Chapter Text
The first thing Hinata thinks when he gets home is that he can’t wait to see Komaeda.
The second thing he thinks is, Ah, fuck.
He’s immediately flanked by Naegi and Kirigiri, who must have gotten back a few minutes before him, waiting for him on the curb. Kirigiri nods curtly at him and says, “I’ll write the report, but could you make a spreadsheet with the numbers?” She says it deadpan; it’s not a question.
The car that dropped Hinata off is skirting away, and Hinata is left with his luggage in one hand. He nods. “Yeah. Can I get it to you… by the end of the week?”
“Anytime before we need to send over our results.” Which meant before the end of the month, before applications for funding for the next year would be necessary. Which means he really, really wants to completely put off all work until then. What he wants is to kick back on the couch for days straight and to watch what crappy television was starting to air now, all ridiculously low budget while the rest of the money left in the world was used to feed and nurse people back to health. He wants—oh, right. Komaeda!
He checks his watch. Then, quickly, before either of them can say something, says, “I have a meeting to get to now, so I’ll see you later,” and walks off as quickly as possible.
On the other side of the headquarters, Komaeda should be working.
After passing through the white, gray hallways and everyone else hard at work, he emerges into a big, green courtyard. At the other end of it, he sees a group of children on play break, supervised by a young-ish girl.
Before Hinata had to leave town to connect with one of the Future Foundation’s partner organizations, across the country, he set Komaeda up with his first real job after—well, everything. A caretaker for children, essentially, a school slash daycare the Foundation had recently propped up. It had been big news at first—Hinata remembered Kirigiri saying something like, If we don’t want something like this to happen again, the children born from this rubble need to be educated, of course.
“Hey,” Hinata says to the girl, who’s halfheartedly watching the children play.
“Hi!” she says, because she must recognize him, him with the green and red eye. But she must have been hired for the Foundation specifically for this new branch, because he doesn’t recognize her.
“Is Komaeda in today?”
Her face falls, confusion spilling onto her face. “Komaeda?” she looks around, as if she might find him lurking about. “I’m not sure who you mean.”
“N—what?” Hinata blinks. “He’s not your coworker.”
She feigns thoughtfulness, to be polite, probably, then shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know a Komaeda.”
“You don’t—you don’t work with him? When were you hired?”
“Um…” she smiles nervously, “Today is actually my first day. So maybe I just haven’t met him yet. Is he an instructor?”
“Uh…” Hinata finds himself blinking again. He suddenly is not invested in this conversation, because the girl clearly knows nothing.
Komaeda, by now—Hinata tries to do the math in his head. He should have been working here for a few weeks already, should have started just after Hinata left town.
He straightens. She’s still waiting for a response, but he just says, “I’m sorry, I must be remembering something incorrectly.” Then, walks briskly past her and into the building behind her. Where the classrooms are, where the instructors meet their students. And, to the back, where the woman in charge was. The woman he had spoken to about hiring Komaeda, had praised Komaeda to the heavens to.
When he finds her door, he knocks gently. It’s see-through, so when she looks up and sees that it’s Hinata, she nods quickly and gestures for him to come in.
The first thing she says is, “So much for that Komaeda, right?”
Hinata freezes. “Why isn’t he here?”
She scrunches her face at him, honestly confused. “He didn’t take the job.”
“I—“ Hinata struggles for words. “But he was ecstatic for it. It meant everything to him.”
She just shrugs. “Well, I don’t know.” When he doesn’t reply, she smiles in a small, artificial way. “I don’t think any less of you, Hinata. I just think you see the best in people. And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t live up to their best.”
Anger unfurls in Hinata’s chest, hot and simmering. She knew nothing about Komaeda. She was a self righteous asshole who—and this, he thought much worse—just saw the worst in people.
If Komaeda didn’t take the job, Hinata thinks, something is seriously wrong.
As he leaves, he pulls out his phone.
He walks to the Foundation’s parking lot, where he finds his car, parked here for a month now, and settles into the driver’s seat. There, he scrolls through him and Komaeda’s messages.
Sure, he realizes. For the last two weeks none of his messages went through to Komaeda. By each of them, there’s a red exclamation mark, and when he presses on them, they say: Failed to send. Retry?
He retries, but they just err again. When he was away, he’d figured they’d failed to send because he was too far. He hadn’t really thought anything of it at all, really. There were only three messages—they’d never messaged much before. They had no need—they were with each other nearly 24/7. Just not the last month. And Komaeda hates messaging, hates how it can’t convey tone and the way it all feels superficial. Hinata has never understood such deep hatred, but at least understands the annoyance. It’s fine; he prefers to talk to Komaeda in person, too.
Which is why he hadn’t thought anything of it, the fact they hadn’t spoken in two weeks. He’d figured that he’d get home and see Komaeda within the first few hours of being back.
Hinata shakes his head, puts his keys in the ignition. He’ll ask him at home.
But when he arrives, the apartment is silent.
“Komaeda?” he calls.
He looks down at their coffee table. There’s a book on the edge, an English one, with the bookmark only fifty pages through. A vase of flowers in the middle—the ones Hinata gave to Komaeda just before leaving—so dead their entire buds have fallen, brown and crisp, onto the table. The stems wilt in water that, when Hinata puts his nose to, stinks with rot and new bacteria.
He presses a finger to the surface of the table, and when he pulls it away, there is a thin layer of dust on the pad of his finger.
He immediately whips his phone out and dials Naegi’s number—because he doesn’t know who else. But he doesn’t call him just yet.
Hinata takes a few steps further into the apartment and peers down the hallway. Komaeda’s bedroom door is shut closed.
He puts his hand to the doorknob, and it, too, feels wrong. Komaeda’s door is never closed like this. Always, even when he sleeps, even when he dresses, he leaves it open, if only just an inch.
It makes me claustrophobic, Komaeda would say. Like I’m in my cottage again, or something. I just like being able to see your bedroom door across from mine.
He opens the door.
Inside, it is pristine. Komaeda’s room has always been neat—he doesn’t own a lot of stuff. But it’s so neat it looks like no one has ever lived here. The stack of books usually present on his desk sit cleanly in his bookcase, and the random pair of pants and pair of shoes usually chucked somewhere are nowhere to be seen. Komaeda’s bed is perfectly made. On his night stand, where he keeps his medications, there is nothing except his lamp and a pen.
Hinata calls Naegi.
Naegi’s voice is light through the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey,” Hinata can’t stand the weariness in his voice, “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“What is it?”
“It’s Komaeda,” Hinata says. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Well…” Hinata looks around the room again. “He’s certainly not at home. And he hasn’t been for a long time.”
–
“So…” Komaeda set down the groceries onto their kitchen island.
Hinata only barely nodded in his direction. He was focused on moving clean dishes from the dishwasher into their respective cabinets, eyes darting around the kitchen. “Hm?”
Komaeda stilled. He didn’t want to sound self-important, or even really proud. Didn’t want to sound like he was asking Hinata to be excited, or to react at all. But he did, he really did. “My cancer, it’s in remission.”
Hinata seemed to glitch, then, malfunction—the plate he was holding fell to the floor, and it crashed into shards, coating the kitchen floor like snow. Instinctively, Komaeda flinched back, but the plate felt inconsequential, especially when Hinata looked at him like that.
Pure, uncomplicated joy, mouth gaping open like an idiot. His arms were outstretched, hands splayed out. “Komaeda!”
Komaeda felt his own face break into a crooked smile. “Yeah,” he said, voice airy. He wasn’t sure he had even really processed it himself. He’d prolonged coming home, just to have some time to mull it over. So he’d done that while he went to acquire food—he’d bargained with a seller for some special wine, even.
“Komaeda,” Hinata repeated, then stepped forward.
“Be careful!” Komaeda shouted.
Hinata ignored him.
And in a flash, wrapped his arms so tightly around Komaeda that for a moment, he felt crushed.
Hinata pulled Komaeda down to his height, pushing his head into the crook of Hinata’s shoulder. His arms were so strong around him—hard and intentional and soft and warm all at once.
Komaeda breathed him in.
“Komaeda,” Hinata said. “That’s great. That’s… that’s the best news.” His voice was restrained.
“Yeah. I guess it is.” Komaeda lifted his arms, felt them less like arms and more like useless extensions of himself. Where to put them? Around Hinata’s neck, or his middle? How did people usually do this?
Hinata sighed, heavy. His body was limp on top of Komaeda’s, like he’d let go of everything else apart of him, behind him, to do this. To be wrapped only in Komaeda.
Komaeda settled for wrapping his arms around his middle, then sighed himself.
But Hinata was already pulling away. “We need to celebrate, Komaeda. Holy shit!”
“Yeah?”
“Yes!” Hinata exclaimed, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Yes, Komaeda!”
So they did.
Hinata invited everyone over, after what felt like a decade of negotiation.
I think we should invite everyone, Hinata said. They will be ecstatic to hear it. And our apartment could use some life.
Of course. Whatever you want to do!
Hinata, narrowing his eyes: Do you want me to? I don’t have to. It can be just us.
It had been difficult for Komaeda to answer. He couldn’t really imagine that everyone would be ecstatic—not unpleased, maybe, but most likely unaffected by the news. It wasn’t like they reached out often—though it wasn’t like Komaeda had been reaching out, either. But if Hinata wanted them over, then Komaeda did too. Really, he did want to see everyone, but were these the right circumstances? Komaeda had figured that the next time he’d see everyone like this, he’d be fully pieced back together: glued nicely, no cracks shining through, well adjusted and contributing to society. It had been three—four now?—years and he still wasn’t there, though, and wasn’t sure he ever would be.
But Komaeda hadn’t said any of that. He’d opted for being vague, saying over and over that if Hinata wanted everyone over, then Komaeda did too.
It’d finally ended with Hinata taking a deep breath and punctuating, “Okay, then I’m going to, because I think everyone will be very happy and I think it’d be good for both of us. But if you feel uncomfortable, or overwhelmed, or upset, please tell me. And I’ll make up some excuse and say I feel sick and kick everyone out. Seriously, Komaeda.”
So here they were.
Their apartment cramped with their old classmates, Hinata being a perfect host. Each time someone walked in, their smile was so big when Hinata announced the news that it had genuinely made Komaeda’s heart clench in his chest. He felt that now, his entire body was on fire from it: happiness, some feeling like a bunch of puzzle pieces slotting into place inside of and all around him. Hearing about everyone’s new lives excited him in a way that made him feel embarrassed, almost—these days he was much more self aware of how he came across when that uncontrollable grin appeared on his face, when he couldn’t resist lifting his hands and shaking people by their shoulders. The former was hard to control, the latter less so. He settled for keeping his hands perpetually in his pockets, or around a glass, or wrapped around his own body.
Tsumiki had been especially unexpected; upon seeing Komaeda, she’d said nothing except for stepping forward and hugging him so lightly, so unlike Hinata’s unrelenting hold. When she pulled away, she’d said, “K—Komaeda, this is… r—really such a joy.”
Koizumi had nonchalantly presented a stack of photographs to Hinata and Komaeda, with Saionji on her arm. They must have been from over the last few years, because they were an amalgamation of photos from their time on Jabberwock Island, and a few from when they’d all recently moved off. Most of them were group photos—ones they’d posed for and ones they hadn’t—and a few were of Hinata and Komaeda, standing alone by the water or on the couch of someone’s apartment. “Koizumi!” Komaeda had exclaimed. “I feel… I feel…”
She’d raised a hand to stop him. “You can just say thanks. Congratulations, by the way.” Then she’d looked around the apartment. “The photos are for you two to decorate. I had a feeling you boys wouldn’t have touched this place, even though you’ve been here for a year now.”
Late into the night, some people had drifted out—namely, Tsumiki, Koizumi, and Saionji, along with Owari and Nidai. Conversation flitted about the connected living room and kitchen, lower and less energized than it had been when the night began.
Pekoyama, Mioda, and Sonia sat at the kitchen island. The boys were all splayed out on the couch, talking jaggedly and casually.
Komaeda drifted over to where the remaining girls sat and, hoping he wasn’t overstepping, sat beside Mioda, across from the other two. “Hi,” he said. He glanced towards the couch.
Mioda clapped him on the back. “Heeelllooo, survivor!”
He smiled at her.
Sonia rested her chin on her hand, elbows on the table. It was so un-princess of her that it made Komaeda freeze, and blink several times. They had all changed, perhaps, in these years. She said, “Komaeda, I have a question.”
He nodded, cocking his head to the side. “Yes?”
“What quite is the nature of…” she gestured around them, at the apartment. “This?”
“I don’t really know what you mean,” Komaeda answered.
“Oh, you know. You and Hinata.”
“I still don’t know…”
Mioda cut in. “Oh, come on, Sonia! He’s obviously shy!”
What was the nature of it? Komaeda thought.
“I’m just saying,” Sonia started, “Right now, Hinata is the happiest I’ve ever seen him. And I’m very happy for the two of you, whatever the two of you… are. That’s all I wanted to say!”
Komaeda looked at Hinata on the couch, listening to Kuzuryu and Soda with his wide eyes. Legs spread like he didn’t know or didn’t care how much space he took up, a childish glee in his eye. So utterly normal, so utterly not anything like what Komaeda had expected and everything Komaeda had ever wanted in life. Of course he was in love with him, he felt like telling Sonia.
And it didn’t really matter if Hinata loved him back. If he did, it might be awful—when Komaeda’s life was going too well, bad things always started to happen.
With how he felt here, right now, everyone speaking so gently to him, for when Hinata to talk about home to mean somewhere Komaeda was too, it was enough. Komaeda didn’t want to tip anything too much in his favor.
“Thank you,” Komaeda said. “I’m really happy, too.”
He swallowed, felt that dread start to pool in his chest. Happiness had never lasted very long for him.
Soon enough, everyone left. It was late into the night when he and Hinata cleaned up the trash left over.
From across the room, Hinata suddenly piped up. “Hey, Komaeda?”
“Yes, Hinata?”
“What about your… you know. The other thing. The dementia.”
“Oh,” Komaeda sighed. He straightened up after putting something in the trash, and Hinata did, too, looking at him intently. “Slow, and early, like it’s been for years.”
Hinata nodded unsteadily.
“Don’t worry,” Komaeda said, “Please don’t worry about me.”
Hinata waved a hand at him. “How can I not?”
“Is one of the talents you got ultimate worrier?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“It doesn’t really matter, anyway,” Komaeda said. “At this point, I don’t know what parts of me are my illnesses and what parts are truly me. Whatever that means. Sometimes I’m scared that… that if I was without all this mess that I was, I wouldn’t be me anymore.”
Hinata was quiet.
Komaeda looked away. “Oh, sorry. I know that probably doesn’t make sense. That’s probably insensitive for me to say, especially when there are people who…”
“No, no,” Hinata interjected. “It’s perfectly normal. I think all of us sort of wonder who we would be without… without everything that’s happened to us. I think most of us wouldn’t be ourselves.”
Was that true? Komaeda mulled it over. They were all good people, always, he thought. But he’d been so susceptible to Junko’s brainwashing, had been so awful even when they’d had their memories wiped. His self was made up of so many drastic highs and lows in ways he’d never observed among the others. He had always been molded by the worst parts of the world around him. All his life, he had admired others for not being so.
“I guess,” Komaeda said. “Even now, I don’t know who I am anymore. It was hard enough to… you know.”
“To what?”
“To continue living the way I’d been living before the tragedy.”
“What, obsessed with hope?”
Komaeda felt himself squirm uncomfortably. “Something like that?”
Hinata was quiet.
Komaeda had sat through a lot of counseling sessions, mandated by the Future Foundation. They had been—well, they’d been hard. They still were; every once a week he’d shuffle into a room and have his brain prodded like an animal, and by the end of it he always felt like he’d just been asked, very politely, What the hell made you such an asshole? He knew the answers, he just couldn’t stop it—until he’d really been forced to sit back and try.
Hinata suddenly blurted, “What if it hadn’t happened, the tragedy? Where do you think you’d be?”
“Ah, dead?”
“Komaeda!”
Despite himself, he grinned. “I’m sorry.”
“For real. What did you dream of doing?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Nothing. I really do think I’d probably have been dead by this age. I’d have my own hand, that’s for sure.”
Hinata stiffened, and in a more serious voice, said. “Okay. Seriously. Imagine that you don’t die. Imagine that your luck won’t interfere.”
When Komaeda actually thought about it, the answer felt easy, and he wondered at why he’d never thought about it before, because suddenly it was a wonderful thought. “I would want to help others, of course. Maybe a therapist or a teacher… I’d like to read books, maybe, and talk about them.”
Hinata nodded stiffly, looked as though he was shelving the information for later.
A few moments later, Hinata spoke up again. “By the way, Komaeda?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re saying you don’t know which parts of yourself are you and which are your brain’s deterioration to the guy whose brain has been poked and prodded at until he was someone else. So when I say I understand, I do. Okay?”
Komaeda stared at him.
“I want you to say okay.”
“Okay,” Komaeda said, soft, and the gentleness in Hinata’s eyes frightened him.
Something bad was about to happen, he was sure. His good luck prophesied it.
–
“What did you find?”
Across from him, Kirigiri looks hesitant. “Hinata, don’t get your hopes up. We’ve found places to look, but really we just have more questions.”
“Please,” Hinata begs, “just tell me.” Around him, the room feels hotter than it should. He can sense his heartbeat in his chest, rapid, drumming. It wants to reach out and grab the files Kirigiri has herself, because she is talking so damn slow.
“I spoke to the director of the branch hiring Komaeda—“
“She’s awful, isn’t she?”
“Hinata.”
He slumps back in his chair. Kirigiri’s office is plain, sophisticated. Too sleek. It’s all so sterile, and it is so discomfiting when inside, he feels like his mind won’t stop. It’s fucking chaos up there. Last night he’d thought that maybe Komaeda would turn up sometime in the evening, that maybe it was dusty because Komaeda just hadn’t cleaned. His room, in such an odd state, just because—why? Because Hinata was overthinking. And Komaeda would explain why he hadn’t taken the job. Hinata would explain that he wasn’t angry or upset or disappointed, just confused. Everything would go back to normal.
But it didn’t. He’d woken up and the apartment was still empty.
He’d sent another message to Komaeda, one that said What the hell where are you??? Can this message go through, please???? and it hadn’t.
So now, he was reeling. Makoto informed him that under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t be able to extend what little resources they had to a grown man just being away from home, especially when there were so many very big fish to fry–but when they realized that he might have been gone for longer than a few weeks, and was actively diagnosed with a long, long list of illnesses and disorders, used a prosthetic arm, and that at one point in his life he had been a terrorist… they got right on looking for him.
As soon as Hinata got into work, he went to Kirigiri’s office.
She was staring at him so sternly. “Can I continue?”
“Yes. Please.”
“She didn’t tell me much. All she said was that he was scheduled to start on January 1st, but it fell through, even before then, because he wasn’t responding to any of the communications. She really didn’t know the specifics; it’s not her job. There is actively a team looking into his interviewer and all his communications with the people he was speaking directly with about the job. I’ll update you with what they find, okay? But right now this is all I have.”
“He wasn’t supposed to start on January 1st,” was all Hinata said.
“Well, when was he supposed to start?”
“Three weeks ago? He was going to start right after I left.”
“She did say some things were moved around.”
“Like, by Komaeda? Or by them?”
“I don’t know, Hinata.”
“Why the fuck doesn’t the director know?”
Kirigiri’s smile was small. “You’re the one who said she was an asshole.”
Leave it to a person like that to be the director for the education efforts.
She shrugged. “Not everyone in the Foundation is sunshine and rainbows.”
Hinata let out a chuckle. “I know that, all right.” Then he stood up. “I’m serious, let me know immediately what you find out.”
“Of course, Hinata.” When he turned to leave she said, “Wait. Before you go.”
Hinata raised an eyebrow.
“If you want to be involved with the investigation, you can. I’m giving you my permission. You’d probably be a lot of help.”
“Oh, I know,” Hinata said. “I was just on my way to get on the team.”
As he left, he heard her shout, “Just please get those spreadsheets to me, too!”
–
Hinata said, with his mouth full, “Guess what.”
Komaeda looked up. “What is it?”
“They’re starting an educational branch, the Future Foundation. It’s a big deal. Part day-care, part schooling. Not full-on; the kids will have half days and stuff, have very light work. Just so they’re using their brains, so they actually learn how to read.”
The news lit up Komaeda’s day a bit. “That’s great. That’s really great, I think. It will be good.”
“Would you…” Hinata swallowed his food, then looked up at Komaeda with a glint in his eyes. “Would you wanna get involved?”
Confusion twinged inside of him. “A former remnant of despair, working in the educational branch? They wouldn’t allow it.”
“No—I—they would,” Hinata said. “Honestly… I already brought it up to Naegi and Kirigiri. They think it’s a good idea.”
Komaeda felt nothing short of horror at this. His eyes locked onto Hinata’s, and his voice came out wobbly, “You already asked them?”
“Well, first I was floating the idea to Soda and Kuzuryu. They thought it was a good idea.” His voice turned doubtful. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine. It’s completely fine. You just got the news about your cancer. I might be jumping the gun. And, I don’t mean to sound like I need you to get a job or—or even want you to. You don’t need to do anything. I just thought you might be interested, might want to. And I wanted to get the approval from the others before I got your hopes up. But seriously, if you don’t want to, it’s fine. I just thought of you when I heard about it, because of what you said about helping others.”
“What would it entail?” Interest floated in him, but most of all—joy. Hinata thinking of him. Hinata doing this for him.
The thought of it was almost too good to be true. Komaeda, really doing something meaningful. The words stepping stone drifted through his mind, but he swatted them away.
“You’d probably start off just as an aid or a supervisor for the student’s breaks. But you could move up, definitely. Go through training to be an instructor. You could teach literature!”
Something expanding inside of and before Komaeda, something expansive and light and hopeful. Meaning, purpose. Life, the sort of life he never thought he could have or would ever even deserve. He couldn’t bite back the smile forming on his face. “I would love to, I think.”
“Really?”
“But are you sure I’m right for it? Don’t you think I’m,” Komaeda gestured at his head, “not fit to be a role model when I’m all…”
“Oh, come off it. The kids would love you.”
“How do I go about this?”
“You’ll need to go through the normal process. Application, interview. And of course I’ll put in a good word for you. I think you should get certified to handle, like, emergency situations with kids, it’s a requirement, but it’s not a long process; through the Foundation it only takes a week because they want to teach people. You’ll be golden. Komaeda, I really see this for you.”
What did Hinata see, when he looked into that future? When Komaeda tried to think of it, he usually saw a lot of nothing.
He tried not to. He threw himself into preparations, how to make the most perfect first impression. With every passing moment, he almost wished that Hinata hadn’t introduced this possibility to him, because now he wanted it so bad it hurt to imagine that it might not happen. It wasn’t really about the job, of course it’s not. It was the idea of having a routine, him and Hinata coming home from work together, cooking dinner tired and setting their alarms for the same time, all domestic bliss. And meaning, that beautiful thing. Waking up every morning and not thinking that one’s body felt like a prison, more like a tool for all the good he had to give.
He took the course at the Foundation and got his certifications. How to stop a kid from choking, how to handle allergic reactions, how to give CPR. He bumbled through it clumsily, but his enthusiasm seemed to make up for his reputation to the instructors, and they were patient, kind with him. They must not have recognized him. The whole time he had kept thinking that his luck would make something go wrong, but it didn’t.
One night, he and Hinata were brushing their teeth in the bathroom at the same time. And as Hinata leaned over to spit into the sink, Komaeda’s eyes scanned the nape of his neck, the tiny hairs that curled there, the muscles pulling themselves taut. And he felt so overcome with the physicality, the realness of Hinata and by extension his entire life, so much so that he froze.
When Hinata popped back up, he laughed at Komaeda. “What’s wrong with you? You’re dripping.”
Bubbling toothpaste had accumulated in the corner of his mouth. With his toothbrush in his mouth, Komaeda said, “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” and then leaned over and spit into the sink, too. What a miracle, to be asked what was wrong and for Nothing to be the truth. What a miracle, to put his toothbrush back and for it to be right beside Hinata’s.
–
Naegi, with a notepad in his hands, notes Hinata’s observations.
“Fist of all, I’m almost positive these are all the same groceries we had when I left. A few meals short, but it means he didn’t do any grocery shopping in the time from when I left. He couldn’t have been home for much longer after that.”
Naegi writes it down.
Hinata points at the book on the coffee table. “And I remembered, last night, that he’d just started reading that book when I left. If Komaeda does anything with his days, it’s read. The fact that he only got through fifty pages… he really wasn’t home for long.” Hinata doesn’t add the fact that if Komaeda left all of his books behind, it could point to a whole other stack of unexplainable things. Had he not thought he’d be gone for long? Had he abandoned the hobby completely? “Even fifty pages—that’s like one day of reading for him. He was either busy with other things or he was here for even shorter than I thought.”
Naegi writes that down, too.
Hinata suddenly puts a hand up at Naegi, signaling him to stop. “You don’t need to take notes. I’m capable of remembering.”
“It’s not for you, it’s for the file. For the other investigators.”
Hinata’s not sure literally anyone else except for him can figure this out. No one knows Komaeda like him, no one else understands the small, intricate movings of their life. If he left it up to anyone else, they were going to conclude that he’d run off in a manic episode and killed himself. He was surprised no one had already told him, That is most likely what happened, after Hinata sent them his medical records, along with all the extensive, extensive files on him held by the Foundation.
Hinata ignores what Naegi said, because he doesn’t feel like explaining himself. He’s feeling his world shrink down around him to just hold him and Komaeda; he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. He feels such red-hot urgency that he doesn’t want to waste a single waking moment on thinking about anything else.
Fuck Kirigiri’s spreadsheets, he thinks. I’m finding Komaeda before the end of this month anyway, no matter what it takes.
Naegi continues, “Listen… I get the sense that you don’t want this to be such a big investigation, but it just is. Komaeda is a very dangerous person for us to not have our eyes on.”
Hinata whips around so harshly, and he knows his face looks ugly with all this anger on it, but he can’t help it. “Is that what his counselor said? That he’s dangerous?”
Naegi sighs. “Those—those records indicate a sparkling mental progression, yes. But do you know what else she said?”
“What, Naegi?”
“That progress isn’t linear. I know you know that, Hinata.”
Hinata just groans and runs his hands through his hair. He feels like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Do they know what they’re going to find if they go into this investigation thinking that that’s what happened? A bunch of evidence that makes them think he’s actively dangerous, and then when we find him they’re gonna break down the door of wherever he is with a bunch of guns, and he’s gonna freak out and hate himself even more and maybe actually become, whatever, dangerous again.”
Naegi sighs, sounding older than Hinata in that moment. “I’ll leave you alone. Just write up your findings and send them over to me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says.
As Naegi leaves, Hinata takes a deep breath, calming himself.
What did they tell him to do, when he was feeling like this? Count your breathing. Think about what you’re grateful for.
He doesn’t feel grateful for anything, not when his messages to Komaeda still aren’t going through.
He goes down the hallway then, hesitating before Komaeda’s doorknob. He hasn’t went in since his first day home, because it makes his spine prickle and his heart race uncomfortably.
But he goes in.
Scans the room, analyzes. He doesn’t notice much more than what he already has.
He sits at Komaeda’s desk, feels the armrests. Runs his fingers along where Komaeda must have, where he’d have leaned his back when he sat sideways, slid the chair so that it sat properly before the desk. There were two drawers at this desk—first, Hinata opened the bigger one. There was nothing in it, a black hole.
He opened the topmost, smaller one.
Inside there was a blue, leather-bound notebook.
Hinata brushed his fingers over the top of it.
He didn’t know Komaeda kept a diary.
If Komaeda kept it from him, then it was really private. It always seemed that Komaeda’s favorite part of the day was spilling every waking thought to Hinata, always late into the night when Hinata needed to be asleep.
But there could be clues inside. If this was legitimately a document of his day-to-day—there had to be something.
Hinata brought it to the desk and opened it.
And the first page was—a list of words.
Hinata squinted down at it. It makes no sense; they weren’t even difficult words that he would’ve need to remember for some special case. Hinata flips through—some later pages have lists of English words and their definitions, grammar rules. But all the first ones are Japanese, the most basic of phrases.
Pass the salt.
Chopstick
Toast
A page-turner
Detective
Passion/Interest
Domestic
The list goes on. They’re so ridiculously random that Hinata wonders if Komaeda really has relapsed, or something, playing random manipulative tricks on everyone else like he had in the killing game.
But it just doesn’t bode. Everyone else would say that it did, but Hinata feels somewhere deep in his gut, around his heart, that it’s not that. Not when things were going so well. Not when Komaeda was starting to smile that often. Not when he was nearly levitating every night from the excitement of his life opening up.
Hinata traces the word Domestic with his fingers and tries to think about why Komaeda would have written it, but he can’t think of anything. Everything they did was domestic. Just a month or so ago, Soda had laughed at Hinata for it: “You’re like a fuckin’ married couple or something.”
Hinata could not help the thought slipping through, that whatever it meant, that when Komaeda had written this word that he hoped he’d thought of him.
–
They’d reached a point where most of their time together was actually filled with silence.
Dinner again, Hinata eating with his eyes glued to his food.
Komaeda looked down at his food. “Can you—“ he stopped. He stared at what he needed: that vial of white flakes, the one that made food taste good. What was it called, again? How did someone usually ask for it? He waved his hand back and forth.
“Uh, hot?” Hinata asked, and mimicked the motion. “Is the food too hot or something?”
“No…” Komaeda pointed. “That, please.”
“Oh.” He glanced down. “The salt?”
“Yes,” Komaeda said. “The salt. Can you—you know.”
“Pass it?”
“Yes! Pass it, the salt, please.”
Hinata gave it to him. “There you go.”
“Sorry… my mind blanked, I guess.”
Hinata shrugged like it was nothing, a calm on his face. “All good.”
But something uncomfortable twisted inside of Komaeda.
And then it happened again.
Again, at dinner, when Komaeda sat down. “Ah, I forgot my…” his eyes lingered on Hinata’s. “The things.”
It wasn’t a big deal; Komaeda just turned around and grabbed his. But as he held them in his hands, his mind could not recall the word for them.
Hinata twisted around. “Your chopsticks?”
“Oh. Yep.”
It was fine, wasn’t it?
And then it just kept happening. Toast, one morning. One day, while Komaeda gushed about a book: “It’s so exciting! The suspense is so gripping. It’s a total… you know! Like it just makes me want to keep going, keep reading, keep turning the pages—it’s a total… oh, what is the word?” to which Hinata said, “Oh, a page-turner.” and again when he couldn’t remember the word for someone who investigates criminal cases.
Komaeda noticed it. He knew what it could’ve been. Every time it happened, his brain flashed the word DEATH inside of him so sharply it made him nauseous. Before, when he had symptoms, he wouldn’t notice them, and there was no one else really around to punctuate them to him. But when he was finally diagnosed, so early at that, whenever he started to act like someone diagnosed with a rare type of behavioral dementia, he’d notice it. It will be much more manageable for you, since we’ve noticed it so early. Now, how it developed this early is interesting, but alas…
And before, it just made him hate himself. Sink back into himself, hold his body and despair at the fact that before he was anything, he was an animal. A lone one—a lone wolf. Komaeda hated that term; wolves weren’t loners, they ran in packs. In that way he really was one, a lone wolf—alone without wanting to be. Dying because of it. That was all it ever was. No denial, but full blown acceptance, and raw, aching despair at the fact of it.
But now, he felt denial.
I’m just overwhelmed, he told himself. There was nothing like acceptance. It can’t be. Not now, please.
There was no denying, though, that it was. This was his good luck collapsing, twisting back around into that dreaded cycle.
He practiced interviews with Hinata. He practically memorized the questions Hinata told him he might be asked, and memorized his answers, the ones Hinata revised with him.
“Okay, so, could you explain your interest in the role?”
“Of course! As someone who grew up without parents myself, I know the importance of support. I think that the educational branch is going to be one of the most important extensions of the Foundation, and I’m excited at the prospect of being a part of it. I’ve always had a passion for being of support to others like this—watching them grow and learn. And I think it’s such an important thing to provide, especially in times like these.” Komaeda felt himself breathe when he finished speaking.
“That’s great!”
So when the interview finally came around, he thought he had prepared to the goddamn nines. He would be spotless. The interviewer had started by skipping the question Komaeda hated the most: Tell me a little bit about yourself, and he was grateful for it. Probably, she already had his entire background.
She eventually asked the question, “Could you describe your interest in the role?”
And it was going perfectly, until Komaeda said, “I’ve always had… had, like, this…”
Fuck, what was the word? Desire? No, that was weird! Not like desire but more than interest. A strong interest.
“Ah, an interest in…”
That was such a weak word, though! He’d have to roll with it, though. Or maybe he’d tack on—
“I really enjoy,” and in the stress of that he forgot the next part of his memorized answer. Something about helping people. “I really enjoy helping children,” he said bluntly.
The interviewer cocked her head at him.
That was… weird, wasn’t it?
Passion!
“Well, it’s more that in general, I have a passion for supporting others…” and then the rest came back to him, and everything was fine.
When Hinata asked him how his interview went that night, Komaeda wanted to crumple into himself. “Good, I think. I just repeated everything I’d say in our practice interviews. I stumbled over my words once, and I sounded like a complete idiot,” and I’m becoming increasingly aware that I might not be able to work this job, anyway, if this disease inside of me is increasing the speed at which it eats at my brain, “but I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you did great,” Hinata smiled at him, like everything was fine, well, even. At least that was one of them.
Komaeda really knew it was true one day when he was out with Hinata. Komaeda had met him after work, and together they were getting groceries, picking out their favorite things and debating brands and vendors.
It had just rained. Beneath them, the floor was dewy and smelled of earth. Later when Komaeda did his laundry he’d catch a whiff of that earth scent and want to cry at this memory, its double-sidedness.
They’d checked everything off their list, Komaeda making the final tick in their little notepad, when Hinata stopped and said, “Komaeda, I’m glad for this. For us. Our little domestic life.”
And before he could feel the happiness it should’ve evoked in him, his brain caught onto the part of it that made alarms go off in his brain. “What does that mean, again?” Komaeda asked.
Hinata looked embarrassed, looked away shyly. “I mean—I mean what it sounds like.”
“N—no…” Komaeda should’ve just dropped it and moved on, but the panic inside of him was so spiky, “that word. Domestic?”
“You don’t know what domestic means?”
“I think… I think I do. But I forgot.”
“Like, homely. Normal. Like a family, or something.”
“Oh. Thank you, Hinata.”
Hinata’s smile was wobbly, his cheeks stained pink. “Of course.”
Komaeda imagined his brain inside of him, graying at the edges. Everything inside of him falling into ruin, just when everything around him was starting to brighten.