Work Text:
The first time it happened, he only realised in retrospect. He had been young, still young enough to possess some of that classic childhood exuberance despite living in a dead-end orphanage. He had been running around, avoiding the mean kids and bumping into some of the adults. Had he been playing tag? Or maybe he was trying to find a private corner to enjoy some of the scraps the younger him called a meal? It didn’t really matter anymore, did it? What did was…
“Hey, brat!”
The steps were like thunder. The man’s face was red. He smelt awful in a way different to the usual stench of the orphanage. He had likely been drinking that gross juice that the adults seemed to like drinking so much.
“Y-yes, sir?”
He might’ve still possessed his exuberance, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how the game was played. When the adults were mad, you had to kiss ass as hard as possible. Act demure, speak as if they deserved the respect of kings, and take whatever happens and bear it.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t scared.
“You bumped into me, you little shit! The hell do you think you’re doing, running around and screaming your dumb fucking head off, eating up the fruits of our hard work and labour, while you kids do nothing and just waste our space and our time! Unloved brats like you should all just die already!”
Tears came to his eyes. The man was obviously drunk and saying whatever came to mind, but to the boy, guileless and yearning, the man’s words had pierced his young heart and planted tainted seeds. If only that had been the extent of it.
“I-“
“Actually, that’s a good idea… Let’s start with you!!”
The boy couldn’t react. Even though he was much younger and more energetic than the man, there had been no way for him to dodge the man’s assault. Whether it had been shock from the poisoned words, or a deep-seated understanding grown into him to just take whatever the adults do, he didn’t move no matter how much he wished he could have.
“S-sir… gaghk!!”
The hands around his throat were rough, the pressure they tried to exert was crushing. Not just the fingers digging into his throat, but the way the two palms tried to touch each other through the expanse of his neck. The smell was even worse up close, and through the tears in his eyes he could see the man’s red face complete with bloodshot eyes and spit upon his lips. His back against the worn wooden floor left him without escape.
“This is what parentless freaks like you deserve!”
Spit and his dank breath landed on the boy’s face, pushing the tears that had blurred his vision to finally fall. He thinks his body tried to fight back, hands trying to claw at the man’s hands or chest, legs trying to buck him off. He thinks he tried to call for help, but all that he could pass was a strangled whimper. Things had begun to go dark. The last thing he saw was the glee in the man’s eyes at his course of action, his own reddened face reflected and filled with terror.
Maybe that was when such a wish had been born into his heart…
When he woke up, things were hazy. The man, whose face was once red, had gone pale white, and he had backed into the other corner of the room. When the boy sat up, he seemed to go even whiter, before screaming incoherently. Monster, freak, ghost, demon. Such were the words the man flung at the boy, not paying attention to another thing. Not the other children, not the other adults, and not even the director when his incoherent insults turned to ranting about people staying dead when killed and about finishing the job more thoroughly. He certainly seemed to pay attention when the boys in blue arrived, called by one of the better adults.
Seeing the monstrous man, face oscillating between terrified white and wrathful red, being hauled away by the strong-willed men filled the boy with a different sensation. Not poison, or a wish, but a hope. Maybe one day, he could be like those men, bringing Justice to the world. As things started to calm down and everyone went back to what they were doing before, with a few adults staying nearby to check on him, the boy looked to the future. For once, he was really excited for what it might bring.
Thus had gone the day Hayato Yagyu died for the first time.
The second time Hayato Yagyu died had been nearly 15 years later. The events of that day had long become a memory, the only thing keeping it from fading being his burning desire to become a dealer of Justice. He had left the orphanage behind, never to return, and was happily a member of the police academy. Well, “happily”. He wasn’t exactly the best at study, and had a bit of an attitude towards any and everybody. He was a damn good shot, though. Another of his problems, though…
“Yo, Hayato!”
He groans, and tries to hurry down the hall, not giving her any attention. If he looks, he loses.
“I know you heard me, Hayatooo!”
Why did he have to stay so late in the library…? And why did she have to be nearby!?
“Hayato Yagyuuuuu!”
God, he isn’t getting out of this. Okay, he just has to play gruff and distant. Easy.
“Buzz off, Kuranushi.”
“He speaks! How’s your day been, Tall, Dark, and Grumbly?”
“Better before you decided to bother me. You?”
“Eh, it’s been fine. Curriculum’s pretty easy. The lingering gazes some of the guys give me is rather flattering. Especially the ones from the girls. Maybe not so much from the teachers, though.”
He couldn’t help how his jaw hung.
“Seriously?”
“Yup.”
“Creepy bastards…”
“Aw, you worried about little old me?”
“Feh, as if. I just can’t stand people like that being the ones teaching us how to be police officers.”
He really couldn’t. Though the memory might be worn, he could still recall the awe he felt all those years ago when the cops visited to do whatever they did. That awe lingered and strengthened over the years, taking whatever opportunities he could at the orphanage to read about the police and trying to watch any tapes or live programs about them. So the thought that there could be bastards and pigs among the police was… painful. Was the hero in the movie an abusive bastard? Was the policeman awarded for his service a bar-hopping troublemaker? Were the cops that came to the orphanage that day the sort to use their judicial power to force others to follow their whims? It pissed him off.
“Hm… yeah, I see what you mean. But consider,” and here Kuranushi’s face adopted a smile that sent shivers up Hayato’s spine, “the dirtier they are, the more leverage you can squeeze out of them so you can get your way and do proper justice later. Pretty smart, right?”
“Pretty wicked, more like…”
“Ah well, I didn’t need my beauty sleep anyway. This is all natural.”
Reluctantly, he gave her a once-over. She was, unfortunately, not wrong with her implications. She was a beauty. Not that he’d tell her that, she’d definitely try to hold it over him. He gave a grunt instead. She chuckled anyways, which shifted into a yawn. It was getting late, wasn’t it? Looking out the window, to the moon and the few stars not consumed by light pollution, only really left him feeling the time pass. He wasn’t too fond of the night sky…
“Anyways, nice chat Hayato. I oughta be getting to bed. I might not need it, but beauty sleep is still nice. Toodles.”
And off she went, down the hallway. Hayato sighed. He definitely couldn’t keep up with her. Rubbing the back of his neck, he turned to instead walk down the stairs. The men’s and women’s dorms were on opposite floors, after all. He placed one foot on the stairwell.
It shouldn’t have happened, frankly. His footing was sure. He prided himself on being quick on his feet. What was it? Was it exhaustion from the late-night studying? Did someone drop a loose leaf of paper that he didn’t notice in the darkness? Maybe he thought he heard something in the darkness that made him jump? Whatever it was faded into a blur, the brief pain in his leg leading directly into the oncoming sight of the stairs, barely leaving him time to fling his arms in front of him.
The second time Hayato Yagyu died was, comparatively, incredibly painful. Not just the killing blow, but also the surrounding physical trauma. When he woke up, vision blurry once more, the first thing he noticed was something slick under his hands. The next thing he noticed was the harried breathing of someone next to him.
He turned and she flinched back. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, clearing his vision. It was Kuranushi, shaking like a leaf and pale. Despite his misgivings he went to ask what was wrong, only for him to croak. He rubbed his throat, and only then noticed what was coating his hands, the floor, the side of his face, and now his neck.
It was blood.
“Wha- whose-“
His view flicked from his red hands to Kuranushi. Her eyes seemed to follow the same path, focusing on a particular point on his head. Slowly, he lifted his hand, eventually touching his temple. He wiped the blood off. The flesh felt smooth, unblemished. Why was that odd? No, of course it was odd, there should at least be a bruise, right? But it doesn’t even hurt, so- no, before that. Why is there blood that seemed to trail from there? Why did the blood feel so wet, like it was freshly shed? He looked back to the woman that seemed even whiter at the total lack of a wound on his head.
“What happened?”
She jumped again. Looking into his eyes, she opened her mouth.
“Y-you-“
She coughed. Taking a deep breath, she silently fiddled with her hands, putting on a more confident face.
“I heard something fall down the stairs. I went to check it out and I found you. You were… I was sure you were…” she grit her teeth, struggling to get the words out. “You had a gash on your head, it was bleeding badly. Your arm was twisted up. You weren’t breathing. Y-your pulse, I- I couldn’t find it, and you- you were dead. You were dead! I’m sure of that! And then… and then…”
Her confident façade had slowly deteriorated into a manic ferocity. Hayato didn’t know what to do. What she was saying was so far-fetched, it was frankly ridiculous. It was more likely she had taken the opportunity to prank him. And yet, even though he wanted to cling to this normal conclusion, he knew he really couldn’t. He knew blood, how it looked, how it felt, how it smelt. And maybe he didn’t know Kuranushi well, but he knew terror, and she was well and truly terrified.
Terror… why did that…?
Monster, freak, ghost, demon. The look in that drunk bastard’s eyes. His pale face. He should be dead.
He should be dead.
The revelation should have sent him into a frenzy, but instead it brought him to a kind of internal equilibrium. He’d probably freak out about it later, but for now it felt like he had been told how to ride a bike or cook an omurice. Instead…
“Hey, calm down, won’t you?”
“Calm down!? Are you dense, how can I calm down!?”
“Gah, why are you taking it out on me!? I died and then I came back to life, and sure that’s pretty weird, but I’d like to keep something like that close to my chest, so could you at least stop screaming?”
“Dumbass! Grrr… fine. Fine. I can play it cool. But don’t think you’ll be getting off the hook that easy.”
“Whatever… just help me clean this up.”
And then, almost like they were just two teenagers cleaning up a spilt lunch tray in a school corridor, they got to work. It was almost easy to forget they were cleaning up the proof of a body. Well, ex-body.
“Hey, call me Shizue.”
“Hell no, are you kidding?”
“C’mon, we’re clean-up buddies now. And it’s weird if I’m the only one calling you by your first name.”
“I never asked you to…”
“C’moooon.”
“No.”
“Do it or I’ll tell someone about this.”
“Seriously!?”
“Yup. Oh, and if you say something cocky like “Oh, we just cleaned up the proof,” I’ll go and kill you in front of someone and prove my point.”
“Jesus… you’re terrifying, you know that?”
“”You know that,” who?”
“You know that… ugh, Shizue.”
“There, was that so hard?”
“Yes.”
Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. They might’ve both been adults, but they couldn’t deny their youthful curiosity. They had given excuses for the process, of course. “If you die a lot, then I’ll be able to get used to corpses faster for field work, which will put me ahead of the curve.” “If I can learn what I can really do with this power, then I can become some kinda super cop.” They had become close. Become friends. She pulled him out of his shell, and he started to really enjoy his time at the academy. Even when they graduated the academy and went their separate ways, they stayed in contact, meeting up for drinks and the occasional… experimentation. Some part of them found the whole death affair distasteful, but other parts found the opportunities they granted wholly attractive.
Maybe that was how it all went wrong. He had put too much faith in his power, too much faith in the “authority” it granted him, too much faith in the “Justice” he was dealing. Justice, feh. He had just become another mass murderer, hadn’t he? Deciding he was above the law, that his might made right. And now where did it get him? With the yakuza gunning for his life. He hadn’t been scared, of course. They could torture him, sure, but he wasn’t a stranger to pain, and a quick death would wash it all away. Hell, even just them threatening his life, that fat bastard Rohan telling him his choices were to either die or become his own assassin, didn’t scare him a blink. All he had to do in that case was find a way to get out of his bindings and take them by surprise. No one expects a dead man to walk again.
Then he threatened Shizue.
Said his boys had been keeping an eye out, had seen how he kept visiting the same lady over and over again. Mentioned how they had a few guys keeping an eye on her, that an accident might happen to her if he refused, or if, say, he tried to double-cross them after agreeing. He had to say yes. He had to.
He couldn’t lose his best friend.
So here he was, dumped out the front of his complex, stumbling his way into his shitty little unit, the blood on his hands weighing heavier on him than it ever had it had felt freeing once, to finally bring Justice into the world, but what justice was this. This was his fault. All his fault. He never should have visited her. His hands were covered in blood, and yet he still went to visit her. He thought that she’d understand, even if he never said anything and she did, she did, he’d seen the way she looked at him some days, worry and begrudging respect and understanding in her eyes as she asks about some cases and avoids others, shoving police reports out of sight, but he shouldn’t have, should’ve cut things off, he was spoiled goods, he was a monster, a freak, a ghost, a demon. He should be dead.
He should be dead.
The sentiment echoed as he brought his trusty bloodstained revolver upwards, settling the barrel against his temple, a desire he had buried twenty-something years ago finally rising unbidden, unfettered by mortal concerns or something petty like morals. They certainly didn’t seem to concern him after this.
Hayato Yagyu’s 46th death was accompanied by the bang of the revolver and the smell of gunpowder.
Tomorrow his hands would be stained with the blood of an innocent.
Kaname Date has never died. Well, literally, at least. Metaphorically, maybe not so much. But of course, such a sentiment is strange to tout. Of course he’s never died, he wouldn’t be alive otherwise. Saying that, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t come close. The number of gunfights he had been in over the last six years was almost comic. He’s sure if it wasn’t for Aiba, any number of those would have been his doom.
Boss sure seemed to chafe at the fact. She always criticised him and threatened to dock his pay if he kept cutting it close like that, and even when he says he doesn’t ask for that kind of attention, she always gives him a look. He always wondered if maybe that had to do with whoever he was before he was Kaname Date. In the midst of battle, he always felt himself swell with an unearned confidence. Like he didn’t have to worry about getting hurt.
He really didn’t understand why, given getting shot hurt like a bitch, but alas. Maybe he was just crazy.
He certainly felt crazy, unfamiliarly familiar rough hands gripping at the dirty, rusted railing of the bridge, resting his weight as his heart tried to beat out of his chest, terror and rage and grief and desperation overwhelming the radiant pain from his left eye (or the lack thereof) and the aches and pains of a middle-aged body that spoke of a lifetime of violence.
Between the revelations of his past identity he had been forced to face not even fifteen minutes ago, a strange sense of existentialism, the most mind-bogglingly complex murder case he had ever heard of, the aforementioned physical agony contending with the anaesthesia, and facing down the bastard that had been behind all of this (all of what? There was technically only one murder…) holding a gun to the head of the woman he had currently complicated feelings for, all while his partner was telling him to activate her self-destruct sequence even though it would likely result in her actual permanent death instead of a temporary one.
How could they ask him to choose? How could he choose? Hitomi or Aiba? What the hell was that!?
“Aiba, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have a choice…”
He hadn’t taken the shot. He had thrown away the gun.
“I know.”
“Command… 41205.”
He knew he couldn’t trust Saito, but even so, if it meant pushing back the bloodshed even a second longer, he had abandoned the means to minimise casualties.
“Okay, Date.”
“I…”
He wanted to hear her voice again. Clearly, not through the speaker of some shitty smartphone. Hear her like she was a part of his own mind again.
“I…”
He wanted to go home. To bicker with her on a long drive back, tease her about her “logic” and whatever else he could pull out of his ass while she countered back with his perverted and lazy tendencies. To eat his stew with Mizuki and snap at a remark of Aiba’s while Mizuki looked at him like he had two heads. To work on a case at the office, having Aiba and Boss double-team him.
He looked to the image of her on Ota’s phone, putting that smiling bastard Saito and the terrified Hitomi entirely out of mind for just a moment.
“I…”
He shouldn’t have looked away.
“I hate you, Aiba. I hate you and I-“
A zap echoed through the factory. A thunk followed soon after. In his last few moments of clarity, Date had to admit, Pewter definitely knew what he was doing. The electromagnetically flung bullet pierced through his turned head. There was a bright spot of agony and then nothing.
It was silent. No one knew what to say. Not the young girl that had just lost the closest thing she had to family, not the older one that had just lost again the father figure she had shaped her whole life around finding. Not the young-looking man that had begrudgingly respected the older man, not the mother that had her whole world flipped upside down twice in one evening once again. Not the AI that had just watched her partner, her purpose in life, get snuffed out before her. Not even the serial killer that had just taken his life.
Well, not for long.
“Aha. Ahahaha. Ahahahaha! Where are you looking, Date!? Keep your eyes on the prize, or else you never know what might happen!”
He cackled, surprise shifting to glee shifting to disappointment.
“Ah, it’s too bad, Date. I truly wanted you to live a little longer, to watch the fire in your eye flicker as I made you watch more and more fireworks. Oh well,” his gaze shifted from the corpse of that body snatcher to the people he left behind. “More fireworks all for me.”
However, his eyes missed it. The twitch of a hand, the shifting of clothes. The slightest flickers of an absence of light rising from his body like ashes rising.
Kaname Date had never died. However, he was intimately familiar with death. Face down as his body regenerated, drugs flushing from his system, bullet forced out of his head, eye regenerating, he felt a familiar sensation, nostalgic feelings, build in his chest. As Date, he had a passing familiarity with some of them and a more intimate relationship with others. Rage. Hate. Bloodlust. Desperation. And a desire that always flickered just out of his reach. But right now, he wasn’t just Kaname Date, the amnesiac detective. Right now, he was also Hayato Yagyu, the vigilante detective, and Falco, the undying assassin. Those feelings amplified, multiplied, a lifetime of despising the injustices that plagued this world, of coating his hands in the blood of those he felt were deserving and those he felt weren’t, of desperately wanting to protect the few things he held precious to himself, even if it cost him everything-
“D-Date…?”
“Uncle!?”
“H-hey, Date!”
“No… Date… No…!”
…the feelings in his chest felt like they ignited into flames, fuelling his inhuman body beyond capacity. The excess felt like it was flowing out of him, pooling together into something, somewhere. He didn’t understand what was happening, not really. The memories of death hadn’t exactly been the focus of his reminiscence, and even if they were, this was wholly unfamiliar. Saying that, while he didn’t understand what was happening, that didn’t mean he didn’t know what to do. Without a doubt in his slightly scrambled mind, what he had to do was…
Defeat… Saito Sejima!
Even though he couldn’t see a thing, his eyes still closed, it was as if he knew the situation perfectly. There Saito stood, grinding the Evolver into Hitomi’s head, finger teasing the trigger, as if he wanted to squeeze out every last drop of horror from his captive audience. And behind him… behind him was…
The crunch of glass being stepped on had Saito turning around fast enough to give him whiplash. Before him was… something. Two arms, two legs, a head, a body… humanoid, and yet. Pitch black, as if fabric had been wrapped around a distorted wire framework. For the first time in his life, Saito felt… terror, at the monster before him.
“I… hate… you.”
A distorted rattle, barely recognisable as Date’s true voice underneath the layers of audial twisting. In the next instant, it moved, and Saito went flying.
The crash of the rest of the window shattering drew the attention of the struck quartet, looking up just in time to see Saito seemingly flung out, and a black, hulking monster standing silently beside Hitomi before just… fading away, like dust in the wind.
“SAITOOOOO!!!”
Like thunder, two hands slammed on the railing of the bridge, a dead man’s body throwing itself over the ledge, three floors down as his friends and family watched, emotional whiplash putting them off-kilter.
He rolls with the fall, feeling cracks in his legs and knowing he’s gonna regret doing it this way in the morning, but he was impatient and had to finish this now. Before him lay Saito Sejima, slowly crawling along the floor to the fallen Evolver. His back was split open, three wicked tears running the length of it. His breathing was heavy and wet, spitting out just as much blood as he was air on the exhale.
Slowly, methodically, the detective walked to the gun. Past the splatter and trail of blood, past the desperately clawing living corpse of his enemy, right up to a hand-held partner that had done him well the last six or so years. He picked it up, feeling it in his grasp, adjusting his rough hands to the grip, his large and stubby finger to the trigger, his compact arms to the weight.
The assassin stared down the barrel, his gunmetal eyes meeting mismatched green and yellow, ash blond hair askew, pale face stained crimson red. The murderer’s eyes brimmed with rage, with hate, with bloodlust, with desperation. He spat out a question through bloody lips, his familiar voice strangled by it all.
“What the hell… are you?”
He took a deep breath. Who was he? Was he the detective that took justice into his own hands for a sick sense of self-satisfaction? Was he the assassin that was too cowardly to fight back for fear of losing what little he had?
He was both. He was neither. And he wanted to be. He was something more. He was…
“I am Kaname Date. Special Agent of ABIS, Tokyo MPD.”
The fire in his chest had died out to embers. There was no satisfaction to be found here. Just pity. Without offering Saito the time to respond, he pulled the trigger, a zap ringing out shortly followed by a quiet thunk, a hole in Saito’s “third eye”. Lowering the gun, he let out a long, bone-deep sigh, sinking to the floor. He wanted to take a moment to unpack, he really did, but he still had some stuff to do first.
Lifting Saito’s head, and trying not to look at the face he always saw in the mirror, he felt around for the left eye, eventually finding the seam of the eyelid and popping it out. Bringing the mechanical eyeball before him, he looked into the golden iris and gave a weak smile.
“Hey, Aiba.”
She couldn’t answer him, of course. She was likely still affected by the tasing from earlier. Instead, he looked back up to the third-floor rafters from which he jumped and- yup, he was suddenly very much feeling the pain of jumping down that many stories without anything to help, especially at this age. The hell was he thinking, he could just die and it’d be all good!?- there stood the three brats now joined by Hitomi, conversation flicking from their concern for Hitomi to him. He waved a hand to them, gesturing for them to come down. Although hesitant, they did decide to follow. And so, he rose with another bone-deep sigh.
“There’s gonna be a lot of explaining to do…”
“…so what you’re saying is, I don’t need to hold back when I beat you black and blue for being a pervert?”
“That is not the takeaway here, Mizuki.”
The seven of them all sat by the window, Moma having been recovered. The ambulance had been called upwards of twenty minutes ago, with the MPD certainly not far behind. Date hefted Aiba to eye level, glancing between her physical form and Ota’s phone.
“How you doing on time, Aiba?”
“Good. It seems someone has stopped Pewter’s wipe of my data, so as soon as we reconnect to a network I should be able to repropagate myself.”
“Good. That’s good.”
Date slumped further against the wall. He half remembers from his time experimenting with Shizue- er, Boss, that dying and coming back seemed to undo any fatigue he experienced, but honestly, he felt like he could take a week-long nap right here. If not because he almost certainly broke at least one leg, then because of the mental strain of the last hour and some. He relished the current silence, but would likely fall asleep if it continued. Luckily, Hitomi decided to voice her own thoughts.
“Still, it seems so… amazing, I suppose. All that time, Falco,” he winced and she immediately corrected, “ah, Date, you could do something like that. Why didn’t you on the day we met?”
He shrugged, a little embarrassed at the thought of that day.
“Well, I probably would have ended up doing that if you had just gone on your way after my, uh, greeting,” he carefully tried to avoid the piercing eyes of his audience, “but instead you stuck around and dragged me to the doctor’s. I wasn’t exactly gonna tell you to screw off.”
At least part of that was because he found comfort in her touch, but he wasn’t gonna say that. Instead, he was going to look away again at the sight of her beautiful, heartbreaking smile and look at the far-distant corpse of Saito.
“Hey Uncle, how come you never told me about your power? I can keep a secret!”
Iris said this with a pout which, while cute, made her comment feel a bit more disconcerting.
“Er, Iris, that isn’t exactly something you go around telling people, especially impressionable kids. It isn’t some kind of party trick.” Then he mumbled, “Well, not yet. Might make drinking a bit more fun.”
Iris gasped in response, hand over her mouth.
“Oh Uncle, you’re right! If it got out that you were a deathless being, then the entire world would probably be after you like you’re some kind of guinea pig! Governments would try to cut you open to see how you tick and if they can apply anything from your biology to their country’s armies, and even Naixatloz might find you as something worth having! Everyone, we have to keep this a secret!”
Date opened his mouth then let it shut. He… never really thought about it that hard, even if he was sure she was part right. Everyone else looked from her determined expression to his aggrieved one then nodded. He was sure they all would’ve kept their silence anyways… well, maybe not Ota or Moma, but since A-Set is saying it, they have no choice but to follow through. That’s at least one problem scratched off the list. Just a hundred more to go.
“Hey, Date… what are you? I mean, like, what do you call your whole… y’know, undying thing?”
He tilted his head. Ota had… a not-terrible question for once.
“I dunno. Me and Shiz- Boss, were never really good at naming things. It’s definitely more Pewter’s avenue of expertise.”
Did Pewter know about his condition? No, probably not. Boss had no reason to spill when he was in… the other body. Ah well, he’s sure Pewter could tell him something he didn’t know. Then again, Pewter could have used it against him somehow during all this…
“Name, huh? Name, name… undying human… not quite a human…”
Moma sure seemed to take to the activity with gusto. Who’da thunk he had an artistic side?
“I got it! Ajin!”
“What?”
“That’s what we’ll call ya! Ajin! You’re not quite a human, right?”
“So, what, the Demihuman Detective Date? Nice alliteration.”
“Yeah! Nice, right!?”
Well, at least Moma seemed happy, despite the stomach wound.
“Yeah, that’s super cool, Uncle! You sound like a super hero! Nice job, Moma!”
“Eheheh… n-no problem, A-Set. I live to serve.”
Ugh, never mind. Suffer some more, Moma.
Aiba vibrated in his hand, and the Aiba on Ota’s phone perked up.
“I’m reconnected to the network. The authorities are nearby. Everyone can receive proper medical attention soon.”
“Good…”
Date relaxed his shoulders, fully leaning against the wall and tightening his arm around Mizuki, trying not to shift her. Today had been, frankly, terrible by all accounts. In fact, the last week could be said to be pretty bad. And yet, somehow, he felt a little optimistic for the future. There are still a lot of problems to deal with, dynamics to rule out, apologies to be said, bridges to rebuild. But, he wouldn’t do it alone.
For the third time in his life, Kaname Date began to live.