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“You haven’t been visiting me very much. That’s not very nice of you, Takumi.”
It’s funny, Takumi thinks. Even her voice is different, now that she’s dropped the mask.
(It’s not funny at all. It hurts. She hates it. She wants her Eito back.
But that Eito is dead. That Eito was…never alive, to begin with.)
“I thought I’d spare you the burden of having to see my hideous face,” Takumi says, as dully as she can manage.
Eito smiles at her. The same kind of smile a different Eito once offered her, while calling her Takumi-chan. Despite the hatred that now boils in her blood, Takumi aches to have those days back. To hear that voice again.
“Takumi, please,” Eito sighs. “You’re even uglier than the rest of the humans here, it’s true. But at least you’re interesting to make up for it. Ginzaki just squeaks at me when he’s bringing me food.”
“You want Shouma to talk to you?” Takumi raises an incredulous brow at her.
“He is the least offensive of all of you, given that he understands just how disgusting his existence is,” Eito admits. “But, no. I suppose you’re right, just this once.”
“How magnanimous of you to say so.”
“Anything for you, Takumi.” She’s laughing as she says it, eyes crinkled shut. She sounds sarcastic, not sweet. Her mouth has a cruel slant to it.
Still. It’s Eito. Just those words are close enough to the comfort the friend Takumi had thought she’d had had always offered her that it makes her eyes sting.
And that pisses her off.
She clings to the anger like a lifeline. Being angry at the Eito in front of her is better than feeling sad over the Eito that never truly existed in the first place.
“Just—what do you want,” she sighs. Exhausted. When Shouma had told her that Eito had actually spoken to him that morning, requesting that he ask Takumi to come see her, Takumi had felt hope for…what, exactly?
She doesn’t know. (Yes she does, she just doesn’t want to admit it to herself.)
The smile and the teasing slowly fades from Eito’s expression. “I have a request,” she says stiffly.
“Yeah, I gathered that. What is it?” Takumi asks on autopilot; she’s so used to doing odd-tasks for everyone now. She doesn’t really want to be Eito’s errand girl—and there’s a part of her, wounded and curled up defensively like a kicked dog, that likes the idea of Eito suffering in her cage with her wants unfulfilled—but so long as whatever she’s requesting isn’t harmful, there’s probably no harm in at least hearing her out.
“I haven’t exactly been able to keep up my standards of personal care from within a cage. Sirei rarely lets me out to wash, and when he does, I only have the generic soap he offers me to use.” Discomfort flickers across her face, there and gone before Takumi can be sure it was actually there. “I know the Gift-O-Matic can make more specialised products. I have a list of ones I’d like you to procure for me.”
For a minute, the audacity of the request leaves Takumi stunned into silence. Then, she sputters in disbelief. “Excuse me?”
Eito, frowning, runs a hand through her hair. The pale strands almost seem to glow against the black of her gloves. Takumi swallows, throat tight with some undefinable emotion.
When she’d first met Eito Aotsuki, she’d felt shy and awkward in a way she hadn’t since puberty, when the girls around her got hips and breasts and little Takumi Sumino stayed as flat and boyish as ever. She’d gotten over those insecurities fast as a child—it’s not like Karua had ever cared; with his more gentle demeanour and her bloodying her fists against boys who called him a girl, they’d found an equilibrium in being together and being slightly wrong for what society wanted from them—but waking up in that classroom surrounded by girls like Tsubasa and Hiruko and Eito had them all rushing back up again.
Eito had soothed those issues, though. She’d called her Takumi-chan, and reassured her that she was cute just the way she was. She’d been Takumi’s first real female friend.
Except she hadn’t been real at all.
Somehow, that’s the betrayal that Takumi can’t actually forgive her for. Not killing Hiruko, not for disposing of Sirei or draining the baby’s cryptoglobin. Not even—not even telling Nozomi’s secrets, though the rage that burns through her at the thought tells her that specific betrayal is a close second to the one that truly threatens to break her.
(Eito, grinning up at her with blood on her teeth. Until the very end, I hated, loathed, and despised you so much…
There’s rage, when Takumi brings her sword down. There’s hatred in her veins as Eito fills them, drop by drop.
Yet the only thing in her mind is a lone, sorrowful thought: I loved you. I loved you.)
Takumi takes in a deep breath to calm herself. “You don’t need a bunch of fancy toiletries. You’re a prisoner, in case you’d forgotten.” She turns to leave.
“Wait!” Eito calls out, but it’s not the word that makes Takumi pause; it’s the thread of panic in it. Frowning, she looks back over her shoulder. Eito is staring at her pleadingly. It’s probably all just an act, like everything with Eito always has been, but…
Eito smiling at her softly. Eito’s warmth and softness pressed against Takumi’s back; her breath tickling her neck. Eito comforting her through her confusion about Nozomi and Karua.
None of it had been real. But Takumi’s heart still hasn’t quite gotten through processing that, and it’s her heart that makes her walk back to Eito, even if her head is calling her stupid while she does it.
“Just look at my hair, Takumi,” Eito says mournfully, and Takumi has to admit…it has seen better days. Her Eito’s hair had always been a perfect waterfall of silk, no frizz, grease, or split ends in sight. A few weeks in a cage have this Eito’s hair looking…unhealthy, Takumi supposes. “I just want some real shampoo and conditioner, so I can stop damaging it with the soap Sirei gives me. And maybe some hair oil, too. Nothing big, nothing dangerous.”
“You could absolutely break a bottle into shards for a weapon,” Takumi points out.
Eito rolls her eyes. “Make it in a plastic bottle, then. Just…” She falls silent, troubled. “Please,” she spits out finally, looking like the hit her dignity took to say it almost wasn’t worth the effort.
“This is really bothering you, huh?” Takumi tilts her head consideringly, and actually takes the time to really look at Eito. It doesn’t surprise Takumi that her hair is something she takes a lot of care of—beyond seeing the Eito of another time already take that care, the fact that it falls past her hips really says a lot about how much care Eito must put into it, because Takumi’s hair doesn’t even hit her shoulders and she hasn’t gotten a proper haircut in years—because Eito Aotsuki is just that kind of fastidious person, but…why?
She’d originally thought it was because Eito was just the sort of girl to care about things like that, but now that she knows what Eito is like under the act…that can’t be it at all.
Takumi casts her mind back. Eito’s hair falling around her face like a curtain in the cafeteria, Tsubasa exclaiming wonder aloud that she managed to keep it out of her food. Eito’s hair like a barrier between them when they sat together in the library. Eito wrapping her hair around her lower face like a scarf when talking to each other for long enough; it’s just a stim, she’d said.
It hits Takumi like lightning. Eito uses her hair to shield her from the rest of the world. That’s why she takes such good care of it—it’s useful to her.
Something ugly and vicious blooms to life in Takumi’s stomach. Its venomous roots spread through her veins and leave her itching to do something cruel. To, for once, be the one who gets to deal out the hurt instead of taking it.
“I don’t know if Sirei will let me do that,” she says, and the words come from far away as her mind is already elsewhere entirely. “But I’ll see what I can do.” She leaves the courtyard without waiting to see if Eito will respond. Her feet take her automatically up to the Gift-O-Matic, where her hands automatically input what she needs.
She holds her prize close with shaky hands, before tucking it into her sleeve. She makes her way back down to the courtyard.
Eito blinks at her. “That was quick. Did you convince Sirei that quickly?” Her mouth twists sardonically. “Or are you here to tell me to just suck it up? How cruel of you.”
Oh, Takumi will show her cruel.
The thought should make her feel sick, and it does, but—mostly she just feels giddy. Hands trembling with what she tells herself has to be anticipation, Takumi unlocks Eito’s cage.
And steps inside.
Eito—smirking, smug, sure of herself Eito—looks like she isn’t sure what she should make of this development. Takumi steps closer, and her eyes go wide before a sneer drops over her face. “What are you doing, Takumi?” Her voice is low, a threat and a warning, but Takumi is riding the high of finally getting out some of the hatred that Eito Aotsuki poured into her. It doesn’t matter that Eito is bigger than her, not when she lunges forward and wraps her hair around her hand and pulls until Eito falls to her knees, shrieking.
She keeps pulling, keeping the hair she’s gripping taught. Even having been so neglected, it’s soft enough under her fingers that it pisses Takumi off.
Eito’s head cranes back with the force Takumi is using. Her eyes shine wetly; her lips are curled into an ugly snarl. “Get your filthy hands off of me!”
“In a minute,” Takumi says, and smiles. “I’m just here to help you with your problem, Eito. Let me fix it for you.” And then she lets the knife she has up her sleeve fall into her hand, and hacks her way through as much of Eito’s hair as she can. She doesn’t take her time with it, but she doesn’t hurry it, either—hearing Eito gag every time the tips of her fingers brush her neck is a sort of rush Takumi doesn’t think she’ll ever get sick of.
“Okay,” she says, once she’s finally satisfied with her work—Eito’s hair choppy and uneven and only slightly longer than Takumi’s is—taking a step back and letting Eito curl inwards on herself, sweating and shaking and covered in vomit from the times she couldn’t get a hold of her nausea, “I’m done, Eito. Do you like it?”
Eito doesn’t speak. It’s fine. Her throat probably hurts.
Takumi exits the cage, making sure to lock it behind her. “I’ll tell Sirei his drones should come collect you for a shower,” she says. “You really need one, now.”
“I hate you,” Eito says weakly, voice rough and wet.
Takumi doesn’t say anything in response. Just keeps on walking, feeling lighter than air.
(Eito might have gotten the last word, but she’s pretty sure she won that one.)