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Ouma hangs his feet over the edge of the roof and rests his chin against the railing. It’s cold and moist with dew, but he ignores the unpleasantness of it and relaxes into the sensation, eyes half-lidded as he watches the street from several stories up. Even at this hour, when the sun is yet to rise and the fluffy clouds on the horizon are still painted navy blue, traffic is busy as ever. Red and yellow lights dance in front of Ouma’s eyes as the cars zoom by. Hundreds of people, strangers, going about their lives. Heading to work, heading home to their families, heading out to see friends. The world… moves forward.
He hears the creaking of the roof door opening behind him but doesn’t turn, cheeks squished in the palms of his hands. Footsteps approach him, light and uncertain, but don’t stop until they’re maybe a yard away. Whoever it is doesn’t speak, and Ouma doesn’t prompt them to; doesn’t even indicate that he knows they’re there.
Those people down there… they’re all vile. Or maybe they aren’t. Maybe Ouma’s the vile one.
“Ouma-kun,” the person behind him says. Ouma straightens up, now, his eyebrows raising. Of all the voices he was expecting to hear… “Um. Good morning.”
Good morning, he says. Ouma huffs out a laugh and turns to face Saihara with an eyebrow raised, keeping one arm propped on the railing. Saihara doesn’t seem too worse for the wear, aside from an anxiety in his face—but then, that’s familiar enough that Ouma barely even questions it. He’s dressed in loose-fitting black sweats and a dark t-shirt, and he has a blanket tucked over his arm. His hair is a bit messy, and though his eyes are still lined with the dark bags they always were in the simulation, they’re alert. Not bright, necessarily, but… probably much more lively than Ouma’s look.
Ouma finds a smile, somewhere within the depths of him, even though he knows Saihara won’t return it. “Well, what a surprise! If it isn’t Mister Detective himself. What can I do you for?”
One of Saihara’s eyebrows raises. He moves forward and drops to sit down next to Ouma, a slightly awkward motion, before folding his legs underneath himself. The blanket he brought rests in his lap, and he lays his hands on top of it, rolling his shoulders forward.
“I’m not a detective.” It’s not the self-deprecating deflection he made so often back in the game; Saihara’s tone is factual. Ouma would love to pretend he doesn’t know what the other boy is talking about, but he does. Of course he does. Everything that they thought they knew about themselves… was a lie.
He’d guessed as much, back when he first saw his own motive video and suddenly needed to get home to a group of misfits he hadn’t remembered until right that second, but… back then, there’d still been a chance that he was wrong. It was all just conjecture, back in the game. Everything is factual now; honest. Ouma has always hated it that way.
“And I’m not a horse,” Ouma returns, eyes closing. He throws his arms behind his neck. “What’s your point?”
“Um.” Saihara pauses, sounding unsure. Ouma cracks open an eye to see the same feeling mirrored in his expression. “I guess I… didn’t have one.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You just… probably shouldn’t call me one.” He shakes his head. “I um, didn’t come out here to talk about me, though.”
Oh, here they go. “You didn’t, huh?”
“No.” Saihara shakes his head. Ouma averts his gaze now, looks back down at the street, and awaits the inevitable. Saihara is going to say that he understands him now, that he knows the truth. He’s going to spill platitudes about how Ouma was everyone’s friend, in the end—how he’s not a monster or a villain—he’s going to say something ridiculously sappy, about how he doesn’t have to be alone anymore, because he—
A cold hand wraps around his own. Ouma blinks and looks down at it, as though to check that this is really happening—but no, it is. Saihara’s hand, slightly larger than Ouma’s, is interlocked with his. Squeezing. A lump crawls into Ouma’s throat and he swallows it down.
“Do you think—um.” Saihara clears his throat. Ouma looks up and sees that his lower lip is wobbling. “Do you think that… anything in there, our feelings, our memories… do you think any of it was real?”
Ouma opens and closes his mouth. “That’s a loaded question, Saihara-chan.” He clears his throat. “What makes you think I’ll know the answer?”
“I don’t know, I—” Saihara breaks off and clears his throat again, his free hand coming up to cover his eyes. When it lowers, Ouma sees that they’re a bit red, but dry. He isn’t crying, though from the way his voice sounds, he very well might be soon. Ouma bites his lip and thumbs at the side of Saihara’s hand. “You always seemed to have the answers. In the game.”
Did he, now? Ouma frowns, turning Saihara’s hand over, resting the back of his own against his knee. The answers he had, the things he figured out… it was all just what he was supposed to know. Even if Shirogane panicked at the time, what Ouma learned was all just meant to be his own undoing. He played a part, read a script. He was exactly what Team Danganronpa designed him to be, right down to the way that he hated the killing game. Now… all he can do is hate it, because even if that’s exactly what they wanted, it’s still better than loving it.
Saying all of that to Saihara, though… first of all, doesn’t answer his question, but more importantly… Ouma wouldn’t even know where to start.
“Well, I hate to disappoint,” he says after a moment, “but I don’t know. I don’t know any more than Saihara-chan does what was real and what was fake. For all I know, everything went exactly as they planned, right down to you, Harukawa, and Yumeno-chan putting an end to it all. Whatever answers I had in there don’t mean shit out here. I’m as lost as you are.” After a moment, Ouma adds, much more quietly, “I’m sorry.”
Saihara squeezes Ouma’s hand hard enough to be painful.
“Ow,” Ouma hisses, trying to pull away, “what the fu—”
“Don’t apologise,” Saihara interjects, with such a heat in his voice that Ouma blanches. “I—I never understood you, you know? And after you died, I still… I still didn’t really get you, or why you did what you did… why you never asked anybody for help, why you thought I might be trustworthy when I never once trusted myself… but if I know anything, it’s that—from the very start, you’ve just been… trying, just as hard as the rest of us have been. A-And that, that isn’t something to apologise for.”
Ouma puffs out his cheeks. There it is, the understanding. “Listen, Saihara-chan, I don’t know who you think I am, but—”
“I don’t think anything of you, Ouma-kun.” Saihara lets out a breath, and Ouma sees that his eyes are bright this time, intense and defiant and glossy with tears. “I don’t know who you are, and I never did, because every time I tried to get close, you pulled away twice as hard.” He shakes his head. “I can’t—I can’t understand you if you don’t let me, and I don’t even have to understand you if that’s not what you want, I just…” Saihara trails off, and for a moment, he looks lost, a stray tear caught in his eyelash. On a random, blind impulse, Ouma reaches out to brush it away, and stops before his fingers touch Saihara’s face.
Grey eyes trail up Ouma’s arm from his fingertips and stop when they’ve made eye contact. Saihara’s lower lip trembles again.
“Saihara-chan is lonely, isn’t he?” Ouma asks. “How could that be, when he has so many people who love him so much?”
Saihara exhales a shaky laugh. “You’re lonely too.”
“Guilty as charged,” Ouma shrugs. “Maybe I like it that way.”
“Do you?”
Ouma hesitates. His impulse is to say yes, he does, but… does he really prefer to be alone and unseen? Is the idea of Saihara understanding him really so unbearable, or is it the thought that Saihara could dig underneath his skin to the real him and decides he doesn’t like what he sees?
After all, hadn’t he hated Ouma before? The last time Ouma saw him, Saihara was gazing at him with utter resentment in every corner of his face. And then before that, after Ouma punched Momota in the stomach and laughed and Saihara spit those words— you’re alone and you always will be— like they tasted like poison… who’s to say that Saihara wouldn’t hate him again? Could Ouma really blame him if he did? Had he not earned every inch of Saihara’s dislike with the actions he took in the game, however orchestrated?
“If Saihara-chan hates being alone,” Ouma starts, voice level, “then he should try to get closer to the people he has. He has Momota-chan and Akamatsu-chan back now, and pretty much eeeeeveryone else would love to be friends with him. A lot of them aren’t even killers! Why does he need me?”
“I don’t… I don’t need anything.” Saihara grips Ouma’s hand again. His hold is less painful now, but still secure. Ouma can’t remember the last time someone took his hand like this. “If I walked out of here without a single friend and tried to start my life anew… I could probably make it. But I don’t want that, Ouma-kun.” His voice takes on a desperate undertone. “I don’t want to walk out of here alone and leave you to do the same, I want… I want to reach you, somehow, I want to help you, I don’t—” And now the tears in his eyes spill over and he reaches for Ouma’s other hand. “I don’t want you to just disappear.”
Was that ever an option? Ouma pulls his other hand away from Saihara’s, just out of reach, but Saihara doesn’t withdraw. He stays close, eyes pleading, expression open and raw and vulnerable. It should be disgusting to him, but it isn’t; Saihara has always been easy on the eyes—even pretty—but in real life, with the acne on his nose and chin and the weakness in his eyes… he’s beautiful. Or maybe it’s just his words, that are beautiful.
Still, “You don’t need to fix me. That isn’t your job.” Ouma clears his throat and digs his nails into his palms. “I’m sure you have plenty of problems to deal with on your own.”
“Then maybe we can help each other,” Saihara counters weakly. “I-I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t at least a little bit selfish… being believed in by Akamatsu-san and Momota-kun, who trust with their whole hearts for no reason other than to trust… it means a lot, it does. But seeing that you thought maybe I could be trusted, it…” He bites his lip. “I guess a part of me just… wanted to see what you saw. I don’t feel like you’d trust without good reason.”
Nothing that Saihara is saying is wrong, exactly. He can only imagine how little the belief of people like Momota and Akamatsu means when they pass it around like free samples at the mall. Or maybe that’s not fair, since neither of them ever trusted Ouma— at least not until the very end, in Momota’s case—but still, he understands what Saihara means. He even understands why that, in turn, gave Saihara an interest in him. He just…
He takes Saihara’s other hand and brings his own hands together, squeezing both of Saihara’s in his own. “It’s really not that deep, Saihara-chan. I just figured you were smart and knew how to do the right thing, even when it was hard.”
Saihara laughs. “Is it stupid of me to want it to be more than that?”
Ouma pouts, ready to say that it wasn’t, but… maybe it’s the look in Saihara’s eyes, maybe it’s something inside of him that stops him. He’d written off whatever he felt for Saihara in the game as another product of the game. After all, if Team Danganronpa said jump, he probably would’ve been asking how high… but they’re not in the game anymore. What remains of Team Danganronpa’s influence now is little more than a flickering shadow in the back of Ouma’s mind. What he’s feeling right now, looking into Saihara’s eyes… is a lot stronger than that.
And embarrassing, too. Ouma flushes and averts his gaze. “Yes. It’s so stupid. You’re the stupidest man I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Ah, but,” Saihara is smiling, Ouma can hear that he’s smiling, “you just said I was smart, so… which is it?”
“You’re the detective, you figure it out!” Ouma complains. Still, he scoots closer to Saihara, and Saihara releases his hands in favour of draping the blanket over both of them, his arm wrapping around Ouma’s shoulders. It’s such a rush of warmth against the early-morning cold that Ouma’d previously gotten acclimated to that Ouma shivers, ducking his head down. The flush is still tingling in his ears, a constant, irritating heat, but the smile he sees on Saihara’s face when he looks up almost makes it worth it.
Mmmm. He shouldn’t just leave it at that, though.
“I can’t promise anything,” Ouma says. “I can’t promise I’ll be who you want me to be. Or that I’ll make you feel better about yourself. You have to do that, if you want it. It can’t be me. Because if something bad happens and you end up hating me again, you need to be able to keep that self esteem. Or whatever they say.”
Saihara’s smile softens. “Right.” He exhales again, relaxing against Ouma, and his eyes slide past Ouma to gaze at the sky. The sun is rising; Ouma can see the painted oranges and reds reflected in Saihara’s irises. “I… don’t think that’ll happen, though, me hating you, or you being different than what I want… I don’t really want anything from you. I just want a chance to be friends with you now that the pain is over.”
Is the pain over? Ouma looks away from Saihara, stares out at the horizon. It certainly seems that way when the sun is rising, but when the sky has returned to its blue and the world has woken up completely, the pain will still be there, a constant undercurrent, throbbing right beneath his ribcage.
…Still, at least Ouma has a friend now, to share it with. He feels around blindly until he can take Saihara’s hand again, interlocking their fingers. Saihara holds him tighter.
“I can accept that.” Ouma closes his eyes and leans his cheek into Saihara’s shoulder. He’s had his fill of this sunrise for now. “I can even promise that we can be friends! Beyond that, though…”
“We’ll figure it out,” Saihara says. He squeezes Ouma again. “One way or another, we’ll figure it out.”
There is something hopeful about that, isn’t there? What a weird feeling.
“Yeah, I guess we will.”