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Minato hadn’t seen their faces in days.
They’d seen him.
He had kept his head down.
They had tried to talk to him.
He had muttered a few words in response, turned the volume on his headphones up.
All he heard were muffled voices. All he saw were glimpses of familiar shoes, familiar hands reaching out.
He closed his eyes and let his feet steer him up the stairs and to his room. A dead room. He pulled his headphones out of his ears and fell on top of his bed, burying his head in the sheets. The music was still playing, a faint, almost ethereal noise in the heavy silence.
I’ve never felt like, so miserable
I’ve never felt like thinking this will last forever…
He had queued it up, ready to play as he no doubt aimlessly roamed Paulownia Mall, observing the drab colors of the walls and signs and peeking into the shops, the arcade, the cafe, anywhere that would feel like comfort.
But he stayed in, tonight. It didn’t seem worth it all.
…When the moon’s reaching stars
If you hold me tight
Feeling heart beat so close
Will this last long?
He grabbed his MP3 player and turned it off, shifting his head sideways to look out of his window.
No, he thought.
He held his hand out to the moonlight, searching for something he wasn’t sure he knew. There was a band-aid on his thumb from when he was nicked by a shadow a few weeks ago. It was healed by now, but he had gotten so used to the habit of waking up and putting on a new one that he never bothered to stop. Something inside him wanted to preserve the small bit of normalcy that he still had left.
The bandage was hanging on by a thread. When he went to the bathroom during school earlier and went to wash his hands, he didn’t turn off the water. He stayed, frozen, hunched over the sink, lost in thought, a French voice serenading him. He thought he might’ve seen Junpei’s shoes enter the bathroom out of the corner of his eye, but he, too, stayed silent, pushing open one of the stalls. When he came out, he hesitated, then walked to the sink four down from where Minato was.
This person, Junpei, too, stood there and washed his hands and let the water flow much longer than was needed.
A heavy silence only disrupted by the screech of the water hung over them. If this person, Junpei, had tried to speak to him, Minato most likely wouldn’t have been able to hear. The thought comforted him.
He watched his pathetic band-aid hang off of his thumb, the stickiness cascaded away in the water. This band-aid that he didn’t remember putting on in the morning, that he had attached to his person while on autopilot. He pressed gently down on the bandage, his fingers trembling. It didn’t stick. Water streamed down his fingers. His body was shaking. He grabbed the sink, forcing his eyes shut before tears fell.
A voice he heard now. Junpei was speaking. Minato was wrong. He could hear it, loud and clear, through the splashing water, through his headphones and the French voice. He turned off the faucet, turned on his heel, and left. His hand, the hand that did not have the bandage, wiped his face. He pressed down on the bandage again, harder and harder until it stuck. Returning to the classroom he sat in his seat and stared at his desk and waited. Junpei, too, returned shortly after.
Now, his hand held up to the moonlight, the side of his face pressed into his bed, the memory of his friends calling out to him fresh on his mind, he peeled the band-aid off, just slightly. He touched the area left behind. Fresh, healthy skin. He put the bandage back on. He turned his head and buried himself once more in his sheets, trying to forget about everything. About death. About the Dark Hour. About Nyx. About Ryoji. About his friends, especially his friends. About himself. About the band-aid that feebly hung off of his right thumb.
That night he slept and awoke and slept and awoke and slept and…
He didn’t put on a new band-aid the next day. Or the next. Or the next. Or the next.
In the morning, a week later, he put his hand up to the sunlight and pressed down on the old one until it stuck, as he always did.
He took the monorail to school early, hoping to avoid everyone else. He had closed his eyes throughout the entire trip. Did the monorail always seem so quiet? he almost thought, but he slipped into sleep; he saw the sink and the band-aid, heard the water and the French voice, haunting him, as they always did. He pulled himself awake and loaded up a different song on his MP3 player, biting down on his lips until he tasted blood.
As he walked to the front doors of the school, Yukari called out to him. Was she on the monorail with me? he almost thought, but her voice drowned it out. He had turned his music down a level this morning, but he didn’t know why. He thought of Junpei’s voice last week, briefly, enough to send a pang of guilt through his body, but he let it go.
Her shoes came into view. She walked with him, talking about this and that, but he wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t seem to mind.
Together they walked to class, pretending everything was normal. Pretending that they were normal high schoolers, joking about normal things and worrying about normal things. Pretending that death was not upon them. Pretending that Ryoji had not made his ultimatum.
Minato could tell that she was scared, could hear the tremble in her voice as she talked, could see the way her hands clutched her bag until her knuckles were white. His hand, his hand with the bandage, was reaching out towards Yukari’s shoulder, to do what he wasn’t sure of, but the band-aid had come off. He retracted his arm and pressed down on it until his knuckles, too, were white.
He had seen a glimpse of Yukari’s face. Her face was washed out, her eyes downturned, scrunched up as if she constantly had to fight off tears, the spark that once existed in them gone. He felt as though he was looking into a mirror. It terrified him.
She was smiling, too, a pained smile, a smile that made Minato tighten his grip on the insides of his pockets, that forced his eyes shut.
Yet he stayed silent.
Entering the classroom he sat in his seat and stared at his desk and waited. Yukari, too, entered and sat.
He hadn’t even noticed the music playing in his headphones until now. He listened.
In the light, men’re crossing over lone shadows
Wearing veiled slight hopes for intimacy
Want to be close…
He held the MP3 player with his right thumb. The bandage was still falling off. He pushed it once, weakly, as he heard the song loop over and over and over, through the teacher’s lecture, through the other students’ talking.
His mind found Junpei and Yukari many times. Each time he turned the volume up once.
After the fifth time, his mind found nothing.
As he pushed open the doors to the dorm that weekend in the evening, a face came into view.
“Minato-san,” Ken said. Minato could hear him clearly. He had turned down his music on the monorail back from school. He had turned it down so low he could only just make out the lyrics. He didn’t know why.
The bandage was on its last dying breath. He had pulled it back slightly, wondering what it would be like to take it off completely. But as he remembered Junpei’s voice, as he remembered Yukari’s face, as he remembered his friends’ shoes circled around him, he had pressed it back into place with numb fingers.
“We have to talk,” Ken continued, knocking Minato out of his stupor. Minato avoided eye contact. He bit down on his cracked lips, clenched his hands into fists in his pockets, and stumbled to the side, intending to go upstairs once again. Ken’s hand grabbed his arm with a firm grip. “Please,” he said quietly, motioning to the couches.
Koromaru barked, running up to them and sitting down in front of Minato, panting. Minato looked at his fur. It was brushed clumsily, most likely by Ken. His leash was on the table to the side as if he had just been walked. Ken ran a hand through Koromaru’s mane, smiling as the dog leaned into his touch.
Minato swallowed.
His friends had been taking care of each other.
And all the while he had been drowning out the world.
“Please,” Mitsuru echoed. Minato’s head swiveled to the side. The rest of SEES—except Aigis—was standing there, staring at him. Junpei. Yukari. Mitsuru and Akihiko and Fuuka. They all nodded.
Minato looked at their faces for the first time in weeks. He lingered on Yukari. He thought that the glint in her eye was gone, but as he looked again, he realized he was mistaken: faded though it was, it was there. Her eyes weren’t scrunched up anymore, and she looked at him head on. Was she a mirror for him? He wasn’t sure anymore. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
He looked at the rest of them and saw people, hurt, traumatized, scared people, standing with their chests puffed out and their heads held high in spite of everything. He saw his friends, his trusted allies, the ones that had stuck by him again and again. He saw them exchange looks, looks of determination, looks of togetherness, looks of understanding.
They had understood each other.
They had understood Minato.
Did he understand them?
He looked into their faces, searching for something he couldn’t identify. He saw Ken and Fuuka crack a small smile, pained, so full of pain, and yet still hopeful. He saw Koromaru rub against Ken’s legs and jump onto him, asking for more pets. He saw Yukari and Junpei quietly bickering, but he saw Mitsuru and Akihiko looking at them with fond exasperation, shaking their heads, smiling.
Everyone was taking care of each other. Through the hurt, through the fear, through the anger and the sadness and the shock, everyone was there.
Minato knew, then, what he was searching for.
Minato looked down and held out his right hand in front of him, shaking harder than he had ever shaken in his life.
When he had held it out to the light before, he had searched for something he didn’t find and didn’t know how to find.
When he had peeled away the band-aid on his thumb before, he never took it fully off, scared that his illusion of normalcy would shatter.
When he had turned off his music before, he was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to drown reality out anymore.
When he had stood in front of the sink in the bathroom, when he had seen Yukari’s face full of fear and anguish, he had closed his eyes to stop tears from falling down his cheeks.
The bandage, now, only had a small strip that stuck to his thumb. Minato pulled it off and put it in his pocket. He took his headphones out of his ears. He let his tears fall freely, wiping them from his face as they did. He walked towards the rest of SEES, his vision blurred but his head, too, held high.
Softly, distantly, he heard the music from his MP3 player.
Feeling heart beat so close
Will this last long?
No, he thought as Junpei and Akihiko clapped his back and Yukari and Fuuka pulled him into a hug.
But he had the others, however brief their time together would be.
And maybe that was enough.