Archive of Our Own ^beta

Eito Aotsuki opens his eyes once more. 

Relief rushes through him as he does so—killing Sirei hadn’t been one of his better plans by far, but it was all he was capable of. He simply could not let anyone learn what was going on. Even if he had to be left in the dark as well, he did not trust any statements from humanity. 

Before he’s allowed to think about his situation any further, the door to the Revive-O-Matic is opened and he’s pulled out to the open air and putrid stench of a human. 

It’s a vaguely reddish mass of hair and flesh and teeth, with a couple dozen blue eyes, ringed with red like a venomous octopus. Eito sure does feel poisoned every time he brushes up against him. 

“Ta—Takumi?” Eito forces himself to stutter, giving himself enough time to think of a good lie. It’s still the middle of the night, there is no logical reason for Eito to be in any danger, nonetheless enough danger to kill him. There’s no reason why Takumi should even be awake right now, the one that loves to sleep up until every announcement and is always late to breakfast. 

Eito cannot see expressions, not really. He knows what they should look like from pictures, he knows that humans make them to show emotions, but it’s only through intense study that he is able to understand what expressions people are making at any given moment. 

Study that he seriously doubts because he swears the moment Eito says Takumi’s name, for a slight second, his expression changes to something Eito cannot make heads or tails off, before the emotion is gone, replaced by worry. 

“Eito! What happened to you, why are you in the Revive-O-Matic?”

Ugh. Eito had not prepared himself to listen to a human’s grating voice tonight. 

“I was attacked by…something. I’m not sure what it was, I was just going down to the cafeteria for a late-night snack and I don’t know the rest.” Eito gets out of the stretcher, putting a contemplative look on his face as he crosses his arms, “Did you see anything strange?”

The disgusting monster quivers a bit, Eito takes it to mean that Takumi is shaking his head, “No. I just saw the corpse drone flying by and followed it here…however—no, nevermind.” There’s a horrid little chuckle, “Forget it, you’re okay, right?”

“Right as rain!” Eito forces himself to chirp, “I’m glad the Revive-O-Matic doesn’t work for defensive battles only or else I would be done for.”

“Yeah, that really is lucky.” Takumi responds, but it’s flat. Edging on emotionless. 

Just what is going on with Takumi?

“Let’s get you back to your room.” Takumi offers and Eito preps himself, ready for Takumi to grab his hand with whatever mass of slimy flesh is supposed to be his hand, but instead Takumi begins walking off without him.

He turns back towards Eito from time to time, but Takumi doesn’t even offer to take his hand. Eito doesn’t mind—he would never be grateful to a human, but he believes that this emotion is quite close—but he wonders if he should assume that Takumi hates him. He cannot imagine why: he knows that he just did something that Takumi would consider deplorable, but Takumi isn’t the type of person to keep quiet if he did see that Eito killed Sirei. If anything, there would have been everyone waiting for him once he woke up.

As usual, Eito does not understand why a human does what it does. However, unusually, he is not upset by it. He does not mind as Takumi leads the way back to Eito’s room, just far enough away that Eito’s nostrils aren’t constantly being burned by his presence. 

Even as Eito enters his room, and Takumi makes his sole movement to get closer to him—he only puts his hand on Eito’s doorframe, resting it there. Eito’s hand is nowhere near. 

Eito wonders if Takumi hates him. 

He wonders how this hatred feels so much like being understood. 

“Goodnight, Eito.” The mass of flesh and eyes shifts into something Eito understands to be a smile, then retreats out to the left as he shuts the door.

Eito stands there for a moment, staring at the closed door. Takumi’s scent still clings to him like fresh sewage but for once, Eito doesn’t instinctively shudder after letting such a horrific monster get so close to his room. Instead, he just stares, trying to piece things together. 

What’s strangest is that when he finally forces himself to go to bed, the last image he sees are dozens of blue eyes, pupils circled with red. All of them focused at him, stabbing him with their cold gazes. As he bled out, it felt a lot like hatred. Eito woke up covered in sweat.

The strange happenings continue for a few days and Eito keeps his eye on Takumi throughout all of them—though so are most, because Takumi seems to be center of all of them.

Sirei is discovered in the front of school, split in two. Eito never got to see his handiwork, but he’s pretty sure that the slices would match up exactly with his scythe. They almost have to physically break into Takumi’s room to get him to see and about two seconds before Tsubasa gets out a power saw, Takumi finally wakes up. It takes several loud bangs and thuds before Takumi opens the door. When he does, Eito is just about ready to cut Takumi in half as well. Forcing him to stick around two grotesque beasts because he overslept is bordering on unacceptable.

“Sorry guys,” Takumi says with a very loud yawn. One of the strange things about Eito’s disorder was that, despite the fact that he could not see a human the way they saw each other—he could only see their true self—he was able to pick up on details of their clothing most easily. Which is to say, that Takumi’s hoodie was backwards and he was clearly wearing the wrong shoe on each foot, “I was asleep.”

“Clearly.” Hiruko says derisively, having recovered from the shock of seeing Sirei split in two to give Takumi a scathing look, “With how much you sleep, I’m surprised that you joined yesterday’s battle. It seems like you would rather sleep through us all being slaughtered.”

“Ouch, Hiruko. That’s a little rude, I just woke up. Anyway, what’s the big hurry?”

“Did you forget that Sirei was supposed to tell us why we were here today?” Hiruko replies with a cluck of her tongue and a tilt of her head and Eito wonders why she leads with that…then he realizes that Hiruko probably suspected one of them killed Sirei and was already working to narrow down the options. 

…Faster than I expected. I respect her speed of judgment…even if she is a human. 

“Uh, no.” Takumi replies, “But did you need to try and break my door down for that?”

“No.” Hiruko replies, “What we did that for you will find out soon. Follow us.” Hiruko begins to lead them back down to the front of the school, and Takumi quickly falls to the back of the group, on account of having to swap his shoes. 

“Did you tell them?” Takumi whispers as Hiruko and Tsubasa step down to the lower level, leaving the two of them on the roof alone for a few moments. 

Did he plan this? Is Takumi capable of planning such a thing?

“Not yet. I didn’t know what to say.” Eito mutters back before continuing down, knowing that even a few seconds would be enough for Hiruko to get suspicious. 

“Should we keep it to ourselves?” Takumi asks as they trail behind on the third floor.

“Oh, keep it from the group Takumi? What reason would we have for doing that?”

Second floor. 

“Well, isn’t there a chance that one of us hurt you?” Takumi asks, reaching out for Eito but stopping himself, “What if they know we’re onto them?”

Eito hadn’t responded, and there was no more time to talk because they had reached the first floor, and had to struggle to keep up with Hiruko’s pace…well, Tsubasa and Takumi did. It was quite amusing to watch the two wobbling beast try and keep up with them.

“Can’t—can’t we slow down a bit, Hiruko?” Tsubasa calls out, “I mean, it’s not like Sirei is going to walk away.”

“...Why not?” Takumi asks, and asides from a look Tsubasa gives him, is ignored. 

“I feel as if it was a bad idea to leave those ones alone with Sirei.” Hiruko muses and Eito has to agree with that line of logic. Despite calling them soldiers, most of their group had anything but discipline. It was only a matter of time until Gaku managed to pull someone along with his stupid ideas and something bad would happen.

Well. Bad for humanity, that is. 

Bad for him…Eito glances back at Takumi, the small monstrous thing…still to be seen. 

Takumi reacts appropriately to finding Sirei’s body, all shock and horror and hands clasped over his mouth and what…?! 

“Do we know what happened to him?”

“Ugh, duh, an invader did it.” Gaku, the simpleton, states like it’s fact. 

“But wouldn’t that be—” Eito begins, before Hiruko cuts him off. 

“Impossible. The alarm would have gone off.”

“Ugh, but…what if they launched an invader above the Wall of Fire?” Gaku quickly pivots to an even more lucidaris idea. Eito is a little bit in awe. He couldn’t be this stupid if he tried. Even Darumi has a better idea (a killing game, of course, which is going to begin the second that a new mascot rises from Sirei’s corpse. Of course, because it is Darumi, Eito is letting her screeches fade into the background).

“That’s…also not possible.” Takumi points out, “And if that was possible, wouldn’t they just send an commander instead of just a regular invader.”

“But…what if—” Tsubasa begins thoughtfully, before being cut of by Takemaru’s No Guts No Glory! as he and Shouma (read: he forces Shouma) to make a defensive barrier around Sirei’s body to prevent Darumi (who wants to play with the body), Kako (who wants to investigate the body), and Ima (who wants to support Kako) from touching Sirei. 

After everyone stops what they’re going to get things in check and Eito is so thoroughly sick of humans for the day before noon, Tsubasa finally finishes what she had been saying earlier. 

“I mean, what if there is an invader lurking around the school. Just one.”

“Explain.” Hiruko’s words are cut but the lack of obvious dismission has Tsubasa perking up a bit.

“I mean, what if an invader slipped in during our last defensive battle and has just been hanging around, trying to pick us off one by one.” (Darumi is ignored) “Just one, not enough to take us down as a group, so they have to resort to tactics like this.” (Darumi is ignored)

“Hmm. A possibility.”

“I think now’s a good time to tell you all something.” Eito begins, figuring now is as good as a time as any. There’s no way he’s willing to have this information known to himself and Takumi alone, to allow himself to be that close to a human, “Late last night, as I was heading down to the cafeteria for a snack, I was suddenly attacked. I don’t know who or what attacked me, I only realized what had happened when I woke up in the Revive-O-Matic.”

“Yeah, and I found the corpse drone carrying Eito while I was going to the cafeteria for a snack.” Takumi adds. 

Eito winces internally, hoping that no one would notice just how big of a coincidence that—

“You and Eito were going for nighttime snacks at the same time?” Hiruko points out. 

“Uh um, yeah, I guess?” Takumi replies, scratching his cheek nervously, “I was just going down for some chips, what were you going for, Eito?”

Why did you bounce it back to me?!

“I had just remembered a nice Korean cucumber salad recipe.” (Darumi is ignored) “I wanted to see if I could make it.”

“That is not important.” Hiruko replies and Eito internally berates Takumi for bringing him into that meaningless back and forth, “What is more important is despite the fact that Eito was attacked, you weren’t, Takumi.”

“Oh yeah. Well…” 

Please come up with a decent reason.

“I don’t know why.” Takumi scratches his chin again.

…Eito is a bit impressed. His desire to kill someone has rarely even been this high, and that takes time. He’s around humans so much that he’s learned to keep it under control but Takumi Sumino. Eito wants to wrap his fingers around that gross beast’s stupid little neck and squeeze until all of his little eyes bulge out. 

“Hah. I guess that’s just how things are.” Hiruko replies. 

“Coincidences can happen.” Tsubasa adds. 

Takemaru punches his fist, “Once I get my hands on that invader!”

One by one, everyone chimes in with their version of I’m not suspicious of Takumi at all! and Eito wonders if he was sent into an alternate reality when he was killed. One where there was no such thing as murder or bad intentions or lying and he was the first person to ever come up with such concepts. 

His stomach begins to roll, a good sign that he’s had enough of people for the day. He excuses himself as everyone else is dividing themselves into groups to try and find this invader. As Eito tries to get away so he can regain his composure, he turns a corner and finds that Hiruko is waiting for him, a disquieted expression on her face. 

“We don’t have long to talk.” She begins with giving Eito any time to acknowledge her, pushing up her glasses as she does so, “I’ll be curt. Do you think an invader attacked you? Or do you believe Takumi did it?”

Ah. Well, Eito would never say that he could genuinely respect a human, but Hiruko’s skills of deduction were unlike anything he had seen before. No hesitation in suggesting that one of their own might be responsible for two murders…which is especially dangerous for him. Luckily for him, Hiruko had just presented him the perfect opportunity to get her off his trail. 

“Well, I can’t be sure. I don’t want to sow any mistrust between us…but I didn’t hear any invader sounds when I was attacked. To be fair, I didn’t hear any sounds at all when I was attacked. It’s possible that Takumi could just be being really quiet, though.” Eito pretends to think hard, “Maybe I was getting close to where Sirei was destroyed?”

“Hmm. Go back and rest. If I find out anything, I’ll stop by this evening, around the time of the evening announcement.” Hiruko’s disgusting face twists into something with too many teeth, horrific intentions, “I’ll make sure that I find out what happened last night.”

A smile. Ugh.

The first thing Eito did when he got back to his room, the first thing he does most days, was take a shower. He scrubbed his skin raw, made sure that under every fingernail was free of any dirt, picked off any stray hairs that had clung to him. 

Once, when Eito was younger, the stench of humans clung to him, even when he went to his room. In the mirror, he was alone but there was always a monster in the corner of his vision. It took completely separating himself from humans for months on end to cleanse himself.

Now, Eito takes time out of every day to clean himself and his room. Humans could have the rest of the world for as long as it took for him to eradicate every last one of them, but Eito would always have his room. Even after being taken from his home, put on this school and forced to fight, he would still have a room to make his own. 

After he was done with his shower into a clean outfit, he cleaned the entire room. There wasn’t much in the way of decorations or furniture, but he preferred it that way. Anything that he didn’t have a hand in getting he didn’t fully trust…however he guesses that he should begin to trust what he’s given or else he’s going to wear away at it like he did his skin once. 

Eito cleans and cleans and cleans and does not think until the last rag is tossed into a plastic bin that he will toss directly into the Wall of Fire once everyone has gone to bed. It’s the only way to really get rid of filth here, and he is surrounded by it but he is fighting and he will not succumb. 

He will not lose. 

He will kill them all and he will—

RING

Eito’s heart jumps into his throat, an instinctual terror response reinforced over two decades.

One day, Eito promises himself as he calms his nerves so he can open the door, keeps his hatred at a simmer so he can face the woman outside, I will eradicate all of you.

And I will never be scared again. 

Despite the power Takumi has over him, the infrequency of their talks makes it seem as if the human is unaware of it. Never does Takumi seek him out, only speaks to him as part of larger conversations before flitting off to Darumi to watch a movie or to help Tsubasa do whatever to the Ration-O-Matic or a dozen of random things with random people. For a few days, Eito had begun to believe that Takumi had no idea what they were tied up in. 

That’s why he felt safe enough to take out Hiruko.

He would have liked to get more information out of her, but the less they knew as a group, the better it would be for him. As it was, most of their group didn’t want to fight and if things continued the way it did, Eito wouldn’t have to lift a finger. Sirei told them that their work here was to save humanity, if they failed then humanity would lose its last hope. 

That made everything so simple: keep things the way they were. Everyone lost, confused, too scared to fight—all that worked perfectly for him. 

So, after the last announcement, he snuck out of his room and was immediately met by a monster with too many blue eyes. 

“I’d like to talk to you, Eito.” Takumi said staring at Eito unflinchingly, “Do you want to talk outside the Wall of Fire?”

“Ah, Takumi! What lead you to seek me out at such an hour? Did you wish to have a sleepover with me? I’ve never been part of such an experience, I’ve been told that they’re necessary for childhood but I’ve—”

Takumi cuts off his spew of saccharine lies, “You’re not afraid that I’d kill you while we’re alone?”

“Of course not!” Eito replies, “I know that I don’t have anything to fear from you, Takumi. You were right there for me from the moment I woke up after being attacked!” He holds his hand over his heart empathetically, feeling his pulse race under his palm. 

“I’m glad.” Takumi replies with a tight smile, “Then grab your Infuser and meet me outside. I’ve already got mine.”

Takumi spins his Infuser around one of his hands, giving Eito’s shoulder an affectionate punch with his other as he leaves the roof. After Eito has suppressed the urge to gag and recollected himself, he does as Takumi asked and makes his way onto the school grounds, wondering all the while how much Takumi knew. 

He has to assume by now that Takumi suspects that Eito is the one that killed Sirei, or may even has damning evidence of such. Maybe he even knows that Eito had planned on killing Hiruko this night, and that’s why he’s bringing him outside of the Wall of Fire, for revenge for Sirei and to prevent more killing. 

Not for the first time, Eito wishes that the easiest lie for him wasn’t of someone overly eager and cheesy and trusting. It makes sense for Eito’s disguise to blindly follow Takumi outside of the range of the corpse drones, like a stupid damsel who can’t see the wolves lusting for her flesh. Eito’s disguise is guileless, full of good intentions and words and thoughts and would never do anything wrong.

When he seems Takumi again, calmly seated on a rock, Infuser still in hand, they smile at each other. Takumi’s doesn’t reach his eyes. Eito, the better actor, knows that his does.

They are silent as Takumi uses the fire extinguisher to carve a hole in the Wall of Fire large enough for them both to slip through, as Takumi leads them into one of the nearby abandoned buildings. 

There are seats waiting for them, upright as if they had been completely unbothered by the destruction that caused their owners to flee. Takumi dusts off his own and in a stunning lack of manners, doesn’t do the same for Eito. Eito does it for himself, seat unstained by a human’s touch. 

“Well Takumi, what is it you brought me out here for? Not that I don’t enjoy spending time with you but this is a bit unusual—”

“You don’t,” Takumi begins emphatically before calming himself, “You don’t like spending time with any of us. Or any human. We’re disgusting to you. You hate us all.”

Eito lets out a chuckle. He doesn’t mean to, it just fell out of his mouth. How else is he supposed to react to his cognitive disorder, his deepest secret, being revealed so plainly? How did Takumi know?

“It’s just how humans look to you. And there’s a way to fix it.”

“What…?” Eito chokes on his words. It’s impossible. It has to be impossible. There’s no way to get rid of it. It’s impossible. He’s been this way for all his life and is going to continue to be this way—and even if he could get rid of it, he would never want to get rid of his righteous eyes. They’re what allows him to see humanity as it truly as, disgusting and hypocritical and horrible and repugnant!

“And if you don’t want to, then we’ve got some walking to do.”

“Explain yourself, Takumi.” Eito replies coldly, finally letting the mask slip off his face. It’s been so long, he can feel it tearing at flesh as it finally falls away. 

“Let’s start walking.” Takumi stands instead of replying, grabbing a small knapsack which had been taped to the underside of the table. Eito doesn’t know when Takumi got a break from being a social butterfly to manage that one…though it might explain the day he slept until noon.

“Why? As far as I know, you’ll take the chance to kill me.” Eito replies, gripping his scythe hard enough that he could feel the spikes go through his fingers and jab his thumb. He glares at Takumi through the agonizing pain. 

“And you’d do the same to me.” Takumi responds as he throws the bag over one shoulder, carelessly showing Eito his back for a moment before he turns around with a cruel grin, “C’mon. Unless you want me to go alone so you can go back and kill Hiruko?”

Eito has grown sick of this game and readies himself for a single, decisive swing. 

“Kill me and you’ll never be able to succeed.”

“What makes you so sure about that?” Eito hisses in reply. 

The monster gives him another mean smile, “Because I have information which you need to kill us all. I’m confident that there’s no way you could succeed without it.”

Eito tightens his grip on his weapon a moment longer, but the agony is too much and he lets go. 

He doesn’t think that Takumi is lying. 

Eito has always been so bad at telling when a human is lying. He’s been tricked so many times. 

All the tells they get: shifting eyes, wringing hands, a shaky voice—how if he supposed to see shifting eyes in a fleshy blob with dozens of eyes, he can barely tell which mass is a hand, and he has no chance of telling when a voice is shaky when it all sounds like nails on a chalkboard. 

There is no reason to assume that Takumi is telling the truth. Or that Takumi would give him the truth. 

His hand hurts. There’s no rush of adrenaline like there usually is during the heat of battle. Without it, his weapon is too painful to hold. Without righteousness, he has no direction.

“This information better be worth it, Takumi.”

“It will be.” Takumi reassures him, “I’ve got some food for us. All made by the Ration-O-Matic. We’re going to be on the move for the next couple of days.”

“I would rather not be pulled along by the insipid whims of a disgusting human.”

“Hey! You really don’t get any easier to be around, do you.”

“You don’t either.”

The story Takumi tells him surely is a…fantastical one. One of time, of it turning in on itself and eating its own tail. One where these hundred days never ended, but continued on in hundreds of different ways. 

A story that doesn’t seem to have an ending.

“Why bother with this?” Eito had asked him during their first night, as they took refuge in what used to be a gym. They slept on benches in the locker room, with a row of lockers between them. 

“Because,” Takumi had responded, the echo nearly masking its inherent awfulness, “I want everyone to be happy.”

Yet you are content with my suffering. 

“Except Sirei?”

Takumi lets out a snort, “Sirei doesn’t care if we’re happy. The things he’s done to us…sometimes I end up making the same mistakes over and over again. Sirei would do the exact same things every time, but he wouldn’t call it a mistake. I at least try. I have to.”

Takumi tells the story like it’s an eventuality. 

He is a cog in Time’s clock and he continues to spin. Eito spun first and Takumi spun next but he wished upon a star and everyone he’s in contact with is doomed to spin forever. 

Takumi doesn’t say it like this though the theme is similar: Takumi did something and now everyone is stuck like this until the entire clock breaks. Takumi doesn’t know how to stop the looping and because of that, they’re going to be stuck in these hundred days until reality itself breaks down. 

And reality is resilient, so it will take a while. 

Takumi has been through this a hundred times already and reality has had no signs of breaking down. 

(It has been decades. It may be decades more.)

“Am I correct to guess that you’re telling me to pull me into the cycle?” Eito asks during their next break. They’re now in a department store, having stolen what remains of some sleeping bags and lying to rest with an aisle between them. Eito can see bits of the stars through the holes in the ceiling.

“What? No. Why would I do that?” Takumi replies sleepily. 

Because you hate me.

“It doesn’t work that way. Also I don’t hate hate you, you know? Just…” Takumi trails off with a yawn and then speaks no more. 

Takumi tells the story like he knows its his fault. 

He blames that Eito, that one from decades ago (a highly successful him. One for more accomplished than himself), for sending him down this path. Takumi blames himself for continuing down this path. For not know when to get off. For not knowing how to get off. 

They nap in a what was once a school. With nothing to separate them, Takumi takes pieces of a desk and arranges them into a wall. Eito is known and he hates it but he does not tell Takumi to stop making barriers between them. He does not want to be close to humans. They are an assault on every sense. Takumi knows this…and he is trying to make things easier.

It makes Eito’s skin crawl, fire ants tearing into his flesh.

“Why me?” Eito asks, turned away from the wall between them, giving them just a few more degrees of separation, “Out of everyone, you chose me to bring along on this journey?”

Dust shimmers in the air, bright spots lit up by the afternoon sun. He’s accustomed to dust, having spent so much time in and out of hospitals of all sorts—psychiatric wards, children’s hospitals, good ones with enough funding for three separate MRI machines, bad ones that couldn’t even keep the front desk staffed—but he’s not used to seeing it shimmer like this. 

Or maybe he had, but it was useless thing to remember, something that existed in his periphery but was never truly noticed.

This memory is just as clear as all those years he spent in hospitals, around humans that proved that his eyes were righteous, that the nausea they naturally incited was a correct reaction. All those years he spent being looked at as a malfunctioning creature, a medical marvel, a bad son. All those years that he spent trapped in a world, no a universe of monsters so horrific that he could never describe them. 

Those memories which were all fake. All because of a glitch in what made Eito Eito, had twisted him from the inside out, had turned him into him. 

Takumi had assured him that it didn’t mean anything in the “long run because what matters is what we’re going through right now. Even if our pasts are fake, this is real” but Eito doesn’t trust any human, won’t listen to any human so he’s left wishing that he could just this once. He wishes that he could believe Takumi, could internalize that the only thing that matters right now is right now but that would mean believing a human and he’s spent his whole life doing the opposite. 

He’s been lied to for so long. 

It’ll go away someday.

One day, you’ll lighten up, I promise!

It’s fine, you don’t have to be around anyone if you don’t want to. 

Not everyone will be like this.

You can keep to yourself as long as you like. 

Sure, I don’t mind that you keep throwing up at the sight of me. 

I love you.

You can trust me. 

He’s sure that Takumi lied to him to get Eito to join him on this trip, the destination of which he doesn’t fully know but is pretty sure is related to the other humans Takumi refers to in his stories. 

Eito doesn’t know how this information could be used to kill them all. It changes absolutely nothing. This is a colonizing mission that humanity has sent them on after destroying their planet, but that’s because humanity and Futurans had no way to communicate with each other until the wheels of war were already spinning. They were created to shed blood and cycle between dying and being revived forever but there is a way for them to leave this planet, for no one’s sake but their own. 

Just how any of this knowledge was meant to help him, Eito didn’t know. And seeing as there hasn’t been a key Takumi revealed over the past days of traveling and talking, Eito believes that he’s been lied to again. 

“Because,” Takumi responds after letting Eito have several long moments to think, “This has been the only time where I remember everything from the moment I jumped back. It’s the first time I actually got to make a decision knowing how things tended to go. I trusted you, once, but I know the least about you. So that’s why.”

“When did you jump back to? Finding me in the Revive-O-Matic?”

“Yup.” Takumi lies. 

“You’re so disgusting you make me want to vomit, Takumi.” Eito responds in a light voice, relishing in how he can hear Takumi stiffen across their barrier, “You lied to me to get me all the way out here, away from those allies you hold so dear to your heart, like you’re a slaughterhouse owner and I’m a meek little lamb.”

Takumi grits his teeth, “What are you talking about?”

“Maybe your mind is a bit scrambled from spending so many years doing things so many different ways, but you have to remember the order of events, right? I kill Sirei, I explode, you find me in the Revive-O-Matic. I don’t remember Sirei having ever done anything awful to us—oh, but you might after spending so long killing me and saving Sirei!”

Eito turns around, knowing that he’s going to be met with a monstrous gaze brimming with bloodlust. 

The barrier Takumi made is so flimsy that merely gripping it is making it shake. 

“I—” 

Eito clicks his tongue, “Now isn’t the time for excuses, Takumi. Didn’t you want to take a nap? Really, I worry about you sometimes.”

Takumi grinds his teeth, bone against bone. 

“I’m not tired anymore.”

“After all you’ve been through, I would have thought you had better anger management skills, Takumi.”

Takumi lets out a loud, long sigh, but Eito can see the mass of flesh beyond their wall deflate a bit. 

“You really are the hardest one to love.” Takumi mutters. He thinks he mutters it quietly enough that Eito doesn’t hear it because Takumi lies back down immediately afterwards and within in a few minutes is sleeping away.

Eito checks before he says, “What would you do, to get rid of my disorder?” 

He doesn’t want Takumi to answer.

Takumi wasn’t joking when he said love earlier—he told Eito to try and keep him in check so he didn’t act weird around everyone, but it was genuinely stunning how much Takumi loved the mixed bag of borderline psychos and definitely not borderline perverts. It was obvious in the way that Takumi just rolled with their verbal punches. 

“Ah, and who is the other cutie, tall and brooding?” One of the weirder ones, Yugamu, wiggles a bit in his direction. Eito doesn’t need to see faces to know the expression that he’s getting. He’s equal parts irritated and amused. 

“Aha, Takumi’s squire!”

“Aren’t you a samurai?” Eito points out, carefully keeping his face neutral, “That’s a more medieval reference, isn’t it?”

“Also, Eito isn’t my sidekick.” Takumi adds before Eito can figure out a nice way to tell Kyoshika to slit her stomach for daring to liken him to Takumi’s squire, “He’s just a little nippy because he didn’t sleep well during our last resting session.”

“Speaking of that, Takumi—it’s been about two hours since then. About time for you to take another nap soon, right?”

“Hey!”

And everyone laughs and the sound grates at Eito’s ears, no worse like someone has taking a nail file and inserted it directly into his ear canal, stroking his tympanic membrane, prepping for one sharp stab to pierce it. 

He feels ill. He’s spent the last two days with a single human in now that they’re in a group, it’s overwhelming now. Their stench, their sounds, the sight of them. Eito puts his hand to his chest, focusing on counting his heartbeats and blocking out everything else as much as he could because if he did not he was sure to ruin his first impressions (and Takumi’s reunion, but he did not care about that) by throwing up all over the floor. 

“Takumi, your tag team partner isn’t looking too good.”

Ugh. I hate you. All of you.

“You okay Eito?” Takumi calls out, stepping away from the group to put a hand on Eito’s shoulder. Eito bites his tongue so he doesn’t flinch when Takumi touches him, “It is something to do with traveling?”

Eito had prepared himself for nothing. Takumi’s hand simply hovers over his shoulder. 

“Perhaps so. I had been doing fine so far, but sometimes things flare up. I’ve had so many kind people doing their best to help me deal with my condition but sometimes, there’s nothing that can be done about a flare up.”

“A condition?” The sanest one asks. The words are clearly meant to be considerate, but instead they remind Eito of everyone who had ever lied to him, “That must be hard to deal with.” He’s met dozens of different kinds of people just like Nozomi Kirifuji, and each and every one of them was a liar. He expects Nozomi to end up the same way. 

“I’ve dealt with it as long as I can remember. So much of my life has spent dealing with my condition, and I’m so grateful for having others support me through it.” His heartbeat is rabbit-fast now, if he tried he could remember the heart rate charts from his fake memories and see that he was clear in the immediate medical attention required! range. 

“But without them, I think it’s best to get back to base as soon as possible. Sirei has been destroyed,” (Nigou lets out a warbly cry) “so he wasn’t able to tell you, but I think it’ll be best for us all to go back to the main school together.”

“I cannot believe that you dared to have me, an Oosuzuki defend a decoy!”

As Nigou lets out another warbly cry, a dozen blue eyes turn to him, then the door, then him before whispering out some directions, and Eito takes the opportunity to slip away.

It’s one of the things he’s coming to truly hate about Takumi: just how badly he misunderstands Eito. Eito forces himself to think about it as he rests his head on the side of the bus, breathing in the clean air.

Takumi has a bleeding heart and it’s becoming Eito’s job to keep his hands pressed over all the holes to stop Takumi from dying with every heartbeat. 

He’s so obvious about everything. It’s like he’s in a competition with no one to be the least suspicious person around and he’s losing. How Takumi could ever hold these putrid emotions for these humans, how he could ever relish them Eito would never know. 

There is a version of him that knows. There is a version of him that is exactly the same as the mask he puts on every morning. 

A version of him that is stupid and helpless and kind and maybe not happy but at least is almost there. 

Eito’s arms shake and he longs to clutch his head. Each breath sends a new wave of pain through his head, brought on by sticking around disgusting, horrific monsters for an entire day without retreating. By going to bed without showering. By staring one in the face until the amorphous mass shifts and condenses: flesh pulling inwards until it makes identifiable limbs, wandering teeth snapping together into a single mouth, eyes flowing together until there’s only two, planting themselves onto a face that looks quite like Eito’s. 

While being completely unrecognizable at the same time. 

Something was wrong. Something was wrong. Something was horrifically wrong and Eito had stared it right in the face long past the point where he usually threw up. 

The image was seared onto the back of his eyelids so every time he closed his eyes it was there. 

The image lingered in the corners of his vision, so ever time he opened his eyes, it was waiting for him, just out of sight. 

The only reprieve he had was via keeping himself suspended over his pillow, opening and closing his eyes rapidly so the image behind his eyelids didn’t stick around long enough and the demons in the corners of his eyes had no where to wait. 

Oh, how disgusting humanity was! Oh, how they tortured him!

…This fucking sucks. 

Eito lets himself fall back onto his sheets, eyes falling shut with exhaustion. Immediately he regrets it because the monster is right there and he can’t look away but he is nearly tired enough to ignore it. 

RING

Who is ringing his doorbell? Who the hell is ringing his doorbell? If it’s Takumi, then that’s it. This will be the last time Eito ever thinks about getting his righteous eyes removed because he will split Takumi in two like—like an apple! With his bare hands! And then he’ll bash out whatever is left of his skull, relish in seeing the dust mites in place of a working brain and—

“Eito?” It’s Nozomi. Eito curls his hands into fists and shoves them into his pockets, focuses on the ground to her side, takes a single deep breath in so he doesn’t have to breath anymore

and responds, lying through his teeth, “Oh Nozomi? It’s nice to see you, but I don’t know why you’re coming around this late.” He would say more, but he’s run out of air. 

“Are you okay, Eito? You looked a bit off today…you’ve mentioned a condition before and I was just wondering if it was flaring up.”

It is flaring up. Get away from me. Get away for me. Leave me alone. 

A quick breath in. 

“A bit—but there’s no need for anyone to worry! My condition is part of me, I can handle it on my own. I’ve grown used to it.”

I should know better. Don’t look at them directly. I know better. Why didn’t I?

“I understand how you feel but,” Nozomi shifts, waiting for the right words while Eito waits for her to give up and leave so he can breath, “Dealing with things like this by yourself doesn’t make you feel accomplished or rewarded. Just tired. If there’s anything I could do to help, just tell me.”

‘This’ makes me hate you. ‘This’ makes me incapable of looking at you. ‘This’ makes me want to vomit and I just might if you take a step closer. ‘This’ has lead to me getting you killed. 

Eito has known people like Nozomi. People in hospitals that take the shitty roll of the dice life handed them and handle it with grace. Rotten humans that believe their kindness meant that they were owed Eito’s affection in return because their compassion was a light that everyone could see. As if being nice could overwrite a cognitive disorder. 

People like that, humans like Nozomi—he was glad when they died because it meant that another human was dead and he was just a bit closer to being free. 

That’s why Eito tells Nozomi, “No thanks, I’ve got it under control.” And shuts the door in her face. 

Because Nozomi reminds him of people she is clearly not and Eito has to cling to that or beg her for help. 

Eito Aotsuki is a rope, twisted around something hollow and he’s fraying and this metaphor really doesn’t make any sense so he presses his head against the door and looks at the floor until he forgets enough to go to sleep.

“You know, you could tell them if you wanted.” Takumi stands a few feet behind him, obviously munching on some potato chips, “Sirei’s been gone for a while and we’re past halfway through and nothing else bad has happened.”

Eito hates that he doesn’t have Takumi in his line of sight. He hates that he’s glad he can’t see Takumi. He can barely hear him beyond the crunching and the sound of sprinklers. 

“My dear friend Takumi, don’t you know just how alarming it would be for me to admit that I hate everyone here and wanted them dead? Wouldn’t the next logical question be whether I still want them dead? And I just cannot imagine lying to my dear friends and allies, could I?”

“You still want to kill everyone?” 

“I want to rid the universe of humanity.” Eito responds without allowing himself to think. Automatic. Just as it should be, “Don’t you forget why we’re here, Takumi. Unless you are all for colonization.”

“Of course I’m not. I’m just saying, hating humanity and hating us are two different things.” Takumi keeps on munching, “Like, Hiruko could make me do things that—I’m stopping before you—”

“Can comment on just how easily your little mind is swayed? You would fall for many stupid tricks done by many people here. You hold yourself to too high standards by using Hiruko as an example, you would make an easy target for even Kako.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t fool yourself. Your bleeding heart is one of the most pathetic things about you.” Eito hisses, “Just because you could be convinced of anything, please hesitate to think that everyone is like you.”

“Then what is someone like you going to do?”

I hate you. 

Eito stares down at the grass and does not answer. He has not had an answer for over two weeks now. Everything he’s learned over the past two decades tells him that he should kill them all right now—he’s trusted enough that he could reasonably get through half the humans here before getting put down. 

The past two decades are a complete fabrication. 

They should be meaningless but he’s not just about to believe Takumi. 

…It’s been over a month, can he just believe Takumi now?

Eito Aotsuki was made to kill and left to hate and he didn’t know what was left of him.

Takumi finishes his chips and tries to quietly fold the bag into his pocket. It is not quiet.

“Simply crumpling it would have made less noise.”

“Well it’s too late for that now.” Takumi hisses, continuing to fight with the plastic. 

Eito turns so Takumi can get a good look at Eito laughing in his face.

When someone dies, Takumi makes it clear that despite all the times he’s done this, he was not prepared for it and never could be. 

(Could any of them ever be? Could anyone ever prepare themselves for the sight of Kyoshika and V’hexness’s screams converging together in a horrific symphony after V’hexness resisted the poison gas on accounts of absorbing her allies and Kyoshika, without hesitation, used her sword to split a hole in the Supreme Commander just big enough to shove her hand—holding the poison gas canister—inside. And held it there until the death of V’hexness was assured. Even if her own coffin was sealed shut.

Eito had never liked Kyoshika after that squire comment…he felt no joy in seeing her die in such a way. Yes, she was annoying and childlike and a pervert but she was also sincere and while managing to step over all his boundaries, she seemed like she was trying to not cross them—nothing could be said to twist her perversions into a positive other than they were all directed to her sword.

The sword which they had to bury in place of her body.)

Eito is one of the few people who isn’t lying in bed the next day. Only him, Hiruko, and Ima. They all descended to the cafeteria before the morning alarm and split up delivering breakfast to everyone. Eito simply rang doorbells and let food on doorsteps until he reached his last unfortunate soul. For Takumi, Eito simply twisted the doorknob to let himself in. 

Something which, annoyingly, did not work. 

So he knocks. 

And knocks and knocks until his knuckles are sore and he is seriously considering going to get that power saw. 

“It’s. Too. Early.” Takumi growls as the door swings open with a bang, hitting the inside wall. He stops for a moment and stares at him, “It’s you.”

And then Takumi grabs him by the collar and slams him into the wall, spilling all the breakfast that Eito had graciously prepared for him. He isn’t quite tall enough to take Eito off his feet, but he is certainly strong enough to bang Eito’s head against the wall hard enough to make his teeth chatter. 

“You—You!” Takumi hisses as if Eito has wronged him, holding him so tight that his knuckles were surely leaving imprints in Eito’s neck. Eito was still quite bad at figuring out expressions, but he only needed the eyes to imagine the crazed look on Takumi’s face, “Do you not care?”

Eito closes the door with his foot so Takumi isn’t screaming this out to everyone. 

The action only makes Takumi’s anger flare, but Eito remains calm and mildly repulsed. 

“Kyoshika is dead and you hate her so you don’t give a shit!” Takumi howls, trying to pull Eito off his feet. Eito takes pity on him and stands on his tip-toes, “What the fuck are you doing here. Going to rub it in my face? Tell me that I failed to protect everyone again? Over forty years and I’m still messing it all up?”

Ah, Eito had missed this. Takumi hated him. Well and truly hated him. Oh, how he longed to see Takumi’s face at a moment, oh how he wished he wasn’t restrained to his disorder because he wished to see Takumi’s face outlaid like his, contorted with the pain of having to exist alongside him. 

For so long, Eito had agonized over being known. Hated that Takumi could look at him, into him and know what Eito needed wanted. Hated that a human could ever assume to know him. Hated that a human could ever do just that. 

Takumi had gazed into Eito’s deepest recesses and Eito had stared right back. 

Eito stops standing on the tips of his toes and wraps his arms around Takumi in a hug. It’s the first time he’s ever done so, because all the times it was forced to do so were fake. The result of a glitch in the system—not meaningless, but so pale in comparison to life. 

Takumi stands oh so still for one heartbeat, the next he is clinging to Eito and sobbing his little bleeding heart out. Takumi claws at Eito’s jacket and wails like something is broken. Like something has been broken for a long time, far worse than Eito could have ever imagined. Takumi cries and cries and cries and Eito wonders if it ever stops if Takumi will ever stop screeching sobbing bawling. Wonders what will give first: Takumi’s voice or his regrets. 

Eito knows that Takumi’s heart is bleeding because it’s bursting with affection for all of them. He hadn’t realized that there was space for anything else. Eito never would have guessed that there was enough space for all this despair. 

There are so many things Eito should be saying right now. So many things he should be saying. Yet all he can do is clamp his mouth shut so he doesn’t vomit and keep himself still so he doesn’t start shuddering. 

There haven’t been many times he has cursed his righteous eyes. But if given the chance, he would pluck them out of his head. 

“Sorry.” Takumi sniffles, “You can let go of me.”

“You’ll have to do that first.” Eito manages to choke out. Doing this for Takumi had done nothing to override his cognitive disorder. It feels like all his nose hairs have been singed off and he’s been holding hot wet sludge. 

“Do you mind if I…don’t?”

“No.” Eito lies and immediately regrets it when Takumi holds him closer. He hopes Takumi doesn’t notice that Eito gags.

“Thanks. I won’t be able to do this for a long time.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” Eito chokes out, instead of Let go of me let go of me right now!

“This time was different. Every other time, I didn’t remember anything until at least day 5. This time, I remembered everything from the second I jumped back…the reason I haven’t told anyone about it is because, the very last loop, Hiruko and I—mostly Hiruko—worked so hard to get out of the loop. And everyone lived but I’m still here.

“And I don’t know if Hiruko is out or if she’s just not talking about it and what if me telling her about it pulls her back in and—” Takumi chokes on his tears for a few moments, Eito is too petrified (you should be better than this, you should be able to handle this better) to pull away, “—She deserves at least 100 days of peace. I’m going to give her that, I had just hoped—” Takumi starts crying again but he doesn’t need to say anything else. 

Eito cannot bring himself to let go of Takumi. This is not due to affection. 

The only affectionate action he can perform is via forcing Takumi to go down to the cafeteria to get breakfast after he ruined what Eito had gotten for him.

“So your confession is related to the disappearing act you and Takumi went on when I planned to tell you what I knew?” Hiruko announces as soon as she walks into the library. Most people would fall for his act of burying his nose in a book but Hiruko is much too sharp for that. 

He does not raise his head to acknowledge her, but he does nod. Eito knows that he looks strange, knows that people are going to react badly to the action (no matter how slight, how simple) but he’s no longer on the knife’s edge where he needs everyone to like him so he can be safe. 

“Takumi found me on my way to kill you and took us out of the school.”

“Why didn’t he simply get rid of you?” Hiruko glowers at him, this he can tell without looking. She rests her hand on the table, the tips of her gnarled, fleshy fingers at the edges of Eito’s vision. He shifts his chair a couple of inches in the opposite direction, “What possible reason could he have for letting you continue to live?”

“It’s Takumi.” 

Hiruko lets out a world-weary sigh. 

“That’s such a bad reason.”

“It’s Takumi.” Eito repeats, emphasizing the important part, “He’s an idiot.”

Hiruko glances behind him.

“I know he’s right there.” Eito adds, “And he knows I think that of him.”

“Hey! My quick thinking saved you from Hiruko!” Takumi calls out from behind a stack of books. It is meant to hide him in case of the other members of the SDU decided to kill Eito after his confession. It is not a very good hiding place because it’s primary purpose is meant to hide Takumi from Eito’s glitched gaze. 

Also it’s a stack of books person height in the middle of the library. 

“He is correct.” Hiruko admits, “I had been suspicious of you from the start.”

Eito feels his eye twitch, “Takumi had no excuse the night Sirei was destroyed.”

“Both of your excuses couldn’t be corroborated by anyone. And really,” Hiruko says with a chuckle, “Do you really think Takumi could even dream of doing something like that?”

Eito snorts in response, wondering if this is a Hiruko that knows exactly what Takumi is capable of. 

But he…likes Takumi so he will not ask.

It really is shocking that a group of soldiers respond so well to a traitor revealing himself more than two-thirds into their deployment. He supposes that it did help that he could reveal the brainwashing machine but their reaction was still much less…passionate than he would have expected. Both he and Takumi, who after three whole days of acting as Eito’s bodyguard began to look increasingly embarrassed. 

Everyone…takes it more or less in stride. 

Yes he does have to prove his loyalty to a few people but he expected more slit your own throat in penance or attempts to steal his cryptoglobin compared to…wrestling matches (painful, but not too bad) being forced to join Takemaru for a motorbike right (genuinely awful), and ‘match among samurai’ (fine, though a katana isn’t his preferred weapon). He’s even allowed to refuse the ones with ridiculous requests (Yugamu and Kurara). 

And while he does end up slitting his throat on Ima’s behalf but that one is quick and Kako even yells at him for it. 

And the others…it’s not like they’re really mad. Just disappointed, which Eito can deal with. Within a day, Tsubasa has whipped up an attachment for his glasses that superimposes cartoon versions of themselves when Eito looks at them—to which he informs her that his glasses are for the wrong prescription so he can't see what she did. Darumi tries to get him to describe his condition to see if it’s like one of her gory games, and Nozomi takes the opportunity to jump in and ask Eito if he wanted to talk with her about it, considering they both had conditions that were hard to manage.

This, Eito wanted to refuse but then Nozomi looked at something behind him that he knew was Takumi and knew that his choices had become: agree of your own free will or have Takumi agree for you. 

Which was annoying, like Gaku, but like Gaku, it wasn't a real issue in the end.  

(And Shouma was utterly forgotten.)

He’s taken back into their fold within a week, as if all he had done was a minor transgression, instead of hating them and sincerely wishing them all dead. They’re all still monsters to him, and he still does not support humanity’s mission, but they aren’t throwing him into the Wall of Fire. Instead, they are taking a step back, reassessing their purpose here, wondering just what it meant for them to succeed. 

Eito does not look them in the eyes and they don’t try to touch him. Never has he coexisted with humans (taking into account his false history, of course) but he never thought it could be like this. He never thought he could have this at all. 

Never thought that he could have distance from them for once yet still be willing to seek them out. 

Eito Aotsuki waits patiently on Takumi’s doorstep after knocking. 

The fleshy bob that he is familiar enough with to recognize as Takumi Sumino opens the door, swaying slightly, obviously still half asleep. Just how much more sleep could you need? He thinks, with a hint of something that is close to fondness. 

It’s strange. 

He’s—they’ve been through stranger. 

“Wha? Smwats up?”

“You really need to start waking up earlier, Takumi. I’m going to start thinking you have a problem.”

“You have a problem.” Takumi shoots back, childishly.

Fair enough. He found that endearing, even from a fleshy, putrid creature. 

“Invite me inside? I have something I want to say to you, away from the potential of prying eyes and ears.”

“Uh, sure.” Takumi replies, scratching his cheek, “Sorry for the mess.”

“It is fine. I have no intention of staying here for long. I just thought—”

“Once second.” Takumi jiggles around the room, bending down to check under his bed, “Okay, go—wait!” Then Takumi checks his locker. After checking for a split second, he closes it with a satisfied hum, “Okay, go for it.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Well, in the first timeline, before I looped, y—someone hid under my bed and listened to some sensitive information.”

“That ‘someone’, being me?” Eito assumes. It’s not a hard assumption, “But I am standing here right in front of you. Who were you fearing would be listening in?”

“Well! That’s! What is it you wanted to tell me?” 

“You are truly awful at attempting to switch topics surreptitiously. I felt like I should let you know that.” Hey! “But that is not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Spit it out then.” Takumi replies, sounding downtrodden.

“I just wanted to let you know, that I will not be taking you up on the offer to get brainwashed and get rid of my cognitive disorder. I think that it is important for you to know that there’s multiple ways for me to love you, and everyone else, as you love me…and the rest of them, I guess.”

A strangled sound falls out of Takumi’s mouth. 

“And with my piece said, I will be taking my leave. Kako is trying to rope me into a detective roleplay and I need to tell Ima to distract her.”

And he leaves.

There’s are a couple of fleshy masses on the roof, horrifying to look at but Eito is not forced to look at them for the sake of appearances. He still hates humanity, but not them. Eito would fight for them. He cannot bear looking at them for too long, but they know that. They accept him despite that. 

He might be like this for the rest of his life. Eito has come to terms with that, that the people he cares about might always be repulsive to him. That ever last one of his senses might try to keep him away from them. They might succeed sometimes—no, they would succeed more often than not. 

Something went wrong with his brain, the parts of his brain that convert sensation to perception. 

But he would protect these monsters until the end of his days—something Takumi grabs his arm and turns Eito around so far he has no ability to prepare himself for the sight—

The blob comes in quick, a sudden attack. More horrid flesh wraps around his shoulders and pulls him down and it comes in and Eito is nearly rooted to the ground in fear as it comes closer and presses something again his lips. 

Oh. Eito thinks, squeezing his eyes shut. Thankfully Takumi is not moving. His lips feel like rotten flesh and the rest of him smells like it but he understands. He can bear with it. He just needs to—and as soon as the kiss has started, it’s over.

“Thank you.” Takumi says and it still sounds like nails on chalkboard, and Eito will need to tell him someday soon that his disorder is still alive and well and that it felt quite unpleasant to be kissed, but he does need to find Ima (and the lingering feeling isn’t…bad) so he simply waves goodbye and hurries off. 

(The first thing Ima does when Eito finds him is mock him for his red cheeks and meek smile and Eito tells him that he could let Kako play her game with Yugamu instead because while he likes all of them, he isn’t that in love with them.)