Chapter Text
He remembered the day. He sat on the edge of the hospital bed, toying with the old watch in his pocket, feeling the indifferent touch of the lukewarm metal and wondering what Aki was up to. Aki had called him earlier that morning– that irritated him, why’d Aki call him so early? Didn’t he think about the fact that his friend had to sleep on a bench behind Port Island Station when he couldn’t afford a hotel room, which was most of the time, and he was awakened by the screams of some poor sap getting his soul eaten by Shadows every other night– and begged him to visit him at the hospital, “just to talk”. Aki had made it sound like he’d split his entire rib cage in half, but when Shinjiro arrived, he seemed to have no problems whatsoever sitting up and interrogating him about the Lost. A few minutes ago, Aki had abruptly stood up, muttered something about a doctor, and walked away. The window behind him was open, and a cool spring breeze rushed in, flipping the pages of the medical chart attached to the bed with a fwup-fwup-fwup . He was debating whether to sneak a look at the chart when three Gekkou High students came up to him.
Two he thought he recognized: the girl in pink looked like that archery club member Yukari Takeba, and the guy with the hat and goatee had to be Junpei Iori, the infamous pervert. But the girl standing next to them, the one with her brown hair tucked into a ponytail and several pins, he had no clue who she was. She was the only one out of the three to look him straight in the eye. Yukari visibly flinched when he cast his gaze in her direction, and Junpei’s arrogant smile slowly slid off his face as he began to focus intensely on a spot just above Shinjiro’s head. He was used to people being intimidated at the sight of him. Aki said it had to do with his tall stature, his choice of clothing, his now customary scowl, but Shinjiro thought it was more than that. In the deepest part of their hearts, he believed, they could somehow sense who he was and what he’d done. And those who dared to look into his eyes could probably see the past and the misery that came with it played out in them. That was why he avoided making eye contact. It wasn’t so much that he feared others knowing his past; he feared they’d try to make him answer to it.
“Um, is Akihiko-senpai in this room… b-by any chance?” stammered Junpei.
Shinjiro ignored him and returned to contemplating the medical chart. Just as Junpei opened his mouth to force out another question, the partition rolled back and Aki walked in with a confident stride. The trio immediately began gushing over his broken rib, while Aki assured them he was fully healed. Listening to them, the truth hit him: Aki hadn’t had a life-threatening injury, he just fractured one damn rib bone.
“I don’t have time for this shit,” Shinjiro announced. They all stared at him in shock as he stood up and headed for the door. As he was about to turn the knob, he realized he still didn’t know who the other girl was. Normally he wouldn’t have cared, but there was something about her…
“You.” He turned around and fixed his eyes on her.
She gazed back with ruby red eyes. They were full of fire and determination, yet there was also compassion. They gave him the answer he sought before he could ask: this was the new leader of SEES, Kotone Shiomi. Aki had mentioned her along with Iori and Takeba when he was talking about the new developments in the squad, before the three arrived, and he seemed to approve of her leadership.
“Nevermind,” Shinjiro said, and left.
Now, months later, he was sitting across from that girl in a booth at Chagall Cafe, watching her ponytail swing ever so slightly as she brought a cup of coffee to her lips. How he had ended up like this, he wasn’t entirely sure– something to do with sorrow and chains and atonement and revenge calling him back to SEES. And Kotone asking him if he wanted to grab a bite somewhere, and how he wanted to push her away but couldn’t find a nice way to do so and ended up saying yes and how it had turned into this– this friendship. But he knew there weren’t going to be many more times like this. Kotone was the last friend he would make before, a couple weeks from now, he faced his death sentence with his head held high.