Chapter Text
Loving Kamimura Kazutoshi is a special kind of pain.
That is a reality that Hasegawa Ken immediately prepares himself for. From the very moment they cross paths within the dining hall, the teenager begins to mentally brace himself. No relationship in a psychotic killing game can come without pain, after all, and something tells him they won’t be given any mercies here.
Perhaps it would be best to distance himself, he wonders as they fall into a comfortable banter the likes of which he’s never experienced. He cannot allow himself to get too attached, he worries, though he begins chuckling about fighting Wada the next second. He decides that he should definitely leave, but Kamimura—no, Kazutoshi is promising to keep him safe, and appreciating his presence, and Ken is offering to stand guard outside his dorm before he even knows it.
Kamimura Kazutoshi is magnetic. Opposite poles attract, after all, and that’s exactly what he thinks they were.
It starts out as a growing ache, like one of the sore spots in his back when he forgets to crack it. Where he struggles to make himself heard within their sixteen-student group, Kazutoshi happily yells over them every day, expletives and all. He’s brave, if not a bit argumentative, and nobody can tell him what to do. Hasegawa admires that about him.
God, and he’s hilarious. He’s never had to stifle so much laughter until meeting this boy; Kazutoshi’s comments are so dry and pointed that he catches himself chuckling even during imperative discussions. He never understands why everyone else gives him such weird looks for it.
“Dear god, that polish is horrendous!” Nakamigawa gasps in passing one day, staring wide-eyed at Kamimura’s chipped nails like they’ve personally offended him. “Kamizama, you have to let me redo those.”
“I would rather drink three gallons of milk and shit out my entire body weight than let you redo my fucking nails,” Kazutoshi saus, and Hasegawa snorts.
Ken likes to make him laugh, too; it becomes something of an algorithm in his head, and it isn’t long until it can accurately predict the exact kind of snide comment to earn that slightly hoarse, hysterical laughter that always pitches high at the end of every breath.
“I-if you wanted to see so much shit, you could’ve, um, just let him do it,” he mumbles as they walk away, and tries not to smile too wide when Kazutoshi has to physically force the noise down.
It’s a sound that, cheesy as it might’ve been, is too good for this place, and it makes the quiz show contestant remember that he really needs to start cracking his back.
Where Ken is meek, Kazutoshi is brave. Where Ken is awkward, Kazutoshi weaves through conversation with a jagged-edge charm that can draw anyone in. When Ken frets over an especially worrying thought, or gets up one too many times to make sure the door is locked, Kazutoshi is pragmatic. He brings calm like it is fact. Ken is messy and Kazutoshi is clean. Ken talks and Kazutoshi listens.
They are parallel lines, never meant to intersect, but the collision is painful and inevitable.
It takes a while for the boy to realize that the other is hurting, too—physically and mentally, that is—and perhaps that’s what first turns the pain up a notch. It claws at the pits and hollows of his chest; in that, it is almost like anxiety, but something about this feels different. Worse.
“This student has made, and failed, multiple attempts on their own life,” the rabbit declares.
Kazutoshi does not meet his eye as he presses the button. The quiz show contestant in him wishes it had been pressed faster, and everything else wishes it wasn’t pressed at all. The latter grows to drown everything else out as Kamimura sobs and shrieks after the game, tearing his hands away from Ken’s grasp to scrub desperately at his eyes, begging and pleading and asking to go home.
As he tugs the boy into a short, grounding hug, every tear soaking through his suit jacket burns like acid—though at least that’s a different kind of pain than the nagging feeling that only seems to intensify with every alarm that blares.
It takes him the entirety of “Decision Game” to realize that this feeling is worry, and it takes him weeks afterward to understand that this is perhaps the most painful thing about loving Kamimura Kazutoshi. The boy is an enigma of things to fret about, considering both his mental health (globally, only one-third of people suffering from depression receive treatment) and physical state (worldwide, people with more mental distress than the average individual). Every headache or dizzy spell makes him tense all over, evoking just as much heart-wrenching concern as the last.
As Kazutoshi slumps over in his desk for the third time in a row, mumbling stubborn incoherencies despite being unable to keep himself upright, Ken cannot help but recite loops of information underneath his breath, speculating and agonizing over what could possibly be wrong.
“Kamimura, enough!”
He doesn’t even know who’s speaking; they just have to let him think. “J-just… calm down. For a minute!”
Excessive amounts of fatigue, no clear stressor besides the punishments…
“I-I— wh— e-excuse me?!” Sasaki splutters, and Hasegawa’s gaze snaps up, flustered.
He stammers wildly, bowing slightly in apology. “Ah— ah! Uh, s-sorry!”
The rabbit’s instructions derail his train of thought for another long moment, but when Kamimura stirs, he immediately bends down to do damage control.
“M’sorry…” the boy rasps, and the contestant continues to catalogue: slurred speech, drooping facial expressions, slight lack of awareness. It’s becoming difficult to ignore Tamba’s nasty glare in his peripheral vision, not to mention how Sasaki’s eyes are flicking toward the pair with an obviously calculating undertone.
“C-can you tell me what’s going on?” he murmurs, resisting the urge to help prop the cleaner up.
“No…” Dizziness, extra-pale skin… and stubbornness, of course.
Receiving a slash across the cheek certainly stings, but juxtaposed with learning that Kazutoshi’s blood apparently doesn’t clot—hemophilia, he assumes—it becomes an afterthought. Worry continues to dig and scrape at his insides while Tsuno’s trembling hands patch him up, and honestly, all he can think about is his friend’s trembling voice as he’d tried to refuse.
The brand, in its own vile way, is a relief from that concern. Banishment from the dorms would have been just the beginning; that isn’t even mentioning the sickening, cold wave of dread he feels just imagining that iron pressing against Kamimura’s back. The way his flesh pops and sizzles is nauseating enough on its own. This way, at least he’s successfully done something to protect Kazutoshi.
All he can do now is lie in the medbay, hissing as disinfectant meets ruined skin, worry continuing to peak as the cleaner’s voice peaks with anger in turn. At least something good comes out of the encounter: Kazutoshi divulges some of his conditions, and at the end of it all, the contestant succeeds in making him laugh. It’s hoarse, hysterical, and pitches high at the end like always, and Hasegawa Ken feels that dull ache return with a vengeance. He won’t ever be able to crack his back again.
Kamimura is beautiful, too. He doesn’t realize it at first; attractiveness isn’t something he’s ever naturally focused on, but the realization is like an asymptomatic virus—it creeps in and strikes when he least expects it. Before he knows it, he finds himself staring: the gorgeous, rich blue slowly losing the war to black roots, bangs that are just a smidge uneven and clearly cut in a bathroom mirror, those extra-long strands swaying in midair, ethereal, like the appendages of a moon jellyfish, rich red irises and striking layers of eyeliner…
Sometimes, he catches Hasegawa looking and glares up at him with that little crease between his brows and a slightly scrunched-up nose. It reminds him of a kitten, honestly, but admitting that would mean nothing short of certain death.
He used to think that loving someone here would mean the same thing, but just maybe, they would be okay.
Ken finds himself caught on that word once it first crosses his mind: love. Is that really how he feels about Kazutoshi? They’ve only known each other for about a week; is it even probable to develop feelings for someone so quickly? Perhaps the sleep deprivation is breaking down his immune system—that would explain the feverish heat to his cheeks, the fact that Kamimura’s voice is always the loudest thing even in a crowd of people, how Hasegawa will zone out just watching his friend twirl those choppy sidelocks around his fingers in such a mesmerizing motion…
“Dude, hello? Earth to Hasegawa?” Kazutoshi is snapping his fingers right in front of his face.
“What?”
“The fuck do you mean what?” he says, incredulous, folding his arms. “You’ve been staring at me for, like, a minute straight. What is your problem?”
“I— uh— w-well, I was just— y’know, I was…” the contestant stammers, flexing his hands awkwardly and trying to settle on something that isn’t too telling, “...l-looking at your hair?”
Kamimura blinks. “What.”
“I-I don’t know, i-it’s just— it’s really nice! It’s nice hair! Y-you have good hair!” Hasegawa wants to die right here on the spot. “I used to, um, b-braid my older sister’s hair. I-I was thinking about… about how n-nice it would be to… um, you— you know.”
The crime scene cleaner stares. His brows unfurrow, then furrow again, his mouth opening and closing, and Ken braces for impact.
Instead, he ducks away and says, “Whatever. Stop being weird.”
“R-right!”
Kazutoshi does, in fact, let him braid his hair that evening, on the condition that he ‘fixes it’ afterward. He sits behind the boy, legs awkwardly folded, and rakes his fingers through the slightly tangled strands.
“D-did you know that the tradition of braiding hair dates back to five-thousand years ago in some African cultures?” he eventually pipes up to break the silence.
“Of course you even have facts about braids,” Kamimura scoffs without malice, “weirdo.”
“It’s really fascinating stuff!” He carefully flips one bushel of hair over another, tongue unconsciously jutting out. “T-the different patterns and hairstyles were used to differentiate between tribes, a-and they also indicated someone’s religion, marital status, wealth, age…”
“Huh.”
The room settles back into silence after that. Ken cannot help the trembling of his hands; Kazutoshi’s hair really is like a jellyfish—it feels almost electrifying to touch.
“Got any trivia about why hospital beds are so fucking uncomfortable?” the teenager in question asks, patting the thin medbay mattress they’re sitting on for emphasis. “Seriously, my ass hurts.”
Hasegawa laughs and begins rattling off hospital-related facts, something aching and aching every time he surprises the cleaner with a fact he doesn’t know. This continues until the braid reaches its end, after which they realize they don’t have a hair tie; Kamimura excuses himself to the restroom and comes back with one that he found on the sink.
“Finders, keepers,” he says casually, winding it back and slinging it right at Ken.
It stings the bridge of his nose, but Kazutoshi’s giggles hurt so much more.
The next morning, though, hurts like nothing ever had.
He’s always wanted to see Kamimura in his element, doing what he did best, but this wasn’t—shouldn’t—cannot be how it happens. He— he was supposed to protect her; she requested his help, she was scared and desperate and all he’d done was go eat dinner when she asked.
Tsuno and Wada would hate him if they knew. Everyone would hate him if they knew.
Isono’s skull is broken against the linoleum. Bloody fragments of it catch glares off the fluorescents, glinting like shards of broken china, and all Ken can think about is how this wouldn’t have happened if he’d gotten dinner with her instead.
Why was Kamimura so insistent that she was using him? She never pressured him into anything, never hung around him too much, and selflessly passed her only chance of safety onto Wada. She was counting on him to protect her, while in the meantime, she was too busy protecting someone else.
Why did he listen to Kazutoshi?
Surely he was just trying to keep Hasegawa safe, but— but Isono should have been safe, too. It isn’t fair to trade his life for hers. It isn’t fair to trade her life for anything. He should have been there; he couldn’t even keep her alive for a fucking week. It was pathetic. He was pathetic.
Why did he listen to Kazutoshi?
Despite being the one who suggested they sleep, something about it feels so deeply wrong. They will wake up; Isono will not. Their dorms are warm; Isono’s body is so, so cold. Isono is alone; Ken sleeps by himself in kind, if for nothing, than to give her some semblance of solidarity. It’s the least he can do, and if his dreams are filled with shattered porcelain and tangled pools of orange, he tells nobody.
They would hate him if they knew.
The faint stench of copper trails him to the auditorium, though Sasaki follows at an even closer pace. He cannot stand still, nor can he stop his mind from racing now that it isn’t quite as restrained by sleep deprivation, but her sharp tone is amplified just so by the acoustics that it becomes impossible to focus on anything else. He becomes somewhat glad for her assertiveness, if not a bit uncomfortable as the target of it.
She is loud and commanding in the auditorium, but the direction within the locker room is meant for him and him alone.
“Suspect everyone,” she orders, and the accusation sticks with him closer than anything else.
Anxiety is an unfortunately close relation of his, and their predicament has it on a perpetual high-alert. The best way he can visualize it is a squirming little bug buried in his chest; he once tried explaining this to Mao, who called it completely disgusting, of course—but this is different. The creature refuses to stop screaming and thrashing and bucking now, desperate to get him away from everyone (except for Kazutoshi), never say the wrong thing to anyone (except for Kazutoshi), and keep a constant eye on his food and dorm and personal belongings (except when Kazutoshi is around).
The cleaner is the only one he feels safe with, but— but oh my god, they weren’t even together the whole night, he— he went to the restroom, right? What if—no—
“She’s just playing you, you know. She’s just trying to make sure there’s somebody in here who’ll jump in front of a knife for her.”
No, Kazutoshi wouldn’t do something like that. He couldn’t do something like that. Ken would have known, right? He wasn’t gone for very long, right? God, why didn’t he take note of how long it was?
Isono died, and he doesn’t even know if his closest friend can be cleared. He’s so useless.
In the trial, he doesn’t— cannot speak unless spoken to. Kamimura is so collected and inquisitive; he lets the intelligence that Hasegawa always knew was there shine, but that ache he would normally feel in response is buried beneath thick, suffocating layers of fear.
There’s no reason to be paranoid, he tells himself over and over, it wouldn’t even make sense.
“We’re not supposed to lie during a trial, right?”
Suspect everyone. Sasaki’s voice rings like bells, over and over.
“Then why is Kamimura allowed to do it?”
What?
“The hell?” Kazutoshi snaps beside him, scowling. “I didn’t lie.”
“Maybe it was more Hasegawa’s lie, actually,” Chiba continues, tilting her head. “You said Kamimura left the medbay once or twice to go to the bathroom. He’s not allowed in the dorms, right? And the school bathrooms are closed at night…”
Ken feels something icy-cold snake its way around his ribcage. He opens his mouth.
“...so where did you really go?”
It’s such an innocent question from possibly the most innocent person in the room, yet the contestant feels as though she physically strikes him. He wavers in the silence, his mouth working soundlessly, before he manages a weak, “Kazutoshi…?”
“I— hold on a minute, you’re completely blowing things out of proportion.” The boy in question does not meet his eye; he glares right across the trial grounds, a crease growing between his brows. “I just left to walk around for a bit.”
Why would he just… walk around for no reason? More than that, why did he lie right to Ken’s face about it?
The coldness creeps down into the grooves of his spine. Where did he get the hair tie?
He never questioned him, never tracked the length of his disappearances, didn’t even wonder who the elastic belonged to. God, he knows the school bathrooms are closed at night; why didn’t he figure it out? Why didn’t he think?
Why did he listen to Kazutoshi?
“...kitchen, that’s where,” Hama is saying. “He killed her.”
Isono is dead, and he doesn’t even know if Kamimura can be cleared.
“I-it would definitely explain why he knows so much about the crime scene…”
“I’m a fucking crime scene cleaner!”
Hasegawa is so worthless.
“Right,” that sharp, commanding tone interrupts, “a cleaner, not an investigator. You’ve been playing detective all day, but you’re not actually a detective. You’re a cleaner.”
Kazutoshi visibly bristles at the observation, flounders for a moment, then bursts out: “Fuck off! You think I don’t know that?! I’m still more qualified than half the people you’re letting run this fucking trial! Tamba? Chiba? Are you fucking serious?!”
“Where did you go?” Tsuno’s mouth trembles around the words, demeanor stonier than he’s ever seen. “If you didn’t go to the kitchen, then where did you go?”
She would hate him if she knew.
“I went to the storage room,” Kazutoshi mumbles after a beat, hands clenched at his sides. “I was just grabbing a few things. It’s not a big deal.”
“Well, that’s pretty easy to fact-check, now, isn’t it?” Sasaki shifts her gaze to him, expectantly, as if she knows he cannot corroborate that. She’s known all along. “Hasegawa, did he bring anything back?”
Ken’s hands tremble, white-knuckled, against the wooden railing of his podium. He chances one more look at his friend—who still refuses to acknowledge him—and lingers on the hair. His sidelocks sway in midair, hypnotic, raked clean of last night’s weavings. He tears his eyes away, just like Kamimura must have torn the braid out.
“N—” He stares at the floor. “no…”
As Kazutoshi finally meets his eye, gaze flicking over in an infinitesimal moment of panic, Hasegawa decides the most painful part of loving him is when it is all, inevitably, torn away.
The cleaner eventually screams in his face, furious and disbelieving in the way Ken knows is a mask for something deeper; when it all crumbles to an elevated heartrate, he finds that his hands move of their own accord. He deserves the shove that came his way, all explicits and vitriol.
He deserves to suffer through agonizing, heart-wrenching guilt when all his suspicions crumble, too—because how could he? How could he ever have doubted Kazutoshi, even for a second?
Why did he listen to Sasaki?
What he doesn’t deserve is the privilege of catching and cradling Kamimura when he falls, raking back loose strands of flyaway hair and bracing the boy against his leg. What he doesn’t deserve is the opportunity to completely exonerate him, despite the accompanying cost.
What he doesn’t deserve is Kazutoshi’s forgiveness, but somehow, he gets it anyway.
The experience teaches him another difference between them: Ken is weak, and Kazutoshi is strong. Everything begins to ache even further after that; this time, it’s for more reasons than one.
It’s just like his friend said: he can think for himself. He shouldn’t have let Sasaki worm her way into his thoughts like that; she was manipulating him from the start, and he should have recognized that. Everything she did during the investigation—wasting time digging around in the mattresses, the bloody towel, commending his intelligence—it was fake. It was all fake.
But the cleaner forgives him. It’s okay, even if he kneels in the storage room heaving out breath after panicked breath, Sasaki’s bloody clothes a bundle in some distant corner. Everything is so, so far away as he gasps for air, and the excuse he gives when he comes back is feeble, just like he is.
Kazutoshi is a great listener, he ponders as they overlook the pool later that day, nursing the ache in his back that has suddenly returned with a vengeance. It only seems to sharpen so acutely when his gaze drifts down to the water, the memories of a night spent sneaking around in the dark a lifetime ago and just yesterday all at the same time.
Around Kamimura, it never seems to matter what he says. Any fact on his mind, any topic that he finds particularly captivating at the moment, and whenever he happens to blurt it out: it never matters. It doesn’t matter to him, in turn, how Kamimura responds; sometimes it’s a seethe of disgust or an exclamation of surprise, and sometimes, it’s just a ‘huh’ of acknowledgement.
He begins talking about Reina, too, just this past day. He weeps about the lost reward and about the sister he mourns, and Kazutoshi listens patiently.
What he doesn’t listen to, however, is anything regarding the state of his own health—and god, Hasegawa doesn’t understand why.
He’s already so, so stubborn on a good day; the only help he’ll halfway accept is Ken catching him when he falls, and that was to avoid something as serious as a concussion. When it comes to medication, mobility, or even comfort, the teenager finds himself facing a wall that he didn’t think was between them anymore.
When the new motive is announced, that wall turns into a canyon—and he doesn't understand why! The effects of heightened epinephrine are severe enough for someone who isn’t chronically ill; the effects range from increased levels of anxiety and headaches to tremors and vomiting. Some of the symptoms, he quickly realizes, even affect Kamimura more specifically. Muscle weakness? Elevated heart rate? These are problems for him on the good days.
That nagging, gnawing feeling, suppressed by the intensity of the recent trial, roars back to life as if it’d never left. It’s cold, this time, like a feeling of dread.
Kazutoshi really is too strong for his own good.
On the first day, he’s okay; he hassles Hasegawa about the books on his desk, forcing him to return the ones he hadn’t been studying in a while and organize the rest. He only sits down to collect himself a handful of times, and whenever Ken tries to offer something, anything, he’s swiftly denied.
“Kazutoshi, please, I— I-I’m worried about you,” he pleads on the seventh occurrence, recalling how the same statement worked so well before Isono’s death.
“Well, don’t be,” the boy in question dismisses, an edge to his voice Ken cannot quite pinpoint.
Still, he presses further. “Are you going to be okay…?”
“God, Ken, will you get off my ass?!” Kazutoshi snaps, standing up as if to prove his point. He wobbles for a couple seconds, then folds his arms, glaring at full strength. “I’m fine.”
“R-right…”
Kamimura isn’t suited to be a killer—not that he’d ever be one, anyway. Hasegawa has long since scribbled down who best fits into the killer or victim category, and his friend is a shoe-in for the latter. The thought makes him nauseous enough on a good day; now, the cleaner is easier to kill than ever.
What if someone snaps from the epinephrine, just like Sasaki? What if Kazutoshi pisses off the wrong person one day? What if the dosage becomes so strong that he becomes completely defenseless? What if the dosage becomes so strong it’s outright fatal?
That squirming little bug, now fueled by adrenaline, is thrashing and kicking and tearing him apart like never before. It’s the nagging and gnawing feeling he’s had all along; it is worry, it is fear, it is shaking hands and gasping breaths. It is thinking about Kazutoshi, dead and bloody, or Mao turning the city upside down to find him. It is tangled orange and interlocked blue. It is suffocating.
He has to be there—and god, he knows Kamimura despises it, but it’s the only way to give himself even a semblance of peace. This way, he’ll know if something happens; this way, nobody else will die on his watch. It’s the only way to still his racing thoughts and his epinephrine-boosted, too-fast heartbeat.
Needless to say, he stays in Kazutoshi’s room in the days that follow, glancing up from his reading material every so often. The headaches get worse, and the bouts of weakness become near-constant, and there are so many cataplexy attacks that he cannot count them on one hand anymore.
They argue. It occurs several times a day now, and they only stop when Kazutoshi shuts him down or physically shuts down. Hasegawa despises being the cause of his attacks; it reminds him of Isono’s trial, wherein Kamimura had crumbled at the mere prospect of Ken being against him. He’s trying to be with him now, but that doesn't seem to make it any better.
He doesn’t understand why he won’t just let him help.
“Because it makes me feel like shit, Ken!” Kazutoshi all but screams eventually, and the contestant flinches backward, hands awkwardly hovering as if to shield himself. He doesn’t know which is worse: the yelling, or the wilting that comes soon afterward, defeat leaking through every syllable.
The most painful part of loving Kazutoshi Kamimura is the guilt, he’s sure—the guilt of being unable to help and the guilt of wanting to help. It is the guilt of making his only friend feel bad about himself. It is the guilt of having doubted him in more ways than one.
He doesn’t deserve to stay, and perhaps he never has, but he’s allowed to anyway. Maybe Kazutoshi’s forgiveness, despite everything, makes everything hurt just a little bit more.
When the chime of the body discovery goes off the next morning, dragging him from warped, anxiety-ridden dreams of braided hair in a pool of blood, Hasegawa starts pounding on his friend’s door before he consciously knows what he is doing.
“Kazutoshi!” He waits half a second, then slams his whole fist down against the wood—once, twice, a thousand times until the side of his hand aches. “K-Kazutoshi!”
“What the fuck,” an unmistakably groggy voice answers, and he deflates. “I’m actually going to strangle you.”
“Oh, thank god,” he wheezes, head bowed against the doorframe, “thank god, thank god…”
“Ken?” The cleaner’s voice is sharper now; more alert.
Though his mouth opens to respond, he’s cut off by the door swinging open underneath him; he stumbles and draws himself back, now face-to-face with frizzy bedhead and smudged eyeliner. Beneath it all is Kazutoshi, here and alive, squinting up at him with that rare, concerned edge to his features.
“S-someone’s dead,” he blurts out before Kamimura can say anything, wringing his hands, “I-I don’t know who it is— I-I-I thought maybe— I-I’m sorry.”
He observes a million different, miniscule shifts in the boy’s expression, but can pinpoint none. Instead, one slender, chipped-polish hand takes his mid-motion, thumb running circles on the back of his hand, and he finally finds the space to let out a breath.
“Come on,” Kazutoshi murmurs, gently tugging him down the hallway, “we don’t have time.”
The trial is excruciating. He wasn’t close with Chiba by any means, but she was an incredibly sweet girl; she was working so hard to get into the vent, too, for everyone’s sake. Something about her reminds him of Reina, in a way.
Kamimura is under scrutiny again, but this time, Hasegawa stands firm in his position. It doesn’t matter that he took trips to the library; it doesn’t matter that he went to bed in his own room. It isn’t a problem that Kazutoshi used his toolkit—they already have rules about what he can and cannot touch in the cleaner’s room, so it’s not like that fact surprised him.
He’s more certain of Kazutoshi’s innocence than anything else in the world, and when all is said and done, the ‘murder’ turns out to be nothing more than a horrific accident. He shifts away from the execution and feels a hand take his once more.
“I have genuinely never seen someone be that bad at lying.” Kazutoshi breaks the silence as they stumble back down the dorm hallway, squeezing his trembling hand once before releasing it. “But thanks, I guess. For having my back.”
“Y-yeah,” Hasegawa stammers, missing the warmth of his palm already. “O-of course.”
Kazutoshi is passionate, too, and extraordinarily intelligent. Though he isn’t a trivia buff by any means, he so frequently meets Ken bar-for-bar with deductions and predictions—not to imply that Hasegawa was anywhere near as intelligent!—and in trials, he becomes the brightest person in the room. Besides, he’ll rave about the topics that do interest him whenever prompted.
Chemistry, for example, is a subject that completely captivates him; when they enter the lab on the second floor of the school, it’s like a switch completely flips. Kazutoshi lights up, glowing like the sun itself as he flits between different pieces of equipment and labeled containers. He gestures animatedly about various chemicals, smiling wide enough at moments that it crinkles his eyes.
God, he cannot take his eyes off him. Kamimura Kazutoshi is the entire world, and Hasegawa Ken is just a moon in orbit. He really is in love, isn't he?
Kamimura Kazutoshi is everything. He is brave, if not a bit argumentative; he is hilarious, beautiful, a great listener, strong, intelligent, and passionate. He is everything, and loving him is a special kind of pain, because he’s in another galaxy compared to Ken. That dull ache is the result of yearning for a distant star—if he puts his hand out, it’s almost like he could cradle it in his palm.
He’ll never be able to reach it, and that hurts more than anything. Kamimura Kazutoshi could never love somebody like him; there is nothing more to Hasegawa than meets the eye. He is clod underfoot. He is a cloud whisked away by the breeze. He is impermanent and unremarkable.
As long as he can just stay, watching Kazutoshi shine like a supernova, that’s enough.
However, not even Kamimura’s brilliance can stop it from making its presence known.
Hasegawa cannot relax. Even sitting in the chemistry lab, protected by his friend’s presence, his leg bounces and shakes beneath the table; he picks at his nails, mind drifting from Kazutoshi’s intellectual rambling before he ever realizes he’s doing it. He insists on sitting where he can see the entrance to the laboratory. He locks and re-locks his doors—no, scratch that, he just stays in Kazutoshi’s dorm instead.
“Alright, fuck it, I’m tired,” the cleaner complains one night, holding his sketchbook out. “God, just being in a room with some of these people is exhausting. Morons, I tell you.”
“Not nice,” he chides without thinking, putting the sketchbook in its designated spot on the desk.
Kazutoshi grumbles unintelligibly, sliding his hoodie off in Ken’s peripheral vision. He isn’t paying much attention; the sounds of teeth-brushing and the toilet flushing are nothing more than background noise as he continues skimming down the page.
Despite the existence of technology to make water use more efficient and maintain water quality, the ongoing negative human impact on aquatic environments is widespread…
He finally looks up when Kazutoshi coughs audibly, just to find the boy sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at him like he’s just missed something exceedingly obvious. “Y-yes?”
“Dude, I’m going to sleep. Go.” He waves a hand in the general direction of the door.
“W-what?”
He doesn’t really want to go. What if something happens? What if their dorms are broken into? What if they’re caught off-guard by something uncontrollable, just like Chiba was? What if—
“Did you hit your fucking head? Get out of my room,” Kamimura snaps, glare equal parts irritation and confusion. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“W-wait, but— but what if—” He stumbles on a lump in his throat, a too-sharp breath. “I-if something happens— a-a-and not because I think you can’t h-handle yourself, I know you can, I’m just—”
The teenager’s face softens, just a bit. “Ken, I’m gonna be fine. The doors are pick-proof, remember? Nobody’s coming in, and if they do, I’ll scream and Hayashi can beat their ass for me.”
“That— I would beat their ass for you,” he mumbles, earning a little snort.
“You wish, trivia guy,” Kazutoshi snarks, squeezing his hand just once.
Despite his friend’s reassurance, it takes hours to get to sleep. When he awakes after just a few hours of rest, he takes his medication—the third-to-last full dosage—and a note from Okazaki has already been shoved underneath the gap of his door.
It’s odd, isn’t it, to spill all his worries to who is possibly the most unnerving, hard-to-read individual in the school? But she asks questions, and he answers, and it might be a little cathartic to get said concerns off his chest—sans the way she tilts her head, reminding him that he came here alone in the early morning hours, which is yet another thing to worry about now.
What matters is that Kazutoshi won’t be any more burdened by Hasegawa’s anxiety than he already is. What matters is seeing the cleaner’s face light up all over again, raving excitedly in between mouthfuls of steaming hot, freshly-cooked dishes. What matters is that, despite everything, he’s still the brightest thing in a room full of people.
The cold dulls that radiant light to a feeble, flickering shimmer.
Just like every motive before it, the effects seem so deliberate in targeting him: the symptoms of so many physical illnesses are only exacerbated by the rapidly dropping temperatures. His heart, for one, starts working overtime to combat to keep his blood flowing; just like the epinephrine, it makes his cataplectic episodes more frequent as the days go on. The cold affects everyone’s muscles and overall movement, but to Kazutoshi, it’s debilitating.
Hasegawa is worried sick. God, Kamimura is shaking like a leaf just the very next morning, and no amount of hoodies or storage room blankets seem to make a difference. His fingers, pale to the point of translucence, fumble with the hem of the comforter as he tries to draw it tighter.
He takes them into his own hands, trying to press some circulation into the joints and checking for any signs of hypothermia or frostbite—none, thank god, and he isn’t going to pass out either. But god, he’s just so cold to the touch; Ken has to do something. The cleaner can barely even breathe.
“A-alright, you’re looking okay,” he murmurs, pressing Kazutoshi’s hands back into the cocoon of blankets like they’re something precious and valuable. “C’mon, I have an idea.”
“Huh?” Kamimura croaks, looking up at him dazedly.
Maybe the cold is getting to his head, but in that moment, Hasegawa cannot bring himself to care. Maybe it’s getting to Kazutoshi’s, too, because he falls uncharacteristically slack as Ken eases him down against the unmade bed, eyes bleary and half-lidded.
“W-wh— what are you d-doing,” he stammers after a second, nose scrunched up in that confused-kitten way that makes Hasegawa melt.
“Easy, easy,” the contestant murmurs in lieu of answering, “c’mon…”
He only makes himself comfortable once ensuring each blanket is carefully tucked around his friend, who is so close he can count each individual mole, scar, and freckle like they’re beautiful stars in an intricate constellation.
Arms in midair, he hesitates, canine clamped down on his lip. “I-is this okay? J-j-just to get you warm.”
Kazutoshi’s breath fogs in the air, wafting over the contestant’s face. They’re so close; he is closer than Ken ever thought he could be, somehow no longer aloft in the distant sky. His eyelashes flutter, gaze flicking upward to his prone arms, then down to meet his eyes.
“S-s-sure. W-whatever.” His voice is faint, but his cheeks have regained a hint of color.
Hasegawa Ken cradles a star in his arms that morning. Kazutoshi’s head slots perfectly into the space just beneath his chin, strands of hair tickling his cheeks and a pleasant, citrusy smell bleeding into the edge of every inhale. Blue dye is certainly staining his skin, and he’s forgotten to remove his tie.
A trembling arm snakes around him, and everything is okay. He tugs Kazutoshi a little closer.
“S-stupid fuckin’ idea,” comes that snark he knew was coming, and he huffs a laugh.
“It’s warm,” is all he gives in response, and Kamimura goes quiet for a second.
“Yeah. It is.”
Hasegawa has always heard that victims of hypothermia feel a brief, intense flash of heat just before their internal organs shut down completely—and surely that’s what he’s experiencing. Everything is so, so warm, like his mother’s fireplace and Shibuya street food fresh from the grill.
He wouldn’t care if he died right here. He wishes they could stay like this forever, safe and warm and free from everything outside, and perhaps the greatest pain of all is knowing that they cannot.
Later that same day, he suggests they sneak up to the woodshop…
(“Hasegawa! You’re so bad!”
“I-it has ventilation! Shut up!”)
…to find somewhere private that isn’t one of their dorm rooms. Hama and Wada have established regular book clubs in the library that become very animated, Nakamigawa and Ojima keep paying visits to the art room, and someone is almost always in the kitchen or medbay nowadays. With so many people, the school feels downright claustrophobic.
When Kamimura speaks in that room, it feels like the walls are closing in on him.
It isn’t just the prospect of being alone that is so terrifying. It’s so much more than that; it’s that Kazutoshi speaks about himself as if he is something to be loathed. The prospect of him being so lonely, too, makes his blood curdle: why isn’t anyone there for him? His aunt, a teacher, or any one of his peers at school? Why can nobody, Kazutoshi included, see how incredible he is?
Kazutoshi wants to die, and that is the most horrifying thing Hasegawa has ever heard.
So he begs. He raises his voice and lets himself sob, snot and tears dribbling down his face in between scarce gulps of air, because he needs his friend to know that he is not only needed, but wanted. Loved.
He takes Kazutoshi’s hands, pressing them against his own heartbeat, and tells him to stay.
Kazutoshi says, “Okay.”
It gets colder, and Kamimura gets weaker. Ken continues to make promises he cannot keep; he speaks of the outside world, and to fill the family-sized void his friend held, he talks about his own. Mao would love him, he explains, because he just knows they would click. They both work in crime and would definitely watch horror movies together. His mother would make Kazutoshi huge pots of miso and Hamamatsu gyoza, just to get some meat on his bones, and he could even visit his father’s antique shop.
“A-and we can both go to uni,” he rambles, watching Kazutoshi line the curves of a tree trunk, “I’ll go into history o-or something, and you can go into forensics, and— and we’ll have an apartment near campus, so—”
The pencil jolts, off-kilter. “W-what?”
“Huh?”
“We— n-no, the fuck are you huh-ing about?” The cleaner’s eyes meet his, then finds something nondescript on the bedsheets. “I— I fucking hate your guts, y-you know that?”
“Be nice,” he scolds, “or you’re not getting any miso.”
“S-shit, you’re right, I can’t b-be mean to you if your m-mom is cooking,” Kazutoshi says, making a two with his fingers. “She’s my second f-favorite Hasegawa, behind Mao.”
“Wh— t-there’s no way I’m third!”
They curl up in a shuddering heap that evening, Kazutoshi’s hair still damp with the fading warmth of his nightly hot shower. Hasegawa keeps the boy’s hands tucked between them, rubbing the joints until his own fingers are too tired to continue, and Kazutoshi’s next words make his heart stop.
“I— I-I think I finally have something I wanna do when I get out of here.” He pauses to breathe, and when Ken prompts him to continue, he rasps, “I-I wanna go visit my aunt again.”
Hasegawa doesn’t get the chance to reply before the cleaner suddenly continues: “A-and I wanna go to school. Do… do f-forensics, and have that s-stupid fuckin’ apartment with— with you.”
“I’d love that, Kazutoshi,” he whispers, wishing all the hope and pride he feels would bleed into every word.
I love you, Kazutoshi, he thinks, but they have an entire lifetime to get there now.
He wants to fall asleep with Kazutoshi smushed against him every night. He wants to wake up in the morning, hands still intertwined, and drag Kazutoshi to the dining table for breakfast and coffee. He wants to find smudges of blue on his pillows when he does laundry. He wants to pack Kazutoshi lunches and go shopping for old DVDs together. He wants to visit an aquarium with him.
It’s so beyond sappy, but he wants to grow old with Kamimura Kazutoshi by his side. And he can, because Kazutoshi finally wants to stay.
The next morning, somehow, feels warmer than the rest. Kamimura’s hair leaves a sodden blue stain on his pillow, and he spends upwards of ten minutes combing through partially-dried knots and tangles. Once finished, the boy piles layers of blankets across his shoulders like a massive cloak; when he catches Hasegawa staring, he mimes a vampire.
They hang around the group for a few minutes and exchange pleasantries, but all Ken can focus on was how the cleaner’s eyes sparkle over a little plate of leftovers. He curls his shuddering hands around the plate, steam wafting up and billowing against his face, and Ken feels a sudden desire for one of those extra-hot showers that Kazutoshi himself has been regularly taking.
He squeezes Kazutoshi’s hand, just once, out of sight. “I-I’ll catch up with you later.”
“See ya,” the cleaner agrees, already raising a fork to his mouth. The food isn’t even cooled yet.
He isn’t even thinking as he treks back to his dorm, and especially not when the hot water hits his goosebump-ridden skin; he sags under the torrent, letting all his muscles go completely slack. For just a few minutes, everything is okay: if he closes his eyes, it’s easy to pretend that this is one of his ordinary showers the night before a big show. When he leaves, Mao and Kazutoshi will be waiting on the couch with some overly bloody murder show already queued up.
Only when he begins to feel a streak of cold in the water does he turn it off, and god, a thousand ice-cold needles instantly sink under every inch of his skin. He towels off as fast as he possibly can and hurriedly stuffs himself back into his clothes, trying not to shudder as damp skin meets fabric.
Next, he gathers up the newest batch of textbooks Kazutoshi wanted him to return and brings them up to the library—the cleaner himself is probably still in the dining room waiting, anyway. He reshelves them as per everyone else’s insistence and browses for a few minutes, scooping up a couple historical reads and lingering on the section about chemistry.
He leaves the library.
The books fall. He gags on an inhale, throat locking up against the heavy stench of blood.
He looks around frantically, down the hallway on both sides, breathing shallow—it’s so much blood, it’s all around him, the scent is still following him—where is it?!
The art room—a smear of red underneath the door—
His hand, trembling and faint, rattles against the doorknob. It isn’t even closed. It’s cracked, waiting for him, leaking out into the hallway, and it swings open at the faintest touch.
All he can see is red, red, red, streaming and bubbling and dripping pooling underneath the art room chair, soaked into every inch of the wood splattered across every inch of the floor
Familiar red shoes
Someone is screaming.
Their hands are clawing through his scalp, nails raking down his throat they are killing him.
He’s dead. He’s dead, dead, dead dead, god, he—
“...gawa?!”
A howl of terror pierces the fog, footsteps slamming— the door slams shut. But all he can see is red red red red, red, god, no— no, no no—
“...his head…”
They took his fucking head; his head is gone, he was just here—this can’t be happening— it’s a bleeding, gory stump, pearly white protruding and sickly cascades of scarlet
“A student has been murdered by another student, as you can clearly see.”
he can’t breathe. Kazutoshi was—he was just here— downstairs— god, fuck—
They— they’re going to investigate and have a trial and—because someone killed him—
Someone screams, drowned beneath the roaring blood and screeching tinnitus in his eardrums. The rabbit’s monotonous drone continues, and someone is calling his name, and Okazaki’s smooth, lilting voice seeps through his senses until he sees red, red, red, red.
“JUST SHUT UP!” Bile pours into the cavern of his throat, and he doubles over, mumbling, “I’m, I’m gonna be sick…”
He can’t listen to any of them. Kazutoshi was right there. Kazutoshi was just across the hall. There was no stench of blood when he’d just entered the library; if he was faster, smarter, more perceptive, he could have saved him—fuck, he was—he was just here—
Curling into himself, he presses his damp forehead down against his knees with eyes slammed shut. Surely this is all some sick, impossible nightmare. He’ll awaken and roll over to find Kazutoshi’s hair splayed across the pillows and tickling his cheek, swaddled in blankets to keep himself warm. He can’t be dead; Kamimura is so, so strong, stronger than anybody, and nothing could ever bring him down.
Did Hasegawa ever tell him that? How admirable his persistence was, despite the terrible cards that life handed him? He loathed himself for how overwhelming it felt to get out of bed every morning, but Ken has always been so immensely proud just knowing he had tried. He was like the abyssal zone: finding a way to live despite impossible circumstances, and remaining so incredibly remarkable throughout it all. God, Kazutoshi had finally wanted to live.
Why did Ken never tell him that? Why wasn’t Ken there? Why did he leave Kazutoshi alone?
He gasps against the frayed fabric of his pant leg, nails clawing down the length of his arm. They’re all trading plans for the investigation—to find out who—who killed him. The thought is staggering, and he shudders with a shallow, rattling inhale, fingernails piercing his own skin. Fury and nausea swell and froth over like one of Kazutoshi’s mixtures in the chemistry lab.
Somebody in this hallway fucking killed him, and they want to play innocent? They want to act like they’re scared of time running out? Like they give a shit about anyone but themself?
“Who… who the fuck killed him?” Everything has hushed around him, and he prays to god that they’re listening. He wants to tear them apart himself. “Who the fuck killed him?”
“H-Hasegawa, hey, breathe for a minute.”
He hadn’t noticed how quickly his breaths were tearing through his chest, but the realization just heightens their intensity; his heart stutters with irregular, aching palpitations, everything blurring into an indecipherable haze save for the pungent, metallic stench of blood ingrained into his senses.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he’s wheezing, clutching both his arms against his stomach, “this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening…”
He doesn’t comprehend when unfamiliar hands dig into the notches of his elbows, hauling him up. When the same hand clasps his own, it’s too large and calloused to be Kamimura’s, and their pace is far too lengthy; he stumbles just trying to keep up. His legs are numb and leaden beneath him.
They tug him gently down the stairs, where Kazutoshi would have yanked him impatiently, and they brace him with every hesitation. He vaguely registers that this is Ojima, who is murmuring meaningless reassurances underneath his breath.
The words continue to spill out as they walk. “Fuck, he’s dead, h-he’s dead, somebody killed him, he’s dead, oh god, oh god, oh god…”
“I know, but you need to breathe,” the illustrator is saying, cerulean eyes piercing. God, he’d do anything to make them red, red, red again— how is he supposed to breathe, he can’t, he can’t…
“I can’t, I-I can’t, I— Kazutoshi—” he whines, head bowed once more as the room spins around him, chest and throat burning in tandem, “Ojima, f-fuck, he’s dead, I— I can’t—”
He can’t what? He can’t what? How does he express the way his chest is collapsing upon itself? How his body is buckling, losing the war to fury, disbelief, and a deep, sickening sense of horror that rips its predatory claws through everything within? How Kazutoshi’s life has slipped through his fingers like unclotted blood?
“I-I can’t do this anymore!” is what comes out. The voice doesn’t sound like his. “Fuck!”
“Ken, i-if we don’t investigate, we’re all going to die,” the artist pleads, hands grasping at his shoulders. There’s a hint of desperation lacing his forced stability, but Hasegawa doesn’t care. “I just need you to calm down. At least for now.”
How hypocritical. If Nakamigawa was the one… god, fuck, dead in that room upstairs, wouldn’t Ojima be hauled around like a lifeless puppet, too? He doesn’t care about Kazutoshi; he never did. Everyone only wants to investigate to save themselves.
He won’t give his classmates the satisfaction. There’s no point. Not without Kamimura.
Unsuccessful in his attempts to motivate him, Ojima lugs him into the kitchen, the sight of which wracks his body with a convulsion of anguish. This—this is the last place he was. He can perfectly envision his closest friend peering through the microwave’s little window, more carefree than he’d ever been since their conversation the night prior.
“Gyoza for breakfast,” the ghost raves, grinning beneath his swathe of blankets. “Holy shit, this is the life. Is this how I’m gonna live as an honorary Hasegawa?”
As long as you live, he wants to beg. Please don’t go, Kazutoshi, please stay with me.
Instead, he’d chuckled and said, simply, “I’ll make sure you have plenty, Hasegawa Kazutoshi.”
An obnoxiously bright, collared coat backs into Kazutoshi’s space, and Ken is dragged forcefully back into the present. Nakamigawa has entered—he doesn’t know when—and is peering over Takeshi’s shoulder as they observe the refrigerator's barren contents. It’s pointless to explore this room for anything, but he cannot find the strength, or care, to say that out loud.
They’re talking about saws. The thought of someone— anyone—
“Th-there’s saws,” he croaks, just to dispel the thought, “a-and… axes.”
Nakamigawa leaves a moment later. He doesn’t know why.
Instead, he staggers over to the trash can and vomits.
* * *
The entire investigation is nothing more than a hopeless, overwhelming blur. He’s been miserably shambling behind Ojima, throat burning with the remnants of his expulsed breakfast and bangs plastered to his clammy forehead, eyes affixed to the ground beneath his feet. Even as they intersect with another larger group, all he absorbs is the information they reveal: Kazutoshi’s vandalized room, some kind of note in his room, the fact that they—fuck, they cut his tongue out.
All he can think about is how disgusted Kazutoshi would be. Everything about his death was a sick desecration; his clothing was removed, his blood spilled uncontrollably, and atop everything, even his room was completely vandalized? He would be so upset, but more than that, so violated. It was like tarnishing everything that the crime scene cleaner stood for.
He recalls so vividly when Kamimura disclosed the details of his parents’ horrific murder. The description was short and extremely candid, yet Hasegawa was sick to his stomach picturing the nine-year-old boy standing over a mess of stab wounds and gushing blood.
“Whenever I’d think about… y-you know… I always wanted it to be something clean,” he’d admitted thereafter, tucked into himself in a way that made him appear so small. “Like drowning, o-or… anything that wasn’t like that. I guess.”
Even the way he perished was nothing more than a revolting mockery. It was as if the entire universe had conspired to extinguish even the smallest shred of light within the abyssal zone of Kazutoshi’s life. No, perhaps it was nothing more than an anglerfish lying in wait all along, and Hasegawa Ken is falling deeper into the void that was left behind. He is drowning.
Once upon a time, he would have sprinted to the secondary body announcement, heart jumping frantically in his chest. Now, gazing upon Tsuno’s impaled body, he can only muster a muffled moment of surprise; when he observes Wada sobbing over those glassy eyes, he remembers how the boy didn’t shed a tear for Kazutoshi’s mangled, decapitated corpse. Nobody did. So why should he care?
Unless her death serves as another clue towards vengeance for Kamimura, it doesn’t matter.
Soon enough, he approaches his podium with mechanical steps, the barren seats around him cold and mocking. The nausea returns with an acidic vengeance in seeing Kazutoshi’s chair completely askew from how he’d always stood so unceremoniously. Whenever he’d become placated enough to sit back down, his feet dangled above the ground, and Hasegawa always teased him for that.
God, loving Kazutoshi Kamimura is the most agonizing kind of pain he’s ever experienced. Every passing second resurfaces an old memory, a new regret, like a cavernous ache in a hollow chest. He scrabbles for anything within and comes up with phantoms.
If only to keep himself upright during the proceedings, he lets anger fill that void; he hates how they speak about Kazutoshi. What right does Tamba have to call him weak when she can’t assert herself without the strongest person in the room playing her bodyguard? To describe his conditions as weak points like he was a structure to be inevitably toppled?
“I mean, first and foremost, obvious point, he was decapitated,” Hayashi begins without a quaver of hesitation in her voice. Nakamigawa retches into his closed fist.
God, doesn’t he know it? He cannot find relief even when he closes his eyes; the jagged stump of Kazutoshi’s neck protrudes from the space behind his eyelids.
“They cut his head off and hid it in—where did you say?”
“Under the shelf,” Hama pipes in.
“They shoved it under the shelf.”
It was so crass, so messy. Kazutoshi was manhandled from the second his murderer took hold of him: the stripped clothing turned into makeshift restraints, the tongue, and not to mention however they dragged him into the storage room in the first place. Even his severed head wasn’t safe, and after everything, he was prodded like a specimen during the investigation.
Hasegawa lowers his forehead down against the podium, a clammy sweat crawling up the overstimulated skin of his back and making its way up to the nape of his neck. Why him? Why Kazutoshi?
“When I actually took a look at it, though, he had a couple stab wounds to the face.”
All they needed was one stab in the gut, and the cleaner’s hemophilia would have taken care of the rest. It was senseless, it was stupid, it was so—so— fuck, he’s going to throw up again.
How was there possibly time for them to incapacitate him, drag him into the room, bind him, carve out his tongue, stab him, decapitate him, hide it, and clean themself up before he stepped outside of the library? If he’d been five minutes earlier, could that have been the difference? It’s Isono’s death all over again—he’s useless. Worse than useless.
Kazutoshi would hate him if he knew.
“...wanted to see if there were any wounds I was missing underneath,” the bounty hunter is saying, voice a thousand miles away. “Lifted his shirt, found a huge, gaping wound in his stomach.”
What?
“Yeah, they gutted him. His abdomen was just open.”
The nausea surges with a vengeance, lapping at the raw, exposed walls of his bloody throat— he was gutted, tortured, mutilated, the stabbing wasn’t enough, the tongue wasn’t— his head— his organs are spilling from his stomach, skin sawed apart like he was nothing more than wood and plaster—
Someone’s calling his name. His breathing comes short and gasping, stomach rolling with sickness, the solid wooden grains of his podium a sensation he clings to like a drowning man at sea.
“Wh-what the fuck,” he breathes, unable to meet anyone’s eyes, “what the fuck…”
The conversation moves on, and nobody cares. They violate his privacy when he cannot defend himself, leaving Hasegawa to shield the remnants of his friend’s dignity. Nakamigawa openly mocks his absence, gesturing across the grounds to that cold, empty podium. Someone makes a reference to his supposed physical weakness again. They explain his conditions as if they know anything about him.
They argue about baseless shit that has nothing to do with his death. Hasegawa is the only one steering them back on course, the only one acting with any semblance of logic. Is this some kind of fucked-up game to them? Why don’t they care?
He draws on that outrage to scream, curse, and call out their idiocy, just like Kazutoshi would have done. There’s a small comfort in thinking that the cleaner could have been impressed with him, but when the thought surfaces, it’s instantly washed away by the tide of perpetual sickness. There is no sardonic whisper in his ear, nor an arched brow in his peripheral vision.
Hasegawa will never hear the voice of Kazutoshi Kamimura again.
Because of her.
Okazaki Hanano unclasps her coat in a grand flourish, and he sees red, red, red. The pristine fabric is stained like scarlet on snow, carelessly awash with Kazutoshi’s crimson gore. With the floodgates wide open, the stench now pours onto the trial grounds, seeping into every breath he takes.
Hasegawa Ken has never been more furious in his life. He braces himself against the podium, teeth gritted until his jaw aches, watching her twirl and gesture with ridiculous theatrics. She paints the sanguinary story of her delusional rivalry, mask metaphorically—and literally—torn away, revealing sharp, starry eyes and the barest hints of a fox’s fang. She howls with laughter in revealing that Kamimura’s death was nothing more than a stepping stone, his torture strategic, and the vandalism spice to stir up the pot.
Is that Kazutoshi’s blood he smells, or is that his own blood thundering in his ears?
He relishes the sensation of his knuckles cracking against her cheekbone. When she doubles over, still stammering taunts through a mouthful of dribbling blood, there is no catharsis. Not until she dies. If her execution was not inevitable, he would tear her apart with his own two hands.
Hasegawa cannot recall ever truly hating someone. Not the man behind the wheel of that glossy red Daihatsu, nor the man who abandoned his grieving family in the dead of night. Although he never forgets, he always forgives; his mother has always praised him for that.
He will never forget the sound of the artisan’s hysterical laughter bleeding into warbling, agonized screams, choking and spluttering underneath the oozing stream of molten gold. And Hasegawa Ken will not forgive. While his classmates avert their gaze from the carnage before them, the contestant memorizes every microexpression of pain upon her face like flashcards, turning them over and over and over in his head.
They’re allowed to leave while the material is still cooling, but Hasegawa will remain to watch it harden.
“Ken?” Ojima approaches him on the way out, the intonation of his given name awry. The shade of blue in his peripheral vision is wrong, wrong, wrong. “Can…can I walk you back to your room?”
The illustrator is shaking; Hasegawa notices this with a faint curiosity. He’s probably at his limit. Even Nakamigawa is hovering by the doorway, entirely patient for once in his life. Exhausted, overwhelmed. Didn’t he attempt to take his own life? Hasegawa doesn’t really care, honestly.
“I… need some time alone,” he settles on in lieu of declining. “T-thank you, Ojima.”
The man hesitates, then nods, and subsequently shambles over to the fashion designer. He stumbles upon arrival, and Nakamigawa clucks at him, tugging his sleeve. Ojima responds by lowering his arm, and they intertwine hands; Ken watches as the shorter man’s perfectly painted thumb rubs circles into the back of his friend’s hand.
The sight makes something repulsive writhe in his chest, like a dying, twitching worm. Turning his gaze back to the still-steaming execution chamber, he elects to consider how she spent her final moments instead. Okazaki really was insane, wasn’t she? She’d clung onto her fantasy until her dying breath, and even then, she didn’t seem intent on giving it up any time soon. It was like her own death was a natural consequence in the chain of events that was Tsuno’s—and Kazutoshi’s—death.
The latter’s tongue is still resting in her pocket, and the thought makes him want to scream. The cleaner’s voice was so important to him; it was always his last line of defense even when his body rebelled against him. His wit, always so sharp, was the one thing that could never be taken from him. Yet in his final moments, helpless and restrained, that last shred of autonomy had been torn away.
Of course she’d kept it. It was just one more thing that Kazutoshi would never get back: his life, dignity, self-determination, and that brightening spark of hope just before it all withered.
“Excuse me.”
He flinches, gaze flicking around until he finds the rabbit’s familiar, beady-eyed stare. It rests on the floor beside him, sporting a distinctive growth of the black spots marring its fur.
“I did not intend to startle you,” it continues, completely impassive.
Illogically, his head begins to swim with fury once more. He knows Monomoko is nothing more than a cog in the wheel; nevertheless, it has actively abetted the entire organization that controls everything. Its paws are soiled with Kazutoshi’s blood.
“Wh-what do you want?” he settles on, hands clenched and shaking.
“I was merely wondering why you have remained in the viewing chamber of Student Nine’s execution, Hasegawa Ken.”
His mouth opens with the confidence of slamming down on a buzzer—because isn’t it obvious?—but he flounders, eyes traveling back to Okazaki’s corpse. A single wisp of smoke curls from the freshly molded mask, brilliant gold now dimming into a duller, metallic hue. The artisan most likely died within minutes of the scalding substance meeting her skin, so why is he still watching? What is he waiting for?
“Hasegawa Ken?”
“I…” He takes a long, deep breath. “I-I don’t know, I was just…”
“Were you perhaps thinking about the death of Student Four, otherwise known as Kami—”
“D-don’t talk about him,” he snaps before he can process the words, “you can’t.”
“I apologize,” Monomoko lies. “My assumption appears to be correct.”
His chest heaves from where, frozen, he’s whirled on the creature. Its nose continues to twitch curiously, disgustingly phlegmatic despite how he towers over it, shaking. The only indication of acknowledgement he receives is the slightest preparatory shift of its haunches.
“I…I-I-I’m going back to my room,” he forces out after several long moments of silence.
Hasegawa turns on his heel toward the doorway, hands clasped to the point of trembling. The feeling is so unlike Kazutoshi’s bony, calloused fingers that would loop with his own after every trial, and he yearns for the phantom feeling of that grip to give him strength.
“Goodbye, Hasegawa Ken.”
At least he got to hold Kamimura’s hand one final time before his death.