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“Uu...... uu... uu...”
He was sitting down next to a coffin.
“So pitiful... poor... Shin.”
Hiyori’s eyes looked over Shin again. Again and again. He was really dead. Through all of the simulations, Hiyori had seen his meek friend die over and over and over again. Losing an attraction. Getting killed by Miss Sara. And, most of all, dying in the main game. It was usually getting voted out, but sometimes he had the sacrifice, and the group found out. They left him to die. Just like that. The poor thing wound up with a survival rate of 0%. But to be thorough, ASU-NARO rounded down to 0.0%. Just great. “Certain death.”
Even with knowing the inevitable, Hiyori was both elated and filled with dread. He finally, after so long, got to see Shin, his beloved Shin, be confronted by death. There was terror in his face when he laid eyes on the victory percentages. At least, that’s what Miley told him. And through his security system, he could see everything on Shin after that point. All the despair he was feeling. But at the same time, he finally, after so long, got to see Shin. His beloved Shin. And he knew that unlike how they used to live together, he couldn’t exactly just waltz up and chat with Shin out of the blue.
Instead, he watched on a monitor as Shin’s eyes slowly got duller and duller with every step he took. He watched as Shin booted up an AI of Joe as a one last ‘thank you’ for letting a little girl live at the cost of his life. He watched Miss Sara, who had been challenging Shin for most of this death game, start sobbing when she talked to the AI, surely wanting to thank Shin back. He watched as a single tear rolled down his own face. One became two. Two became three.
“Oi, oi... are you really the type to cry?”
After Miss Sara had left, Hiyori turned away from the monitor. Shin was due to be cleaned up soon anyways, so there was no more point in looking. ‘...I didn’t know I could..cry.’ He slowly wiped the tears off his face and got up from his chair. He talked things through with the dummies already, so he decided to go down and see Shin again for himself. Just one last time. He started crying again when looking at his corpse, though. He had so much confidence he could keep it together, too.
“You’re so cruel... Even I’ll cry when I’m sad. If it was going to turn out like this... I wanted to be the one to kill Shin...”
Truthfully, he didn’t even want Shin to die. Yes, he was curious, but death is permanent. Permanent is forever. Just the concept of it scared him. He was avoiding it for so long, but now the body was in front of him. It was there. It was the most important thing in the world at that moment. There wasn’t even a chance for him to talk to his now-deceased friend. He didn’t even know Hiyori was here.
He reached down and cupped Shin’s face. A part of him wished that this was only a dream. That he would wake up in his room and find Shin on the couch sleeping soundly under a mountain of blankets. He longed for that comfort again after years of having it stripped away from him. His thumb stroked Shin’s cheek. It should’ve been bloodied, but ASU-NARO didn’t slack when it came to memorials. Shin’s body looked so pristine and delicate as he’d always been, that he only looked as if he were resting a bit after walking home from school. But he was so cold. He was freezing to the touch. All of his life had seeped out of him.
“Ka ka ka... As I thought, you’re cracked.”
Meister wouldn’t understand. He was an okay boss, but was never welcoming of Hiyori’s attitude towards the candidate of Shin Tsukimi. Meister thought Hiyori was “too affectionate” with the boy, despite how Hiyori vehemently denied the assumption. Though, after seeing him dead, he couldn’t do anything but accept it. He never even realized how much Shin meant to him until he was already in a coffin, about to forever be locked away. Away from his family, his apartment. Away from Hiyori.
“Whatever... My love is too complex to comprehend, see.”