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Takumi regains consciousness amidst a splitting headache and the sensation of his own rattled breaths scrapping against the insides of his throat. He picks his head up with a degree of effort and blinks the haze from his eyes, turning his head left and right without truly making anything out… The only thing he can truly see is the incredibly bright Wall of Fire some metres ahead, hot even from this distance, the crackling and flickering a reassuring constant even though the roof of Takumi’s mouth is bone-dry and there’s a sharp pain in his sinuses like you’d get in the prelude to a cold.
He clears his throat softly and waits for the green spots to fade from his vision. Slowly, the feeling returns to his extremities. He’s able to pull his legs upright beneath him and adjust so that his arm—which is hoisted over somebody’s shoulder—feels less sore at the joint. Turning his head again, this time, Takumi makes eye contact with Eva, who has a hand on his wrist and her other arm braced around his lower back. A bag of materials is secured at her hip, bulging with more than just the fire extinguisher, which bangs heavily against her knee with every difficult step.
“E-Eva,” Takumi stammers, and digs his heels into the ground to halt them. “Shit, sorry. That looks heavy, how long have I been out?”
Eva tilts her head demurely. Her gaze flits aside, and she seems to ponder the question, her jaw working. Eventually she responds, “For the bulk of the afternoon. Please forgive my continuing the exploration while you were unconscious, Sumino-san.”
Takumi waves her off. “I’m not mad, I just—” His voice comes out cracked and hoarse, so he clears his throat. Pulling off of her, Takumi pulls in another breath with some difficulty. He feels very faint, weak in the knees still, but the headache slowly recedes into a background sensation. They’re so close to the school already… “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you to finish looking on your own.”
Clearing her throat, Eva reminds him, “My directive was to finish collecting the supplies needed to make a gift for Kirifuji-san… I only wasn’t sure if you would have preferred that I bring you back to the school in order to recover, or complete the task before doing so.” She touches her chin with her now-freed hand and adds, “Consulting my inner Sumino-san, I ultimately concluded that you would prefer I attended to Kirifuji-san first and foremost.”
Well, she isn’t wrong, but Takumi isn’t not perturbed by the notion of an inner Takumi in Eva’s head. He rubs at his temple with a hand.
“What’s done is done,” Takumi finally says. “Let’s just hurry up and get back inside… You must be exhausted.”
Eva eyes him oddly but only says “If that’s your order” before she begins walking back toward the school. To her credit, she moves without difficulty, coming to a stop and drawing the fire extinguisher from the confines of her bag with ease. Takumi lags a few feet behind her, only quickening his pace once she’s created a hole in the Wall of Fire to sneak in alongside Eva. He coughs into his sleeve as they make their way toward the front entrance, glancing up at the sky, which is taking on a faded bluish greyish hue with the coming of dusk. They really have been out all day… Even the morning, which Takumi must have been conscious for, is all a blur to him. Takumi’s hand creeps back up to his eyes and scrubs one of them while he trails behind his teammate.
It’s already been three days since Oosuzuki was absorbed by V’ehxness—no, wording it like that makes it sound too passive, too out of their hands. It’s been three days since Takumi chose to allow Oosuzuki to be absorbed by V’ehxness. The battle itself is a painful, bloody haze in Takumi’s mind and the muscles that are still sore from the memory of how hard he’d been fighting, but he remembers keenly the moment that he chose to follow Kako’s intuition and direct his friends to save Maruko. He remembers the sinking feeling in his stomach, the knowing that he’d been unable to ignore, the sense of inevitability he’d registered as he spun on his heel at the sound of Oosuzuki’s scream and watched V’ehxness thrust a hand through her stomach and—
Takumi nearly stumbles, but a hand on his elbow makes him blink, realising that Eva had stopped when he did. She supports his weight, looking at him again with that odd, inscrutable look in her eyes. It’s nothing like the perfectly placid ‘nothing’ that usually makes her expression so mild. Eva’s got an eyebrow quirked and her lips are pressed into a thin line. Before Takumi can tell her that he’s alright, or apologise for stumbling, there’s a heavy thunk as she drops the fire extinguisher to the ground.
“Eva?” Takumi asks, then yelps. “Eva, wait—!”
Despite her subservient programming, Eva ignores Takumi’s directive and scoops him bodily off the ground. She subsequently ignores his protesting in favour of carrying him all the way back to the entrance hall, where Takumi is faintly embarrassed to see that some of his friends are already present to receive them; fortunately, Kirifuji is not among them, but Shizuhara, Yakushiji, and Omokage are, the former already lifting her chin to survey the two with her usual unflappable scrutiny.
Takumi starts to sweat a bit. “H-Hey guys, sorry we were out for so long, we just—”
“Sumino-san passed out this afternoon,” Eva explains, and finally sets him back down on the floor. “It was just after we finished dispatching a small squadron of Invaders. He remained unconscious until just now, but it seems like he’s still feeling weak.”
“Eva,” Takumi complains. He’s not even really sure why he does, just that he can feel his face warming as his three friends turn to look at him sceptically. You truly couldn’t have chosen a more incredulous group of people to learn about what happened. Takumi chews on the inside of his cheek and balls his hands into fists, realising when his nails press against thick fabric that he’s still in his Class Armour, and wordlessly dismissing it. Eva, in turn, bows her head and turns to leave, presumably to do the same with her artificial set.
Shizuhara clears her throat. “I assume Eva would have mentioned it if you had been injured. Heatstroke, maybe?”
“What’s that?” Takumi mumbles.
“He doesn’t look hot,” Yakushiji points out to Shizuhara, effectively ignoring Takumi’s question—which is fair actually, he’s not sure he has the brain power to retain an explanation right now anyway. “Think he actually looks sort of pale, no?”
“We shouldn’t rule out something that happened in the last defensive battle,” Omokage muses, touching his chin with a hand. “I’ll happily give our reliable leader a much more thorough examination… Unless you have any guesses yourself as to what might have happened, Sumino-kun.”
Takumi shakes his head. He feels a bit nauseous standing here, and bits of his head, particularly the spots behind his ears and at the nape of his neck, feel tingly and cold and numb, like the prelude to another fainting spell. Yakushiji’s observation had been apt, though; he doesn’t feel feverish, and is not congested or sore in the throat. There isn’t localised pain, and Takumi hadn’t been injured today, nor has he been grappling with anything nonfatal since the last attack on the school.
Trying to meet Omokage’s inquisitive gaze only makes the twisting in his stomach worse—to say nothing of the moniker. Our reliable leader. Shizuhara’s observational skills are impossible to dodge and Yakushiji won’t let up if he thinks that you’re pushing your limits unwisely—neither of those are easy to deal with after something so embarrassing. But neither of them had been particularly close friends with Oosuzuki, either, or Magadori before her… Staring down at Omokage’s boots, Takumi is suddenly certain that he really is going to throw up, and not even being hyperbolic, there’s a violent lurching in his stomach and Takumi loses his balance all over again.
Yakushiji makes a noise of distress and rushes forward to catch him, firm hands closing around Takumi’s upper arms. Takumi groans. His stomach hurts something fierce, and the bile he swallows down makes his throat burn. In front of him, Shizuhara says nothing, but her eyes have gone wide behind the lenses of her glasses. She looks taken aback in a way Takumi hasn’t seen from her before, a hand moving to cover her mouth… and Yakushiji’s staring down at him with his lips pulled back in a concerned grimace. One of his large, calloused hands is set over Takumi’s forehead, warm to the touch.
“He don’t got a fever,” Yakushiji mutters. “The hell else could it be though…?”
Omokage clears his throat. The hint of mischievous suggestiveness that’d been in his expression a moment ago has vanished, leaving him utterly impassive in a way that turns Takumi’s stomach all over again. There’s not a hint of concern or intrigue in his face… His gaze is almost cold, if anything. In some ways, it’s a relief not to be coddled, but it makes dread turn in Takumi’s stomach all the same. Omokage must truly hate him now.
“...No, it most certainly is a bug,” is how Omokage eventually decides to respond. “I have a theory… but I’ll need to look into it. For now, Sumino-kun should take a sick day. He’s in no condition to be going out on expeditions…”
“Hey,” Takumi protests, albeit weakly. “C-C’mon, I can’t just rest, I need to…”
Tongue suddenly leaden in his mouth, Takumi trails off as Shizuhara and Yakushiji both turn to stare daggers at him. He means to protest that he’s concerned about Kirifuji, that he has to finish putting together her telescope, and to apologise to her for his part in her closest friends’ deaths, but under those combined gazes…
Takumi shrinks back. “N-Nevermind, sorry.” Maybe tomorrow after everything has calmed down, he can sneak off the roof and into the rec room. It won’t hurt to play along until then…
…is what Takumi is thinking, but when Takumi wakes up the following morning to the sound of Sirei’s usual announcement, he yelps and falls out of bed in shock at the sight of Omokage standing right by his bedroom door.
“H-How’d you get in here?” Takumi gasps, the sleepy haze clearing from his mind rapidly as adrenaline courses through his veins. His first priority is to check, well, himself, to make sure that Omokage hadn’t done anything suspicious while he was out cold, but when his two sweeps of his body don’t turn up anything strange or different (other than the fact that Takumi is wearing his pyjamas, which he doesn’t have any recollection of changing into last night) he relaxes somewhat, shifting his attention to other concerns. Like, getting back on the bed, which Takumi does sheepishly.
Omokage hadn’t moved throughout Takumi’s outburst, covering his mouth with a sleeve and letting out a soft chuckle. “Good morning to you too, Sumino-kun. There’s a very simple answer to that question, you know.”
He pauses here, as if waiting for Takumi to guess. Usually Takumi would play along, but his head is pounding something fierce—somehow worse than it was yesterday, even after sleeping—and it’s difficult for him to focus. He leans against the headboard and touches his temple, pulling his legs under himself. Omokage observes him with a strange look on his face, then clears his throat, eye closing.
“...That is, you left your door unlocked.”
“Oh, right,” Takumi mumbles. “I guess I must’ve forgotten to lock it last night…”
“You usually leave it open. It would earnestly surprise me if I ever tried the knob and found you safe in here.”
Takumi frowns. “You don’t need to rub it in, man.”
“Ah, sorry.” Omokage grins at him, not exactly sounding sorry. His expression morphs a moment later, and he clears his throat, nodding to Takumi’s bedside, where it appears he’s set a tray with a bowl of rice porridge, a banana, and a tall glass of water. “More specifically, I’m here to look after you. You are sick, after all… Hiruko-chan and the rest thought it would be irresponsible to leave you without a caretaker in your time of weakness.”
Guilt twists in Takumi’s stomach at the reminder of how he’d worried Shizuhara and Yakushiji yesterday—how he put Eva out, forcing her to look for the last materials to finish Kirifuji’s telescope while hauling around an unconscious leader. Some leader. That isn’t even going into what Takumi’s gut does at the thought of his friends having to convene and discuss what to do with him like he’s some kind of liability for the team… Granted, if he’s doing stuff like passing out on expeditions, who’s to say he wouldn’t do that during a defensive battle? During some other time when they might need him? Maybe that really does make him a liability.
Turning away from the tray that Omokage set out for him, Takumi hugs his knees to his chest. He’s not the brightest, but he can read between the lines here. It isn’t like he’s broken, he can handle taking care of himself even if he does have whatever illness it is that Omokage suspected yesterday, which must mean…
“You’re here to babysit me, right?” Takumi asks, unable to make his voice come out any less sullen. “To make sure that I don’t leave here and stay on bedrest.”
Omokage doesn’t reply right away—which is all the answer Takumi needs, really. He groans, hands coming up to drag through his hair. More than anything else it is humiliating, not just that Eva told the others, of course she did, but the fact that he passed out in the first place is so shameful… Takumi isn’t even sure how he’s meant to explain it. Yakushiji had been right yesterday in pointing out that Takumi doesn’t have a fever. He’s sure that he isn’t sick, because Takumi very rarely gets sick, and when he does it usually bowls him over, renders him incapable of doing anything but lying in bed and complaining for the duration, but also because if Takumi had to guess as to what he’s actually dealing with here, it’s…
Across from him, Omokage clears his throat. “Would you mind if I sat down?”
“Better than staring at me from the door, I guess,” Takumi grumbles. “You sure I can’t convince you to leave?”
“...I’d really prefer it if I could talk to you first,” Omokage admits after a pause, clearing his throat. He sits in Takumi’s desk chair and folds his hands. “If you’re up to it, that is. It’s regarding my theory from yesterday… what I believe is ailing you.”
Takumi chews on the inside of his cheek. He really does know that he isn’t sick, is the thing. Isn’t it technically wasting Omokage’s time to sit here and entertain a conversation when he already knows whatever he’s theorising isn’t the case? Then again, wouldn’t it be weirder for him to dig his heels in and deny? It strikes Takumi as odd that Omokage is even asking about it—not just that, but he’s sat at the desk, a respectable distance away from Takumi, and avoiding making eye contact with him directly. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable exactly, in fact everything about his countenance is extremely relaxed, it’s just…
“Huh,” Takumi says.
“What is it?”
“I was just realising I’ve never been your patient before,” Takumi explains. He adjusts so he can rest his chin between his knees. “Even before. I mean, there’s…” Omokage usually helps Takumi do his T-shots, did then and does now, “there’s stuff, but as far as me being sick…”
“Ah, I understand.” Omokage smiles. “Well, as much as that kind of excites me to think about, I wouldn’t exactly consider this our first. More, I would describe it as… an appeal from a friend, if that works for you.”
“From a friend,” Takumi mumbles. His chest pangs. He very nearly asks the question that’d been on his mind yesterday, that has been since Day 33—You don’t hate me now? You still consider me a friend? but manages to bite down on his tongue before it can escape. He knows better. Not that there should be secrets or reservations between friends, but it would also be unfair to Omokage to broach an issue of his own feelings, to put Omokage in the position to feel guilty about any resentments he may or may not be grappling with. Takumi tries not to do that kind of thing. In any case… “Sure, I’ll hear it.”
Omokage’s smile softens. “Thank you. Sumino-kun…” He hesitates, then clears his throat into a fist. Now he does seem faintly awkward, or maybe… uncertain is the better word, like he doesn’t quite know what to say. His eye gaze darts aside, and Takumi follows it to the tray on the table, just in time to figure out what Omokage is going to say in the second before he actually says it. “...I noticed you’ve been missing meals.”
Despite his gentle tone, Omokage could just as well have dropped a ton of rocks into Takumi’s stomach. Taking a breath, Takumi finds that he feels nauseous again, so he shifts onto his side. He squeezes at his calves where the bone protrudes and tries to search for a denial, but comes up empty. No secrets. Friends shouldn’t lie to friends. Takumi has always believed that wholeheartedly—in retrospect, it was kind of unfair of Omokage to preface this whole thing by establishing them as friends in the first place. Maybe he did that on purpose.
“How long have you been… noticing?” Takumi asks quietly.
“I thought at first you didn’t have much an appetite,” Omokage admits, “or preferred to eat in private. I’d never taken that many meals with you when we first got here, after all, so I didn’t assume right away that the cause was Darumi-chan, but after Kyoshika-chan gave her life to activate the bomb…”
“The whole time then?” Takumi groans. “L-Listen, it isn’t…”
“Sumino-kun,” Omokage interjects. It is an interruption by definition, but his tone is surprisingly gentle. He lifts his hands, palms outward, and offers a small smile. “This isn’t an interrogation, and you don’t have to try and justify anything. For what it’s worth, I understand. It really isn’t an uncommon reaction to grief or guilt.”
Mercifully, Omokage says nothing else. He doesn’t have to anyway because it’s written all over his face. But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that you need to eat in order to live. Takumi has to turn all the way away, from his teammate, from the tray of food by his bedside, because he really does think there’s a chance he’ll be sick if he keeps looking at them while thinking it all over in his head. He can maybe manage one or the other, but both just feels plain insurmountable right now… He hopes Omokage doesn’t take it personally. At the very least, Omokage doesn’t seem the type to.
It is… hypocritical, what Takumi is doing. He knows that it is. He came back in time to change the past, to survive the hundred days with everyone else and make it to a future none of them have to regret. Part of that does mean living, which inherently isn’t something that human beings can do without eating, or even just without eating regularly. Takumi knows that, and he likes eating, it’s not like you have to twist his arm to get him to do that most of the time.
Maybe that’s part of it though. Takumi bites down on his lower lip. “It’s not uncommon?”
“Oh, no,” Omokage reassures him, tone a little more difficult to parse now that Takumi isn’t looking directly at him. “Feelings are a very fickle thing, you know. I myself found it difficult to eat after missions for many years when I was younger.”
“It’s not—” Takumi’s voice catches. He breathes out sharply through his nose. “I-It isn’t, grief. I mean, it is, I’m—I’m grieving, I miss Oosuzuki,” he misses Oosuzuki, regrets more than anything that he’d lost her before he had the chance to show her a future with Kirifuji in it, especially after they’d only just made up again, “but it’s not, I don’t—” Takumi pulls in a shallow breath. “D-Don’t you feel like I don’t really deserve to—?”
“To eat?” Omokage sounds so alarmed that Takumi does look back over at him, in time to catch the way his visible eye has widened before he quickly schools his expression back into the neutral one from before. “Sumino-kun—”
“I didn’t mean that,” Takumi says in a rush, waving his hands. “I-I mean, it’s hypocritical anyway when I’m the one who chose to come back—and—if anyone should take the responsibility it should be me and I know nobody blames me—” Really, they’ve all been so nice, far too nice if anything. “I just, I—”
“Sumino-kun,” Omokage repeats. This time Takumi shuts up, jaw closing with a click before he swallows all the saliva that’d rushed into his mouth. Omokage’s hands have lifted again themselves, palms still out in that placating gesture. “...It’s all right if you did mean it. If that’s how you feel.”
Of course he meant it. There is a whole host of things that Takumi does not deserve, among those, the chance to give up on it all and simply let everything happen. Not after the choices he’s made… He owes to his team, not just his team now but his team from before, to push forward and trust in the decisions that brought him here. Now more than ever, with Oosuzuki in the ground, with Kirifuji more than likely still collapsed and crying over her grave…
Takumi buries his face in his knees. “I just don’t know how to—I couldn’t stomach it. I didn’t realise it’d been that long since I’d eaten. I didn’t mean to cause trouble for Eva.”
“She doesn’t mind.”
“She can’t help that she doesn’t mind,” Takumi grumbles, hands tightening into fists. “Omokage, I’m the worst. I don’t know how you or Mojiro or Kirifuji can even look at me.”
There’s silence at that. Takumi is almost afraid to picture the look that might be on Omokage’s face, but he picks his head up to see it anyway. Maybe a part of him is hopeful (or dreading) that there really will be resentment there… but of course, Omokage only looks contemplative.
Omokage seems a bit surprised to meet Takumi’s gaze when he does. His lips twitch in a faint smile. “You’re not the worst. I happen to have it on good authority that those two girls are rather fond of you.”
“What about you?” Takumi blurts, nonsensically. Omokage’s eye widens.
“Me?”
The regret rushes in as soon as Takumi’s registered the follow-up, but he has no choice but to nod, too desperate for the answer to the question to take it back. He never realised he even cared that much about Omokage’s validation—the guy is odd, and creepy at times, and really interested in all this freaky stuff that gives Takumi the heebie jeebies. He is also reliable and intelligent, but sometimes that pragmatic attitude leads Omokage to do things like suggest executing a prisoner of war, or as a lower-stakes but still frustrating example, station himself in Takumi’s room to make sure that Takumi doesn’t shirk bed rest.
They are friends, though. Omokage said so himself. Maybe Takumi hadn’t realised how much he was really needing to hear that… needing to hear Omokage say even more than that, potentially, but there’s only so much he can ask for without hating himself permanently, without never being able to take a bite of breakfast or any other meal ever again. Takumi straightens his legs and fists his hands in his bedsheets instead. He finds that he can’t meet Omokage’s startled gaze, even as it begins to relax into something more compassionate.
“...You fascinate me, and have from the first moment I saw you,” Omokage admits at length. “I don’t think there’s a chance that I could ever do what you do, but even just saying that isn’t quite accurate, because I can barely conceptualise your position to start with. You’re far kinder and more selfless than I could ever fathom being.”
“A selfless person wouldn’t have sent Magadori to deploy the Undying Flames bomb,” Takumi mutters.
“We could go in circles all day about that,” Omokage points out. It sounds as if he’s smiling. “...I will, with you, if you’d like. If it would make you feel better.”
“What?” Takumi laughs, looking up in surprise. “What kind of offer is that?”
“A desperate one,” Omokage admits. “I am so far out of my depth right now, man. If you start crying, I actually have no idea what I’ll do with myself. I might just kill you in a blind panic.”
Takumi sputters, but can’t do anything but start to giggle uncontrollably. Omokage seems happy about it, at least until those giggles do eventually give way to tears, and as he’d promised, Omokage starts to fret visibly from his place at Takumi’s bedside. Rather than leave an opening for Omokage to put him out of his misery, Takumi stretches forward and picks up the banana from the tray on his bedside table. His hands shake too badly to get the stability needed to peel it, so Omokage plucks it from his grasp. It is a testament to how concerned he is, that he doesn’t make a single lewd joke about the thing as he cleanly separates the stem from the body.
Sniffling, Takumi takes a bit and talks around it. “You’re a good guy, you know that? If you weren’t always asking to torture me and stuff, I’d really like you.”
“Aah, how cruel…” Omokage sighs, gesturing with a hand. “When you say things like that, it almost makes me more excited for how close I am to real acceptance…”
He’s funny too. Takumi hopes Omokage knows he doesn’t really mean it. The eccentricities kind of make him who he is, and even if Takumi didn’t feel that way, the simple kindness of Omokage’s choice to come here and sit with him, to bring him breakfast, to lie to the others about what specifically is going on with Takumi… All of those far outshadow any weirdness Omokage could potentially bring to the table. Takumi’s shoulders shake and he starts to cry all over his banana.
“Really, Sumino-kun…” Omokage sounds like he’s aiming for exasperated, but he really just sounds immensely stressed out, the way he only gets on the battlefield. “You’d be surprised at how little I field situations like this in my line of work…”
“Not surprised at all,” Takumi says after swallowing a mouthful of salty banana. “Just hug me, man, it’s not rocket science.”
Omokage mutters something—Maybe to you, perhaps—but he does rise from Takumi’s desk chair, waiting politely for Takumi to eat his last bite before he joins him on the bed. With no assassin background to speak of, Takumi falls easily into his side and grabs onto Omokage, hands fisting in his haori, face burying in the silken fabric.
“I’m so sorry,” Takumi mumbles. “I’m—for Oosuzuki and for Magadori, I’m so…”
Omokage, although stiff at first, seems to relax hearing Takumi’s words. His arms wrap tightly around him, and his sleeves are so baggy, Takumi feels as if he could disappear in the generous folds, shielded from the world and from the weight of his own duties by Omokage’s careful embrace. Chin pressing into his hair, Omokage murmurs in his ear. He doesn’t tell him not to blame himself, that he isn’t upset or that Takumi is being silly. He only says “I forgive you” and folds Takumi in closer against his chest.