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Kaede's throat was dry.
…
Adrenaline shot through her.
She… felt something!
Her heartbeat started racing as she watched the wreckage of The Academy For Gifted Juveniles fade away. Darkness replaced her vision, but she couldn't open her eyes. She felt a pleasant coolness around her.
Her mind was spinning. Now that it was over, her memories had begun flooding back to her, and she was graced with the remembrance that everyone was going to be okay. Everyone.
She had kept the moment of Shuichi revealing to everyone that no, she didn't actually kill Rantaro, on repeat in her mind from that point. Even as a ghost stuck outside looking in that had wrenched a scream from her throat.
Rantaro.
Rantaro was alive.
They were both alive again.
She began to hear muffled voices from what sounded like miles away beyond her pod.
Tsumugi's voice from even further, and the closer ones she didn't recognize. She couldn't make out any words yet.
A sudden sound. Whatever he'd said, it was Rantaro's voice.
Kaede could feel a slight draft as she heard her pod click. Her heart was beating so fast her sluggish mind couldn't count the thumps in her ears.
She was coming back. That ordeal was over. She could move her eyes behind her still-closed eyelids. Her fingers twitched.
"Decompressing…" She heard a voice say beyond the darkness.
For what could've been a minute or an hour in her hazy but steadily sharpening state, she laid in the cool gel regaining control of her muscles. She tensed her upper arms, then her forearms, then her fingers twitched again as she wanted to make a fist. She began to smell the sharp sting of antiseptic or some similar cleaner as she started on her legs. The draft around her had warmed a little.
"Releasing in 10… 9… 8…"
The other voices were quiet. Her mind was racing with a million things she wanted to say, a million questions on her tongue.
"3… 2… 1. Standby."
A louder click.
Kaede opened her eyes to the cover of her cryopod lifting away.
Beyond that were two medical staff and… Rantaro, kneeling next to her.
Her mouth opened but all words evaporated when she saw his face again. Relief flooded through her so strongly she felt dizzy.
Pushing through the vertigo, she shakily propped herself up on her elbows. She said nothing, unsure if she could speak again yet, and tried to reach for his face with one hand.
He, not yet much steadier than her, quickly grabbed her hand to keep her upright.
She promptly collapsed into tears, and into him.
She felt him crying too.
"I-I thought I… but it wasn't me…" she managed to croak out.
"I wish I could've told you the truth somehow," he said. "I screamed and screamed but I couldn't do anything." He gripped her tighter, wrapping an arm around her to steady both of them. "And you were gone so fast…"
And then they had to watch the rest unfold, completely alone.
But now they were out.
As their tears subsided and their breaths evened back out, Kaede wiped at her eyes and took notice of her surroundings. She and Rantaro were wearing garments similar to hospital gowns. They were in a dim and fairly big but narrow room, with a large desk in front of a wall covered in various monitors which the medical team were back to taking notes on. Their "class'" 16 cryopods were lined up through the rest of the room. Aside from their two, another was already open.
Tsumugi stood near the doorway, watching them nervously. She bristled when Kaede made eye contact with her, but when she saw that the blonde wasn't incredibly angry at her she quickly walked over.
She looked like she'd been crying now that Kaede could see her better.
Tsumugi knelt down beside her cryopod, shaking and tightly gripping the edge. Unlike Kaede, she had no trouble finding the words that spilled out of her.
"Kaede I'm so so sorry I did that I had to be the villain and I didn't want to but I didn't have a choice and I only did it because the villain keeps their memories so I knew it was gonna be okay in the end but I felt awful about it the whole time and I'm so so sorry…" Kaede saw tears welling up in her eyes once more as Tsumugi put her head down on the side of her pod.
"Sorry… out of breath…"
She seemed even more sincere than she initially had in the game.
Kaede gingerly lifted a hand to pat her head once, twice, and she heard Tsumugi let out a deep sigh of relief.
"Thank you," she said shakily.
Two other medical staff walked over to Ryoma's cryopod and began the process of bringing him out of the purgatory of the post-death simulation.
The three of them looked on as Tsumugi cleared her throat and spoke. "They always bring them back in the order they died. Except for the villain who comes back first."
Tsumugi watched as they began to decompress Ryoma's cryopod. "The longer ago you died, the easier you come back," she said vacantly, sniffling a bit and already thinking of what she might have to face from some of the others. "But since I never stopped being aware of the circumstances I came back the quickest."
She then slowly stood back up, and once again on solid feet, walked over to Ryoma's.
Kaede thought back to her audition. A cold pang of… something shot through her chest for a split second.
I sure didn't make it far, did I?
She could too easily recall the pressure on her throat. The massive piano keys underneath her. The sour notes. The pressure behind her eyes. The taste of copper… Then the shattered confidence after everything else had subsided and she was stuck alone and watching a car crash that she thought for so long that she set in motion in the worst way possible.
She was so sure she could win. She thought she had what it'd take to kill everyone. Because it wasn't real.
Sitting in her cryopod now, she was sick at the thought. It didn't just feel real, for all purposes except permanence it was real in that moment.
Clutching the edges of her cryopod, she felt her clenched jaw and tears streaming down her cheeks. A gentle hand wiped them away.
She pressed her hand to his. He had always been genuine.
He felt her skin, cool but warming and more than anything alive.
They promised it would've felt like nothing more than a bad dream after coming back out. Rantaro knew better than anyone that it was a lie to get people to agree to another season. But now it really was over.
He tried to keep his hand steady beyond his rapid heart.
Kaede opened her eyes slightly, looking towards the floor past her cryopod.
Both of their minds were racing. Each remembered that last conversation, the promises they made. Too afraid to bring it up in case it, even with his hand still on her cheek, and her hand still on his, held no water back in the real world.
She broke the silence first, words rasping through her still-dry throat.
"You still owe me that dance."
He laughed quickly, quietly in relief. Once, twice… and he realized he couldn't stop. He deflated on the side of her cryopod, arm falling back down by his side, shaking in quiet bursts of breath.
More tears were streaming down her face, but her breath was steadier as she smiled down at him. She lifted her hand to place on his head, and gently ran her fingers through his pretty green hair.
After he caught his breath, he turned his head to look at her again. He couldn't muster any more words. He merely looked at her through watery eyes, a tired smile on his lips.
She said nothing in return, just feeling his soft hair against her fingers for a few moments.
Gingerly, he reached up to take her hand, and he brought it to his lips. As he kissed her knuckles, she flushed, a nervous giggle spilling from her throat. But this nervousness was blessedly light, and fun, and nice.
She cleared her throat. "You'll have to paint my nails again, too," she smiled. Her blood felt warm again, the last bit of cold in her bones had thawed.
Her strength then returned to her in a rush of adrenaline. She stiffened, bolting upright, then jumped up out of her pod in front of Rantaro.
He stood up too, ready to catch her when the buzzing quickly turned to wooziness and she had to sit back down.
He guided her softly to the floor as she groaned, head in her hands.
"It'll pass in a few seconds," he said as she sat down next to him.
Kaede took a slow, deep, shaky breath and leaned against him. Another breath. Then a less-shaky breath as the room stopped spinning.
Rantaro chuckled softly. "It's even worse the farther you make it. Trust me, you really don't want to be one of the last people standing."
"...oh."
"Something about your brain coping with reality being different than it thought. You have to come back slowly, and the more time you have to adjust the better... I don't remember much about it."
She was hardly listening. Being the last person standing… the thought of it was stuck in her mind. Some angry part of her wanted to try again, to see how far she could get if nobody cheated, but thinking about going through it again sent a chill down her spine.
Rantaro was the Ultimate Survivor.
"I'm sorry you went through all that." As she spoke she pulled herself back to reality.
A flicker of sadness shone in his eyes as smiled slightly. His heart jumped as she leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Well, I didn’t have to go through it all again.” He leaned his head onto hers in return. “It’s good we didn’t make it far.”
Kaede hummed in outward-agreement-but-internal-uncertainty as she closed her eyes for a moment. She saw flashes of returning to the library and seeing the man next to her dead on the floor. The blood pooling under his head. The odd stiffness of his back. The cold feeling of dread in her stomach–
“Hey, come back to me, I’m here.”
She opened her eyes again. “How’d you know?” she asked, then realized it was a dumb question. “Nevermind.”
“It never ends up feeling like just a nightmare,” he said, eyes a bit unfocused and aimed at the wall, and trying to focus on the feel of her hair under his cheek. “It’ll get more bearable, though.”
She sighed, and thought a moment.
“Well, at least we can help each other, right? It’s gotta be hard to deal with it on your own.”
She heard a soft chuckle from him. “You wanna stick around, huh? You know, I’m not as cool as I was in that world.”
She giggled in return. “That’s okay, me neither.”
They sat for a few minutes in a blanket of quiet, heads together and breathing softly as they watched the medical team move from Ryoma to Kirumi. Kaede realized she had a million things she wanted to talk to Rantaro about, but she knew that it could wait until they were outside again, the warm sunlight finally real again.
She felt him sigh again. At the very least, the game couldn’t have been all bad, right? Not if she was here, out the other side and still breathing. And now she knew him, who’d captured her attention from the first time she saw him. His determination to end it on his own had further inspired her to try her hardest, and even if it didn’t work the way she wanted, it gave them both an out. Even though that voice deep inside her still said she should’ve made it farther, she knew it was for the best that she didn’t. What she did go through was bad enough. Even recalling her final moments was enough to make her feel like her throat was tightening again.
Rantaro moved his head a bit, and she felt his lips press onto her hair. She smiled, and relaxed a little. At least they had each other now.
She reached for his hand that rested on his leg, and brought it to her lips to return the sentiment.
At least they had each other.