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Kiyotaka has been staring at his own body for what feels like hours.
Mondo had been in the room when it happened. Since the wake of his own well-deserved demise, he felt like he owed it to Kiyotaka to stick around him. Watch over him, in some way. Like a guardian angel—except Mondo is no angel. Maybe some kind of shitty half-reformed demon, but that doesn’t sound like a fitting term either, given his own crime. He hasn’t necessarily repented for it, he’s only received part of what he’s always deserved.
It’s not like Mondo believes in Heaven or Hell. It’s kind of bullshit, that whole thing; karma probably exists to serve those who had it coming, and yes, Mondo included, but eternal damnation or the “Kingdom of the Lord” didn’t necessarily feel real. Just tales they tell the kids to listen, and the kind of thing that some kids never get broken out of.
Still, part of him always thought that there would be worse in store for him after his death. There’s blood on his hands—too much fucking blood.
But yeah, sure, let him be a guardian-angel-slash-demon-spawn or whatever the fuck. Maybe that was his chance to repent. Make up for killing Daiya, make up for killing Fujisaki. Protect his kyoudai.
—or, well, that’s what he was supposed to fucking do. Until that shit-for-brains Yamada hit him on the head with a hammer.
Kiyotaka is still staring at his own body.
Mondo should… do something. Fucking anything.
“Kyoudai,” he starts, his fists shaking at his sides. He digs his nails into his palms to steady himself. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
The sound of his voice makes Kiyotaka snap his head up, red eyes wide and haunted like he’s been these past few days. Well, before his whole… what’s the fucking word, awakening? There’s probably a better word for it. That one seems like it’s implying something else.
Kiyotaka sputters, “Kyoudai?” Like he’s seen a ghost.
Well. That makes sense.
“Yeah.” Mondo is stationed on the other end of the storage room, near the door back out to the physics lab. He hadn’t planned on leaving—not until Kiyotaka was ready to—but he always lingers by doors lately. He doesn’t particularly feel welcomed anywhere as a ghost. “Shit. Shit, dude.”
His eyes glance down to the dead body. Kiyotaka’s dead body. That surge of anger returns; the blood pooled under his head, the way his eyes are wide with shock, his mouth left open in shock. Yamada left so quickly. That fucking asshole.
He’s going to fucking kill Yamada Hifumi.
…Somehow.
Kiyotaka has followed Mondo’s eyes, peering back down at the corpse. “That’s… really me?” he asks, and he doesn’t sound as horrified as he was expecting. More detached. Disbelieving. “But I don’t… I’m here. I’m standing here.”
Mondo’s heart feels heavy. The guardian angel, the reformed demon. The messenger of bad news, the breaker of reality.
“You’re fucking dead, dude,” he says, approaching Kiyotaka by his side. He’s not sure what to do here. How the fuck do you comfort someone that’s dead? “Yamada… He took that hammer and…”
“I-I get the picture.” Kiyotaka shakes his head. He looks up at Mondo again, and this time, he stares. Really stares. Those eyes of his, the ones he can’t look at head-on, once piercing, and then annoying and infuriating, and then heart-shattering to look at—they soften. A slow, shaky breath escapes him. “Mondo. Are you…?”
“I’m here.” He turns to face him. “I’m here, Taka.”
And then comes something unexpected. Kiyotaka launches himself at him, and for a brief moment, he sees them both in the trial room last week, his shirt balled up in Kiyotaka’s fists as he listens to his broken, betrayed voice screaming at him. Why? How could you kill Fujisaki? Why, Mondo, why?
He’s half-expecting to hear that yelling again. The scolding of a lifetime (and beyond, given they’re both dead)—one that Mondo more than deserves. If Fujisaki refused to yell at him, then Kiyotaka would.
—but Kiyotaka is hugging him. Tightly. His arms wrap around Mondo’s neck and he stumbles backwards. There’s a strange warmth between the two of them that he didn’t really think would be there. It doesn’t make much sense; they have no blood to be spilled between them anymore. All of Mondo’s blood was drained in that cage, and all of Kiyotaka’s blood is pooring out onto the floor as they embrace.
He’s stunned for a moment. Kiyotaka lets out a long and loud wail into his shirt. He’s shaking and Mondo doesn’t know what to do. He’s not a very physical guy—shit, he can throw a good punch and beat the shit out of people—and he can slap his arm around people in half-hugs before becoming embarrassed—but this is… this is a lot.
Kiyotaka is like that. He’s a lot.
But dammit—that’s become something Mondo has come to be fond of. Or some sappy shit like that.
Awkwardly, his arms find their way around Kiyotaka’s back, and before he knows it, he’s squeezing him so tight he’s worried he’s hurting him. (Can he still be hurt like this? Dying is supposed to leave people in a “better place,” but they’re still in this shitty school. He knows now that this can’t be Hell itself, since Kiyotaka’s here. The Ultimate Moral Compass in Hell? What a joke that’d be.)
Mondo finds the need to repeat “I’m here” like it’s a mantra, his hands lightly patting the back of Kiyotaka’s shoulders. The only reason they’re both standing is because Mondo’s holding them both up. The next thing that falls out of him is “I’m sorry,” and he buries his face against the other’s black, spiky hair.
He knew his death destroyed Kiyotaka. He doesn’t know why, but he watched it firsthand. The first thing he saw after “waking up” was him curled by the execution chamber, Asahina at his side gently trying to get him to stand. Mondo remembers yelling at him too, telling him to get up—but then his attention went elsewhere, once he saw Fujisaki in the room too.
Mondo hasn’t left Kiyotaka’s side since. His apology isn’t solely for leaving him behind, though.
“I couldn’t fucking protect you,” he blurts, and he feels his voice crack and suddenly he’s aware, too aware, of the wetness on his own face. Fuck. “I couldn’t— If I were alive, you wouldn’t have—”
“Stop!” Kiyotaka shakes his head, and only then does he pull away from Mondo’s now-soaked shirt, but he’s still loosely embracing him. He looks up at him, lips pressed together in a firm line. He still looks so damn tired. “Stop, Mondo. I don’t… want to talk about what could have happened.” He weakly presses the side of his head against his shoulder. “I’m just in disbelief. I-I didn’t— I didn’t think I was going to see you again.”
They weren’t supposed to meet again so soon. Mondo wants to scream in agony, staring at Kiyotaka’s body just over his shoulder.
But that doesn’t fucking matter right now. He has his kyoudai in his arms right now—and that counts for some shit.
“I missed you too,” he admits in a low mutter, tugging Kiyotaka a little closer. That warmth. He can’t wrap his head around it, can’t wrap his head around much of the current predicament, but he can’t fully complain. “But fuck, Taka, you really couldn’t wait? Impatient bastard.”
It’s a weird time to make a joke like that, but Kiyotaka still laughs—some kind of relief among the horror of the situation they’re in. “Sorry, kyoudai.”
Not that Kiyotaka has ever had anything to be sorry for. Mondo has half a mind to spill his apologies again—and all his anger for whatever the fuck Yamada had done—but he shuts up for the time being. Knowing that damn Naegi and his gaggle of smartass crime-solvers, he’ll get his comeuppance too.
For now, he has Kiyotaka. He wasn’t cut out to be some guardian angel, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about losing him again.