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"Do you believe in God?" Kou asks.
It's quiet, the middle of the night, and they're both laying in their separate beds. Kei stopped questioning why they were forced to room together a long time ago, even if it's all his college roommate nightmares come true, even if it means he has to put up with all of Kou's snores and complaints about waking up in the morning.
Kei rolls onto his side; across the room, he can make out Kou in the darkness. He's laying on his back, blankets kicked down by his feet, restless. Usually he's the type to fall asleep in zero seconds flat, maybe one of the only traits Kou possesses that Kei wishes he had, but he's wide awake, staring up at the ceiling.
Kei thinks of his mother, her stern voice, her firm grip against his forearm when he was a kid. He thinks of Eriko, in a hospital room, drawing pictures of houses and suns in glasses. He thinks of his father -- really just a man -- in scrubs, and then in a jail cell. "No," he says. He never did, not really. "I don't."
Kou rolls over onto his side, facing Kei. With his eyes adjusted he can make out the whites in his eyes, the bridge of his nose, the shape of his mouth. It's weird, getting to see Kou so relaxed; most of the time he's enthusiastic, or frustrated, or at least anything but calm. This kind of Kou -- who sounds melancholic in the middle of the night -- feels strange, foreign.
"What about an afterlife?" Kou asks.
Kei shrugs, the best he can on his side, anyway. Anytime he's died there's been no white light or shining gates -- only the pitch black darkness of death, both the excruciating pain and the split second of relief. And then he'd be alive again, the heart rate monitors starting back up.
"No," Kei says again. "Not really."
Kei watches as Kou flops back on his back, lifting his arms up to stretch. The movement makes the bottom of his shirt ride up, showing off the base of his stomach, his hipbones, the start of a happy trail. Kei looks back up, watching Kou fold his arms behind his head.
"Why?" He can't resist asking, finally.
"I just," Kou starts. He sounds uncertain, which makes sense, and he's not really the type of guy to get all philosophical. "Wonder what happens when other people die, y'know? What they go through. What might happen when we die." If we die hangs in the air, unspoken.
Kei nods. "I see," he breathes.
"It'd be nice though, wouldn't it?" Kou asks before he can say anything else, turning his head to look at him. There's an uplift of hope in there, but not a lot, more sentimental than anything.
For a god to exist? To believe in an afterlife? To not know what it's already like to die?
"Yeah," Kei says. He rolls over then, onto his other side, so Kou will know the discussion is over; they both still need to get some sleep. "It would be nice."
Before he drifts off, Kei listens to Kou's breathing even out.
They're in the woods outside the facility, some time in the late afternoon. Kei is giving his IBM commands and watching it act them out, smashing down trees and snapping branches. Kou is meant to be off somewhere dying, but instead he sits nearby, pulling pieces of grass apart as he watches. Kei wishes that it didn't make him both feel proud and a little itchy, for all that attention to be on him.
His IBM starts to fade away, particles dissolving, and Kou lets out a bit of a whoop! of success.
"That's like, your sixth one today, right, Nagai?" He asks, excitedly.
He's sitting with his back against a tree, legs crossed and elbows resting on his thighs. In this kind of soft lighting, he looks young, and Kei wonders idly how old he is, if maybe they were in the same grade, or if Kou was just a year above him. Kei eyes him, from his wide grin down to his jawline.
"Seventh," he corrects, and watches as Kou's brows furrow.
He still can't even make an IBM yet, and despite how he trains everyday, dying is still the best thing he's good at. He could have had a normal life before he was found out -- could still have it even now, if he decided to run away, and yet he's still as gung-ho about stopping Satou as the day he was when they first met in the woods. Kei thought he was stupid then, and he still thinks he's stupid now.
He knows Kou dropped out of school, but he aches to know the details behind it. Before, he couldn't imagine not being in school or enrolling in university, and even now it's what he thinks about when he thinks of a life post-Satou. It was one of the only things he's ever held onto to, a hope for a future, even on a dissection table.
"What do you plan on doing once we beat Satou?" Kei blurts, the words bubbling out of his throat before he can stop them. It's just that sometimes -- rarely, but sometimes, in the quiet moments -- he wonders what kind of future Kou has, if not school.
Kou blinks, like he didn't expect the question. His eyes go kind of wide too, like he doesn't have an answer. "Well, uh," he starts, and Kei watches the bob of his adams apple in his throat, the way his hand slides up to rub the back of his neck. "Just go back home, I guess?" He grins, and it's sheepish. "To my apartment."
"We could go to school together," Kei says.
He doesn't know what possesses him to say it; he regrets it the second it comes out his mouth, the second Kou startles back at the question. It's stupid, but not irrational, and he allows that shred of knowledge to help him keep his dignity.
"What, like university?" Kou questions. His lips curl downward, just a little bit, into a tiny frown. "I didn't even graduate high school."
"I could help you study," Kei answers, easily. "Catch you up. It wouldn't be hard," he adds pointedly, at Kou's look of disbelief. He feels embarrassed and exposed, weak and way too open. He glares, "surely it'd be a better life than working odd jobs and staying at your apartment," justifying it for the both of them in one fell swoop.
Kou is still looking dazed, but his gaze flickers up to meet Kei's. Slowly, and then all at once, he grins, so big and wide it threatens to split his lip wide open. Kei's stomach churns.
"That'd be, that's like," Kou keeps starting, like he's full of too much joy to finish a sentence and Kei made him that way. "That'd be cool," he finally settles on, eyes bright and happy.
Kei inhales deep and nods, before creating an IBM in front of himself to hide any twitches of his lips. Eventually Kou trots off to try and create his own IBM, which basically means he's returning to the noose, and Kei calls for his IBM to smash one of trees.
"Everyone... around here... is an idiot," it gurgles, punching and hacking away, and Kei can't find it in himself to disagree. He feels weirdly light, and happy, all the way down to his toes. Which is stupid, he knows; they might not even stop Satou, and even if they do, that doesn't mean Japan will suddenly change all its fucked up beliefs about Ajin and what to do with them. There's no certainty, no guarantee, no anything.
Kei still feels weightless, even as he goes to cut Kou down, all thorough out dinner, and going over some information with Tosaki. He's being irrational, and stupid, and guided by his emotions, but.
If they do. Manage to stop Satou, go back to a regular, quiet life, if they do--
Kei lays down and listens to Kou's breathing, the way he snores and tosses and turns as he sleeps. He imagines an apartment with Kou, a classroom with Kou, a life with Kou -- a future with Kou.
It makes him feel warm all over, and lures him to sleep.