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To be dead is not terribly different from being alive, Korekiyo thinks.
He can’t quite walk the same, and his physical body appears moreso to exist amidst a state of extraplanar incorporeality, but from what he can gather, the general shape and size of his appearance seems to remain intact.
His mental faculties also appear to have suffered no particular damage, as far as he is capable of surmising. In fact, his senses have actually somehow improved a great deal, performing exemplary feats of sight and scent and sound that he is incapable of precisely putting into words.
He can feel things, now.
Things he can’t quite explain.
Too complex for a mass of muscle and organ tissue to endure, he decides; he doubts the human brain would be able to withstand it.
Because he feels it, viscerally; others’ hearts beating, quick or slow, in response to stimuli. Variances in heat, in temperature, physical sensations to relieve the mind.
He’s felt it, these last few months succeeding his untimely death, the looming grief of his lover.
It is suffocating.
Kaito has all but rendered himself bedridden, nursing that ailing heart of his, lying catatonic beneath covers once shared with the one to have pained him so egregiously, staring listlessly towards the space beside him, empty now and evermore, his buxom chest little more than a stringent cavity of tightness and black pus, numb to the world, and yet somehow still not quite numb enough.
And even if Kaito does not feel it, Korekiyo is sitting there beside him, stroking their fingers along the ochre flesh of his jaw, brushing them through the man’s long-unwashed, long-unkempt locks of hair, every moment, every hour, noting the passing days as flaxen beams of the sun’s light filtered through the room’s shutters, disappearing, reappearing, disappearing, reappearing.
Korekiyo has always thought that Momota looked at home amidst such seraphic, golden light.
Amusing, then, for Korekiyo to be the one to have gone into it.
To be honest, Korekiyo does not see the sense in mourning for himself.
It is not all that different from being alive, something tells him, and indeed he knows it to be true.
He cannot be heard, but what would there be to hear?
Korekiyo has never needed to be listened to.
He cannot be seen, but what would there be to see?
Korekiyo has never been a particularly beautiful sight.
He can do little more than observe, now, and truly, isn’t that for the best?
It is all he needs; all that he has ever needed.
To watch, to witness.
And he does - he witnesses it, the way in which Kaito wastes himself away, deaf to the beckoning of the outside world, blind to the earmarks of this depression’s futility.
It ought to anger Korekiyo in some way, shouldn’t it? Upset him, surely, to see the vivacious man he loves faltering, defeated.
And yet, he cannot bring himself to feel such a way; the shores of rage are far too shallow, a low tide that can’t be swum.
Kaito is hurting.
He knows it.
He feels it.
And he cannot find it within himself to blame the man.
Even when Kaito begins skipping his daily training regimens, alleging himself too tired, too worn out.
Even on the days where Kaito calls in sick to the space station, refusing the very thing he’d endured so much for, on the precipice of jeopardizing everything, everything he had so terribly endeavored to attain.
Even on the days when Kaito stops eating, the days he wishes to stop breathing.
Never once could Korekiyo think of him in anger.
After all, their roles had once been reversed, hadn’t they? Back when both of their hearts were still beating and the two of them housed beneath the same roof; back when it was Korekiyo who so oft found it unfathomable to peel himself out from under the covers, could not even set a single foot on solid ground, back when his bones were so burdensome and so weighted that it felt as if he might never breathe again.
Back when the past hurt, and hurt, and hurt yet still - never once did Kaito fault him.
Even on the days he had every right to, even on the days when he should have.
And here, now, Korekiyo believes he might have discovered the reason for it, believes he might now know why.
Because it hurts.
Because you’re healing.
Because after everything, you haven’t given up.
After everything, you’re still here, still being.
And that, my dear, is good enough.
He repeats this mantra, over and over amidst his mind, a fruitless telepath.
A stray tear escapes onto Kaito’s cheek.
Korekiyo cannot wipe it away.
No,
Korekiyo thinks.
It is not very different at all.