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The weight of the gun in his hand was welcome. It gave a grounding feeling: a pair of arms around his shoulders, tears on his cheeks, laughter in his lungs, hair dye on his scalp, a ring on his finger. It felt like it was home. The hole in his foot didn’t smart like it did only moments ago—it was balmed, put on pause. The world could resume around him once it was put back in its proper place, with Kisaki out of the picture and all of Toman living happily.
(He ignored the fact that what he wanted was not natural, that he was bending time and breaking people to get it.)
“It should have been this way from the start,” he spoke. “You should have learned from your first mistake.”
Kisaki, bleeding like the human he always was, stared at Takemichi and not the gun. “And what mistake would that have been?”
“Crossing me.”
Takemichi didn’t know what expression was on his face, but he could see Kisaki’s and it was slowly dawning in fear. His glasses were partially fogged and they had snow, blood, and sweat on the lenses. He blinked before realizing Kisaki had lost them a long time ago.
(He could’ve sworn the boy was wearing a suit, a single tear rolling down his cheek.)
He could feel the words on his tongue.
So long, my dark hero.
He’d been waiting for this moment, dreaming of it, praying for it, ever since Akkun walked off the lip of a building more weightless than Takemichi will ever be. (He was weightless too once, by Akkun’s hand. He would never forget the way his heart soared and the world condensed itself down to the only things that had ever mattered to him. It was just so… so focused, so neat, that he yearned for that kind of clarity. He would never again get it, so long as his friends had anything to say about it, but for this one moment he thought he was getting close.)
And then Hina was there. She was standing where Akkun had died and Mikey was with her, and he could hear Kisaki’s feet colliding with the pavement, but there were flames licking his skin and there was only smoke to breathe. (He didn’t want to drop the gun.)
“Kisaki!”
Mikey’s cry tore through him like every bullet had before, and the gun was being wrenched from his fingers. There were hands on his back that were charred, broken, bloody, and dead—but they were pushing him forward. There were too many for him to count, but he knew they were there.
Takemichi’s mother had never been anything but authoritarian and absent, but Iori—Takuya’s mom—had a story for everything. She would wind him tales that spanned decades and realities, of gods and mortals, hubris and vanity, power and intelligence. She said that the wind whistled and moaned because they were the only sounds that could cross over the barrier between life and death, that it held the whispered wishes of the departed that followed behind you.
Whether the wind held the spirits of the people he never knew to save, or if he had held onto their memory so tightly that he’d fooled himself, he would never have to reconcile those parts within himself because now he was running. Fists of broken flesh and tombstone nails pumped by his sides as he searched through the snow desperately for a flash of red. His ears were numb from the winter air, his lips swollen and dry, but he breathed smoke and every footstep was followed by the thunderous applause of a hundred different ghosts.
“Shit!”
Kisaki’s voice rang across the empty landscape, the snow swallowing the sound. He’d slipped going around a corner, his feet finding no traction as Takemichi rounded on him at full speed.
“It’s over, Kisaki,” the blonde huffed. “You’ve lost all your allies.”
The blood spattered hem of the boy’s jacket was just out of reach when he finally got his bearings. They ran and ran, until Kisaki pulled further ahead, enough that he could chance a look backwards.
“Like hell I’d let this end!” he howled. “I can start over again and again!”
“I won’t let you go back to the future again!”
When Kisaki tripped, Takemichi was going too fast to sidestep the boy, and ended up falling over him. He did see the burnt remains of what had to have been Hakkai’s body nestled in the snow, while Mitsuya’s hand had been the one to grab the boy’s ankle and down him. It was fitting that in life and death the duo were still attached at the hip. The blonde wanted to smile, overwhelmed with relief and joy for a single moment, knowing that even though he’d failed his friends were able to find each other.
A hand looped under his armpit and helped him stand. Shorn black locks tickling the nape of his neck told him that Mikey had had his back. By the time Takemichi had gotten to his feet, every muscle in his body shaking in agony, Kisaki was standing only a few feet away, looking at the blonde in awe.
He spoke with a furrow in his brows. “Go back to the future?”
The wind seemed to fall silent, the snow suspended in midair.
“You’re a time leaper,” Takemichi told him. “Why are you acting so surprised?”
Kisaki’s lips turned upward, pity marring the grin. “I’ve only ever been competing against you, Hanagaki, not time.”
In a great cacophony of misery, every ghost screamed out all at once. It whipped through the street, ruffling hair, spitting snow, harmonizing with whistles and weeping, and the crunching of snow between tires. (Of the crunching of snow underneath Takemichi’s feet as he stepped towards the boy.)
“So you…” he whispered. “Y-you’re not—you never—went to the future?”
The pride that lighted Kisaki’s face was enough to draw fresh tears to Takemichi’s eyes. He was close enough that he could have reached out and grabbed the boy, but he couldn’t feel his fingers and he was dripping with melted snow. He didn’t have the energy—standing was almost too much.
Kisaki looked at him like he was a work of art. “Only you.”
The blonde could only stare in awe at the boy who’d bested him time and time again. Even though his demons were weeping and the snow by his feet was red (redredred, always red), Takemichi couldn’t find it within himself to move, let alone speak.
“Hanagaki,” Kisaki called, his voice echoing in ears that didn’t want to listen.
Takemichi’s vision was starting to fail too, dark splotches overtaking the edges.
“Hanagaki,” Kisaki spoke, hands placing themselves on either side on the blonde’s shoulders.
As if he’d been slapped, Takemichi could look nowhere besides the bludged face of the boy before him. The bags under his eyes were intense, his eyelashes crusted with blood, and his lips were pockmarked with scars from biting at them one too many times.
“Takemichi,” the wind stole his whisper. “I won’t ever let this game end. We can play it forever because of you. We’ll never have to be bored, or lonely, or forgotten again.”
The gleam of the streetlamp in his eyes was manic and every inch of him covered in blood that was and wasn’t his. He was smiling, but there wasn’t an ounce of malice. He was hopeful. In a rotten, twisted sense, Kisaki was overjoyed.
“What do you say, Takemichi?” he asked, hands on either side of the blonde’s head to keep his chin from dipping.
(Takemichi was not going to last much longer, he was losing consciousness.)
All this time Kisaki had just been looking for someone to fool around with—a friend, someone who could keep up—not simply just to gain power and fear, but to find competition. Kisaki’s move was to try and get the future he wanted, he was putting everything he was into this game, and all he wanted was for someone else to play too.
No wonder Hina always ended up dead—of course the prize at the end would be worthless if there was nothing to keep you from winning it. No matter how many clever, strong, and unwieldy people Kisaki gathered, no one could ever hold a candle to what he was capable of.
Kisaki held him like a treasure, with hands warm enough that they burned, and for a moment, Takemichi wanted to just close his eyes and sleep. What was one more game, right? He’d won this round—he’d caught Kisaki, foiled his plans, and kept Tenjiku from killing Toman. Takemichi had won! If he’d done it once—if he kept up at it—he could do it one more time. Why couldn’t he finally rest his weary bones and give in to the gentle warmth that brought feeling back to his cheeks?
“Will you do it?” Kisaki pleaded. (Will you stay with me?)
Takemichi’s eyes flickered open, not even realizing that they’d shut.
The only thing he could see was an adult version of Kisaki standing in the street, just a few feet behind the young, alive, and captivated one. There was a hole punched through his stomach, and a sad expression on his face, as if he could hear Takemichi’s very thoughts. The adult Kisaki shook his head no, slicked back hair falling across his forehead. Headlights illuminated the side of his body as he opened his arms.
You know what to do, he seemed to say. You know where this all ends.
Takemichi knew, he just didn’t want to be the one to do it. He didn’t want to be the executioner, despite how the gun had felt. The person before him was a child clinging to a life-preserver amidst a tumultuous sea of loneliness, a rain soaked whelp of a boy clinging to the sleeve of the only person to earn his trust. Takemichi didn’t want Kisaki to die, because he would just be another person he’d been unable to save—and he was so close, right now was the closest he’d ever been.
But every blink seemed to be getting longer, and Kisaki was starting to get worried. The living Hina and Mikey would be there soon. So Takemichi did what he did best: he failed.
Using all of his remaining strength, he summoned a light grin.
“Okay,” he murmured.
And then he pushed Kisaki in the chest as hard as he possibly could.
The boy took a few startled steps backwards, sliding across the icy blacktop before coming to a stop. Takemichi was on his ass in the snow, vision more black and white than anything intelligible. He couldn’t see the headlights, but he knew they were coming, just as well as the bile burning up his throat.
Kisaki was still smiling—still thinking that Takemichi had given in—when the truck slammed into his body. The boy was flung a good twenty feet away, limbs pointed in directions they weren’t supposed to be, extra joints bending the bones. Kisaki was on his side, face pointed towards where Takemichi was sitting. His soul rending cry overtook even the wind, windows rattling with the force of his agony. Sharp eyes were trained on the blonde, swimming with some kind of emotion that wanted to be understood, but Takemichi could hardly look at him.
Spilling his guts half onto the ground and half in his lap, Takemichi’s brain couldn’t keep up with the words leaving the boy’s mouth. Instead of listening, he spoke through strings of bile. “Follow me.”
Kisaki was quiet.
“Follow me and the game will never end.”
(Takemichi would have sworn he’d seen himself—twenty-six years old, black hair, and still in his work uniform—help push the boy into the road.)
When Hina and Mikey found Takemichi and what was left of Kisaki, they were both taken aback by the carnage. A driver was on the phone, frantically sobbing and switching between staring at Kisaki’s corpse and the blood-smeared front of his truck. Takemichi was sat down in the snow, shaking from head to toe and covered in vomit. His eyes were trained on the smear that was their enemy, a vacant expression on his face. He didn’t react when Hina spoke to him, nor did he make any indication that he could tell that they were there. Only when Hina started wiping the sick from his lips did he lazily look in her direction, his body shuddering all at once.
He whispered something then, but Hina didn’t respond, and Mikey—no matter how much he pestered the girl—never found out what he said. Ever the dutiful girlfriend, she helped clean him up, brushed a hand through his hair, and pressed snow against the worst of his swelling. She was crying, but she wasn’t freaking out, which was probably the reason Takemichi was still holding it together.
Hina held his hand as the ambulances arrived, and did everything possible to keep him focussed on other things: like how she’d cleaned off the gun he’d held to Kisaki’s head, and how the cops would most definitely match it to his wounds, and how the rest of the Toman boys had already been taken care of.
“Kaku,” he said quietly, as if he’d already known the answer.
Hina hummed lightly, trying to rub feeling back into the boy’s hands. “Yes, he was still alive.”
Takemichi nodded then, before lowering his chin onto her shoulder and promptly passing out.
He woke up in the hospital no worse for wear—though he did have to have his foot splinted for a bit. He didn’t tremor at Kisaki’s name, nor did he react out of turn. Mikey thought he was a bit spacey, to which Chifuyu and Hina quickly agreed was true.
Hina kept two things to herself regarding the matter: the first of which being what Takemichi had whispered to her at the scene of the crime (“Forgive me”) , and the second being the one evening where she heard Takemichi speaking to his empty room.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I hate you to death—I can’t help but loathe you. There’s no way I could ever like somebody like you. But… you did it because you loved Hina, and you respected me as an opponent, so—” his voice broke with the first tears since Kisaki died, “—I wish I could have faced you again!”
No one in Toman needed to know.