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“Nanny!”
The nanny looked up, frowning as she heard her young master sobbing out in the gardens. Concerned, she went to go check on him.
“Gonta?” she called. “Where are you?”
“Here! Nanny!” Sobbing, whimpering cries guided her, as the nanny found the young master among the rose bushes, rolling tears dirtying the new glasses that tilted across his face. “I chased off the fox, but it was too late! C-can you help her?”
In the boy's hands, was a bitten, bleeding rabbit. Eyes half closed as its little furry chest panted rapidly in fear.
-
Kokichi sneered as Gonta fell to his knees. Eyes wide and empty, as memories of their dead world filled his mind. The true hopelessness of their situation. There was no escaping the death game. The death game was all there was.
Kokichi spun the flashback light with a flourish, before saying with exaggerated sadness, “Geez, isn’t that terrible? There’s nowhere for us to go~ You know, Gonta, with that in mind? Maybe it’d be a good idea to help the group with some more… extreme measures.”
Gonta just sobbed, not acknowledging Kokichi said anything. Frustrated, Kokichi decided to continue, “Lock them all up before they can do more damage. These idiots have already gotten seven of us killed for no reason, they need to be bound for their own good! All of them.” Gonta still said nothing, so Kokichi planned aloud, “The most dangerous one is Miu, if we grabbed her first, then the assassin? Once we control those two, we control the dome!”
“Control…?” Gonta murmured.
“And when we control everything?” Kokichi sneered, “This boring killing game will finally be over.”
-
The nanny felt sad, to see the hurt rabbit in her young master's arms. But despite the horror he had stumbled across, she felt warm and happy, to hear he had tried to rescue the small creature, and to see him so heartbroken at its pain.
The rumors around her young master's terrible temper were unfounded, despite how much he looked like the old shogun he was descended from. Yes, the boy shared the same piercing red eyes, the same heavy build, and every sign of his growth showed one day he might match the shogun's rumored giant-like features…
But he was a sweet boy, at the end of the day. Nothing like the terrible violence the old shogun stories were full of.
Her young master was a boy that loved even the smallest creatures.
Even this poor, dying creature bleeding in his arms.
-
“…control the dome?” Gonta echoed again miserably, staring dead-eyed at the grass. “Why want to control dome? Dome is hell. Outside is hell. Everywhere hell…”
Kokichi scowled, “So, what? We should just let everyone keep running around killing each other? Non non, mon ami. What happens when everyone else knows what we know? They’ll all lose their minds, Gonta, we need control—”
Kokichi didn’t gasp. He just went very quiet, when Gonta reached out like a viper, grasping his thin arm in his massive hand. Gonta staring back at Kokichi with wide, weeping eyes.
Gonta’s hand on Kokichi’s arm squeezed.
-
“I’m sorry, young master.” The nanny whispered, placing a gentle hand on the boy's back as he sobbed, “I think at this point, trying to save the poor thing would only prolong its suffering.”
The boy looked up at her, his red eyes shimmering with grief under thick lashes. “Suffering?”
-
“Friends can never know.” Gonta whispered, squeezing Kokichi’s arm tighter, as Kokichi stared blankly back at him, “Too much pain. No one else can ever know.”
“…oh?” Kokichi said, trying not to notably wince as he felt his arm start to bruise, bleeding just below the skin from where Gonta kept his grip, “And how do we pull something like that off, genius?”
“We can help them.” Gonta blinked. “End pain.”
‘Uh oh,’ Kokichi thought, as he subtly tried to pull his arm out of Gonta’s grip, ‘I’m in trouble.’
Kokichi was thinking quickly, as Gonta explained his plan to Kokichi. Struggling not to visibly sweat as Gonta said, “Gonta will help everyone. Find everyone. Like with Insect Meet and Greet. But this time, Gonta will…” Gonta looked down sadly, “Make pain stop.”
“Okay.” Kokichi said carefully, extremely aware of Gonta not having let go of his arm yet, “I see what you’re saying, Gonta. But hunting everyone down one by one won't exactly be a quick death, will it?”
“What Kokichi mean?” Gonta asked, red eyes only calm in this moment, some of the sadness lifting for pragmatism as the massive man simply explained, “Gonta good hunter.”
“Hah!” Kokichi giggled nervously, before swallowing that giggle at Gonta’s concerned look, “Well, I mean, it would be fun to watch you do it, for sure. But for everyone to spend their last few hours running for their lives from you? How much pain is that really sparing them?”
“Better than years to rot.” Gonta said with certainty.
“Sure,” Kokichi smiled, changing tactics, “But wouldn’t a more instant death all at once be… kinder?”
-
“Yes. I don’t think we can save the creature, and if we bandage it, it might live through the night, but it would still die in the morning,” the nanny explained, smiling sadly, “Sometimes kindness is allowing pain to end.”
“Allowing pain to…?” the boy sniffed, confused.
“To allow something dying to die.” Nanny explained, “It’s kinder than forcing it to live in pain.”
-
“…Kokichi is frightened,” Gonta frowned, standing up from his knees and giving Kokichi a stern look as he lifted the other man in the air by his arm and, more alarmingly, his other hand wrapping around Kokichi’s neck, “Trying to get out of dying. Gonta is sorry he frightened Kokichi. Gonta will make it quick—”
“I-I can help you! I can help you give everyone a quick death, all at once! Barely any fear! Everyone going out together, as friends!” Kokichi quickly sputtered, his thin legs kicking lightly in the air as he hung, the grip around his neck sending a panicked ringing sound of ‘do something!! You’re going to die stupid!!’ , “We can use the rules of the death game to help everyone!”
Gonta squinted suspiciously at Kokichi, his massive hand still around Kokichi’s thin neck.
“Y-you know I’m smart. You can’t do it on your own, you’ll end up just bludgeoning everyone to death one by one! But work with me?” Kokichi said quickly, knowing every word was putting off his death, sentence by desperate sentence, “And I can do it. I can come up with a plan that saves everyone.”
“…from pain?” Gonta said, squeezing Kokichi’s neck lightly. A warning that Gonta had already decided what the end result was going to be, and if Kokichi didn’t fall in line…
“F-from pain.” Kokichi agreed, gasping through his tightening throat, arm feeling like it was pulling from his socket where Gonta held him up, “We’ll team up. B-be the death game busters! A-and save everyone from the pain of this hellish dome! T-together! Just… you have to let me die with everyone else. All at once. I-it’s the only way I can help…”
“…Kokichi trying to trick Gonta.” Gonta frowned, before letting his hand fall from Kokichi’s neck, “But Gonta understand. Everyone wants to live. Even when it’s better to die. Gonta will let Kokichi suffer a little longer. But Kokichi need to give Gonta plan to save everyone else. Or else…”
“Neeheehee~ ouch.” Kokichi winced as Gonta’s grip on his arm tightened in warning, “Loud and clear! S-So, Gonta… listen up.”
Kokichi’s mind raced as he tried to find a way—any way—to turn this into an advantage, wondering what happens if maybe you split a vote down the middle in a class trial as he explained, “So, I know where Miu is going to be later…”
Gonta listened. And then he nodded, putting Kokichi down.
-
“Oh…” the boy sniffed, looking down at the rabbit with new understanding, “she’s in pain…”
The nanny smiled, nodding proudly that her young charge understood. “Yes. It’s not good for things to be in pain—young master!?”
-
Miu writhed, kicking with all her might behind her, hoping to clip her attacker as she fought the roll of the toilet paper with all of her might.
-
The nanny felt genuine horror tighten her voice into a near screech. Shocked out of her lesson as the boy, with a sudden sad understanding, grasped the rabbit's small head in his already thick, meaty palm, and with a terrible ease, twisted the rabbits head until it was staring backwards into the grass.
-
Gagging and gargling on her petrified screams for help as she clawed at her neck, her little chibi eyes bulging and rolling with the terror of a prey caught between a massive predators closing teeth.
-
Finally the boy, to ensure the rabbit wasn’t still clinging to any painful life, popped its skull from its spine, ensuring the rabbit was dead as he pulled its head from its neck.
-
“Gonta is sorry, Miu,” Gonta whispered, “The pain is over.”
And Kokichi, who had been trying to watch, trying to accept the reality of what was happening, what he had orchestrated… still had to look away when Gonta raised his leg and, with sudden ferocity, kicked Miu in the back. Her neck snapped against the hold of the toilet paper. Body going limp.
-
The boy sniffled, looking sad still… before holding the rabbit's head in one hand and its body in another, blood splattered across the grass and over his feet and legs, he looked up at the nanny with an earnest desperation.
“Better?” the boy asked.
-
Kokichi didn’t answer. Staring thin-lipped as Gonta, sad but accomplished, showed Kokichi the corpse that now hung limply in his hands.
Gonta stared earnestly at Kokichi for a moment, before sighing, looking sadly down at his prize. “Gonta is sorry. Gonta knows how hard it is the first time. Kokichi can look away again. Gonta can do the rest.”
Kokichi tried to laugh. To throw a smirk onto his face, make some little quip or joke to show how fine he was.
But he couldn’t let the air out of his chest. The thundering horror in his chest echoing like a terrible drum in his ears. If he made a sound, that drum would come out. If he made a sound, those red eyes would look at Kokichi with new consideration. If he made a sound, Gonta might decide the plan was at risk and…
Don’t make a sound. Don’t laugh nervously. Don’t. Don’t scre—
-
The nanny panted for a moment. Shock silencing her… and then she screamed.
-
As a child, Gonta Gokuhara went missing in the woods, in the mountains worth of acres behind the family’s estate.
His family and staff and rescuers, of course, spent weeks looking for the boy. They looked high and low, through rivers and caves, and found no sign of the poor missing child. Not for lack of effort. They truly, genuinely tried.
…but when months went by and he was eventually, tragically, declared dead?
There was a small, collective sigh of relief.
There was no room for a shogun reborn in a modern genteel Japan.