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Kirumi’s heels click against the tiled ground of the academy as she makes her way up to the second floor, the nighttime announcement set to play in another half hour or so. She has finished the grand majority of her daily chores and upkeep, and has plans to retire early so she has the proper energy to keep up her duties.
Though their numbers have… dwindled… the school itself has expanded in scope, and therefore, she has more to tend to in her day to day. And despite the deeply unfortunate events that have transpired to bring them here, she finds herself more determined than ever to maintain her composure and provide the best service she can to all those still trapped within this hellish academy.
That was Kaede’s wish, her final request… and Kirumi will see to it that said wish is carried out to the best of her ability, no matter its difficulty.
It is why, despite the lack of a request, she holds a plate of fried rice, seasoned simmered chicken, and a small cup of assorted fruits as she makes her way towards a certain Ultimates lab.
She does not conceal her footsteps in the least as they echo through the darkened halls, nor was she ever making an effort to do so. It comes as no surprise as she rounds the corner that she comes to find a certain brunette’s red eyes trained on her with the intensity of a territorial animal about to strike.
“My lab is off limits, even at night.” The Ultimate Child Caregiver speaks before she’s even broached the distance between them, voice cold and firm. “None of you have the right to just come and enter whenever you want, so stop trying.”
“I take it you have had this conversation a multitude of times today, then?”
She does not really expect an answer, and she does not receive one. Maki’s gaze simply hardens into something more warning with every step she takes towards the other girl. She holds out the dish in her hand, which finally seems to catch the brunette’s gaze.
“I have no intent to enter your lab unless you request me to do so.” She took in a deep breath, pursing her lips. “Though it is… unfortunate… to imagine a room I cannot help clean, I will not go against your wishes. I simply wanted to bring you your dinner, seeing as you have not left this hall since breakfast this morning.” She closed the distance between them fully, holding out the platter of food towards Maki. “I was not sure of your particular tastes, so I simply took leftovers from earlier in the evening and–”
“I don’t need your food, and I don’t need your dotting. If I want to eat something, I’ll go and get it. You can leave me alone.”
“You seem determined to stand guard around your lab, though.” Kirumi couldn’t help her frown, nor the chiding tone her voice slipped into. “Would me bringing you your meals not allow you to continue that as you please?”
“I’m going to stock up on stuff to keep in my lab on my own. I don’t need your help.” Maki turned on a heel, cracking her lab doors open ever so slightly as she slipped inside, her eyes narrowed into a sharp glare through the slit in the door. “If you’re really so eager for a ‘request’, then leave me alone and go about your business as usual with the others already.”
With that, Kirumi soon found the Ultimate Child Caregivers lab door being slammed closed in her face, leaving Kirumi standing with a plate of dinner and the silence in the hall.
This was something she had dealt with before in some capacity. There were times in which a maid was expected to act on her own best judgement for the best interest of the master or client she was serving, if they could not grasp their own needs themselves. Maki was determined to protect the internal contents of her own lab from everyone else, and was insistent no one attempt to breach the room while she was around or otherwise– that was a request Kirumi could accept wholeheartedly.
What she could not adhere to, however, was the concept of allowing another Ultimate here to needlessly deprive themselves of food, water, or proper rest. Kirumi herself was well in a way familiar with going long periods of time without eating or sleeping, sometimes both in conjecture if her schedule became backed up with time sensitive requests, and that meant understanding that this game Maki was playing was not one that could go on indefinitely. Not without being detrimental to her health, at least.
So with a determination of her own settling in the back of her mind, Kirumi laid the platted dinner in front of the lab door, covered it with a handkerchief to help keep it fresh for as long as possible, and retired herself for the evening with the full intention of coming back for a hopefully empty plate by morning.
It very nearly brought a smile to Kirumi’s face to return to a clean plate just outside the Child Caregivers lab.
Nearly, being the keyword. Happy could in no way describe her current mood, irrespective of what smaller problems she overcame for her friends trapped in this academy. She had been given many different tasks she was due to complete by the others following the very tense meeting in the dining hall, of which the motive videos were to blame.
Kirumi could not say if she was secretly grateful or inherently on edge that she had not voluntarily told everyone she had received her own video. She had been so deeply considering sharing what she had learned with them all, as they were all intended to do.
Yet something deep in the back of her mind had kept her quiet, something dark and perturbed silently forming in the dustiest, most disgusting crevices of her brain, eating away at her clean intentions by the moment.
All she could think of as she picked up the empty plate outside Maki’s lab and returned to the kitchen, a listen of chores lined up for the rest of the day given to her by the others, was that she was wasting her time on the needs of a few when the needs of many, many more were desperately waiting on her. Dependent on her to act, lest she dawdle and allow untold suffering to occur to tens– no, hundreds of millions awaiting her guidance.
There were times in which a maid was expected to act on her own best judgement.
Kirumi clenched her eyes, cleared the grimace on her face, and plastered on a mask of neutrality as best she could as she returned to her requests, grateful for the numerous distracting tasks she’d been provided by the others… despite the increasingly sickly, desperate feeling their presence filled her with.
Kirumi could not recall the last time she had ever felt so exhausted, as she trudged towards Maki’s lab once more in the quiet before nighttime.
The kitchen, gymnasium, pool, basement and every currently available lab had all been dusted, mopped, organized and cleaned from top to bottom. Everyone’s laundry who had been willing to give it had been cleaned, sorted, and returned to her dorms. Lunch and dinner had been made and she’d even taken to searching for leftover trash or debris in the underground tunnel to potentially clean up.
The fact she had carefully analyzed every inch of the places she’d been for potential escape routes and obscure hiding spots was besides the point, the fact she had been unable to stomach any of the meals she’d made today was of little importance, and the half hour she had spent vainly attempting the Death Road of Despair had been nothing more than a waste of time and had left her deeply sore in more places than one.
The fact she was thinking about this whatsoever was…
…Kirumi would be sure to clean the kitchen once more before retiring for the night.
She could recall earlier in the day that Kokichi, acting as the ever unsettling irritation, had made sure to go out of his way to inform her on how each and every place she’d been to smelled way too much like cleaning detergent and bleach. He had felt the need to joke that she’d be the perfect candidate to help his organization clean up crime scenes of all the blood and guts after a hit job.
Despite herself, she did not react one way or the other to his comment. She did not flinch, she did not cry, she did not scream, she simply offered him a flat, despondent look and asked him if he needed anything practical of her. When he had nothing of importance to say, she simply excused herself from the room.
She had not yet forgiven him for putting the thoughts of the dead in her mind, nor how… easy, it may be for her to clean up such spills or evidence. Perhaps that interaction was why she’d skipped both lunch and dinner, thinking back on it.
Maki had also skipped lunch and dinner. Kirumi had brought her lunch in the same way she had dinner the previous night, and was set to do the same for dinner now. It was a needed distraction.
…Or– no. Her duty. It was her… yes. Her duty. Her friends were owed her servitude, even those that did not wish for it.
Kirumi willed herself to perhaps stop thinking all together as she approached the Ultimate Child Caregivers lab, feeling not nearly as disappointed as she may have expected to find a full, untouched lunch plate outside the lab door.
Disposing of the stale food gave her more work to tend to, after all.
She said little as she knelt down to grab the plate, replacing it with the freshly made pot roast she had spent the entire evening compulsively watching while cleaning the kitchen. Though before she could excuse herself…
“I told you to stop coming here, if you don’t I’ll–”
Kirumi was admittedly a little off put by the intense glare Maki had affixed her way– her tone doing little to persuade Kirumi she was anything but silently furious. Kirumi was to hope that the brunette did not use the same cadence or tone when trying to control unruly children and that it was simply the stress of the academy making her so irritable and irrationally aggressive.
After all, if a child caregiver could consider thinly veiled threats towards those bothering her while under duress, perhaps, in some capacity, a maid could be forgiven for considering–
“Oh… it’s you. Just my luck there’s two of you idiots that can’t understand a simple command.”
Maki’s gaze didn’t soften, exactly, but the daggers in her eyes didn’t seem as poignant as she stepped outside her lab and leveled Kirumi a flat, irritated look. Her arms were crossed as she offered little more than a brief glance at the plate of food on the floor.
“Didn’t I tell you yesterday I don’t need this? I requested you to stop coming here– aren’t you supposed to obey those?”
Memories of tough choices brought on by her congress briefly drew forth from the back of her mind. Kirumi stifled her own grimace and desperately shook the thoughts of her true occupation from her mind.
“And I, in turn, told you I would not allow you to starve yourself.” Kirumi spoke perturbingly calm, her tone devoid of either fear or passion as she leveled Maki a blank look.
“I have plenty of food stocked in here already. I told you I’d get some.”
“No you don’t.”
Maki blinked at her, as if both surprised and affronted by the challenging claim. Kirumi was not usually the type to push so insistently– and she knew the moment the words left her mouth she was overstepping as a maid, but she was helpless to do anything other than speak her mind as Maki’s eyes narrowed at her.
“I keep stock of all the food in the academy. Among everything that has been used up or disappeared from the pantry and fridge, the only things I can not personally account for are a pair of cans of tomato soup and a handful of chocolate candy wraps that I suspect either Kokichi or Angie might have taken... Regardless, a few measly cans of tomato soup are hardly sufficient for someone of your age and build.”
Maki’s expression was carefully held still as Kirumi maintained eye contact, as if attempting to scrutinize her over a misconception or error in her logic. Eventually, the child caregiver almost looked to… be pouting?
“You clearly don’t have enough tasks to do if you have the time to check that amount of stock so frequently.” Maki muttered slowly, as if resigning herself to having a conversation about this was needed. “For all you know my lab came with food, but that shouldn’t matter one way or the other. I’m not your master, or a client, and you’re damn well not my mom. You don’t have any reason to act so concerned about my eating habits or well being– nor do I want you to, understand? So you can just stop. I’m not going to starve myself.”
“But you’d be willing too, if it kept others out of your lab, would you not?”
Maki’s expression didn’t give anything away, the child caregiver's usual glare was pressed on firmly as her gaze held firm on Kirumi’s own.
Kirumi sucked in a breath. Perhaps it was her exhaustion lessening her desire to act passively, or her own selfish interest in continuing to speak on the matter so she could avoid being left without any further requests or responsibilities to attend to. Listening to orders was what she was normally preordained to do, she nearly never overstepped the boundaries as a servant in an attempt to speak candidly with her clientele. And yet…
“It is evident in your behavior. You’re a fit young woman, and you have calories in reserve in the muscles you’ve accrued. I have no doubt you’d be exhausted and dehydrated, but you would be ultimately fine if you went without food for days, perhaps even a week or so, just to stand watch over this door. You are determined to keep watch of your lab enough to do such a thing, I have no doubt.”
Maki’s stance shifted ever so slightly as she kept her gaze level with Kirumi, no indication on if she agreed, disagreed, or if she were irritated by the analysis. Kirumi shook her head.
“I do not speak from a position of judgement. I can tell you’re willing to do as much only because I have been in a similar position… and I hope you will forgive me when I say I believe it’s a needlessly self-sabotaging limitation. I do not believe anyone aside from potentially Oma will feel compelled to break into your lab, and if you are truly uncomfortable with the idea of leaving your lab unattended, I wish you’d at least believe me in that I am willing to watch it for you so you may at the very least take care of yourself.”
A tense silence overcame the hall as Maki looked at her. After a long, agonizing minute, the child caretaker let out an irritable sigh, leaned down, took the plate off the ground, and moved back fully into her lab as she parsed a halfhearted glare through the door.
“Just do us both a favor, and leave me alone. If it’s what you need to hear to stop coming, I’ll eat more regularly. Worry about yourself and the others, cause I certainly didn’t ask for you to worry about me.”
The lab door shut with a firm thud before Kirumi could even formulate a response to that, the silence of academy halls apparent to her nearly immediately.
Kirumi did not linger. Before the thoughts in her head could raise to a volume she could not possibly ignore, she hurried off back down the hall, almost eager to clean the same few rooms for the third time today.
Kirumi had never indulged any morally compromising requests asked of her.
There had been instances of requests that caused conflicts, naturally. Perhaps a pair of clients might hold differing opinions and thrust her into the middle of their spat– perhaps from time to time she would be asked to provide destructive vices like alcohol or cigarettes to people she knew had no good use for them. From time to time, usually by more haughty, wealthy clients, she could be requested to do petty or illegal acts– like key another stranger's car, or attempt to pickpocket a passer by.
She did not speak out of turn, but she did not allow herself to be used as a tool devoid of agency or respect, either. If her clients wished to engage in behaviors that were self-destructive or counterproductive… She forewarned them, pleaded even, sometimes, for alternatives in concern of their well being– but her perspective was just one of many, and she never forced her will onto those understanding of the consequences, even if she tried her very hardest to convince her masters to make the best choices for themselves.
To be asked to do something to another, however– to harm another, physically, mentally, economically, or anything in-between… the types that made those requests of her had never stayed as her clients for long. Kirumi Tojo was someone that lived to serve, thrived while being helpful to those that relied on her services… but she was not one to remain blindly obedient should a situation or request turn awry.
Kirumi Tojo was not the type to plot to kill a man with no will to live.
And yet… her people– the country's people were not concerned with the whims and wants of Kiurmi Tojo. They were dependent on the prime minister, a prime minister she acted in accordance with– one she was the effective surrogate of.
To Kirumi Tojo, Ryoma Hoshi was not just a deeply troubled man; she wished to help turn his life around… he was her friend.
To the country, however, he was but another convict on death row– one of hundreds if not thousands of nameless, faceless murderers and crooks. The type of person that, assuredly, her country would gladly give up if it were to ensure their own survival.
Kirumi Tojo cherished the wish of the deceased– she had been deeply touched by the cry for unity and survival from the late Kaede Akamatsu, and had sworn with all she was to uphold that wish as her most pressing request.
The people of Japan did not care about one pianist's wish for peace, they wanted their prime minister’s guidance during a time of impending tragedy– the details and severity of which was currently beyond her, beyond these walls.
Kirumi Tojo wanted nothing more than to stay in this place, and assist the people she had come to care so, so deeply about through this hardship they shared… but Kirumi Tojo was not important.
16 Ultimate Students were not important in comparison to the whole population of a country, her country. A country that knew not her name, nor her role, but depended on her all the same.
Her country knew not of the wants or pleas of one Kirumi Tojo, and as the Ultimate Maid… she could not afford to either, no matter how deeply the thought felt like poison seeping through her mind.
What was once a debilitating thought that made her wish to clench her teeth and separate from her consciousness was not all she could think of– her heart thumped dully within her chest as she sewed the curtains for Himiko's magic stage, fully aware that if all went according to plan, the entire play would be ruined by the corpse of an Ultimate Tennis Pro dropping into the tank.
She played her part well. She conversed with them all like normal, she tended to her chores like normal– and though she failed to force herself to sleep or eat, she felt far from lethargic. Though the rampant amount of energy coursing through her was nervous, it was there, and it would be enough, she was sure of it.
She had hoped to be sure of it.
Come late into the evening, past nighttime, past Oma’s mind numbing meddling, past Gonta’s invitation for a ‘Insect Meet ‘n Greet’... Kirumi was tired.
It was an hour before twelve, and an hour before she was due to meet Ryoma, and she was so, so tired.
Her country cared not for the state of Kirumi Tojo, though. So long as her duty was done– so long as the country maintained the foundation to run it. Kirumi Tojo could not afford to be tired, with what was to come.
So, wordlessly and with little appetite, the Ultimate Maid made her way to the kitchen and fixed two plates of leftovers.
It had taken her a moment to realize her mistake. Perhaps exhaustion had clouded her judgement, but that didn’t change the fact she had fixed food for someone who had explicitly told her she did not want it.
For someone who, if all went according to how it had to, would be dead within twenty four hours time.
Kirumi spent a good, long time staring at the dishes in front of her before eventually, with more of a tremor than she knew was affordable in her situation, took them both hand and hand and made her way towards the second floor of the academy.
She knew it was selfish– she truly did. Nobody wanted Kirumi Tojo to bring a plate of food so late in the night to the lab of the Ultimate Child Caregiver. Not the people, nor the girl in question herself.
But Kirumi Tojo wanted to bring it anyway, despite how little that mattered at the moment. Despite how inconceivably poorly this could potentially go for the plan to murder she had already set in motion.
And yet, Kirumi went anyway. Not against her better judgement, but perhaps in service of it, despite how contradictory it was to her goals.
Predictably, there was no one waiting outside the lab for her as she arrived, and nobody exited the lab as she set down the plate with a soft click, now only left with her own meal in her hand.
She stared at it for a little bit, and before she knew it, she was knelt down on the floor with her back to the wall a few feet off to the side of the lab, picking away at a meal she was not at all hungry for.
She was aware she was stalling, in some capacity– selfishly so, yet Kirumi could not bring herself to simply stand up and walk away.
It made her feel rather… pathetic, in a sense. It was odd. She’d felt nearly nothing but pathetic since she’d learned she was, by association, one of the most powerful women in the world. The very idea felt like a lie on her tongue waiting to be spoken aloud…
crreeeaaakk
She stiffened a little, but ultimately didn’t turn. She simply continued to stare at her food.
“...Here I thought you had done the reasonable thing and actually listened to me.” A dry, irritable voice came from her left. “I told you, I don’t need you to watch after my lab. You can leave me alone.”
“I know.” She says simply, tone carefully neutral and devoid of anything she needn't let slip out. Supposedly, that was the wrong call to make, because before she’s even aware of it, the lab’s door shuts again.
Only Maki is still outside.
“Why are you even eating here?” Maki moves in front of her, though Kirumi doesn’t make eye contact as she spotted the brunette walk into view in her peripheral vision. The other girls tone was harsh. “If you’re trying to guilt me by sitting outside my lab by your lonesome, I don’t care. I don’t owe you anything.”
“I know.” Is what she says again, the same tone as before– though something in her chest almost seems to ache through that dull numbness she’s mantled since early this morning.
The hall goes silent for a moment. Kirumi hears the plate she left out for Maki shift and clink, and the brief scrapping of a fork.
The silence stretches for a moment before, inevitably, Maki’s legs cross as she lowers herself to the ground and sits across the small hallway from her.
Kirumi still does not make eye contact. She is too cowardly to do so. Maki says nothing on the issue.
The hall remains silent for a good, long while– nothing but the scraping of utensils and soft, nearly inaudible chewing sounding out through the empty halls. Though nothing can persist forever.
“...Why?”
Kirumi has been asking herself that in some capacity for a few days at this point, and she still hasn’t come to an answer. Against her better judgement she finally levels a glance towards Maki.
She’s almost surprised by the calm, albeit mildly annoyed look on the Ultimate Child Caregivers face.
“Why what?” She feigns ignorance in lieu of answering the question properly, and she can see the irritation growing on the brunette's face.
“I didn’t ask you to do this– I’m not going to pay you for it. I haven’t thanked you, and I don’t plan to. I just want you to leave me the hell alone, but you keep insisting on doing this for me. Why?”
She has only one answer for that, perhaps the worst answer a maid such as herself could ever hope to give, but it’s all she has right now. Perhaps all she has left, in anticipation of what is yet to come. Of what is to become of her, of Kirumi Tojo.
“...I wanted to.”
Her voice comes out softer than she means it too, rasping out of her throat ever so slightly as if the very notion is poison seeping into the back of her throat. Maki’s gaze hardens.
“But why?” Maki shifts, setting her plate of food aside haphazardly. “I don’t appreciate what you’re doing– and I know you’re not stupid, you can see that. You can probably see that very few of the people here genuinely appreciate you. You don’t get anything out of this– not money, not fame, nothing. What is the point in doing it? It can’t be because you’re simply that good a person that you’d willingly make yourself a slave.”
Kirumi can’t help but smile, the very notion withering whatever left of her appetite remained as she set her own plate aside and stifles a laugh. Kirumi Tojo, a good person…
“I do it simply because I want to.” She answers after her own laughter dies down. “It’s my duty as the Ultimate Maid to assist and serve others, so–”
“But you have agency.” Maki bites back, and Kirumi is almost surprised by the harshness to her tone. “Becoming the Ultimate Maid didn’t choose you, you chose it. You choose to willingly allow the people here, people like me, to take advantage of your willingness to serve. And for what? What do you possibly get out of this? Like I said, nobody is going to pay you for this. Nobody even appreciates you now. So why?”
She swallows something down her throat as it sits heavily in her stomach, her smile fading quickly as she furrows her brows. She wishes she could say it is but her duty, that servitude is a type of selfless devotion that she simply abides by… but even at that, this is not how she usually operates.
He is usually paid for her services– even in acting as the prime minister's surrogate. What she is doing confined within the academy walls will never amount to any official transaction between her and the others as if she were truly their maids, and then her clients. She has no proper rationale for serving them so diligently, none other than the situation they share– the place they are trapped in together.
Perhaps it is some bond formed from those very conditions that drive her so, but irrespective of that, the ‘why’ she does it remains the same.
“I… simply want to serve you all.” She says slowly, voice a whisper.
“That’s not an answer.” Maki practically scoffs out– and Kirumi fails to recall a time she’s seen the other girl so animatedly irritated, perhaps other than Kokichi’s antics. It resonates a passion in her on chest she was not aware was there, burning and writhing within her chest as she holds her tongue. “You just keep saying the same thing– all you do is the same thing, over and over and over, even though I tell you to stop. Why? What possible reason do–”
“Is what I want to do not valid enough a reason? Can I not have but one thing that I’m permitted to do that is my own will?!”
She does not hold her tongue– the words barrel out before she can control herself, her tone almost hissed out as she’s helpless but to let them flow.
“I want to– that is my reason! That is the truth of the matter, I want to do something, and so I have done it! I cannot grasp how this idea is beyond reason! It’s simply important to me that I do this, so I do it! It’s…”
She clenches her eyes shut, and her hands unconsciously ball by her sides. She can feel her heart pounding in her ribs in a manner that hurts in a way she has not felt in a long, long time.
“...That’s the truth, I simply want to do this. I do not expect anything, I do not think you owe me, I do not even think you are wrong for being rightly annoyed by my persistence… but… but I want to do this. I like being of service– I enjoy helping. That is all there is to it– it is not deeper than that. I’m not…”
She pauses to swallow thickly, her own words sitting like led in her belly. “Can you not understand that feeling? Your Ultimate… you too care for those who don’t always appreciate your assistance, don’t you? You look after those who you believe cannot look after themselves, those that require you to be there for them because it is what you feel is right… so… so how can you not understand this? That I, a maid, want to do this for you and all the others that rely on me, even if you think it unnecessary…? How can…”
Her words trail off as Kirumi realizes what she’s doing… what is she doing? This isn’t the kind of thing a maid should be needlessly speaking of to a client.
This is not the type of thing she should be discussing with one of her fellow Ultimates, with the very people she’s planning too…
…Right. She… she has work yet to do.
“I apologize.” The words feel automatic, almost robotic as they leave her mouth. As she stands she makes no effort to face Maki, if anything, she decidedly looks in the opposing direction– irrespective of how potentially suspicious this may be. Of the attention it is drawing onto her– the attention all of this has drawn onto her. She feels so stupid.
“I have done poorly in respecting your wishes, I… will stop intruding on your space.” Her feet are already moving, dragging across the floor like weighted lumps of steel. She knows where she has to be right now. “Have a good evening, I will not bother you anymore from now on. Please, forget this has ever–”
“You’re willing to watch my lab, right?”
She pauses, body frozen in place as she contemplates what is the right thing to do.
Against her worst senses, she turns back around to face Maki.
The brunette looks almost awkward, gaze not quite meeting her own as she loosely plays with one of her ponytails. She looks half part irritable, half part… defeated, perhaps? If Kirumi hadn’t known better, she might have thought it guilt or meekness from another Ultimate.
“I haven’t showered since the labs have opened up.” Maki explains plainly, her eyes catching on Kirumi’s own as her expression hardens a little. “You said you won’t look inside, right?”
That was before. Before I already set plans, plans to kill someone. Plans to kill you all, before I so selfishly decided to bother you for company. Before I tried to dilute my mind from thoughts of a heinous crime I’ve already committed to seeing through. Is what she wants to say– but she cannot say that.
So, instead, Kirumi nods her head in a swift, curt motion, not trusting her words right now. With a low, drawn out sigh, Maki glares at her.
“You and that idiot … the both of you are too damn stubborn to know when to quit.” Maki looks back over her shoulder, lips pursed for a moment, before her gaze catches back on Kirumi’s own. “...I can be there and back in about 15 minutes.”
Kirumi doesn’t know what to say, and Maki doesn’t elaborate. So Kirumi simply says what comes to mind.
“Okay.”
That is all Maki needs to stare her down for another moment, eyes narrowed into slits. The instructions are clear to her, even without a word, and with that Maki swiftly walks away down the hall– her footsteps echoing faintly until they’re gone.
Kirumi is alone.
She does not dawdle, she does not resume her meal, she does not move– she simply stands stiffly in front of Maki’s lab silently, alone.
Something sits heavy in the pit of her gut– a feeling she cannot describe. It is equal parts perturbed, anxious, and determined, but ultimately, it just makes her feel somewhat sick.
She remains, however, even as time drones on and a voice in the back of her mind with increasing severity tells her she is wasting her time.
And, before she is even cognizant of the fact–
“You didn’t even move…”
Maki approaches her with a hair-tie in hand, only one of her two signature ponytails made as her expression is carefully neutral, almost skeptical, on her approach. As she closes the distance she glances between her own lab and Kirumi.
She takes a breath, or, perhaps, remembers that she can breathe as she nods. “I did not enter your lab, I simply stood watch to ensure nobody else would either. I have not seen anyone else but you.”
Maki glances towards the floor, at the two barely touched plates of food, before letting out a sharp exhale out her nose.
“Right… thanks.”
Wordlessly, Maki moves to pick up her own plate, walk to her lab door, and slip halfway inside before briefly turning back to Kirumi, her gaze catching on Kirumi’s own for a moment.
“I’ll bring this back in the morning.” Maki paused for a moment, expression hardening the slightest bit after a moment of deliberation. “Don’t bring me breakfast.”
The door closes with a soft click and silence fills the hall. The invisible tension rooting Kirumi in place dissipates with a shiver as she lets out the breath she’d been holding.
Wordlessly, she checks her monopod.
It’s 12:27 AM. She’s nearly half an hour late.
By the time she arrives at Ryoma’s lab, it’s past 12:30, and she finds no one inside awaiting her.
She could not possibly describe the intense feeling that washed through her as she opened his lab door, only to find no one inside– it was neither despair, nor relief. It was painful, in a sense, but she was almost thankful for it.
It simply settled into a heavy, dull numbness in the pit of her gut when all was said and done– and she hadn’t the slightest idea on if that was a good or bad thing as she trekked back to her dorm and slid into bed without so much as taking off her uniform– her mind preoccupied with one central though.
She had fulfilled a request from Maki, one she had been given voluntarily, and all it had cost her was her opportunity to murder someone and abandon her people.
…She didn’t know how to feel. She should feel disgusted in herself– and perhaps she already did, for one reason or another, and yet she didn’t regret it.
Untold amounts of people may be suffering outside these academy walls because she chose to watch a single room for someone that did not even want her company or assistance in the dead of night, and yet she could not say she regretted it.
Kirumi felt something wet in her eyes, letting out a shaky, quivering breath as she rolled in her bed and closed her eyes. Exhaustion weighed heavy on her, deep in her bones, and despite herself and what she deserved, sleep took her in easily.
Kirumi, for the first time in her imprisonment within the academy, awoke to the sound of the infernal Monokubs on the T.V rather than her own volition, and finds it very nearly difficult to make herself get out of bed for a change. If the Monkubs announcement is playing, it means she has drastically overslept. That and, assumedly, Himiko’s magic show is going to be starting soon as well…
…She still cannot place how she feels about the matter. She feels numb to the fact, in some capacity, but already accepting of it– as if that was her one and only attempt and she is but helpless to not make any more similar plans when that isn’t at all true. She should already be attempting to come to terms with another plan of action to escape this place as quickly as possible, and yet…
With a low, defeated sigh, Kirumi resigns herself to simply change into a new uniform and attend the show. It does her no good to show any drastic changes in behavior, and she has no doubt everyone will be upset with her tardiness in her daily chores and fixing breakfast…
As she readies herself for the day ahead and opens her dorm door, however, she’s forced to pause, eyes widening the smallest bit over what she just stepped in.
By her foot, resting on the ground in front of her door, is a small bowl of tomato soup.
Ever so slowly she leans over to pick up the bowl, nursing it in her hands for a moment before she cautiously takes the spoon and takes a bite. The soup is cold; it’s surely been sitting out here for a while…
…Despite herself, despite the shame she should feel, despite the vows she has broken– Kirumi allows herself a small, selfish smile.
With her soup in hand, she makes her way out of the dormitory and towards the gym, thinking nothing of anything other than the fact that despite everything she should be feeling and doing… She finds the soup she’s eating right now to be quite tasty, and she is the smallest bit happy to have it, even if she has done nothing to deserve it.