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She finds her on the stone-tiled floor. Saihara, Shirogane and Kiibo are already there.
The floor is cold. The hallway is dark. The only way she can tell Chikako is bleeding is the faint glint from one of the flickering overhead lights on the pool underneath her.
The sight of the blood makes Maki’s stomach churn—it dazes her.
She wasn’t ever sensitive to blood before.
Ouma’s blueprints, clutched in her right hand, drop onto the floor. Just because Chikako is bleeding out doesn’t mean she misses the way Shirogane is covered in blood, or the stalled Exisal beside them, or how Yumeno isn’t present. Always critical in her observation, no matter the situation—she takes mental snapshots of the situation to store for later.
Maki, who was once simply a puppet—an executioner controlled by the high court, believes herself a god now. She surges forward and doesn’t waste breath with questions, she can see the way Chikako’s chest rises and falls even if slight.
She's still alive, a voice warns her. There's still time.
Maki sees the gun of the Exisal still raised. She has heard the gunshot. The tricky part is identifying, without wasting Chikako’s breath, where exactly she is wounded. It doesn’t help that she wears black, and the hallway is dimly lit, and that the only discernable color on her person is the pink in her curls.
Briefly, before Maki falls into the trained patterns of her work, she sees her face. It is devoid of color, absent of the flush she has grown so familiar with. Pale, like those people she’s ripped the lives from.
She’s dying.
But Harukawa Maki believes herself a god, and if she can take lives, then she can certainly take this one for herself.
Her hands work methodically. She undoes her belt from her skirt, barely feeling the black leather slide across her palms as she critically scans Chikako’s still-writhing body, barely processes the breaths that escape her target and are wrong.
Even on the floor, Chikako isn’t hard to read—the way she has drawn her left leg in just slightly, the way the fabric of her pants is ripped. There is no regard for how painful this will likely be as Maki takes the belt and eases it under Chikako’s thigh. She whimpers—what should be a scream, and Maki winces.
She’s never had to stop someone from dying.
Maki loops the belt around Chikako’s thigh, poignantly ignoring the blood that starts sticking to her hands—warm and fresh, and the concerning way it spurts out of her thigh. It’s not unlikely to assume that the femoral artery has been damaged, but so long as she can stem the bleeding—
She dies anyway, coughing up blood in a way too similar to Momota, digging into a wound that is still far too fresh.
Before Atsuko even opens her eyes, the pain hits her like a freight train. Burning, aching pain in her muscles—right down into the fibers and proteins that wind them together. It is so excruciating that she isn’t quite sure what to do at first, but her body isn’t listening when she tries to get up. Even the thought of moving, as it travels from the synapses in her head down to the motor nerves in her legs, hurts. It hurts like there is flame in her blood, incessant until it kills her.
She tries not to cry, but pulling herself into a sitting position makes it hurt—hurt so much, in fact, that her vision blackens and she gets dangerously dizzy in the process.
Standing is exponentially worse, and while she does not collapse when she’s on her feet, moments later when she reaches the bathroom, her knees give and hit the tile with her hand still gripping the door handle. If she weren’t in so much pain, she’d consider the bruises likely to paint her skin tomorrow.
Right now, it doesn’t seem like there is a tomorrow.
There is a beat of silence before she lets out a pressed scream between her teeth. It quickly turns into sobs. Nobody will hear her, and she relishes in it as she lays on the bathroom floor. The cold tile soothes her, but the reminder that she needs to stand back up and try to be functional snaps her out of it. She wants nothing more than to go back to her bed and rot in it.
Atsuko doesn’t understand why she feels like this. Every time she tries to parse it together, a wave of burning in her nervous system stops her. She tries to haul herself up, tears still streaming down her face.
Her stomach leaves the floor, then her knees, then her feet. She grips onto the sink counter so that the black spots covering her vision won’t take her down again.
What she sees in the mirror is even worse; the way her face is ghostly pale aside from the frightening flush on her cheeks. She has always had a rosy complexion, but this screams that she’s ill. In a way that won’t go unnoticed by her peers.
By Harukawa.
Her eyes hurt from the tears. Her knees hurt from standing. Her breaths keep making this uncanny gurgling sound that she’s positive can’t mean anything good. It’s hard and uncomfortable to take in oxygen.
Her knuckles whiten as she stares at the sick person before her. They begin to hurt, too, when she tastes iron thick on her tongue. Lungs spasming, she's forced to cough out the inevitable. In the next moment, scarlet is staining the basin of her sink.
She wheezes, staring at it, then at the blood dribbling past her lips.
Oh.
The rest of her morning moves by as though there’s a fuzzy film covering her eyes and brain. She pulls her tank top on, then her pants, and leaves her blazer behind. She’s too warm. The moment she steps out of her room, she’s trembling.
She leaves the dorm building.
She pukes in the grass three feet away. And as she stares down at the contents of her stomach, she notices that it’s scarlet, too.
It’s a wonder her legs don’t give out right there, from the horror or exhaustion or just misery. Her heart is beating too fast in her chest: a concerning double-time, stuttering tempo. She stumbles into the University building, less disoriented from the dimmer lights and significantly cooler without the sun beating on her, but still in so much pain. Whatever power allowed her to walk without aid to the school has vanished, and the skin of her shoulder now slides against the wall as she moves at a 60° angle.
Her head, typically still groggy in the minutes after waking up, is oppressively loud, now. While her head is usually plagued with thoughts, white noise replaces it and blocks anything vaguely coherent, prevents her from trying to understand what the reason for her very sudden and very imminent death would be.
Her feet drag her ahead with a mind of their own, and she finally ends up facing the cafeteria door. It's quiet from out here. She used to be able to hear conversations halfway down the hall.
Now, there are six of them, and it is dead silent.
Vision blurring, Atsuko still fixes the door with a stare. The short distance to cross from her side of the hallway to the door seems cavernous—it stretches, vastly—disorienting her. The following steps are hesitant—terrified, even. The deep-rooted fear that she will fall and be unable to get up, especially this close to the cafeteria, where everyone could walk out and find her, sits heavy in her chest. Her choice isn’t just limited—there is no other option but to head into the cafeteria—not when she's here, and turning around seems too daunting of a task. So, that’s exactly what she does.
If not for her legs briefly giving out, and her having to grab at the wall to find stability again. Atsuko cannot understand why her body is giving out beneath her, and despite trying, her intelligence is robbed of her in the wake of whatever is killing her.
Dehumanizing.
Whatever is killing her has done away with her only positive quality, leaving her with nothing but animalistic panic, fear, and pain. Atsuko stumbles through the doors, and everyone stares.
Pale, sickly, shaking, stumbling. Of course, they’re staring. She can feel Harukawa’s gaze leave a blazing trail on her skin, most of all—akin to whatever it is that is ruining her.
Being up without support nearly takes her down, and she falls into a seat further away from the rest of the group. If they were quiet before, they are silent now. Unspeaking. Staring at her, she’s absolutely sure. Kiibo is the first to speak. He says her name, and she tilts her head to fix him with a stare, but the action rattles her so badly that the black spots come back. Threatening. She doesn’t respond.
They’re all exhausted. Depressed. Done with this game.
She kind of wishes she hadn’t crawled out of bed this morning.
Their stares remain, despite her frustration at the lingering, burning awareness of their eyes. She can feel everything, and that makes glances (that, otherwise, don’t touch her) feel like lighters being held to her flesh, devoid of color. How can the mere idea of someone looking her way hurt?
Sitting in silence like they do leaves Atsuko to her thoughts—there’s not many. It hurts, over and over and over again. Someone has injected gasoline in her bloodstream, and lit it on fire. The inferno’s origin is unknown to her, but it feels worst in her chest. Burning. Heavy. Hard to breathe.
Atsuko has wondered, on multiple occasions, what it felt like to die. It’s a hard thought process to avoid, being in her position. Watching classmates vanish in twos or threes, leaving six stragglers. From slit throats to blunt force trauma, to executions crueler than anything she could ever imagine, to the mere presence of Harukawa Maki in her life, Atsuko has grown more familiar with death as an entity and an idea in the past two months than she ever has considered before.
She knew it was coming; her gut, the way she lived—all signs pointed to failure to thrive. Once Iruma and Harukawa left her for dead, all bets were off. Her fate was sealed away in a pretty envelope, and she had just as easily accepted it. Exhaustion crept in.
It would be so easy, she wasn’t hard to catch off-guard.
Staring at the press, at what remained of (what turned out to be) Ouma’s body, Atsuko feared what she knew was coming for her. She could only pray (was anyone listening? Did it matter that she was never devout before?) that it came swift. Painless.
What a sick joke—Atsuko never got what she wanted. That much is pounded into her skull when she looks up from her absent paralysis, only to meet the fleeting gaze of one Harukawa Maki. Scarlet eyes meet hers, and are gone just as quickly. Red like the blood she spat up earlier.
Maybe, she had always been closer to death than she thought.
When Atsuko’s gaze lingers for a moment too long, because it hurts her head to move her eyes too fast, Harukawa stands. Abruptly. Chair scraping in a way that makes Atsuko see white. She’s gone, and Saihara follows. No second glance. No confusion or concern or hesitation. She’s just gone.
If Atsuko were ever to try to argue she fought for her life, it stopped now. She leaves in a hurry. Shuichi starts after her, as he always has.
Well, he lingers at the doorway for a moment, looking back at her with an expression that conveys he’s worried sick. Seeing this only deepens her frown, further creases the furrow in her eyebrows, and he probably notices, because he steps out a moment later. She can hear their footsteps, pounding like hammers against the gray matter of her brain, and picks out the one that she knows is Harukawa’s.
It’s hurried—brisk, an aggressive stomp that makes her understand that she’s angry. There are voices for a moment, though they disappear when the door finally slams shut. The noise it makes elicits a moan out of her.
Kiibo and Yumeno are the next to go, together instead of one after the other. Kiibo hurries Yumeno out, nodding at Shirogane like they’re having some silent conversation. Well, for all she knows, they could’ve been talking—her brain is exceptionally slow to catch up: something she despises. For someone so sharp-witted, whatever is killing her is killing neurons, too. The door shuts behind them, and she physically tenses—breathing pressed between her teeth.
Her saliva feels thick, and she has to work to swallow.
She also doesn’t know what it’s like to drown. But she’s starting to find out. If excruciating pain in response to every stimuli wasn’t enough, that is. Her hearing has significantly reduced, but she can hear some sort of crackling when she breathes. Gurgling. And then, finally, a voice.
Shirogane’s voice—oh, and her hand on her shoulder—finally breaks through whatever ringing filled her head. It’s soft. Quiet. Like she’s breakable. And the worst part is that she is, there’s no fighting the horrid truth—Chikako Atsuko is not even half the girl she was a day ago. She cannot argue with the truth: she is kintsugi—fractured, glued together, and she is fracturing again. Doomed to splinter into millions of pieces. “Chikako, y-you’re… pale.”
She’s always been nervous, Atsuko knows that well. Awkward, in a way that she can’t hide. Atsuko, on the other hand, does an excellent job at hiding her anxiety and social ineptitudes. Speaking to Shirogane is like speaking to the part of herself she keeps hidden under a carefully constructed mask. Why the group voted to leave Shirogane with her, in favor of anyone else, is beyond her.
The memories come flooding back just as fast—another hit to the delicate plating of her skull. The red string, time that Ouma didn’t have. She knows what Shirogane is. There are six of them, and the other four were easy to count out. Shirogane is meek and unassuming on purpose.
Another cruel trick of fate. Her slow death, leaving her alone with the one person who, probably, wanted to wring her neck more than anything else. There are cameras—it’s impossible for her not to know that she knows. “Kiibo is going to start, um… destroying the University soon,” she murmurs. Her fingers tighten on Atsuko’s shoulder—usually covered from the blazer, Atsuko jumps at the sweaty warmth of her hands.
Still pretending, apparently. The act isn’t over. And Atsuko can play along—it doesn’t take much energy to ignore the elephant in the room; whether it be her impending death, or the mastermind they’re both aware of. What she can’t ignore is the iron slowly creeping up her throat. She can taste it—it’s like a warning. Telling her to hide, as she always has. To run.
From what? What is there to run to? From? Towards? Fleeing in any direction leads her no where: she cannot, for once, outrun what she’s afraid of. Her idea of death has abandoned her—the pleasant one, leaving her alone. Scared.
There is another physical body in the room—she is alone in all the ways that matter.
Warm, sweaty hands holding her jaw shock her back into the present. Her fading is more frequent, now; the real world, crumbling as it may be, is far away from her unless something else pulls her back. And that something happens to be Shirogane’s hands. How she wishes they were someone else’s. A thumb brushes across her chin. Then, a voice—stammering, nervous.
Her face is being cradled by one Shirogane Tsumugi, the only other person in the room. She’s touching her in such an intimate way, and Atsuko wants her to let go—it's making nausea roll in her belly, more threatening now. She doesn’t have the strength to push her away. It isn’t fair that the first and likely only person to touch her this intimately is the one orchestrating this killing game. Killing her friends. Killing her, surely. Her voice finally clears into understandable words. It’s then that she realizes that Shirogane’s right hand is covered in blood.
Painful as it is to even raise her hand, Atsuko wipes at her chin. Her hand approaches her skin spotless, and comes away covered in warm, scarlet liquid. The taste of blood, iron, floods her senses so quickly that she shrinks backwards. “Chikako, you—you’re bleeding,” she practically yelps, pulling her hands away from Atsuko. The lack of support leaves her sagging over on the long dining table, unable to activate her abdominal muscles to keep herself upright.
It’s a strange situation to be in; to have your body systemically failing and being powerless to stop it. Bits and pieces of Shirogane’s muttering cut in—something about Momota’s illness being infectious. Something about the turnaround time being too quick for that to make sense.
Yesterday, she was walking. Talking. Completely fine.
“Chikako… have you—have you taken some-something?” Her hands flutter around uselessly, like she isn’t sure what to do to fix this. There’s nothing she can do. Atsuko is tired that she’s still pretending. Frankly, she wants to snap at her—to tell her that she knows, and that she knows she knows—feigning worry for her life is useless. She shakes her head once, slowly, in response. She can’t manage anything more strenuous.
“Not that,” she wheezes. Hacks up blood onto the floor, careless, because it doesn’t matter anymore. Nobody worthwhile is watching. She doesn’t feel the need to protect anyone. To pretend. “Not that I know of.” Those five, short words wind her.
Shirogane Tsumugi is still pretending. She presses a napkin into Atsuko’s hands, and hoists her up with a feigned look of determination. “Then… it’s plainly foul play. Poison, maybe? Saihara… Saihara’s lab has antidotes. If we—if we can figure out—”
Atsuko is, surprisingly, content to just die here. Well, as content as one can be when making peace with their fast-approaching death. In actuality, she’d just be happy not to cause herself more pain by making the trek up to the fifth floor. She isn’t sure she has the energy to compensate for one staircase, let alone four of them. If not for the sudden crashing and banging that occurs terrifyingly close to the cafeteria windows—the ones Atsuko currently sits with her back to—she would push Shirogane off completely.
But the combination of dust clouding the room from the ceiling and the loud noises that seem to rattle against her very eardrums makes it easier to pull herself up from her seat—desperate to endure brief pain if it will lessen the insistent slamming against her eardrums and, by association, her head. Her balance falters, and if not for the edge of the dining table, she would be on her knees. Shirogane reacts a second later, sparing no time in hauling her up.
Atsuko wants to protest the help. All that comes out is a disconcerting gurgling noise.
In seconds, they’re out of the cafeteria. She thinks Shirogane is saying something—she sees the movement of her lips—but the act of standing up has robbed her of her hearing. In its place is high-pitched ringing that makes processing any other stimuli impossible. Every other thought disappears, only a headache and nausea and electric current running through her blood vessels remain.
Oh, and the blood that won’t wash away with her saliva—it sits on her tongue. The increasing lack of ability to draw in sufficient oxygen starts to feel like a clock. Ticking. Impending. The entity of death is likely staring her down—just waiting. If only its hands were familiar.
They make it up two stairs—Atsuko white-knuckling the railing—before the first flashback light flashes her vision white. Her knees hit the jut of the stair, and the world melts for maybe ten seconds before she’s back in it—new memories fill her brain while dust and blood fill her lungs. The following steps come at a slower pace, and even slower when she finally shrugs off Shirogane’s hand, pushed under her armpit. Like her support was somehow meaningful.
The second one follows maybe five minutes later, when Atsuko is gasping for air and has only conquered the first set of stairs. She insists to Shirogane that she just go ahead—that she’s only making this journey slower—but Shirogane doesn’t move.
“I couldn-couldn’t just leave you in the dining hall! The ceiling wo-would’ve caved in with you-you in it! Be-being near glass windows is a bad-bad idea right n-now, who knows if they'll break if Kii-Kiibo keeps this up-p! We puh-plainly have to keep going, Chikako.” She fusses, attempting to support her again as Atsuko’s calves start to contract and twitch in ways she can’t control. And Atsuko, she begs Shirogane to put her down.
She has to sit—and the moment she does—her vision goes white again. Another memory, this time, of her bickering with some faceless friends from her old high school. They have faces, but by the time she's out, she can't recall them—and the bright lights in the memory only make her head worse when she finally comes to.
Atsuko presses her face to the cold concrete of the landing—uttering words even she doesn’t understand under her breath. Her breath. Her breath crackles—and she keeps sucking air in. Her body won’t stop fighting for a life that she doesn’t even want anymore.
The flashes of her life from before; memories of school and of the world ending, none of those matter. Maybe they would, if her prognosis was anything longer than an hour, she’d be more concerned.
Hot and metallic flushes up her throat before she can choke it back, and it’s spilling down her chin. Her lungs try desperately to expel it, she’s sure, but there’s too much. The wheezing continues for fifty-four seconds (she counted) and the coughing sounds—
Wet. Squelching. Her lungs are trying to wring itself of the blood pooling there—and it leaves Atsuko stomach-down on the stoop. She’s in another memory, and when she comes back around for the third time, she barely remembers what it is that she saw. Something about high school friends, maybe? It doesn’t matter, because she’s so dizzy and her stomach is convulsing, and Shirogane shrieks. It rings so loudly that Atsuko sees stars.
Something acidic coats her tongue and Shirogane whines like she’s been shot, and Atsuko finally raises her head more than an inch to see that there’s vomit on the landing.
Shirogane Tsumugi seethes with rage—an emotion that has grown more and more familiar to her as the Killing Game has progressed. It’s hidden, carefully composed and tucked away—her facade of a clueless, useless girl seems almost natural. Admittedly, it wasn’t far from the truth—wasn’t far from what she really was. A talentless individual, always pining after a fate she didn’t possess. Envious and resentful, she was.
Shallow as it is, her rage is ignited by the stomach acid coating her shoes—streaked with blood. Shiny Mary Janes now ruined by the bodily fluids of her victim, Atsuko’s fate falls into place. There is only one option left for her.
In some ways, Tsumugi is doing her a kindness—ending her suffering swiftly, no-longer prolonging a sadistic experiment of her own design. Chikako Atsuko has repented enough for the sin of being too bright, of beating the Ringleader at her own game. Ouma Kokichi paid in much the same way, but she couldn’t play god in that situation. Not like this.
Chikako Atsuko knew she was dying.
It was only a matter of time.
Her rage has dulled into something sharper, more calculating. She plans it before she executes it, and in her haste, she realizes that she’s disappeared—the lamb to the slaughter, bright as she is. How does she even have the strength to conquer another set of stairs?
She finds her by Harukawa’s lab—on the ground, in the middle of the hallway. Crawling. She doesn’t miss the cruel intentionality of their location—of their proximity to the one place Chikako believed she would be protected. Not that her brain is functioning properly, but the Research Labs never had locks on them. Oh, that and with where their relationship is headed, the fact that Harukawa would likely slam the door in her face if she saw her.
Shirogane sighs, hand stuffed in her left pocket and fiddling with the hidden remote control she had for the Exisals. She's certain she can call one of them from this distance, though her euthanasia plan hinges on one particular robot being too preoccupied to notice a fleeing mech. If she's lucky, it will come. And she will hear it when it does.
In the meantime, she stares dejectedly at her shoes—surface covered in flaky bits of red. Blood—she was vomiting blood. Her experiment's findings had proved interesting, as she wondered how far the damage went. It didn't quell her anger, though—didn't stop the aggressive words she kept choking back from pushing out of her trachea—as blood certainly did Chikako's. Her image was ruined—it would only worsen. And she was the catalyst.
“She's not here, you know.” The scorn is purely impulsive—the control is slipping from her fingers, she savors the last bits of it as she approaches Chikako with caution. Says farewell and relinquishes hope that the rest of this simulation will fall back into her hands.
Hope. What a funny concept: she still had some, buried away inside her ribcage. Hope for a better future—for vengeance, for her rightful place amongst her peers. She had hope in Enoshima.
“You still have hope that she's coming,” she murmurs—almost sympathetically—as she crouches down. Chikako is still holding herself up with her arms—though she observes the muscles shaking underneath the strain. Shirogane holds her chin between a clammy thumb and forefinger, glances again at the door to Harukawa's lab, and back to Chikako. It really is a shame they didn't work out—after the lengths she went to to break out of the molds written for them. She supposes it can't be helped, what with the conditioning Harukawa went through in her youth. Liking a girl was as much a foreign concept to her as love itself.
A click of her tongue later, and Chikako's body has crumbled to the floor. There's no fight left in her, as she mumbles something incoherent to Shirogane. Curiosity prickles in her chest, and she realizes the girl is crying Harukawa's name.
“She's not coming,” even in the wake of her death, Shirogane does not spare her from the harsh reality of it. There is no worth in gently deluding her, not Chikako Atsuko—she can afford her that kindness. Is it a kindness, when Chikako is dying? The words are cold—clipped, a sense of finality as Shirogane picks up on the metal stomping of an overbearing robot carcass. It's over.
This was her fate from the very beginning—ever since she sprained her ankle in the tunnel and had to be hauled out, Shirogane thinks as she climbs into the cockpit. For never being inside of one, the controls aren't hard to understand—there is a simple stick to move—she only takes a step or two closer to the near-corpse of her classmate before finding the button that reads “GUN”. No wonder Momota was able to pilot it around without difficulty. She pushes the button and raises the muzzle.
She can only afford one shot. As soon as it's fired, the others will hear and come running. Her next moves are quick to jump into place as she angles the crosshair just right—square in Chikako's back. Painless. There's no second-guessing herself or pushback from the shot as she fires it and immediately recedes from the hull.
The amount of blood as Shirogane's eyes adjust assures her that Chikako is dead on impact. Hand already in and out of her waistband, she slices through her clothing and skin with her switchback and screams—always acting, she is. Just a graze, though it burns—her tracks are covered. She has a sound alibi in two seconds, clearing her of all suspicion in the midst of the crumbling University—sound only in the knowledge that if she plays her cards right, Saihara will be too preoccupied to investigate a pinned suicide until it’s far too late.
The first person to arrive to the scene is Kiibo, smashing through a window and stalling the Exisal in its tracks with some sort of electricity blocker akin to Iruma’s electrobombs and hammers. At first, he’s proud of himself—then his gaze drops to the growing puddle of blood on the floor. Conflict crosses his face, like he’s not sure what to do, and she knows why. It has everything to do with the missing “ahoge” on the top of his head.
Saihara's footsteps aren't far behind Kiibo's, though before he can even get the words out to ask what happened—utterly predictable—an angrier footfall stops him short. Hurried, aggressive—she, too, is predictable. There's a sound, like papers shuffling against each other, and Shirogane doesn’t have to turn to know that Harukawa dropped the blueprints from Ouma’s room upon seeing Chikako’s bleeding body.
As Harukawa steps forward, the thought briefly crosses her mind that the body discovery announcement isn’t playing. It’s probably due to the fact that all of the Kubz are occupied—or, were—are they still, with Kiibo present? Meeting his gaze, he casts a conflicted glance out the broken window he came through. When Shirogane follows Harukawa's almost hesitant path towards Chikako, it's only then that she realizes she is very much not dead.
Yet.
Initially, Atsuko thinks she’s in hell—her body is on fire, and her leg, most of all. Her body, convulsing and twitching into something she couldn't control, left her entirely on the ground instead of attempting to stay afloat. Her muscles still spasm, and there is a new heat that is blooming outwards of a pinpoint on her thigh. The more it spreads, the more its pain takes clarity and priority. Crimson coats the floor beneath her, soaking wet warmth clinging to her skin, and she comes to the very horrifying realization that she's been shot.
That nobody is going to come save her now.
Fleeting, Atsuko's brain musters what it can to ponder why she didn't hear the shot—only then does she pick up on the painful ringing in her ears. It won't ring to clear, either. It stays, and her head spins, and she can't bring herself up from where she lays. Lying face down in a puddle of her own blood seems like a pretty shitty way to be found, she thinks as she tries to fight the pain so hot and sharp it nearly makes her scream. Biting it back because Shirogane will surely put a bullet through her head if she has proof of life, she belatedly realizes that might not be the worst idea with the kind of pain she's in right now.
Lungs growing increasingly heavy, breaths coming increasingly raspy, Atsuko expels another throatful of blood and paints the tile red with it. All fight in her is gushing out in much the same manner as her blood. As if coming back from poison didn't seem impossible enough, this was, literally, the final nail in her coffin. Here, on soaked, warm tile, she would die. Alone, with the manner of her death twisted into something entirely dishonest and new—that is how she will go. How she will be remembered. By her peers—by Harukawa Maki—she is nothing more than the girl who couldn't handle it all. Who took the easy way out.
The ringing of her ears makes it impossible for her to hear the events that follow. Namely, the footsteps that come and the scream, and the loud commotion from metal against metal—it’s all shut out by tinnitus and the ragged, painful gurgling of her breathing. By the time she’s convinced herself she’s truly and really going to die alone, with the circumstances of her death spun into intricate lies, and has accepted it—that is when she is proven wrong. Horrifically and miserably wrong.
Fate has it out for her, apparently—reminding her of what she doesn’t have as she’s rolled onto her side, and then onto her back. She’s positioned against something solid—a wall, maybe—and she struggles to see through the tears and the blood that coats her face. Something presses against her eyes, and when her vision clears, she sees Harukawa kneeling beside her. She’s not looking at her, and Atsuko focuses on how she undoes her belt. The frantic nature of the action is unfamiliar to her—Harukawa Maki, who was always so composed in her choices—her hands are shaking. If not for her tunneling vision, she wouldn’t have noticed.
Breathing is harder on her back, propped up. Her trachea feels like it’s narrowed into nothing—like she’s taking in air through a straw. The metallic liquid is spilling into it and slowly rising, and hacking it out does nothing to stop the flooding. It becomes even harder when something starts to tighten around her thigh.
Atsuko’s scream is absent of oxygen, a pitiful cry that dissolves into gurgling and gasping. Her hands blindly scratch at the belt, now looped tight around her thigh to stop arterial blood from exiting the wound, but they’re caught by Harukawa’s own. She shifts closer, expression hard and unreadable if not for the devastation hidden in the inky blackness of her pupils. Easing Atsuko against her is easy—she’s never been hard to manipulate—but listening to her, holding her, is harder. She tries to hush the pitiful crying she breaks into, ignoring the way Atsuko’s nails claw desperately into the fabric of her sleeve.
Soaking it with her blood.
As much as she wants to deny it, she knows in the back of her mind that Atsuko is dying. She’s stopped the bleeding coming from her thigh—but she’s coughing it up, now. It dribbles past her lips. Her breathing is wet in nature. Despite trying not to lose another person she has cared about—her efforts are absolutely futile.
She can pretend all she wants that she’s a god amongst men, but she’s still pretending. Her interference isn’t enough to save a life—it’s just enough to end one.
For a moment, the world narrows into just them—Shirogane and Saihara and Kiibo aren’t present. Just them, just her rocking Atsuko as she, naive as she’s become, tries to believe that this isn’t it. That she can take back her mistakes—or at the very least, admit all the things that she hasn’t yet said. Like she did with Momota.
But unlike with Momota, her tongue sits heavy in her throat. She can’t formulate the words. Confession used to be routine to her, but the things that fill her head now are far too sinful to voice. Too hopeful in nature. Atsuko cries out again, quieter and certainly with less enunciation, and Harukawa tries to shush her. Tells her to save her strength.
Atsuko, even in death, is stubborn and insistent. Lowering her ear, she hears the beginnings of a confession from her, and Harukawa pulls away like she’s been burned.
In a way, she has. Her throat burns and tightens in much the same way as her friend’s (?) does, and she can feel the terrifying burn of something oppressive and heavy behind her eyes. She forces a swallow and turns Atsuko on her side when she starts to wheeze again. As if the redirection will get all the blood out and save her.
There are so many things that she could say. That she should.
They won’t come out as she watches Atsuko’s lips turn blue, or her skin drain of the familiar flush she’s used to. She tries to force them, but all that comes out is a choked-up whine. Wounded stray she is, hurt over and over again by the ones she chose to bear her guarded heart to.
Her gaze remains on Atsuko’s cyanotic, discolored lips as she breathes sharply in, struggles to breathe out, and then does not breathe in again. Her eyes—sunken in and dark-rimmed—stare forward at the ceiling. Her stare and her stale breath linger like something she should’ve done long ago.
Fear is no match for even the strongest—Harukawa Maki is nothing but a puppet. Her role is the same as it’s always been—submissive even now. The master, her fear, let her watch helplessly as another girl rotted, bled, and died in her arms.
Harukawa Maki stares at the corpse in front of her. Atsuko.
She is dead.
Maki’s hands are stained with blood—her blood—it is different from the countless triggers pulled and knives drawn, countless lives taken.
Atsu—Chikako's life is different. She can't understand why.
The warmth of her blood disappears in seconds. It sticks to her; every inch of fabric, the soles of her shoes, coagulating in her hair—and it is on her hands. She stares at this girl, this corpse.
Scarlet—the color of her eyes, the ones she hates so much—coats Chikako. Even against the dark fabric of her undershirt, she can see the splotches. It coats the tile beneath them. Hurt pulses in her temples, a warning—maybe that she's clenching her jaw, or that her body is an explosive ticking down to detonation. Her instincts will take over. She will kill the first person in her line of sight, tear them apart with her bare hands and teeth as a replacement for her hurt. Instinct.
She has been trained to kill with a steady hand and mind.
She is left with neither, and the urge—something innate, as if she is nothing more than a predatory animal—to kill remains.
Harukawa Maki has felt grief, hurt, loss, in all of its raw, crushing, visceral forms. Nothing compares to this: staring at the corpse of someone she really barely knew—she barely knew her, why does she feel like this?—it feels like the air in her lungs is limited, like no breath she takes now will satiate her. She is short of air in a way that makes her head spin—she’s been strangled countless times by opponents, but this is entirely different.
There is a weight on her lungs, and it sits there, unmoving. Her throat keeps shrinking—barbed wire wrapped around her neck, she’s a marionette to her grief.
She presses bitten nails into her palm, trying to use the pain as a motivator to keep her steady. To stave off more tears from falling.
She doesn’t understand. Now that it’s over, her mind starts to work—cold, calculating, logical—everything that she lacked only minutes prior. Her belt is around Chikako’s thigh. It stopped the bleeding—she watched it slow. But there’s blood drying around her lips—she considers the possibility of suicide.
Considers that she aggravated one of the Monokubs on purpose. That she willingly drank something. Poison.
Considers that it might be her fault.
There are hands pulling at her arm, trying to get her from the floor—but her vision tunnels.
Harukawa Maki is the Ultimate Assassin. She has countless lives on her hands, the number now only an assumption—does that make her a monster, that she can’t remember every single life she’s taken?—but the possibility of one sticks its claws into her beating heart and holds on for dear life, bloodletting. Slowly letting the life drain from her as she’s helpless to watch—just as she did Chikako.
Ouma Kokichi, Momota Kaito, and Chikako Atsuko. Three deaths she’s had a hand in, now.
She hates that Ouma was—is right. She really was nothing more than a tool used to hurt people. To kill. Merely an attack dog, her purpose was to rip limb from limb and watch as blood came from flesh—by a weapon or her teeth or hands—the method didn’t matter. It was always her behind the hurt, the stench of death.
With stony acceptance, Maki finally catches her breath and looks up to meet Saihara’s frightened gaze. Frightened. Does he think she will kill him? She thinks she might; switching her brain off and finally letting her impulses control her, letting her rational thinking take the backseat—it’s plausible. She’s still a machine. It would be so easy to just let go—to give in to the hurt. Let it consume her.
No, that’s not why he’s afraid. Or crying.
Her hearing finally comes back to her, everything static—robbing her of her most reliable sense—since the moment she stopped breathing. And he’s pleading with her.
Saihara Shuichi—the most compassionate executioner she knows, he is pleading with her like he plead with Gokuhara, or Akamatsu. Like he is afraid for her. It takes only a moment for Maki to realize why he is, why Kiibo and Shirogane are all staring at her with varying degrees of anxiety painting their expressions.
She’s unstable—truly a bomb set to explode. They all know what she is capable of. They all know that her conditioning could kick in, and she could massacre them. Rip skin from muscle from bone, metal from wire.
When Kaito died, she had Monokuma to picture as nothing more than wires and dented, scratched metal. He was the cause. Ouma was the cause, but he was already dead. But now? Kiibo had stalled the Exisal. She has nobody to threaten, nobody but the four innocent pairs of eyes watching her.
“Maki,” Shuichi repeats. His voice is soft, it makes her stomach churn. She looks briefly at him, over her shoulder, and then looks back at the corpse.
The corpse.
Is that just what she is now?
Countless corpses flash in her mind. Young girls just like Chikako. She shouldn’t be any different. She shouldn’t. And even if Harukawa Maki had a hand in this death, she had directly caused so many others—so what is the difference?
“Maki, please”—I love you—”get up.”
“Maki, let me take”—I love you—”you to the bathroom.”
“Maki, are you”—I love you—”listening?”
Those precious whispered words bounce off the inside of her skull, echoing and getting louder, overtaking all conversation. Chikako spent her last breath, her fading energy, to say them. To confess the things that Maki was too afraid to say—to either of them.
Maki’s standing. Her back is turned on her, but her mind is screaming at her not to leave this hallway. Not to leave her. Her hands tingle, numb. Their voices are background noise. She breathes in, breathes out, and stares down at her hands. Tan skin smeared red. Bitten nails with red caked underneath.
A hand is on her shoulder; she looks up. Shirogane regards her kindly, and Maki zeroes in on the cut on her face. A stray bullet wound—they had tried to get her, too. She breathes again, and it shakes in her chest under the pressure.
It’s fresh, still scarlet. Without a word, Maki takes her hand and pulls her down the hallway.
“M-Maki—?”
She doesn’t listen, and keeps walking. They’re in the girls’ bathroom on the first floor, and Maki has paid no attention to the last three minutes of potential protest. She moves to the supply closet, searches for a moment before returning, first aid kit in hand. Shirogane is stunned, and her lips are moving but she doesn’t pay any mind to the noise. She’s protesting, grabbing Maki’s wrist, but Maki easily pushes her away. Alcohol, cotton ball, bandage.
And she thinks she’s done—turns her back to the other intending to leave. Shirogane catches her wrist, her nails dig into flesh in a way that feels all too familiar to her, and Maki pauses. She never believed in God, but she swears she sees the ghost of someone else. She blinks. Turns.
“Let me clean you up.”
She wants to do it herself—go back to her dorm and stand under scalding hot water until her skin is red from the heat and not her blood. But they don’t have that kind of time anymore. She stays.
Lets Shirogane Tsumugi wash away the traces of her. Maki stares at a stain, even after rounds of soaking and scrubbing, cleverly hidden by the color of her shirt—blood remains. The fabric is wet underneath her fingertips, discolored in a way only she would know, and stained with her. Without chemical interference, she lingers—stained deep into her blouse like a flame that won’t snuff.
Try as she may, Shirogane cannot pull Chikako from the fibers of Maki’s being.