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The inside of the exisal was stuffier than he thought it’d be.
Swallowing against the persistent lump in his throat, Kaito readjusted himself in the seat of the exisal. No matter what position he tried, his knees would press into something, whether it be the controls or the tinted exisal glass. There wasn’t nearly enough space in the cramped, humid environment for his tall form to fit comfortably.
But the next few hours weren’t going to be comfortable. It was going to be nothing short of absolutely hellish.
Swiping a bead of sweat from his nose, Kaito hunched over his lap, resting his injured arm on his thigh. With his other clammy hand, he flipped through a red notebook, stuffed to the brim with the plan, lines and lines of dialogue and hypothetical situations, for him to memorize. Each swipe of his finger over a new sentence had him yearning to curl into his mattress. He would give anything to sleep.
Kaito didn’t have that luxury. He’d already been awake for over twenty-four hours, and he had to cram for several more. As if he wasn’t in bad enough condition from the illness and injury.
Gah. No more complaining.
He didn’t have time to complain. He had to be able to mimic Kokichi’s inflections perfectly before the end of the hour. Flawless mockery and the powerful aura of evil Kokichi performed so well. Just reading off these lines might’ve been enough for most of the class, but there was one variable he had to take into consideration. The one person he had to fool beyond a shadow of a doubt, that would take so much more effort to convince than any of the others, maybe even Monokuma.
You.
You wouldn’t give into the anger and drama like the others. You would see right through the bitter cruelty.
Because you knew better.
You knew Kokichi better than anyone else in that room. You hadn't been huddling with Kokichi in the hangar for no reason. You knew him.
Fuck, this would be so much easier if you were the one in the exisal.
Who better than the Kokichi expert to pretend to be Kokichi? But he didn’t have that luxury. He wasn’t a Supreme Leader whisperer; he lacked the knowledge that you had earned. Right now, all of that knowledge would be working against him in the worst way. You’d see through him. You were smart; you knew better.
This wasn’t going to work.
Okay, stop thinking about them. Keep working. Keep working!
Kaito heard the chime of the elevator greeting him. He knew that was his signal to enter the courtroom, and even though he pushed the joystick forward, a heavy pit formed in his stomach.
He was really going to put his improv skills to the test, wasn’t he?
And for his first performance, he was going to be critiqued by an expert.
No. I can do this. I can’t lose. I promised Kokichi. I’m getting everyone out of here.
Kaito wouldn’t give up. He wouldn’t let himself even consider the idea of giving up. Kokichi entrusted this plan to him, and he wasn’t going to surrender. So, when the elevator doors slid open, the exisal emerged into an ever-shrinking group of teenagers. As expected, there was shock. Awe. Fear, the blood draining from the faces of people who associated the big clunky machines with death, the empty shells once filled by Monokubs. Kaito gave a shaky breath as his face flickered over his classmates, his friends. He ignored that lingering thought, one of them is the mastermind, and pushed forward. He spoke, a twinge of humor laced into his voice when he could not feel anything but the opposite. Dread.
The exisal dropped in front of Kaito’s podium, just behind the sign. He spared a glance at the sign on Kokichi’s podium, his portrait marked with an orange question mark. Then, hesitantly, to you.
Despite all his preparations, he could not be prepared for how suddenly your face dropped at the sound of his voice. You grasped, aching for some way for Kokichi to still be alive, so you brought up the voice changer. And the unsteadiness of your voice, however subtle, made him regret ever agreeing to this plan. You were grasping, you were clinging on to what little hope was left in your body. You had changed so much from the night before.
You looked exhausted, with your clothes disheveled and voice teetering. He was sure he saw dark circles, even from his perch in the exisal.
Kaito saw the way your gaze lingered over the exisal, trapped in a despairful hope. Everyone was reasonably uneasy, but he knew what this trial would ultimately be about. You. Versus the rest of the class. A fight for who was in the exisal, your hope versus your despair. You must’ve wanted Kokichi alive, but the rest of them… If they wanted Kokichi alive, then it'd be for a totally different reason than you. It would be so Kokichi could be the blackened they so desired him to be. He understood, that surging, burning rage of just wanting the little shit to be guilty. He felt that with the last trial. He wanted so badly to be done with him, but despite all of his will, all of his hope, Kaito was forced to confront a nasty truth.
And soon… everyone would have to face it too.
Kaito couldn’t bring himself to keep staring at you. He let his gaze wander to where Monokuma sat on his high and mighty throne, lording over the group like a king. He gritted his teeth. The bear simply sat, not able to see how Kaito seethed at the sight of it. He granted himself one moment, only one moment, to bear his teeth at the stuffed beast.
Let’s play your little game, Monokuma.
Kaito hit the voice changer button and twirled the dial to Kokichi’s pixelated face. When he spoke, he watched the chorus of reactions across the courtroom. Your body straightened, fingers clinging to yourself like you were easing a stab wound. Maki’s glare might’ve been the daggers to your wounds. Kiibo and Shuichi stared in awe. Tenko squawked. Himiko tugged at her hat, hiding her face so he couldn't read her expression. Hearing a voice that was not his own was disorienting, but it was convincing. It was convincing enough.
That’s all that mattered.
His fingers traced over the edges of the exisal. His blood thrummed through his veins. He dragged his gaze over the pages of the red notebook again. Kokichi’s plan. His heart and soul poured into these pages, all in the hopes of making a plan that worked. Kokichi…
Never in a million years did he think he’d ever see Kokichi as anything other than an evil, evil guy. He didn’t believe the kid to be capable of any good, especially not after what he did to Gonta.
But…
When he was stuck in the hangar with the two of you, Kaito watched.
In his skepticism, he watched, he learned, and he began to chip away at what he thought he knew about Kokichi.
(He hadn’t wanted to. Even now, he still found himself hung up on what Kokichi had done before).
You and Kokichi were two peas in a pod. Kaito might not have been an Ultimate Physicist, but even he could see the gravitational force between the two of you. It was like you had been crafted together and made to balance the other out.
Maybe you had.
Maybe this killing game had been the crafting hands, and your relationship was the steel and bolts being held together. Constructed to be so perfect under harsh conditions. A diamond in the rough. The creation of a star. Call him the Ultimate Astronaut, but he could compare the two of you to a spaceship. Something that needed that dangerous balance, where any screw loose could bring the whole thing down. That relationship between steel and bolts, a shield and the glue, fighting against the pressures of space.
Who was the steel? Who were the bolts?
It might’ve worked, in some other reality. Too bad the two of you were stuck in a killing game. Too bad he watched the two of you rise and fall in opposite directions.
Too bad Kokichi was dead.
Next part of the plan was the video camera.
Kaito sighed, hitting the voice changer on the exisal panel. The movement brought his gaze down to his fingertips, coated in dried blood. It lodged underneath his fingernails, stained the fabric of his clothing in hand-shaped blood prints. In a sick thought, he wondered whose blood it was. Was it his? Kokichi’s? Yours? He had way too much blood on him, three different sources. Each from wounds different and similar, where you all shared an arrow wound.
(You all had something in common after all. He almost smiled at the thought).
Too much blood.
Not nearly as much blood coated the floor of the hangar, as he turned his gaze away just in time as the video showed the gore of Kokichi’s demise. His heart ached when the courtroom turned into a mess of grief and disgust. He felt dirty, tricking them into believing he was dead in such a gruesome and horrible way. He knew it was a part of the plan, but it felt so damning. Doing it felt wrong, having the murder someone just to try and help his friends. He wondered if this was how Kirumi felt when she killed Ryoma, having prioritized her country over a handful of strangers she’d met only a few weeks prior.
No. No, this was different. It had to be. It felt sickening. Did Kirumi seem sickened when she killed Ryoma?
Focus. Focus, Momota, focus.
He leaned back into the conversation.
Oh, it was time for dramatics. Kaito referenced something similar in Kokichi’s notebook as he spoke, his chest aching with each breath he took. Jeez, being Kokichi took more energy than he had anticipated. It took what little breath he had just to keep a normal sentence, much less the evil quips Kokichi never seemed to run short on.
Even without his illness, this still seemed like a lot of work.
How did Kokichi manage to pull off his whole mastermind charade?
He had managed to prove to everyone, without a shadow of doubt, that he was the mastermind. Even though he wasn’t.
(He wasn’t, right?)
Well… maybe it was because he had you.
Did he doubt Kokichi could do it on his own? Not at all. The kid was too smart for his own good.
But Kaito couldn’t ignore your role in all of this.
In fact, this plan couldn’t have happened without you. He knew it couldn’t. He’d seen the proof himself, sitting on the floor of the hangar. The tapes he had found discarded, your mess-ups. You joined him on the floor of the hangar to prove your active role in this whole situation. He thought you’d been brainwashed, but it didn’t take long for him to begin to question what he thought of you and Kokichi.
After all, the tapes only proved everything he’d been trying avoid.
He didn’t get to see what built up to that: what made you believe in Kokichi as he believed in you and take on the mastermind plan alongside Kokichi. He remembered you as the shy type, like a leaf in the breeze, moving at the pace behind the crowd. A wallflower, maybe a pushover.
Now, he looked at you and saw someone completely different. He looked at you and saw someone who wasn't afraid anymore. All the confidence that he had hoped to bring out in you before, he saw now.
It sucks how it took Kokichi to bring it out…
No, no, what was he talking about? You made your decision to better yourself. To become a stronger person. You could’ve let the killing game bring you down. After Rantaro, Kaede, Kirumi, and… and Korekiyo, you could’ve let yourself fall apart at the seams. Maybe you did. Maybe that was what he was missing in all of this. What he just told himself, how he missed your progression into this… this person standing before him. So assured, even in doubt, and so much more confident than in the beginning. He missed whatever happened after the third trial because he couldn’t imagine what you had to go through to rebound after such an experience.
(Idly, Kaito wondered if he’d ever forgive himself for killing. He wondered if you did. After all, your case was self-defense. He didn’t have an excuse like that.
Kaito grimaced. That’s too much right now.
But he was going to die anyway.
No, no, too much. He wouldn’t live long enough to deal with that.)
When Kaito looked at you now… He saw someone with courage. Would you have been able to stand up to Kokichi when you woke up here? He didn’t know. But you would now. Not even a day ago you had put your foot down. With all of the strength of a thousand lifetimes, the fury, the exhaustion. You were stronger than him by miles. He was foolish sometimes; stupid, as Kokichi so often called him.
All Kaito ever wanted to do was good. What was he doing? While you and Kokichi fought against all odds to make this plan possible? He might’ve been carrying it out, but he was doing only that. He didn’t burn down the ink of a pen writing into every nook and cranny of a dense notebook; he didn’t crack the foundations of his friendships to keep everyone safe. Kaito was just a pawn in the plans, but that was okay because this was going to work. He just had to believe in himself.
Kaito cleared his throat, the taste of blood and bile lingering on his tongue.
He never did get to train with you.
Kaito sighed, leaning his head back as the words thrumming against the exisal turned into meaningless jabber. His head pulsed with each beat of his heart, each half-breath shaky, on the brink of another coughing fit.
He was going to die soon, whether it be from Monokuma and this damned killing game, or from this illness. One more friend. One more person dead. He didn’t know if you’d be able to grieve one more time. But he hoped. He hoped that your friendships with the others meant enough. You had Kiibo, and Tenko, and Shuichi. Maki and Himiko. Tsumugi.
There’s a mastermind among us.
Kaito gritted his teeth. No. No, he wasn’t going to think like that. It was impossible for you guys to lose. Even if he died, the rest of you were going to make it. He believed in it. It didn’t matter what Kokichi said before. Because even if he failed here, Kokichi’s plan would lay the groundwork to completely destroy this killing game. It wouldn’t matter if there were a mastermind because you were smart enough. You and Shuichi and Maki and Kiibo, Tenko, Himiko, Tsumugi. He’d only regret not being there to help.
The debate went on until-
His chest seized, and he hunched over, coughing blood onto the floor of the exisal. Each hack was another surge of pins and needles against his skin. His toes curled in his sandals, fingers digging into the skin of his chest. The blood seemed almost never ending, boiling hot in his lungs. Each attempt at a breath was minute agony.
It took a while for his breathing to return to normal.
Well, as normal as his breathing would get. He couldn’t take a full breath anymore.
Luckily, you all had been preoccupied with the discussion of the Flashback Light to notice his abrupt silence. He managed a quip to something Maki had said, but he couldn’t say anything more. His chest knocked with each breath, like a broken part of a struggling car.
Jeez.
His bloodied fingers dragged over the edges of the seat as he leaned back, head rolling back against the hard cushion of the headrest. As much as he wanted nothing more than to sleep, Kaito had to keep himself awake. He’d think about his feelings later. So, he leaned forward in the seat, fingers grazing over the speak button.
You had brought up the crossbow. Kaito pursed his lips. No one else said anything about the crossbow. Where does this leave us? Kaito took a breath and made a sarcastic Kokichi line over the speaker - he cringed. Calling you Kokichi’s pet names made him a little sick: they were not his words to say, even if he had to keep up appearances with you. Knowing how you felt towards Kokichi, how Kokichi felt towards you, it felt like betrayal, or worse, torture. How’d you feel knowing it was Kaito instead of him?
Kaito would regret it, for sure.
Regrets... The last twenty-four hours had been nothing short of hellish, but he didn’t think he’d take it back. Maybe do things a little differently. He wished he didn’t have to lie to you, but…
Kaito thought he did good.
Given the circumstances, and they were pretty shitty circumstances, Kaito thought he did as much good as he could.
And, you know what?
That was enough.
It was enough because he knew everything was going to end well. He didn’t have any proof. The way this trial was going, he was most definitely going to be proven wrong. There was more stacked against his hope than there was for it. But… he guessed that what hope does. It perseveres, even in the bleakest of times. He knew. He knew more than he knew anything else: you and the rest of the class were going to survive. You were all going to make it out of this shitty place and cling to hope, cling to all of the good memories they’ve made here.
Kaito’s heart gave a heavy thump in his chest. He didn’t have much time.
The trial went on. He forced himself to speak even when his lungs were threatening to give out. Everyone was doing a wonderful job fighting for the truth. Kaito smiled at the thought. If he could only leave one thing, it’d be the inspiration. His friends were better people than they were in the beginning. He was too, he thought. He swallowed.
Kokichi. You and Shuichi and Maki and Kiibo, Tenko, Himiko, Tsumugi. Gonta, Miu, Korekiyo, Angie, Ryoma, Kirumi, Rantaro, Kaede.
He chanted the names in his brain over and over. He wouldn’t forget them. He had good memories here. Despite all the pain, all the misery, he had good memories. He had good laughs, good breakfasts, good teamwork, good friends.
Kaito had good friends. They were good people.
And Kaito…
He blinked when the phantom warmth of your hand over his, tight and warm and comforting. Your hands were the evidence of your talent, little marks and bumps from the work he saw you do in the hangar, probably outside of it too. Trying to reassure him of a plan you had worked so hard for. He could see it when he looked at you. Despite his grievances against Kokichi, he believed in you. He believed in what you told him.
Kaito was good too.
Kaito flipped the pages of Kokichi’s notebook, fingers tracing over words that had more meaning than he could ever. These were the words that mattered right now. He didn’t have time to get sentimental. He had more work to do.
After all, this trial was just getting started.