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Thump, thump, thump…
She listens to her heartbeats as she’s standing there, under the heavily smashing rain, in the middle of...is that a cemetery? She can’t move. Her body appears to be frozen and all she can do is blink, look around her as much as her eyes allow her to.
There, she can see a child standing alone in front of one of the gravestones. The child is dressed in what seems to be a very nice attire and has a wavy pale hair that makes her heart squeeze. Then, her body is granted movement and she feels herself falling forward before straightening up. She then walks - practically runs - in the child’s direction.
As she approaches him, she slows down until her feet stop. And finally, she takes in a breath before sheltering the child under her umbrella. The child looks up to whatever has stopped the rain from pouring down on him and turns to look at the girl who crouches down.
“Hey.”
The little boy tilts his head in confusion and she smiles before taking one of his hands in hers. The coldness of the child’s hand makes her heart throb a little.
“Let’s play?”
The child looks at his right hand softly held by the girl’s, and thinks her hand is pleasantly warm. He knows he shouldn’t be involving himself with others because it will only hurt them. He knows he should decline and go back home. He would be all alone again, in a dark, cold, way too roomy and empty house, but he has enough of involving people in his weird, damned luck cycle.
Yet, he finds himself feeling warm inside, hopeful. He has never seen that girl before, but she looks so different compared to everything here. Dull, gray… She isn’t. She looks...colorful.
He squeezes the girl’s fingers a little in his tiny, pale hand, and looks at her again, his gray eyes starting to shine with hope again.
...Hope?
Her smile widens in a gently way and the boy studies her face, trying to engrave every feature in his memory, as if he wouldn’t be able to see her ever again after today.
When she stands up without letting go of his hand, it’s like the time stopped.
✦✦✦
The girl continuously talks to the little boy while walking down the empty street. It is actually quite uncharacteristic of the girl to talk so much, even more so when it is not about video games, but she feels the need to talk. It is like the conversation should go on and on, and on, until the strange need fades away.
When she tells the boy her name, his chest tightens, warm, throbbing, filled, emptied… A strange flood of clashing emotions wash over him and he feels like he could start crying at any moment but doesn’t in the end. Since...how long hasn’t he cried…?
When he tells her his name, her grasp tightens for some reason and somehow, he guesses what she is going through may be pain. The girl, however, feels a lot more than just pain. It is not as simple. What she is feeling is… A cocktail of warm and painful emotions.
“Hey, let’s play here.”
He turns to look at what ‘Nanami Chiaki’, he learned, is pointing at: the park. He would always pass by here and see the children play but has never actually played here himself. His mother would always pull on his hand and take him straight back home. ‘You would make yourself dirty even more often’, she used to explain.
And now, here he is, playing in the sandbox with a stranger. The rain has long stopped with the rest of the world, but the sand is still heavy and thick.
Now, they are quietly playing together, exchanging a word or two every now and then.
Time passes by without flowing in reality. Only, it feels like they have been playing forever. The boy lifts his head from the sand to look at the girl still focused on strengthening the sand bump. The warm pink of her eyes is comforting to look at, and sort of tingling at the same time. Again, he contemplates her face, trying to remember everything of her, desperately trying to print her face and record her voice into his memory.
Noticing the boy’s stopped playing to look at her, she stares back at him.
“Nagito-kun?”
She tilts her head on the side and he soon goes back to patting the sand before him.
“...It’s getting late. Don’t you have to go home?”
A throb catches in her throat and she inhales in a silent gasp, eyes glowing. Then, she cleans her hands before reaching out to Komaeda and gently patting his fluffy hair which makes him snap his head back up. What a nice texture, she thinks and smiles at him. She shakes her head.
“Hm-hm, I don’t have to, as long as you don’t want me to.”
The boy’s eyes widen at her words and he lowers his head again, nodding slightly, a faint blush coloring his cheeks. And finally, he smiles for the first time in what feels like years.
“Come on, let’s make a tunnel!”
Komaeda nods again, more enthusiastically this time, eyes shining with happiness. The both of them start digging carefully yet with an uncharacteristic energy and at some point, their fingers touch and Nanami catches the child’s hand fond and tight, not bothering to dust off the sand from their connecting hands. The boy gasps at the contact and his eyes widen before he raises his head looking at her with sparkling irises.
“It- It connected…”
“Yeah,” she smiles fondly. “It did.”
✦✦✦
After playing with the swing for a moment, Nanami pushing Komaeda higher and higher, glad for every giggle from the boy, she sits on the swing next to his and sighs.
“...That was tiring, but I had fun. How about you, Ko-... Nagito-kun?”
“Me too. I didn’t...have this much fun in a long time.”
His genuine words make Nanami warm and her nose stings.
“I’m glad,” she whispers and puts a hand on her chest, her lips bending upwards again.
Seconds of silence go by, or at least, that is what he thinks would have been if the time wasn’t suspended before the boy speaks.
“Nanami-oneesan,” he calls out to her, smiling brightly and pushing himself slightly.
“Yeah?”
“...Are you going soon?”
He looks at anywhere but Nanami when she turns to stare at him, eyebrows slightly knitted together. The end is close, she can sense it.
“...I-”
“You don’t belong here. I know you don’t.”
He turns back to her with a smile different from the ones he has been giving her for the last few hours. This is...the kind of smile she knows. This is the smile all of them know, the one that makes her heart sting. The one he is showing to hide the aching slowly eating himself up from inside.
The wind starts blowing again, bringing a rain of pink petals with it.
“Komaeda-kun…”
“...Thank you, Nanami-san.”
Nanami sharply sucks in a breath and feels like her heart could be crushed by the painful squeeze. Komaeda’s eyes have always been a cloudy gray with a tint of green but right now, his eyes are crystal clear and she can see the reflection of his whole universe inside them. She abruptly gets to her feet and pulls the boy into a tight, tight embrace.
“...I-”
Komaeda’s eyes widen again and he stops breathing for a second, utterly surprised by the sudden contact. The quiet rain of petals turns into a storm of flower and all the gray changes into lights and colours.
He can feel Nanami starting to sob, starting to cry. She wished she could stay with him and with everybody else. She wished she could stay and protect them forever. She wished… She wished she was still alive. She holds him tighter and tighter, making it almost hard to breathe and he hesitantly brings his tiny hands to her back. And when whimpers start to escape her throat, the boy clutches at her shirt as his nose starts stinging painfully and his eyes getting warm. The world before him then gets uncomfortably blurry.
Eventually, she releases the embrace and moves back a little to look at him.
“...I should go, and you…”
She takes in a shaky breath.
“You should wake up. Hinata-kun is waiting for you. Everyone is.”
Another drop slides down her reddened cheek as she closes her eyes and rests her forehead against Komaeda’s.
“Please get along with everyone and take care of yourself. And please… Please don’t forget me.”
She barely whispers the last few words when she starts to disappear in a million of petals and holds Komaeda tight again. This time, the boy hugs her back as tight as his small and frail arms allow him to.
And when she disappears completely in a burst of petals, Komaeda’s grip closes on itself and his grown body curls until his forehead is against the ground. He screams, gripping tightly on the remaining petals.
✦✦✦
Komaeda finds himself in a white empty space in front of who he first thinks is Kamukura Izuru but reveals himself as Alter Ego. He doesn’t have to push the other dream in the back of his mind, it hides itself in the deep side of his memory.
I won’t forget. I won’t forget. I won’t forget.
He repeats the words to himself again and again, as if it would eventually reach Nanami.
It’s going to be okay.
When he wakes up, a voice he missed and loves so much is ringing in his ears.
“Hey! Can you hear me?”
And finally, finally , as the gates open behind Hinata, a mixture of hopeful feelings fill his chest and his eyes glow in happiness.
Everything is okay now.