Work Text:
2018
"Whose picture is this?"
Nagisa Nijisaki stopped humming some tune he had heard that morning on the radio - and that just wouldn't leave his mind - and looked up from the job applications he was reading.
"Mr. Hongou," he greeted him with a formality that had little to do with the relationship they shared and would rather keep under wraps. "I didn't hear you coming in."
Hongou gave a small chuckle. He was still standing in front of Nijisaki's desk, the framed picture that usually sat on the wooden surface in his hand. "The tune you've been humming all morning must be quite distracting. I've been standing here for at least a minute."
"I'd rather blame the applications I'm reading for that. It's hard to look away from the paper when you happen to be reading what's written on it," Nijisaki said with a shrug. "Now, what about that picture?"
"I asked who the man in it is," Hongou said, looking down at it as though he was trying, and failing, to recognize him.
Nijisaki's lips curled into a smirk. "Jealous, Mr. CEO?"
"Don't be ridicolous. I'm merely asking because I certainly hope it's not me. People could notice, and ask questions, and--" he trailed off when Nijisaki reached up to take the frame from his hand.
"Not, it's not yours. It's my father's - or at least, the one you see is."
Hongou frowned. "The one I see?" he asked, then fell quiet when he saw Nijisaki opening the back of the frame to take something out of it - another photograph, hidden beneath the one displayed. He put it down on the desk and, while Hongou could not see anything familiar in that face, the hat and suit were very much familiar. They were his.
"This," Nijisaki said, his voice softer. "This is you."
Hongou stared down at it for a few moments, and Nijisaki could see he worked his jaw a couple of times before speaking again. "I... see," he finally said, straightening himself and busying himself by fixing his tie - which needed no fixing at all. "I should hope no one ever notices."
"No one will."
Another long moment of silence followed. "I see no point in that," Hongou finally spoke again, something akin to anger in his voice. His gaze was still fixed on the picture on Nijisaki's desk.
Nijisaki raised en eyebrow. "No point in what?"
"In pictures," the CEO almost growled, looking away. "Why would you need reminders? You know what people look like. You know what I look like. There is no point in--"
"Perhaps you'll see the point once you're cured."
Hongou trailed off, taken aback by the other man's calm retort. His jaw clenched, and his gaze fell on Nijisaki's breast pocket before he spoke. "Perhaps," he all but snarled, and left the office without saying another word.
Nijisaki didn't get much done until the closing hour: he simply took the rose he kept in his breast pocket - the easiest way for Hongou to recognize him right away - and stared at it for a long time, lost in thought.
When he stepped into his office the next morning, Gentarou Hongou was quite taken aback by the sight of a vase sitting on his desk, filled with freshly cut roses. Right next to it there was a message written in Nijisaki's elegant handwriting.
To be reminded of me, until you'll be able to do so through other means. Soon.
Gentarou Hongou looked at the message for several moments, then at the roses, then at the message again.
Then he smiled.
"Soon," he said quietly to his empty office.
It sounded good. It sounded like a promise.
2027
He had expected prison to be worse.
Oh, not that he had truly given much thought to what prison could be like lately: after being beaten at his own game and being played by Zero like some puppet, he couldn't bring himself to give much thought to anything anymore. He could barely think. Not even his lawyer got more than a few words out of him; he did not speak at his own trial. He did not even look at the judge or the jury or the witnesses - why should he? They all were the same. None of them was worth a glance. He knew what he'd see already.
But before then, before being so defeated and broken, he did wonder what prison would be like. While planning out the Nonary Game, if just for a moment he had wondered - what would prison be like if he was caught?
Nagisa had laughed off those thoughts. Told him everything was too well-planned for that to happen, that he'd never have to stay behind bars for one second.
"Would be a shame, don't you think? Getting to see faces and then having to look at them through bars," he had commented, and Hongou had laughed at how ridiculous that idea sounded - imagine, succeeding in his goal to see human faces only to wind up in prison! How ridicolous, he had thought, so ridicolous it was almost hilarious.
And now, in prison - inside a rather comfortable cell, because while money could not buy his way out of there it could give him more luxury than he was probably supposed to get - and without a cure for his disability to boot, he didn't think it was funny. He didn't think at all. It was easier that way.
He was afraid of what he'd think if he allowed himself to.
So for a while he kept not thinking. He just existed. Breathed. Ate. Read. Spent hours upon hours resting on his back and staring at the cracks on the ceiling. Thinking of nothing. Not of what had happened, not of what he had done, not of the way he had allowed himself to be fooled. Nothing.
Don't think.
Don't think.
But in the end - after how much time he could not tell, but it couldn't be too long - he had been asked if there was something he wanted to be brought to his cell, any personal effects. To make himself home, they had explained with no small amount of mockery, since he was not to leave that prison as long as he lived.
That hadn't forced him to think right away: he had politely shaken his head, and turned his gaze back on the book he was reading. But then that man had insisted, asked him with an incredulous tone if there really was nothing he'd want to have.
"Nothing at all? Are you serious? Not even a picture of someone or anything like that?"
That sentence had caused Hongou's hand to stop in mid-air, and the page he had been about to turn was never turned.
A picture.
A picture of someone.
And before he could stop himself his mind had wandered, and he was thinking, and he wish he hadn't allowed it - because in only one moment he was thinking of Nagisa Nijisaki.
"Tell you what, when you're finally cured and can see my face I'll get a professional photographer to make me a fine-ass picture. No, two of them. You'll need at least one with clothes on," he had said, his lips curling into that smirk that was never too far away from his lips. "And I'll expect you to keep it on your desk then, Mr. CEO. You'll have no excuses then."
And he had laughed at that, told him that he looked forward to that - to being able to look at his face as recognize it as his. "I'm sure I'll very much appreciate what I'll see," he remembered saying.
But that had never happened. He was never cured. There was no picture on his desk - there was no picture at all, because he could never see any face and never would. And, even if by some miracle he was cured right there and then, he would never see his. Not in person, for he had killed him, and not in picture, for he had none.
"... Heh..."
"Hongou? Did you say something? I didn't hear--"
Hongou had barely even heard him, could barely even see, for his sight was now blurry and something was falling from his face onto his book. "Ha. Hah. Ha..."
"Hon--"
And then he had started to laugh. It was a joyless laugh, one that had very little humanity left in it, but he still couldn't stop. The book fell from his hands and he fell on his knees and he still wouldn't stop laughing and laughing and laughing.
Deaf to anything but his own laughs, he only knew the guard had called for help when heard the door of his cell opening with a clang and felt several hands seizing him, holding him down. He did not try to resist: he just kept laughing, to the point he could barely breathe, to the point he couldn't even think, and that was good. It truly was good.
He did not want to think.
Then he felt something piercing his neck, and his own laughs grew distant as all strength seemed to leave him. He slumped on the floor and turned just enough to see, through the veil of tears and the darkness that was starting to cloud his vision, the empty syringe that had just been thrown on the ground.
Soporil, he thought one moment before blacking out.
How delightfully ironic.