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He comes to you in tears. That’s never happened before.
You let him into your cottage— a funny thought, that you could own anything when you yourself are a thing owned— and let the door click quietly closed behind him. You listen as he rambles, heat rising to his cheeks: he has always been quick to anger, the young master, and if he had the physical strength to tear this whole island in half, you’re sure he would (but he wouldn’t need to; that’s what you’re for, after all).
You can tell that he hates this, you, the fact that you exist; he hates using you, even though you were bred to be used, and perhaps if you were anything more than a simple tool you might find it touching that he would have such compassion— but that isn’t why he hates using you. He hates the very idea of you, some living reminder of his status; he is so resentful of all the things he’s been given. But he needs you: that much is unquestionable. He has so much to prove, and you are his means of doing so. He will never dirty his hands with others’ blood, not while you still stand. You will make sure of that. Perhaps one day, when you have made yourself indispensable to him, he will no longer loathe you. But it does not do to dwell on hypotheticals.
He rubs at his eyes when he describes the photos he received from Monokuma. You pull his hand from his face and gently interject that the rubbing will make his eyes red, and he won’t be able to pretend for the others that he hasn’t been crying. He looks at you with such disgust, like you are garbage (but what did you expect? you are merely his tool), and demands that you get him a tissue. Something twists into a knot in your chest at his expression (and how odd, you thought that had stopped happening), but you push it aside so that you may fulfill his command— you are only alive to fulfill his commands.
The box of tissues is on the other side of the room, and as you cross the floor to fetch it you feel some strange and instinctive resistance, a reluctance to leave his side— but it doesn’t matter that you don’t want to obey (and you do want to obey, you simply also want him close), because you don’t have wants, people have wants— the young master has wants. You would be peculiar company, you think, were you a person; the other students must find you so strange.
His hand brushes your wrist on its way to snatch the box of tissues from you.
Oh.
The others don’t understand when you explain who you are, and neither does Monokuma; you had hoped that they would be obliterated with you, not out of any malice or ill will, and the young master would have been free from this place (and from his hatred of you, all you represent)— but instead the bear saddles you with the burden of autonomy you’ve never felt before, as though you had any choice but to act in place of the young master, to be his tool. But you’ve never had that choice, and you’ve never wanted it. If you were asked, you think, you would choose this life, every time, this life where you are his.
Komaeda accuses the young master of being your “hope.” You have never used that word in that way before.
They drag you to your fate, but not before the young master says what he says— and you don’t have the time or the words to express all the things you would like to say to him, all the guilt and the joy you feel under his gaze. He is good and kind, still, even in this; you will miss him when you are gone.
You only wish you could have protected him from this wretched life. Instead you leave him to brave it on his own (the young master has never been on his own before, and you trust him but you are afraid for him, for how he will ever go on, with all his big talk, without a companion). Maybe one day the others will forgive him.
He tries— foolish, the young master, and impulsive as always, but valiant and, somehow, sweet— to save you (and how funny, for you have always been the one saving him), but he endangers himself without your protection, and he puts himself right in the way—
If you weren’t already half-dead, you would never be able to live with what you’ve done. As it is, you hold him close, and succumb to your fate.
When you finally go, he is in your arms: you are quiet, and your mission is complete.