Chapter Text
Makina Aguni’s world ends, not with a bang, but with grey smoke rising into a wine-dark sky, orange fire still raging.
When Maki wakes the morning after her brother tackles Niragi into the fire, it’s in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar bed, to the sound of Kuina and Yamato quietly bickering in the living room. Their voices are muffled by the closed door, but they seem to be discussing her, she hears her name being spoken but can’t make out more than that. She can’t hear Chishiya but she’s sure he’s out there too.
Rolling onto her back, she stares towards the ceiling. Her eyes sting as she blinks, her mouth is dry as she swallows. She’d spent hours sobbing through the night until she’d finally passed out into a listless sleep. She hadn’t even dreamt, it had just been black murky nothingness. Pressing a shaky hand to her face, she sniffles quietly and draws in a shuddering breath.
Slowly, she gets up out of bed and pads towards the door. The doorknob is cool beneath her hand as she twists it and pulls the door open. Kuina and Yamato quickly fall silent as their gazes shoot towards her. She shrinks a little under their looks, her shoulders slightly hunching. Kuina sighs softly, there’s pity in her eyes. It had been in her tone last night too. There’s a deep sting in Maki’s chest, stabbing. She grips her fingers tightly around the doorknob, hidden from their view.
Her gaze flicks towards Chishiya where he sits on the couch. His eyes flick towards her but she can’t read his expression. He’s changed clothes, she realises, all three of them have. Kuina, for her part, seems to have only put on jeans; though she seems a little worse for wear. Her arms and hands are injured. How had she gotten injured in that game last night? By who? The militants? The injuries don’t look like bullet wounds, more like scratches and thin slicing cuts.
Kuina seems to notice Maki’s stare and walks towards her, her gaze flicking down to her rumpled shirt. She touches a hand to Maki’s bicep, gently like she’s worried she’ll shatter like a porcelain doll.
“Maybe you should change your shirt?” she says, her tone gentle.
Maki looks down at her shirt. There’s dark specks of dried blood and dirt on it. Her stomach churns, sickened. Yukimaru’s blood, Saiko’s blood, muddled together and staining the fabric. She roughs the fabric as she thumbs at a spot, wonders whose blood it is. Yukimaru’s face flashes into her mind. His dark eyes going dull, bright blood dripping down his chin, a gurgling breath before he fell to the ground.
“Right,” she mumbles, stepping backwards into the room.
She closes the door behind her and walks towards the wooden closet. The room is dim, the only light coming in from where it peeks through the gap in the curtains hanging over the window. Taking her button-up shirt off, she drops it on the end of the bed. For a moment, her gaze flicks towards a mirror hanging on the wall. Her eyes are dull and darkly circled, her mouth downturned, her skin pale; she looks wan, practically ghoulish.
She rubs a hand over her freckled cheek. Her fingers pause on her jawline, her eyes spying a hickey in her reflection. She remembers Niragi then, his mouth against her throat, her fingers in his hair. It was just the night before last night that she’d had him in her arms, now he was —
Tears prickle in her eyes and she sucks in a breath, forcing her gaze away from the mirror. She yanks open the closet door and it creaks on the hinges. Pushing down the memories, she starts to dig through the clothes inside. They smell a bit musty, abandoned and left to decay when everyone else has disappeared. She picks a blue hoodie out, pulling it on over her tank top. It hangs a bit large on her frame and is a little ratty on the shoulder seams and sleeve cuffs, but at least it doesn’t have blood on it.
Turning she walks back to the door, exiting into the living room. Chishiya has stood from the couch and it’s obvious the three are waiting on her. She shifts under their gazes.
“What are we doing?” she asks, her voice soft and a little croaky from her prior night of crying. Kuina shoots a look at Chishiya.
“We’re going back to Shibuya,” he answers.
Maki’s brows scrunch, “Why?”
“I want to check something.”
Count on him to be confusing. Whatever. What does it matter anyway? No Beach, no big brother, no Niragi, what else has she got going on? Why not go back to Shibuya? She’s got at least ten days worth on her visa left now, after that, she’s not sure what she’ll do.
With nothing else to say, she heads to the small entrance and shoves her shoes on. Kuina must’ve taken them out and left them here after Maki had turned away from her. As Kuina walks over to join her and slide her own shoes on, she still has that pitying look in her eyes.
“Maki …” she starts, then pauses.
Maki knows what she means to ask.
“I’m fine,” she answers, “Not fine but …”
She shrugs. She doesn’t have the words. She’s not fine, not even 'okay', but what else can she say? She can’t say that she just wants to go back to bed and cry about it until there’s nothing left inside of her, that she feels like her heart has been ripped out of her chest. She wears her grief like a cloak, it engulfs her.
Her head droops and she turns her gaze down, looking away from Kuina. Opening the front door, she steps outside.
The morning sunlight is almost painfully bright, white clouds stretching across the blue sky. High-up, delicate cirrus-type clouds. She steps onto the sidewalk, tugging the hood up over her head and tucking her hands into the front pocket. The other three stroll out of the small house. Chishiya takes the lead with Yamato at his side, Kuina behind themm. Maki trails along at the back.
She doesn’t look at the city around her as they walk, not at the overgrown plants, nor at the buildings or the abandoned cars. Her gaze stays on the ground, watching the beat-up toes of her white shoes with every step. Up in front of her, Chishiya and Yamato are quietly talking but she can’t make out anything that they’re saying.
She doesn’t care to try and listen in anyway.
Her mind slips to the Beach before she can rein it in.
She hasn’t seen any more smoke in the sky, does that mean the hotel has stopped burning? Is there anything left of it? How high did the fire reach? Up into her office? To the deluxe suites? To Danma’s room? Did any of her notebooks in her office survive? What about all the toy penguins Niragi had gifted her? What about the portrait Sumie had drawn? Has she truly lost it all?
Her steps drag. If she went back there, to that place, would she be able to find her brother’s body? Niragi’s? Had Danma been all burned up too? What would he have thought about what happened? His paradise had become ash and he hadn’t even been alive to see it.
She feels like she could collapse, a wanting to lay down on the ground and not get back up, to let the sun rise and fall above her until her visa days run down to nothing and she meets her own death at the red beam of a laser. Instead, she just keeps walking, her shoulders hunched in, her chin dipped towards her chest and her tired gaze on the dirty sidewalk and the shoots of green growing up through the cracks.
The four of them walk for a little over an hour. Eventually, at the front of the group, Chishiya and Yamato fall into silence. Maki can feel Kuina looking back at her every so often but she doesn’t say anything, though Maki can sense that she wants to so she avoids looking up to meet her gaze. When they get closer to Shibuya, they come across a surprising scene.
The other remaining Beach residents are all gathered here. It’s almost as if nothing had happened, that they’d just been displaced from the hotel out onto the streets instead. Stepping up to Chishiya’s other side, Maki stares at them as they mill around. Soon, she finds a group of particularly familiar faces; Ann, Arisu, and Usagi. Kuina hops to Maki’s side and throws up an arm, waving to get their attention.
“Ann!” she calls out with a smile.
The three turn. Arisu looks particularly worse-for-wear, he’s been bandaged up but he’s covered in bruises. Niragi’s work. Morizono’s too. Her stomach turns at the memory. She sees a flash of anger across Usagi’s expression, the woman’s eyes focused on Chishiya. Her mouth moves and she takes a step but Arisu grabs her wrist to stop her. Kuina hurries towards the three and Maki, Chishiya, and Yamato follow after her.
“You guys are okay?” Ann asks as they walk over, seeming relieved. Like Arisu, she’s been bandaged up, her face cleaned of the blood from last night.
“Were you worried?” Kuina shoots back with a smile.
“Just wondering where you went off to after the game,” Ann replies.
As Ann and Kuina keep going back and forth, Maki’s gaze flicks and she finds that Arisu is already looking at her. Despite his blackened swollen eye, his gaze is gentle and she’s forced to flick her eyes down, unable to meet his fully. Her stomach twists and turns and she wants to collapse, but she steels herself, not even able to manage a weak greeting smile.
Luckily, she doesn’t have to say anything since a man comes running over to them, his pace slowing as he gets close. Shibada, her brain recalls as it scrolls through the list in her head. He seems surprised to see her and she quickly remembers her outburst from the previous night, all her yelling and cursing, an explosion of emotion. Her head ducks, embarrassed.
He looks away from her and towards Usagi and Arisu, beginning to explain the ex-residents’ idea. When he’s done, Arisu and Usagi glance at each other, curious.
“A … memorial service?” Usagi repeats.
“We want to remember everyone who was lost in the ten of hearts game and send them off,” Shibada continues, “And we’d like you guys to attend. We couldn’t have made it through without you - Arisu and Ann, especially.” His eyes flick towards where Maki, Kuina, Chishiya, and Yamato stand off to the side. “Oh, and you guys are welcome to come too.”
“Actually we’re —” Yamato starts but Kuina elbows into his side.
“We’ll be there,” she cuts him off.
It’s barely minutes after the four have broken into their own group again and stepped away that Chishiya, Yamato, and Kuina start quietly bickering. Maki says nothing, just follows numbly after them. They stop on a street corner away from any of the others and Maki sways on the line between concrete sidewalk and the road. She can hear the muffled sound of people nearby, the ex-beachers. So many had died, but so many were still alive. Were the militants here too? Or had they been run off after the ten of hearts? How many of them survived?
Near her, Kuina and Chishiya are arguing. Kuina is more impassioned, opposing Chishiya’s tensing calm.
“The Shibuya Railway isn’t going anywhere, Chishiya, and we’ve all got another ten visa days. After everything that happened yesterday, let’s just take a break for today,” Kuina argues, “You should really be thanking Arisu for not letting Usagi kick your ass, she sure looked pissed to see you.”
“I wasn’t the only one that tricked them,” he replies, a slight sharpness.
“But it was your idea.”
Maki can’t listen to this anymore.
She turns to walk away. If any of them notice, none try to stop her. Her steps drag along the cracked concrete, her shoulders slumped and chin down, her fingers interlinked inside the front pocket of her hoodie. She doesn’t know where she’s going, she just walks. Off to her side, she can hear the ex-beach-residents.
Have any of them realised the cards are all gone? That all their work was for naught? With Danma and Morizono both gone, would their questions fall to her? Does she tell them it was all a lie? That Danma had just made it up and she has no idea how they’re going to get home? She doesn’t want to be a leader, she doesn’t want to make a new ‘Beach’, she doesn’t want to have to play and keep track of all those games again.
She’s tired. She’s so tired.
Stopping, she pulls her hands from her pockets and presses them to her face. What is she doing? What is she supposed to do now? She doesn’t have any of the answers, she doesn’t even know where to start looking for answers. What did answers even matter when her brother and friends are dead?
Hearing a couple familiar voices, she glances up and sees Usagi and Arisu.
She should say something to them, but would they even want to hear from her? Usagi had looked particularly angry with Chishiya, but didn’t some blame also rest on Maki’s shoulders? She’d done nothing really to stop her brother or the militants.
Despite herself, she walks towards the bench where they sit. Usagi stiffens when she stops in front of them. Maki can’t blame her, not after what had happened yesterday. She glances to Arisu. Getting a closer look at him now, she grimaces.
He’s badly bruised, all dark red and purple, and one of his eyes is swollen shut. If his face looks this bad, she can only imagine what the rest of his body looks like. Morizono had always been a heavy hitter and he hadn’t held back. She wouldn’t be surprised to find out he had cracked bones somewhere, in his ribs or his cheekbones or jaw. He’d been lucky to not lose teeth. It wouldn’t be the first time her brother had knocked the teeth out of someone’s mouth.
His uninjured eye is tired, but his expression is still kind as he look at her. It makes her stomach twist in knots. Is he not mad? Her chin drops, avoiding his gaze.
“I want to apologise, on behalf of my brother … and Niragi,” she says softly.
Her chest hurts to even mention them. Her mind has no sympathy for her as it drudges up the memory of them disappearing into the bright flames, the grey smoke clouding her watery vision and stinging her nostrils, Ann’s arms wrapped tight around her to stop her from following them to their deaths, a scream ripped out of her mouth.
Her hands tightly clench inside her hoodie pocket, blunt nails driven into her palms.
The two seem surprised. She continues before they can say anything.
“I also want to thank you, Arisu, for your kindness towards my brother in the end, even when he was beating you,” she adds quietly, still unable to meet his eye, “He wasn’t a bad person. The Beach, this world, it didn’t just mess with Hatter, I think it affected Mori too and when Hatter died, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I know it’s no excuse but …”
She trails off.
“I understood what he was going through, I lost my friends here too,” Arisu replies.
“Sorry for your loss.”
He looks at her, a slight smile curving to his busted lip, and he nods.
“I’m sorry for your’s too.”
She feels tears spring to her eyes and quickly nods her thanks.
Turning, she starts to walk off to leave Arisu and Usagi to their privacy. She rubs a hand across her face, sniffling quietly. She doesn’t get far down the sidewalk before she hears footsteps coming up behind her.
“Makina.”
She turns, surprised to see Usagi. Her expression is stony.
“Yes?” she replies, confused.
Usagi takes a breath, then asks, “Chishiya … does he have them?”
Maki blinks, then her brows furrow.
“Have … what?”
“The cards. Hatter’s.” Usagi huffs shortly, “Though I suppose if he did, then he wouldn’t still be here - unless he needs a complete deck.” Her gaze flicks pointedly to Maki’s, “Or if the cards are just useless.”
Maki forces herself to not look away in shame, to not show that she knows the truth about Danma’s lie and is keeping his secret even now. She just shrugs and tucks her hands back into her hoodie pocket so she can thumb at the smooth line of her ring.
“I don’t know.”
Usagi’s lips press in a line, a slight hint of frustration in her eyes.
“Okay,” she says with a short sigh, “I’ll see you at the memorial later?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Maki trails back to where Kuina and Chishiya had been arguing. Chishiya and Yamato aren’t there, but Kuina sits with Ann, chatting. They sit close together, their knees brushing. Maki watches Kuina reach out to run her fingers along the bandage wrapped around Ann’s head, saying something Maki doesn’t hear, and Ann smiles, rolling her eyes and batting Kuina’s hand away. There’s something so sweet and intimate about it that makes Maki’s chest ache terribly.
Kuina and Ann seem to notice her and shift slightly apart.
“Maki, you’re back,” Kuina says.
Maki glances around.
“Where’d Chishiya and Yamato go?” she asks.
Was it really possible? Had Chishiya stolen the cards? Had he really tricked those two like Usagi said? She doesn’t want to believe it could be possible, that he’d been lying, that he’d tricked her. But where had he been during the ten of hearts game anyway? She hadn’t seen him.
Kuina waves a hand towards a nearby small hotel a short ways down the street. She rolls her eyes slightly.
“They were complaining about being out in the heat,” she explains.
Maki nods. She turns her gaze skyward, all stretching blue and white clouds and bright sunlight.
“It’s still so hot, it’s like summer hasn’t passed at all,” she murmurs.
She leaves Ann and Kuina to their conversation, trailing down the sidewalk to the hotel. Pushing open the thin glass door, she steps into the dim foyer. She’d taken for granted the electricity at the Beach, there’s not even a fan working let alone the air-conditioning. Sighing, she plucks at the front of her hoodie, picking it away from her sweaty skin.
Further inside, there’s the low murmur of voices from what must be a back office. Chishiya and Yamato. If she asked them about the cards, would they even tell her the truth? How much have they already lied to her about? She creeps slowly closer to the ajar door. Maybe she could overhear something. Leaning in, she peeks through the gap but she can’t see much.
“Are you sure Hatter had all the cards?” She hears Yamato ask.
“Do you think I can’t count?” comes Chishiya’s quick retort, “Do you want to check them yourself?”
Maki nudges the door open a little wider. She can see the pair of men now. Chishiya steps towards Yamato, pulling a hand from his pocket and holding something out. Her blood runs icy, freezing her in place. There’s a deck of cards in Chishiya’s hand. Sizeable, familiar, she’d been the one collecting those exact cards for weeks.
She feels dizzy, like the world has just jerked and been set off-kilter, a framed painting slipping off its hook.
Usagi had been telling the truth. Chishiya had used them, made distracting patsies out of them, and then left them behind for her brother and Niragi and the militants to torture and almost kill.
She stumbles back away from the door. Her lower back hits the corner of the front desk, accidentally knocking a pen cup off it, the pens hitting the ground with a clatter. Hurriedly, before Chishiya or Yamato could reach the door and see her, she twists and rushes back out of the hotel and onto the street. She shrinks down beside an overgrown garden in front of the hotel, hiding, pulling her knees to her heaving chest.
She feels completely stupid.
He’d tricked her too, she’d stood up for him, she’d been sure he wouldn’t do something like that. She’d thought he’d wanted to be her friend, but it’s clear now that she’d been wrong about that too. He’d just been trying to get those cards and probably assumed she’d be the easiest way to get them.
Did Kuina know? Was she part of it too?
Pulling her hood back up, she presses her heated face into her knees, trying to get her thoughts in order. She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t go with them. What was she supposed to do now? Who did she have left now?
Niragi wakes in pain. In agony, really.
Every slight movement spreads torturous pain across his body. He wants to scream but his breath is stolen from him, his throat and mouth dry from the smoke. Gasping in breaths, every inhale feels like he’s swallowing sand and razors. The air smells like smoke and ashes and burnt corpses. The bright midmorning sunlight burns his eyes and he throws his arm up to shield his face, immediately regretting the movement when shooting pain sears along his shoulder and down his side. It takes gritting his teeth hard to not cry out and scream.
When the pain subsides to a still-agonising-but-duller ache, he slowly moves to sit up. He pants at the effort it takes. Even just the light touch of his burnt raggedy shirt and the breeze against his skin is torturous. Slowly, he manages to lift his head and turn his gaze towards the hotel. It looks more like a burnt-out husk now. The walls are blackened with ash. Of what he can see of the inside, it’s not much better.
So that’s it. The Beach is done. There’s nothing left of it.
Certainly one way to go out with a bang.
Well, there’s no reason to stay here any longer. Hospital, he thinks numbly as he slowly gets to his feet. There’s no doctors around but there’ll at least be medication, bandages, anything else they didn’t ransack for the Beach. He needs painkillers, something to treat his burns. He plucks at the front of his shirt to try and get it to stop rubbing against his sore skin.
It’s slow-going.
Each step heavily drags as he stumbles through the abandoned streets. He trips on cracks in the concrete, his ankles and toes hurting. His arms hang loose, swinging at his sides. He pants and huffs, groans of pain wheezing past his dry lips. The vision in one of his eyes is completely blurry that no amount of blinking clears. It aches and throbs in the socket, making him hesitant to rub at it.
His gaze turns along the street; it’s empty, no people in sight. It doesn’t matter. If there’s anyone left in Setagaya, they’d be from the Beach, and none of those fuckers would help him. They probably hope he’s dead. His teeth grit, a snarl pulling at his mouth. Bastards, he should’ve killed all of them, made sure they were dead. His eyes flick and he finally spies a sign directing to the hospital down the street.
Stumbling a little faster, he hurries to it and pushes through the door, the relief of the being out of the sun only dampened slightly by the sting of the burns on his palms. He drags in breaths, the air inside is musty and still. The hospital’s dark inside, shadows drawn long, the bright sunlight coming in slightly hindered by overgrown plants covering the windows.
As he walks down the halls, his steps and wheezing breaths are loud.
Stopping, his eyes pause on a row of thin metal signs on the wall at the intersection of a hallway, looking over the engraved arrows pointing in the direction of each labelled hospital unit. He glances between them. Burn ward? Or the pharmacy? Which should he go to? His eyes pause on the arrow to the ER, they’ll keep the stronger medication for emergency-use there, right? At this point, he’d even take a sedative.
He makes his way through the hospital, following the arrows until he finds the ER. It’s not overly messy, but looks like it was abandoned mid-shift. There’s a rolling stretcher bed that he pushes out of his way, letting it roll and hit the wall. He trudges through the sprawling ER towards a labelled, close-doored room. With no running electricity, the electric lock doesn’t work anymore and, with a bit of force, he can push his way inside.
There’s rows of metal shelving, once painted white but now chipping on the edges. The racks are still mostly stocked. This must be one of the hospitals they’d missed when they were gathering medication for the Beach, it had probably fallen by the wayside when Maki gave up managing everything. Lucky for him, he supposes.
Propping open the door so it doesn't swing closed behind him, he stumbles over to a shelf of boxed medication. He tosses aside basic analgesics, looking for the stronger stuff. He doesn’t care that he’s making a mess of the place or that his hands sting. Finally, he plucks up a slight crumpled box of opioid pills. He squints to read the small lettering. Morphine, immediate release. That’s what he was looking for.
Ripping the end of the box open, he pops a few pills out of the blister packet and throws them into his mouth, swallowing them dry and resisting the urge to crunch them between his teeth. He doesn’t need to overdose now, not when he’s already survived this long. Upturning the box, he dumps out the rest of the blister packets into his palm and then shoves them into his pocket before continuing along the shelf.
His eyes pause on a box of tubed ointment. He picks it up. Betamethasone? Is that what he needs for the burns? He’s no doctor, he doesn’t know where to even start treating burns like these. Reading off 'anti-inflammatory' and 'steroid' on the box, he shrugs. Better than nothing, he supposes. Shucking off the tattered remains of his shirt, he leaves it in a pile of burnt fabric on the shelf and slathers the cream over his burns.
It stings horribly, almost bringing tears to his eyes. Again, he grits his teeth to stop from crying out in pain. When he’s done, he leans a lesser-burnt part of his thin arm on the shelf, dropping his face against the back of his forearm as he heaves in breaths, his body shaking. Turning his throbbing cheek against his arm, his gaze falls on the bracelets around his wrist. The number tag and Maki’s blue beads. He wrenches the number tag off and throws it aside, the plastic clattering across the floor.
Prodding the pad of his thumb at the charred lapis beads, he sighs softly. Where is Maki now? Is she okay? Who is she with? Did Aguni find her after he left Niragi to burn? His ears ring with the echoing sound of her scream. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly. That can’t be the last thing he ever hears from her.
He has to find her.
Pushing up from the shelf, he grabs a handful bandages and starts to wrap them around his hands and forearms. He twines the bandage between his fingers, gripping his hands into fists to make sure he can still move them. Next he starts to wrap the bandages around his torso, the burns sting and ache. It’s a painful, slow process and he clenches his jaw against the sting until he finally tucks the end of the bandage in.
Picking up his ragged shirt, he moves towards the door to leave, feeling the morphine finally starting to kick in. He rolls his neck from one side to the other, loosening up as he pulls his shirt back on.
Looking down at it, he frowns.
New clothes first after he’s had the chance to rest and recover, then he’ll go looking for Maki.
As the sun goes down, the ex-beachers gather onto a cleared area of the street. Someone’s started up a decent sized fire that makes Maki tense as she hears the wood crackle. There’s a couple of battery-powered camping lanterns lit up and sat on car hoods. The day’s heat has slightly cooled off without the sun blistering above them. Some people stand and others sit on the road, everyone quietly filling in the space. Maki keeps her distance for a while as she watches. Again, she notices there’s no ex-militants around. She wonders where they are. Are they still together or have they split up?
Chishiya’s declined the invitation, but Yamato’s come down. He easily slips into conversation with people, but Maki notices how he keeps a particular distance from Usagi.
Eventually, Maki trails over to the edge of the group, right on the edge of where the fire's light reaches. She leans herself up against the side of a car, spies Tatta sitting nearby. There’s another sting in her chest, becoming so familiar that it’s starting to feel permanent. Yarita, he had died during the ten of hearts too, like Joe, like Yukimaru. The Beach’s car-and-fuel sect has been cut down to just one person. Though she supposes there’s no longer a need for a fuel-collection group anymore. The majority of the working cars probably got burned up along with the hotel.
She thinks about her Skyline, charred and ruined in the garage in her usual parking spot. Another thing she cared about lost in the blaze.
Kuina sits on the ground by another car, Ann stands leaning against the car door beside her, arms crossed. Arisu is sat by Kuina too, still looking a tad pale, making the bruises stand out. She wonders if she should tell him and Usagi what she’d seen, that Chishiya does have the cards. Then she thinks, does it really matter? It hadn’t helped him, hadn’t saved him, he’s still stuck here with the rest of them.
“How do we start?” Someone asks finally when everyones has arrived.
“Do we just talk about the people who died in the game? Does someone want to start?” Another suggests.
“Well, uhm …”
Slowly, people start to talk and the rest listen. They bring up their friends that had died, things they had done, who they had been before they came here. Maki recognises people’s names, ones she had written down in her book but never taken the chance to get to know further. They’re all people, as real as her, with lives as vivid as her own. They’d been alive. During all that time she’d spent working, there’d been so much happening that she’s missed, friendships being made, fun being had.
She thinks about Sumie and Yukimaru, sitting with them in the garden or in her office, she can almost hear the murmur of their voices in her ears. The memory is stained red, remembering that Sumie died out in a game and she hadn’t even had a chance to properly say goodbye, remembering the blood spilling out of Yukimaru’s mouth, the light leaving his eyes as he died. She breathes out shakily.
As the rest of the group start to quiet down, she finally speaks up.
“His name was Yukimaru Atsuki,” she starts softly, “A lot of you probably knew him, he helped me out a lot at the Beach. He was … sweet. And kind. He was my friend.” She feels tears prickle in her eyes. “He died to protect me. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead now too.” She doesn’t look at anyone, just stares at the fire, watching the sparks fly off it. “We were going to go on a trip when we got home. Take a train to Tokushima.” She wraps her arms around herself, flattening her palms against her sides and pressing on herself, swallowing, “I don’t know if I can go alone.”
She wants to talk about her brother, about Niragi, but looking around, she only sees the people they’d hurt. She thinks about Morizono, driven by his grief to try and kill everyone, Niragi gleefully following his orders. They’d wanted to burn the place down, she had too, but now that it’s gone …
As someone else begins speaking, Maki takes a step backwards into the darkness, silent as she walks away from the gathering. Without the light of the fire and the lanterns, she’s left with only the moonlight to guide her way as she walks down the street. Eventually, she comes to the side of a park and sits herself on the edge of a bench. She leans her arms onto her legs, interlocking her fingers, pressing between her knuckles. Her gaze turns skyward, looking at the twinkling stars and the bright moon.
It’s not long that she’s sitting alone until someone comes up beside the bench. She glances sideways to see Ann standing there, her arms loosely crossed and her own eyes turned up towards the sky. Look away again, Maki rubs one thumb over the other, her shoulders hunching in.
“Do you want to talk about them?” Ann asks, breaking the silence.
“I didn’t think any of those people would want to hear it,” she answers quietly.
“They’re not here now. Do you want me to start?”
“I know you didn’t like them, Ann, so, no offence, but if you haven’t got anything nice to say, I’d rather not hear it.”
“Just because I didn’t agree with what Aguni and Niragi were doing at the end didn’t mean I wanted them to die.” Ann shifts, her mouth pressing thin. “Especially not like that.”
“Do you think —” Maki pauses to swallow back the shake in her voice, “Do you think they could’ve made it out?”
Ann goes quiet for a moment, then she sighs softly.
“I don’t want to lie to you, Maki, or give you false hope.”
Maki’s mouth trembles and she rolls her lips. Ann moves to sit beside her on the bench, taking her hand and squeezing it.
“I couldn’t protect them,” Maki chokes out. “Not Sumie, not Yuki, not Niragi, not Mori. They’re all dead, I couldn’t save any of them.”
With a sob, she folds over on herself. Pulling her hand out of Ann’s gentle grip, she drops her face into her hands, feels hot tears dripping against her palms. Ann shifts closer to her, running a comforting hand over her spine as she cries.
In the darkness beneath a bridge, Morizono sits alone. The light of the full moon barely reaches where he sits. He can see it captured in the surface of the nearby river, shimmering like a silver coin and rippling in the tiny waves. There’s a thin stream to his right, running along as little more than a trickle towards the river; further up, there’s overgrown foliage is blocking its path. He’s built a small fire that barely gives off light, which fortunately means it also draws no attention to him.
Hiding away like this, it’s unlike him.
Distantly, he’s heard familiar voices in passing. Ex-beachers and ex-militants alike. He makes no attempt to approach any of them or reveal himself. They could keep thinking he was dead, what did it matter? He’d tried to kill them all. They should hate him. He hates them. He hates himself.
His mind turns to Maki. That is where his regrets lie.
“How could she ever forgive you?” A voice whispers close to his ear. It has no breath, but it’s Danma’s voice. A ghostly apparition that his mind has conjured, haunting him.
He stares down into the embers of the fire, tiny sparks of red-orange eating away the twigs. Danma is right. How could she forgive him after what he’d done? Killing Danma, ordering the militants to kill all those people, killing Niragi. He’d promised to protect her always. He’d failed. Maybe she’s better off without him. Maybe he should’ve just stayed and died in the burning gut of the Beach.
So long as she survives, so long as she makes it home, that’s all that matters to him now. It’s all he can hope for. Not forgiveness, not peace, just that she can survive this.
Sighing, he leans back against the cool mossy wall of the underpass. His lungs still sting from the smoke, his bicep throbs from the bullet Niragi had shot at him. That had been a surprise, he’s never known Niragi to miss a shot, let alone at such a distance. A slight change in angle and he could’ve killed him then and there. His hand brushes over his arm. The graze isn’t deep and it’s crusted over with blood, but it’s sore to the touch.
He almost feels guilty to have done it, to have left Niragi behind in that place, but what other choice had he had? Niragi was killing indiscriminately and they had no time left. Some small part of Morizono knows, though, that it really had nothing to do with Niragi. He had simply wanted to die and Niragi ended up in the crossfire.
However, when it came down to it, some selfish part of him had still wanted to survive, if only just for a little bit longer.
From above him, he hears footsteps on the bridge, accompanied by a pair of male voices. Familiar voices. They’re ex-militants. Takeno and Kanaya, he reminds himself; the former had landed with the militants due to making people uneasy, the latter’s a spark near a fuse, a bomb just waiting to blow. There’s a usually a third with them and Morizono wonders where the last is now, if he’s dead like countless others at the Beach. His head lifts from the wall to listen as they come to a stop by the bridge’s railing to talk.
“Did you hear? Some of the guys went to check out tonight’s game.” That’s Kanaya.
“They cleared the game and came back, right? I don’t think I can stand to hear about any more deaths so soon.” Then Takeno.
“That’s just the thing, they said something weird when they came back. They said nightfall came but the game didn’t start at all,” Kanaya continues, “And on the registration phones, there was a note displayed. It was talking about the games being at an interval, that there’s a 'next stage' undergoing preparation and to 'wait patiently'.”
Morizono sits up a little straighter. A next stage? And the games were on pause? What could that mean? Was there going to be more games? His stomach churns like an unsettled ocean. Were they going to have to play all those games over again? Another forty games? Or fifty-two this time? He sets his jaw, his teeth gritting. So many had already died in the first round, how many more had to die until they could return home? Were they ever going to be able to get home?
The two men continue walking off down the bridge, their voices trailing away until Morizono is left in silence again, alone with only his whirling thoughts and Danma’s ghost for company.