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Sou stared at his room, at the space he’d shared with Shin for the last several years. His bed, tucked into a corner to hide the chargers he needed to hook his limbs to, recently upgraded to one that could comfortably fit two people. Their desktop setups, back to back, exactly the way Sou had wanted them to be. The photographs of Shin on his shelves, each a personal favorite, that Sou had decided to decorate with and Shin had objected to, but not loudly enough to make it feel like he was actually upset. The toys that Shin had put up, his carefully sanded and pieced-together mecha models and cute plushies that suited him perfectly. The heater that existed purely for Shin’s sake. The tall windows that framed their desks.
He was going to have to leave it all, tonight.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He honestly felt somewhat numb.
Really, it was silly of him in the first place to have thought that this could’ve lasted. He was only supposed to have played a designated role for a designated amount of time, and five years was about four too many—Asunaro’s leaders had permitted him to continue this role, and Shin had let him continue it too, despite the revelation that Sou was an irregularity that wasn’t meant to exist alongside him. It was only by their grace that he was allowed to maintain this new existence of his, and if either of them decided to change their minds about it, there was very little he could do about it. Which was exactly what had happened, of course.
Sou had been fitted with a new head, told he was being written off as dead, and instructed to abandon his life here. Punishment for Yabusame Alice finding out about the existence of dolls, even though it was more than possible to just wipe his memories of them, and they probably had done that, too. More likely was simply that the people in charge had just been waiting for him to slip up and do something that warranted him being punished like this.
He put a hand on Shin’s side of the desk. It was more cluttered up than Sou’s side.
It all came back to Shin eventually. Sou had bent the rules to stay with him longer than originally intended. He wasn’t supposed to have relationships like this. He’d been raised by Asunaro since childhood—the fact that Shin was curled up in his bed, their bed, fast asleep, was something that was never meant to happen in the first place, because that meant he wasn’t Asunaro’s anymore. Sou had at least maintained the bare minimum, ensuring that there was no photographic evidence he existed, but Shin had other, more solid proof by now. Gifts, memories, records of his own making. Text and call logs. Stories told to his parents. And so on and so forth.
Being honest, both of them were getting off lightly for this. Asunaro’s preferred way of cutting off worldly attachments was getting rid of them by force. Sou knew best, of course—he’d been sanctioned to carry out some of those executions himself. And he had. He’d never really thought about what they were meant to do before now.
Sou sat down in Shin’s chair. It was the first time he’d done this. The chair was pretty comfortable. In the worst case scenario, in a scenario where Shin was not a precious candidate, Sou would’ve likely been made to kill him personally.
He’d been given a single night to prepare this location for his departure and, implicitly, to say goodbye. This was a lot of freedom, really. Perhaps he should’ve been grateful. There wasn’t really anything inside of him right now, though.
This was going to be cruel to Shin. Sou didn’t mind that, for the most part, but this wasn’t a cruelty he was perpetrating—it was Asunaro’s. Leaving a note or any indication Sou had left on purpose was going to be crueler than letting him hear about Alice’s murder case in the news a few weeks on and let him draw conclusions himself. It meant “this person left you on purpose”. This one wasn’t true. It meant “you are less important than something else in his life”. This one…maybe was.
Sou looked at the room from Shin’s perspective. It was very similar to Sou’s own, and yet, very different at the same time.
Kai had betrayed Asunaro. He didn’t know that they knew, of course, but he should’ve expected that they did. Sou wondered idly to himself if this was how Kai had felt before he’d made the decision to splinter himself away from the only world he’d known before—this somewhat numb feeling that made everything seem so much more complicated than it should have been. Kai had been very brave to make such a commitment. He should’ve known it would’ve gotten him slated for death. It was only his good luck that it had been determined to happen through the holy death game and not immediately.
Sou resented Kai, he decided. How lucky he was, getting to still be a participant in the game despite the fact that he was actively working to undermine it. Sou had made a single, easily rectified mistake, and he was losing his chance at candidacy at all. He wanted to live and die with everyone else, too. Kai even had the good fortune to be able to continue living with the people who had inspired him to rebel in the first place. Sou envied Kai, he decided.
He placed his hands on Shin’s keyboard. The computer wasn’t on, so it wasn’t like this would do anything. But it felt comfortable to go through the motions. Familiar, like the rest of this room.
Sou was just another of Asunaro’s puppets, and he knew this. He’d known it in his head for a very long time, but it hadn’t been so clearly illustrated for him before this incident. With little more than a flick of the wrist, the life he’d carefully built for himself here with Shin was going to be torn apart. It was tragic. He should’ve expected it. The fact that he hadn’t expected it was what was so tragic.
Carefully, slowly, silently, Sou allowed a thought he’d been stifling for a few hours now to bloom inside of him. What if he fought back, the way Kai did? What if he took this chance that had been so graciously afforded to him and decided to run away instead? He knew everything about the way that Asunaro tracked people, and he could surely manage to evade them for a year…or maybe at least a few months…a few weeks…a few days…
He’d have to take Shin with him, of course, or else that’d render the whole act pointless. Shin would probably be safe no matter what, given his candidacy, but it would’ve been just like Asunaro to go after him even though it was Sou who ran away. Or rather, because it was Sou who ran away—his intentions would be obvious at that point. There’d be so much to explain, so much to be honest about…would Sou even be able to explain it all before there was a red bead of light trained on Shin’s forehead? Would Shin even believe him? If he did, would he have the courage to run and hide with him?
It would be a short life, but at least it would be an exciting one, which mattered more. Maybe he should do something that actually warranted a punishment with this time instead, like spiriting Shin away to his lab to finally carry out all the experiments he’d been wanting to conduct since the day the two of them first met. He wanted to cut into Shin’s body, open him up and see everything inside, sample his blood and his brain and his flesh and preserve them on carefully labeled microscope slides so that he could check up on them whenever he wanted. Shin’s physical form and personality could be simulated, replicated, while the real thing had his life slowly snuffed out at Sou’s hands. Killing him didn’t have to mean he was gone forever.
Something about that thought tasted bitter.
Sou turned Shin’s computer on and tapped in his password. He had actually never done this before, just for the novelty of the look on Shin’s face when he found out that Sou hadn’t gone prying into his business while Shin had taken every opportunity he’d been given to poke through Sou’s things. That day had never come, so he might as well take a look now.
…Well, it wasn’t as if he had any proof that what he was experiencing right now wasn’t a simulation. Their AI technology had more than advanced enough for said AIs to think of themselves as people, and never realize they weren’t if they didn’t get told and have it proven to them. Maybe, right now, Sou’s brain was just working according to predetermined processes that the real version of himself had set up. Maybe the real Hiyori Sou had set all of this up to see what a simulated version of himself would do if he was forced to separate from Shin. Maybe his actions didn’t have to mean anything. How would he know?
Shin’s computer was somewhat underwhelming. There wasn’t anything here that Sou didn’t already know about. He turned everything off and sat back again.
It was unthinkable, honestly, to consider going against Asunaro, the organization that had so dictated his life. If Sou were the protagonist of the story, then it was Asunaro who was penning it—doing something like Kai did was just plain impossible. It was like going against a god. Sou couldn’t be so ungrateful. Sou couldn’t be so stupid.
“...Hiyori?”
Sou had been so caught up in his thoughts he hadn’t heard Shin’s footsteps—quite a dire state he was in, to say the least. Shin was all rumpled up by his sleep, and Hiyori had to resist the urge to smooth out the hem of his shirt and comb through his hair with his fingers. “Sorry. Did I wake you up, Shin?”
Shin just sort of grunted, clearly still half asleep. “Thought you weren’t coming home tonight ‘cause of how late you were.”
“Sorry, sorry! Something came up at work, and I didn’t have time to contact you about it.” Shin just nodded. It was funny, just a little bit, that Shin had woken up and seen him. Maybe now, if he could remember this, it wouldn’t get written off as Sou abandoning him—or maybe, Asunaro would simply wipe his memories of this night, just in case. Who could know? “Go back to sleep. I’ll be there soon.”
Instead, Shin shuffled forward a couple steps leaning his forehead against Sou’s shoulder. It was a silent request, but it was still plainly obvious what he was trying to say. Sou just pulled his scarf off his neck and gently looped it around Shin’s shoulders. “I still have something else I need to do first. Is this good enough for now?”
Shin grumbled something indistinct against Sou’s jacket, but he still obediently took a step back, tucking one hand into Sou’s scarf. He was going to leave that scarf here with Shin, Sou decided—just a little act of rebellion, a confirmation that the two of them had lived here, once upon a time. Proof of something that had never been meant to happen. He could only hope it would be slight enough that Asunaro wouldn’t undo it. “...Don’t take long, okay?”
Sou’s chest felt unpleasantly tight. Tsukimi Shin was…a pitiful, weak person, so insecure that he’d dig through Sou’s phone and computers to try and find proof that he was hiding things. Which he was, of course, but Sou had a feeling this and that were two completely separate things. It wasn’t that Shin suspected Sou of lying to him, it was that he suspected everyone of lying to him. Sou hadn’t ever felt guilty for that before—it was just part of the rules of the game—but something, be it that or some other emotion he was unfamiliar with, made him tug Shin back towards him for a moment. Just long enough to press a kiss into Shin’s bedhead.
This was far from the first time Sou had kissed him, but Shin still reacted like they were teenagers getting caught holding hands on their high school campus, hiding his face and blushing up to the tips of his ears, not that Sou was able to tell in the dark. It was as if Shin still couldn’t quite believe it. Normally Sou enjoyed the response, teasing Shin just so he could see it, but it wasn’t quite as fun when he knew he wasn’t going to get to see it again. “If you stay up too long, you won’t be able to get back to sleep, Shin!”
“You always play dirty,” Shin mumbled, but his heart obviously wasn’t in it.
He trudged back off to bed, and Sou didn’t move from where he was standing until he heard Shin’s breathing even out to the slow, steady rhythm that meant he really was back to sleep.
If this were all just a simulation, then surely, there would be other times where he would commit to doing something so stupid as outright defying Asunaro. There would be other times where he wouldn’t have lied to Shin just now. Perhaps if he repeated that to himself enough times, he could convince himself it was true.
Sou began writing a note for Shin.