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“Aragaki-senpai?”
“Told you to stop calling me that.”
Kotone just laughed from where she was seated on top of the jungle gym, watching the stars overhead. It’s chilly, this point in September, and she really should dress warmer than just that sweater. Some of them hadn’t forgotten when she went down with a cold during that typhoon last week. “Gaki, then?”
Shinjiro groaned, glad it’s dark enough she couldn’t see the embarrassed heat stealing into his face even if she was looking at him. “Absolutely fuckin’ not.”
“Mean,” she retorted, but there’s laughter in her voice, and despite the cold and how he pulls his coat tighter around him, that warms him through. She finally looked back over at him, perched right up there with her, and even in the near complete darkness left by the waxing moon he can see there’s something behind that sparkle she always has. “Do you ever think about what it’s like to die?”
He blinked, once, before exhaling sharply, eyes narrowing. She doesn’t know. She can’t know. But he has to know, has to be sure, so he asks anyway, harsher than intended, “What brought this on?”
She hummed to herself, eyes flickering over his face. Doesn’t look intimidated, or nothing, not like most would. “Nothing. Everything.” She leaned back, and it takes everything in him not to reach out to steady her, to stop her from losing her balance and falling. “Just…”
You would think knowing you were going to die would make someone impatient. And maybe he is, sometimes. Impatient with Takaya and the rest, or to finish off shadows before she got herself hurt, or waiting for Ken to finally decide he’s had enough. But here, he let her think, pull together her words. He looked over the shrine, at Koromaru, running around without a care in the world. Most times, she’s a bit like that, but others… it’s like the mask slips, just a touch, and she’s not their fearless leader anymore. Just Kotone.
“I think I’m living on borrowed time,” she finally said. Not sad, just… accepting. Almost conversational. “Sometimes I’m not sure I’m gonna make it through the year.”
And that cut through him, because what the fuck does that mean? It was one thing for him to say, a man who downed death in a bottle every day, but she was healthy, strong, vibrant, happy- Happy with her friends, anyway. Or with him, if he was feeling selfish. Which she shouldn’t be, but he didn’t have the heart to push her off, did he? “The fuck, Shiomi?”
“Kotone,” she corrected, light as ever.
“Idiot,” he countered, even as he rocked back slightly to stare her down. “Seriously, though, what’s brought this on? Shadows? The Dark Hour?”
She laughed, for real, bright and airy and completely at odds with the somewhat morbid conversation. “No, not really. Just a feeling. Always been there, especially after-” And she cuts herself off, smile tightening slightly, and he knows she’s thinking of her parents, and her brother. “But,” she picks back up, a firmer edge to the humor in her voice, like armor, “it’s got worse since I came here, I think.”
He frowned. “Well, you’re not dying before me.”
That made her raise herself up slightly to look at him with an eyebrow raised. “Oh, yeah?” The challenge in her eye was unmistakable, along with the little suppressed twitch of her mouth that let him know she was trying not to smile.
He huffed, scowling; looked away before she could see him flush darker. “I mean it. You’re going to live a long and happy life.”
He didn’t have to look at her to know she was grinning, even as she cooed, “And you’re going to make sure of that? Oh, senpai, my hero.”
He ducked his head, burying it slightly in the collar of his jacket, even as he muttered, “Shut it, kid.”
An indignant squawk, followed by, ”Don’t call me kid! I’m, what, a year younger than you?”
He scoffed. ”Don’t call me senpai, then.”
And a heavy sigh, too dramatic to be real, before finally, “Fine, Shinjiro.” His name fell almost sing-song from her mouth, equal parts a surrender and a tease. Which made his face even redder, probably bad enough she’d be able to see even in this light, so he very firmly did not look back at her even as he heard, felt, her rustling and moving to sit up next to him. “But you didn’t answer the question.”
“Shiomi-”
“Kotone.”
”God damn it.” He sighed, chanced a look at her. “Why are you being so insistent?”
“Well,” she drawled, head tilted as she looked at him with that glint in her eyes, “It was because I thought you would be the only one who might tell me straight instead of avoiding the question, but now I’m seeing that might not have been true-
“Fine,” he gritted out, exhaling sharply. He could still see her watching him, quietly expectant; he dragged his eyes away, lifted his face to watch the moon instead of her. It didn’t help much. He hadn’t expected it to, really. “I think… I think it depends,” he finally said. “On how you go out.”
It wasn’t really an answer. They both knew that. Still, she hummed, just acknowledging, before asking, “And what do you think being dead is like?”
He grunts. “Nothin’, probably.”
“Nothing?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Would be dead, wouldn’t I?”
She was quiet for a bit, and he couldn’t stop himself from looking back at her, watch her contemplating. “I hope you get to watch.”
Which startled a laugh from him. More a bark than anything, and then a cough, as he smacked his chest to try and cut this off before it becomes a fit, so he doesn’t fall. “Watch yourself die?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, senpai-”
“Kotone-”
“Shinjiro,” she corrected herself this time, “I hope you get to watch the people you love. Watch who they get to become.”
And she would hope that. Kotone, who gave everything of herself to others, who spent her days juggling responsiblities and people and fixing the world. Who still comes home and takes Koromaru for walks even after running herself ragged at volleyball. Who always put everyone else above her own needs, even when she’s exhausted and he has to nearly chase her to her room so she actually gets some rest. Who somehow still manages to get top marks on her exams. Who spends her limited time with him, even though he doesn’t deserve it.
Doesn’t deserve her.
And if it was coming from anyone else, he’d probably roll his eyes and scoff, but it’s her. So instead he just sighed, a small smile pulling at his mouth against his will, before saying, softly, “That doesn’t sound half bad, I guess.”
And she smiled at him, and makes a grab for his hand, and even as he pulled it away with a scoff, keeping his balance all the while, he knows it’s too late.
He’d already fallen.