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Kokichi blinks at the broken screen, watching the jittery display fight to stay lit. He is lucky to be alive. Well... 'lucky' isn't the word he'd use. By no means does he wish to be dead, he just doesn't know if being alive is any better in this moment. His precious new body is barely together; the legs that he has wished for his entire life now lay limp as rags with the bones ground nearly to dust, and the arm he has had for no more than a few hours is twisted at an inhuman angle that he cannot move it from without screaming. He's barely got enough energy in him to allow for screaming, so he holds his breath as he attempts to use his good arm to shift himself out from under the debris.
A few centimetres into his first push forward, he feels white hot burning in his abdomen as his flesh tears against jagged metal. Kokichi's eyes shoot open and his throat expands with a sudden gasp as a guttural shriek erupts from his chest. The arm supporting him collapses and his head lolls at an angle that lets him glimpse at the cause of his pain.
The weight of the cockpit’s broken exterior bears down on a piece of shrapnel buried deep in his stomach. Whatever energy he has left is now rapidly bleeding out of his gut.
Kokichi is accustomed to pain, but not pain like this. Not pain this deep. Sobs echo around him, bouncing off the metal with a tinny ringing that makes his ears ache. With each shake of his chest, his flesh shifts against the sharp edge of the panel threatening to bisect him and he breaks into a cold sweat as he vomits handfuls of blood. Inside his chest, a heart gallops like a horse shocked into motion and pumps pure fear into his fragile veins. Tears stream down his face and choke air from his lungs as he begs with gods he doesn't believe in to take the pain away.
In all these years, he has never had to be afraid when losing a fight. Risk is never something he has to pay much mind to unless he needs to defend the others and that isn't how sorcerers were taught. In a fight, the only life that matters is your own and Kokichi never cared about his life anyway. It's an anomaly, a mistake. It is a lonely, pathetic existence, tucked out of sight from everyone. Kokichi is certain that because he was almost guaranteed to die in the safety of his room, it might be the only time anyone ever came to see him. If anything, he was looking forward to it because he wouldn't be alone anymore.
Mai once said that Mechamaru fights like he has a death wish and Kokichi always found that wording funny because his life was never going to be forfeit in a fight. He was never there, so why should he care what happens to him? Every hit Mechamaru takes is just cosmetic damage. When his puppets lie cooling on the ground, it doesn’t matter if no one comes to get them. It doesn’t matter if Mechamaru dies alone.
So, Kokichi imagines that the cold bite of death that sinks its teeth into his muscles is just the feel of canons cooling and circuit boards losing power. He shuts his eyes and tries to imagine that he is a puppet. That's all he's ever been to most people, so he might as well die as he lived to make his last moments a little easier. Puppets aren’t afraid when they die.
But death is cruel and arduous—it doesn’t let him go without feeling pain or regret.
It's a funny feeling; dying and mourning a life you didn't live.
There have been too many nights where Kokichi imagined walking into a classroom and seeing his classmates' faces drop as they realised who entered the room. Miwa would run and hug him and he'd lift her into his arms to hold her close enough that their souls melted together. Mai would make a snarky comment about how he's never had a haircut. Then he'd meet the first and third years and they'd all poke and prod his bony chest as they remarked on how he needed to eat and work out bad.
And Kamo... Kokichi promised himself that he'd tell Kamo everything.
Kokichi would go to Kamo's door and tap on the frame. Noritoshi would invite him in with the most gentle smile and slip a bookmark into the novel in his lap. Then they'd sit face to face as Kokichi explained how much every late-night text had meant to him and the feelings that he'd started developing from that. Kokichi had never considered it worth having a crush on anyone until he met Noritoshi. Falling for the Kamo heir was never intentional but how could he help it when those beautifully sleek cheekbones were one of the only things Kokichi ever got to look at? And he really loved looking at them.
That's what he'd tell Kamo. And if the feeling wasn't mutual, Kokichi would simply say that was grateful to have been given the chance to feel those feelings. Those feelings made Kokcihi feel real.
In a perfect world, they'd have slowly fallen in love over the course of their school years. They'd slip each other notes and pester each other in their dorm rooms. Kokichi never got to do much to his dorm but he can imagine the photos of them tacked on the walls. He likes to think he'd own a Polaroid camera so that whenever Noritoshi was bundled up in a sweater he stole from Kokichi's laundary pile, Kokichi could snap a picture of him and add it to the collection. Mahito never gave Kokichi a chance to examine this new face but he might've been handsome and so they'd have to take lots of photographs. Kokichi might have even gotten to experience lying beside someone who looks at him the way he has been secretly looking at Noritoshi. He might've been called pretty as Noritoshi pulled him close. The warmth of Noritoshi's body against his would be much more welcoming than the cold ground that Kokichi lies on now.
Kokichi could have had a future with him. Maybe they could've gotten married one day. Now Kokichi will never even have his first kiss, let alone marry.
'What could have been' is such an astoundingly broad concept that Kokichi becomes lost in the possibilities. He wanders down hallways of false memories and desperate dreams for longer than he intends to. It gives him time to bargain with the idea that he could survive this. Maybe someone will find him and be able to help. At the very least, someone will be there to hold his hand.
Kokichi is an optimist, but he is not quixotic. If he is to survive this, he must take matters into his own hands and pray that someone will be willing to help him. Sending a distress signal won't be fast enough, so he has no option but to make direct contact. It won't be easy; he's a fugitive. They must've realised he escaped the room he'd been detained in and who is to say they would care whether his body left the wreckage in one piece or with breath still in it? Unless someone who cared about his survival was involved... Maybe if he contacted someone who might not know what he's done. He musters the last of his physical strength, reaches for the controls and calls Kamo.
Noritoshi answers after only a few rings with a sleepy voice. Kokichi realises he doesn’t know how long he has been waiting to die. It must be later than he realised.
The husky tone isn't something Kokichi has ever heard before and at first, he almost forgets he needs to say anything because he's so busy picturing Noritoshi's soft, thick hair touselled around his face. The older boy's shiny obsidian eyes probably blink blearily in the darkness of the room as makes a lazy attempt at putting the phone to his ear.
“Who is this?” Noritoshi’s voice crackles through the speaker.
“It’s Ko— It’s Mechamaru.” Kokichi thinks his own voice sounds too quiet. There isn't enough urgency in it to make his situation sound as dire as it is without explanation but he can't seem to push his throat any harder.
Noritoshi is silent for a moment. “Oh. Hey.”
Kokichi’s chest tightens. The simple greeting feels like safety. He feels hopeful. But then words sound like static. They warp and blur into nothing but empty, meaningless noise and it takes a few moments for Kokichi’s brain to click the edges of the sound’s together into sentences.
“Mechamaru?”
“Hm?”
Kamo yawns. “I said it’s 2am. Why are you calling?”
“I— I um.”
“** ********** *******?” A pause. "*********?....Mechamaru?"
Kokichi jolts back into himself again. His senses are shutting down. “Huh?”
“I said is everything alright?”
This is the moment Kokichi should ask for help. He should send out a distress signal and beg Noritoshi to wake up Iori sensei & send out a rescue party.
But he doesn’t.
Kokichi is dying from his wounds faster than a rescue party can be formed. Blood has soaked his clothes so badly that they make him feel like he's wearing a suit of lead. A static feeling is spreading through his hands and face until he isn't sure which parts of his body are still able to move. The pilot light keeping him burning is about to go out, and if he puts it on Noritoshi to attempt the impossible task of saving him, he risks creating a curse.
So, instead, what Kokichi says through a bloody, metalic gulp is, “I can’t sleep. I’m sorry it’s late, I just thought some company might help.”
“What do you need from me?” Noritoshi says with clear acceptance of the task. He always does that—takes on everything without question as if fulfilling other people's wishes is as natural as breathing to him, even half asleep. Too many people take advantage of that and it makes Kokichi mad because Kamo deserves to be more than a servant or performer. Yet Noritoshi never complains because he's a sweet, caring, reliable boy who has always been there, treating Kokichi like a real person. With qualities like those, Kokichi understands why it was so easy to fall in love with him.
Kokichi's slowing heart warms a little as he realises that Noritoshi is unknowingly being there for him right until the very end. He'll never get to hold him. He'll never get to kiss him. He'll never get to know if they could've had something. But at least he has this.
Part of him wants to be selfish and ask Noritoshi to say he loves him, just to hear it once. But it wouldn't make any sense to ask that so suddenly, and when he finds out Kokichi is dead, Noritoshi will have so many complex emotions about it, whether he says it or not. After all the kindness he's shown over the last couple years, it wouldn't be fair to torture him like that. Plus, he'll know this phone call was in Kokichi's last moments and that Kokichi knew it was happening and didn't ask for help.
At least if Kokichi acts naturally, Kamo might never know he was present at the death of his friend.
Kokichi lays his head against his arm and pretends it is Noritoshi’s chest. “I think I’ll be out soon. Can you stay on the phone with me for a bit?”
"Sure. I might fall asleep though. Sorry if I snore." Noritoshi makes a sleepy, snuffling noise and mutters something about Miwa worrying about where he's been, but trails off.
*
In the shattered cockpit of Absolute, there is nothing but stillness and the soft, unaware breathing of Kamo Noritoshi over a small speaker.
There is a singular bulb, blinking in the face of the mecha's pilot. It is the only light left in Muta Kokichi’s eyes.