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Noctis isn’t great at packing his own lunch, and his dad never has, but at least his dad is good about leaving him money. When it’s time for the lunch period, most of the kids in his class start pulling out their food, so Noctis heads out of the classroom and downstairs. There’s a little snack shop down on the first floor, near the shoe lockers, that’s staffed by the student council, but there’s a crowd and Noctis has had enough of people staring at him today.
This school isn’t as strict as his old one was; there aren’t any teachers at the front gates to keep students from leaving campus. He’s not the only high school student to head out, and he trails after uniformed students in twos or threes to the town’s only convenience store a couple blocks away in what passes for downtown.
The electronic doors slide open, and with them comes a welcome blast of air conditioning. Even in the middle of nowhere, convenience stores are all set up basically the same way, so it doesn't take Noctis long to find a pair of hard-boiled eggs, some plastic-wrapped onigiri, and a bottle of soda. The cashier barely looks at him, which is fine—Noctis would rather be just another anonymous high school student--and packs everything neatly into a plastic bag for him. Then Noctis is outside again and heads back to school.
The grounds are generous for a school this small; Noctis finds himself an empty section of bleachers near the track area and takes a seat. He fishes his cell phone from his pocket and turns it on—this the school is strict about, but there aren’t any teachers around to confiscate it. There aren’t any messages, not even a how’s-your-first-day-going text from his dad. Nothing from his old friends, either, and he sighs even if he knows it’s stupid to pick at that old wound. He shuts his phone off and puts it away.
Noctis makes short work of the eggs and the onigiri. He is just finishing up his soda and wondering where he’s supposed to take his trash when someone turns the corner.
It’s that blond kid from his class. Noctis did skim over the school dress code, so the guy’s hair must be natural, because there’s no way he’d get away with it otherwise. What surprises Noctis, though, is that the guy actually perks up and waves at him—and then alters course straight for him.
“Hey,” he says when he’s close enough. He doesn’t try to climb up the bleachers to get closer, but it still makes Noctis feel a bit cornered. “You booked it out of class earlier, I didn’t have a chance to catch up.”
Noctis frowns. “You need something?”
“Huh? No.” The guy rocks back on his heels, like he’s surprised by Noct’s question. “I just wanted to say hi. I’m—well, I’m the one who had to do the whole new-guy introduction last year. My name’s Prompto.”
Noctis can’t help but be a little curious. From what he read online before moving, this town has slowly been dying for decades, with more people moving out than moving in. It’s barely got two thousand people now, and even with both the junior and senior high in the same building, there’s still plenty of space. “Why’d your family move out here?”
“My parents work for the Ministry of Agriculture,” Prompto says. He shrugs, a slight lift and fall of his shoulders. “Someone had to fill the post, and they wanted a change of scenery. You?”
“My grandfather died a couple years ago,” Noctis says flatly. “And dad got let go when his company restructured, so he’s finally getting around to taking care of the estate.”
Prompto blinks once, twice. “Sorry for your loss.”
“Gotta actually know someone for it to be a loss,” is all Noctis says, because he doesn’t even know how to explain to someone else how his dad collapses in on himself a little more every passing day for finally having to cave and accept the house and the money that he swore he’d never return to or touch. He finishes off his soda and waves the empty bottle at Prompto. “Where do I dump my trash?”
It’s supposed to be the end to the conversation, but Prompto doesn’t get the message. Or if he does, he ignores it. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
There aren’t many options left, and Noctis doesn’t want to be an entire asshole even though his mood has been shitty ever since they started packing up their old apartment, so he gets off the bleachers and falls into step with Prompto. “So, what is there even to do in this town?”
“Well, that depends,” Prompto says. He gestures toward the western sky and the forest-covered mountains that dominate a good section of it. “How much do you like nature?”
“I’d like it a hell of a lot better if it didn’t come with bugs.”
It wasn’t meant as a joke, but Prompto actually laughs, and something in Noct’s chest catches and pulls. “The last time I let Gladio take me hiking, a huge ass spider dropped right out of the trees and into my face. ”
Noctis can feel a smile threatening to form at the corner of his mouth. “Well, cross hiking off the list.”
“Uh, there’s—a bar nearby, or kind of. They don’t start serving alcohol until six, so we can be in there until then. They’ve got some pool tables and arcade games and even a room for karaoke if you’re into that, and it’s probably the closest we’ve got to some place to hang out that’s not the park down by the river.”
“Not the biggest karaoke fan. But arcade games are cool.”
Prompto perks up at that. “Yeah? You ever play Justice Monsters?”
“I haven’t, sorry,” Noctis says as they round the corner of the building and find the row of trash cans.
“I could show you, if you want,” Prompto says, and it’s just the right amount of casual for Noctis to realize that Prompto really wants the answer to be yes.
“I can’t tonight, I gotta help my dad finish unpacking. But—how about this weekend?”
“You mean it?”
Prompto’s grinning, and Noctis finally allows himself a smile back. “Yeah, I do. What’s—”
But the rest of the question gets lodged in his throat because a handful of thin, black threads creep out from under the collar of Prompto’s uniform and slowly wrap their way around his throat.
“Noctis?” Prompto asks, and just like all the others Noctis has ever seen, he is entirely oblivious to what has caught Noct’s eye.
He’s never—he’s never seen them move before. Whenever he’s seen someone who is close to death, the threads are thick and binding, wrapped heavily around the soon-to-be-deceased, the ends trailing behind like smoke. A few times, he saw the ends wrapped around another person’s hands like a leash and knew that this was the person who would be responsible.
He’s never seen the threads just—appear. But they’re here now, when they weren’t just a few moments ago, delicate like a fine silver necklace around Prompto’s throat.
“Dude, are you okay?” Prompto reaches out and grabs him by the shoulders.
“Yeah,” Noctis tries, and then one of the threads drifts down and snakes its way around his wrist.
Noctis doesn’t remember what excuse he gave Prompto, only that he hurried to put as much distance between them as he could. He eventually hid in one of the bathrooms, stall door locked, and waited for the rest of the lunch break to pass. Noctis doesn’t return to the classroom until the very last minute, mutters I got lost when the teacher looks at him sharply, and then refuses to make eye contact with Prompto even though they’re on the same row and Prompto clearly keeps trying to catch his eye from several seats down.
The black thread is still there, snaked around his wrist. The connection to Prompto is stretched thin enough it disappears, but it will be visible again if Prompto gets close enough. Noctis tries to peel the thread off, but he can’t—he can’t even feel it. He’s never touched this stuff before, only ever seen it on other people, and it is horrifying on some primal level to see this thing on his skin and not be able to touch it. He tries picking at it, then scratching, and doesn’t realize how frantic he’s gotten until the teacher asks is there a problem, Caelum?
Noctis looks up and sees the entire class staring back at him. He mutters no, sir and yanks the sleeve of his uniform jacket over his wrist so at least he can’t see the thread anymore.
It’s almost worse that way, because now he can’t see if it’s still there or not.
Don’t be the fucking weirdo here, too, Noctis tells himself. It was his goal all the way to this town and to the school this morning. But it seems like an incredibly distant worry now.
He’s never seen the threads be wrong . But they have to be wrong. They can’t be connecting him to Prompto. There’s—he barely knows Prompto. He’s got no reason to—to be involved in his death somehow.
Not just involved. The direct cause of it. And whatever it is—it’s already set in motion. He’s never seen the threads disappear after they showed up. They just accumulate over time, until—
The only way they’ve ever gone away is when the person’s finally dead.
Noctis doesn’t even bother to pretend to pay attention. He stares blankly at his notebook, a pencil clutched in his hand, and tries to fight off the nausea roiling in his gut.
He’s going to kill someone. Noctis can’t—it’s too big of an idea to handle all at once. He can’t imagine ever wanting to kill someone. So maybe—?
An accident? The thought doesn’t help his nausea or the horror threatening to suffocate him. It must be some kind of accident, right? That’s the only thing that makes sense. Not that any of this makes sense. But the threads—they only showed up after Noctis said he’d hang out with Prompto this weekend.
Trying to intervene has never worked. But Noctis was never the one involved in a death before, either. He could just stand Prompto up. But what if standing Prompto up is the thing that sets them down the path to—
Noctis wishes fervently, not for the first time, that his mother was still alive. Even if she had never figured out how to stop a death before, at least he could have someone to talk to about it. The first time Noctis tried to tell his father about seeing the threads on someone after she passed, Regis had simply told him to let it be.
You’ll only ruin yourself trying to save them, he told Noctis. I won’t lose you, too.