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...
- 01 -
He knows that he shouldn't even be here right now, that he should be wasting away in his hospital bed and letting her spend graduation with people who actually have futures. People who will live to see next year, and all of the years after that too, or something like that. He says this to himself even though he knows it's wrong - it feels wrong just thinking it, because he can't do that anymore. He's too far gone, he can't think about staying away. About leaving her alone for both of their sakes. It's selfish, and he knows that too, but she spoiled him rotten and he grew accustomed to it far too quickly after a lifetime of giving.
The sun is warm and she is cold, alarmingly cold, in his arms. That's not right. But she looks so peaceful, so maybe it is. Maybe his mind's just playing tricks on him because he's so damn delirious from happiness. Or because of the mad dash he forced his atrophied body through to get here that would put most Olympic gold medalists to shame. It doesn't matter either way, so who cares. He brushes stray hairs away from her cheeks and pulls her closer to him.
For once, just once, he doesn't have any regrets.
(That's later, though. Much later.)
...
- 02 -
Miki's death taught Shinjiro some things. Most of them are scattered, mundane things - like how fast a building could burn if you blinked too many times, and just how high Akihiko could scream when he really tried, and how long someone would cling to you and cry themselves to sleep at night if you let them. Above all, it taught him about the importance - the fragility - of time. Akihiko wishes he could have extended Miki's time - and of course Shinjiro does too, but beyond that there are a lot of things he wishes he could have used Miki's time to do before it was up. Things that could have made it a bit more well-spent.
It was already too late. So he had to let it go.
...
Then SEES, and Castor, and the broken body of that boy's mother during the Dark Hour storm into his life, and soon his own time is manufactured and bottled up in tiny plastic containers with child-proof lids.
(Really, the only comfort in constantly hearing the clock ticking away in the distance is the knowledge that he'll be taking this sick bastard with him when he finally does croak.)
...
- 03 -
There's a girl.
There's always a girl, though. It's always a damn girl. She's not just any girl, though, if Akihiko's babbling is anything to go by. She's their new leader, she has multiple Personas, she can fight, she's strong. Blah blah blah. It always boils down to that, doesn't it Aki, he wants to say. It'll probably just get him punched.
He says it anyways and does get punched, but at least Akihiko has the courtesy to change the subject afterwards.
...
Time marches on. The clock ticks down. Jolly mister Reaper waits in the corner to snatch him off the streets for good.
When Akihiko comes around (for the fifth time? Sixth? Tenth? He settles for next), he brings the girl along for extra pressure. Just a slip of a girl - short, brown hair full of pins, fiery red eyes that appraise him like a necklace in a jewelry shop before her lips curve into a cheery smile.
"I've heard a lot about you," she says.
"Same here," he grunts. Her smile grows.
It feels like she's always watching him out of the corner of her eye from the moment he rejoins SEES and moves back into the dorm. Not like the wary side glances he gets from punks in back alleys and the scornful glares from the general populace, should he dare to roam their pristine streets during daylight hours; he's familiar with those looks. This one is more innocent. Curious.
(Is paranoia a side effect of the pills? He'll have to ask that bastard Jin.)
Still, he doesn't pay her any mind. There's no point. He'll be gone before it matters.
...
- 04 -
Or so he wanted to believe, but fate apparently has other plans. Because one day, she approaches him with that same innocent, damnably cheerful smile that she flashes around the dorm like it's a dime a dozen.
"Hey, senpai. Are you free?"
He shrugs, which she apparently takes as a yes, because she continues, "Something came up during lunch so I didn't get a chance to eat, and I'm so hungry. But it's better to eat with company, so do you wanna come with me?"
(He wants to say no because it isn't supposed to work out this way, they're supposed to keep dancing around each other with furtive glances and minimal interaction except during their ventures into Tartarus until his time is finally up and she waves him off with a tear and a goodbye before turning her attention back to her actual friends - )
"Sure," he replies with another shrug.
...
- 05 -
Age is a number. The suppressants have aged Shinjiro into the appearance of a man far beyond that number.
It never truly hits home until he's at Hagakure with Minako one day and some nosy asshat asks if he's her father. She immediately bursts out laughing, but he is far from amused, and glares intensely enough to send the man scrambling to the exit with a squeaky apology as Minako's laughter dies down to a snicker.
"What the hell are you laughing for?" He regards her bowl with his chopsticks. "I can see, you know. Finish those damn vegetables."
"Sure, Father," she replies, snorting on the last word and dissolving into a mess of giggles all over again.
He has half a mind to shove her off the stool but she'd definitely retaliate, and then they'd probably get kicked out, so he doesn't. It's most certainly not because she looks cute when she's laughing, or because the other half of his brain is preoccupied with making him stutter like an idiot and try not to blush.
No, it's not like that at all.
...
(He hates these fleeting moments, because they make him forget, they make him feel normal, they remind him of what could have been but most definitely isn't.)
...
Another time they're at Hagakure and Minako says out of the blue, "I really enjoy spending time with you."
Castor tears away at his lungs, at that - or the mouthful of noodles he just swallowed went down the wrong pipe. "You shouldn't," he assures her after he stops coughing, and a white hot lance stabs into his chest - yeah, no, that's definitely Castor. "You've got better things to do. I'm a waste of your time."
And your time is so much more valuable than mine.
Meanwhile, Minako frowns. "You're always saying that, senpai. Don't you know that I wouldn't hang out with you if I didn't want to?"
"...Who knows." He messes with the lid of the plastic bottle in his pocket. Manages to get it off with the outside of his index finger and thumb. "I don't know how you think, Minako."
Her face lights up at the use of her first name - it was sort of accidental, but she doesn't call him on it, thankfully. "Now you know that I hang out with you because I enjoy spending time with you. It's a start, right?"
He tips the bottle ever so slightly and counts the gentle tap of two pills against his palm.
"...Well, thanks."
Minako smiles.
When she turns back to her bowl, he tosses the pills into his own and goes back to eating.
(It's a bitch trying to pick them up with chopsticks, but she doesn't notice.)
...
- 06 -
"I love you."
The words make him freeze, much longer than he intended. She misinterprets the reason why and frowns, looking hurt. "You don't believe me?"
"W-what? No, that's...no." Briefly it occurs to him why that's the first conclusion she jumps to instead of the more obvious one, like an impending rejection, perhaps (unless she knows? No way, that's not possible). "I believe you, yeah. It's just..."
"Just what?" she presses. "Do you not love me back?"
"Yes! I mean, no! I mean - shit." He exhales, long and hard, emptying both his lungs and his brain, before speaking again. "Look, I'm a bad guy. I'm just gonna hurt you."
(He doesn't look at her, because he knows that he'll crack if he does.)
You're gonna regret this, I'm terrible, I'm awful, you'll end up hating me, you're gonna wish you had never met me - he goes through as many of the tired phrases and warnings that he's been storing up in preparation for a moment like this and she shoots them all down with the same effortless grace that she uses to wield her naginata. Eventually he caves - he knows he's fighting a losing battle, and his will to resist is and has been slowly trickling away with each passing second.
It's a horrible mistake.
She smiles, a real smile that's completely different from the smile she constantly wears like a brand new outfit. It pronounces the dimples in her cheeks and scrunches her nose up adorably and lights up her entire face, and Shinjiro knows that he's officially, royally fucked.
(Mostly figuratively - and, later, quite literally.)
...
("You're not a bad guy, Shinjiro," she says softly in the silent darkness of his bedroom. "You're one of the kindest people I know."
He tries to disagree, but her lips are on his again before he can get out so much as a denial.)
...
- 07 -
He hopes that his vision is just very blurry, and that she's not actually crying when her naginata slips through her fingers and hits the ground with a noisy clang. She drops to her knees next to him and begins applying pressure to the wound the way she goes about nearly all of her tasks - wordlessly, without being asked to.
The green moonlight reflects off of her cheeks. She's definitely crying. Ah, hell. The bullet feels like a small pinch now, in comparison.
"Hey." Shinjiro reaches up despite every one of his cells screaming to do the opposite, to lay still and finally give them release, and brushes away her tears with a callused thumb. His hand lingers and leaves traces of red on her cheek. The color matches her eyes, but it doesn't look right on her. "I told you...not to cry. You look better when you're happy...so smile, got it...?"
She nods, sniffling, and lifts a bloodstained hand to cover his. The color matches her eyes, but it doesn't look right on her.
It was meant to be like this, he wants to add, but his mouth is filled with iron and he can't speak anymore. She probably wouldn't want to hear it, anyways. I love you, he tries to mouth instead, and maybe she understands because a fresh bout of tears well up and cascade down her cheeks as he finally gives in to his exhaustion and lets his eyelids drag shut.
Heat engulfs him as Akihiko screams - and her, she's squeezing his hand and shaking -
...
(The clock ticks, and ticks, and ticks, and ticks, and then -
then it sputters, and slows down.)
...
- 08 -
Shinjiro floats in the darkness for awhile.
Sometimes it's just darkness. Other times he finds himself witnessing scenes he doesn't understand. Hundreds of glowing blue butterflies flitting about an otherwise empty space. A woman in blue traveling through an endless desert with a pair of silver headphones dangling from her fist. A yellow scarf and striped pajamas folded neatly on a bed. A sleeping boy with blue hair, chained to a golden door.
One particular scene repeats itself - a room that looks similar to an elevator, swathed in velvety deep blues. Its inhabitants, a man who looks similar to the woman in blue and a long-nosed man with bulging eyes, stare as he passes as if they can see him. It makes him uneasy, but something tells him that they're important.
(He tries to speak, once, but neither of them respond.)
...
There's a girl.
She's somewhere dark and lonely, and there's Death all around her. It strikes him as odd - why is this slip of a girl facing something so powerful, so eternal, by herself? - and disheartening, because there's no way she can win. She'll just be another victim.
That's what he wants to think. But he doesn't, because he knows it's not true.
She'll stand up to Death. She was meant to do this.
Slowly but surely, the girl regains her strength through the voices of her comrades, pulling herself off of the ground using her naginata. Death's maims become bruises, then scratches, then are rendered ineffective altogether. She stares Death down with a fearless twinkle in her eye, and he chuckles to himself.
"All right, let's do this."
Somehow she hears him and nods. Her hair pins catch the light as she straightens and lifts one finger to Death, and suddenly he's cold all over -
...
- ??? -
Miracle, the doctors say, over and over. He fingers the pocket watch absently, cracked from the impact of the bullet, as they draw up test results and pull charts and graphs and a bunch of other shit out of their asses to describe how absolutely destroyed his body is - in their eyes, for absolutely no reason at all - and talk as if he isn't there. How is he alive? It's a miracle.
"You're very lucky to be alive," one of the doctors says to him, frowning slightly when he snorts derisively. You shouldn't be alive, is what they don't say to him, but they should just put it out there because he hears it anyways.
At least, he thinks they should. He's not sure - he feels like he shouldn't be alive, but something is telling him that there's a reason behind it. A clock is ticking somewhere, much faster than it should be.
Shinjiro naps briefly, and when he wakes up, he hears a snippet of conversation between two passerbys outside his room. Something about a graduation ceremony over at Gekkoukan. He probably wouldn't be allowed to attend even if he wasn't in the hospital, since his grades are so piss-poor from missing school that he'll have to repeat his senior year. But the words strike an entirely different chord in his mind, one that the pieces and shapes that form a coherent meaning are too fuzzy and vague for him to put together.
"A shame you'll miss graduation," a nurse titters sympathetically as she checks his vitals later on. The hell do I care about graduation for, he thinks, but -
Well, he doesn't, but -
But someone is waiting for him. Right? There's red, and a girl with pins in her hair, and he promised that he'd try to make it to...
...
- 09 -
Shinjiro bursts onto the rooftop, gasping air into his aching lungs, and she's there in Aigis' lap, waiting. Just like they promised.
"Minako..."
Minako slowly opens her eyes and smiles at him, tiredly, and he breathes.
...
("I'm glad I met you," Shinjiro whispers. He can hear the rest of the group storming up the stairs, chattering excitedly.
"I love you."
She doesn't respond as he gently presses his lips to her forehead and unknowingly takes in her last breaths.)
...
...
...
...
...
- 00 -
There was never enough time. It just didn't matter until now, when she's pranced into his life and made herself comfy as if she had always been in it. When she's made him believe that maybe, just maybe, he has a chance to change things. Find a different path and right his wrongs, even though he already knows that it's far too late to try and make amends with anything but death.
(The Reaper laughs - he loves a twisted punchline, after all.)