Chapter Text
The buzz of Shuuichi’s phone against the hollow wood of his desk is jarring, and it startles him awake with a flinch. He sits up straight, eyes scanning over the classroom, where no one seems to have been disturbed by the Snapchat notification noise. Even his history teacher hasn’t missed a beat; he continues droning on about something Shuuichi had stopped listening to a long time ago, so he allows himself to relax and flip over his phone.
As he silences it, he reads over the new notification: the name Rantarou blinks up at him, and he unlocks his phone to check the Snapchat with a confused frown.
Only the left half of his friend’s face is visible; he’s crossing his eyes — eye, Shuuichi supposes — and he’s wearing a jovial smile, a peace sign half obscured by his earthy green hair. He can see his teacher in the background, frozen mid-word. Shuuichi’s eyes scan over the caption: we’re going out tonight.
And. Well. Shuuichi is not a fan of that idea at all. He has homework tonight — and he’s going to ignore the fact that he’s currently tuning out a lecture in a class he has homework in — and he knows that Rantarou’s dads will not be super into that idea, so he taps a few times until he has a blurry picture of his desk and has attached a sad face as the caption.
Shuuichi idly looks at Rantarou as he receives the notification, and uses his hand to mask an amused smile as he watches his best friend pose for a new picture. It appears on his phone a moment later; Rantarou pouting into the camera, totally oblivious to their teacher, whose eyes just barely missed making contact with the camera itself.
i want to win my little brother a prize at the arcade!
Shuuichi rolls his eyes, angling his camera down to snap a picture of his shoes. i’m not your little brother.
The next image he receives from Rantarou is him pouting even more pronouncedly, cheek resting on his fist. you’re littler than me, and my parents have custody of you, so you’re my little brother.
Shuuichi is readying to send another award-worthy picture of his shoes when he suddenly freezes up at the sound of his name.
“Saihara.” Immediately feeling himself begin to perspire, Shuuichi struggles for a few moments to find the will to look upward; when he does, he sees his teacher staring down at him with his arms loosely crossed, a long-suffering frown on his face. The eyes of every person in the class are on him, and he nearly drops his phone as his hands become slick with sweat.
“As much as I’m sure whoever you’re messaging,” his teacher’s eyes cut across to Rantarou, who smiles good-naturedly, “loves receiving Snapchats of your shoes, it can wait until I’m finished teaching, no?”
Shuuichi nods furiously, his hat nearly flying off his head. He pulls it further down as his teacher sighs.
“Good. Now, to get us back on track, can you tell me anything I’ve said at all today?”
Instead of answering, Shuuichi pulls his hat down further, shielding himself from eye contact entirely. It’s unbearably silent for a few long beats. Finally, his teacher clicks his tongue.
“After class please, Saihara.” A pause. “And you, too.”
Shuuichi peeks out from underneath his hat to watch as his teacher’s gaze lingers on Rantarou for a few moments before moving back to the board, where he underlines a name Shuuichi doesn’t recognize.
“Now, getting back to the betrayal of the Goddess of Vitality—”
Shuuichi’s phone lights up with another message from Rantarou. He wipes his hands several times on his pants, lays his head back down on the desk, and presses his thumb against his phone until it recognizes his sweaty fingerprint and unlocks.
From his phone Rantarou smiles up at him in what would be an unattractive manner on anyone else, but it mostly comes off as endearing. The caption on the picture asks Shuuichi if he’s alright. Quick as he can he snaps a blurry picture of his shoes, sending back a dejected i’m fine, just hate being called on.
Rantarou’s next response mirrors Shuuichi’s habit of sending shoe pictures; the caption of maybe you should pay more attention! is backdropped by a shot of Rantarou’s legs. Shuuichi rolls his eyes; neither of them are very keen on paying attention in their shared history class, so Rantarou has no place teasing him. He tells him as much with the next message.
i know plenty about what’s going on. the goddess of music is terrible, and you shouldn’t mess with the goddess of vitality.
Shuuichi frowns. there’s no way you heard all of that!
Rantarou sends him one last message, a picture of himself winking, before they stop altogether. When Shuuichi peeks up a few minutes later, he notices Rantarou casually playing a game on his phone, oblivious to the increasingly-exasperated glares their teacher is sending him. Shuuichi, though not doing anything nearly as overt, finds his attention caught away from the lecture at the front of the classroom until the bell signaling the end of the school day rings, jarring him out of his daydreaming.
As the class clears he stays obediently in his seat, and he can only fondly roll his eyes as he catches Rantarou — ostentatious as ever, sporting designer clothing and dyed green hair — attempting to retreat along with the crowd. Their teacher calls his name, and Rantarou turns, utterly shameless as he laughs it off.
“Oh, come on, Mr. Hinata — what could you possibly want with poor Shuuichi and I?”
At his name Shuuichi stands, shuffling his belongings together and slinging his backpack over his shoulder nervously. Mr. Hinata rolls his eyes and motions them both towards his desk. Rantarou lightly bumps him as they move, flashing him a thumbs up before settling into an easy stance next to Shuuichi’s own tense one.
Shuuichi watches him warily. Rantarou smiles, his entire appearance announcing his usual carefree attitude. One hand rests on his hip, his elbow gently touching Shuuichi; the other holds his bag over his shoulder lazily, watching their teacher with half-lidded eyes. He shoots Shuuichi a wink over his shoulder, and yes, while having Rantarou by his side during this does make him feel somewhat better, Shuuichi can’t push past the discomfort he feels at Rantarou being so casual and seeming to almost…tease Mr. Hinata.
“Actually,” their teacher says to Rantarou, watching him with wary green eyes, “all I have to say to you is how close I am to calling your parents, Togami.”
Rantarou laughs, apparently unconcerned. “To be completely honest, I’m not sure how happy my dads would be to hear from you.”
Mr. Hinata rolls his eyes, gesturing towards the door. “Good night, Togami.”
After waving good-naturedly to Mr. Hinata and promising Shuuichi to wait for him outside the classroom Rantarou saunters out, leaving just him and Mr. Hinata. With all of the attention being focused on him, Shuuichi begins to squirm.
It’s not that Shuuichi doesn’t like Mr. Hinata, or that he’s particularly afraid of him; on the contrary, he’s probably one of the nicer teachers Shuuichi has ever had. With the amount of times Shuuichi has moved schools, he’s had his fair share of teachers, and not all of them were so understanding of his various…issues, in and out of the classroom. Coupled with the fact that it’s so hard to get a feel for each new teacher, each new class, each new batch of classmates, he knows he’s not an easy person to deal with. Sometimes it’s hard to even find a reason to get acclimated when he moves around so much — and, really, he’s averaging out to almost a new school every year — and it’s just a lot to deal with on top of everything else.
'Everything else' being a whole host of things really very out of his control, but his not paying attention in class: that’s totally Shuuichi’s fault. His face feels hot; he does this way too much, the being-too-distracted-to-pay-proper-attention thing, but he’s never been held back after class by Mr. Hinata before. Is he in real trouble now? Is he going to be yelled at? Is he going to ask to talk to Shuuichi’s mom? Shuuichi knows it’s Rantarou’s dads listed on his contact sheet, but—
“Shuuichi?” There’s a hand on his shoulder. Shuuichi sucks in a deep breath, looks up to meet his teacher’s eyes. The look on his face makes him squirm all the more. “Are you alright?”
“Ah, I’m fine.” Shuuichi pulls the visor of his hat over his eyes, suddenly embarrassed at his bout of silence.
“I…Saihara, you’re not in trouble, so don’t worry about that.” Mr. Hinata sighs, leaning to rest against his desk. Shuuichi shuffles from foot to foot, unsure of what to do. His teacher smiles, expression gentle, running a hand through his hair awkwardly.
“You do worry me a little bit, you know.” His gaze on Shuuichi sharpens a touch, and he suddenly feels as though he’s being assessed. Shuuichi scratches at his neck, anxious. “Is everything alright? At home, at school?”
“What, ah, what do you mean?”
“Well,” Mr. Hinata looks a little uncomfortable for a moment, “I am…familiar with some aspects of your situation. Your home arrangement, your history of moving schools, the, uh, reasons for that. I guess I’m asking if things are okay here.”
He feels himself go red with mortification at the mention of his moving schools. Looking down at his shoes and the floor, he sort of wishes he could melt into it. “No, things are, uhm, okay here.”
“How about at home?” Shuuichi looks up abruptly; Mr. Hinata goes red at his own words, and immediately puts his hands out, defensive. “N-Not that I’m trying to assume anything! Really. I don’t doubt that Togami is a good friend to you. I just…I worry, like I said. I don’t see you interacting with people other than him very often, is all.”
“Sorry,” is all that Shuuichi says, not sure of how else to respond. Mr. Hinata sighs, dragging a hand down his face. He shakes his head, then fixes Shuuichi with an odd look.
“No, I’m sorry. I can tell I’m making you uncomfortable.” Mr. Hinata moves behind his desk and sits in his chair, the smile he aims up at Shuuichi kind. “Have a good night, Saihara. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, sir.” He wastes no time escaping the room, more than ready to leave school behind for the day. As he retreats he looks for Rantarou and, upon not seeing him, chooses to wait tucked in next to a row of lockers, thumbing at his phone where it rests in his pocket impatiently.
Shuuichi is by default on high alert when alone in school hallways, but the sight of empty floor space before him offers him some comfort, and he allows himself to relax a bit. He stands up straight for a moment, rolls his shoulders against the ache of a chronically sore back, and glances around again for any sign of Rantarou. When none appears, he finds his mind wandering to his conversation with Mr. Hinata.
It’s terrible enough operating with the knowledge that Rantarou and his parents are privy to the details of the intense bullying Shuuichi has been faced with a good portion of his life, but something about a teacher he only met a matter of months ago knowing as well makes the memory of his own low points all the heavier.
The moving schools, the bullying, they were issues even before his mom died, but after the fact, well…
Freshly traumatized by his mother’s out-of-nowhere death, newly started on hormone blockers, and facing the terrifying reality of heading into the world with no remaining blood relatives made for easy (if exceedingly cruel) targets for people his age to exploit to the fullest. At first the jokes made at his expense were relatively simple in nature — he was jumpy, he was prone to acne, he didn’t have a dad or a nice house or new toys like the rest of his classmates.
But then his mom died. And he went to live with his best friend, who was something of a celebrity at whatever school he ended up at. And his new guardians made the mistake of disclosing Shuuichi’s status as trans to the first school he transferred to after his life's upending. And it got so much worse.
It’s better at some schools than others. But he never stays at any single school for long. And neither, in that regard, has Rantarou; even before Shuuichi moved in with him, he always insisted to his dads that he follow Shuuichi to his new schools. He and Rantarou have moved schools something like six times in as many years, and where they’re settled now…
It’s nice. It’s not a far commute from the house, and people mostly just leave him and Rantarou alone now that the novelty of having a famous person and his less-famous adoptive sibling in their class has worn off. Things are unexciting, but that suits Shuuichi just fine.
Though he gets the feeling, sometimes, that perhaps Rantarou vies for more than what Shuuichi is able to handle.
“There you are.” Rantarou steps out of the bathroom a few yards down the hallway and waves, looking, as always, delighted to see him. His expression droops some when he sees the — presumably cloudy — look on Shuuichi’s face, and when he makes his way over to Shuuichi he throws an arm around his shoulders, leading them both towards the exit, eyes on his phone.
“You didn’t get yelled at too much, did you?”
“No,” Shuuichi replies, squinting against the bright sunlight as they step outside the school. “I think there’s a gossip circle about me among the teachers, though.”
“If there’s a teacher support group about either of us, it’s definitely for me,” Rantarou counters with a laugh, slipping his phone into his pants pocket.
“That’s true. You’re the only one of us who plays Cookie Run in class, anyways.”
“And you listen excitedly to my play-by-play, so you’re hardly innocent, you know.” They begin down the steps towards their awaiting ride. “But seriously, why do you think the teachers are talking about you?”
Shuuichi sighs, fidgeting with the visor of his hat. “Mr. Hinata, ah, knows about how much I move schools. And asked me about it. And I guess it just…doesn’t feel great to be reminded of it, when things have been okay so far here.”
“I’ll lecture him next time I see him, make sure he doesn’t bother my little brother again.” Rantarou squeezes Shuuichi’s cheek teasingly before circling around the car and climbing into the backseat. Huffing, Shuuichi pulls open the door on his side of the limo and settles in himself.
“I’m not your little brother. And I think that’s unnecessary.” He clicks his seatbelt into place, and gives Rantarou an unimpressed look. “Speaking of unnecessary, did you have to get the limo to pick us up?”
“It’s fun.”
“It’s tacky. And obnoxious.” Shuuichi makes sheepish eye contact with the driver. “Ah, no offense?”
Rantarou chuckles, waving off Shuuichi’s embarrassment with a smile. “Hey, don’t make such a long face. To make you feel better, I’ll win you a prize and get you something sweet at the arcade tonight, okay?”
Shuuichi groans at the mention of sneaking out, flopping back against the seat. Rantarou chuckles again, patting Shuuichi on the shoulder, before shifting away and beginning a conversation with the driver.
Shuuichi contents himself to watch his friend silently, uninterested in interjecting into the conversation. As he observes him, he quietly catalogs Rantarou’s behavior.
He shines with effortless confidence. Every movement, every word out of his mouth, every carefree laugh and contented smile boasts what is one of his many strengths: his seemingly endless supply of self-assuredness. Rantarou is one of the most easy-going people Shuuichi has ever met; is that where his confidence stems from?
He’s confident, and he’s carefree, and he’s languid, and he’s upbeat, and he’s sort of Shuuichi’s hero. He’s so different from Shuuichi; from his insecurity, his anxiousness, his uptightness, his constant undercurrent of depression.
It’s sort of a wonder he holds any interest in being around Shuuichi at all, for all that they’re different.
Rantarou looks over, meeting Shuuichi’s eyes for a moment. His friend smiles, reclining back against his seat and slinging an arm over Shuuichi’s shoulders before continuing his conversation with the driver.
Warmth floods Shuuichi’s chest.
Despite their differences, despite their near polar opposite at times tendencies, despite how many leagues above Shuuichi he is, Rantarou never fails to show him kindness. Never fails to be the best friend Shuuichi could ever ask for. Rantarou always has Shuuichi’s back, is always the best friend and brother that Shuuichi needs; he always has been, ever since the first day they met.
Despite his issues with expressing it a lot of the time, Shuuichi hopes that he is as good a best friend as Rantarou deserves.
Shuuichi doesn’t notice that they’re home until the low hum of the engine dies, and Rantarou is pulling away and pushing open the car door. Shuuichi exits on his side, smiling fondly as Rantarou presses a generous tip into the hand of the driver, and motions him forward.
As he and Rantarou enter the house, Shuuichi marvels — not for the first nor the last time — at the grandeur of the home he has come to live in. It’s not what he would call necessarily homey; as someone who spent the first decade of his life living in a modest little apartment with only his mother, he still finds it uncomfortable to walk through the house’s sweeping halls and spend too much time on the marble stairs that he’s frankly terrified of dirtying.
Rantarou, as Shuuichi has observed many times, does not share this same fear; he moves towards the kitchen with his shoes still on, not pausing for Shuuichi to toe his own off. When he catches up with his friend, he finds him stealing a cookie off of a warm tray resting on the oven as his father wraps up a phone call.
Shuuichi accepts the cookie he’s offered, and politely waits until Rantarou's dad hangs up the phone to speak.
“Hi, Makoto.”
“Hey, dad.”
Makoto smiles at the both of them, wrinkling his nose a bit at the stolen cookies. “Hey, guys. How was school?”
Before Shuuichi can meekly mention his meeting with Mr. Hinata, Rantarou cuts in, leaning against the granite island. “Uneventful. Would’ve much rather been home baking cookies.” His eyes are alight with something that Shuuichi knows only means trouble as he appraises his father's baking.
“More like eating them.” Makoto scoops up the tray as Rantarou reaches for another, tucking it onto the counter behind him. “Besides, I think it’s more likely that you’d be causing mischief rather than baking cookies with your dad.”
“Me, cause mischief?” Shuuichi smothers a smirk at the faux-confused look Rantarou adopts. Rantarou kicks him lightly, out of Makoto's sight. “I’m not the problem child.”
Makoto laughs. “Are you implying the problem child is Shuuichi?”
“Of course not. Shuuichi’s a good boy.” This time, it’s Shuuichi who kicks Rantarou. “Byakuya’s the problem child.”
“Don’t call your father by his first name,” Makoto warns gently, though he's still smiling — this song and dance isn't new to any of them. “Oh, speaking of. He won’t be home until late tonight.”
“Again?” Rantarou’s smile dips around the corners ever so slightly. “Is something wrong?”
Makoto shakes his head, pulling a soda out of the fridge. “You both know how it is at work. Someone’s misplaced something important, and your father is going to throw a fit until it’s fixed.”
Rantarou’s smile returns, and he leans towards Shuuichi conspiratorially. “Tell me again how he’s not the problem child again?”
“Go,” Makoto tells them both, shooing them out of the kitchen. “Stop being mean to your father when he can’t defend himself. He’ll get all pouty.”
“Sounds like him.” They both watch as Makoto heads back into the kitchen, phone in hand. Rantarou steers them both towards the stairs. “Hey, Shuuichi, let’s play Smash.”
They play Smash. They play until the not-quite-summer sun dips below the horizon, and they play until Makoto orders takeout for dinner, and they play until Byakuya doesn’t come home (again), and they play until Makoto, voice tired, implores the two of them to go to bed.
Shuuichi is more than happy to oblige; the call of his bed has been tempting him for hours now. He doesn’t get the chance, however; just as he’s folded up his binder and is about to climb under his covers there’s a knock at the door, Rantarou appearing a few moments later, looking much more dressed up than Shuuichi’s choice of a hoodie and checkered pajama pants.
“I’m going to win you something,” Rantarou declares, and Shuuichi flops onto his bed, groaning.
“If we get caught your dads will kill us.”
“Would I let anything happen to my little brother?” Shuuichi grasps around for a moment before his hands wrap around a pillow, and he throws it forcefully in Rantarou’s direction. The laugh he gets in response tells him he wasn’t even close to hitting his mark.
Rantarou tosses the pillow back to him a moment later, leaving the room with a request that Shuuichi put some actual clothes on. As the door shuts Shuuichi sits up, rolling his eyes at this whole situation, but getting up to change anyways. If he’s going to be made to go, he’ll make his friend keep his promise to get him something good.
A few minutes later he emerges from his room changed into his most casual attire: a slightly-less-slept-in hoodie, a pair of dark jeans he’s had since he was about thirteen, and his practically new sneakers. His hair isn’t brushed, and he hasn’t bothered to put his binder back on; he knows where Rantarou intends to take them, and there won’t be much of a crowd to judge Shuuichi’s fashion sense, so he makes himself not worry about it too much.
He shuts the door to his room as quietly as he can and begins down the stairs where he knows Rantarou is waiting, having gone through this a few times before. As he passes through the foyer his eyes catch on the clock — nearing midnight, god is he going to be dead tired tomorrow — before moving through the kitchen towards the back door where Rantarou waits, wallet in hand.
Shuuichi’s led out through the back door without a word, and after a few minutes of maneuvering over the large fencing the house boasts they’re on their way, shoes lightly slapping the pavement as they walk. Rantarou hums quietly as they move, one earbud in ear, the other spilling tinny music into the crisp air around them. Shuuichi wishes he’d had the foresight to bring his own earbuds, but it’s not a long walk to the arcade, only a few blocks, so he doesn’t concern himself too much with the thought.
The trip is uneventful until the foot traffic on the sidewalk gets clogged up for a reason Shuuichi can’t immediately see. Rantarou, too, seems confused, pulling his earbud out of his ear to ask Shuuichi what’s going on.
They find out a few minutes later when the mini crowd is finally granted passage across the upcoming crosswalk, the sight of a nasty car wreck coming into full view as they move. As soon as Shuuichi realizes what he’s looking at he forcefully pulls his gaze away, letting Rantarou’s body block his view as he moves past as quickly as possible, now wishing he had his earbuds so he could drown out the growing sound of sirens.
“You okay?” Rantarou asks once they’re out of view of the wreck and an ambulance has flown by. Shuuichi manages a smile, appreciative of his friend’s kindness.
“Yeah.” Rantarou mirrors his smile, and affectionately flicks Shuuichi’s cowlick before facing forward again and continuing their walk in silence. Shuuichi allows his bravado to deflate after a moment.
He’s lucky it’s an okay night. There were some days where the mention of a car crash, even a minor one, could turn an entire week sour. Could put him out of commission entirely until he could calm himself down again.
Shuuichi feels himself frown. Hm. Maybe dwelling on the trauma he has surrounding his mother’s death isn’t the most productive way to spend his night.
“Shuuichi?” Rantarou’s voice sounds farther away than it should. Shuuichi blinks a few times, turns around, and finds him waiting at the entrance to the arcade, a contemplatively concerned look on his face. Shuuichi rolls his eyes at himself for just walking off, and follows Rantarou inside.
His spirits lift exponentially once any idle thoughts in his mind are killed by the sensory overload the arcade offers. Between the multitudes of noises being thrown around the dark room, the neon lights illuminating the area like someone’s taken highlighters to the walls, and the vast collection of claw machines available for Shuuichi to waste his money on, he simply doesn’t have the capacity to worry over anything but the present. And that’s good for someone like him.
He’s not sure how long exactly he and Rantarou stay at the arcade, but when they’re starting their walk back home, Shuuichi can hardly keep his heavy eyelids open and his arms secured around the stuffed Bewear plush Rantarou had scored him after his many jackpot wins.
All Shuuichi had been able to get Rantarou with his collection of tickets was a rubber duck wearing sunglasses, a pair of cheap matching braided bracelets (one of which Rantarou immediately tied around Shuuichi’s wrist), and a few pieces of assorted candy.
Rantarou, however, didn’t seem to mind the trade off; in their last few minutes before they were kicked out the arcade, he insisted Shuuichi pose for his Snapchat story with the stuffed animal Rantarou won for him, as well as take an egregious amount of selfies showing off their matching bracelets that could not have cost more than about twenty-five cents, combined.
Nevertheless, Shuuichi leaves the arcade feeling sort of deliriously content, hugging the Bewear doll close and fidgeting with his bracelet. He only becomes all the more happy when he notices Rantarou’s choice to take a different route home, circumventing the sight of the car wreck for Shuuichi’s sake.
If a thought of Rantarou is the best brother I could have, passes through Shuuichi’s mind as he settles into bed, well, who is he to say that he’s wrong?
The sentiment is not quite the same when he wakes up what seems only minutes after his head hits the pillow, sunlight streaming through the window, reminding Shuuichi that he does in fact need to wake up for school now.
He showers quickly, gets dressed even quicker, and is prepared to head downstairs and find Rantarou waiting for him so they can leave.
He does not. Instead, he finds Rantarou getting what must be the quietest yelling-at Shuuichi has ever seen.
Also, Byakuya is home.
Also also, Byakuya and Makoto both look really angry.
Shuuichi ducks behind a corner, sending a silent prayer to Rantarou in an attempt to atone for not facing whatever discipline is happening with him.
It is supremely awkward waiting for an appropriate time to make his entrance into the room, and despite his valiant efforts not to, his environment (and, in all honesty, his nosiness) doesn’t allow him any option but to eavesdrop.
“We shouldn’t have to be having this conversation again and you know it, Rantarou.”
“We’re teenagers. We should be allowed to have fun.”
“You are allowed to have fun, I just wish you would tell one of us before you go out into the middle of the night—”
“—I disagree. You shouldn’t be going out that late at all. You could get yourselves killed.”
“You know me better than that. I wouldn’t let anything hurt Shuuichi or I.”
“You say that as if you can control what, or who, decides to go after you.”
“Byakuya, I think it’s time to consider actually sitting Shuuichi down and—”
“I…don’t necessarily disagree.” A pause. Shuuichi hears Byakuya sigh; he can practically picture him pinching the bridge of his nose against a stress headache. “But we have to think realistically. A situation this…complicated requires a certain delicacy, and we can’t exactly just come out with it out of nowhere.”
Shuuichi, feeling confused and more than a little bit anxious at whatever he’s out of the loop of, decides he needs to make his presence known. He rounds the corner from the stairs, trying not to cringe at the sudden hush that falls over the Togamis.
The three sets of eyes on him start him sweating. Byakuya speaks first. “Shuuichi.”
“Ah, good morning.” He tries his hardest to seem casual. His neck feels hot.
“You and Rantarou snuck out last night.” Shuuichi has never known Byakuya to be anything but straight to the point, but the accusation — not even a question, he says it as a fact — hits him like a brick to the chest, and the sleepy smile he’d put on as he entered the room quickly drops off.
“Uh.”
Makoto and Byakuya give him matching unimpressed looks. Shuuichi wishes he’d stayed in bed. “I’m sorry.”
“I made him go with me,” offers Rantarou, earning a glare from both of his parents.
“Shuuichi’s just as guilty.” Makoto pauses, fixing Rantarou with another decidedly displeased look. “Okay, not quite. Nevertheless, you’re both very grounded.”
Shuuichi nods, fully accepting his fate. Rantarou mirrors him, though the badly-hidden smile on his face doesn’t do much for him in the ‘seeming genuinely sorry’ department. Makoto rolls his eyes, used to the both of them and their nonsense.
“Right home after school. I’m going to put you both to work.”
Shuuichi nods again, and Makoto waves them off, saying ‘I love you both!’ before moving into a different room. Byakuya taps for a few moments on his phone before looking up.
“Your ride is outside. Like your father said, home right after school. Please, Rantarou, listen to him for once.” Without further preamble Byakuya follows after his husband, pausing for a moment to ruffle Rantarou’s hair affectionately, and then do the same to Shuuichi. Embarrassed, he pulls his hat onto his head and follows Rantarou out the door.
Shuuichi does his best to push down the anxiety he feels at being in trouble with Byakuya and Makoto on the ride to school.
Easier said than done.
He does, eventually, feel his guilt over the situation lessen, but the anxiety sticking in his lungs doesn’t ebb. All day he is on edge, hairs standing on end; he feels eyes on him, everywhere, and it’s the strangest — and most uncomfortable — sensation he can remember feeling in a long time.
At first he thinks he’s imagining it; he rationalizes that he’s simply high-strung from the events of that morning, or overly tired from his late night, and he’s daydreaming. He spends more than one class looking over his shoulder, confirming with his own eyes that no one is actually staring at him; and even when he does, even when he catalogs every single person in each of his classes, sees for himself that no one is paying attention to him, the feeling doesn’t go away.
He ducks into the bathroom more than once to mop up the sweat building on the back of his neck and escape the feeling. By lunchtime, Shuuichi is a wreck, and he’s half considering calling Makoto or Byakuya to come pick him up.
The stress must show on his face, because when Rantarou meets him by a classroom door to walk him to lunch, his expression immediately falls, eyebrows drawn in concern. He approaches Shuuichi, a question on his lips, when suddenly his face — and everything in Shuuichi’s immediate vicinity, for that matter — disappears, eyes instead filling with red and blue spots. A sound akin to a clap of thunder booms in his ears, immediately followed by a sharp pain stabbing at the space between his eyes, and he feels himself collapse.
Ouch.
He still can’t see, still can’t hear all too well over the memory of the metallic clanging and the pain quickly overtaking his head, but he thinks he senses Rantarou’s shadow looming over him, and hears a distinct edge in his voice as he says, “Back off.”
“Out of the way, filthy Togami,” comes a hiss from above him, and Shuuichi, alarmed, opens his eyes just in time to see a girl he doesn’t recognize grab Rantarou by the neck and throw him several yards down the hall.
His body smashes hard into an adjacent set of lockers. Rantarou crumples to the floor. He doesn’t get up.
There’s yelling in Shuuichi’s ears; it might be his own, for all he can tell. He isn’t given long enough to tell before the girl focuses in on him, red eyes catlike and narrowed.
A hand tangles itself in the front of his shirt, hauling him upwards; in the next moment the hand moves to instead wrap around his throat, squeezing too tight to let any air through. Panicking, he tears at the hand around his neck with his nails, trying desperately to make her let him go. He might as well not be touching her at all her for all the effect it has.
Through the tears in his eyes Shuuichi focuses on Rantarou, still unmoving on the ground, still so far away. Terror mounting, he looks to her face, scratching as hard as he can in an attempt to just make her let go. The already intense scowl she wears intensifies and she bares her teeth, showing Shuuichi — to his complete and utter horror — four rows of dagger-sharp canines only a matter of inches away from his face.
She knocks his head against the lockers again, sending another shot of pain through his whole upper body. His lungs try to cough, but he pulls no air in.
“R-Rant—”
“Dead.” He’s pushed even harder against the wall. “You’re next.”
His vision goes all at once, leaving him swimming in terrifying, empty blackness. His chest, already heavy from the weight of the day’s anxiety, seems to grow infinitely heavier; stickiness sprouts from his stomach, moves like sludge through his veins, overtakes his whole body; the sensation makes him want to gag.
Very forcefully he blinks, and his sight returns some, but it’s different; his vision suddenly tips and he feels himself stumble. He looks around desperately, trying to regain some control on what’s happening, but he’s been seized by the worst vertigo he’s ever had in his life, and he’s not even sure he’s still standing up.
He forces himself to focus on the girl: is she still choking me? Her eyes are angry, rows upon rows of teeth still bared, but she doesn’t lunge as he expects her to; she moves so much slower, now, a complete shift from her lightning-quick movements from before.
The sudden change in speed is so disorienting, the blur of color and shape before him threatens to melt Shuuichi's brain. His limbs feel so heavy, like he must be swimming in, drowning in molasses, but when he forces his arms up to defend himself, he finds them moving just fine, the speed jarring in comparison to the girl and the rest of the world.
Shuuichi only gets as far as moving a hand towards her before his vision goes again, and this time, he can’t get it back. His sight is dark and his breath threatens to freeze him to death and he doesn’t even know if this is real, if he is even real as he floats in honeyed darkness.
Sensation comes back first. He’s on his knees — they hurt. The stickiness recedes, leaving him feeling off-kilter and unbalanced. The only remnants of it are his arms. They’re warm. Too warm. There’s something wrapped tight around his middle.
His vision comes back to him all at once, and he’s so overstimulated that he physically flinches at the reappearance of light. He looks around frantically, trying to find some semblance of what’s happened; he stops dead as he glances down at his hands, flecked with red.
The girl from before is on the ground, limp and breathing laboriously. Rantarou is conscious, on his knees and in front of Shuuichi, hands grabbing at his face, speaking harried words Shuuichi can’t make out. His eyes are wide, desperate, scared; so unlike the Rantarou he is accustomed to. They are surrounded by the penetrating, watchful eyes of classmates.
Sound returns last. There’s whispering all around him. Rantarou’s tone is near-hysterical, but he can’t make out the words over the new voice in his ear.
“Shuuichi, can you hear me? Come on, come back, come on…” Mr. Hinata’s pleading is gentle from right behind him, and it makes Shuuichi want to sleep. The tension saps from his body all at once, and he feels himself go limp, held up only by the arms Mr. Hinata has wrapped firmly around his torso.
He’s not sure how long passes before he’s brought to his feet. Mr. Hinata snaps at the forming crowd to get out of the way. Rantarou reaches out to help him stay upright, but he’s also reprimanded and told to go to the nurse immediately. As he’s led away, Shuuichi glances back.
He doesn’t register that the girl has disappeared until he’s sat down in the office lobby.
Shuuichi sits for a long, long time. His hands are too warm. He’s shaking enough to vibrate the chair he’s been deposited in.
At some point Rantarou joins him, gauze wrapped somewhat crudely around his head. He settles in next to him wordlessly, wraps an arm around his shaking shoulders, and does not let go.
He’s not sure how much time passes between when he’s delivered to the office and when Makoto arrives, but it must be only a matter of moments from his arrival until when he’s ordered into the principal’s office, Rantarou following close behind.
In the office stands the principal, Makoto, and Mr. Hinata. Shuuichi doesn’t understand the intensity of the look shared between Rantarou’s dad and his teacher, but such concerns are immediately blown from his mind once the principal delivers to him the news that he’s been expelled for fighting.
“What?!” Rantarou is the one who objects, a look of shocked annoyance on his face as he defiantly gets to his feet. “Shuuichi was attacked. He was defending himself.”
Shuuichi looks down at his blood-covered hands. He wants to puke.
“Rantarou.” Makoto’s tone is sharp. He settles back in his seat, a dark look focused in his father’s direction. “Will there be police involvement?”
Shuuichi stops listening, not even slightly emotionally prepared to deal with the prospect of being arrested. He stares at his shoes until Makoto’s hand on his shoulder rouses him from his stupor and he stands, not offering a word to anyone as he leaves.
He tries to melt into the leather of Makoto’s car as they begin the ride home, hat pulled so low over his face that he can see nothing but the dark gray of the fabric on the inside. The obscuring of his own vision does nothing to block out the conversation up front that very obviously does not include him.
“You should have told me you had him as a teacher.”
“It would have only made you upset.”
“Obviously I’m upset,” Makoto says flatly. “He didn’t tell me he was around, that he was teaching my children, for a reason. You have a responsibility, Rantarou—”
“—I think you’re overestimating the importance of him being here.”
“He’s scouting,” Makoto says, voice low. “And there’s no one else of interest at your school. Which means he’s there for you, and as your parents, me and Byakuya should know why.”
“I didn’t say anything because I knew you would freak out like you are now.”
“I am freaking out because I was just called to the school, where both of my sons have just been expelled for fighting. You’re both covered in blood, Rantarou, am I meant not to 'freak out'?”
Rantarou sighs. “Have you called Byakuya?”
“Don’t call him that.” Makoto’s voice is tight. “And no, I haven’t. I was putting that off until I had asked you what you’ve been seeing.”
“…Is this a conversation we should be having in front of Shuuichi?”
He flinches at the mention of his name.
Makoto winces softly. “No, it isn’t.” A pause. Makoto kills the engine, and with a start Shuuichi realizes they must be home. “Shuuichi, look at me, please.”
After a moment’s hesitation he pushes his hat back up onto his head, looking at Makoto through the rearview mirror. His eyes are soft as they look at each other.
“Look, Rantarou, Shuuichi. I love you — both of you. There’s nothing Byakuya and I wouldn’t do for you. All I ask, is that — you keep us in the loop. Keep us involved. We can’t do our jobs as your parents and your protectors if we don’t know what’s happening. Okay?”
Shuuichi nods in acknowledgement, desperate to get out of the car. Makoto sighs. “Head inside, Shuuichi. I’m going to talk to Rantarou for a little while.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice. He maneuvers out of the car and into the house at Olympic-level speed, ducking into the first bathroom he comes across to begin the nauseating task of cleaning the blood from his hands, tears streaming down his face.
After spending what seems like forever scrubbing obsessively at his skin, Shuuichi is satisfied — to the extent he can be — and changes into his most worn comfort clothes, crawling into bed with the lights off and his covers pulled over his head. His phone is plugged in and on silent across the room.
The sun has set and his pillow has dried-in tear stains marking it before he sees another person.
There’s a sharp knock at his door, and without waiting for Shuuichi to answer the door is opened and Makoto is gently prying the blankets away from his face. He can’t bring himself to make eye contact, the memory of Makoto’s anger and his own shame in the principal’s office making him sick to his stomach.
“Shuuichi, listen to me, please.” With difficulty he looks up. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Rantarou looming in the doorway, the tight expression he wears concerningly out of place. The baseball bat held loosely at his side is even more odd, but Shuuichi isn’t given time to dwell before Makoto begins to speak.
“There’s an emergency.” Shuuichi’s chest seizes in anxiety; Makoto rests a hand on his, squeezing gently. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. But I have to go meet Byakuya at work, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”
“I-Is he okay?”
“Byakuya’s fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine. But I need you both to follow my directions very carefully.” Makoto tilts his head minutely towards Rantarou. “Neither of you are to leave the house. Stay upstairs, don’t answer the door for anyone. If I come home I’ll call one of you and unlock the door myself. Don’t call me unless it’s an absolute emergency, and don’t make any calls at all to anyone else. Understood?”
Shuuichi nods mutely, the severity of Makoto’s tone doing nothing to lessen the sick feeling in his stomach. Makoto smiles softly at Shuuichi, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
“If I’m going to be out all night, I’ll call Komaru and have her come over. I love you.” He squeezes Shuuichi’s hand once more before standing and moving briskly towards the door. He kisses Rantarou’s forehead as well, leaning in to whisper something not meant for Shuuichi’s ears before beginning towards the stairs.
Shuuichi looks to Rantarou, utterly confused: is he any the wiser about what is going on?
Rantarou gives him a pregnant, indecipherable look before he walks away without a word, leaving Shuuichi with a pit in his stomach as he somehow falls once again into a fitful sleep.
He’s woken up an unknown amount of time later by a rough grip around his shoulder as he’s shaken conscious violently. He sits up with a start, glancing around the room in a panic, wincing against the bright ceiling light. Rantarou pulls his hand away, face scarier than Shuuichi has ever seen it, his eyes wide and shadowed in a way that strikes Shuuichi as haunting.
He’s opening his mouth to ask what’s happening when he realizes his brother is absolutely drenched in blood.
“…R-Rantarou?”
“We need to go.” Rantarou drops a duffle bag onto Shuuichi’s legs. Blood drips from Rantarou’s hands and stains his blanket. “Pack absolute essentials only. You have two minutes.”
He exits the room without another word, the baseball bat clenched tightly in his fist, smearing the carpeting of Shuuichi’s room a grotesque blood color. Shuuichi jumps from bed, not understanding what on earth is happening, but complying anyway.
Shuuichi’s head swims as he rushes around, shoving anything he feels he might need into the bag. Why is Rantarou covered in blood? Is he hurt? Did someone break in? Why is he being made to pack a bag?
The look on Rantarou’s face flashes in his mind, and Shuuichi pushes his questions aside as best he can. He needs to hurry if Rantarou is in danger, and working himself up over the unknowns will only slow him down.
He ends up with his bag full of his phone and its charger, his inhaler, his wallet, a random assortment of sweatshirts, shirts, pants, clean boxers and socks, two binders, and the bear Rantarou won him. He pushes his hat onto his head as he swings the bag over his shoulder, and on a whim grabs the photo of himself and his mother that sits on his desk, pushing it on top of the bag’s contents and zipping it up before pulling his bedroom door open.
Shuuichi nearly collapses at the rush of nausea the smell of blood sends through him. There’s deep stains all over the floor, and in the midst of it all stands Rantarou, a bag slung over his back and the bat clutched offensively in both hands. Shuuichi plugs his nose against the scent of the hallway and looks at Rantarou, eyes wide.
“What’s happening?”
“Stop talking.” Rantarou takes a few steps forward, peeks down the long staircase. His voice is low, dangerous; it sends a chill down Shuuichi’s spine. “Don’t say a single word until we get to the car.”
Rantarou takes the first few stairs, dead silent, and after another sweeping look around he motions for Shuuichi to follow him. He does, keeping his voice as quiet a whisper as he can as he follows him down the stairs. “We can’t leave, your dad said—”
Rantarou holds a finger against his lips, expression harsh. “Things changed.” He holds out a hand to stop Shuuichi as he reaches the bottom of the stairs. “Keep your eyes shut through the living room, I’ll guide you.”
Shuuichi’s seized around the wrist and pulled forward. The warning doesn’t register until it’s too late, and his eyes have already caught on the grotesque pool of blood staining the expensive hardwood.
There’s a body slumped in the middle of his living room. She’s bleeding.
And unlike at school, she doesn’t move.
His mind runs slow in comparison to his body in registering that she’s a corpse, and by the time the word corpse is actually running through his mind, they’re in the garage and Shuuichi is sobbing. He can’t get her face out of his mind.
Did Rantarou kill her?
“Get in the car. The black one.” Rantarou enters the driver’s side, motioning for Shuuichi to take the passenger’s seat. He does, dropping his bag at his feet and looking at Rantarou pleadingly.
“You — you c-can’t drive.”
“I’ll make it work.”
“Where are we going?”
Rantarou pushes the key into the ignition and peels out of the garage, turning hard onto the road and speeding off into the darkness. “Komaru’s house.”
“H-Have you called—”
“Not yet.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and begins rapidly scrolling through something. “I have one call to make before that. No talking.”
Shuuichi just nods, eyes focused on him as he presses something on his screen and brings his phone to his ear. The car shakes with the rapid speed Rantarou’s settled on.
“It’s Rantarou.” His voice is matter-of-fact; cold. Shuuichi, like with everything else that’s happened all day, doesn’t know what to make of it. “Byakuya and Makoto are away, and there’s a dead monster in my house. There’s probably—”
He pauses for a long moment, a far away look in his eye. “God damn it! We’re in a black car. I’m sending you my location, get here as soon as possible. You won’t have a long time.”
He hangs up, spends a few moments tapping on his screen, before dropping the phone in the cup holder and steadying the wheel with both hands.
“I don’t have enough time to explain what’s going on. I doubt you'd believe me anyways, but—” Rantarou pauses for another long minute, teeth grinding together. “Fuck. Fuck. Okay, Shuuichi. You’re going to learn a lot these next few days, all right? Keep an open mind. Be smart, because I know you are.”
“Pick who you trust very carefully, because it’s not everybody.” Rantarou exhales, suddenly sounding small. His eyes laser-focus on something in the rearview mirror. “And don’t give up hope. I’ll be waiting for you on the other side of this, okay?”
Why does this sound like a goodbye? Why is Rantarou saying goodbye?
“No, stop, what are you — why are you saying that? Rantarou, why are you talking like that?” Shuuichi asks breathlessly, on the verge of hysterics.
“I thought I’d have more time.” Rantarou reaches behind him with one hand, pulling out his bag and dropping it at Shuuichi’s feet, following it with — inexplicably — the bloodied baseball bat. “Whatever happens, wherever we end up, know that I love you, okay? You’re my brother, and I’m so proud of you, and I know you will make it through this. We’ll always have each other's backs, and I’m going to need you to have mine right now.”
Rantarou tears his eyes away from the mirror to give Shuuichi a significant look, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Shuuichi wipes desperately at his eyes, trying to find meaning, to find the answer to what Rantarou is talking about in the few brief moments he looks at him.
He doesn’t get the chance. Rantarou’s focus is pulled to one of his door mirrors, and he grits his teeth in annoyance. Shuuichi follows Rantarou's gaze, mind completely blanking on what to think of the large, amorphous figures quickly gaining on the car.
“This isn’t going to feel good. Hold on, Shuuichi.”
Rantarou yanks the wheel harshly to the left, weaving into the oncoming lane of traffic. Shuuichi opens his mouth to ask what on earth he’s doing when something rushes Rantarou’s side of the car, sending the vehicle careening sideways down the road. Shuuichi hears himself scream in alarm, the sound cut off sharply as the car is hit again, sending them spinning off the shoulder of the road.
His head smacks roughly against the window and his vision fills with all-consuming purple spots. Something sticky begins to leak down the side of his head and he hears himself sobbing; from the pain, the terror, the shock of the unknown, a combination of it all.
A deafening metallic shriek rips through the air, grating on his ears, disorienting him further. His heart is beating as fast as it ever has, his breath is icy and hard to catch, and it’s impossible to make out what’s happening through the cloud of pain closing in around his head and the darkness quickly forcing his eyes into total blindness.
The last time Shuuichi is able to open his eyes, he can only watch as Rantarou is lifted from the wrecked car by an unknown force. He can’t make out if he’s injured, if he’s moving, if he’s breathing. All he can make out between the darkness and the stickiness falling into his eyes is the blood on Rantarou’s face.
Shuuichi must be dying. He must be. There is no other explanation for the sight of a large, dark figure, a creature he can only describe as monstrous, taking his best friend, his brother from him, leaving him to watch, helpless and injured and losing consciousness fast.
He hears screaming, and then he hears whispering, and then finally, he hears nothing.
Notes:
+ hello again! im really proud of myself that i was able to post this on kokichi's birthday. too bad he's not in this chapter. next time, though!
+ yeah! uh. whoopsy doopsy, rantarou's not doing so hot. uh oh!
+ i don't have an exact updating schedule per se; but i'm hoping (crossing my fingers) that i don't slack off too much in keeping a decent timeframe between updates. here's to hoping my hyperfixation on this idea carries me through!
+ we meet a ton more characters next chapter, so that's very exciting! but for now, i leave you here. thank you so much for reading, and please feel free to hit me up with any comments, questions, or other thoughts on tumblr! i'm at @gontagokuhara
+ oh, and if you did like this chapter, please consider leaving a comment! they really make my day
+ trigger warnings for this chapter: major/character death, violence, symptoms of ptsd, references and descriptions of car crashes
+ may 14, 2023 update: tightened some of the writing & corrected typos, no major changes
Chapter 2: i guess the car crashed into crazy town
Summary:
When Shuuichi comes to, he is immediately confronted with two very startling realities.
One: he feels as though his head’s just been shoved into a blender that’s running at its highest setting. Even with eyes closed he feels disoriented and dizzy, and after a few moment’s consciousness he finds that the problem is not exclusively concentrated in his head. The presence of an ache works its way down from his head to his feet, and the mental visual of not only his head being beat in like a piñata, but his whole body, makes him want to gag.
Two: he can’t breathe.
Notes:
+ hello again! i'm back with a second chapter that is WAY longer than the first! which is surprising because i actually cut out about a quarter of this chapter's content!
+ i hope you like dialogue because we are meeting 15 new characters and BOY is that wordy
+ some small edits: i have updated the tags a bit, as well as changed the fic summary! i wasn't super happy with what it was originally, so i'm glad to have it changed!
+ i believe that's it for my opening notes; enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Shuuichi, in the moments before he loses consciousness, hears whispering. What sounds like whispering, at least. He’s not sure how loud it really is. Or if it’s really even happening. If he’s even still alive.
“Oh, no…” The voice is light, soft, but sad.
“Stay in the car. You don’t need to see this.” Airy, more masculine, pitched downward with an emotion Shuuichi can’t decipher.
“No, I can help. If they’re still here, they’re probably hurt really bad.”
“Togami isn’t here. Oh, gods above.”
“What about…?”
“Here.” Something to his immediate right crunches unpleasantly, the sound of metal tearing jarring against the quiet. “Let me just…"
“I’ll grab him. You look around and see if you can find the other one.”
Shuuichi can’t feel anything, but there’s a soft grunt of effort by his ear. Muttering he can’t make out. Finally there’s a triumphant little noise.
“Nagito, he’s so heavy!”
“He’s not here. Hah! Dealing with the two of them is going to be a nightmare.”
“Help me get his heavy butt buckled in before he bleeds out all over me!”
“I did tell you to stay in the car, Kaede.”
“Yeah, and as your assistant, no way that's gonna happen! C'mon, let’s just go. He needs to be healed.”
As what remain of Shuuichi’s senses fall away, including the voices keeping him company in his final moments awake, he has to wonder whether he really heard them at all.
When Shuuichi comes to, he is immediately confronted with two very startling realities.
One: he feels as though his head’s just been shoved into a blender that’s running at its highest setting. Even with eyes closed he feels disoriented and dizzy, and after a few moment’s consciousness he finds that the problem is not exclusively concentrated in his head. The presence of an ache works its way down from his head to his feet, and the mental visual of not only his head being beat in like a piñata, but his whole body, makes him want to gag.
Two: he can’t breathe.
All at once he gasps, eyes shooting open and widening in primal panic, coughing against the insistent weight on his chest. His lungs ache like every other part of him, feeling too big for his body, feeling like they’re being constricted by the confines of his chest cavity and that he’s going to die if he can’t get rid of it.
“Oh!” A voice gasps in surprise from directly in front of him. Shuuichi, alarmed, looks up and finds the source of the weight on his chest — a pair of deep violet eyes — appraising him. A pale finger jabs into his cheek. “Mooorning, sleepyhead! Wow, New Kid is so handsome!”
Shuuichi screams, and as he reflexively sits up the person sat on his chest topples to the ground. He backs up against the headrest of the bed he’s in, pulling the blanket up to his chin, glancing around the bright, unfamiliar room in a panicked haze.
Floods of natural light stream through the many windows adorning the walls of the…log cabin? The log cabin Shuuichi currently finds himself in. Lush green grass is only just visible through the windows from the angle Shuuichi sits at. A thin white curtain stands a few feet away, pushed all the way open, revealing that the room is rather densely populated, and every single person inside is staring at him.
There’s a non-subtle cough from the floor next to Shuuichi’s bed. Remembering the person who had, until a few moments ago, been sharing the bed with him, he whips his head down and catches the same purple eyes from before, this time taking in the rest of their owner's appearance, too.
The first thing Shuuichi notices — of many very odd characteristics — is the long purple hair obscuring most of the person’s face. Both eyes peer out through breaks in their bangs, slightly narrowed and watching him with an expression Shuuichi can’t puzzle out in the few moments he regards them. The checker print bandana tied neatly around their neck is slightly askew, revealing thin collarbones through the damaged-looking top of their shirt.
Their shirt. Which is a straitjacket. The person who almost suffocated him to death is wearing an untied straitjacket.
Before Shuuichi can even process, Straitjacket’s eyes gloss over with a blindsiding rush of tears, and they let out a pitiful wail.
“Wah!” Two small hands disappear under purple bangs to wipe raggedly under their eyes. Shuuichi flinches so hard he nearly falls off the bed himself, hands floating in the air guiltily, trying to find some way to remedy this — whatever this is.
“I can’t believe N-New Kid pushed me! I think I have a concussion, ow!” Shuuichi is given a nasty look from beneath the person’s bangs as they bring a hand to hold the side of their head. Shuuichi finds himself mirroring the action, touching lightly with the pads of his fingers at the source — or, at least, one of them — of his pain.
He freezes.
He’s injured because he was in a car accident. He — he and Rantarou were in a car accident. If he’s hurt, that means Rantarou must be, too, because whatever they hit — a deer? A really, really big deer? — smashed into Rantarou’s side. Is he okay? Why is he with these people he doesn’t know? Where is Byakuya, where is Makoto, where—
“Oi, shut up already, Kokichi! New Kid actually has a concussion, and your cryin’ is just making it worse!”
“Where am I?” The many eyes in the room zero in on him. He pulls the blankets up over his nose. "Where’s Rantarou?”
“Gods, what is taking Mr. Ko so long? My arm hurts, nyeh…”
Shuuichi doesn’t have time to feel offended at being ignored as he takes in the people populating the room for the first time. He’s the only one laying down, but considering some of the current afflictions a few of the other occupants are dealing with, Shuuichi almost wants to offer the bed to someone else.
A girl with red hair cut in a neat bob and wearing a Halloween witch hat clutches at an obviously dislocated arm. She yawns when she catches Shuuichi’s eye.
There’s the person on the floor, wails quieted down into sniffling as they bicker with someone wrapped up in a…net? Whose volume steadily rises with every word out of their mouth. Sat on a spinny chair is a blonde girl reading a magazine upside down, and in the far corner…
Someone is holding their own head. Right in their hands.
Shuuichi yells, and promptly falls out of the bed.
“New Kid sure is jumpy…” The dislocated arm wiggles grotesquely as the girl points at him.
“You’re holding your own head.” Shuuichi resists the urge to point, feeling it to be a little more rude than he’s comfortable with. The blonde girl drops the magazine onto the floor and gives Shuuichi a bright smile, getting to her feet.
“Glad to see you’ve rejoined the land of the living! I’ll go get Nagito.” She winks at him as she turns to leave. Shuuichi wants to say something, ask what on earth is happening, figure out where Rantarou is, but the words die on his tongue as he watches her leave.
“Kokichi, knock it off, would ya?! You get more and more obnoxious every second, I swear!” The person in the net jabs an accusatory finger towards the purple-haired person who fell onto the floor.
“But Kaito!” Their eyes water again, bottom lip wobbling almost comically. “I’m so hurt! New Kid is so mean for bullying me!”
“I didn’t — I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to—”
‘Kokichi’ giggles, all remnants of the previous tears forgotten. “Just kidding! That was toootally a lie. As if you could bully me, a light breeze would blow you over!”
Their smile becomes unkind. “‘Sides, I’d just kill you if you really tried!”
Shuuichi blanches, totally at a loss for words. “Wh—”
A door opens, hitting against the wall of the cabin hard enough to make Shuuichi flinch. He looks to the entrance just in time to see a man, looking to be in his mid-twenties, with messy white hair and an uncomfortable-looking sunburn across his cheeks step into the cabin, and promptly groan. As he surveys the room, Shuuichi notes the many offbeat things about his appearance, feeling his discomfort rise: his sickly pale face; his long, gangly limbs; the too-big-looking blue t-shirt with lettering Shuuichi can’t make out; the long, single glove covering all the way up to his left elbow.
“I do believe I only left one of you in here to supervise our new addition.” The man sighs breathily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So why is half of my camp in the infirmary?”
Everyone begins to speak at once. The man lifts his non-gloved hand to silence them, and then looks at Shuuichi, a small smile on his face. “Just a moment, please. Also, whatever Kokichi did to bring you onto the floor, you’re free to return to your bed.”
He does, too overwhelmed to speak.
The man turns to the red-haired girl, the corners of his mouth dipping into a light frown. “Himiko, what did you do to your arm?”
She blinks blearily up at him, shaking the arm for emphasis as she speaks. “I fell out of a tree.”
“And why were you in a tree?”
“Tenko and I were…dropping water balloons on the boys as they,” she pauses for a moment to yawn into her hand, “…passed underneath us.”
The man exhales harshly through his nose and mutters to himself for a moment. No one seems particularly concerned. “I’ll need to put it back into place.”
“I made it fall asleep. I can’t feel it, nyeh.” Once again she shakes the arm. Kokichi makes gagging noises from the floor.
“Wonderful.” The man’s smile is painfully forced. He takes the arm into his hands and spends a few moments popping it loudly back into place. Shuuichi feels himself go green.
“What are you doing to Himiko?!” A frankly pissed-off voice accompanies the visual of a girl catapulting herself in through one of the open windows, landing on her feet and entering an offensive stance in front of Himiko. The man watches her with half-lidded eyes, blinking so slowly that it makes Shuuichi wonder if the man is as caught off guard by all of this as he is.
“I fixed her arm, Tenko.”
“Tenko will avenge you, Himiko! Hi-yaaah!” The floor creaks with the weight of the man as Tenko flips him and slams him into the floor, earning spatters of giggles from around the room. Tenko turns back to Himiko, picking her up and racing towards the door.
“Tenko will take you to Angie, Angie will fix you pain-free!”
The door slams behind the two of them. Shuuichi can’t keep his jaw off the floor.
“You’ll catch flies like that, New Kid,” Kokichi says thoughtfully from his position on the ground, eyes on the man as he gets to his feet with a self-deprecating sigh. He turns to the person wrapped up in the net.
“Kaito, this is the third time this week this has happened, isn’t it?”
“W-Well, yeah, but!” Kaito gestures wildly with his hands — or, at least, as well as he can with both bound up quite securely in the confines of a sturdy-looking net. “It’s different this time!”
“You mean it didn’t happen because you’re an idiot, just like the last hundred times Nagito's had to cut you out?” Kokichi giggles as Kaito’s sputters from beneath his apparently...self-inflicted bindings.
“No, asshole! It happened ‘cause Maki Roll and I had an incredible sparrin’ match, and the cannon shot at the wrong time!”
“I see,” is all the man says, a bemused smile on his face.
“Kaito, I think you need to accept that the net cannon is a bad idea,” the blonde girl supplies, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she lingers behind the man.
“No way! I’m so close, I can feel it!”
The man rubs his chin thoughtfully, appraising Kaito with a grin on his face. In his other hand are a pair of scissors that Shuuichi didn’t see him grab. “Perhaps it could use some reworking.”
“B-But Komaeda, w-wait! This is my last net! Kirumi said she wouldn’t help me make anymore after this one, don’t cut it!”
Komaeda shakes his head, clicking his tongue sympathetically. “It would take hours to even attempt to untangle, and I just don’t have that kind of time right now, I’m afraid.”
Kokichi snickers as Komaeda gets to work cutting Kaito out of the net. Shuuichi thinks he may hear sniffling from Kaito as he kicks the ruined net away from himself dejectedly, but he can’t be sure, as a moment later he’s being thrown a blinding smile and a thumbs up.
“It’s a shame, but I won’t sweat the little stuff! That’s what I always say.”
Shuuichi can see his outfit for the first time, unobscured by the net. He’s wearing a galaxy-print hoodie and slippers.
“Goodbye, Kaito,” Komaeda says, voice light but holding a clear implication of ‘please get out now’. Kaito slaps him good-naturedly on the back, sending him stumbling; he stares blankly forward, an uncomfortable-looking grin on his face, as Kaito waves the rest of the room goodbye — save for Kokichi — and exits the cabin.
Komaeda blinks the haze from his eyes, gives Shuuichi an odd smile, and spins on his heel to face the person who is still holding their own head.
Frankly, Shuuichi would have made that the priority within the cabin, but.
“Kiibo, what on earth happened?”
“W-Well!” The head goes bright red, eyes scrunched up in…embarrassment? “Miu was — she recently obtained some new parts! And she wanted to, ah, make some modifications to my hardware!”
Oh. It’s a robot. Because of course.
“Ew, nasty Miu wanted to poke around in your insides?” Shuuichi feels himself go red at the implication. ‘Kiibo’ lets out a whine, head dropping from their hands as they begin to gesticulate feverishly with them. The head clangs metalically as it drops against the floor, jumping Shuuichi out of his skin and almost onto the floor again. Kiibo’s head lets out a pitiful, "Ow!" as it rolls away from the deep dent it's left in the floor.
“Kokichi! Don’t say such vulgar things, it’s embarrassing!” Kiibo’s body struggles to pick up their head off the floor. Once it’s upright and back in their arms, they fix Kokichi with an unimpressed scowl.
“What? It’s true!”
“Mr. Nagito, please make him stop!”
Komaeda sighs, sinking into the spinny chair that the blonde girl had left vacated when she’d gotten up.
“So,” he says after a long moment, interrupting the growing argument between the two, “you’re saying Miu took your head off while she was trying to make modifications to your body?”
Does this sound insane to anyone else? Or is it just Shuuichi?
“Not exactly.” Kiibo looks sheepish, cheeks once again going red. “I, ah, told Miu that perhaps we should wait until w-we talked to you, because of what happened last time." Last time? “But she was, ah, v-very excited! So I was running away to come find you, when I tripped, a-and…”
“Kiibo, you tripped and — and your head fell off?” The blonde girl looks as though she’s trying her hardest to suppress a fit of laughter. Kokichi, on the other hand, is openly rolling on the floor, tears streaming down his face as he cackles.
“Are you making fun of me?” Kiibo asks incredulously, turning their head in their hands to point a glare at her. Her face is bright red and there are tears leaking out of her eyes as she shakes her head.
Komaeda clears his throat. “Kiibo, we can talk about this later. Come here so I can fix you.”
As they march forward, there’s a pout on their face. “Mr. Nagito, I have to say, I think I object to you saying you're going to ‘fix' me! The implication that there is something wrong with me on the basis of me being a robot is incredibly robophobic, and frankly, I’m very disapp—”
Their spiel is cut short as Komaeda takes the head from Kiibo’s hands and without preamble slams it back down onto their neck. Kiibo shrieks, the sound a string of electronic garbling that hurts Shuuichi’s aching head.
“Ow!” Kiibo’s eyes spin wildly in their…sockets?
“Robots can’t feel pain, Kiibaby’s totally faking it,” Kokichi says to Shuuichi matter-of-factly, snickering at the new round of protests the sentiment brings on.
“If you’re all set, Kiibo, I need to speak with our new addition.” Komaeda’s smile is polite, if a little forced. Kiibo spares another glare in Kokichi’s direction before nodding, hands on their hips.
“Understood. Shall I finish setting up New Kid's room?” At Komaeda’s nod, Kiibo claps their hands, looking to Shuuichi. “Not to worry, I’ll decorate it to the best of my ability! I have studied Mr. Nagito’s many interior design magazines, so I am equipped with—”
Komaeda stands and scoots Kiibo out the door, smiling embarrassedly. Kokichi and the blonde girl snicker.
“Now, you two.” He faces Kokichi. “What are you doing here?”
A finger is pointed in Shuuichi’s direction. “New Kid tried to kill me!”
Komaeda sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No, he didn’t, Kokichi. If that’s all, then…”
Kokichi jumps to his feet, jutting his lip out and clutching at Komaeda’s shirt. “But Nagitooo—”
“No. Please go find someone else to bother until he’s settled.”
The upset on his face quickly turns to unrestrained mischief as a smile cracks his mouth open and he giggles. “Well, since I have your permission, I’m gonna go put rocks in your pillows! Byeee, New Kid!”
The door slams shut behind Kokichi, settling the room into uncomfortable silence. Left with only two strangers instead of an entire crowd, Shuuichi finds it a little less intimidating, but not by much. Both Komaeda and the girl stare at him with equally indecipherable expressions.
“Where am I?” Shuuichi tries, voice small even in the quiet of the room. Both stares become sadder, and it only turns Shuuichi’s stomach all the more. “Where is Rantarou? And who are you?”
“Okay, okay, one thing at a time.” Komaeda comes closer, and looks for a moment like he’s considering taking a seat on the edge of the bed, but at the last minute thinks better of it and instead idles awkwardly a few feet away.
“My name is Nagito Komaeda. I’m a camp counselor here at Camp Hope’s Peak.” He gestures to his shirt which does, in fact, boast the camp’s name. Shuuichi stares in silence, waiting for answers to the rest of his questions. “You can call me Ko, Komaeda, Mr. Ko, or Mr. Komaeda. Don’t let the brats convince you otherwise.”
Komaeda laughs breathily to himself, eyes momentarily unfocused. Shuuichi doesn’t laugh with him.
“You’re Shuuichi Saihara, right?” He nods mutely. “And you know Rantarou Togami.”
Hearing Rantarou's name fills him with hope that someone knows where he is. He nods again, much harder than before.
“Are you…” Shuuichi pauses, mind glazing over a hazy memory of a breathy, lilting voice in the midst of darkness. “I heard you. Before, you were at the…” Shuuichi can’t bring himself to say the words. “Right?”
Komaeda nods. “I was the one Rantarou called. He asked me to pick you up and bring you to camp.”
Shuuichi brightens, eyes searching around the room, greedy for any sign of Rantarou. Komaeda’s face darkens as he does so, and he stops, confused.
“Where is he?”
“Kaede.” Komaeda turns to the blonde girl, who perks up at — presumably — her name being spoken. “Go get Hajime, please. He’s better at these sorts of conversations.”
She frowns, cheeks puffing out. “But—”
“Please.” Komaeda smiles in Kaede’s direction until she sighs and leaves the cabin. After a moment, his attention refocuses on Shuuichi.
“I understand the impatience you’re feeling, but please forgive me for not being able to answer your questions.” He smiles. “And please allow me to ask you a few questions of my own.”
Shuuichi doesn’t answer, too distracted by the unease taking hold of his insides. Komaeda continues on despite his lack of an answer.
“What is the last thing you remember before waking up here?”
He has to take a moment to think. Then: “I…I was in the car with Rantarou. We had just left his house, because—” Shuuichi clams up, flashes of spilled blood and unending rows of teeth and unblinking, blank eyes taking the words from his lungs. He pulls a hand to his mouth, a rush of nausea threatening to make him empty his stomach.
It takes longer than it should for him to recover enough to speak. “A-Anyways, we were driving, and Rantarou was acting strange, I...I don't really understand what he was saying. That I would be learning new things…?”
“He wasn’t wrong,” Komaeda says softly, running a hand through his hair. His fingers seem to tangle up somewhere, because he has to spend a few moments pulling his hand free. “I suppose I should start somewhere familiar. How much do you know?”
Shuuichi blinks, utterly lost. “Know about what?”
“About what you are.” Shuuichi’s confusion must show on his face, because all of a sudden Komaeda’s eyebrow shoots up, and he pins Shuuichi with an incredulous look. “Did — did no one tell you?”
“Tell me about what?” Shuuichi asks, sort of desperately. Komaeda bursts into uncomfortable laughter, burying his head in his hands.
“Oh, gods, I knew those two were protective, but this is just…” He regains his composure a moment later, still not quite meeting Shuuichi’s eye. “Oh-kay. Just our luck that it's me here, not Hajime, he...th-this is, hah, I didn’t expect this at all. Okay!”
Komaeda takes a deep breath, finally looking at him head-on again. “I know this is going to sound really, really unbelievable, but just…listen, okay? Shuuichi, you’re a demigod. You know what that means, right?”
Shuuichi thought he did, but apparently he doesn’t, because the definition he’s thinking of certainly doesn’t make sense in this context. Nevertheless he nods, feigning understanding.
“Okay, okay! Good. That’s good. Well, you are. And you…” Komaeda walks over to one of the tables decorating the room, and picks up a small file with Shuuichi’s last name brandished on the front. He licks his pointer finger and flips through a few pages, before stopping on one. “You lived with your mom, right?”
Shuuichi nods.
“And you never knew who your dad was.” Shuuichi nods again. “Well, the reason for that is because your dad is a god. So you’re half-god. A 'demi,' so to speak.”
“Ah, what?” Shuuichi asks, because, ah, what?
Just where on earth is he?
Komaeda chuckles, picking idly at his glove. “So is Rantarou. I was under the impression you at least knew that, but from the look on your face, I’m guessing I was wrong?”
Very, very wrong.
“Look,” Shuuichi begins, his unease and anxiety since waking up, and his irritation at not being told about Rantarou spilling out of his mouth, “I don’t know what’s happening here. But this is all crazy. I just want to know where Rantarou is, and you — you telling me fairy tales instead of where my brother is, is really just…cruel.”
“I’m not lying, or telling stories, or anything like that,” Komaeda replies, hands up defensively, “but I understand where you’re coming from. I do, promise. I’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, so I get why you’re upset. You’ll understand with time.”
Wait.
‘Hundreds of years’?
“‘Hundreds of years’?” Shuuichi asks, eyebrows shooting into his hairline. Komaeda chuckles, looking sheepish.
“You caught me. Hold on, let me reintroduce myself.” He waves, smiling brightly. “My name is Nagito Komaeda, and I’m the God of Luck. I’m one of the two camp counselors here at Camp Hope’s Peak, a summer camp for demigods, and I have been for a long time.”
“Okay. I’m still passed out after getting hurt. Okay.” Shuuichi takes in a deep breath and lays down rather forcefully in the bed, hiking the blankets up over his head. “Time to go to sleep and wake up in a hospital, next to Rantarou, with Byakuya and Makoto telling us we're grounded. Okay. Nice meeting you.”
The door creaks open. Shuuichi stays underneath the covers.
“Ah, that’s my cue to leave. I have a lot of paperwork to do. I’ll see you around, okay, Shuuichi?” Komaeda doesn’t wait for a response before exiting the cabin, leaving Shuuichi with a different stranger. Whoever it is walks across the floor, and the sound of the spinning chair being rolled towards the bed makes Shuuichi — hesitantly — pull the blankets down far enough to make eye contact with Mr. Hinata.
Wait.
Mr. Hinata?!
“M-Mr. Hinata?!” Shuuichi scrambles into a sitting position, bug-eyed as he takes in the sight of his history teacher sitting backwards in the chair. He smiles gently.
One of his eyes flares red.
“It’s nice to see you again, Shuuichi.” Mr. Hinata’s smile dampens slightly, eyes focused intently on him. “…I just wish circumstances were a little better. How are you feeling?”
“Sore. Ah, confused. Anxious, too. Mostly anxious.” Shuuichi tries his best not to stare, but he can’t keep his eyes away from Mr. Hinata’s face. The red eye is literally glowing. “Your, ah, your eye is red.”
Instead of being offended, Mr. Hinata laughs, smile kind. “There’s a lot about me you don’t know. I’m going to change that.” He sticks a hand out towards Shuuichi. “First off, I’m not really a history teacher, so you don’t have to call me ‘Mr. Hinata’ anymore. Hajime is fine. Nice to meet you.”
Shuuichi shakes the offered hand, feeling awkward. As Hajime pulls his hand back, he sighs. “So I imagine it’s time for me to fill you in. Is there a starting point you’re comfortable going from?”
He takes a moment to consider his starting question. “Where…am I?”
“Camp Hope’s Peak.”
Okay. That, at least, checks out. “And why am I here?”
“Rantarou called Nagito and arranged for him to bring the two of you here.”
“Why summer camp?”
“Because it’s the safest place on earth for endangered demigods.”
Shuuichi blanches. “Demigods?”
Hajime nods. “You, and Rantarou, and everyone here except for Nagito and I.”
“So he’s really — and that means you, you’re—” Hajime quirks an eyebrow up, and Shuuichi groans. “You’re actually…like, a god?” Hajime nods. “You’re a god. And you taught my history class about gods. And I never listened.”
He buries his head in his hands, embarrassed. Hajime pats him awkwardly on the shoulder as someone laughs. He looks up, surprised, and finds Kaede peeking around the curtain. When they make eye contact she waves and comes to sit at the foot of the bed.
“So, yes, you’re half-god. So is Rantarou. I know who his godly parent is, but I’m not sure about you.”
“Oh, I—I don’t know. No one ever said anything, not even my mom. So I don’t…” He trails off, suddenly self conscious. Hajime shrugs.
“That’s fine. In the grand scheme of things it’s unimportant, anyway; it’s more a fun fact to share with the other campers than anything else.”
“Oh. Okay.” Shuuichi fidgets with the hem of the blanket. “So…who is Rantarou’s, uhm, ‘godly parent’?”
“Oh my god, Hajime, I know you said he was flunking your history class,” Shuuichi goes red with mortification as Kaede stage-whispers, “but how did he not realize he was living with two gods?”
“What?” Shuuichi shakes his head. “No, Byakuya and Makoto aren’t, they can’t—” He looks at Hajime pleadingly, hoping for some semblance of normalcy to remain. “…They can’t be.”
“They are,” Hajime says, smiling a little too much for his faux-sympathetic tone to really mean anything. He pats Shuuichi on the back. “The Gods of Wealth and Friendship, actually.”
Shuuichi suppresses a snort. If it’s real, it’s certainly fitting.
“I feel sort of like I’m going crazy,” Shuuichi tells Hajime emphatically, “I’m apparently a demigod, so is my best friend, his parents are gods—”
“—Makoto is a Big Five god, too, so that means he’s one of the more powerful ones! Just like Hajime!” Kaede cuts in, stars in her eyes. Shuuichi stares at her blankly, half of her words meaning nothing to him.
“Okay, great, that too. Now it turns out my history teacher is also a god, and everyone else in the world knew this before me.” Shuuichi forces a smile, feeling sort of hysterical. “I am totally cool with all of this.”
He is not totally cool with all of this.
“Well, that’s good news, because this next bit…” Hajime’s smile drops into a frown, his hands playing idly with his tie. Kaede, too, loses some of her cheery aura; though a small smile remains, her face becomes a little less bright, morphs into something a little too much like pity for Shuuichi to be comfortable looking at.
“You were in a car crash. That was almost three days ago.” Shuuichi freezes up all at once, hands suddenly going clammy as he waits with bated breath for Hajime to continue.
“When Nagito and Kaede got to the site of the crash, the car was totaled.” The pitying looks on Hajime’s and Kaede’s faces amp up in intensity, and Shuuichi suddenly begins shaking his head, tears welling up in his eyes.
Please don’t say it. Please don’t say that Rantarou is dead.
Please.
“When they got there, you were the only one in the car.” Kaede’s hand finds his and grasps it firmly. He can hear his breath begin to hiccup in his ears. “You were the only one there, and we don’t know where he is, but we are doing our best to find him.”
“You mean that — I wasn’t hallucinating when I saw,” he swallows around the lump in his throat, “when that…thing t-took him?”
“I’m sorry,” is what Hajime says. Shuuichi shakes his head, pulls his hand away from Kaede and into his lap.
“H-How can you not know? If you’re a god, aren’t you — why can’t you find him?” he demands, sudden anger pumping in tandem with blood through his veins. Hajime sighs.
“It doesn’t work like that — I don’t work like that, try as I might.” He pauses. “But there are gods who do have a penchant for finding people, and they’re working their hardest to find him. All we can do right now is wait and try not to make ourselves miserable over what might be happening.”
Shuuichi nods, wiping at his eyes, feeling miserable despite Hajime’s attempts to steer him otherwise. He shuts his eyes against his headache, suddenly more pressing at the day’s revelations.
“Do his dads know?”
Hajime winces. “They know Rantarou’s…missing, yes.”
He can't even imagine the state Byakuya and Makoto must be in. A dead monster and blood all over the house, both of their kids missing...Shuuichi grimaces.
“Hey, Hajime.” Kaede stands up from the bed. “What if we introduce Shuuichi to everyone? I know we’re just waiting for news right now, but everyone wants to meet him, and it would be good to get out of the infirmary, right?”
He can’t really think of anything he’d rather be doing less than being forced to meet a bunch of people he doesn’t know and who are just going to pity him. Especially after he’s been crying and unconscious for three days and hit with the feeling he had when his mom died all over again.
“It’s up to Shuuichi.” Hajime places a hand on his shoulder and he looks up, not quite meeting his eyes. Kaede smiles reassuringly behind him, and he rubs at his eyes, feeling like he’s being cornered in the friendliest way possible.
He shrugs, not feeling up to committing to one answer over another. Kaede nods, pumping her fist, and crouches down by the edge of the bed, the sound of rummaging accompanying the movement. Her head pops back up a moment later, and she places Shuuichi’s duffle bag onto the bed by his feet.
“Your other bag and your bat are in your cabin. Oh!” She moves over to a stray box on the floor and pulls out a blue t-shirt with ‘Camp Hope’s Peak’ emblazoned on the front. She wads it up and tosses it towards him. “You can change into that if you want, or you can just get something out of your bag. The clothes you’re wearing now are…a little wrecked, so we’ll let you get changed.”
Hajime stands, offering him one last squeeze on the shoulder before leaving the cabin. Kaede flashes Shuuichi a smile as she pulls the white curtain across the stall, leaving him in private silence to gather his thoughts.
He looks down at his hands, really takes in his appearance for the first time since waking up; Kaede was right, he is a wreck. The hoodie and pants he wore in the car are all but destroyed, soaked through with varying amounts of dirt, blood, and sweat. He pulls the hoodie off quickly, dropping it to the floor with a shudder, feeling itchy just thinking about how long he had it on.
He digs around in his bag for a moment, feeling a new rush of grief as his hands pause over the stuffed bear Rantarou won him. He pulls it along with one of his binders and his deodorant from his bag, quickly applying a generous amount of the latter and shuffling on the former before settling down on the bed, the bear in his arms.
Secured around its neck is the bracelet Shuuichi won Rantarou at the arcade, and that alone sets him off sobbing again.
Rantarou is missing — Shuuichi will not think the word ‘dead,’ not even to himself — and all that he has left of him is a stuffed animal and a piece of plastic.
It’s not fair.
Everything was okay just a few days ago. He was happy. He fell asleep in his history class, and played video games with his best friend, and got grounded for sneaking out, and it was normal. Shuuichi was a normal, unassuming teenager, and his trait of greatest note was the fact that his guardians were rich.
He buries his face in the bear, the cheap felt of its fur scratchy against his cheeks. He forces himself to take large, deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling through the fabric until his hiccupped breathing turns shaky but manageable, and all that remains of his previous tears are wet stains on the plush and sticky trails down his cheeks.
Shuuichi pulls his face away and gently removes the bracelet from around the bear’s neck, securing it around his wrist a moment later. For good measure he ties the pull strings of both his and Rantarou’s together, wipes at his eyes once more, and pulls on the shirt Kaede gave to him.
Along with fresh underwear and a pair of jeans, he fishes out his hat as well, pushing it onto his head as he stoops down to pull on his shoes. Satisfied as he can be, Shuuichi piles his belongings back into his bag (including the ruined clothes; though he doesn’t want to, leaving them on the floor feels...wrong) and pulls back the curtain, eyeing the door warily.
As an afterthought he goes back to his bag and retrieves his phone, pushing it into his pocket before walking towards the door and opening it.
Immediately a warm breeze blows across his face, and as he makes his way down the two stairs he sort of relishes the feeling of sunlight falling onto his arms and face, feeling his lack of sunlight these past few days in full force. The sound of birds chirping calls his attention to the fact that they’re somewhere in the woods, trees surrounding the large open space the cabin and a few other buildings are situated in quite thickly. He thinks he may hear water somewhere farther away.
“You all ready?” Shuuichi nods in response to Hajime’s question, pulling at the edge of his shirt a little self consciously. They move past the infirmary, and after a few moments Kaede joins them, in the process of pulling her hair into a ponytail.
“I just realized that I didn’t really introduce myself back there, sorry,” she says with a light laugh, using her hand as a visor against the sun as she turns to look at Shuuichi. “I’m Kaede Akamatsu! I was with Nagito when he brought you back to camp.”
“I remember hearing you talking. You said I was heavy.”
She laughs, going a little red. Shuuichi hears Hajime snort from his other side. “As if someone like me should worry about others being heavy.” She gestures to herself vaguely, and Shuuichi doesn’t really know how to respond without sounding like an asshole. “Anyway, sorry about that. But it’s nice to actually talk to you! You had me scared back at the wreck.”
“Yeah.” Shuuichi scratches at his arm awkwardly, trying to think of what to say. “So, ah, who is your…god?”
Kaede bursts into sudden laughter, and Shuuichi looks down, embarrassed. “No, it’s okay! It’s just been so long since someone’s asked me, I guess. My mom is Sayaka Maizono, the Goddess of Music.”
“Oh, that’s cool. I guess there’s always music playing at your house, right?”
“Oh, no. I live at camp all year.” Her smile dampens for a moment, but soon it’s back in place, and she reaches in front of Shuuichi to flick Hajime’s arm. “I’ve been here so long I’m like a mini-camp counselor!”
“Really?”
“Kind of,” Hajime cuts in, rolling his eyes a bit. “Kaede and a few other long-haul campers act as counselors-in-training, mostly when Nagito and I aren't around. Kaede did protest outside of Nagito’s office for hours until he let her be his assistant, though, so…half-true.”
“You can be smug all you want, at least I get paid,” she counters, sharing a laugh with Hajime before settling into silence. As they walk, Shuuichi glances over at her, getting a real read on her appearance for the first time.
She’s pretty, the sort of pretty that usually makes Shuuichi get intimidated and shy just to be in proximity of. Her blonde hair is medium-length, just long enough that she can put it up into a ponytail. She is fat in all the places Shuuichi is thin, with round cheeks and soft-looking hands and large, solid legs. As she walks she seems to bounce to a music Shuuichi can’t hear; her steps are heavy, confident, much like everything else he observes about her. Her dress is casual but cute, in a pair of what looks to be self-tie-dyed overall shorts and a pink tank top.
All of her exposed skin — face, legs, arms — is heavily freckled, and there’s a hint of a sunburn touching the apples of her cheeks and the tops of her shoulders. Her eyes cut over to meet Shuuichi’s, and he finds himself feeling less embarrassed than he probably should when she offers him a warm smile instead of an affronted look.
She takes him by the arm and pulls them to a stop in front of a large, two-story cabin. Every available inch of outdoor space is covered in various planters filled with a vast array of different flowers.
“This is Nagito and Hajime’s cabin,” she explains, dropping Shuuichi’s arm and using both hands to gesture broadly at the building. “We’re not technically supposed to go in there, but I have special privileges because I’m Nagito’s assistant!”
“No, you don’t,” Hajime corrects, rolling his eyes. “No, she doesn’t. Stay out of our house.”
Kaede sticks her tongue out at him and continues walking.
The counselor’s cabin is much more central to the rest of the camp, as far as Shuuichi can tell; as he turns around to follow after Kaede, he can make out several buildings and other landmarks around the large clearing. A garage and what looks to be an RV are situated immediately to the left of Hajime’s house, and just beyond that stands a large, unassuming wooden building that Shuuichi can not immediately discern the purpose of. His focus is caught for a few moments on what looks to be a small outdoor amphitheater, but it’s soon gone from his vision as Kaede leads the three of them around one of the larger buildings Shuuichi can see.
“We have communal bathrooms here,” Hajime says as the gender markers over each door come into view. “There are full bathrooms in each cabin, of course, but additional showers and toilets are in here.” Hajime approaches the men’s side of the building and pushes open the door, holding it for the two of them.
“We’re working on getting the gender markers taken off — yes, Kaede, I haven’t ignored the notes you and Kiibo have been leaving on my desk, but since everything here runs through the other gods, it’s a long process, so — wait, why are the lights off in here?”
As he verbalizes his question he flicks the light switch on, revealing that they are not the only ones in the bathroom.
There’s a strange circle drawn on the floor, outlined with various candles, and in the middle of the ghastly display is a person.
Shuuichi looks at Kaede and Hajime pleadingly. The former takes the sudden awkward silence to slip back out the door, while the latter seems intent on permanently denting his temples with how hard he’s rubbing them.
“Oh, it seems we’ve been interrupted,” the person in the middle of the…whatever that is says, a chuckle in their soft voice. They sit up, yellow eyes reminiscent of a cat’s in both color and intensity as they give Shuuichi a once-over. Satisfied, they laugh again, the sound somewhat muffled by the mask over their face.
“Of all the days…” Hajime grumbles, stepping into the middle of the room and systematically blowing out the candles. Shuuichi, for the first time, notices there’s another person in the bathroom: a short boy wearing a blue hoodie and ripped jeans sits atop one of the sinks, eyes on his phone. When he notices Shuuichi he glances up, inclining his head in acknowledgement.
“Are you putting an end to our ritual, Hajime?”
“Their ritual. I’m just here because Kiyo said I couldn’t shower until they finished.” The boy pulls his hood over his head, and Shuuichi is relieved that the action keeps him from seeing Shuuichi’s reaction to his oddly deep voice. “What a great first impression to make on the new kid.”
Hajime runs a few handfuls of paper towels underneath the tap for a few moments, and then forcefully thrusts them towards the person conducting the ‘ritual,’ who has since stood up and begun dusting themselves off. They stare at the wad of wet towels for a beat, hesitantly take it, and then a few moments later discard it onto the ground. Shuuichi smothers an uncomfortable laugh as Hajime begins cursing under his breath, stooping onto his knees to begin scrubbing at the drawings on the floor himself.
“Any other time I would welcome someone new into my practices, but I’m afraid it’s all coming undone now…” They idly push a lock of long, straight hair behind their shoulder and focus their attention on Shuuichi. He sort of feels as though he’s craning his neck just to look them in the eye. “Yes, how intriguing…our new addition is quite a specimen, Hajime.”
“Don’t call him a specimen,” Hajime says irritably from the floor, taking the words right out of Shuuichi’s mouth. Nonetheless, he smiles — if a bit uneasily — up at the person, who in return raises their eyebrows in an approximation of what Shuuichi thinks is meant to be a smile.
“Please pardon our strange meeting, and allow me to introduce myself. My name is Korekiyo Shinguuji.” Another maybe-smile from behind the mask. “I invite you to call me Kiyo.”
“N-Nice to meet you,” Shuuichi replies, hoping his smile isn’t too uncomfortable. “I’m Shuuichi.”
“What a precious name,” Kiyo says thoughtfully, a finger pressed to their chin. Shuuichi quite honestly does not know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t; he instead turns to the boy on the sink, who has since returned his attention to his phone.
“Ryoma Hoshi,” Kiyo says, stooping down to gather up some of the candles adorning the floor. Ryoma looks up at the mention of his name, and offers a tiny twitch of his lips in response, but nothing further.
It’s at this point Kaede steps back into the bathroom, hands over her eyes. “Shuuichi, no one’s naked, right? Can I look?”
“Not that kind of ritual, Kaede,” Kiyo replies, a hint of humor in their voice. Kaede pulls her hands from her face and laughs, responding with a grin, “Maybe not this time.”
Just what the hell goes on here?!
“Oh!” Kaede waves her hands around for a moment, waiting until she’s garnered the room’s attention before continuing. “Shuuichi just learned about god stuff today, so you guys should tell him about your parents! Give him a little culture lesson.”
Kiyo perks up significantly, gaze zeroing in on Shuuichi. “Oh, what an honor it is to introduce a new pupil to our world!” Their eyes widen, expression absolutely delighted.
“The realm of the gods is a very interesting one, and there is so much mythos to be explored! I do not personally subscribe to all of the beliefs commonly held by beings such as ourselves, but—”
Shuuichi blanches. “Wait, what do you mean? You don’t believe this stuff?”
Kiyo looks a bit annoyed to have been interrupted. Before they can counter, Kaede cuts in with, “Kiyo has a lot of background knowledge on other legends and deities and stuff, and they’re really interested in studying other cultures anyway, so they have different views on the gods than the rest of us! And as much as Shuuichi would love to listen to one of your anthropology lectures,” Kaede shoots him a subtle wink, “we’re trying to go around and meet everyone before dinner, so maybe we can just start with your mom?”
Kiyo straightens, shrugging their shoulders. “Ah, of course. My parentage is that of the Goddess of Literature; that is to say, my mother is Touko Fukawa. She introduced to me a dear love of knowledge and literary exploration, which of course influenced my passion for—”
“Wait.” Shuuichi’s voice is doing that thing it does where it gets all scratchy. He feels his eye twitch. “Touko? You said Touko?”
“That’s correct…?”
“Touko? Like the Touko that’s married to Komaru Naegi?”
Kiyo looks surprised. “I did not expect someone with such entry-level godly knowledge to know who my godly parent is married to, how interesting…”
“You’re Touko’s kid?” Kiyo nods. Shuuichi laughs, the sound sort of choked, and Kaede gives him an odd look. He flushes, embarrassed at his outburst. “I-It’s nothing bad! It’s just, ah, Komaru is Ra — my best friend’s aunt, so that means…”
“Rantarou, yes.” Hearing his name makes Shuuichi feel a bit ill. “Yes, Byakuya and Makoto’s son…I suppose one could call us cousins.” Kiyo shrugs. “It amazes me how small our world seems at times.”
“Uh, yeah.” Shuuichi looks to Ryoma, desperate for an out of this…weird conversation with his sort-of-pseudo-maybe-cousin. “What about you?”
“Hm.” Ryoma jumps down from the sink, shuffling his feet. “My dad is…no, nevermind. It’s not important.”
“Ryoma’s like me,” Kaede tells Shuuichi gently, a small frown on her face. “Not so good parents,” she clarifies, looking a bit awkward.
He’s sort of sorry he asked.
“But that’s okay!” She suddenly brightens and moves closer to Ryoma, hand extended. “Because we get to live here and be friends! Yeah?”
“Right,” Ryoma replies gruffly, but his face is as close to a smile as Shuuichi’s seen. He meets Kaede halfway for the high-five she was clearly after, then drops his gaze to his shoes and kicks idly at the floor.
“Since Kiyo’s all done, I’m gonna shower, but I don’t want to while there’s still a girl in here, so…” Kaede goes a little red and quickly heads towards the door, waving to Ryoma and Kiyo on her way out.
Hajime stands a moment later, hair disheveled and looking as though he’s faced a thousand hardships. He drops the wet paper towels in a nearby garbage can, and pins Kiyo with a look.
“No more ritual drawings,” he says, voice tinged with exasperation. Kiyo gently picks at their nails. “Seriously. They’re a pain in the ass to clean.”
“We’ll see.” They turn to face Shuuichi once more. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Shuuichi. Please feel free to seek me out, should you have anymore questions for me.”
Shuuichi nods, quick to follow Kaede out of the restroom. As soon as the door is shut behind him he gives Kaede an incredulous look. She simply laughs into her hand.
Hajime joins them a moment later, a long-suffering grimace on his face. “Please, let’s go anywhere but here.”
‘Anywhere but here’ ends up being the picnic area and adjacent fire pit only a short walk away from the bathrooms. Shuuichi reasons that the sound of water he heard earlier must have come from around here; the setup is within view of what looks to be a large lake, equipped with several paddle boats, canoes, and even an anchored dock a ways away from the shore.
A cluster of five picnic tables sits a short distance away from the unlit fire pit, some of them adorned with small notes of graffiti that showcase their apparent age and use. The stone fire pit a few yards away is large, larger than any Shuuichi has ever seen, and surrounded by four logs crafted into makeshift benches. His eyes linger on the large bell hung up in the space between the picnic tables and the fire, but discerning no visible use for it, he moves past it to focus on the girl holding a blowtorch to the pile of wood in the pit.
“This is where we eat when it’s nice out. Us long-haulers eat in the mess hall most of the time, but the summer-only people like eating outside, so this picnic area gets used pretty much every day during the summer.” Kaede turns away from where she was previously gesticulating towards the tables, and falls silent as she catches sight of the girl who looks as though she's attempting to DIY herself a forest fire.
“Miu.” The girl jumps in surprise as Hajime yells her name, quickly dumping something in the roaring fire she’d started. Hajime runs over towards her, Kaede and Shuuichi following close behind.
Her startled expression quickly turns into one that Shuuichi can only describe as a leer as she looks at him. Scattered heavily across the bridge of her nose are dark freckles, and she, like Kaede, shows the hints of a sunburn. She pops one hip out — the action making the pink hoodie tied around her waist swish lightly — as she props her hand up on it and stares down at him.
“Here to check out the goods, huh, New Kid?” She gestures vaguely to herself, and Shuuichi’s mouth goes dry. Her grin widens at his lack of response, and with a scoff she tosses some of her wild hair over her shoulder. “Can’t say’s I blame ya! If I were you, I’d be starin’ like a lovesick bitch across camp at me, too.”
While Shuuichi struggles to come up with any sort of appropriate response to that, Hajime cuts in, rubbing his forehead tiredly. “Why.”
“‘Cause I’m the hottest, baddest bitch in this place, that’s w—”
“No, no — why do you have a blowtorch, and why did you just set all of the wood on fire?!” She ignores him in favor of staring down Shuuichi some more. He tries to make polite eye contact with her, but her expression morphs into one of disgust, and she pulls something from the pocket of her shorts and throws it at his head.
It's a screwdriver. He barely ducks out of the way in time before it takes his eye out.
“Fuckin’ perv, quit starin’ at me like that!”
“I’m not!” Shuuichi protests, looking to Kaede for help. She’s frowning over at Miu already.
“I guess I can’t expect you to be normal for even one conversation, huh?” Miu begins to sputter at that, grin dropping into a scowl.
“S’a little early for you to be foamin’ at the mouth like a bitch in heat over New Kid, ain't it?”
Kaede's cheeks burn dark red, hands clenched in tight fists at her sides. “Will you just introduce yourself to him so we can go talk to someone I don’t want to punch?”
Miu’s demeanor physically deflates into something much more submissive and uncomfortable, eyes watering. She turns to Hajime, who was busying himself with taking apart the blowtorch. “H-Hajime, Kaeidiot is embarrassing me in front of the new kid!”
Hajime seems to be pointedly ignoring the exchange happening between the three of them. Getting nowhere she sighs, pulls back her original confidence, and shoots Shuuichi a wink.
“Name’s Miu fuckin’ Iruma, the gorgeous golden girl of Camp Huge Penis.” She laughs heartily at herself, filling the space enough that Shuuichi only feels sort of awkward for not finding it that funny. “Hey, you’re not so much of a sad, cuck-lookin’ loser up close, y’know?”
He doubts ‘thank you’ is the appropriate response to that, so he doesn’t say it; instead, he offers his hand to her. “I’m Shuuichi Saihara.”
“Don’t care!” Miu’s eyes find Kaede’s and she rolls her eyes, groaning loudly. “You’re a real pain in the dick today, y’know that? Fine. Nice to fuckin’ meet you. Happy?”
“Definitely.” Kaede’s smile is forced, to put it lightly, but it softens several degrees when she turns to look at Shuuichi. “I’m sorry she’s such a perpetual embarrassment. I have this theory that she got all the crazy genes, and I got all the normal ones.”
“At least I got all the hots and the brains!” Miu protests loudly, sticking her tongue out at Kaede. Shuuichi stares between the two of them.
Both blonde (though their respective tones varied some), both on the taller and fatter side, both heavily freckled with very similar complexions, both with incredibly blunt, forward personalities…
Are they...?
While Shuuichi is lost in thought, Hajime makes his way over, the blowtorch in pieces next to the fire. Shuuichi doesn’t look away from the two as their squabbling increases in volume. “Are they related?”
“Twins,” Hajime replies, loud enough for them both to hear, and they pause their fighting to look over. Kaede straightens out and smiles at Shuuichi, playing with a stray lock of her hair.
“Same mom, different dads.” Kaede’s smile twitches at the confused look Shuuichi adopts. “I know, right?”
“It’s a shame a bombshell like me had to share a womb with her,” Miu pouts, slumping against one of the logs. “‘Least mom likes me more.”
“Not the accomplishment you think it is,” Kaede sing-songs, sparing her sister a look, which is returned with a heartfelt middle finger in her direction.
“It’s okay, I understand why you’re jealous of me and mom’s relationship. It must suck being hated by both your parents, huh?”
“Miu, enough,” Hajime cuts in sharply, startling Miu off the bench and sending her sprawling onto the ground. “Go find something better to do than antagonizing the others — Kiibo included. Nagito’s tired of having to put their head back on.”
“F-Fine! It smells like whiny virgin over here anyways.” She pulls her hair over herself like a curtain as she stands. “See you later, cock goblins.”
She scrambles away without another word, leaving Shuuichi to stew in the aftermath of that whole encounter. Kaede tugs at his arm after a moment, and he follows, deciding it’s probably best to not spend too much time thinking about Kaede’s sister.
He’s led next into what must be the mess hall, if the large tables, serving station, and adjacent kitchen are anything to go by. It’s the biggest building he’s been in so far since he arrived at camp, and he spends a few moments marveling at the ceiling, which serves as one large skylight. The room glows a honey yellow, no artificial light necessary; and for such a simple building, he finds himself charmed for the first time since waking up.
“Kirumi!” Kaede calls at the same time Hajime mutters, “Where is Kokichi?”
Shuuichi looks into the kitchen area through the half wall stretching all the way across, and finds a pair of green eyes watching him. After a moment she waves, and Shuuichi finds himself reciprocating. Kaede leads him towards a door on the far end of the room, and once he’s entered the kitchen he’s greeted with the girl offering him a hand and a kind smile. He shakes it as she introduces herself.
“You must be Shuuichi. I’m Kirumi; it’s nice to meet you.” As she pulls her hand away she pushes up the sleeves of her green sweater, and turns to Hajime. “I hate to interrupt our introduction, but Hajime, my mother just called.”
“Anything new?” he asks, glancing around the kitchen for a moment before refocusing on her. Kirumi shakes her head.
“Just that she’s still working, and that when she hears word that someone’s found something, she’ll call me. You’ll be the first to know.”
“Thank you.” Hajime shies away from the concerned look Shuuichi gives him. “Kirumi’s mother is helping search for Rantarou, and I’ve asked her to let me know when she finds something out.”
“I’m very sorry about your friend,” Kirumi says solemnly, shaking her head. “I’m truly hoping for a happy ending to this.”
“Me, too.” Kaede pushes an elbow into his ribs gently. “Oh, ah, Kaede is having people talk about their godly parents, get me more acquainted with this stuff, so…”
“Of course!” Kirumi turns away, but motions for Shuuichi to follow as she moves across the kitchen, pulling open a few cupboards before huffing, seemingly annoyed. “Oh gods, Kokichi, why…”
“He bailed on dinner duty again?” Hajime asks, sounding exasperated. Kirumi hums.
“I sent him away, actually. He was being especially obnoxious, and now it seems he’s stolen the flour.” She turns to Shuuichi. “Oh, my apologies. My mother is Chihiro, the Goddess of Knowledge.”
“Chihiro’s so cool,” Kaede says reverently, a wistful smile on her face. “Kirumi, can you ask your mom to adopt me?”
“The next time she’s allowed to visit, feel free to ask,” she replies, a laugh in her voice.
“‘Allowed to visit’?” Shuuichi parrots, earning matching uncomfortable looks from the other three people in the room. Once again the feeling of being totally out of the loop permeates the air around him, and he tries to laugh off some of his embarrassment at being so clueless when it came to this stuff.
“Will you be all set to work on dinner tonight alone?” Hajime asks, ignoring Shuuichi. Kirumi nods.
“Yes, but to avoid this issue in the future…” she smiles a little sheepishly, “perhaps he should no longer be assigned cooking duty.”
“I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Hajime moves towards the door. “We’ll be off now, we still have a few more people to meet. Let me know as soon as you hear anything.”
Shuuichi exchanges pleasantries with Kirumi once more before leaving, and once they’ve left the dining hall and begun moving towards their next tour stop — from the direction they’re headed, Shuuichi guesses it’s the stage — he looks to Hajime for an explanation of his earlier question.
It’s Kaede that gives it to him. “Camp has been a lot of things over the years. When the gods first built it, it was intended as a place to train demigods to survive in a world among monsters and gods, but it’s changed over time. For a long time it was what you’d think — summer camp. Demis would come, get away from the human world for a little while, learn more about our parents and history and things like that.
“But, uhm, a few years ago — something happened. One of the Big Five gods got really out of control, and forbid birth parents from seeing their children. And it left a lot of demis without a place to go, so the camp opened up for full-year residency. Probably about two-thirds of us are long-haulers, and everyone else just doesn’t live with their birth parent.”
Shuuichi frowns. “But that doesn’t make sense. If the ‘Big Five’ are the most powerful out of all of the gods…” He looks to Hajime for verification; he nods. “Couldn’t the…other four, ah, team up and stop them?”
“Doesn’t work like that,” Hajime says, tone bitter. He waits for an elaboration, but none comes.
“But what about Rantarou? I guess it wouldn’t apply in my case, but he…” He freezes all of a sudden. “Unless that’s why he was…?”
“It’s a possibility. Jun — she has a habit of going after demigods specifically.” Hajime sighs, settles down onto one of the benches surrounding the small amphitheater. “Byakuya and Makoto have never been very receptive to her leadership, especially when it came to their kids. No matter how many times Nagito and I offered, they wouldn’t give the two of you up.” Hajime puts his head in his hands, exhaling very deeply.
Shuuichi doesn’t know how to respond to that. Kaede nudges him, violet eyes kind.
“This is our stage. One of our camp activities is doing a talent show every few weeks, so it gets used a lot. It’s one of my favorite places here.”
“It’s nice,” Shuuichi replies softly, his heart not exactly fully in the conversation. He hears her sigh, and then a moment later his hand is being tugged at.
“Hajime?” At Kaede's prompting he looks up, red eye pulsing; it looks painful. “You go take a break. I’ll finish up Shuuichi’s tour and bring him to his cabin, okay?”
He nods, looking grateful, but doesn’t move from his spot on the bleachers as Shuuichi and Kaede walk towards a stretch of woods. Once they cross the tree line Kaede drops his hand and begins swinging hers at her side, occasionally glancing over at Shuuichi, though she doesn’t say anything until they come across a stream, where three girls are sat around chatting. He recognizes two of them as the girl with the dislocated arm and the girl who flipped Komaeda onto the floor, but the white-haired, deep-complexioned girl he hasn’t seen before.
“Kaede!” the white-haired girl waves as the two of them approach, a bright smile on her face. “Himiko was just telling Angie that the new kid was awake!”
The three girls stand up and appraise Shuuichi. Swallowing nervously at the tallest girl’s disapproving gaze, he waves, trying to be polite.
“I’m Shuuichi Saihara. It’s nice to meet all of you.”
“You pushed Kokichi onto the floor,” the red-haired girl (what was her name?) observes, a chuckle in her voice. “That was pretty funny, New Kid.”
“I-It was an accident!”
“Whatever he did, I’m sure that degenerate deserved it,” the tallest girl says darkly, hands fretting over the shortest. “But Himiko, are you sure your arm is alright? Tenko trusts Angie, of course, but…”
“I told you, I’m,” she punctuates her sentence with a small sound, “okay. Angie and Mr. Nagito did a good job. Oh…I’m Himiko, by the way.”
“Angie Yonaga!” Angie takes Shuuichi’s hands, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she greets him. “Angie is so happy to meet you! It’s been so long since Angie met someone new, you know!”
“Oh, it’s nice to meet you, too,” Shuuichi replies, hoping his hands aren’t too sweaty in hers. “So, ah, who is your—”
“B-But Angie, waaait!” the only girl yet to introduce herself wails, sounding genuinely distressed. “He’s still a nasty boy, don’t trust him so much!”
“Angie likes making new friends, even if they are nasty boys. Oh, Tenko, you must introduce yourself!”
Tenko does not seem very keen on that idea. She frowns in Shuuichi’s direction, and as a peace offering, he offers a hand for her to shake. She stares at it for a long moment, unblinking, before grabbing it lightning-quick and promptly flipping him directly onto his ass.
Recalling her reaction to Komaeda earlier, Shuuichi really should have seen that coming.
“Oh my god, Tenko!” Kaede cries, immediately scrambling to help Shuuichi up.
Huh, he doesn’t remember her having three heads.
“Even though Nagito healed him, he still had a concussion! Shuuichi, are you alright?”
“Ahh! Tenko is sorry!” Tenko paces in place for a moment, face (he thinks, anyways) bright red. “Tenko just wanted him to know that no menace boys can touch her! Not hurt him!”
“I’m okay,” Shuuichi says emphatically, taking in a few deep breaths. He rubs at the back of his head; he’s not bleeding, at least. That seems to appease Tenko, whose guilt appears to ebb completely.
“You should not be taken down so easily! Tenko could flip you into next week if she is not careful!” She seems to actually be scolding him, which is about four shades of crazy too far. He stands on slightly wobbly legs without actually responding, keeping a fair amount of distance between the two of them.
“Okay, okay.” Kaede pulls at the straps of her overalls. “Anyway. I’m bringing Shuuichi around and introducing him to everyone, and letting everyone talk about their godly parents, because Shuuichi’s new to this stuff!”
“Oh! Oh! Angie first!” Angie raises her hand as high as it will go, jumping up and down until she’s sure no one will interrupt her. “Angie has two amazing godly mothers who she loves so very much! Sakura is the Goddess of Strength, and Angie’s birth mother is the Goddess of the Ocean! Angie is so blessed to have such a strong, happy family!”
Her constant positivity is a little blinding, but also infectious, so Shuuichi finds himself smiling. “That’s really cool.”
“Indeed! Oh! On Angie’s island, she is the leader of spiritual worship! During the summer Angie’s island celebrates with festivals, but the rest of the time Angie is in charge of making sacrifices to her mothers!”
“Uhm.” Shuuichi blinks. “Sacrifices?”
“Yes! Would Shuuichi like to offer up his first? One pint of blood should suffice!”
He laughs. Because if he doesn’t laugh he’s going to cry, or go completely bonkers, or say something that will make Tenko flip him again (as the warning look on her face tells him very, very clearly).
“I was in an accident a few days ago, so I shouldn’t while I’m still recovering,” Shuuichi says gently, praying the excuse will work. Angie frowns, shrugging a moment later.
“What a shame. Another time, then! Himiko, what about you?”
“No sacrifices,” she says, sounding the most passionate that she has since Shuuichi’s met her. “Oh, my mom is the Goddess of Sleep. But I’m also a mage.”
“Oh…?”
“It’s true!” Tenko interjects, looking rather adoringly in Himiko’s direction. “Himiko’s magic is amazing! Tenko helps her with spells during talent shows all the time!”
Shuuichi is in no place to dispute the existence of magic when he’s at a summer camp for half-gods. He just smiles in acknowledgement, and the subtle thumbs up Kaede sends his way is proof enough that he’s made the right choice.
“Tenko, do you want to talk about your godly parent?”
She frowns. “No thank you.”
Fair enough.
“That’s fine! We still have a few more people to meet, so we’re gonna head out. See you guys later!”
After sharing a few additional goodbyes the two of them head back the way they came, weaving between the trees. As they settle into a comfortable pace, Shuuichi asks, “How many people are here, anyway?”
“The last of our summer-only people just moved in a few days ago, so all of the usual demis are here, and with you there’s fourteen. Plus Nagito and Hajime, there’s sixteen people. We still have a few people left to meet. Speaking of, I should have asked them if they’d seen Gonta around...”
They emerge from the trees and back into the open air, and Kaede leads the two of them back the way they’d originally come from.
“What do you think of everything so far?” she asks, pulling the elastic from her hair and shaking it out gently. “I know you’ve had a lot of information pushed at you today, so how are you feeling about, well, everything?”
“It’s weird,” Shuuichi admits, lifting his hat off his head to fan himself with it for a moment. “Just learning about all of this stuff, and meeting everyone, it’s already a lot, but with everything with Rantarou happening…”
“I’m sure it’s tough.” Their arms bounce against each other as they walk. “But we don’t know anything for sure yet, so try to keep your head high, okay? And whatever happens, you’ve got people here who have your back.”
“Thanks.” He smiles at her. “Thank you, really. You have no reason to do all of this for me, so I appreciate your kindness, I guess.”
“Of course! I know we just met, but I already consider us friends, you know? And I want to help my friends whenever I can.”
The sentiment is surprisingly touching, and to his embarrassment he feels himself tearing up. He wipes quickly at his eyes and replaces his hat on his head, eyes downcast.
“Friends. I like that idea.”
“Oh, here’s our next stop.” Kaede plants her feet and waits for Shuuichi to do the same, then begins pointing to various landmarks around the area.
“This is the training grounds! This is the only place where we can spar without giving Nagito an aneurysm, so naturally, we use it pretty often to train or just blow off steam!”
They’re standing in a large pocket of open space surrounded on all but one side by tall, thick trees. In the middle of the ground is a large white diamond, marked in the middle with a smaller red ‘X,’ with various equipment lining the shelves on its outskirts. In the midst of it stand two people, one of which Shuuichi recognizes as Kaito, the one who was stuck in the net.
“Harumaki and Kaito are sparring right now, so we’ll wait until they’re finished to introduce ourselves.” She points upwards towards a patch of trees, and when Shuuichi squints he can make out some sort of structure near the top of an especially large one.
“That’s the zip-lining course. It’s not mandatory, so don’t worry if heights aren’t your thing. And over there,” her finger moves back to the ground and past the sparring area, where several large targets sit in a row. He notices a few bows hung neatly on a nearby rack. “We also have a place to practice archery, but usually the only people that use it are Harumaki and Kaito when they’re competing.”
Kaede falls into silence, eyes intently focused on the two as they spar. Shuuichi turns to watch as well, curious.
He isn’t able to watch for long. The girl opposite Kaito glances up very briefly, eyes passing over Shuuichi and Kaede, and with a swiftness that surprises him she targets several points on Kaito’s body with quick, clean hits — both arms, his chest, and his stomach — and in moments has him pinned quite firmly to the ground. She says something quietly in his ear and then stands, dusting herself off.
“Good match,” Kaito says weakly from the ground, a mass of purple clothes and gelled hair. Kaede is cheering at Shuuichi's side.
“Harumaki! Come here and meet Shuuichi! You too, Kaito!”
The girl offers a hand to help Kaito to his feet which he waves off with a laugh. She scoffs and leaves Kaito behind, making her way over to the two of them with a neutral expression. When she’s stopped in front of them she looks at Kaede expectantly.
“You did really good out there,” Kaede praises, pumping her fist. “You’ve been at it for hours, haven’t you? You don’t look tired at all!”
“He’s not what I’d call a challenge,” the girl replies in a low voice, hands combing through one of the two dark pigtails adorning her head. When she catches Shuuichi looking she stops and frowns at him. “You’re the new kid.”
“Oh, yes. Shuuichi Saihara, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Maki Harukawa,” she says simply.
“Oi, Maki Roll, don’t be so cold!” Kaito’s made his way over, and there’s a smile on his face as he looks down at Shuuichi. “Name’s Kaito! We met earlier in the infirmary.”
“Nice to see you again. Shuuichi Saihara.”
Maki turns to walk away, but both Kaede and Kaito’s protests stop her.
“Harumaki, wait!”
“Where’re you goin’, Maki Roll? You hardly said a word to Shuuichi!”
Her shoulders move steeply in time with the deep breath she takes as she turns around and fixes Shuuichi with an unimpressed look, as if he’s the one annoying her. “Don’t let these two give you any ideas with the stupid nicknames. You’ll call me Maki, or you’ll be calling an ambulance.”
Shuuichi swallows, and resists the urge to take a large step back. To his surprise (and, when he thinks about it, horror), Kaede and Kaito simply laugh at the threat, apparently not taking it seriously at all.
Her red eyes leave no room for argument. She’s definitely serious.
“Anyway, I’m having everyone talk about their godly parents with Shuuichi, since this is his first time hearing about this sort of thing! I know you’re not going to want to talk, Harumaki,” Maki nods, something like a smile on her face, “but what about you, Kaito?”
“Oh, well, I’m just like you, Shuuichi! I’m pretty new to this god stuff, too. Just moved in full time a few months ago, actually.” He rubs the back of his neck, pulling at the galaxy print hoodie a bit. “And I don’t actually know who my godly parent is. I lived with my grandparents before I lived here.”
“Oh, me too,” Shuuichi says, chest filling with the tiniest bit of relief at having someone he could relate to. “I don’t know who my dad is, so I guess we do have quite a bit in common.”
“There’s a few of us who’re unclaimed, actually, so don’t worry!” Kaito pumps his fists. “We’re friends now, so I’ll watch out for ya, ya got that?”
Shuuichi nods, a smile on his face. Kaede clears her throat. “We’re still looking for a few people so Shuuichi can meet everyone. I know where Kiibo is, and he’s already met Kokichi well enough, so do either of you happen to know where Gonta is?”
“Kiibo came an’ grabbed him a little while ago, said they needed help with somethin’.” Kaito looks back to Maki, a challenging grin on his face. “You ready to go again, Maki Roll?”
“Obviously.” She spares a look to Kaede. “See you later.”
“Good luck!” After waving goodbye Kaede takes Shuuichi by the arm and begins leading him towards another stretch of woods. “That pretty much finishes up our tour! I left out a few places, but I’ll show you those another time. We’ll meet up with Kiibo and Gonta after I show you the boy’s common room, and by then it should be time for dinner.”
It turns out the path Kaede takes them through the woods is a shortcut towards the boy’s cabins, because only a few minutes later they break into another clearing filled up with cabins of various shapes, sizes, and colors.
As they pass between two cabins, Kaede points to them. “Something that we all get involved with when we get someone new is we decorate each cabin! Like Kaito’s,” she stops briefly in front of the oddly shaped one, “he’s really into space and astronauts, so we tried to shape his sort of like a rocket! And Kokichi’s,” she gestures to the black and white cabin to the left of Kaito’s, “we painted like that, because he specifically told us he wanted it to be an eyesore.”
As they walk, she points out the various other cabins, briefly stopping to point out Shuuichi’s comparatively plain-looking cabin. “Yours is a little underwhelming right now, but once you get settled Nagito will take you shopping for decorations. It’s one of my favorite parts of getting new campers.”
They end up in front of a rather large wooden building, and once Kaede leads them inside he’s sort of surprised to find that all of the available floor space is taken up by…washing machines.
“You have to wash your clothes at least once a week, or else Nagito hunts you down. Upstairs is the boy’s common room, where — oh, hey, Gonta!”
The stairs leading upstairs creak in protest as a large figure makes their way down two at a time. Their initial appearance is rather intimidating; long, dark, wild hair that flows all the way down their back, piercing red eyes, a frame packed with more muscle than Shuuichi has ever seen in a single person, matched well with a height that must be almost a foot taller than Shuuichi.
Once they’ve reached the ground floor they smile, arms filled to the max with various sheets, blankets, and pillows, and their intimidating aura dies some.
“Kaede, hello! Gonta was just helping Kiibo with setting up!” Kiibo begins down the stairs a moment later, and Shuuichi is more than relieved to find their head still intact and firmly on their head.
“Here, Gonts, let me take some of those!” Kaede swipes the top few layers of fabric from Gonta’s large pile, and they smile appreciatively. Kiibo approaches Shuuichi with a hand outstretched and a smile on their face.
“Hello again! We met earlier in the infirmary, but I am now going to properly introduce myself! My name is Kiibo, and yes I am a robot, but please do not discriminate against me!”
“Of, ah, of course,” Shuuichi replies, taking the offered hand and shaking it politely. Kiibo retracts their hand a moment later and places both defiantly on their hips.
“I know I may not appear to be a demigod like yourself, but please do not allow your preconceived notions about robots cloud your judgement! I am just as much a demigod as you are, but I am also a fine specimen in robotics, as well!”
“That’s…remarkable?”
Kiibo nods. “Indeed.” They smile brightly at Shuuichi, and the intensity of it makes him feel more than a little awkward. He’s thankful when Kaede comes to the rescue.
“Let’s go set up Shuuichi’s room and walk as we talk.” Shuuichi holds the door for all of them as they exit the building, and returns to his spot next to Kaede as they begin the short walk towards his cabin.
“Gonta sorry he can’t shake Shuuichi’s hand right now, but Gonta is very excited to meet him!”
Whatever personality he was expecting from Gonta, it certainly wasn’t overly enthusiastic and polite.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” he says to both of them, and means it, taking comfort in both of their genuineness.
Kaede pushes open the door to Shuuichi’s cabin with her hip and promptly dumps the fabric in her arms onto the bed. Gonta places his pile neatly on the bedside table, and Kiibo claps their hands, calling attention to themselves.
“As I said before, I did my very best to make your cabin comfortable, but my resources were limited during the decorating phase. I hope it is acceptable until you can begin with your own decorations.”
“It’s more than enough, thank you.” Shuuichi feels a sort of embarrassment at watching Kaede and Gonta put the sheets on his bed. “I don’t know what to say. You’ve all been very kind to me.”
“Why, of course!” Kiibo announces proudly. “The three of us, as well as Kirumi, hold a special distinction among the rest of our friends, so Hajime and Nagito often put us in charge of welcoming new people! It is only natural that we be kind.”
“Oh, Shuuichi, Gonta bring your bag back to your cabin,” Gonta says, pointing towards the duffle bag Shuuichi had gotten his clothes from while still in the infirmary. He notices Rantarou’s own bag and the bat propped up in a corner of the room, and it fills Shuuichi with a relief he can’t really put a name to.
“Thank you,” Shuuichi says, picking up his bag and setting it on his bed. He doesn’t pull it out, but he does reach his hand into the bag and close it protectively around the bear. It’s soft on his fingers, and unendingly comforting.
“Dinner,” Kiibo begins, pausing for a brief moment, “should be ready any time now, so we will wait for you to get ready and then escort you to — oh, hello, Hajime.”
Hajime steps into the cabin, a hand behind his back. Any joviality in the room quickly drains as each of them digests the look marring his face, and Shuuichi finds himself gripping the bear tighter.
“I need to talk to Shuuichi.” Worst, those are the worst words someone can say. The ambiguity of the statement makes the sick feeling he’d experienced earlier come back full force. “Why don’t the rest of you go get ready to eat.”
“I—I see.” Kiibo spares Shuuichi an unmistakably sympathetic look. “Good luck, Shuuichi. We’ll see you outside.” Without another word they leave, Gonta following close behind.
“Kaede,” Hajime prompts, and he looks so tired. She fidgets with the straps of her overalls.
“Do you want me here?” she asks, a gentle hand on Shuuichi’s arm. He shakes his head, eyes focused intently on his shoes. He feels her squeeze, and then pull away.
“Be brave. I’m rooting for you, ‘kay?” She idles for a moment by the door before slipping out, leaving Shuuichi alone with Hajime, who takes a seat next to him on the bed.
He pulls the hand from behind his back, revealing two pieces of paper that he recognizes to be envelopes. One is a midnight black, accented with gold and sealed with a wax stamp shaped far too much like a skull for Shuuichi’s stomach to handle.
The other, he realizes with an increasing amount of anxiety, is Byakuya’s stationery.
Notes:
+ i promise i wasn't lying when i said kokichi would be in this chapter. he is, technically, quite a bit! just not quite in the way i expected. for real, next time he'll be here. promise
+ i forgot to mention this last time, but the inspiration for this fic was actually a sprite edit video on youtube of nagito singing "another terrible day" from the pjo musical. i cant find it at the moment, but total props for this whole entire mess of an au go to that three minute video!
+ you may notice some differences in some characters, particular korekiyo and miu. i'll be honest, i'm not the biggest fan of their canon characters at all, so i've taken some liberties wrt their characters. so no sister and no using of the r-slur here, folks!
+ im super excited about getting into the thick of things with this au, so feel free to hit me up on my tumblr @gontagokuhara and talk to me about it!!
+ i believe that's about all for now! if you're so inclined, please take a moment or two to leave a comment; they're my favorite things!!
+ trigger warnings: mention of head injury, mentions of car crash, and i believe that's it!
+ may 14, 2023 update: tightened up the writing, no major changes
Chapter 3: shuuichi gets traumatized
Summary:
Shuuichi’s brain knows before Hajime even says anything. His brain knows, the ache behind his eyes knows, the tightness in his chest knows, the squeeze of his stomach knows, but nevertheless, in the deepest part of his heart, he allows himself to hope, allows himself to cling to the notion that Rantarou isn’t — that he can’t be dead.
As if the world cares what Shuuichi Saihara wants.
Notes:
+ hey, long time no see!
+ uh, yeah, BIG whoops for not updating for almost 2 months. does it help if i say that i saw the pjo musical in my absence? cause i TOTALLY did, and it was wonderful, and it really reinvigorated my love of this au!
+ so, yeah! here's like 12k of this au to (hopefully) make up for the long hiatus?
+ i'll talk a bit more in the end notes; for now, enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Shuuichi’s brain knows before Hajime even says anything. His brain knows, the ache behind his eyes knows, the tightness in his chest knows, the squeeze of his stomach knows, but nevertheless, in the deepest part of his heart, he allows himself to hope, allows himself to cling to the notion that Rantarou isn’t — that he can’t be dead.
As if the world cares what Shuuichi Saihara wants.
Hajime flips open the black envelope, the red of the wax skull leering up at Shuuichi. He doesn’t pull the letter out.
“This is from Celeste, the goddess who is in charge of keeping track of which souls enter the Underworld.” Hajime places the letter on the bed next to himself — away from Shuuichi — and sighs, clasping his hands in his lap. “She recorded the soul of Rantarou Togami as entering the Underworld about three days ago. I’m so sorry.”
He’s known, he could never really convince himself otherwise, but nevertheless that fact doesn’t lessen the swell of grief that fills Shuuichi. He almost thought he’d cried himself dry in these past few days, but the steady stream of tears that drip from his cheeks and stain the bear disprove that notion quite soundly.
He thinks of the other letter. “His dads k-know?”
There’s a brief pause as Hajime flips open the letter, skims over it quietly. “They do.”
“D-Do they know that I-I’m—”
“Not yet,” Hajime interrupts gently, “it’s best for now that you stay where you can be protected. While we figure everything out.”
Shuuichi hiccups into the silence that falls between the two of them, body rocking back and forth of its own accord. His whole body is filled with misplaced adrenaline; though he’s never felt more like a livewire, there’s nowhere to direct his overflow of anxious energy: his teeth begin to chatter from the force of it, his entire frame begins twitching uncomfortably, and he can’t stop it.
“Is it—” Speaking around the chattering of his teeth and the vice-like tightness in his throat is difficult, and he has to swallow around the sickly feeling the words he plans to say bring him several times before he continues. “Is it my fault Rantarou’s dead? It m-must be, right?”
“Of course not,” Hajime says immediately, turning to face him for the first time since delivering the news and laying a hand on his shoulder. Shuuichi flinches away from the contact so hard it seems to startle Hajime, and the pitying look he’s given in response somehow makes him feel worse.
“I think — no, Rantarou knew what was coming, at least in some capacity. That’s why he said what he did.”
The attempt at a justification sends a simultaneous flash of anger and of self-hatred through Shuuichi’s body, and though he doesn’t look up, he feels himself grimace. “How c-could he have known he was going to die? Why wouldn’t he tell anyone?”
“…Every demigod has a certain ability, something that makes them unique, gives them a leg up.” He feels Hajime looking at him, gauging his reaction. “Rantarou had — to a certain extent — precognitive abilities. I can’t say if he knew exactly what was going to happen, but I guarantee he suspected.”
Shuuichi shakes his head, squeezing the bear tighter. “No, I can’t believe that! If I allow myself to believe that, then that means Rantarou let himself die!”
For me, he doesn’t add, because he knows that if he were to say something as horrible as that out loud, it would make him sick.
“Shuuichi.” Hajime rubs at his eyes, posture slumped. “I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know who is responsible, or how the two of you got caught up in all of this, or why Rantarou made the choices he did before he died.” They both flinch at the word.
“But myself, and Nagito, and Byakuya, and Makoto, and all of the other gods — we’re going to figure it out. We’re not going to let whoever or whatever’s responsible get away with what happened. And I know that means nothing right now. Whatever justice we enact on the responsible parties won’t make this better. But you’re here, you’re where Rantarou wanted, and together we’re going to make sure that what happened means something.”
“‘Means something’?” Shuuichi parrots incredulously, rising to his feet and staring down at Hajime. His blood feels white hot in his head, the sensation only feeding into the anger very quickly overtaking him. “Rantarou died. He’s dead. He was murdered by a monster! He died when it could have just as easily been me!”
And maybe it should have been, a dark part of his mind adds, but he ignores it for now, too swept up in his grief to care.
“The monster at school went after m-me. He died and it was after me.” Like a stick bent too far his anger breaks, leaving only gaping, unending sadness and guilt as it ebbs. Shuuichi’s knees weaken and he sobs, fingers digging through his hair as he tries desperately to find stability somewhere. “How is — wh-where is there any meaning in th-that?”
Like when he woke up, he can’t breathe. But there’s no one sitting on his chest now, no physical excuse to pin the blame on; his throat constricts dangerously, the hiccupping from his sobbing and the coughs as he struggles to breathe becoming indistinguishable. The emotional tears and the primal, panicked tears blur together, leaving him unable to see which bag has his inhaler in it.
Nevertheless it’s pressed into his hands a few moments later, Hajime’s calm voice in his ear telling him to relax as he fumbles with the plunger. He gets it, eventually, and the time spent coming down from his asthma attack he spends sucking in hurried, uncomfortable breaths and wiping at his raw, damp cheeks.
Hajime sits him on the bed when his breathing has returned to normal, and looks as though he has more to say. Shuuichi, embarrassed about — but not willing to take back — what he said before, wishes he’d pass out to save himself from what has without a doubt become the worst day of his life.
It doesn’t take passing out. As Hajime opens his mouth the door to the cabin swings ajar, Kaede and Kaito lingering awkwardly in the doorway. When Shuuichi makes eye contact with them their expressions fall, and Kaito takes a hesitant step into the room, Kaede close behind.
“Now’s not really a good time,” Hajime tells them, voice curt. Undeterred, Kaito makes his way over to the bed and plops down unceremoniously next to Shuuichi, their sides flush. Kaede steps forward, thumbs looped in the straps of her overalls, and regards Hajime with a sad look.
“Anything else you need to say can wait until he’s eaten, showered and slept, right?” She spares a glance out the window, the waning sunlight casting shadows across the trees. “We’ll look after Shuuichi, so leave him to us, ‘kay?”
Hajime still looks as though he wants to object, but he just nods, pulling at his tie. “Yeah, okay. Okay. I’m trusting you guys to take care of him, alright? Shuuichi, we’ll…talk later. Goodnight.”
Shuuichi draws further in on himself as the slam of the cabin door reverberates behind Hajime. He half expects Kaede to sit in the vacant spot Hajime left, but she doesn’t, and instead drops into a cross-legged sit onto the floor, eyes searching for contact with his.
“How ya holdin’ up?” Kaito asks from beside him, their elbows bumping. Shuuichi laughs drily, the sensation irritating on his raw throat.
“My best friend and brother, who was apparently half god, is dead. My father who abandoned me and my mom is apparently a god, and I’m concussed, and I’m scared, and all I want to do is go home and forget about all of this.” Shuuichi wipes at his sore eyes. “Not exactly a winning day.”
“No, s’pose not,” Kaito replies, bracing his hands behind him on the bed and leaning back onto his arms. Shuuichi feels his eyes on his face. “But hey, what point is there in just wallowing in how shitty you feel?”
Shuuichi looks over sharply, hackles raised. “Excuse me?”
“Kaito—”
“No, Kaede, he should hear this,” Kaito interrupts, making unabashed eye contact with Shuuichi as he speaks. “I’m not tryin’ to tell you that you shouldn't be upset, ‘cause that’d be stupid. Somethin’ supremely shitty just happened, and you’re gonna feel like crap.”
“But!” Kaito clasps a hand around his shoulder; Shuuichi stares at it warily. “You gotta keep your head up! You and me are sorta alike, y’know, Shuuichi. About seven months ago, I had to come to camp too. Similar reasons.”
“…Oh?”
Kaito removes his hand, flashes Shuuichi a reflective smile. “Lost my grandparents to a monster, didn’t have a godly parent who’d take me in, y’know? Real shitty circumstances. I could’ve been a sad sack about it — everyone prolly expected me to be, all things considered.”
“I’m sorry.”
Kaito shrugs. “But I got real tired of bein’ depressed. Bein’ pitied. And I knew that they wouldn’t want me bein’ miserable either, y’know? So I told myself I gotta chin up, I gotta start smiling and getting back to bein’ me, ‘cause what’s the point in living if you’re stuck dwelling on the past?”
Shuuichi wrings his hands, looking to his lap. He hears Kaito chuckle.
“Listen, Shuuichi,” he begins, standing up and popping some of the bones in his back, “you know your life better than I do. You know your friend better than anyone else. So ask yourself — how would he want you to continue on? Would he want you to be miserable over him forever? Or would he want you to keep on living, keep movin’ forward, and live your life to the fullest so what happened didn’t happen in vain?”
He’s right, of course. Kaito doesn’t know Rantarou in the slightest, but of course Rantarou wouldn’t want him to hide away and be miserable forever. If he were here, he’d haul Shuuichi to his feet, lightly scold him, and wouldn’t leave him be until Shuuichi was feeling better.
The ache in his chest doesn’t lessen, not even a little bit, but the smile that cracks his face feels genuine. He squeezes the bear once and sets it down before getting to his feet.
“No one’s saying you can’t grieve,” Kaede interjects gently, pushing herself to her feet as well. “You’re allowed to be upset. Life sucks sometimes, so do parents, but as long as you try your best and rely on your friends, you can do anything. And that includes being able to feel better.”
“…Thank you,” he tells the two of them emphatically, trying not to sniff as he does. Kaito shoots him a grin and a thumbs up.
“‘Course. Now, hey, it’s dinnertime, so let’s grab somethin’ to eat, alright? You must be starving, sidekick!”
Of all of the things that could, it's Kaito's tacked-on nickname that gives Shuuichi pause. "Sidekick?"
Kaito nods to himself, expression resolute. "Yeah! We're friends now, obviously — but since we're so similar, I feel like we gotta kick it up a notch. Yeah, you're gonna be my sidekick from now on! I'll get ya feelin' better in no time. Now, let's eat!"
Shuuichi feels as unhungry as he ever has, but he doesn’t object as his new friends lead him from his cabin towards the picnic area. The air outside is warm, even as the sun dips lower beneath the horizon, and just past the picnic table he can see the fire from earlier is much larger.
“It looks like Kirumi made chicken for dinner,” Kaede says, gently tapping Shuuichi on the arm to grab his attention. She points over towards a mostly empty table, only occupied by Kiibo and Gonta, who wave when Shuuichi looks over at them. “If you want to go grab a seat, I’ll bring you some food?”
“Alright, thank you.” Kaede smiles before going off to meet Kaito by the table where Kirumi is set up. He watches her for a moment, then turns to the rest of the picnic area, silently taking in everything.
Korekiyo is sitting on one of the logs closer to the fire, book in hand and eyes trained on it carefully. Angie, Himiko, and Tenko occupy one of the tables, talking animatedly about something Shuuichi can’t hear.
Miu, it seems, is back to harassing Kiibo; they’re having to bat her hands away as she attempts to mess with…something on the back of their neck. Shuuichi has to mentally prepare to put himself in the midst of that situation, his memory of his first meeting with Miu flashing in the forefront of his mind.
Before he can dwell much on what inappropriate comment Miu may make at his expense, there’s a sharp jab in his side. He yelps, winces at the sound, and looks down to the source to find Kokichi standing right next to him, two large plates full of food in his hands and a smile on his face.
He is, thankfully, no longer wearing the straitjacket.
“New Kid!” One of the plates is waved in his face. “I brought you some dinner!”
“Oh, thank you,” Shuuichi says softly, taking the offered plate and trying his best to smile down at Kokichi.
Strangely, his smile falls, until it reappears in full force a few moments later, toothy and wide.
“Well, of course! You figure, we’re both sad parentless loser archetypes, I may as well start leveling up my affection early so we can be besties!”
Alright.
There’s a lot of ways Shuuichi could respond to that, which could lend itself to many different conversations he’s not sure if he wants to navigate. He settles on a nervous sort-of laugh.
“So, where are we sitting?”
“Over here.” Shuuichi nods his head in the general direction of the table Kiibo, Gonta, and Miu are occupying.
“‘Kay! Lead the way, New Kid.”
Shuuichi wants to ask why he’s still being called ‘New Kid’ when he realizes that Kokichi probably doesn’t know his name, and feels himself flush at his lack of manners. “Ah, I guess you’re the only one I haven’t really introduced myself to, right? Sorry. I’m Shuuichi.”
“Kokichi Ouma!” He slams his plate down onto the picnic table forcefully as he says it, startling Kiibo enough that they jump a good foot in the air. The unimpressed look they send his way either goes unnoticed, or ignored altogether. Shuuichi settles in next to him, smiling at those at the table as he does.
“I see you’ve officially met Kokichi,” Kiibo says a little irritably, lightly shooing Miu’s hands away. She huffs, mumbles something unintelligible under her breath, and proceeds to shove Kiibo over as far as she can in order to squeeze herself in onto the bench next to them.
“Yeeep! Me and New Kid are total besties for the resties now, right?”
Gonta silently offers Shuuichi a fork from across the table; he thanks him and takes it, picking at his food in a way he hopes draws little attention.
“Ah, you can just call me Shuuichi.”
Kokichi has begun flicking spoonfuls of rice across the table. As he lands a particularly good shot on Miu’s face, he says, “Huh, what was that, Shuumai? I was too busy ignoring you to listen to what you said.”
Shuumai…?
“You fuckin’ cockshit, quit gettin’ food all over me!”
Someone settles down heavily on Shuuichi’s other side; he looks over to find Kaede smiling at him, looking a little sheepish as she sets down two plates of food. “Guess I didn’t need to get two after all, huh?”
“Sorry.” He pulls his hat a little lower over his face, an irrational feeling of guilt washing over him. Kaede just shrugs and pushes it towards the middle of the table.
“Why doesn’t Kaede give her extra food to Kiibaby?” As he speaks, Kokichi lands another spoonful of rice in Kiibo’s hair. “Oh, wait! Robots can’t eat, 'cause they’re not real people.”
“Stop being rude just because you want to show off! Being robophobic isn’t funny, nor will it make Shuuichi want to be your friend!”
“Oh, I don’t care about that. I think being robophobic is just hysterical. Absolute top tier comedy, you know?”
“L-Leave me alone!”
Shuuichi shrinks back from the growing argument a bit, leaning in more towards Kaede to whisper, “Are they always like this?”
“Unfortunately,” she replies, eyes focused somewhere behind Shuuichi’s head. “Oh, good idea, Kaito!”
After turning to see what she’s talking about, he finds Kaito working along with a reluctant-looking Maki to lift one of the empty picnic tables. They set it down so one end of it lines up with the end of the one he’s currently sitting at.
“C’mon, everyone come eat over here!”
It takes some more yelling, but eventually Kaito gets everyone sat at the two connected picnic tables, and he comes to sit on Kaede’s other side. Once all’s said and done everyone seems to dig into their food and conversation lulls for some time; Shuuichi is more than happy to sit in silence for a bit, even if his only stimulation is to push his food around his plate and occasionally pop bites in his mouth when he feels eyes on him.
“Oh, Kiibo, Gonta,” Kaede says after a time, pulling her napkin from her lap and dropping it onto her empty plate, “you two didn’t get a chance to talk to Shuuichi about your parents! Would you mind telling him a little bit about your situations?”
Gonta nods, eyes settling on Shuuichi. “Gonta do his best, but Gonta not know who godly parent is, so Gonta not have much to say.”
“Hey, no way!” Kaito interjects, mouth a bit too full for the words to come out clearly. Kiibo shrinks away a bit. “You may not know who it is, but the hell does it even matter for? Listen, godly parents don’t matter that much at all, so don’t undersell yourself jus’ cause you don’t know who it is!”
“It sounds like Kaito is trying to make himself feel better about the fact that his godly parent doesn’t want him, just like Gonta’s,” Kokichi says mildly, stabbing at a piece of chicken on his plate rather forcefully with his fork.
“You little—” Kaito sputters for a moment, face going hot. “I don’t care about that! And no one wanted you either, you know!”
“And how cruel it is for Kaito to rub it in my face.” Tears well up in Kokichi’s eyes, and Shuuichi finds himself sort of proud at realizing that they’re entirely fake even before Kokichi smiles them away and continues eating.
“Anyway,” Kaede cuts in, sounding a bit exasperated, “Kiibo, what about you?”
“W-Well, I—”
“Kiibs has some major mommy and daddy issues,” Miu interrupts, idly flicking a piece of rice out of their hair. “Shit’s been goin’ on for years.”
Kiibo rolls their eyes. “While your description of my situation is crude, it is not entirely incorrect. That is to say, ah, I am not sure who should be technically classified as my godly parent.”
“How does that happen?”
“Well, I am a robot, of course.” Kiibo gestures to themself, as if Shuuichi hadn’t already caught onto that fact. “And as one might expect, most robots are not sentient, and most robots certainly don’t have souls. I, however, am the exception!”
“I was constructed by Kazuichi, the God of Craftsmanship, and for a time I simply functioned as an AI in his care—”
“Like a robo-slave?” Kokichi asks, looking a bit starry eyed at the idea.
“A-Absolutely not!” Kiibo’s face goes red. “If you’re going to ruin the story, I’m just going to ignore you!”
Kokichi shrugs, having taken to stabbing at his plate with a pair of chopsticks that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Kiibo exhales forcefully (do they need to breathe, Shuuichi wonders?) and looks back to Shuuichi.
“As I was saying, Kazuichi technically ‘created’ me, which would likely indicate him as my godly parent, right?” Kiibo shakes their head before Shuuichi can respond. “However, the issue arises when the fact of Sonia giving me a soul comes to pass.”
Shuuichi falters. “…Give you a soul?”
“Yes!” Kiibo nods, a smile on their face as they gauge Shuuichi’s investment in the story. “Sonia is the Goddess of Magic, so of course it was no challenge for her. It was not long after she gave me my soul that I, ah,” Kiibo suddenly shrinks in on themself, looking a little sad, “was forced to come here by…her.”
“Which!” They cut in after a brief pause, their enthusiasm apparently back, “Of course puts forth the issue of my parentage: though Sonia gave me a soul and that action is what classified me as a demigod, it was Kazuichi who built my body and the vessel of that soul. It is a complicated issue, and one I have been struggling with since the problem came about.”
“It certainly sounds complicated,” Shuuichi agrees, to which Kiibo smiles brightly at him.
Everyone breaks off into smaller conversations at that point, food mostly finished and people seeming to just want to spend time with each other. Shuuichi looks over at Kaede, whose eyes are fixed on his plate, a small frown on her face. He does his best to ignore how full it seems comparatively to everyone’s empty ones, and instead tries to engage her in conversation.
“So, ah, what’s going to happen now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well.” Shuuichi fidgets with his hat a bit. “I guess if I’m meant to stay here for…some time, what do you guys do?”
“Oh!” Her eyes focus on his face, smile returning. Shuuichi smiles back. “There’s not like…a lot of structured activities? We’ll do a couple of group things a week, like our talent show, or capture the flag, and a whole bunch of other competitive stuff like that, but otherwise we’re free to do what we want?
“We have the training grounds, the lake, the common rooms, and really anywhere else within the barrier to hang out and find stuff to do, so there’s never a dull moment as long as you’re looking for fun. Speaking of!”
Kaede stands as the rest of the group begins to rise from the tables. He parrots the action when prompted, taking his plate and dumping it along with hers into a nearby trashcan.
“Tomorrow we’re all playing dodgeball. Breakfast starts at nine, and we’re starting right after, so—”
“You better not be late, Shuuichi!” Kaito falls into step on Shuuichi’s other side, turning for a moment to wave at someone behind him before continuing on towards — presumably — Shuuichi’s cabin. “Me an’ Maki are gonna take tomorrow’s match for the red team, definitely, and I don’t want any delays!”
“I’ll…do my best,” Shuuichi says, which appeases Kaito enough to earn a grin.
“And after that we’ll hang out with you more, okay?” Kaede inches a bit closer, takes Shuuichi’s hand and squeezes, the sudden touch causing him to fumble momentarily. “I know that being constantly surrounded by people is probably the last thing you want right now, but I think when things are really tough, you shouldn’t be alone and wrapped up in the bad without any support, y’know?”
“An’ hey, the three of us’ll have such a good time, you’ll hardly have time to feel sad at all!”
Sounds…suffocating.
As they approach the door to Shuuichi’s cabin their pace slows, until they’re stopped just short of the entrance. Kaede fidgets with her hands.
“Shuuichi.” Kaede’s eyes are intense, but her expression is kind, understanding. “Things are going to be tough. There’s a lot you have to get used to, and a lot you have to sort out. And while I’d like to think that our presence will help lift some of that burden, I know it won’t be enough.
“Just — do what you need to do to feel better. If that means throwing yourself into life at camp, great. But if that means being alone for a while, and working through things on your own, that’s — I understand. But don’t be a stranger, alright? All of us are here for you. So just let me know, okay?”
“Th-Thanks.” Shuuichi pulls his hat low on his face, tired of having her sad eyes on him. “I’m really tired, so I’m going to go to bed. Ah, nine tomorrow, right?”
“Yup!” A pause. He inches towards the door. “Goodnight, Shuuichi.”
“Night, sidekick!”
“Yeah, goodnight.” He pulls open the door to his cabin and shuts it quickly behind him, holding his breath until he can hear the soft crunch of grass underfoot as Kaede and Kaito walk away.
When he’s alone he deflates, eyes drifting towards the bed that seems to be calling his name. Without bothering to turn on a light he undresses, pulling on the first shirt and pair of pants his hands catch on in Rantarou’s bag. He coughs out a laugh as he pulls the pants on, knowing just from the feel that they’re that one stupid pair that look like sweatpants but cost more than anything in Shuuichi’s own closet.
The shirt that he pulls on is silken and smooth, and Shuuichi is sure that when Rantarou finds out, he’ll tell Shuuichi off for getting it so wrinkled—
The thought fractures and shatters in his head before he can finish it, the broken pieces wedging themselves in his insides. The sudden realization hurts so much he stumbles, falling haphazardly onto the bed.
All of the commotion knocks both his and Rantarou’s bags off and onto the floor, and the sound of both’s contents spilling all across the hardwood, coupled with the overwhelming grief of the day starts him off crying again. It’s the kind he feels not in his eyes, not in the hot damp streaks on his cheeks that chafe when he rubs at them, but in his stomach, where each gasp, each sob, each sharp intake of breath as he in vain tries to calm himself, sends a new wave of pain radiating through his entire core.
His fingers scramble desperately around for the stuffed animal, his breathing dipping dangerously close to hyperventilating until he grasps and pulls it from where it lay tangled in the mass of new blankets on the bed.
It’s a stupid plush. It’s worth pocket change. Some of the felt is already peeling from the base. It shouldn’t provide Shuuichi the comfort (albeit small) that it does.
Nevertheless, it’s only the fact of it being in his arms that allows him to fall unconscious, the weight of the day an overwhelming force against his weary mind.
And when Shuuichi wakes the next morning, it's to the sound of rhythmic pounding.
It’s so loud in his ears, so grating on his senses that he thinks for a moment it’s his own head that is pulsating. He doesn’t open his eyes, the idea too daunting to consider as the events of the past few days slowly make themselves known to him again.
Another loud wham rings out, and though it makes his head throb, it isn’t the source of the discomfort itself.
Shuuichi ponders, for just a moment, the idea of himself hallucinating the noise; with all of the stress he’s been subjected to as of late, it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility.
Wham. Wham. Wham.
No, the noise is coming from somewhere in the room, definitely. Each solid hit is accompanied by various other noises; metal bouncing off of…something, wood splintering, something tiny and metallic rolling. Sounds he doubts his mind could come up with on its own.
With that mystery solved, he decides to simply keep his eyes shut and hope that…whatever is happening just stops, because frankly, he’s been made to deal with far too many inexplicable situations over the past twenty-four hours. He’s encountered the existence of gods, and rituals involving pentagrams in bathrooms, and robots who can talk and carry their own heads. Shuuichi has had his fill of confusing unknowns.
Wham wham wham wham wham wham wham—
Okay, this is just ridiculous.
He opens his eyes but otherwise stays very still, and the lovely view of the wall next to the bed is not very informative. It doesn’t seem the small action has been noticed; the sound continues all the same.
“Ow, shit!” A voice suddenly rips through the air, nearly jumping Shuuichi out of his skin. As it stands he nearly follows his and Rantarou’s bags onto the floor, and before he can collect himself and place a name to the mysterious speaker that is, apparently, somewhere on the floor behind Shuuichi, he hears snickering.
“Are you done pretending to be asleep, New Kid?” He stiffens as he recognizes the voice to belong to Kokichi and freezes for a moment, feeling more than a little caught off guard, before resigning himself to turn around, bunching the blankets up over his torso as he does.
The first of many sights before Shuuichi that he takes note of is the fact that Kokichi is sitting cross-legged on the floor, a hammer in one hand, the other up near his mouth, one finger between his lips and a pained expression on his face. Scattered all around him are various…nails? The bat sits not too far off as well, certainly within Kokichi’s reach.
The pieces come together quickly in Shuuichi’s mind.
“Wh-What are you doing?”
Kokichi pauses at that, taking a few moments to look slowly between the hammer, the bat, and Shuuichi. His expression is almost disappointed.
“Is it not obvious?” He plucks a nail up from the floor and pounds it with the hammer a few times, leaving the bat with yet another jagged bit of metal sticking out of it.
“Why?”
The look on Kokichi’s face practically screams ‘what are you, an idiot?’ as he picks up another nail and looks at it appraisingly. “To make it more deadly, duh.”
Shuuichi swallows, his mouth feeling rather dry all of a sudden. “And, ah, why do I need something like that?”
“I dunno!” The hammer is casually tossed behind him, clattering noisily against the floor. “Maybe I just wanted an excuse to see you! Ooh, I know, I was just trying to freak you out! Isn’t that a fun answer?”
“I—”
“No, it’s no fun when I say it like that.” Kokichi picks idly at his fingernails, looking bored. “Sooo, how did your first day at summer camp go, sport?”
One of the worst days of his life, actually, but something tells him that that may not be an appropriate way to respond to a near-stranger’s question. Shuuichi sits up, blankets still pulled to his neck, and reaches for his phone before remembering it’s still in his pants from yesterday.
“About as well as you’d expect, I guess?” He’s more than a little thankful when Kokichi begins picking up the nails from the floor, though the visual of the absolutely ruined bat doesn’t do much to quell his nerves. “Uhm, do you know what time it is?”
“Lunchtime! You reeeally let everyone down when you missed out on dodgeball, y’know!” A quick glance out the window tells Shuuichi it most certainly is not lunchtime. “Juuust kidding! Jeesh, don’t make such a scary face, Shuumai.”
Shuuichi doesn’t respond to that, and instead bends down to rummage through the mess on the floor. Kokichi is silent until he’s got his phone plugged in and he’s checked the time, confirming for real that he hasn’t, in fact, missed the game he’d promised Kaede he’d attend.
He waits for Kokichi to leave so he can change before he’s actually late, but he doesn’t, and instead stares up at Shuuichi as if he’s the one who’s waiting. Shuuichi coughs.
“‘Kay, you’re actually gonna be late and hokey CIT Kaede is going to pitch a fit, so let’s hurry up already! Just watching you stare at me is weird.” Kokichi picks at the sleeves of his black jacket idly, eyes not leaving Shuuichi, and eventually narrowing a fraction when he doesn’t move.
“Unless you’re actually planning on skipping out? How rebellious!”
“Uhm, actually,” Shuuichi feels his face redden, eyes pointedly looking away from Kokichi, “I’m just waiting for you to leave, so I can, uh, change. So.”
“Ugh, fine! But dooon’t take too long! Or I’ll use the hammer on you!” Kokichi bounds to his feet, retrieving the hammer and dropping it haphazardly into his jacket pocket.
He leaves the nails.
Shuuichi flops back onto the mattress as the door slams shut, taking a moment to process that whole encounter before fully emerging from bed. But he does, eventually (not without some rather persistent knocking on the door from Kokichi, though), mechanically going through the motions of taking the fastest — and most necessary — shower of his life, putting on deodorant, dressing, combing his damp hair through with his fingers, and pulling his hat onto his head. He takes his phone with him as he leaves, despite the fact that it’s only charged up to a measly 17% since he plugged it in.
“Finally! C’mon, I’ll walk with you to breakfast, 'cause I’m just sooo nice!” In the time Shuuichi took to change, Kokichi somehow disposed of the hammer, leaving the pockets of his jacket empty as he knots it around his waist. Underneath the black and white scarf tied around his neck he wears a purple tank top, emblazoned with the camp name. He seems to leer when he catches Shuuichi observing him, and he quickly turns away, pulling his hat low to obscure his caught-out expression.
“So!” As they make their way towards the picnic area, Kokichi rests both hands behind his head, pace casual and eyes occasionally darting over to Shuuichi. Whenever they make eye contact, he pulls a face. “You ready for dodgeball today, New Kid?”
“Probably not,” Shuuichi answers honestly, hands floating from his jeans pockets to his hat to his sides and back again. “I’m not exactly the, ah, athletic type.”
“Ooh, it’s a good thing I modified your bat, then!” Kokichi slows significantly, an intense expression on his face. “Yeah, you may wanna go back and grab that.”
“What?”
After a moment he regains his normal pace, idly tightening the jacket around his waist. “Did Miss CIT not tell you? Dodgeball gets, like, crazy serious around here. Demigod camp games are no joke.”
“There’s no way I’d need something like that for dodgeball.”
“No, Shuuichi, you don’t understand. If you don’t have a way to protect yourself, you’re gonna die.” Kokichi blinks up at him as he steers them towards the cafeteria building. “I’m not kidding.”
Shuuichi regards him closely as they pause just outside the doors. Kokichi’s expression is blank, eyebrows set and posture firm. He almost believes there’s any merit at all to what he’s saying until he sees the corner of his mouth quirk up, just slightly, a fraction of a smile that threatens to undermine whatever…well, whatever this is.
He’s known Kokichi all of one day, but surely he’s witnessed him lie more convincingly than that, right?
“I don’t even know how to use something like that, I’d probably just end up hurting myself,” Shuuichi decides on, which warrants a shrug from Kokichi as he reaches for the door and pulls it open.
“Well, whatever. Anyway, let’s eat! I’m staaarving, ‘cause all my food ended up on Miu and Kiibaby last night.”
The only people in the cafeteria are Angie and Gonta, who are each in the process of filling their plates with various food items from a rather impressive buffet-style array of breakfast options. Angie catches sight of them first and waves, a slice of avocado stuck midway on a fork.
“Gooood morning, New Kid!” As Angie beams through her greeting, Kokichi pushes a plate into his hands and begins piling his own plate up with rice, and Shuuichi has a sneaking suspicion there may be a repeat of last night’s incident. “Are you ready for dodgeball today?”
“I’m…looking forward to seeing what everyone’s talking about,” Shuuichi says honestly. Gonta steps up next to him, a finger to his chin as he goes over the various foods before them.
“Good morning, Shuuichi, Kokichi,” he says, smiling down at the two of them once he finally decides on a banana.
“Morning, Gonts! Ooh, I’ll trade you some cereal for your chocolate muffin!”
Shuuichi responds to Gonta’s greeting in kind as Kokichi makes grabby hands towards his plate. As they negotiate, Shuuichi fills his own plate with a few options; despite his lack of appetite, his body is hungry, and the last thing he needs is to get sick in the middle of the game and cause a scene.
As the four of them are getting ready to head outside the cafeteria doors open, and he hears, “There you are, Shuuichi!” as Kaede steps in. She waves, the single braid hanging down her back bobbing as she walks up to greet him. “Morning, everyone!”
With a brief pause to say hello, Angie and Gonta both depart from the cafeteria, leaving Shuuichi to wait for Kaede to grab her breakfast, Kokichi bouncing on the balls of his feet impatiently.
She doesn’t take long, and soon the three of them are on their way towards the picnic area. Just from looking Shuuichi can see that most everyone is already there and well into their breakfast; the only faces he can immediately pick out as being absent are Komaeda and Hajime.
Kaede leads the three of them to the table where Maki and Kaito are sitting, the latter waving excitedly at them when he sees them approaching. Kaede takes the empty seat next to Maki, leaving Shuuichi to sit on the unoccupied bench, Kokichi settling in next to him.
Other than an occasional bite being stolen from him or random bits of food being deposited on his plate by Kokichi, breakfast is fairly uneventful. There’s an undercurrent of excitement underneath everyone’s conversation, and by the time Komaeda is calling for the camp's attention, Shuuichi finds himself almost looking forward to the game.
Though Shuuichi wouldn’t qualify Komaeda as being necessarily ‘calm’-looking at any point in time since he met him, something in his posture now, in the way his face is dripping with sweat and his eyes are dark, filled with anxious energy, makes Shuuichi immediately tense.
“As many of you know, there’s some…complicated stuff happening with the gods right now.” He laughs, the sound joyless. “And I’ve just been called to a meeting, so I’ll be out for the day. Maybe a few days, you know how these things go.
“Kirumi and Kaede, you’re in charge. Please, don’t let the camp burn down while I’m gone.” Komaeda laughs again, running a hand through his hair as he stares out at the camp with glazed-over eyes. “I will remind everyone that under no circumstances are you to go anywhere near the barrier. If I suspect you’ve even thought about it, well…you don’t want to know.”
He pats at the pockets of his jacket. “I’ll have my phone on me, like always, but unless he,” Komaeda pulls an oddly dark face as he speaks, “starts eating people, don’t call. Please be good.”
With a sharp sound like wood splintering and a bright flash of light he’s gone, and within moments the entire group has broken out into hushed whispers. When Shuuichi looks over at Kaede for an explanation, he sees that Kirumi is crouched down next to her, the two whispering hurriedly at each other.
“Us being put in charge is usually not the best thing…”
“What a time for him to come back, too, right?”
“I agree, but unfortunately there is not much we can do…” Kirumi briefly glances up at Shuuichi. “Should we cancel dodgeball for today?”
“Uhm…” Kaede turns and appraises him closely. “No, I think we’ll be okay, as long as we make sure no one goes near the barrier.”
“Will Shuuichi know not to…?”
Kokichi peeks out behind Shuuichi’s shoulder with a sly look. “Shuuichi isn’t dumb enough to follow some creepy stranger, riiight?”
“Uh, no?”
That answer seems to satisfy Kaede, as not a moment later she’s climbing on top of the picnic table and cupping her hands around her mouth. “Hey, everyone! Dodgeball’s still on, so after I split up the teams, go get ready, ‘kay?”
“Red team is Harumaki, Kaito, Kiyo, Miu, Angie, Himiko, and Tenko! Blue team is me, Shuuichi, Kiibo, Gonta, Kirumi, Ryoma, and Kokichi! Meet up by the fire pit when you’re ready!”
As Kaede steps down from the table the group breaks off into smaller clumps of one or two, most heading back to the cabins and a few heading towards the edge of the tree line. When Shuuichi turns he finds everyone else who had previously been at the table has disappeared, and as he’s attempting to figure out what exactly he’s meant to be doing right now, something soft is pushed into his hands; a blue bandana, an exact match to the one Kaede begins tying around her braid.
“I’m not sure how great your outfit is for dodgeball, but I doubt anyone’s going to go super hard on you anyway, so I’m sure it’s fine! Here.” She gently plucks the bandana from his grasp once her hands are free and sidles up behind him, tying it around his neck with deft fingers. He knows he’s surely bright red under his hat, but when she faces him again she just smiles and gestures for the two of them to move.
“So, dodgeball is really sort of a free for all,” she explains as they walk, rolling the sleeves of her blue t-shirt as she does, “and we don’t have a ton of rules. Play fair and be safe covers most of it, but also things like traps, shields, balls, and powers only, and—”
“Powers?” She pauses as she’s interrupted. “I’m sorry! I, ah, just don’t know — are you saying that people have…superpowers?”
“Uhm…” She giggles. “You’ll see, how about that.”
Her smile only widens at the frown he sends her way. “Anyway, yeah. There are balls scattered all throughout the woods, so if you can’t find any balls where you are, that should tell you you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be. Anything below the neck is an out, but if you hit someone in the head, they get a free shot on you. It’s a good thing you’re on blue, ‘cause Kokichi likes to duck into headshots and just cheat in general.
“And, other than that…most of the game is pretty intuitive? We have a rule about ball catching, so if you happen to do that, the person who threw it is out. Ah, and last one standing wins for their team. Oh, hey Kiyo!”
“Kaede, Shuuichi,” they reply, the visible portion of their face reflecting what Shuuichi can only describe as pain as the two of them take in the hastily drawn red smile now adorning their mask. “The red team is playing rather dirty today, it seems.”
“When aren’t they?” Kaede cranes her neck to peek over their shoulder. “I wonder where our paint is…”
Shuuichi, curious, looks behind Kiyo as well, and sees the red team with crimson paint on their fingers, decorating themselves in various ways. Angie, covered rather heavily in numerous lines, dots, and symbols of bright red chases after a shouting Miu, calling her name and attempting to coax her into being painted. Kaito looks as though he’s just pulled his head out of the paint bucket, his hair and face dripping with it.
Tenko and Maki have matching red lines underneath their eyes, with Tenko being slightly more decorative as Himiko draws swirls on her cheeks, hearts adorning her own face.
“Oh, thanks, Kirumi!” Kaede is drawing light blue lines under her own eyes when Shuuichi turns towards her, and when she catches his gaze she beams. “Shuuichi, do you want any?”
“No, thanks.”
“Okay! Kirumi, what about you?” At her nod Kaede drags two streaks of paint across her cheeks as well, and a moment later her eyes are on Ryoma, who looks as though he might have been trying to sneak past her unnoticed. “Ryoma, there you are!”
With a wink Kaede dashes after him, blue paint running down her fingers as she gives chase. Shuuichi can’t help but laugh at the picture of the two running around, and the giggling that bubbles up from next to him doesn’t surprise him as much as he would expect in his preoccupation.
Kokichi has reappeared, his standard checker print scarf traded out for a blue one not unlike Shuuichi’s. He spares Shuuichi no attention as his eyes catch on the abandoned paint bucket.
“Ooh, goody!” His smile as he seizes it is positively devilish, dark eyes glinting dangerously. “Hey, Kiiboy! C’mere, c’mere!”
“Kokichi, what do you — no! Get away from me right now!”
He’s off like a shot after Kiibo, who runs away shrieking about the paint dulling their body’s shine.
Shuuichi contents himself with observing the contained chaos from a distance, watching as Kaede wrestles two crooked lines of blue down Ryoma’s face, both of them laughing as Kaede struggles to catch her breath. He can hear Kaito shouting vaguely motivational phrases at the rest of his team, and the clicking of Miu’s phone as she takes selfies.
“Shuumai, look ooout!”
The tail end of the sudden shout is accompanied by the wet smack of a hand against his lower back, and his own yelp as the sensation makes him jump out of his skin almost as much as the slap does. Something cold and moist immediately soaks through his shirt and jeans, and as the reality of what just happened sets in, he feels himself go scarlet all the way up to his ears.
“K-Kokichi!” He can hardly hear his own voice over the sound of cackling, Kokichi having doubled over and fallen directly onto his ass in the aftermath. Both hands are dripping blue, and there are actual tears streaming down his face as he points to Shuuichi’s backside, most certainly now covered in a blue stain in the shape of Kokichi’s hand.
“Oh my god, you should’ve seen your face!” The force of his laughter causes Kokichi to cough, but that doesn’t stop him from craning his neck in order to shout to Miu, “Puh-lease tell me you got that on camera!”
The thumbs up Miu manages as she rolls in laughter herself only worsens Shuuichi’s embarrassment.
“You’re almost as easy to get as Kaito, New Kid!” Kokichi has collected himself enough not to burst into giggles upon looking at Shuuichi’s face, at least. “Hey, help me up? Pretty pwease?”
Rolling his eyes but deciding that no real harm was done, Shuuichi offers a hand and is unsurprised when Kokichi takes the opportunity to rub as much paint as he can into Shuuichi’s palm. He pulls Kokichi up with a soft grunt, and once Kokichi’s tossed his hand away, he takes the chance to retaliate, drawing a wobbly line just beneath his eye.
“Ooh, good idea! I’ll do yours and you can do mine! We’ll match, just like yucky Himiko and Tenko! How disgustingly romantic, Shuuichi.”
“That’s not really—” There’s already something being written on his forehead, his hat bumped onto the ground to avoid getting stained, which he more than appreciates. Shuuichi sighs and rolls his eyes, bringing his own hand up to Kokichi’s face.
He struggles to keep still against the ticklish feeling of the paint being smushed into his skin, and he can tell just from the smug expression on Kokichi’s face that he’s being made a mess of, but he manages, and tries his best to think of how to decorate Kokichi in return.
He writes KOKICHI in big, bold letters across his forehead, but beyond that he draws a blank. The idea to draw something crude strikes him, and though he knows he’ll surely regret it later, he lets his childish side win out and traces out something vaguely phallic across his chin.
If Kokichi notices, he doesn’t mention it; though by the way his smile brightens, Shuuichi doubts it’s gotten past him.
With the remaining paint he simply claps his hand against Kokichi’s cheek, leaving a handprint that likely matches the one on his back. Kokichi pulls his fingers away not long after, staring at Shuuichi’s face intensely, uncharacteristically silent in such a silly situation.
He’s very quiet for a long stretch of time, eyes focused intently on Shuuichi’s face for enough of a period that it becomes awkward. Kokichi’s close enough that Shuuichi can feel the light puff of each exhale against the drying paint, and the other boy’s expression is blank, oddly unreadable for someone usually so expressive.
It’s more than a little uncomfortable.
“Blue isn’t your color.” A grin cracks Kokichi’s face, and he laughs for a moment in Shuuichi’s space before bouncing back several feet and taking off in Gonta’s direction, paint bucket in hand and shouting for Gonta to bend down so he can get some, too.
“Kokichi, quit wasting the paint and get over here! You too, Shuuichi!” Kaede barely suppresses a laugh as Shuuichi turns to look at her, and after taking a moment to settle her expression she beckons him over with the hand not currently holding her phone.
As soon as he’s within reach he’s manhandled into position next to Kirumi, Kokichi being pressed in just behind Ryoma when he eventually makes his way over. Kaede slots herself in next to Shuuichi and Kiibo, throws an arm around his shoulders, and offers her phone to Gonta — sporting matching sky-colored stars on both cheeks.
“Here, Gonta, come stand behind me, good — okay, everyone smile!” He tries to smile as convincingly as he can as Gonta fumbles with the camera on Kaede’s phone, though he finds it taking a more genuine note when he sees the blue bunny ears that have sprouted over his head, suspiciously close to where Kokichi’s smile is peeking up innocently at the camera.
Kaede takes her phone back after Gonta’s snapped a good few pictures just in time for Maki to make her way over, arms crossed and eyeing Shuuichi oddly.
“Kaede.” Maki runs her fingers through one of her pigtails as she waits for Kaede to acknowledge her greeting. “Our five minutes are up and we’re ready. Tell your team to take theirs so we can get started.”
“C’mon, Gonta, we gotta huuurry!” Kokichi takes off towards the woods, pulling Gonta along as he does. Kaede jogs after them, leaving Shuuichi to wait behind with Kirumi, Ryoma, and Kiibo, the latter of whom grimaces as they try to scrape the drying paint off of their face.
Kiibo looks at Shuuichi and smiles, though the expression seems pained. “It seems Kokichi got his hands on you, as well.”
“In more ways than one.” When he turns to show the hand-shaped stain on his back, Kiibo gasps, and he thinks he might hear Ryoma snort from somewhere, but he can’t be sure.
As he waits for something to happen he pulls out his phone, though it ends up being a mistake as all he can bring himself to look at is the flood of hundreds of missed texts and calls from Byakuya and Makoto that have all gone unanswered; first while he was unconscious, and now…while they all just wait, in Hajime's words. It succeeds in pulling some of the warmth from his mood nonetheless; and after a few long moments spent staring at his screen, it drops a percent. No longer interested at all in his phone, he pushes it back into his pocket dejectedly.
“Hey. Shuuichi.” He startles a bit at hearing his name, but settles in time to look down at Ryoma, worrying at one of his sleeves. “Thought I’d give a word of advice before we start.”
“Don’t know if someone told you this already, and if so then sorry for wasting your time, but if you see Angie, Maki, or Tenko during the game, run in the opposite direction.” Ryoma’s mouth twitches into a smile. “Or you’ll have more to worry about than cleaning the paint off of your clothes by the end of this.”
“Oh, thank you,” Shuuichi replies, resisting the urge to scratch at the paint on his face, which is already beginning to itch. “Are they really good?”
“You could say that. The rest of that team are usually easy targets, so if you’re the offensive type, go for them.” He runs a hand over his short hair, staring off at the red team as they stand in a huddle a small distance away. “Just make sure Himiko doesn’t touch you with her hands.”
“Noted. Thanks again, Ryoma.”
“No worries.”
“Oh, Shuuichi,” Kirumi says softly, stepping closer to him to speak in his ear. “There is one more thing you should be aware of. If you see an, ah, I’m not really sure how to describe him—”
“Vaguely homeless looking?” Ryoma offers, chuckling softly at himself.
“Yes, that. If you see a man you don’t recognize who looks…as Ryoma described, it would be best if you stayed away from him. If he tries to speak to you, ignore him and don’t go anywhere he asks you to.”
“Uh?”
“He’s creepy for sure, but he can’t hurt you.” Ryoma shrugs. “He probably won’t even talk to you. But if you do come across him, just find any of us, and he’ll leave you alone.”
As Shuuichi is trying to formulate a response to that, the sound of a whistle being blown carries through the trees as Kaede emerges, Gonta and Kokichi not far behind.
“Red team, are you guys ready?” At Maki’s nod, Kaede beckons the rest of the blue team over to the tree line. “Blue, what about you?”
A nod from all of them is greeted with a resolute grin from Kaede. “Alright! When Maki and I blow our whistles, it’s game on! Everybody, good luck, and please do your very best!”
The whistles blow in unison and Shuuichi’s off, grabbing a small shield from the pile and taking off into the woods in a direction he thinks is away from everyone else. He keeps his eyes on the ground, searching out any tripping hazards, as well as dodgeballs to let him know he’s still within bounds.
It takes a few minutes, but a spot of bright green catches his eye from a few yards away. As he runs over and stoops down to grab it he listens; the only sounds he can hear is that of his own breathing and some sort of water source somewhere farther into the woods.
He takes a moment to look around; he’s lost sight of the break in the trees where he entered from, but he trusts that the woodsy area isn’t big enough for him to actually get lost in, so for once he pushes any anxiety to the backburner and allows himself a moment of peace in the quiet.
He’ll play for a little while, he’ll eventually get out, and though he’s more than confident he won’t be one of the last players in, he’s fairly certain he won’t be first.
Something purple catches Shuuchi’s eye from a ways away and he takes his time going to retrieve it, allowing himself to bask in the calmness the woods provides. Sunlight only filters through the thick foliage in thin yellow slivers, lending the air to be cool and comfortable. The ground beneath his shoes is worn in countless long, winding paths; a sign of a long history of usage. A weak breeze occasionally brushes past him, carrying the scent of decaying leaves and dirt.
After living in a place like Tokyo for as long as he can remember, the stark difference the remoteness of the camp provides feels almost like a vacation, and not a mandatory holding facility until his life back in the real world is sorted.
The thought makes him cringe, and his steps falter for a moment, the tips of his shoes just shy of the purple ball he’d been after. He bends down to retrieve it, and as he’s straightening something shrill and nauseatingly loud and almost like a scream breaks through the silence he’d cultivated, leaving him feeling dizzy and even a bit like he could get sick.
The sound is cut off abruptly, nearly as soon as it began, and replaced with the sound of a high whine, not too far away from Shuuichi.
“Kokichi, you fuckin’ cockshit!” From the volume of Miu’s anger, she really isn’t that far away. And from how clearly he can hear Kokichi laughing in response, she can’t be more than a few yards out of eyesight. “You always target me! Go after someone yer own size, you goddamn fuckin’ manlet!”
Shuuichi doesn’t hesitate to run in the opposite direction, more than okay with neither of them knowing he’s close by.
He slows to a jog after a few minutes of not seeing anything — no balls or people, for that matter — and he’s just considering turning around and trying to find his way back towards where he started when he hears the sound of something heavy dropping to the ground somewhere close by. He tenses, pulling the shield flush against his chest; though he listens, he hears nothing further, and after another beat of silence he begins to tiptoe towards the source.
It’s not too hard to find once he catches a flash of red hair, and immediately he steps behind a tree for cover, peeking out only long enough to get a read on the situation in front of him.
Kirumi is on the ground, looking as though she's moments away from falling asleep. A ball sits next to one of her hands. Above her stands Himiko, pulling a hand away from Kirumi and seeming to sway in the air.
Is…this what a ‘power’ is?
With difficulty she grabs the ball from next to Kirumi and drops it against her arm, effectively getting her out. Shuuichi looks at the balls in his possession, takes a moment to weigh his odds, and steps out from behind the tree with a sheepish smile on his face.
Himiko blinks up at him blearily, recognition flashing in her eyes after several long moments. Her gaze drops to the ball he’s aiming in her direction.
“N-New Kid…you better…not get me…out…”
“Sorry, Himiko.” He tosses the ball underhand at her, and she can only manage to lift one of her hands up before the ball is bouncing off her arm. She rubs at her eyes for a moment and fixes him with an unimpressed — if sleepy — look.
“Aw, Tenko…Shuuichi…got me…” Her eyes focus somewhere behind his head.
Wait.
He spins around, alarmed, and finds Tenko hardly two steps away, a ball in each hand and expression blank; something that he finds almost more concerning than if she’d been staring at him with murder in her eyes.
He blinks, and tries to subtly lift the shield to cover his face. Tenko’s eyes track each movement, and he feels himself grow sweaty under the collar at the intensity of her focus.
“I, ah — you’re v-very good at being quiet.”
Her eyes narrow a fraction. Shuuichi hears a huff from behind him. “Duh…that’s her power…”
Ah.
“Ah. Very impressive power.”
Her mouth twitches downward. “Tenko doesn’t care what some boy she just met thinks of her or her powers.”
“Of course.” He swallows nervously. Her fingers twitch around one of the balls. “Still, very cool.”
“Tenko is going to get you out now.”
She winds one arm back, eyes determined; Shuuichi cringes backward, realizing all at once that there is not a chance Tenko isn’t going to bruise one part or another of his body with one or both of those balls.
If only she slowed down, just a second, I might be able to get away—
That train of thought — along with the air in his body — is knocked out of him all at once, and he almost thinks he’s been hit until he realizes his vision is darkening around the edges, the world around him moving in what feels like slow motion. Realization seizes him in an instant and he panics, the idea of losing his sense of reality like he did when that girl attacked him and Rantarou scaring him into moving, running away, regaining control, something.
But his vision doesn’t escape him entirely. He watches as the ball Tenko had prepared to send his way passes through the space he’d been occupying several moments ago at an almost leisurely pace, before falling like a coin through honey towards the ground.
He looks to Tenko as she moves her eyes towards him, though her reaction is significantly delayed. This is not lost on her; genuine surprise and then anger cycle through her face, and it’s only as she opens her mouth to speak that the world regains its usual speed, the headrush the acceleration gives him sending him stumbling.
“—nswer me! What did you do?!”
Shuuichi stares straight ahead, his legs shaking underneath him as his mind struggles to fill in the gaps as to what just happened.
Did I just…?
Was that what happened at school? When — when that girl attacked him, when he was up by the throat and suddenly he couldn’t see and everything was wrong, was that — did he slow down time? How is that even possible? Is it even possible?
The feeling of something sticky and heavy crawling through his veins, the vertigo, the blackening of his vision; that was all the same, but it was so vivid this time, and he can’t just blame it on being asphyxiated like before.
He almost wants to blame it on being disoriented, but if Tenko is acknowledging it, then…?
Something slams against the shield, startling him out of his stupor. His eyes find Tenko’s and — she’s mad.
“Tenko was going to go easy on you before, but since you cheated, you won’t get any mercy!”
She bends down, lightning-quick, to retrieve a ball.
“I’m, ah, going to run now.”
He wastes no further time, taking off running in the opposite direction as fast as his legs will take him. He hears her shout from behind him, and the whizz of a ball as it brushes past his ear sends his heart into overdrive, pumping in tandem with each slam of his shoes on the ground, his head and body and everything screaming at him to get away.
Shuuichi runs until he’s teetering dangerously on the edge of an asthma attack and he has to stop, and he almost collapses with relief when he finds he’s stumbled upon the mysterious water source he’d heard earlier: a substantial-looking stream running straight through the trees, filled to the brim with water that is simply too tempting to pass up.
He spends several long moments cleaning the crumbling paint from his hands and then brings a handful of water to his mouth, cringing at the taste but swallowing it nevertheless. He flops onto his back once satisfied, content to lay there and catch his breath until someone (hopefully not Tenko) finds him and gets him out.
“Shuuichi?”
He blinks, startled, and looks over to find Angie standing on the opposite side of the stream. She waves, and he’s confused — but not ungrateful — to find that there are no balls in sight.
“Ah, hello! How fun to see you here!” With difficulty he rises into a standing position, pulling the shield and balls close as he watches her step into the stream with bare feet.
“…Hi, Angie.”
“Are you having fun playing dodgeball so far, Shuuichi?”
That’s not the word I’d use, is what he thinks, but he smiles at her and nods, to which she claps her hands, looking delighted. “Wonderful! Oh, oh! Shuuichi, do you know who Angie’s mother is?”
“Uh…” He wasn’t expecting a pop quiz, though nonetheless he offers what he hopes is the correct answer. “The Goddess of Strength?”
“Nyahaha!” Angie titters, swaying lightly in the water. “Yes, this is true! But do you remember who Angie’s other mother is?”
Shuuichi is suddenly seized by a very, very bad feeling. He takes a step back, and when her smile only widens, he takes another one.
“…The Goddess of the Ocean?”
She nods, looking proud. “Very good, Shuuichi! Angie loves her mother very much, you know, because she has given her many wonderful things! Do you want to know something else about her?”
“Wh…?”
Angie’s smile is shadowed as a wall of water rises around her. Her eyes sparkle as she says, “She gave Angie her powers! Isn’t that divine?”
All he has time to do is retrieve his phone and toss it as far away as possible before the water is raining down on him, soaking him through to the bone. The shield does little to protect him from the torrential downpour that is thrown at him, and as he scrambles towards his phone and then as far away from the stream as he can, he is backdropped by the sound of Angie’s delighted laughter.
He’s hardly been running a minute when he suddenly stops dead, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up and adrenaline screaming in his ears. In his haste he’d dropped one of the balls, so all he has to defend himself is the shield and the other ball, both of which he pulls as close to him as he can, spinning around wildly in search of whatever is sending his senses haywire.
“I see Angie got to you.”
…Maki?
He tenses reflexively, bracing himself for a moment before spinning on his heel in search of the source of the voice. He falters when he doesn’t see anyone in the vicinity; he’d been positive that was the low lilt of Maki’s voice, and yet she’s…nowhere to be seen?
And. Well. He’d seen Himiko put someone to sleep and Angie control water today; it shouldn’t be a stretch to consider there are some sort of supernatural — is that the correct term? — shenanigans at play here.
“…Maki?” he ventures, keeping the shield pulled tight against his chest as he slowly spins around, keeping his eyes peeled for even a hint as to where she might be.
“Tenko said you were cheating.” The statement is punctuated by the sound of a ball passing just next to his head, as well as his own shout of surprise as he registers it. He does his best to retrace the path the ball travelled; it definitely originated from somewhere in the trees, though no matter how closely he looks, there’s nothing there.
“I doubt you’d believe me if I told you I wasn’t,” Shuuichi replies nervously, jumping several feet back as another ball shoots through the trees and smacks directly into his shield.
It’s silent for several long beats, long enough that he’s sweating through the water that’s drenched his clothes, when he hears something gently hit the ground.
“You’ve stayed in longer than I thought you would.” The voice is definitely coming from in front of him; it’s much closer now. In a normal world, she’d be standing right in front of him, but she isn’t—
There’s a ball floating several feet off the ground.
Sleep powers, water powers, now this?
“I, ah, was told you’re very good at dodgeball.” He eyes the yellow ball warily. It doesn’t move even a little bit. “I think I just figured out why.”
He feels his jaw slacken as Maki pops into view right in front of him, as if she’d been there all along. She’s crouched down low, a hand curled dangerously around the ball. She looks positively lethal.
She almost smiles. “Invisibility. It comes in handy.”
“I imagine it would.” He swallows, and then she’s gone again, the yellow ball the only tangible thing denoting her presence.
He’s absolutely caught, unless…
Slow down, please.
Somehow, that works, and the ball passes through the air slowly, giving Shuuichi more than enough time to sidestep out of its path. The slowing of the world around him is once again accompanied by a feeling of something sickly moving through his blood, as well as a nauseating blur of his vision, but he can pretty quickly recover enough to begin running away in the opposite direction of Maki before the forest once again rockets into regular speed around him. In the distance, he hears an affronted scoff, but he can’t be bothered to stop, the looming threat of death by dodgeball not yet fully avoided.
For a single, fleeting moment, he thinks he might just be in the clear, that he’s evaded a beating from the red team for the second time and he might actually win this thing, until he comes crashing down to earth.
Literally.
The ground gives out from underneath him and he yells, falling in time with a large amount of leaves and branches into a hole in the ground, where he lands rather harshly on his side, immediately knocking the wind out of him.
He groans, head spinning, and positions the dented shield as well over his most sensitive parts as he can.
“Shuumai!” Kokichi’s tone is severe enough to indicate Shuuichi has done something positively terrible. The face Kokichi makes at him as he peeks over the edge of the hole mirrors the sentiment. He’s too sore to care. “You ruined my Maki catcher, you meanie!”
“Your what?” Maki’s voice comes from somewhere above him.
“I mean, my Tenko catcher — ow!”
“Your what, degenerate?”
Oh, good. He’s surrounded by all the people who are most likely to send a ball flying at his head. Fantastic.
“Quit ganging up on me!”
“You’re out, Kokichi. Get lost.”
“No I’m n — oh, shit.”
“…Shit.”
“Shit!”
“…Hey, Shuuichi, jump-scare warning.” With difficulty he looks up as Kokichi’s face reappears, visible only as a silhouette against the bright sun. “Captain Killjoy is here, so don’t go waltzing into his candy van, ‘kay? Ew, get away from me!”
Kokichi jumps away from the edge of the hole as a new face peeks over, this one totally foreign. Long, dark hair hangs over the shoulders of a tall, imposing figure, red eyes bright even against the glare of the sun and staring down at Shuuichi coldly. The veil of intimidation is ebbed some by the frankly very out of place clothing combination of a Camp Hope’s Peak sweatshirt and…dress slacks?
He’s almost funny looking right up until his red eyes begin to pulse, and Shuuichi feels his vision darkening for the third time that day.
The gaze is hypnotic, intoxicating, and despite the swell of dark, scary energy that begins to cloud his head, he can’t pull his eyes away. It’s impossible to look away, but the more he stares back, the more he feels as though he’s dying.
The feeling is only broken when something slams roughly into the fleshy part of his torso and he rolls over, arms cradling the area instinctively.
“He’s out. Kokichi, go get Gonta to fish him out of the hole.”
He’s terrified to look up, afraid that the feeling will overtake him again. He hears Maki huff. “You’re wasting your time. He’s not going to go anywhere with you. Go be creepy somewhere else.”
Shuuichi chances a look upwards. A ball bounces off the stranger’s head, the absurdity of the sight causing him to cough out a frantic-sounding laugh. But he needn’t have worried; the stranger is now looking at — Shuuichi presumes — Maki, and he simply stares silently until another ball glances off of his head.
“Leave her alone, you freak! Or Tenko will flip you into next week!”
God, is she afraid of anything?
The stranger’s eyes suddenly cut downward to look at Shuuichi. He swallows nervously, but the stranger steps out of view a moment later, leaving Shuuichi blinded by the bright sunlight once again, but he’ll take that over whatever that man did to him any day.
“Shuuichi, you okay?” He jumps as Gonta drops without preamble into the hole, arms open. “Gonta come save you from Maki’s trap!”
“You’re a bastard, you know that, right?” Maki’s voice rattles in his ears along with Kokichi’s laughter as Gonta — embarrassingly — lifts him from the hole and sets him gently on his feet. A moment later, when Gonta has himself climbed out of the hole, Shuuichi thanks him, face bright red.
“Ugh, just! Go to the kitchen! There’s all the saltines you could ever want, just go away!” Kaede walks into the group of them facing backwards, freezes when she turns to see all of them, and then waves awkwardly. “Oh, hey, everybody. Uhm, Gonts, are you out yet?”
“No, not — oh, yes, Gonta out now.”
“Shuuichi?”
He smiles sheepishly, cradling his stomach. “Yeah.”
“Damn.”
With a soft pop Maki blinks out of existence again, and as Shuuichi is getting ready to mourn the loss of the blue team Kaede begins singing softly.
Then his limbs start to lock up. And so, it seems, do everyone else’s. It's sort of hard to tell while his brain fills with grainy static.
With an apologetic smile Kaede takes the ball from his frozen hands, but she doesn’t have time to do anything with it before Maki blinks back into view, smiling, and hits her with the ball.
“Ugh, Maki!” As soon as her singing stops, feeling begins to creep back into Shuuichi’s body, though his recollection of the past thirty seconds becomes no clearer. “I really thought we were gonna win this time.”
Maki smirks. “If Izuru hadn’t shown up, you just might’ve.”
Kaede turns away from them and blows for a few moments on her whistle. She smiles at the group when she finishes, and then links her arm with Shuuichi’s. “Good job, guys! Let’s clean up and head back, ‘kay?”
Though his fingers are feeling a bit numb still he grabs the shield Gonta had retrieved from the hole and begins walking along with Kaede, though he can’t help but eye her warily. She notices immediately and her smile drops some, looking sheepish.
“Sorry about that. Guess I should’ve warned you about what my power was, huh?” She does a once over on him, biting back a guilty smile. “And everyone else’s, too.”
“Ah, yeah.” He forces a laugh. “So what was that, anyways?”
“I have, uhm,” she blushes, looking shy all of a sudden, “I can…if I sing, people around me freeze up. Which kinda stinks when you’re someone who wants to do music for a living, haha…”
“Oh.” He doesn’t know how to respond to that. “That’s…really useful in a game like dodgeball, huh?”
She shrugs, looking shy again. “Yeah, though not like Maki’s or Tenko’s.”
“Yeah, ah, invisibility seems pretty perfect for something like this. And Tenko’s, uh…”
“She’s really fast. Like, really fast. And quiet.” Kaede laughs. “And I guess you know what Angie’s is, huh?”
He nods. “And Miu has something similar to you, right? I heard, ah, her do something near the start of the game.”
Kaede makes a face. “It’s pretty terrible, right? She screams like that enough at Kokichi, I’m surprised he’s not deaf.”
Shuuichi laughs along with her. “What’s Kokichi’s, if I can ask? I didn’t notice one.”
“It’s mind control!” Kokichi appears at his side, smiling brightly up at him. “You just didn’t notice 'cause I mind controlled you not to!”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, Shuumai, what’s yours? Meanie Tenko was complaining about you cheating, so it must be really good, right? Right?”
Kaede looks at him curiously. “Did you figure yours out?”
“…Maybe? But I don’t know if it’s even worth talking about—”
“Nuh-uh, Shuuichi!” Kokichi pulls on his shirt, stopping the three of them in their tracks. He points emphatically at what Shuuichi had drawn on him, earning a laugh from Kaede. “You drew a dick on me, so you gotta cough it up! It’s, like, equality, or whatever.”
Shuuichi hopes the look he sends Kokichi's way conveys how unimpressed he is in that excuse. Kokichi blinks up at him innocently until Shuuichi sighs.
“I — maybe — can slow down time? Maybe? But it makes me dizzy, and feel sick, so—”
“That was you?” Kaede and Kokichi ask in unison, wearing matching looks of surprise. Suddenly feeling bashful he just nods, pulling his hat over his head.
“Well, that’s okay I guuuess, but it’s not as cool as my real power!”
“And that is…?”
“Hmm, it’s a secret! You gotta unlock friendship level twenty-two for that kind of lore, Shuumai!” Kokichi winks up at him. “Take me on a date, and maaaybe I’ll tell you!”
“Wh—”
“Juuust kidding! You’re too stinky for me. Anyway, bye!” Kokichi runs off, leaving Shuuichi feeling more confused than their encounters usually do. Kaede just smiles fondly and nudges the two of them forward.
“There’s a couple of us who don’t have powers,” she says softly, not looking at Shuuichi’s face. “Like Kaito, Kiibo, and Ryoma. Kokichi, too, but he’s probably too embarrassed to say it, y’know?”
She shakes her head, looks to Shuuichi again with a smile as they break through the tree line and back into the main campus. “Well, whatever, stuff like that doesn’t matter to us. What matters most to me right now is getting some lunch, though, so go clean up and I’ll grab us something to eat, ‘kay?”
Notes:
+ hi again!
+ so yeah, rantarou's dead, but hey, izuru's here, so that makes up for it, right?
+ i'm never quite sure how to write izuru honestly, but i know he takes a somewhat more comical role in this universe (which will be explored at some point), so for now just take…saltine eating, terribly dressed, chaotic bastard izuru.
+ so, here's the thing! i'm moving into my college dorm tomorrow. and my classes start next week. so while i can't say for certain what my update schedule will look like from here on in, i will say that this fic is NOT being abandoned! updates may just be...slowish. apologies, but between two roommates, classes, acclimating to boston, and a whole bunch of other stuff, i just may not have a ton of time!
+ other than that, next chapter is when the ~plot~ really jumps into gear, so that's exciting! i hope my silly little dodgeball shenangians can tide you over til then!
+ talk to me on tumblr if you'd like! @gontagokuhara
+ content warning: major character death, a character as a panic/asthma attack where they describe not being able to breathe, and i think that's it!
+ may 14, 2023 update: tightened writing & corrected typos. no major changes!
Chapter 4: the world goes up in smoke (or: things go very, very wrong)
Summary:
“Well, there was always just one thing that got to Hajime. Just one person who he struggled to hold his own against. The God of Despair.”
He swallows nervously at the idea of such a being. Maki huffs from next to him, smushing her perfectly-roasted marshmallow between two graham crackers. She passes it down silently to Kaede, who beams as she receives it.
“That’s who you met today. Izuru Kamukura,” Maki explains, pushing another marshmallow onto the point of her stick. “The look on your face when he was staring at you — you felt it, right?”
Though there’s no way he can for sure know that what she’s describing is the same as what he felt when that person — Izuru, he reminds himself — looked at him, he just nods, figuring it’s okay to assume. She gauges his reaction for a moment before continuing. “That’s what he does. Infects people with despair.”
Notes:
+ wow! i updated in a semi-decent amount of time even though i started college! don't worry, i'm surprised too!
+ yep! long awaited, long struggled over chapter four is here, and if my hopefully-funny-in-a-way-that's-reminiscent-of-percy-jackson-titles chapter title is anything to go by, it's gonna be a hoot!
+ as always, i'll have more to yammer on about in the end notes (and you can find applicable chapter warnings there, too!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Despite everything, Shuuichi is in relatively high spirits as he sits down to eat (actually eat!) dinner after the day’s events. True to their word, Kaede and Kaito had stuck by his side for the rest of the day following dodgeball; after another slightly more in-depth tour and an unsuccessful attempt on Kaito’s part to get Shuuichi to try out the zipline course, he’d been lead to an American-style dinner of hot dogs and corn roasted over the large campfire, everyone sat around on the log-style seating, laughter and conversation filling the air between the group. Which is where he finds himself presently.
Shuuichi sits on one of the logs, flanked on either side by Gonta and Maki, both of whom are, like him, carefully balancing paper plates filled with various foods on their laps and sticks in their hands. Kaede rests on the ground in front of Maki, leaning back against her legs as she roasts a hot dog. Kokichi and Kaito are sprawled out a mere foot or so away, Kaito groaning in the aftermath of a hot dog eating contest gone wrong, and Kokichi systematically burning whatever he can stab onto his stick into a crisp.
Shuuichi’s in a fresh pair of clothes, the dirty, damp, paint-soaked things he had been wearing earlier tossed into the corner of his cabin, a reminder that he’ll have to do laundry at some point. The sinks in the men’s bathroom were dyed a dull purple from the runoff of everyone scrubbing red and blue paint from their faces before their showers — in Shuuichi’s case, much needed. He feels fresher now, cleaner, more whole than he had on his first day; and though the ache of the wound that was Rantarou’s death never strays too far from the front of his mind, he finds himself smiling along with the conversations floating around his head, his fingers worrying with the strings of his and Rantarou’s bracelets, both now worn around his wrist.
During a lull in conversation Kiibo jumps to their feet and takes off towards the cafeteria, evidently more excited than anyone who could actually eat about the upcoming s’mores roasting session. Shuuichi watches after them with a smile, though his expression falls when he sees Hajime stumble out from somewhere in the darkness, both hands cradling his head and feet tripping over each other as he makes his way into the warm light of the campfire. He glances up and seems to catch Shuuichi’s eye, because a moment later he’s making his way over, the action seeming to come only with great difficulty.
Shuuichi pulls anxiously on the bracelet as he waits for Hajime to approach, the dark feelings associated with their last interaction bringing down his mood. Though his behavior earlier was embarrassing and uncomfortable, he doesn’t think he feels it appropriate to apologize. Whether that’s due to the awkwardness the conversation is already sure to bring, or his own complicated feelings over the matter of how Hajime regarded Rantarou’s death, he isn’t sure; whatever the case, the smile he spares toward Hajime when he eventually manages his way over to the fire pit isn’t exactly genuine.
He’s about to broach the subject of their last conversation when he registers the drawn look of pain on Hajime’s face, and falls short. “Are you alright? You’re stumbling.”
The sound of his voice speaking up for the first time in a while seems to rouse the attention of the people around him. One of Hajime’s eyes pulses a bloody red in the bright glow of the fire.
“I’m fine. Thank you.” Even the smile he offers to Shuuichi is strained; grimacing, he breaks eye contact with Shuuichi and turns to Kaede. “How much time did I lose today?”
“From around when Nagito left 'til now is about eleven hours.”
Hajime looks so, so tired as he runs a hand through his hair, posture slumping. “Any incidents?”
“He met Shuuichi,” Maki interjects, eyes on Kiibo as they throw her a marshmallow. She catches it one-handed.
“But!” Kaede says, hands waving in the air nervously at Hajime’s haunted expression. “Me, Maki, and Tenko were there, and nothing happened!”
“I was there too, y’know!” Kokichi whines, sitting up to lean back against Shuuichi’s legs, a pout on his face.
“All you did was insult Izuru and lie about not being out of the game,” Maki corrects with a roll of her eyes, spearing the marshmallow onto her stick and raising it over the coals of the fire. Kokichi sticks his tongue out at her.
“Well, that’s good at least. No, thank you, Kiibo,” Hajime says wearily, shaking his head at the marshmallow he’s offered. Instead it’s passed to Shuuichi, Kiibo smiling as they settle down next to Kaede.
“Hajime.” Shuuichi pushes his free hand into the pocket of his hoodie, stick balanced between his legs as he prepares to roast his own s’more. “What — or, ah, who was that person?”
Hajime sighs, looking as though all he wants to do in the world is lay down and rest. He tries to smile, but it ends up looking uncomfortable. His red eye visibly throbs.
It looks painful.
“Want us to field this one, man?” Kaito offers from the ground, artfully spinning his stick so as to ensure his marshmallows don't catch. Hajime nods, observably grateful for the out.
“Yes, thank you.” He looks to the group. “I’m going to go call Nagito. Have fun, everyone.”
The explanation doesn’t begin until Shuuichi has his marshmallow balanced delicately over the tips of the flames. Kokichi occasionally bumps their sticks together, knocking his own already smoldering marshmallow into the well-tended pyre.
“So,” Kaede begins, looking thoughtfully at the fire as she speaks. “This is a complicated, really weird story, even for someone who knows how stuff with the gods works, so just…try your best not to let anything weird keep you from believing this, ‘kay?”
Shuuichi nods. Kaede brings her knees to her chest, wraps her arms around them. “Hajime is the God of Hope, right? And he’s a Big Five god. So he’s a really powerful person. And he seems like the sort of guy who, well, like nothing could really shake him, right?”
He thinks of the stress lines on Hajime’s face as he taught his history class. Of the thinly-veiled panic in his voice as he held Shuuichi in the hallway after the first monster attack. Of the pain in his eyes as he broke the news about Rantarou. Of the way he struggled to even walk over to where the group sat.
Shuuichi just nods again.
“Well, there was always just one thing that got to Hajime. Just one person who he struggled to hold his own against. The God of Despair.”
He swallows nervously at the idea of such a being. Maki huffs from next to him, smushing her perfectly-roasted marshmallow between two graham crackers. She passes it down silently to Kaede, who beams as she receives it.
“That’s who you met today. Izuru Kamukura,” Maki explains, pushing another marshmallow onto the point of her stick. “The look on your face when he was staring at you — you felt it, right?”
Though there’s no way he can for sure know that what she’s describing is the same as what he felt when that person — Izuru, he reminds himself — looked at him, he just nods, figuring it’s okay to assume. She gauges his reaction for a moment before continuing. “That’s what he does. Infects people with despair.”
“Hajime and Izuru have been enemies since, well, forever,” Kaede picks up, idly sucking on her fingers to remove the sticky marshmallow residue. “They would have these big, destructive, earth-shattering fights every so often, they’d beat each other up really badly. They were like—”
“Like mortal enemies!” Kaito cuts in, speaking around his own s’more. Shuuichi can feel Kokichi recoil into his legs, a look of disgust on his face. “Like good and evil! Darkness and light!”
“Or like people who have good taste, and people who like Homest—”
“Anyway,” Kaede interrupts Kokichi, voice forceful and eyes rolling, “they’re enemies. And they fought each other a lot, always looking to destroy the other. But one day…”
“They almost killed each other,” Maki supplies calmly, once again passing a finished s’more to Kaede. With a grin, Kaede passes her one as well. “The two of them were barely hanging on by a thread. And it’s already incredibly difficult to kill a god, so that tells you a lot about how terrible the fighting was.”
“But Hajime’s…?” Not dead, Shuuichi doesn’t say.
“Nagito had to go to very…extreme measures to save him. Which of course he did, obviously,” Kaede says quietly. “What’s worse, he had to—”
“He had to fight Junko!” As soon as the last syllable leaves Kokichi’s mouth Maki is striking him harshly upside the head, and Kaito has a hand clapped over his mouth. Kaede sighs.
“Nagito did not fight her,” she corrects sternly, rolling her eyes before turning to Shuuichi to give him a long-suffering smile. “But he did have to…find a way to get her to do what he wanted.”
“Which was…?”
Kaede doesn’t speak for a moment, instead saying a thanks to Maki as she’s handed a napkin. After wiping her hands carefully she looks back up at Maki. “Hey, can we trade spots so I can braid your hair?”
Shuuichi’s honestly expecting Maki to scoff and turn her down coldly, but to his surprise she just shrugs and vacates the seat next to him, waiting for Kaede to take her spot before settling into a cross-legged sit on the ground in front of her. Kaede sets to work running her fingers through one of her pigtails before addressing Shuuichi again.
“Nagito is Hajime’s husband, duh,” she continues, eyes fixated on Maki’s hair, “and Junko is…Izuru’s only associate, I’ll call it. The point of the matter was that to save one, both of their healing abilities had to be combined, which meant—”
“They had to stick both their brains in one body, like some fucked up Frankenstein shit!” Kokichi laughs as Shuuichi makes a face at the mental image. Kaito flicks him in the back of the head.
“That’s not what happened, but yes, both gods had to be put into one body to save Hajime. And Junko and Nagito…disagreed on whose body should have been saved.”
Maki looks at Shuuichi over her shoulder, not seeming impressed. “Junko is a Big Five goddess. Like Hajime.”
“She’s a raging bitch,” Kaito says curtly, mood suddenly sour. “Fuck her.”
“Agreed.” Maki, looking very reluctant, reciprocates the fist bump Kaito initiates. “So, Nagito and Junko ‘fought’ over whose body would be saved.”
“How did they do that?”
“Rock, paper, scissors,” Kokichi supplies. When no one corrects him, Shuuichi catches his eye, confused. “No, I’m being serious.”
“Why would someone like that agree to a game of luck with the God of Luck?”
“Junko is the Goddess of Chaos,” Kiibo interjects, speaking for the first time though they’d been listening intently to the conversation. “As such, she is more inclined to agree to terms that will produce chaotic results, even to the point of her own misfortune.”
“So, with Hajime’s body bein’ the one that was saved, it took a few other gods — Celeste, Sonia, and—”
“—And another god whose name we don’t say,” Kaede cuts in quickly, looking up from her half-finished braid to pin Kaito with an especially stern look.
“Who? And why?” Shuuichi asks, curious, seized with a desire to know more about the world he’s been shut off from. The group looks at him — and between each other — warily.
“He’s, ah, not one of the friendlier gods,” Kaede says delicately, looking as though she’s choosing her words very carefully. “So much so that, uhm, in fact, we don’t say his name, because—”
“If you say his name, it’s said you’ll have bad luck. And or die.” Shuuichi glances at Maki incredulously; she just levels an unfazed look at him.
“He kills people just for saying his name?”
“Allegedly! But, uhm, no one’s really keen to test it, especially since he’s part of the Big Five, and—” Kaede gestures vaguely with her hands. “Uh. God of the Dark Arts. Magic stuff I don’t really get.”
Shuuichi blinks. And blinks again. “Okay. Great. Cool. I would prefer not to, ah, be killed. So. You were saying, about…?”
“Where were we…” Kiibo puts a finger to their chin. “After the intervention from the other gods, Hajime and Izuru’s lives were both saved, and the two of them now reside in Hajime’s body,” Kiibo continues. “And though Hajime is the one in control the majority of the time, sometimes—”
“—When he’s super stressed out, like when a random geek with an emo haircut shows up on his doorstep unannounced—"
“Don’t be rude!” Kiibo glares at Kokichi for a few moments before continuing. “Sometimes, when Hajime is under a certain level of duress, or when he is otherwise weakened, Izuru emerges for a few hours.”
Shuuichi takes a moment to digest all of that, sparing a brief glance in the direction Hajime wandered off; at the edge of his vision he can see a dark shape that looks mostly like Hajime if he were pacing. He turns back quickly, looking at his hands.
To imagine Hajime and this Izuru person both were in equal proximity to Shuuichi and everyone else…
“Hey, I know what you’re thinking,” Kaede says softly, nudging Shuuichi with her elbow. “You’re thinking ‘what if Izuru tried to hurt one of us,’ right?”
Shuuichi nods. The several pairs of rolling eyes are not lost on him.
“He’s why Nagito is so insistent about staying within camp boundaries. Gods can’t interfere here, so he doesn’t pose a threat outside of being creepy.” Kaede laughs, though her expression is suddenly downtrodden; uncomfortable. “Usually.”
“…Usually?”
Kaede shares a significant look with everyone involved in the conversation. Finally, she turns back to Shuuichi, a sad smile on her face. “There was, uh, an incident of note. A few years ago. Before most of us got here.”
“Erm, how to put this…" Kiibo picks up, unsure, looking anxiously towards Gonta every few moments as they stammer, “when Gonta was much younger, he—”
“Izuru try to bring Gonta outside of camp.” Gonta squeezes his knees tightly, not meeting Shuuichi’s eyes as he speaks. “When Gonta much littler. Say he need Gonta’s help, but actually want to—”
Gonta pauses for a long moment, chewing on his lip. Shuuichi looks away from the tears budding in his eyes.
“Izuru actually…want to h-hurt…Gonta. That what Mr. Komaeda told Gonta.” He sniffs noisily, and then wipes at his eyes, looking embarrassed. “Gonta sorry for crying, everyone.”
“No, it’s okay,” Shuuichi responds softly, encouraged to hear the sentiment parroted by everyone else. Gonta gives Shuuichi a watery smile, which he returns in kind.
“Izuru isn’t a good person. But he can’t hurt us,” Kaede says after several beats of quiet, hands frozen in Maki’s hair. “Hajime would never let him hurt us. Would never let anything hurt us. I trust him with my life.”
“Kaede?”
She shakes her head, finishing up the last braid with gently trembling hands. “And I know all of us here do, too. So don’t let Izuru make you distrust Hajime, alright? He’s a good person. Just know that, okay?”
She turns to look at him, expression fierce; and though he’s only known Kaede for a day, something in the way she looks at him, the fire in her eyes tells him he can trust her word, and in turn trust Hajime, too.
He nods. She does the same, then turns back to Maki’s hair as she secures the finished braid with the second scrunchie.
The conversation drops off after that, and Shuuichi takes the opportunity to construct his first s’more of the night. Despite Kokichi’s valiant efforts to sabotage his marshmallow, it's done and relatively uncharred; Kokichi sticks his tongue out and spears another marshmallow, shoving it directly into the coals. It catches in moments, the smell of burnt sugar wafting over Shuuichi as he smushes his own between two graham crackers.
The treat is sticky, and sweet, and already he’s planning on making himself another before he’s even finished his first. As he cleans his hands of a spot of stray chocolate, he watches as Angie walks with several immaculately made, perfectly roasted s’mores directly over to the fire, and sets them into the flames without hesitation.
After swallowing around some leftover stickiness, he asks, “Angie, why are you putting those in the fire?”
He winces instinctively at how accusatory the question comes out, but as she directs a contented smile towards him, she seems unbothered. “An offering for Angie’s mothers, of course! Would Shuuichi like help making one for his own godly parent?”
“Oh, no, I’m okay—” He waves the stick he’d speared a second marshmallow on for emphasis. “But, ah, you really get along with your moms, huh?”
Angie nods emphatically, bounding over to where Kiibo sits with the bag of marshmallows and holding out her hands for another one. “Of course! Angie’s mothers are the most amazing goddesses in the whole world, why wouldn’t she show her love for them with offerings?”
She doesn’t wait for Shuuichi to respond to that before dancing back to her seat, happily accepting a stick from Himiko as she does. Shuuichi turns to Kaede, who seems to have regained some of her cheer, idly chatting with Maki with a smile that's mostly recovered from before.
“Does, ah, everyone do the offering thing?” he asks, low enough that he hopes Angie won’t hear and take offense. Kaede laughs.
“Uh, no, that’s really an Angie thing,” she admits, shrugging. “But she has good reason. Angie has two of the better gods for parents. Unlike my mom, who, well.”
Kaede’s smile turns grim. “Let’s just say she won’t be winning Mother of the Year anytime soon.”
“Speak for yourself!” Miu shouts across the fire, harrumph-ing as she turns her body to fully enter the conversation. “Mom’s the fuckin’ best, she jus’ doesn’t like you.”
Kaede crosses her arms, cheeks puffed out in annoyance. “Are you ever going to get it through your thick skull that I don’t care what Sayaka thinks about me?”
“Oh-kay, sure, Miss ‘If Everyone Doesn’t Love Me I’ll Die,’” Miu bites back, haughtily turning her face away from Kaede somewhat immaturely. She huffs at Shuuichi’s side, face red.
“Kaede’s right,” Himiko pipes up from the opposite side of the fire pit, tugging on the sleeves of the oversized hoodie she's wearing. “Her mom sucks. Miu’s just, nyeh, a suck up…”
Annoyance forgotten, Kaede giggles, grasping at her knees with both hands. “Himiko, your mom’s pretty cool though, right?”
“Miss Nanami is so wonderful, Himiko is so lucky to have such a wonderful godly parent,” Tenko adds dreamily, face reddening as Himiko rests her head on her shoulder.
“She’s pretty cool, compared to other people’s parents…I guess.” Her eyes lazily move over to Kiibo. “But she’s…nyeh…dating Kiibo’s mom, so that’s kind of weird…I think.”
“S-Sonia is not my mother!” Kiibo argues, face flushed. “At least, I — I am unaware if she is my mother, or if Kazuichi is my father.”
“Mom called you my sibling, though,” Himiko counters, eyes focused on the ribbon of Tenko’s hair she's idly twirling around. “Which is really weird, but.”
“Why is me being your sibling weird?” Kiibo squacks, their previous argument of not being Himiko’s sibling apparently forgotten. “Are you saying having a robot for a sibling is weird? That’s—”
“‘That’s robophobic’, jeez, Kiibot, we get it,” Kokichi interrupts, jabbing at logs within the firepit with the horribly burnt end of his stick. “You have parent issues, whatever, whatever.”
“At least they have a parent, even if they can’t decide who it is,” Maki interjects quietly, something resembling a smile on her lips. Kaede tugs on one of her pigtails, affronted.
“Oh, that was low,” Kokichi tells her, not seeming all that bothered. His eyes flash up to Shuuichi before he turns his whole body to address Maki. “Since you’re right, and I have no parents to speak of, does that mean you want to tell the class about your super cool parent situation?”
The whole group goes dead silent, eyes uneasily focused on the wordless exchange quickly growing in tension happening on both sides of Shuuichi. Maki assesses Kokichi coldly for several long, uncomfortable moments, eyes unblinking. Shuuichi doesn’t miss the hand Kaede curls around Maki’s shoulder, the several times she squeezes, foot tapping anxiously.
The tension saps at least a little bit from Maki’s shoulders, and her expression morphs from murderous to thinly veiled annoyance. She leans back against Kaede’s legs, apparently choosing not to respond. Someone coughs awkwardly.
“Well, in that case, I’ll talk!” Kokichi kicks his feet out, reclining fully against Shuuichi’s legs and making himself comfortable. “It all started the day I was born, when—”
“Shut it, Kokichi, no one wants to hear ya lie through your teeth for half an hour,” Kaito says gruffly, ignoring the pout Kokichi turns towards him in favor of sitting up just enough to glance at Gonta. “Gonts, you got an interestin’ family story, don’t ya?”
“People want to hear about Gonta’s family?” he asks, looking around the circle for approval. Everyone seems to nod, and strangely, several people’s gazes end up on Shuuichi.
“Gonta, I thought you didn’t know who your godly parent is?”
“Oh, that right! Gonta not know,” he affirms, nodding as he speaks. “Gonta talking about his forest family.”
Ah, what?
“Ah, what?” Shuuichi asks, face screwed up in confusion as he tries to imagine just what a…forest family is.
There’s laughing all around the circle. Gonta just beams. “When Gonta lived in the woods, before meeting Mr. Komaeda, he lived with wolf family.”
Wolf family? Lived in the woods?
“You…lived in the woods, Gonta?”
“Yes,” he responds, nodding firmly. “Gonta woke up in woods one day, lived there for a few years with wolf family, before being brought to camp. Gonta planning to visit wolf family soon, actually!”
“…Why?” Gonta’s face falls a bit, and Shuuichi blanks, scrambles to rephrase. “No, I mean — why were you in the woods? How old were you?”
He brings a thumb to his chin. “Gonta not sure. Mr. Komaeda and Hajime say they found Gonta when Gonta was nine, and Gonta remembers being in the forest for a long time, so…”
“Nine?” Shuuichi sweats just thinking about it. The idea of a kid — even someone so naturally strong and capable as Gonta seems to be — living in the woods at nine, it’s just horrifying.
He glances around the fire, expecting to find matching expressions of horror on everyone’s faces, but instead finds laughter. He feels himself shrink back a bit, awed by the lack of — the lack of appropriate anger at Gonta’s situation.
“Shuuichi, what’s wrong?” Kirumi asks after a few beats of silence. He looks sideways at Gonta, who appears totally fine after recounting his traumatic past.
“I—” He struggles for a few moments to find the words. “Am I the only one horrified by this? By the fact that Gonta’s parent must have left him in the woods, alone, as a kid? By all the stories of terrible parents?”
Silence falls over the group again, everyone’s eyes downcast. It’s Kiyo who speaks up first.
“No, you’re not. But, Shuuichi, please understand that many, if not most of us, have similar tales of parents being…less than ideal.”
“Something demigods learn really, really quick, is that most of the time, parents aren’t so good. Some of us have great parents — like Kirumi, and Angie, and Himiko — but most of us…” Kaede trails off, fiddling with her fingers. “You sort of get used to it, as terrible as it is.”
“So you just…are okay with it?”
“No,” Ryoma responds immediately, hands shoved deep into his pockets. “We all know better than to be okay with our bad parents, or to think we deserve how we’re treated. We just know that no amount of dwelling on it will change anything.”
“If the gods are anything, they’re set in their ways,” Kaede says gently, voice sad. “Having kids won’t fix that.”
Shuuichi doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. He’s half considering excusing himself for the night until Gonta nudges him gently.
“What about Shuuichi’s godly parent?”
“Oh, I—” He pauses mid-thought, suddenly hesitant to say it out loud. “I don’t know who he is.”
“Does Shuuichi have any guesses?” Angie asks, head lolling gently to the side as she regards him. He shakes his head.
“No, I wouldn’t know, uhm — my mom, ah, never said anything about my dad. She never even said a name. And after she died, I—” As soon as it’s out of his mouth, the familiar lens of sympathy glazes over the eyes of everyone around him. He coughs uncomfortably. “I never heard anything. Byakuya and Makoto didn’t know, either. Why didn’t they know?”
“Shuuichi?” Kaede asks gently. He shakes his head.
“No, I mean, they’re gods, right? So wouldn’t they have known my father? Or did he not want to be known? And Rantarou, he has — had precognitive powers, right? Wouldn’t he know? Did my father really not want to know me that badly…?
“Was I a mistake?” he asks the air, suddenly desperate for answers to questions he’d never felt any need to ask. “Why didn’t he want me? Why didn’t he — when she died, why didn’t he come back? Why did he leave me alone? Why—”
“Shuuichi. Hey.” There’s two firm hands on his shoulders, and at the end of them stands Kaito, face set in a frown and eyes focused intently on Shuuichi’s. “Listen t’me, alright? It doesn’t matter.”
“What?” Shuuichi realizes he has his arms drawn around himself only when the pressure of his fingers digging into his sides registers. He shakes his head. “How can it not matter? He abandoned me, I—”
“Shut up a second.” Kaito removes his hands, but the intensity of his gaze doesn’t lessen. “You’re right, it sucks. But you’re not the only one. Me, you, Gonts, Kokichi — all our parents abandoned us. But listen up, kay? It’s ‘cause my shitty parent abandoned me that I got to spend sixteen years with my grandparents, y’know?”
Kaito rises to his full height, grinning. “I got to have them as my real parents, the best parents I coulda had. And ‘cause your dad abandoned you, you got to spend time with your mom, right? So yeah, it’s shitty, and you’re damn entitled to be pissed, but it means nothing compared to what ya got out of it.”
“You — you’re right.” Shuuichi stands, unwrapping his arms from his torso. They clench into unintentional fists at his sides. There’s a surge of something dark in him, something angry, but it feels righteous; feels natural. Almost good.
“Who cares if he didn’t want me? It’s because he abandoned me that I got to meet the best mom I could have had. That I was able to have Rantarou as a best friend!” His hands shake, the anger burns through him, buds tears in his eyes, but he’s smiling. “I was able to experience Makoto and Byakuya’s kindness. I don’t need someone who abandoned me. I already have all the family I need!”
A chorus of cheering rises into the air, shouts of, “Hear, hear!” intermixed into expressions of agreement. Kaede rises and pulls Shuuichi into a tight hug, which he reciprocates in kind, a feeling of satisfying catharsis coursing through his veins.
“Shuuichi?!"
He swings around in the direction of the shout of his name, disentangling himself from Kaede as he searches for wherever Hajime’s voice came from. He doesn’t have to look for long; Hajime’s running headlong towards the group, his phone to his ear and his eyes wide, terrified.
“He’s right here, wh — no. Are you sure?” Hajime’s eyes narrow. “What?!”
The fire, beforehand overly large but calm, surges straight up into the sky, the force of the heat knocking everyone backwards. Shuuichi’s feet catch on the log and he trips over it, landing hard on his side; he has only seconds to recover before the fire is licking at his shoes and he has to scramble out of its far-reaching grasp or risk being burned.
There’s someone screaming, the sound ringing in his ears as he drags himself away from the steadily growing inferno. Hajime grabs him roughly by the arm and hauls him to his feet, sparing only a moment to shove him out of the flames’ reach before surging forward after those still on the ground.
“Get back! Back to your cabins!” Hajime’s voice is rough, panicked, pinched with an edge of horror that Shuuichi doesn’t understand until he looks back after him and sees the figure materializing within the blaze.
The fire must be thirty feet high, if not higher. Even out of its direct reach the heat emitting from it makes Shuuichi’s eyes water, has sweat dripping down his forehead, has smoke choking him up. Hajime races away from the fire, pushing Miu in front of him as he moves, patting her back as she coughs the smoke out of her lungs.
It’s all an afterthought in his mind as a torso takes shape within the fire, long and lean and cloaked. Hajime’s hands insistently shove him backward, he’s screaming at him to go back to his cabin, but Shuuichi, like most everyone else, can only stare as the torso develops a neck, and then a head, and then a twisted, furious grimace.
He hears someone gasp. Another person curses. A third shouts, “It’s him, run!”
Harsh, scarred eyes rake over the group from the sky. Backdropped by smoke, outlined in fire, the only word to describe the man before Shuuichi is Hellish.
And then the man says his name.
“Shuuichi Saihara! Step forward!”
Something grips his arm tightly, painfully so. He doesn’t need to look to know it’s Kaede. He can hear her teeth chattering, feel her hands shaking, but she does not run away. He couldn’t run even if he tried; his feet are planted to the ground, and he isn’t sure there’s a force on earth that could make him move.
“I will not repeat myself again, halfblood! Reveal yourself to me, or I shall rain death and destruction down on Camp Hope's Peak!”
“Don't even think about it,” Hajime warns darkly, not sparing a glance at any of the remaining campers as he steps towards the fire, expression harsher than Shuuichi has ever seen it. “Gundham—”
Several gasps ripple through the group. Kaede takes a step backwards, whole body trembling. Shuuichi tears his eyes away from the confrontation happening before him, looks to Kaede desperately; she just shakes her head, still grasping his arm.
“—You know just as well as I do that gods can’t cause harm within the boundary, whether you’re physically here or not.”
“Do not speak to me as if I am a fool, Hajime!” The flames surrounding the god — Gundham — rise higher, smoke billowing out around him in troves. “It is one of the children in your care that stole Enoshima’s spear, do not make me repeat myself again!”
From his side Shuuichi hears Kaede hiss out a quiet, “What?” as Hajime steps forward, unbothered at going head to head with the wall of flames before him.
“You have no reason to believe that Saihara is even here—"
“Silence!”
Shuuichi steps forward, eyes fixed on the man in the fire. Kaede scrambles after him, whispering furiously, words Shuuichi can’t make out over the noise from the steadily rising blaze. His knees wobble but he takes another step, and another, and another, until Hajime takes notice and shoots a hand out, knocking the air out of his lungs as it collides with Shuuichi’s chest. The man’s eyes track the movement closely, eyes eventually locking on Shuuichi. He can’t bring himself to look away.
“Shuuichi Saihara.” His name is said like a curse; as though it’s the most vile collection of syllables to ever cross the man’s lips. “Halfblood. You and the fatalistic foolishness of your ilk have truly outdone yourself. By abducting Junko Enoshima’s spear from its home, you and you alone have placed the mortal world in jeopardy!”
“Wh-What?”
“Interrupt me again, and the despair inflicted upon you by that wretched sorceress' spear will pale in comparison to what I will do to you for your slow-wittedness.” The fire shifts; angry, restless, the red and orange hues flicker into blue. He can hear the stone of the pit cracking from the heat. “In my almighty power, I have found it within myself to offer you a trade deal. Listen well, halfblood.”
“You are to come to my domain with Junko Enoshima's spear in one weeks' time.” Gundham’s expression darkens, red eyes heavily shadowed by the blue flames that dance around him. “Should you fail to meet my terms, rest assured that the infinite agony of eight billion mortal souls will forever stain your palms. And I will see to it personally that Rantarou Togami never sees the light of day again!”
“Rantarou?” Wrenching his arm from Kaede’s grasp, ducking under Hajime’s arm, Shuuichi runs headlong towards the fire, bracing a hand up against the waves of heat rolling off of it, though he knows instinctively that the heat isn’t what has tears welling in his eyes. “What do you mean? Is he alive? Where is he? What did you do to him?!”
“Shuuichi, don’t, it’s not sa—” Gundham’s face draws up in fury as Rantarou’s voice, weak but unmissably sharp and unmissably Rantarou, cuts off whatever he was about to say. Shuuichi falls to his knees, the sound of Rantarou’s voice the perfect key to unlocking any control he had over himself and his steadily worsening panic.
“…Rantarou?” Tears fall into his mouth as he tries to speak. “Rantarou, is that you? Are you there? Answer me! Please, an—!”
“Get him out of here,” Gundham commands to someone Shuuichi can’t see, pausing for just a moment before recovering, and focuses his sole attention down on Shuuichi, expression cold, unkind. “One week to bring me the spear, or Gehenna will befall every soul you have ever loved. I shall be awaiting you.”
“No, wait! Give him back! Rantarou!”
The fire bursts upwards into the sky once again, the blue flames seeming to lick the stars themselves, before giving a great howl and shooting downwards. It seems to consume itself from the inside out; and within a matter of moments, the blue falls to warm orange until finally dying down to glowing red embers in the bottom of the pit, Gundham’s final words echoing out into the night.
All Shuuichi can do is stare after the embers as his vision blurs with tears, a steady mantra of no, no, no, no, no spilling from his lips as the world collapses in on him.
Rantarou is alive.
Rantarou is alive, and he’s trapped, caught in the clutches of someone who is threatening worldwide destruction over something Shuuichi has no idea about.
Junko Enoshima’s spear? He barely knows who that is, let alone anything about a spear, and he has a week to bring it to Gundham or else he’ll—
He’ll what? End the world? Kill Rantarou? Both?
A flash of bright, eye-searing light appears from somewhere behind Shuuichi, illuminating the whole clearing, blinding Shuuichi even just witnessing it secondhand as the glare bounces off the surrounding grass. Immediately it’s followed by an earth-shatteringly loud sound that leaves his ears ringing, and the whole world seems to shake with the force of it.
“Shuuichi Saihara!”
He can barely see Komaeda through the stream of tears washing down his face, can barely hear him over the steady crescendo of his hyperventilation and the broken, aching sobs that tear out of his throat. It’s not until Komaeda is upon Shuuichi, hauling him up with his gloved hand with enough force to bruise, that he sees the counselor’s eyes swirling with unkempt terror, matched with the most deliriously furious expression Shuuichi has ever seen in his life.
Komaeda does not let go of his arm, even as pained sounds begin to fall from Shuuichi’s lips.
“What did you do?"
“I—I d-don’t—”
A large yellow blur comes between he and Komaeda, and Shuuichi only vaguely registers it as Kaede as she forcefully pulls Komaeda’s hand off of his aching arm. “Nagito, sto—”
"Back up, Kaede,” he says viciously, seeming to tower over her more than usual as he speaks, not pulling his eyes away from Shuuichi. “To my office. Now.”
Komaeda leaves no room for argument as he spins around and stalks off in the direction of the main building. Hajime watches after him for a long moment, grimacing, before moving to follow after him.
Somewhere in the commotion everyone else must have scattered, because all who remain in the vicinity of the smoldering fire pit are he and Kaede. He can’t find it within himself to feel embarrassed, to feel ashamed or nervous about her witnessing the episode he's in the midst of, too entirely wrapped up in the replay of the last few minutes on loop in his head.
She catches his eye. Her face holds no glimmer of hope, no signs of a coming reassurance of belief; her eyes only hold the same confusion, the same fear that he sees mirrored in his own.
He moves, mechanically, towards Komaeda’s office.
When he eventually finds his way into the yet-to-be-explored main building and through the door leading to Komaeda’s office, he finds him pacing up and down the room, hands tangled in his hair and whispering half-hysterically to himself. Hajime sits behind the lone desk in the room, eyes staring straight ahead and head propped up on his elbows, two fingers rubbing at his temples. He inclines his head towards the pair of plastic chairs in front of the desk, and without a word Shuuichi sits, unable to keep his eyes on either man for long without having to suppress another round of hiccupping sobs.
There are various knickknacks and bits of junk scattered across the area of the desk. Most prominent is a handmade photo frame painted various neon colors, wrapped around a photo of Komaeda with three older, similar-looking teenagers with various shades of technicolor hair. Everyone in the photo, including Komaeda — Komaeda, whose footsteps are harsh and heavy on the wooden floor as he paces, whose hair is falling to the ground in clumps as his fingers dig violently at his scalp — was smiling.
Komaeda is not smiling now.
“Before we discuss the matter of Shuuichi,” Hajime begins, voice purposefully neutral, eyes glazing right over him and instead focusing on Komaeda whose pacing doesn’t slow, “please fill me in on what happened at the meeting.”
“Gundham pretty much covered it,” Komaeda says quickly, eye twitching, one hand moving to scratch incessantly at his neck. “I don’t know how on earth he found out, because of course he didn’t go, but things went to Hell long before he started causing problems.”
“You said Celeste wasn’t there?”
“Of course not, Makoto would have—” Komaeda laughs, the sound fractured, keyed up and ugly. “Talking about Makoto right now is going to give me an aneurysm.”
“You saw Makoto?” Shuuichi's voice is barely above a whisper, but even still he's left flinching when two sets of glares are turned on him.
“I,” Komaeda’s voice breaks as he sucks in a very deep breath through his teeth, “cannot talk to you right now, or else I am going to freak. out.”
“You already are freaking out,” Hajime points out gently, looking unsurprised by the grimace Komaeda gives him in response. He picks up the landline on the desk and starts dialing. “Breathe.”
Komaeda ignores him. “No, Ludenberg wasn’t there. I doubt she’ll show her face ever again after the nightmare at the last meeting.” Komaeda begins pacing with renewed agitation. “And of course the two of them were already threatening to kill every last one of us over Rantarou and Shuuichi even before she showed up.”
“And we’re sure it was her at this point, right?”
“I certainly wouldn’t put murdering a kid past her, especially not a demigod, and especially not theirs,” Nagito spits, recoiling against something he's said. “But now Gundham has Rantarou, somehow, and he knows her spear is gone, somehow, so now—”
“Junko's saying Shuuichi took it.”
“Not just that — now she's claiming if she doesn’t get it back, very, very soon, she’s going to start a war. Aha!” Komaeda laughs again, crazed and humorless and stressed, gaze trained on Shuuichi. “Somehow, Shuuichi stole her spear, somehow, she found out, somehow, after she killed Rantarou — because of course she admitted that right in Togami and Makoto's faces — he was taken out from under Ludenberg's nose by Gundham, and somehow, Gundham knows all of this!”
“Celeste isn’t picking up,” Hajime informs the room flatly, placing the phone back on the hook with more force than necessary.
“Of course not. Access to the Underworld is cut off, too. No one can get down there.”
“Not even F—?”
“No, as he was very pissed off to find out.” Komaeda leans against the wall, head in his hands, body slowly slipping downwards until he’s on the ground. “Shuuichi, what did you do?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shuuichi tells them desperately, eyes shifting quickly between the two gods before him, praying for some sign that they believe him. “I don’t know anything about a spear! I don’t k-know, I—”
“You need to cut the bullshit.” Hajime voice is harsh, strict as he stands to his full height, arms braced on the desk while he stares down at Shuuichi.
He feels so, so small.
“At this point, there are no fewer than four different gods threatening to war with each other, three of whom are Big Five gods. When gods war, that means people die, Shuuichi.” His red eye pulses erratically. “Junko Enoshima is blaming you. And right now, none of the other gods have any reason not to believe her. I need you to tell me where the spear is, and I need you to tell me now.”
“I don’t know!” He stands up abruptly, shaking, and the force of the movement sends the chair he was sitting in crashing to the floor. Everyone in the room flinches. “I don’t know! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I didn’t know about god stuff until I got here, I don’t know what’s happening! Why don’t you believe me?”
"You were in the same city as the spear when it was stolen over a week ago.”
“Where? Tokyo?! I live in Tokyo!” Shuuichi insists, inhaling deeply through his nose in an attempt to control his breathing. “I’ve always lived in Tokyo. I…I didn’t do anything w-wrong…”
Hajime is silent for a long time. Eventually his eyes move to Komaeda, still curled up on the floor.
“You and the kids were in the city around that time. It was — the field trip, right?” Hajime rubs at his eyes. “Was there anything suspicious? Was there anything wrong when you and the kids were there?”
“Of course not,” Komaeda replies immediately, voice a whisper. “If it wasn’t quiet, we wouldn’t have been there — wouldn't have let them anywhere near there. You know that. We only went because it was quiet.”
Hajime sighs heavily. “Shuuichi, you’re sure you didn’t take anything odd? Rantarou didn’t bring you anywhere unfamiliar?”
“No.” He wraps his arms around himself. “The only thing we did different before — b-before Rantarou died, we — we went to the arcade. The night before.”
“It was already gone then,” Komaeda huffs tiredly, lifting his head to look at Shuuichi. He regards him for a long time, green eyes cloudy, unfocused. Finally he stands, runs a hand much less aggressively through his hair.
“Hajime...I don’t think he has it.”
“I don’t think so, either.” Hajime scrubs at his face, expression weary. “Which brings us to a new set of problems.”
Komaeda shifts around Hajime, dropping into the desk chair, which groans underneath his weight. He rubs at his temples, whole body tense.
They don’t acknowledge him for several long minutes. Shuuichi almost feels as though he’s free to go, but he can’t. He can’t.
He doesn’t know anything about a spear. He doesn’t know why Junko killed Rantarou, or why Gundham has him, alive, or why any of this is worth risking the entirety of the world. All he knows is that Rantarou is gone, Rantarou is trapped with a god with intentions to kill, and Shuuichi needs to save him.
“Where is he?” Shuuichi asks, stirring them both from their thoughts. He looks the two of them in the eye. “Where is Rantarou? How do I get to the Underworld?”
“Absolutely not,” Komaeda hisses automatically, expression walling off. “You will not be stepping a foot out of your cabin without Hajime or myself escorting you.”
“He’s being held hostage,” Shuuichi argues, taking a step forward, “I need to save him. He's my brother.”
“Do you know what will happen if you leave camp, Shuuichi?” The nails of Komaeda’s ungloved hand bite into the wood of his desk hard enough to leave marks.
“Nagito—”
“If you were to go to the Underworld, Gundham would kill you. As soon as he found out you didn’t have what he was after, he’d get rid of you, and what good would that do?” Komaeda’s nostrils flare, volume rising. “Gods, if you even left camp, I have no doubt that one of Junko or Gundham’s monsters would kill you. Gore you the second you crossed the barrier. Make it slow and painful because that's what gods like them do, Shuuichi!”
"Nagito. Enough."
“So I should just leave Rantarou to fend for himself? To hold his own against a Big Five god?”
“Shuuichi, I understand how you feel, I do. But you will not be able to do this. The gods will figure something out, we’ll—"
“You’ll what? You just said that no one can get into the Underworld! Gund — he told me to come, he’s expecting me, I can get in! I can — I can save him! I have to!”
I couldn’t save him before. I can save him now, so I have to. I have to. I have to.
“I will not lose another demigod, and that is final!"
Komaeda, shoulders trembling, chest heaving, inclines his head towards the door.
“Hajime, please escort Shuuichi back to his cabin. Lock the door behind you. I—I need to think.”
“No, please,” Shuuichi begs, backing away from Hajime as he advances. “Komaeda, please, I need to save him. If I don’t, I—I have to, or else he’ll die and I’ll lose him forever, please, please! No, get away from me! Stop it, please!”
Hajime corrals him out the door with a firm hand on his shoulder, angling the door shut behind him. Shuuichi jerks away, tries to wrench himself free of Hajime’s grip, sobs building in intensity. The door shuts fully and Shuuichi falls forward, grasping at Hajime’s shirt, unable to stop himself as he heaves into Hajime’s chest.
His arms wrap around Shuuichi, holding him close, letting him sob into his chest. He rubs circles into Shuuichi’s back, quiet mutters of, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Shuuichi,” filling the space around his crying.
He’s not sure how long he stands there, begging between bouts of hyperventilation and dizzying sobbing spells to just tell me how to save him, please, I don’t want to lose him again, nor does he know how long it takes for Hajime to walk Shuuichi back to his cabin, because by the time the blur clears enough from his eyes to get a read on his surroundings, Hajime is sitting Shuuichi onto his bed and pulling the sheets back.
“I…” Hajime stands in the center of the room, face tired, looking all of a sudden much, much older than the twenty-something year old he appears as. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. And there’s nothing I can say that can make any of this better. But please, just…”
He drifts towards the door. “Don’t do anything stupid. The gods, we’ll — we’ll manage. We’ll find a way to make things right. I’ll call Makoto and Byakuya in the morning, get them here, and we can — we’ll start the process of making things right. As right as they can be.
“Try to get some sleep, Shuuichi,” Hajime concludes, a hand on the doorknob. “I’ll come retrieve you in the morning, and we’ll get to work. I’m sorry.”
The door clicks gently shut through the silence of the cabin, followed shortly by a more mechanical, metallic sound. Before Shuuichi can wonder what it is, he hears Hajime pull on the door; when it stays in place, it tells him it’s locked, and soon the only noise to be heard is the distant sound of Hajime’s retreating footsteps.
Shuuichi sits stock still for several long minutes, until he’s certain he’s alone, mind racing.
He has to find Rantarou. It’s not even a question of if, but how. Many, many, many ‘how’s that depend on information that he has no way of knowing, on finding a location that he can’t even begin to imagine where it might be, on doing all of these undoable things in the span of a week.
Now, he needs to pack.
He stands, mind over-aware of each creak of the floorboards, each ambient noise from the wilderness outside, as he moves throughout the cabin, piling his bag onto the bed and sorting through its contents in search of anything that might prove useful on a mission to, well, he isn’t sure.
Shuuichi is woefully unprepared to begin with. Though he packed clothes, there was no thought put into what was thrown into his bag the night of the monster attack; he has a surplus of shirts to wear, but only two binders, and though he’d thought to pack several sweatshirts, all he has for shoes are the ones he wore to school, and a scarcely used pair of running shoes.
Dropping to his knees he begins to dig through Rantarou’s bag, finding much of the same; he takes clothes he knows will fit, pushing them into his own bag without much care for neatness or efficient use of space. Within a sweatshirt of Rantarou's he wraps the photograph of him and his mom. Along with his own phone charger he shoves in Rantarou’s, and after finding the rest of the bag’s contents of little use, he pushes it aside, trying desperately to ignore the shaking of his hands as he stands up. His eyes catch on the bear sitting still tangled in the bedsheets, and without a second thought he takes it and places it gently, carefully, in the duffle as well.
He zips his bag with a feeling of finality, though as he swings it onto his shoulder he finds himself feeling directionless.
Shuuichi needs a plan. He paces for another long stretch of several minutes, eventually retrieving his hat and placing it on his head, hoping the familiar comfort of the garment may offer some sudden epiphany he knows in his heart is impossible; nevertheless, when it provides none, he is caught off guard at the feeling of frustration and panic once again stopping up his lungs and restricting his airflow.
Though the swell of emotion takes several minutes and puffs of his inhaler to work through, it reminds him to place the inhaler in the pocket of his sweatshirt, leaving a hand wrapped protectively around it as he resumes his pacing.
As he’s just beginning to seriously consider escaping through the window there’s a sudden clinking from outside the door. Instinctively he pauses his pacing, entire body tensing up like a rubber band pulled taut. The noises outside become louder, more hurried, and as the rubber band is just about to snap the door swings open.
Kokichi stands just beyond the door frame, hands paused in mid air holding two small, slim pins. He removes a thin leather pouch from a pocket of the jean jacket he at some point changed into, drops the pins into it, and steps into the room.
“Good to see you’re already packed,” he notes as Kaede, Maki, and Gonta step in behind him. Shuuichi regards them warily, stance defensive, until Kaede approaches and holds out a hand.
“Phone, please,” she tells him, voice holding a sense of urgency he doesn’t understand until he’s handed it to her and she adds, “what’s your passcode?”
“Why?” He types it in quickly and hands it back to her, eyes scanning over the rest of the group as she begins tapping quickly on the screen.
“I’m disabling your location services so it will be harder to track us once we leave.”
“Us?” He regards the group, genuinely confused. “What’s going on here? And how…do you know I’m going?”
“We’re going with you, duh,” Kokichi says flippantly, wandering towards the corner of the room, backpack in his hands. They’re all wearing backpacks. “And we were listening outside of Nagito’s window. I mean, really, stealing Junko's spear? You can tell just looking at you that you don't have the guts to do anything that badass.”
Kaede hands his phone back to him, pinning Kokichi with an unimpressed look. “Kokichi is not going with us, because he agreed he’d stall while we got away.”
“I don’t understand,” Shuuichi cuts in, watching as all four pairs of eyes focus on him. “You don’t know Rantarou. You don’t know me. It’s dangerous, you shouldn’t—”
“That’s the point,” Maki interrupts, rolling her eyes. “It is dangerous, and you won’t make it a mile outside of the barrier without someone who knows how to deal with this kind of thing. You know Rantarou, we know god stuff, and all of us want to see this situation resolved without the world ending. That’s why we’re going with you.”
“But—”
“No but’s.” Gonta ignores Kokichi’s giggle as he steps forward towards Shuuichi and places a hand on his shoulder. “Shuuichi is Gonta’s friend. Friends protect friends, which is why we go.”
Shuuichi backs up, regarding the people in the room — his friends — with wide eyes. “You…you all are really going to help me save him?”
“Demis stick together,” Kaede says firmly, pumping her fist. “We’ll save the world as a team. I know we can.”
“Demi Squad team high five!” Kokichi adds, bounding to the center of the room, hands raised. Maki knocks him with her elbow.
“You’re not going.”
“M-Maki is s-so—” Kokichi falls dramatically into Shuuichi’s chest, eyes round and watery as he pouts up at him. “Mee-ee-eean!”
“Kokichi, shut up!” Kaede surges forward, clapping a hand over his mouth. “You’ll wake someone up, and ruin this wh—”
The door bursts open and slams against the wall of the cabin, jumping everybody in the room out of their skin. Kiibo stomps up to the group of them, face bright red, eyes narrowed and an accusing finger shifting between the lot of them faster than Shuuichi can keep up with.
“Just what is going on in here?!” Both of their hands find their hips, disapproving eyes moving systematically through the five of them. “I had a feeling something like this would happen, and thank goodness I charged last night, or else I would have been in sleep mode and just let this — this prison break happen!”
“Oh good, Robocop is here,” Kokichi muses, voice unkind, licking Kaede’s palm until she jumps away, wiping her hand on her sweatshirt and gagging in disgust. “That’s just awesome. Way to ruin everything, Kiiboob.”
“Do not mock me!” Kiibo stalks towards Kokichi, still pressed rather close up against Shuuichi, and jabs a finger into his chest. “Is it wrong to not want to see my friends get themselves hurt, or worse? Am I not allowed to feel angry that you are all doing something so — so reckless, with no regard to what everyone else is going to feel once they realize you’re gone?”
“Robots can’t feel,” Kokichi says flatly, shoving their hand away and removing himself from Shuuichi. “Back off.”
“Stop it, Kokichi!” Kiibo’s eyes narrow, the electric blue of them quickly shifting into a glowing red that has the whole room taking a collective step back. “Hajime and Nagito have entrusted me to look after my fellow campers, just as they have Kaede and Gonta!”
Their eyes cut dangerously towards the two of them. “And though they have chosen to abandon their duties, I will not! I cannot and will not in good conscience abandon the job I have been given. As a counselor in training, and as your friend, I cannot allow you to go on a suicide mission. I’m sorry.”
Gonta looks towards the ground, shoulders trembling. Kaede refuses to meet anyone’s eye for enough time that the silence grows unbearably tense, before rising to catch Kiibo’s gaze, eyes set in determination.
“Kiibo, I understand how you feel. I don’t want to see anyone get hurt, either. But we have to do this.” She takes several steps forward, grasps their hands in her own, her fingers shaking. “Because if we don’t, if we just wait the week out — people are going to die. But we — Shuuichi and the rest of us — we have a chance. So we have to try.”
“And what if you can’t?” they ask, voice quiet, more watery; their anger seems to ebb out of them all at once, eyes blinking back to blue and expression suddenly softer, more vulnerable. “Wh-What if you don’t come back? Do all of you understand the extent of the risk you face outside of camp?”
“I don’t,” Shuuichi says quietly, shaking his head. “I don’t. I don’t know what’s at stake, and I don't know what's waiting out there for me. All I know is that the world is ending, and the people who have the power to end it think it’s my fault.”
“Shuuichi—”
“All I know,” he insists, hands squeezing into fists at his sides, “is that I watched my brother die trying to protect me. But somehow he’s alive, and he needs saving, and I’m the only one that can. So I have to. I have to. And you won’t change my mind.”
The room is silent as he stands there, shaking, tears spilling down his face for what has to be the millionth time that night.
"…I see.” Kiibo gently pulls away from Kaede, approaches Shuuichi with an unreadable expression. They hesitate for just a moment before wrapping two tentative arms around Shuuichi, engulfing him in the strangest hug he’s ever experienced. He reciprocates it, finding an odd comfort in the action as Kiibo squeezes him lightly.
“I admire your determination,” Kiibo says quietly, pulling away after a long moment and smiling up at Shuuichi, eyes sad. “And I — I am going to choose to believe in you. Furthermore, I believe I can help you. I’ll join you.”
“Wh-What?”
“Yes.” They nod firmly to themselves, turning to face the rest of the group. “Yes, I have decided. You may need my assistance in your journey, so I will only allow you to proceed if I accompany you. The — the voice in my head is telling me that I am needed more to look after you than those here. Please, allow me to come with you.”
“Okay.” Shuuichi nods, wiping under his eyes and straightening his bag on his shoulder. “Okay, we can do this. But first we need to get out of here.”
“Kokichi.” Maki turns to Kokichi, who has been making various unkind faces and gestures at Kiibo. “You’re up. Go make sure we don’t get caught.”
Kokichi shoves his hands in his pockets, staring dejectedly up at Shuuichi. “Gods, New Kid, you sure suck at picking members of your team. Fine, leave the escape to me.”
He ties his bag shut with a flourish, moving towards the door. “Give me fifteen minutes, and you’ll be good to leave. Don’t have too much fun without me!
“Oh, and Shuuichi.” Kokichi spins on his heel in the door frame, grinning. “Try not to die, ‘kay? It’d be toootally lame.”
“…I’ll do my best.”
Kokichi waves his fingers delicately at them. “Good luck, losers!” With a hearty grin he leaves, slamming the door shut behind him and leaving the group in silence. Maki rolls her eyes, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket.
“Okay, we have fifteen minutes to figure out what our plan here is.” Kaede begins to pace, counting things off on her fingers. “Shuuichi, all of us have our wallets, so if you have yours, you should grab it. Leave any credit cards here, they’re too easy to trace. We’ll need to budget for public transport, because there’s probably at least one bus ride involved. Until then, we’ll need a way out of here and reliable way of travel, so we’ll probably have to steal a car—”
“We have to steal a car?” Shuuichi interrupts, startled. Kaede just nods.
“Gonta not sure if we all fit in one car…”
Kaede hums in response, bringing a hand to her chin. “That’s true. Nagito does have the RV, so maybe…”
“You’re going to steal the RV?”
“Technically, all of us will be stealing it,” Kiibo corrects unhelpfully, peeking out the window. “Kaede, you know where the keys are kept, correct?”
“I’ll go as soon as the fifteen minutes are up.”
Shuuichi feels ill. “Can anyone even drive an RV?!”
That seems to give the room pause, though no one looks particularly concerned. Finally, Kaede looks to Maki, face pensive.
“Harumaki, you can drive, right?” At her nod, Kaede claps, seeming satisfied. “Problem solved.”
Is it, though?!
“Oh, no,” Kiibo mutters quietly, eyes still on the window. Before Shuuichi or anyone else can ask what they mean, the door to the cabin is once again thrown open, the walls seeming to shake from the force of it as Kaito steps in, a bag on his shoulder and a determined grin on his face.
“Shuuichi, dude, get a bag, I’m gonna help you earn your sidekick status and go with ya to bust your friend outta Hell — wait, what the fuck is goin’ on here?”
“Oh, gods above,” Maki says tiredly, rubbing her temples. “We do not have time for this.”
“Maki Roll? Gonts? What’re you all doin’ here?” Kaito leans in towards Shuuichi, a hand over his mouth as he loudly whispers, “Do they know me an’ you are leaving?”
“As much as I’m sure we’d all love to argue this issue,” Kiibo says quickly, pointing towards the door, “it’s time to go.”
Shuuichi is led by the arm out of his cabin by Kaede, who has to continually shush Kaito as he runs after them, demanding to know what’s happening. Once in front of Komaeda and Hajime’s cabin Kaede stops, shooing them towards the RV.
“I’m going to sneak in and grab the keys,” she whispers, jutting a thumb towards the garage. “You all wait there until I get back, and then we’ll go, but you need to be quiet.”
She moves up the stairs of the building without further preamble, back turned to the group as they carefully but quickly make their way towards the garage. Kaito tugs on Shuuichi’s jacket once they arrive in front of it, affronted.
“If you’re all goin’, then I am,” he promises seriously. “No arguments.”
Maki pinches the bridge of her nose, looking as though she’s just barely holding herself back from smacking the lot of them upside the head. “Kaito, we are going to the Underworld.”
“Yeah, and?”
Kiibo hums. “I believe what Maki is getting at is — we are going to the Underworld, which is where dead spirits reside.”
“And?”
“And you have a fear of ghosts, Kaito.”
Kaito scoffs, crossing his arms. “Th-That’s a load of crap! I’ll be fine, why should I be scared of a bunch of stupid g-ghosts?”
“Whatever. Now shut up.” Maki’s eyes focus on something over Shuuichi’s shoulder, and in just a moment Kaede is there, a ring of keys swirling around one of her fingers, moonlight bouncing off the cool silver.
Kaede leads the six of them around the garage, and after a few minutes spent picking their way through the dark towards the large structure in silence, Kaede slides one of the several keys into the lock on the door, eventually pulling it open and gesturing for them to climb in. It’s a long, tense few minutes as everyone makes their way on, several times having to stop as the RV creaks or groans under the added weight. But eventually everyone piles inside, Kaede shutting the door behind her after everyone’s settled. Then it’s a waiting game as Maki slides into the driver’s seat, shifts the engine into neutral, and begins the process of slowly, carefully rolling the RV out of the camp and down the lone dirt road tucked carefully into a patch of wilderness.
Shuuichi can hardly allow himself to breathe in the twenty minutes or so it takes to move the RV down the road far enough to put it into drive. The whole way he fights the urge to hyperventilate, just barely managing to keep his breathing quiet as nerves completely overtake him. From his place on one of two small couches he watches out the window, eyes vigilant and searching for any sign that they’re to be interrupted.
But none comes; despite the intensity of the anxious tremors that seizes his arms and legs and has him shuddering like a leaf, nothing happens. The engine comes to life, the sound making them all wince, but they continue forward, until there’s a physical shift in the atmosphere around them.
It’s as though the warmth in the air is sapped away all at once, and the change startles him, puts him on edge; as he looks around, he finds he’s not the only one. Even Kaede, sat in the passenger’s seat next to Maki, has tensed enough that she shakes.
After several long moments, she spins around, and eyes all of them with an expression Shuuichi can’t immediately decipher.
“That was the barrier we just crossed. We’re out,” she says quietly, eyes shutting as she speaks, and it’s then that Shuuichi understands.
Kaede is determined. She is terrified, and sick with fear, not unlike the rest of them; but her jaw is firm, her mouth boasts the ghost of a smile, and when she catches Shuuichi’s gaze, her eyes are confident, hopeful.
They can do this. Shuuichi can do this.
I’m coming, Rantarou.
Notes:
+ izuru lore! junko lore! gundham lore! EvErYbOdY gets some lore!
+ yes, the plot thickens! a good few of you guessed that junko would be a main baddie in this little quest, and i'm excited to formally add gundham to the rogue's gallery!
+ from here on in is where the plot really picks up, and i'm so excited to get into the thick of this adventure! and, as we go through, you're all excited by what's happening, too!
+ as always, please feel free to give me a follow on tumblr (i'm gontagokuhara over there!), i love answering questions about this fic and just talking about it in general! so hit me up, ask a question (i'll love you forever if you express interest in my fic), or just say hey!
+ aaand that's it for now! thank you so much for reading! if i may ask one thing, it would be to please leave a comment if anything you read tickled your fancy! feedback quite literally drives my desire to continue writing — if i know more people are interested in and engaged with the fic, the more quickly i want to put more of it into the world! so yeah, drop me a line, please and thanks!
+ content warnings: mentions of events of world ending/apocalyptic nature, breathing trouble/descriptions of a panic attack (though it is not necessarily defined as such), mentions of major character death relevant to those of previous chapters, and i think that's it!
+ may 14, 2023 update: tightening writening, actually revamped the dialogue quite a bit, made gundham a bit more true to form & overall made shit a teensy bit better
Chapter 5: how mommy issues become a matter of international security
Summary:
As he pulls one of Rantarou’s hoodies and the bear from his bag, he can’t help but want to abandon the idea of taking off his binder and pass out right now. Though the bed doesn't look particularly comfortable, the idea of nodding off for a few hours and potentially being able to escape the trauma of the past few days is extremely tempting. There is nothing he wanted more than to forget, at least for a little while, the daunting task that lay ahead of having to save his brother from a fearsome god and save the world.
He snorts, the sound lacking any real humor. As if.
Shuuichi pulls his spare toothbrush and toothpaste from his bag as an afterthought, suddenly craving the taste of a fresh, clean mouth. As he pulls the zipper to close up his bag his eyes catch on something green in his periphery, and his heart stops.
Notes:
+ hooray for updating! and having stuff happen! and getting into the meat of our harrowing adventure!
+ i hope the 13k of actual Plot Happenings makes up for the month wait!
+ as always, enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Despite the fact that she is not old enough to actually legally do so, Maki is a surprisingly good driver, and in the several hours they’ve been on the road, they’ve made remarkably good time.
Or, at least, it feels like they’re putting the distance in. It must be late morning at this point, but Shuuichi has been too anxious to check his phone since around dawn, when all of their devices had begun to ring with an urgency that could mean only one thing: they’d been discovered as missing.
It had been jarring; letting six phones ring for almost an hour without interruption, missed call after frantic text message after long voicemail filling up the spaces on their lock screens and the otherwise tense silence in the RV. Eventually Maki couldn’t take it anymore and demanded everyone’s phones either shut up or go out the window, and after that it had just been…silent.
The mood in the RV is uncomfortable, to say the least. Save for the ambient sounds from the RV — an occasional creaking of the floor, the whistle of wind outside the windows, the steady thrum of the engine, the rare sound of a car speeding by — it’s quiet, too quiet; quiet enough that he can practically hear everyone else’s racing minds.
For the past hour or so Shuuichi has been heavily considering wasting the drive away with a nap, but the culmination of all going on at present keeps him awake, foot tapping anxiously against the floor as he waits for someone to do something. Get up to go to the bathroom. Turn on the radio. Speak. Something.
Which is a stupid idea. By all accounts Shuuichi is at the head of this mission, the quest as Kaede had put it before everyone had fallen to silence, so if anything, the others may be waiting for him to make some sort of move.
He glances to the front of the RV. As she has been since they boarded the vehicle Maki is driving silently, body still and eyes totally focused on the road ahead of her. She — at least, Shuuichi hopes, from what she’d said earlier — knows where she’s headed, not having to stop once to check directions or ask anyone else for their input. Her reliability is comforting, though not much else is.
Kaede is in the passenger’s seat, and she is much more active than Maki; at one point she’d sat and spun around in the chair for about twenty minutes, eyes not really focused on anything. She’d stopped since Shuuichi last looked to her, and is now facing forward, one knee pulled up to her chest, her other foot tapping out a rhythm unknown to Shuuichi onto the floor. She’d been by far the most anxious when the phone calls began, and ever since hasn’t met anyone’s eyes.
Gonta and Kiibo are sat on the couch across from Shuuichi, and Kaito at the small booth right next to it. Kiibo has their eyes shut, hands on their knees and seeming to be in some sort of resting mode; and after Gonta had failed to rouse them a while earlier he’d taken to reading a book about — well, Shuuichi can’t be sure, but after about twenty minutes of staring at the odd-looking bug on the cover, he’s pretty sure it’s a book about beetles.
Interesting.
Kaito sits despondently on one side of the booth, picking at his fingers and bouncing his leg with such intensity it betrays his agitation and boredom. The few times he’d caught Shuuichi glancing at him he’d forced a grin, or pulled a face just long enough until Shuuichi looked away, before his expression dropped into something much less animated.
Shuuichi sits on the other couch, shoes tucked against the wall and feet pulled up next to himself. He’d abandoned any care for manners about feet on furniture right around when his anxious leg spasms gave way to cramps, and he’s been in that position since, alternating between spending long periods of time staring out the window at the moving scenery or at his uncomfortably quiet friends.
Unsatisfied with his assessment of his friends this time around but unable to do anything about it, he looks out the window once again. Smudges of green and gray blur past too quickly for him to catch the details of what they are.
“Anythin’ interesting out there?” Shuuichi doesn’t notice he’s being spoken to until Kaito heaves himself to his feet and drops down noisily next to him on the couch. He jumps, taking too long to process the question, and then shakes his head.
“It looks like the same forest and sky that it did two hours ago,” he replies, smiling the tiniest bit as Kaito chuckles next to him.
“That’s just ‘cause you’re not lookin’ hard enough, sidekick,” Kaito says, making himself comfortable on the other end of the couch and propping his legs up on Shuuichi. It surprises him for just a moment before he smiles, the close contact of his friend comforting. “Hey, let’s play a game of I Spy. You ever played?”
“When I was little.” A memory, vague and hazy at the edges, pops into his mind of his mother with a finger to her chin, shaking her head as a much younger, much more unsure Shuuichi guesses at what she possibly could have spied with her little eye. He brings his sleeve to his mouth to hide the smile it brings forth.
“You’re all playing too, so get your thinkin’ caps on! Growing up in the middle of nowhere made me a master of car games!”
“I’m driving,” Maki says, the rolling of her eyes clear in her voice. Kaito grins conspiratorially at Shuuichi.
“That’s not the spirit I’m lookin’ for, Maki Roll! Be excited! Be engaged! Kaede, don’t let her slack off up there.”
“You got it, boss,” Kaede replies with a laugh, something like ‘I’ll play one game with that moron and that’s it,’ coming from Maki, which only makes Kaede laugh harder. Kaito winks conspiratorially over at Shuuichi.
Maki, as well as the rest of their little group, ends up playing more than one game, some of them more involved in the guessing than others. Kaito, as is the case in seemingly all that he does, gets intensely into it, cheering on his friends whenever they guess correctly or otherwise show any sort of interest in the game at all.
Shuuichi finds himself almost content during the forty-five minutes or so the six of them play, laughing in tandem with everyone else more than once as the mood within the RV lifts significantly. Though his phone burning a hole in his pocket is never too far out of his mind, Shuuichi has fun, and he’s almost disappointed when Maki calls an end to the game as she turns into a secluded parking lot and shuts the vehicle off.
“Is everything alright, Maki?” Kiibo, whose face is still red from having taken an obscene amount of time to guess Gonta’s I Spy pick of the couch they were both sitting on, looks towards Maki curiously.
“I need to rest before I drive anymore.” She stands from the driver's seat and stretches her limbs, the pops of her joints as she moves echoing around the RV. “We’re making alright time, so taking a few hours won’t be an issue. The rest of you should sleep, too.”
“Maki and I are taking the bedroom, so everyone else find somewhere else to get comfortable and try to get some shut-eye.” Kaede stands as well, yawning into her hand for a moment before following after Maki towards the back of the RV.
“If it is all right with everyone, I will be taking the booth,” Kiibo says to the rest of them, popping a panel open on their hip and settling gently into the seat nearest one of the outlets. “Though I do not necessarily need a charge right now, I am most comfortable operating at full capacity.”
“No problem.” Kaito stretches his arms over his head, yawning loudly. “Shuuichi, I’ll take the couch if you wanna take the wall bed?”
“Alright.” Kaito lifts his legs up enough for Shuuichi to stand, then kicks them out and settles fully onto the couch. Shuuichi watches as Gonta settles gently on the other one, discarding his glasses onto the floor and waving up at Shuuichi sleepily. After waving back Shuuichi walks towards the wall bed, leaving his shoes by the couch for the time being but taking his bag and dropping it onto the twin mattress.
As he pulls one of Rantarou’s hoodies and the bear from his bag, he can’t help but want to abandon the idea of taking off his binder and pass out right now. Though the bed doesn't look particularly comfortable, the idea of nodding off for a few hours and potentially being able to escape the trauma of the past few days is extremely tempting. There is nothing he wants more than to forget, at least for a little while, the daunting task that lay ahead of him: having to save his brother from a fearsome god and save the world on top of that.
He snorts, the sound lacking any real humor. As if.
Shuuichi pulls his spare toothbrush and toothpaste from his bag as an afterthought, suddenly craving the taste of a fresh, clean mouth. As he pulls the zipper to close up his bag his eyes catch on something green in his periphery, and his heart stops.
He turns slowly, very slowly, and though he expects nothing less, he feels an ache develop in his chest regardless when he realizes the glimpse of Rantarou he thought he saw was just his imagination.
He’s hallucinating. He needs to sleep.
“I’m going to brush my teeth,” Shuuichi says to the room, cringing when his voice comes out a quiver, the shake of it seeming to echo. With a flash of embarrassment he realizes he’s dangerously close to crying, and taking only a moment to wipe beneath his eyes he trots off towards the tiny bathroom to save himself the mortification of crying in front of everyone.
He shuts the flimsy door of the bathroom behind him with more force than necessary, an odd anger at himself manifesting as he tries and fails to fight the tears welling up out of a misplaced feeling of shame and pent up frustration.
It’s better to fall apart in private than in front of the others, though, so there is a note of relief to be felt to that point as Shuuichi relishes in the comfort of privacy for the first time pretty much since Rantarou went missing. So with a shaky breath he turns to face the bathroom, only to find that he is not as alone as he'd thought.
Kokichi sits perched daintily on the closed toilet lid, phone in hand and a delighted grin aimed in Shuuichi’s direction.
And, unlike Shuuichi, he is entirely unfazed by the scream that Shuuichi lets out at the sight of him.
“Ohhh, I’ve been found!” He pockets his phone and bats his eyelashes up at Shuuichi, expression fawnlike, eyes wide and a light blush crawling up his face. Any illusion of it being genuine is broken by the flash of his grin as he takes in Shuuichi’s caught-out expression. “By my beloved Shuuichi, no less! That means you get a prize, 'cause you’re the first one. You, my perpetually blue acquaintance, get to take a peek inside my bottomless backpack! Only for a second, though, otherwise the — oh, you’re crying. Huh.”
He is, but he’s too flabbergasted to feel any real shame at the fact. Gearing up to sound annoyed, though, he wipes beneath his eyes and pins Kokichi with an unimpressed look.
“Y-You said you were going to stay at camp.”
Kokichi clicks his tongue condescendingly, swinging his feet, not looking particularly concerned. “And that’s where you’re wrong, New Kid! Meanie Maki and her hokey gal pal Kaede said I was staying at camp. It’s a personal conviction of mine to never listen to what cornballs like them have to say — leader types are just so obnoxious, y’know? — so here I am! Aren’t you delighted to see me?”
Kokichi wobbles his lip for emphasis. Shuuichi sighs, missing the energy necessary to humor Kokichi’s — well, whatever it is that these little interactions are.
“You really shouldn’t be here, Kokichi.”
“Aww, why not? I’m following all the rules and everything! I turned my location thingy off, cut up all of Miu’s credit cards that I stole — 'cause those are, like, suuuper easy to track — turned off my Snapchat map, and everything! You guys haven’t noticed me in the bathroom for hooours, I’ve been so quiet, so you won’t let those meanies kick me out when I’ve been such a good boy, will you, Shuumai?”
“Please don’t call me that,” Shuuichi admonishes, voice weary. “And — you haven’t been totally a…good boy.”
He cringes as soon as he says it. Kokichi lets out a short giggle, but his expression remains artfully confused. “Whaddya mean? I’ve been so well behaved, just like one of those ugly little show dogs.”
“…What?”
“Arf arf!” Kokichi sticks his tongue out in an approximation of a dog. It’s comically stupid, but Shuuichi feels a sort of compulsion to laugh.
“You lied just now.”
Kokichi’s nose scrunches up in feigned confusion. “Okay, yes, I lied about the dog thing, I’m not a furry — unless you’re into that, but that’s a little yucky, even for y—”
“No, oh my…” Shuuichi rolls his eyes and places his toothbrush under the tap, too impatient to wait any longer to brush his teeth. “The backpack thing, Kokichi.”
“Oh, that?” Kokichi pulls it into his lap, idly messing with one of its pink cat ears. “No, I wasn’t lying, middle finger swear!”
Shuuichi spits into the sink before he can see Kokichi flip him off.
“Besides, I hate liars.”
Before he can respond to that, a polite knock at the bathroom door interrupts him. “Shuuichi, I noticed you have been in the bathroom for quite a while, are you alright? Do you need any assistance?”
With a grimace, Shuuichi pulls the bathroom door open. Kiibo’s eyes move in an instant from Shuuichi to Kokichi, still sat on the toilet lid, and they immediately burst into sputters.
“Kokichi!”
“Oh, hey, Kiibaby. Way to perv on Shuuichi while he’s in the bathroom.” Kokichi hides a snicker with his hand, swinging the backpack onto his back with the other. “I’m gonna call you CR33-P0 from now on.”
Kiibo’s face goes red with anger, finger hanging limply in the air as they try to come up with a response. Shuuichi spits the last of his toothpaste into the sink and sighs.
“H-Have you been hiding in here this whole time?!”
“You betcha, CR33-P0! Hey, when did stinky Miu take the time to turn you into another of her weird sex bots? I’m thinking of filing a police report in Shuuichi’s honor.”
“Ugh!” Kiibo seizes forward and takes Kokichi by the hand, dragging him bodily out of the bathroom, Shuuichi following close behind. “Of course I can't count on you to stay true to your word even once, Kokichi!”
“Oh how you wound me, Kiibot,” Kokichi says dramatically, glancing backwards to shoot Shuuichi a wink. “Hey, toaster oven, hands off the goods. I’m fragile.”
Kiibo scoffs, dropping his hand and retrieving their own to cross their arms indignantly. “You are no such thing.”
“Aw, shit.” Kaito groans from the couch as he catches sight of Kokichi. “Of course I couldn’t catch a goddamn break from you even while the world’s friggin' ending.”
“Lovely to see you as always, Space Case,” Kokichi retorts, waving his fingers at Kaito delicately. “Have I introduced you to my friend, CR33-P0 the perv-bot?”
Kaito snorts and rolls over, apparently intent on going back to sleep.
Kokichi moves towards where Gonta lay and snatches his glasses up off the floor, placing them on his own face. The large round lenses dwarf his entire head, and after making a crude comment about the strength of Gonta’s prescription, he hops on top of him and pokes his chest until he wakes.
“Gonts, you’re happy to see me, right? The rest of my friends hate me!”
“Gonta always happy to see Kokichi!” Gonta grins up at Kokichi to further his point, to which Kokichi’s pout falls into a smirk.
“That’s why you’re my favorite, Gonts. At least someone loves me, even if it is the one who goes looking for stink bugs for fun.”
It’s at that point Kaede steps out of the bedroom, clad in a large pink t-shirt and pair of red shorts. Eyes bleary, she takes one look around the group, eyes narrowing as they catch on Kokichi, and without a word she steps back into the bedroom, shutting the door loudly behind her.
Kokichi, for all it’s worth, seems delighted by this turn of events. “Stinky protagonist Kaede is too busy making out with Sushi Roll to kick me out, so I’m safe for a while longer!”
As Gonta launches into a spiel promising that he won’t let anybody get thrown off the RV, Shuuichi takes that as an opportunity to do what he set out to in the first place. As quietly as he can he slips away back into the bathroom, pulling the door shut and locking it for good measure before taking off his shirt and binder.
The hoodie, while big enough to provide adequate comfort and familiar in the way it smells like Rantarou’s terribly gaudy perfume, doesn’t satisfy the loneliness radiating throughout his core like he hoped it would, and the resulting emptiness in his chest only has him feeling more exposed and alone than ever.
He stares at himself in the tiny mirror, stained from what must be years of loving use. He’s missing his hat, having shoved it into his bag after several prodding questions about it had made him feel insecure in wearing it; even just the absence of it makes him seem so unlike the Shuuichi he knows himself to be.
Exposed and without his hat; messy, unwashed hair; under eyes and cheeks stained red and raw from rubbing away countless tears over the past several days; wearing Rantarou’s grossly overpriced clothing without having to be wrestled into it for a feature on his Snapchat story or something equally stupid; wide, angry, anxious yellow eyes staring back at him through the mirror in an RV stolen from a god in order to save the world from a threat that’s been blamed on him.
There is so much in Shuuichi’s reflection that he doesn’t recognize, it’s almost as if he’s forgetting what he really looks like. What he’s supposed to look like.
With great difficulty he pries his gaze from the mirror, instead focusing on grabbing his phone he’d discarded on the sink and unlocking it with shaking hands. He half expects something to happen — an explosion? An alarm? The intense, breathy scream of Komaeda’s voice or the panicked, desperate pleads of Makoto or the clipped, frazzled tone of Byakuya as they all urge him to call them back, tell them where he is, let them know he’s okay?
But, no. Though staring down the number of missed calls, voicemails, and texts his phone has been inundated with in the last few hours — the number well into the triple digits already — is scary and incredibly guilt-inducing, he gets to his target with no other issues.
Shuuichi isn’t what he’d consider a particularly organized person; he’s not like Byakuya, who has every contact, every document, every photo meticulously sorted into its matching folder or album or group. He only has one non-default photo album in his photo app, and it’s one comprised entirely of the stupid pictures Rantarou always took of the two of them.
There are over three hundred, collected and compiled over many, many years of friendship, and many different phases of his and Rantarou’s life. The early ones, of the two of them posing for first day of school pictures taken by Shuuichi’s mother, starting with their second year of friendship, only days after he and Rantarou had borrowed a pair of Makoto’s scissors in order to demolish Shuuichi’s new haircut that he hadn’t deemed short enough.
The terrible blurry ones that were the product of Rantarou getting his first smartphone at the ripe age of nine, mostly of Rantarou making dumb poses towards the front facing camera from too low of an angle and with Shuuichi caught doing homework in the background.
The other various phases of their friendship: when Shuuichi’s mother died, and they found themselves living in the same house and spending more time together than ever; when Rantarou pierced his own nose at age twelve; when their matching love of video games emerged and they had a short-lived stint recording and uploading themselves playing and commentating on the games; Rantarou’s polaroid phase, in which he spent obscene amounts of money on old, authentic film just to take pictures of the most mundane things; Rantarou’s many hair colors, piercings, and even a tattoo; every new school, new house, and new experience documented.
Shuuichi stops on one of the many selfies Rantarou insisted they take together. They’re both smiling, though in fairness one side of Shuuichi’s mouth is being pulled up by Rantarou, one arm around Shuuichi’s shoulders so his finger can manipulate his face into the photographed grimace. It’s a terrible picture; the phone is shaking from the movement of them both laughing, half of Rantarou’s face is shielded by Shuuichi’s hat which he’d stolen and placed onto his own head, and neither of them had been able to look straight at the camera in time.
Even looking as he did, grinning like a moron and displaying a totally different persona than the casual, effortlessly beautiful Rantarou he broadcast to the world, he’s still eons more comfortable in front of a camera than Shuuichi ever has been. Rantarou was always the more photogenic one, but he always pulled Shuuichi into his selfies anyway; always took sneak shots of Shuuichi while he posed; always poked his cheeks afterward, made him flush, teased him about being his ‘handsome little brother.’
It was annoying, and embarrassing, and exhausting, but Shuuichi would give anything to have it back. Would give anything to have Rantarou back.
Setting the picture as both his lock screen and home screen doesn’t make the hurt go away, but the reminder of a time when everything was okay at his fingertips helps him close the distance, just the tiniest bit.
Stepping out of the bathroom, it seems that the arguing has for the time being been put on hold; all that Shuuichi can hear is Kaito snoring loudly, the low whir of Kiibo’s inner mechanisms as they charge, Kokichi’s idle humming coming from — oh.
Kokichi waves from his spot on the wall bed, sprawled out in apparent comfort and feet swinging contentedly in the air. Shuuichi spares a glance to the shut bedroom door behind him; something tells him that trying to argue his way back onto the bed would draw Maki or Kaede out of the bedroom to mediate, and frankly, he’s already dreading the inevitable confrontation between Maki and Kokichi, he doesn’t want to worsen things by making it happen while Maki is tired.
He just grabs his bag, which Kokichi must have set onto the floor at some point, and looks over his options for some place to rest.
He ends up in the booth seat opposite Kiibo, more than a little unnerved by the way in which their eyes stare forward, unseeing and unblinking, the only movement in them a tiny green light that blips every so often to indicate their…battery…level? Or something to that degree, Shuuichi supposes.
It’s hard to find a position comfortable enough to sleep in, but he must doze at some point, because when he next opens his eyes it’s to an RV cast in shade and, as is becoming worryingly common, Kokichi.
Maki has him by the hair, expression dangerous but overall appearance rather…cuddly? At the very least, the far-too-large, light purple hoodie patterned with kittens that falls nearly to her knees does not serve to make her look more intimidating.
As Kokichi whines against the strength of her hold, though, Shuuichi can’t help but wonder if there’s an outfit on earth Maki wouldn’t be formidable in.
“Screaming isn’t going to stop me from killing you,” Maki warns him curtly, fingers twisting in his hair.
Strangely, Kokichi’s eyes cut across to Shuuichi very briefly in response. He wiggles his eyebrows — Shuuichi cringes away in preparation of what’s to come — before glancing back up at Maki and letting out a bloodcurdling scream.
“What the—” Kaito scrambles for one of Shuuichi’s shoes, still discarded by the couch, and throws it in Kokichi’s general direction, looking miserable. Grinding his teeth, he pulls a pillow over his ears. “Maki, please shut him the hell up!”
“That can be arranged.”
Kiibo groans across from Shuuichi, unplugging themself and shaking their head until their eyes flash back to their usual blue. Mouth set into a disgruntled frown, they roll their eyes. “And here I was hoping that finding you was just a bad dream.”
“Robots don’t dream,” Kokichi says idly, rolling his shoulders. Maki twists her fingers tighter into his hair for daring to move, and he scowls. “Someone wanna wake up Gonta so he can get Maki off of me already? This isn’t fun anymore.”
“You—” Maki releases her grip on Kokichi with difficulty, wiping her hand on her shirt in disgust. “What’s not fun is waking up to find the worm I thought I left behind has snuck his way onto the RV like some sort of infestation, and none of you—” her eyes cut across dangerously towards Shuuichi and Kiibo, “—thought to tell me.”
“Worm?” Gonta asks sleepily, sitting up and looking around excitedly. Kokichi snorts and falls backwards to sit on his torso.
“There ya are, buddy.”
“We have a stowaway,” Shuuichi supplies unhelpfully. Maki huffs and turns in the opposite direction, stomping off towards the bedroom. Kaito groans loudly from underneath the pillow as she slams the door behind her.
“Shuuichi! You’ll make sure I don’t get thrown off the moving RV, right? Right?”
Instead of answering, he stands to go and retrieve his shoes. As he’s slipping them back on someone emerges from the bedroom, and when he looks up he finds Kaede, fully dressed and staring at Kokichi with crossed arms.
“I want to say I can’t believe you, but I can’t, because I know you.” She rubs tiredly at her eyes. “How did you even know we were taking the RV?”
“As soon as Kiibaby showed up, I knew all of us wouldn’t fit in the car,” he responds casually, picking at his nails. “Then when I saw Kaito stomping up to Shuumai’s cabin, I knew it was a done deal. Take care of Nagito and Hajime super quick, break the latch on the bathroom window, slip in and hide 'til we were a few hours into the trip, and here I am! Clever, right?”
“You are…” Kaede balls her hands into fists, though there’s no real anger on her face. “I just want you to know how incredibly disappointed I am that you put this whole thing in jeopardy.”
“Oh nooo, the girl that wears sweater vests is disappointed in me.” Kaede crosses her arms over her outfit with a huff, face flushing in embarrassment. Maki emerges from the bedroom at the tail end of Kokichi’s insult, hackles visibly raised as she stalks towards him. “However will I recover.”
Kaede puts a hand out to halt Maki’s apparent intent to kill him, sighing. “As much as I think we can all agree that Kokichi being here is a hindrance, we don’t have time to drop him somewhere safe.”
“Somewhere safe,” Maki echoes, eyes narrowed at Kokichi dangerously. He leans farther back against Gonta, lip wobbling.
“And,” Kaede continues quickly, “this is no time to be fighting, or endangering each other. Out here, we’re — we’re all that we have to count on. We can’t leave him, or anyone else behind. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I must agree,” Kiibo says, standing up from the booth to pin Kokichi with a look. “Though I am most certainly not looking forward to being taunted for the next several days by him, I cannot in good conscience as a counselor in training leave him behind.”
Kaede nods firmly, sparing one final apprehensive glance towards Kokichi before focusing her attention on Maki. “It’s almost four, so we should get back on the road. Are you alright to drive?”
“Yes.” Maki briefly glances over each of the rest of them. “Just keep him away from me.”
As Maki and Kaede settle into their seats and start up the RV, Shuuichi takes the opportunity to change back into his binder and use the restroom. When he reenters the rest of the RV he finds Maki has already pulled them out of the remote lot they’d stopped in and back onto the road.
In the time he took in the bathroom Gonta had taken to sitting across from Kiibo at the booth, so Shuuichi slides past to take a seat on the now-vacant couch. He unlocks his phone briefly to check the time and catalog the new onslaught of messages he’d received while he slept, rolling his neck against a knot that had developed at having napped at such an odd angle.
“So, Maki Roll,” Kaito begins sleepily, propping his head up on the pillow to get a good look at Maki where she’s sitting up front. “Where are we even goin’? How do you even get to the — well, uh, where we’re headed?”
There’s a slight shift in the room as everyone angles themselves to hear Maki’s response. She’d said when they’d left that she knows how to get there, but she’s yet to give any directions, or even any indication on where they’re going, so it makes sense that they’re all interested in what she has to say.
“It’s not so clear cut as to say that the Underworld is at a certain place. It’s not something I can put in a GPS,” she begins, eyes on the road. “What we’re heading towards is a…point of access. An entrance that’s separate from the Underworld itself.”
“What do you mean?” Shuuichi asks. “Do you mean like…a portal?”
“…That’s a stupid way to describe it, but the short answer is yes. The long answer is that it’s not as clean cut as that. It’s more like we’re headed to where the entrance is in theory.”
“‘In theory’?”
Maki sighs. “It’s not a question of whether there is an entrance, because yes, there is technically one. It’s more a question of whether we’ll be able to access it.”
“What’re you sayin’, Maki?”
“I’m saying,” she snaps back at Kaito's interjection, “that the Underworld is not known for having visitors. It’s where souls go to die. There is no reason for a living person to end up there. So unless you’re dead, a descendant of an Underworld-dwelling god, or invited, you don’t go to the Underworld, period. I know how to get to the entrance, but it’s a matter of whether or not that god will let us in.”
“You mean you don’t even know if we’re able to get to the Underworld?!” Kiibo asks frantically, the sentiment echoed all around the RV as everyone has a collective freak out.
“No, I — I don’t think that’s right,” Shuuichi interrupts, shaking his head. “Gun — I mean, the, ah, the threat counts as an invitation, right? It must. He wouldn’t tell me to bring the spear to his ‘domain’ if I wasn’t able to get in.”
“Shuuichi’s right,” Kaede agrees, looking back at him with a small smile on her face. “He isn’t an idiot. As long as he thinks Shuuichi has the spear, we’ll be able to get in. What’s important is that Maki knows how to get there, and we’re working together, so try not to worry too much before we get there, ‘kay?”
The seven of them lapse into silence after that, no one seeming to have anything to say. Despite Kaede’s words of encouragement, though, there’s an undercurrent of suspense that permeates the air, stifling any conversation or attempts to really relax. Everyone, at least for the time being, seems content enough to do their own thing, which Shuuichi supposes is an improvement from this morning.
Gonta has pulled the book about beetles back out and reads silently at the booth; Kiibo sits and stares at him curiously, words — are those their thoughts, Shuuichi wonders? — scrolling across their collar; Kaito has seemingly fallen back asleep, breathing lightly from beneath the pillow; Kaede and Maki talk quietly amongst themselves, too soft for Shuuichi to hear; and Kokichi — Kokichi settles silently onto the couch next to Shuuichi, one earbud in his ear.
Shuuichi looks around awkwardly; though other than the bed there isn't really anywhere else for Kokichi to sit, it still is a little uncomfortable to be on the couch with him, after — after what?
Kokichi is weird, and loud, and probably one of the most…interesting? Fascinating? At the very least unique people Shuuichi has ever met, but nothing he has done thus far warrants being wary of him, Shuuichi doesn't think. Maybe it's the fact that Shuuichi struggles to get a read on his intentions at any given moment, or the fact that half the time Kokichi speaks so fast about such strange things that he struggles to digest any of it in time to formulate any sort of response, but nevertheless…something about him is off. Maybe not in a bad way, but at least in a way that puzzles Shuuichi endlessly.
And he’s only known him for a matter of days. How so many questions can arise out of a near stranger is baffling, but it's also…intriguing. Shuuichi would give anything to answer just one of the questions about Kokichi he has floating around his head.
He tries to be subtle as he observes Kokichi, body facing towards the window but eyes flickering over every so often to get a read on him. Unlike earlier, he’s not wearing any particular mood or face; most of the time Kokichi is so expressive, that whenever he isn’t performing (and is that an insensitive thing to call it?) he finds it impossible to puzzle out what exactly is running through his mind.
With others it’s easy; one look at Kaito’s expression or one glimpse of Maki’s body language or one word out of Kaede’s mouth and it’s immediately clear what they’re thinking and feeling. Even when they’re trying to hide their feelings, like Kaede whenever she’s nervous or Kaito when he’s embarrassed, one look and he can tell.
Even with more challenging people — Rantarou and Byakuya being prime examples of those who kept up a façade in order to mask what they’re really going through — Shuuichi can generally pick out what they were thinking or feeling. Byakuya’s mouth twitches whenever he’s trying to remain stern but doesn’t want to be, and his body language is always a dead giveaway whenever he’s nervous or uncomfortable or amused, even if his face remains unchanged.
Rantarou, too, is easy to read after so many years of knowing him; Shuuichi can usually tell what’s going on with just a look at his eyes, he’s so used to him. They narrow when he’s annoyed; he blinks more often when he’s bored or when he’s trying to impress; his eyes widen when he’s trying to appear engaged; he can’t look in the same place for long if he’s nervous or upset.
But Kokichi…
Mouth set in a line, not frowning, just passive, no inclination one way or another. Eyes downcast at his phone, blinking slowly but not in any specific way. Not chewing on his lip, or tapping his fingers, or bouncing his leg, or anything.
Until he suddenly flashes his gaze over to Shuuichi, one eyebrow cocked upwards and a smile pointed in his direction.
Teasing, feigning surprise, looking to make sure Shuuichi knows he’s been caught staring. He knows what the expression is supposed to mean, but there’s nothing genuine in the way his brow wiggles, the way his smirk is all teeth.
Shuuichi recognizes an act when he sees one, but for the life of him he can’t figure out what’s going on behind the scenes. What’s almost worse, he’s still embarrassed at being caught-out.
“Stare much?” Kokichi asks, voice casual, swinging his other earbuds loosely around in the air. It knocks Shuuichi’s leg more than once. “Maybe I was wrong about CR33-P0, maybe you’re the perv. How does Creepichi Saihara sound?”
“Really rolls off the tongue,” he concedes, forcing the thought process out of his mind for the time being. He can worry about Kokichi and his weird motivations when Rantarou isn’t in danger. “What are you listening to?”
“Why, New Kid, if you wanted to share, all you had to do was ask.” Shuuichi accepts the proffered earbud and places it in his ear, trying not to cringe away from the loud, bright music that immediately spills into his head. He’s expecting some double-edged (or perhaps even just straight-up rude) comment to follow, but it doesn’t; Kokichi just looks away and stares off into space, head moving minutely in time with the music.
It’s nice, actually, just sitting in silence (or, well, as silent as it can be when listening to music). Though he has his own earbuds buried somewhere in his bag, he hasn’t dug them out for fear of missing something while listening to music; though now, he’ll have to, because it’s actually the most relaxed he’s been since everything began.
Eventually, though, Kokichi breaks the silence. He doesn’t look over at Shuuichi. “You were crying in the bathroom earlier.” He keeps his voice quiet, barely a hum over the sound of the RV. “It’s none of my business, duh, but if you wanna talk about it, you can, I guess.”
The offer surprises Shuuichi, so much so that he struggles to answer it. “I, ah…I must have just been overtired.”
Kokichi’s eyes cut across to him all of a sudden, narrowed dangerously and matched with an unimpressed frown. “You’re lying.”
“I…” He falters, pausing for a moment to pull out his phone, something to avoid Kokichi’s intense look. “I am. I — I miss him. Rantarou.”
Shuuichi pulls the earbud out of his ear, crossing his arms and pointedly looking away from him. “And right before you saw me I — I thought I saw him. And I think I probably was really tired, but also, it’s just been. Really, really hard. I watched him die — or, I thought I did, and I hardly had a chance to mourn before this all happened, and I just. He’s my best friend in the entire world, and I just want to see him again, and that’s…the gist of it, I guess.”
“Y’know,” Kokichi begins after a moment, edging himself closer to Shuuichi to peer curiously at his phone, “I’ve heard so much about this guy, and I’ve yet to see a picture. You gotta have one, right?”
Shuuichi tries not to cringe at the way Kokichi stares at his screen as he unlocks his phone and navigates to his photo library, ending up on the still-open photo album of the two of them. He angles his phone subtly towards himself, spends a few moments looking for a picture he hopes will give Kokichi a good first impression of his brother, and then, satisfied, turns the phone back towards him to reveal it.
It’s one of the many selfies Rantarou insisted they take the night they went to the arcade. And though it’s dark due to only being illuminated by whatever city lights were on in that moment, and half of the frame is taken up by the matching peace signs Rantarou had insisted they do in order to show off the bracelets Shuuichi currently wears on his wrist, it’s a favorite and he can’t help but smile just looking at it.
Rantarou has the posed arm around Shuuichi’s shoulders, his two fingers brushing the edge of Shuuichi’s shyly smiling face. Shuuichi’s own hand is poised between them, framing Rantarou’s grin.
Kokichi plucks the phone from Shuuichi’s fingers, voice teasing as he coos at the picture. “Wooow, Shuumai, he’s a real looker! I can’t believe you’re related!”
Shuuichi can’t help the grin that crosses his face at the comment. He reaches for his phone back, only for Kokichi to fall onto the other end of the couch away from him, scrolling quickly through the rest of the album. “Rantarou is so cute! When we bust him out, you should give him my number.”
“The first thing I do when I save Rantarou will not be to set him up with anybody.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Hey, I just texted myself from your phone, so now you have my number.” Kokichi tosses the phone back to him, remaining reclined on the couch and resting both arms underneath his head. When Shuuichi checks the message Kokichi sent himself, he finds it to be the picture; he feels himself flush as he puts his phone away.
“But you two look so happy, which is so weird! You’ve looked so emo since you got here, y’know?” Kokichi’s retrieved his own phone, eyes focused on it instead of on Shuuichi as he speaks. “I hardly recognize that smiling weirdo as you at all.”
Shuuichi feels his smile drop just as quickly as it appeared, physically deflating from the surprising hurt the jab inflicts. He tries not to let his change in mood be obvious; he needn’t worry, though, as Kokichi has entirely disengaged, earbuds back in his ears and eyes resolutely on his phone.
Kokichi is almost nice. He’s so close at times to saying something that genuinely makes Shuuichi feel a little better, saying something that is kind for the sake of it, but every time there is always something. Something that leaves Shuuichi feeling as if he would’ve been better off not talking at all.
Curling in on himself, feeling more than a little insecure, he can’t help but hope that the silence that falls between them sticks.
But, because of course not, it’s only a matter of minutes before Kaito is sitting up, cursing loudly. “Agh, c’mon guys! This is a road trip, and jus’ sitting in silence is freaking me out so bad I can’t even sleep!”
“Thank god, your snoring is obnoxious,” Maki retorts, earning an embarrassed squawk from Kaito.
“Maki Roll, I’m gonna go nuts! Can we at least turn on the radio?”
Kaede perks up at that, spinning around to face the rest of the RV with an approving smile pointed in Kaito’s direction. “That’s not a bad idea! I know we’re all understandably a little tense, but let’s try and relax for a while, at least until we start getting closer! Here, I’ll find us a station…”
She spins back around in order to fidget with the radio, missing the way Kaito mouths ‘thank god’ as his wish is granted. Fully seeming to commit himself to being awake he stretches, tossing the pillow aside and looking to Shuuichi, expression still a little bleary.
“Hey Shuuichi, what were you an’ Kokichi talkin’ about over there an—”
“—higher up at the Togami Corporation has confirmed that CEO, billionaire Byakuya Togami and his husband are still searching for their sons, Rantarou Togami and Shuuichi Saihara, who are at this time still considered missing following a severe automobile accident—”
Shuuichi’s breath catches in his throat as several pairs of eyes zero in on him.
“—are urged to contact the missing persons hotline at the following number, with any information as to the whereabouts of the missing teenagers to be rewarded with one hundred million—”
“Holy shit, Byakuya and Makoto aren’t messin’ around,” Kaito mumbles, dazed, eyes still on Shuuichi.
“Hey, Shuuichi,” Kokichi stage whispers, nudging him gently in the ribs, “when we’re all done saving the world, think I can call that number and get the cash reward for you?”
“Kokichi, you are so insensitive, I cannot—!”
“—In breaking international news, Queen Nevermind, after only revealing the existence of an heir apparent to the European Kingdom of Novoselic’s throne a matter of hours ago, has been granted authorization by the Japanese government to deploy over two thousand troops in search of her child after a reported kidnapping. Roadblocks have been set up on major roads across the main island, so expect delays…"
“Shit.”
“Of fuckin’ course a royal goes missin’ right after we go on the run!”
“Think Nagito’s luck is finally catching up with us? I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner!"
“All of you shut up,” Maki says tersely, not having to turn around for the glare most definitely on her face to be effective. Shuuichi feels the RV slow the tiniest bit beneath him. “And let me think.”
“Oi, Maki, there any back roads you can pull onto?” Kaito rises from the couch to stand between Maki and Kaede’s seats, pawing at the map splayed out between them.
“No, there aren't. Not here.” The RV slows a significant amount, sending more than one of them tripping as a long line of vehicles becomes visible beyond a sharp turn. “Damn it.”
“Gonta no understand,” Gonta begins softly, rising from his seat at the booth to join the majority of the group — minus Kiibo, who has been frozen since the broadcast first played — up near the front of the RV.
“We not do anything wrong, right? No kidnap Queen Nevermind’s ‘heir’…” Slowly, the RV shifts forward as more cars are stopped, searched, and let through the blockade manned by several soldiers in strange, bulky uniforms. “Gonta not even know Queen Nevermind have an heir. So we safe, right?”
The sound of Maki’s teeth grinding is audible. Kaede spins around, fingers drumming in a nervous, unsteady rhythm on her armrest.
“Even if we didn’t, we’re still seven teenagers driving in a stolen RV with no adults and no license.”
Kokichi, having been silent for a long minute, opens the window closest to him and sticks his head out. “Hope we’re not thinking of driving through, 'cause they have guns. Uh oh.”
“Guns?!” Kaito parrots, face paling as he turns to look at Kokichi. When he receives only a shrug in response, he begins to pace anxiously, sneakers slapping loudly against the floor. “Maki, what’s our angle here?”
“Hey, Kiibaby, now would be a great time to be actually useful and show off your laser vision or machine gun arm or whatever other weird shit you can do.”
He’s met with silence. Frowning, Kokichi rises from the couch and marches over to where Kiibo sits, looking vaguely affronted at being ignored. It’s not until he’s poking incessantly at their cheek that Kiibo responds, standing up with wobbly legs and glancing frantically around the RV.
“E-Everyone!” The volume of their voice has Shuuichi wincing. They don’t seem to notice. “Though I would normally be rightfully offended at this idea, it seems this situation is…dire.”
“Don’t say that, Kiibo, or I’m actually gonna freak out!”
“Anyway!” Another glance out the window has their thoughts turning from anything coherent into garbled letters and numbers across their collar. “The soldiers are searching vehicles, yes? Seeing as I am very visibly, ah, a r-robot, I believe it may be best for me to hide, so as not to arouse any unnecessary suspicion.”
“That’s a good idea,” Kaede says quickly, sparing a glance over her shoulder to where the line is growing increasingly shorter outside the windshield. “Come with me, we’ll find a place.”
Kaede takes them by the wrist and drags them bodily deeper into the RV, leaving the rest of them looking to Maki for guidance. She pulls the RV forward another few feet, close enough now to the soldiers to make out clearly the sleek, glossy guns at their belts and the strange insignia marking each of their face masks.
“We are six eighteen-year-olds celebrating our last year of high school with a road trip,” Maki tells the four of them briskly, hands tight on the steering wheel. “They’re foreigners looking for a kidnapped European royal, not the cops. As long as we act natural and Kaede is able to hide Kiibo, things will be okay.”
“And if they do find Kiibo?” Kaito asks, eyes flickering back towards where the two of them are rustling around quietly in search of a hiding spot.
“Then Kaede and I will disarm them long enough for us to get away.”
“You got it, boss!” Kokichi responds, voice cheerful as he pulls out his phone and waves it around in the air. “And I’ll be in charge of putting the whole thing on TikTok! Getting harassed by a bunch of freaky Euro-cops will be great for the algorithm.”
She pins him with a harsh look over her shoulder, eyes narrowed towards his phone. “If I think you’re going to mess this up even a little bit, I will throw you to the soldiers and escape while they’re using you as a punching bag.”
The nervous tremor Shuuichi has been desperately trying to keep out of his legs rolls in with full force, so much so that even consciously tapping his feet won’t mask it. He wraps both arms around his stomach, taking a shaky inhale. “Please, don’t talk about leaving anybody behind.”
“Shuuichi’s right,” Gonta agrees with a nod of his head, looking to Kokichi with a small frown. “No matter what Kokichi says or does, we no can leave him behind.”
“Aw, Gonts! My heart is melting, seriously, I’m all gushy inside, yuck!”
“But Kokichi, please try to be nice. Shuuichi getting nervous.”
Kokichi raises an eyebrow in his direction. Shuuichi offers what he hopes is a blatantly sardonic thumbs up in response, one arm still firmly cradling his anxiety-induced stomachache. He just shrugs before turning back to Gonta, rolling his eyes with an exaggerated whine.
“I’m always nice, but whatever!” Kokichi pockets his phone, then pulls on the pink backpack he’s had since Shuuichi found him. “I’m a regular ol’ ball of sunshine, I am. Protag Kaede could take a few pages outta my book about being nice.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Kaede mumbles as she reenters the front of the RV, settling back down in her seat before turning to pin Kokichi with a look. “And will you stop calling me that? I don’t know what you mean.”
Kokichi just bats his eyes at her until she groans and turns away. “Kiibo’s hiding as best as they can. Let’s just hope they have better things to do than check underneath our bed, huh?”
“I’m going to throw up,” Shuuichi says miserably, resting his head between his knees. A big hand rubs comfortingly in circles on his back, and he doesn’t need to look up to know it’s Gonta. He wheezes as a way of saying thanks.
“We’re next.” Maki puts the RV in park. “Nobody say a single word. Act normal. Kaede, take the lead?”
“Mhm!” Kaito pulls Shuuichi to his feet, still looking a little pale himself. He offers Shuuichi a matching grin and thumbs up, though his smile shakes around the edges. He tries to match it best as he can as he follows after Kaede off the RV.
The climate outside is windy, and unusually warm for late afternoon. In all Shuuichi counts fourteen soldiers; two immediately step onto the RV as Kokichi makes his way out last, four stand before them, with the others scattered about at various stations around the blockade; their vehicles, the roadblocks themselves, and on either side of the surrounding woods.
Shuuichi finds his eyes continuously trailing back to the silver, shining guns each of the four guards before the group of them wear at their belts. Their entire uniform matches; bulky, clean armor in various hues of silver, blue, and black cover their entire bodies, the only unshielded part of them being their eyes, visible above the mask that covers from their chin to above their noses.
The four pairs of eyes that move over the six of them are cold, but not suspicious or hostile. The shortest guard, with piercing slate eyes that slide over each of them individually, speaks first.
“This is an authorized, lawful search by the Kingdom of Novoselic.” Their voice is soft, lilted, and heavily accented. “In addition to submitting to a vehicle search, please state your name, destination, and purpose of travel.”
“Akamatsu,” Kaede says breezily, keeping her eyes locked with the soldier’s as she speaks. “We are heading to a nearby campground for a vacation.”
One of the other soldiers taps a few times on a panel on their arm, eyes trained on Kaede as they type. The first soldier nods, eyes flickering up to the RV.
“License number?”
Shuuichi feels himself freeze up, and notices Kaito do the same at his side. Maki gives each of them sidelong icy glares, and Shuuichi coughs in an attempt to loosen himself up.
Kaede laughs, shrugging her shoulders in self-deprecation as she bares her hands. “Unfortunately, I forgot my ID, and by the time I noticed, we were several hours into our trip. My apologies!”
The soldier stares at her for several long moments, before turning to the other three and speaking quickly in a language Shuuichi can’t understand. Finally they step away from the group to stand in front of Gonta, glancing up at him boredly.
“How old are you all?”
Kaede’s smile wavers slightly as she waits for Gonta to answer. He fidgets with his fingers for a few moments, face reddening the longer the group of them stand in silence. “Gonta a-and his friends are eighteen years old.”
Taking a step back, the soldier’s eyes once again assess each of them. Out of the corner of his eye, Shuuichi sees Kokichi grasping his phone from within his pocket, and silently prays this will just end already.
The soldier glances at Shuuichi as they speak. “Lying is unnecessary. We are not police, and we do not care about students on a joy ride in their parent’s vehicle. Do not be so nervous.”
Each of them take a collective deep breath.
“As soon as my soldiers finish searching your vehicle, you will be free to leave. Please wait here until they are finished.”
The soldier turns away then, pulling out a cell phone to make a call. Some of the tension saps out of Shuuichi’s body, leaving him with merely a stomachache and sweaty palms, as opposed to the full blown combination panic-and-asthma attack he could feel himself building up to. Kaito tosses an arm around his shoulders, seeming significantly more at ease himself.
“Is it just me, or do these guys seem to you that they have a stick up their ass?”
Shuuichi chuckles despite himself, reddening when one of the soldiers raises an eyebrow at him. He elbows Kaito gently in the side. “Don’t push our luck.”
“‘Least I’m not actin’ like Kokichi,” Kaito bites disdainfully, jutting his head towards Kokichi — currently eyeing one of the soldier’s guns, fingers grasping around empty air as he asks rapid fire obnoxious questions to the unsuspecting soldier. Shuuichi brings a hand to his mouth to mask a laugh as he observes.
“I think I can hear Maki’s annoyance from here,” he whispers back, cringing as Kokichi flicks the soldier’s arm panel.
“Don’t talk about me,” she hisses curtly from Kaito’s other side, earning an embarrassing squeak from Shuuichi and a guffaw from Kaito.
Something clatters noisily to the ground behind Shuuichi, nearly jumping him out of his skin.
All six of them turn to look at the cracked plastic of the window that has fallen out of its matching panel in the bathroom. Like it was planned, as Shuuichi’s eyes instinctively move upward to where the window used to be, something like a cry fills the air around them, followed by another, much more solid sounding crash to the ground.
Kiibo has just jumped out of the broken window, and their head has fallen off.
“Kiibo?” Shuuichi asks incredulously as they flail around on the ground for their head, sound leaving their mouth in an electronic garble.
“The Princette!”
“…The what?”
Gonta and Maki immediately move to pull Kiibo to their feet, the latter quickly taking their head aggressively from their hands and slamming it with more force than strictly necessary back onto their neck, earning a loud cry and another string of electronic noise.
And then Shuuichi notices the guns.
There’s a sniper sight pointed right around where his heart would be if it hadn’t already fallen right out of his chest and into his shoes. As the soldiers yell to each other in their native language and more move in to surround the seven of them, more guns take aim and more sights find themselves plastered to every immediate game-over spot on their bodies.
All of them except Kiibo, who stands suspiciously sniper-sight free and shaking in their boots.
“What the hell, Kiibot!” Kokichi whispers in a hiss, kicking at Kiibo with unmasked annoyance. Half of the sniper-sights immediately align themselves over his forehead, effectively clamming him up.
“Another hostile or robophobic action against the Princette will cost you your life,” one soldier says viciously, accent jarringly harsh comparative to the soft lilt Shuuichi had heard from the others just minutes ago. “Hands in the air.”
“What the fuck is going on?!” Kaito demands, earning several targets on his own body. He yelps anxiously, raising his hands not a moment later. “Why are you freakin’ out over Kokichi bein’ an ass to Kiibo?”
“And why do you keep calling them…’Princette’?”
Shuuichi is pretty sure he knows the answer already, but for the sake of clarification, he asks anyway. He expects the shift of several guns back over to him, but nevertheless he feels his anxiety shoot up in intensity at the imminent threat.
Like clockwork, each of the soldier’s face masks morph into full helmets, shielding all but their eyes. Shuuichi’s hands shake where they sit in the air.
“Under Novoselic law, at this time authorized to exert in the bounds of the nation of Japan, the punishment for the kidnapping and endangerment of a Novoselic citizen, and furthermore, for the kidnapping and endangerment of a prince, princess, or princette is death.” From between Maki and Gonta, Kiibo visibly goes green. Shuuichi isn’t left with enough time to dwell on the logistics of that. “Queen Nevermind has authorized the use of deadly force in retrieving the Crown Princette. Release Princette Kiibo at once.”
Silence.
Then: “Kiibaby is a what?”
Six pairs of eyes shift to Kiibo, wearing various shades of confusion, panic, and annoyance.
Kokichi laughs, the sound vaguely unhinged, delirious. “What the fuck?!”
Maki’s hands twitch into fists in the air, the expression on her face making it very clear that it’s Kiibo’s neck she’d much rather have them wrapped around. This is not lost on the soldiers, who direct the vast majority of their guns towards her.
“Did you not think it may be important to mention that you are international royalty?” Kiibo visibly shrinks under her frosty glare.
“I—” All of the soldiers start at the sound of Kiibo’s voice. Kokichi’s cackling fractures into something akin to a sob. “Sonia has never referred to me as the heir to the Novoselic throne, or even specifically as her child. As I’m still unaware of my true parentage, the thought did not occur to me!”
“Princette,” the shortest soldier says in a much more submissive, deferential tone, bowing ever so slightly towards Kiibo. Kokichi has begun cursing rapid-fire at Shuuichi’s side. “I must request that you step away from the kidnappers at once.”
Kiibo glances frantically between the group of them and the soldiers, but does not move from where they stand. “Please put away your guns! They are not kidnappers, they are my friends!”
“Kiibo, I hate you so, so much.”
Kiibo grimaces. “Except Kokichi. He is not my friend.”
“Not helping, Kiibo,” Kaede tells them, voice tight.
“We will not ask again. Release Princette Kiibo at once.”
“Tin Can already told you,” Kokichi bites back irritably, cracking his knuckles in the air, “we didn’t kidnap them.”
“Will you shut the fuck up already, asshole?”
“Silence,” the soldier interrupts, voice harsh. With deliberate movements, they holster their gun. “I shall offer you a deal. Release the princette to us, and we shall not harm you.”
“No, you’ll just imprison us and then kill us once we’re brought back to your country, right?” Shuuichi gives a significant look to the rest of the group. “You already told us the punishment for the crime you’ve decided we’ve committed is death.”
With a shrug, the soldier retrieves their gun, aiming the sight between Shuuichi’s eyes. “Have it your way.”
“Wait!” Kiibo steps forward, arms thrown out defensively in front of as many of them as they can — they only succeed in shielding Maki and Gonta, but nevertheless immediately all of the guns slide far out of their direction.
“You are not listening to me! I am telling you that I am here voluntarily, of my own free will, so no further threats are necessary! Please, just allow us to leave in peace!”
“My apologies, Your Highness,” the short soldier begins, gun sliding once again upward, “but we have direct orders from Her Majesty to return you to her custody and to dispatch the kidnappers.”
“I have — ugh!” Kiibo throws their hands up in frustration, then pulls their left arm to their chest and begins fiddling anxiously with something there Shuuichi can’t immediately identify.
“I have no plans to allow you to harm my friends, nor to go with you. If you do not leave us be, I will be forced to take offensive action.”
Something whirs to life inside of their arm. A moment later they raise and aim at the collection of soldiers, intense blue light radiating from the hole where their hand used to be. Though their eyes narrow dangerously as they take aim, their whole frame shakes, fingers on their right hand trembling as they tap at a button on the bottom of their forearm in warning.
“Princette Kiibo,” a soft voice pleads as one of the soldiers lowers her gun, helmet retracting back into the normal face mask a moment later. Her eyes are blue, and they water as she takes a tentative step towards Kiibo, arms held out placatingly.
“I beg of you to think of Queen Nevermind — your mother, before you choose your next action.” She takes another step closer, and Kiibo is really shaking now, a steady stream of no no no no i don’t understand rolling across their collar in quick green text. “I was there when she received the call that you had gone missing. I have never seen Her Majesty weep, and yet she was inconsolable at the news of your kidnapping.”
Kiibo blinks several times, as if holding back tears. With each artificial movement of their eyes, more and more static fills the white space within them.
“She love you so, so deeply. You understand the position she is in, yes?” Tears stream freely down the soldier’s face. “To give life to her first child in so, so long, to finally have an offspring who will not leave her due to the fallacies of being half human, only for you to be ripped away from her arms! She is heartbroken. Please, come with us, let us take you to see your mother. All she wants is to see you again. To protect you with every ounce of her power.”
There’s oppressive, tense silence for a long, long stretch of time as Kiibo glances between the soldier, with her arms outstretched as if to embrace them, and the increasingly scared looks that Shuuichi and the others are casting in Kiibo’s direction.
Finally, they shake their head, eyes firmly on the six of them.
“Please ask her for my forgiveness for what I am about to do, and for making her wait a few days longer.”
With a renewed confidence they rearm their gun, pointed at the encroaching soldier. She backs away with narrowed eyes, drawing her own gun. “I will give you one final chance to let my friends and I leave in peace.”
The sniper-sights do not stray from the six of them. Kokichi groans in frustration, gesturing to Kiibo wildly.
“Hey, pigs, why don’t you aim at Kiibo, they’re the only one of us that’s armed!”
With a roll of their eyes and a wince, Kiibo fires, the kickback making them stumble. A flash of bright blue light streaks through the air before Shuuichi can even process it, so fast that he can’t shut his eyes in time to miss the impact of the shot against the group of soldiers.
He needn’t have bothered.
“Wh…What?” Kiibo asks incredulously, eyes focused intensely on the soldier who was pointedly not affected by Kiibo’s gun. “This gun has shot through metal before, I — I don’t understand—”
They fire again. Shuuichi watches as the force of Kiibo’s shot seems to merely bounce off the soldier’s armor like a rubber ball.
“Uhm, Kiibo?” Kaede questions, audibly nervous.
Kiibo looks moments away from collapsing. “It would seem my mother has equipped her army with robot-proof armor.”
“Hey, Kiibo!” The intensity of Kaito’s shout draws all of the gun’s aims to him. “You just called Queen Sonia your mom! You admit it now?”
Strangely, inexplicably, they go red. “Y-Yes.”
“As happy as I am for you, Kiibo,” Shuuichi says urgently, eyes on the many guns still drawn and aimed at them, “is this really the most pressing matter at the moment?”
Several things happen within the span of a few seconds as the final syllables leave Shuuichi’s mouth.
One: the soldiers issue a final warning, promising to begin shooting if Kiibo does not immediately return to their care.
Two: Kiibo pleads once again to let them pass freely, growing audibly more frustrated the more they are ignored.
Three: the rest of the group — minus Shuuichi, who is too concerned with keeping a careful watch on the guns aimed at himself — makes some very purposeful eye contact over the shouting match happening between the soldiers and Kiibo, apparently affirming among themselves something Shuuichi is not privy to.
And four: Maki pops out of sight, and all hell breaks loose.
In a matter of moments Shuuichi’s friends are armed and on the offensive. Maki, the only trace of her existence being a knife that floats poised dangerously in the air, moves methodically between soldiers, grabbing guns and tossing them aside faster than they can even notice what’s happening. Kaito has torn open a panel on the side of the RV, revealing a dusty toolbox and crowbar that he swings around with abandon, working at one soldier in particular and attempting to beat the helmet off of their head.
Gonta picks two soldiers up effortlessly, knocking their heads together between pained whimpers of, “Sorry, sorry, Gonta so sorry!” leaving them unable to do anything but flail helplessly in the air.
Kaede has run a fair distance away, far enough that Shuuichi cannot hear whatever she’s meant to be saying — singing? — as she spins the paralyzed soldiers who made chase after her around in circles. Kiibo has joined her, apparently immune to the affects of her power as they take guns from the frozen hands of the soldiers and struggle to break them over their knee.
And Kokichi — Kokichi’s wielding a boxcutter, darting quickly beneath the legs, around the backs, over the heads of soldiers and dragging the sharp blade over whatever points of weakness he can find in their armor.
“Why is everybody armed and ready to fight except for me?!”
“So slow on the uptake, New Kid, jeez!” Kokichi wrenches a gun away from a downed soldier, eyeing it as if it’s a shiny new plaything and he’s a rich kid in a toy shop. He clicks the boxcutter shut and slides it back into his backpack, pausing his hand within it for several moments to pull out — Rantarou’s baseball bat?
“Why do you have that?” Shuuichi wheezes, taking momentary cover behind Kokichi as he pushes the gun into the pocket of his jacket — it makes Shuuichi ill just to watch — and grips the bat in both hands. The pink kitten on his backpack stares pitifully up at Shuuichi. “How did that even fit in there?”
The response he gets is vaguely menacing laughter as he swings the bat experimentally, very nearly taking Shuuichi’s head off as a stray jagged nail barely misses stabbing his eye out. Knowing better than to trust Kokichi not to accidentally kill him he takes a large step back, just in time for the soldier whose gun Kokichi stole to charge headlong towards the two of them.
“Hey, batter batter, swing!”
It’s a terrible hit, and Kokichi winces with the force of the recoil, but nevertheless the effect on the soldier is immediate; as they fly backwards from the impact of the hit, Shuuichi can immediately see patches of blood form within the pockets the nails ripped through the armor as if it was tissue paper.
Kokichi curses under his breath, eyes alight with wonder. “Holy shit, Shuuichi, this weapon is magical! Where did you get something like this?”
What?!
“It’s a baseball bat!” Shuuichi half-shrieks as Kokichi, looking on the verge of wondrous tears, pushes it into his hands.
“A magic one! This convo is toootally not over, you hear me?” With a wicked grin Kokichi darts off, pulling the gun from his pocket and running headlong into the fray, conveniently leaving Shuuichi to deal with three incoming soldiers.
“This is crazy,” Shuuichi whispers to himself, struggling to get a decent grip on the bat as his hands sweat faster than he can wipe them off. “This is crazy, magic is weird, the robot is a princette, and I am going to freak out.”
Shutting his eyes he swings wildly with the bat, and nearly throws his arm out of its socket, not to mention totally misses any of the three soldiers bearing down on him. Cringing at himself he takes a deep breath, adjusts his grip, and swings again.
It just barely clips one of the soldiers in the side, but that’s all it takes to make them go flying several yards backwards, slamming hard into one of their vehicles, shattering the windshield and most definitely getting glass into the wound Shuuichi’s just left.
Wound. Wound Shuuichi just left. That he can already see is bleeding through their armor.
Oh, gods.
Why the hell did Rantarou have this?
As much as his nervous brain would love to dwell for several anxiety-filled hours on that and similar questions, there is no time. There are still two soldiers with their sights set on Shuuichi, and all around him his friends are struggling within their own fights.
As he does his best to disarm the soldiers as painlessly as he can, he mentally takes stock of what his friends are dealing with.
Maki is visible now, having to resort to ducking around gunfire and and relying on her quickness as she pulls gun after gun from the hands of the soldiers bearing down on her. Kaito is with her, doing his best to beat the recovering soldiers away from the pile of guns Maki is amassing, but it’s no use; they’re grabbed and turned back on the others faster than Maki can disarm them again.
Kiibo seems on the verge of having a breakdown as shot after shot from their gun merely bounces off the soldier’s armor. Eventually they relent, and help Kaede lean paralyzed soldiers against the side of the road and out of the way.
Shuuichi swipes at a soldier’s legs with the bat, sending them sprawling, but he has no time to applaud his minor victory as the realities of the fight dawn on him.
Despite their progress, not much ground is being made — and if something drastic doesn’t tip the odds in their favor, fast, they’re going to lose, and Shuuichi fears for his friends safety at that outcome.
“Oh! Everyone, look!” Gonta’s sudden, booming yell breaks through the fighting, calling everyone’s attention momentarily to himself as he points at…nothing. An empty spot in the woods.
“Wh-What is it, Gonta?” Kaito asks weakly, struggling to wrestle the crowbar back from one of the soldiers.
“We are surrounded by woods.”
“And?” Kokichi shouts impatiently, banging the gun against his leg as it seems to run out of ammo. He resorts to hitting an unhelmeted soldier over the head with the end of it.
“Many types of bugs live in the woods!”
“Get on with it, Gonta!”
With a grimace, Gonta kicks aside a soldier who was attempting to pull him to the ground, and cups both large hands over his mouth.
“Bug friends! Gonta need your help to save friends! Please!”
Aside from the dizzying headache Gonta’s voice at that volume imbues Shuuichi with, nothing happens. Grimacing at the aftershocks of pain from the hit a soldier was able to land on him while he was distracted, he winds the bat back up, prepared to do his best to make sure his friends make it out of this okay.
It’s his responsibility. Everyone is here because of Shuuichi, because they believe (at least somewhat) in the fact that he didn’t steal Junko’s spear. In his determination to save Rantarou. In his refusal to give up when he’s being depended on by people he cares about.
Shuuichi will not allow himself to fail.
He swings the bat and hits an approaching soldier as hard as he can, despite the rush of guilt it sends through him.
As he moves to regain his grip some force from behind him seizes the bat, yanking backward in one fluid motion, causing him to stumble and nearly let go of it. He catches himself on one knee, wincing at the jolt of pain it sends through him, but does not let go.
The soldier persists, even as the nails, apparently affected by the magic Kokichi said possessed the bat, dig through their armored gloves like a hot knife through butter and bloodies their hands. Shuuichi tugs desperately on it, the feeling of the rough wood rubbing against his bare palms painful, but he cannot let go.
If he lets go, it means giving him and his friends one further disadvantage. If he lets go, it means giving the soldiers one more weapon to seriously hurt them with. If he lets go, it means losing one of the only things he has left of Rantarou.
“Give it back!”
Squeezing his eyes shut he forces himself to fall backward, silently willing the world to slow, slow, slow down! as he grasps onto the handle of the bat with everything he has. The inky, honeyed darkness ebbs his vision immediately, and with a sick feeling of satisfaction the nausea and the vertigo only lasts until he’s fallen onto his back, the bat fully in his hands and the soldier looking utterly bewildered.
As he stands, though, the darkness crawling across his vision does not leave, and it takes the screaming of the others to realize that it isn’t just him that’s seeing it.
Oh, gods above.
An amorphous, all-encompassing wave of black, buzzing matter rises from the woods like a tidal wave, rising high enough into the air to block out the almost-setting sun for a few moments before surging downwards towards the makeshift battlefield. Screams crescendo all around Shuuichi as the wall of — they’re bugs, oh my god, thousands, hundreds of thousands — bugs overtakes all of them, swarming everyone without a care to who is friend or who is foe.
There’s buzzing in his ears, in his eyes, in his mouth, so sickeningly loud that he can’t make out who it is that runs screaming onto the RV. Just barely between the waves of insects swirling in the air he can see Maki standing statue still within the fray, a hand braced over her eyes as her other is thrown out behind her, wrapped protectively around Kaede as she cringes against her back.
Something loud and clunky moves past — the electronic edge to the scream sets it off as being Kiibo as they, too, take shelter on the RV — which seems to give Kaede the idea that now is their chance to get out of here.
“Everyone get in!” she yells as loudly as she can over the dizzying buzz, grasping Maki around the arm and pulling her bodily behind her. Shuuichi looks around wildly for any stragglers, finding Kaito after a few moments braced against the RV, coughing and with both hands over his ears. Shuuichi pushes him towards the door, tosses the bat in after him, and holds it open just long enough for Gonta to hurry on before pulling it shut as quickly as he can.
From the safety of the bug-free RV, the chaos outside is all the more horrifying. Soldiers sit half engulfed by various bugs all around, waving guns and hands and helmets frantically in the air in an attempt to escape. Very, very cautiously, he spares a sidelong glance to Gonta.
That is his power?
“Kokichi better be on, because I am not opening the doors,” Maki says with conviction, voice aghast as she throws the RV into drive and floors the gas pedal.
“Present,” Kokichi replies from somewhere within the bathroom, accompanied by the flush of a toilet. When he stumbles out moments later, he collapses onto the floor without preamble, looking positively green.
Kaede stands from her seat with shaky legs, tapping each of them on the head as she passes through the RV. “Seven. We have everyone. Okay. Okay.”
She falls heavily onto one of the couches, letting her head rest against an equally-exhausted looking Kaito. Kaito pats her leg gently, leaning his own head against hers and letting his eyes fall shut.
As Maki speeds away from the roadblock much faster than is strictly legal, Shuuichi lets himself collapse on the other couch, looking to Gonta wearily as he settles into a cross-legged sit on the floor.
If Gonta is powerful enough to do that, then who on earth could his godly parent be?
Kokichi rises from the floor and falls onto couch next to Shuuichi, groaning. Kiibo emerges from the bathroom a few moments later, looking deeply ashamed as they settle into the booth, eyes downcast and hands folded tightly in their lap. Shuuichi looks down at Kokichi for a moment, noting how tired, how exhausted he looks. How exhausted all of them look.
For now, he supposes, it doesn’t matter who anyone’s parents are. They faced their first real challenge of this mission and survived, and right now, that’s all that’s worth thinking about.
Notes:
+ woo, kiibo-centric chapter in a shuuichi-protag fic? sure, why not!
+ speaking of! kiibo, being explicitly and strictly nonbinary in this fic, uses gender neutral terms! it's why i write them as using they/them pronouns, and also why the soldiers from the kingdom of novoselic call them "princette"! it's the best gender neutral alternative to prince/ss i could find, so i hope that makes sense!
+ apologies to anyone, though, if you were hoping kokichi would Stay Gone — as the main relationship tag would suggest, kokichi is here to stay! and boy does he habit of being obnoxious at the worst of times
+ regardless, i hope you enjoyed this chapter! i absolutely adore writing the banter between this group, as theyre all my favorite characters from v3, so expect to see a lot of that sort of thing all throughout!
+ to that end, i hope my particular style of writing action scenes comes across alright! it's for certain not my strong suit, but not to worry if it isnt your thing; there will be moments of downtime intermixed with the spicy action bits within this fic, including next chapter! expect some less intense stuff next time, pinky promise!
+ if you'd like to interact with me outside of these silly little authors notes, you can find me on tumblr @ gontagokuhara ! i love talking about my fic, or danganronpa in general, so feel free to stop by and say hey!
+ just oneee more thing: if you liked this chapter, please consider leaving a review! they are my lifeblood and literally make my day when i see them!
+ other than that, thanks for reading, and see you next time!
+ content warnings: one moment of unreality regarding a single hallucination, mentions of blood/wounds/injuries, non-graphic emetophobia, large swarms of bugs within the last few paragraphs
+ may 15, 2023 update: surely we've caught onto what im doing now, no?
Chapter 6: i don't think us having our socks on will make the bed-sharing thing less weird
Summary:
“Hey.” Kokichi’s fingers twirl a bit of fur from the bear as he speaks, eyes not quite meeting Shuuichi’s. “I know you’re totally clueless about who your godly parent is, but what about your human mom? What’s she like?”
“Dead.”
Kokichi glances up at Shuuichi, expression open and confused for only a beat before falling back into a schooled neutral, an eyebrow lifting curiously. Shuuichi cringes as he realizes what he said, bringing his hands to cover his face in mortification.
Notes:
+ hey there, happy thanksgiving! i'm thankful this chapter is done, because i'm actually super happy with it!
+ i'll keep it short to start; as always, enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The subsequent yelling match held between the seven of them immediately following the haphazard escape from the Novoselic army leaves Shuuichi with a resounding headache that lasts well into the drive they take late through the night.
In the uncomfortable atmosphere during and immediately following the argument, he learned several things. For one, Kiibo can’t cry — though from the expressions they could make and the heartbreakingly guilty tone their voice could take on when upset, they might as well have anyway, with how inconsolable they’d been for the first few hours of the drive.
For another, each of the other six people in the RV could be a formidable force when tensions were high. In addition to Kiibo’s pseudo-crying, Gonta had more than once fallen victim to upset or anxious tears, and even Kaede had to wipe hastily under her eyes at one point.
As Shuuichi would have expected, Maki and Kaito were at the head of the whole affair, lecturing Kiibo (and anyone who jumped to their defense) about how much unnecessary danger the miscommunication put them all in, how close they all were to getting injured, or captured, or worse, and how if they’re going to do this, there cannot be any more disasters like the Novoselic incident.
And while Shuuichi agreed…looking at any one of them for the hour following the heated exchange made him ill to his stomach.
What had been most surprising, though, was the lack of interjection into the whole affair by Kokichi, who had gone from being green from sickness at the swarm of bugs to unusually despondent and quiet, eyes on his phone as Kiibo was torn into by the others.
Shuuichi, admittedly, knew very little about Kokichi as a person, but just by witnessing his behavior the past few days, he knew that he got some sort of pleasure, some thrill out of pestering Kiibo. Sometimes it was simply light-hearted ribbing, sometimes it twisted into something a little crueler, but as Kiibo was scolded, he’d had nothing to say. His only indication that he knew some sort of altercation was even taking place was when Shuuichi caught him glancing at Kiibo for long stretches of time, face unreadable and eyes blank, but continuing to stare.
Why was Kokichi holding his tongue, when any taunts and criticisms he leveled Kiibo’s way would likely be allowed to stand?
Shuuichi could only watch his movements wordlessly, trying to understand.
But now, though, the tension has faded to fatigue in the long stretch of time it’s been since the sun set, and Shuuichi can feel the cloud of exhaustion heavy in the air. As a peace offering of sorts, Kaito had settled into the booth opposite Kiibo, but has long since fallen asleep; Gonta has been yawning into his hand at a steadily increasing pace over the last hour or so, and Shuuichi himself is just now hearing the beginnings of Kaede’s insistence that Maki pull the RV into the nearest rest station so she can sleep.
With Kaito’s light snoring and Kaede’s whispered directions towards the closest rest stop being the only auditory stimulus in the RV, it’s easy for Shuuichi to zone out — not for the first time — until the RV pulls to a stop and the two girls up front are standing and rubbing at their eyes.
“Today has been a long day,” Maki begins quietly, pointedly looking away from Kiibo, who seems to shrink in on themselves even further, “so we’re going to stay and sleep the whole night. No one leaves the RV.”
No one moves to object, so she just nods and brushes back towards the bedroom, leaving Kaede standing up front. She smiles, looking exhausted.
“Today was really, really hard, and stressful, and scary, but we got through it, and that’s what’s most important. Let’s just try and get some rest, so we’re ready to get going tomorrow. We also have a stop planned for tomorrow to get some supplies and some disguises for Kiibo and Gonta,” the two of them look up in surprise, but Kaede continues, “so let’s get to sleep as soon as we can, okay?”
She’s met with nods from everyone still awake, to which she nods herself before moving towards the booth and speaking too softly for Shuuichi to hear to Kiibo, who rises after a moment and follows her towards the bathroom.
At their departure, everyone moves to prepare for bed. Gonta rouses Kaito, and the two of them move to the respective couches they slept on earlier as Shuuichi and Kokichi vacate them. As the three of them take to changing into more comfortable sleepwear, Shuuichi rummages around in his bag for his toothbrush and a fresh pair of clothes, heading into the bathroom a few moments later when Kaede and Kiibo emerge, both a little misty eyed but smiling.
Kaede bids Shuuichi goodnight as he moves past her into the bathroom, which he returns before she retreats into the bedroom and he shuts the door. He goes through the motions a little mechanically, body physically fatigued but mind not quite in the bleary headspace that usually indicates he’s ready to sleep.
When he exits the bathroom a few minutes later, teeth brushed, binder folded up with the other clothes he’d worn during the day, and still feeling distinctly as though sleep is out of the question, he finds that the lights have been shut off and the blinds drawn, washing the area in darkness, save for the LEDs on Kiibo and the overhead fluorescent beaming bright yellow just above the wall bed.
As Shuuichi is stooping down next to his bag to put away the day’s clothes and retrieve the bear he feels a shadow fall over him, and when he glances up he finds Kokichi standing a foot or so away, body facing towards the wall bed and rubbing sleepily at his eyes.
He gives no indication that he’s paying attention to Shuuichi as he stands, drawing the bear to his chest and observing him curiously.
Kokichi pulls his phone from somewhere deep within the front pocket of his oversized hoodie, blinking for a few moments down at the screen before dropping it back into his pocket and yawning sleepily into his hand, the sleeves of the sweatshirt bunched up in a way much akin to sweater paws at his hands.
It’s so transparently an act in order to get Shuuichi to relinquish the wall bed again that he has to laugh. Kokichi looks tentatively at him, and when Shuuichi just shrugs and gestures towards the bed with his free hand, he bursts into a smile, fatigue evidently forgotten as he jumps around excitedly.
“Shuuichi, how gentlemanly! You’re giving poor Gonta a run for his money!” He picks his own bag up from the floor and sets it delicately on the bed, his phone following a moment later, much less carefully as it’s flung onto the threadbare sheets. Kokichi hops up himself after his belongings, feet swinging in the air as he lavishes Shuuichi with a faux-charmed smile. “Such chivalry! And they say romance is dead.”
With another soft laugh Shuuichi rolls his eyes, nodding to Kokichi before retrieving his bag from the floor and moving forward in search of a place to sleep for the night.
Option one: the booth he napped in earlier that day. Perhaps it’s the remnants of a minor injury from the fight with the soldiers beforehand, but the idea of trying to sleep through the night with the ache in his neck that he’s developed doesn’t seem all that pleasant, so that’s a no.
Option two: the floor. The assured stiffness he’d be in for in the morning aside, Shuuichi can tell even in the relative darkness of the RV that the floor is in desperate need of a good sweeping (a deep clean, more likely, but that’s a fantasy and Shuuichi knows it) and he has very little desire, frankly, to wake up to a clogged respiratory system thanks to the dust and whatever else down there that would surely aggravate his allergies. So, no, thank you.
Option three: the passenger’s seat that Kaede had commandeered for herself, up front. It’s padded, at least, but it will neither recline nor be large enough for him to comfortably lay sideways across, so it was sure to be a night of awkward angles.
Looking like a yes, then.
Shuuichi drops his bag unceremoniously onto the floor next to the chair, eyeing it warily for a moment before settling down. He nearly yells as his text tone goes off, the sound reverberating in the ambient silence of the RV. Quick to pull it out of his pocket and silence it, he finds his lock screen lit up with a slew of new messages from an unknown number.
new kid! shuuichi! hey ;)
where did you gooooooo shuumai it’s so dark!!! ;(
i hope you’re not going to cuddle with kiibaby! what if they blow you up with their lazer beam eyes while they’re having a bad dream???
just kidding robots can’t dream. ur safe!!!!!
hey cmere i have a surprise for you
shuuichiii babyyy hit me uppppp ;00000
do u think i can send a text with every single emoji in it
He does. It takes almost a full minute of scrolling to reach the end of it and see the final message Kokichi’s sent.
are u ignoring me, shuuichi???:((( u aren’t here yet
With more apprehension than anything else Shuuichi lifts himself out of the chair, placing his hands in his pockets as he tiptoes as quietly as he can past his sleeping friends towards the wall bed, still lit up by the overhead light.
As he comes to stand it front of it he makes eye contact with the bright glare of Kokichi’s phone’s flashlight, wincing away as he waits for Kokichi to, well, do whatever is is he plans to after succeeding in getting Shuuichi to come over.
Eyes on his phone, Kokichi pats the pathetic patch of space on the bed next to himself. It takes Shuuichi a bit longer than it feasibly should to realize it’s an invitation, and when he does, he can’t help but laugh a little.
“Uh, Kokichi, the bed is a little small,” he points out in a whisper, trying to figure out in his mind why anyone would even make a bed this cramped. “You’re way smaller than me, and you’re hardly fitting. Thanks for the offer, though.”
Attention still on his screen, Kokichi half-rolls until he’s pressed flush against the wall of the RV, making some — but not a lot of — additional free space on the bed. His tongue just barely peeking out his mouth in concentration, he doesn’t look up as he taps something else out on his phone.
When Kokichi finishes he spares a millisecond to glance at Shuuichi’s pocket before his eyes move back to his own phone. Warily, Shuuichi pulls his phone out, and reads the new message Kokichi has sent him.
we’ll fit if we cuddle ;?
By the way Kokichi’s grin widens as he watches Shuuichi read the message he knows that this whole interaction is a bit, but regardless he feels an embarrassing redness crawl up his face anyway. An excuse is halfway off his tongue when Kokichi sends him another text rife with a collection of sad-looking emojis, so resigning himself to a very uncomfortable night for a whole host of reasons, he moves back towards the chair in search of the bear.
He doesn’t need to look at his phone to know that Kokichi sends him a flood of messages in his absence. When he returns to the front of the bed it’s with the bear and a roll of his eyes, followed by a long stretch of embarrassing moments as he attempts to slot himself next to Kokichi on the pitifully small bed without letting the two of them touch too much. To his credit Kokichi at least attempts to stifle his laughter on the multiple occasions Shuuichi either bangs his head on the low ceiling or squeaks when they accidentally make contact, but he’s fairly certain Kokichi begins to record him at one point, so the gesture is sort of lost.
Eventually, though, Shuuichi manages to wiggle his way on and hastily shuts off the overhead light, face warm from the effort and embarrassment and awkwardness at the several points of contact his body makes with Kokichi’s on the tiny mattress.
Even with his arms wrapped around his chest as well as the bear his elbow bumps Kokichi’s chest; their knees knock together with every minute movement; and Shuuichi has to fight the urge to sneeze at the way some of Kokichi’s hair tickles his nose from where they both lay in relative closeness on the singular pillow.
It’s more than just vaguely uncomfortable, and he feels his stomach turning in agreement with his brain at the sentiment.
Because. Well. Kokichi is weird, and unpredictable, and a little mean, and a little too excitable for Shuuichi’s already fragile mental health, but the way he beams at Shuuichi when he’s settled and smiling back at Kokichi gives him that same glimmer of optimism he’s felt several times that perhaps Kokichi is just a little eccentric, not anything too formidable.
Kokichi clicks the light back on.
“Oh, thank gods you brushed your teeth before bed! If you hadn’t, I definitely would have barfed from having to smell stinky boy breath all night!”
Very, very eccentric, Shuuichi thinks to himself as he shrinks back in embarrassment despite the fact that it was, he thinks, a compliment? Kokichi’s smile is still there, if a bit more of a leer at this point, so he doesn’t think it’s an attempt to be mean.
He chooses to respond with: “So you’re talking to me again?”
“Of course!” Kokichi says emphatically, sounding aghast. “It would be so rude if I let my lovely Shuumai sleep in my bed and didn’t even talk to him!”
Shuuichi groans, pulling the bear up to hide his face. “Don’t phrase it like that…”
He feels a poke at his face through the plush, and when he lifts his gaze he finds Kokichi’s finger pushing insistently at its nose, eyes alight with intrigue. “Ooh, this is so cute, Shuuichi! Hey, if I start wearing pink and white, will you cuddle me instead?”
Shuuichi gapes like a fish while trying to find a way to respond to that, half considering rolling backwards out of the bed the to escape the way Kokichi’s eyes crawl up his neck to his face, more than likely following the blush that’s once again turning him red.
“Stop flirting with Shuuichi and go to sleep,” Maki says sharply from the bedroom, the sound of her voice and what it is she actually says making Shuuichi’s face flush all the more.
“Say’s the one in bed with her ultimate gal pal,” Kokichi hums lightly, though Shuuichi notes that his response isn’t nearly loud enough for Maki to actually hear.
That is, he thinks, probably to the benefit of both of their health.
Kokichi winks at Shuuichi, seeming content to leave that line of conversation there, despite not denying Maki’s accusation. Which.
He clears his throat, unable to look at Kokichi as he speaks. “Is, uhm, that what’s happening here?”
“Hmm?”
Shuuichi grimaces. “The, ah — the flirting.”
Kokichi laughs into his hand, propping his head up on his other one. “Me, flirt with you? How bold, Shuumai, how cute! But, no. I just want your Pokémon. Have you named it yet? Where’d you get it?”
Shuuichi shakes his head, kicking himself for being distracted again by Kokichi’s antics. “Didn’t you invite me here to sleep?”
“The way I see it,” Kokichi begins, making grabby hands at the bear, “we can just sleep on the drive, can’t we? It’s obvious you don’t really trust me or like me that much, so why not bond a little, ease some of the tension?”
Shuuichi stalls. “I don’t—”
Kokichi plucks the bear from his hands, observing it appraisingly and refusing to allow Shuuichi to continue that line of questioning. He tugs on its ears, squeezes its paws, flicks the short nub of a tail, almost as if he were inspecting it. His eyes don’t leave the bear, and Shuuichi’s eyes don’t leave Kokichi.
“Y’know, it is toooootally unsurprising that you’re the sort of loser to sleep with stuffed animals, but I wouldn’t expect it to be such a cheap little thing! Seriously, what dollar store did you steal this from?”
Shuuichi glances instead at the bear’s face as he speaks. “I got it from an arcade, actually. Rantarou won it, he’s really good at that kind of stuff, and he got it the night before he…well. The night before everything happened, I guess. So I can’t bring myself to part with it, as silly as it is.”
He hears Kokichi boo quietly, pulling the bear protectively to his chest and glancing at Shuuichi with a muted expression.
For someone who keeps complaining about how cheap the toy is, Kokichi doesn’t seem too eager to actually give it back to Shuuichi.
A pause, then: “You’re real upset about your friend, huh?”
Shuuichi looks at him, a little confused. “Well, yeah. I think anybody would be, right?”
“That’s not what I mean.” Kokichi rests his chin on the bear’s head, looking up at Shuuichi searchingly, much as he looked at the bear as he was inspecting it. He feels himself squirm.
“You’re weird, y’know that? A monster tries to kill you, you find out your bestie and his daddies and you are mixed up in all this god stuff. Get the bomb dropped that you’re half-god, and that your big-shot godly parent abandoned you. Then you find out the world is gonna end and all the gods are blaming you and fighting over ugly Junko’s spear — but all you’re concerned about is Rantarou.”
Shuuichi pauses, Kokichi’s words washing over him with no small amount of significance. Yes, actually, in the grand scheme of things happening in his life right now, maybe he should be more preoccupied with the fact that he’s half-god, and whoever his godly parent is abandoned him and hasn’t made himself known at all during Shuuichi’s life.
Or, a bit more pressing, the whole the world is ending and everyone thinks it’s your fault thing, wherein the lives of literally everyone are under threat from no less than four different gods. And if Shuuichi doesn’t somehow make things right and stop the gods from tearing each other and the world apart…poof, that’s it, curtain call, everyone dies.
It’s stupid, and more than a little bit selfish, but every time he even thinks about the state of things all Shuuichi can do is circle back to the fact that Rantarou is gone, that Rantarou was willing to die to protect Shuuichi, and that it’s now all on him to save his friend and make things right.
And, y’know, stop the world from ending.
That’s a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure.
“Uh oh! Looks like I freaked you out.” He must look as stricken as he feels, if Kokichi can pick up on it. He laughs to himself, waving his hand dismissively in Shuuichi’s direction. “Don’t linger too much on that sorta stuff, Shuumai. You can’t save your prettier brother-friend-whatever if you’re all locked up in your head freaking out.”
For emphasis, Kokichi raps his knuckles very gently against Shuuichi’s forehead. “So lighten up, ‘kay? Hey, y’know, for all that you talk about Rantarou, I don’t know anything about him! As much as I would haaaaate to listen to you angst about your dead bestie, I won’t be able to sleep if you’re crying next to me all night, so spill all the dirty details of your life to me! I’m all ears, and that’s the truth!”
“You want to know about Rantarou?” Shuuichi asks, a little blindsided by Kokichi’s request. Considering Kokichi has expressed interest in Rantarou before this, it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, but still…
When he’s given an enthusiastic nod in response, Shuuichi just shrugs and tries his best to think of a good place to start. There was so much that he knew about Rantarou, so much history between them that spans the majority of Shuuichi’s life; what should he mention? What shouldn’t he? How much does Kokichi really want to know?
“Ah, well—” Shuuichi stops short of finishing a single thought when Kokichi’s head lolls heavily against the pillow, fake snores loud as they spill out of his mouth. Shuuichi rolls his eyes, turning the overhead light off with a shake of his head.
He's not sure what he expected.
“Just kidding!” Kokichi says into the darkness, giggles spilling out of his mouth. “…That was a joke, Shuuichi. C’mon, tell me about him already!”
Kokichi doesn’t move to turn the light back on, so Shuuichi doesn’t bother either before launching back into his train of thought again.
“Well, uh,” Shuuichi begins, ever eloquent, blanking on how to start, “I hope you’re not expecting anything super grandeur or dramatic, because it, uh, wasn’t? We met on basically our first day of school — same class and table to sit at and everything.
“It’s hard to remember stuff from so long ago, but I remember Rantarou reached out first. I’m sure it doesn’t come as much of a shock that I wasn’t the, ah, most outgoing kid—” when Kokichi hums in agreement, Shuuichi finds himself stalling momentarily, smiling, “—but Rantarou was your usual rowdy six year old, and wanted to be my friend pretty much immediately.”
Shuuichi shifts minutely in the bed so he’s facing Kokichi more directly, a bit more comfortable with speaking while looking at him now that he’s gotten into the groove of telling his story. “We were sort of best friends from the get go. I don’t know what it was about me that made him fixate on me so much, ah, maybe now that I think about it, it might have something to do with his, uhm, power? But even then…”
Shuuichi trails off for a moment, a sudden surge of affection overtaking him.
“Rantarou was always very genuine with everything he said and did. Coming from parents like he did, very rich and in the public eye, even as a kid I think he sort of realized there would be people who would want to use that to their advantage? I think he appreciated the fact that I, ah, didn’t really have the knowledge to take advantage of his status and wealth, and I appreciated that he never tried to get me to be something I wasn’t.”
Shuuichi bites his lip. Kokichi blinks slowly, purple eyes bright in the darkness, waiting patiently for him to speak again. He rolls his shoulders. “But, uh, who his parents were never really mattered to me. All that I ever really cared about was that he was nice to me. Even when he didn’t have to be. Even when it maybe would have benefited him to go along with the crowd, or just, uh, stop being my friend.
“But he hasn’t. Didn’t. Uhm, stop being my friend, ever. And he was never a bad friend. He likes to tease me a lot, poke fun, but he was always respectful of my, ah, many boundaries. And even when he was stressed out, or if I was stressed out and spiraling, or I did something wrong or we had a bad day or — or anything, he was always kind to me. Always. And he always made time for me, even when he had a world of other things going on, you know? I guess I mean that literally.”
He pauses for a long moment, shutting his eyes as he ponders whether to touch on his next point at all. When Kokichi makes a noise encouraging him to continue he does, though he’s not quite able to meet his gaze.
“I, ah, school wasn’t — school wasn’t always very good to me. For a lot of reasons. And, uh, because of that, I had to — move, a lot? I moved schools a ton, and every single time, Rantarou made Byakuya and Makoto enroll him in whatever new school my mom signed me up for, so he was always in my life, which helped.”
“Moved schools a lot, hmm?” Kokichi asks, voice tinged with intrigue as he interjects for the first time. “Was Shuuichi a troublemaker? Did you get expelled?”
Shuuichi’s expecting the question, but nevertheless it makes his stomach turn uncomfortably as images of his last day of school make their presence known in his head. He laughs into his hand, attempting to hide his discomfort.
“I only got expelled once, actually, after the monster attack,” Shuuichi admits a little shamefully, tapping his fingers anxiously against the bedspread. “The other times, uhm. It was because of bullying? My mom always enrolled me in the higher end schools, and I guess it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t as wealthy, or as confident, or as worthy of respect,” or as cis, his mind tacks on as an afterthought, because while Shuuichi’s more than sure that that was a deciding factor in the treatment he got, that isn’t a conversation he is going to have with Kokichi while in bed with him, “in a lot of people’s eyes.”
The silence around them settles somewhat awkwardly for a moment, before Kokichi comments, looking surprisingly muted, “Y’know, that doesn’t surprise me.”
Shuuichi looks at Kokichi a bit sharper than he intends to, but when he sees that his expression is free of anything cruel or really of any sort of joking nature at all he relaxes. The context of his comment isn’t exactly comforting, but what he says isn’t unkind, isn’t a jab — more a soft observation, free of judgement.
Still, there’s a discomfort in talking about himself so frankly at length. He shrugs in response to Kokichi’s words, realizing that his reaction is too late to be casual when Kokichi silently raises an eyebrow. He averts his eyes, hoping that Kokichi is satisfied now so they can get to sleep.
After a few minute’s silence, Kokichi wordlessly reaches above their heads and clicks on the light, making them both wince against the glare, wherein he takes the opportunity to push the pillow more towards Shuuichi, nudging his own head marginally closer.
“Hey.” Kokichi’s fingers twirl a bit of fur from the bear as he speaks, eyes not quite meeting Shuuichi’s. “I know you’re totally clueless about who your godly parent is, but what about your human mom? What’s she like?”
“Dead.”
Kokichi glances up at Shuuichi, expression open and confused for only a beat before falling back into a schooled neutral, an eyebrow lifting curiously. Shuuichi cringes as he realizes what he said, bringing his hands to cover his face in mortification.
“Oh my god, that was the worst way I could have phrased that.”
“You’re telling me, jeez, Shuuichi,” Kokichi replies with a scoff, though there’s a smile in his voice. “How am I supposed to rebound a conversation after that?”
“Just — ugh, sorry,” Shuuichi apologizes quickly, staring up at the ceiling. “No one really asks about her, ah, no one likes touching the dead mom subject. So I don’t, hm, know how to talk about it delicately.”
“Hmm…” Kokichi rolls over to stare up at the ceiling as well, the bear pulled protectively to his chest. “Just what feels right, I guess? You’re barking up the wrong tree about how to talk parent stuff, y’know.”
He resists the urge to glance curiously at Kokichi before launching into another explanation. “Uh, well, like I said, I don’t really know where to start. I talk about her even less than I do Rantarou, and anyone that’s ever known my situation has been him and his family, so there’s been no reason to talk about it outside of therapy and stuff, so.
“It was just me and my mom all my life. She never really — there was never anyone else, no step dads or boyfriends or anything. It was always just the two of us in our apartment. And it worked for us, I think. She was — she was a really good mom. The best I could have ever had. She was supportive of everything about me, never belittled me or tried to change…who I am, and — yeah.
“She was really good friends with Byakuya and Makoto,” Shuuichi recalls fondly, letting a smile slip onto his face, “she was like me with Rantarou — didn’t care about their wealth or their status or anything like that, which is why I think they liked her so much, too. I don’t think I can remember anything bad about her. She was always supportive, and tried her best to make things good for us, good for me, and when she was alive things were just…good. At least when it came to me and her.
“But then, she, ah, she died. Car accident. Emergency workers and Makoto and Byakuya and therapists all said it was quick, that she didn’t feel anything, which I guess is good. But, uhm, because it was so quick, I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. One night I was having a sleepover at Rantarou’s house and the next I was being moved into one of the guest rooms and having adoption papers signed. Which maybe explains why I feel so blindsided and on edge all the time, huh?”
Curious as to how his story has landed on Kokichi, who has been remarkably quiet throughout his recollection, Shuuichi turns on his side to find Kokichi watching him already, his face a brick wall.
Kokichi’s expression is unreadable, and the lack of animation in his features gives him pause. Even though much of what Kokichi projected to others was untrue, or at the very least largely exaggerated, Shuuichi could generally read what he was at least trying to portray. But now, much as he had been faced with during the day when Kokichi had walled his expressions off, and now as they lay in the same cramped bed, Kokichi’s face is impassive, and he doesn’t meet Shuuichi’s eyes.
Discomfort floats in the scant space between them. Kokichi has taken to — perhaps subconsciously — squeezing at one of the bear’s paws, eyes fixed on a random spot on the blankets. Shuuichi, still not quite sleepy enough to fall asleep in a bed he’s sharing with an almost-stranger, especially not after such a heavy reveal of some of his past, taps Kokichi gently on the arm, an idea in mind.
“What about you?”
“What do you mean?” Kokichi replies, some of his bravado back as he smiles curiously at Shuuichi.
“If you want, you can tell me more about yourself. It’s only fair, right?”
“Fair…” Kokichi ponders it for a moment before shrugging and propping himself up on one of his arms so his head rests above Shuuichi’s, looking down at him with shining eyes. “I guess that makes sense! Buckle in, Shuuichi, this is gonna be the craziest story you’ve ever heard in your life!”
As Kokichi loudly clears his throat in preparation of…whatever’s to come, Shuuichi settles back to comfortably look at him, smiling a little at the fact that what comes out of Kokichi’s mouth in the next few minutes is more than surely going to just be a stream of lies.
Still, if Kokichi is anything, he’s a hell of a storyteller.
“So, Shuumai wants to know all about me, hm? Well, I could talk about the legions of thousands that I use to secretly puppeteer the world's elite, but then I’d have to kill you! Hmm…
“Ooh, here’s a story!” Kokichi aligns his pointer and middle fingers in an approximation of a frame, calling Shuuichi’s full attention. “Picture this: little old me, seventeen or so years younger and way less devilishly handsome, wrapped in a plastic bag and dumped on the doorstep of some rural shitbag orphanage. What a way to celebrate being born, huh?”
Though his tone is flippant and artfully detached, the contents of Kokichi’s words leave Shuuichi with a pit in his stomach as he describes his abandonment.
“Mammy or pappy or whoever dropped baby me off didn’t leave a note or anything like in those hokey Disney movies, so I couldn’t Annie my way into my own Daddy Warbucks, which is laaame. Had that childhood dream smushed pretty early, right around when I figured I wouldn’t be gettin’ my Hogwarts letter, so that tells you how sad orphan life was.
“Just kidding! The misses and misters at the orphanage had better things to do than let us read, so I didn’t do any of that! Couldn’t read myself 'til the ripe age of eight, which maybe explains why I have to cheat off of Kaede’s homework for online school. I digress!” Kokichi waves his hands in the air as if to clear the tangent away.
“Stuck around the orphanages — yes that’s plural, I was a problem child just like you, New Kid — 'til I hit everyone’s favorite time of their life puberty, when I became more of a brat than usual and the lovely folks who ran the child labor workshops couldn’t get me to behave anymore! So I went to all sortsa homes. Never stayed too long, y’know? I’ve got a sensitive heart, after all, and being used for tax breaks just made me cry day and night!
“By the time yours truly was, hmm, eleven? Whatever, the trauma makes it blurry around the edges, I was spending more time on the street than in the foster homes, which kinda defeats the purpose! None of them were very fun…but the bestest home, though, was the one where fetus baby me walked into my foster’s apartment one day and found his mutilated body! Talk about a terrible, no good, very bad day.” Kokichi’s smile twists, morphing into some bastardization of humor that Shuuichi can’t place exactly. Shuuichi’s own expression must shift, because when Kokichi’s eyes refocus on him he winks, the smile falling away into something more playful.
“Of course, me and my big MENSA brain weren’t gonna get blamed for whacking off the old bastard. Dunno what actually happened, but as soon as I saw that I dipped and never looked back.” Kokichi giggles softly into the space between the two of them. “Don’t look so horrified, Shuuichi. Trauma bonding is only fun if we’re both laughing.”
He hums quietly to himself before falling backwards onto the pillow, face aimed up towards the ceiling. “Kicked the old foster system to the curb after that. Clearly I was never gonna top that experience, so no use sticking around, y'know? Worry not, though! I’m good with my hands, and found I had a real knack for stealing the wallets off of dumb people! Got bored of that, though, decided I didn’t wanna just live off of half-empty Subway gift cards and pocket change anymore.
“I had aspirations, I had dreams like you wouldn’t believe! And that dream?” He pauses for a long moment, taking a deep breath. “Rule the world. Small beans for an eleven year old street rat, huh? Found a ragtag gang of like-minded orphans, and a year later I had ten thousand underlings that hung off my every word and obeyed each and every command! Like I said, small beans, but hey, I gotta start somewhere, right? Soon enough I was richer than god and had the criminal underbelly of the country in my grasp. Good ol’ God of Crime didn’t know what hit him, psh. Eat your heart out, Kuzuryuu, I was on the scene now.”
Kokichi suddenly flips over to stare at Shuuichi again, openly appraising him. After a moment he shrugs, resting his cheek on his palm. “Go figure, though, shit hits the fan and I’m arrested just short of making the jump from tween to full blown villainous teenage heartthrob. ‘Course, I’m a legend, and they wanna try me as an adult. Jokes on them, I got bailed outta jail by Nagito before they got the chance, hah!
“I know you’re endlessly enthralled by my autobiography here, Shuumai, but unfortunately we’re getting close to the end.” Instead propping himself up on his elbow, he uses his now free hand to mimic a mouth moving as he mimes the bear in tandem. “Nagito poofs himself into my cell and is all like, ‘hey ya little brat wanna go to summer camp?’ and 'cause I’m not stupid, I’m not about to crawl into the candy van of someone that looks like Nagito, I was like, ‘no way, you look homeless’!
“And so Nagito’s like,” as he gears up to move his hand along with his pitiful Komaeda impression Kokichi’s face twists, intentionally crossing his eyes and developing a tremor, “‘I’m, like, a god and stuff, and you’re a hybrid freak, you come with me and I’ll show you your sick god powers, ‘kay?’ and I was like, ‘this definitely sounds like something fresh off of Famous Last Words, but I’ll bite’ and then he bailed me out! Funny enough, the first place we went was the local city hall, so I could actually get a name.”
“What?” Shuuichi cuts in bluntly, knowing full well that that is certainly not the strangest part of this tale, but nonetheless the one that catches him the most off guard.
“Oh, did I forget to mention that?” Kokichi shrugs, wrapping both arms around the bear and falling onto his back again. “Whoops, guess it got caught up in all the other sordid details of my life. Yeah, y’know good ol’ mom or dad or whoever? Parent of the Year who dropped me off at an orphanage as a newborn? Didn’t give me a name before they did. Nagito asked me about it when he broke me out of that yucky jail, and when I told him, he let me pick one out! Got the papers done and everything!”
Kokichi beams over at him, seemingly unbothered by the horrific events recounted in his ‘life story’. Not even a crack in his amused demeanor.
“I get the feeling you’re not telling me the truth.”
Unsurprisingly, Kokichi’s good mood stays, though his grin drops into a pitiful pout. “Huh? No way! At least, like, two of those things actually happened. And that's the truth!”
Shuuichi groans, though it’s clear to the both of them that it’s lighthearted. Kokichi breaks into laughter, apparently overjoyed at the effect his waste of time of a story has on Shuuichi, and pulls the thin blanket up to his chin, smile warm. Shuuichi angles himself to face Kokichi a bit more head on, half anticipating the expectant look in his eye to lead to another addition to the conversation.
Kokichi just blinks owlishly, almost sleepily at him, the ears of the bear only just peeking out over the edge of the blanket. Shuuichi stares back, not necessarily uncomfortable in the silence that falls over them but also feeling as though it’s weirdly intimate — even considering their current position.
But, like clockwork, the moment is broken when Kokichi’s face splits into a wicked smirk as he presses his socked feet against Shuuichi’s legs, causing him to jump in surprise and nearly bang his head off of the ceiling, groaning over the sound of Kokichi’s laughter that erupts into the surrounding RV.
Shuuichi’s head falls back onto the pillow at the same moment that Kokichi angles himself even closer, now laying only a matter of centimeters away, the several points of contact their limbs previously made on the bed now a singular, elongated point, from their shoulders down to their feet. Kokichi shoves his head ever closer, and Shuuichi can feel the tickle of his — bubblegum scented? Does Kokichi use bubblegum toothpaste? — breath against his cheeks.
And suddenly, Shuuichi is uncomfortably warm.
Shuuichi attempts to shift away as anxiety over being so close physically to someone, especially a stranger, especially Kokichi, especially without being out or having his binder on, bubbles up in him so fast it takes him by surprise. It’s a losing battle, he realizes a little belatedly, as he finds himself balancing already on the edge of the bed.
“Shuuichi, no!” Kokichi whines dramatically, crocodile tears set in motion and a hand grasping towards the front of Shuuichi’s sweatshirt. “My life living on the streets has left me with a damaged immune system, and I’m so sickly that my body temperature is several degrees lower than a normal human’s! At night I can get so cold I can die. You wouldn’t let me die, would you? You don’t reeeeally hate me that much, riiight?”
Neither of them miss the harshness of Shuuichi’s grasp as he removes Kokichi’s hand from the fabric of his hoodie. He retreats immediately, though he can’t fight the frustration that tinges his voice as he speaks. “Kokichi, don’t, I’m getting uncomfortable. Let’s just sleep.”
Shuuichi nearly falls backwards as the bear is shoved forcefully against his chest, and immediately the press of Kokichi against him is gone; only a light, unavoidable pressure around their knees remain. Kokichi shuts his eyes, pressed as closely as he can against the metal of the wall, and though he looks uncomfortable, even embarrassed, Shuuichi knows on instinct that his pride is too high to address that fact.
Kokichi punches the overhead light out, hard, and the sudden darkness can mask neither the discomforted red that floods his cheeks, nor the soft curse he utters as he pulls his hand to his chest, and there’s an undeniably you fucked up coursing through the both of them as the silence turns from uncomfortably sour to downright suffocating.
“I’m sorry, Kokichi, I’m just — tired. I didn’t mean to be snappish. I can leave.” Shuuichi isn’t sure of what response he’s hoping for, but Kokichi flipping over to face the wall certainly isn’t it.
“What, and sleep on the floor?” Kokichi asks sardonically, voice acidic. Any lightness is gone; Kokichi is all hard edges and sharp words now, and even in the darkness Shuuichi knows that he’s genuinely hurt him, frustration in himself quickly rising.
There were better ways to handle that, damn it. He should've known that underneath Kokichi’s flighty demeanor there was an edge of truth, something genuine that could be wounded, and he just — he shouldn’t have been so short with him. They were both teasing, there was no way for Kokichi to know he was taking things too far. No way for Kokichi to know he was centimeters away from stumbling upon a truth about Shuuichi that he hasn’t even confided in Kaede yet.
He loathes to leave the night on such a bad note. In part because he has to sleep in, quite literally, the bed he’s made for himself, but also because he knows how it feels to go to bed feeling like you’ve ruined things. And he doesn’t want Kokichi to, not if he can help it.
Biting his lip, he hesitates for several long moments before he carefully draws the blanket over Kokichi, who seems to purposefully still his breathing as Shuuichi’s hands ghost across him. He withdraws only once Kokichi’s covered, and as an afterthought lays the bear between them, its face towards Kokichi. And finally, bracing himself against the discomfort of sleeping so close to another person, he angles himself just a touch nearer to Kokichi on the bed; a peace offering, of sorts. He flips onto his other side with as little disruption of the bed as he can, facing away from Kokichi to allow them both some privacy but staying just close enough to (he hopes) stand still as a peace offering.
The closeness between them is tangible; the shared body heat is comforting, if unfamiliar, and he feels the tendrils of sleep pulling him down fast, the exhaustion of the day heavy on him.
“Goodnight, Kokichi.”
He’s not expecting a response, but Kokichi’s socked foot gently tapping his heel serves well enough as one. His smile at the gesture is his last action before he drifts to sleep.
The next morning, when Shuuichi wakes, the bear in his arms, he is alone; and when he rises for the day, and greets his friends good morning, Kokichi does not meet his eye.
Notes:
+ i like to think i'm funny with my titles, but i can't take full credit for this one. shoutout to my sister for the socks joke
+ chapter six, in the bag! not a lot happened per se, but there was a lot to be learned, and to be honest i adore writing both shuuichi and kokichi, so i count this as a success in my book! i hope you all enjoyed it as well
+ next chapter i am *really* excited for, and it's when one of my thusfar unused tags will see its first appearance, so that's fun! no spoilers, but i'm excited to break new ground in terms of the fic
+ i think that's it for me! feel free to message me about the fic or danganronpa or anything over on tumblr @ gontagokuhara, and, if you're in the business of putting a smile on the face of a highkey stressed writer, i'd adore you to pieces if you took the time to tell me what you think of this chapter, or the fic so far, either in my inbox or right here in the comment section! it's my favorite thing to get notifs about comments on this fic, so ^^ thank you in advance!
+ thank you so much for reading, and see you next time!
+ content warnings: a dead parent is talked about at length, some minor dysphoria but it's limited to less than a paragraph
+ may 15, 2023 update: making things nice and shiny you know the vibes
Chapter 7: get in losers, we're going shopping
Summary:
“That’s not—” Maki hides a laugh with a cough from right next to Kaede. Traitor. Kaede sighs. “You look just fine, Gonta. Truly the best fashion sense among any of us. I’m saying, however, now that we’re fugitives running from no less than an angry monarch, four of the five most powerful gods in existence, and Nagito, it might be to our benefit that we all blend in and don’t look out of place…right?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kaede sees a large shopping mall somewhere down the road. Kokichi must see it at the same time she does, because he seems to perk up considerably, abruptly throwing himself into Kaito’s personal space. He doesn’t even seem particularly ruffled when he’s promptly shoved onto the floor with a grunt.
“Are we going on a shopping spree?” he asks, delighted. He eyes Kiibo rather predatorily. “Do we get to give each other makeovers?!”
Notes:
+ uh. hi! it's been a hot minute, huh?
+ sorry about that. here's a chapter to make up for my 3 month hiatus?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Not for the first time this morning, Kaede sneaks a glance over at Maki.
As per usual, her eyes remain focused on the road, not even a twitch in her neutral expression to hint that she knows Kaede is looking at her for what must be the hundredth time since they’d settled into their seats and hit the road.
The RV is quiet; somewhere behind her Shuuichi and Kiibo are playing a card game, Kaito is snoring softly on the couch, Gonta is reading, and Kokichi…Kokichi has been sulking all morning, for reasons no one could — though, Kaede suspected, it was just as likely that no one cared to — figure out. Despite the quiet, though, the calm silence of the morning is a welcome change from the high tension of last night, and Kaede finds herself relishing it.
Aside from the gentle thrum of the wheels on the highway and the ambient noises of her friends behind her, the loudest sound in the RV is the gentle instrumentals spilling from the radio. It’s soft enough that she doubts the others can hear it; even Maki, sitting the same distance away from it, can likely only hear traces of music, comparative to the way Kaede can hear each individual note as the sound serves as a reminder of the space between them.
Space that, Kaede muses with a sloppily-suppressed smile, did not exist between them last night.
She and Maki had sleepovers plenty of times in the past, but they were in cabins, one in a sleeping bag or on a chair or both of them sharing a small but still less intimate space, like the inside of a tent. Maybe it was a little odd, having never shared a bed with who she considers her best friend during one of these sleepovers, but.
But now that she has, she can’t push the thought from her mind.
Perhaps the bed sharing itself isn’t a big deal; Kaede has heard enough stories about the boys and their often rowdy group sleepovers to know that sharing a bed with someone else isn’t implicitly a huge deal.
But Kaede had woken up this morning with an arm wrapped around Maki, and that is the key difference.
It was nothing particularly scandalous; her grip had been loose, non-constricting, but there had been barely a breath of space between them, and when Kaede had opened her eyes that morning and felt the hand she had pressed tenderly against the small of Maki’s back, it had felt like the whole world was looking at the two of them.
But the world hadn’t caved in at their relatively chaste embrace. The earth didn’t burst into flames. Kaede woke, and panicked, and nearly fell out of the double bed, but as her heart rate slowed and her blush went down…she’d relaxed enough to slip into a few more minutes of sleep and…cuddling, with Maki.
Just the memory makes her heart race, and quickly she turns to glance back out the windshield, teeth digging into her lip to fight a smile.
And maybe, maybe — despite the circumstances that more or less forced their hand in the matter — the escalation to sharing a bed when sleeping over was the natural progression of things. She and Maki hadn’t started off being as close as they are; Maki was angry, and coping with her own demons, and distrustful of getting close to people for reasons Kaede knew better than to ask about. And Kaede was young, just barely coming to grips with her identity as demigod and neglected and girl, and grappling for the first time with people her own age who she could develop meaningful relationships with.
She and Maki had been acquaintances, then friends, then friends who hung out more often with each other than with others, then best friends, then best friends who had sleepovers where one was in their bed in the cabin and one slept on the floor, or in a chair, or otherwise not within the same relative space as the other.
Kaede likes to think Maki knows her well enough to understand that night terrors won’t scare Kaede away in the dark. And Kaede knows, from one particularly challenging night where she’d cried into Maki’s shoulder for hours after unintentionally coming out to her as trans, that Maki feels no discomfort at Kaede existing as the same sort of girl as Maki, in the same spaces, whether it be the bathrooms, or the lake, or the bedroom.
There’s no reason to be afraid, at least not in terms of who either she or Maki are.
Though, the guilt that has been weighing heavy in her gut since she’d first realized their position is certainly giving the notion of confidence she has in her friendship with Maki a run for its money.
It’s no secret to Kaede the types of feelings she has about Maki. Maki is a lot of things to Kaede; she is without a doubt her best friend, she is the person Kaede trusts the most on the planet, she is the person Kaede feels the safest with, and, aside from Nagito and Hajime, she is the most important person in Kaede’s world.
But she is also the person Kaede has been pining after for the better part of two years.
And this isn’t breaking news, or some revelation that Kaede’s having just from the previous night — by all accounts these feelings, and her acknowledgement of these feelings are more or less commonplace, and have been for some time. She’d like to think she’s one of the least emotionally constipated of her friends, and her general emotional perceptibility has her feelings for Maki in the back of her mind more often than not.
But being more or less in love with her best friend is embarrassing, damn it!
Kaede sits up straight, hands sweating. She’s gone down this rabbit hole plenty of times before; hopeful what ifs and increasingly mortifying daydreams about Maki and love floating around her head until the realities of the situation catch up with her and set her off like a live wire. The mere implication of KaedeandMaki is equal parts exhilarating and scary, which is why she chooses to keep that particular aspect of herself private.
And, really, with personalities such as Kaito, Kokichi, and Angie within her small social group, it’s a feat in and of itself she’s managed to keep her feelings for Maki a secret at all, let alone as long as she has.
The song on the radio changes to something more fast paced and bubblegum pop-y, and Kaede spares Maki another glance, still worrying her lip between her teeth.
Perhaps she hasn’t kept her feelings as closely guarded as she likes to think she has.
Because never, in all her years of knowing Maki, and being perhaps more intimately familiar with her daily routines than a regular friend might be, has Kaede known herself to wake up before Maki.
Maki has always been the sort of person to be up, showered, dressed, and eating breakfast before dawn has broken. It’s something of a joke among the group of them, a point of contention with Kaito especially, who argues between early-morning yawns that there’s no benefit to Maki’s dedication to waking up early other than showing off. Even on lazy days, once Maki had gotten over the compulsion to be up and training before the moon was even below the horizon, Kaede woke up the morning after their sleepovers to find Maki already packed up and gone.
But today, Kaede woke up before her, on the one morning of their lives where she had cuddled her best friend in their sleep.
It’s a possibility that Maki was awake. Probably actually very likely, from the silent treatment Maki has been giving her all morning. Kaede has hardly gotten a single sentence out of her in the hour or so they’ve been driving; it makes her chest ache, the idea that she’s pushed Maki away, made her uncomfortable. It keeps her from enjoying the memory of Maki in her arms.
And though she’s been frosty, and more withdrawn than Kaede has grown used to, she’s been spared the wrath her other friends face when Maki is in a bad mood. And that’s always been the case; for whatever reason, Maki has always treated Kaede with a sort of patience she doesn’t even think of offering anyone else.
Though Maki is certainly not affectionate or otherwise soft with Kaede; most definitely, Maki is still abrupt, and blunt, and often unkind, but there’s a certain subduedness when it comes to Kaede, she’s noticed. More sardonic and teasing, accompanied by wry, barely-there smiles that Kaede has come to treasure like gifts.
Even others that Maki considers friends — namely, Kaito and Tenko — she still confronts with a veil of hostility; and though they’re both thick-skinned enough to take it, Maki never seems to hold back, even though they’re of the small majority of people whose company she enjoys.
Kaede isn’t sure if her special treatment is pleasing or worrying.
Behind her, Gonta is attempting to pull Kokichi out of his bad mood. Kokichi responds, voice chipper to the point of eye-rolling, that he is super, totally, one hundred percent fine, silly Gonta. The RV lapses back into quiet not long later.
And, well. At least he’s feeling fine enough to be himself.
Kaede looks once again at Maki, and she swears she sees her eyebrow raise. She suppresses a groan, running a hand through her hair and slumping irritatedly into her chair. Ugh, this silence is going to kill her.
She hasn’t felt this unsure around Maki in years, dammit! Kaede needs to be confident! Regardless of how different Maki may treat her, if she was really mad, she’d say something.
Just talk to her!
“Did you sleep well last night?” Kaede reaches forward to turn up the radio a few notches as she speaks, deciding rather firmly that she’d rather not have this conversation be overheard by the others, thank you very much. Maki shrugs minutely.
“As well as one can, I guess.”
Kaede waits for a elaboration, but because the universe is cruel, and for all that she loves Maki, she’s not exactly a chatterbox, one never comes. Kaede sighs, angling herself a touch closer to Maki. There’s no use in beating around the bush.
“I’m sorry if sleeping in the same bed last night was uncomfortable for you. I can find somewhere else to stay next time.”
Maki rolls her eyes, adjusting her shoulders and giving Kaede a brief look. “Don’t be stupid. It’s not a big deal, don’t worry so much.”
“So you were awake?” There’s a small consolation in the fact that Kaede isn’t the only one to go red. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Maki lifts a hand from the steering wheel to rub in annoyance at her cheek, eyes firmly on the road. “There was no logical reason to. Waking you up would have embarrassed you, and made going back to sleep needlessly difficult. The possibility that you would let go or roll away was there, and it wasn’t bothersome, so I didn’t find it necessary to wake you up just to move.”
“Oh.” Kaede laughs, rubbing the back of her neck. “Thanks for trying to spare my feelings, then. But don’t worry about that, if you’re uncomfortable — I won’t mind at all.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Huh?” Maki’s mouth presses into a firm line, looking more annoyed than she has all morning. “What do you mean?”
“Gods. I wasn’t…uncomfortable. It was cold, and — ugh.” Maki shakes her head. “That aside, it wasn’t all in consideration of your feelings. It’s not that big of a deal.”
From how flustered Maki looks, Kaede’s not sure how true a statement that is, and she feels her heart swell. Maki’s not mad, or uncomfortable, or upset, and that’s all that matters.
“Hey,” she begins a moment later, eyes scanning out the window, “do you know where we are?”
Maki seems more than a little bit grateful for the subject change, her posture relaxing near immediately. “It’s hard to say because we aren’t using our location services on our phones. We’re still a few day’s travel away, though.”
“Is there anywhere to shop around here?” Maki gives her a brief, unimpressed look. Kaede laughs, shaking her head.
“No, not like that! I mean, like, we should probably get some food. And I think it’s a good idea to get some more…civilian-looking clothes for Kiibo and Gonta.”
Maki shrugs, flipping the blinker on and turning off into the nearest exit lane. There’s a few questions coming from the back of the RV, and Kaede turns to look at everyone else.
“We’re making a short pit stop.” As she speaks, Gonta politely puts his book in his lap, attention rapt. Kiibo, too, seems focused. Shuuichi stares a little longingly at his phone — when Kaede gets a chance, she should ask if he’s alright, help him cheer up some. Kaito seems to be playing a game on his phone, tongue sticking out slightly in concentration. Kokichi, like he has been all morning continues to sulk, and he gives Kaede an unimpressed look when she clears her throat.
“Kiibo, Gonta, please don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but—” Kiibo’s expression immediately turns indignant, “but you’re both a little ostentatious.”
“Kaede, I’m shocked at you! I would expect Kokichi to say something like that, not you! I’ll have you know that I was artfully designed—”
Kaede smiles through the pain. “I’m not making fun of you, Kiibo.”
“What’s wrong with Gonta?” Gonta pipes up nervously, patting his hands over his suit almost guiltily. “Kaede not like Gonta’s clothes?”
“That’s not—” Maki hides a laugh with a cough from right next to Kaede. Traitor. Kaede sighs. “You look just fine, Gonta. Truly the best fashion sense among any of us. I’m saying, however, now that we’re fugitives running from no less than an angry monarch, four of the five most powerful gods in existence, and Nagito, it might be to our benefit that we all blend in and don’t look out of place…right?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kaede sees a large shopping mall somewhere down the road. Kokichi must see it at the same time she does because he seems to perk up considerably, abruptly throwing himself into Kaito’s personal space. He doesn’t even seem particularly ruffled when he’s promptly shoved onto the floor with a grunt.
“Are we going on a shopping spree?” In an instant Kokichi has shifted from despondent to delighted. He eyes Kiibo rather predatorily. “Do we get to give each other makeovers?!”
“Most of our regular styles are street friendly.” Kaede looks very pointedly between Kokichi and Kaito. “Mostly. Certain tastes in fashion aside.”
“Hey!” Neither Kaito nor Kokichi are too pleased to be grouped in with the other.
“That said, I think the only ones of us in need of a temporary wardrobe change are Kiibo and Gonta.”
“This is ridiculous. My appearance is just fine as it is!” Kiibo argues, arms crossed. “And besides, I see no issue with Gonta, either.”
“Should Gonta have packed more than his suits?” he wonders, looking self conscious. Shuuichi eyes him oddly.
“Gonta, did you really only pack suits?”
He beams at Shuuichi. “Of course! Gonta want to be comfortable and respectable while on journey. It’s important for a gentleman to always look his best, and Gonta looks his best in suits!”
Shuuichi just smiles in response, though Kaede hears him mouth 'comfortable?' under his breath as Gonta turns away.
“Your fashion sense and pride in appearance is admirable, Gonta,” Kaede says fondly, ignoring the way Kokichi begins loudly gagging, “but I think it would help keep all of us safer and make our quest run smoother if you and Kiibo got some clothes that maybe…gather less attention, for now.”
“If it helps our mission and helps keep friends safe, then Gonta will wear whatever! Gonta will even wear clothes like Kaede and Maki if that helps!”
“Now wouldn’t that be a sight,” Kokichi mutters, looking far too into the idea for comfort.
“We’ll figure something out,” Kaede decides, turning her attention to Kiibo. “Look, I know you don’t want to, but—”
“I understand your complaints to a degree, but! I don’t believe there is any reason to assume that my appearance will cause us any further issues.”
“Kiibo, didn’t we all get our asses handed to us ‘cause your mom sent her army lookin’ for you?”
Kiibo splutters, shaking their head. “The Novoselic army fought with us because they had intimate knowledge of who I am and my relation to Sonia. They did not fight with us because of my…my fashion choices!”
“Kiiiiiibaby, why aren’t you jumping at this chance? Clothes shopping is a super human thing to do! You’ll finally get to feel like a real boy!”
Kiibo turns to look at Kokichi, grimacing. “Kokichi, I am not a boy. And please, for once, can you not make fun of me because I am a robot?”
“Ugh, well, you can feel like a real person, anyway.” Kokichi shrugs. “Anywho, I’ll help you pick some stuff out! You’ll be the baddest bot on the block.”
“Please never say those words again.”
“If there is one thing that is certainly not going to happen, it will be Kokichi, Kiibo, and Gonta running around a shopping mall by themselves,” Maki says firmly as she pulls into the large parking lot.
“Lame!”
“I agree. Not all of us need to be a part of this, and this can’t take too long. We just need to buy these two a few things to wear and be right back on the road.”
Kaito pockets his phone, looking around the group. “Wait, so who is going?”
As Maki parks the RV, Kaede stands, stretching her limbs. “I was thinking me, Kiibo, and Gonta go off and shop really quick. We also should think about getting some food we can keep on hand, so the rest of you could go grab some snacks and some stuff to eat? Or just stay here.”
“Not that I’m complainin’, but why should you be the one to go?”
Kaede shrugs, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. “No real reason, I guess. I’m cool under pressure? Oh, and I probably have the most money between us from working for Nagito.”
“So it’s settled! Kaede, Gonta, and Kiibot get makeovers, and Maki gets to babysit the rest of us!”
Maki grimaces at the thought. Kaede smiles at her, sympathetic to her oncoming struggle. As everyone readies themselves to leave, Kaede quickly makes her way back into the bedroom to grab her bag, stopping in her tracks on her way out when she sees Shuuichi’s hat sitting on the wall bed.
“Wait!” She snatches it up from the bed, pushing it down onto Kiibo’s head a moment later. They, understandably, object rather loudly, and when she’s met with an affronted look, she just shrugs apologetically.
“Sorry, Kiibo! But we don’t want you getting us caught while we’re shopping. Hey, does anyone have anything else they can wear while we’re out?”
In just a few minutes they’ve been forced into a pair of Maki’s leggings, one of Gonta’s less ostentatious suit jackets, a double of Kokichi’s scarf, and Shuuichi’s hat. As Kaede steps back to appraise them, their face goes a shade of red Kaede would be concerned to see on a human’s face. They stomp their feet indignantly, looking rather self-conscious as they wrap the jacket tightly around themself.
“I look — I look foolish!”
“Personally, I’d say ‘fucking stupid’.”
Kiibo ignores Kokichi entirely. “Allow me to change at once!”
“It’s too big of a risk to let you go out undisguised. I’m sorry, Kiibo.”
“That is perfectly fine with me! You are more than welcome to pick out whatever you like in my stead, Kaede. But it’s embarrassing to go out looking so…so mis-matched!”
Kaede resists the urge to roll her eyes. “I don’t know what size you wear. Guessing isn’t going to work.”
Kiibo stomps again, face going from red to purple to blue. “This whole idea is ridiculous! Will someone please come to my aid here?”
Silence. Kiibo groans, throwing their hands up.
“Gonta think Kiibo look very nice in his clothes!”
Kaede can see the moment Kiibo goes from upset to flustered, and it would be sort of cute if they didn’t stumble in shock and nearly drag poor Shuuichi to the floor.
“Can we hurry this up? We really don’t have time to be wasting.” Maki stands up herself, ignoring the rest of the group in favor of addressing Kaede. “Just go. We’ll worry about getting food and any other supplies we may need. Text me when you’re almost done, and I’ll have the RV started and ready to go.”
“Thanks, Harumaki! You're the best. See you in a bit.” Kaede has to pull Kiibo bodily towards the door. “The rest of you, please behave. We won’t take too long, promise.”
The temperature outside of the RV is hot and the air is sticky, and despite being the least modestly dressed of her little trio in a comfortable pair of shorts and a black tank top, Kaede seems the most affected by the ghastly summer heat out of the three of them. Gonta, though he never seems ruffled by drastic temperatures, appears content to walk casually towards the large mall as he takes in everything with wide, intrigued eyes. And though Kiibo still looks pretty miserable, even they can’t seem to help but marvel at what is likely one of their first glimpses of regular human society.
As she leads the way into the mall, Kaede realizes with no small sense of weirdness, that it’s been a long time since she’s been in any aspect of regular human society, and she feels equally as starstruck and cowed as Kiibo and Gonta as the magnitude of her surroundings set in.
Kaede was never exactly a common patron of malls in the years before she went to camp, but. The sheer size of the building and the crowds moving throughout it feel utterly foreign, the controlled chaos of the noise level jarring, and the moving of droves of people throughout the place, totally unaware of the great peril they’re all in…Kaede isn’t sure she knows how to describe that feeling.
It’s been something like five years since she arrived at camp, and her closest contact with the rest of the world were the bi-weekly trips to Seiyu for groceries and general camp supplies with Nagito. But this…it’s weird, even having come from living it for the first part of her life. She can’t imagine how strange it must be for Kiibo and Gonta.
What the hell, neither of them have probably ever heard of a shopping mall, let alone been inside of one.
Kiibo looks somewhat more okay with their current outfit as they wrap the suit jacket tightly around themself, visibly overwhelmed. “Is it always so crowded in these sorts of places?”
“I think so,” Kaede replies, gently tugging them both farther into the building in search of a cheap department store.
“It so big! Gonta never been anywhere so large before,” Gonta observes softly, eyes the size of saucers as his head whips back and forth between the brightly colored stores on either side of them.
They walk for a good few minutes, Kaede keeping a keen eye out for anything that may serve their needs as Kiibo and Gonta maintain an equal parts adorable and humorous running commentary on what they observe. They pass several candy shops, multiple brand-name fashion outlets, restaurants, bakeries, sports shops and specialty stores, but nothing that seems promising in terms of what they need.
“K—Kaede!” There’s a sharp tug on her arm, and when she turns she sees Kiibo, face vaguely green and expression panicked. “Where did Gonta go?”
She spins in place for a few moments, expecting him to be right there; he’s six and a half feet tall, for crying out loud, how lost can he possibly get? As her panic silently grows, Kiibo’s grows much more loudly, to the point where Kaede has to clap a hand over their mouth to keep them from screaming Gonta’s name again and drawing curious eyes.
The two of them only have to take a few steps back in the direction they came from for Kaede to spot him several storefronts down, face pressed uncomfortably against the glass of a particular shop. As she hurriedly jogs to retrieve him she notices that it’s a pet shop he’s stationed in front of, and — oh, no.
He’s got his eyes locked on a large row of kennels, most of which contain a dog that looks far too big to be shut up inside of it. Kaede feels her own chest stutter in heartbreak, but it’s nothing compared to Gonta, who has tears streaming freely down his face as he sniffs loudly.
“Why would anyone keep animals locked in cages like this? Dogs should run in the wild! Cats should have fields to play in! Rabbits should have more room! Why?!”
“Oh, Gonts…” Kaede takes his hands gently, offers him a stray napkin from her pocket to dry his eyes. “It’s not very fair, is it? You’re right, the animals deserve better than this. But hey, there are people we can call about this, right? Once we finish our quest and get back to camp, we’ll call an animal rights group to make sure this place is being good to the animals, ‘kay?”
Gonta hesitates to answer, eyes still forlornly on the animals within the store. With a shaky sigh and a squeeze of Kaede’s hands he nods. “O-Okay.”
By some stroke of luck Kaede catches sight of a large department store not too far away, and it’s with a sense of relief that she shoves a still-protesting Kiibo into one of the many dressing rooms with a promise to bring back some clothes for them to try on. As Kaede tries to ascertain where she may find anything suitable for Kiibo, she points Gonta towards the men’s plus sections, instructing him to pick whatever casual clothing he likes.
All together, they probably spend around a half hour in the store. After tossing about a fourth of the store’s total contents into Kiibo’s dressing room, they’d come out with a good few selections of hooded sweatshirts, stretchy leggings, sweaters, and even a pair of jeans. Even Gonta leaves happily with a large shopping bag filled with much more acceptable street clothing — even if half of the shorts he picked out were swim trunks — and as Kaede is slapping down a pack of fashionable face masks and handing over a decent chunk of her cash, she’s satisfied.
Though Kaede corrals Kiibo into a bathroom in order to change (forcing one of the masks into their bag, despite their protests) she doesn’t force Gonta to do the same; the rules and etiquette surrounding the dreaded public bathroom are definitely more foreign to him than they are to Kiibo, and for all that she loves Gonta, she won’t be going in after him to help him out.
As the two of them wait for Kiibo to finish changing Kaede spots and points out a cute looking patisserie across the way, and as she’s counting out her money to see just how much she can indulge on overly-expensive pastries Kiibo emerges, dressed in an autumn orange sweater, a new pair of black leggings, a face mask, and Gonta’s suit jacket, looking none too happy about it. Kaede smiles at the way they pull the jacket protectively around themself but for the time being deigns not to comment, instead leading the way over to the bakery.
“I’ll save us a table. Buy me a panda bread?” Kiibo pouts the whole way over to the mesh table they reserve, giving Kaede significant looks until she instructs the bakery employee to add one of the custard-filled panda treats to her order. As she’s walking the powder pink box back to the table Gonta excuses himself briefly to wash his hands, and as she’s sitting down Kiibo looks at least marginally less affronted than they have all day.
While Kaede snacks on a cupcake and Kiibo admires the bread in silence, Kaede decides she can no longer hold her tongue, and levels a fond smile in their direction.
“Is there a reason you’re still wearing Gonta's jacket, Kiibo?”
“I — I didn’t want to carry it,” they decide eventually, fidgeting with the mask to cover their unsubtly-coloring cheeks.
Kaede inclines her head towards the several shopping bags at their feet. “You could put it in one of the bags?”
“It would get wrinkled!”
Kaede laughs. “I don’t mean to tease you, Kiibo. But — it’s okay to say you like wearing Gonta’s clothes. I certainly don’t think he’d mind.”
Kiibo makes a garbled sound, putting their head in their hands. Kaede giggles again, patting their shoulder comfortingly. “Your crush on him is cute! You don’t need to be embarrassed.”
In response Kiibo shakes their head, picking up the panda bread gingerly and placing it back in the box looking rather forlorn.
“I would prefer to change the subject.” They cough awkwardly, and Kaede doesn’t torture them further by pointing out that robots don’t cough. “How — how did you sleep last night?”
Feeling her own embarrassment creeping up on her, Kaede just shrugs, licking a bit of frosting off of her fingers. “I’m glad Maki claimed the bedroom for us girls. It was a little hard getting to sleep because of the excitement of yesterday, but I’m good! Were you able to rest alright?”
“I have very little need for comfortable dwellings, so even at the booth my charging period was very uneventful. I found myself dreaming quite a bit, though,” Kiibo replies, pulling at the sleeves of Gonta’s jacket.
“Oh?” Kaede can’t help but ask the question on her mind. “I didn’t — I wasn’t aware robots could dream.”
Kiibo pins her with a flat look. “Yes, I can. I don’t often, but it happens. Last night, I…well, I dreamed about Sonia. As you can imagine, yesterday was rather eye opening, and I…I’ve decided to call Sonia my mother, without hang-ups or qualifiers. And I dreamed about what life may be like after this mission is done and we all return to our normal lives.”
“That’s really great, Kiibo. I’m happy for you. And I’m sure Sonia will be, too.”
Under their mask Kiibo seems to smile, face tinged pink. “Thank you. After having some time to reflect, I couldn’t help but think that anyone who would go to such lengths to find me, even if those actions were misguided, must really love me, no? I…I look forward to building my relationship with her as my mother, in whatever ways I can.”
Her own chest feels warm at the sentiment as she lays a hand over Kiibo’s. “I wish the very best for you in that. And hey, maybe if she’s got motherly love to spare, she could adopt me and spread the good cheer around, huh?”
Kiibo laughs along with her. “Who knows what the future holds? Maybe instead you can find happiness with your own parentage, hmm?” Kiibo laughs again, and their conversation dwindles.
Kaede’s laughter dies. ‘Happiness with her own parentage’. Right.
In the three or four times Kaede has met Sayaka Maizono, the Goddess of Music, there has not been much happiness to be found.
From the very beginning, Kaede knew her mother was “special.” Her father described her and sang her praises in somewhat different terms — ethereal, magical, perfect — but none of that adoration ever seemed to transfer onto Kaede in her eleven or so years living with him.
He’d loved Sayaka from his first time laying eyes on her, he said. Was ruined for anyone else after the short time they spent together. Became utterly disengaged from the mortal world when Sayaka lost interest. He loved Sayaka; but the same, Kaede believes, could not be said for what he thought of her. Not after being essentially dumped on his doorstep nine months after their brief affair.
He felt like she was a burden; an expensive, complicated, needy reminder of the night he chose to live over and over again. Kaede felt for her father in some ways — he was neither the first nor last mortal to succumb to Sayaka’s charms — but as she grew older, and he receded further into the bottle, and chose to live life in a haze in order to hold onto the memory of a woman who cared very little for him, well. Kaede eventually had to start looking out for herself.
Buy — or, nearly as often, steal — food and supplies and clothes when he could not pry himself off of the couch. Navigate the strange, scary, overwhelming hurdle of school on her own. Come to terms with the many things that made her “special” in ways both similar and different to Sayaka, and manage the ways her life differed from her peers.
She didn’t really know what “special” meant. She knew she was “special” in some ways; she could beautifully utilize any instrument she could get her hands on, she could hear even the slightest flaws in a performance which she corrected with ease, and most odd: was whenever she tried her hand at singing, when she asked her audience what they thought, they could only look to her, terrified, as their limbs locked up and they lost any recollection of what happened while she was performing.
She recognized these things as "special," even if they made her unlike her peers. Her father talked at length about her mother’s voice, the “magic” it contained, the beauty in every sound she made. They were the scant things about her that earned to a degree some praise from her father.
But there were other things about her that were “special,” too. They were special, because if she didn’t affirm that they were, the other words would worm their way into her head, instead.
Abnormal, weird, freaky, strange, wrong, bad.
Other girls at school didn’t get strange looks when they announced they wanted to be called a nickname other than the one on the attendance sheet. Other girls didn’t get corralled into the boy’s sections in stores. Other girls didn’t get laughed at when they announced proudly, easily, that they were girls, not boys.
Other girls didn’t have to fight to be seen as girls.
But the most “special” thing about Kaede was her mom. Always.
Her mom, who teachers and parents and students rumored had walked out because of just how special Kaede and her dad were. Her mom, who could turn her dad into a person Kaede hated without even being there to make him angry, or sad, or heartbroken. Her mom who, when she visited, always made Kaede feel like her dad usually did.
Angry. Sad. Heartbroken.
On Sayaka’s last visit, Kaede was eleven. She was learning to sew, and had made herself a skirt in her very favorite color. When she’d heard her mother's voice from downstairs she could barely contain herself as she threw on the skirt and raced towards the source, eager to show her mother; because for all that she could make Kaede feel ugly inside, she was so much more beautiful than any other adult Kaede knew. Sayaka knew beauty, knew pretty things, knew girly things, and to maybe get her approval, have her mother brush her growing blonde hair behind her ear and praise the way she looked, maybe even call her the name she’d spent months picking out for herself — it would be worth it, if she could be special in a good way, too.
But Kaede was polite, and knew better than to interrupt her parents while they spoke again for the first time in several years. So she’d waited patiently tucked against a doorway, listening for their conversation to lull so she could make her grand appearance.
None ever came. Instead, Kaede learned that her twin sister was sitting half dead in a hospital room across the country after a traumatic accident, and was being considered for ‘camp’ if her recovery goes well.
Desire for validation forgotten, and indignant, heartbroken anger taking its place Kaede had burst into the room, demanded to know what she was talking about. A sister? A twin? Camp?
A sister, yes; a twin, named Miu.
Kaede’s hands had nearly torn her skirt as she clenched them in the fabric, furious tears falling down her face as she yelled at Sayaka to tell her why she kept this from Kaede for so long.
A sharp rebuke from her father. A condescending pat on the head by Sayaka; a ‘where did you get that skirt, oh my, it’s dreadful. Aren’t you a little old to be playing dress up in girls’ clothes?’ as she went back to ignoring Kaede.
Yes, Camp Hope’s Peak. For special children, yes. Perhaps, in a few years, it will be a good fit for…
Kaede hadn’t lasted even a week after Sayaka’s visit before she’d run away in search of it.
There’s a sharp tug at Kaede’s hand; when she turns to look at Kiibo, she realizes belatedly that they’ve been saying her name. “Yes?” she answers, blinking dazedly, growing more confused by the second as she takes in Kiibo’s expression as increasingly anxious.
“It has been nearly twenty minutes, and Gonta has not returned yet. Could he have gotten lost?”
Her own rumination forgotten entirely, Kaede looks around as she quickly packs up their belongings. “He can’t have gotten far. Go check the bathroom while I look around here, okay?”
Kiibo is off like a rocket before Kaede’s even finished her sentence, and with all of their bags and the box of pastries in hand she searches around for Gonta, keeping an ear out for the sound of his voice. By the time Kiibo returns they’re a nervous wreck and Kaede has no leads, so together they go off in search of him.
As they walk Kaede shoots a text to Maki, letting her know that they’ll be ready to go soon. She doesn’t realize Kiibo has stopped dead in their tracks until she’s pocketed her phone and, belatedly, hears screaming.
That can’t be good.
“Friends!”
From the direction they'd originally come, Gonta runs towards the two of them full speed. The shoes Kaede had bought for him are gone. Behind him is — oh, gods, he released all the animals in the pet store, didn’t he.
Beside her, Kiibo’s speakers seem to malfunction, if the strangled noise that emits from them is anything to go by.
Gonta, contrary to all of the chaos going on around him, seems euphoric. What must be several dozens dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, and even a few birds follow him closely, seeming more than happy to accompany him to the ends of the earth.
“Gonta go see the animals, hear them say they so sad in store! Not even room to run around — so Gonta save them! B-But policemen no like that very much!”
Sure enough, a decent swarm of mall officers race after Gonta, some of them stooping down to pick up various loose animals as they do. In no time Gonta is upon them, and before Kaede can react he’s grabbing the two of them by their hands as he passes and yanking them forward.
Over the sound of mall patrons screaming, mall cops ordering them to halt, an army of animals going crazy and Kiibo shrieking in panic, Kaede hears a fire alarm going off from somewhere in the general direction they’re running towards. She’s not given much time to dwell on the new development as she struggles to keep pace with Gonta, lungs working overtime as she runs along with him.
People jump out of the way of the three of them, and Kaede’s lucky for the clear path; she vaguely recognizes them as headed somewhere near where they entered the mall, and as she’s about to direct Gonta to take a sharp right, she sees a familiar pair of black pigtails rushing towards them from the left.
“Maki?!” she calls in surprise, her voice rising an octave when she sees the swarm of police following after her as well. She has Kokichi in a death grip by his arm, pulling him forward as Kaito and Shuuichi struggle to keep up.
Kaede pushes Gonta and Kiibo to the right, hoping Maki catches on. She does, and begins running after them with newfound vigor.
“What did you do?” Kaede yells as Maki and Kokichi catch up to the three of them, sparing a brief glance backwards only to find a concerning plume of smoke and another rush of police coming from that branch of the mall.
“Kokichi,” Maki begins viciously, giving a sharp tug on his arm, “got caught trying to steal from the Gucci store, and set a fire as a distraction!”
“He what?” Kiibo squeaks from Gonta’s other side. “What is wrong with you?!”
“What did you do?” Maki counters, checking over her shoulder to make sure Shuuichi and Kaito are still following. Shuuichi is coughing heavily into his elbow as Kaito drags him along, but they’re still somewhat close.
“Gonta saw a pet store, got sad, and let all of the animals loose!” Kaede braces a hand out to slow Maki, points at the door where they’d entered the mall. “Here! Let’s go!”
Kaede reaches the door first and holds it open as the others run past, silently counting all six of them as they move past her out into the parking lot. When the last of them — Shuuichi, face red, likely needing his inhaler — is out the door Kaede shuts it and plants herself in front of it, staring down the crowd coming down upon her.
At least twenty mall cops. A horde of various animals. Screaming mall shoppers. Kaede surveys the distance between herself and the security carefully, takes a deep breath, and clears her throat.
This is the only good thing that Sayaka ever did for me.
It’s always a sort of out-of-body experience, using her power. She knows, of course, that she’s singing; some English pop song she’d heard at one point or another on the radio, something mindless that spills out of her mouth without her really needing to think about it. But the words — she can’t hear them, in the same way she can hear herself speak, or anything similar. It’s like a dull ache in her head, a constant pulsing, just loud enough in her own ears that she can’t hear the way the song sounds coming out of her mouth.
It leaves her feeling fuzzy, like she’s not altogether here, in the moment. Reality becomes just a touch stranger, a degree harder to hang onto; but she keeps her eyes open, watches as the people, the police and the shoppers and everyone else in earshot, begin to lock up and freeze.
When she’s satisfied enough with the inability of anyone to follow after her to stop singing, her head is pounding, she’s stumbling just the slightest bit on her feet, and the world is just a touch too bright, a touch too oversaturated. She blinks forcefully, because there isn’t time for her to fully recover right now, and with one last glance downwards to make sure she’s still holding onto the bags she runs off in search of the RV.
She grounds herself by listening for the slap of her shoes on the concrete, the sound of her breathing as she runs, the rustling of the shopping bags as they bang against her legs. By the time she’s taking the steps up into the RV her senses are for the most part back to normal, which allows her to hear something she doesn’t often: Maki cursing up a storm.
“What’s—” Kaede sags into the passenger’s seat, letting the bags slip from her fingers. “Wh-What’s wrong?”
“The RV has been running this whole time.”
“What?!” Kaede squeaks, surging forward to glance at the control panel; sure enough, the gas tank is dipped heavily into the empty tick mark.
“You didn’t shut it off before we left?” Kaito demands from somewhere farther back, accompanied by what sounds like the shake of an inhaler.
“I did, I swear I did,” Maki says frantically, putting the RV into drive and taking them quickly out of the parking lot.
"Maaaybe Maki Roll is getting forgetful in her old age?” Maki’s hands grip tighter onto the steering wheel at Kokichi’s words, and Kaede feels her own annoyance mounting.
“You have no right to criticize after what you did,” Kaede rebukes sharply, pushing a bit of sweat-sticky hair off of her forehead. “How it happened doesn’t matter. We’re running on fumes right now, we need to get gas.”
“God damn it!” Maki snaps, turning aggressively onto the highway. “Everyone keep your eyes open. We have less than a few miles before we’re out, we need to make sure we see the nearest station. Shit.”
Notes:
+ hey there! whoops.
+ yeah, it's been a little while! apologies for that. life happened. this chapter sat like 0% finished for about 2 months, and then everything from kaede pining > forward came in the last like. two days. my excuse? uh. i hyperfixated on the clown movies? college sucks? writing from a pov i'm unfamiliar with is hard? i saw the mean girls musical? a bitch got his heart broken? take your pick!
+ regardless, i appreciate your patience in waiting for this update. this fic isn't abandoned! not by a longshot. i'm just a mess with managing update timing. but, hey! we got to have a pov that isn't shuuichi! that hasn't happened before! and Everyone Is Gay! we knew that but hey isn't development exciting?
+ that's all i've got for now, i think! thanks again for your patience, and for making it this far! if you'd like to hear from me between updates, shoot me a line over at gontagokuhara on tumblr! or connor.jpg on tiktok if you're nasty. other than that, smell ya later!
+ content warnings: implicit transphobia/transmisogyny, some not so great parenting, and i thiiink that's it!
+ may 15, 2023 update: you know the vibes. also, oops, getting to the point where updates weren't so fast. 3 months? 3 years, babe.
Chapter 8: probably not the weirdest thing to ever happen at a gas station
Summary:
Shuuichi nearly breaks the zipper clean off of the bag from how harshly he jumps when he feels something grab his leg. He stumbles and drops the duffle entirely, his residual discomfort and flash of panic falling away quickly into embarrassment as he takes in the something that had touched him: a little girl, her petal pink hair pulled in two short pigtails, looks up at him with watery eyes and a quiver in her lip, one hand fisted tight in the fabric of Shuuichi’s pants leg.
“Hi,” Shuuichi greets, keeping his voice soft so as not to frighten the girl more than she already is, “are you alright?”
Notes:
+ uhm. hey. long time no see, huh?
+ we broke the chapter hiatus record, but i think we all already knew that. here's a chapter, even if it's many, MANY months too late
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
From where he sits at the booth, upper body splayed out like a starfish on the cool plastic of the table in front of him, Shuuichi sends a silent thanks to Rantarou down in Hell for his stupid pre-cognitive power bullshit.
Because while he isn’t sure just how far into the near future he had been able to see as he’d packed his bag the night he died (was kidnapped? Shuuichi still struggles with what, exactly, to call the worst night of his life), he’d had the foresight enough to pack a frankly ridiculous number of t-shirts, tank tops, and shorts, for which Shuuichi is incredibly thankful as he stews in the lingering sweaty heat their mad dash out of the mall had created.
As the rest of them had collectively freaked out when Maki informed them so incredibly calmly that they are quite literally driving on fumes, Shuuichi had been feeling a bit too close to the dead zone of ‘half-dead from exhaustion’ to really pay much attention. At least until he had one, taken several puffs of his inhaler; two, changed clothes; and three, drank one of the bottles of water Gonta had oh-so-thoughtfully packed in his bag in an effort to cool down.
He’s currently on step three, removing his hat which Kiibo had returned and pressing the only-slightly-cold bottle to his forehead and cheeks to relish the way the barely-there condensation tickles his skin as he half-heartedly glances out the window in search of any sign of a gas station.
No such luck. Shuuichi tugs irritably on one of the straps of his binder, annoyed that the first t-shirt he had pulled from his duffle had been too thin to get away with going without it. He’d had to choose between taking significantly longer to come down from his breathing difficulty, or more than likely out himself. Fucking asthma.
At some point during his internal mini-rampage against asthma and binders and summer weather Kokichi slides into the seat opposite him, and it takes him longer to notice than it really should. When Shuuichi finally does notice, he almost shrinks back against the sunniness of Kokichi’s disposition as he looks over at him appraisingly, his pink-and-white kitty backpack clutched in his hands and seeming to stare at Shuuichi with the same intensity as its owner.
Not knowing what to say Shuuichi takes a long drink from his water, wiping some of the pooling condensation off of the table and awkwardly onto the floor as he waits for Kokichi to do something.
Because. Well. Kokichi has been artfully and purposefully avoiding him all day, ending up pretty much wherever Shuuichi isn’t right up until Maki had been assigned to babysit the both of them and Kaito in the mall. Every time Shuuichi so much as thought about approaching Kokichi to — to apologize for last night, or strike up a friendly conversation, or even just make things fractionally less awkward than they were, Kokichi would steamroll over him immediately in favor of bugging Kaito or Maki or literally anyone that wasn’t Shuuichi. And since they’d reboarded the RV and been headed towards the elusive gas station he’s been holed up on the wall bed, separated from the group entirely. All in the name of, at least as far as Shuuichi could tell, avoiding him.
But here he is, smiling winningly at Shuuichi, as if he hasn’t been expertly avoiding being in this very position all day.
Maybe it’s just the after-effects of all of the running he’s had to do in the past twenty minutes, but Shuuichi for the life of him cannot figure out the rationale behind anything that Kokichi does.
And it must show on his face, because Kokichi’s expression shifts from innocent to practically screaming victory. Not taking his eyes off of Shuuichi, he waves something that crinkles like cellophane in the air. “If Shuuichi doesn’t eat something, he’s going to die of low blood sugar!”
He fails quite miserably at catching whatever Kokichi throws at him, but the hand he flails around in an attempt to do so at least keeps it from hitting him in the face. A package of crackers smacks pathetically into his palm and falls back onto the table by his discarded inhaler, glinting up at him in a way that’s rather tempting. Deciding to put his confusion aside for the moment he doesn’t respond, just peels back the wrapper and savors the taste of peanut butter and plain cracker as he eats.
As he snacks, Kokichi leans over his bag to pry open the pink box that Kaede had brought with her from the mall. In the few seconds Kokichi takes to decide which one he wants Shuuichi examines the pastries, most of them half-squished, presumably from all of the running Kaede had done herself with them in hand. Kokichi takes a relatively unscathed sweet bread pastry shaped like a panda bear and sinks his teeth in, eyes still mostly trained on Shuuichi.
They eat in relative silence, Kokichi staring at Shuuichi while Shuuichi does his best not to be totally weirded out by all of the attention, the only background noise being the occasional chiming in of someone about a possible gas station. At some point between Shuuichi finishing the crackers and him briefly getting up to drop the wrapper in the trash can Kokichi takes out his phone, the pastry perched delicately between two fingers. When he sits back down Kokichi just smiles at him, one corner twitching slightly, and gently inclines the hand holding the bread towards Shuuichi.
It ends up pretty much directly in front of his face, and he stares at it a bit cross-eyed for a few moments trying to figure out how he’s meant to react to this. Kokichi’s leg bounces beneath the table, and Shuuichi finds himself having to actively fight the urge to mirror the action. Eventually he leans forward, moving to take a bite of the sweet-smelling treat in what he thinks is the right course of action, and he’s swiftly rewarded with Kokichi smushing the bread against his mouth, getting the filling — some sort of sweet cream or custard? — all over him.
Kokichi laughs as he takes more pictures of the resulting mess than is strictly necessary. Feeling as though he’s crossed some sort of hurdle Shuuichi finds himself smiling too, not letting himself feel particularly bothered if it means he and Kokichi have gotten past whatever tension had been created last night. As Shuuichi wipes his face with a few napkins he plucks from the box Kokichi seems to settle, apparently satisfied for now. Shuuichi reverses their previous dynamic and simply watches Kokichi as he looks out the window, his backpack clutched close to his chest, one hand fidgeting with a stray strap on the bag while the other worries incessantly at a particular section of his hair.
When Shuuichi once again gets up to discard the dirtied napkins, he notices Kokichi’s leg is still bouncing anxiously. After sitting again, Kokichi doesn’t so much as spare him a passing glance, his eyes trained resolutely out the window and his expression somewhere far away.
He looks nervous. Really, really nervous. Far too much so for how quickly his mood appears to have darkened. He’s almost convinced himself it’s another of Kokichi’s ploys due to his rapid adoption of some of the more usual tells of anxiety, but the way in which he avoids Shuuichi’s eyes seems a little too genuine, a little too uneasy (afraid?) to be furthering some end.
“Oh, thank gods,” comes Maki’s tight voice from the front, calling Shuuichi’s attention briefly away from Kokichi — who still does not seem to step out of his reverie. When Shuuichi glances up, he sees a sign for a gas station that’s no more than a turn or so away.
“We spent too long at the mall, so we need to fill up and get moving again as quickly as possible. Shuuichi, Gonta, Kaede, and I will grab anything we need from the store, because someone,” it doesn’t take much to guess the target of Maki’s ire; Kokichi just gnaws on his lip, “started setting things on fire before we could buy any food. Kaito, fill up the tank. Kiibo, make sure Kokichi doesn’t screw anything else up.”
Kokichi doesn’t rise to the bait Maki lays out, nor does he respond to the snide agreement Kiibo offers at the task they’ve been given. He just stands, pulling his bag onto one shoulder, and retreats further into the RV towards the wall bed, crawling on silently. The RV swings with the rapid turn Maki makes into a tiny gas station and convenience store lot, and Shuuichi, though confused, doesn’t understand enough to take up the issue with him.
As Maki is cutting the engine Shuuichi stands, drinking the last of his water and patting around his pockets to make sure he has his wallet with him. Kaito complains from up front about how much the gas is going to cost, and as Shuuichi is deciding whether or not to listen in on that mini argument Kokichi ends up in front of him, pushing his duffle bag into his hands.
“Oh, I don’t need this right now. Thanks, though.” Shuuichi attempts to twist and place it down on the booth table, but Kokichi doesn’t relent, tsk-ing at him as he picks it back up and shoves it towards him again.
“Think of the planet, Shuumai! You wouldn’t want to waste a plastic bag for the thing of trail mix and two bottles of water you’re going to buy, riiight?” By the tone of his voice as he says it, Shuuichi thinks that Kokichi’s identifying of the things he is, actually, planning on purchasing is supposed to be an insult. But he can’t be sure. “You can just put your lame snacks in your lame bag!”
“…Okay?” Apparently satisfied, Kokichi dashes off, his backpack banging against him as he skips off of the RV and after his babysitter for the time being. Pulling his hat instinctively onto his head Shuuichi makes his own way off the RV after adjusting his bag on his back, once again feeling for his wallet and his phone, and wanders behind Gonta into the small convenience store attached to the gas complex.
Considering how far they’d had to drive away from the mall to find it, it’s no surprise that the store itself is practically empty; aside from the heads of his friends Shuuichi can count off between the few aisles in the store, the only other people there are the man working behind the counter and a young, sandy-haired child weaving his way through the various displays. As Maki brushes past him, she warns quietly, “Don’t take too long,” and, well — he doesn’t need to be told twice.
Feeling only a little weird after Kokichi’s comment, he ends up picking out a few bags of trail mix, hoping they’ll at least be filling enough for their temporary time on the road. He swipes a couple of bottles of water as well as a can of diet soda from one of the fridges near the back of the store, and as he’s approaching the front counter he snatches up a few snack-sized bags of low-sodium potato chips and a few candy bars on a whim. He struggles to carry all of it with just two hands, and he knows it'll take out a decent chunk of his remaining cash, but he figures that they all need to eat, and he's certainly got enough to share, so he doesn’t allow himself to feel too bad about the amount he purchases.
After he’s paid he’s offered a plastic bag, and vaguely recalling Kokichi’s insistence on ‘saving the planet’ he shakes his head and begins packing his purchases into his duffle bag instead. He feels the clerk’s eyes on the back of his neck as he shoves his things into the large bag, but he’s made his bed and now he’s going to lie in it, the weirdness of the whole affair be damned.
It’s only as he’s pressing the last of his snacks into whatever amount of space is left available in the bag when he realizes it’s much more full then he remembers it being. The pajamas he’d worn the night before, which he last remembers having left sitting in the bathroom, are presently crumpled up and buried beneath other clothes.
He notices his toothbrush and his chargers — both of which were certainly not in the duffle as of this morning — a few moments later, and the surge of nausea that seizes him when he realizes someone has been rifling around his bag — where they more than certainly would have seen his binders sitting near the top, stupid — gives him pause.
Shuuichi nearly breaks the zipper clean off of the bag from how harshly he jumps when he feels something grab his leg. He stumbles and drops the duffle entirely, his residual discomfort and flash of panic falling away quickly into embarrassment as he takes in the something that had touched him: a little girl, her petal pink hair pulled in two short pigtails, looks up at him with watery eyes and a quiver in her lip, one hand fisted tight in the fabric of Shuuichi’s pants leg.
“Hi,” Shuuichi greets, keeping his voice soft so as not to frighten the girl more than she already is, “are you alright?”
“I’m…lost,” she manages after a few moments, her expression too close to shattering into full-blown tears for Shuuichi’s comfort. “I can’t find my family.”
“Alright, you’re alright,” Shuuichi says placatingly, eyes searching for the cashier who’d rung up his purchases and frowning when he notices he’s absent, “can you…tell me who you’re here with?”
“My brothers, a-and—” her voice breaks, grip on Shuuichi growing tighter, “I — I can’t find my daddy.”
“Okay, hey—” In a brief moment of abject dumbassery, Shuuichi pulls his phone from his pocket, pointing at it when the child stares at him strangely. “Do you know your dad’s phone number?”
He knows it’s stupid the moment he says it, but even as he visualizes Maki griping at him later for being a moron when there’s a near one hundred percent chance that all of their phone activity is being monitored by the gods, he can’t bring himself to not help the girl, especially when the only adult in sight has made himself scarce.
Red flag one shows itself in the way the little girl’s eyes light up as she takes in what Shuuichi has said, expression just a touch too…knowing? Pleased? Victorious? For her age, which Shuuichi wouldn’t put over probably eight or nine.
“Oh, yes please, mister!” Her eyes sparkle as she reaches her free hand up towards his phone, the other still tightly holding his shorts. All signs of her tears are gone, the way her voice threatened to crumble just moments before now shining with childlike glee. It’s just a little bit unnerving.
Red flag number two rears its head as Shuuichi, suddenly hesitant at the way the girl makes grasping motions towards his phone, glances once more around the store and watches with rising paranoia as similar scenes between himself and the little girl play out between Maki, Kaede, and Gonta in various parts of the store, each with a similarly aged child at their feet.
Red flag number three, Shuuichi will recall later, does not so much show itself as it does explode into the forefront of his mind.
Or, maybe, that’s just the windows blowing out along with the thunderous boom! of something detonating just outside of the convenience store.
The glass in the windows falters and cracks, some of it falling into pieces on the colorful tile of the store. The force of whatever’s happening outside seems to shake the walls of the entire building, throwing loose items like bags of chips, cigarettes, and magazines scattered all across the floor. Shuuichi has to bring his hands up to shield his face as a burst of hot air pushes through the holes in the glass, having to fully take a few steps back as something he can only think of as a fireball, red and hot and huge and like something out of an action movie, explodes outwards from where the gas pumps are — or, rather, were.
He’s barely registered the sound of roaring flame when Maki is rushing out of the store, Kaede on her heels and the two children that had been accosting them following close behind on shorter, less practiced legs. From across the store Gonta locks eyes with him, and without any further prompting the two of them are dashing out of the store as well, everything else forgotten in the wake of the Hellish sight before them.
“Kaito!” Maki is screaming, her hands cupped over her mouth as she swings her head around, eyes focused and alert. There is a small pile of snacks abandoned at her feet, and the child who had been speaking to her inside the store — a boy with a soft face and green hair not unlike Rantarou’s — picks up some of it with apparent fascination. “Kiibo! Kokichi!”
“Here!” Kaito’s voice is sort of delirious from where he lays several feet away, clothes somewhat scorched and coughing from the smoke. There are clear singe marks all over the front of him, and his shirt has burned away in a few places, but he doesn’t seem to be actively on fire, which is more than can be said for Kiibo.
The sleeve of the sweater they’re wearing has caught flame which has them crying out, trying to wrestle the garment off before throwing it to the pavement and stamping it out hurriedly. They, too, bear obvious signs of being too close to the explosion; there’s a fair amount of soot in their otherwise white hair, and their collar spews just a stream of garbled text as they scurry away from the fire.
“What happened?”
Kaito has to cough for a minute before he answers Maki’s question, swatting Gonta lightly away as he’s helped to his feet. “The fuckin’ RV blew up! I dunno how!”
“What do you mean, the RV blew u—”
It registers quite late, really, that the burning husk spewing flaming shrapnel and smoke is what remains of Komaeda’s RV. Shuuichi just stares at it dumbly, completely and utterly incapable of processing anything that’s happened in the past few minutes, because what the hell?
“Oh my god, Kokichi!” Shuuichi’s mouth and body spring into action before his brain quite catches up, and he rushes towards where Kokichi is splayed out on the ground, not close enough to the fire to be in danger but close enough that Shuuichi would really rather he move. He doesn’t respond to his name being called, nor does he seem to register it when Shuuichi drags him several feet away from the burning remains of the RV.
He looks the worst for wear by far. When Shuuichi manages to pull him to his feet he notices a shallow gash opened across his forehead that’s already dripped down and stained his ruined shirt with blood — probably from when he had been blown back, Shuuichi reasons. His face is a mess of soot and ash, the smell of burned hair is heavy in the air, and Shuuichi can plainly see how the fire has eaten away at his clothing; even though he’s swaying on his feet, Shuuichi’s surprised he’s standing at all, considering he was probably closest to the RV when it blew from the look of him.
Weirdly — concerningly — he smiles at Shuuichi, though his eyes are unfocused and bleary. “My backpack okay?”
The absurdity of the question pulls an uncomfortable laugh from Shuuichi, and he makes a point of leading Kokichi farther away from the RV before he does something stupid like fall into it. “Yes, your backpack is fine, but oh my god are you okay?”
“Shh, Shuumai, it’s all fine!” The hit to his head must have been bad, because Kokichi’s giggling, barely able to hold himself upright as he waves Shuuichi’s concerns away. “Everything’s fine, don’t worry!”
“How did this happen?!” Maki’s voice is sharp enough to momentarily pull his attention away from Kokichi, leaning heavily into his side. Kaito puts his hands up defensively, coughing another few times.
“Ooh, I know the answer to that one! Pick me!” Kokichi stumbles forward, and Shuuichi has to grip the back of his shirt to keep him from falling flat onto his face. Maki’s neck snaps to the side to look at him squarely, eyes alight with something that makes Shuuichi want to take several steps back.
“It was monsters! Yeah, th’ mooonsters blew up Nagito’s RV!”
From where they stand propped up by Gonta’s arm, Kiibo’s eyes begin to turn to static in their head. “I cannot believe we blew up Nagito’s RV!”
“There weren’t any damn monsters, you liar!” Kaito starts, his shout breaking off into a round of heaving, and he has to lean bodily against the store to keep his balance.
“Yeah there were! Kiibaby saw them!”
“I saw no such things, Kokichi—!”
“—Yes you did, yes you did, yes you did yes you did yes y—!”
“Can we please stop arguing about this?!” Kaede yells, holding her hands up in a silent request to shut up. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do!”
No one seems to be listening to Kaede’s pleas for order; there are five pairs of eyes trained squarely on Kokichi’s delirious, grinning expression, suspicion clear on all of the faces around them. Shuuichi, too, feels the sick feeling of distrust welling up in him as he turns his gaze downwards towards Kokichi.
The RV is no more; that much is clear. It’s been blown up, and those things don’t just happen. There are, obviously, no monsters to speak of despite Kokichi’s insistence, which then begs the question: what made the RV blow up?
The gas line, maybe, but those things don’t just explode! Shuuichi glances around the surrounding area as panicked silence falls over the group of them, and from just behind the flaming wreckage his eyes catch on something dark and out of place on the ground. It looks almost like scorch marks, but the blackened line is too straight to be natural; it looks almost like a trail.
A trail that leads to the small patch of blood where Kokichi had been laying.
Shuuichi looks down sharply at Kokichi — swaying at his side and chattering animatedly about monsters.
But — but Kokichi is the most injured. If he was the one who blew up the RV — why would he even do that in the first place? — why wouldn’t he get himself to a place where he wouldn’t be hurt? Not only does it not make sense for him to blow up the RV, but to do it in such a way as to nearly get himself blown up in the process? It doesn’t make sense.
Before Shuuichi can harriedly ruminate on any further conspiracy theories about Kokichi purposefully blowing himself up, Kokichi outstretches a finger, eyes shifting around. His line of sight ends at the child following Kaede: a chubby, stout boy with shaggy blue hair and sporting sloppily applied face paint hovers by her legs, seeming to have no reaction to the fire at all.
“Those are the monsters! Those kids!”
Even through the weirdness they all present, Shuuichi finds that hard to swallow. “Kokichi, they can’t be more than eight years old.”
“And they most certainly did not blow up the RV,” Maki adds, voice dangerous as she takes a half step towards Kokichi.
“Rise and shine, ursine!”
A new voice joins the fray, and Shuuichi has to spin around to find its source: a young boy with red hair and a long scarf stands facing them all, stance confident, arms crossed in defiance. He looks quite similar to the other several kids they seem to have collected within the past few minutes, and a very bad feeling settles in Shuuichi’s stomach as he begins to speak again.
“We’ve captured you!”
The little girl who had been standing near Shuuichi’s abandoned bag scowls at the red head. “T-Taro, wait, not yet!”
“Ya fuckin’ moron, yer blowin’ our cover!” accuses the blue haired one that Kokichi is still insistently pointing at.
The green haired one, still hovering close to Maki, rolls his eyes. “You are a moron.”
‘Taro’ falters, his confidence falling away as he glances over all of them. “Wait, were we not revealing ourselves yet?”
“No, dummy!” the sandy-haired one snaps, bareing his teeth from behind Gonta’s legs.
“Whoopsies!” Taro seems to blush, rubbing bashfully at the back of his neck. “Forget that, halfbloods!”
Shuuichi has only heard the term halfblood once, but he can immediately place its source: the diminutive Gundham had spit at him the night everything went wrong. It tells Shuuichi all he needs to know about the situation they’ve found themselves in. He sees the shock and fear pass over his friends’ faces, too, the way they tense up, their mouths go slack, their faces go pale.
Kokichi, though. Kokichi grins.
“I told you!”
No one else is feeling particularly celebratory as the weight of their situation settles around them. Kiibo, hands shaking, addresses the children. “Just what are you?”
“How rude!” Taro snaps, sniffing as he turns his nose up. “I can’t believe you don’t even know us! We’re the most fearsome monsters in the realm, how do you not know us?”
The pink haired girl sighs, and Shuuichi makes a point to shift himself and Kokichi away from her. “Daddy will be so upset that Taro ruined the surprise early…”
“Shut up, ‘Phanie! As long as we kill ‘em, Mama won’t be mad!”
The green haired child furrows his brow. “‘Mama’? I thought we were doing the father bit this time? Is it mother?”
“Dam, you fuckin’ asshole, quit givin’ too much exposition!”
“Don’t be mean, Kid!”
The kids are on their way to getting into a full-blown fight when Shuuichi interrupts them, unable to keep himself from asking. “Wait, so you are monsters?”
It’s the wrong thing to say, evidently, if what follows after his frankly stupid question is any indication. The five children’s eyes zero in on Shuuichi as he says it; their expressions darken into something sinister, their smiles twisted, and looking as though they each hold too many teeth. From beside him, Kokichi laughs weakly, muttering something about lying that Shuuichi doesn’t care enough to listen to.
The group of them, demigods and children, stand for several moments in mutual hesitation before the red haired one, Taro, shrugs and shares a meaningful look with the other children. “Looks like the jig is up, guys!”
Seemingly in sync, the five children move to form a semi-circle around the seven of them, staring them down with expressions that are downright predatory.
“I’m Monophanie—”
“—Monosuke—”
“—Monotaro—!”
“—I’m fuckin’ Monokid—!”
“…Monodam.”
“And we are…”
Everyone’s faces morph in horror as the children begin to change. Where they once barely stood past Shuuichi’s stomach, each child shoots up in height until they dwarf even Gonta in size. Their teeth, already too numerous for any human to possess, sharpen and grow into glistening, pointed fangs that hang out of their laughing mouths. The whites of their eyes swirl and change until there’s nothing there but inhuman, monstrous blackness, a beady red pupil taking shape in each eye as they narrow in contempt.
Where there once stood children now stand five large, grotesque, wicked monsters; a twisted bastardization of a bear gone horribly wrong.
“…the Monokubs!”
Each ‘Monokub’ takes a purposeful step forward, and Shuuichi only realizes then that their bulbous, intimidating forms have the seven of them totally boxed in.
Monokid growls, a harsh, animalistic sound that sends a chill straight down Shuuichi’s spine. “We’re gonna eat ya, bring our mom the spear, and kill ya!”
“In that order?” Kokichi mutters, because apparently, even faced with imminent death, he refuses to take anything seriously.
“Shut the fuck up, Kokichi!”
In his periphery, Shuuichi sees Kaede duck down to grab something. In just another moment she’s back upright and hurtling a glass bottle of soda at Monotaro. “Run!”
Much like during their run-in with the Novoselic army, things very quickly descend into chaos. The Monokubs are distracted just enough by Kaede’s unexpected projectile that they’re able to mostly duck out away from the wall they were trapped against, though very quickly it becomes apparent that they won’t be able to get away as easily as last time.
The monsters waste no time in chasing them around, large paws pounding the pavement as their claws, teeth, whatever they can flail or thrash or use to harm any one of them just barely miss seriously injuring them. Between the bears and the fire, there’s very little space to maneuver around, and more than once Shuuichi runs haphazardly into one of his friends, barely having a moment to recover and take off into a run again before one of the bears is upon them.
While last time everyone else had more or less come to an agreement to fight the army, this time they are sorely unprepared for any sort of combat, as most of their belongings have been destroyed in the explosion. They’re scrambling, and the desperation each of them feels is palpable; even Maki, with her invisibility, can only blink in and out of view long enough to pull one of them out of the way of downward moving claws before she’s sprinting off after someone else and repeating the same process. Kiibo has their gun armed and fires every chance they get, but the blue bursts seem to merely ricochet off of the bears and blast up pieces of concrete whenever they bounce off the ground. Gonta’s height and build is no longer of any advantage, and any attempt at fighting them directly that Shuuichi is able to catch between gasps for breath and frenzied dodging away from the shrieking bears seems to be having no effect at all.
When Shuuichi sees Kokichi stumble to a stop and begin fumbling with his backpack, he has half a mind to scream at him to move! but the word is never able to leave his mouth as he watches Kokichi flip open the top of the bag, reach inside with his arm twisted at an odd angle, and pull out the baseball bat.
Swinging it once as if to test out the weight of the bat he gets into an offensive stance, but one swipe from one of the monsters has him unbalanced, the bat dangling dangerously close to the open grip of the bear. Shuuichi runs, pulling the handle of the bat from Kokichi’s hands as he inserts himself in front of him and swings wildly at the attacking bear. It’s the yellow one — he’s not exactly in the headspace to remember their names with perfect clarity, at this point — and it screeches when Shuuichi is able to bash it quite forcefully on the nose, making it retreat a few feet away to nurse its now-bleeding face.
In the interim while he braces his hands on his knees and stoops to catch his breath, Shuuichi watches from the corner of his eye as Kaede is pursued by the blue bear, the terrified panic plain on her face as she dashes just out of the monster’s grasp. Maki is on her in moments, and they seem to reach some sort of agreement; Kaede runs headlong towards the still-burning RV, Maki blinking out of sight just as Kaede is closing in on the flaming rubble. Shuuichi feels rather than hears the yell of protest that rips its way out of his mouth, and he’s not alone; he can hear the voices of the others scream at her to stop, move, the fire is right there!
He can hardly stand to watch as she comes upon the flames, but miraculously at the very last moment an invisible force pulls her away from the pyre, and the blue bear, too big to slow its momentum in time, crashes straight into the fire, immediately burning up with a horrible, ghastly scream that leaves Shuuichi’s ears ringing.
The other bears watch in detached fascination. When their…sibling? dies, none of them seem particularly bothered.
Instead, the red one declares, “That will definitely not happen again! The Monokubs won’t go down that easily!”
Somehow, miraculously, they do. It takes some time — more time than Shuuichi thought he could run without stopping, especially now that his inhaler’s somewhere in the RV wreckage, if he’s being honest — but with a healthy mix of strategy, coordination, and pure dumb luck they’re able to maneuver each of the four remaining bears into the still-burning remains of the RV using Maki’s invisibility and the monsters’ size against them.
The red bear is the last to be sent to a fiery death, though it doesn’t come easily; Kokichi trips and falls as he scrambles out of the way of it, twisting his ankle very visibly from where Shuuichi stands keeping the bear from darting out of the small space they’ve miraculously cordoned off. Gonta just barely manages to grab him out of the way before the bear rears around and stomps where Kokichi had been lying, but it’s with that lapse in attention that Maki is able to knock it into the flame with one harsh swing from the baseball bat.
The bear dissolves into a pile of black ash and fur, the howl it lets out as it dies seeming to stick in the air as they all take a collective deep breath, having their first chance at a moment to breathe in what must have been nearly a half hour.
The air is still, save for their panting and the roar of the still-burning RV as it feeds off of the bears it had devoured. Shuuichi lets himself slump against the wall of the store, a relieved laugh bubbling up his throat and spilling into the smoky air around him. Sweat drips into his eyes, and he can barely breathe, but he’s so relieved he could cry.
When all is said and done, and he’s able to refocus his eyes enough to get a good look at his friends, it’s obvious just how hot, injured, and exhausted all of them are. Kokichi and Kaede, especially, look a little worse for wear. Kokichi has his head between his knees where he sits, looking concerningly ragged next to Gonta’s feet. Kaede has to prop herself up against the wall to remain upright, though she’s feeling well enough to offer a weak, “G-Good job, team.”
For the first time in a while, Shuuichi chances a glance inside of the store; the employee that had rung him up is long gone, probably having fled and called the police.
Just as the idea forms in his mind, the sound of sirens wailing in the distance hits his ears. Maki grimaces, cradling her shoulder as she tosses the bat Shuuichi’s way. “We need to get moving.”
Shuuichi, horrified at the thought, looks at her pleadingly. “Maki, we’re all hurt, we can’t.”
“There are cops on the way,” she says softly, not looking happy at having to break this news at all. “Cops that are going to blame us for this. Cops that are going to notice that Shuuichi and Kiibo are some of the most wanted missing persons on the planet, and put an end to our quest.”
“M-Maki’s right,” Kaede agrees, breathing labored as she attempts to steady herself without the help of the wall. “We need to go, and we — it needs to be fast.” Kiibo moves towards her, holding out an arm for her to steady herself on, which she takes readily.
Everyone looks to Shuuichi, and the realization makes him falter.
“Where do we go, Shuuichi?”
He starts, looking at Gonta with no small amount of panic. “Why are you asking m-me?!”
“It’s your quest,” Maki replies, grimacing as she adjusts her weight from one foot to the other.
“I — I don’t know where we are!”
Kaede smiles at Shuuichi. Ever patient, ever kind, and even with her obvious injuries and a layer of filth holding her back, she has enough confidence to give Shuuichi a grin. “Shuuichi, it’s up to you. Our physical map is gone. We can’t turn location services on; some of us don’t even have phones anymore. Wherever you want to go, we’ll follow, and figure out the rest from there.”
Shuuichi glances at the faces of his friends. Kaito gives him a tired but encouraging smile, Kaede offers a thumbs up, Maki watches him appraisingly, Gonta and Kiibo look to him for guidance, Kokichi just stares blankly as he’s piled onto Gonta’s back. His friends are counting on him, and he needs to figure this out, fast.
He scans the surrounding area, and his eyes catch on a subtle dirt path leading into the woods the convenience store is situated just in front of. He points, the motion painful in his overworked muscles.
“There. It sucks, but we can’t travel on the roads on foot or we’ll get caught. We’ll walk until we find a break, and go from there.”
Maki nods, then bends down to collect the discarded snacks at her feet. She holds her hand out wordlessly towards Kaede, and with some help from Kiibo she manages to pull her bag from her back and hand it over to her. Maki dumps the snacks into the bag and swings it onto her free shoulder, so both her own bag and Kaede’s sit more or less evenly on her back.
“Shuuichi, Kokichi, myself and Kaede are the only ones with bags. Stock up as much food, drinks, and anything else you can think of and put it in one of them. We’ll take turns carrying.”
Shuuichi, Maki, and Kaito rush back into the abandoned store and shove as much into their bags as they can fit while the others keep themselves propped up outside, keeping watch for the police cars they know are coming. When his bag physically can’t hold anything more, he nods, and together he and his friends run towards the path into the darkening woods as the lights from the police cars emerge over the horizon.
Notes:
+ i saw the previous 3-month break between chapters and then fell into a 6-month break right afterwards. whoops!
+ in my defense, the world more or less ended, didn't it? is that a valid excuse? probably not. oh well!
+ so, yes! this is the chapter i've struggled to put out for nearly half a year now. not exactly my best moment, but hey, i got there! i just feel bad about the wait.
+ ...the good news, though, is this little break was motivated primarily because this chapter was a pain to write. mostly because of the monokubs. mostly because of the action-y bits. but the next few chapters i'm VERY excited to get to writing, so hopefully (knock on wood) we won't be gunning for a 9-month hiatus, or something equally ridiculous.
+ that's all for now, i think! thanks for the patience, as well as all of the lovely comments and tumblr messages i've received in the interim. they all motivate me very, very much, and i love each and every one! thank you again<3
+ content warnings: animal/monster death (whatever you fancy calling the monokubs' dying), non-graphic description of injury, and i think that's it!
+ may 15, 2023 update: the end of the editing grind is in sight. i can taste it. i hope you appreciate my efforts, dear reader!
Chapter 9: we're lost, we're alone, we're just kids, this is impossible!
Summary:
At the risk of being dramatic, Shuuichi sort of feels like he’s about to drop dead. He’s not alone, either; the seven of them, who had to have been trudging through the woods for hours at this point, are all looking pretty beat down.
Between the disorientation from the fight with the monster Monokubs and the near pitch-blackness enveloping them since the sun set, who knows how long ago — it’s hard to put a finger on how long they’ve been walking. Certainly, long enough that any warmth from the daylight has been sapped away, forcing them all to tear apart their bags once again in search of sweaters, blankets, anything to stave off the cold that quickly sets in alongside the darkness.
Long enough that several of them — Shuuichi included, if he’s being fully honest — have at one point or another burst into frustrated tears over the cold, the ache of their injuries, the throbbing of their feet, or any number of other rightfully upsetting things.
Notes:
+ hi danganronpa nation! remember this fic? don't worry, i didn't either until about 2 days ago! (seriously).
+ i have absolutely no excuses. but, uh...three years late is better than never, huh?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
At the risk of being dramatic, Shuuichi sort of feels like he’s about to drop dead. He’s not alone, either; the seven of them, who had to have been trudging through the woods for hours at this point, are all looking pretty beat down.
Between the disorientation from the fight with the monster Monokubs and the near pitch-blackness enveloping them since the sun set, who knows how long ago, it’s hard to put a finger on the distance nor length of time they’ve been walking. Certainly, long enough that any warmth from the daylight has been sapped away, forcing them all to tear apart their bags once again in search of sweaters, blankets, anything to stave off the cold that quickly sets in alongside the darkness.
Long enough that several of them — Shuuichi included, if he’s being fully honest — have at one point or another burst into frustrated tears over the cold, the ache of their injuries, the throbbing of their feet, or any number of other rightfully upsetting things.
Gonta, easily the strongest among them, is himself losing steam. From where Shuuichi is shambling behind him he can see Gonta’s legs shaking from the effort each step forward takes; hear the soft winces he lets out every time he has to rearrange Kokichi on his back; observe how his teeth gnash together against the pain of the day as it weighs down on him, clearly very heavily.
It’s obvious that he’s struggling; with Kokichi, two backpacks, and Kaede depending on him for support, even Gonta — as big and strong and determined as Shuuichi knows him to be — can’t go on like this forever. Shuuichi takes a few deep, laborious breaths before he quickens his gait to catch up to Gonta and places a hand on his arm.
“Hold on for a second, everyone,” he calls as loudly as he dares, waiting for the rest of the group to stop and face him before continuing. “Gonta, you need to take a break. Someone else can take a turn.”
The relief on his features is clear, but still he hesitates, shuffling Kokichi further up onto his back and looking down at his opposite side, where Kaede is leaning bodily against him, and has been for some time. “Is Shuuichi sure? Gonta strong, he can keep going…”
“You’ve done more than enough. Here.” With difficulty Shuuichi reaches towards Kaede’s bag where it rests on one of Gonta’s shoulders, grimacing once he’s pulled it on and got the full weight of it on his back; already it’s aching from the strain. “I’ll help Kokichi walk. Can someone help Kaede?”
It’s Kaito that first comes to help, offering Gonta a tired salute as he takes over helping Kaede remain upright. As the two of them wrap their arms around each other to give both of them some support, Gonta begins the process of slowly disentangling Kokichi from where he’s wrapped around him, half asleep. Shuuichi has an arm out before Kokichi’s feet have even touched the ground, and he quickly moves to help Kokichi keep weight off his bad foot as Maki approaches.
She holds a hand out wordlessly, presumably an offer to carry his backpack. Kokichi just looks at her blearily, unresponsive, but then nearly takes both he and Shuuichi to the ground when Maki reaches for one of the bag’s straps and Kokichi harshly juts away from her grasp, free hand coming up to grip possessively at one of the pink straps.
Something about the look he gives Maki is decidedly off-putting; instead of his rudeness prompting a fight, however, she just scoffs, turning bodily away from him and moving instead to slide Kaede’s backpack off Shuuichi’s shoulder to carry herself. The relief of some of the weight off his back is nice, but it doesn’t last; between his too-full duffle bag and Kokichi at his side, soon enough he’s feeling as weighed down as ever.
The others have begun to slowly crawl forward again; taking one last second to crack his back against the horrific knot forming, he hesitantly offers his arm out for Kokichi to hold, unsure of how best to help him move.
Before he can even make an attempt at taking a step forward, from a few yards up ahead he hears a burst of electronic garbling, followed by something heavy hitting the dirt ground hard. When Shuuichi cranes his neck he can see that Kiibo must have tripped on a gnarled branch and fallen, if the sight of them laid out on the forest floor is any indicator.
Kiibo has been pretty out of it for a while: every so often they emit a loud beep-ing noise, and now their collar is flashing red with low battery! low battery! low battery! the only words scrolling across the display. They don’t move to stand on their own, and it takes Maki stooping down and dragging them to their feet to get them up. Shuuichi observes Maki wave a hand in front of Kiibo’s eyes — which are, he realizes a little belatedly, no longer their usual blue, but rather filled with TV-like static. When they don’t react to her movement, she just huffs, grasping one of their hands with her free one and pulling them bodily along behind her.
With the group beginning to slowly move again, Shuuichi figures it’s now or never when it comes to helping Kokichi. He very tentatively takes a step, but he’s hardly set his other foot down before Kokichi is wincing whisper-quiet at his side, for once trying not to be a spectacle. Regardless, Shuuichi pauses a moment to take stock of his appearance.
The head injury he’d sustained during the RV explosion had stopped bleeding hours ago, though the shallow gash left behind by whatever had hurt him is still raw and red and looks rather painful. He’d been bloodied up pretty bad in the midst of the fighting earlier, but sweat and movement and whatever else has cleared a lot of the mess away, leaving behind smears of long-dried blood crusting across his forehead and down his cheeks. Across his collarbone is a much less severe-looking wound, though Shuuichi can’t gauge it accurately in the dark.
His hair stinks of smoke and blood and gasoline, as do his clothes — much of which were burned or torn away hours earlier. On his left arm is a nasty bruise Shuuichi vaguely remembers one of the Monokubs giving him after grabbing onto him and yanking, and though he can’t see in the dark he knows there are small burns of various degrees dotting his arms and hands.
By far the worst of his afflictions, though, has to be his right foot: he'd nearly died while sustaining that particular injury, and it's obvious something is wrong from the way he holds it above the ground, curled inward, all of his weight on his left side as he sways and tries to keep from bearing any weight on his bad foot. At the very least, it’s a nasty sprain — and not at all fit to walk on.
“Kokichi.” At the sound of his name he looks up, the eye contact he makes with Shuuichi hazy and unfocused.
“…Hm?” The smile Kokichi levels at him is not his most convincing, and the way his frame begins to tremble doesn’t help, either.
For how miserable Shuuichi feels, barely injured as he is, he can’t imagine Kokichi’s current plight.
“What can I do to help?”
Kokichi’s gaze solidifies somewhat as he regards Shuuichi for several moments, but soon his eyes drift, focused somewhere behind his head. “I’d throw myself adoringly into your arms and beg you to carry me, but something tells me that wouldn’t be very funny, huh?”
He’s clearly attempting a joke; so in return, Shuuichi attempts a laugh, not minding too much the way the movement reminds him of his aching back.
“Another time, maybe.”
Kokichi doesn’t respond, and neither of them move. He can see that the others are a decent distance ahead of them now, and Shuuichi bites his lip, unsure of what to do. He obviously can’t ask Gonta to do anymore — it seems it’s his turn to break into tears of pain and frustration, if Kaito’s frame at his side consoling him is any indication. Kaito and Kaede are no-gos, obviously, not to mention Kiibo — still being led down the path by their arm — and Maki already have their hands full as well.
Shuuichi is the only option, and there’s no way he’s leaving Kokichi behind. “Here.”
Bracing his left arm around Kokichi’s middle, he waits for Kokichi to swing his arm across his back, straightening their posture and readjusting his grip on Kokichi when his shoulder is given a squeeze to indicate he’s holding on. “Just walk with your good foot. We’ll go slow.”
Remarkably, Kokichi has the wherewithal to level Shuuichi with a flat look. It’d be almost reassuring if he didn’t look like he was about to make fun of Shuuichi.
“Does Shuuichi want us to get left behind?”
Bingo.
“No, but do you have any other ideas?” Cocking his head to the side, Kokichi stares up owlishly at him for a few moments before he blows a raspberry, renewing his grip on Shuuichi’s shoulder.
“Fiiine, I guess this might work. You better not drop me!”
They manage, somehow. Their movement is incredibly slow — closest to them is Kaito and Kaede limping along similarly to the two of them, but even still they’re being outpaced by a pretty large stretch of the path. And the strain of the duffle on his shoulder plus the added weight of Kokichi’s bad side is probably going to put him in an early grave.
But…seeing Kokichi’s expression (mostly) pain-free, it’s easier for Shuuichi to decide it's worth it.
They walk in silence for several minutes, not falling any further behind the others but not exactly gaining any ground, either. All he can really focus on is quite literally just putting one foot in front of the other over and over, but at some point he feels a poke at the hand he has braced around Kokichi, and when he looks down there are violet eyes focused on him, a ghost of a smile on his face.
“Not that I’m questioning your expertise or anything, Shuuichi knows I’d never do that,” Kokichi begins with a giggle, pausing to carefully sidestep an overgrown root, “but do you know when we’ll be able to stop? We’ve been walking for hooours, and that’s not even a lie!”
He’s right. It has been hours, and even with multiple breaks along the way for eating, drinking, and resting, the exhaustion between them all is palpable.
In an instant a wave of self-hatred hits Shuuichi, and his steps momentarily falter. Gods, how much has he screwed everyone over by making them go this way? He doesn’t know where they were going, he doesn’t know if this path even leads anywhere, yet he’s been urging them forward for who knows how long at this point?
“I — I don’t know,” he eventually replies, painfully honest. He’s too weak to fight the watery note his voice takes on, but regardless he’s still embarrassed.
A sudden jab in his side has him flinching away from Kokichi, nearly sending them both tumbling. He looks down wide-eyed at Kokichi, a question of why he just did that on his tongue, when he’s interrupted with Kokichi planting his good foot and holding a hand up as a silent gesture for Shuuichi to shut up.
“I’ve decided! You’re not allowed to cry.” He nods as if agreeing with himself. “Nope, I simply won’t allow it! Not only would it be suuuper awkward, but then you’d dehydrate and we’d have to leave you behind. And Kiibaby’s useless so of course we’d leave them too, and then I’d have to stay behind because you can’t carry me. So no way!”
Shuuichi tries to smile, but it’s likely more of a grimace. He’s so tired. His lungs ache. He wants to take off his binder. He wants to sleep.
Kokichi groans, yanking the two of them to a full stop with a force that surprises him, given his present lack of two functioning legs. “Gods, New Kid, you really are emo, aren’t you?” He grasps onto one of Shuuichi’s arms firmly, swinging his pink cat backpack off his shoulder and onto the ground, using his free hand to partially unzip it before reaching in and beginning to dig around.
Shuuichi watches silently, making sure Kokichi stays off his bad foot, his concern and confusion mounting the longer and deeper he reaches his arm into the bag. Maybe it’s the darkness, but at one point Shuuichi is almost convinced he’s shoulder deep in the tiny thing and still not at the bottom of it.
“Y’know, I was planning on holding this hostage and sending you creepy ransom notes for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cut out magazine letters, signed in blood, the whole shebang.” He briefly juts his face up towards Shuuichi, positively beaming, before looking back down into the bag. “But maybe winning your undying affections this way will be fun, too.”
A beat of silence, then: “Aha!” Kokichi retracts his arm from his backpack, and out with it comes — of all things — the god damn Bewear plush that Rantarou had gifted him. Smushed, certainly, and with a small tear in the stomach, but otherwise very much not blown up along with the RV, as had dawned on him hours earlier to his utter horror.
Shuuichi really does begin to cry now, taking it eagerly from Kokichi’s outstretched hand and hugging it close. It’s so stupid, he knows it’s stupid, but he thought he’d lost this little piece of Rantarou in the explosion. And to have it here, in his hands, somehow miraculously spared from the monster attack — he truly doesn’t know what to say.
He expects Kokichi to make fun of him for doing the opposite of what he told him to, but no such taunts come. That fact alone is enough to pull Shuuichi from his mini-celebration, and when he looks back to Kokichi, he finds him looking oddly uncomfortable. He brings his hand to his mouth and idly licks his palm, and when he pulls it back Shuuichi, alarmingly, sees his tongue shining red in the dim light.
“They’re leaving us behind, crybaby.” Kokichi gestures vaguely with the hand he’d just licked; Shuuichi watches with mounting anxiety as two thin streams of blood begin to drip down his wrist.
“Kokichi, why are you bleeding?”
He flashes a smile in response, and he’s stupefied enough that Kokichi manages to pluck the plush from his arms — quick but careful, with his clean hand — and tuck it back safely into his backpack. He once again grasps onto Shuuichi’s arm to balance himself as he slides his bleeding hand through the strap of his bag and swings it unceremoniously onto his back once again.
“No time to worry about that, Shuumai. C’mon, let’s get a move on! I refuse to die because you’re a sentimental sap.”
Frankly, Shuuichi’s more concerned about Kokichi’s fate with that wound on his hand than he is about himself being a sentimental sap, but regardless he acquiesces, rearranging Kokichi back onto his shoulder and beginning again down the path. With how far behind they are, they two of them do make an effort to at least try and catch up; it leaves them both panting and Shuuichi’s shoulder throbbing, but they do regain enough ground that Kaito and Kaede are only just out of earshot, with Gonta, Kiibo, and Maki farther up ahead, much less discernible in the dark.
After a few minutes, when he’s leveled his breathing again and they’ve mostly fallen back into their kind-of-working rhythm, Shuuichi clears his throat gently to get Kokichi’s attention. It doesn’t immediately work, so with an awkward cough he tries again.
“Kokichi?”
“Hm?” Tone flippant, Kokichi merely flicks his eyes up towards Shuuichi, still mostly facing forward down the path.
“Just, that was — I don’t know how you managed to save it. The bear. But that was really nice. Thank you.”
Shuuichi doesn’t look at him as he speaks; he’s not really sure he wants to see his reaction. Regardless, he lets his mouth run a little longer. “You act mean a lot, but you’re actually a good person. I think.”
“Poor, sweet, stupid Shuuichi.” Kokichi’s pitying response to his genuine sentiment makes him laugh. “Didn’t you hear me? I was holding that stupid thing hostage. Your brother is rich, he could foot the ransom bill. I’m the leader of an evil organization, remember? Everything I do is motivated purely by terrible intentions!”
Shuuichi hums in response to that, just pleased that Kokichi’s spirits seem to be up — both of them, if he’s honest. He half expects Kokichi to opine again on the vastness and evilness of the “seedy underground organization” he’d mentioned once or twice, but he doesn’t; instead, they settle into an almost comfortable quiet, moving in pretty decent tandem despite the uneven path and the silence.
The longer the silence stretches on, the more Shuuichi’s mind begins to wander. Kokichi’s bleeding hand — which he’s likely purposefully hiding at his side, if his lack of even being given a peek at the wound is any indication — is top of the list, but. It also lends itself into thinking about his miraculously saved Pokémon plush, which…
Leads Shuuichi to a topic he’s been trying very, very hard not to think about.
By all accounts, his back-of-the-mind suspicions about Kokichi’s potential role in the RV explosion should have been put to rest as soon as those kids in the convenience store had morphed into the Monokubs. But since the adrenaline rush from the fighting ebbed away, more and more unsure thoughts about Kokichi’s culpability have been seeping into his brain.
The most damning of the evidence pointing to Kokichi somehow being responsible for the blast was the scorched path in the gas station pavement that led from where the RV used to be to a few feet away from where Kokichi ended up post-explosion. The fact he’d barely an hour earlier set a fire out of nowhere in the middle of a high-end store also points to…incendiary capabilities. His insistence upon Shuuichi taking his duffle bag with him into the store — and now that he thinks about it, his saving of the Bewear plush as well — is also…disconcerting, if he thinks about it too hard in relation to the other evidence.
But all of that is circumstantial. Nothing that would hold up to even a microsecond of scrutiny, given the amount of evidence that leads to the perhaps obvious conclusion that it wasn’t Kokichi, which is: the Monokubs.
Post-explosion, but before they took on their more monstrous appearances, Kokichi had accurately and immediately identified all five of the children as monsters. It’s entirely likely he saw them tampering with the RV, causing the blast, and was able to identify them in that way.
Almost as convincing was the fact that Kaito and Kiibo, two people who would undoubtedly throw Kokichi to the wolves if they genuinely thought he could have done such a thing, hadn’t seen anything. They were right there, both close enough to be injured in the destruction; if Kokichi had done something as brazen as spray gasoline all over, somehow light it, and get it to ignite the gas to then blow up the RV, surely they would have said something the second it happened. But all they could say was that they hadn’t seen the monsters before they changed forms.
Kokichi is also by far the most injured from the blast out of any of them, so not only does it not make sense for him to almost blow himself up; he also doesn’t have any motive, at all.
He glances down briefly to get a read on Kokichi’s condition; he still appears to be mostly fine, humming some random pop tune and lightly swinging his still-bleeding hand at his side.
Gods. This case is so like Kokichi: conflicting and confusing and enough to give Shuuichi a headache.
“Oh, Kaito! Shuuichi! Friends!” From up ahead Gonta’s voice booms, and the volume plus the sound of his name pulls Shuuichi from his reverie. Immediately he and Kokichi quicken their pace, and by the time they’re caught up with the rest of the group they’re just in time to witness the tail-end of a light scolding by Maki about yelling too loud, Gonta.
He’s invested in that conversation for approximately a fraction of a second, until his brain catches up with his eyes as he registers the source of light Gonta is pointing at through a break in the trees.
It’s a cottage — a really, really tiny one. But with it is a car. And a road at the end of the dirt driveway.
Shuuichi could cry with relief.
He’s apparently not alone; before any of them can get too excited, though, it’s Kaede that cuts in, voice wary.
“I know we all really, really want to rest, but we need to be prepared for the possibility that the person that lives here could turn us away.”
“Or call the police,” Maki adds automatically, though Shuuichi can tell the day weighs heavily on her, too, and her desire to rest is just as strong as any of them.
Kaede sighs, wincing as she very gently pulls away from Kaito’s side, waving him off as she moves to stand on her own. “We have to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”
“Damn it, Nagito, please let your luck do us all a solid right now,” Shuuichi hears Kaito mutter under his breath as he loudly cracks his back. Everyone else seems to share the sentiment; all exchanging a meaningful look and a nod, with a renewed sense of hope they move forward to approach the cottage.
No one speaks in the walk up to the porch — save for the soft, loopy giggling streaming from Kiibo’s speakers — and after a few moments’ hesitation in which they try to figure out how to do this, it’s Maki who finally steps forward and knocks three times on the door, quick but firm.
Almost immediately, a shrill, surprised yelp can be heard from inside the cottage. There’s a faint sound of crashing, and after several tense moments spent listening to multiple internal locks on the door unlatching, the door just barely shifts open, only a single gray eye and wisps of dark bangs visible.
“Wh-Who’s there?” It’s a woman, and her voice belies her very clear fright at her door being knocked on — presumably in the middle of the night. “Oh, gods — are you g-going to rob me?”
It’s Shuuichi that speaks up first, taking a half-step forward with his palms open, trying to appear as unassuming as he can — which is not easy, given the whole…everything, going on with the seven of them.
“No! No. We are so sorry to intrude, but—” He gestures to his friends around him weakly. “But we’re all injured, and we’ve been lost in the woods for hours. I hate to impose, but is there any way we could come inside and rest?”
There’s a brief pause, then the sound of several more locks clicking. The woman swings the door open, face pale and looking positively aghast as she takes in the sight of them fully, bleeding and singed and dirty as they all are.
“Oh my goodness, you r-really are injured! Oh, I’m not sure if I — I don’t know how much I c-can do for you, but I’m a nurse! Please, please, come in!”
Notes:
+ so. LOL.
+ i will keep this as brief as i can (no promises). but to start: if you're new here, hi! i started plotting the fic you just read in spring 2019. the last time i wrote a chapter was summer 2020. except for: 2 days ago!
+ i truly don't know what happened. i lost steam for this fic in the midst of some of the worst covid months, during my freshman year of college, and left it alone for...a while! rereading it occasionally. but certainly not for quite some time.
+ until. well. as i said! two days ago. i finished my last ever college assignment. graduating in a few weeks, y'know? exciting stuff. and what's the first thing i do upon finishing the last of my school work, you ask? i reread pointy fucking objects.
+ well, we're missing a step. about a month ago a [UPDATE: NOT A HOMIE LMFAO] began playing danganronpa: trigger happy havoc for the first time, totally blind, with me at his side. the danganronpa Itch has been building, but seriously, i started writing this chapter last night (may 7th) and am posting it just before the day ends today (may 8th).
+ i can't tell you why. maybe if i manage a tenth chapter (gasp) i'll expand more in another authors note. but for now? here's a chapter of a passion project i abandoned literally three years ago, got sucked back into, and then wrote a full chapter of in about 48 hours.
+ here's to graduation, or whatever. and also to introducing new characters and arcs three years late. cheers!
+ content warnings: talk of characters being injured (mild to moderate), and i think that's it!
Chapter 10: stranger danger on steroids
Summary:
“So, u-uhm, how…did you all get so hurt, anyways?”
It’s a fair question, but one none of them want to — or are probably even prepared to — answer; and the longer the silence hangs in the air, the more that fact becomes clear. And the further Maki tenses at Kaede’s side.
“Gonta and his friends were attacked by bears!”
Notes:
+ hi again! miss me? (it's been, like, ten days).
+ to show how ultra committed i am to this fic that has dragged me back into danganronpa again, here's 10k words on the night before my college graduation! (seriously).
+ we can expand upon that later, though. for now: enjoy some shenanigans, starring — well, i guess you'll see, won't you?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As Kaede limps through the threshold of the modest woodland cottage Shuuichi had somehow talked their way into, the warm, vaguely herby scent in the air hugs her like a blanket. Her single-minded focus is on rest; the nervous rambling of the nurse barely registers as she follows closely behind Maki, into the main living space of the tiny building.
“I’m s-so sorry for the mess! I — I don’t ever get visitors, and sometimes I forget to clean up…I know it’s disgusting, b-but the couch is clean, so please, have a s-seat!”
She wouldn’t say messy, more so...cramped. They shamble single-file through the narrow entryway, emerging into a tightly closed-in room, a quarter of which is occupied by a bulky, winding wooden staircase; a quarter is occupied by a quilted, rundown couch; a quarter is dominated by a freshly tended fireplace; and what space remains is occupied by the eight of them standing wherever else they can fit.
The desire to settle herself on the couch is strong, painfully so (or maybe that’s just all the injuries she’s sustained, hah…) but she hovers in the corner she’d awkwardly tucked herself in, waiting to see if someone else takes the couch, needs it more than her. To her relief, Shuuichi is quick to deposit Kokichi — definitely the worst off of all of them — onto one of the cushions, before dropping down without fanfare next to him.
Before she can ask if anyone else would like the couch, she catches Maki glaring at her, and Kaede knows what’s coming as her friend quietly shifts towards her, takes her less sore arm, and guides her into a sit next to her on the couch.
“Thanks,” she whispers, unable to resist sinking her full weight into the cushions, unbearably relieved to finally be off her aching feet. As Gonta settles into a polite cross-legged sit between the couch and the fireplace, she watches out of the corner of her eye as Kaito drags a barely-conscious (...is that the right word?) Kiibo to the sole outlet in the room, unceremoniously yanking out the cord to a rather ugly lamp and replacing the vacated socket with Kiibo’s charger.
Kaede lets herself relax, just a little, once Kaito sprawls out next to Gonta by the fire, and they’re all finally off their feet. The warmth of the fire is magnetic, and Kaede gives up her position leaning fully back against the couch to lean forward and extend her freezing palms out towards the crackling wood fire.
Though her adrenaline is as low as it’s been since the beginning of their very long and very scary day, anxiety twists her stomach and leaves her feeling ill at ease.
Not to mention the two gashes to her abdomen that stupid bear had given her!
The memory of that injury causes the pain to flare to the front of her mind, and she moves one hand to rest worriedly over the spot on her shirt where she’s long since bled through.
The nurse returns finally with a large first-aid kit in hand, though just as she rounds the bend of the couch over Kaede’s shoulder she trips, stumbling dramatically to the floor. The crash as the basket of supplies she’d been holding hits the ground makes all of them cringe; at the close distance, her fried nerves exacerbate her augmented hearing and Kaede flinches especially hard away from the noise.
“Oh jeez, I’m sorry, so sorry! I’m s-such a clutz!” Kaede wishes she were more up to humoring this especially strange stranger while intruding in her home, but her exhaustion and her nerves and the pain keeps her from being able to take the lead in placating her.
“Please, don’t apologize. Are you alright?” Shuuichi rises from his spot between Kokichi and Maki to awkwardly help the nurse from the floor and begin piling her scattered medical supplies back into the basket.
Kaede just tries to focus really, really hard on putting the pain in her stomach out of her mind. And the headache. And her knee. And the fact that sitting is almost as bad as walking was.
Maki gives her a sidelong weary glance; Kaede can offer her a smile, but not much else.
The nurse, nervously tenting her fingers as she waits for Shuuichi to hand her the basket, addresses the group of them with worried eyes. “I know you’re all very — very hurt, b-but, uhm, is anyone more i-injured than the rest?”
All eyes in the room turn to Kokichi; he’s the clear biggest loser of the day among them, so as Shuuichi settles back into his seat, the nurse moves to kneel in front of him, expression serious. She gives him a brief once over, muttering, “Oh, yes, this is quite bad,” under her breath quiet enough that Kaede guesses only she hears, before she moves to pull on a pair of sterile gloves.
“I’d like to clean the cut on your f-forehead first. A-Are you able to stand?” The look Kokichi sends her is withering; he shakes his swollen foot at her in lieu of a verbal response. “You’re r-right, my apologies! Here, we’ll do this—”
The nurse pulls a towel from the basket, settling it around Kokichi’s shoulders. Kaede leans back against the cushions again and tries to keep her breathing measured.
“I’m going to r-rinse it with some saline, the towel is just to make sure there’s no mess! Th-Then I’ll bandage it and move onto your foot.”
Presumably, she sets to work. There’s the sound of liquid swish-ing in a bottle, and a few moments later a sharp hiss from Kokichi. Silence, for a brief stretch, save for the sounds of the nurse working and Kokichi complaining — Kaede’s too tired to even attempt to figure out if he’s being dramatic or not. Then:
“So, u-uhm, how…did you all get so hurt, anyways?”
It’s a fair question, but one none of them want to — or are probably even prepared to — answer; and the longer the silence hangs in the air, the more that fact becomes clear. And the further Maki tenses at Kaede’s side.
“Gonta and his friends were attacked by bears!”
If Gonta’s answer didn’t scare Kaede so much, she’d do more to shush the shut the hell up energy radiating off of Maki after his…explanation.
“Oh?” The nurse sounds shocked; not necessarily disbelieving but…perturbed. “...Yes, I think I’ve seen one of them in my woods once. How a-awful! Okay, uhm, ah, the butterfly s-stitches should keep the cut closed. As long as you don’t touch it!”
“Aye-aye, captain,” Kokichi mutters, sounding exhausted. She frowns. Gods, he really is hurt, isn’t he?
The nurse stands so she can better assess a cut Kokichi has across his collarbone; Kaede forces herself to relax back into the couch, attempting to keep her breathing level while also pointedly ignoring the increasingly anxious glances she can tell Maki is sending her way.
“O-Oh, actually, let me…” She hears the stranger’s voice trail off, then a few moments later the sounds of pills rattling around a bottle. “Here, even wh-while I’m working on your friend, you can — uhm, here!”
Painkillers, Kaede guesses; the suspicion is confirmed when Shuuichi softly asks if she has any water for them to take the medication with. The nurse squeaks to the affirmative, stammering over herself that she actually had just prepared a pot of tea before the group of them arrived — as long as they don’t mind if it’s slightly cold now, of course! Shuuichi gratefully accepts for the group of them, and Kaede finds her weary mind clinging to the idea of a nice cup of tea after such a long, exhausting day.
Footsteps retreating, then relative silence save for the ambient noise of her friends breathing, the fire crackling gently in front of her, the sound of the nurse messing about in the kitchen. She feels Maki shift on the couch, her arm moving to press slightly closer against Kaede’s; she’d be more inclined to savor the contact if she didn’t feel so awful.
When she hears the stranger returning, Kaede forces her eyes open, blinking against the soft light of the room a few times and sitting up in preparation to receive a cup of tea. The nurse rounds the other side of the couch this time — and thankfully, she doesn’t trip, even with a tray of teacups perched awkwardly in one hand — and starts by offering Kaito a cup before moving down the line.
Maki nudges Kaede as gently as she can, dropping a few nondescript pills into her palm when she’s gotten her attention. She smiles gratefully, but it must not come across as she hopes — Maki’s expression just pinches, contemplative frown clear on her face. It’s interrupted when the stranger nervously hands a cup off to her, and when Kaede extends a hand for her own cup — she finds the nurse turning around abruptly, tray held beneath her arm as she goes back to Kokichi.
She resists the urge to groan — guess it serves her right, she has another bout of bad luck, especially after blowing up Nagito’s RV. She doesn’t voice her complaint, though; Kokichi really does need to be looked after. A cup of tea can wait.
From the look on her friend's face, Kaede gets the feeling Maki doesn’t agree. She’s holding the cup by its handle, knuckles white as she stares after the nurse, who is back to making soft, nervous smalltalk with anyone who will engage her — Shuuichi and Kaito, mostly. Maki swallows the pills she’d been given dry, then wordlessly hands her cup off to Kaede, the pointed look on her face very clearly demanding she drink.
She listens, savoring the warmth and taste of a tea blend she can’t immediately identify as she swallows the medicine. She offers the half-full teacup back to Maki, who just sends her a flat look; Kaede frowns back.
She may be injured, but so is Maki — she won’t be getting out of being properly cared for that easily. “We’ve been walking for hours. At least drink a little.”
Though it earns her a scowl in return, Maki obliges, taking two small gulps with her eyes still fixed on Kaede before returning what’s left of the tea to her. “You’re worse. You drink the rest.”
Kaede knows when to pick her battles, and she knows arguing that point would be a losing fight, so with a nod she does, setting the empty cup aside on the floor by her feet and leaning back against the couch. She lets herself press ever so slightly closer into Maki’s side; when she’s met with no resistance she smiles to herself, savoring the blossoming warmth in her chest alongside the comfortable atmosphere of the firelit cottage.
It’s quiet for a few minutes, and eventually Kaede hears Shuuichi ask if he can help at all. The nurse seems to consider, before gently directing him that he could disinfect and bandage up a wound on Kaito’s arm, if he’d like. Kaito’s enthusiastic enough about that, offering quiet phrases of encouragement — probably to Shuuichi’s embarrassment, if Kaede had to guess.
“Y-You know,” the nurse begins, interrupting herself to giggle; Kaede looks up, and sees that she's currently at work on Kokichi’s badly injured foot, the extremity held in her lap as she sits on her knees before him. “It’s very lucky that you only tw-twisted your ankle!”
She taps Kokichi’s swollen foot for emphasis; he jumps abruptly, hackles raised, and Kaede dreads the sneer on his face before he even has a chance to open his mouth. Please, Kokichi, don’t mess this up…
The nurse doesn’t flinch, as Kaede expects; instead she giggles again, much longer than the first time, pulling a roll of gauze and medical tape from her large first-aid kit.
“If you had sprained it, even b-broken it — what a terrible thought! — you wouldn’t be able to w-walk anymore! You’d have to stay here!”
The nurse continues to laugh to herself, apparently joking; from a quick glance around her friend’s faces, she finds that no one else seems to have found it particularly funny.
Unease settles on Kaede’s shoulders, though she can’t place exactly…why.
There’s another few minutes of somewhat uncomfortable silence, as both the stranger and Shuuichi work; the nurse in wrapping Kokichi’s bad ankle, and Shuuichi, in a much less skilled way then his counterpart, in finishing up wrapping Kaito’s (Kaede assumes burned) arm, securing the bandaging with a bit of medical tape.
Kaede sits up, preparing to be looked at next — if they’re following the metric of who is the worst and working backwards towards less-intense injuries, Kaede is probably next. She looks over at the nurse — probably her first good look at the woman, if Kaede’s being honest — as she waits for her to move on.
The stranger, relatively short and petite, boasts a few curious quirks. Beyond her obvious anxiety and skittishness, the first thing that Kaede’s eyes stick to are her bangs, choppy and uneven, seeming to obscure her eyes in some places while in others they seem to be cut almost too high. The rest of the length of her hair is normal — a few blunt cuts every here or there, but they more or less blend in with her quick, jumpy movements.
She’s covered in varying amounts of standalone band-aids, and one arm she has wrapped up to the elbow in gauze. Her clothing indicates she really hadn’t been expecting visitors: satin pajama shorts and a comfy-looking pink blouse, both covered by an apron she must have thrown on between meeting them at the door and starting her work on Kokichi.
Which, speaking of — it looks like he’s about done being treated, at least for now. As soon as the nurse’s hands are off him he pulls his injured foot to rest in his lap, eyes dark and wary as he regards her.
She guesses it makes sense that Kokichi, for all his grandeur, would be feeling the effects of the day, and even he can’t keep up the bravado forever. She’s almost grateful.
“Alright, n-next!” The nurse shifts from her position in front of Kokichi to kneel by Shuuichi, hands on her hips as she silently appraises him for injuries or afflictions otherwise requiring treatment.
Looks like she’s moving down the line. Great. Kaede pulls her arm a little tighter around her wounded stomach, gritting her teeth and trying to remind herself that she will be helped, she just has to…wait a little longer.
An insistent poke against her arm surprises her; when she looks up she finds Maki staring at her, giving her one of those looks that tells Kaede she’s about to make a fuss over her if Kaede doesn't do it for herself. She’s not sure she’s feeling up for it, one way or another — fighting was hard, walking was hard, sitting is hard, breathing is hard; she just wants to wait in stasis until something happens that will make her feel less like crap. She just shrugs her shoulders, tiredly rubbing at her elbow with one hand.
Maki’s voice cuts into the settling silence in the room, causing the nurse to flinch in the midst of wrapping one of Shuuichi’s knees. “Excuse me. Kaede is the next most injured, you need to do her next.”
Despite her embarrassment, Kaede doesn’t have the energy to blush at the edge of care in her friend’s voice. She smiles placatingly at the nurse, who had paused with her wild hair blanketing over her expression, and counters as brightly as she can manage, “I’m fine, Harumaki. I can wait.”
Usually her favorite nickname for her friend brings a faux-annoyed eye-roll — or when Kaede’s lucky, a smile and a little color tinging her cheeks — but this time Maki doesn’t look impressed.
“...Kaede, hm?” Whatever argument Maki was about to make is cut off as the nurse addresses Kaede for the first time. “That’s a pretty name.”
She goes to offer a polite thank you, but when she opens her mouth she falls short as she takes in the expression the nurse is leveling at her. Actually, if Kaede remembers correctly, she thinks this might be the first time the nurse has looked at her…really at all.
Gray eyes narrowed in her direction, unobstructed by her choppy plum bangs. One corner of her mouth is ticked down in a sneer, and Kaede must be really out of it, because she almost thinks she sees the nurse bare her teeth.
“...Thank you,” she eventually manages, leaving out the wry I picked it out myself that's itching temptingly at her throat to be let out as uneasiness settles in its place. The stranger stands from where she’d been kneeling in front of Shuuichi, moving to settle in front of Kaede instead.
Her bangs are back to shielding her expression again as she speaks. “What seems to be the problem…Kaede?”
The venom with which the woman says her name surprises her; instinctively she looks to her friends, desperate to understand whether her injuries are getting to her to the point that she’s paranoid, or if the others are also witnessing the thinly-veiled displays of hostility being leveled towards Kaede.
Is anyone else seeing this?
She expects to find Maki’s dark, searching eyes still on her, but when she looks to the rest of the group, she sees that none of them are looking anywhere near her: instead Maki, Shuuichi, and Kokichi have their gazes laser-focused on Kokichi’s collarbone, watching as the gash there shrinks, and shrinks, and shrinks until the only hint of its existence is the thinnest of pink lines quickly scarring over Kokichi’s skin.
Dread seizes Kaede’s chest to the point she nearly keels over with nausea.
Someone has healing powers they’re not disclosing, and Kaede has a very, very bad feeling as to who it might be.
A poke to her knee causes Kaede to jump, and when she looks towards the source she finds the nurse’s eyes on her, one hand clenched in front of her as she pins Kaede with an impatient look. “Y-Your leg is fine. Take these.”
Kaede holds out her hand, but the nurse chooses to drop this second selection of pills onto the armrest of the couch instead. With slightly trembling hands she picks them up, and though the woman’s glare makes her want to shrink back and hide, she softly asks, “Th-Thank you. Uhm, is there anything I could have to drink to…take them…?”
Her voice dies under the withering look the nurse pins her with the longer she speaks.
“I’m afraid I’m all out of tea, Kaede.”
All she can do is blink, utterly disoriented by the open hostility, and accept the lukewarm, half-finished cup Shuuichi passes to her through Maki. The nurse continues to stare, face blank as Kaede dumbly swallows the pills; and when she finishes she looks as if she’s about to get up and move on.
As much as Kaede would really rather like to hide in this situation, she does have another, worse injury she needs taken care of. One that requires the attention of a nurse, or in a few days it will require a hospital — and they simply don’t have the time for that.
“W-Wait.” Gray eyes cut up to her again, cold and unblinking. “I…the — the bear, one of them scratched me on the stomach.”
She gestures weakly to the front of her shirt, where her wounds’ bleeding through has long since dried into a gross brown color. “Is there anything you can do…?”
The nurse finally looks away, eyes resolutely on the first-aid kit as she murmurs, “You r-really want me to look under your shirt in front of everyone…Kaede?”
Kaede freezes at that; all right, no more second guessing herself, this person really does not like her. Still, the woman eventually agrees, “...Maybe the bathroom will be fine.”
The stranger is off before Kaede’s even registered her agreement; with difficulty she stands, making sure not to knock either of her empty teacups onto the floor, and as she’s taking the first step after her she feels Maki stand as well, moving to shadow her.
Turning, Kaede places a hand on Maki’s shoulder. From the look she’s giving Kaede, it seems she has finally caught onto the distaste the woman has for her; and as much as she probably would be more comfortable with Maki being there, well…
She’s not sure she trusts Maki not to make the nurse mad if she continues treating Kaede the way she has been.
“I’m okay! Promise.” Maki opens her mouth to object, but Kaede takes another step before addressing the rest of the group. “Everyone, Maki’s in charge. Be good!”
She forces a laugh, pointedly ignoring the significant look Shuuichi and Maki share as she turns in favor of limping off after the nurse towards the bathroom. The fallout from this can be dealt with later. Right now she needs medical treatment from this stranger more than she needs kindness.
Like the rest of the cottage, the bathroom is small; even after squeezing herself through the door and resting as silently instructed on the closed toilet lid, there’s barely a breath of space between Kaede and the nurse as she lifts as little of her shirt up as she can so the stranger can get to work.
The nurse works in silence, very different from the anxious chatterbox she’d been while dealing with Kokichi earlier. Like before on the couch, Kaede just tries to focus on her breathing, eyes squeezed shut so she doesn’t have to watch as her wounds are cleaned. Every so often something makes her hiss or whimper in pain, and each time the nurse seems to grow more agitated.
Gods, please let her finish soon.
There are gloved fingers on her wound, and Kaede grinds her teeth; the nurse seems to decide now is when she’d like to speak up. Not looking up from her work, her statement, barely above a whisper, rings loud and clear in Kaede’s ears.
“I wonder where a name like K-Kaede comes from.”
It’s…not what she’s expecting. Names can be dangerous — both in the sense that this woman clearly has…something less-than-mortal going on, but also in the…more unique way names can be dangerous for someone like her.
She spends many long, uncomfortable moments trying to come up with an answer. Finally: “I wanted it to match my last name. I’ve always thought names having to do with nature are so—” Sharp pain in her wound; Kaede bites her lip against the sensation. “S-So pretty, y’know?”
The nurse looks at her with an expression Kaede can’t decipher. “...And that would be?”
It’s only belatedly Kaede realizes what she’s asking; trying not to let her hesitance show, she simply replies, “Akamatsu.”
“Hm.”
Another minutes-long stretch of uncomfortable silence. Kaede can’t remember the last time she felt this…lost in a social interaction. Something’s clearly gone wrong, she’s clearly done something to offend this woman who is treating their wounds and letting them rest in her house for god’s sake!
She has to at least attempt to make amends.
“I…I get the feeling you don’t like me very much.” Silence in response. Kaede waits, though an especially harsh prod of a soaked cotton ball against one of the gashes tells her she won’t be getting one to that.
Wincing softly, she continues, “I just — I’m afraid I’ve offended you, or done something wrong, and I’m…sorry, whatever I did. And I’m very grateful that you’re taking care of me and my friends. So, thank you.”
“All done,” the nurse says curtly, rising to her feet and disappearing out of the bathroom without another word. Kaede blinks in the aftermath, then sighs, looking down at her stomach — the nurse seems to have treated her wound as well as she had Kokichi’s, so she really shouldn’t complain.
On unsteady legs she stands, tucking her shirt back in and glancing idly at herself in the mirror as she does. Her eyes find her way back to her reflection, this time fully focused, and it’s with a frown that she regards her own appearance.
Her undereyes are dark from exhaustion, and all across her face is smudged with dirt, soot, and who knows what else. Her clothes are ruined — obviously — but it’s the frown she points at her own face that gives her pause.
She lived. Her friends are all okay. Their mission is continuing, despite the many bumps in the road.
Much like she’s observed Maki do countless times, Kaede puffs her cheeks out, and the memory of one of her best friend’s cuter quirks is enough to bring a genuine, if small, smile to Kaede’s lips. She nods to herself once before shutting off the bathroom light and exiting in search of the couch that, if she’s being honest, is still absolutely calling her name.
Stepping out into the living room reveals that the nurse has moved onto Gonta, who watches each movement in rapt fascination, asking rapid-fire questions to the nurse that has her once again stumbling anxiously over her answers.
Sparing a glance around at the rest of her friends, she sees immediately that Maki’s gaze is locked on her, eyes intense and searching. Kaito is flexing the bandages on his hand, showing off to Shuuichi, who watches with a barely-suppressed amused grin. Kiibo is still beeping in the corner of the room, curled up by the socket they’d been plugged into, and Kokichi—
Kokichi's hand is bleeding badly.
“Gods, what happened?” Between her outburst and her gaze fixed worriedly on Kokichi’s lacerated appendage, the others in the room are quick to grasp what she’s asking after.
Despite the pained haze on his face, Kokichi still manages to shoot Kaede what she thinks might be a genuinely annoyed look — but with him, it’s honestly too hard to tell for sure.
“Just a scratch,” he replies brightly, hand disappearing into his jacket pocket. Kaede can see a dark patch forming in the fabric, and it makes her hair stand on end with anxiety.
Shuuichi, at least, seems to match her level of concern; eyes jumping over to him, he says incredulously, “Kokichi, you’ve been bleeding since before we even got to this place. It should have at least slowed down by now.”
Kokichi’s hand remains in his pocket, and he shoots Shuuichi a smile that even Kaede can tell is all bravado.
“I’m just suuuper anemic, y’know! Kaede and Shuuichi are so sickly sweet for checking on me I could almost barf!”
“N-No,” the nurse cuts in suddenly, moving to crouch in front of him, “your other wounds would still be b-bleeding if that was the case. Here, let me—”
With a quickness that surprises Kaede the nurse seizes Kokichi’s wrist, wrenching it from his pocket and scanning over it with an expression Kaede can’t identify. She brings a gloved hand up and abruptly presses two fingers against the deep gash across his palm.
Kokichi shrieks, kicking at the nurse and retrieving his hand against his chest with wide, frantic eyes. “S-Stupid pig, the hell did you do th-that for?!”
The vicious edge to both his words and his tone is exactly the kind of thing Kaede would guess would send the nurse back into blubbering hysterics, but she doesn’t. She just stands, leans over to press her fingers against the wound on his forehead that…had been there, before, but is now merely a faint pink scar, barely visible in the dim light of the cottage
“Why isn’t it…healing…?”
The outburst from a moment ago mostly forgotten, Shuuichi addresses Kokichi shortly, though the concern on his face is clear. “What did you cut your hand on?”
“Oh, who’s to say for certain. So many dangers in these scary, bear-infested woods, y’know?”
“No, it was something in your bag,” Shuuichi argues, frown deepening. “Seriously—"
He abandons his sentence when the nurse’s gaze snaps to him, then Kokichi, then back to Shuuichi again. Kaede, still standing behind the couch, swallows nervously at the intensity of…whatever is happening right now.
Wordlessly the nurse stands, rushing out of the room without acknowledging any of them. Maki’s eyes are on her, and as soon as their gazes meet she’s rising, quickly moving towards Kiibo and yanking their charging cord out of its socket forcefully, startling them awake with a shrill, static-y cry.
It’s done not a moment too soon. As Gonta is rising to help Kiibo to their feet and calm their rapid-fire questions, the nurse reemerges into the room, and oh, gods.
Poised dangerously in both hands is an almost comically-large syringe.
Kaito yanks Kokichi and Shuuichi to their feet, eyes wide as he backs the three of them up as far as they can without hitting the fireplace. There’s tense silence for several long moments before Kaede, in not her most eloquent moment, manages a shaky, “Uh…”
Slate eyes dart to her, and the look in the nurse’s eyes is enough to have Kaede taking another step back.
“This is what you all need,” the nurse mutters under her breath, gaze sliding across all seven of them. “Y-Yes, a n-nice shot to make you feel all better…”
Kokichi, still pushed behind Kaito and Shuuichi, irritably snaps, “Not a chance, psycho!”
“‘Psycho’…?” The nurse tastes the word on her tongue; from the way her expression twists, Kaede has a feeling she’s not a fan.
“W-Well,” Kaede cuts in nervously, before Kokichi or anyone else can piss off this dangerous stranger any further, “thank you for all you’ve done for us, ma’am, but I think it’s about time we le—”
“Shut up!” The point of the large needle is swung in her direction, the nurses’ fingers twitching at the plunger, agitated. “Don’t you d-dare talk to me!”
Cloudy liquid swirls around inside of the syringe; from the short distance, Kaede can see some gently drip from the needle with each twitch of the nurse’s fingers. Her eyes are hard, angry, and focused squarely on Kaede as she pushes past her stutter to continue where she left off.
“All I w-wanted was to get away! I — I was miserable for so long, and I finally got away! I stopped b-being a c-c-coward! I left her for good, and found a lover so much better, and now you’re back j-just — to just — to t-taunt me! Did she set you up to it?!”
A panicked glance around to her friends tells Kaede that no one is any the wiser about the nurse’s outburst than she is. And, considering it’s her the woman is coming down on, in a panic Kaede tries her best to think back to her history classes.
This woman isn’t all she seems to be. She has strange healing powers. She’s probably not fully human. She’s mad at Kaede, thinks Kaede was put up to something by someone bad—
Oh, gods.
Her blood runs cold, and she swallows, terrified. The nurse watches her, expression still twisted in rage.
“Uhm…what did you say your name was, again?”
Wrong question. Definitely wrong question. The nurse seizes forward a step, expression positively livid as she pivots to jut the needle closer to Kaede’s direction. Kaede doesn’t need to look to see that it’s Maki’s vice grip on her wrist that pulls her away hard.
“H-How like her!” For a moment the nurse seems to shrink in on herself, arms cradling her own body as she whimpers under her breath, “S-Stupid, ugly, disgusting n-nasty, gross, useless, terrible, good-for-nothing, n-not even worthy of having a name! Right?!”
She’s back to her full volume, eyes not leaving Kaede’s as she once again flips to rage. “She t-took everything from me. Chewed me u-up and spit me out like trash — like garbage! And I used to need her.”
Her expression morphs from something self-pitying and heartbroken, to something almost loving.
No.
More like…devout. Reverent.
“U-Used to take every breath for her.” Clutching her syringe to her chest, the nurse openly begins to weep, tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping loudly onto the floor in the dead silence. “But not anymore.”
She giggles, eyes shifting around the room.
“I have a new beloved. And she will be s-so happy that I captured the stupid h-halfblood that stole her spear!”
Mikan Tsumiki, the Goddess of Health and Vitality, stares down Kaede and her friends where she has them cornered with a positively delirious grin.
Shuuichi opens his mouth, likely to object to his having the spear — not now, Shuuichi! — but Kaede doesn’t give him the chance. Grasping the teacups she’d left on the arm of the couch, she tosses both at Mikan as hard as she can, yelling for her friends to “Run!” before taking the person closest to her — Shuuichi again — by the hand and following her own advice.
There’s hardly any space to maneuver around the cottage to begin with, so Kaede leads her and Shuuichi on quick feet towards the door, trying to ignore the anguished shriek that tears out of Mikan’s throat. She rounds the sharp bend and nearly sends Shuuichi to the floor when she stops abruptly just before the threshold, cursing under her breath as she watches vines claw their way up from the floorboards and bind the door shut, hinges and all.
“C’mon!” It’s Shuuichi that takes the lead, hauling Kaede behind him while she still has him by the wrist as they move into the first empty room they can find: a kitchen, even smaller than the obscenely cramped living room. Shuuichi seems to fall short in terms of a plan beyond that, but Kaede spares only a moment or so to glance around the tiny room before throwing open a cupboard door and practically shoving Shuuichi in.
She has half a mind to leave him there and find a hiding spot for herself, but the sound of Mikan’s heavy, quick footsteps leaves her unsure and she ends up following in after Shuuichi, pressing herself as tightly as she can against the inside of the space. She only just barely fits in there alongside him, and even then she has to use both hands to grip the cupboard door closed so it doesn’t spring back open.
“Kaede, what was that?!” Shuuichi asks in a panicked whisper, pulling his knees tightly to his chest and staring at her incredulously. “Why does she know you — and why does she hate you?”
She grimaces, and not for the first time she curses her entire bloodline for being so fucked up. “Remember how I told you how my mom is kind of a terrible person?”
He blinks owlishly at her in the dark.
“Kind of famously, Sayaka fucked another goddess over.” She inclines her head emphatically towards the cupboard door, where said goddess is practically screaming the house down. “That goddess.”
Shuuichi’s expression pinches with anxiety to match her own. He swallows nervously. “And now, she’s—”
“—She’s acting like she’s working with Junko?” Kaede shivers at just saying the name. “Yeah, not grea—”
“Stop running from me!” The sound of Mikan’s sniffing and hiccuped breathing is audible even through the bloodlust dripping from her tone. “You need y-your shots to be healthy! Healthy and so happy to m-meet my beloved!”
Silence, followed by the soft sound of sneakers hitting the tiled floor of the kitchen. Kaede holds her breath, shooting Shuuichi a look that hopefully conveys to him don’t talk.
“If — if you’re a g-good girl, l-listen and take your shots like you need, I’ll e-even ask my beloved to go easy on you! Doesn’t that sound nice, Kaede?”
Pacing, just outside the cupboard. Kaede’s shoulders begin to tremble, hands slickening with sweat as she forces herself to keep holding the door shut.
“Kaede is s-s-such a nice name, so — such a pretty name,” Mikan fawns, voice oddly pitched and scratchy as she speaks. “A lovely name for a lovely daughter…Kaede is so m-much nicer than ugly Mikan. Even the terrible, disgusting name your mom gave you that you hated is better than stinky Mikan.”
The footsteps stop. Kaede’s afraid her heartbeat can be heard throughout the whole house with how loud it thunders in her ears. Shuuichi keeps trying to catch her eye, but Kaede very pointedly looks away, trying very hard to school her expression into something neutral before she mouths don’t ask.
He draws his finger in a cross over his heart.
“I-If you come out,” Mikan begins again suddenly, though her pacing doesn’t continue, “maybe I’ll let everyone else go! Y-You’ll have to stay, of course, along with that Shuuichi Saihara, and that boy who c-called me a psycho, b-but…! I’ll let everyone else go if you come get your shots!”
The look shared between her and Shuuichi affirms that neither of them believe that offer, but she’s not given much time to formulate a plan beyond that; there’s a sudden yank on the cupboard door, and it takes all her strength and biting her lip against the pain as she does everything in her power to keep the door shut, keep Mikan out.
It’s no use. At the slightest resistance the entire door is ripped off of its hinges, nearly taking Kaede’s arm out of its socket as Mikan throws the ruined slab of wood across the kitchen, allowing it to collide noisily with the oven as she stares Kaede down. In a flash she’s got an iron grip around Kaede’s wrist, painfully pulling her from the ruined cupboard and out onto the kitchen floor before Kaede can drag herself back.
Desperate, Kaede opens her mouth to sing, but before she can force a single sound out there’s a hand clapped roughly over her mouth, Mikan’s eyes wild and furious as she grabs her and holds her still.
“J-Just like your mother,” Mikan spits, nails digging into the skin of Kaede’s jaw as she tightens her grip, refusing to let her speak or sing or breathe. She drops Kaede’s bruised arm in favor of picking up the syringe again to wave at her. “She would do that wh-when she wanted m-m-me to shut up! Did you know that, Kaede? Mikan has s-such an ugly, n-nasty voice, so she shouldn’t t-talk! Right?!”
Kaede shakes her head desperately, tears blurring her vision and burning her cheeks. She feels Shuuichi tugging her backwards, blunt nails digging into the skin of her other arm, but a rough step on Kaede’s foot keeps them both in place and causes Kaede to scream in pain against the hand still clapped harshly over her mouth. She hears Shuuichi’s hiccuped crying behind her, his grip insistent and desperate as he tries to pull her away, sobbing under his breath, “Slow down, slow down, please, slow down!”
She tries to bring a hand to wrench Mikan’s grip away, but she can’t, she’s not strong enough, she can’t and the needle is getting closer to her neck and she’s going to die, Kaede’s going to die in front of her friends, she’s going to die because her mom can’t stop fucking her life up—
“Shut up! J-Just stop crying already! Shut up! Shut up, s-shut up, shut u—!”
The tail end of her sentence slows, the final syllables dripping out of her mouth like molasses, the angry twist of her lips moving in slow motion; it’s so disorienting that Kaede wants to shut her eyes, but the sight of Shuuichi moving at near lightning-speed in comparison to the world around her keeps her gaze on him as he rolls out of the cupboard, stumbles to his feet, and moves to yank Mikan’s hand away from Kaede’s mouth.
Her fingers have only just left Kaede’s skin when the world rockets back into regular speed, but he’s able to knock away the syringe from her hands in the interim before he’s roughly shoved aside, Mikan not even looking at him as her eyes laser-in once again on Kaede.
Almost without realizing Kaede’s mouth opens and she begins to sing, and she can tell it’s loud even over her heart pumping deafeningly in her ears from the way Mikan freezes up all at once, swaying in the air and unable to go back on the offensive as her limbs lock into place.
She watches Shuuichi go stock-still from where he’s still sprawled out on the ground, and Kaede knows it hurts and she’s sorry but she can’t stop, if she stops singing she’ll attack again, Kaede doesn’t want to die, she can’t—
“On your left, crazy!”
It’s not the sudden shout from the kitchen entrance, but rather the person behind the voice that pulls Kaede from her desperate haze; her head pounds dully as she forces herself to stop singing and watches as Kokichi, who somehow had managed to climb onto one of the kitchen counters unnoticed, jumps onto Mikan’s back, tackling her onto her stomach and bracing his knees on her thin shoulders.
Mikan shrieks, a wordless, almost animalistic noise, thrashing underneath Kokichi’s weight as he fumbles for something in his backpack. Kaede can only watch, stupefied, as he retrieves his arm and with it comes a syringe matching the one Mikan had very nearly stabbed Kaede with. Not giving her a chance to fight back Kokichi sticks the needle unceremoniously into her neck, forcing down the plunger and not moving an inch until her screeching subsides into wailing, then whimpering, then silence.
“Man, she really shouldn’t leave these things just lying around. Who knows what would happen if someone bad got their hands on one of these!”
Satisfied that she’s unconscious Kokichi disentangles himself from the goddess splayed limp on the floor, kicking her hair away from his shoe with no small amount of disgust. Brushing himself off with his hands he then turns to look at her and Shuuichi, still on the ground and heaving from the adrenaline rush.
From the expression on Kokichi’s face as he looks at them both, the two of them must look as awful as she feels. “Wow, I’ve never seen Kaede cry before! You should excuse yourself to clean up.”
Despite her raw throat and the tears still freely falling down her face, Kaede laughs.
“You’re a terrible little brat, you know that, right?” There’s nothing but admiration in her voice; regardless, Kokichi still has the gall to pretend to be offended.
“A terrible little brat that just saved you and your beloved Shuuichi’s lives!”
It takes Kaede a few seconds to manage to her feet, head still throbbing from using her power too intensely and entire leg aching from both her injury during the bear fight, and now from where Mikan had stepped on her ankle to keep her in place. Shuuichi seems back to being able to move, and as he gets to his own feet Kaede moves forward, wrapping Kokichi in an abrupt, tight hug.
He’s squirming in her grasp immediately, whining, “Yuck, gross! Kaede smells like a nasty hospital and sweaty Shuuichi smell! Get off!”
Gods, he is a brat, but Kaede’s not about to let that ruin the moment. She hugs him tighter, face hiding against his shoulder.
“I was so scared, I really thought she was going to kill me. I — I thought I’d never see you or any of my other friends again.” She sniffs, squeezing once more before pulling back enough to look at him. “Thank you for saving me, Kokichi.”
Kokichi’s face is very purposefully blank, but his ears are red from her sentiment. He coughs, awkward, muttering, “Whatever. Would have done it for anyone. Duh.”
“Are you alright?”
At the sound of a friendly voice she turns, seeing Shuuichi up and looking incredibly anxious, and wordlessly she just pulls him into the hug too, squeezing both of them tight as Shuuichi squeaks out another question as to if she’s okay.
“Thanks to you and Kokichi I am! Seriously, I think she would have gotten me if you hadn’t done your weird time thing. Thank you,” she says earnestly, pleased when Shuuichi accepts her hug even as Kokichi gags between them.
“Kaede?! Kaede!”
Maki.
“Maki!” she cries in response, pulling away just in time for Maki to burst into the kitchen, and despite herself her heart swells in affection — and, more importantly, relief; Maki’s okay.
Stepping uncaringly over Mikan’s body, Maki is unsubtle in her pushing the two boys out of the way in order to get a look at her, hands hanging in the air and eyes frantic, searching.
Despite the rudeness of Maki’s actions towards their friends Kaede finds herself reddening under the attention, savoring the way Maki’s anxious hands ghost over her cheeks, her arms, her waist, searching for injuries.
Finding none, Maki gives Kaede one of the softest, most relieved smiles she’s ever seen her friend wear. With the adrenaline still pumping through her veins, Kaede only just resists the urge to lean in and kiss it off; she satisfies the itch somewhat by wrapping her into a hug instead, biting back a giddy, totally out of place smile as Maki’s arms immediately come to circle around her, holding her tight as her fingers twist in the fabric of her ruined shirt.
A little preoccupied, Kaede hears rather than sees as the rest of her friends pour into the room, loudly and anxiously asking after everyone’s conditions. Someone forces their way into the hug — from the smell of hair gel and the fact that Maki doesn’t immediately kill them, she guesses Kaito — and Kaede can’t help but laugh at how Maki just pulls away with a huff, looking annoyed at being interrupted.
Kaede takes just a little too much pride in that fact, though it’s quickly knocked out of her as Kaito pulls away from their embrace to lift her and spin her around excitedly.
“Man, Kaede, you’re so friggin’ cool! You showed that crazy lady who’s who!”
“It was all Kokichi and Shuuichi!” she argues, embarrassed at the attention.
“No way! You gotta give yourself some credit — she was targetin’ you directly and you still kicked her ass!”
The sound of Maki’s voice immediately pulls Kaede’s attention from Kaito, and when she glances over she can only watch with barely-concealed fondness as Maki irritably runs her fingers through one of her pigtails, cheeks puffed out as she watches Kaede. “C’mon, put her down already.”
He does, though Kiibo and Gonta are quick to move in to fret over her as well, Gonta crying openly over Kaede’s near-death experience while Kiibo insists upon ‘scanning’ her to make sure she’s not further injured. Over Kiibo’s shoulder she watches as Kokichi begins pulling open drawers and cupboards, clearly intent on ransacking the kitchen. When he catches her gaze he just yawns dramatically into his hand.
“As much as I’d looove to watch everybody continue crying over Kaede, we should probably find those car keys and bounce before Nasty Bangs wakes up, riiight?”
He does have a point. Kaito, excitedly booming, “A car!” quickly takes off into a different area of the house, presumably in search of the keys. From there the rest of them split up; Shuuichi and Kiibo stay in the kitchen to watch Mikan’s condition and take any food they can find; Gonta goes off towards the door to break it down; Kokichi mutters something about “jewelry boxes” with a dangerous glint in his eyes.
And Kaede — every minute movement is shadowed by Maki, lurking over her shoulder, very clearly shaken by what happened (even if Kaede doubts she’d ever admit it).
Catching sight of the staircase from the hallway where she emerges she moves towards it, and when she stops to assess how steep and narrow they are, Maki crashes directly into her back — jeez, Maki must be really freaked out.
“Kaede?” she asks, confused as to why they’ve stopped. She chances a glance over her shoulder; Maki’s expression is serious, worrying at her lip with her eyes fixed on Kaede — solely on Kaede.
“C’mon, let’s search upstairs,” she answers, and promptly takes Maki by the hand to lead them both up to the second floor.
Kaede’s sure she’s bright red, but she’s so giddy she doesn’t even care.
The small cottage is kind of a dud when it comes to offering useful supplies; other than a small first-aid kit and some warm clothes — all of which end up stuffed into Kaede’s bulging bag — they don’t come up with much in almost ten minutes of searching, and by that point they’re both anxious to get downstairs and away from this place as quickly as possible.
Sparing one more glance around the tiny second story, Kaede moves to squeeze them both down the narrow stairs after their friends. She’s stopped in her tracks when Maki plants her feet, refusing to move even after Kaede looks back at her with an inquisitive eyebrow raised.
“Maki?”
“Shut up for a second.”
Kaede squeaks; and, realizing they’re still holding hands she does so again. Gods, she hopes her hand isn’t sweating too much. Is she sweating too much? Is it hot in here?
She’s pulled from her anxious ruminations when her gaze slides to where Maki has her free hand held uncertainly in the air, poised between both their bodies. They stay like that for several long, practically endless moments; Maki with her eyes downcast, face steadily reddening; and Kaede unable to pull her eyes away from her best friend, waiting with bated breath for her next move.
Very, very slowly, Maki moves her free hand up towards Kaede’s cheek, eventually settling for pushing a few strands of — gross, probably sweaty and dirty — blonde hair behind her ear. Maki doesn’t make eye contact, gaze flickering everywhere but Kaede’s own. She’s hyper aware of the way Maki’s focus lands on Kaede’s chest, Kaede’s neck, Kaede’s mouth.
“Maki?” she tries again, voice much softer, not wanting to shatter…whatever is happening within her friend. She’s not immediately given an answer; when Maki’s hand slowly pulls from her own, Kaede doesn’t breathe as she watches Maki’s movements.
Her arms settle on Kaede’s shoulders, fingers linking gently behind her neck. Kaede hopes she can’t feel her jackhammering heartbeat at their proximity.
“I don’t like having to worry about your safety,” Maki admits lowly, still refusing to look at Kaede properly. “I have to make sure the idiots don’t die. I don’t want to worry about you, too.”
Guilt washes over Kaede, and despite her stomach doing flip-flops at their closeness she does have the wherewithal to feel bad. “I’m sorry. I don’t like worrying you either, you know. But this was a pretty weird circumstance, so…cut me some slack, okay?”
“Hm,” is all Maki says.
Silence, for an unbearably long stretch of time; even the distant sound of Kokichi and Kaito’s muffled bickering downstairs isn’t enough to break the intense weight of the moment happening between them.
Maki is looking at her lips again.
Kaede wants Maki to lean in and kiss her so badly.
“...Maki?”
It feels weird to say her name so much. It feels weird to say it so softly, into the scant space between them. She can’t decipher the look on Maki’s face. Gods, they’re so close; barely a breath apart.
Maki is still looking at Kaede’s lips.
She swallows, nerves tangling up her words in her throat, as she very, very softly asks, “Are you…going to kiss me?”
Maki goes a brighter shade of red than Kaede has ever seen her wear. The realization of what she’d said hitting her, Kaede groans loudly, hiding her head in her hands in shame.
Something gently touches her throat. Face still hidden, Kaede feels herself burning as she realizes Maki still has her arms propped up on Kaede’s shoulders, hands still resting by the back of her neck.
Whisper-soft, Maki’s thumbs brush the skin of Kaede’s throat. It’s enough to make her hands tremble as they cradle her mortified face.
One hand leaves her neck, reappearing barely a moment later as Maki’s fingers slide to pull Kaede’s own hands away from her face. Maki’s touch is still gentle on her neck, the minute movements of her thumb swiping across her skin keeping Kaede from doing something silly like bolting.
“Not here,” Maki decides eventually. Finally, finally, she looks Kaede in the eyes again. “Not in…this house.”
There’s a boisterous, victorious shout from downstairs; neither of them move at the sound, though Kaito’s impatient call up the stairs for them to “Hurry the hell up, who knows when this lady’ll wake up!” is enough to more or less break the intensity of the moment.
Maki smiles wryly, eyes sliding over Kaede’s shoulder to glance behind her down the stairs. “Not with the idiots waiting for us.”
And that’s…better than Kaede expected. It’s not a no. It’s a…not yet?
Kaede almost stumbles at the thought, and the look Maki gives her as she immediately reaches a hand out to steady her is enough to have her flushing again, embarrassed. She turns to head down the stairs at Kaito’s insistence, but the hand still on her neck holds her still just long enough for Maki to squeeze her eyes shut tightly, push herself up onto her tip-toes, and plant her lips just a little too hard against Kaede’s cheek.
Without a word she pulls away, bright scarlet as she quickly slides past Kaede down the staircase, leaving her to flounder alone.
Kaede brings a hand to her cheek, positively lovestruck, before dreamily making her way down the stairs after the others.
It seems she’s the last one in the house, and when she steps outside, she notices that the stars in the sky have been blotted out and it’s begun to drizzle. Kaito honks the horn playfully from the driver’s seat, and quickly she hurries off the porch, climbing into the car and claiming the seat Maki saves for her, just in time to hear the tail-end of Kaito excitedly saying something about how he’s great at driving actual trucks.
After Kaede secures her seatbelt, Kaito throws the truck into reverse and maneuvers them out of the cottage property and onto the dirt road. The lack of light on the road provides Kaede with a cover of darkness, and biting her lip, she very, very slowly moves to lay her hand over Maki’s where it’s resting on the car seat.
Maki doesn’t look at her, doesn’t even look up from where her eyes are fixed somewhere out the windshield, but she doesn’t pull away, and that fact alone is enough to have Kaede almost as deliriously happy as the nurse had been earlier.
Almost. She still has some of her wits about her.
“Alright, Demi Squad!” Kaito looks through the rearview mirror to address all seven of them. “I vote we get the hell outta these woods and onto a main road, stop at the first motel we find, and get some sleep. Sound good?”
Predictably, there’s not a peep of disagreement, and once again Kaede and her little group settle after another high-intensity, terrifying ordeal with the gods.
Sometime between the bumpiness of the dirt road and the smooth, clear ride on the main road, Kaede’s eyes droop, so much so that she can’t even feign an attempt to stay awake. In the darkness, Kaede allows her head to gently rest against Maki’s shoulder as she shuts her eyes for good.
Maki’s thumb gently strokes Kaede’s hand where they rest still intertwined on the seat, and soon enough she’s out like a light.
Notes:
+ first off: bet you weren't expecting the homosexuality to pop out! rest assured, it's been in the outline like this for eons at this point. kaemaki is.......well, there's *something* going on there!
+ second off: okay, so i really wasn't lying about the whole "college graduation" thing. it's currently uhhh [checks watch] 11:21pm on thursday. i walk the stage friday at 8am! (whoops)
+ however, both i and my sister (another stakeholder in this passion project you've got your eyes on) thought it would be fitting to an almost obscene degree (haha) to cap off my years in college like...well, like this. so forgive me for these rushed authors notes; it is so unbelievably past my bedtime
+ one more thing before the content warnings, however: you may (or may not) have noticed the word count for this fic jump a little bit! over the past few days i.....on the low end typo-fixed, on the high end kind of rewrote whole sections of chapters. nothing plot relevant has changed, however! just lots of typo and formatting fixes, and to a much lesser extent some dialogue and flow of conversation was changed (this is most apparent in chapter 4, but i believe this change is absolutely for the better — i'm very pleased!)
+ so if you're an old-head who has been keeping up with this fic since its beginnings in 2019 (i love you), perhaps give it a reread! or don't. with this chapter we get dangerously close to 100k words, and this fic is not even halfway done yet. if you ARE new, though: well, if youve read since may 15, you've seen the new edits. but anyone before then — take a gander! i improved the reading experience for us All, y'know!
+ alright, enough of all that. graduation, bazwrites, c'mon now! here are your content warnings: discussion of wounds (mild to severe), subsequent treating of those wounds, there is a moment where a trans character is (implicitly) outed to another trans character but it isn't touched upon in-verse (yet!), and i belieeeve that's it!
Chapter 11: drive, just drive! (interlude i)
Summary:
Gonta is strong — he knows this. All of his friends are strong, too, in a lot of different ways, but Gonta knows that in the same way Kaede is talking-strong, that Maki is fighting-strong, that Kokichi is brain-strong; Gonta is physical-strong.
And yet Kaede and Shuuichi had been forced to face off against the nurse all on their own.
Gonta wipes under his eyes, trying not to jostle Kiibo too much, where they’re sitting right next to him, with the movement.
Notes:
+ hi there! we're back with a cute, short-and-sweet little chapter where i...more or less relearn how to write gonta after a years-long absence
+ new pov! woo yay woo! also, another title borrowed from the percy jackson musical from which this entire bizarro story was originally inspired. fun!
+ not much preamble necessary here; without further ado, enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Gonta Gokuhara has had a very, very long day.
Well, if he’s honest — something he tries very, very hard to be! — it’s probably been a little longer than a day, hasn’t it? It’s a little hard to remember, with all Gonta and his friends have gone through since their ‘quest’ began, what quite happened when. Gonta tries his hardest to get enough sleep every night, because it’s the best way to feel good when he wakes up in the morning, but now that he thinks about it…he’s not very sure at all when the last time he slept was.
The day had begun with Gonta waking up on one of the couches in Mr. Komaeda’s RV — that much was easy to remember. Kokichi had woken him up really early, earlier than everyone else; even Maki, who got up before even Gonta did most days, was still in bed. When Gonta had retrieved his glasses from where he’d folded and placed them on the floor he'd opened his eyes and found Kokichi poking impatiently at his cheek, asking Gonta to wake up and talk with him because he was bored, and sleeping in the same bed as Shuuichi had been so terribly, mind-meltingly boring.
And of course, as one of Kokichi’s very best friends at camp (it had taken Kokichi a long time to agree to such a label, but for a long time now Gonta has been his best friend!) Gonta had happily offered his couch for Kokichi to sleep on as soon as he’d blinked himself fully awake. Kokichi had been very happy — so happy, in fact, he gave Gonta one of his real smiles, the one Gonta likes to see on Kokichi the most — and thanked Gonta as “the realest, truest gentleman there is, y’know!” before curling up under one of Gonta’s suit jackets and falling immediately asleep.
Gonta likes waking up early, so allowing his friend to sleep while he read on the floor had been an easy decision for him to make; but now, much, much later, Gonta isn’t regretting it per se…but he is tired. More tired than he’s ever been, even after his longest days of training with Maki and Kaito in the camp training grounds.
Still, he can’t sleep, not yet — so Gonta squeezes his eyes shut and thinks, tries to remember the long day he’s had, to distract himself awake just a little longer. Between his thoughts and the metal limbs poking into his side, it’s easy enough to refocus, force his eyes open and recall what had led them all to where they are now.
That’s right…Gonta had been reading on the RV, waiting for the rest of his friends to wake up so they could continue on their quest. He wasn’t sure when exactly the others had gotten ready, but he knew for certain that the sun was definitely bright and high in the sky by the time Maki had begun to drive that morning. Most definitely, by the time Gonta, Kaede, and Kiibo had gone into the large, overwhelming, exciting but almost frightening shopping mall the day was at its warmest.
Gonta feels his face burn as he recalls the way he’d put his friends in danger by his attempting to save the animals in the shopping mall earlier. He knew Kaede had been right when she said that their quest couldn’t wait, knew she would never tell a lie about helping Gonta protect the animals once their quest was done…but after hearing the cries of each and every animal in that place, he couldn’t leave them behind.
He’s definitely happy that he freed them, but…ashamed that he had made such a mess in the process.
His friends mostly seem to have forgotten, though — apparently Kokichi had begun setting fires in the shopping mall (Gonta should tell Kokichi that lighting fires inside is no good…) and Mr. Komaeda’s RV had run out of gas, so they had to hurry to get more. Gonta mostly remembers that the drive to the gas station was very nerve-wracking, everyone tense and yelling because of all the bad things that had happened.
What happened after that is…hard. So many things seemed to have taken place one right after another, so much so that even when Gonta tries his best, it’s impossible to separate all of the following events in his mind.
Gonta can recall that the sun was still out when the RV exploded and those bear monsters attacked, but by the time they could escape and run away into the forest, it was almost totally black out. The forest was dark, and between the ache in his feet and his attentions mostly focused on keeping Kokichi on his back and helping Kaede to walk, Gonta can’t say for sure how long they had wandered before finding the very tiny cabin in the woods.
He’s the least sure about what happened then, even though it’s the event that happened most recently. At first the nurse lady in the cottage was so nice, taking care of his friends’ injuries and giving them tea and answering all of Gonta’s questions as she had worked on him! But…
At one point she had pulled out a large, scary needle, and begun to talk about giving them all ‘shots’ and things Gonta really couldn’t understand. He had run away when Kaede told them all to — Kaede is smart, and very trustworthy, and when she speaks Gonta tries his hardest to listen — and when he’d finally found her and the rest of his friends again, the nurse had tried to hurt Kaede and Shuuichi.
And Gonta hadn’t been there to protect them.
Gonta is strong — he knows this. All of his friends are strong, too, in a lot of different ways; but Gonta knows that in the same way Kaede is talking-strong, that Maki is fighting-strong, that Kokichi is brain-strong, Gonta is physical-strong.
And yet Kaede and Shuuichi had been forced to face off against the nurse all on their own.
Gonta wipes under his eyes, trying not to jostle Kiibo too much where they’re sitting right next to him, with the movement.
His friends know Gonta is physical-strong, which is why they had all asked him for help during the long, hard walk. Gonta is the strongest, the only one able to carry Kokichi after he hurt his foot really bad and couldn’t move on his own. He had carried most of the bags that had escaped the RV explosion, and helped Kaede for a long time, too. It had been really hard, and hurt more than anything than Gonta could remember, and he had cried a few times despite his best efforts, but he had done it, because his friends needed him to.
And when he’d finally been able to lay down in the cottage, warm his aching body by the fire and rest his bruised feet, it had taken him much longer than usual to get mental-strong enough to become physical-strong and save his friends. By the time he had summoned the strength, it was too late — and if it hadn’t been for Kokichi, Kaede and Shuuichi would have…
But they were okay, and Gonta was so relieved that it hadn’t even hit him until much later, in the same spot he is now — squished into the very back of a truck with Kiibo, trying to keep himself awake to make sure nothing follows or hurts his friends as they sleep and Kaito drives — that he’s sitting in a stolen truck.
Gonta had known they had stolen Mr. Komaeda’s RV, but when Kokichi reminded them that they were actually just borrowing it, that they would bring it back, it had lessened some of Gonta’s guilt. But the RV is gone, and not only had they stolen it, they’d also destroyed it, too.
And now they’re in the nurse’s stolen truck. And Gonta is almost certain that they have no plans to give it back.
Perhaps it’s for the best; someone who could hurt Gonta’s friends, especially friends as nice as Kaede and Shuuichi…it’s probably best that she can’t follow them, right? That’s what Kaito had told him, when he’d nervously asked after that fact…he isn’t sure how long ago, now.
Gonta is so very, very tired.
So he tries to focus on something else. Something other than his still-hurting body, or all of the bad things he’s done, or Kiibo’s metal points digging into Gonta’s right side.
The truck…the truck is small, but it does fit all seven of them — a big relief. It smells very faintly of herbs, which Gonta likes, but something else that’s much more medicinal, much sharper; whatever it is, he doesn’t like it. However long it has been since they all piled into the truck and began to drive away from the nurse’s house, Gonta has used the time to get used to the smell that had him holding his nose for the first thirty minutes or so of the ride.
But no matter how hard he tries, no matter what he attempts to distract himself with, he can’t get used to the physical discomfort he’s been confined to since they began driving — so long ago now in Gonta’s exhausted, weary brain.
The very back seat, where Gonta is sitting, is much, much too cramped for someone as large as him. His legs are scrunched up against the back of the seat in front of him, knees pressed tightly against the wall of the truck. He has his arms curled up in his lap as best he can, trying to keep in his own space, but even with his best efforts, he can’t stop the many, many points where Kiibo’s metal body digs uncomfortably into his own soft, fleshy one.
It’s not Kiibo’s fault, Gonta knows this — Kiibo is a robot, and Gonta is very large, so in a tiny space, it’s only to be expected that they touch. Usually Gonta quite likes touching Kiibo, and even now the closeness to one of his other best friends is welcome, just not…the painful parts.
And there isn’t room anywhere else for Gonta to sit; up in the front with Kaito, Shuuichi sleeps in the passenger’s seat, hat pulled over his eyes and a jacket splayed out like a blanket on his front. Directly in front of Gonta, in the truck’s middle seat, Kokichi’s head rests against the left window, snoring softly. Next to him is Maki, and next to her Kaede — and while Kaede uses her backpack as a pillow, Maki’s head rests in Kaede’s lap, seatbelt off and forgotten as she silently naps.
At present, Gonta is sure only he, Kaito, and Kiibo are awake. And as much as he’d like to sleep…he wants to stay strong, for Kaito. If Kaito has to stay awake to drive…then Gonta will stay awake too, to listen for any danger that might be following the car, point out any motels they can pull into and sleep in properly.
Earlier in the drive, it was easier to keep himself awake; it’s ungentlemanly, he knows, but listening and trying to follow along to the quiet conversations of the others had been enough to keep him awake with relative ease. As his friends had started to drop off into sleep, it had gotten harder — and after Kokichi had finally fallen asleep following an argument with Kiibo that Gonta tried his best to mediate, it’s been silent ever since.
It must be at least a few hours later, now, and even with the argument long forgotten Kiibo still, every so often, apologizes profusely for the many places in which their robotic parts poke and prod at Gonta.
But Kiibo has been quiet for a long time now, long enough that Gonta can’t help but glance over and check to see if they are still awake. They are; Kiibo gazes silently out the window into the night that’s quickly rising into dawn, fingers of one hand worrying at the sleeve of the torn orange sweater they wear.
Gonta thinks they look…nervous. When his eyes trail down to look at the words sliding across their collar — Gonta knows it’s ungentlemanly, but sometimes he can’t help himself! — his suspicions are, well, maybe not confirmed, but his observations tell Gonta that something is happening.
Lots of exclamation marks. No words. No matter how hard he thinks, he can’t quite figure out what that’s meant to mean.
If Kiibo is nervous, like Gonta thinks…well, he’s not sure why. Gonta is listening very closely, has been since the drive began; if there was something following them, he definitely would hear it. Not to mention, Kaito is a very good driver!
At least, as far as Gonta can tell. This is probably only his second or third time ever being in a car.
After gazing himself out Kiibo’s window for several long minutes, Gonta comes to the conclusion that there’s nothing out there that could be making them nervous.
So something inside the car, then…?
“Kiibo?”
Gonta tries to speak as quietly as he can, so as not to wake up his friends, but Kiibo jumps at the sound of their name anyways, collar momentarily filling with scrambled numbers and letters before they look up at Gonta with a soft — if maybe still nervous — smile.
“Oh, yes, Gonta? Do you need something?”
Gonta shakes his head, turning his body to look at Kiibo a little-more head on. He ignores the way it reminds him of all the pain he’s still in. “Gonta think Kiibo look…nervous. Is Kiibo okay?”
Despite their answer to the negative, Gonta isn’t quite sure he’s convinced by it. “Ah, I am…I am alright, Gonta. Th-Thank you.”
It makes Gonta frown. Kiibo goes to turn back to the window, but before he can stop himself, Gonta speaks again to make sure he’s made himself perfectly clear.
“If Kiibo is sure…then okay. Gonta not like it when his friends sad or nervous or upset.” Kiibo is looking at Gonta still; he smiles, tired but genuine. “If Kiibo ever any of those things, they tell Gonta, right? Gonta will do his best to make Kiibo feel better again, whenever they need.”
Their face goes from its usual pale white to bright red, and without responding they abruptly pull the collar of their sweater up to hide their face. It makes Gonta frown; if Kiibo isn’t nervous, could they be embarrassed, maybe…? How can Gonta fix this for his friend?
Kiibo continues to hide; Gonta continues to frown. “Gonta understand if Kiibo no want to talk, but Gonta wish Kiibo no would hide. Gonta like seeing Kiibo’s face.”
Strangely, Kiibo only seems to further recede into the…well, Gonta can’t tell what mood they’re still in. An odd, electronic sound comes from Kiibo as they abandon their attempts to hide in their sweater in favor of shoving their face right into their hands.
“Woooo, Gonts! You’re smooth as silk back there!”
From Kiibo’s reaction, it should be Gonta’s turn to get nervous; but Kaito’s chipper interjection sounds positive to Gonta — so even if he can’t quite tell what Kaito means with his words, when he sees his friend smiling brightly at him through the mirror, it makes Gonta a little more confident.
“Hey, no way — you’re bright red, Kiibo! Damn, Gonta, you are a real charmer!”
Gonta’s pretty sure that’s also a compliment; before he can ask, Kiibo retrieves their face from their palms, just as Kaito had described them — bright red — as they seem to find their words again. “P-Please keep your eyes on the road, Kaito!”
Gonta immediately nods in agreement. “Yes, Kiibo is right! Kaito is a very good driver, but it’s very important to keep eyes on road!”
Kaito waves a hand in the air, shooting Gonta another smile in the mirror before his eyes do find their way back to the task at hand.
“I’m gonna be an astronaut one day, y’know. If I can’t drive a car and be a wingman at the same time, how can I even think about flyin’ a rocket?”
Gonta is…not sure he follows. Still, Kaito always gets so excited when he talks about his ambitions to go to space; even if Gonta doesn’t quite understand all of the smart, advanced concepts Kaito talks about regarding his exploration of the stars, he loves to listen regardless.
Kaito would know better than Gonta what it takes to be an astronaut, anyway. He’s not even quite sure what a ‘wingman’ means in the context Kaito said it now.
“Those things are not related at all!”
Or maybe Kiibo knows best; they sound pretty confident as they object to Kaito’s words. But before long, their indignant expression falls once again into silence, eyes trained out the window. When Gonta looks closer, in the low light of the early morning drive, he can see that Kiibo’s face is still a little red. The pointy, upright lick of their hair seems droopier than usual, too; before Gonta can stop himself, he reaches a hand out to try and straighten it.
The moment his fingers make contact with Kiibo’s hair they shoot back up in their seat, unintelligible sounds falling out of their mouth and speakers. With his hand so close, he can feel the heat radiating off of Kiibo, and immediately Gonta’s mouth opens to voice his concern.
“Kiibo is burning up! Should we get medicine for fever?”
Recovering somewhat, Kiibo shakes their head firmly; their face is tinted an almost purple color now, hair standing straight on end.
“That will not be necessary, Gonta. I am a robot, so rest assured I cannot…c-come down with a fever.”
“Then why is Kiibo so hot?”
Gonta’s question is genuine; regardless, Kiibo goes back to hiding in both their shirt and their hands (somehow) and Kaito whistles from the front seat.
If Gonta listens really hard, he’s almost sure Kokichi’s snoring may have stopped, too…
“That, my friend, is because Kiibo’s blushing.”
Gonta looks over to confirm Kaito’s words for himself; when Kiibo glances up and meets Gonta’s gaze, their face only darkens further, the sound of mechanical whir-ing loud in the otherwise quiet car.
“I — I am doing no such thing!” Gonta is quite positive Kiibo is lying. “Kaito, it is incredibly rude of you to bully me! I demand you stop at once!”
“Gonta no want Kaito to bully Kiibo,” Gonta observes in agreement.
From the front of the truck, Kaito shakes his head, making eye contact with Gonta again through the mirror. “No bullying happenin’ here, Gonts. They are blushing, and it’s ‘cause of you!”
“Oh, Gonta sorry!”
His apology only seems to make Kiibo more frantic. “It’s — that’s, I — I suppose it’s alright…”
“Stop…” Gonta is surprised by Kokichi’s sudden interjection from in front of him. “Flirting…Kiibaby, you stupid, loud…”
As quickly as it had stopped, Kokichi’s snoring starts up again. Kaito huffs from the front seat; Gonta is too concerned with glancing nervously over at Kiibo, who had clammed up rather quickly as soon as Kokichi had interrupted them.
Gonta inclines his head closer to Kiibo, to make sure Kokichi can’t hear him — though Gonta is pretty sure he’s sleeping for real again. “Kiibo not stupid. Kokichi…Kokichi just tired.”
The excuse rings as hollow even in Gonta’s own ears. Kokichi is one of Gonta’s best friends, but sometimes he’s meaner to Kiibo with his jokes than Gonta is comfortable with. He’s gotten much nicer over the years Gonta has known him, but…
He still makes Kiibo frown down at their lap, embarrassed and affronted.
“He is just so…” They trail off, fingers gripping the front of their ripped sweater, wrinkling the dirty fabric. “Though I have incredible self esteem, it is sometimes — too much.”
The sentiment is enough to make Gonta frown, to make him not even think about his words before he lets them out in his friend’s defense. “Kiibo not stupid. Gonta know Kiibo very smart. Kiibo one of the smartest people Gonta knows. For sure, friend most knowledgeable about robots!” Gonta smiles at his friend for emphasis.
“Kiibo help Gonta and friends be less robophobic. Help Gonta become more robot-friendly gentleman! Kiibo very smart, in lots of ways,” Gonta finishes firmly, nodding his head.
They look unsure for a few moments; finally, though, Kiibo returns Gonta’s smile, and something in Gonta’s chest goes warm and fuzzy and all around quite lovely at the sight.
“Thank you, Gonta. As always, you’re the perfect gentleman.” It’s Gonta’s turn to blush at the high praise. “But even outside of, ah, helping you…I enjoy spending time with you. Very much so. And when all of this spear business is behind us, I would quite like to spend time with you doing much less stressful things.”
“Gonta would like that very much,” he responds earnestly, enjoying the smile he gets in return.
From the front of the truck, Kaito drums his hands on the steering wheel until he gets both of their attention. “Alright, love birds, enough chit-chat! I know you both gotta be exhausted, so try and get some sleep, okay?”
Gonta…would quite like that, since Kaito says it’s okay. Kiibo seems to agree; though they’re back to looking sheepish, once again apologizing for their cramped quarters and many points of contact.
Yawning, Gonta shakes his head. “No, Kiibo okay. Here, does Kiibo want to lay on Gonta and get comfy?”
They look very unsure for several moments; then, finally, they move somewhat closer to Gonta, angling their head to rest against Gonta’s shoulder. He’s pleasantly surprised when he can feel lingering warmth in Kiibo’s face; their hair is soft where it cushions their head, their cowlick gently tickling Gonta’s cheek as he moves closer to rest his own head against his friend.
“I have…” Kiibo’s voice is very soft. “...No functional need for comfort. But this is very nice.”
“Gonta think so, too.”
A gentle hand grasps onto the sleeve of Gonta’s jacket, and doesn’t pull away. From his position, Gonta can see the way Kiibo’s eyes flutter shut, a small smile on their face.
“Thank you. I will now enter sleep mode to preserve my battery life. Please get some rest as well, Gonta.”
Following his friend’s lead, Gonta shuts his eyes and tries to do the same. From the front of the truck, Gonta thinks he might hear Kaito mumble something; but Kiibo’s hair is so soft, and their body is so warm, and Gonta can think of nothing else as he finally, finally allows himself to sleep.
Notes:
+ kiibonta supremacy WOOOOO (i just think they're neat)
+ in general though i like the little trio dynamic going on with these three. they're the ones who tend to get neglected in such a large questing gang AND i haven't written my eternal favorite boy gonta as the star of his own chapter yet, so of course!
+ nothing very ~plotty~ happens this chapter, and you may have noticed the little addendum in the chapter title. you'll see more of these little interludes here and there. i hope you enjoy them like i do!
+ as is true of most authors i know, kudos and comments and bookmarks are beloved to the moon and back. if the urge so happens to strike!
+ chapter warnings: embarrassing flirting (and i believe that's it!)
Chapter 12: the mark of any great adventure: its obligatory beach episode
Summary:
A new voice and the sound of metal soles on the pool deck pulls Shuuichi from that thought before he can consider it for too long. “Oh, good! Everyone had the same idea as me!”
That would be Kokichi, dragging poor Kiibo behind him by their hand towards the other side of the pool area. Kiibo looks as they usually do — stripped of the clothes Kaede had forced them into and then subsequently ruined over the course of the previous day — but Kokichi definitely doesn’t. He’s in just a pair of checker-patterned shorts, dark hair pulled back out of his face with a rubber band and slathered head to toe in not-fully-rubbed-in sunscreen.
He turns to wave excitedly at Shuuichi as he moves past with Kiibo still in tow, making a beeline towards the dinky little shelf on the opposite end of the pool filled with various swimming amenities. Pulling floaties of various sizes off one of the shelves, he rounds menacingly on Kiibo and stalks back to them with a wicked little grin.
Notes:
+ hello again! we are back with a chapter twice the length of the previous, and i'm pretty sure this'll push this fic over the 100k word threshold
+ have i mentioned we're not even halfway done yet?
+ regardless, this chapter was MEGA fun to write, for a lot of different reasons which i will expand upon in the end notes. for now, though: enjoy the pointy objects BEACH EPISODE BABEYYY!!!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As has become increasingly common, recently, Shuuichi wakes to the sound of fighting.
“Kaito, you moron, why didn’t you wake me up to trade off?”
“Nothin’ to worry about, Maki Roll. We’re all still in one piece, right?”
There’s something strange in Kaito’s voice. When Shuuichi blinks his eyes open and pushes his hat up, he notices it’s daytime — very bright. He flinches back reflexively, waiting for his eyes to readjust before glancing over at Kaito.
He’s sweating, hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. The car is in park, Shuuichi realizes a little belatedly, in the lot of some motel that he’s honestly just shocked it apparently took this long to find.
“Tell that to the curb you smashed me into, asshole!” Kokichi snaps from behind Kaito, kicking the back of his seat for emphasis.
“Seriously, Kaito, you look exhausted! You know Maki would have switched off so you could sleep!”
Kaito’s smile twitches as he flashes it towards Kaede through the rearview mirror. Shuuichi begins to see the issue. “Utterly unnecessary. I am completely, totally fine right now…!”
Shuuichi can only watch as Kaito, at the tail end of his sentence, blinks a few times before his body falls forward and he smashes his head off the steering wheel. The half-second, aborted chirp of the car horn is enough to startle him awake again.
He’s pretty sure it’s Maki that kicks Kaito’s seat this time. “Give me the god damn keys.”
“Can Gonta leave the back seat soon?”
“And I have to go to the bathroom!”
Shuuichi groans as he forces the passenger door open and rolls away from the whole everything happening in the crazy goddess lady’s stolen truck. His dismount is unsteady, but he does remain on his feet, having to stoop down to grab his jacket off the ground, though he has no interest in putting it back on as he cringes beneath his hat against the glare of the late morning sun.
He goes to grab his duffle bag from where it had been sitting for hours on top of his feet when the car door is slammed shut, and after he follows the offending hand to its source he finds Maki leveling him with an annoyed look.
“You’re the only one that’s normal looking and not dead on their feet right now. Come with me to rent a couple rooms.”
Shuuichi follows wordlessly. He can’t imagine there are many requests she could make coupled with that expression that he wouldn’t acquiesce to.
He realizes about a half-step inside of the hotel’s unassuming main lobby that he doesn’t have his wallet with him. He considers for a brief moment bringing this to her attention, but as she confidently steps up to the concierge, he sort of figures she’s got it handled.
The woman who blinks between the both of them as Maki operates through her exhausted agitation to secure them two rooms for the day clearly doesn’t think they look as ‘normal’ as Maki claims they did. Shuuichi finds himself looking down at his grimy, sweat-soaked clothes and ruined school uniform shoes anxiously as Maki does the dirty work of bargaining and paying.
When they emerge, two dull silver keyrings in hand, Shuuichi realizes as he surveys the rest of his friends while they pile out of the truck that Maki was kind of right.
All of their previous injuries and ailments had more or less been dealt with while still in Mikan Tsumiki’s cottage — whose healing abilities had about convinced him he was losing his mind as he’d watched several of Kokichi’s more grievous wounds heal over right in front of his eyes. Still, though their little ragtag unit is up and moving again, the other reminders of their previous twenty-four hours remain very clear.
Kaede, her entire front caked in dried blood, has to physically keep Kaito — still in singed, smoke-stained clothing from the RV disaster — hauled up against the truck to keep him from toppling over asleep again. Kiibo is just as bad, their new clothes heavily torn and damaged from who knows what, beyond again, the obvious RV explosion.
Gonta rubs at his eyes, everyone’s surviving bags piled at his feet. And finally there's Kokichi, who looked probably the most conspicuous out of any of them — a pretty difficult feat, all things considered. Blood, gasoline, dirt, who could say what else; his ruined clothing and hair are filthy with it. Regardless, Kaito seems pretty intent on leaning on him, until Kokichi darts away, running in frantic circles around the truck on his healed foot as he cries about needing the bathroom still.
“Gods above.” That would be Maki, regarding their friends as Shuuichi is, though with much more exasperation than Shuuichi can bring himself to muster. He’s mostly just happy they’re all still alive.
She marches over to where Kaede's struggling under Kaito’s weight, pushing a key into her hand. “Shuuichi. Help me bring him to the other room.”
Kaito argues the entire walk to their destination, despite the fact he’s being actively held up by the two of them between split seconds of falling asleep mid-sentence. Shuuichi hears bits and pieces about astronaut work and sleep training and other, slightly less coherent excuses, but by the time he and Maki are holding Kaito down on one of the beds and waiting for him to inevitably conk out again, he’s kind of stopped listening.
“So we make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Maki begins, wrinkling her nose as she’s cut off by an obnoxious, room-shaking snore, “I’m going to sleep, too. We’ll be driving in shifts from now on.”
That last sentence seems to be more for their sleeping friend’s sake rather than Shuuichi’s. He nods, taking that more or less as his sign to get out. As soon as he turns, Maki clears her throat, and when he immediately spins back around she finds her holding out Kaede’s backpack to him, gaze withering.
“I’m not sleeping in these disgusting clothes. Find someone to do some laundry before we all suffocate on each others’ smells.”
Shuuichi is agreeable enough to that. “Sure.”
Along with Kaede’s backpack, Shuuichi takes from the first hotel room what they’d wrestled off of Kaito while trying to get him in bed as well as the clothing Maki drops outside the bathroom door. The other room they’d rented is only a few doors down, and when he approaches it he finds it unlocked with only Kiibo inside.
Taking his chance, knowing it might be a while if he hesitates, Shuuichi only feels a little guilty as he abandons what he’d been holding in favor of snatching his duffle bag — which must have been dropped off by one of the others — off the bed and hurrying into the unoccupied bathroom in search of a shower.
As he strips his ruined clothing off and kicks it away with disgust, he has to admit Maki was correct again; he’s sort of rank. Most of what he had on for all of yesterday was absolutely decimated by the various disasters they’d barely scraped themselves out of, and he deems most of it not even worth attempting to salvage, save for his binder and his boxers. The rest he kicks to the opposite end of the bathroom, away from his bag which held blessedly clean clothes.
Before he even thinks about picking through his belongings he washes his hands, thankful to scrub away the grime that he’s been picking out from under his fingernails for who knows how long. While at the sink he snatches his dirty binder off the floor, pressing down the drain plug and letting the basin fill with warm water as he works the newly-unwrapped bar soap into the binder generously.
As satisfied as he’s going to get he leaves the dirty binder to sit in the sudsy water, pulling open the shower curtain and attempting to figure out how to work the temperature setting on the handle. He doesn’t spend too long worrying at it, though; there are several more people just as desperate for a shower as Shuuichi is, so he only shivers slightly at the cool water as he steps in and begins to wash off the rest of the previous day’s grossness.
He’s quick; aware both of the limited time and washing resources available to him, he lingers in the spray only long enough to make sure he’s fully and properly clean. He’s never appreciated the scent of cheap hotel shampoo and body soap more as he steps out of the shower, moving to towel dry his hair and drain the water from the sink. He thinks he can hear movement in the room beyond the locked bathroom door, so he doesn’t waste time, wringing out his wet binder in preparation of hanging it up to dry as he brushes his teeth.
Shuuichi definitely hears Kaede pounding on the door, begging to be let in for a shower, so after yelling back his intentions to do just that he hurries to shuffle on one of his remaining clean binders, then deodorant (again, an unimaginable relief), then finally a fresh shirt and shorts. Pausing only to slide his damp binder onto the towel rack, Shuuichi hurries to gather the rest of his belongings before finally unlocking the door.
He’s hardly taken a step out the bathroom before Kaede rushes in past him, smiling appreciatively and promptly slamming the door.
Before he forgets: “I’m gonna do some laundry, so toss anything out that you need washed!”
“I’m throwing everything on me away!” Kaede cries through the door, though a moment later, “can you wash everything I’ve got in my bag?”
He can, so he takes a few minutes to empty her bag entirely, tossing everything that looks like clothing into the growing pile on the floor. The shower comes to life once again in the bathroom, though it abruptly stops a few moments later. Before he can ask after it the door cracks open, Kaede’s voice a little unsure as she calls out to him again.
“Shuuichi? Should I leave what you have hanging in here, or do you want to wash it?”
It takes a half-second for his brain to catch up to what he’s been asked, but by the time he does his mouth has already answered. “I—I’m leaving it to air dry!”
“Gotcha!” With that the bathroom locks again, and the discussion is done.
A glance towards the door tells Shuuichi that Kokichi and Gonta have also left a mound of clothes to be washed, so after pulling his wallet from his bag and gathering the laundry into his arms, he sets off out of the room in search of a washing machine, forgoing shoes for the time being.
Perhaps a little strangely, he finds his target after rounding the building, sitting alongside a singular drying unit by the modestly-sized pool on the hotel property. It’s coin-operated and the detergent is complimentary with a paid wash, so he just counts his blessings as he forces all of their dirty clothing into the chamber of the washing machine.
His mom would cry at the idea of Shuuichi shoving whites and colors — especially filthy ones at that — into the same load and running the machine without pre-washing anything. The thought makes him smile, and he tips what’s probably a little too much detergent into the machine before slamming it shut and paying for the wash cycle.
Mission on pause (for now), Shuuichi takes a moment to glance down at what he’s currently wearing, pretty much just the first clean things he’d grabbed from his bag: suffice to say, he won’t be winning any fashion shows with today’s outfit. Cargo shorts (he’s pretty sure Rantarou’s), a tank top (definitely Rantarou’s, he thinks wryly), and socks currently without shoes — of which all he has left are a scarcely-used pair of sneakers, seeing as the combined forces of a car crash, demigod dodgeball, no less than three different fights, the explosion, and the hours-long walk had torn his usual pair of shoes absolutely to shreds.
Shuuichi looks and feels a little ridiculous, but for the moment — despite the entire universe working to the contrary — he also feels almost at peace.
He drops into a sit on the too-warm tar of the pool deck, allowing the late-morning sunshine to wash over him where he sits only partially in the shade of the machines. He leans back against the in-use washer, eyes falling shut as the vibration of it serves to sort of relax him, despite the odd clang-ing noise it keeps making.
Despite a lot of things, actually, Shuuichi feels…fine.
He came out to Kaede, and he’s fine. A contributing component to that is most definitely the fact that he’s pretty sure Kaede is now out to him, but. It isn’t exactly ideal the way it happened — though it feels a little embarrassing to think that considering how Kaede was outed to him — but nevertheless it did, and the world didn’t end.
One down, five-odd to go, Shuuichi supposes.
The warmth of the day and the movement of the machine behind him help to lull him into something like a pseudo-rest, definitely not asleep but nevertheless happy to waste time with his eyes shut.
Until, that is, a single finger prodding at the apple of his cheek has him snapping his gaze up towards the intrusion.
It’s Gonta, broad body stuffed into an admittedly odd selection of a graphic t-shirt and…patterned board shorts. Shuuichi’s honestly just surprised to not see him in a suit.
“If Shuuichi tired, he should rest! Beds in second hotel room empty,” Gonta says helpfully, pointing back towards where he’d come from for emphasis. Shuuichi smiles, pulling his knees to his chest as he glances up at Gonta.
“I’m not really tired, actually, I slept for quite a while on the drive. I was just enjoying the nice weather.” His gaze shifts between his friend’s face and the pool. “Are you going to go in, Gonta?”
“Huh?”
“The pool,” Shuuichi clarifies. “You’re wearing swimming trunks, aren’t you?”
He looks down, as if to confirm for himself. “Oh, Gonta not notice.”
Kaede steps out from behind Gonta, nudging him good-naturedly with her elbow as she grins down at Shuuichi. “He insisted on getting them when I took him and Kiibo shopping.”
“Gonta just likes the ducks on them!”
As she glances past Gonta towards the pool, Shuuichi gets a proper look at Kaede for the first time since they were both able to shower. Her blonde hair is damp and tied into a low ponytail, wetting the back of her light pink t-shirt. She looks a lot better, both physically and also in terms of her mood; as she bounces on the balls of her feet with a conspiratorial smile aimed up at Gonta, all signs of the previous nights’ terror and pain are gone.
“Speaking of swimming, I’m really tempted.” She tip-toes towards the pool, turning over her shoulder to this time make eye contact with Shuuichi. “It’ll be fine, as long as we’re out before Kaito and Maki wake up…right?”
He’s certainly not going to tell her no. “I think so?”
“Yes!” She twirls to face Gonta again, grabbing one large hand in both of hers. “Will you swim with me, Gonts?”
“Of course!”
Kaede tosses her shoes and phone in Shuuichi’s direction, Gonta waiting politely at the edge of the deep end for Kaede to join him before he unceremoniously jumps in, Kaede not far behind. The washing machine continues to rumble behind his back as Shuuichi watches them splash and swim around, laughing loudly between bits of conversation too quiet for him to hear from his spot, over the din of the cleaning cycle.
He almost, sort of, kind of, wants to join them.
A new voice and the sound of metal soles on the pool deck pulls Shuuichi from that thought before he can consider it for too long. “Oh, good! Everyone had the same idea as me!”
That would be Kokichi, dragging poor Kiibo behind him by their hand towards the other side of the pool area. Kiibo looks as they usually do — stripped of the clothes Kaede had forced them into and then subsequently ruined over the course of the previous day — but Kokichi definitely doesn’t. He’s in just a pair of checker-patterned shorts, dark hair pulled back out of his face with a rubber band and slathered head to toe in not-fully-rubbed-in sunscreen.
He turns to wave excitedly at Shuuichi as he moves past with Kiibo still in tow, making a beeline towards the dinky little shelf on the opposite end of the pool filled with a small range of swimming amenities. Pulling floaties of various sizes off one of the shelves, he rounds menacingly on Kiibo and stalks back to them with a wicked little grin.
“You’re not going to push them in, are you?”
He already knows the answer before Kokichi deigns to give it to him. “Of course I am.”
Kokichi brings one of the floatie mouthpieces up to his lips and begins to blow it up forcefully. Kiibo crosses their arms as they turn away from the display to address Shuuichi.
“He has not stopped insisting upon me swimming since we saw the pool.” They don’t seem particularly bothered by the prospect; still, Shuuichi kind of is, ‘robophobia’ of his query be damned.
“Won’t the water, uhm…hurt you?”
One inflated-floatie later, Kokichi pulls his head up to answer before Kiibo gets the chance. “Nope! Kiiboob is totally waterproof. But they’re heavy and made out of a bunch of dumb metal,” Kiibo’s warning look gives him pause, though he continues on mostly unfazed, “sooo they just sink whenever they swim. That’s what these are for!”
With resignation, Kiibo takes the floatie Kokichi waves in front of their eyes, pushing it up as far as it’ll go on one of their arms. They’re quickly roped into blowing up more of the floaties (they’re much faster than Kokichi, at least) and Shuuichi can only watch in…mostly fond confusion as the little assembly line continues.
Kokichi is only satisfied after Kiibo is positively engulfed in rubber floats. Three on each arm, four on each leg, and a ring around their middle for good measure. This is exactly the sort of thing Shuuichi would expect Kiibo to loudly object to — no matter how insane the last few days have been, Shuuichi still remembers the way they’d protested at being dressed and bought new clothing — but to his surprise they don’t. Instead of seeming embarrassed or indignant, they seem rather excited as they pose with a wide smile for pictures Kokichi takes between peels of laughter.
Upon encouragement from the rest of the group Kiibo approaches the edge of the deep end, looking warily between the water and Kaede, Gonta, and Kokichi as they cheer them on. After a few moments’ hesitation Shuuichi watches as they pinch their nose, squeeze their eyes shut, and step unceremoniously into the pool.
The noise they make as they hit the bottom of the pool is unpleasant, but they do (with great difficulty) float back to the top of the water, and even Shuuichi can’t help but cheer as they break the surface, pushing their soaked hair out of their face in annoyance — though their intense cowlick remains more or less in place.
Kokichi runs over towards where he sits by the laundry machines long enough to drop his kitty backpack by the dryer, toss his phone onto Shuuichi’s lap, and send him a playful wink before he’s darting back towards the deep end, catapulting in face-first after the others. When he comes up for air he’s closer to the shallow end, shaking his head like a dog’s before propping himself up on the lip of the pool to address Shuuichi with a toothy grin.
“Are you going to join us, New Kid?” Kokichi purrs, splashing some water onto the deck — though not nearly close enough to hit Shuuichi — as he flutters his eyelashes up at him. The others, hearing the question, make their way closer as well to echo their agreement with the sentiment.
“Gonta think Shuuichi will like the pool!”
“I agree! The chlorine may be unpleasant, but please!”
The excitement in their requests surprises him, and despite his base instinct to say screw it and have some fun, he’s still a little apprehensive. “I don’t know…”
Kaede, who had been conspicuously missing for the past few moments, pops up out of the water just behind Kokichi, grabbing him around his middle and hauling him shrieking back towards the deep end.
“Hokey protagonist Kaede’s gone crazy! Save me!”
He does not, in fact, need much saving; she’s quick to swim away, smiling as she watches Gonta and Kiibo take off after Kokichi before pushing herself up out of the pool. She comes to a stop a foot or so away from Shuuichi, water quickly soaking the deck beneath where she stands as she smiles down at him.
“I can keep them off your back if you’re not comfortable,” she tells him softly; then, much louder: “It is a lot of fun though, I can’t lie!”
Kaede’s reassuring, hopeful smile is all the push he needs. After discarding his socks, he sticks a hand out for her to help him to his feet. Eye to eye with her, he smiles.
“Jump in with me?”
Shuuichi hears his friends yelling with delight as he hops in with his hat on.
He shuts his eyes against the sting of the chlorinated pool water, so he’s expecting the person kicking next to him to be Kaede, who he definitely heard splash down next to him. But when his hat is deftly pulled off his head just as he’s wiping some water out of his eyes, he’s pretty sure he knows who it actually is before he blinks to look over at them.
“You even swim with this thing, Shuumai?” His hat is a little too big on Kokichi, especially with his hair slicked down against his scalp, and he has to hold the visor with one hand after he flicks it upward to actually make fun of Shuuichi properly.
“I’m in all my clothes, Kokichi,” he retorts, feeling slightly vindicated when Kokichi’s grin widens.
“Hmm, I guess that’s true!” Plum eyes look him up and down as if to confirm for himself. “Real interesting wardrobe you’ve got, Shuuichi!”
It makes Shuuichi laugh, and emboldened by his good mood he reaches a hand out to gently slap the visor of his hat down over Kokichi’s eyes. “You’re one to talk.”
“Wooow, Shuuichi’s sure in high spirits!” He hears laughing over his shoulder, and he assumes Kokichi’s speaking to an audience now. “Is it because I took this from you, I wonder?”
Kokichi kicks a few feet away towards the edge of the pool, bracing one arm on it as he uses his other to arrange his soaked bangs across his face in a crude approximation of Shuuichi’s own hair. “Hey, hey! Can anyone guess who I am?”
“A thief,” Shuuichi shoots back, also for his listening friends’ sake. He swims a little closer as well, waiting for a good moment to make an attempt at snatching it back. “You don’t deserve it. Also, it’ll keep my face from getting sunburned. So—”
Swing and a miss; Shuuichi’s hands land on the spot against the pool wall where Kokichi had been, but before he’d made contact he’d kicked off the wall, launching himself past Shuuichi and towards Gonta, shrieking all the while.
“He’s gonna give me cooties! Quick, Gonts!”
Shuuichi takes off after the two of them, grinning.
Morning turns to afternoon, but the light, carefree atmosphere the five of them manage remains. Shuuichi only gets out when he needs to, once to switch the clean clothes into the dryer and once to drop the finished laundry load off in the empty motel room, then he’s quick to hop back into the blessedly peaceful excitement of the pool.
At one point Kiibo pops one of their floaties, and their incredibly (un)dramatic, uneven sinking is thwarted by Gonta — the only one capable of lifting them — diving in and heroically lifting them back to the surface, depositing them in a sit on the pool deck with ease. Shuuichi is pretty positive he sees and hears steam hissing off of Kiibo once Gonta offers to replace the popped floatie, and a conspiratorial look shared between him and Kaede tells him all he needs to know about that.
His affectionate teasing of them in passing to Kaede under his breath comes back to bite him in the ass: another high energy period of the afternoon is set off by Kokichi jumping onto Kaede’s back, demanding she swim a lap around the pool with him obnoxiously hanging off her like a leech. Shuuichi, from his spot at the time lounging on the steps half-sitting in the water, had thought it would be left at that, but because it’s Kokichi of course not.
One second he’s resting, and the next there’s a hand yanking on his wrist to jerk him forward into the water, and he’s barely given a second to recover before Kokichi’s jumping on his back. He splutters, feet scrambling for purchase on the slick pool bottom, but manages to get them both upright by the time Kokichi’s ordering him to do his lap around the pool, now.
(At the end of it all, Gonta is declared the clear winner. Shuuichi, as is whispered into his ear while he’s finishing his ‘turn’ carrying Kokichi around, is declared the clear loser despite the smile in his voice, the way Kokichi clings for a bit longer than the single lap he’d requested.)
The afternoon isn’t quite waning yet, but the sun is much lower in the sky and the energy of the group has shifted into something a little more relaxed as they lounge around in the pool — save Kiibo, who sits on the lip of the pool with their feet in the water, close enough to converse easily back and forth with the rest of the group.
It’s nice. Shuuichi’s got his hat on his head — for now, at least — with the visor pulled down just enough that it shields his eyes from the sun as he floats lazily on his back, a little closer to the shallow end than the others. His ears are below the surface, and the soft conversation happening behind him is more or less dulled by the sound of the water around his head.
He’s not roused from his peaceful state at the pool’s surface until something splashes down near his head, earning his attention enough to lift his hat and look in the direction it had come from. It’s the floatie that Kiibo had popped earlier, and Kokichi’s staring down at him impatiently when Shuuichi’s gaze finally trails up to meet his.
“I know my beloved Shuumai would never ignore me, right?” If he’s waiting for an answer, he doesn’t get one; he drops down onto his knees to splash Shuuichi in the face as punishment. “So get up already! We’re playing a game.”
Shuuichi does as he’s told, pushing his hat more securely onto his head before swimming towards the edge of the pool and with some difficulty pulling himself out. He’s the last one out of the water, and obediently he joins the other four where they stand lined up a pace or so away from the deepest part of the pool, smiling when Kaede nudges him good-naturedly with her elbow.
Satisfied that no one is ignoring him now, Kokichi moves to stand in front of them, hands clasped behind his back as he looks over the four of them with an artfully neutral expression.
“Okay, this is an American game, and you losers have probably never heard of it. So listen as hard as you can so you can understand!”
Kokichi’s suggestion of Get Down, Mr. President does not at all sound like a legitimate game in Shuuichi’s opinion. It involves one person acting as the “president,” with the rest of the group acting as the “Secret Service.” Shuuichi’s still pretty confused on what the point of the game even is, right up until Kokichi is grinning devilishly over at him, pupils blown with excitement.
“Get down, Mr. President!” Kokichi wails, and without further warning runs the few steps between them at top-speed before he’s colliding with Shuuichi and tackling him backwards, so they both land rather roughly against the surface of the water.
Shuuichi comes up spitting water, face red, and he can see concern on the others’ expressions for about a half-second before he rounds on Kokichi to tackle him back into the water this time. He blinks his eyes open once underwater, and his face splits into an unintentional grin when Kokichi seems genuinely caught off guard after they make eye contact beneath the surface.
When they both pop up again, Shuuichi’s laughing. “You’re next, Kokichi!”
They all get a turn, in the end — for better or for worse. Kokichi gets his comeuppance for whatever annoyances he’s gotten away with thus far as he’s shoved into the pool a little more often than the rest of them. Gonta, predictably, is immovable even with the four of them trying with all their might to push him in. And, after sizing them up, Kokichi demands Kiibo allow him to tackle them into the water, but the idea is abandoned once Kokichi bangs his hand against part of their body that isn’t cushioned by rubber floaties, and he bails dramatically into the pool wailing for someone to kiss it better.
By the time the energy between the five of them is winding down, so too is the afternoon. The sun is slightly too low in the sky now for the pool to be swam in comfortably anymore, though with the fun stretch of time they did have, no one is feeling particularly downtrodden as they pull themselves from the water for the last time, wrap their shivering bodies in towels snatched up from nearby shelves, and tiptoe with damp feet back to their hotel rooms to dry off and change.
Kaede and Gonta split off towards the room where Maki and Kaito are still sleeping, while Shuuichi, Kiibo, and Kokichi make their way into the empty hotel room. While he’s shuffling through the pile of clean laundry — not separated at all yet, oops — in search of something to wear he hears rather than sees Kiibo drop into a sit on the floor, working the many, many towels they’d taken from the pool deck into their various mechanical joints, drying themself thoroughly.
Kokichi ropes him into several drawn-out rounds of rock, paper, scissors to decide who gets showering privileges first. Shuuichi only feels a little bad at leaving him fake-bawling in the room with poor Kiibo when he eventually pulls out the victory, chuckling to himself as he shuts and locks the bathroom door behind him before Kokichi can change his mind about playing fair.
Given he no longer has to stress over washing away the grime from several fights and injuries, Shuuichi’s second shower of the day passes even quicker and easier than his first. Once he’s clean, dried, and repeating the process of washing his damp binder in the sink, he notices when he glances up at himself in the mirror that there’s the faintest touch of red on the apples of his cheeks, dusting the tops of his shoulders where his tank top hadn’t quite covered them.
He’s gone and gotten himself sunburned. The inconvenience is already forgotten by the time he’s hung his damp clothes up to dry and walking out of the bathroom.
Kokichi, still in his wet checker-patterned shorts, scowls over at Shuuichi as he darts from where he’d been standing near the air conditioning unit towards the bathroom, clean clothes tucked under his arm.
“You better have left me some hot water! If you didn’t, I’m sending my henchmen after you!”
He’s gone with the slam of a door. Shuuichi just laughs under his breath before making his way over to the bed with all the laundry strewn about on top of it, opposite the one Kiibo currently occupies, flicking aimlessly through the channels on the hotel room’s TV.
Shuuichi only really plans to get his own stuff out of the laundry pile, but before he knows it he finds himself separating everything out by who he thinks it belongs to only to fold it all anyway. The room is quiet, save for the hum of the air conditioner and the occasional static-y click of Kiibo switching the channel, and feeling a little emboldened by his experience with Kaede earlier, Shuuichi opens his mouth to break the silence.
“Hey, Kiibo?”
“Yes?” They haven’t broken their focus on the TV, and Shuuichi bites his lip, suddenly awkward. He’s in too deep now, though.
“Can I ask you something?”
Kiibo does turn now, whole body shifting so their crossed legs face Shuuichi, along with their pleasant smile. “Of course. What is it?”
Shuuichi puts the laundry aside for now, sort of regretting it when he ends up just anxiously picking at his fingers. “It’s okay if you don’t want to answer, first of all. And you said this a while ago, anyway, but…”
At Kiibo’s expectant look, he forces himself to finish the thought. “I just remember, when we still had the RV, you said at one point that you’re not a boy. I just, ah, wanted to ask…?”
They seem to get what Shuuichi’s implying, and he’s relieved when they excitedly clap their hands together, attention renewed on Shuuichi as they beam in his direction.
“I see!” Nodding to themself, they tap a finger against their chin. “Yes, you remember correctly. As you know, I am a robot, and Kazuichi originally designed me as a ‘boy,’ at least in terms of my appearance.
“I am very happy with the way I look, and most conceptions of gender held by others do not bother me greatly. I just simply have never felt inclined to call myself a boy or a girl, and so I don’t. I suppose it would be correct to say I am…neutral on the topic.
“But,” they continue, “among friends, I know that my preferences and thoughts on the matter will be respected, so that is when it comes up. You’re asking in what way you should refer to me, yes?”
Shuuichi nods.
“Please don’t worry yourself too much. Kiibo is just fine, and in terms of pronouns, they and them are what I choose to be referred to as.” Kiibo smiles over at him once more. “Thank you for your concern, Shuuichi. You are a good friend.”
He ducks his head against the praise, chewing on his lip as picks his next words very carefully.
“Sure, of course. I just…” The reassuring look Kiibo sends his way pauses the anxious twisting of his stomach long enough to get the words out. “I just asked because, uhm, I’m trans, too?”
Their expression doesn’t change after he says it, which Shuuichi appreciates as he continues. “And I wanted to double-check what I heard on the RV. And…sometimes it’s easier to say when it’s to someone that, ah, gets it, you know?”
Kiibo’s smile is warm. “I do. Thank you for telling me, Shuuichi.”
“You too, Kiibo.”
The room lapses into silence after that, but neither of them lose the excited, relieved smiles on their faces.
Just as Shuuichi is finishing depositing his own freshly washed and folded clothes back into his duffle bag he hears a knock at the door, but by the time his hands are free Kiibo’s already gotten up to answer it. Kaede and Gonta step in after greeting them, both looking newly showered. When Kaede sees the laundry on Shuuichi’s bed she makes a beeline for him, flopping down with a dramatic whine onto the comforter.
“Clean clothes,” is what Shuuichi thinks she says, though with her voice muffled by the sheets it’s hard to tell. He chuckles, running a hand through his drying hair as he looks over the room. It seems Gonta’s settled in the lone chair by the desk, his attention drawn to the spinning capabilities of it rather than the TV a few feet away.
When Kaede’s lifted herself up enough to begin putting her own clean clothes away, Shuuichi pulls his knees to his chest before addressing the room at large. “Do we know what time we’ll be getting back on the road again?”
“Maki and Kaito still asleep, so Gonta and Kaede agree that they should have more time to rest,” Gonta supplies, pausing his spinning long enough to give Shuuichi his answer.
“Probably not too much longer, a few hours max.” Kaede zips her bag shut with a huff before flopping onto her back this time, staring at Shuuichi upside-down. “I’m down to let them sleep as long as they can. Kaito seriously looked like a wreck earlier, and Maki—”
“Maki’s extra scary when she’s sleep deprived!” Kokichi flounces out of the bathroom with his backpack slung over one shoulder, a towel around his neck, and his damp hair once again tied back in a short ponytail while it dries.
When he flops onto the edge of Shuuichi’s bed near Kaede, she flicks him on the forehead, already shifting back in anticipation of the way he begins to whine.
“Be nice.”
“Whatever!” Kokichi pulls his phone out, lounging casually on his stomach as he taps away with his socked feet dancing idly in the air.
“Okay, seriously, be nice,” Kaede repeats, sitting up with her own phone in hand. A moment later she’s tossing it next to her on the bed, voice loud enough to carry. “Hey, Harumaki! You’re on speaker, that okay?”
“Oh, thank gods, Chihiro was finally able to do it after all—!”
Dread hits Shuuichi like a punch to the gut, and he freezes up along with everyone else in the room.
That’s not Maki.
“Kaede? Was that you? Is everyone there, a-are the others safe? All of you are still together, right? P-Please, tell me you’re all still…”
No one in the room moves an inch. Komaeda’s panic pierces them all anyway.
“Do you know how terrified everyone is?! It’s been days and we haven’t heard from any of you! No one has known if you’re alive for—” He cuts himself off with a sharp, shaky breath. “Everyone is so w-worried, Kaede. For all of you. They — we, I miss you all so much. You’re not in trouble, I promise, I just need you all to be safe.”
From across the room Gonta sniffles, bracing his hands over his mouth to muffle the sound of his crying. Kiibo’s eyes steadily fill with static, gaze locked on Kaede’s phone.
“Hah…I really should stop freaking out, before my luck…Ghh—!” A loud sound from the other side of the line, as if someone’s hit him. When Komaeda speaks again, he sounds even more out of breath, voice strangled. “K-Kaede? Please answer me. Please come home. Just tell me where you are, I’ll come get you all, I don’t care where it is — you know I’ll come s-save you anywhere, whenever you need me, right?”
Kaede hasn’t moved an inch, fingers tangled in the sheets beneath her as silent tears stream down her face. Shuuichi feels like he’s about to throw up.
“I’ll beg if I have to. Please, just one of you say something…! Let me help you while we still have time! You’re not — please, you’re going to get yourselves killed! Please, tell me…let me, not again, I can’t…”
He audibly shudders, remaining composure fracturing. “L-Look at me, so useless I can’t even keep my kids safe, huh…? I really am worthless, hahah…hah…”
Komaeda weeps openly into the receiver. It’s the only sound in the room until Kokichi reaches for Kaede’s phone, face blank, and shuts it off.
“G-Gonta will go wake up f-friends,” he says hoarsely, making a quick departure from the room with a sob halfway out of his throat.
Still not looking altogether themself, Kiibo rises wordlessly from the other bed towards the bathroom, reappearing soon after with a paper cup filled with water that they push into Kaede’s trembling hands. She takes a few small sips before bringing a hand to her chest to steady her breathing.
“You okay?” Kokichi asks quietly, expression obscured from Shuuichi’s sight while he has his whole body turned to address her. After a few moment’s hesitation she nods, and when she places a hand over Kokichi’s he doesn’t pull away.
Shuuichi swallows against his uncomfortably dry throat, knees pulled anxiously to his chest while he makes a point to look away from everyone else in the room, as Kiibo comes back to themself and Kaede and Kokichi do…whatever it is they need to.
Not for the first time, he feels like he’s missing something.
Obviously, the intensity of the call was enough to make anyone emotional. Hearing anyone plead like that, so openly terrified about their wellbeing…
It reminds him about how he feels about Rantarou.
Kiibo sits back down on the edge of the other bed, facing the other three occupants of the room. They still don’t look quite right, but they have the wherewithal to notice Shuuichi sending concerned glances in their direction, and with a shaky exhale they break the silence of the room.
“Are you alright?” He doesn’t realize the question is directed at him until neither Kokichi nor Kaede respond.
“I’m fine,” he answers quietly, nervous all of a sudden to rouse the other two. “Are you alright? That was…a lot.”
Kiibo sighs, leaning their elbows on their knees to drop their face into their hands. They stay like that for long enough that Shuuichi shifts his focus back to his other friends in the room, where Kaede has a clean towel blotting against the tears still falling down her face. Kokichi has his backpack in his lap now, rhythmically squeezing the paws of the kitten decal with his eyes fixed somewhere on the blanket. He must notice Shuuichi looking, because he’s quick to snap his gaze up to meet his, mouth set in a hard line.
“The hell are you looking at?” he hisses defensively, glaring Shuuichi down until he ultimately looks away. Kaede makes a soft noise, and when he hesitantly looks up at her he sees that she has a hand on Kokichi’s arm.
“It’s okay,” Kaede whispers, and her voice is like how Gonta’s sounded — hoarse, grief-stricken. Kokichi looks down at his lap, chewing his lip. “Let’s not fight.”
“I’m sorry,” Shuuichi immediately supplies, not sure what he’s done wrong but still incredibly guilty anyway. Kaede shakes her head, letting out a watery exhale.
“Don’t be. It’s just…really, really hard, hearing that from Nagito.” She sniffs. “For all of us.”
Not for the first time, the feeling of being left out of the loop, of being different from the others hits him, and he instinctively cringes away from her gaze. He hears her sigh, and the sound of her bringing her legs back onto the bed to face him.
“That includes you too, Shuuichi,” Kiibo mutters, head still in their hands. “Nagito means it about you, too.”
“...Why?” He knows it’s the wrong question as soon as he says it; the looks the others give him range from confused to heartbroken to guarded. “I — I mean…he doesn’t know me. It’s only been a few days, and mostly all I’ve done is stress him out. Make him yell at me. I guess it makes sense, considering he’s in charge of camp, but…it sort of surprises me, to hear him so…”
He’s not sure how he’d describe Komaeda’s demeanor during the phone call. While he thinks on it, the others in the room exchange significant eye contact, before turning back to Shuuichi, seeming to have decided…something.
“What do you think about Nagito, New Kid?” Kokichi asks, expression much less hostile than it had been before. He waves the paws of the kitty backpack at him as he speaks. Kiibo and Kaede seem to also be waiting for an answer; so trying not to flounder too hard, he opens his mouth to reply.
“Well, like I said, I’ve only known him a few days. I don’t really know anything about him. But…” He fidgets with the leg of his jeans. “I guess I got the impression he doesn’t really…like, being at camp? He’s only really ever been angry, or panicked, or annoyed when I’ve talked to him. I’ve never heard him like that before, though. I wouldn’t have expected it from him. Hajime, maybe.”
He inclines his head towards Kaede’s phone, still lying shut off on the bed. The reactions among the others are…mixed, and it’s Kaede that eventually responds to what he’s said, wiping once more under her eyes as she does.
“I understand why you think that.” A soft, choked laugh. “He’s intense, and frazzled, and stubborn, and weird, and you’re right — he does act like he’s annoyed with us most of the time. But he does it on purpose. He wants everyone to think that.”
“Why?” Shuuichi can’t see the logic in it, no matter how hard he thinks. Not for the first time, the others look between themselves, as if assessing they’re all on the same page, before they all turn to Shuuichi again.
“This is just…one of those things that all of us know. And don’t talk about, because it’s…” Kaede sighs, sparing a glance over at Kiibo.
They meet her gaze, giving a small nod. “But Shuuichi should know.”
Kokichi’s recovered some of his bravado, and the smile he contorts his mouth into is rueful, sour. “Pop quiz, Shuuichi. What’s Nagito the god of, again?”
“Luck,” he replies automatically, because he does know that — but also because one of the things he said during the phone call has been itching at him since he recovered from the shock. “...What does that have to do with anything?”
“Yeah. Luck.” Kokichi huffs out a dry laugh. “Good and bad.”
“What we’re getting at,” Kaede takes over, fidgeting now with the towel still in her hands, “is that Nagito being the God of Luck affects him in slightly different ways than some of the other gods.”
“But he’s not a Big Five god, right?”
Kiibo shakes their head. “He is not. Junko would exert less influence over him if he was.”
Shuuichi’s…not really sure he follows. “Are you saying he…works, for her?”
“No,” the entire room tells him at once, and he cringes away. Duh.
“It’s not his fault,” Kaede insists. “It’s just…bad luck.”
“With luck like that, you can do a lot. Like, for example, save your mega-powerful god husband from death in a game of rock, paper, scissors against a just-as-powerful psycho bitch. Pretty good luck, right? But something’s gotta balance it out. Something equally bad.”
Kokichi’s smile twists. “Like getting forced by said psycho bitch to work at a crappy summer camp for halfbloods for the rest of eternity. Forced to watch ‘em grow up and then die ‘cause they’re still mortal. How unfortunate.”
Shuuichi swallows, uncomfortable at the implications beginning to dawn on him. “So he has, ah…cycles of good and bad luck?”
“Bingo. Not just him, though.” Kokichi looks over at him, appraising. “Surely you’ve figured that out by now, right?”
That thing Komaeda said on the phone. I really should stop freaking out, before my luck…
He’d cut himself off, but Shuuichi’s pretty sure he knows what he meant, now. The others had mentioned it multiple times during their quest as well — something muttered under people’s breath in a tense moment, about his luck not turning on them. And that, coupled with, well, everything that’s happened in the few days they’ve been on the road: the Novoselic soldiers intercepting them; the RV exploding and the Monokubs appearing; coming across a cottage in the woods that happened to be inhabited by a goddess actively working with Junko Enoshima…
“...Yeah, I think I have,” Shuuichi says eventually. “All of that is Komaeda’s luck?”
Kokichi huffs a raw, humorless noise. “Just call him Nagito, New Kid, jeez. You really don’t know anything.”
”I don’t,” he concedes, not at all interested in a fight. Kokichi relents, glancing away again. “I guess I just don’t get how…Nagito’s luck can work like that, even if he is a god.”
Kiibo sighs. “It’s hard to know for certain. But his luck has always impacted the people around him. That is one of the points of Junko’s cruelty.” A weak laugh escapes their speakers.
“But I thought that the gods couldn’t interfere at camp?”
“Not anymore,” Kaede says softly. “Not…anymore.”
There’s a lot of weight in that, clearly, and it hangs heavy on the room, both Kaede and Kiibo’s heads bowed. After a long pause, Kokichi looks back over at Shuuichi, eyes intent on his.
“Hey, Shuuichi. You ever wonder why he always wears that glove?”
It happened maybe twenty years ago.
For a long time, Camp Hope’s Peak was quiet — most of the year, the number of demigods there at any given point could be counted on one hand. That was over the summer, mostly, with the rest of the year spent with Nagito maintaining the grounds, more or less on his own apart from Hajime. And that suited him just fine; the isolation put him more at ease, when he’s the only target nearby that his luck could wreak havoc on. And he’d handled the intense, cycling luck for long enough that he could ride them out, especially without the presence of any mortal children to stress him out, agitate his volatile cycle further while terrorizing himself with thoughts of anyone else getting caught in the crossfire.
When it happened, camp was relatively lively, even for summer: alongside counselor Nagito, his technically-a-volunteer husband Hajime, there were five demigods occupying the grounds. Triplets, two girls and a boy, with Ibuki Mioda, Goddess of Festivities as their godly parent — more than happy to allow her newly-teenaged children to spend a summer with her good friends. Sonia, too, had a son at camp; hers by birth, early twenties, at camp as a summertime vacation from his home kingdom halfway across the world.
Finally, the newest addition to their little bunch: a shy, withdrawn girl who had shown up on the camp’s doorstep unexpectedly asking for help and guidance as to who she was. Fifteen years old, a lost demigod with no ties to the human world and unclaimed by her godly parent; of course they were quick to accept her into their midst. With such a small group, the fondness they all extended to the new girl was quick to take root.
It didn't last.
No one knows the specifics — not even Kaede, Nagito’s direct underling at camp presently — but they do know that something went very, very wrong. Hajime was gone, Izuru taking his place and simply observing while the camp needed more than ever both of its counselors. The triplets and the other boy were badly injured, bleeding out in the grass where just before they had been playing, unaware of the brewing tragedy.
And in the midst of it all stood the quiet, unclaimed girl, blood-soaked and gleeful at the prospect of bringing Camp Hope’s Peak to the ground, with Nagito there to witness it all.
In his panic, hands pressed against gushing wounds, Nagito took his eyes off of Izuru just long enough for him to decide to interfere, to decide there was something else he’d like to see play out: what Nagito might do, should his hand be forced once more.
Surrounded now by five dying children and a monster wearing his husband’s face, Nagito was faced with a life-altering choice, and very, very little time to decide. He acted on instinct — incapacitated Izuru to prevent further harm, destroyed the weapons the girl had used to inflict her own damage, returned back to healing the triplets and the other boy who were wholly innocent in all of it.
All three triplets made it. Sonia's son did not.
By the time Nagito could move onto the girl, it was too late; though he tried in vain to save her, he was exhausted, and panicking, and between dealing with Izuru and putting his everything into healing four other children, all he could do was just hold her in his arms until she was gone. All the while blaming everything that’s happened, all the carnage before him on his luck.
As Nagito quickly found out, Tsumugi Shirogane was not nearly as unclaimed as she purported to be. In fact, he knew her mother quite well.
Junko Enoshima was no friend of Nagito’s. Not ever, but certainly not after her allying with Izuru Kamukura to start a millennia-long campaign of chaos and despair. Not after her influence very nearly killed Hajime, forcing him to share his existence with Izuru. Not after damning him to watch over the gods’ children eternally, forced to love them, know them, and watch them die.
For Hajime’s revolt against her rule over the gods: an eye for an eye, with Izuru. For Nagito’s allowing her daughter to die: an arm for an arm, now, with Junko.
To lord her power over the other gods, in the wake of the tragedy, she forbade them all — many of whom were having or had just had children of their own — from living with their birth children, under promise of vicious, painful death.
When Gundham was made an example of, the gods were given no choice but to take her seriously. To find a solution to maintain the safety of their children. Some gave their children to human parents to divorce them from the perils of the godly realm altogether; some separated their families so one god’s child could live with their non-birth parent; some decided to send their children to summer camp full-time — with some stipulations.
A barrier was erected, preventing godly interference within the bounds of the camp. Time stretched on, and more children were upended, faced with the choice of hiding away at camp, living away from their parents, or—
“...Or ending up like me and Rantarou,” Shuuichi finishes quietly, capping off the complicated, awful story the others had relayed to him.
All seven of them are together now; Gonta, Kaito, and Maki had stepped in at some point during the conversation, offering quiet interjections when appropriate but otherwise listening with the same heavy, rapt focus that Shuuichi had. Kaede, who had taken on her fair share of recounting the story, wipes under her eyes, having broken into tears sometime near the end.
“I know the way Nagito acts a lot of the time is off-putting. But he loves all of us, and he has sacrificed so much to keep camp safe for all of us demigods. So that’s why…why we have to stay alive and do this. He and Hajime are the closest thing a lot of us have to real, good parents — they’re all some of us have. So let’s just finish this so we can go home.”
Notes:
+ what's a bit of a lore dump to cap off a beach episode, huh? tags will be updated in a day or so as to avoid spoilers for up-to-date readers.
+ but, as many of you have speculated both in the reviews & on tumblr: the mystery of tsumugi's absence (& many camp shenanigans)! i love love LOVE reading what people are theorizing with regard to the direction of the story; i read and save every one and send them to my sister to be like "YOOOOO LOOK SOMEONES FIGURED [thing] OUT YOOOOO"
+ i sort of wrote this chapter in two big chunks, and i imagine those sections are fairly obvious; still, both the fun and not-so-fun was a joy to write! i've specifically been looking forward to writing the pool & coming out scenes since i've had this fic outlined though.
+ part of my re-danganronpa-fication has been replaying sdr2 after several years. in truth, uh, in the past three weeks i've written well over 143k words (and yes that Is the real number) of just. self indulgently rewriting the game. with particular focus on nagito because i'm insane. being in his character's head/voice so much inspired me to...do a little bit more with the phone call (which has been in the outline from the jump as well) & what came after than initially expected. i'm a big fat shameless sdr2 enjoyer, nagito especially, so i couldn't help myself. i'm kind of in love with how it turned out though, and i hope you all can appreciate it as well!
+ these notes are getting long, so to part: as excited as i was for this chapter, i am just as if not More excited for the next 1-2. speaking of characters i've been getting into the heads of nonstop with my cringe little rewriting exercise...expect a fresh voice or two next time. that's all i'll say!
+ two more things. first, i am active on tumblr again! you can find me conveniently at gontagokuhara.tumblr.com for all pointy objects (or gonta) related queries
+ second, chapter warning time! these include: questionable driving safety, several characters coming out as trans (of their own volition, this time!), non-graphic injuries to children, off-screen non-graphic deaths of children
+ june 16, 2024 update: one teensy little wording change that will make sense soon :)
Chapter 13: family matters (and other related questions)
Summary:
Kaito turns to Maki for her to elaborate, and the others — Shuuichi included — are quick to follow. Uncrossing her arms, she very pointedly unballs her hands from the fists they’d been clenched into. She doesn’t make eye contact with any of them as she yanks up the too-big sleeves of her sweatshirt, pushes her long pigtails over her shoulders to rest down her back.
“I know where we are.”
Even Kaito looks surprised by that. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? Where the hell are we?”
She doesn’t reply, and instead shoulders past Kokichi to approach the as-of-right-now useless stolen truck. No one moves, just watches as she jerks the driver’s side door open, fidgets with something inside, then shifts back out and braces her arms on the door. “Quit staring at me and get over here. We’re pushing the truck.”
Notes:
+ hi again! i know it hasn't been quite so long in the grand scheme of things (3 weeks since the last chapter went up) but i've still felt the absence anyway! i'm glad for it, though — allowing myself to sit on this chapter, get a better idea of how i want to write it, instead of trying to brute force it and frustrating myself was deffo the right call.
+ while i've got your attention, i'd like to direct you to my tumblr: gontagokuhara.tumblr.com !
+ these days, it mostly serves as a spot for me to yell about danganronpa as i replay the games and continue writing pointy objects. i love to chat about this fic, and am prone to also just shitpost about/in the midst of the writing process. if that's of any interest to you, feel free to stop by!
+ other than that, let's begin! (also: no content warnings here that i can immediately think of, but if *you* spot one that i've missed, my inbox is a great place to let me know!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Following their abrupt and tense departure from the motel, the several hours they’ve been on the road since have been passed more or less in silence. Maki had slid into the driver’s seat without a word once she’d returned the room keys to the reception desk, and Gonta ended up with the passenger’s seat, mostly taking to staring out the window. In the very back seat Kaede has been sleeping for some time against Kaito’s shoulder, and Shuuichi is in the midst of it all, Kiibo and Kokichi on either side of him in the truck’s middle seat.
Presently, Shuuichi’s long since fished out his earbuds to pass the time, and he’s been doing a pretty good job at zoning out for the past hour or so of the drive as a result. With both windows in the middle row occupied separately by Kokichi and Kiibo also both staring off into space, Shuuichi keeps his gaze trained out the windshield. His eyes catch on every town line and kilometer marker and exit ramp they pass, though for the past little while, it’s been more…stoplights and branching roads and street signs.
“Damn it.” The silence of the car is broken by Maki cursing under her breath. He pops one earbud out.
“Is everything alright, Maki?” Kiibo asks from Shuuichi’s right, attention shifting to her.
There’s a pause, then: “...We’re almost out of gas.”
It’s enough for Shuuichi to stow away his music for the time being. The last time they had this problem…
“That’s not good.” Kaede’s awake, though her voice is thick still with sleep. “We…aren’t on the expressway?”
“More Novoselic roadblocks. No way am I dealing with that again.”
“How the hell’re we gonna find a gas station, then?” Kaito huffs from behind Shuuichi. “Should we…turn a GPS on and try to find one nearby?”
“Way too risky,” Kaede replies automatically, sounding more stressed than sleepy, now. “We know Nagito’s got Chihiro monitoring our devices. By the time we even figured out where the nearest gas station is, the gods would already be there waiting to put an end to our quest.”
“So we’re winging it and hoping for the best?” Even Kokichi sounds uncharacteristically wary.
“Shut up," Maki snaps, turning onto another street. “Unless you see a station, be quiet."
There’s tense, anxious quiet for maybe a half hour until the car pitters pathetically to a stop, the engine groaning as the vehicle stalls. Under her breath, Maki’s saying curse words Shuuichi’s never heard from her before, until she angrily kicks the driver’s side door ajar. Stomping to the front of the car, she pops the hood with a huff.
Kokichi throws his own door open, spinning in his seat to stretch his legs outside of the car while simultaneously lounging back so his head is resting on Shuuichi’s lap. His expression is carefully neutral, though his eyes shine playfully in the dark; Shuuichi tries to keep his own expression schooled, waiting for Kokichi to address his positioning.
He doesn’t. Instead, from the back, Kaito complains, “Can you shut the door? It’s cold out!”
“Baby,” Kokichi sing-songs in reply, still maintaining eye contact with Shuuichi. He feels himself smile at Kaito’s indignant squawk that sounds from behind him.
“Asshole,” Kaito bites in return, thumping the back of Kokichi’s seat — though in his current position, it probably doesn’t have the desired effect. “Oi, anyone got a sweatshirt I can borrow?”
“It might be a little small, but yes,” Shuuichi offers, looking away from Kokichi’s antics for the time being in favor of angling his head to address the front seat. “Gonta, could you pass me my bag?”
While Gonta hands his duffle back to him in the middle row, Kiibo exits the car as well, shutting the door behind them as they round the truck to, presumably, aid Maki. Their departure gives Shuuichi room to dig through his bag without having to rest it on his lap — and therefore, Kokichi’s face — which he seems to appreciate.
“Shuumai, can I have one of your hoodies, too?” Though he’s a little preoccupied searching for what Kaito had asked for, Shuuichi’s pretty sure Kokichi’s batting his eyelashes obnoxiously in his direction. “I’m freezing!”
“Then shut the damn door!”
Fingers closing around a sweater Shuuichi knows just from touch is Rantarou’s, he spins back around to awkwardly hand it off to Kaito. “Here.”
“I think we took a blanket from the cottage, too,” Kaede supplies helpfully. Shuuichi picks around his near-full-to-bursting bag until he frees another sweatshirt from the depths — a hoodie, this time, that he’d finally gotten a chance to wash earlier at the motel.
“Thanks!” Throwing himself back into a sit, Kokichi takes the sweatshirt that he’s offered and hops out of the car, making a show of wiggling it onto his body just outside of the door. “I can’t believe I’m wearing my beloved’s hoodie! How disgustingly forward, New Kid!”
“Oh, please,” Kaito scoffs from behind him, and that’s about as good a response to that as Shuuichi can think of. He takes the opportunity he’s been given not to reply to instead pull on something himself to keep out the late-night chill — Rantarou’s favorite bomber jacket.
The hood of the car slams back down roughly, and the sound startles Shuuichi in time for him to watch Maki, arms crossed and scowling, make her way back around the car. She opens the door Kiibo had previously been sitting closest to, and she looks mad.
“Nagito and his stupid luck.” Her arms tighten over her chest. “The car is bricked until we can get some gas. I’m going to go try and figure out where we are, where the closest station is. Don’t go anywhere.”
“No way you’re goin’ off alone,” Kaito cuts in, just as Maki’s looking like she’s turning to leave. “I’ll come with you.”
She lets out a very purposeful, very measured breath, eyes squeezing shut. Eventually, she mutters, “Fine,” accepting the sweatshirt Kaede offers to her from her own backpack before stepping away from the door for real. Shuuichi leans across the seat to fold the headrest down, and Kaito throws him a thumbs-up as he shambles over it and maneuvers outside to jog after Maki down the dark street.
“Should Gonta and friends stay in car?” Gonta asks from the front seat, looking back at the rest of the group for guidance.
“The doors have been open long enough that it’s just as chilly in here as it is outside,” Kaede answers with a sigh, and Shuuichi doesn’t have to look back to chance a guess who she might be glaring at. “We’ll be able to keep an eye out for Kaito and Harumaki better if we’re outside, anyway.”
It’s a fair enough point, so with no outward complaints Shuuichi follows Kaede out of the car once she climbs over the seat herself. He looks through his bag briefly for anything else that might be useful while they wait, but the only thing he can really think of is the Bewear plush — but Kokichi still has it in his bag. And he’s not really sure how up he is to asking for it, no matter how much he may want it.
So he shuts the door on his duffle bag, pushing his hands into his pockets and following the others to where they’ve settled beneath the single street light in view of the spot on the road they’d run out of gas at. Kiibo and Kaede are sitting on the curb, the former’s eyes fixed in the direction Maki and Kaito had disappeared down while the latter waves Shuuichi over with a tired smile, a fluffy fleece blanket around her shoulders.
Shuuichi’s not going to say no to that, so returning her smile as best he can he sinks down onto the curb next to her, gratefully accepting the blanket as she drapes one side over his shoulders. A little ways away Gonta, also with a blanket around his frame, paces somewhat restlessly up and down the road, eyes intently focused on their dark surroundings every time he temporarily turns in Shuuichi’s direction.
Kokichi is the last of his currently-present friends to join the group near the street light, looking only slightly ridiculous in Shuuichi’s old hoodie and what looks to be a pair of Kaito’s sweatpants, if the stars decorating them are any indication. For the time being he hangs around Gonta, following him as he paces and prodding him with questions too quiet for Shuuichi to hear.
His attention is pulled away from the others when Kaede lets out a quiet sigh, pressing her side flush to Shuuichi’s and laying her head on his shoulder, sagging fully against him. He chuckles, pressing his knee against hers and savoring the warmth. “Tired?”
“I never want to step foot in a car again."
He can only laugh in response, allowing himself to fully rest against her, too, before lapsing into quiet. Neither of them seem inclined to break it, even as Kokichi makes his way over to pester them once or twice, asking probing questions to try and goad them into conversing. Maybe it’s exhaustion from the past few days. Maybe it’s the anxious weight of Nagito — and several other gods, as a matter of fact — actively meddling in their plans to save the world. Or maybe it’s just as simple as the fact that they’re a bunch of scared teenagers, pulled over on a dark road next to a broken down, stolen car, in the middle of the night in an unknown city.
Whatever it is, neither Shuuichi nor Kaede rise to the bait, and Kokichi finally grows bored, telling them as much before running off to bug Gonta again. Despite the tense atmosphere of the night around them, Shuuichi finds himself smiling at the ridiculousness of his friend as he sneaks up behind Gonta, plucks the quilt off his back, and begins to race around him in circles with the blanket flying behind him like a cape.
Kokichi is many, many things. One of those things is certainly being a great distraction from everything else going on around them, for better or for worse. At present, Shuuichi will gladly watch Kokichi screech and duck under Gonta’s grasping hands over dwelling on the trauma of the past few days, one hundred percent.
Another thing he is, though, is confusing. Contradictory. In obvious ways, sure — Kokichi and his propensity to communicate through carefully told lies and half-truths had long stopped being a surprise to Shuuichi — but also in ways that are much harder to parse through. Much more uncomfortable, too.
He chews his lip as he tries his hardest to put his anxieties aside. Apparently, he doesn’t do a very good job — because Kaede calls him on it after she observes him observing Kokichi for a long stretch of time.
“I can hear you thinking way too hard,” she whispers, bumping their shoulders together to pull his gaze to her. “What’s on your mind?”
How on earth do I…?
“Kokichi,” is what he decides on. It gets him laughed at, and he flushes, mortified.
Idiot.
“Well, duh.” Kaede says it like it’s obvious. Shuuichi’s not sure how he feels about that. “But what about?”
“Just…everything.” The look Kaede fixes him with makes it very clear it’s not a very good answer. “For someone who wasn’t even meant to come with us, he’s…been through a lot the past few days, hasn’t he?”
Shuuichi knows they’ve all been through a lot the past few days. Kaede knows that, too. Her expression dampens a touch, and from the way her voice pitches lower, he’s pretty sure she knows what he’s trying to imply.
“You’re not the only one.”
He’d assumed that, too. “All of this is weird. This entire quest. Gods, monsters, foreign armies, uh…”
Putting the question that’s been itching at the back of his brain into words will make it real. Whether or not he wants to, while he’s this far in, with Kaede glancing at him expectantly, Shuuichi can’t justify not saying it.
“…RVs blowing up.”
Kaede’s gaze slides over his shoulder — gauging how far out of earshot the subject of their conversation is, he guesses. “Yeah. That.”
She draws her knees up closer to her chest, eyes shifting between various points in the night time darkness.
“What do you think of the Monokubs?”
“A headache,” Kaede replies, pulling a face for a moment before she slips back into a pensive frown, eyes trained over Shuuichi’s shoulder again. “Definitely actual monsters. Probably sent by Junko, or…the one who’s expecting us in a few days. I couldn’t really figure that part out. Whoever sent them, for sure they were trying to kill us.”
That much they agree on. “And their role in the RV explosion?”
“…Unclear,” she sighs, and she sounds kind of miserable. Given the implications, Shuuichi can’t exactly blame her. “I want to blame everything on those monsters, or even Nagito’s luck because it was his RV that blew up, but…”
“I haven’t wanted to say anything, since so much happened in such a short time since then. But I feel the same way. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
Kaede chuckles humorlessly, adjusting the blanket over her shoulders. “I’m pretty sure Maki would have actually, literally finished him off herself if we weren’t all so injured, and the police weren’t so close. They’ve always clashed, but…oh, I don’t know."
Running a hand through her hair, she turns back to Shuuichi with a nervous smile. He shrugs in response, because neither does he.
“I don’t know anything for certain,” he eventually decides. “I’m not even sure if I have an actual accusation. Something just feels…off. Well, a lot of things do, but out of everything, that one bothers me the most.”
“Keep working at it,” Kaede murmurs, smile more genuine as she reaches a hand out to lightly rap her knuckles against his forehead. Shuuichi’s certain he goes red again. “If anyone can put the pieces together, it’s you. Even if it’s not until after we finish our quest…well. Nagito’s probably gonna want to know what really happened for insurance reasons!”
Shuuichi laughs, and when Kaede falls back against him doing the same he leans into her warmth, savoring the casual, comfortable contact. He doesn’t reply to that, and Kaede doesn’t pick up the conversation, so he decides to let it rest for now. She’s correct, of course — of all the mysteries in his life right now that need unraveling, this is definitely a lot lower on the ‘immediate priority’ list.
Silence sticks for a few minutes, long enough that the day of physical activity and the warmth pressed into his side coaxes him a little closer to sleep than he should really let it, considering where he is. Probably for the best, Shuuichi isn’t left to fend for himself in staying awake; his attention is regained by Kokichi squatting down in front of him and Kaede, arms crossed over his chest and looking between them expectantly. He’s deigned to give Gonta back the blanket he stole, it seems, as he’s no longer wearing it. Shuuichi manages a tired smile in his direction, and though he can’t see her face from this angle, he can imagine the amused one she probably wears when she finally breaks the quiet.
“Are you done harassing Gonta?”
“‘Harassing’?” Kokichi sounds aghast at the very notion. “I was saving his life, I’ll have you know! Running him around, getting his blood pumping, warming his big ol’ body right up! And now that he’s cuddling with Kiibaby—”
He juts a thumb down the curb, and when Shuuichi turns his head he does, in fact, see Gonta and Kiibo sitting together, the blanket wrapped fully around Gonta while Kiibo rests against his larger frame.
“—He needs to be warm more than ever!”
“How kind of you,” Shuuichi murmurs, and in response Kokichi flashes a smile at him, all teeth in response to his sarcasm.
“Are you here to steal our blanket, now?”
Kokichi’s much less outwardly pleased by Kaede’s question. “No, running around got boring. Plus, if I do run anymore, I’ll totally have an asthma attack and die! That’s not what Kaede wants, is it? You really want me to die that bad? How cruel!”
Apparently uncaring of the road beneath him, Kokichi falls out of his squat in favor of splaying out on his back, head landing at Kaede’s feet as he blinks up at her. It’s a little hard to tell with his face sharply shadowed at this angle beneath the streetlight, but Shuuichi’s pretty sure he’s got fake tears in his eyes, too.
Though he still can’t see Kaede’s face from their current position, he certainly turns to look once she opens her mouth again. “Are you sure this isn’t all some scheme so you can cuddle with Shuuichi under the blanket?”
“K-Kaede!” Shuuichi squeaks, horrified.
With Kokichi’s head still laying by her shoes, the blank look he regards her with is clear as day despite the shadows from the streetlight being unfavorable. Pushing himself into a sit with his hands, he gives Kaede an almost disappointed once-over before he’s crawling towards them, shoving his hands into the nonexistent space between Shuuichi and her. While wiggling into place, Kokichi does a pretty good job at pushing Shuuichi entirely to the wayside, and he huffs, a little affronted, when he has to catch himself on his hands to avoid being forced off the curb.
“Actually, I’m here to cuddle with my beloved Kaede!” When Shuuichi glances back over, it’s just in time to watch Kaede shrug her shoulder against where Kokichi’s laying his head on it, batting his eyelashes up at her. The look she shoots back his way is decidedly unimpressed.
“And why would you want to do something like that?”
“You and New Kid weren’t leaving room for God. In public, too — how very shameful!”
Kaede turns her nose up. “That sounds more like something Angie would say, don’t you think?”
“Why are you talking about other girls while we’re cuddling? You’re going to make me jealous!”
The bickering continues, and though no resolution is made regarding either conversation involving Kokichi he’s been witness to tonight, Shuuichi finds himself not minding so much. At the very least, it allows him the reprieve of laughing behind his hand at the increasingly long-suffering looks Kaede shoots him over Kokichi’s shoulder.
“Yo, Shuuichi!” The relative quiet of the group is broken by the sound of his name, and he’s anxious for about a half-second before he recognizes the person behind the voice and relaxes. There’s an indignant shout, and then much quieter: “Don’t be so loud, idiot.”
Ah. It seems both Kaito and Maki have returned. Kaede perks up, and this time it’s Kokichi that gets pushed aside towards the curb — and, as it so happens, Shuuichi — as she stands up, taking the blanket with her. As she disappears down the road the two of them had initially taken, Kokichi looks back at Shuuichi for the first time in a while, blinking up at him for a moment before rolling in the opposite direction and ultimately rebounding to his feet.
Shuuichi follows his lead, pushing himself into a stand and zipping his jacket up now that he’s no longer got a blanket and shared body heat to keep warm. As he’s dusting himself off, Kaito and Maki finally emerge into eyesight beneath the street lamp. Kaito’s fully wrapped up in his jacket for once, hands shoved deep into his pockets, while Maki’s wearing what Kaede had given her before her departure.
The bubblegum pink hoodie she’s wearing does little to soften her appearance. Arms still crossed tightly over her chest, her scowl as she stomps up to the group alongside Kaito is as fierce as he’s ever seen it. Whatever discoveries — or lack thereof — they’ve made, he gets the distinct impression that it’s nothing good.
“Well? Did you find anything?” Kiibo asks, approaching where most of the group save for themself and Gonta are already clustered. They address the question to Maki, but it’s Kaito that offers an answer, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck.
“Er, not really? We tried to at least find our way outta this residential area, but before we did, Maki got real mad and made us turn back.”
Kaito turns to Maki for her to elaborate, and the others — Shuuichi included — are quick to follow. Uncrossing her arms, she very pointedly unballs her hands from the fists they’d been clenched into. She doesn’t make eye contact with any of them as she yanks up the too-big sleeves of her sweatshirt, pushes her long pigtails over her shoulders to rest down her back.
“I know where we are.”
Even Kaito looks surprised by that. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? Where the hell are we?”
She doesn’t reply, and instead shoulders past Kokichi to approach the as-of-right-now useless stolen truck. No one moves, just watches as she jerks the driver’s side door open, fidgets with something inside, then shifts back out and braces her arms on the door. “Quit staring at me and get over here. We’re pushing the truck.”
It’s not what any of them would like to hear, cold and tired and nervous as they all are. Under the scrutiny of multiple full-chested disagreements, Maki’s patience wanes.
“I am not arguing this,” she snaps. “Unless you want to get left behind, hurry up. We have more than a mile to go, and the sooner we get there, the sooner all of us can eat and sleep."
Though no one is impressed, the fact that Maki apparently knows where they are, can secure them food and a warm place to sleep is enough to kick everyone out of their hesitation before there’s time to get left behind. Shuuichi, not really sure how pushing a gasless car works, decides to hedge his bets by following Kaito to the rear of the car, falling into step next to him.
“You.” Before he can ask Kaito what he should be doing, his attention is piqued by Maki again, and when he peers around the vehicle he’s just in time to watch her jab a finger in Kokichi’s direction. “You’re the most physically useless. Sit in the car and do what I tell you to.”
He looks a little too excited at the prospect. Before Kokichi can get carried away Maki snatches him by the hood of his — Shuuichi’s, actually — sweatshirt, dragging him close enough to shove into the driver’s seat. “Make this any harder than it needs to be, and I’ll kill you.”
Shuuichi is quick to pull his head back after that.
As it turns out, he doesn’t need to ask Kaito how best to position himself for their upcoming walk. He ends up being instructed to follow him around the car, popping open another door and standing at his side as the car is shifted into neutral and it finally begins to move. Though Shuuichi does put in a genuine effort, between all six of them pushing — mostly Gonta, if he’s being honest — it’s not the hardest thing in the world to do.
At least until they turn onto the first road built at an incline, and the whole affair starts to suck as much as he initially suspected it would.
It’s quiet as they walk, save for Maki barking orders of turn, gear shift, brake to Kokichi in the driver’s seat, and occasionally addressing the full group when she decides she wants them to head down a new street. He hears scattered conversation here and there, but the further they travel, the more the scenery around them changes, and the soft voices fall quiet in discomfort. It’s nice to be out of the eerie darkness, but the alternative Maki leads them towards — ignoring any and all questions or complaints about where it is they’re actually headed — is increasingly upscale and well-lit neighborhoods. Shuuichi feels like he’s stepping into a new tax bracket every time he glances up from the task at hand. And as the presence of street lights and gated houses dawns on everyone else, no one’s feeling very up to conversation at all.
Being a bunch of fugitive teenage demigods slowly maneuvering a stolen car through brightly-lit, rich people neighborhoods is almost as bad as doing it under cover of darkness. If not a little worse.
He’s pretty positive he’s not the only one who is growing steadily more uncomfortable, the nicer the houses around them get. If he’s being honest, he’s not sure what on earth Maki is thinking taking them down roads like this, but even Kokichi has stopped trying to agitate her at this point. Shuuichi is the last person that’s going to question Maki’s motives when she’s as obviously pissed off as she is.
It’s Kaito that loses the ability to suspend his disbelief first. “Maki, are we goin’ the right way?”
“Obviously,” she replies tersely. “I wouldn’t bring us here if we weren’t.”
“But, like, where are we gonna stay in a place like this?” Kaito drops one arm from where he had it propped against the still-rolling truck to nudge Shuuichi’s shoulder, as if asking for backup. When he gets none, he continues himself with a groan. “We’re not gonna…break into one of these houses, are we?”
“Will you shut up, or do you want to get caught?”
Affronted, but unwilling to argue further, Kaito clams up. Shuuichi nudges his arm himself now, a little guilty at hanging him out to dry. It’s returned with a smile and a shake of his head, and they leave it at that.
Maki directs them down a side street with the steepest incline they’ve dealt with so far, and at least ten tense minutes are spent with all of them now having to push with all of their might to get where Maki insists they go. Shuuichi is sweaty, and panting, and longing to take off his binder, so much so that he doesn’t notice they’ve stopped until he’s walking straight into the door he’s been pushing like an idiot.
They’re stopped outside of a…very, very nice house. Admittedly, it’s still a long, windy driveway away from the curb they’re paused by, but even in the dark the silhouette of the building is very imposing. He hears the car shut off, and a moment later the sound of Kokichi finally climbing out of the driver’s seat. The door is shut behind him, and when Shuuichi hesitantly grabs his duffle bag and steps back, Kaito does the same with their door.
When they round the car to greet the rest of the group, it’s immediately clear the walk has done nothing to quell Maki’s ire. She rigidly motions for the remaining six of them to line up against the car, hands balled in fists so tightly her arms shake.
“None of you are to say a single word, got it?” Even in the dark, her rust-red eyes are murderous. If there weren’t a car behind him, he’d take a step back against the venom in her voice. “Stand behind me at all times. Keep your eyes down, and don’t make any sudden movements unless you want to die.”
“Maki, where on earth are we?”
“Shut. Up,” she hisses, and Kiibo does jump back, the sound of his body banging against the metal having them all cringing in the otherwise tense quiet. “Keep talking, and someone else will kill you before I get a chance.”
With that, she spins on her heel, and begins to move robotically up the driveway. No one has it in them to object again.
Following Maki up to the house, they all naturally break off into pairs, sticking close behind her. Kaito and Kaede sidle up right at her rear, and it seems Gonta and Kiibo have decided to stick together as well. So wordlessly, Shuuichi finds his way to Kokichi’s right side, the two of them bringing up the back of their little band of outlaws.
The closer they get to the actual house on the sprawling hilltop property, the more its opulence becomes apparent. Shuuichi instinctively looks towards Kokichi, wanting someone else’s reaction to validate his own feelings of anxiety and just general…what-the-hell-is-going-on-ness. His expression is flat in the dark, eyes scanning over their surroundings but otherwise marching up to wherever they’re headed silent and without fanfare. Either he’s aware Shuuichi’s watching him and he’s schooling his expression on purpose, or he can’t summon up his usual bravado at the moment.
He’s pretty sure he knows which one it is. The revelation doesn’t feel great.
They’re at the doorstep now, though from where he’s standing in the back, he and Kokichi end up not climbing upon the stoop with the rest of the group. If he cranes his neck, he can count no less than three stories making up the intimidating frame of the house, with lights only on at the first level. It’s a nice house, an extremely upscale house, in fact, and even though Shuuichi has spent a fair share of his life inside of places like these as a consequence of his friendship with Rantarou…
…He still feels very, very small as Maki raps her knuckles briskly against the front door.
It kind of jumps the hell out of him — out of all of them, really. Clearly, no one was anticipating her just knocking on the door, and Kokichi does glance his way now to exchange with Shuuichi a confused look. There’s tense, awkward silence for a long stretch of time, and it leaves him squirming anxiously, heart pounding and palms sweating from the anticipation of, of whatever is about to happen.
The front door is roughly yanked open, and light washes across all of them from inside of the house, and suddenly—
There’s a gun pointed at Maki’s head.
The man wielding it is short, with closely-cropped blonde hair and an eye-patch bearing a golden spiraling dragon design. Behind him stands a woman with straight silver hair twisted into two braids, crimson eyes intense from behind her glasses as she stands poised by the man, a sword clutched confidently in both hands and seeming ready to strike at any moment.
Most of that is background noise, though. Shuuichi’s mostly just looking at the gun.
“Who the hell do you think you are, coming to my home at this time of — Maki?!”
Her nonchalance is unreal as she hesitantly responds, “…I thought Peko would be the only one here.”
“Gods above,” the silver-haired woman murmurs, eyes wide, and sheathes her sword behind her back.
Apparently stunned, the man has dropped his gun-holding arm to his side, staring equally bug-eyed and gap-mouthed at Maki. Even from his position in the back, Shuuichi is able to observe the several shades of red his face takes on before ultimately deciding on a rather unpleasant purple. Several times he opens his mouth, only to manage nothing but an aborted curse word or some iteration of Maki’s name until he takes a very deep breath, then rounds on her with renewed anger.
“Jesus fucking Christ, do you have a lot of nerve showing up without a word after what you’ve been putting your goddamn dads through! Do you know how freaked out of their fuckin’ minds they are?! Get the hell inside!”
Without another word the man spins in the threshold and stomps further into the house. The other woman, who has so far simply been observing quietly, glances over all seven of them — something in her gaze makes Shuuichi feel as though he’s under a microscope. He’s almost convinced she’s going to be the one to tell them to get lost in lieu of the other, angrier man’s absence.
Instead, her tight expression twitches into a very, very small smile. “Hello, Maki. Kaede.”
“Hi again, Miss Peko!”
A house with occupants that answer a knock at the door with weapons drawn? Maki’s dads? And Kaede seems to know this woman?
What the hell is going on here…?
“Maki, move your ass!” Even from somewhere much deeper in the house, the man’s snappish tone still carries. Though he’s clearly got some sort of authority going on, Shuuichi gulps at hearing anyone talk to Maki like that. If anyone else tried something even close to that level of rude, he’s pretty sure she’d actually murder them.
Face red, she steps mechanically past the woman — Peko? — into the house. Kaede follows soon after, offering a wave to the woman, and when none of them move to follow, she shifts the door open a little wider for those remaining. “Please, come in. There is…much we need to discuss with you all.”
One by one, they awkwardly step inside, and when the woman has shut and locked the door behind them, she motions for them to follow her towards the sound of more loud arguing.
Perhaps expectedly, Maki, Kaede, and the man are already inside of the living room that they’re corralled into. With no further instructions, they’re left to just sort of watch as Maki and the blonde man continue to go back-and-forth.
“Would it have killed you to give me a call before you show up on my doorstep in the middle of the damn night?!”
“Our phones are being monitored.”
“Real novel observation there, thanks kid, I had no idea. You want to take a guess as to why? Half the gods are tearing their hair out trying to find you, and these—” The man spares a brief look in their direction, lip curled with disgust, “—goddamn brats you ran away with.”
“Hey!” Kaito cuts in, offended. If Shuuichi were closer to him, he’d tell him to be quiet. As it is, Kokichi stomps quite hard on his foot, prompting an equally obnoxious yelp.
Both the man and Maki round on him, hackles raised.
“And who the fuck are you?!”
“Shut the hell up, unless you want to die, you moron."
“I — I think we’re pretty close to that already!” Kaito counters, gesticulating broadly with his arms around the room. “Maki Roll, you haven’t told us anything. And now we’re in a mansion that's filled with a buncha very real-looking weapons that keep getting pointed right at us! I think we have a right to know! Who are these people, why do they have so many damn weapons, and why the hell do you know them?”
The man’s face hasn’t been a normal color since he opened the door. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming into my house and demanding answers from me!”
“Are you quite done?” Peko’s voice immediately cuts through whatever else the man was rearing up to yell at Kaito, and his scowl turns over to her, visibly fuming.
Maki’s not looking much different — she’s been red for a minute, now, and Shuuichi’s pretty sure she hasn’t unclenched her fists once. Surely that can’t feel good.
“Are you seriously grandstanding for the fuckin’ runaways right now?”
Peko rolls her eyes. “If anyone is making things difficult right now, it is you. Have you even given Maki a chance to explain?”
The man huffily crosses his arms, glaring in Peko’s direction for a few moments before he sighs, curses under his breath, and turns back to Maki, expectant. Her posture moves to mirror his, arms tight over her chest as she looks at her shoes.
“This is Fuyuhiko. He knows my parents.” Fuyuhiko huffs again, and it makes Maki go even redder. “He is also my…godfather.”
“Not her actual godly parent,” Fuyuhiko corrects. “In the other, uh, traditional way.”
That…explains a lot, somehow. Not everything, obviously — the various swords, guns, and other assorted weaponry adorning the walls of the room like decorations are a very clear reminder of that. And given that at the very least he knows about the gods, and is comfortable discussing it in front of Peko and the seven of them…clearly, there’s some godly shenanigans going on here that haven’t been fully explained. But, well.
At the very least, Shuuichi’s learned a lot more about Maki in the past five minutes than he has in all of the previous days he’s known her. From the look on her face, having this conversation is probably near the bottom of the list of things she’d like to be doing right now.
“Okay, er…that’s two questions answered, I guess. But seriously, what’s the deal with all of these weapons? And why does that lady have a sword? Uhm, no offense, ma’am.”
Peko opens her mouth to respond to Kaito’s questions, but Fuyuhiko beats her to the punch, a wry grin cracking his mouth upward. “We’re yakuza.”
Maki turns to Fuyuhiko sharply in order to glare at him, while the rest of the room takes a collective step back. Except for Kaede, wearing an awed smile since they all walked into the living room, who merely looks Peko’s way and waves again. She waves back with a small smile of her own.
“Of all the things to—” Maki cuts herself off, rubbing irritatedly at her temples. “Fuyuhiko is the God of Crime. Peko’s the Goddess of Victory. Most of you should know that already.”
She pins Shuuichi, specifically, with a flat look. Given the circumstances, he finds it a little unjustified. Obviously he’s not going to say that, while surrounded by gods that are members of the yakuza, armed to the teeth and clearly related to Maki enough to care about her.
“Alright, now that introductions are done—”
Fuyuhiko rounds on Maki again, not letting her finish. “No they absolutely are not. Heh, unless you’re gonna side with these dumbass kids again?”
The glower Peko sends his way seems to be answer enough for him. “Good. So, as I was saying, you kids are going to sit your asses down. You are going to eat what I give you, because there’s no way in hell you’ve been taking care of yourselves and eating properly. And then you’re going to explain to me just what the fuck you’ve been up to these past few days that’s worth unleashing a pissed off Makoto fucking Naegi on the gods and potentially the whole goddamn world.”
With that, Fuyuhiko spins on his heel and disappears out of the room, stomping the whole way. Kaede immediately takes a seat on one of the several plush couches dotting the room, and when no one else moves to follow, Peko clears her throat and looks them all over.
“Don’t let him frighten you.” Easier said than done. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. You all have a lot of explaining to do, after all. But first, dinner is in order.”
“You better not be undermining my authority with those brats!”
Peko smirks indulgently, moving a hand to half-hide it. “As if it takes my interference to do that.”
Loud cursing, from wherever Fuyuhiko had disappeared off to. Peko rolls her eyes again, then crosses her arms to address the group. “I would advise you all to sit. Fuyuhiko is harmless to you all, but should you try to…outrun, our questioning, rest assured that such a choice would be an exercise in futility. You are in our home now, and you will do as we say.”
The terrified expressions sent her way are apparently all Peko needs to decide it’s safe to leave them alone, and with another intense look in their direction she moves to join Fuyuhiko — presumably, to help with the food they’re apparently about to be served.
Shuuichi has no plans to go against either of the very, very scary gods he’s standing in the home of. As Maki moves to sit on the other couch cushion next to Kaede, he follows Kaito onto another, larger couch, leaving enough room for Kiibo to settle on his other side. Gonta and Kokichi each pick out a chair to sit in, and while the former settles himself down delicately, hunches in on himself as if to not further intrude in the space, the latter…
Kokichi’s looked a little starstruck for a while now, though he’s thankfully remained silent thus far. He bounces happily back into his chair, pulling his legs up to sit cross-legged as he glances excitedly around the room. When he catches Shuuichi looking at him, he grins, linking his fingers behind his head to lean back against.
“Surely you’re not naïve enough to not know what the yakuza is, right?”
“O-Of course not!” Shuuichi whispers in reply. Really, he may not have paid much attention in his history class, but he’s not that clueless!
The smirk widens. “Then I guess you know exactly who we’re dealing with. Good for you, New Kid! At least you’re not as stupid as Kaito.”
“Fuck you!” Kaito snaps, plucking up a pillow from behind him on the couch and reaching over to whack Kokichi with it. Kiibo huffs, standing just long enough to wrench it from where Kaito and Kokichi are fighting over it before sitting back down, visibly exasperated as they shove it behind themself.
“Better pipe down, Space Case, wouldn’t want the thirty-thousand strong Kuzuryuu clan to set their sights on you, would ya?” He winks, delighted at the way Kaito begins to sputter nervously.
“Y-You mean they’re part of that gang?!”
“You really are stupid,” Kokichi replies flippantly, inspecting the nails on his left hand before glancing back towards Shuuichi. “Hopeless, isn’t he?”
“What the heck are you guys even arguing about?” Kaede whisper-yells over towards them, frowning. “Quit being obnoxious, before you piss Peko and Fuyuhiko off enough that they call Nagito!”
“Oh, gods, you don’t think they’d actually—”
“It’d serve you dumbasses fuckin’ right if we did.” Kiibo’s question is interrupted by Fuyuhiko stepping back into the living room, balancing three sizable bowls of something delicious-smelling in his arms. “Maki, help me hand these out.”
Scowling, Maki complies, and takes two of the bowls from him rather forcefully. After handing one off to Kaede she drops back into her seat with the other, cheeks puffed out in annoyance. Fuyuhiko sets the remaining bowl down on the armrest of Kokichi’s chair, rolling his eyes at her once his hands are empty. “Build a bridge, get over it, and eat your goddamn curry. Pouting isn’t gonna make us interrogate you any less.”
“‘Interrogate’ is a little dramatic, is it not?” Peko’s emerged into the room as well, wielding her three bowls much more confidently as she first hands one to Gonta, then to Kaito, and finally to Shuuichi. He murmurs “thank you," under his breath, and as Peko turns he sees her smile.
As Fuyuhiko had mentioned, Shuuichi has a bowl of steaming, spicy-smelling curry and rice set delicately onto his lap. His mouth waters just from that alone, and he’s only a little embarrassed at the speed with which he picks up the spoon and takes a bite. It’s definitely spicier than his usual tastes, but it’s delicious, and from the silence of the others as they also begin to eat, it doesn’t seem like anyone’s particularly bothered by it.
“Fuyuhiko, did you make this? It’s really good!” Kaede waves her spoon over at him, delighted, and for the first time he cracks a smile — small, but definitely there.
“Nah. Your dad did, actually,” he replies, eye fixed again on Maki. Her posture tenses, and her gaze drops to her lap, but she doesn’t say anything. “Both of ‘em were over here the first night, after shit went sideways. Don’t look at me like that, they’re gone now. Probably out patrollin’ the streets for you kids themselves. Them and Nagito are gonna tear me to shreds if they find out you were here and I didn’t immediately call a meeting, so you better make this explanation real fuckin’ convincing.”
Neither god in the room sits, instead standing over the seven of them, clearly waiting for one of them to start talking. When no one does, Fuyuhiko scoffs, crossing his arms again.
“The only ones of you I know are Maki and Kaede. Just who the hell are the rest of you? And seriously, Maki, seven people? No wonder you needed a goddamn party bus to get you all out of Hope’s Peak. I’m surprised you’ve gotten this far when you’re towing half the camp around with you.”
Maki’s very much ignoring the question aimed at her, so with two gods’ eyes trained on them, the other five, unintroduced of the group are left to offer up their names.
“Gonta’s name is Gonta Gokuhara.”
An eyebrow raise in response. “Uh-huh. You,” Fuyuhiko scowls very directly in Kiibo’s direction, “I already know way too much about. Sonia’s a fuckin’ nightmare about this, obviously, but that dumbass Kazuichi has been blubbering down my line all week about you, too.”
Mirroring Maki, Kiibo stares down at their lap, hands in fists on their knees as they bow their head against what’s been said. Fuyuhiko sighs, a hand coming up to idly fidget with the strap of his eyepatch.
“Kaito Momota.” He smiles sheepishly at Shuuichi’s side. “Thanks for the food, man.”
Fuyuhiko’s eye twitches a little at being referred to as such. Before he can respond, Kokichi’s sitting up on his knees within the chair, bowl abandoned for the moment in favor of reaching a hand out towards the god. “Kokichi Ouma. I’m a huge fan of your work, y’know. Thirty thousand is a pretty impressive number of underlings, especially for a shady yakuza business like yours!”
Oh, gods, Kokichi…
Pretty much everyone in the room turns to scowl over at him. For reasons unknown to Shuuichi, rather than letting that settle, he sets his spoon down for long enough to offer his own introduction. “And I’m…Shuuichi Saihara. Thank you for the meal.”
Shuuichi likes to pride himself on being pretty polite. Regardless, his nervous, appreciative smile fractures when Fuyuhiko pulls an entirely different weapon from somewhere on his person, and then there’s a gun aimed at his head, now.
It’s a miracle he doesn’t drop his bowl under the confined pressure of the gun and the sudden ire being spit his way. “Are you fucking crazy?! Bringing that god-awful thing into my house?” His gaze snaps over to Maki, though his aim doesn’t shift even an inch off of Shuuichi’s most vital parts. “I know you know better! Oh, gods, don’t tell me you helped him steal Enoshima’s spear! What the fuck are you thinking, Maki?!”
“W-Wait!” No sudden movements, he thinks to himself very forcefully, though his voice definitely comes out several octaves too high, and the loud interjection has Fuyuhiko swiveling his head back to pin Shuuichi with his most murderous look. “Whatever you’ve heard, it’s wrong. I don’t have the spear — I n-never have!”
“That is not what has been reported amongst the gods,” Peko retorts sharply, and any warmth from before is gone, eyes intense and icy as she stares him down. “Every god is operating under the assumption that the spear is in your possession. If you claim not to have it, then just what are you doing here?”
“We didn’t come to your house on purpose,” Kaede cuts in, finally sounding as nervous as he thinks she should be. “And Shuuichi doesn’t have the spear. We can explain everything, if you just give us a chance. We’re trying to do the same thing you are — save the world.”
Peko and Fuyuhiko exchange a very long, heavy stretch of eye contact, before he finally lowers the weapon he’d been holding. Stowing it somewhere on his person and leaning back against the wall behind him, he crosses his arms. Peko stays where she is, mirroring his pose but remaining fully upright, alert.
“Everything. And I mean everything, from the start.” He exhales harshly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If you can somehow talk yourselves out of this, maybe I’ll consider not calling every one of your goddamn parents and sending your asses back.”
Shuuichi doesn’t doubt him for a second. The stakes here are very high — and somehow, despite being sat on a comfortable couch with a bowl of warm, tasty food in hand, he feels the same level of anxiety as he had when facing down actual monsters, actual gods who want to hurt him.
“Everything,” Kaede promises, then looks significantly over towards Shuuichi. “You should…probably start with Rantarou, right?”
He does, and they really, truly spill to Peko and Fuyuhiko everything. There are a few particular sticking points where their explanation does turn a little bit into an interrogation, but given the absolutely crazy things they’ve witnessed over the past few days, it’s not exactly unexpected.
Still, laying everything out in such plain terms does remind Shuuichi of how very, very in danger they’ve all been in, and how very lucky they are to somehow still be alive, nonetheless uninjured. The Novoselic army, the RV explosion and the Monokub attack, Mikan Tsumiki — if the situation was reversed, he’s sure he’d be no less freaked out by the story of their quest so far.
“Sonia was going to have her soldiers kill you?” Fuyuhiko rubs at his eye hard enough that Shuuichi would expect it to hurt. “She’s always been crazy about her kids, but this…have any of the gods not gone batshit?”
“Everyone’s nerves are frayed. Many for good reasons, but others…” Peko grimaces. “Perhaps we should make a list of our peers we need to…speak with.”
Kaede chuckles nervously, eyes on her food. “Yeah, haha, about that. Uhm, how do we put this…”
He’s expecting her to mention their run-in with Mikan, but there’s something that happened before that, and Shuuichi’s not sure how the hell he forgot about the RV explosion and fight with the Monokubs just a few hours prior to that mess.
“Wait, you’re not in the RV anymore? How the hell are you even here?”
“I am frankly more concerned about how you all managed to blow it up in the first place,” Peko says warily. “That is not exactly an easy task.”
Fuyuhiko laughs under his breath, his following smile sour. “Heh. It was Nagito’s, after all. That sounds pretty in-character to me.”
“Mr. Komaeda’s RV was exploded by monsters, and then monsters f-fought with Gonta and friends.”
Peko and Fuyuhiko share another heavy look, before they both turn over to Kaede and Maki. “You know who sent ‘em?”
“We’re not actually sure,” Kaede answers honestly, and Shuuichi doesn’t miss the way she keeps looking over at him. His mind wanders back to their earlier conversation. “There’s, well…a lot of people looking for us right now, huh?”
“They called themselves, uh…what was it? The Monokubs? If that rings any bells.” Kaito shrugs at the end of his sentence, though neither of the gods in the room mirror his casual posture.
“That bitch and her god damn bears,” Fuyuhiko hisses through clenched teeth, raking his nails roughly over his short hair.
Peko blinks over at them all, surprised. “You defeated monsters that Junko sent after you?”
“Are you sure they’re hers?” Kokichi asks, seeming genuinely curious. “I’m pretty sure the mean guy downstairs has a habit of doing that, too.”
Something in what he says causes Fuyuhiko to go bright red to the point of appearing purple again, teeth audibly gnashing as he seems to bite back whatever objection he has to Kokichi’s statement. Peko replies in his stead, awkward. “There is currently…no movement between the Underworld and the other realms.”
“Which means Enoshima sent them, and you made it outta there alive anyway.” At least a little recovered, Fuyuhiko leans back against the wall, hands in his pockets. “Heh. If I wasn’t still tryin’ to figure out if you fucking idiot kids actually have her spear, I’d almost be impressed.”
“I really don’t have it,” Shuuichi tells them emphatically, feeling like he’s saying the same thing for the millionth time now. “But…you’re not the only ones we’ve spoken to that are, ah, under that impression.”
At two intent gazes focusing on him, Shuuichi continues, glancing over at Kaede as if to say help me out here? “After the Monokubs were dead, we had to run away on foot because the police were coming. We did…a lot of walking, and hours later we ended up finally at a house. A little cottage in the woods.”
If there’s recognition up until that point, neither of them show it. Kaede takes over from there.
“We were all pretty injured from the explosion and the fight, so we couldn’t justify not knocking, y’know? And, uhm…you guys aren’t the first god whose house we’ve been in on our quest, haha…”
There’s certainly recognition now. “Do not tell me—”
“—You all did not encounter Mikan Tsumiki, did you?”
At their collective group nod yes, Peko brings a hand to her mouth, eyebrows at her hairline with surprise. Fuyuhiko immediately pushes away from his spot on the wall again, rounding the loveseat Kaede and Maki were occupying to begin fussing over Kaede.
“That psycho broad didn’t do anything to you, did she? Any of you? Fuckin’ freak, I cannot believe…”
“I—I’m really okay!” Kaede promises, blushing under the sudden concern. Maki’s back to scowling at Fuyuhiko, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her hoodie.
“She’s fine. We got Mikan to heal us before she figured out who we were, and we took care of the issue.”
“Kokichi does deserve credit for that,” Kiibo murmurs, though seems to immediately regret it when Kokichi begins to gag obnoxiously in their direction.
“It was honestly kind of embarrassing how shriek-y she got over hokey-pokey protag Kaede. That weirdo totally deserved having her car stolen, and maybe even worse!”
Before Kokichi can go into detail on how exactly Mikan was taken care of at the time, Shuuichi cuts in. “She seems to have been at least intending to hand us over to Junko, but, well, here we are. Other than that, the only other issue has been us running out of gas near here.”
“Well, thank the gods for that, at least,” Fuyuhiko replies wryly, before puffing out a sigh. “Who knows what shit you bastards could get into around here this time of night.”
“We really aren’t trying to cause trouble for anyone. For the gods. All we’re trying to do is the…the right thing. The only thing we know of that has even a chance of stopping whatever the gods are threatening from happening. From the sounds of it, the only one…he is going to let in is me. So even if I don’t have the spear, I have to try.”
Fuyuhiko watches him while he speaks, and when he finishes he just continues to stare, expression…Shuuichi’s not really sure. At least there’s no longer a gun pointed at him.
Finally, he scrubs a hand down his face, walking over to address Peko. “At the meeting, the one after they ran off. Hajime mentioned he didn’t think they had it, didn’t he.”
“Byakuya was adamant, as well.”
“Obviously, he’s not gonna openly suspect his kid.”
“You’re wrong,” Kaede says firmly, not flinching like Shuuichi knows he would when both of the gods turn their gaze to her. “Shuuichi didn’t even know about the gods until after he got to camp. Rantarou and his parents never told him, Hajime had to explain it. And the spear was already gone by then.”
“…Yeah, Togami said that, too. I still think he’s full of it, and playing defense to make sure Naegi doesn’t blow his fuckin’ lid early, but…” Fuyuhiko’s gaze returns to Shuuichi. “But Hajime’s not stupid. He wouldn’t go to bat for a kid messin’ with Enoshima. Nagito, either.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, looking exhausted all of a sudden. “This is gonna be such a goddamn headache. At least when we thought you had it, we knew where it was gonna end up eventually. And had a huge group of kids we could try and track down. But now we don’t even know who actually has it. That idiot, what was he thinking, lobbing accusations without making sure they’re right—”
“Speaking of,” Maki interrupts after clearing her throat, both her and Kaede’s empty bowls balanced in her lap. “I don’t suppose you have any secret shortcuts to get us where we’re going faster?”
His lip twists, hackles visibly raised. “No. Whole Underworld’s been on lockdown since Rantarou entered, at least on Celeste’s end. And after—”
More audible, vicious teeth gnashing as Fuyuhiko goes nearly blue-faced with pent-up rage. Shuuichi’s a little concerned he’s going to crack a tooth. Peko picks up where he leaves off, her own expression marred by the weight of some heavy emotion.
“Once Gundham’s role in all of this became clear, he too closed all of the access points to the Underworld under his control. Including such entrances that are usually open to…certain gods, without requiring an invitation.”
Kokichi’s eyes widen, chin propped up on his hand as he smiles innocently over at the two of them. Oh no. “Wow, even his boyfriend got locked out? Those Big Five gods sure are something!”
If the crude comment wasn’t enough to make Shuuichi start to sweat, the target of it — and how Fuyuhiko reacts — certainly is. He openly splutters, vein in his forehead twitching to the point of being in danger of bursting. Stalking forward, he shoves a finger rather roughly against Kokichi’s chest, emphasizing certain words with more harsh jabs.
“And just who the fuck do you think you are, you little freak?! I ought to—!”
“Feel free to kill him,” Maki supplies unhelpfully from the opposite end of the room, seeming more pleased than she has all night as Fuyuhiko screams the house down. While Kaede rolls her eyes, Kokichi just throws his hands up defensively, giggling under his breath.
“I dunno!”
“Can you stop being rude to our hosts for even five minutes, Kokichi? I expect nothing less from you towards the rest of us, but really!”
Fuyuhiko juts a thumb towards Kiibo before stepping back from Kokichi, wiping his hand on his suit jacket in disgust. “Take your robot friend’s advice and shut the hell up before I make you, got it?”
Kokichi crosses his heart, and with a huff Fuyuhiko turns away from him to look back at Maki.
“You know where you’re even headed?”
“Celestia’s Palace.” She briefly spares a look towards Shuuichi and the rest of them. “It’s a gambling den. The ‘Casino of Envy’.” Her nose wrinkles as she says the name between air quotes.
“It is not too far. You should be able to make it with time to spare, so long as you operate intelligently.” Peko casts a glance towards the doorway, where they’d all initially come in. “And part of that includes making sure you are rested. It is very late, and you all have a long journey ahead of you. I will make sure your car has gas for when you leave in the morning.”
“Thank you,” Shuuichi says emphatically, more grateful than he can put into words. She smiles in his direction, then looks broadly at the rest of the group.
“There are many open guest rooms, and I would encourage you all to sleep very soon. We will take care of your dishes, so please feel free to find a place to rest for the night.”
With that, Peko takes two of the empty food bowls and moves gracefully out of the room. The rest of them look to Fuyuhiko, who shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck.
“You heard her. Don’t fuck around with any locked doors, or I will send your asses straight the fuck home.”
“So you’re not going to call Nagito?” Kaede asks, hopeful.
He sighs. “I will, eventually. And the parents of those of you who’ve got ‘em, once you kids are long gone. I cannot believe I’m letting myself get wrapped up in this shit. Go on, get lost already, your day starts bright and early tomorrow.”
Once he starts snatching up dirty dishes as well, the rest of the room takes that as their cue to leave, Shuuichi included. Gonta, Kiibo, and Kaito all head down the opposite end of the hallway than where they’d come in, so hedging his bets Shuuichi grabs his duffle bag and moves back towards the entrance, where he knows he saw a staircase leading up to at least one of the house’s upper stories.
The first thing he does is locate a bathroom, desperate to get out of his binder after a full day of wearing it basically non-stop. While there he changes fully into something he can comfortably sleep in, then brushes his teeth and washes his face as best he can. It’s admittedly really weird examining himself in the mirror when he knows he’s inside a house also inhabited by the God of Crime, but honestly…this little detour could have turned out way worse.
After reemerging from the restroom with his bag pulled over his shoulder, he’s immediately greeted by Kokichi, and Shuuichi softens when he sees he’s holding the Bewear plush. He wiggles it around as if to make sure its presence is noticed, though when Shuuichi reaches a hand for it he leans back, raising it above his head with a smile. Kokichi’s not tall enough that the bear is actually out of his reach, but he allows whatever he’s got planned to happen anyway.
“This thing is taking up way too much space in my backpack. I don’t wanna bother with it anymore.” He pulls it back down to hold against his chest, tracing a finger over one of the bear’s ears. “Actually, that was a lie. It got a little beat up by your brother’s bat, and really, I’m already carrying too much of your crap anyway.”
The bear is pushed into his arms, and as Kokichi steps back Shuuichi’s own fingers trace over the small tear that’s widened a little bit since he last saw it — though maybe that can be attributed to the fact that last time he looked it over, he was trudging through the woods in the middle of the night.
“Thank you. I really appreciate what you’ve done for me so far,” Shuuichi tells him honestly, chancing embarrassment at being genuine because he’s pretty sure Kokichi is actually being genuine, too.
His understated smile doesn’t shift into something more animated, and the fact alone makes Shuuichi want to smile, too. “Whatever. Don’t say I never did nothing for ya! Now scram, would you? Don’t want that scary yakuza that’s lurking around to yell at you for disobeying, right?”
“Yeah, I will. Sleep well, Kokichi.”
Sending a mock-salute his way, Kokichi turns back towards the sprawling hallway. “You too. I better see you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed come dawn!” With that, he pulls a stray door open, and then he’s gone.
Exhaustion hitting him anew, Shuuichi decides he really should do the same. He moves in the opposite direction, hoping no one’s come down this way while he was in the bathroom so he doesn’t have to poke around for too long to find a place to sleep. The first two doors he tries are locked, and very quickly he steps away from them, not wanting any lurking yakuza as Kokichi put it seeing him fidgeting with what is very clearly off limits.
The handle of the third door twists, and he pushes inside without thinking about it. At the same moment he reaches around to flip the light on, he hears an aborted shout of “Don’t—!” that doesn’t startle him in time to not see the room before him.
Sky blue walls, plastered with various posters of female idols and girl groups, along with what looks like original artwork. Though the fairy lights are off, they’re strewn all around the room, including within the canopy of the sole bed in the room. On the bedside table, as well as atop the dresser by the window and a desk against one wall, Shuuichi can see various framed photos of Tenko, most of them also boasting Himiko.
Immediately he jumps back, mortified at having invaded what is clearly not a guest room. Swiveling his head around reveals exactly what he’d feared — Fuyuhiko is right behind him, obviously the source of the shout that failed to stop him from opening the door. Shuuichi flushes and looks very pointedly away from the room, waiting to be yelled at or have a gun waved at him or something equally as unpleasant.
Instead of looking angry, though, the god looks almost…wistful, as he inclines his head towards the open door. “Just fuckin’ go in. It’s fine.”
He follows his own order, gently sliding past Shuuichi through the door’s threshold and into the room proper. Confidently he moves towards the bed, sitting on the edge and reaching for one of the few photos on display atop the table. Though Fuyuhiko angles it so he can look at it properly, Shuuichi sees in the few moments it’s still visible that within the frame is a picture of Peko and Tenko, the latter looking several years younger than she did at camp a few days back.
Shuuichi’s been told to go in, so despite his trepidation he does, walking approximately two steps onto the soft carpet before stopping again, really feeling like he’s intruding. After he spends several long, uncomfortable moments in the silence of the room, and it seems Fuyuhiko is uninclined to break it, he very hesitantly does so.
“Does Tenko live here?”
“My daughter,” Fuyuhiko answers absently, not even glancing up as he stuns Shuuichi back into silence. As he glances around, he doesn’t see Fuyuhiko in any of the pictures, though Peko features pretty prominently in several. Cautiously, he steps a little farther into the room, until he can examine the photos on the neat-looking desk a little closer.
“She looks…very happy, in all of these,” Shuuichi offers eventually, eyes caught on a photo of Himiko and Tenko wearing matching school uniforms and flashing wide grins at the camera. He’s honestly not sure if he’s seen Tenko smile at all in his short time knowing her — at least, not towards him. But she does look happy in each of the pictures of her that Shuuichi can see.
“‘Cause I wasn’t around, probably. Ever since fucking Junko…”
Fuyuhiko leans an elbow on one knee, rubbing tiredly at his eye. “Peko’s her aunt. Under her stipulations, I guess she gets her kicks by just keepin’ us parents away from our kids. I’m just glad she’s got family she can live with at all. Heh, even if it weren’t for that bitch, Tenko’d probably prefer to just live with Peko, anyway. I’m only ever here when she isn’t.”
Shuuichi’s not sure at all how to reply to that, so he doesn’t.
“Maybe it’s for the best. I don’t want my kid around all this gang crap, anyway.” Fuyuhiko sets the photo very tenderly back down on the table, making sure it sits straight before standing up. He doesn’t meet Shuuichi’s eye. “She’s too good to have to deal with all’a my shit.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” he replies, before he can think about whether or not doing so is a good idea. He’s pretty sure it isn’t, but Fuyuhiko’s looking at him expectantly, so he can hardly clam up now. “I mean…you’re her family, too. Her father. And, ah, not to be presumptuous, but I can tell you…really care about her. Having a parent like that is all anyone can really ask for, right?”
He shrugs a little lamely, rearranging his bag on his sort-of aching back. “Just, uhm. Make sure you tell her that. That you care about her, so she knows. You never know when you’ll lose the chance to say it one more time.”
Shuuichi hadn’t expected to make his point around Rantarou, but he does, and he feels his shoulders slump at the reminder. Gaze softer than he can recall seeing it all night, Fuyuhiko looks over at him significantly. “Oh, yeah. I guess you just lost someone, too. Sorry, kid.”
The attention is kind of uncomfortable, and Shuuichi shrugs his shoulders again under the weight of it. Still, he forces himself to look the god in the eye as he responds.
“Thank you. And, ah, not that my opinion matters, but. I haven’t known Tenko very long; she doesn’t really like the boys that much—” Fuyuhiko laughs, and Shuuichi manages a smile, too. “—But even considering that…again, not like it matters what I have to say, but she seems like a good person. She’s strong, and loyal to her friends, and tries her best, and just — even if it wasn’t all you raising her, she’s turned out good so far. S-So you shouldn’t beat yourself up too much over it. Sir.”
Another chuckle as Fuyuhiko regards him with loosely crossed arms. “Y’know, I don’t think she’d like hearin’ you praise her that much. But, between you and me…it’s nice to hear she’s doing well, when I can’t be there to see for myself. Thanks.”
Shuuichi nods, and with that Fuyuhiko rolls his shoulders, stepping towards the bedroom door and flicking off the lightswitch. Even in the dark, he can make out the way Fuyuhiko looks at him — intense, as his gaze always has been, but altogether seeming more like a person than he's projected all night.
“C’mon, kid. You’ve got a world to save pretty soon. Go the hell to sleep.”
“Yes, sir.” Fuyuhiko rolls his eye at him as he steps past him out of Tenko’s room. When the door is shut behind them both, he’s pointed towards a room two doors down that’s already got the entrance propped open. Shuuichi walks towards it obediently, and once in the threshold he turns to wave a little awkwardly at the god whose guest room he’ll be sleeping in. “Goodnight.”
“Heh, I’ve got a long one ahead of me, tryin’ to deal with your shit. But, sure. Night.”
Notes:
+ fuyuhiko and peko, everybody!
+ this chapter and everything within it has been planned from the jump, but my writing it has coincided with my real-life replaying of sdr2's second chapter, which i think was only a benefit to this process. hopefully, my getting acquainted with their dialogue again has a positive impact! we're also at the point where i can *really* start getting into the lore i've mapped out with regard to familial relations/the roles of various gods, which i am SO hype for. i hope you are, too!
+ if anyone's keeping up, my self-indulgent-silly-sdr2-rewrite has reached 222k words (oh, great heavens...) which *certainly* contributed to my writing peko and especially fuyuhiko as well as i (think) i have. this is purely a me-myself-and-i project, not something i ever expect to see the light of day (god willing) but at the very least, it makes pointy objects slightly less daunting a beast to tackle! (even if it also distracted me from writing it sometimes. oops!)
+ oh, and very silly aside here: this won't become relevant for a *while,* but if you caught a certain location being mentioned in this chapter, i feel it necessary to declare that it is definitely a shameless persona 5 reference. won't tell you outright for spoiler reasons, though!
+ but: anyone you're expecting to see in this story but haven't yet? any theories about any characters? guesses about anything? i'm all ears! (even if i won't confirm anything for you lot). in the comments, or over at gontagokuhara.tumblr.com, is where you can expand upon anything and everything at your leisure!
+ as always, thanks very much — and see you next time! (i think we'll all be happy with what's coming up)
Chapter 14: maybe if i'd been a little bit braver (interlude ii)
Summary:
Kaede has always been a light sleeper, due to her hearing — so waking in the middle of the night to quiet sounds she can’t quite place at first isn’t entirely out of the ordinary. Conversations outside of her cabin window, Nagito mumbling under his breath while she naps in the back seat, even the barely-audible sounds of Maki getting dressed and slipping out during their sleepovers. All of it is…not normal, maybe, but at least something she can anticipate well enough now.
This is different.
Quiet muttering, heavy breathing — it feels more akin to a nightmare than something Kaede, still half-asleep, recognizes as actually happening nearby. So much so, that her sleep-addled brain doesn’t register it as real until it breaks off into ill-contained crying. By now Kaede’s definitely awake, but she still fumbles for far too long to push herself into a sit, find the lamp’s switch, and rub at her eyes against the sudden, painful influx of light.
Notes:
+ hello hello!
+ we are back with a second 'interlude' chapter! normally these are meant to be Shorter, but at 7.5k this is definitely longer than i envisioned it. hardly a bad thing, though!
+ as always, any applicable content warnings at the bottom. but with that said, let's continue!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
By far, this is the nicest house Kaede has ever stepped foot inside of, let alone showered in and now been permitted — well, they don’t really have a choice here, do they? — to sleep in one of the equally expensive beds within.
She comes across several of their group in her search for a place to sleep, to the point she’s thinking she’s gonna have to head upstairs to find a place to crash. Kaito, predictably, has conked out atop the first bed he’d come across and was snoring away so loud Kaede didn’t even have to check his door. Similarly, she can hear Kiibo and Gonta speaking softly a few doors down — sharing a room, it seems. Cute.
Also unfortunately predictable is her rounding a corner to find Kokichi snooping about in rooms he definitely shouldn’t be in. Kaede shoos him away as quiet as she can, reminding him under her breath that the Kuzuryuus absolutely will drop-kick him back to camp, sighing when he merely shrugs his shoulders and dashes up the stairs.
Kaede is debating going up after him in search of a free bed, but as she doubles back through the hallway she hears quiet movement behind one of the doors she’d previously tried and found locked, and she stops in front of it, considering. It’s no sooner that she’s given the door a soft knock that the minute sounds from inside abruptly go silent, and she frowns as she stews on why that might be.
All signs point to Maki being behind the door, which begs the question…uh, why isn’t she answering?
“It’s Kaede,” she offers softly, shifting back slightly in preparation for what she assumes is going to be the door being pulled open. But no such thing happens, and even with Kaede’s excellent hearing, it’s uncomfortably silent.
Definitely Maki, then. Kaede’s frown deepens.
It was obvious basically as soon as she and Kaito came back to where they’d left the truck behind that she was in a bad mood, and given Kaede’s at least somewhat-decent grasp on Maki’s very…delicate family situation, she can’t really blame her for that. Kaede’s own circumstances aren’t nearly so complex — they suck, certainly, but Sayaka’s many issues and the whole mess with her and Miu doesn’t come close — but even she balks to discuss them too much, and she’s eons more open than Maki ever really has been.
But, the longer she’s left to flounder uncomfortably in front of the locked door, the more it starts to dawn on Kaede that whatever’s got Maki icing her out right now, it might be a little more than just introducing half of camp to her extended family tonight.
The only thing she can really think of is, well — it’s been a little while since then, but it’s hardly left Kaede’s mind since Maki disappeared down the cramped cottage stairs after maybe-sort-of-perhaps-implying that she might kiss Kaede. Things had seemed fine, she remembers maybe-kinda-sorta holding Maki’s hand on the drive away from the woods, and the car ride that took them to the Kuzuryuu residence was tense already because of the call she’d received from Nagito. Kaede hadn’t noticed anything else amiss, at least things that could have Maki trying to convince Kaede she’s not behind the door she knows she is, so…
Against her better judgment, Kaede knocks once more, now more desperate than ever for an answer — though she’s a lot less sure what it might be than she was about two minutes ago.
“Maki?”
That does it, at least; Maki opens the door wearing the same sweatshirt she had been when they’d arrived at the house, though she’s traded her skirt for something she can more comfortably sleep in. Her hand is still tight on the doorknob as she blinks out wordlessly at Kaede, and she swallows around the nerves beginning to tighten her throat.
“This place is pretty big and all, but I think most everywhere that’s not off limits has been claimed. Can…I come in?”
It’s not the full truth; Kaede certainly is capable of parking herself on one of the many plush couches dotted around the Kuzuryuu manor, and she’s sure if she looked she could find at least one bed. But now that Maki’s staring through her, face drawn up with exhaustion, the last thing Kaede really wants to do right now is leave her alone. Frankly, she’s not sure she could stomach a night alone after this sudden bout of nervousness, anyway.
She smiles over at her friend, trying not to let her apprehension show as Maki weighs her options. Finally, fingers still wrapped around the handle, Maki’s eyes cut to the side as she rubs purposefully at the side of her head. “I have…a headache.”
It’s a half-baked excuse, one she doesn’t even look at Kaede to give, so she’s not giving up that easily. “I think I have some medicine in my bag. I’ll trade ya, if I can sleep in here?”
“My head really hurts,” Maki replies, as if that’s an answer to the question she’s been asked. They both know it isn’t; Kaede isn’t really sure how to feel as the excuse hangs in the air, and even less so when Maki finally sighs, rubbing at her eyes with her fists, and steps away from the door to double back towards the singular bed in the room.
Not as enthusiastic a response as Kaede really would have liked. Her smile wavers, but she turns towards the door to shut and lock it to conceal it as best she can. When she’s facing the room properly again it’s just in time to watch Maki crawl beneath the covers on the right-hand side of the bed, curled up tightly as close to the edge as she can manage.
With Maki’s face hidden, Kaede can no longer fight her frown. She gnaws on her lip the entire time she settles in, stopping only to approach Maki’s bedside with the almost-empty pill bottle in hand, setting it down on the table holding a lamp and alarm clock slightly louder than necessary, just so Maki knows it’s there. With very little left to do, Kaede finally shuts the last light in the room off, trying to remain unobtrusive as she slides into the bed on the opposite side, attempting not to shift their shared blankets too much as she settles beneath them.
Confused, and more than a little concerned at Maki’s sudden mood shift, Kaede considers asking after it now but thinks better of it. She has no interest in talking, clearly, and she doesn’t even need to glance over her shoulder to know how tightly-coiled Maki is right now, pressed as far away from Kaede and her side of the bed as possible. So instead of pushing, Kaede dejectedly settles into bed, keeping her back to Maki’s to afford her as much privacy and space as she can. The last thought that crosses Kaede’s mind before exhaustion wins out is that she wishes she knew how to help — wishes she even knew what’s wrong.
Kaede has always been a light sleeper, due to her hearing — so waking in the middle of the night to quiet sounds she can’t quite place at first isn’t entirely out of the ordinary. Conversations outside of her cabin window, Nagito mumbling under his breath while she naps in the back seat, even the barely-audible sounds of Maki getting dressed and slipping out during their sleepovers. All of it is…not normal, maybe, but at least something she can anticipate well enough now.
What she wakes up to now is different.
Quiet muttering, heavy breathing — it feels more akin to a nightmare than something Kaede, still half-asleep, recognizes as actually happening nearby. So much so, that her sleep-addled brain doesn’t register it as real until it breaks off into ill-contained crying. By now Kaede’s definitely awake, but she still fumbles for far too long to push herself into a sit, find the lamp’s switch, and rub at her eyes against the sudden, painful influx of light.
“Maki?” she asks, breathless, glancing over at the lump of covers on the other side of the bed and then reaching to lift them when she’s not given a response. The bed is empty, but she can still hear her, so why—
With a jolt, it hits her that Maki must have gone invisible, and Kaede’s hands flutter anxiously in the air as she gets to her feet, trying to either eke out her location for herself, or convince Maki to pop back into sight. The room is fairly large, and with Kaede too nervous to look around properly and Maki definitely trying to keep herself quiet, she struggles more than she really should.
She reappears, but it’s hardly a relief — at the sound of a loud sniff Kaede turns and finds Maki on the opposite side of the room as her, braced protectively against a corner, eyes wide and silent tears streaking down her face as she looks out into the bedroom, unseeing.
“Maki—” As soon as she opens her mouth Maki’s gone again, though she moves in vain towards where she last was, anyway. Kaede shudders at the feeling of Maki brushing roughly past her unseen, and she turns on her heel in time to watch her reappear as far away from Kaede as possible again, scrubbing angrily at her eyes with her fists.
“Just leave me alone.”
Obviously, that’s not happening. “I’m sorry, I’ll…I’ll stand over here, for right now. Is there anything else I can do to help?”
“I said get out.” If she’s trying to be convincing, she’s not doing a very good job at it. Arms wound tightly around her middle, still blinking away tears, looking resolutely at her socked feet instead of Kaede like she really, really wishes she would. Yeah, not a chance!
“It’s okay, you don’t have to be—” None of the ways she can imagine finishing that sentence seem as though it’ll pan out well, have the desired calming effect. She stops short, reassessing. “You had…a nightmare, right? You know that doesn’t bother me, you don’t need to—”
“This isn’t about you," Maki spits, still refusing to glance up. “I didn’t even want you here, so just leave."
It hurts, taking hold somewhere deep in Kaede’s chest and twisting. It also doesn’t matter.
“I’m your friend. I’m not going to leave you alone.”
“Then you aren’t a very good friend, then, are you?”
Another deep cut. But it’s starting to dawn on Kaede just what’s going on. “I think I would be a worse friend if I left you right now. But you know that already, right?”
“You don’t know anything," Maki fires back, voice tight.
“No, that’s wrong. I know that you’re one of the most important people on the planet to me. I know that I care about you more than pretty much anybody else. I know you’re trying to run me out of here, and we both know that’s not going to work. You’re my best friend,” Kaede finishes quietly, because that should be enough.
For Maki, it’s not. Gaze finally snapping up from the ground, her fresh tears catch in the low light of the room. “Don’t say things like that!”
“Why not?” Kaede pushes back, desperate herself for an answer.
“Because you should know better!” Maki snaps, hands balled in tight fists at her sides. “You’re not a fatal idealist, an idiot like Kaito. I’m not someone you should trust, should get close to, rely on, consider a ‘best friend’. All of you should distrust me, be scared of me, hate me, don’t you get it?”
“I don’t! You’re not making any sense! Of course I can rely on you, why wouldn’t I—”
“Look at where we are! I brought you to a yakuza den, Kaede!”
The laugh Kaede lets out is strained, confused. “You brought us to your family’s house, because otherwise we would’ve been sitting ducks, lost in some random city in the middle of the night!”
“Whatever.” Maki’s looking away from her again.
“No, not whatever! I — I don’t know where this is coming from, but it’s not true, alright? I’ve known you for years, Maki, and you have never, ever made me think I can’t trust you, or rely on you, or given me any reason not to consider you my best friend in the entire world!”
Kaede’s panting at this point, but she pushes on when Maki’s jaw just tightens, refusing to respond. “You don’t think Kaito’s an idiot. You call him that because you care about him, just like he calls you Maki Roll because he cares about you. You care about Kiibo and Gonta, even though they can be exhausting to you. You care about Kokichi, despite wanting to wring his neck half the time. And you care about me, Kaede, your best friend, who cares about you just as much.”
She takes a half step forward, fire dying behind her words as Maki’s slim shoulders begin to tremble.
“We all rely on you, because we trust you, and we care about you, and we have no reason not to. But you — you can rely on us too, okay? On me. So please, just — rely on me, and let me help you, okay?”
Uncomfortable, tense silence settles around the room, as Maki deflates until her face is obscured entirely, and Kaede just waits, hoping something will come to her that will help her make this better.
Finally: “Why are you making this so difficult?”
There’s no vitriol behind Maki’s words anymore. Just resignation. It’s almost worse than being yelled at.
“I’m not trying to,” Kaede replies gently, taking another small step towards where Maki’s still curled in on herself in the far corner of the room. “You’re asking me to lie to you, but I can’t. You care about us, just like we care about you. Don’t you see that?”
Maki’s hands push into the front pocket of Kaede’s sweatshirt, posture hunched. “Is that what you want me to say? That I care about you all? Fine, I do. That doesn’t change anything. Even if I care,” her gaze darts up to meet Kaede’s briefly, dark eyes intense and radiating an energy that tells Kaede very clearly to back off. “I’m still dangerous. Being around me is dangerous. Being stupid enough to consider me a friend is dangerous.”
Her expression twists again, and Kaede winces reflexively against what’s about to come.
“So just leave me alone, Kaede.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Kaede counters emphatically, sweaty hands clasped nervously in front of her, unsure of what she should do with them when she already feels so lost. “I’ve known you for years. Even…even ignoring everyone else, this whole quest, everything except for me and you. You’ve been my best friend for so long, and I’ve never felt unsafe around you, not even once. Just being near you makes me feel safe, makes me feel—”
Good. Secure. Loved. However Kaede plans to stick the landing on her declaration, it falls short when Maki finally, finally looks at her. And for perhaps the first time Kaede can remember — bar what she’d seen a few minutes ago, while Maki was fighting with her invisibility to remain obscured — she watches over the feeling of her heart cracking in her chest as Maki begins to cry in earnest.
“That’s the problem," Maki whispers, voice breaking on the last word. “You don’t understand. You don’t know me. You don’t know what could happen to you because of me.”
“Then tell me,” Kaede all but begs, her own hands scrunched in fists at her sides against the urge to reach out to her. “Whatever it is, it’s not going to scare me away. I promise.”
“It’s not about you being scared!” Maki laments, hands moving to grasp the sides of her head, beginning to pace in the small alcove of room she’s made for herself in her corner. “It’s about me, and what happens to the people I care about, that I’ve allowed to rely on me, when I get scared.”
Kaede shakes her head. “We’re just kids, Maki. The world might be ending, and the gods keep trying to kill us, and we’re just a bunch of teenagers, and we’re all scared. We’re all terrified, even the strongest among us, even you, and we’re still okay. We’re going to be okay. There’s no other choice but to affirm to ourselves that this will turn out alright. I’m terrified, and you’re terrified, but that just makes me all the more determined to make sure we do make it out of this.”
“It’s not that simple.” Maki wipes her fists against her eyes again. “Stop being naïve, Kaede. You’ll get yourself killed like that.”
“No, I won’t—”
“Yes, you will!” Abruptly Maki shoots forward, shoving a finger into her chest and then grasping onto the front of Kaede’s sleep shirt when she takes a half-step back. “It’s happened before, and I’ve tried to keep it from happening again so far, but the longer this—” She gesticulates wildly with her hands, more animated and less controlled than Kaede can ever recall seeing her, “—continues, the more likely it is to happen again."
“…’Again’?” Kaede parrots softly, a hand moving molasses-slow to wrap her fingers around Maki’s wrist, letting them both fall to the side but not letting her go. Maki rears to step back, run away again, and keeping her grip gentle she stops her from bolting like she looks as though she wants to. “What do you mean?”
Her next exhale is shaky, and her eyes catch on her and Kaede’s joined hands instead of on her face. “Is this what it will take for you to finally give up on me? Telling you the worst thing I ever did?”
A heavy, oily, nauseating weight settles in Kaede’s stomach as she takes in what she’s being asked. Beneath her fingers, Maki’s arm is trembling, and when she follows the line of their joined hands she finds the rest of her looking more or less the same; tense, terrified. Whatever spurred her nightmare, whatever catalyst set off their argument, whatever has led them now to Kaede regarding the most important person to her with sadness as shame and self-directed anger radiates off of her…it weighs so, so deeply on her friend.
“I will never give up on you,” Kaede tells her with a soft squeeze of her wrist, hand sliding down enough to grasp her fingers and squeeze them, too. Maki pulls away, retracting her arms to cross tightly against her chest as she pointedly looks away from her face.
“You should, if you want to stay safe. Stay alive. I already killed one friend, don’t make me end up just hurting you, too.”
Kaede swallows around her dry throat as she processes…that. “But you’d never hurt me.”
The laugh that Maki lets out in response is sardonic, bleak, entirely out of place from those genuine ones that Kaede recalls and treasures like gifts. When Maki leans back, folding herself again into the corner of the room, Kaede doesn’t follow, allowing her own arms to wind defensively around herself as she waits, watches, listens.
“I wouldn’t hurt you. Not on purpose.” Her voice is strained, like it’s a more earth-shattering admission than it is. But Kaede knows that, so why? “But my actions are my own. Including my mistakes. My failures. And all it takes is just one slip up, one split-second mistake, until you’re dead or dying and there’s nothing I can do to save my best friend again. I can’t, Kaede. I cannot.”
“Can’t…?”
Maki’s hands scrub roughly down her face, exhausted and frustrated and very clearly wounded. “Maybe I’ve hurt you too much already, by not telling you the truth. Maybe this is my fault, keeping you in the dark, and…” she grimaces, eyes briefly flicking over to Kaede’s face, “…indulging in things I never had any right to.”
“All I want,” Kaede begins, pushing through the way her voice constricts around confused, heartbroken tears, “is to understand. So I can help make it better.”
“You can’t.” Maki’s following swallow is loud, like she’s physically forcing down a lump like the one Kaede feels in her own throat. “But even if you can’t ‘make it better’, you can at least know better than to rely on me.”
“Nothing you could say to me will change the way I feel.”
The edge in Maki’s grim smile is almost bittersweet. “If you have any sense at all, it will.”
Hands at her sides, all Kaede can do is nod. “Then tell me. And we can find out together.”
And she does — in her own roundabout, oftentimes vague way.
The reason Maki first ran away from her human life. The reason her parents finally entered her life after twelve years missing. The reason she discovered the truth about who she really is. The reason she’s even here, at Camp Hope’s Peak, on this quest, has any reason to know Kaede at all.
Kaede knows the sparsest of details, the bits and pieces Maki’s let slip whether on purpose or accidentally across their over four years of friendship, the littlest inklings that even the likes of Tenko and Kaito don’t know. She knows Maki’s memory of life began at an orphanage, she lived there up until she was twelve, because that’s when she turned up at camp barely a year after Kaede. Much smaller and angrier and more closed-off than she can ever recall seeing from the rest of her friends, but…still just another traumatized demigod, ducking beneath her dad’s — not her godly parent’s, never him — hesitant touch and hiding in her undecorated cabin for months on end, unwilling to speak with anybody.
Until Kaede had made an effort, when Hajime and Nagito and Tenko and any of the others in their much smaller group hadn’t succeeded in making progress. And over the years, as Maki began to trust the camp counselors as safe adults, as she warmed to her familial ties with Tenko, as her begrudging friendships with the others started to form, as Kaito arrived and pulled her kicking and screaming out of what remained of her protective shell…she seemed better. She got better.
But clearly, there are pieces Kaede’s still missing. “It was…the orphanage, right?”
“The orphanage was fine.” Maki’s reply is a murmur, and she waves a hand as if to shoo the notion away. “Underfunded. Rundown, especially as time went on. The older kids had to take care of the younger ones, which I never liked, but it was fine. Until the men in the dark suits showed up.”
This feels right about the time Kaede should just shut up and let her talk. She nods, in a way she hopes is reassuring, and holds her tongue against the deluge of questions, of concern she wants to ask after.
“There weren’t many, at first. A pair or two stopped by every couple of weeks, maybe. They’d bring gifts for the littler kids, play with us sometimes. All of them wore sunglasses, so it was easier to go outside with us, I guess. I was younger then, so I didn’t…” Maki sighs, eyes downcast. “Over the years it got worse. There were more of them, snooping around all the time. They stopped smiling so much, and just started…watching. They’d watch the kids play, and I’d watch them, because I was already responsible for the younger ones anyway.
“The sunglasses started following me, after a while. At first they just wanted to watch me ‘look after’ the others. Right.” She spits the word. “The caregivers let them. We were already so poor, and whether they were withholding promised funding, or paying off the orphanage to let them do…whatever, they weren’t in a position to turn the suits away. I’m sure it wouldn’t have mattered if they did.
“It was frustrating. Creepy. It was…distressing,” Maki manages eventually, arms drawn tighter around herself, “and we wanted to get away. Just to get those stupid sunglasses and the eyes behind them to stop following us. Just for a little while. Me…and my f-friend.”
Maki’s voice breaks on the word. She doesn’t say a name, and Kaede doesn’t ask.
“I never figured out what they wanted with us. What they were looking for in that orphanage. I didn’t want to know. But being away from the orphanage was better. If I saved up enough for bus tickets, we could go into the city, sometimes. She always told me not to waste my money, but I just hated that they watched me. Watched her. And even if it was just a day spent on the streets, anywhere was better than the orphanage while the suits were there. Lurking. Scouting.”
She inhales, the sound labored, pained. “I found that out, at least. That they were looking at us for something. We were out in the city, I don’t even remember what we were doing.” There’s a soft hiccup, and then another, and Maki scrubs desperately at her face until she can force them back.
“They moved in pairs. Always. Even when they would play with the kids, it was in groups of two. Two playing, two watching, two writing things down, whatever. I don’t know why that one cornered us alone. I don’t know why.
“With how closely they always watched me, how often they followed me, even out of the orphanage, I assumed it was me they wanted. It wasn’t. Whatever they were looking at us for, I knew it was bad, and I knew she wouldn’t make it through. She was soft, and sensitive, and got scared easily, and hated being alone. But for some reason, the man decided he wanted her, and I told him no. There was no way he was going to separate us. There was no way I was going to leave her alone.
“I told her to run, I did,” Maki says emphatically, eyes on her hands, and Kaede’s not even sure if she’s the one being spoken to anymore. “Even as a kid, I — I could put up a fight. Could try, at least. I wasn’t even really afraid, just angry. And determined. Scrapping with the older kids was one thing, but I thought, if I gave her time to run away, fought the man, maybe he wouldn’t leave us alone, but at least he’d take his eyes off of her. At least my best friend would make it out.”
Maki sniffs, miserable. “I was ready to do whatever it took to make sure she got out of there. Even if it meant never seeing her again, or dying. I told her to run, and I stepped towards him, and I was ready. I was. But he pulled out a gun — I’d never seen the suits carry them before, I’d never seen one so up close, and I…”
All at once Maki disappears, phasing out of sight with a barely-audible pop in the relative quiet of the room. Her voice picks up again from the same spot near the wall.
“I couldn’t see my reflection in his dark sunglasses anymore. I was scared, in a way I never had been before.” Kaede still can’t see her, but she hears Maki suck in a sharp breath through her teeth. “He got scared, too. He dropped the gun. It fired. I couldn’t even turn it off, come back, until it was too late. Until the man had run, and my best friend died alone. She needed me, she trusted that she could rely on me, and because of me she died.”
When she reappears, Maki’s crying in earnest again, but she’s looking at Kaede head-on, crimson eyes ablaze as she stares her down.
“Relying on me is how you’re going to get yourself killed. It’s a miracle it hasn’t happened already. And if we somehow all make it through the end of this week, we somehow finish this mission and save the world and stop Junko Enoshima, then I’m going to make it a non-issue for all of you to leave me alone.” She pauses, biting her lip.
“So you get it now, right? Why I’m dangerous. Why you can’t rely on me. I care about you, alright? And because of that, I can’t be around you. So please, just listen, and don’t make me turn you away myself again.”
“You don’t have to.” At Kaede’s first words for a while, Maki flinches, as if expecting a combat blow. It breaks her heart more than Kaede knows how to put into words. “This doesn’t change anything.”
Maki’s head shoots up, glare renewed along with the tears leaving her cheeks raw and irritated. “You can’t possibly mean that. Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s not a lie, I mean it,” Kaede insists, fighting every atom in her body that screams at her to step closer to her friend. “You’re not dangerous, Maki. This isn’t something you should ever have to blame yourself for. And I’m so sorry that you have for so long.”
The sleeves of Kaede’s sweatshirt are damp from where Maki has to keep using them to wipe her face. It’s such a human sight, her best friend standing in her clothes, crying, begging Kaede to leave because she cares so much…it’s such a steep contrast to the person Maki’s currently trying to sell herself as that she could laugh. She doesn’t, because that’s the last thing her friend needs right now, still glancing out at Kaede like a desperate, caged animal, though it’s Maki that seems more apt to skitter away terrified than to lash out in any sort of dangerous capacity.
She still hasn’t said anything. Kaede fumbles for the right words before she loses the chance — loses Maki — entirely.
“You were just a kid. We’re still kids, but gods, Maki, you were just a baby. You were young, and scared, and faced with an impossible situation, a man with a gun and abilities you can’t control and so many other things you had absolutely no say over. What happened isn’t your fault, not at all.”
“I didn’t kill her, but it’s my fault she’s dead. It might as well be the same thing.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Kaede fires back, shaking her head against her own incoming tears. “Those people, that man, it’s his fault. He was the one with bad intentions, with the capacity and the will to hurt. There’s no way you could have controlled your invisibility when you were that young, in a situation like that. It was him that had the control, was the terrifying adult with a gun that he knew would scare you.”
“But I—”
“No. Listen to me. What happened to your friend should not be your burden to bear, Maki. And…and as your best friend now, today, here, I am not going to let you spend your whole life feeling guilty and unreliable and dangerous over something that’s not your fault.”
“Stop it. Just stop, Kaede! Isn’t this already painful enough? Do I really have to beg to get you to listen?”
Kaede shakes her head. “I am listening. I haven’t stopped listening to you since the day I met you, and because of that I know you’re wrong. You’re not a — a killer. You’re not dangerous. You’re my best friend. You’re a friend to all of us. And I am telling you, there is not a thing you could do or say that would drive our friends away from you. There is no way that I will ever stop believing in you.”
“Then I guess you are stupid,” Maki says venomously, and Kaede can practically see her throwing her walls back up around herself, preparing to shut Kaede and everyone else out for good.
“Maybe I am!” Kaede shouts, marching forward to close most — though not all — of the distance between them. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that Maki has no choice but to listen.
“Maybe I am stupid, alright? The world is ending, and maybe I stupidly think that us and our friends can actually save it before people start dying. In a few days we’ll be making our way to the Underworld, and I’m stupidly going in without a plan. Maybe I’m too stupidly optimistic, too stupidly trusting of others, but not about this. Maybe I’m stupid for a lot of reasons, but believing in and loving you isn’t one of them!”
All the air saps from the room at her final declaration, Kaede’s face burning so hot with mortification that she can feel her blood pumping with it. Maki’s stopped dead, too — fury forgotten, tears forgotten, the argument forgotten, all Maki does is stare, mouth in a tight line, eyes wide as she pins Kaede in place with her gaze.
“Take it back.” Maki’s face is red now, too, hands clenched so tightly her arms shake. “Kaede. You can take it back.”
That wasn’t what she meant to say. She hadn’t even registered what she said until Maki was balking at her, giving her an out. But it’s out there now, and Kaede’s watching the consequences of that unfold on Maki’s face in real time.
She shakes her head, the deep inhale she takes unsteady. “I can’t. I can’t lie to you, Maki.”
“Kaede,” Maki warns, voice tight.
“This is a terrible time to air this all out. Obviously, we’ve got some things we need to work out about our friendship, let alone about…this.” Kaede laughs weakly, sweaty hands twisting anxiously in the soft fabric of her shorts. “But I mean it. And I don’t regret saying it. I’m not taking it back.”
“I,” Kaede continues, fighting her instinct to bolt so she can at least look at Maki while she says this, “have loved you for so long as my best friend. As someone who stands on equal ground with me. As someone I look up to, and want to impress, and want to make proud, and want to make happy. Everything I know about you, everything I’ve learned up until this exact moment, has solidified that I just want you to be happy, always. Because after everything you’ve been through, you deserve more than anybody I know to be happy.”
By now, Kaede’s crying too, but as long as she can make her voice work she will keep going.
“I’m optimistic to a fault. Maybe a little too hopeful for my own good. A — like you said, a fatal idealist. All of that is true. I don’t care. When it comes to you, I am never, ever going to stop believing in you. And I’m never going to stop loving you, either — the context of that love be damned.”
She pants for a few moments, breathless not only from the prolonged fight, but from the weight of her final declaration, too. Maki is silent, stock-still, eyes on her socked feet instead of on Kaede, where she last remembers them being. Terrified, but knowing down to her bones that this is right, Kaede takes the final few steps forward, holding out her arms.
“I’m going to hug you now, okay?”
And as she promises, she does.
Kaede’s always prided herself on being a good, tight hugger; whether it be her warmth, or her softness, or something else that she can’t place about herself, people tend to sink into her embrace when given the opportunity. It takes some time, but finally — thankfully — Maki reciprocates, arms hesitantly creeping up to fold behind Kaede’s shoulders, fingernails catching on the thin fabric of her t-shirt as she leans her forehead to rest against Kaede’s chest. Emboldened, Kaede presses a little closer, leaning down until her cheek skates against Maki’s own.
Unless she is seriously, catastrophically misreading this, then the storm has passed. Maki is here, and she’s safe, and she might be crying a little bit into Kaede’s shirt, and Kaede loves her so much she doesn’t know how it hasn’t spilled out of her sooner, more forcefully. But the air in the room still hangs heavy with unresolved tension, and she can feel it in Maki’s posture while she’s got her arms around her, the way her shoulders and back are still drawn taut, unrelaxed.
Pondering her next move for the long stretch they spend in silence affords her no answers on how she can fix this. And the longer it continues to settle, the less confident she is that they’ll actually talk through this at least kind of properly.
Finally, lips still near Maki’s ear, she asks, “Do you want to keep the mood serious and talk, or am I allowed to make you laugh?”
A huff from within Kaede’s arms. “I’d like to see you try.”
She says it like a challenge, and even in circumstances like this, Kaede has never been one to back down when Maki tries to call her bluff. Unable to contain her smile, she dips her head down low enough to blow a loud, obnoxious raspberry into the skin of her throat, earning a surprised gasp from Maki that has Kaede’s heart pumping. She pulls back laughing, and is rewarded when Maki does the same, revealing a scarlet tint crawling all the way up to the tips of her ears and — miraculously! — a small smile.
Her arms are still looped loosely around Maki’s middle, and in return, her friend keeps hers clasped around her shoulders. Kaede’s done a pretty decent job diffusing the tension, but she would feel like crap if she didn’t acknowledge how they got here, at least long enough for Maki to respond properly, honestly.
“I like you a lot, Maki,” she tells her softly, her hands too-still on Maki’s waist in fear of overstepping. “But like I said, I know it’s probably not the best time to be…bringing this up, with the whole world ending and all. So if you don’t want to acknowledge it right now, that’s okay.”
In all honesty, Kaede’s expecting Maki to take the out being offered, this time. There’s quiet for a few moments, then:
“…Don’t laugh.”
Not what she was expecting. Kaede chuckles nervously, fingers twitching where they’ve been still on her for far too long. “Uhm…I won’t?”
“Remember, in that nurse’s cabin…that thing you asked me?”
Kaede’s red up to her ears now, too. “Y-Yes, I do.”
“I…I guess, if…you wanted to,” Maki licks her lips, maintaining eye contact though she really struggles, “then that would be okay.”
Something crackly and lightning-like shoots up Kaede’s spine, pulling Maki in just a touch closer as her words register because oh wow, oh wow, oh gods!
But wait, wait. She’s doing this right, damn it! “Sorry Harumaki, but I need more than that. I need to know we b-both want this, yeah? So if you want me to kiss you—” Kaede feels the shudder that rolls through both of them, sees the focus of Maki’s gaze on her lips, “then I need you to tell me.”
Maki puffs her cheeks out, embarrassed, and she’s so cute Kaede can’t stand it.
“Yes. Do that. Please.”
And as she has since she met Maki, Kaede listens.
Their first kiss is gentle, chaste, definitely a little ruined by the fact that Kaede’s grin keeps widening but she just doesn’t care because it’s Maki. She removes one arm from around Kaede’s shoulders, sliding her hand down just far enough so she can fidget with a stray lock of her hair. In the space the move makes, Kaede lifts her right hand from Maki’s waist to her cheek, offering them both a guiding hand that they both probably need.
But who’s counting? Kaede is in heaven.
When Maki pulls away, her eyes are barely open and there’s a ghost of a smile on her face. Her hand regretfully slides out of Kaede’s hair, the one still cupping her neck falling away soon after, and with one last soft squeeze Kaede finally disentangles herself, too. She’s definitely going to wake up with bruised lips from how much she’s having to physically bite back the desire to smile goofily, and though Maki looks similar (wow!) it’s her that ends up being the voice of reason so they don’t spend the rest of the night just smiling at each other.
“It’s late,” Maki murmurs, glancing behind Kaede briefly towards the bed. “Peko and Fuyu are getting us up early. We should sleep while we can.”
She’s right. Yes, Maki, fantastic idea. “R-Right! Who knows when we’ll have a warm, soft, clean bed again. I’ll turn off the light.”
Maki rounds the bed towards her side, slipping back beneath the covers as Kaede adjusts her own sheets, pushes her legs beneath the comforter, and finally clicks the lamp off — hopefully, this time, for good.
As she settles, she ends up on her back, staring up at the ceiling as she wrestles with herself on whether or not to push her luck further than she has already. What started as a bad night, that somehow devolved into an even worse one, has now finally settled on somewhere good. Maki talked through her nightmare. Kaede reaffirmed her dedication to their friendship, her love of her best friend.
And, she kissed Maki!
By all accounts, this should be more than enough. And it is. Certainly more than she ever could have hoped could possibly happen. If the night ends here, Kaede will fall asleep elated.
But there is one thing…
“Maki?” she asks softly into the dark.
“Yes?”
She’s closer than she was the last time they were in the bed together, Kaede can tell from how near to her Maki's voice is. Swallowing back her nerves, she eases onto her left side to look in Maki’s direction, heart stuttering when she sees red eyes already trained on her in the dark.
“I know, I know, bad timing…like, with the world ending, and our collective trauma, and everything, but…”
Maki squints over at her, mouth pursed with confusion. “Kaede?”
Just rip the band aid off, already!
“Can we be girlfriends?”
In not her bravest moment, Kaede squeezes her eyes shut as soon as she forces the question out. Even without her sight, she can hear the quiet shifting of the sheets, the almost-imperceptible sounds of the mattress bowing under Maki's lightweight body. She can tell Maki’s moving closer, but she still jumps when a cool hand settles to rest on her arm.
Hesitantly, she cracks her eyes open, and Maki’s expression has changed. Though her eyes aren’t quite adjusted to the lack of light in the room yet, what she sees in front of her — very close in front of her — is her friend looking tentative, even…shy. She’s never seen Maki look quite like this before, and she thinks she’s kind of in love with it.
But beyond being something Kaede wants to permanently sear into her memory, it’s also clearly a question — the fingers twitching around her arm are proof enough of that. It’s a total shot in the dark, guessing what it is Maki might be asking after right now, and she’s anxious to try when her own question still hangs in the space between them unanswered.
Still, Kaede opens her arms, and she all but wheezes in relief when Maki closes the distance to position herself in Kaede’s embrace, arms folding behind Kaede’s back as she’s pulled as close to her body as is comfortable. Maki’s face falls into the spot where her throat meets her shoulder, and she thinks she may feel a smile being pressed into her neck.
“I think I’d like that.” The reply is whisper-quiet, but Maki’s confident that her answer has been heard. Kaede squeezes her just a little tighter, relaxing into warmth in her arms.
“Okay. I’m really happy. I’ve liked you for a long time.”
“…Me, too.”
Kaede can’t help but giggle, her giddiness impossible to contain. She feels Maki’s eyelashes flutter shut against her skin, and before she falls asleep one more impulsive thought slips out.
“Harumaki? Last thing, I promise.”
“Try and make it quick. We should rest soon.”
Kaede nods, and when Maki feels it she chuckles. “Just…I meant what I said. All of it. And we should talk about all of…this once things have calmed down, but, just. I love you. Rest well.”
Maki does not have another nightmare. As Kaede drifts, she hopes she never has to have one again.
Notes:
+ WOOOOOOOOOOOOO LOVE WINS EVERYBODY!!!
+ i'll be honest, this chapter gave me more trouble than i was expecting, but i think it panned out alright! would love to hear your thoughts as well!
+ side note, but maki's nightmare/explanation of it is a pretty decent mirror to her canon backstory (with minor tweaks, of which i'm sure are obvious) so i was rereading quite a bit to make sure i got it right. canonically, her friend at the orphanage? they played house together all the time, with the friend as the mom and maki as the dad. as a lesbian, this is the most lesbian-coded behavior imaginable. i just thought that was a fun aside!
+ my timetable for next chapter: unsure! we've got a real *doozy* of a multi-chapter arc coming up, in which a new POV and a new character are explored! i am very excited, but it is also a little bit ambitious. it Will come eventually, and i have no plans for an *obscene* hiatus between this chapter and next, but...we shall manifest the best, wait, and see!
+ whatever the length between updates, i am always reachable over on my tumblr: gontagokuhara.tumblr.com ! questions, comments, concerns, just wanna say hey, my inbox is wide open! usually post updates on where i'm at writing, too, if that's of any interest. but i've plugged enough. thank you for reading, and i'll see you in the next one!
+ content warnings: off-screen, non-graphic death of a child, a nightmare is had and discussed revolving around it
Chapter 15: history's most successful museum heist: part i
Summary:
“The hell do you even want me to look at, anyway?” He’s successfully gotten Kokichi to retreat back to his proper spot in the car, leaving Shuuichi to deal with getting him out of his space and wrangling his seatbelt back on.
If they weren’t cruising down the expressway still, Kaito might be tempted to brake check him. Just for a second. That’d teach him to keep his ass planted in his seat.
“Are you blind? It’s been plastered all over the past three signs!”
Kaito squints out the windshield, assessing. The only thing that really catches his eye is— “Huh? The ‘Museum of Japanese Mythology’?”
Notes:
+ hi again! back with another chapter, woohoo!
+ this is the first of a little three-parter arc, and it ended up...longer than i anticipated. but i'm very happy with it! (despite how i sort of struggled to write our newest pov after not playing the game for like 3 years)
+ which, speaking of: new protag pov just dropped, and it's kaito! exciting!
+ without further ado, let's begin <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As soon as he wakes up, Kaito is itching to get out of the house full of gods, even if he did catch a pretty decent sleep while there.
After the conflicts revolving around stumbling into a yakuza hideout and stolen spears and guns being pointed at various friends of his had settled, the gods were actually…mostly pretty nice. True to what she’d said last night, Peko had filled the truck up with gas, and when he approaches the driver’s seat barely past the ass-crack of dawn he finds her already there, though she only lingers a moment longer before exiting the seat gracefully and looking up at him with a small smile.
Huh. Kaito’s actually a good deal taller than her. He sort of didn’t think it was possible to feel big compared to any of the gods.
“The gas tank is full. So long as you drive responsibly, you should have no issues reaching your destination. I assume you all will be leaving soon, so I thought I might double check once more, and warm it up in preparation for the drive.”
He’s also sort of surprised she’s bothering with something as…mild-mannered as that. Surprise notwithstanding, the smile he returns to Peko is genuine. “This is all really nice of you. Thanks.”
Peko just nods, looking across the hood of the truck and back up towards the winding driveway, the house that still manages to look pretty huge, even from down here.
“Have you eaten breakfast, Kaito?” Hearing a goddess say his name is weird. The only other gods he really knows are Hajime and Nagito, and despite being pretty odd guys, they mostly just strike him as normal. He sort of just registers them as human, same as him, most of the time.
This feels different. Something hazy and strange radiates off of all the other gods he’s met so far. But he’s also forgotten to answer for way too long, because now Peko’s looking at him weirdly. “Uh! Nah, I didn’t, actually. Mostly just hurried so I could claim the driver’s side before Maki Roll could.”
She raises a thin, silver eyebrow in response — Kaito’s not sure what it is he’s said that prompts it, but he struggles not to fidget under the weight of her expression anyway. Jutting a thumb towards the seat she’d just vacated, he offers another smile before plopping himself unceremoniously down. “Look at that, mission accomplished!”
It earns him a laugh, and he glows just a little under the reaction. Man, gods are weird.
“In that case, I will send down something for you to eat with one of the others. If I do not see you again before you leave — good luck. I believe in you, but you all could…certainly use some good fortune, no?”
Kaito laughs this time, and he shoots her one last grin and a two-finger salute. “Thanks, ma’am. Don’t worry about us too much though — between you an’ me, we totally got this. You just focus on keepin’ the gods from going crazy before our time’s up, and the Demi Squad will handle the rest!”
Peko grins back at him, and it’s the most human he thinks he’s seen her look. “You have my word. Good luck.”
She shuts the door behind Kaito, and with that she’s gone, disappearing back up towards the house and leaving him alone for…a good few minutes, actually.
Though he’d made sure to check that no one was sleeping in late before he’d retreated to the truck, the others sure do seem to drag their feet in actually getting out of here. For gods, at least Peko is actually pretty nice — though Kaito certainly still has some hangups about Fuyuhiko, God of Crime, apparently Maki’s family. But though they’ve got three entire days left to get where it is they’re going and save the world, and the distance between them and their casino destination isn’t nearly that far of a drive from what he’d gleaned off Maki…he’d still really like to leave.
It’s Gonta that arrives soonest after Kaito does, and he’s got a paper bag of breakfast for him, so it’s a no-brainer to invite him into the passenger’s seat for the upcoming stint of driving. Gonta’s huge, after all — it’s a service both to himself and the others to give the guy a little more legroom. Next is Kaede and Kokichi a few minutes after that, and he makes no effort to contain his snort as he watches her drag the purple brat by the strap of his backpack through the rearview mirror.
The left-hand backseat door is pulled open, and in tumbles Kokichi, the sound of his voice as he cries out a lot louder and a lot more annoying now that there isn’t a car door between them to muffle it. Kaede huffs, remaining outside the car, before tossing him another one of those paper bags.
“You are so obnoxious.” She doesn’t even sound that pissed — just weary. “Stay here. Don’t move. I already called the back seat, and after that there is no way I’m sharing with you!”
Without giving anyone a second to react, she slams the door shut, but by the time she’s turned and headed back up to the house, Kokichi’s decided to stop being a crybaby.
He really doubts it’ll last.
“Oooh, Kaito!” He’s no sooner pulled out the contents of his bagged breakfast when suddenly Kokichi’s in his ear, squishing himself into the space above the center console that isn’t occupied by Kaito and Gonta’s arms and shoulders. One of his arms is trapped underneath him, but with the other he flails around his own paper bag. “You get anything good? Wanna trade?”
Kokichi’s already being annoying. But Kaito’s also admittedly a little intrigued. Despite the hassle it is, and how much Kokichi tries to haggle over a swapped sandwich and an energy drink, it works out for him in the end, and he even gets a chance to eat most of what he’s scored before the others finally hurry their asses up and climb into the truck.
Neither of the gods from last night reappear, and it actually doesn’t take long at all for everyone to get situated and for Kaito to get them out onto the road, finally. Once on the expressway and cruising at a respectable speed, he spares brief glances through the rearview mirror to take stock of the state of his team.
True to her word earlier, Kaede’s dibs on the back seat held strong, and she’s back there chatting quietly with Maki, too quiet over the thrumming of the car for him to hear from his spot up front. Gonta kept his passenger seat privileges during the brief shuffle before they’d taken off, and for the last little while he’s been humming quietly to himself, eyes trained out the window. And forced into the unfortunate middle seat situation is Kiibo, Shuuichi, and Kokichi. Also unfortunate, it’s been looking for the last little while like Kokichi’s been rubbing off on Kiibo, because they’ve been bickering back and forth between themselves basically since Kiibo scooted into the car after Shuuichi.
And Shuuichi. His poor sidekick’s stuck right in the middle of whatever bullshit they’re arguing about, looking a little green at the prolonged period spent between the two of them when they’re like that. Kaito feels bad, he does, his buddy doesn’t deserve the irritating morning he’s got to be having, so he shoots him encouraging winks whenever they catch eyes through the mirror. But…though he hasn’t known him that long, he’s more than confident that he’ll be able to manage. And honestly, he’d much rather Shuuichi be caught up in that mess than himself.
Kaito chose early-morning driving duty for a reason.
Well, a few reasons, actually, not just those revolving around avoiding Kokichi’s antics.
Since moving to Camp Hope’s Peak full-time a little less than a year ago, there have been some growing pains, obviously. Some are more obvious, and some don’t really bug him at all, but one of the aspects of camp that he still hasn’t quite gotten used to is the immobility. It’s pretty big, and there really isn’t a shortage of things for him to do, but he’s stuck on his own two legs except for the rare occasion they get out for a field trip, or he argues his way into a shopping run with Nagito alongside Kaede.
Back when he was still living with his grandparents, in real rural Japan, Kaito liked driving his grandfather’s car around. It wasn’t technically legal, but the whole town was so old anyway, even the cops didn’t care if they saw him on the main roads, though he liked to stick to backroads, anyway. Or highways. He just likes being able to move, being able to put his mind to going somewhere and getting there no matter the distance.
He just likes driving, and it’s been ages since he’s gotten the chance. His first bout driving, the night they left that creepy nurse’s place, had been more than enough to shake off any nerves at getting behind the wheel again after months spent away. Now he’s comfortable, loving it, upbeat beneath the early morning sun as he coasts them towards their destination.
Kaito gets a solid few hours of relatively uninterrupted driving, actually. Conversation piques his attention here and there, and when he’s not involved he’ll listen if there’s anything interesting being said, but he’s mostly just content to lose himself in going through the motions, getting more driving hours under his belt — all the better for his real ambitions.
But all that stuff can come later. Right now he’s on the world-saving team with some of his best friends in the whole world — and Kokichi — and they have got their work cut out for them. Luckily for their whole group, Kaito’s been keeping an eye on everyone as best he can when they’re not actively fighting off freaky god crap, and more and more he’s witnessing the collective confidence of the gang heading steadily upward.
And honestly, they’ve god damn earned it. They’re officially only on the morning of their fourth day of their quest, but already they have ass-kicked their way out of a ton more stuff than even Kaito would’ve thought possible before getting thrown right into the middle of it. Scary foreign soldiers with death orders, shapeshifting bear monsters, explosions (that only singed his hair a little!), demon nurses, gang members — it’s been a non-stop deluge of admittedly grim circumstances, but by all accounts the seven of them are doing pretty damn good!
Speaking of things they’ve earned — they’re well enough into the morning now, sun high and bright where it streams in through the windshield, that it feels acceptable to finally turn on the radio. There’s still some idle chatter going on over his shoulder, but it’s not nearly loud enough for him to hear, and even as much as he loves driving, he’s been going at it without any auditory stimuli for a while now, and it’s gonna drive him a little nuts if it carries on too long. So as great a conversationalist as Gonta is, he decides to click on the truck's stereo, messing with the knobs until he’s found a suitable music station before turning it up for the rest of the car to hear.
Gonta blinks over at Kaito at the sound of the song spilling through the speakers, and from the back Kaede begins bopping her head, and ultimately no one complains, so he leaves it at that for a little while, whistling lowly along with the radio.
It’s pretty fun, actually, humming lyrics under his breath when he knows the words and just following the medley when he doesn’t. But as he’s apt to do, Kokichi does his best to screw it up, kicking obnoxiously at the back of his seat and then leaning forward to chirp a snide comment into his ear when that fails to get a rise out of him.
Whatever. As annoying as Kokichi can be, Kaito can be even more stubborn. For the first time in a while, his fingers find the stereo dials, turning the volume up a few clicks and shooting the back of the car a grin.
“Hey, this song’s pretty good! Everyone knows the words, right?”
No one joins him as he starts to croon along a little louder. Resisting the stubborn urge to pout, he instead raises an eyebrow as he glances back at the group again. “C’mon, somebody’s gotta join me!”
“Sorry, Kaito,” Kaede calls apologetically from the back, shrugging her shoulders, “you know I’m out.”
Well, uh. He can’t really argue with her on that one. He’d prefer not to freeze up and crash the car, thank you! “I gotcha. What about you, Maki Roll? Shuuichi?”
“Obviously not,” Maki replies immediately, and now Kaito does pout, just a little. “You’ve already missed half the song by talking about this.”
Shuuichi merely gives him a thumbs down when he glances back through the rearview mirror again, then pulls the visor of his hat down over his eyes, and Kaito groans. There’s no way Gonta knows the words, so a duet with his front-seat buddy is a no-go, too.
It’s Kiibo that brightens his mood, actually, and when Kaito hears their voice singing the chorus, he grins and turns the volume up a little louder, getting back into the swing of singing along himself. And it’s great!
Until, of course, Kokichi begins yelling the lyrics too, clearly trying to drown the both of them out. Kaito probably eggs it on a little longer than he should, not wanting to give the bastard the satisfaction of screwing him out of a decent car ride. But eventually Kiibo gets louder too, and at that volume it becomes pretty clear how not meant for pop-stardom they are. Before long they’re both screaming over each other — and over Shuuichi, who’s got both hands clamped miserably over his ears.
It’s also starting to give Kaito a headache, so before Maki can open her mouth and make things worse, he clicks the radio off with a huff, mumbling curses under his breath about what brats both of them are.
The car once again lapses into silence, though it takes a few minutes for his ears to stop ringing and for Kaito to be able to hear properly again. He’s only just barely adjusted to the low noise level when suddenly Kokichi’s popping halfway over the center console again, gasping shrilly in Kaito’s ear as he points at something through the windshield.
“Look at that!”
As Kaito swats him away, Shuuichi ignores whatever bullshit he’s playing at. “Kokichi, please put your seatbelt back on.”
“The hell do you even want me to look at, anyway?” He’s successfully gotten Kokichi to retreat back to his proper spot in the car, leaving Shuuichi to deal with getting him out of his space and wrangling his seatbelt back on.
If they weren’t cruising down the expressway still, Kaito might be tempted to brake check him. Just for a second. That’d teach him to keep his ass planted in his seat.
“Are you blind? It’s been plastered all over the past three signs!”
Kaito squints out the windshield, assessing. The only thing that really catches his eye is— “Huh? The ‘Museum of Japanese Mythology’?”
“Duh!”
“You really wanna waste time on a field trip right now? We just went on one, too!”
Kokichi exaggeratedly scoffs from behind him. “This isn’t a trip of pleasure, a leisure activity, Kaito! Really, must I spell it out for you?”
“Please just get to the point,” Kiibo interjects wryly, and Kaito hears someone blow a raspberry in response. He has a pretty good idea who it is.
“The point is that there’s a whole building full of information about the gods smack dab in the middle of our whole save-the-world roadtrip! We might even get lucky, find some legitimate stuff from the gods! C’mon, it’ll make things so much easier!”
“Are you suggesting a museum heist?” Shuuichi’s voice is a hiss, as if he’s afraid someone might hear. From the way Kokichi cackles, he probably gets the same impression.
“Of course not! We can’t plan a heist unless we know if there’s something worth pilfering though, right? Sooo…ooh, how convenient! We can get there off the next three exit ramps!”
“I’m not really sure about this…” Kaede pipes in from the way back, and when Kaito looks he can see the apprehension on her face. “It seems a little far-fetched, doesn’t it? Even if there is something useful, it just seems really risky.”
“And a waste of time,” Kiibo adds anxiously. They’ll be coming upon the first of the three exits soon.
“We are so totally fine for time, don’t you remember? Or were you too busy shitting your britches to listen to the instructions the yakuza were giving us?”
“Rude.” That’s Shuuichi complaining, now. Kiibo also squeaks out a protest as Kaito cruises past the first off-ramp. “Also, even if that’s technically true…why do we, ah, need anything belonging to the gods, when we’re just going to talk to…the one we’re headed towards?”
Second exit’s coming up, and the group is still arguing. Kaito is…a little curious. They really are pretty well off for time, and even if they don’t do something as dumb as heisting or whatever from the museum, it could be a worthwhile side quest.
And, admittedly, a chance to stretch his legs would be nice.
“Decision time, team! What’re we doing?”
“I really don’t know about this,” Kiibo insists, “Fuyuhiko and Peko gave us very specific instructions to not waste time or gas on the trip to the Underworld’s entrance!”
Kokichi blows another raspberry in response. “Taking orders from the Kuzuryuu clan, and you’re not even on payroll. What is this, amateur hour? Ow! Hair pulling, really?!”
Kaito snorts as he watches the display through his mirror. Unfortunately, the brief moment he indulges to watch Maki yank his head back pretty effectively distracts him long enough that they pass the second exit that’ll take them to the museum.
“Last call on the detour, guys!” He has to sort of yell a bit to break over Kokichi’s shrill wailing; Gonta cringes back, and as an apology Kaito briefly claps a hand on his shoulder.
“Gonta pretty sure we still have lots of time, right?”
“I guess that’s true…”
“But Kaede, should we really, ah, push our luck with this?”
They’re not that far from the final exit, and still no one’s made a definitive decision. Regardless, there’s still a lot of chirping going on. “You learned about the gods like a week ago, New Kid! If anything, we’ll be at a disadvantage if we don’t go, ‘cause you’re totally clueless.”
“I fall asleep in Hajime’s class one time, and nobody ever lets me hear the end of it…!”
“Well, according to Hajime, it was definitely more than onc—”
Whatever Kaede’s saying is abruptly cut off as Kaito makes the decision for the group and takes them onto the final off-ramp towards the museum, in what proves to be not his smoothest lane change of all time.
He’s kind of anticipating the way Kokichi begins to jitter-kick the back of his car seat — next time he drives he’s getting shoved in the way back — and he ignores the multiple verbal complaints to reach an arm behind him and swat at Kokichi.
“I’m doing what you wanted, asshole! Quit kicking me!”
“Oh, huh, guess you did!”
“For no reason.” Yeowch! He can feel Maki’s annoyance from the front seat.
Once they’re back onto a main road, Kaito immediately catches another street sign pointing the way towards the museum. “No one was givin’ me a straight answer! Listen, there’s no harm in driving over and checking it out from the front. If it looks legit, we go in and investigate, and if it looks like some scammy bullshit, we’ll just leave!”
“Kaito is…not wrong.” When he catches Kiibo’s gaze through the mirror, he shoots them a wink. “I suppose a quick look can’t hurt.”
Though the trepidation in the car is still pretty thick, Kiibo’s sentiment keeps the car at ease until they’re actually pulling up to the damn thing. He’s not exactly a museum kinda guy by trade — Kaito’s ambitions are to make history, not just read about those that made it before him — but from what he can tell…well, it doesn’t look like a shitty cash-grab sort of joint.
It’s a nice building, if a little nondescript save for the words MUSEUM OF JAPANESE MYTHOLOGY emblazoned above its double-door entrance. At least two, if not three stories, and the bronze statues framing the front of the building seem…pretty legit.
And he’s getting the distinct feeling he’s not the only one developing that impression; there are multiple sets of wide eyes trained out the right hand side window to get a better look. No one objects when he turns into the decently sized parking lot attached to the museum, nor when he shuts the car off and turns towards the back of the car for the first time in hours.
“So, what are we thinking?”
“It is…pretty impressive-looking, honestly.” Kiibo’s been glancing out the window for a while.
Kaede jabs a finger against the glass she’d been glued to since they pulled into the lot. “Look at the statues! Is that Kirumi’s mom?”
“…And is that Hajime?” Maki squints.
“That’s so weird!” Kokichi cries, shoving Kiibo’s head down to get a look himself. They make a high-pitched noise in reaction. “I’m totally snapping a picture to rub in his face. Yeesh, Big Five gods and their big ass egos!”
“So does that mean we’re goin’ in?”
He turns to Shuuichi as he asks his question, and most everyone follows his lead to look at him as well. It is his quest, after all.
Though he doesn’t sound or look particularly confident — yet — he does make a decision faster than Kaito anticipates, and it leaves him grinning. “It…can’t hurt, right?”
“Woohoo! Oooh, I wonder what difficulty level this boss battle is gonna be!”
Maki glares openly at Kokichi. “If you make a scene, I will let you get arrested.”
“Oh, please, it wouldn’t be the first time!”
“We are not letting Kokichi wander off by himself,” Kaede says firmly before deflating a little, huffing a sigh. “I guess I’ll babysit him this time. And we should probably split up to cover more ground, right? What’re the other teams?”
“Gonta, you can cover a floor with me.”
“Understood, Maki!”
Kaito grins back at his two remaining friends. “And then me, Shuuichi, and Kiibo as the last group! Hell yeah!”
They both return the fist bump he initiates, and when he pulls back he kicks his door open with a groan as he finally stretches his legs. “C’mon, no time to waste! Holy shit, I’ve been sittin’ way too long!”
Following his lead, the others make their way out of the truck, and then towards the main entrance he’d snagged a parking spot not too far from. Apparently not lying for once, Kokichi does in fact take a picture of the Hajime statue on their way inside. He can’t really blame him — seeing one of the dudes who runs his summer camp and is, like, technically his guardian is weird.
Gods are weird.
The thought is knocked from the front of his brain for the time being as a quiet argument breaks out among a few of the group once Maki and Kaede catch sight of the ticket prices. Kaito never carries cash and can’t use his card, and therefore is pretty useless on this debate. So he lets those with a real stake in the game hash it out as he glances around the museum’s lobby area.
He’s not really a museum guy. Nothing jumps out at him except the directory sign, pointing out the highlights of each floor. It’s also apparently being used to further Kokichi’s point.
“Look at the stuff they’ve got here! This place is real legit, and totally worth forking over a little cash for! As long as we’re frugal until it’s time to buy our bus tickets on the final stretch, we’ll be fine.” He makes a face — one that usually indicates he’s about to be an asshole.
“Hey, your godfather’s a yakuza, you know? How come he didn’t give you any cash? There’s no way he doesn’t have all kinds of ill-gotten money lying around!”
“Will you shut the hell up?”
“Oh, gods above, we’re going in. Shuuichi thinks it’s a good idea, and I trust Shuuichi.” Kaede glares reproachfully down at Kokichi, who makes kissing faces at her in response. “Let’s hurry so we can split up for a little while.”
“Wow, Kaede really wants to explore with me, hu—”
Before he can finish, he’s snatched by his wrist and forcefully pulled towards what Kaito assumes is one of the ticket purchasing lines. Maki leads Gonta over to the one farthest away from Kokichi, and Kaito just rolls his eyes before following after Shuuichi and Kiibo towards the last free lane.
Shuuichi’s visibly anxious as he hands over a decent chunk of cash to the ticket-lady, and from the brief peek he gets into his wallet before he stows it back in his pocket, he can guess why. For someone who’s guardians are apparently loaded — seriously, God of Wealth! — he’s much shorter on pocket change than Kaito would expect on face.
Still, the three of them end up with day passes to the museum, along with a free drink coupon each to the attached cafe. Kaito thanks the woman behind the desk heartily before following after his friends, and by the time he’s joining them by the elevator, only Kiibo and Shuuichi are left, the others having already gone off to the other floors.
“Third floor duty, huh?” He scratches the back of his neck as the elevator doors shut behind them, trying not to come off as too disappointed. This was the floor he was interested in the least. “I bet there’s gotta be something interesting up here!”
There is not. At least, not really. True to the sign he’d read near the entrance, most of the third floor is occupied by an old as hell library. Kiibo and Shuuichi seem content enough to go searching through the stacks for something useful, but that’s so not his thing, so Kaito offers to cover the other side of the floor, where there’s less books and more proper exhibits.
Signs dotting the walls tell the origins of the library, which is more interesting than most of what he’s actually seen in it so far. The books contained in it apparently belonged at some point to the Goddess of Literature, a collection that spans thousands and is very dense, including with writings of many of the other gods. There are a few exhibits the signs point out that intrigue him, actually, so once the narrative ends he begins wandering through them, stopping first in front of the Goddess of Literature herself.
Or at least, a statue of her. Though it’s propped up on its own platform along with a metal engraving of her name — Touko Fukawa — it still comes across as rather small. From what Kaito can tell it’s some sort of gilded metal, the gold shiny and bright in the warm glow a floor-fastened spotlight casts on it. Its posture is hunched, curled almost protectively around a book, as if trying to shield it from something. Though its face is subdued, even submissive considering its cowering pose, the eyes on it are intense, packed with emotion that’s honestly pretty damn impressive for a metal sculpture.
Unless he thinks too hard about the way the eyes seem to follow him, even as he shifts around the statue to look at different angles. To an almost creepy extent. But as he continues to admire the craftsmanship, the thought loses importance in his brain as his mind instead wanders to the goddess herself.
Kaito’s got no idea who his godly parent could be, he has no real way of finding out unless they decide they want to claim him, but it’s not something that bugs him — in eight months of knowing the gods are real, it never really has. He grew up and into the man he is today without any of this god stuff as an influence in his life, and his grandparents get a ton of credit for helping shape the guy he’s come to be. It hardly keeps him up at night, but imagining the possibilities and trying to crack the code can be a fun mental exercise on occasion.
Touko Fukawa, literature goddess, huh? Kiyo’s godly parent, and Kaito looks nothing like them, so probably not. Still, it could be sort of cool to be a descendant of hers; even if it’s not likely to be true, he’s certainly got the brains to be related to the Goddess of Literature! And maybe that could be his special ability, the ones most of the other demigods have got — super smarts.
…Well, probably not. He doesn’t linger on the thought for much longer.
It’d be nice to know who his godly parent is, in the same way it’d be nice if they hadn’t refused to claim him thus far. What’s done is done. No use wasting time crying over things that haven’t bugged him all his life, and he certainly isn’t gonna start on the heels of his grandparents’ deaths.
They’ll always be his real parents, when it comes down to it. Not even the best excuse for the radio silence from his godly parent would ever shake that reality for him. His grandparents raised him, loved him, and Kaito just simply wouldn’t be what he considers an all around pretty good guy if it weren’t for their influence. They weren’t perfect, but they were family. The grief is still fresh, and he has no qualms admitting that he misses them.
Maybe it’s all the talk of family on this quest that’s got him getting so sentimental right now. Heading off in the first place to save Shuuichi’s brother, the genuine confidence and pride Kiibo’s mom has in being their mom, even Maki’s godfather, though he shows his concern in…dangerous ways. None of it’s perfect, but they’re family, and it has Kaito missing that connection with his grandparents extra hard.
The question of his godly parent’s identity isn’t one that will leave him dying unfulfilled, should he never find an answer. It would be nice if he at least got a name, and even better if they had a good reason for not coming forward when his grandparents died. But he’s not resting any of his hopes or aspirations on where he came from.
Godly parent or not, demigod or not, Kaito’s had his eyes on the prize from the beginning: being the world’s greatest astronaut. He’s never accepted the idea of living in anyone’s shadow, and even if half of his DNA is from a literal god, that’s still not going to stop him from making a name for himself. And besides, why would he care about a single god on just one planet when he has all of the universe awaiting him beyond the earth’s atmosphere?
He is Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars! Nothing is gonna keep him chained down to Earth — not even the gods themselves. Kaito would like to see them try.
“Ah…Kaito?”
Shuuichi’s voice startles him way more than it should, especially when he’s so damn quiet; man, he must’ve been really daydreaming for a minute. “Yo, Shuuichi. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing! You’ve just been kind of…staring, for a while.” He narrows his eyes slightly, assessing. It almost reads as concern; he’s a softie enough that that’s probably what it is.
“I’m all good, don’t worry. Just thinking — godly parent kinda stuff.”
That piques his interest immediately, and his gaze turns back towards the statue. “Oh, about Touko?”
“Kinda. Not really,” Kaito clarifies. “I was thinking it’d be kinda cool to be related to the Goddess of Literature. But she’s Kiyo’s mom, right?”
He gets a nod in response. “Yeah. Hey…” When Shuuichi trails off, Kaito raises an eyebrow to urge him to continue.
“She’s actually kind of my aunt. Technically. Which makes seeing this specific statue so weird. Rantarou’s parents are my legal guardians now, and his other dad Makoto has a sister named Komaru. And she’s married to Touko. I’ve only met Komaru, though.”
Kaito chuckles, throwing an arm loosely around Shuuichi’s shoulders. He tenses, but doesn’t pull away — from his somewhat skittish sidekick, definitely a success. “Y’know, if she was my mom, that’d make you and I family too, right? How sick would that be?”
Shuuichi’s answering laugh leaves Kaito grinning, and it sticks as Kiibo joins them by the statue just as he’s turning them both around to move on.
“Find anything heist-worthy?” Elbowing him in the side, Shuuichi does duck out of Kaito’s loose hold now, though Kaito’s answering snicker is louder than his actual question had been. Kiibo rolls their eyes at him.
“No. I did, however, find something I thought was quite interesting. Follow me!”
Obediently they do, trailing behind Kiibo as they lead the three of them back through the library slightly, where there’s a small alcove in the midst of a much more modern set of bookshelves. Encased in glass and on a small pedestal is…some sort of scroll, illuminated by small lights inside of the display. When Kaito steps closer to get a better look, he finds no matter how hard he squints, the writing is just too small to make out.
“This stuff belongs to the Goddess of Knowledge?”
“That is correct! Chihiro Fujisaki. We saw a statue of her outside earlier.”
“Kirumi’s mom, right?” Kaito’s still squinting down into the glass, trying to figure out if it’s even in a language he can read. He seriously can’t tell.
Kiibo hums their affirmation. “Also correct. I suppose the last time she was able to visit was before you got to camp, Kaito! She’s very kind — I see quite a bit of her in Kirumi, which I mean in only the most positive sense!” Their eyes sparkle a little, which is weird, considering they’re a robot. “She was also very interested in me!”
Shuuichi takes up the job for the time being of entertaining Kiibo’s fun facts about the various exhibits they move through, but Kaito listens along and even learns some stuff he didn’t know while they explore. Kiibo’s maybe-but-also-not? dad Kazuichi has an invention displayed that they give a long spiel about, which he kind of mostly tunes out — he’s heard this one before. But apparently Mahiru, the Goddess of Art — who they pass a portrait of, painted alongside her wife, Hiyoko — had a child who attended camp and was notoriously troublesome to Nagito and Hajime.
When Kaito decides to join back in, it’s after they’ve stopped in front of a book that according to the placard used to belong to Kiibo’s mom herself. Now their eyes really are shining.
“As her namesake would suggest, Sonia is incredibly talented in her wielding of various types of magic! Spellcasting is a particular skill of hers, however, as evidenced by this book! Oh, I would love to read it properly.”
“I’ll pass,” Kaito says warily, uninterested in lingering. If gods are weird, then magic and the dark arts are extra freaky. He means it as a joke, but immediately Kiibo’s hands are on their hips.
“Why? That’s a little rude, you know!”
“Hey, chill out! Magic is just…” Kaito gesticulates broadly. “…Creepy occult crap.”
Uh oh, now he’s pissed the robot off. “Now that is very rude, Kaito! I’ll have you know that I’m here today because of her magic! She created from her raw magical essence a soul for me! That’s not creepy, or occult-ish, or…or crappy!”
Kaito shows his palms, hands up. “It’s nothing personal, cross my heart. Just personally freaks me the hell out. So does any stuff with death or ghosts. And, uh…the big guy downstairs.”
“I don’t think a fight is really necessary,” Shuuichi cuts in with a laugh, presumably saving him from an accusation of robophobia. Best sidekick ever. “I just got a text from Kokichi — if we’re done here, everyone’s meeting up in the cafe.”
Despite some stuff being interesting, none of it is particularly useful when it comes to helping them to save the world, so off to the cafe they go with news that the third floor is kind of a dud. The three of them are the last to arrive and cash in their free drink coupons, and are also the ones with the least interesting findings to report. He’d been super right when he called from the jump that the third floor would be the lamest. Maki and Kaede’s teams had infinitely more success, and he listens attentively once he’s snagged himself that free energy drink and dragged a chair over to join the rest of the group.
“We discussed this before you guys got here, but we only really found one thing that could be useful.”
“Kaede, how very unlike you to lie! Is the hokey protagonist coming for my role as the dashingly handsome, silver-tongued phantom thief?”
The whole table laughs at him, but of course Kaito’s the only one who receives a kick beneath the table. Patting his own self-restraint on the back, he refuses to rise to the bait.
“Seriously, I don’t know what you mean when you say all that weird…crap!” Huffily, she crosses her arms, then turns her gaze broadly to the rest of the group. “What Kokichi is going to suggest is dumb.”
“I don’t even need to hear it to know that that is true.”
Kokichi appears to think better of kicking Kiibo. “It’s at least worth discussing, though, riiiiight? You guys are almost as bad as Nagito is. Just talking about stealing his stuff isn’t gonna cause us all to burst into flames, y’know!”
“You are not actually suggesting trying our luck at stealing from the God of Luck,” Kiibo deadpans flatly, eyes narrowed.
“Was that supposed to be a joke?” Kokichi cocks his head to the side, gaze just as intent on them as Kiibo’s is on him. “Man, you’re suuuper dedicated to the cause of proving that robots really aren’t funny, huh?”
“No, Kiibo being serious,” Gonta interjects, stopping whatever retort Kiibo was working to push out while red in the face. “Gonta also think messing with Mr. Komaeda’s luck is a bad idea.”
“Are you implying that you’re fine stealing other stuff, Gonts?”
“N-No!”
Maki huffs, leaning her head down against her arms, crossed on top of the table. “I’m not dealing with a lifetime of bad luck because of one idiot’s sticky fingers. And like Kaede said, I found something that’ll be way more useful to us than anything of Nagito’s.”
“Ah, and that would be…?” Shuuichi’s been hiding under his hat for a while now, as disinterested as Kaito is in whatever bitch fight Kokichi is trying to engage them all in.
“A helmet.”
There’s a long pause, where he expects Maki to elaborate but she doesn’t. It’s almost a little awkward until he tentatively asks, “Uh, and…what about it?”
Her expression quickly sours, and against the table she turns her head to look away from them all. With a small sigh, Kaede picks up the slack. “It belongs to her godly parent — or it did, ages ago. It’s pretty old, but it’ll make the wearer invisible indefinitely.”
It’s about then that Kaito’s interest is really piqued, and about then that everyone starts being a lot more hush-hush as they start discussing a game plan.
“Is it even possible to take?” Kiibo asks, looking especially anxious. He’s honestly a little surprised when it’s Gonta that answers their question.
“Maki and Gonta saw up close. Just behind some glass.”
“For how expensive this stupid place is, the safeguards are pretty bad.” There’s a smirk in her voice. “Items that belonged to the gods are only separated from the rest of the world by a locked glass box.”
“But,” Kaede interjects, casting a glance over her shoulder, “it’s still way too risky to try and do anything when this place is crawling with visitors and security.”
Crawling with is a bit of a stretch, in Kaito’s humble opinion. But she’s got a point. “Way too much of a spectacle. This time of day, it’d probably end up in a street chase, and we sure as hell don’t have the gas reserves for that.”
“Nope!” Kokichi’s kept himself quiet for the minute by draining most of his soda, but he punctuates the pop! on the ‘p’ in his reply by slamming the empty bottle down in front of him. “So I vote we kill some time ‘til this place closes, and do it then. I think on weekdays it’s five o’clock.”
“But that’s still…at minimum, four hours off the road,” Shuuichi murmurs, checking the time on his phone, “and we still have to find a place to sleep tonight. Can we afford to waste that much time on a risky maybe?”
“I think so,” is Kaede’s eventual answer, a fist pressed against her cheek as she considers. “We’re really not as far as we think from the bus station, and from there it’s a straight shot to Celeste’s casino. Four hours isn’t going to make much of a difference, especially when we’re only barely past the halfway point on his time limit.”
Kaito’s down, but for the sake of Shuuichi’s observable lack of surety, he decides to play devil’s advocate for the minute. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. But Maki Roll can turn invisible anyway, right? Is it even worth the hassle?”
At her name, she finally lifts her head, taking a long pull from her water. “I’m not thrilled, either. But the more I think about it, the more I think we could use all the help we can get.” True to her word, Maki’s clearly not all that happy at the prospect. “My ability is limited. But more importantly…”
She looks significantly at Shuuichi, and then the whole table is. “If things go wrong once we get to the Underworld, it might save your ass to have an auto ‘off’ switch while facing off against the Big Five god who wants you dead.”
“Dead?!” Shuuichi hisses, ducking as if the guy is actually about to come crashing down on him.
“Though I assume she is exaggerating,” interjects Kiibo, casting a glance at Maki before looking back at Shuuichi, “Maki is not wrong. I also assume you have some kind of plan in mind?”
Maki shrugs. “Wait out the security. Pick a lock. Lift a case. Leave with the helmet.”
“Ah…Gonta think that sounds a little bit vague.”
“That's your complaint? Not the heisting?” Kokichi almost seems a little intrigued, but before he can be an even worse influence on Gonta, Kaito stops fighting the urge to kick him under the table, earning an even harder one back. Dick.
“Shut up already. Are we doin’ this or not?”
Once again, all eyes turn to Shuuichi, but he shrinks back a little less now. “Am I the only holdout?”
The following silence speaks for itself. “Okay. I…I trust you guys. If you think we can pull it off, and that it will tangibly help our end goal…let’s do it.”
A tentative agreement made, the conversation turns to how to spend the next few hours. Since they’ve got day-passes, they’re not locked into the museum itself, but they all commit to being back in the museum and searching for a hiding spot by 4 o’clock. They’re in a fairly metropolitan area, so their subsequent agreement not to waste gas by using the truck isn’t as big of an issue as it could be.
Still, they should stay grouped together for a whole host of good reasons, so they also hash that out before breaking. Kiibo and Gonta are content to actually stick around the museum and explore, and when prompted they agree to scout potential hiding spots for when the time comes. He’s not surprised when Maki takes the lead on planning the actual ‘heist’ itself, but he is a little shocked when she — begrudgingly, but still — insists that Kokichi join her and Kaede somewhere off the museum premises. Something about him being a better lockpick than her, though Kaito’s not really sure it’s worth it.
Again, Kaito is left with Shuuichi for company, and again, he’s more than happy to hang with his sidekick. After promising to have her godfather ‘pull some strings’ in order to secure sleeping accommodations for later that night, Maki leaves with Kaede and Kokichi close behind. And then both Kiibo and Gonta make their way back into the museum, leaving just the two of them to figure out how to kill some time.
Shuuichi’s not particularly passionate about their location — which is a little disappointing, but whatever — so he’s agreeable enough when Kaito guides them out of the museum, and doesn’t put up a fight when Kaito points out a McDonalds a fair distance down the main road. It’s hardly a difficult walk — though he does wish he sprung for a water as his free drink — but once they’re pushing into the joint proper, Shuuichi still makes a point to quickly excuse himself to the men’s room, leaving behind his wallet so Kaito can “get whatever he’d like” on Shuuichi’s dollar.
Frankly, he’s got no interest in rooting around in his friend’s wallet even if it is an opportunity to grab a bite to eat. Besides, he’d feel like shit if he overspent — even if it is a McDonald’s, hardly the pinnacle of fine dining — what little cash reserves he’s got left. So Kaito contents himself with instead snagging them a booth to sit in and trying to guess what Shuuichi’s order is gonna be before he comes back out.
Not that he’s feeling impatient, because they’ve got more than enough time that’s just itching to be wasted until it’s time for the real next stage of their quest to begin, but. Shuuichi does take quite a lot longer than Kaito expects. Long enough to peg down what he guesses his buddy is gonna order, and figures out what he’s gonna get himself, whenever Shuuichi shows back up. Long enough for Kaito to lament his phone’s dead battery and therefore lack of something to do while he waits.
But not quite long enough for Kaito to actually get up and check on him, though he’s considering it when the bathroom door opens and out walks Shuuichi, looking a lot less sweaty and miserable than he had when he’d disappeared inside ages ago. When Kaito waves him over, Shuuichi’s eyes widen, almost seeming a little alarmed to see him.
“You didn’t want anything?”
“I could definitely eat. Just wanted to wait for you — I’d rather have some company while I do, anyway! You ready?”
Kaito pushes himself out of the booth, though before he can head off towards the line to order, the embarrassment he catches on Shuuichi’s face gives him pause. “Everything alright?”
“Ah, yeah,” he replies, though he shies away under his hat again, “I just feel kind of bad that you waited for me. You really didn’t have to. Sorry.”
“Oi.” Though he seems a little surprised when Kaito takes him by the shoulders to walk them over to the counter, Shuuichi doesn’t duck out. “Like I said, I was happy to wait. You don’t need to apologize so much, y’know.”
Before he’s given a chance to respond, Kaito's stepping them up to the counter, though he releases his hold once a cashier catches sight of them. He can’t help his laugh when Shuuichi does order the exact thing he expected — seriously, right down to the size of the nugget meal — but he saves his explanation until after they’re sat back down. As he’s coming to expect, the attention seems to fluster Shuuichi, but an off-hand comment about the predictability of his own choice fixes things well enough as they tuck into their meals.
He’s still hiding under that damn hat, though. Makes it real hard to make eye contact sometimes, which he’d guess is the point. Kaito knows a crutch when he sees one; he just can’t figure out why. Shuuichi’s plenty smart, more than capable of holding his own physically — for someone as scrawny as him to make it out of the shit they have mostly unscathed, he has to be — and from what Kaito’s observed the past several days, a pretty awesome guy all around. Other than his insecurity and the issues that stem from it, Kaito can’t breathe a bad word about him.
Before he’s quite thought it through, he’s opening his mouth. “I’ve been thinkin’, Shuuichi.”
“Oh? About our…plans later?”
“Nah. About you, mostly.”
Like clockwork, the brim of his hat tips down over his eyes as soon as he notices Kaito’s got his full attention on him. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“Not at all. I just think it’d do you some good to stop hiding under your hat, is all.”
Shuuichi doesn’t respond, eyes on the table. He’d expected that. “I don’t wanna assume or anything. You’re one of my best buddies, but even I can’t figure someone out this soon into knowing ‘em. However, from what I do know, in who-knows-how-many days we’ve been friends, is that there’s nothin’ about you that’s worthy of obscuring from the world. From what I can tell, Shuuichi Saihara’s a pretty great guy. It’s a shame he doesn’t let the rest of the world see it.”
He’s content to leave it there — at least for now — but before he can do more than take a bite of his burger, Shuuichi’s looking at him head-on again. Now it’s him that has Shuuichi’s full attention.
“Do you…” Kaito can practically see the neurons firing off in his brain. “Do you believe that about yourself, too?”
“‘Course I do,” he answers easily, taking a pull off his water before continuing. “I choose every day to be the person I want to be. For sure I screw it up sometimes, but I know I’m a good guy, ‘cause I won’t let myself be anything but. And that takes work, so…why let the effort it takes to be the best I can go to waste by not lettin’ everyone else see it?”
Kaito’s not usually the type to get philosophical over food — he’d rather eat while it’s still hot, frankly — but he indulges, because it seems to be doing his friend some good. It takes Shuuichi several more bites of food before he follows up the answer Kaito has left hanging.
“…How?” And speaking of getting philosophical. He takes another drink to consider his answer.
“No point in me bullshittin’ you by saying it’s easy. It’s not. There’s no perfect formula for waking up one morning with confidence. Some people say ‘fake it until you make it’ but…I feel like that attitude’s already sellin’ yourself short. Don’t fake it — believe in yourself, and once you do, you’ll start being more confident, too. I’m confident because I believe in myself, because I believe that I’m confident, y’know?”
He said the words believe and confident enough times to leave himself a little dizzy, but Shuuichi seems to get what he’s saying well enough, looking as though he’s digesting Kaito’s sentiments just as he is his food.
Well, maybe ‘digest’ is a stretch. Kaito’s already kind of regretting his burger.
“And I also believe in you, Shuuichi. You’re not my sidekick for no reason, y’know?” The grin Kaito flashes him is returned by a somewhat shaky smile. “We’re halfway across the country, on the run from the gods for a world-saving mission, and you’ve been carryin’ our asses more times than I can count this whole quest. We only got a shot at making it because we’ve got you on our team.”
The gears are turning in his head, Kaito can all but hear it. He continues before Shuuichi can spin some sort of retort. “You wanna know how I dance through life like I do? I wake up every morning as the protagonist of my own story, and I can’t just not play my part, y’know? It doesn’t even take a huge amount of confidence to get into that mindset, by framing yourself as the main character. You just gotta act like one, and once you start really believing that you’re the protagonist, you’ll get the confidence of one, too. What good does it do for the protagonist to hide himself away, you know what I mean?”
It’s a pretty poetic note to end on, in his own humble opinion, so he leaves it there and lets them both finish the last few bites of their meal with the sentiment lingering between them. He tries not to make a spectacle of watching him process what Kaito’s said, and he must succeed — he’s not sure Shuuichi would tip the visor of his hat up like he does if he knew the extent of his eagle eyes. From what he can tell, Shuuichi’s enjoyed his food just about as much as he did; Kaito used to be pretty good at putting fast food away, but almost a year without it’ll leave him unaccustomed, he supposes. And Shuuichi seems the type not to be a big fan of it in the first place, anyway.
All together, they’ve only burned through a little more than an hour of their unexpected free time, and the prospect of dithering the rest of it away in this restaurant is not the most appealing. Once they pack up their trash and toss it out, Kaito gives his friend’s arm a nudge before he speaks. “Hey. You wanna hang outside for a while?”
Again, Shuuichi’s agreeable, so the two of them step back out into the early afternoon with their drinks in hand. He spots a park entrance just a little further down the road, and soon enough they’re stretching out on a relatively uncrowded stretch of grass to soak up some sun. Kaito sprawls comfortably as soon as he’s picked them a good spot, and he wordlessly cheers when Shuuichi settles to lie down next to him. Well, kinda — when he turns his head to the left Shuuichi’s face is a few feet away, though from this angle he’s upside-down, torso and legs flipped in the opposite direction of Kaito’s.
He’s still got the hat on, but as they settle into a warm, companionable silence, Kaito watches from the corner of his eye as he pushes it back enough that the crown is resting against the ground. It’s not like he’s hiding; from the way Kaito’s got to squint over at him, it looks like all he’s trying to do is shield his eyes from the bright sun.
Progress.
Kaito’s not usually one to let the quiet linger — more the proactive, happy-to-chat kind of guy, he is — but the one that settles down in the park’s soft grass alongside them is cozy, almost. Or maybe he’s crashing from both those energy drinks earlier.
Regardless, the silence does last a while, and with his eyes shut against the bright sun he’s feeling sort of peaceful.
Nothing quite breaks it, but he’s still aware of his surroundings and the ambient noise around him to the point that it keeps him from conking out entirely. The breeze is strong enough that he can hear the leaves of a nearby tree rustling each time it blows past. He can also hear a bird crowing from nearby, probably in that same tree. Occasionally a car will drive past on the road that’s a little ways away from where they’re at, and a little less often the soft sounds of passing conversation will drift over him.
It’s nice. He hopes Shuuichi’s getting as much out of this as he is. At the very least, he hopes he’s having a nice time just chilling with him. For all of the rough-and-tumble, exciting action of their quest so far, a small reprieve like this before jumping right back into world-saving is something he thinks they both need.
So much so that he’s content to just stay like this. Until he hears his name.
“Hm? What’s up?”
When he adjusts his eyes to the sun again and glances over, Shuuichi’s not looking at him, and the hat’s still over his eyes but he fidgets with the brim. Crossing his arms behind his head, Kaito props himself up so he can look at him a little easier.
“What you said earlier. I’ve been thinking about it.”
Though he can’t see it, Kaito grins over at him. “Good, that’s the point. What’s goin’ on in that head of yours?”
“I’ve never felt like the protagonist in my life. Before all of this happened, Rantarou getting taken and the spear and everything…my life wasn’t normal, you know? It was more normal than all of this, obviously, but even when I was the odd one out…I always faded into the scenery. Tried to, at least. Rantarou was ‘protagonist’ enough for the both of us.
“Which has been fine for me so far, I think. It’s not that I’m ashamed of who I am, or my background, or anything like that. The people that know me, or at least make the effort to…they’re not ashamed, either. But I still hide anyway. Maybe it’s because if I don’t, it feels like people might discover some…terrible, awful truth about me, I guess.”
“Do you have a terrible, awful truth?”
Shuuichi huffs a weak laugh. “I don’t think so.”
“Then why be afraid?”
“That’s the funny thing,” he says softly. “I don’t know.”
It takes a minute for Shuuichi to continue. “I just…am. I’m afraid now, even though I know I have no reason to be. You don’t scare me.”
Kaito hums, considering. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You’re also way more self-aware than you have any friggin’ right to be.” A snort, to keep things lighthearted. “And because of that, I believe that you can assess whether or not that terrible, awful truth is real or not. According to you, it’s not. And I trust you. So, if there’s nothin’ to hide — then there’s nothin’ to worry about, right?
“I’m not worried, at least,” Kaito adds, leaning back more on his arms to give his neck a break from craning over to watch his friend. “You’re Shuuichi Saihara. A good guy, according to my excellent judge of character. And I happen to like that guy. That’s all that matters to me.”
Quiet, for a little while. He’s almost convinced this is another one of those occasions where his wisdom’s just gonna linger, but Shuuichi surprises him. “Hey, Kaito?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t have a terrible, awful truth. But I was still hiding from you, earlier. Before we ate.” Another long pause; he hasn’t shifted to look back at Shuuichi yet, but something in his gut encourages him to wait. “Can I tell you why?”
“I’m all ears,” Kaito replies, honest. That last question was a little shakier than the bulk of everything else he’s said. He hopes his answer — and the fact he makes a point not to watch Shuuichi while he works himself up to it — makes the hint of fear go away.
“I’m trans. It’s not terrible, or awful. Just the truth.” He pauses, then: “After the stress of what we’re going to do, and the heat, and the walk over here, it was just hard for me to breathe for a bit. I had to take my binder off to, ah…chill out.”
There’s something like a laugh in his voice, and when Kaito finally looks over, Shuuichi’s already watching him, expression wary, hat clasped in his hands atop his chest. Kaito raises an eyebrow. “You’re all good now, right?”
It’s clearly not what Shuuichi expects; nevertheless he nods. Kaito flashes him another smile, and though it’s not his sunniest, it’s certainly genuine. “Good. I’m glad you’re feelin’ better. Though I’m sure that damn food can’t have helped much.”
Shuuichi chuckles, seeming more at ease than he was, but there’s something that itches at Kaito until he opens his mouth again.
“I don’t wanna, like, take away that that was probably pretty hard to say by bein’ all casual. Kinda scared to fuck this up, honestly. Just…it means a lot that you trust me with that. And, for the record,” he continues, making purposeful eye contact with Shuuichi, “nothing’s changed, obviously. You’re not hiding right now, and you’re still the same friend I trust and believe in. Actually, no, you’re better than I thought — funny how that happens, when I get to know you more. No awful, terrible truths. Just Shuuichi, my friend.”
When it becomes obvious he’s choking back tears, Kaito turns his head away, staring up into the wide blue sky above them. After Shuuichi’s taken time to collect himself, he hears a quiet, “Thank you.”
“‘Course. Like I said from the start, Shuuichi. It’s a shame to see you hiding away from the spotlight in your own story. Maybe some of the stuff beneath the surface doesn’t need to be shouted from the rooftops, privacy and all that. But none of it’s worth hiding. The spectacular life and times of Shuuichi Saihara definitely deserves to see the light of day.”
He receives a hum in response, and he’s content with that for a little while. Once again, he’s happy to leave things there entirely for the time being, and he does until Shuuichi speaks up again.
“Hey. Can I still be a protagonist while being your sidekick?”
The laugh Kaito lets out is full-bellied, and over it he hears Shuuichi’s laughter, too. Once recovered, he glances back over at him again with a grin. “Duh.”
Before they can do much more than laugh again, the quiet chime of a text tone spills into the air between them. Kaito turns his eyes back to the sky, ruminating on his own grandiose life and times as he lets Shuuichi do his thing. He hears more than sees Shuuichi sit up, and he tips his head over to watch him curiously.
“Somethin’ up?”
“Nothing bad. It’s a little after three, though, and Kaede wants those of us not still in the museum to meet up and discuss the game plan before we head in and split.”
Good idea. With a groan Kaito pushes himself into a sit as well, rolling his shoulders and using it as an excuse to glance back at Shuuichi upside-down. “The McDonald’s might be easiest, right?”
“That’s what I was thinking.” He spends a few more moments tapping on his phone, holding his hat above his head with his free hand to shield his screen from the glare. “Kaede says they can be there in ten. You ready to go?”
Kaito tries not to watch too closely, but Shuuichi seems much better off on the walk back than he was before. As Kaito holds the door open for them once they arrive, Shuuichi takes his hat off once they’re out of the sun, and he doesn’t put it back on; instead he rests it on the table in front of him, leaving him nothing to hide with.
Despite the greasy food settling in their guts, Kaito’s in high spirits — and from the genuine smile Shuuichi sends him before their other friends walk in, he gets the feeling he is, too.
Notes:
+ something about writing this chapter spurred me into doing a lot of Other work for pointy objects; the most exciting of which is that i finally put down onto paper (or google doc, whatever) how this fic ends! i've known for years how this wraps up, but i never got around to outlining it before falling off the wagon for like....also 3 years.....until now LOL. so we're looking at something in the ballpark of ~30 chapters, which means...huh, we're at the halfway point! (we are also at like...135k words)
+ as always, i'm reachable on my tumblr — gontagokuhara.tumblr.com — for questions, comments, concerns, or just if you wanna see how the progress of me fic writing (and sdr2 playing) is panning out. and also as always, any and all feedback is much appreciated!
+ i won't drone on for too long; thanks for being here, and i'll catch you in the next one!
+ content warnings: slightly risky driving behavior, Crime Committing, a character comes out as trans but it's on their own terms, aaand i believe that's all!
Chapter 16: history's most successful museum heist: part ii
Summary:
Three down, four to go.
It’s the predominant thought that’s run through Shuuichi’s mind since he actually went and told Kaito, though not for any particularly negative reason. Quite honestly, he’s just kind of bored, in the middle of this world-altering quest, and it’s all his brain really catches onto with any significance in the long stretch of waiting since they all hesitantly agreed to attempt a museum heist that night.
Well, he supposes they’re pretty squarely mid-heist attempt now. Once he and Kaito had met up with the others, it seemed Maki, Kaede, and Kokichi had come up with a plan, though Shuuichi still has his doubts about how successful an operation that’s been left so vague can end up being. Probably for the best, despite being the de facto figurehead of their quest at-large, none of the preparations or even the brunt of the heist undertaking itself has been left to him. His instructions were don’t get caught, and then later, after they’d called Kiibo to ascertain the hiding spots they’d scouted, to keep Kokichi out of trouble.
Notes:
+ hi hi! we're back with part two (of three!) of the heisting saga!
+ for those of you requiring content warnings particularly revolving around that 'graphic depictions of violence' tag, i'd recommend taking a gander at the end notes for this chapter. it's nothing i would describe as particularly graphic, but some people have feelings about certain types of wounds in certain places, so! take that how you will
+ beyond that, however, let the shenanigans begin!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Three down, four to go.
It’s the predominant thought that’s run through Shuuichi’s mind since he actually went and told Kaito, though not for any particularly negative reason. Quite honestly, he’s just kind of bored, in the middle of this world-altering quest, and it’s all his brain really catches onto with any significance in the long stretch of waiting since they all hesitantly agreed to attempt a museum heist that night.
Well, he supposes they’re pretty squarely mid-heist attempt now. Once he and Kaito had met up with the others, it seemed Maki, Kaede, and Kokichi had come up with a plan, though Shuuichi still has his doubts about how successful an operation that’s been left so vague can end up being. Probably for the best, despite being the de facto figurehead of their quest at-large, none of the preparations or even the brunt of the heist undertaking itself has been left to him. His instructions were don’t get caught, and then later, after they’d called Kiibo to ascertain the hiding spots they’d scouted, to keep Kokichi out of trouble.
Roughly an hour before the museum’s closing time those still camped in the McDonalds made their way back to their intended target, flashing their day-passes at the front entrance before breaking off into their agreed-upon groups following one last meet up of all seven of them in the museum’s cafe. Gonta and Kiibo had discovered in their snooping the presence of an indoor amphitheater, and it was there Kaede had decided would be her hiding place until closing time, dragging Gonta along excitedly by the hand to show her where it is before they’ve got to hide properly.
Kiibo was comfortable going off on their own — though they didn’t elaborate on where it is they’ll be heading — and by the time it was just four of them remaining, when Shuuichi had taken a glance around the table, he’d come to a conclusion pretty quickly on just who he would be teaming up with for their pre-heist preparations.
Just the very notion leaves his stomach squeezing with anxiety, made no better by the fact that when Maki and Kaito pair off they also made no effort to inform them where they’ll be hunkering down to wait out the museum’s closing time. And so Shuuichi was left with Kokichi as his “heisting partner,” as Kokichi insisted far too loudly when it was just the two of them left camping out in the cafe.
Relying on instinct and experience, Shuuichi had eventually decided the third floor in the library was probably their best bet. His rationale had been that the seemingly endless rows of cluttered bookshelves and closely-clustered small exhibits would provide ample maneuverability room to duck between cameras and stray guests until it was time to actually do the damn thing.
He’d almost been convinced they were going to somehow get away with at least the staying hidden aspect of the plan, but nearly as soon as they’d stepped off the elevator onto the sparsely-populated third floor, a hand snagged him around the wrist, leading them both insistently towards…Shuuichi wasn’t sure. And considering Kokichi hadn’t made it onto this floor during his bout of museum exploration, he hadn’t had a single clue where they were going — not that Kokichi would answer any questions he’d asked, anyway.
Instead of between stacks of books, or shut up in the small archives room, or any number of other places Shuuichi had put a good deal of thought into about how reliable a hiding spot they’d be, Kokichi had pulled them to an abrupt stop in front of a nondescript door shoved somewhat awkwardly into a dimly-lit alcove on the opposite end of the room as the elevators had been.
Shuuichi caught onto his plan just before he’d actually made a move towards the door, catching Kokichi around the wrist this time to keep him from impulsively tossing open a random, unlabeled door and potentially setting off some kind of alarm that would immediately put an end to whatever it is they’re trying to do here.
Kokichi had just called him paranoid, deftly pulled his arm back into his own possession, and with a wink over his shoulder thrown open the door, grin turning smug when it didn’t set off any alarms, or really do much of anything at all except expose a dingy supply closet to the open air of the room.
“B-But Kokichi, the camer—!”
“Ah, ah, ah! Not to worry, they dumped this place in a blind spot. What bad design, seriously, what if someone wanted to do something naughty in a tight, confined space like this?”
And then he’d been yanked inside, Kokichi shutting the door soundly behind them. Which is where he finds himself now, awaiting the signal from Kaede that they’re good to meet up at the helmet exhibit and get this awful heist thing over with.
He’s lost track of how long they’ve been in here, though his eyes have long adjusted to the relative darkness of the space. It’s not the nicest room he’s ever been in — though Shuuichi will be the first to admit he doesn’t find himself in random stuffy closets particularly often. The closet isn’t especially cramped, the two of them aren’t forced quite close enough to touch in the relatively modest quarters, though Shuuichi doesn’t stray far in fear of tripping over miscellaneous file boxes and cleaning equipment strewn all over the place.
The thought strikes him more than once that this wait would be much easier spent on his phone instead of staring out into space. But an unfortunate lack of opportunity to charge his phone other than the few hours he’d managed at the Kuzuryuu household has left him relying much more on its low power mode than he is quite comfortable with. So he resists, fidgeting with the sleeves of his jacket to keep his hands from drifting down in search of his phone.
There’s not a ton Shuuichi can make out in the dark, but every time his gaze lifts from the floor in search of something to pass the time, all his attention ever really ends up on is Kokichi. Even in the dimness of the closet he’d dragged them both into, his violet eyes are bright and piercing. More often than not, when they fix in Shuuichi’s direction, it’s matched with a brief flash of teeth as Kokichi grins over at whatever it is in Shuuichi that’s amusing him for the moment.
Given where he currently is, where all of his friends are in preparation for what they plan to do, the discomfort turning over in his stomach is pretty justified. And while much of that he can easily attribute to the looming museum heist, as he stands there and makes a very earnest effort not to focus on how Kokichi definitely keeps glancing at him, the uncomfortable feeling strikes him as…more than that, if he thinks about it.
Which, again, given where he currently is and his lack of other things to distract himself with, he is thinking about it.
It’s not as though he doesn’t have a ton of things going on, he does and every one of them is more than enough to have that sticky, cloying anxious feeling wrapping around his insides and squeezing tight enough to hurt. As Kokichi had put it earlier in the car, all of them are smack-dab in the middle of their hopefully-world-saving quest, both in terms of how long they’ve been on the run but also in terms of distance left to go. He’s a little less sure on that point, though, left to rely on the navigators of the group for the specifics.
They’re halfway through their one shot to stop a war among the gods and save the world, and there are no shortage of reasons for Shuuichi to be rightfully nervous. Rightfully uncomfortable.
Maybe it’s the fact that these past few days — starting basically the second that monster smashed his head into the lockers at school and going straight through to this moment — have been by far the scariest of his otherwise pretty unassuming life. Maybe it’s the fact that what seems like every godly force in the universe is actively out to get him, kill him, hold him hostage, use him in some way to further their own ends because they think he has some sort of freakish, all-powerful weapon. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s about to take part in a museum heist in order to further his own ends, being: saving his brother. Getting Rantarou back.
…That certainly plays a role in Shuuichi’s current, practically endless anxieties, too. Rantarou. The last he heard, he was alive; the interruption in the midst of Gundham’s declaring his terms was unmistakably Rantarou’s voice. He’s supposed to be dead — Shuuichi thought that was the only conclusion to be made when the Goddess of the Dead writes a letter detailing the entrance of a soul to the Underworld — but he’d heard Rantarou’s voice after he was supposed to be dead. Something Gundham had said too, about never letting ‘Rantarou Togami see the light of day again’…it has to imply there’s a chance, right? But he’s had no indication since then that his brother is okay — just another source of unresolvable discomfort leaving him more nauseous than any bout of illness ever has.
Maybe it’s all of that, all of that pain and uncertainty and wrongness, shut up in a shitty supply closet alongside Shuuichi and the very strange boy who has been teasing him, prodding at him, confusing him, weirdly pretend-flirting with him for the better part of this adventure.
Or something. Perhaps it’s best not to think about it.
Pulling his gaze up finally from the floor, Shuuichi blinks a few times before casting a cursory glance around the room. As they pass over Kokichi, he finds he’s already being looked at, eyes wide and clearly having been focused on Shuuichi for a little while.
Kokichi doesn’t blink as he breaks the lingering stuffy silence. “Shuuichi looks nervous.”
“…You can’t see me.” Nothing except his eyes, at least. And his have been trained on the floor for the last stretch of…well, who knows. In any case, it’s still not long enough for the signal from the others to have come through.
“Right you are, Mr. Cena!” The reference flies over his head; Kokichi chatters on before it can stick for too long. “Or at least you would be, if you weren’t so horrifically, pathetically wrong. Exceeept, I’ve got night vision! My special power, y’know.”
Curious — but also looking to kill more time — Shuuichi slowly pushes one of his hands out from the sleeves of his jacket and raises his middle finger in Kokichi’s direction, maintaining eye contact as he does. The purple ones across the small room don’t twitch away from his, giving no hint of recognition as to what it is Shuuichi’s doing.
Ever in-character, Kokichi is. Cracking jokes. Watching him. Lying at the drop of a hat, for no observable reason other than his own amusement.
Shuuichi supposes this is a better way to distract himself pre-heist than ruminating on his own anxieties. Idly, he wonders how his own eye contact is coming across in the dark, when his expression is as indiscernable as Kokichi’s is.
His hands are back in his pockets when he eventually replies. “You say that a lot.”
“Hmm? I say lots of things.” His voice is an amused lilt in the dark, his eyes pivoting slightly as he cocks his head to the side.
“Things about your power,” Shuuichi clarifies, finding himself unwilling to look away from the one unobscured feature of Kokichi’s he can see. “But none of them have ever been the truth.”
Eyes crinkling at the edges is accompanied by a huffed laugh. “That’s an awful confident accusation from someone pressed as far against the wall as possible right now!”
Though he’s right, it hardly takes a genius to realize that. Kokichi’s just as aware of the size of the hiding spot he’d insisted upon as Shuuichi is, and he’s doing basically the same thing.
“You don’t need night vision to know that.”
Kokichi pauses, making a spectacle of the way his eyes glaze up and down where he approximates Shuuichi’s body to be relative to his eyes. Privately, he’s thankful for the cover of darkness in this particular moment. “Oh, yeah?”
He leaves it at that, attention once again rapt on Shuuichi’s face — his eyes, rather. Waiting. “Mhm, that’s right. I think if you had night vision, you would have reacted when I flipped you off earlier.”
A short bark of laughter, kept hushed in consideration of where they are. Shuuichi hasn’t heard footsteps outside for a while now.
“Now, now, were you testing me? I didn’t even realize until I was already ensnared in your trap.” Kokichi hums softly, the step he takes towards Shuuichi more audible than visible. He can see the flash of his teeth again, lips parted around a grin. “Right again! You’re quite the detectiving type, Mr. Saihara.”
Shuuichi’s not really sure how to respond to that, so he fumbles in the quiet for a few moments before eventually asking, feeling that false confidence he’d been accused of earlier, “So what is it?”
“What’s what?” Though it just looks like he’s being blinked at really fast, the impression of innocent eyelash-fluttering at the tail end of his question is gotten across regardless.
“Your, ah…ability.” Both that word, and ‘power’ feel weird still coming out of his mouth. Still feels like he’s misusing fantasy words, that they sound stupid dropping from his lips in circumstances that are by all accounts dire. Kokichi titters at him from across the closet, blinking owlishly over at him as he continues.
“Who knows? I probably don’t have one, y’know? It’s not like I have anything else going for me.” All Shuuichi can see of him is his eyes, though as he pauses he darts them away. They ping-pong between Shuuichi’s and some random point in the dark. “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if I’m not even demigod enough to have an ability? No parents, no power, hah! It’s kinda like a bad joke, right?”
Footsteps, as Kokichi retreats backward so he’s closer to the opposite wall. The rush of frustration is palpable as Shuuichi realizes he’s overstepped again without meaning to. His tone is flippant, but it’s also clearly detached in a way it hadn’t been before he’d gone and asked after what is an apparent sore spot.
Before the silence can settle long enough to grow awkward, he pushes back his base instinct to apologize and instead murmurs, “Kokichi?”
“Oh, don’t sound so pathetic, New Kid! Man,” he exaggerates a yawn, eyes squeezing shut as he does, “so much for being a smarty-pants, I was obviously lying just now! That’s my real power. Or maybe it isn’t! Either way, it’s so much better than just being able to slow down time, huh?”
…Yeah, Shuuichi definitely screwed that up by pushing. Crap.
Thankfully, they’re not left to sit in the atmosphere that’s settled much longer; the buzz of Shuuichi’s phone garners both of their attention, as well as leaves them both wincing when he removes it from his pocket and the light from his screen washes across the small room.
“That our cue?”
“‘Coast is clear, meet on the second floor, take the stairs not the elevator,’” he reads as a reply, liking Kaede’s text so she knows they’ve got the message before locking and pocketing his phone again. Not a moment later the closet door is tossed open, Shuuichi cringing in reaction to the light overexposure. Kokichi has no such hesitations, and skips out of the room ahead of him, arms swinging happily at his sides.
After visually affirming that the third floor is suitably empty and shutting the door much more carefully than it had been opened, he finds Kokichi gripping the straps of his backpack, looking around the nearby scenery — bookshelves, mostly.
“No elevator, huh? You’re the one who explored up here earlier, so you find the stairs.”
He doesn’t know where exactly they are but regardless he accepts, wordlessly leading them past the elevator where he knows the stairs definitely aren’t. Kokichi walks in step with him at his left side, whistling lowly under his breath as he occupies himself by looking all around the large library. Shuuichi’s already seen most of it, and he’s not feeling particularly up to enjoying the scenery of the lovely museum they’re about to rob, so for better or for worse he lets his attention fall to the boy next to him instead.
Kokichi must’ve gotten a chance to mess around in the car, because the denim jacket he’d been wearing earlier has been traded out in favor of the checker-patterned scarf Shuuichi’s growing accustomed to, though the graphic t-shirt and jeans he’s in are no surprise. Nor is his backpack; the little face on the front flap is as pathetic as always, but also as always Kokichi seems disinclined to part with it — despite Shuuichi being pretty sure he saw a no-bag policy near the museum’s entrance.
Whatever. For all he knows, he’s got his…heisting supplies hidden in there. Alongside Rantarou’s bat, somehow. And who knows what else.
It’s only a matter of time until he gets caught staring and totally called out on it, but just before he grows some sense and fixes his eyes elsewhere, he catches the motion of Kokichi’s hands swinging at his side again. Though it’s just for a moment, Shuuichi sees clear as day the angry pink coloration of the scar he’d earned in the midst of their quest thus far.
“Hey, Kokichi?” Neither of them stop, but it’s clear when the other boy begins paying attention, despite the fact he doesn’t say anything. Shuuichi pushes on before he loses his nerve. “I have another question for you. A…detectiving question.”
Though it feels very dumb to say, especially coming out of his mouth, it gets Kokichi smiling over at him curiously, an eyebrow raised his way. “I suppose I can’t say no to that, can I? Shoot.”
Shuuichi watches his face closely as he asks, “How’s your hand doing?” Now that Kokichi’s focus is on him, he doesn’t want to draw attention to it, have him shoving it back in his pocket as he’d done multiple times when someone asked after it. So he keeps his gaze level with Kokichi’s as he awaits an answer.
“Hm? This old thing?” As they walk he extends his left arm out, splaying his fingers in the air and spinning his wrist just enough to show off the healed gash on his palm. “I basically forgot something as minor as this even happened. It’s hardly the worst thing this quest has thrown at me! That nasty nurse prodding at my ankle hurt worse than that.” He stretches said ankle out briefly and rolls the joint a few times to accentuate his point.
“I’m glad it doesn’t hurt anymore.” What Shuuichi says is genuine, but he also words it carefully, his previous blunder still fresh in his mind. “How did you even get it, anyway?”
He’s pretty sure he knows the answer — given it happened on the walk through the forest, while digging in his bag, Shuuichi’s immediate inclination is that he cut it on Rantarou’s bat. It had torn through robot-proof armor like it was nothing, a wound like that certainly wasn’t out of the question even from an accidental nick. But he’s been unforthcoming in the few times it’s been brought up, and he’s not sure why he’d bother to lie just to keep it in his possession.
Kokichi’s taking his time in answering, so to keep himself from feeling too awkward he idly scans over the rest of the third floor in search of any sign of the stairwell. All of the signage around them is dedicated to telling Touko’s story and the lore of the library’s contents, and instead of rereading what he already had in their first exploration trip, he scans around for the familiar face he’d also seen earlier.
Like the statue of Hajime that had been very weirdly standing vigil outside of the museum, seeing people he knows in the context of centuries-old mythology — history? — never gets any easier to digest. Hajime, he’d only known for a few months as a teacher, and just a few days as some apparently all-powerful god, so while seeing his face larger than life outside of a museum had been surreal, it’s a totally different ball game as he makes eye contact with his kind-of aunt in a painted portrait of her and Touko.
He supposes it should’ve set in sooner, the fact that if Makoto is a god, then obviously his sister is too. Plenty of times he’s met Komaru, at least a few times a year ever since his mom died and she was around the Togami household as a supportive hand following his move-in. And despite Shuuichi remembering her as particularly kind, she’s never come across as really…goddess-like, even as he thinks in hindsight. Larger than life, in the same way Makoto and Byakuya always seemed to be, especially when he was younger, but he’d always attributed that to, well. Being his best friend’s super cool dads. Learning later on that his dads were not only cool, but also rich. Powerful, in a way that always transcended most other adults Shuuichi looked up to, save for his mom. Like they had all the influence in the world — which again, he supposes is closer to the truth than he ever knew before this past week.
But Komaru…even knowing all he does about the gods now, even reading the placard identifying her as Komaru Naegi, Goddess of Family, wife of Touko Fukawa…it still feels so strange. Soon enough they’re well past the portrait, and the face of his kind-of aunt is left behind, but not for the first time he’s left with the impression that most of the gods he’s met haven’t really come off that way at all.
Nagito definitely does — there’s something distinctly…more brewing beneath the surface there, though he couldn’t place a name to it if he tried. Gundham came off as incredibly god-like, if not apocalyptic in his appearance within the camp’s flames. And the way Izuru had looked at Shuuichi…something supernatural and dark fills his head just thinking about how the way he’d stared down at Shuuichi made him feel.
When Kokichi finally deigns to answer, his voice startles Shuuichi, and he scrambles for a few moments to remember where they left off before their bout of silence.
“I was pretty out of it, if I recall correctly,” he begins, tone flippant, and in Shuuichi’s periphery he watches him shrug his shoulders. “Didn’t you have to drag me around for a little while back there? My beloved Shuuichi didn’t drop me, did he?”
Kokichi makes a show of blinking up at him through his eyelashes again, and maybe it’s the fact that it’s visible now, but it has Shuuichi smiling. At the reaction, Kokichi taps a finger to his chin, looking away as he opens his mouth again.
“No, of course not! Even if you did a shitty job carrying me around in the pool, you’re not that noodle-armed! Not like Kiibo is.” He hums, examining his scarred palm closer now. “It only started lookin’ like this when Miss Goddess of Vitality got her grubby hands on me, right before she went psycho and started trying to kill you and Kaede. Yeesh, totally smacked down a full-fledged goddess on my own, and all I got was this stupid ruined hand!”
“‘Ruined’?”
“Hm?” Half-twirling, Kokichi tosses his hand in front of Shuuichi’s face, and he has to look at it cross-eyed to see properly. “Look at me, Shuumai! My perfect skin, marred by a dumb scar that doesn’t even have a cool story. My hand and my reputation are ruined. Hey, you’ll lie for me when I come up with a way better story once we’re back at camp, right?”
Still deflecting; chuckling as the hand retracts from before his eyes, Shuuichi lets it go — mostly. “If you stop getting actually injured, maybe.”
“What, you think I like getting sliced and diced by all these weirdo gods and monsters?”
“I don’t think any of us do,” Shuuichi replies, pleased to see Kokichi’s back to smiling. “Considering what we’re up against, though, avoiding unnecessary injuries seems like the least we all can do to make sure we get out of this okay.”
“Speaking of,” he adds, after Kokichi doesn’t respond for a few moments, “you said last night you were kind of tired of carrying around my stuff in your bag, right? If you want, I can take Rantarou’s bat back. Avoid future accidents, you know?”
“Wow, Shuuichi, how valiant! How chivalrous!” With a hand around his wrist Kokichi pulls them both to a stop, eyes shining in the dim light of the library. The prolonged eye contact — and the insistent pressure of Kokichi’s fingers holding him in place — leaves Shuuichi’s face feeling too warm.
“Buuut,” he croons, tugging lightly on Shuuichi’s arm to get him bending down far enough to whisper in his ear, “I wouldn’t want my beloved, magnanimous Shuuichi getting hurt, either! The very thought moves me to tears.” Instead of faking them — as he’s clearly capable of doing — he instead pulls back to crack a smile up at Shuuichi.
“Especially because you’re so incompetent with weapons!”
Shuuichi huffs, feigning offense, though he’s sure the effect is lost some by the way his own lips twitch upward while Kokichi laughs at him. When he recovers, he glances down curiously at where he’s still got a hand around Shuuichi’s wrist, squeezing experimentally before shrugging. He expects to be dropped, but instead Kokichi just angles around him, intent to drag him off.
“As sickeningly, disgustingly sweet as your words are, Shuuichi, let’s get a move on! If we wanna avoid unnecessary injuries, we better find those stairs before Maki beats us up for being late!”
…Good point. Finding their way to the stairs has taken on a rather casual air to it, hasn’t it? He’d almost forgotten what it is they’re going to do in the first place. Getting tugged along by the wrist is a strange sensation, but he’s hardly doing a great job on his own at finding the stairwell that’s apparently hiding from them. So he allows it, feeling a little better about the choice when Kokichi shoots him a wink over his shoulder.
They’re on the end of the third floor that Shuuichi didn’t get a chance to go over with much detail — he and Kiibo had been pretty engrossed in the library and the exhibits inside, whereas Kaito had wandered over this way to examine some of the larger exhibits. And he’s pretty confident that he or Kiibo would have come upon the stairs in all of their snooping should they have been nearer the library, so he’s content to follow where Kokichi leads them, looking around as he does. It’s much more open on this half of the floor, the exhibits more scattered, but considerably larger than those squeezed into the library. It was near here he found Kaito earlier, and they’d talked about—
“Kokichi. Wait.” His heels dig more aggressively than he intends into the floor to slow them both down, head craned to the side where he knows something’s wrong. He feels the weight of Kokichi’s eyes glancing him over, and a moment later the pressure around his arm releases.
“Seriously, New Kid, we are absolutely gonna get our asses handed to us if we don’t pick up the pace. Be a nerd later.”
“No, I’m not—” Taking a few steps closer to the exhibit he’s stopped them both dead in front of, his discomfort only mounts as he studies the empty platform, the few floor-mounted spotlights still on and shining at nothing. “This exhibit is missing.”
“Hm?” As Kokichi retraces his steps to stand at his side, Shuuichi reads over the metal inscription inlaid on the platform. Touko Fukawa. Yes, this is definitely the statue he’d talked in front of with Kaito earlier — about godly parents. So why isn’t it…?
“There was a statue here. Earlier. Kaito and I talked about her for a while.”
“Earth to Shuuichi? You sure you’re not hallucinating?”
“I’m not,” he insists, craning his neck, as if the metal sculpture of his kind-of aunt will magically pop into view. “It was of Touko. Shiny, she was holding a book. It’s only been a few hours, why…?”
“Ooh-kay.” Kokichi snags him by the sleeve of his jacket this time, and after a few tugs on the fabric, he looks over to find Kokichi aiming a smile his way. “Museum dates are fun and all, but I do not care about some statue they probably just moved. ‘Sides, it’s supposed to be of Kiyo’s mom, right? I wouldn’t want that on display in my museum, either.”
“Rude.”
“Maybe! C’mon, it’s heist time. Looky, I think I just found the stairs!”
Though it’s with immense unease, Shuuichi once again allows himself to be dragged away, eyeing the space the statue was occupying over his shoulder until Kokichi turns a corner, and then they’re off down the stairwell.
The quick pace they’re moving at — plus the way Kokichi’s two steps below him yet still tugging him along by his jacket — has Shuuichi stumbling more than once, and halfway down to the second floor he pulls them to a stop. At the unimpressed look he’s sent, Shuuichi raises his free hand defensively.
“It’s just — you don’t need to drag me. I’m probably gonna trip and send us both tumbling.”
“Jeez, Shuuichi, you’re such an amateur when it comes to thieving.” His fingers uncurl from around his sleeve, only to insistently snatch his hand up, already moving towards the stairs again. “There are cameras in here, y’know? We look less like we’re running from a crime scene like this.”
He has no further complaints as he’s led the rest of the way down to the second floor, obedient as he trails behind Kokichi, who seems much more sure of where they’re going as he weaves them between various exhibits encased in large glass frames. They catch sight of where the others are gathered well before they actually make their way over, and as their gait slows, Kokichi lets go of his fingers before sauntering up confidently to the case the rest of their friends are crowded around.
As he expects, Maki’s at the helm when he stops to stand between Kiibo and Kokichi, though no one’s saying anything. The entire floor is quiet, actually, the uneasy feeling only heightened by the way many of the lights are dimmed, casting them in shadows that make their situation look…well, about as tense as it actually is.
Shuuichi is actually about to steal from a museum. He doesn’t even want to think about how illegal this has to be.
Fragile, uncomfortable silence sticks for several minutes after he arrives, everyone’s attention rapt on Maki as she appraises the glass case before them with narrowed eyes, assessing. Similar to some of the exhibits he recalls from upstairs, the barrier standing between them and Maki’s dad’s helmet is a relatively simple-looking glass box, a small key lock visible on the side closest to Maki. All it’s sat atop is a platform shaped and painted in some approximation of a white marble pillar, though it’s too…shiny for it to be authentic.
The helmet itself, however, is much more authentic relative to the comparatively kind of crappy items used to encase it. Unlike the more modern bronze sculptures he’d seen earlier throughout the museum, this is different — this is ancient. He recognizes that it’s bronze with unvarnished patches that have long since oxidized with age (and he’s only kind of embarrassed to know what it looks like because of Minecraft…), leaving sections of it a dull blue-green color that looks almost like moss, given how badly beaten to hell the metal itself is.
Though he’s hardly a history buff — as no one ever likes to let him forget — Shuuichi would describe the design as…spartan, almost. Missing the red plume adorning the top like he’s seen in movies, it’s instead studded with some sort of insignia or crest. Despite how old the helmet is, the eight-pointed star and twin rings surrounding it are vibrant, the burnt orange color a stark contrast from the rest of it. From where he’s standing he can’t see the front of it, but he guesses the protective point of the faceplate he can make out is mirrored on the other side.
Maki still hasn’t made a move, nor has anyone said anything — next to him Kokichi’s watching her curiously, though when he notices Shuuichi’s shifted his focus to him, he indulges him in a moment of shared eye contact, a raised eyebrow. It seems he doesn’t know what the holdup is either, and it only makes Shuuichi all the more nervous. They both think better of saying anything, which is perhaps for the best, because when Maki breaks the silence, she sounds distinctly uncomfortable.
“You.”
Everyone looks up, then around at each other, trying to figure out who she means. For a moment Shuuichi thinks she’s talking to him, but it’s not him she’s staring at; it’s Kiibo, who bursts into hushed splutters.
“M-Me? By wh-what metric do I have a part in this?!”
“You don’t.” From her pocket she pulls out the keys to the truck, tossing them in Kiibo’s direction. They catch them, looking no less confused. “Something doesn’t feel right about this. Go start the car, text Kaede when you’re done. I want us to have a bail-out immediately if things go wrong.”
“Are things going to go wrong?” Shuuichi asks before he can think better of it, though he still winces at the look Maki sends him anyway.
“…It’s hard to say. Go,” she insists again to Kiibo, who bobs their head once in a nod before taking off as quietly as they can back towards the stairwell. When they’re gone, Maki refocuses her attention on the initial question. “It feels too easy. It feels too…weird. I have a bad feeling, so let’s just get this over with.”
Shuuichi has no complaints there, so he chooses to shut up, having absolutely no desire to delay their heisting any further when the promise of getting the hell out of here is guaranteed once they get their robbery done. Kaede’s eyes are on her phone, and though her ringer is off, she knows immediately to nod towards Maki. “Keys are in the ignition, the driver's seat is clear for you for when we’re out. Ready?”
It’s Kokichi that answers her question, once Maki turns her focus to him. In his hand is a nondescript leather case, and he pops the button on the flap with a grin, flipping it open to reveal an array of thin metal tools.
“Trust me, I was born for this.”
With a confident flourish that Shuuichi will never understand in a situation like this Kokichi steps up to replace Maki in front of the helmet, crouching down a few inches to eye the lock on the display case closely. The minute or two he spends appraising the work ahead of him feels a lot longer in Shuuichi’s head, in no small part due to the sweat beginning to drip from his hairline down the back of his neck as the suspense goes from deeply unnerving to downright unbearable. If he weren’t so terrified of making unnecessary noise — and so convinced he could be violently sick, should he unclench his jaw — his teeth would be chattering from anxiety alone.
“Oh, man,” Kokichi begins as a means to break the quiet, seeming almost amused as he gives Shuuichi a once-over, “this security is pathetic. I got this.”
Again, he shines with nothing but effortless self-assurance as he plucks two tools from what Shuuichi assumes is a lockpicking kit, handing the leather pouch off to Maki — who takes it without question — before focusing his attention back on the case, expression dropping into a contemplative frown. Though he could step closer and observe Kokichi while he works, he’s pretty sure seeing exactly what it is Kokichi does will only freak him out even more. Wishing he had his hat to shield his eyes with — even though he’s trying not to do that, anymore, at Kaito’s insistence — he instead keeps his eyes focused on Kokichi’s face, so he can at least have some heads-up as to how it’s going before any alarms start going off.
But no such alarms, or swarms of security, or really anything comes, and after another few minutes spent with Kokichi carefully and methodically taking apart the lock, he steps back with both tools in hand, wearing a satisfied smile. At a single nod from him Maki once again takes over, and Shuuichi holds his breath as she approaches the front of the glass case, undoes a latch, and lifts the lid to reveal the helmet to the open air.
Nothing. Silence. Her fingers breach beneath the lip of the glass, and after a few moments pass and no sensor trips, she slowly grasps the helmet by the faceplate and lifts it off its display stand. It comes off with ease, and Maki is steady enough that the metal doesn’t knock against the case as she deftly removes it once and for all from its exhibit. Gently, the glass is lowered; even though he winces at the soft sound it makes as it touches down on the pillar platform, that is the extent of resistance put up as Maki takes the helmet now in both hands and lifts it eye-level.
He can’t quite decipher the expression on her face as she turns it around carefully in her hands and lowers it with finality onto her head, but it hardly matters; the moment the pointed peak of the forehead guard passes over her she’s gone, out of sight with not even a sound. Shuuichi almost forgets she’s there at all, until she reappears a few moments later with the helmet half off her head again.
What he sees in her now is also, like Kokichi, something like satisfaction. “Good. Now let’s go.”
“Not so fast!”
The sharp interjection of a loud, unfamiliar voice sends Shuuichi stumbling, shouting unintentionally at the fright with how wound up he is. His friends, also left scrambling, seem at least somewhat more prepared; Gonta angles in front of all of them except Maki, who crouches low as she faces the surprise intruder.
Crimson irises, blown so wide nearly her whole sclera appears overtaken by the vivid, unnatural color. Thin, mulberry purple hair, hanging nearly to her knees; not unlike he’d witnessed in his brief look at Izuru Kamukura, though her length is jagged, unkempt with blunt slices chopped out in odd places. She’s laughing at them — she’s been laughing at them, a monstrously long tongue lolling out of her mouth all the while — and when her hands move lightning-fast through the air, light glints off something silver and delicate and sharp.
Her dark dress is torn, and where it’s sliced away he sees a holster strapped at her mid-thigh, the round loops denoting the presence of even more sets of scissors in the dim, rapidly intensifying atmosphere.
“C’moooon, you shrimps didn’t think it was gonna be that easy, did you? In my little hole in the wall? Kyeeehahaha!” The woman takes an abrupt step forward, loudly delighting in how most of them jump back.
Maki hasn’t moved an inch, still low to the ground. Shuuichi struggles to hear her voice. “What are you?”
Yeah. He had a feeling they were dealing with a what right now, too.
“That’s awful rude, you frightful little witch! ‘Specially since you’re the ones breaking and entering!” One hand on her hip, she flips a pair of scissors between her fingers with her other, pouting around her protruding tongue. “Seriously, what kinda barn did you gutter dogs grow up in, anyway? ‘Least I taught my mini-me manners!”
“What are you?” Maki repeats, voice pinched. “Why are you here?”
The woman giggles, cocking her head to the side. “Mannerless and stupid! But I guess that became obvious when you two baby blabbermouths started spilling your guts right in front of me, kyeehahaha!”
With each hand she gestures with the points of her scissors at Kaito and Shuuichi. No one’s keen to look away from the clearly supernatural someone actively threatening them with very deadly-looking pointy objects, but the collective what the fuck did you do energy is palpable. “I don’t much appreciate having my stuff stolen, y’know! Soon as I heard it was a buncha thieving halfbloods lurking around the joint, there was no way I was gonna pass up the chance to slice ‘em all up!”
Tittering, she gesticulates again with one hand towards Shuuichi, standing on her tip-toes to peer over Kaito’s shoulder when he also puts himself between the woman and Shuuichi.
“Oooh, I know that look! That there’s a look of recognition, ain’t it? C’mon, you had quite a lot to say earlier, pipsqueak!”
Mouth dry, barely believing what he’s saying, he hisses, “The statue was Touko?!”
“What the hell?” Kaito mutters under his breath, the sentiment echoed when Maki finally does move back along with the rest of them.
“Nada! Nope! Wroooong!” she sing-songs, twirling in a circle. “Well, kinda. Whatever, not like it’s gonna matter when I’m done with ya, huh? Syo, Genocide Jack, Goddess of Wrath, and — hm? What was it you said again? Your ‘kind-of’ aunt? Kyeeehahaha!”
“Guess you weren’t hallucinating, New Kid,” Kokichi murmurs, as if that matters anymore.
“Nope! Real as daaay!” Again Touko — not Touko, not Goddess of Literature, oh gods above what didn’t Shuuichi pay attention to now?! — steps closer, lethal intent palpable in the weight of her unnerving red gaze. Syo’s stopped laughing; now she just looks focused. Almost a little put-out.
“I’m real picky, yanno? Don’t like wasting my trusty scissors on uninteresting and unadorable people, especially boring kids, it’s such a pain. This woulda been way more fun if it was just you three adorable boys!” Shuuichi doesn’t know who exactly she means, but he knows instinctively his ass is definitely on the line here. “Ah, but you brats are my Kiyo’s age! So adorable! So adorable I can’t help but wanna spread my wings and outdo even myself!”
In a flash she sends a pair of scissors flying, and before anyone can move it’s embedded in the empty glass case right next to them. Something that looks like blood smears on the cracked glass; Kokichi curses, bringing his left hand to brace around the arm the blade had at least grazed.
“You’ll be just the cutest pinned up on my walls!”
At the same moment Maki pulls the helmet down on her head and disappears from sight, Gonta yells, “Run!” and charges headlong towards her. Shuuichi only watches long enough for him to extend his hands out and roughly shove her backward before he follows his friend’s advice and bolts.
Goddess of Wrath is right; in just a few minutes of running around, more than one of them are feeling it, with Kaito, Kokichi, and himself — those lucky three adorable boys, he realizes quickly — falling beneath the ribbon-thin blades of Syo’s scissors more than once. Her slashes are practiced and precise, like a cat batting around several very underprepared mice with claws so razor-sharp he doesn’t feel them until his clothes are already torn and he’s bleeding enough to feel it drip down his skin.
Whatever Syo is, she’s clearly capable of keeping any normal sort of security at bay; for better or for worse it is just them trapped on the second floor of the museum with the goddess, ducking beneath her grasping hands and delirious shrieks of unhinged laughter. Which means while no cops — or monsters, which would probably kill them way faster than Shuuichi fears his maybe kind-of aunt is going to — appear to arrest them, no one comes to save them as they scream and weave through the floor’s large exhibits, either.
After a few minutes, it does become clear that Syo is focusing on the three of them pretty exclusively unless Kaede, Maki or Gonta are bearing down on her. None of them escape the bite of her scissors, but from the cries of pain he hears and the frequency with which they’re dragged out of Syo’s hold by Maki wearing the helmet, it is most definitely Kaito, Kokichi, and Shuuichi himself that get the worst of it.
Maki only barely saves Shuuichi from getting his left hand skewered by a pair of scissors into a wall, her poised fingers and the bloodstained blades held expertly between them dragged backward by an invisible force. It’s just in time — mere inches separate the small hole she punctures in his palm and what could have been her digging deep enough to sever his hand straight through. From behind, Kaede grasps Syo’s hair and yanks, succeeding in bringing her to the floor before a slash at her calf has her jumping away.
Multiple times she tries to sing and get her to stop moving, but the endless shriek of Syo’s laughter is dizzying, and deafens even Kaede when she can’t get close enough because of those damn scissors to drown her out.
“Get out of the museum!” Maki’s voice is rough with exertion and pinched with something bordering on hysteria. “Get to an exit and get out!”
“Like I’m gonna letcha do that!”
Shuuichi’s heartbeat pumps loud and hot in his head, beneath his wrist where his fingers are wrapped around it, and he can only stare at the blood pulsing out of the wound in time with his hammering heart.
“Gonta, no! I am not leavin’ anyone behind!”
Breathing heavily Shuuichi glances up, watches through the blurry filter of painful tears as Gonta hesitates, Kaito thrown over his shoulder and blood spotted all over the arm holding him in place. Kokichi darts out towards them with a fire extinguisher in hand, hands shaking as he fumbles with the nozzle. “Th-The car, shit-for-brains! Go get ready to drive, we’ll be right behind you!”
“But—”
Maki’s placed the helmet on Kaede’s head to keep Syo from slicing her to ribbons for her continued interference, and now she’s rounding on the boys again with blood seeping down her lip. Kokichi brandishes the cylinder of the extinguisher itself at her before he gets the trigger down and begins spraying her back.
“Gonta! Get out!” Shuuichi repeats as loudly as he dares, jutting his head towards the stairwell Kokichi is guarding Syo from blocking. With a nod Gonta runs, and he can hear Kaito cursing all the way down until they’re out of earshot. Shuuichi plans to follow — Kokichi’s desperate nod in his direction tells him that’s the plan, do that now — but he trips on, of all things, an untied shoelace at the same time the extinguisher sputters in Kokichi’s hands, empty. Syo deftly dances out of the way and then she’s standing over him, leering down with her scissors at the ready.
“P-Please!” He feels as delirious as Syo is, this whole situation is, and he’s sure between the pain and the disorientation of the losing fight he’s not making sense. “I’m Shuuichi, Rantarou’s brother! We’re leaving, I’m s-sorry, Makoto and B-Byakuya are my — Komaru is — please!”
“Byakuya Togami.” Syo isn’t laughing anymore. She isn’t even smiling. “Anything that feckless dog loves deserves the conviction of my crucifixion! To even speak his name alongside hers—!”
With renewed vigor she seizes towards him again, but moments before she can drive a pair of her scissors through his ankle Kokichi is stepping on her back and cracking Rantarou’s baseball bat over her head. It doesn’t hurt or, or kill her, but it does slow her down, and Shuuichi uses the break to get to his feet, dragged backward towards the stairwell moments later by Maki.
“You idiot,” she seethes, and only then does he notice the anger she regards him with as they move, “mentioning Byakuya was the worst thing you could have done!”
“Syo, think!” Kaede cries, her position impossible to discern while still wearing the helmet. “Komaru wouldn’t want you to hurt Kiyo’s friends! She wouldn’t want you to hurt Shuuichi, your family!”
“Lalalalalaaaaaa! Shut it, motormouth! The wifey loves the murderous fiend in me!”
Maki shoves him into the stairwell, and he only just catches himself with his uninjured hand on the railing. “The only thing that’s going to calm her down is her wife, you absolute—”
“Wait, Maki!” Despite the look she sends him, he doesn’t let himself hesitate as Kokichi tries to keep Syo at bay with the bat. “There’s a portrait of Komaru upstairs!”
Twisting briefly to assess the situation behind them, she comes to a decision quickly. “Grab it and get it here before she kills us, got it?”
Not waiting for an answer she pops out of sight again, and Shuuichi only takes a moment to suck in a deep breath before dashing as fast as he can through his injuries up to the third floor, mentally retracing his steps to where he’d seen it earlier.
It’s even darker on the third story when he makes it up just seconds later, and he relies on blind instinct as he runs towards where he thinks he remembers it being. Unlike the statue of Touko, mercifully, the portrait has not come to life and run away, and he finds it exactly where he recalls it hanging on the wall. It’s with frantic desperation that he wraps his hands around the ornate frame and yanks, and even if an alarm did go off it wouldn’t stop him from his single-minded focus of doing what his friends said, getting the painting, saving the people he cares about because whether he believes in himself or not he has to, he can’t lose anyone else, he won’t.
With the frame in hand he turns sharply on his heel to retreat back to the second floor, and as he’s taking the stairs two at a time an idea comes to mind. It’s hard not to think it and do it too early, he catches his brain slipping into the desperate plea to the universe of slow down, slow down, slow down more than once, but he has to time this right. He cannot afford to use up whatever window he has before he actually needs it.
Emerging back onto the second floor he hears loud crashing from just out of sight, a shrill shriek, followed by a demand of, “Kaede, now!”
Turning a corner around another large exhibit gives Shuuichi the full picture while he continues his mad dash; Syo screams around an invisible force clamping her mouth shut, thrashing under the press of unseen weight on her thin shoulders as Kokichi scrambles for the helmet, abandoned on the floor a few feet in front of her. As Kaede drags herself up from the floor she opens her mouth, her singing voice a dull thrum in the air as everyone in earshot — Syo and Shuuichi included — begin to freeze up.
Slow down, come on, I need to get there, slow down, sl—
Just before his cramping leg fails and sends him tumbling it works, vision ebbing around the edges as Kaede’s voice slows to the point it’s inaudible, and Shuuichi can move again. Syo registers the slowing of time, of her own movements in comparison to his first, though all she has time to do is follow him with blown-wide pupils before he’s diving between her and Kokichi. He doesn’t mean to actually hit her with it, but as he’s waving it before her eyes he loses his focus on keeping the rest of the world lagging behind, and as everyone else rockets into real time again around him, the forward momentum of his shove bowls her over and knocks her heavily onto her back.
She recovers before Shuuichi can even catch his breath, sitting up with the framed portrait held now at arms length. “Komaru, honey bunches! Oh, I don’t even remember gettin’ this one painted, it’s so damn old!” Almost lovingly she pulls it close, cradling it tenderly to her chest and rubbing her face across the canvas.
Behind him Kaede pivots to help Kokichi to his feet, wrapping a hand around his wrist before slamming the helmet down on his head, tugging him towards the exit as he silently disappears from sight. Maki only pops back into view once she’s rolled away from where she’d also been knocked over while perched on Syo’s back, chest heaving as she presses a closed fist against a shallow cut on her cheek.
“It’s so friggin’ adorable, I — ahh-choo!”
Through his pumping adrenaline and pounding head Shuuichi forces himself to listen to what Maki’s saying as she moves towards him. “—ave the helmet, Syo’s down, go, Shuuichi!”
“H-Huh…?”
He has absolutely zero intention to listen to whatever it is the goddess that has only just stopped trying to slash him to pieces has to say. But her tone is different; so is the way she says his name. “Sh…Shuuichi? Y-You’re…why are you…you sh-shouldn’t be here!”
Against his better judgment, he spares a glance over his shoulder, stalling in place when he finds her looking a lot different than she had just a minute ago. Syo shrinks into her dress — now more torn than it was — with her back bowed, hands tenting nervously in her lap. When she makes eye contact with Shuuichi she shrieks, flinching away as if he’s the dangerous one here.
Behind him Maki hisses his name, but he can’t help himself and warily asks, “…Touko?”
She whimpers, looking torn between whether or not she should nod or shake her head by way of answering. “Yes…? I — I mean, I don’t know! Oh, g-gods, I’m not supposed to talk to you! B-Byakuya made very c-clear that you can’t m-meet me, it’s too da-dangerous, the gods…!”
“I believe we’re a little past that,” Maki mutters, stepping up to stand at his side, arms crossed as she coldly assesses where Touko is still curled up on the floor. “Which one are you?”
“Just wh-who do you think you’re talking to?” Despite the bite of her words she winces back anyway, not meeting Maki’s gaze. “It’s not polite to s-stare, you know! Stop staring at me like I—I’m some filthy creature!”
“You are a filthy creature,” Kokichi snaps, and though Shuuichi can’t see him still he can see Kaede as she also approaches, bending down to rub irritably at her leg. “You’re even worse than that, you nasty, ratty, ugly cun—”
Probably for the best, the tail end of Kokichi’s insult is lost as the goddess’ eyes widen, pulling her hands to her mouth. “Wh-Why the hell are you all b-bleeding?! This is t-too weird, you really shouldn’t b-be here…!”
“You’re Touko now, right?”
“Obviously!” Touko bares her teeth defensively, though a moment later she pales, eyes widening. “Oh no, d-don’t tell me she—! Gah! Shit!”
Miserably she pulls out the scissors she’d holstered, gagging at the dried blood sticking the blades together. Tossing the pair away she stumbles onto her feet, hands tightly gripping her frail biceps with her arms crossed over her chest. “I’m r-really, really sorry…! O-Oh, Byakuya’s gonna m-murder me when he f-finds out she hurt Shuuichi!”
“I won’t tell him if you don’t,” he cuts in quickly, taking the chance the moment it materializes as an idea in his still-reeling mind.
“What d-do you…?”
Touko isn’t the only one staring at him, confused; even Kokichi’s removed the helmet from his head, eyes narrowed in his direction, apparently having decided the danger level presently is low enough to risk it.
“A-Ah…” Think, think, how do I get us out of this… “You were — right. You don’t want Byakuya to know that I know about you…this…right? So just let us leave, and we’ll — nobody has to know we were ever here. That you ever saw us.”
She spends nearly a full minute in silent consideration, expression pinched into something decidedly suspicious as she weighs her options. When she does come to one, Touko averts her gaze towards the floor, clasping her hands deferentially behind her back.
“Yeah…yeah. Th-This was just another quiet n-night in the library…n-nothing happened…jeez, what month e-even is it…?”
It hits all four of them, the chance they have at what Touko mutters, at roughly the same time. If she doesn’t even know what month it is, she doesn’t know they’re on the run. She doesn’t know Junko’s spear is missing. She doesn’t know half the gods are trying to hunt them down and she nearly did Junko’s job for her.
“Let’s go,” he whispers, voice hushed underneath the increasingly nervous ramblings falling past Touko’s lips as she paces. They do slowly, backing up the first several feet until they’re mostly out of sight and can take off running as fast as they can towards the stairwell, the first floor, the god damn exit.
There are no alarms that trip despite the clumsy way they escape the museum, and the night is quiet as the four of them race towards the truck idling as close to the entrance as Kaito could possibly manage. None of them waste time piling into the vehicle, someone hisses, “Drive!” before Shuuichi’s even yanked the door shut, but once again they make it out. Somehow, somehow, he and his friends survived another off-the-walls insane encounter with a literal goddess. And with a prize to boot — somehow, he’s ended up with Maki’s godly parent’s helmet in his lap.
“Fuyu got us a place to sleep,” Maki says raggedly from the way back, still breathless from the run. Not even having put his seatbelt on yet, Shuuichi sags with relief as Kaito pulls them out of the museum complex and begins cruising down the main road in the opposite direction. “It’s two hours out, but it’s something.”
They made it. Shuuichi’s got multiple stinging cuts up and down his body he’s going to have to wait hours to treat, his whole body aches with overexertion and the lingering life-threatening terror, but they made it. Yet another instance where all of them have only barely escaped with their lives in the midst of the literal end of the world, and they haven’t even made it to the final boss yet. Before them still awaits Gundham, a Big Five god, and who knows what else they’ll run into, considering their luck so far.
But again they’ve survived, and from the sounds of it, they’re going to make it through yet another night despite the entire universe working to the contrary. As the protagonist of his own story — a notion he doesn’t really believe about himself, but still he promised Kaito that he’d try — Shuuichi tips his head back, shuts his eyes, and prays to whatever will listen that his plot armor is enough to stave off the encroaching apocalypse like he really, really needs it to be.
Notes:
+ this whole little plot point has always had very scooby-doo vibes to me, so of course i couldn't resist the classic 'the statue was a monster the whole time!' cliche, especially for a little creep like touko. it was very fun to write; i hope it was as well to read! god damn do i not exactly Love writing either girlie though; pin it on the UDG hater in me
+ next installation will be much more chill, but it's also a new addition to my outline! so lots to look forward to
+ lately ive been having a ton of fun answering questions about pointy objects over on my tumblr, so if you'd like to join in with anything to say on the matter (or peep my watching of the dr3 anime for the first time), you can find me at gontagokuhara.tumblr.com !
+ until next time! <3
+ content warnings: descriptions of (non self-inflicted) cuts and punctures as wounds, particularly on arms/hands/feet; touko/syo's characters and the implicit problems there; and i do believe that covers the brunt of it.
Chapter 17: history’s most successful museum heist: part iii (the aftermath)
Summary:
The ‘place to sleep’ that Maki directs Kaito towards some two hours and change away from where they barely scrape themselves out of the museum ends up being, without an ounce of exaggeration, yet another yakuza den.
Really, Shuuichi should’ve seen this coming.
A very legitimate business-slash-safehouse under the Kuzuryuu clan’s…employ, as it were. Positioned strategically between a large domestic airport and the surrounding trade and manufacturing hub — something Kokichi and Maki have it in them to discuss at length, Shuuichi shuts his eyes against it, he doesn’t want to know the salacious details — it’s within two hours of the museum and also apparently well within Fuyuhiko’s sphere of influence, so according to Maki it should be mercifully quiet. Of yakuza underlings or other patrons, apparently; Shuuichi doesn’t exactly have it in him to care too much about the details while he and half the car are actively bleeding all over the seats.
Notes:
+ wooo hi there hello! heisting saga 3/3 only slightly later than i would have liked. oh well! in my defense i turned 23 last week so i was a little busy during my usual 3-weekish-since-last-update period.
+ i was so certain this chapter was going to be short. i really don't know what happened, especially because it's unplanned, only recently added into the outline. 9.3k, give or take; banter tends to run away from me, and given it's basically two people the entire time...well, i guess we're about to see!
+ similar content warnings to last time, particularly in the aftercare stage; as always, specifics in the bottom notes, but otherwise here we go!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The ‘place to sleep’ that Maki directs Kaito towards some two hours and change away from where they barely scrape themselves out of the museum ends up being, without an ounce of exaggeration, yet another yakuza den.
Really, Shuuichi should’ve seen this coming.
A very legitimate business-slash-safehouse under the Kuzuryuu clan’s…employ, as it were. Positioned strategically between a large domestic airport and the surrounding trade and manufacturing hub — something Kokichi and Maki have it in them to discuss at length, Shuuichi shuts his eyes against it, he doesn’t want to know the salacious details — it’s within two hours of the museum and also apparently well within Fuyuhiko’s sphere of influence, so according to Maki it should be mercifully quiet. Of yakuza underlings or other patrons, apparently; Shuuichi doesn’t exactly have it in him to care too much about the details while he and half the car are actively bleeding all over the seats.
Maki seems to have it covered. Even if what snippets of conversation he does pick up are not exactly reassuring.
“Okay, so she’s your godfather’s…sister. That make her your…godaunt?”
Kaito has not yet caught the hint that Maki — worrying over a gash on Kaede’s calf, last Shuuichi turned to look — is incredibly uninterested in talking. Shuuichi could’ve guessed that before they even stumbled out of the museum…however long ago that was. He’s not really sure. His phone — and his reliable time-telling mechanism, as his head’s still a little wonky after using his power — is very dead. And his hand is a little too stabbed for him to bother doing anything about it at present.
Ow.
“Natsumi is not anything,” she replies snappishly, though her voice softens after a pause where Kaede makes a pained noise. “…Think of her as our ‘handler’ for the night. One that cares very little for the lives of humans or halfbloods, and has earned the title Goddess of Vengeance because of that reputation.”
Great. Shuuichi thunks his head miserably against the window he’s pressed firmly into.
“But she listens to Fuyuhiko…mostly. We really shouldn’t push our luck,” Kaede insists at the choked cough Kaito lets out in response.
“We already are.” Maki sighs. “Assuming none of you piss Natsumi off and we survive the night, our twenty-four hour head-start will be over — by dawn, they’ll have called our parents. And Nagito.”
Throughout the car, a collective shiver passes, Shuuichi included. A phone call between hot-headed gangster Fuyuhiko, stressed, angry, missing-both-of-his-sons Byakuya, and whatever the hell the other gods have been implying about Makoto…
He should really, really not think about it.
Next to him, Kokichi hums, “Guess that means we get a lot easier to track, too, huh? If the gods didn’t know where we were headed before, they sure will soon! We could’ve been anywhere in the country before, y’know? But there’s a lot less island between us and the Shiniga-miss now, and as soon as the yakuza start snitching, they’re gonna know exactly which entrance we’re closing in on.”
“Would Gonta and friends be more safe if we go to…non-yakuza hotel instead?” Gonta asks from up front, and Shuuichi almost thinks it’s a reassuring idea, until:
“We’re less likely to die if we avoid Natsumi. Unfortunately,” and really, Maki says it as though it truly is, “we are infinitely more likely to get spotted or arrested if we show up somewhere else, actively bleeding, the same night as a museum heist nearby.”
Right. Of course.
“Nagito and his luck,” Shuuichi laments weakly, and a second later Kokichi huffs a laugh, his head falling heavily onto his left shoulder. It hurts — there’s definitely a scissor wound back there, and the movement has it stinging beneath his sliced-to-bits shirt — but he’s too exhausted to shrug him off.
“Now you’re getting it, New Kid.” A hand moves to pat the top of his sweaty hair, somewhat awkward given their positioning. “Spoken like a true demigod.”
From the back: “It’s paid for, and it won’t ask any questions. We’re also dangerously low on funds — forget a couple more hotel rooms, we don’t even have enough to eat dinner tonight. Bad luck or not, it’s our only option. Kaito, take the next exit — Kaede’s watching updates on the Novoselic roadblocks, and…”
There is very little Shuuichi can do from where he is at the moment. So as the conversation moves to navigation and money woes, he makes a conscious effort to stop listening and instead do his very best not to think about how much first-aid is going to suck when they finally get to their destination. If anyone has any qualms about Shuuichi indulging his bone-deep exhaustion for the duration of the car ride, he hears none of it; whatever words float between the others do nothing to rouse either him or Kokichi — still using Shuuichi’s aching shoulder as a likely not very comfortable pillow — from their stolen moment of rest.
He doubts he actually sleeps any on the drive — try as he might — but he’s certain he doesn’t open his eyes again until the car is slowing, and Maki is breaking the long-settled quiet to tiredly remind the group about who it is that’s waiting for them when they arrive at the hotel. Once Kokichi pulls away from his side Shuuichi finally cracks his eyes open, massaging his forehead against his long-standing stress headache. By the time his vision has adjusted again they’re basically there, as evidenced by the final turn Kaito takes into the lot of a relatively non-descript western style hotel.
When they step out of the seven of them are alone in the parking lot, but by the time they’ve scrounged up their belongings and locked up, someone else has materialized near the entrance to the building. Though not physically the most imposing, the woman shadowed in front of the hotel immediately puts Shuuichi on edge. Maki mutters something under her breath about handling it, and he is in no position to argue; he merely falls deferentially behind her, cradling his punctured hand that has begun to hurt a lot more now that the adrenaline has ebbed.
“Took you long enough,” Natsumi Kuzuryuu sneers by way of introduction, making no effort to meet them halfway, though she clearly sees the battered — and for half of them, bloodied — state of the seven of them.
Under a normal circumstance, Shuuichi would privately speculate that the relation between her and Fuyuhiko is clear. Shiny, well-kept blonde hair; intense green eyes; round, pink cheeks; short and thin but no less intimidating because of it — a Kuzuryuu is certainly recognizable when one knows what to look for…Tenko excluded. But that isn’t what strikes Shuuichi first as they finally move close enough to see Fuyuhiko’s sister properly, because—
Well. He’s not going to say it, but she kind of looks like Kaede.
Shuuichi’s definitely not the only one to draw the comparison; Kiibo switches their gaze between the two of them rapidly — or maybe they’re just as on edge as he is —and Kaito openly gapes before Kokichi reaches a hand up to push his mouth shut.
“Apologies,” Maki offers, shifting her weight to her other foot. “We don’t plan to overstay our welcome. We’ll be quiet, and be out of here by morning.”
“I don’t give a shit one way or another.” Natsumi makes a show of inspecting her nails instead of looking at any of them. “You’ll have safe harbor here tonight, but once the sun’s up you half-breeds aren’t my problem. Try not to make a mess, would you?”
“We’ll stay out of your hair,” Maki reiterates, angling a step closer, though she stops when Natsumi sharply looks up. Palms facing forward, she continues, “I know you don’t care, but we’re injured and exhausted. The sooner we’re in our rooms, the sooner we’ll be able to leave.”
“Whatever. This is my brother’s favor, not mine. Just stay out of clan business, and there should be no reason for you brats to get sliced up any further. Heh, by me, at least.” Out of nowhere she pulls out three silver keyrings, surveying the group of them for the first time since they approached. At the end of the line, Natsumi raises a manicured eyebrow, and instead of following through her motion to hand off the keys to Maki, she instead slots her three middle fingers through each of the rings and clasps her hand into a fist, keeping them in her possession.
“You. You’re not half bad.”
Kaede is on Gonta’s other side and therefore out of Shuuichi’s eyesight, but he doesn’t have to see her to hear her hesitation. “Uhm…thank you? I…like your nails.”
They’re pink. And sparkly, he can tell despite the low light. Huffing a soft laugh, Natsumi presses one hand to her hip, examining the nails on the other, still holding the keyrings. “Sure, half-breed. Hey, actually…who did push you out, anyway?”
Kiibo coughs, horrified, while Maki’s expression pinches into a sneer. Kaede, for her part, is composed despite the crude phrasing as she wryly answers, “That would be Sayaka.”
Natsumi laughs again, the sound meaner, though she finally reaches forward to hand off the keys — just not to Maki. “What a pity. She’s a real hag.”
Though the mood unwinds slightly, as soon as Kaede’s got the keys in hand, Natsumi’s tipping up her nose and angling away. “Alright, that’s my job done. You can buzz off now.”
“Thank you!” Kaede offers as a departing word, but Natsumi disappears from in front of them with a sound like a whip cracking, and she goes unheard. Not that it matters to them much — as soon as they’re alone the tense, high-strung atmosphere dissipates, and the conversation quickly turns to room divisions for the night. No one is up to arguing, least of all Shuuichi; he’s expecting to be paired off with Kokichi, so he accepts a room key without complaint.
Once inside the building, it becomes clear that they’ve been given rooms that are right next to each other and on the first floor, sparing them a trip up the stairs and a search of the hotel complex in the state they’re in. With quiet reminders passed between them to get some sleep and set their alarms, they all disappear into their lodgings for the night, Shuuichi and Kokichi included.
The first thought he has is thank the gods, two beds. And with that out of the way, as Shuuichi flops down unceremoniously with his duffle bag onto one of them — probably rubbing dried blood into the bedspread, whatever, Kuzuryuu underlings have definitely dealt with worse — his second thought is holy crap everything hurts.
“You and me both, New Kid,” agrees Kokichi from the other bed, and when he looks he sees him scowling down at his torn up right arm. “That fugly bitch sliced us into sashimi.”
“Ew,” Shuuichi replies, pushing himself back into a sit, then wincing at the way just doing that leaves his arms hurting. “I…think I got stabbed.”
“You think?” With a grimace Kokichi unties his scarf from around his neck, then waves it towards Shuuichi. “Hey — what’s black, white, and red all over?”
“A newspaper?”
“Wooow, you’re bad at this! I was gonna say a badger in a blender.” His scarf he finally drops, holding his arms out in front of him to assess them both. Feeling kind of like he’s been put in a blender himself, Shuuichi pulls a face. “Stabbed, huh? Where?”
“Hand.” And man does it hurt as Shuuichi works his jacket off as carefully as he can. “She was about a half-second away from going all the way through it.”
Kokichi parrots the “Ew,” that Shuuichi had supplied earlier as he flips the top of his backpack open and shoves a hand in. Kicking his shoes off, Shuuichi considers for a few seconds the pros and cons of stripping his jeans off out here, or hiding away in the bathroom to metaphorically — but also kind of literally — lick his numerous stinging wounds. A brief glance over at Kokichi makes up his mind; he’s already just in his boxers, working at wiggling on a pair of oversized sweatpants. Next to his backpack on the bed is a first-aid kit he recognizes him pilfering from Mikan’s cabin, and a small cylindrical container of something he doesn’t.
His shirt he keeps on, but while Kokichi’s still got his back turned, he borrows his idea and trades his bloodied, ripped up jeans for his own pair of sweatpants. The cuts he’d earned on his legs are concentrated below the knee, so once he’s bunched the cuffs up he’s suitably covered from view and able to deal with the wounds…somehow.
None of them are particularly deep, save for the stab — puncture? Is stab kind of dramatic…? — wound on his left hand, but they’re long, and Syo’s blades were unnaturally sharp, and each one stings, even hours later. One beneath his left knee, a long one down the length of his right calf, and one on his ankle that throbs as he recalls how she’d nearly succeeded in skewering him through that limb, too. His arms are torn up in a good few spots, and of course the worst of it is that left hand — other than that, he can see the proof of at least a few littering his torso from the blood staining his shirt, and then the one on his left shoulder that still hurts pretty bad.
The mattress next to him dips down with a new weight atop it, and when Shuuichi looks up from himself he finds Kokichi settling down unceremoniously across from him on the bed, depositing the first-aid kit and the uncapped jar of something between them. “That nurse may have been crazy, but her stash did come in handy. Stealing from the gods has its perks.”
Shuuichi’s hardly in a position to argue. Kokichi’s got a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide occupying his lap, so for the minute he contents himself with pulling out an assortment of bandages to match the number of cuts he thinks he has. As he does, his eyes catch on the container of translucent green…something. “What’s this?”
“Why don’t you put it on and find out?” Kokichi counters unhelpfully, uncapping the peroxide with his teeth and spitting it to the side once he’s got it open, dabbing a cotton ball at the opening with his other hand.
He’s pretty sure Kokichi wouldn’t screw him too badly when they’re both as messed up as they are, and anyway — there’s several finger-swipes off the top of whatever’s inside the jar. If he were feeling any better, he’d put up more of an effort to interrogate him, if just to quell his own curiosity. But he’s not, he’s feeling pretty firmly like garbage, so Shuuichi obediently dips two of his fingertips inside and begins spreading it across the small pierce-wound on his ankle, aware of the way Kokichi watches as he does.
Immediately he lets out a sigh of relief as the cool, jelly-like substance soothes the lingering bite of the scissor wound. Now he is properly curious, but Kokichi, apparently pleased by his willingness to listen without complaint, offers him a real answer before he has to ask.
“Goddess of Vitality has some value, I guess. Feels better, right?” Shuuichi nods, and he’s flashed a grin in response. Before he’s even bothered bandaging the wound on his ankle, he’s applying more of the salve onto the remaining cuts on his legs. “It’s magic. And that’s not a lie — these nasty cuts should be ancient history by morning.”
“How lucky.”
Kokichi snorts, abandoning the bloodied cotton ball and antiseptic unceremoniously on the floor in favor of Shuuichi’s method of just figuring the magic will make sure he doesn’t die of gangrene. He’s got a gauze pad somewhat clumsily taped down over the puncture near his ankle, and as he looks up to reach for another one, he notices Kokichi’s other hand — the one not currently applying a generous layer to a deep slice across the length of his shin — fidgeting with a necklace that Shuuichi…doesn’t recognize.
What he twists between his fingers is dainty and lithe, some sort of strange pendant design of what looks to be two thin hooks interlocking. Attached to the loopy red charm is a simple silver chain, and when he drops it and allows it to settle against his chest again, the uncurved side of the bottom hook falls to sit at the top of his sternum.
Shuuichi’s certain he’s never seen it before, but he’s also quite certain that if he doesn’t play his cards right, he’ll overstep like he already has multiple times today and screw himself out of yet another answer. So he makes sure his gaze doesn’t linger, instead handing off to Kokichi a roll of medical tape after he’s padded the shin cut adequately. “Did you, ah, borrow anything else from Mikan? Or are we out of surprises?”
“Why Shuuichi, with me, you’ll never run out of surprises!” To prove his point, he picks up a clean cotton ball and flicks it at his face. All things considered, it’s one of the least awful surprises Shuuichi’s had all day. “All her jewelry was chintzy cheapo garbage, so there’s no hope for us spinning that for a profit. First-aid kit’s borrowed, too, but other than that nada. For a chick meant to be Junko’s gal-pal, she sure doesn’t live like Big Five god eye candy!”
“‘Eye candy’…?”
As he pulls the leg of his sweats back down Kokichi giggles, shooting Shuuichi a sly look across the bed. “Yeah, you’re right, Shuuichi! She doesn’t have looks or a winning personality — I dunno what the hell Junko sees in that dumb broad.”
Seems he’s still holding a grudge from when Mikan prodded roughly at his strange hand wound. Not that Shuuichi really blames him — and not like he’d make this observation openly — but even Kaede, who was targeted with laser-focus and nearly died just because of who her mom is, didn’t have that much vitriol for the goddess. Kokichi being one to hold grudges is about the least surprising fact that he could possibly discern from him, though, so it seems banal to point it out.
However, the observation has called to mind another lingering question. But he’s getting ahead of himself — Shuuichi’s already screwed this line of questioning up, he may as well get a successful one under his belt before attempting it again. Kokichi’s begun working on his right arm, scowling down at the mess as he just slathers himself all over with the paste.
“Oh, Kokichi.” He’s twisted just right to reveal a ribbon-thin line dragging down his shoulder blade, but when he turns at the sound of his name, Shuuichi loses sight of it. “You have one on your back. A cut.”
“Hmmm?” Craning his neck, Kokichi makes a show of examining the wrong shoulder before he winces for real, and instead slaps a hand down lightly on the correct side. “Oopsie poopsie, guess I do! Astute observation — real eagle-eyed, you are. It’s not too bad, is it? Doctor, what’re my chances?”
Kokichi slaps a band-aid down on a small nick across his wrist as Shuuichi manages a tired smile along with the show he makes of rolling his eyes. “I think you’ll live. Turn around?” He does, more careful this time, and Shuuichi leans forward slightly to inspect, arm hovering in the air until he thinks way, way better of it and drops his hand back onto the bed before he can touch Kokichi like a weirdo. “Y-Yeah, it’s not too deep, just a graze.”
“Oh, thank goodness! I thought it was terminal!” Kokichi sniffs dramatically, wiping beneath his eyes though he doesn’t bother with the fake crying — he hasn’t for a minute, now, if Shuuichi’s remembering correctly. Though it’s not as though they’ve really had the time. “Silver linings, that two-faced hag only got me good in spots I can reach.”
“Do you…need help?”
Shuuichi’s a little surprised at the forwardness of the offer, but if Kokichi takes offense, he chooses not to let it be known. “Only if my beloved Shuuichi wouldn’t mind.”
He bats his long eyelashes playfully, and the brief quiet that settles feels decidedly like an opportunity for an out. Instead of taking it, Shuuichi plasters a bandage over a cut on his torso before wiping his hand off on his wrecked jacket and gesturing towards the healing salve. “Of course not. I — I mean…we’re a little, ah, past that, don’t you think?”
If he were to rank them, he’d argue sleeping in the same way-too-small wall bed is objectively a more awkward endeavor than patching up a friend. Still, even if it’s not exactly what he intends — Shuuichi would bet on it, though — the care he puts into gauging permission is…kind, if again, they’re a little past the formality given the circumstances.
Not needing to be told twice, Kokichi spins around on the bed, scooting himself close enough that his back presses into Shuuichi’s criss-crossed legs. The cut is no more concerning up close; armed with the magic stuff and a large patch of gauze, he makes quick work of coating it with the jelly and carefully covering the wound up with the pad and medical tape. As he does, Kokichi goes back to fidgeting with his necklace, the chain pulled taut against the skin on the back of his neck, only visible beneath his dark hair while Shuuichi’s in arm’s reach.
“Did you borrow that from Mikan, too?”
“Hmm?”
Whether or not his confusion is feigned, Shuuichi offers as casual an elaboration as he can. “That necklace. Didn’t you say all of her stuff was kind of…trashy?”
“Oh, it was,” Kokichi hums, and when Shuuichi peers over his shoulder, he can see him again twisting the pendant between his fingers. “I could lie and say I did steal it from her, but that would be lame, ‘cause you guessed that already. The real answer is just as pathetically boring, unfortunately. I spent the last of my money on a souvenir from the museum’s gift shop! Cool, huh?”
This time, he slides the chain around his neck enough for him the wave the charm at where Shuuichi’s still right behind him, smoothing down the gauze once more. The red metal is shiny in the yellowish lights of the hotel room.
“I…hope it was worth it,” Shuuichi eventually answers, figuring he’s being about as truthful as Kokichi is — which is to say, he really doubts it’s the case. But now hardly seems like the minute to push on his more…klepto-maniacal tendencies. “Okay, I think I’m all done. Is there anything else you need help with?”
“Oho? Offering to patch all my grievous wounds for me, Shuumai?” Again Kokichi spins, facing him again in a flash, their crossed knees pressed together from their proximity on the mattress. He definitely feels himself go red from the contact and the teasing lilt in his voice, but he manages a smile despite it.
“Shut up.”
“So hostile! So mean!”
Kind of stupidly, Shuuichi’s waited to deal with his left hand — and he’s feeling that choice now as he squeezes his eyes shut and applies a heavy amount of the healing serum to the puncture wound on his palm. Theoretically, if this actually works in the way Kokichi insists, it should be gone by the time he wakes up — regardless, he still spends longer than necessary agonizing over a band-aid or wrapping his whole hand in bandages for the night. Given the severity of the wound, he goes for the latter, but as he’s moving to reach for the gauze next to Kokichi’s leg he pauses to instead look at his hand, balanced palm-up on his knee not unlike Shuuichi’s.
Kokichi didn’t actually answer his question earlier, at the museum, about how he got the gnarly scar. Maybe he should take a hint and just let it go, but…
Well, Kokichi did agree that they’re a little past that.
Shuuichi’s not expecting himself to go and touch him, though, but by the time his brain is catching up to his movement, he’s grazing two fingertips very lightly over the raised pink scar. Kokichi doesn’t shove him away — or, as he expects more, make fun of him for his forwardness — so it can’t be too big of a blunder.
Nonetheless, it’s still an incredibly embarrassing thing to do, and he can’t look up from Kokichi’s palm as his ears warm with the feeling. “I’m glad this one finally healed. It was…kind of scary, when it wouldn’t stop bleeding a few days ago.”
He’s still not looking, but the weight of eyes on him is heavy enough to be felt. Kokichi doesn’t respond, so he carries on to fill the silence, the mood of which will likely be determined by whatever falls out of Shuuichi’s mouth next.
“Even Mikan couldn’t heal it properly, right?” Kokichi is very good at keeping still when he wants to; Shuuichi’s unsure quite what to make of it. “You said earlier that your hand is ‘ruined’, which I don’t really think is true. But, ah, whatever could injure you like that…I hope it doesn’t happen again. I…would definitely prefer not to see you get hurt anymore.”
Finally building the nerve to look at Kokichi while still touching his hand — his own feels a little sweaty, and he seriously hopes it’s not obvious — he finds he’s already being watched. The intensity of his eyes isn’t really a surprise anymore, but up close the impact of them is enough to leave Shuuichi feeling a little breathless, anyway. He gets the distinct impression that Kokichi isn’t performing at this moment, which is…certainly something. Instead he’s openly analyzing Shuuichi, picking him apart like a puzzle, which…isn’t exactly a shock, either. But Kokichi is more than capable of reading him like a book while not looking as though it’s taking him very much effort at all.
Kokichi’s putting in effort now, as they hold eye contact, the pads of Shuuichi’s fingers still twitching against the scar. And Shuuichi’s not really sure what to make of any of it.
“…Why do you even care?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Shuuichi counters, though it takes effort on his part to keep his eyes on Kokichi’s. He’s still considering his options on his verbal answer, but looking away would feel akin to failing a test, so he forces it. “I told you already…we’re friends. Of course I don’t want to see you in any kind of pain.”
A longer stretch of silence, as Kokichi considers that. Finally: “Jeez…you earnest protagonist types.”
Before Shuuichi quite figures out what he means, Kokichi flashes him a small smile, drumming his fingers against the ones Shuuichi still has pressed into his palm. The sensation finally pulls him out of the prolonged stretch of eye contact, but this time, looking down at the point where they’re touching feels more like the right thing to do.
“I’ve been sparing you an answer ‘cause I didn’t think it was worthy of gracing Shuuichi’s precious ears, but you’ve kept up the worry-wart schtick long enough that I guess I might as well tell you, if only to shut you up. But if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you for real, got it?”
Not the most convincing threat Shuuichi’s heard tonight. It’s pretty obvious that was the intention. “It’s so embarrassing I could just throw up and die, you know? Kokichi Ouma, supreme leader of doom and despair, losing half my body weight in blood all because I cut myself on your brother’s stupid bat! Guess that’s what I get for digging around my backpack in the dark. That’ll teach me to do anything nice for anybody ever again! Evil’s way easier.”
About what Shuuichi expected, given the clues he’s observed thus far. It’s not a deduction worth pointing out, given its obviousness. “That explains why it was bleeding so badly, right? I’ve never seen it up close, but when we’ve, uh, used the bat before…it’s not normal, that’s for sure.”
“Tell me about it.” Kokichi finally draws his hand up from his lap, and Shuuichi retrieves his own while continuing to look at the scar. “I dunno if it ever would’ve clotted properly. The only thing that kept me from bleeding out was the magic stuff I borrowed — and even then, it healed over fuck-ugly, huh?”
“I’m sorry,” Shuuichi says gently, because he is; if Rantarou’s bat is really that dangerous, then he feels even worse about making Kokichi carry it around in his backpack. No matter how nonsensical the logistics of that are. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take it back?”
“Oh, Shuuichi, I was lying when I told you I hate carrying all your stuff! Lugging around spooky crap from guys I just met is my jam.” Briefly he turns his hand over to inspect his nails. “Juuust kidding. Y’know, I can’t tell if you’re real committed to the goody-two-shoes chivalry bit, or if you’re just kinda dumb.”
“Why does that make me dumb?” Despite himself he frowns, eyebrows pulling together. Kokichi snickers at him, pressing a finger against the middle of his forehead until he relaxes the muscles there and releases his pursed expression.
“Don’t look so offended. It makes sense I carry the dangerous weapon, if you put your noggin to work for a second to think about it. I sliced myself ‘cause I couldn’t see inside my bag — the only place it’s even gonna fit, Shuuichi, really. You’d probably kill yourself after carrying it around for five minutes.”
As he speaks, Kokichi leans over across the bed to reach for his backpack, squeezing one of the cat’s paws idly as he retrieves something from inside; not the bat, but instead two packs of peanut butter crackers. “Dinner?”
“Thanks.” Shuuichi tears the cellophane with his teeth as he finally gets to work wrapping his left hand. While he works Kokichi takes to eating his own ‘dinner’, and by the time his worst wound is bandaged and he can push the first of his crackers into his mouth, he’s worked up the courage to ask after the other curiosity Kokichi’s brought to the forefront of his mind.
“How…does it even fit in there, anyway?”
He’s given a flat look in response. “Gods, New Kid, you’re a real bad listener. I gave you this lore already!” A finger is waggled disapprovingly in his face, and he scrunches his nose at the intrusion into his bubble — a little unjustified, seeing as they are still sitting close enough that their knees brush — while he rubs more of the healing stuff against a shallow cut on his side, not bothering with a band-aid.
“I remember the lore. You scared the hell out of me in the bathroom, and said I could look in your ‘bottomless backpack’ because I found you first.”
“At least I don’t have to worry about you developing early-onset dementia!” How dark. “I would just cry and cry if my beloved Shuuichi forgot even a single word I’ve said to him! Especially the lies!”
“Like the prize you promised me?” Surrounding the both of them on top of the bedspread is a mountain of discarded band-aid papers, and as he chews another cracker Kokichi gathers them all up, crumpling them together into a ball inside his closed fist.
Shuuichi’s not expecting such obvious bait to work, especially when Kokichi takes a minute to digest it. But when he looks up from where he’s sticking one last bandage over a cut on his bicep, Kokichi’s watching him curiously, backpack pulled fully into his lap.
“No way! You won that game fair and square, I definitely wouldn’t lie about a reward like that!” Kokichi takes a moment to consider that, waving the bag’s paws at him. “But I guess you’re right, you never did get your prize! Okay, Shuuichi — you better prepare your brain, okay? Mere mortals have perished at the sight of my bottomless bag when not adequately prepared for its glory!”
A grandiose explainer spiel, as is to be expected of any endeavor Kokichi’s spearheading. Shuuichi smiles along, more apt to feeling fondly amused now that he’s not actively bleeding all over the place. After taking another few seconds to look between his bag and Shuuichi, finally it’s plopped into his still-crossed lap, the pink cat’s-head flap staring up pitifully at him. Up close to it for the first time, he notes it’s not really a backpack; it’s got the straps for it, but its build is more like a drawstring bag, less…secure, than Shuuichi assumed when viewing it from afar. At Kokichi’s encouraging nod, he tugs one end of the loose bow tying the bag shut, then somewhat warily takes a peek inside.
Where he immediately sees nothing. Crumpled pink velvet lining the inside of what is a very empty, very small little bag. Probing the interior with his hand reveals little else; the bottom of the supposedly bottomless bag is soft and clearly felt against his right palm. But he’s seen Kokichi pull some really weird and large things out of here, so a complete lie is out of the question.
“…I think I’m doing it wrong,” Shuuichi admits sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders — and shifting his binder against that lingering cut, ouch. “It’s empty.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Kokichi snickers at the unimpressed look Shuuichi shoots at him as he retrieves his hand, gives the bag back when Kokichi reaches for it. “I see how it is! That’s it — feast your eyes, Shuuichi! I’ll teach you to accuse me of being a filthy liar!”
Maintaining an affronted scowl Kokichi dips a hand into the bag, shoving his arm in basically up to his elbow while he rifles around for something. After a pregnant pause he breaks into a grin, declaring, “Aha!” while drawing his hand back out, and with it something thin and black-and-white, sticking out just a few inches from the bag’s opening.
He definitely hadn’t seen or felt anything like that inside, but before he can comment on it Kokichi’s pulling with both hands at the exposed end of what he’s freed from the bag, and Shuuichi can only watch dumbstruck as an absurdly long checker-patterned handkerchief pools around them both on the bed. The display lasts well over a minute, even as Kokichi makes an effort to yank at it as fast as he can. When they’re both tangled in the length and it still shows no sign of ending, Shuuichi joins in with a laugh, bumping hands with Kokichi as they take turns trying to free it from the confines of the bag.
By the end of it the two of them are pretty well wrapped up in the sprawling thin fabric when they finally unearth the other side of the scarf. A moment later Kokichi mimes jazz-hands at him, and it leaves Shuuichi laughing again. “Seeee? You should never, ever doubt me, Shuuichi! That’s the truth!”
“Impressive magic trick,” he concedes in reply, glancing down at himself where he’s got the scarf looped around his body no less than five times. Kokichi seems as good a culprit as any to blame his entanglement on. “But I don’t really think it proves that it’s bottomless.”
“Tough crowd.” Sighing dramatically, Kokichi spends a few seconds futilely kicking away the monochrome fabric bunched by his legs, then hops to his feet while dragging the bag towards the edge of the bed. Shoving his arm back inside, he sniffs Shuuichi’s way, waiting for him to also unwrap himself from the aftermath of his prank before continuing, “I’m no show dog, y’know? I don’t bark or do tricks on command. So pay attention, ‘kay? You should be thankful I’m humoring you at all!”
“Thanks,” Shuuichi offers helpfully. He gets a raspberry blown at him in response.
“Oooh, here we are!”
Out of the bag’s opening, like a rabbit out of a hat, Kokichi reveals Rantarou’s bat to the room. He takes care to wield it away from his body as he drops the bag onto the floor, then mimes a swing of the bat towards Shuuichi while popping his tongue loudly at him. Before he can open his mouth to eat his humble pie, Kokichi carelessly discards the bat, and it falls forgotten against the bed as Kokichi follows his bag to the carpet, pulls it wide open, and—
—Proceeds to try to stuff himself inside.
“K-Kokichi!”
By the time Shuuichi can scramble off the bed after him, Kokichi’s managed to disappear head-first, all the way down to his hips into his bag, and he shows no signs of stopping until Shuuichi wraps his hands around one of his bony ankles and yanks. He stops resisting easily enough, but it’s still a pain — and seriously painful, ow his shoulder! — dragging him back out of the depths of his observably bottomless backpack.
“Thanks! I don’t actually know what happens if I do that.”
While Shuuichi splutters, he’s only given an unconcerned, doe-eyed look in response. “Th-Then why do it in the first place?!”
“Dunno! Sure was fun, though. Hey.” He’s still holding onto Kokichi’s ankle, he realizes belatedly, only as he’s lightly kicked off. Snatching up the bag again, Kokichi rolls slightly closer to where Shuuichi’s splayed out on the floor, then holds the bag open to him. “Wanna see how it works?”
“Are you going to jump inside of it again?”
He shrugs. “Nope! I’m bored of that bit now. Now shut up and close your eyes, would ya?”
Obediently — and against his better judgment — Shuuichi complies. The bag is dropped into his lap again, and a moment later his unbandaged right hand is picked up and placed on top of the cat’s head. While waiting for further direction, he pets it.
Soft…
“Stick your hand in.” When he does, he’s greeted with nothing but the velvety lining. “Empty, right? Take it out…‘kay! Now, picture in your brain a balloon animal. Red. Cutest thing you’ve ever seen.”
“Is it a dog?”
“No, Shuuichi, it’s a goddamn Monokub. Yes, it’s a dog!”
“I—I’m trying to visualize it accurately! I’m playing along!”
Kokichi responds to that by tugging on Shuuichi’s arm and forcefully shoving his hand back into the bag. Wincing at the way it causes a flash of pain up his other shoulder, he nonetheless follows the nonverbal direction. Instead of brushing against the bottom again, his fingers find the smooth exterior of a balloon, static-y from the friction against the bag’s fuzzy insides. Blinking his eyes open, he finds he has, in fact, pulled out a cute little balloon dog.
“When did you even have time to make this…? And how didn’t it pop while in there with the bat?”
“That’s what you’re worried about? Man, and I took all this time to show it off, too…you didn’t even figure it out!”
Shuuichi rolls his eyes. “You just have to know what’s inside the bag to take things out, right?”
“Oh. Huh! Guess you did figure it out.” Kokichi draws it out of Shuuichi’s lap and back into his, pausing for a few seconds to dig around inside. The balloon animal he receives this time is blue, and shaped like a bear. “I did actually make a Monokub.”
“What are you, a clown?”
“I guess that depends on whether or not I throw this pie in your face!”
It’s an angel pie, actually, which Shuuichi appreciates when Kokichi does toss the wrapped treat he pulls from the bag at his head. The surprised squeak he lets out is suitably embarrassing, and he quickly shifts gears to move on from it. “Seriously, ah…point proven, about your backpack. But where do you even get something like that? Rantarou’s bat, and I guess the helmet, too…god stuff is so weird.”
Instead of replying right away, Kokichi retrieves the bat — knocked down onto the floor when Shuuichi dove off the bed — and smoothly fits it back inside his bag, before yanking the drawstrings and tying it shut with a bow. “I can’t go giving away all my secrets. Speaking of — you good over there? You keep making weird faces.”
“I…do?” Shuuichi asks, a little self-conscious.
“Yeah. You leaving one of those cuts unhealed for a reason, or is the self-flagellation just for the hell of it?”
Oh. Huffing a relieved chuckle, Shuuichi uses the bed as leverage to rise to his feet, kind of proving Kokichi’s observation correct when the strain — and the reminder — has his shoulder stinging again. “No, it’s not…I — I was distracted by you playing hide-and-seek in your bag!”
“I told you already, that got boring.” Kokichi also gets to his feet, tossing his bag onto the other bed but settling back onto Shuuichi’s along with him. “I’m done now, so what gives?”
“My shoulder.” He crosses his right arm over his chest to try and prod at the wound on his left side, but it’s out of reach and just that much movement is painful, so he doesn’t really get anywhere. “It’s not that bad, I’ll be fine, just — sharp. I bet Syo’s scissors were magic, too…”
“Probably. That’s why it’s, like, uncharacteristically dumb for Shuuichi not to put the nurse lady’s magic goop on it! You bleed out a few IQ points?”
Shuuichi bites his lip as he processes the dilemma that’s cropped up. Before he finds an excuse, Kokichi continues, “Not that I care, since I’m so evil and villainous and all, but if you need a hand taking care of it I guess I don’t mind. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, or something stupid like that.”
“I, uh…”
At his hesitation Kokichi shrugs, leaning back after he’d shifted minutely into Shuuichi’s space again following the offer. It leaves Shuuichi frowning, drawing a spot of blood on his bottom lip, and when he turns away from Kokichi, his gaze shifts to his duffle bag, still sitting kind of abandoned near the headboard of his bed. Near the top, he knows, is his hat.
Kokichi’s not wrong, that there’s no good reason for Shuuichi to neglect the last of Syo’s untreated scissor wounds. And he’s also offering, not even crossing a new boundary as he does, because Shuuichi did the same thing for him a little while ago. According to the others, they’re closing in on Celestia’s Palace — the stronghold containing the entrance to the Underworld — and they could make it as soon as tomorrow night. Though he has no idea what to expect from anything there, stumbling into what’s definitely enemy territory with an unnecessary wound…it’s just not rational.
The other option, of course, is to allow Kokichi to patch him up, and out himself to him in the process.
Shuuichi thinks of his hat again. When he’d shoved it into his bag ahead of reentering the museum pre-heist Kaito had been so proud, and he’d felt a hint of that confidence he’d been assured he can find, so long as he believes in himself. Gotten a taste of what it’s like to play the starring role in his own life, be the protagonist in his own story. Even if he can’t really believe it, not yet…well, Rantarou’s abduction and the appearance of gods and the threat of worldwide armageddon have kind of pushed him into the main character position, whether he likes it or not. If he’s going to save the world, save Rantarou, he needs to act like the protagonist he’s been forced to become. And that means not handicapping his world-saving team because he’s spent his whole life hiding.
He isn’t hiding anymore. He doesn’t need to. There’s no terrible, awful truth hiding beneath the surface — just Shuuichi.
“…I’d appreciate the help, Kokichi. Thank you.”
Kokichi raises an eyebrow in response, expression otherwise neutral — seems he didn’t keep his initial hesitation as close to his chest as he hoped. But he’s already accepted the helping hand, and he has little interest in making this more of a thing by letting Kokichi question his decision. So without another word spared Shuuichi takes the initiative to twist himself around, positioning his back to Kokichi to give him access to his shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a real peach. Alright, New Kid, what’re we working with?”
The mattress dips behind him as Kokichi crawls into place, and from the shadow that looms over him a moment later — as well as the press of legs into his back this time — he deduces easily enough that he’s sitting on his knees. In lieu of a verbal answer, Shuuichi spins his and Rantarou’s tangled bracelets anxiously around his wrist a few times, before taking a deep breath and finally moving to get his shirt off and out of the way. It sticks grossly to his skin as he pulls it off by the collar, and he hesitates a lot less now to fully twist himself out of it and discard it on top of his other ruined clothing from the evening.
Behind him Kokichi hums, and a moment later he feels a cold fingertip gently run along the skin next to the cut, stopping before he quite reaches the fabric of his binder. “I’m no doctor, but I’d put your chances of survival at maybe thirty percent.”
Though his responding chuckle is a little forced, Shuuichi manages, “Is that so?”
“Maaaybe twenty-five. At least, it would be if it weren’t for the magic stuff!” Two fingers, cool from the healing jelly instead of just ambient body temperature, carefully begin applying a generous amount to what is definitely a pretty nasty cut after all. It immediately soothes the lingering pain, and the breath he puffs out is one of relief — for a few reasons.
Clearly, Kokichi notices — if the playful tone he’d adopted once Shuuichi tossed his shirt aside wasn’t enough of a clue-in, then him very carefully and very silently shifting the strap of his binder aside enough to finish applying the salve to the cut certainly is. Kokichi notices, because he’s smart, and he has other trans friends, and he has eyes…
…And the world doesn’t end.
Not that Shuuichi was banking on that — not today, at least, and not because of this — if he’s being perfectly honest with himself, in the silence that settles as Kokichi adds another layer of the jelly for good measure. He’s no stranger to Kokichi’s — mostly purposeful — lack of tact at times, but right now…he’s not afraid of him being indelicate. He’s not really afraid at all, actually, which he wasn’t expecting. Isn’t expecting. Shuuichi was fully expecting to have to white-knuckle through this, slink into the bathroom to recover as soon as he’s patched up, and then hide away from any further conversation under the excuse of getting a much-needed night of sleep.
“How lucky, Shuuichi! That stinkbug slid her scissors just right and somehow only trashed your t-shirt!”
As Kokichi tapes down the last corner of gauze over the cut, his breath fans across the back of Shuuichi’s neck, and he’s really not afraid at all.
Hearing that one of the few binders he has with him isn’t ruined is relieving, and he’s opening his mouth to make a stupid joke himself about Nagito’s luck when Kokichi’s hands smooth over the tops of his shoulders, then squeeze once, and Shuuichi’s voice gets a little tangled in his throat. For a half-second he tenses on instinct, but it’s easier to get his posture to unwind when he’s feeling decidedly unafraid in the presence of…a friend he trusts. Kokichi releases him a moment later, but it’s not from being shaken off, pushed away this time; it’s with another light squeeze, and when Shuuichi looks over his shoulder to gauge how he’s feeling…he’s smiling.
“Good?”
“Yeah. Good.”
True as that may be, he is still shirtless, and he’d really like to take his binder off now. So with a small, matching smile sent Kokichi’s way he pushes himself off the bed, dragging his duffle bag close in order to retrieve something to sleep in. Still on Shuuichi’s bed — at least it is in his mind, his blood’s all over it, surely that’s adequate enough a ‘dibs’ — Kokichi flops onto his back, picking up both discarded balloon animals and miming them around on his chest instead of watching Shuuichi too closely.
“You gonna shower?” Kokichi asks, not looking up from where the faces of the red dog and blue Monokub are pressed together in a crude approximation of a kiss.
“In the morning. It’d be a pain to have to change all the bandages after…and it probably won’t hurt as much if all the cuts are healed.”
“Wooow, Shuuichi has such good ideas! I’m so totally a morning shower kinda person, too. Hey, real quick — you still have that hoodie you let me wear after the truck died?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s right in my bag.” Shuuichi’s at the bathroom door now, paused in the threshold. “It’s all yours if you want it.”
“‘All mine’?! Oh, Shuumai, you disgustingly, sickeningly romant—”
Though he shuts the door firmly on Kokichi’s tease, Shuuichi’s laughing once he’s alone.
He doesn’t stay that way for long, though; his binder shucked off, he only bothers washing it briefly in the sink and scrubbing his top half with a washcloth to clear away the blood and grimy feeling before pulling his shirt over his head. Figuring Kokichi will want a turn before bed as well he leaves the light on, and when he steps back out into the main hotel room, Kokichi’s still digging around in his duffle bag. Next to him on the mattress is a charger (oh, right, my phone—), the Bewear plush, and a pink balloon animal that wasn’t there before.
“Is your bag actually just full of clown supplies?”
Kokichi snorts, but doesn’t acknowledge his comment otherwise. “Now we both have a cuddle buddy in the yakuza love hotel.”
“The what—”
“Yeesh, finally!” With two hands he pulls out what he’d been after, but also something else that drops out of the thick fabric and falls heavily onto the bed next to him. It doesn’t immediately hit Shuuichi what it is even though it’s obviously something of his, and he only recognizes the squared item once Kokichi picks it back up to observe it curiously — only to immediately toss it away, sharply averting his eyes in the other direction.
Stepping closer to the bed reveals it’s definitely his, he’s just completely forgotten he’d even packed it in the first place — the framed photo of him and his mom, taken when he was twelve, the both of them pictured just a few months before she died.
In an instant Kokichi’s thrown the sweatshirt over his head, moving to dismount from the bed with his eyes still downcast and an awkward apology falling past his lips. Before he can fully retreat Shuuichi takes a few steps closer, holding a hand out as he reaches for the picture with the other. “No, it’s okay.”
As he settles into a sit on the edge of the mattress, he notices that the glass in the frame is cracked. Kokichi’s paused near the edge, maybe a foot away, but he still doesn’t look at him. It sort of reminds Shuuichi of the previous night, where a…similar situation unfolded between him and Fuyuhiko.
“…I didn’t mean to break it.”
“I don’t think you actually did,” Shuuichi counters, unconcerned. “I honestly forgot I even brought it with me. I’m surprised it’s not way worse, considering what it’s been through since I left home.”
Appearing less skittish now, in the face of Shuuichi’s nonchalance, Kokichi gains a little more confidence as he fully relaxes on the bed again, pulling his legs up to cross them on the mattress and peering over curiously at the photo. “It’s…your mom, right?”
“Now who’s the detective?” At Shuuichi’s smile, Kokichi returns it, though the giggle he lets out is certainly a little put-on. “Yeah. Her name was Isako.”
It’s been a long time since he’s had reason to say her name. Introducing her to one of his friends…that’s as good an occasion as any, right? “I was twelve here. Since Rantarou and I became close, he would always invite me and my mom on his family’s summer vacations, and this was…the last one, before I moved in with him.”
His mom is smiling in the photo; they both are. Shuuichi was always a pain about taking photos at all, let alone smiling in them, but he’d been wrangled into it here. They’re sitting next to each other on a picnic blanket at one of the Togamis’ sprawling vacation properties, one of her arms around his shoulders to pull him against her side, the brightness of her wide grin rivaling the sunshine shining down on them both inside the frame. His own smile is shakier, more unsure, but even if it’s not well captured, there’s nothing but happiness for him in the memory.
“She’s pretty,” Kokichi observes after a long pause, where they both gaze down at the photo in his lap, not breaking the contemplative quiet. A moment later he glances up to find Kokichi already looking at him, wiggling his eyebrows with an understated smile. “I guess you got your looks from your godly parent, huh?”
Shuuichi snorts; his delivery is lighthearted, but he’s not exactly wrong. He never has looked much like his mom, and he really doesn’t in the photo, either. With their heads pressed close together his hair — black with dark blue undertones, even in the sun — is starkly different from his mom’s light brown. His eyes are brighter, more gold-toned, while hers were a dark brown that bordered on black. In the summer she developed light freckles, but Shuuichi just tends to burn.
He’s been quiet a little too long, he can see it on Kokichi’s face, so he scrambles to be reassuring before he screws this up. “Maybe. I know you’re just joking, but…that’s never mattered to me. Still doesn’t. She’s my mom, and all the good parts I inherited came from her.”
It hits him then that perhaps this is more weighty a conversation than either of them were prepared to have a few minutes ago. Not only is the dead mom topic…a lot, but he’s also unloading it on Kokichi. An orphan. Whose sore spot around parents — especially godly parents — Shuuichi has observed for himself in his brief time knowing him.
“She would’ve liked you a lot, I think,” Shuuichi concludes eventually, offering him a sheepish smile alongside a shrug to try and offset some of the heavy air that’s settled.
Strangely, Kokichi seems to deflate a little at that, and Shuuichi could smack himself. Way to trip and fall at the finish line…!
“You think so?” Kokichi asks, voice quiet but tone…he’s not really sure. Whatever it is, though, it’s also a sign that Shuuichi needs to tread carefully unless he wants to mess this up twice in a row.
The answer he gives is honest — but tailored to his audience, for sure. “Definitely. She always did like the circus.”
It gets him laughed at, and whacked with the balloon dog, but he hardly has it in him to mind. Especially not when Kokichi recovers a moment later, expression playful, eyes shining with something that could almost maybe be pride.
“Y’know…” His gaze shifts only briefly back to the photo, and his smile twitches upward. “You may have gotten godly-level emo looks from whoever, but the human-level niceness you got from your mom…maybe I do see the resemblance.”
No more words pass between them, as the moment breaks and exhaustion from the past day settles in its place. Before Kokichi retreats over to his own bed he squeezes Shuuichi’s shoulder one more time, leaving Shuuichi a little red as he quickly packs the picture frame, and his dirty clothes, and the stupid balloon animals he’d been left with into his bag. Right before he shuts the lights out Kokichi offers him one more smile, one that feels genuine and earned, as does the following warmth in his chest.
When Shuuichi finally falls asleep, it’s while feeling a little bit more like a recovering protagonist.
Notes:
+ yeah, i really don't know how this ended up as lengthy as it did. am i upset about it? NO! i actually quite like what i've ended up with; i hope you all do, too!
+ i have a few little P.S.-notes at the bottom here, but not a lot of personal things to say. so...until next time (where more shenanigans are set to ensue, naturally)!
+ as always, i'll have my eyes on the comments, but if you'd like to hear back from me my inbox at gontagokuhara.tumblr.com is open! i'm gonna be replaying trial four of sdr2 soon so we've all got THAT (me crying and throwing up over it) to look forward to <3
+ content warnings: moderate descriptions of wounds as they're treated and healed (thanks, magic!)
+ ** 'angel pies' are the japanese equivalent of american moon pies — marshmallow filling, two graham cookies, coated in chocolate. yum!
+ *** kokichi is such a clown show of a character (affectionate) (...mostly) i couldn't help but make him an actual one. there is, in fact, a large amount of clowning supplies in his bag, which is not at all relevant but very good for you all to know
+ **** for no specific reason, the kanji for shuuichi's mom's name (isako) is 義子 !
Chapter 18: one big happy family car ride that goes very, very normally
Summary:
Shuuichi’s head is pounding.
It wasn’t so bad, to begin with, at least when the day first started. He’d actually been kind of stoked — buried far, far beneath the anxiety of oh gods we only have two days left that he’d woken up with and still has yet to shake — because most of his scissor wounds had healed overnight. Slightly harder to appreciate was the sting of the hot shower on the ones that had not, and the insistent gnaw of hunger after going to bed without a proper meal. And by the time Maki was pounding on their front door just past sunrise, he’d more or less succumbed to the bad mood settling over everyone.
Notes:
+ halloween update? i didn't plan it this way, but it's sure fun how it's worked out!
+ life has been...odd...since the last update. writing this was a much-needed distraction in the midst of my community making national news lol
+ THAT said....oh wow did this chapter absolutely run away from me. final count is around 10.6k i do believe...so we may as well get right into it! as always, content warnings in the end notes for those that need a heads-up
+ one more thing: thank you to my dearly beloved proofreader and kokichi correspondent evan captorvatiing <3 hopefully there will be less typos for me to quietly go back and fix over the next 48 hours
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Shuuichi’s head is pounding.
It wasn’t so bad, to begin with, at least when the day first started. He’d actually been kind of stoked — buried far, far beneath the anxiety of oh gods we only have two days left that he’d woken up with and still has yet to shake — because most of his scissor wounds had healed overnight. Slightly harder to appreciate was the sting of the hot shower on the ones that had not, and the insistent gnaw of hunger after going to bed without a proper meal. And by the time Maki was pounding on their front door just past sunrise, he’d more or less succumbed to the bad mood settling over everyone.
And he does mean everyone. Kokichi hadn’t reneged on his offer to let Shuuichi shower first, but he almost wished he had so it wouldn’t have been just him left to face Maki’s ire when she caught he was mostly healed up and demanded to know what was going on.
Suffice to say, Kokichi had not informed the rest of the group about the magic jelly he had lifted from Mikan’s cottage. And suffice to say, after finding out how needlessly painful their previous night of sleep was, they were mad.
That’s about where Shuuichi’s headache started, and it only got worse from there.
By the time they’ve all caught onto how crappy everything is seeming that morning, no one’s feeling particularly up to making the usual joke at a certain god’s expense. Bad luck appears to be striking hard, and it only manages to compound once they’ve left way too late from the Kuzuryuu hotel property, none of them eager to spend another long stretch in the car.
Their first hiccup: the sharp ringing of Kaito’s phone, directly in front of Shuuichi where he’d snagged a seat in the way back on Kiibo’s right. If any of them had forgotten that their head start promised to them by Fuyuhiko and Peko was over, then they certainly knew then, as all of their phones lit up with more calls to be ignored from the people that care about them most — everyone but Kaito had just had the sense to silence their phones ahead of the onslaught. Kokichi and Kaito had it in them to restrain from snapping at each other too hard — at that point in the morning, at least, it didn’t last — but with neither the hindsight nor the wherewithal to appreciate it in the moment, all Shuuichi could do was stare down at his phone and watch the missed calls roll in until the screen hurt his eyes too much, and he had to look away.
Of the hundreds of calls he’s received since all of this started, it’s the lack of any calls from Rantarou that manages to hurt the most.
The drive only devolves further.
Everyone’s hungry and agitated. There’s a period of a few minutes where there’s a collective freak-out because the helmet is gone, only for Kokichi to retrieve it nonchalantly from his backpack and earn angry, loud remarks from the others that do not do nice things at all for Shuuichi’s steadily-worsening headache. That angry loudness gets a lot more of both when at one point there’s an aggressive thump from the front of the car, a sharp jerking sensation as the vehicle swerves before being roughly realigned on the road, and Maki cursing loudly from the front informing them all that a rock had cracked the windshield.
Presently, Shuuichi hasn’t looked at his phone or even removed his hat from over his eyes in ages. His brain will probably explode. He’s gotten these shitty combination tension-aura migraine headaches pretty much since his mom died. And while they’re debilitating the day or two a month they crop up, he can usually hide away in his room with Makoto’s blessing, his cozy dark comforter pulled over his eyes as he rots beneath the blankets and tries not to knock himself out to escape how painful it is. How painful it is, and how they always manage to put him on edge, the arrhythmic pulse of anxiety almost as bad as his vision spotting and the bright, fizzy, technicolor distortions.
It makes him feel like he’s dying. Like his body is revolting against him for all that he makes it put up with. A doctor told him once when he brought it up offhandedly at an endocrinology appointment that his hormones might do him some good, counteract some risk where his aura migraines significantly increase the risk of a stroke, apparently, before sending him off on his way like it was a humorous little fun fact. Lots of internet researching had opened Shuuichi’s eyes to just how at-risk he was, with his headaches and his high blood pressure and his anxiety and his everything, and he’s very, very good at convincing himself each time that this is it, it’s over, every throb of his headache is a blood clot and he’s going to die as quickly and as meaninglessly as his mom did.
He’s absolutely missed this week’s testosterone shot — actually, he bets if he attempted to do the math backward including the three days he was apparently unconscious, he’s probably coming up on two weeks missed. Great. Who knows how long it’ll be, assuming the world doesn’t end in two days. It’s hardly going to kill him, or cause any significant changes unless he goes a really long time without getting back home. But now he’s thinking about aura stars, and percentiles for youth stroke deaths, and car accidents like the one that killed his mom, the one that took Rantarou, the one that just cracked the windshield, and how he has to stop the world from ending in two days.
Right. That’s the thing that’s way more likely to kill him in the very imminent future. If the god damn headache doesn’t wipe him out first — a prospect that seems ever increasingly likely the worse it gets, and the worse his anxiety about it and the tense car ride and the impending apocalypse and everything gets.
“Shuuichi…is everything alright?”
Mercifully, Kiibo keeps their voice quiet, a faint hum over the sound of the car moving fast down the expressway. Regardless he still cringes, squeezing his eyes reflexively against what he knows is coming before pushing his hat up, then immediately regretting it as rainbows move in zigzags across his badly blurred field of vision.
No, Shuuichi thinks miserably, rubbing at his eyes with his fingers and slowly inclining his head nearer to Kiibo.
“Yeah,” he lies instead, and though he’s not looking, Kiibo makes a quiet beep noise that sounds decidedly displeased. “I just…”
His brain is going to explode, if he doesn’t do something about it soon. If that can be avoided, he’d much appreciate it. “…I have a headache. I…don’t suppose anyone has any paracetamol, or something like that…?”
Had Shuuichi known what directing his question to the broader vehicle would culminate in, he would’ve cut his losses and just grit his teeth through it in silence.
Because of course, for all that they’ve lifted from stores at the mall and gas stations and a nurse goddess’ house, there ends up being not even a loose pill at the bottom of a first-aid kit. Healing jelly, heat packs, antacids, bandages — but the few bottles of painkillers that people do pull from what bags they have remaining are depleted and empty.
“Sorry, Shuuichi…” Kaede tells him sympathetically from the middle seat, tone dropping into concern when she turns to look back at him. “Hey, are you okay? You don’t…”
She doesn’t finish her thought, but Shuuichi winces anyway, only narrowly resisting the urge to retreat back under his hat, and instead rubbing at his eyes so he at least doesn’t have to watch as half the car immediately moves to stare back at him, too. Awesome. Perfect.
Shuuichi hardly needs to see them to hear their observations about him, though. Kaito picks up the slack Kaede left off on. “You sorta look like shit.”
“Maybe Mikan’s healing salve can fix it.”
“Jeez, Sushi Roll, you’re still mad about that?” Unfortunately, Maki is still mad about a lot of things. Kokichi is hardly helping. “It’s the end of the world, who’s up for letting go of all of our nasty grudges and holding hands while we drive into the sunset?”
“Gonta really don’t think Kokichi’s joke suggestions helping friends…”
“Yeah, right on, Gonts. I don’t wanna stop holding my grudges, either!”
“Th-That not what Gonta intended at all!”
Before Shuuichi really can recede beneath his hat again to wait it out, there’s a tap on his shoulder, and bright blue eyes blinking over at him, and scrawling electric green text across their collar — not like Shuuichi can read it right now. “Are you positive you’re alright? My sensors are detecting abnormal neurogenic activity…and really, you look…”
“What, am I having a stroke?”
In order to deflect from people asking after his appearance again Shuuichi tries to make a joke, but his voice comes out squeaky and it’s only something that makes sense to him and now Kiibo is really looking at him. “I assure you, I would let you know well before that happened!”
Ouch. Too loud. “Thanks, Kiibo…”
“You look a little green,” Kaito points out, seatbelt off and body fully spun around in his seat to look at him over the headrest. “You gonna be sick?”
“He better not be,” Maki says curtly from the front.
Also from the front: “Fresh air always make Gonta feel better when sick! Would Shuuichi like Gonta to open a window?”
“Oooh, good idea!”
A moment later, the sound of wind rushing loudly through Kokichi’s newly-cracked window as the car continues careening down the expressway. Visual and literal noise clouds Shuuichi’s senses.
“Would you knock it o—?” Kaede’s request is promptly drowned out by even more wind flooding into the vehicle as Gonta’s window opens as well. “Gonta, I really don’t think—”
“Kaede, please push that idiot out of the car.”
“M-Maki! Kaede no should do that!”
Good grief…
“Kokichi, you are so obnoxious! You’re not helping Shuuichi’s condition at all!” The click of another seatbelt being abandoned, and then the predominant sound in the car becomes Kiibo and Kokichi bickering as they fight over the fate of the window. “Gonta, would it be alright if you put your window up, as well…?”
“Mhm, Gonta can do that!”
“You’re the perfect gentleman as always, Gonta, thank you.”
“Gods, you are embarrassing.” An audible gag from Kokichi, as Kiibo is shoved back into their seat next to Shuuichi. The whipping wind noises are gone, but the damage is done. His skull squeezes like a vice around his pulsing brain. “Can you be a little less obvious while flirting with the big guy?”
“I — I object to that, K-Kokichi!”
“Man, will all of you can it? Shuuichi, dude, are you sure you’re good?”
“I’ll live.” Kaito makes an audible noise that tells Shuuichi he’s unconvinced by the clipped response he gets. “There’s not a lot I can do except…just tough it out, I guess.”
“We’ve still got loadsa time, right? Can’t we just stop somewhere and buy painkillers?”
“Uhm, Kaito, about that…”
Before Kaede can finish her more delicate denial, Maki beats her to the punch. “No, we can’t.”
“Are you certain, Maki? My readings on Shuuichi have not improved…”
“Do you think I’m being an asshole on purpose?”
“N-No, but—!”
“What Maki is saying,” Kaede cuts in forcefully, “is that even if we want to — which we do, of course, it’s not like we want any of us to suffer — we can’t. We’re…kinda out of money. Sorry, Shuuichi, but—”
“Wait, pause. How the hell’re we out of money?!”
“Obviously, someone spent too much of it, dipshit!”
“Piss off, Kokichi!”
And back under his hat Shuuichi goes. It does very little to spare either himself or his headache from the argument that he’s unintentionally prompted amongst the rest of the car.
“I am not letting you two argue over my head again! Just — listen to me!” Huffily, Kaede waits for Kaito and Kokichi to settle. “I double checked the cash we do have left when Shuuichi asked, and…seriously, guys, we gotta figure this out. We don’t even have enough money to buy all of us bus tickets once we get to the city.”
“What?!”
The chorus of voices are too loud and too much for Shuuichi to parse out who is who in the mix. It echoes the shared feelings in the car regardless.
“And we are just noticing this now?”
“Wh-Who the hell spent all our friggin’ money, anyway?”
“Perhaps you should ask Kokichi and his museum tickets.”
“So I can just toss your dad’s helmet out the window, then?”
“Do you want to die, you bastard?”
Vaguely, Shuuichi is reminded of the conversation he’d overheard between Makoto and Rantarou immediately following his expulsion from school. Like he had back then, before everything went wrong, he hides beneath his hat and tries his hardest to block out a conversation where everyone is upset and it’s his fault for starting it in the first place.
Also like last time, he is unsuccessful in escaping both the argument and his steadily-steepening anxiety.
“Wait, if we no have enough money for everyone to ride the bus…does that mean Gonta, or one of Gonta’s friends get left behind?”
“A-Absolutely not! As a counselor-in-training, there is no way we can leave anybody behind!”
“Uh, Kiibs, I agree and all…but why’s that your reasoning?”
An unkind snicker, then: “Seriously, and I thought Kaede’s hokey CIT schtick was bad!”
“I vote we leave Kokichi behind,” she shoots back immediately, though backtracks with a sigh to amend, “wait, no, the gods know where we’re headed now…and he’s definitely annoying enough to piss one off and get killed…”
“All the more reason to, honestly,” Maki muses from the front, to which Gonta loudly objects, “No! Gonta no will let any friend be left behind! Gonta will walk to Underworld so friends can ride bus…!”
“Ah, Shuuichi…? Y—”
The escalation from arguing about money to debating who gets left behind to fend for themselves feels distinctly like Shuuichi’s fault. In the brief moment it takes to shove his hat off his face and press his palms hard over his eyes, stars explode across his field of vision and leave his ears ringing. However Kiibo finishes their sentence, he loses it over the rush of wind blowing harshly through the car. He’s pretty sure all the windows are still shut.
“Also, uh, what the hell are we gonna eat? The last thing I had was that McDonald’s before the museum, and it just made my guts feel like crap!”
“I’m going to empty my guts if you keep talking about your crapping habits!”
“Kokichi, don’t you dare puke on me—!”
“U-Uhm, Shuuich—”
“Blehhhh—” Kokichi’s fake retching is cut off by the sound of, presumably, Kaede shoving him against the car door. “‘Kay, seriously, who blew the budget and fucked our finances over? Is the world really gonna end ‘cause one of us is a shopaholic? What a way to go out.”
“Fuck, man. If only we budgeted better, this wouldn’t be happening…!”
“Are you kidding? We only got this far because Kaede and I have been watching the money so you idiots don’t waste it on stupid shit,” Maki snaps. “Why don’t you ask Kokichi where he got the money for his new accessory?”
“You fucked over our quest for some shitty necklace?!”
Practically the whole car is yelling now — save for Kiibo at his side, murmuring his name with increasing urgency — and it’s so loud and it hurts so badly and it’s all Shuuichi’s fault, all of it. The world is ending because a monster attacked him, and Rantarou was taken trying to protect him, and a mad woman’s spear went missing and all the gods think it’s his fault and now they have two days left to save the world, save Rantarou, save themselves. Because if they don’t do this a lot of people are going to die, they still might die from an errant god or monster or just plain bad luck. They’re the only seven people on the planet who have a chance in Hell of postponing the apocalypse and now they might not all even get there, and it’s all his fault.
He’s not sure when it is exactly that he starts crying, but by the time he notices there are tears leaking through the cracks between his fingers, he’s a little too caught up trying not to hyperventilate through his guilt, and his stress, and his binder constricting his chest to do much about it. Kiibo’s still saying his name, the rest of the car is still shouting, and when he pulls his hands from his eyes to claw at his chest like that will help, everything he sees is blurred as if looking out a broken windshield in the pouring rain. His struggling to breathe feels like drowning, and maybe he is finally having that stroke — either way, however it is his body’s decided it’s dying, it’s painful and scary and it’s his fault.
“F-Friends, please stop fighting! Something wrong with Shuuichi!”
Gonta’s voice is the loudest, the first to break through the fray, but Kiibo’s been trying for a while, only succeeding once metal fingers close around Shuuichi’s wrists and then they’re there, mouth twisted into a severe frown and the blue light streaming out of their eyes so bright.
“Oh, shit — sidekick, what’s goin’ on?”
“It was probably all the yelling — oh, Shuuichi, I’m really sorry!” The whole middle row, Kaede included, twist in their seats to look at him. “W-Woah, your face is pretty red…”
“Yeah, genius, that’s gonna help him feel better. Shuumai, don’t pay meanie Kaede any mind — she’s just jealous you’re a way cuter crier than she is!”
“You pointing fingers is not going to improve his condition, either!”
“How’s about I hit your mute button, and you shut up and figure out what’s wrong with him, huh?”
“There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with him, asshole! Quit bein’ so insensitive!”
“Hey, dipshit, you’re the one who said he looked terrible like five minutes ago! Man, Shuuichi, can you believe these guys? They’re bigger clowns than I am!”
Everyone is staring at him. Maki through the rearview mirror, Gonta over his shoulder across the passenger headrest, Kaede and Kaito spun around in the middle seat, Kiibo still holding his arms, Kokichi leaning over his headrest to bat their hands away. Over his headache and his heartbeat pounding in his ears and his blind panic shrieking alarm bells through his brain he can’t hear what they’re saying anymore, but it doesn’t matter because whatever it is it’s about him. About how he’s freaking out, derailing their quest, crying like a freak instead of doing anything productive so the world doesn’t end in two days. He needs to calm down, get through this, stop it, but everyone’s looking at him and talking about him and he can’t even hear it to know how bad it is and all the attention just makes it so much worse.
Trying to choke back his sobbing just has him crying all the harder. Attempts to slow his breathing with so many eyes burning into his skin do nothing to remedy the feeling of his binder clamping down on his heaving chest. The pain in his head is absolutely blinding. He doesn’t want to be here, he wants to go home, see Rantarou, see his mom, he wants this to end, he wants this all to just stop.
Please stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it stop it stop it stop stop stopstopstopstop—
When Shuuichi’s vision goes again he doesn’t think it’s anything more than the everything else going on, just another log tossed onto the pyre. But the stars and rainbow zigzags ebb in favor of honeyed darkness, and even though his body is still in the throes of some sort of panic episode, for a few moments his mind is blessedly clear as reality as he knows it slows to a total standstill.
This is new, but he has no time to process it before what little control he can claw back slips through his hands and all the pain is returning and it is so, so loud. Even worse than before now as the world around him violently recovers from the abrupt pause — including the truck, which jerks so severely that even with his seatbelt on, Shuuichi’s body is thrown hard against Kiibo’s.
“Holy shit, did New Kid just—”
“What the fuck was that?!”
“It was Shuuichi’s power! I — I think he’s panicking and can’t control it!”
“Maki, please, pull over!”
Physically and emotionally exhausted and yet still unable to pull himself together, Shuuichi loses track of the following few minutes, marked only by sensations not nullified by either his panic, his headache, or his recovery from unintentionally and forcibly using his power to an extent he hadn’t even known was possible.
Cool metal hands on his shoulders; calloused human hands around his arms as he’s carefully guided over the folded middle seat and out of the car. His ass hitting the pavement, followed by someone gently but insistently pushing his head between his knees. Something warm and soft — Kaede, he reasons when he has the presence of mind to — pressed flush with his left side, a hand moving in slow, grounding circles on his back. Panicked, hushed voices that buzz like white noise in his ears, purposefully spoken low enough that he can’t hear what it is they’re saying. About him.
Shuuichi’s headache fizzles out long before the pressure in his chest or the worst of his anxiety does; like always, gauging time in the comedown is hard, made all but impossible in the aftermath of actually…manipulating it, like he has.
Thinking about it too much leaves his head hurting in a different way than the migraine. There are more pressing matters, anyway.
Like: now that his brain isn’t actively collapsing in on itself, he is still physically rattling with anxiety, and it feeds greedily off the fuel it's given as his senses return, and reality sets in. Though thankfully unseen with his eyelids still stubbornly squeezed shut and face squished between his knees, the humiliating burn of wary, concerned, constant eyes on him only make trying to slow his breathing all the harder. Make his brain attempting to convince his body to relax please and stop crying an even more agonizing ordeal. Not only are all of his friends staring at him; now he’s ground their quest to a halt over his own inability to get a grip on his mind or his body. He’s gone and freaked everybody out, gotten them scared for him — maybe of him, too — and angry with him for calling attention to the money issue they still haven’t solved and annoyed at him for putting a bump in their mission again and and and—
“Shuuichi, buddy…what can I do for you?”
As much as he’d love to answer Kaito’s question, really he would, Shuuichi’s still not breathing nearly enough to force even a single word out. Kaede understands his predicament well enough; from his left he hears a soft response in her voice that he probably can’t talk right now, just let him ride it out.
He hunches even further into himself, back straining. They all definitely see it. Shuuichi’s chances of throwing up are non-zero.
“Kokichi, seriously, give him some space.”
The low, warning note in Kaede’s voice is stern, but all the same a shadow falls over Shuuichi, and the feeling of claustrophobia — if only through what he knows, rationally, is an intangible illusion — has him coughing weakly. It doesn’t linger for long; in the same instant it disappears again Kokichi clears his throat as he crouches down in front of him, and a moment later something soft is pushed into the alcove of space between his legs he’s still hiding in. The moment he blinks his eyes open and sees it’s the Bewear plush the whispers questioning Kokichi’s motives melt away, and as quickly as his still-spinning head will allow he shifts his posture to pull the bear to his chest and bury his face in its fuzzy head, clutching it like a lifeline. Breathing doesn’t come any easier with a mouth full of cotton, but it’s Rantarou’s and it’s safe and it’s here, and considering his current alternatives, it’s about all he can muster up while his energy drains basically down to nothing.
Distantly, he hears Kaito and Gonta whispering — about as well as the two of them are able — about him, hushed words of concern, confusion, desiring to help but not knowing what’s wrong enough to do so. It should be reassuring, and were he operating more rationally Shuuichi would be appreciative of the care his friends clearly have for him. But it’s mortifying being seen like this by anyone, let alone his friends, let alone friends who don’t really know who he is as a person yet and now this stupid episode of his will be a foundational part of how they see him. So the muttering needles at him despite common sense telling him it should be soothing and not something to make recovering even harder.
He might also hear Kokichi, voice harsh, hiss at them both to shut up. It’s so unlike his usual demeanor that Shuuichi’s probably better off just assuming he’s imagined it.
After another unknown stretch of time spent with his face buried in the plushie, the worst does eventually pass — as Kiibo informs the group quietly when Shuuichi’s heart has slowed to something manageable, his breathing is level as he drags it in through the fabric, and it’s predominantly exhaustion fraying his nerves, not panic. As much as he’d really prefer to just forget this ever happened and continue on their quest without addressing it…
Clearly, that’s not going to happen. Warily drawing his head up from the doll opens the floodgates on people asking after him, and — very gently — Shuuichi is bombarded with questions while he looks them all over.
Gonta is crying as he steps out from the front of the car, the skin around his eyes just as red as his irises, and…probably not all that dissimilar to how Shuuichi himself looks currently. A hand on his arm by Maki keeps Gonta from approaching him to follow-through on his offer of a hug — much appreciated — while she directs her question about his physical state to Kiibo, standing a few feet away with their gaze continually trained in his direction. Kaito, as he also steps closer, appears a little misty-eyed as he watches Shuuichi carefully, arms crossed loosely over his chest. At his side, Kaede gently takes his left hand between both of hers once she’s gauged on his face he’s not immediately going to throw up or run away. Kokichi’s the farthest away, leaning against one of the car doors behind where he and Kaede are sitting more or less in the middle of the expressway’s emergency lane. They make eye contact over Shuuichi’s shoulder as he turns; instead of cracking a smile to diffuse the tension or jerking his head away in an effort to not be caught staring, Kokichi holds his eye levelly, and if Shuuichi had to guess…what he thinks he sees in his expression is concern, and he’s pretty sure it’s genuine, too.
Shuuichi hasn’t actually answered any of the questions that have been directed his way. Didn’t really hear or process them properly, either. Given that, well…an apology feels like a good enough place to start, once he turns back to the group at large and gets his raw throat working again. “I’m…really sorry, about th—”
“There is no way you’re seriously the first one apologizing right now, right?”
“I—”
“Maki’s right, Shuuichi,” Kaede tells him gently, squeezing his hand once he looks to her. “You have nothing to apologize for, okay? We’re all just glad you’re feeling better now.”
“I’m just…embarrassed.”
“No need to be, dude. We’re your friends, and we want you to rely on us when you need to. You did, and that’s a good thing, and in my book that’s all there is to it!”
“True,” Kaede cuts in before Shuuichi gets a chance to respond, “but just because you don’t have any ‘sorry’s to say doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t. We’ve all been having a rough day, but we got way too loud and started yelling, when we shouldn’t have. I’m really sorry, Shuuichi.”
The sentiment is quickly echoed amongst the rest of the group, to Shuuichi’s rising embarrassment. But given that his headache has truly receded into just a residual ache, and he’s more in control of his faculties again, he has the sense to push it away and force an appreciative smile. As Kaede carefully disentangles from his side, he manages, “I know, everyone’s just…this has been really exhausting for all of us. No hard feelings at all, I promise. That said…we may as well finish our quest as soon as we can so we can all rest, right?”
He has no doubts that the rallying cry rings about as hollowly among the rest of the group as it does in his own ears as Kaede helps him up onto admittedly kind of wobbly legs. One arm still holding his bear protectively to his chest, after a few moment’s consideration — and figuring the mood before getting back into the truck could be a little better — he turns towards Gonta with a smile that feels slightly more genuine, now. “S-So, about that hug…”
Thankfully, Gonta needs no further prompting once Shuuichi awkwardly trails off, face red; in an instant he’s been pulled against a muscled, broad chest — cloaked in a t-shirt, which is a very strange sight for Gonta. A few delighted shouts from behind and then Shuuichi feels more than sees the likes of Kaede, Kaito, and Kiibo throwing themselves into the hug as well. Though still a little sweaty and a lot uncomfortable, for obvious reasons, the pressure of a tight embrace is grounding and…sort of nice.
As everyone is extracting themselves from the mess of limbs and torsos Maki — whose earlier apology, though distant, expressed sincere regret as far as he’d been able to tell — pops the passenger door open to start the car across the center console before making eye contact with him once they’re facing each other again. “You want to ride up front?”
Tempting, the prospect of having only the slightly cracked windshield to look at as opposed to everyone else in the car for the next long stretch they’re on the road. However, as appreciative as he is of the offer, there are probably others better suited to taking up passenger seat duties than himself, right now. “That’s really nice, but actually…”
Offered first pick, Shuuichi decides to reclaim the very back seat again, though this time it’s Kaito that shuffles in behind him, pulling the backrest of the middle seat upright so everyone else can climb in and they can get the hell off the side of the road. As the car carefully merges onto the expressway Kaito slides his left arm to rest loosely around Shuuichi’s shoulders; though his immediate impulse is to awkwardly maneuver out of the hold, despite the way his back tenses he doesn’t pull away. Though he does have to pull out his phone for something to look at, because the prospect of looking at Kaito feels a little embarrassing, given the past…however long it’s been since they got derailed, and everything that took place in the midst of said derailment.
He’s really not all that used to physical affection from anyone except Rantarou, but if he’s being completely honest…despite the baseline level of discomfort that he feels at the unfamiliar weight of someone else’s arm across his body, it’s…sort of nice, if he allows himself to acknowledge it. Shuuichi’s not really used to having any friendly contact, or friends in general other than Rantarou, actually, but Rantarou was always the best friend Shuuichi could ever conceive of. Rantarou had caught Shuuichi in the clutches of many panic episodes of varying severity over the years, and whenever presented with the chance he always tried to corral Shuuichi into bed or somewhere otherwise cozy and safe and just sit with him. Grounding him with physical touch when Shuuichi could handle it, and keeping him quiet, protective company when he couldn’t.
This definitely isn’t the same. But affectionate physical contact with someone he trusts in the aftermath is decidedly comforting…if also awkward enough that he has to stare resolutely out the window as he silently accepts Kaito's expression of care.
“Hey, can I borrow your phone a sec? Mine’s dead.”
Shuuichi thinks very little of Kaito’s request as he exits to his home screen and hands it off. As Kaito begins scrolling with purpose through the device, he’s left once again with options of either staring down the hand hanging off his shoulder, or snooping on what Kaito wants with his phone.
And…well, suffice to say, Shuuichi sees each motion as Kaito opens up his phone’s notes app and begins typing.
Sorry for lying lol I just didn’t wanna make a big deal out of asking out loud. You ok dude?
Oh. Not exactly what Shuuichi was expecting, but when faced with the alternative, he’s agreeable enough to this means of being asked after. Kaito passes the phone back to him, and Shuuichi doesn’t bother erasing what he’s typed; just adds a break for clarity, and responds on the same line.
/ yeah, i am now. thanks
He gets an eyebrow raise in response as Kaito extends his hand again. The rhythm of passing the phone back-and-forth to exchange responses is one that comes easily enough.
Can I ask abt it? Does that happen a lot? / mostly when i get overwhelmed. / Gotcha and seriously man I’m really sorry. Wish I could say it to u out loud (I can later) but I really hate making my friends feel like shit like that
you definitely don’t have to do that lmao it’s really not your fault. it was a lot of things. bad headache, hunger, stress, chest pain, tiredness, etc / Chest pain?
The next look Shuuichi gets is decidedly concerned. Shrugging enough that Kaito can feel it, he presses the ‘return’ key twice and hopes his casual demeanor alongside his typed reply assuages some of said concern.
nothing major, don’t worry. it’s just from my binder / Oh thats like ur chest thing? right?? / yeah that’s correct / Thats why u had so much trouble breathing right? / yeah.
Then should you take it off?
Yes, Shuuichi really should. He’d kind of like nothing more than to drown himself in a cozy sweatshirt and allow himself to breathe without the press of his binder around his lungs. Most of the time he didn’t even need Rantarou to force his hand on that aspect of his post-panic attack decompression. But for a wide range of reasons that’s not an option presently, so though he chews his lip for several moments while he thinks through a reply, the one he offers isn’t exactly a disavowal.
i mean honestly probably lmao but not everyone knows im trans. and i really DONT want to stop the car again it would be too embarrassing. / I don’t think anyone here would ever give you shit for it but if anyone ever did I’d totally kick their ass for you!!!!! That's what best friends are for I have your back dude!!!
When Shuuichi’s taken his phone back, instead of responding right away he stares down at what Kaito’s last written, processing.
Best friends, huh…?
Before he comes up with a response Kaito motions for him to hand back the phone, and with his chin resting on the stuffed animal’s head, he watches as Kaito taps out his next message.
Since we’re chatting i have another question actually. Earlier did u like. Stop time or somethi
“Ooooh, are Kaito and Shuuichi writing each other love notes?”
Both of them — Shuuichi, peering curiously down at his phone in Kaito’s hands while he types with one thumb, his other arm still casually around Shuuichi’s shoulders — glance up at the same time to find Kokichi has once again abandoned his seatbelt. Spun around and kneeling on the seat directly in front of Shuuichi, Kokichi’s grin is all cheer as he folds his arms over the headrest to watch them both. Kaito’s less pleased by the accusation — as obviously facetious as it is — and while Shuuichi tips his face slightly more into the Bewear doll to hide the way he flusters anyway, Kaito just rolls his eyes as he hands Shuuichi his phone back, his question forgotten.
“If you’re feelin’ left out, you can just say so! You don’t have to be obnoxious and say weird stuff to insert yourself into the conversation, y’know!”
“‘Weird stuff’, huh? What are you, some kind of homophobe?”
“Wh-What?! Quit being an idiot!”
“Is he hate-criming you back there, New Kid? Just how self-hating are those love notes you’re sending?”
Despite Kaito’s continued spluttering, Shuuichi can’t fight his amusement enough not to smile as he replies, “For better or for worse, there are no love notes happening back here.”
One of his arms still braced around his headrest, Kokichi props his other elbow up on the back of the seat with his chin in his palm, to give Shuuichi a playful, appraising look. “Does that mean I can write you some love notes, Shuumai?”
“If that’s how you want to spend the end of the world, then who am I to stop you?”
Were Shuuichi to chance a guess, he’d allow himself to assume Kokichi’s response of cocking his head slightly to the side, blinking down at him several times, and promptly dropping back into his seat without another word arises from being genuinely surprised. Shuuichi’s a little surprised himself at his continued playing along, and even more so excited at apparently having succeeded in leaving Kokichi speechless in the midst of his own game. Something like pride swells in his chest at the realization; that even in the silliest way possible, instead of balking in the face of Kokichi’s endless teasing he’d given it right back, and earned an admittedly sort of pleasing reaction as a result.
The silence that had been sticking within the car before Kokichi’s initial comment seems to be settling again, and there’s a large part of him that’s perfectly fine allowing it to persist. But…
His comment to Kokichi about spending the rest of the end of the world in whatever way he’d like had been made in jest, but it does hang somewhat heavily in his brain as a reminder that yeah, things are kind of dire right now. If Fuyuhiko’s warnings about the gods coming down on them with renewed vigor after getting a lead on their location are any indication, the final stretch of this could be even more treacherous than the whole quest has been so far. He and Kokichi had made a mistake last night, in holding out — as unintentional as it was — on giving the rest of their friends access to Mikan’s healing stuff in the aftermath of the museum fight. That kind of mistake, one that slips through the cracks whether through ignorance, or derived from a lack of trust, or one that crops up as a result of important information being left unsaid…they can’t afford anything like that, if they’re going to really, truly do this.
Shuuichi has zero plans to fail in his mission of saving Rantarou, which by extension means he won’t be allowing the whole world to end either, thank you very much. Irregardless of that fact…well, as it stands right now, the world is kind of currently set to end. And in terms of how Shuuichi wants to spend the rest of the end of the world…
Whatever awaits him at the end of this, he shouldn’t face it while still hiding.
“Hey. Uhm.”
Oh, he has not thought this through. Kaito immediately tilts his head to look over at him, as does Kaede from the passenger seat and Gonta from where he’s serving as a physical barrier between Kiibo and Kokichi.
“Does Shuuichi need something?”
Save for Maki — a good thing, considering she’s driving — once Gonta’s pointed out Shuuichi’s spoken, the rest of the car turns to look at him curiously. Resting his phone down in his lap again, he wraps both arms around the bear plush and pulls it protectively into his chest, chin propped on its head so he can look out at his friends as he somewhat-awkwardly finds his voice. “Yeah, it’s — not to call attention to myself so soon after…that, a little while ago…but, uh.”
Ugh. Stumbling through this with a bunch of stupid qualifiers is making it a bigger deal than it will be if he just spits it out.
“I know this is kind of a strange time to say this, but…I trust all of you guys. You’re my friends, and…I know I have no reason to hide. I feel kind of ridiculous building it up this much, but for those of you who don’t know already, I’m trans. That’s all. Y-Yeah.”
Way to stick the landing…!
Before he can sink down miserably into his seat Kaito claps him on the shoulder he’s still got an arm around, then pulls him as close as their seatbelts will allow for a one-armed bear hug. “Super proud of you, man. I knew I did right gettin’ you as my sidekick.”
A reaction that’s eons better than any number of other, more dramatic responses that would continue to make his coming out a thing. As he’s hugged into Kaito’s side, he leans into it with a smile.
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
It earns him a loud laugh in his ear, as Gonta flashes Shuuichi a wide grin and a firm nod of acknowledgement. “Gonta also proud of Shuuichi. Thank you for telling us all and trusting in your friends. Gonta think Shuuichi very brave…exactly the kind of gentleman Gonta aspires to be!”
That’s what gets Shuuichi blushing. The thumbs up Kaede waves his way doesn’t help things much.
“Wooow, that’s high praise from Gonts! Now you should be proud, New Kid.” Kokichi’s turned around in his seat again; Shuuichi’s long given up on trying to convince him to keep his seatbelt where it is. Leering at him with a teasing smile, Kokichi contorts his body halfway over the seat in order to make grabby hands towards the Bewear plush. Shuuichi hands it off easily enough, but instead of retreating with his prize, Kokichi leans slightly closer, lifting the plush to use as cover as he cups his other hand over his mouth to direct his next question (more or less) into Shuuichi’s ear.
“My beloved Shuumai should definitely tell me if I’m stepping on his toes,” he begins, looking unperturbed as he pitches his voice lower despite his legs dangling in the air behind him, “but has he been wearing his binder for too long?”
Still, Kokichi doesn’t draw back into his seat, blinking up at Shuuichi through his eyelashes as he awaits an answer. It’s honestly really nice, actually, that he’s making an effort to ask after him, but also very clearly trying not to call attention to it for Shuuichi’s sake. For all Kokichi likes to opine on how dastardly a lying criminal he is…he can be pretty sweet when he wants to.
As much as he’s curious about the sort of pleasing reaction he could get by pointing as much out to Kokichi, it feels a little…much, considering the full car they’re still packed into. Shuuichi smiles over at him, not bothering to speak quietly enough for the others not to hear. “I can take care of it whenever we stop again. You’re really nice to ask, but please don’t worry too much.”
Understanding well enough what Shuuichi’s lack of effort in hiding their conversation from the others means, Kokichi rebalances himself over the seat back so he’s no longer hanging precariously between the two rows, the bear still in hand as he drops heavily onto his knees. Its head is shaken disapprovingly back at him.
“Nonsense! You should look after your health if you wanna save the whole world, y’know!”
The squeaky voice Kokichi gives to bear is amusing, he’ll give him that. But it’s hardly the most convincing thing he’s ever heard.
“We’re not going to be able to save the whole world if we keep stopping unnecessarily and wasting time.”
Abandoning the plush as a mechanism for arguing his point, Kokichi tosses it back into Shuuichi’s lap as he circles his arms around the headrest in order to pout over it at him. “Don’t be so dramatic!”
“Me?” Both of their lips twitch against the urge to smile; next to him, Kaito snorts at the two of them.
“Yeah, you. We still have today and tomorrow, y’know? I’m sure no one will object to a potty break so you can change.”
“Kokichi, I’m fine! Really.”
They’re not actually arguing, but there’s a certain stubbornness behind both of them as they go back-and-forth. He’s not really sure what to think about Kokichi’s insistence on this particular sticking point — before he has to figure it out, though, for the first time in a while Maki catches his eye through the rearview mirror.
“We’re going to have to stop soon, anyway. Don’t worry about it.”
Again, before Shuuichi can do more than blink a few times at her in surprise, Kokichi’s plopping back in his seat again, leaning his head against Gonta’s left shoulder with a question already leaving his mouth. “Hmmm? Why? Did Maki leave the car running again and drain the rest of the tank?”
Kaede turns around to flick him in the knee, dodging deftly as Kokichi retaliates by kicking his leg out towards her. “No, you brat. We need money.”
“Ah, yes, I was wondering when we’d return to this issue…” With Gonta’s broad frame in the way, it’s hard for Shuuichi to see much of Kiibo, save for their antenna-cowlick-hair-thing. It almost brushes the ceiling with each bob of their head. “How…can we get enough money?”
From the heavy sigh Maki puffs out from the front, Shuuichi sort of has a feeling what’s coming before she says it.
“Our problem is we need to get enough cash to finish our mission in as little time as possible. We don’t exactly have the time to get a day job, or to ask for spare change outside the bus station. It’s not ideal, but we’re going to have to find somewhere with cash, and steal enough to sustain us for the rest of our quest.”
A split immediately forms across the car as the implications of Maki’s suggestion register for all of them. Kaede quickly comes to Maki’s defense to rationalize the idea, and Shuuichi has no doubt in his mind that Kokichi is onboard with any plan involving thievery.
Shuuichi was there during the Gucci store arson incident, after all.
Somewhat predictably, the loud dissent in the car comes from the likes of Kiibo, Gonta, and Kaito — and it’s not as though they’re wrong about how objectively terrible an idea it is all around. It’s risky, so many things could go wrong, it’s not right to just rob a place of all its cash, even if it’s in order to save the world, people are going to end up worse off if they do this.
Terrible as it may be, though, it’s also kind of their only option. Already his stomach twists with anticipatory anxiety, but Shuuichi knows where he falls on this issue as most eyes turn back to him. “I know none of us want to steal. But, I mean…the world is kind of in our hands right now, right? What other choice do we have?”
“Exactly. If all of us are going to make it to the Underworld before our time runs out, we need more money, point blank.” Kaede’s none too happy about it, clearly, as she pushes her hand restlessly through her hair. “We…kind of already came up with a plan, so…Harumaki?”
“If it makes you feel better, most of you don’t have to do anything except keep your heads down and grab whatever you can run out with once I’ve got the money.” That does offer some relief to the more guilty among them — Shuuichi has a feeling he may not fit under the banner of ‘most of you’ Maki mentioned. “Corner store or gas station, preferably something older, slow, and somewhere we can escape from fast. Shuuichi can change while we’re there.”
Oh. Well, he’s certainly on board now. Kokichi pops his head around briefly to blow a raspberry at him, as if Shuuichi isn’t the real winner here. He blows one back, Kaito joining him before Maki continues her explanation.
“After a few minutes, Kokichi will cause a distraction to—”
“Whaaat? Why me?”
Maki pins him with a flat look through the rearview mirror as she finally exits off the highway. “Because aside from me, you’re the only other street rat used to stealing and being a general menace. You may be annoying, but you’re surprisingly useful at stuff like this.”
“Of course I am. You don’t become an evil supreme leader like me without robbing a few people blind in the process!”
“The street rat,” Maki continues forcefully, seeming more exasperated than properly pissed off, “will cause a distraction at the back of the store and draw the cashier attendant away long enough for me to go in with the helmet and take what we need from the register. Kaede’s going to make sure the rest of you are out, then she’ll incapacitate the employee long enough for us all to get away.”
The tense, uncomfortable quiet that settles at everyone’s apprehensive agreement is all the indication any of them need that no one is happy about this. Shuuichi certainly isn’t; though his role in it is blessedly limited, he is about to be fully complicit — no, screw that, he and the rest of his friends are about to rob a store. At least when they’d stolen Nagito’s RV, they’d had every intention of returning it before it went and got blown up. Mikan’s truck is also very much stolen, but it’s admittedly kind of hard to feel bad about it when she did try very hard to kill all of them.
But they’re going to be — as Kokichi jokingly put it earlier — robbing someone blind. Some innocent store employee, who will either get in trouble for letting the cash register be emptied, or maybe even a store owner who will be directly hurt by them taking their cash reserves. It’s necessary, Shuuichi’s positive, and when compared to stopping godly armageddon, it doesn’t seem…so bad. But that’s a paltry excuse, and he knows it, so even clinging to the ultimate goal of realizing their quest doesn’t make a difference in how awful he feels for the remainder of the drive.
Awful, and exhausted. The anxiety twisting at his insides and leaving his leg muscles antsily twitching only serves to make him more tired. With the plush still pulled close to his chest he tips his head down to rest his chin on it again, and beneath the warm weight of Kaito’s arm still over his shoulders, Shuuichi has to fight the desire to allow his eyes to droop shut. He has his doubts that he’d actually be able to sleep, despite how drained he feels; the allure of at least finally being rid of his binder, as well as the nerves associated with what they’re going to do once he does are enough to keep him awake and with his eyes…mostly open.
Figuring the others will take up the task of locating the kind of store they’re looking for, Shuuichi has his eyes on his lap for most of the additional time they spend on the road. In that respect, he’s well-positioned to see when his phone lights up with something that isn’t a phone call from any of the gods currently after him; a slew of emojis, their collective meaning incomprehensible, and then a few moments later the beginnings of several proper text messages.
turn that frown upside down new kid it would be SO sad if u got face wrinkles from being emo >-<
man emo’s such a dated insult howwww about i call u……huh i cant think of one!!!!
so maybe you should lighten up so i can call u CUTER insults instead hmmmmm?
dont look so nervous ive got this in the bag i can be so distracting u wouldnt even BELIEVE it
;)
By the time they’re pulling into the parking lot of a small convenience store, Kokichi’s earned the smile Shuuichi notices him not-so-subtly peeking backwards in search of. It doesn’t last, as Maki parks them as close to the lot’s exit as she can manage, but it does help, just a little. Once the car’s off Kaito finally retrieves his arm, and as everyone in the middle row disembarks Shuuichi digs through his duffle bag at his feet in search of that fuzzy oversized hoodie he’d been daydreaming of earlier, and places the Bewear plush in its spot once he’s found it. With the sweatshirt and his basically empty wallet in hand he’s the last out of the car, just in time to hear the tail end of Maki’s final explanation of the plan, her dad’s helmet held between her hands. With an assurance from Maki that she’ll handle everything to do with actually getting the money, she places the helmet on her head, and with nerves running high, they begin.
Stepping inside reveals that at least one stroke of good luck has hit them today; the store is small, crowded with tall aisles and shelves packed practically to the ceiling — already Shuuichi can count at least ten potential ‘distractions’ that can be performed out of view from the front of the store. The front of the store, which is currently only manned by a solitary older gentleman who waves and smiles over his newspaper as he catches sight of the six of them filing inside. It leaves Shuuichi’s chest tightening.
It’s a feeling that really only gets worse when Shuuichi approaches the counter to ask after the bathroom’s location, and the man is no less kind as he politely directs Shuuichi where he needs to go — and leaves off with an invitation to let him know if he needs help finding anything in the store.
Shuuichi’s feeling pretty all-around awful as he locks the bathroom door behind himself. Stripping off his binder and pulling on the soft, comfortable sweatshirt is a relief, leaves him feeling eons better physically, but the same cannot be said for his mood as he folds his binder to hide awkwardly in his pocket, then washes his hands and his face before stepping back out into the store. Putting a face to the person they’re going to screw over — even if to save the world — just makes him feel all the more guilty for what he and his friends are about to do. And they all do have a part in making sure this goes successfully. So with his lip between his teeth Shuuichi moves back into the main store, eyes cast purposefully away from the old man at the register — now chatting with while bagging the purchases of a similarly-aged woman.
Though he doesn’t pause, he does notice something rather relevant to their aim of refilling their depleted money supply: the cash tray within the register operates on a lock system, and will only open when a purchase has been rung up. If Kokichi does his distraction at the wrong time, Maki won’t be able to get the tray open and their plan will fall apart. So while trying to appear as chill and unsuspicious as possible, Shuuichi hurries behind one of the precariously-stocked shelves, eyes alert for a sign of Kokichi before he gets to doing his distracting.
Thankfully, he spots him positioned in one of the back corners of the store, eyeing an elaborate display of boxed chocolates with an expression that’s a little too pleased. When he catches Kokichi’s gaze his smirk broadens into a mischievous grin; before he can say anything, Shuuichi leans in close to keep his voice down, though over the loud hum of the fluorescents and the ambient noise of the drink coolers behind them, he probably doesn’t have to bother. Kokichi draws nearer to match, an eyebrow raised.
“I figured out something important when I walked through the front just now. The cash register won’t open unless there’s a purchase in progress.”
Kokichi nods his acknowledgement, smile less pronounced now, but oddly more real. “Good eye. Think that lady up front just left, so…” His eyes slide up and down Shuuichi briefly, lips pulling a little wider. “Stealing my hoodie, are you?”
He takes a moment to glance down at himself, affronted at the accusation; though he takes the bait and positions himself to be flicked lightly in the nose, he figures out what Kokichi means before he’s properly being snickered at, his nose tingling from the stray touch. “Your hoodie?”
“It’s my signature! Very iconically, I was wearing it when we faced off against those yakuza!”
Shuuichi chuckles, despite both their current circumstances, as well as what he says next. “I was wearing it when a monster attacked my house. I think I win.”
“…Touché.” Amidst his quiet giggling, Kokichi looks rather impressed, and there’s that warm swell of pride in his chest again. “‘Kay, I’m chomping at the bit to shove this thing over, but obviously we gotta figure something out first. You got any big ideas, Mister Detective?”
It escapes Shuuichi what detectiving has to do with what they’re doing, or himself in general; regardless, he does have an answer. “Yeah, I think so — I’ve got a little bit of cash left, so I can buy something to get the register open. How about…once it’s open, I’ll say a certain phrase that’ll let you know to do your distraction?”
“One heist under your belt and you’ve become a natural in the fine art of phantom thievery, Shuuichi. Color me stoked!” It’s definitely not something to be proud of; Kokichi’s giddy excitement is kind of infectious, though. “Now, about that code phrase…hmm…”
Twirling in a circle a few times probably too quickly to actually get a decent look at their surroundings, Kokichi eventually stops while facing one of the drink coolers, pressing his forehead against it and pointing at something inside. “Oooh, my lucky day! They’ve got my favorite soda — Kaede and Nagito neeever buy it for me back at camp, it’s so cruel! Well, since we’re stealing anyway…”
Several bottles of grape soda find their way into the untied opening of Kokichi’s backpack. Pulling a face — but holding the door open for him anyway, ever complicit — Shuuichi takes one out of the fridge himself, surveying it curiously.
‘Gush’. Gross. He has to wonder if Kokichi actually likes how it tastes, or if it’s only the obscene name he’s a fan of.
Either way, Kokichi’s clearly a fan of the color purple. “Your favorite, huh?”
“Mhm!” His bag now strapped over his shoulder again, it’s his turn to watch Shuuichi curiously as he stares at the soda he’s got in hand. “Fallen prey to my demigodly powers of persuasion, have you?”
“Totally.” Shuuichi gestures at him broadly with the Gush bottle, then takes a small parcel off the top of the soon-to-be-toppled display of candies. “I think we have our phrase.”
“On it, boss! There’s no way I can fail when my beloved Shuuichi is buying me a box of chocolates for my efforts!”
Kokichi’s nonsense has Shuuichi smiling as he turns to leave, but by the time he’s looped back to the front of the store, the brief levity has escaped him, leaving only twisting, nervous guilt in its wake. The man is alone at the front, only noticing he no longer is when Shuuichi’s arrived at the counter and set down his ‘purchases’.
“Good afternoon. Did you find everything you needed?”
Soft beep-ing, as first the chocolates, then the soda are bagged. Shuuichi’s already got his last few cash notes in hand, ready to be handed off at a moment’s notice. Nodding, he answers, “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
The total he’s given is marginal, not even enough to fully drain the last of his money; Shuuichi doesn’t bother adjusting what’s in his fingers as he hands it off to the man.
“Actually, I…” The man glances up at him, though doesn’t pause his movements on the register in front of him. Shuuichi listens for the metallic clang of the tray springing open. “I was pretty surprised. It’s been a while since I found this brand…”
Click.
“…Even though I don’t get to have it often, grape soda is my favorite.”
He doesn’t have the time to question Shuuichi’s overpayment before the whole store is interrupted with a loud, resounding, “Oof!” and then a moment later an obnoxious, almost deafening crash that lasts so long it could be comical as dozens of heavy boxes clatter dramatically to the floor. There’s a moment of wide-eyed surprise shared between Shuuichi and the old man, but only just a moment, because with timing so perfect it could be practiced Kokichi has joined them at the front of the store, crocodile tears already streaming down rosy cheeks, his hands wringing guiltily as he stutters through a bullshit explanation that’s convincing even to Shuuichi.
Smiling good-naturedly, the man merely chuckles before stepping out from behind the counter, promising all will be forgiven — if Kokichi helps pick up, of course. The cash tray still hangs open.
A cold sweat hits the back of his neck as he’s struck with the thought that this is up to Maki now. She said she’d be watching so she’d know when to come in, and he has no reason not to believe her, but it’s now or never and Shuuichi’s already about to throw up with nerves and—
To his right the door ghosts open, so silently that it’s not the sound of the door itself that gains his attention, but rather the motion of it shutting in his periphery. There’s a sense of relief — quickly sapped out as Maki brushes by him while invisible, causing him to shiver involuntarily — that turns to anticipatory dread while left just sort of…witnessing the crime he’s party to. But it’s not as though him staring where he thinks she is will aid things much; his part in this is finished, all he needs to do is make sure Maki gets the money, and then run while Kaede offers them cover.
Honestly, he almost has half a mind to duck out now, to make it easier for their ultimate escape, but even if just for a moment…he doesn’t want to leave his friends behind. No, he’ll stay and make sure this goes right; even if another, somehow more severe and palpable chill crawls all the way from the base of his spine to his brain, leaving him physically trembling. So it’s by the front counter he waits, fingers itching as he mentally prepares to get himself and his friends out of here, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.
There’s a thick wad of bills floating above the register when a dark, imposing shadow falls over Shuuichi from behind. All at once he freezes, fearing that the employee is back and they are so, totally caught, the world is over, their quest is entirely fucked—
“Maki Harukawa, don’t you dare.”
Notes:
+ happy halloween! this chapter's the treat, but we've also got a spooOooOoOky stranger who can see miss invisibility as our trick <3 oops!
+ timeline for next chapter should be similar (monthish, knock on wood) but i've got my work cut out for me so...wish me luck! you can catch me in the meantime over on tumblr @ gontagokuhara ! more people have been chatting me up about pointy objects and it makes me SOOOO happy you don't even know.
+ all i've got left are a few more silly P.S. notes & content warnings; thanks for being here, see you next time!
+ content warnings: some pretty severe medical anxiety having to do with strokes, unwise binder-wearing practices, a full blown panic-attack, a character comes out as trans (of their own volition, but under somewhat strenuous circumstances), and i belieeeve that's it!
+ * shuuichi and i have opposite but related concerns over hormones. i get migraines which is where a certain section comes from. before being put on hormonal birth control i had to keep a headache diary and get diagnosed with *non*-aura migraines because if i did have aura, i'd be unable to go on bc because my stroke risk would go waaaaay up. shuuichi *does* have aura migraines, but testosterone is said to not increase risk (and in some studies, may even slightly diminish ischemic stroke risk). neither of our medical anxiety makes us feel better about it though LOL
+ ** shuuichi has auto-caps off so when he and kaito are talking in his notes app, kaito is manually capitalizing his sentences. this means absolutely nothing but it's very funny to me personally
+ *** i'm a hater of a lot of kokichi's canon imagery so i've made the unilateral decision that his favorite soda is no longer panta (purple fanta) but rather GUSH (grape crush). frankly the danganronpa team missed an incredibly funny opportunity so i'm taking it for myself. gush enjoyers rise up
Chapter 19: if i had a nickel for every time this happened, i'd have two nickels...which isn't a lot, but it's sure weird that it's happened twice!
Summary:
Belatedly he whips around, back pressed defensively into the blunt edge of the checkout counter, trying to formulate some excuse for the store worker to give Maki time to escape. But any semblance of coherent thought dies well before it reaches his mouth as, instead of the employee staring down the spot where Maki’s floating the money above the register, it’s a sharply dressed, unfamiliar man glaring very, very intensely, right where Shuuichi imagines Maki has to be. Even as Shuuichi jumps, blindsided, the man doesn’t so much as blink in his direction.
There’s an agonizing stretch where nothing happens — the money stays where it is, Shuuichi chokes silently on his own bewilderment, the man doesn’t shift his focus a fraction — until his foot begins to tap, thick eyebrows drawing together with clear impatience. “Really, Maki, you’re acting rather foolishly. Return that to its proper place at once.”
Okay. So Shuuichi wasn’t imagining that. A hallucination sounds a lot less dangerous an explanation, all things considered. Somehow.
Notes:
+ hello again! if last time was the halloween update....we'll call this the holiday episode. don't mind the lack of festiveness.
+ i didn't jinx myself too badly when i said last time i hoped to wrap up in a month, so yay!
+ no content warnings come to mind this time, so i believeeee that's all for me at the top! other than a big ol' thank you and a smooch to my dear evan captorvatiing, resident proofreader and kokichi correspondent
+ beyond that, though, you can catch me in the end notes — so here we go!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Maki Harukawa, don’t you dare.”
If Shuuichi thought they were screwed before — well, they most definitely are. But at hearing Maki’s name in the same moment he is actively watching her steal money while fully invisible…suffice to say, not only is he thrown into an even more frenzied panic than before; but now he’s just sort of existentially confused by what he’s heard. What he thinks he’s heard, at least.
No, there’s — it’s impossible, surely. He’s just on-edge from his prior panic attack. Extra high-alert from how fraught their current stakes are. And now he’s hearing things as an externalization of his own guilt over aiding his friend in completing the crime she’s in the middle of.
The crime she’s in the middle of.
Belatedly he whips around, back pressed defensively into the blunt edge of the checkout counter, trying to formulate some excuse for the store worker to give Maki time to escape. But any semblance of coherent thought dies well before it reaches his mouth as, instead of the employee staring down the spot where Maki’s floating the money above the register, it’s a sharply dressed, unfamiliar man glaring very, very intensely, right where Shuuichi imagines Maki has to be. Even as Shuuichi jumps, blindsided, the man doesn’t so much as blink in his direction.
There’s an agonizing stretch where nothing happens — the money stays where it is, Shuuichi chokes silently on his own bewilderment, the man doesn’t shift his focus a fraction — until his foot begins to tap, thick eyebrows drawing together with clear impatience. “Really, Maki, you’re acting rather foolishly. Return that to its proper place at once.”
Okay. So Shuuichi wasn’t imagining that. A hallucination sounds a lot less dangerous an explanation, all things considered. Somehow.
Soundlessly Maki complies with the stranger, and the first thing he notices about her when she comes back into view are her knuckles, white and strained from how tightly she grips the helmet above her head one-handed. Redder than Shuuichi has ever seen her, eyes blown open and pupils severely dilated, she’s absolutely speechless as she just stares up at the man, same as Shuuichi.
Shuuichi, who in response to having a large hand placed on his shoulder, yells so abruptly his voice cracks. The man offers him a bright smile; unable to look him in the eye, instead Shuuichi’s focus is drawn to the blue band settled up the length of the arm still currently holding him quite firmly in place. Though the stranger’s grip is loose, Shuuichi isn’t sure there’s a force on the planet that could pull him out from beneath the man’s fervent gaze.
“Excuse me, young man! Would you happen to be a friend of Maki’s?”
Not so much as a twitch from her, still shellshocked and appearing equally stuck in place behind the counter. Shuuichi swallows, shrinking beneath such rigid attention as he tries to figure out what’s happening, think through a plan, do something in the midst of about a billion different, very pressing concerns screaming in tandem through his head.
Though he paid little attention in his history classes, he does have a decent enough grasp on modern history to recognize at least one thing about the man: he’s some kind of politician. From the green flower seal emblazoned across his armband, as well as the formality of his dress — black morning coat and waistcoat, white tie, gray pants, two shining medals pinned at his lapel — Shuuichi would even go so far as to assume he’s a Diet member, which prompts even further confusion, because.
One: why is a Diet member in a random convenience store on the opposite side of the island from Parliament? Two: why does this strange politician know Maki’s name? And three, perhaps most in immediate need of panicking over:
Why can he see Maki while she’s invisible?!
Not given an answer in a suitably quick enough amount of time, the man purses his lips, tsk-ing quietly beneath his breath before turning his attention back to Maki again. The hand on Shuuichi’s shoulder doesn’t retreat. “How many more of you are there?”
They’ve both been struck utterly speechless, it appears. Maki’s still rooted where she’s standing, arm spasming where she has the money suspended over the register, gaze glued to a meaningless spot on the wall. Shuuichi’s not sure she’s even blinked.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake…” With an almost disappointed noise the man once again looks away from Maki in favor of pinning Shuuichi with his full, very fierce concentration instead, mouth set in a contemplative frown. There’s a light squeeze on his shoulder, and he only barely bites back a strangled, petrified squeak. “Young man, how many more campers are with you?”
…He knows about camp, too…? “F-Five. Sir.”
Immediately the man’s face splits into a pleased grin, clapping Shuuichi once appreciatively on the shoulder before finally removing his errant arm, smoothing his spiked black hair back with his hand and returning it stiffly to his side in perfect parallel to its twin. “Thank you very much for your prompt cooperation!”
Again, the man’s expression tightens into something much more stern as he refocuses his scrutiny towards Maki, something like a pattern emerging in Shuuichi’s brain as he watches the man’s eyes narrow in open frustration. “Maki, do not make me repeat myself a third time — place that back where you found it already! And really, what on earth are you doing with that old, awful thing? Don’t tell me…”
Now the man does seem content to wait, arms crossed rigidly across his chest and eyes fixed very intently on Maki as he awaits the obedience he so clearly expects from her. Shuuichi’s gone straight past confusion and right into utter disorientation, genuinely unsure of what the hell is going on, let alone what’s going to come next — because someone talking to Maki like that? She’s threatened to put Shuuichi in the hospital just at the thought he might call her an informal nickname — but this? It’s all just incomprehensible.
The feeling only manages to further compound as he watches, same as the politician does, as Maki does exactly as she’s instructed. Wordlessly, face blank save for how she’s still flushed crimson, Maki drops the wad of cash back into the register with a dull thud, robotically slamming it shut at the man’s expectant hum. Their chance at quest salvation officially locked away — though they’ve got much bigger issues staring them down, presently — Maki follows the curling index finger the man beckons her with out from behind the checkout counter, circling around to stand maybe two steps away at Shuuichi’s right.
Pleadingly, he darts his eyes — not thinking it a great idea to turn his back to this stranger, for even a moment — towards her, desperate for some semblance of what is happening. The man steps forward to take the helmet from beneath her arm, clicking his tongue disapprovingly; instead of doing anything that makes even an iota of sense, she just wraps her arms tightly around her middle, staring straight down at the floor without acknowledging any of what’s taken place.
He’s startled by the movement of the man stepping close enough to place the helmet down on the countertop between the two of them, eyes following the man’s hands as he turns to face the rest of the store and loudly claps them together, still standing between Shuuichi and Maki.
“Excuse me! There is something I must address with every person present in this building. I ask you all to please step out into the front so I may speak with you all!”
Oh, gods, everyone else is still here.
One by one, Shuuichi’s straggler friends emerge from the tall, overcrowded stacks, all of them succumbing to the same shock and alarm that has him and Maki affixed like butterflies to a pin board; motionless and very firmly stuck in place. The stakes of this unexpected complication to their robbery plan do not go unnoticed by any of them; as the remaining five come to an apprehensive but nonetheless obedient stop in front of where the man is bracketed between Shuuichi and Maki, all of them look as stricken as he feels.
Kaede, especially, goes bug-eyed when she emerges alongside Kokichi, face paling of color as she starts to make very unsubtle eyes at Maki. She hasn’t looked up from the floor even once.
As the final nail in this little coffin they’ve found themselves in, the employee steps out into the impromptu party that’s crowding most of the front of the store, not paying Shuuichi and his friends any mind. Instead, he’s looking with no small amount of awe at the stranger who has gathered them all here. The same stranger, who when he lays a hand casually on Maki’s shoulder, receives no response from her except her gaze lifting to stare intently at it.
“Ah, wonderful! Now — you, sir. Am I correct in extrapolating that you are an employee at this establishment?”
“Ye—”
“Fantastic! What a lovely store it is indeed. You should be very proud!” With a broad, pleasant smile, the man pats the spot where he’s still got a hand on Maki. “And it is because I have such high esteem for my countrymen and their tireless work in strengthening our economy every day that I am going to have these youngsters apologize for what they were attempting to do.”
Uh. What?
For a moment, Shuuichi thinks he’s misheard. Because even though he and Maki are presently the most aware of how caught-red-handed they are — having been caught by this very boisterous stranger — the rest of them are…well, coming to that realization about now. A politician stopping a crime he witnessed in its tracks isn’t the most inconceivable notion Shuuichi’s ever thought up, but his immediate pinning of the blame on all seven of them is strange.
Not as strange as him knowing Maki’s name and being able to see her while invisible, of course. But the bluntness of being outed to the employee by this man who is in such apparently high spirits is just…it’s just kind of impossible to wrap his head around this unlucky turn of events.
Very quickly, though, he’s got to figure it out; because when silence lingers in the aftermath of what he says, the man becomes much more stern, fixing all seven of them with an unimpressed look. “Come now, we don’t have all afternoon to get this matter sorted, and I’m expecting to hear sincerity. Maki?”
Her gaze slides to rest somewhere over the employee’s shoulder, voice monotone. “I’m sorry for trying to rob your store.”
Of all the things Shuuichi expects her to say at being prompted, it isn’t her just going and admitting it!
“Fortunately, no violence has taken place here, so it’s a burglary we are contending with, not a robbery! But such minutiae is only relevant once we’re finished. Young man?” This time, when the hand comes to rest on Shuuichi’s shoulder, he doesn’t shout; just jumps about a foot in the air as his eyes jerk immediately over to the stranger.
“I—I’m really sorry,” Shuuichi begins emphatically, the man’s warning about sincerity still in mind, “for also, uhm…t-trying to do that. Take your money. I’m sorry.”
Ears burning with anxiety and shame, when the hand retreats from his shoulder again Shuuichi’s posture sags until he’s also staring down at the floor. Though he’s unable to bring himself to look at it, he hears loud and clear as the man elicits — forces — further apologies from those remaining who haven’t yet done so. Everyone sounds about as freaked out and as genuinely apologetic as Shuuichi had been.
Well. Mostly. As he perhaps should have expected, when he’s arrived at last, Kokichi puts up an objection. “I dunno what’s going on in this little crime syndicate, but I’ve got no part of it! Nope! Not me!”
Traitor.
Or maybe Kokichi’s got more sense than all of them, denying his role in any illegal activity instead of falling into line with this random politician like the rest of them did.
Shuuichi glances up just in time to watch the man’s expression go sour as he shifts his attention fully to Kokichi, wine-red eyes managing to be intense enough to leave Shuuichi with shivers, and he’s not even the one being glared at.
“Don’t tell lies, especially in such a serious situation! Surely you are aware of our present time constraints, young man. I would expect you to be much more responsible instead of continuing to waste this fine gentlemen’s valuable time, after you and the other campers’ transgressions! Enough nonsense — you will apologize, it is just up to your discretion whether you do so honorably, or continue this foolish lying and further ridicule yourself in the eyes of your fellow campers.”
…‘Our’ present time constraints…?
It’s not just Shuuichi’s mouth that drops open. Kokichi, even, appears soundly cowed by such a stern rebuke — none of them were expecting such strictness, from the looks on all of their faces. For several moments Kokichi silently flounders, lips wrapping around half-formed words that he ultimately leaves unspoken. Finally, his gaze bouncing all around the store: “Sorry for wrecking your display. And the attempted burglary, I guess.”
He’s almost kind of expecting the man to correct Kokichi on his sincerity. But instead he just hums his apparent acceptance of the apology before looking to the employee with renewed focus — who hasn’t really said much of anything, strangely.
Not that the man gives him much of a chance. “Right then! Now, I do have one small favor to ask of you, sir — however, should you refuse, I will graciously accept it and we shall get out of your hair. But it appears to me that these children are hungry, and with your blessing, I would like to allow them the chance to pick out some healthy snacks. To be paid for, naturally! Would you be agreeable to that?”
“O-Of course, Representative Ishimaru…”
Okay. Well. Shuuichi correctly figured that one out, at least. Not like it makes what’s happening any less confusing.
“Splendid! You must have a very kind heart, sir. I will not forget your generosity to these youngsters! Now,” it becomes clear the moment ‘Ishimaru’ shifts from addressing the employee to speaking to the rest of them, from the displeased frown that flips his mouth, “I am trusting you all not to make the same mistake twice. Please pick out whatever snack items you’d like, bring them to me so I may pay for them, and then we’ll be on our way. Maki, you’ll be staying here.”
He taps her shoulder gently for emphasis; and with that, it seems the remaining six of them have been dismissed. More or less as a unit they move back into the sprawling aisles, leaving behind the employee, the politician, and an abnormally deferential Maki as they begin hastily picking items off the shelves and whispering amongst themselves.
“What the hell was that?!”
“D-Don’t look at me!” Shuuichi shoots back, hands raised defensively in Kaito’s direction. “I don’t know what’s going on!”
“A member of Parliament…oh, gods, I could be sick…”
“Oh no! What can Gonta do to help so Kiibo no get sick?”
“A-Ah…it’s just a small figure of speech, but still…this is just crazy!”
“‘Ishimaru’, huh…that name ringin’ a bell for anybody?”
While the three of them carry on along that line of conversation, Shuuichi’s focus shifts to Kaede and Kokichi, wordlessly but separately pulling down snack items, appearing dazed — and uncharacteristically quiet. Knowing he’s got his ‘snacks’ sitting in a bag up front already paid for, Shuuichi forgoes picking out anything else in favor of trying to figure out what the hell they’re going to do once they’re out of here and, from the sounds of things, directly following the orders of this stranger who has done nothing to establish trust, but has certainly cemented a very high level of authority.
By the time they’re being summoned again to the front of the store on a request they not further delay their departure with idle bumbling about, Shuuichi’s come up with exactly nothing useful. Not even a whisper of a plan materializes in his brain as he reluctantly follows his friends to the checkout, observes everyone else dumping their pretty heavy-handed purchases onto the countertop, and watches Ishimaru pull out a sleek black credit card to pay for the whole lot without so much as batting an eye.
Powerful social capital, knows Maki, isn’t fooled by invisibility, rich. Sure, why not?
…And why is that concept kind of weirdly familiar…?
Everyone’s purchases bagged and handed off to them — Shuuichi’s paltry grape soda and box of chocolates included — Ishimaru repockets his wallet, then directs another dazzling, all-charm smile in the direction of the employee, the whites of his teeth shining.
“I really cannot thank you enough for your leniency and cooperation in this matter. You’re exactly the kind of man I’m proud to represent! And it’s for that reason…” Sighing, Ishimaru for the first time begins looking put-out, almost disheartened — a stark difference from his prior cheer, and stern disapproval from before. “It is indeed a true shame that I have to detract from the lesson I’ve taught these kids. But I’m afraid allowing you to remember this interaction may cause unforeseen issues, and I simply don’t have the time for that. Please excuse my rudeness in doing this, sir!”
Extending a hand, Ishimaru touches his thumb and middle finger to each of the employee’s temples, eyebrows drawn in concentration. Shuuichi isn’t sure he breathes through any of the long, tense moments the man spends doing so. With a satisfied hum eventually he withdraws his arm, no longer paying the employee any mind as he instead casts his gaze around the seven teenagers crowded anxiously, inexplicably around him still. After retrieving the helmet from the counter and tucking it nonchalantly beneath his arm, he opens his mouth to address them, this time, like what just happened is normal. “Outside, now, don’t dawdle.”
So there are gods within the government. And they’ve been intercepted by one. Alright. Okay.
Nagito and his god damn luck…
In stunned, horrified silence, all seven of them comply, moving single-file out of the exit, Maki and apparent god Ishimaru bringing up the rear. The door shut behind them all — and more or less out of view of the poor old man left memory wiped in the convenience store — Ishimaru finally unhands Maki, expressive features contorting into something much more akin to what Shuuichi might see on the face of a parent preparing to scold their child.
…Oh.
“Your bags, please.” Ishimaru wastes no time in rounding up everyone’s purchases, turning on his heel and clearly expecting them all to follow as he speed-walks with purpose towards a hulking, sleek black, kind of obscenely luxurious minivan. With the click of a button on a keyring in his palm the back hatch opens automatically, and after setting the group’s snacks — and the heisted helmet — delicately down, he turns to them all with a single clap of his hands. “Hmm? What is it you’re all waiting for? Into the car, please!”
Silence, in response. Shuuichi catches several of his friends' eyes, and he gets the impression they’re all mostly in the same boat: that is to say, kind of shaking in their boots.
Appearing to also finally recognize how absolutely bizarre a situation this is Ishimaru blinks owlishly between them, before going a bit red, turning his palms out to the seven of them placatingly. “Oh, I see! Some of you must not know who I am — I sincerely apologize for my rudeness! My name is Kiyotaka Ishimaru, but no need for the formalities — you kids are free to call me Taka. I’m Maki’s father. And who might you all be?”
In lieu of any follow-up introductions, everyone’s focus instead renews very heavily on Maki; she still doesn’t look back at any of them, face as red as it had been when Taka first caught her and Shuuichi at the register.
“You’re Maki Roll’s dad?!” Kaito’s the first to get his mouth working again, even if it’s not the most eloquent question Shuuichi’s ever heard. In response, though, Taka beams, arms crossing over his chest as he nods once in Maki’s direction.
“Correct! Well, one of them, anyway.” He shrugs, as if it isn’t the giant bomb on their little group dynamic that the rest of them understand it is. “It makes me very happy to know Maki must speak of me!”
Shuuichi’s hardly the most well-positioned among them to know if that’s true or not, but the others’ expressions tell him well enough how truthful a statement that is. Finally finding her voice after so long spent in stunned silence, Maki apparently thinks similarly. “Oh my god, please stop talking.”
“Nonsense! Really, Maki, are you not expecting a conversation to be necessary after the past several days? Speaking of — I must again implore you all to please hop in. We are very short on time, but it’s only responsible I treat you to lunch before anything else. I’m sure none of you have been eating properly!”
As much of a point as he may have, however — and as much as the prospect of actual food is tempting, enough for Shuuichi to consider pushing past his stranger danger and allowing himself to be lured into this candy van — there are a few sticking points that keep him from doing so…yet.
Maki’s dad…probably won’t kill them. Probably. “Can we…grab our stuff first?”
“‘Stuff’?” Taka glances around the empty lot, confused. “What are we missing?”
“Our, uhm…our bags. They’re in that truck over there.”
Shuuichi points to where it’s parked right by the gap between the parking lot and the road, positioned for a speedy escape that…well, isn’t going to pan out. After following his prompting Taka squints suspiciously towards the vehicle, lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m well aware that none of you have your road licenses.” He directs a very sharp look in Maki’s direction. “I assume you didn’t procure your illegally-driven truck through legal methods, either?”
Busted. It’s not even nearly the worst thing they’ve done, either. “Maybe?”
It’s Shuuichi’s turn to draw an affronted look, and he shrinks under the intensity in Taka’s eyes — and how much of a gut-punch the ensuing guilt ends up being. Just like Makoto, Taka has the disappointed-parent look down perfectly, and all of them feel it as he pins them each individually with one.
A deep, huffed sigh, and then: “…I suppose it will do very little good to deprive you of your things. Go ahead — quickly, though, as we are very short on time!”
Yeah, he’s mentioned. Though it’s not as if any of them needs to be told twice. As they scurry over to do as instructed, Kokichi sidles up to Shuuichi, rolling his eyes very exaggeratedly in his view until Shuuichi gives him the attention he’s clearly fishing for. Only once Shuuichi has the truck door open do they make eye contact, and when they do, Kokichi reaches over to flick him in the forehead again.
“Man, you really are hopeless. Telling the God of Order about our grand theft auto?”
Rolling his eyes back, Shuuichi retrieves Kokichi’s stupid cat backpack from the middle row and plops it into his waiting hands. “Are you saying you knew who he was?”
“Uh, yeah? Taka’s visited camp a few times, and I actually remember a thing or two from the history essays I lifted from the internet. Hajime was totally right to flunk you out of class.”
“I’ve known the gods are real for less than a fortnight. The world is ending. Don’t I deserve a little bit of a break?”
As Shuuichi swings his duffle bag onto his own shoulder, Kokichi’s helpful response is: “Fortnite?”
There’s a loud, vague shout from the direction of the minivan. Maki drops the keys to Mikan’s truck heavily into the front cupholder before slamming the door firmly shut. She makes no move to say anything before stalking back off towards Taka; and having gotten nothing particularly inspiring from his ‘conversation’ with Kokichi, Shuuichi finds himself inclined to do the same and just get whatever fate Taka has in store for them over with.
Graciously, Taka’s propped open all three passenger doors, and put down the middle row of seats to allow them access to the much more spacious way-back than they were afforded in Mikan’s vehicle. Equally lavish as it is spacious, Shuuichi’s left to gawk at the plush, well-maintained interior as the rest of his friends pile in, ending up with Kaito and Kiibo alongside him in the way-back by the time all the doors are shut, and Taka’s himself climbing into the driver’s seat.
Maki, perhaps naturally, ends up in the front passenger seat. Her gaze is firmly out the window as her father addresses the rest of them. “Alright, what is it we’d like for lunch?”
“Not McDonald’s.”
It gets no more specific than that, though, but Taka manages well enough based on Kaito’s pained grumble. The few minutes spent in the car are silent and very awkward, but relatively easy to grit their teeth through as it’s not long before they’re pulling into…what looks like some kind of American-style restaurant. He doubts his appetite will allow him to stomach much, no matter what it is.
With such a big group, he’d expect there to be some kind of wait in getting them all seated, but Taka’s charm and social pull has that problem handily solved while barely lifting a finger. It takes no more than the duration they just spent in the car for them to be sliding into a large, crescent-shaped booth seat, offered drinks, and have handed off all eight of their orders to a very eager front-of-house manager, who swears they’ll be given the privacy Taka politely — but firmly — requests they be allowed.
Then it’s just seven demigods facing down an actual god that, by all accounts, has them more trapped than any god or monster before him has managed.
“Now that I’ve secured us some privacy,” Taka begins, glancing over each of them individually, eyes very intense, “I think it’s about time for some explanations. You all have been missing for many days, and have left quite the mess in your wake! In the name of fairness, I will give you all the opportunity to tell your side as you see it. That charitability will last only as long as your honesty does.”
Next to Shuuichi, Kokichi especially is fixed with a harsh look, but other than that it appears the floor has been opened to them. At the very least, they’ve told this story once already, and so long as no one randomly decides to lie — and there’s looking at Kokichi again — they should have their story relatively straight.
They should have, but of course, Kokichi decides to start things off by throwing all of them a curveball. “Should I start before or after I blow-darted Hajime and Nagito so we could steal the RV?”
Oh, gods…
“You did what?!” Kaito and Kaede manage at the same time, equally aghast, though Kaito ends up being much louder. It’s a good thing they’ve got privacy, at least.
“What is wrong with you, Kokichi? Where — where would you even get something like that?”
Despite his feigned shrug, he looks far too pleased at all the eyes on him. “Don’t go blaming me! Someone else must’ve smuggled them in — I just found them in Nagito’s confiscation pile, and socked them away for a rainy day. Or night, I guess.” He taps his chin, considering. “I bet it was Miu. She orders all kinds of weird shit online.”
“We told you to distract them, not tranquilize them!” It’s probably a good thing Kaede’s sat nearer Maki and Taka, and away from where Kokichi is settled next to Shuuichi on the opposite side of the booth’s half-circle. She’s turning a slightly concerning shade of red. “A-And then you just snuck onto the RV anyway! Kiibo was right — what is wrong with you?!”
Their continued explanation carries on in much a similar, slightly argumentative fashion. Shuuichi spends much of it watching Taka and trying not to be obvious about it; for all his utter confidence in berating them for doing terrible things earlier, he doesn’t say a word. Just watches silently, eyes affixed on the face of whoever happens to be retelling their quest so far with an almost frighteningly neutral expression.
One of the only things that really changes that, actually, is once they’ve got their food in front of them, and they’ve moved onto the parts they haven’t rehearsed yet — rather, what’s happened since they wound up on the Kuzuryuu’s doorstep. It’s only once Gonta anxiously brings it up that Shuuichi remembers that he did have a gun pointed right at him just a few days ago, as did Maki. That inspires a deeply disturbed look cast between the both of them that Taka schools away soon enough, though not entirely.
It’s not as if Taka can really be blamed for that, honestly. Shuuichi’s not a parent, but he’s had a lot of insane things happen to the people he cares about lately; he can only imagine how it feels to hear that your daughter was on the other side of the God of Crime’s gun — especially when he’s her godfather. Thinking of his own living parental figures…
Oh, may the gods help him when he next has to face Makoto and Byakuya.
Foreign armies, Junko bear-monsters, gods of varying levels of bloodlust, a laundry list of racked-up crimes longer than any book Shuuichi’s ever read — the seven of them have been through some shit, the past…five days, give or take a few hours. And don’t they all know it. But it’s not just them, anymore; Fuyuhiko and Peko got their earful a few days back, and presumably at least some version of events has trickled out amongst the gods from whoever the two of them called after their head-start ended.
Now Taka knows, too. Maki’s dad. Who only breaks his contemplative quiet once the rest of them have taken a deep breath following them finishing their recounting — up to this point, their story ends on their failed crime (‘burglarizing’, as Kaede puts it) and following interception (‘kidnapping’, as Kokichi much less helpfully puts it) by Taka. And also Shuuichi can stop time. Maybe. Kind of. He’s still not rock-solid on the specifics.
A brief moment of tense, anticipatory silence settles. Then from Taka, his hands tented in front of him as he surveys the seven of them seriously: “Well, obviously, all of you are on no uncertain terms grounded forever.”
Fair. Frankly, he expected a lot worse. Still is, honestly, so he asks after it so the next bomb that goes off isn’t as out-of-nowhere. “Have you, uh…do Hajime and the other gods know where we are yet?”
Taka blinks, cocking his head slightly to the side. “If that were the case, I doubt we’d all still be enjoying our lunch.”
“Well, Taka…I think what Shuuichi’s trying to get at is…after Fuyuhiko and Peko called everyone, we were expecting any gods that came after us to, uhm, not just take us out to lunch. You know?” Kaede shrugs unsurely, gesturing around the table. “To be honest…I think we’re all kind of surprised Nagito hasn’t teleported in and started…freaking out.”
“You…did know where we were,” Shuuichi points out, cringing a little at the recollection of how that panned out. “But you haven’t told anyone else?”
At his question Taka pauses, fully abandoning his meal in favor of propping his chin on his palm, elbow firmly planted on the table as he seems to heavily consider his answer. “Truthfully, I’ve wrestled with that matter myself, in the lead-up to my finding you. Like I said — you all have left a very large mess behind, and a large part of that is the broken hearts of all the people who care about you.”
Ouch. Way to suck all the air out of the room. Taka sighs before continuing. “While you kids were explaining, I was still contemplating it. But I’ve come to a decision, after listening to your side of the story. I will be calling Nagito, and Queen Nevermind, and the Togamis…but not until I’ve seen you all off on a bus to the entrance to the Underworld.”
“Wait, what?” Maki asks quietly, her first interjection in a while. “You’re letting us go?”
The look Taka fixes her with is severe, but there’s undeniable fondness there, too. “Don’t misunderstand. I will see to it that all of your parents — and for those of you without, Nagito and Hajime will eagerly agree with my assessment, I’m sure — hand down the appropriate punishment for your reckless actions. A sound grounding will be the least of your concerns, you know! After you’re finished your mission, of course, but nevertheless.”
“From you of all gods, that’s a little out of character, right? Did Papa God of Conflict rub off on you that hard?”
Maki isn’t close enough to Kokichi to actually kick him, but someone else — from positioning, his best guess is Kiibo or Kaito — does it in her stead anyway. Taka does a very good job pretending not to notice it, nor the way Kokichi starts sniveling into Shuuichi’s side. “Actually, I’m Maki’s papa. Her father is her dad…but I suppose that’s not what you’re asking, is it?”
Next to Taka, Maki’s slid miserably down her seat, practically half on the floor. It gives her the reach to kick Kokichi herself — presumably, at least. Shuuichi has no desire to involve himself enough to check.
“I have lived a very long life,” Taka observes pensively, “and have been faced with many challenges throughout it. Many battles, both physical and metaphorical, that I have come out the other side of. When one lives as long as I have, some lose themselves in their timelessness and throw themselves at whatever they decide can’t withstand their wrath. Whatever they decide is a just opponent to defeat. Some of these battles, they are worth fighting…but many more are not. At least not without a proper plan of attack.
“There comes a time where one must decide where their priorities lie. What their priorities are. Mine are twofold. As a god, my duty is to the world and its people. The other gods, our demigod children, and a planet full of mortals and monsters…my sphere of influence, my responsibility is in maintaining order among us all. It is my obligation, in whatever capacity I am able, to protect the world from all harm that may befall it — human, god, or otherwise.”
The look Taka casts down at Maki is significant; she reddens, but doesn’t move to hide away, or interrupt her dad. “But just as important, at least in the sense of what guides my actions, is my duty as a father. Neither I nor my husband have been parents for long…Maki is our first, and though it is all of your lives so far…for people like us, seventeen years isn’t very long at all. But in such a short time, even while kept away from her as we have been, she has become our whole universe. Her, and all of the other children that have been left in the care of Camp Hope’s Peak…to you, as well as all of your families, I have a responsibility to keep you safe. To do what is right by you all, because it is what I would want done for my daughter.
“I will be calling Nagito, and Hajime, and all of your parents…where applicable. As a father, and as a friend to many of your parents and your caregivers, I have a responsibility to tell the people who love you that you are safe. But those calls will only be made once you all are no longer in my care. My other duty, that of a god to the people under my protection…is to keep the world from falling into disorder. To stop you from completing your quest and making it to the Underworld would be a dereliction of my duty. No matter the many mistakes you’ve made along the way, you are the only hope we have of getting through to those in the Underworld. So it is my moral obligation to aid you in whatever capacity I am able.”
Following the end of Taka’s speech, they’re all kind of left in stunned, relieved silence. Whatever Shuuichi was expecting to say in response to Taka’s decision on their quest…it isn’t what ends up coming out. “…Thank you, Taka. For trusting us with this. It can’t be easy to give to a bunch of kids, but just…thank you, for letting us do this.”
“Of course!” Taka laughs over at him good-naturedly, eyes squeezing shut briefly with the brightness of his smile. “As I’ve mentioned, I’m only doing what I know in my heart is right. What is rational, quite frankly, in the face of lots of ridiculousness I’ve experienced from the gods lately. However!”
Tone abruptly turning razor-sharp, Taka’s expression darkens like a switch has flipped, pinning Shuuichi with that same severe, disappointed look from earlier. “Do not think for a moment that the fact of you being our best option excuses the irresponsibility that got us all here in the first place! Do you fully comprehend the trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, young man? Do you not recognize how dangerous, and selfish, and — and idiotic it was to steal Junko’s spear? When it comes to appropriately picking battles — you, Shuuichi Saihara, have picked perhaps the most unnecessary and the most perilous fight possible!”
In the face of such harsh disapproval from of all people the God of Order, Shuuichi forgets his own genuine innocence for the briefest of moments as overwhelming guilt wells up in his chest. Right around when he’s mentally coming to his senses again, his friends thankfully take up the mantle of explaining that he isn’t actually the thief the gods of the world think he is.
“The gods are wrong,” Kaede cuts in gently. “Shuuichi doesn’t have the spear. He didn’t even know the gods existed when it was stolen.”
Nodding, Kiibo adds, “I believe I speak for our entire group when I say none of us would be doing all of this if we believed there was even a chance Shuuichi has it.”
“Ask Hajime and Nagito if you don’t believe us. They knew the night we ran off Shuuichi didn’t have it.”
“Wait, they did? Then what the hell’re all the gods trying to kill us for?!”
“Stupid,” Kokichi snarks back, having the sense this time to pull his legs up onto the seat to avoid yet another kick. “We listened outside the window of Nagito’s office. I know you’re an idiot who barged in without a plan, but we actually thought things through before running away.”
“You weren’t even meant to be here, asshole!”
Blessedly not stuck between those two as their bickering devolves, Shuuichi refocuses his attention on Taka once he finds his voice — pensively, seriously listening, like he had the first time.
“I know you don’t have any real reason to believe in me. It’s just my word against what feels like all of the gods, but…but I don’t know how to make it any clearer that I don’t have it. Because of that spear, I got expelled from school and my home trashed. I lost my brother to a monster that I think was after the spear and me. And now, in less than two days, the world is going to end if it doesn’t turn up. If I had that stupid spear anywhere near me, I’d have long since given it to the first somewhat-trustworthy god I came across. All it’s done is hurt me and the people I love. I don’t want any part in this, but the world and the gods are wrong, and they won’t listen when we try to tell them that…so here we are.”
He laughs, though nothing feels particularly funny. “I didn’t run away from camp because of guilt for stealing it, or to use it for some evil purpose, or anything like that — I barely even know what it is, let alone who owns it and what it going missing even means. I’m not putting myself and all my friends in even more danger for some dumb weapon I hadn’t even heard of until I was already being blamed for taking it. Maybe it’s selfish, but the only reason I’ve come this far is to get Rantarou back, and maybe stop the rest of the world from ending. If I’m lucky.”
Nervous and a little out of breath, Shuuichi is left to squirm in the aftermath as Taka continues to watch him with hawk-like eyes, still silently digesting. Eventually, after he’s anxiously dropped his gaze and taken a drink to give himself something to do, he hears Taka puff out a sigh, and when he looks up again he finds him glancing over at Maki.
It pulls her most confident response to her father thus far. “There’s no way he has it. If I thought he had anything to do with Junko…” Maki swallows, visibly uncomfortable, sparing Shuuichi a look he doesn’t know how to decode. “…You know I’d never allow that. I wouldn’t do that to you…and to dad.”
Whatever weight is behind her declaration, it’s lost on Shuuichi — but by the looks of things, only him. Kaede leans a little further into her side; Taka nods his head, patting the hand Maki has resting on the table, and finally turns his gaze back to Shuuichi.
“You have a lot of fine young friends vouching for you, you know.”
“I do,” Shuuichi answers immediately. “They’re the only reason I’ve made it this far. I wouldn’t have a chance without any of them.”
“And we all trust Shuuichi fully.” Gonta, from his right side, lifts a large hand to tap his shoulder for emphasis. “Shuuichi a good friend, and good person. No way would he betray friends by stealing and lying. Gonta only try to do what’s right…and Gonta know this is.”
“…I see,” Taka says eventually, sighing again as his stiff posture relaxes, just slightly. “No, I don’t think it will take me speaking with Hajime and Nagito to make up my mind. If you are all certain, if Maki is certain…then I will put my belief in you. Truthfully, when Fuyuhiko claimed as much in our phone call, I thought he was just trying to appease Mondo and I for only telling us he’d found you after you were already gone…”
Shaking his head as if to clear the thought away, he glances back to Shuuichi with renewed seriousness. “I recognize now that that is no longer the case, and we are in fact operating on the same team — with differing ways of getting there, but with the ultimate end goals of stopping innocent suffering, keeping the world safe, and making sure that awful thing can’t hurt anybody else. I suppose offering you all a little insight into how things are playing out amongst the gods may aid you in completing our shared objectives.”
Shuuichi nods, kind of desperate for information. “Please.”
Thankfully, Taka is more than willing to deliver.
The thing at the root of the upcoming apocalypse, what has caused Shuuichi and his life and his friends and the whole world all of this suffering, is known amongst the gods as the Spear of Gungnir. A ‘horrid, monstrous’ thing as Taka describes it, that has been a major source of grief and heartbreak and death for millennia. From what he can recall, its first usage was a factor in the outbreak of war between Junko, Izuru, and the rest of the gods. For as long as any of the gods can remember, Junko’s closest and only collaborator was her sister Mukuro — the Goddess of War. The combined forces of the two — a Big Five goddess with unimaginable power and a desire for endless bedlam, along with a devoted follower of comparable power and even greater combative abilities — were an ever-present, intangible threat that could never be fully dispatched.
Until on a whim, Junko devises a plan to provoke all-out armageddon, and murders her sister with the spear to put it all into motion.
Gods are all but impossible to kill — Shuuichi has heard that line, at least. But that all but only came into being once Junko managed to successfully destroy a god with this spear that just materialized. A weapon capable of taking down a god, in the hands of a Big Five goddess hell-bent on descending the universe as they understand it into endless chaos. But it was no longer just the Goddess of Chaos herself the rest of the gods were up against; though Mukuro had been disposed of, her role at Junko’s right hand was not left vacant for long.
Enter Izuru Kamukura, God of Despair.
It was the first time the gods had lost any among their ranks — and with that new looming peril hanging over them, as well as a teaming up between Junko and Izuru, they had no choice but to declare war. One that has continued for millennia since, that has been long and bloody and endless as a result of Izuru’s influenceability, Junko’s instability, and the combined, formidable power between them both. Though in recent centuries Izuru’s threat level has diminished because of his physical joining with Hajime and subsequent relegation to within the barrier of Camp Hope’s Peak…Junko’s renewed her focus instead on a more veritably vulnerable target that has almost the same impact as directly targeting the gods: their mortal children.
And thus they return to the matter of the spear. Capable of felling gods. Backdropped by a sprawling history of war and carnage, taking the place of the god whose life it unexpectedly and uniquely cut short. But not just Mukuro has suffered beneath it; the spear nearly killed Hajime in the instance that required he and Izuru join bodies to save his life, it’s how Nagito lost his arm after Junko’s daughter attacked camp, and—
“Your dad?” Shuuichi asks softly, when Taka implies as much, but doesn’t go quite the full way in saying it. From the disquieted looks he sees around the table, he’s hit the nail on the head, and once again he’s the only one out of the know. Backpedaling, he stammers, “Y-You don’t have to answer that, I’m sorry, it’s not my—”
“Yes,” Maki says simply, eyes on her hands as she fidgets with her silverware between her fingers. Taka appears to debate saying something, but thinks better of it. She doesn’t seem inclined to continue beyond that, though, but Taka does, looking much older as the weight of whatever they’re both thinking hits his face.
“Mondo has always been strong-headed in his opposition to Junko’s corrupt rule. We have very different approaches, and…his methods have always drawn more ire than mine. She has always held her grudges — most of you kids know that well enough. Maki’s childhood has suffered because of it.” Taka’s smile is mirthless, gaze far away. “But just as Junko is stubborn, so am I. So is my family. We survived Mondo’s wounding, and we survived the separation she forced between us and our daughter. So long as we have things worth fighting for, things worth caring about…the fate she desires for us and the world at large will never, ever happen. The stubbornness of our collective hope for the world will far supercede the stubbornness of her devotion to chaos.”
“…Jeez, talk about a pep talk,” Kokichi offers after the quiet has settled for just a beat too long, but it does do well to diffuse the…odd air that had gathered around them. Mostly. Taka chuckles, flashing Kokichi an appreciative grin across the table.
“Oh, we’re just getting started! As important as hope is…you can’t rely on your faith in it alone. Decisive action has to be taken in order to see it through into reality. The fact of the matter is, there are many among the gods right now undertaking very reckless, dangerous action in the name of what they believe is hope…or at the very least, what they believe to be right. Though I’m afraid many of my colleagues are behaving anything but right, currently.”
“Can you explain that a little more?” Kaito asks, more or less stealing the words straight out of Shuuichi’s brain. “Like…we keep hearin’ over and over that, like, half of the Big Five are ready to go nuclear over Junko’s spear.”
He’s right, but more than that— “The gods have been freaking out for a while, right? After the spear went missing, but before Rantarou got taken…I remember Byakuya and Makoto were talking about ‘something going missing at work’…they were probably talking about the spear, right? So whatever’s happening…the gods have been fighting for a while.”
“Oh, dear,” Taka says quietly, huffing out a slightly uncomfortable laugh. “If there is one thing you demigods should be envious of, it should be your lack of obligation to the…political sphere of the gods. The last few weeks of meetings…oh, goodness. Even as a career politician, I have had severe trouble retaining my composure at times, really…”
Taka trails off irritably, before shaking the thought away and continuing with slightly more focus. “As a general rule, the contents of our meetings are not meant to leave them, but…I suppose we’re a bit past that, hmm? You are correct, that the Big Five is…somewhat in meltdown, to put things lightly. Junko, following the spear going missing, accused the gods of coordinating it as an act of provocation. Her threats should it not have been returned were…vague, but we all understand well enough that there is no reason to doubt her, especially when given an opportunity to sow discord.
“After several days passed in which the gods attempted to seek it out — or in other cases, pointed fingers at each other and accomplished not very much of anything — Junko, in response to not having the conditions of return met…escalated the situation drastically.”
Taka spares Shuuichi a very significant look. He’s come to learn well enough what that sort of pity means. “She sent the monsters after Rantarou and I.”
“Somewhat. It is Hajime and Makoto’s belief that the monster that attacked you at school was sent by Junko. The ones that succeeded in bringing Rantarou to the Underworld were likely Gundham’s.”
Around him, several of his friends flinch at the name. Shuuichi’s got slightly bigger concerns. “Wait, what?” That’s…new, isn’t it? “I thought…the letter from Celeste said…”
“Neither of the Underworld-dwelling gods are being cooperative in any of this,” Taka mutters, huffing under his breath for good measure. “We were initially under the impression Rantarou was brought there the…traditional way.”
“Killed,” Maki clarifies, somewhat redundantly. Taka nods at her regardless.
“Precisely. Well, er, perhaps not. Celeste maintains a list of every soul that enters the Underworld, through whatever means they happen to do so. Rantarou’s name appeared on that list, and her insensitive delivery of that information resulted in some miscommunication. Once Gundham declared his involvement, and tasked Shuuichi with bringing him the spear…well, Rantarou thankfully isn’t permanently dead, but that has had very little success in calming Makoto down.”
“What is the big man downstairs’ stake in all’a this, anyway?” Kokichi asks, chin propped up on his palms, listening raptly the entire conversation thus far.
“And…Makoto is actually threatening to…to end the world, too…? Like, cookie baking dad Makoto?”
“Makoto’s really powerful,” Kaede answers before Taka gets a chance, smiling a little sheepishly. “I know ‘God of Friendship’ doesn’t sound as spooky as chaos or the dark arts, but…well, apply that to the whole planet, y’know? You put not only the planet in danger, but you put his family in danger, too…scary stuff.”
Kaede shrugs, as if it’s self-explanatory. Shuuichi really isn’t sure if he can wrap his head around it.
“To make a very, very long story short, Junko sends her monster after Shuuichi and accuses you among all the gods of being the one to steal her spear. Rantarou’s soul enters the Underworld, Shuuichi goes missing for several days, and Junko happily accepts the blame for it all until Gundham surprises everyone by revealing it was him that kidnapped Rantarou, sealed off the Underworld, and now has put a one-week time limit on a threat of mass human casualties, with you, Shuuichi, at the very center of it all.”
“Junko wanting her spear back, I get. Makoto — and Byakuya, I guess — threatening to raise hell about Rantarou, I definitely get. But…but what does…” Shuuichi sheepishly points vaguely downward. “Why him?”
“It may seem strange to you all, but…even the gods feel grief.”
At least Shuuichi isn’t the only one confused by that. Not only is it not an answer — he’s not really sure what Taka is meant to be getting at. He sees the lack of recognition across the group and sighs, leaning back slightly in his seat. Somewhat anxiously, his fingertips tap the tabletop. “I apologize for being vague. However…I feel it best not to tempt fate when you all are so close to actually entering his domain. Beyond my own complicated emotions on the matter…it is not my story to tell. Gundham has a very personal vendetta against Junko and the spear alike, and for that reason — I’m sure you’re all fully aware, this far into your quest, but you are about to embark on your most dangerous stretch of your journey yet. I would like to know your plan before I give you my blessing to complete it.”
Their plan. Right. Their plan that Shuuichi totally, definitely has thought through.
But. Well. Everyone’s looking at him for an answer. So well-thought-out or not, what he manages through his nerves is kind of all they’ve got.
“O-Our plan. Right. Well—” How has he not thought this through? “We know where we need to go. Celestia’s Palace, the…Casino of Envy. The bus is here in the city, and after we take that and get there, w-well…he’s expecting us, so as long as I’m there we should be able to get in. We’ll find him…somewhere…and explain that we don’t have the spear. I mean, we’ve convinced you, and Fuyuhiko and Peko, and Hajime and Nagito so far, right? We’ll present our case, and because we don’t have the spear he won’t have any more reason to hold Rantarou, and…everything should work out, right? I don’t have the spear so he shouldn’t have any reason to end the world, I bring Rantarou back to his parents so Makoto I guess can calm down, and…then I guess it’s up to the gods to find who actually has the spear. Kinda out of our paygrade. But. Yeah.”
He can tell he hasn’t given anyone the biggest vote of confidence, but he would certainly appreciate it if Kokichi didn’t just openly facepalm in the aftermath of his explanation!
The table goes quiet enough for long enough that Shuuichi feels compelled to nervously break it himself, feeling a little pinned beneath Taka’s intensity as he appears to think it over.
“…What’s wrong?”
After another moment Taka chuckles, eyes briefly blinking shut as he restiffens his posture, then levels Shuuichi with a small smile once they’re both looking at each other again. “To be completely frank, it’s as good a plan as I’ve heard so far. Better than the other gods have managed since it went missing, at least. Yes, I suppose it will have to do…you all focus on getting in and out of the Underworld safely. The gods have kept Junko under control for this long…and we’ll most certainly do it again. There is no option not to.”
“Do you think you can do it?” Maki’s voice is soft, attention aimed fully over at Taka. Under his daughter’s gaze he wilts just a little, before affixing his smile back on his face — probably for their sake.
“Admittedly, it would be much easier with…her here, but we’ll manage. At the end of the day, the gods are committed to keeping the earth operating as is. We’ll make sure to keep it safe.”
“‘Her’?” is Shuuichi’s follow-up, to which Taka directs a tired smile his way.
“An old friend, someone I haven’t seen in a little while who is always helpful in moments like this. Though I suppose that means different things for people like me and you.” Chuckling to himself, Taka straightens his shoulders before looking over all seven of them with renewed focus. “Alright, it appears to me you’re all finished. I trust you can find your way back to the car while I take care of things in here — then we’ll be on our way to seeing you off at the bus station!”
Maki entrusted with the keys, all of them shuffle their way out of the restaurant, piling into Taka’s car more or less in their same configuration as last time. Ever-cognizant of their established shortness of time, Taka takes very little time himself in returning to his spot in the driver’s seat, and as he pulls them out of the parking lot and back onto the main road, he’s looking across them all through the rearview mirror with a much sterner demeanor reflected back at them as he speaks.
“You all have a very specific set of instructions to follow all the way up until you reach the entrance to the Underworld, so please take care to listen very carefully as I explain it! First, I will get you all in one piece to the bus station, and pay for your tickets while you use the restroom and grab any last-minute supplies you may need — legally. At the appropriate time, you will all board the bus, with my phone number installed in all of your phones so you can reach me if anything necessitates my help. You will ride the bus the entire way to your destination, and promptly enter the car that will be awaiting you at the station in Shimonoseki, which will take you all the way to the casino. It will be well past night time once you arrive there, so I’ll have pre-booked you several rooms there so you can get a good night’s rest before entering the Underworld in the morning — after breakfast. And Maki will be giving me hourly updates to make sure everything goes according to plan. Do I make myself clear?”
Indeed he does, and perhaps as is to be expected from the God of Order, things end up working out more or less in that same way. The first half or so, at least.
They make it without incident through the city and into the bustling station, forgoing the trains in favor of the much less populated bus terminal. Taka easily gets them all tickets for the early evening bus, putting their arrival at their destination right around ten o’clock — barring any unforeseen, unlucky circumstances. Most everyone takes the opportunity to change clothes, or toss a few more snacks into their bags on Taka’s dollar, but at one point all of them end up with a shiny new contact under Taka (Maki’s dad) dialed into their phones and bypassed on their do-not-disturb lists.
Right now, Shuuichi’s lingering near where a few of the others are also sitting and waiting, a little too antsy to be off his feet, so he tries his best to work it out ahead of boarding the bus that he can see has pulled up outside at this point. His duffle is stacked up in the larger pile Kaede and Gonta are currently guarding, hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie as he paces and tries not to be too much of a spectacle about it.
On another rhythmic heel turn he sees Maki walking towards him, away from where she’d been quietly talking with Taka for the past little while. At her approach he pauses, curious, growing more so when she juts her thumb back over her shoulder.
“He wants to talk to you before we go.”
Shuuichi probably should have expected that. He nods his confirmation, and it’s enough for Maki to depart towards the cluster of bags, leaving the air in front of him free to make eye contact with Taka as he hurries over.
“Don’t look so nervous, I’m not going to scold you. I believe I made my point earlier, right?”
Taka laughs, so Shuuichi chuckles under his breath, too. “Yeah, definitely. What do you need?”
“I’ll be making my calls to everyone’s parents once you all are off. Naturally, Makoto and Byakuya will be on that list of people receiving updates.”
“That makes sense. Uhm, if you don’t mind me asking…how are they doing? About everything?”
“Badly,” Taka answers honestly, but there’s no judgment in it. Shuuichi squirms guiltily regardless. “Like my husband and I, they’re first time parents, and they’re going through something no parent is equipped to handle…god or not. But it all comes from a place of caring for their children very deeply…as I said, even gods are capable of grief, and losing two children in one night is unimaginable.”
“Yeah. I felt the same way when my mom died.”
Taka hums, expression wistful. “None of the choices you’ve had to make since being introduced to our world have been easy, and I’m sure many weigh very heavy on you. They are angry, and grieving, and scared…but they will come around. You are a good kid, Shuuichi. The dedication you have to your friends and to your brother is very admirable.”
…Maybe. It’ll feel a lot better when he knows they’re all going to survive the next thirty-six hours. “Thank you.”
“And I know you and the rest of the demigods have what it takes to do the right thing, and make sure everyone can go home to their families…whoever that may be for you all. I know when I call Byakuya and Makoto, I’ll be sure to mention that in my short time knowing him, I’ve found their son to be quite the fine young man.”
“Th-Thank you,” Shuuichi says again, reddening a little under the high praise. “I’m definitely going to try.”
Though he looks as though he wants to say more, Taka is cut off by the intercom announcing their bus to board. A tap on the shoulder signals that conversation as pretty firmly over, so Shuuichi follows the directing to begin walking alongside Taka back towards where the rest of the group has fully gathered, and started organizing their bags ahead of getting in line. There’s not a ton of talking as they make sure they’ve got all of their things — his duffle and everything in it, which he already double checked — and up until they’re stepping into line single-file, tickets at the ready as Taka takes them up to see them all the way off.
Shuuichi’s nearer the back of the line, with just Kaede and Maki behind him. The two of them chat quietly with Taka, though Shuuichi doesn’t hear most of it as he instead indulges the wiggling-eyebrows-contest that Kokichi prompts from just ahead of him, all the way until he’s handing off his ticket to the driver and promising obnoxiously over his shoulder to save Shuuichi a seat right next to him, super-duper pinky-promise.
Whatever. Four hours next to Kokichi on a bus ride is not nearly the worst prospect he’s been up against so far.
His own ticket already handed off, Shuuichi is halfway up the stairs into the bus when he tunes back into the conversation that’s ending behind him. Though it’s not his intention to listen, he does end up pausing at the top of the stairs when what Kaede’s saying registers.
“—Really nice being able to see you again, Taka! Hopefully you can visit camp soon…and hey, next time you do, we won’t be so busy saving the world and we can talk about how me and Maki are dating now!”
Oh…?
“You are what?!”
“Okay, bye!”
Kaede all but bowls Shuuichi over where he’s stopped right in her way as she attempts to quickly run off in the aftermath of that. She’s red-faced, giggling, overflowing with more of both when he extends a hand for her to high-five as they quickly make their way away from Taka’s loud squawking to poor Maki, left behind still with her dad.
Sinking down into his seat next to Kokichi, he finds him arguing with Kaito in the row behind them — typical — as they fight over the fate of their shared window. Kiibo and Gonta are across from Shuuichi, and Kaede snags the one behind them, plopping her bag down to presumably save a spot for her girlfriend once she escapes Taka’s clutches.
Maki does make it on, at roughly the same moment the bus doors slam shut, Kokichi’s window slams open, and it becomes audible to them all that Taka is still going on just outside the window.
“Traitor,” Maki huffs as soon as she’s close enough, though she sinks down in her saved seat anyway. “You can deal with the both of them when this is over.”
“Taka loves me, don’t worry! I’ll be invited to family dinners in no time.”
“You two are not old enough to be dating—!”
Somehow, on a bus headed straight for the Underworld, they’re all left rolling with laughter as it pulls out of the lot, and towards their looming destination.
Notes:
+ surprise! we unlocked the *other* side of maki's family
+ i have LOVED reading everyone's theories up to this point, and a few of you were right on the money (some for a while, even)! we're getting to the point in the story where some of the stuff i've been sitting on and seeding for years at this point are becoming more important, and i'm SO excited to get to unveil more as we close in on the climax here
+ that said: hey, connorlizabeth bazwrites, how long *is* pointy objects gonna be, anyway? and to that i say: it's hard to know for sure! *i* know how this all plays out, the problem is gauging the length of it — we are getting into the thick of things, and i have a track record of chapters i *thought* would be managable lengths ending up...not so much. my guess at present would be somewhere in the ballpark of 30 chapters total, give or take. no promises, though!
+ speaking of what's ahead. another three-parter, anyone? with some twists i think are going to be really fun to write, and really fun for you all to read. these are chapters i've been anticipating pretty much from the jump — now all i've gotta do is do them justice! and we'll get there, hopefully in a similar timeframe as i've been working in previously
+ yowch, i sure am yapping down here! i'll close it off with a few more of my silly P.S. notes, but otherwise: as always thank you, and as always, you can find me on tumblr @ gontagokuhara! as is demonstrable, i love to talk, and any ask sent my way is guaranteed a minimum four big-ass-paragraph reply. see you next time!
+ * anyone familiar with taka's canon design knows he's got the red hall monitor arm band over his otherwise all-white uniform. it's pretty candidly bad vibes to give a character a red arm band without proper explanation as to why, and just straight up i was uncomfortable trying to write my way around it, so i've traded it out for the government seal of japan! i did some deep dives in govt functioning in japan so i wasn't talking entirely out of my ass, and it felt like the best compromise of giving visual cues as to who our mystery stranger was, and also maintaining some accuracy. diet members don't wear armbands, but the rest of taka's outfit is traditional!
+ ** speaking of japanese governmental functions: yes, taka is a member of the diet in this universe! making proud his canon counterpart, he is. specifically, he's a member of the house of representatives, the more powerful and more populated of the two houses (the other being the house of councillors). he and sonia are the solitary members of the political-power-wielding-gods club.
+ *** i don't know shit about cars but taka is the rich dad with the nice ass toyota sienna. the most minivan-driving motherfucker in the entire game series i reckon
+ **** (and for those of you who have read this far, a little hint before we part: expect something New next time!)
Chapter 20: welcome to the motel kumasutra: a love story told in three parts (part i)
Summary:
“Hifumi.” At his first name he jumps, slack-jawed as he stares down at his nametag, only bearing an understated H. Yamada — Front Desk. “If you don’t hurry this up, things are going to get a lot more unpleasant for you.”
One pudgy cheek begins to twitch, puffy lower lip pulled between his teeth as he again looks over the others — this time, more than likely just to avoid Maki’s eye as he stammers, “I—I’m sorry, Miss Oowada, but the r-rules are not mine to bend. No minors after dark, no exceptions! A high-class place like this isn’t appropriate for children like you at nighttime!”
So their reservations are under his name, then. She can work with that. “Unless you’d like to deal with Mr. Oowada, I suggest you shut the hell up and give me the god damn keys. Unless you’re looking to die tonight, in which case — that can be arranged.”
Hedging her bets, Maki juts her thumb over her shoulder, earning a startled yelp from Shuuichi when she uses him as an implicit threat — which Hifumi clearly recognizes, from the way he also definitely recognizes exactly who Shuuichi is, and rolls out of his chair in order to cower further behind his desk.
Notes:
+ hi there, happy new year! my resolution is to finish this god damn fic; and despite many life challenges (like losing my power for 4 days.....) i bring you another update in a pretty decent chunk of time, if i do say so myself!
+ thanks as always to my dearly beloved beta + kokichi correspondent evan captorvatiing <3
+ sorta same deal as last time, no big content warnings come to mind! so with that said, buckle in for 10.5k (i don't know how it happened either) in the first of three parts of...well, you'll see!
+ like always, i'll be sure to yap it up in the end notes. but for now, enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Really, Maki should have known better than to assume that her father’s entire plan would go off without a hitch. Even from an optimistic lens, and with the God of Order at the helm, this was never going to pan out the way he hoped it would.
The bus ride — that was fine. Mortifying, due to having to field her dad’s texts following Kaede’s surprise announcement, and crowing from the others when Shuuichi couldn’t keep his mouth shut about what he heard and the rest of them ended up finding out, too. It was fine, if embarrassing until she shut that stupid conversation down, and then obnoxious because with the seven of them crowded in the back of a bus, no matter what the topic of conversation was, it’s bound to be loud and subsequently annoying.
It helped when she traded seats with Kaede, allowing her to keep her gaze resolutely focused out the window when, maybe two hours into the trip, Kaede worked up the nerve and placed her hand on top of Maki’s between them on the seat.
But that was ages ago now. They’ve long left the fine, embarrassing, obnoxious, but uneventful bus trip behind, and are faced now with a new enemy:
The annoying, sniveling loser manning the front desk of not the Casino of Envy, but rather the hotel also attached to the sprawling complex of Celestia’s Palace.
At the hotel where they currently have reservations. “Check the computer again.”
“My computer isn’t the problem,” the man shoots back snidely, the most confidence he’s managed since Maki marched up to the counter. She scowls in response and he physically jumps, pushing his rounded glasses up for at least the twentieth time in the past ten minutes. “It’s n-not that you don’t have reservations — you’re just not authorized to redeem them yourself!”
Nervous habit, maybe. She can work with that. “You know who we are, and you know damn well how authorized we are in being here. Just give us the stupid keys.”
Yes, this man does know who they are — but Maki also knows who he is. It’s not like she sees most of the gods particularly often, but those she does see are loathe to let themselves be relegated to such a demeaning position as this one has allowed himself to be. Even Nagito and Hajime, forced into watching after all the demigods as a punishment, maintain some semblance of pride — above all else, gods are self-important, and they hate being lesser-than in any capacity.
But not this one. Gods and demigods and monsters have a certain energy to them, a…physical presence that is palpable to those clued-in enough to notice, and even the most pathetic among them are no exception. The hulking, bulbous man squeezed in behind the counter most certainly stinks of immortal — of god, even — but that fact bears little relevance on what his entire being exudes to the outside world.
Though he’s seated, she can only assume he’s several inches taller than she is, in no small part thanks to the obscene spike most of his black hair is gelled into, shining in the illustrious hotel lobby lights from how greased it is. What remains of his hair is further plastered onto his face, styled with even more gel into artificial curled points that sit unnaturally on his skin. Shrewd, hawkish brown eyes stare back at her through thick lenses, lip twisted with displeasure as he appraises her, then the others standing behind her.
Like the rest of the…staff under Celeste’s employ, the suit he’s stuffed his body into is black and formal and vaguely vampiric — thankfully, he lacks the red contacts and fake fangs she’s seen in the faces of some of the others moving throughout the complex around her. His bowtie is on straight, making every effort to be composed, but the further the tense silence lingers without him offering a satisfactory answer to her demand, the more he begins to sweat bullets, dampening his crisp white collar.
Pitiful, for a god, to be happily and willingly indentured to another of his kind. No wonder he’s never been much of a friend to either of Maki’s parents.
“Hifumi.” At his first name he jumps, slack-jawed as he stares down at his nametag, only bearing an understated H. Yamada — Front Desk. “If you don’t hurry this up, things are going to get a lot more unpleasant for you.”
One pudgy cheek begins to twitch, puffy lower lip pulled between his teeth as he again looks over the others — this time, more than likely just to avoid Maki’s eye as he stammers, “I—I’m sorry, Miss Oowada, but the r-rules are not mine to bend. No minors after dark, no exceptions! A high-class place like this isn’t appropriate for children like you at nighttime!”
So their reservations are under his name, then. She can work with that. “Unless you’d like to deal with Mr. Oowada, I suggest you shut the hell up and give me the god damn keys. Unless you’re looking to die tonight, in which case — that can be arranged.”
Hedging her bets, Maki juts her thumb over her shoulder, earning a startled yelp from Shuuichi when she uses him as an implicit threat — which Hifumi clearly recognizes, from the way he also definitely recognizes exactly who Shuuichi is, and rolls out of his chair in order to cower further behind his desk.
“Th-That will not be necessary! But please, really — I have strict orders from my mistress against allowing you onto hotel property! Please, just…leave, and take that awful business w-with you!”
“‘Mistress’?” Shuuichi whispers from behind, aghast. From the sounds of it, Kokichi delights in informing the rest of the group on that.
Inside of her pocket, Maki’s phone buzzes; she leaves Hifumi to stew as she looks away to check, finding what she expects — another text from her dad, at the top of the hour on the dot, requesting an update. She can work with that.
Wordlessly she taps her screen a few times and brings her phone to her ear, raising a finger to shut the god up when his jaw flops open, as if he plans to speak. Whatever the others are muttering about behind her quickly dies out as they, too, listen for something other than dial tone to spill out of the speakers on her phone.
“Maki? Is everything alright?”
“Hi, papa,” she greets casually, raising an eyebrow as Hifumi further attempts to dive beneath the front desk. “We’re at the hotel, but the clerk is having some trouble with our reservations. Would you mind putting dad on the phone?”
Immediately she can hear most of the others begin to whisper furiously about that; everyone who doesn’t know better, at least. Kaede angles closer to listen, biting back a laugh as on the other side of the line, her dad doesn’t bother to hide his. “You’re not going to sic your father onto some poor, unawares wage worker, are you?”
“Actually, he’s a friend of yours,” she muses back, leveling the man with a flat look despite the lightness in her tone. “Hifumi, you’re ready to talk now, right?”
He squeaks, face steadily reddening, practically sweating through his suit. Her dad clicks his tongue. “Oh, don’t tell me Yamada’s continuing to…no, I shouldn’t be surprised. You know the drill — to play things carefully, he’ll just ring the front desk himself. Is now a good time for a ‘friendly’ call?”
“Yeah, we’re ready.” Maki’s dad hangs up first, and she’s hardly returned her phone to her pocket when the one on the desk begins to ring, jumping the rest of the room. Hifumi’s hair is beginning to wilt with all of the perspiration. “Mr. Oowada would like a word.”
As he moves with shaking hands to answer, Maki turns her head enough to address the others over her shoulder. “You might want to take a few steps back.”
It’s an exaggeration, mostly to sell her dad’s upcoming performance to its suitably-terrified victim, but still everyone but Maki and Kaede do take several prominent steps away from the desk. Hifumi’s hardly lifted the receiver to his ear when her other parent’s voice begins thundering down the line at top volume, effectively shouting the building down without even having to be here to do it.
Maki makes little effort to listen, knowing well enough by now how effective her dad is at tearing into people — despite both of her parents’ reservations about letting her actually hear it. Personally, Maki is unconvinced by the reasoning offered to her by the two of them and the gods at camp alike, but the superstition is well-meaning — and originating from her godly parent himself. The two of them, but especially Mondo have always been fearful that Junko would target Maki with reprisal should they violate the limitations set by Junko on just their family, which has played out in…
Well. Played out in her living in some rundown orphanage for the first twelve years of her life. With her being shipped off to demigod daycare the minute shit hit the fan in her human life, in fears that what happened to her friend may have been at all motivated by Junko. In Maki only knowing her godly parent through videos, and messages delivered through her non-godly parent as proxy, and knowledge obtained secondhand by history books and stray accounts from other gods when they visit camp themselves.
And, a handful of times now: played out in distantly hearing him scream threats and obscenities at someone over the phone in her name.
So she tunes it out, more out of habit than anything else, biting back a darkly-amused smirk of her own as the other demigods are cowed, and god Hifumi practically dissolves to the floor with fright, left a stuttering, damp mess by the time he’s shakily returning the phone to its receiver, having apparently stomached all he can of Mondo Oowada for the next century or so.
How unlucky for him, that the line immediately begins to ring again.
“B-Be your — your parents’ concerns what they are,” Hifumi begins breathlessly over the shrill noise of the phone, hands mussing his sticky, melting hair when they scrub anxiously across his face, “my o-orders from my mistress have not changed! As frightening as Mr. O-Oowada attempts to be, m-my mistress is much scarier, and will definitely have my head if I allow you kids entry!”
“He will have your head if you don’t,” Maki points out, not incorrectly. Though Hifumi gulps, still he shakes his head furiously, so much that his glasses, slick with sweat, slide right off of his face and clatter loudly onto his desk.
“My mind won’t change — my loyalty is unmatched. I’ll have to ask you all to please leave now!”
“Pfft, what’re you gonna do?” Kokichi asks snidely from behind, having deduced as well as Maki has that this pathetic man is hardly a threat.
“I’ll — I’ll kick you out! I will! Servants!”
How annoying. Maki shoots him an unimpressed glare as he stuffs his glasses back onto his face. “Are you really sure that’s how you want this to go?”
Hifumi looks over her shoulder very squarely at — she would guess — Shuuichi, flinching as the harsh ringing cuts off, only to immediately pick back up again. As vaguely vampiric suits begin materializing in the lobby, Hifumi shakes his head once more.
“Just — just leave already, would you?! Oh, for the love of—!” Hastily Hifumi stands, yanking the phone cord unceremoniously out of the base, severing the connection and with it, Mondo’s incoming call. “Look — the mistress’ house rules are no minors after dark. Obviously, you know your way around these parts well enough, so just — come b-back with the daylight, and until you do, stay out of Celestia’s Palace and…and don’t bloody up our lovely servants with fighting, please!”
Despite being unplugged, again the hotel phone line begins to ring. Interesting. From the look on his face, Hifumi also seems to think so.
Scowling, Maki points unhelpfully to the magically-ringing phone. “That’s not going to stop, just so you know.”
“Fantastic.” The seven of them mostly surrounded now by the ten or so ‘servants’ he’d summoned, Hifumi waves a hand dismissively at them, a modicum of confidence returning. “You can leave now. Have a luxurious night.”
Huffing, she turns her back on the god, noting quickly that the other demigods are looking to her for leadership on how they deal with the…looming issue of the servants. While none of these people smell of anything other than well-paid human, she sees very little point in wasting their energy on a useless fight when they’re a matter of hours out from the Underworld.
“We’ll talk about it outside. Let’s just leave.” She eyes the surrounding men, decidedly unimpressed. “We’ll see ourselves out.”
As she says they do, each of them sidestepping the men surrounding them and backtracking towards the exit, with Maki pulling up the rear and making sure no one gets any ideas about following them. Which she doubts, but nonetheless her eyes remain sharp on the casino complex they leave behind until they’re positioned closer to the main road, and she’s confident it will be just the seven of them privy to their conversation on what happens next.
Adjusting his duffle bag on his shoulder, Shuuichi casts a wary glance around the dark night as he asks, “So, uh…does anybody have a backup plan?”
Glancing quickly at her phone tells Maki it’s well past eleven at this point. “It’s late. We’re not going to have many options.”
“Man, and I was really lookin’ forward to conking out early to prepare for the morning.” Kaito heaves an obnoxious sigh, hands braced on his knees as his posture sags morosely. “I can’t believe that guy wasn’t convinced by your god-dad, Maki Roll.”
His phrasing is ridiculous, and she rolls her eyes, but nonetheless concedes, “Neither can I.” Irritated, she runs her fingers through one of her pigtails. “We do have funds now, though, and whatever we do I have to update my dad on anyway.”
“Hey, did anyone else catch when he slipped up and said Celeste’s orders are to keep us out of the hotel, or should I just forget about that like the rest of you?”
Kokichi’s smarmy delivery aside…that, and given Hifumi’s lack of cooperation even when threatened, it appears he has a point. Before she can put past her fundamental aversion to openly agreeing with him, though, Gonta’s voice cuts her off, as does the motion of him pointing to where he’s staring far down the road.
“Gonta and friends can sleep there, right?”
Maybe the last of the group to do so, Maki’s eyes follow Gonta’s prompting to where his finger extends towards: some sleazy, rinky-dink building, blinking an obnoxious pink and purple harshly against the surrounding late night. The ‘vacant’ sign, just barely legible when she squints, flickers and occasionally shorts out — but undeniably, it’s a motel with occupancy available. Which is on its face rather convenient.
Except for the fact that Maki is positive it was not there when they drove past that spot on the way to the casino.
“Oh, thank the gods,” Kaede breathes, swaying a little on her feet as she rises up on her toes to try and get a better look.
“Wait — that definitely wasn’t there earlier, right?”
“It wasn’t,” Maki agrees, squinting a little against Kiibo’s bright eye lights as they turn to face her. “Something’s not right.”
“Maybe the lights just weren’t on, or something.” Kokichi’s indifference is all the confirmation Maki needs not to trust it. “It’s not like it popped up out of nowhere, y’know?”
The debate properly begins from there, with clear lines drawn in the sand pretty quickly. Shuuichi and Kiibo, like Maki, are of the opinion that it’s not trustworthy in the slightest; unquestionably, they are in god territory now, a Big Five god no less. Though Hifumi is no real threat, his presence does prove that gods are milling about, and a seedy motel materializing on the eve of Gundham’s deadline running out is as bright a red flag as the lights strobing around the building itself.
On the opposing side are Kaito, Gonta, Kokichi, and Kaede, of whom are of the opinion that they’re tired. It’s been a very long, very stressful day despite the fortune disguised in their running into Taka, and they just want a chance to sleep ahead of what’s awaiting them in the Underworld. The motel mitigates the need to find another place to sleep and arrange travel, it’s already so late — and if all else fails, they can find somewhere else if this place ends up being a bust.
Maki doesn’t trust it in the slightest, and how bad of an idea it is only seems to compound on itself, in how of course it’s Kokichi playing tie-breaker on the issue. Historically, he has only ever gotten them into situations that have ended up dire: he egged on the Novoselic soldiers, she is certain he knows more about the RV explosion than he’s letting on, and most recently spearheaded the waste of time that got all of them sliced to bits by Syo, and held out on the healing salve to let the rest of them suffer through the night with the injuries that were his fault. It could almost be nauseating, if she didn’t have such a strong stomach, how uneasy it makes her — that Kokichi has managed to worm his way into a quest he was never supposed to be a part of in the first place, and has taken such influence over it.
And now he’s playing up his exhaustion, rubbing his eyes and stumbling over his feet and whining to Shuuichi and Kiibo both to try and get them to change their minds, because he knows well enough that he won’t be getting through to Maki.
But the stupid brat is smart, and manipulative, and when Kiibo folds she knows Shuuichi is going to do the same before he actually does. He does, of course he does, and once again Maki is faced with the choice to follow Kokichi’s lead along with everyone else towards the motel, or be left behind in exile from Celestia’s Palace.
So she goes, bringing up the rear, working a knife out of a pocket in her bag that her dad hadn’t thought to check in preparation for…whatever awaits them, on the other side of the dark, silent walk.
‘Whatever awaits them’ ends up being a twin set of adjacent single-story buildings, neither of which bear any meaningful signs of life, even on approach. The lodgings building is certifiably dead; not even a stray spot of light bleeds through any of the curtained windows, and neither it, nor what from process of elimination has to be the administrative main building, have a single car in any of their parking spots. The lot itself reeks heavily of tobacco and syrup-sweet candy, and Maki has to physically hold her nose to ward off the headache the cloying stench threatens her with as burnt cigarette butts crunch disgustingly beneath her shoes.
At the very least, though, there is light bleeding out through the dim windows of the admin building, so there has to be someone inside, and it’s not as if the motel is set to run out of space anytime soon. Repulsed but lacking alternative options, Maki grits her teeth, sheathes her knife in her sleeve, and steps ahead of the rest of the group to reach the entrance first — eager to get inside both to escape the awful smell of the parking lot, and because it’s one annoyance closer to being resolved so she’s able to finally sleep.
She’s hardly got the door open before she’s tensing up in the threshold, eyes narrowed as she — and the others, peering out from over her shoulders — take in the sight before them that very much should not be there.
There’s definitely something nonhuman going on; the overblown grandeur of the massive lobby that sits before them far outsizes the physical boundaries of the dingy building they’d seen outside. Sprawling white interior architecture with shining gold accents bleed opulence down the walls, broken up by a series of crystalline chandeliers that shimmer in the warm ambient lighting of the room. Marble floors match the surrounding pillars that form a path through the room, interrupted by several ornate carpets, potted plants, and in the center of the room — a god damn fountain, the sound of a water stream carrying through the lobby alongside the quiet classical music serving as a backtrack.
As Maki continues to silently take in their surroundings, she makes no effort to clear the way for the others to step in, even as they break into whispered debate over what they’ve just walked in on. This situation has quickly gone from precarious to outright dangerous, but when her eyes glaze over the concierge desk, all thoughts of threat assessment outside of active offense mode are knocked away when she does a double take, and sees her godly parent’s face staring back at her.
No, that can’t be right — can’t be the actual Mondo, her actual dad sitting at the other end of this obscene room, not reacting to her presence at all, just passively observing. But beyond that, more pressing than that: though her exposure to him has been limited to pictures and videos, he’s definitely more the muscular type than the fat type.
So the large man wearing her father’s face, and watching her appraisingly, cannot be the real Mondo Oowada. Which begs, then, an important follow up:
Who the hell is it?
By the time her weapon has rematerialized in her grip again, the others have also spotted the stranger at the other end of the room — and the discussion suddenly gets a lot louder.
“Nana?!” One of Kaito’s hands bears down on Maki’s shoulder as he tries to crane his head to get a better look; when she’s roughly jerked herself out of the way to demand to know what his problem is, his face rapidly drains of color when she turns her own to look.
“Oh, gods, why is Byakuya here, and why is he so much bigger than I remember?!”
“Huh? Shuuichi, what’s wrong with you? That’s fat Nagito!”
“N-No, that’s — it’s Rantarou’s dad! And should we really be calling him f-fat…?”
“Quit playin’ around! Is this some kind of stupid joke?! My grandmother is dead, h-how…”
“Everyone, please lower your voices! I don’t want you to offend Sonia just because she is, ah, larger—”
“Gonta did not know wolves could run motels…hmm…”
“Ooh, my turn! I see fat Junko!”
“Stop it, asshole! Th-There’s no way Ju — she’s here!”
At their bickering, not-Mondo’s lips tip upward. Maki narrows her eyes, not taking them off of the stranger as she raises her free hand to interrupt the collective meltdown happening behind her with what she…thinks she’s figured out.
“Shut up for a second. Whoever you’re seeing, it’s not real — it’s some kind of shapeshifter, and I think they’re appearing to us as…someone who represents some kind of authority figure, or something. It’s not anyone we know. Stay behind me.”
The only sounds in the room as the seven of them slowly approach the front desk are the continued lilting music floating out of unseen speakers, the diffusive noise of the water fountain, and the sounds of their steps alternating on the marble floors and the carpets until they reach where the stranger is clearly awaiting them, and seems uneager to make the first move themself.
Having the weight of her godly parent’s eyes on her is so weird as she opens with, “What is this?”
“A motel.” Hearing the answer in his voice is just as weird. Especially when it’s such a smartass response — not like what she knows of her dad at all.
“Why do you look so…familiar?”
Not-Mondo smiles. Such an artificially pleasant expression looks alien on their stolen features. “It’s hard to say. I get that a lot.”
“I’m sure.” Her glower likely reflects how unimpressed she is with the performance, if the shrug she receives in response is any indication. “What do you want?”
“Me? Nothing. But it appears you all are looking for something.”
Definitely nonhuman, then — Maki’s instincts tell her it’s another god they’re dealing with. Other than their short, cryptic answers, though…nothing in them seems particularly antagonistic. Not like Hifumi, pathetic as he is, clinging onto the laurels of a much more powerful goddess in hopes of a shred of the power and protection that comes with it. No, not-Mondo — who, or whatever they are — strikes her more as the passive observer type. Content to linger in disguise and veiled in ambiguity, watching and on occasion meddling, as they are now.
But not antagonistic. And the seven of them do need a place to sleep tonight. “We’ll take two rooms.”
For the first time not-Mondo frowns, offering a minute shake of their head as they glance over all seven demigods. “Motel policy is two occupants per room.”
Of course it is. “Well, we can only afford two rooms,” Maki shoots back, more out of annoyance than actual truth — either way, it’s her dad’s emergency card on the hook for the cost.
That gives not-Mondo pause, hands shifting for the first time from the desk to idly run one along their long, quaffed hair; it’s hard to say for certain what the others must be seeing, in their own assessment of what and who they’re looking at. After a moment they offer another shrug, gaze dropping to their desk. A chubby hand eventually rises back into view, a keyring on all four of their fingers as they look down at Maki expectantly.
“Buy two, get two free.”
Unnerved, but lacking other options, Maki tosses the card onto the desk and warily takes the keys from not-Mondo when they are extended to her. No one is eager to linger once the transaction is finished, though Maki herself hesitates to fully face her back to the stranger as she retreats after the others. Only as she’s angling out the door last does she turn; and right before it shuts behind them, not-Mondo politely calls out:
“Enjoy your stay at the Motel Kumasutra.”
As soon as the entrance is shut behind them, Maki makes a beeline for the other building, not making much effort to listen to the hushed whispering amongst the others as her eyes scan both the keys in her hand and the numbers on each door to figure out where they’re staying so they can just sleep already. It’s only when she hears Kaede’s voice that she bothers tuning in, more or less right in time to hear her name.
“No, a monster wouldn’t do something so elaborate, they’d probably just try and kill us. Harumaki said a shapeshifter, so — the God of Trickery, right? Isn’t that kinda what they do?”
Well. Not her name, and she’d have the head of anyone else who tried to suggest as much. She’s long since given up putting Kaede off the stupid nicknames…though they’re not that bad, from her. “I thought so, too. Whoever it is didn’t kill us, so I’m inclined to leave it alone and spend our energy on figuring out sleeping arrangements.”
The question is mostly a formality — it should be, at least — but of course Kokichi finds it within himself to be obnoxious, side-stepping Shuuichi to instead cling to one of Kaede’s arms like a whining, petulant child.
“That’s easy! I want to room with Kaede!” For whatever reason, he’s looking to be annoying but not make an entire production of it; an unimpressed look from Kaede — and one from Maki, too, just because he deserves it — is all it takes for Kokichi to crumple, morosely dropping her arm to whimper out, “That was just a lie, jeez…”
Nuisance dispatched, actually splitting up for the night goes relatively easily, and she can mostly focus on sending a text update to her parents while the others sort it out. Obviously Maki’s going to room with Kaede, and both Gonta and Kiibo are quick to pair off in a room of their own, too — from how Kaede keeps winking very openly at Kiibo, Maki is very sure she doesn’t want to know. Kokichi throws himself at Shuuichi and nearly bowls them both over in an attempt to make clear who he’s sleeping with; how very unfortunate for Shuuichi, but it’s much better him than anyone else, who would probably kill him if boxed in some shitty motel room with the brat all night. Which leaves Kaito with a room to himself, an outcome he’s more than happy with. Until, as Kaito’s loudly yawning into his hand and it’s seeming as though everyone’s about to head off, Kokichi obnoxiously stage-whispers:
“Really, Shuumai, it’s a good thing Kaito gets his own room — he’ll get to sleep in when no one wakes him up to go save the world tomorrow!”
“What? W-Wait — Maki, you’re not actually gonna leave me behind, right?!”
“Oh, dear god.” With one hand Maki pinches the bridge of her nose, throwing a set of keys in Gonta’s direction. “No one is getting left behind. But we’re leaving early tomorrow, before nine — set an alarm, make sure you’re up. Shuuichi.”
Pulling her head up, she tosses another pair of keys once she’s got his attention; unlike Gonta, he doesn’t catch them, and has to stoop down to retrieve them before nodding his attention.
“You have the helmet?”
“Y-Yeah, in here.” He turns slightly in order to pat his duffle bag in her view. “Why, do you want it?”
“I’m not going to need it, obviously — it’s probably better you keep it tonight. We’ll talk about it in the morning before we go to the casino. For now, we should get to our rooms and sleep as soon as we can. So…that’s it.”
Offering the last of the extra keys to Kaito, Maki quickly loses interest in dealing with the others, leaving that to Kaede as she laughs softly and steps closer. “Harumaki means ‘goodnight’. But seriously, try and get some decent shuteye tonight, okay? I believe in all of us, duh, but hey — a good night’s rest can’t hurt when we’re trying to save the world, huh?”
When Kaede moves to take Maki’s free hand, she lets it happen, eyes sticking to their point of contact as Kaede bids one last goodbye to the others, then gently begins to lead them down the building towards where their room is meant to be. Neither of them say anything, as Maki silently counts off each room, then brings them both to a stop in front of the door that matches the number on her key. Adjusting her hold on Kaede’s hand, she doesn’t bother letting go as she works the key into the lock, pushing the door open without fanfare.
…Oh, gods.
Immediately upon exposing their room for the night to the open air, Maki is assaulted by even more kitschy pink lights and things searing her retinas. The heart-patterned carpets, all four cheaply-wallpapered walls, the mood lighting soaking through the room; all of it is bright, Valentine’s, obnoxious pink, enough that Maki squints instinctively against it until something else registers, and her eyes blow wide.
The huge, heart-shaped headboard lined with massive light bulbs frames the equally heart-shaped bed, the centerpiece of some sort of carousel-like structure — complete with two painted horses twirling around the bed along to quiet carnival music. It sure feels quite a lot like a clown show, but as bizarre as it is, it quickly loses Maki’s interest when her eyes catch on the pink, lacy curtains and what it is they’re framing on the other side of the room, and her face burns so hot her head spins as she seizes forward, not even bothering to shut the door behind her.
After yanking the satin drapes firmly closed over the room’s extra, adult features, as her heart pumps loudly in her ears she hears Kaede warily begin, “This, uhm…” before trailing off, apparently speechless.
“This is…a lot.” After a few moments Kaede has gotten the door shut and locked, and when she turns back to face the room she looks about as mortified as Maki has ever seen her, rubbing antsily at the back of her neck, face pink even without the help of the bright lights. At least that makes two of them. Chuckling nervously, Kaede points at where Maki’s still guarding the curtains she’d desperately rearranged.
“Is there, uhm…something bad over there?”
“No! No. Don’t…come over here.” Wishing to forget about it herself, Maki scrubs at her smoldering cheeks, stepping away from that nightmare in favor of the next as she approaches the bed. “Gods above, this room is disgusting. How is anyone meant to sleep in a place like this?”
Just the thought threatens her with a headache, and as she drops her bag onto the bed — ducking out of the way of the slow-moving carousel horses as she does — she squints around the room, trying to find a source to all the lights and sounds and moving parts so she can break it. In her periphery she sees Kaede shrug as she also steps closer to the bed, doing the same thing as Maki and discarding her backpack onto it for the moment.
“It’s definitely a little much,” Kaede agrees, before going the full distance and planting herself on the bed, too, “and not very…age appropriate, but…maybe a married couple would find it nice?”
Maki scoffs, turning away momentarily to toe off her shoes by the door, and double-check the lock and deadbolt. “If being married means I’ll start liking weird stuff like this…I think I’ll pass.”
From behind she hears Kaede laugh, and in turning towards it instinctively she moves just in time to notice Kaede coming upon her, a badly-hidden smile on her face as she gently places a hand on Maki’s arm and angles her mouth close to her ear. “Hmm, I guess that means we’ll have to be the unmarried couple in our friend group, then,” she murmurs slyly, pulling back to make brief eye contact with Maki before leaning in again to press a swift kiss to her cheek.
For the second time since she stepped into this dumb room she feels herself flush, eyes cast firmly away from Kaede as she giggles in her direction, apparently pleased with Maki’s reaction. Kind of lamely she lifts a hand to that same cheek, cupping the tingling spot as she tries to regain her composure. Instead, in glancing over at Kaede through her peripherals, she sees the strength of her giddy smile, and a surge of affection swells in her chest at the sight.
Gods, so stupid.
It helps, at least, that she’s tired — at the very least, because it reminds her of what awaits them in the morning, and leaves her more able to fall back on her responsible urges, as opposed to the more…indulgent ones. As much as she may want to, despite how embarrassing even admitting as much to herself is.
Even still, her face feels too hot as she avoids Kaede’s gaze and tells her: “We should…probably get ready for bed. So we can sleep.” In response Kaede groans, the hand on Maki’s arm slackening enough to slide down and instead grasp her fingers. As best she can Maki squeezes hers, lifting her gaze in time to see Kaede’s grin widen at the sensation. “You can have the bathroom first.”
“You make too much sense,” Kaede pouts back, but nonetheless retreats towards the bed for her backpack after she squeezes Maki’s hand once more. “I’ll save you some hot water, ‘kay?”
“Hopefully this place isn’t shitty enough for that to be an issue.” Mouth dropping into a scowl, she looks at the heart-carousel-bed-nightmare reproachfully. “I’ll try and deal with…this, while you’re gone.”
“Good thinking. I’ll be back in a bit!” As Kaede says she does, disappearing into the bathroom as Maki looks again to the bed, intent to shut it all off by whatever means necessary. She’s only just begun tracing the power source on the wall with her eyes when she hears the door reopening, and she looks just in time to see Kaede hastily retreat out of the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her.
“I think I’ll just shower in Hell,” she says breathlessly, by way of explanation. Maki raises an eyebrow.
“It can’t be that bad.”
…It is.
To start, it’s not a shower that awaits them inside of the bathroom; in stark contrast to the bedroom the entire interior is wine red, the focal point of which is the heart-shaped bathtub. From the looks of things, it’s not only equipped with a surround-sound stereo system, but the jets inside indicate some sort of hot tub functionality as well. Lined up near the perimeter of the tub’s lip, framing where it’s seated within the matching floors, are a number of soap bottles — each bearing scents with names so corny that they make Maki redden just to look at.
“Okay…it’s pretty bad.” Regardless of that fact Maki steps further into the bathroom anyway, eyes on their…bathing options, for the night. “And no offense, but I’m not sharing a bed with someone that hasn’t showered.”
“You’re so mean!”
“Mhm.” Kaede’s smiling so Maki does too, stooping down by the tub to pick up two of the bottles awaiting them. “How does rose-scented First Kiss sound? Or Erotic Love in champagne and strawberry? Sensuous Summer Nights that has…charcoal in it?”
“Makiiiii…” Beet-red, Kaede buries her face in her hands, groaning into her palms. “This is so embarrassing!”
“Oh, here, how about you try Forbidden Fruit, that smells like—”
“Okay, okay, I g-get it! You can leave now!”
It’s not often Maki has to physically school away a smile, but she does now as she returns the stupid soaps to their prior position, and in the same motion reaches for the faucet to turn the tap on for Kaede. “Fine, fine, I’m going. Seriously, though, you’ll have to figure it out — we should try and get to sleep as soon as we can.”
Standing back up at her full height, nonetheless she’s dwarfed in size when she approaches Kaede. Emboldened by the happy smile on her face, Maki gently takes Kaede’s chin between her fingers, pushes up onto her tip-toes, and presses a chaste kiss into her girlfriend’s cheek, a match to the one Kaede gave her earlier. In response Kaede makes a quiet squeak sound, turning to hide her face away in Maki’s neck once she drops back onto her flat feet.
It’s hard to put a name to the emotion that strikes her at the sight of Kaede using her to hide against, flustered and smiling because of something Maki’s done. Fondness, maybe, even though just thinking as much leaves her flush with antsy, itchy embarrassment. To indulge the feeling for just a moment she wraps Kaede up in a quick hug, earning another soft noise as she moves immediately to return it. Despite being the one to get them here, Maki’s own cheeks burn as she savors the sensation of Kaede, warm and soft and safe while pulled close, pressed securely against her. Not really wanting to, Maki pulls back first, smiling when Kaede looks down at her even though her flaring mortification makes her want to bolt and regain her composure.
More and more lately, she’s been losing it around Kaede. “I’m gonna go take care of that stupid carousel. Have fun with your soaps.”
As she leaves, she hears Kaede laughing, and while it filters through the shut door for a few moments, Maki returns her full focus instead to the hotel room in front of her, and how on earth she’s going to make it sleepable.
While Kaede bathes, Maki wastes little time in getting to work, scouting around the room intent to shut off every single grotesque pink light, starting with the one behind the yanked-shut satin curtains hiding the obscene side of the room from view. With only the overhead light and one of the bedside lamps still on, the room is still awash in a dim pink as she redirects her efforts instead on the painted horses endlessly circling the bed and the accompanying clown music. And as she does, she thinks — mostly about what comes after she breaks this stupid carousel and they can go to sleep.
Tomorrow. The Underworld. By all metrics, the end of their week-long quest…one way or another. No matter how many times she thinks it through, there are just too many variables, leaving her unable to draw any realistic conclusions about how things might turn out. And not knowing what to expect has never been a good thing, in Maki’s experience.
The rational part of her brain, the part that has seen too many things go badly despite all hopes it wouldn’t, tells her very clearly that it’s probable they’re going to have to fight tooth and nail to make it back out of the Underworld. What they’re up against isn’t a handful of human soldiers, or even a monster out to get them; this is Gundham Tanaka, a Big Five god they’re going against. In his domain. There will be no backup they can count on, no divine intervention to bail them out of a precarious spot; once they make it through the entrance, the seven of them will be on their own, relying upon what they bring with them, and their own abilities — demigodly or otherwise.
If they have to put up a fight, they will. None of them are the type to go down without a fight — the quest so far has proven that well enough. But if that does happen…do all of them really make it out of the Underworld alright?
Because Maki can’t lose another friend.
On the other hand, though, the part that adamantly pushes that possibility away is the one that has spent way, way too much time around the idiots she’s traveling with. It’s the part of her that feels even a flicker of hope at the prospect of what will become of them by this time tomorrow night. They’re a strong — if delusionally optimistic — group, certainly some of the most capable demigods out there. If anyone has a chance of actually doing this, it’s them. It just has to be. There’s no other option.
Kaede comes to mind, when that feeling of resolve hits her again. No, there’s…the only option is that they win. Maki won’t allow anything else.
Blinking a few times to refocus on what’s in front of her, Maki straightens up to assess the carousel that has very decidedly stopped moving. Whether she’s successfully shut it off or just broken it, she doesn’t know; but it’s as good as it’s going to get — that, and the rest of the room, have more or less been dispatched into something manageable for the night. As satisfied as she’s going to be, Maki discards her socks and begins picking through her bag for the clothes she’ll wear to bed. Retrieving their shared chargers, she also plugs in both her and Kaede’s phones, then perches into a sit on the edge of the bed, awkwardly digging her toes into the plush carpet as she’s left with nothing else to occupy herself with except her thoughts as she waits.
In the relative quiet of the room, when a sound slips through the cracks in the bottom of the bathroom door, she’s pretty quick to notice it — though putting a name to it is hard at first, because the obvious answer is just…impossible. It sounds like singing, from the cadence of the noise as it carries into the room, but Kaede left her phone out here, so it’s not as if she’s playing music through the tub’s speakers. Which means—
On reflex Maki tenses, expecting to be left paralyzed and disoriented by Kaede’s singing voice until she finishes. Though she braces herself, while still hearing the sound, she doesn’t end up losing feeling in her body, losing control of her limbs through Kaede’s ability. Lifting her arms up proves successful, and she squints down at her cooperating hands as if they’re the problem while she squeezes them several times into fists, perplexed.
Kaede’s power is…hard, to fully wrap her brain around. She’s fallen victim to it a number of times, mostly during games at camp in low-stakes situations, but almost worse than the physical loss of control at times is the memory of it. For all that she’s been left lock-limbed at the behest of Kaede’s voice, she can’t ever recall what it actually sounds like when she sings. It just fuzzes her brain over, a warm, buzzing sensation that leaves one nauseous if they try to focus on it too long.
What she’s hearing now through the door…Maki can’t be sure. The voice is muffled, so much that the individual lyrics are impossible to make out; but from what she can hear, it sounds like what she’d expect Kaede’s singing voice to be, if she were ever able to actually hear it. Before now, at least.
Some kind of limit on her power that we don’t know about, maybe…?
She doesn’t understand, not really, but she’s more than content to just listen and cherish this chance, because otherwise hearing her girlfriend’s singing voice isn’t possible. Her voice really is beautiful, even muffled heavily by the door. The words aren’t discernable, but her voice carries just enough to resonate in Maki’s ears, and it’s…nice.
It’s nice, and as she listens she forces herself to try and relax, falling with a huff onto her back against the obscene pink blanket beneath her.
At some point she must zone out, because when Maki is roused from her position it’s only at the sound of a door opening across the room. She sits up just in time to watch Kaede shut the bathroom door behind herself, turning to face Maki and the rest of the room. Her hair is wet, tied up off her neck, dressed in a worn yellow t-shirt and too-long red checkered pajama pants with her backpack bundled in her arms and a soft smile on her face when she meets Maki’s eye.
Maki has to avert her gaze as the heavy weight of just how beautiful Kaede is hits her hard in the chest.
Setting her bag down by the door, Kaede moves then to settle onto the bed next to Maki, puffing out what sounds and feels like a tired sigh as she places a hand over Maki’s on the comforter, skin petal-soft. Unsure of how to react Maki doesn’t, and whether or not it’s a good reaction she’s still rewarded a moment later when Kaede leans in to rest her head on Maki’s shoulder, slightly dampening her shirt — not that she really minds much.
Kaede’s skin smells of artificial berry scent, and she’s so soft at all of the parts of her that press into Maki, and it inspires both a deep feeling of fondness…as well as a renewal of her fears upon what happens when they wake up tomorrow morning.
Neither of them will be any better off by dwelling on her own issues, though, so when Maki opens her mouth to break the gentle quiet, it’s on an altogether different topic. “I heard you singing.”
“You — oh, no!” With a jolt Kaede rears back, hands fluttering anxiously around before she eventually settles them on her knees. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think, I—”
“No! No, don’t worry. Like I said, I…heard you singing. I think the door muffled it enough that nothing happened. It was faint, but…” Thankfully Kaede looks less guilty now, and when Maki trails off, it’s more out of her own flustering than anything else. Her hand finds the back of her neck, rubbing it in her own awkward, fumbling motion. “It was…nice. You have a nice voice.”
“Oh…o-oh! Thank you?” Kaede suddenly becomes much more interested in looking at her hands, bunching up the fabric of her pajama pants. “No one’s ever been able to actually tell me that before, haha…”
“Well, it’s true. So.”
“Maybe we can experiment and figure it out once we’re back at camp, huh?”
Her voice is light as she makes her suggestion, and it takes a lot for Maki not to visibly wilt a little. To distract herself — and not clue in Kaede on her issues — she shifts her hands now to her hair, grasping at one of her scrunchies and carefully beginning to pull it out. “Maybe.”
Kaede hums, not replying as Maki places both of her scrunchies around her wrists, fluffing out her hair in preparation to bathe. With her own sleep clothes for the evening retrieved from her bag Maki stands, rubbing at her eyes.
“Guess we’re both tired,” Kaede says softly, and when Maki glances over she finds her blinking, looking rather…sleepy. “Should I stay up until you’re all done?”
“You don’t have to.”
Again Kaede hums, considering, before shrugging her shoulders and flashing Maki a bright smile. “I’ll try to, how about that. I’ll miss you!”
Traitorously, Maki feels her face redden, made worse by how Kaede clearly sees, and does a very bad job biting back her reactive smile. Very intelligently, she replies, “O-Okay,” and turns abruptly on her heel to escape into the bathroom. Just before the door slams shut she hears Kaede giggling, and hearing it makes her heart race in a way that’s so stupid. Leaning back against the firmly shut and locked door, Maki huffs, scrubbing her free hand down her face while cursing herself and her inability to be normal around Kaede, lately.
She never would have thought herself to be the flustered mess she certainly feels like when in a relationship, but…well, it’s not like Maki’s thought about it before. Kaede is the first person she’s ever really liked like that — even just thinking it feels stupid, gods — and it makes her feel like she’s going crazy, how she keeps reacting to just even the slightest show of affection from her girlfriend.
Maki’s just so…awkward with all this relationship stuff, while Kaede, like always, just seems so natural in this new dimension to their years-long friendship turned…more. Even when Kaede gets embarrassed, it’s not because she’s bumbling and inelegant when it comes to things like this; when it’s her it’s endearing, and a reflection of the kind of person Kaede just is. Not like Maki, who struggles to perform even the most simple of gestures because they’re just so foreign to her, and she doesn’t know how to respond, and that fact stops her up and leaves her mortified.
The effect she has on Maki is new, and overwhelming, and exciting but scary, and she doesn’t know how to deal with any of it as she quickly draws herself a bath and sinks into the too-hot water.
She wastes little time, but despite her hustle she still finds her mind wandering more and more to what awaits her when she finishes. Kaede, with her soft hair and softer skin and her kind, trusting eyes. Her effortlessly confident way of speaking, and her sure, graceful movements while she dances through life, and the way her hands feel when she touches Maki. The way her smile is slightly crooked and the way she looks at Maki like she holds all the world’s answers and the way when Maki wraps her arms around Kaede, they don’t quite fit around her round frame, and she finds herself frustrated, willing her arms to grow longer so she can hold her as securely as she wants.
It never used to be this bad. Gods. She splashes water from the tub into her face aggressively, humiliated by the intensity of her thoughts, even in private.
…Maki might be in love with Kaede.
It’s a terrifying revelation to have to contend with. In general, feelings stuff like this is already so out of Maki’s comfort zone — least of all now, with the world set to end unless the seven of them manage to pull this off and stop it. By all accounts it should be the least of her worries, and it’s just so embarrassing that this is what she’s thinking about on the eve of their quest’s climax. But it is, and she can’t stop it, and as nice as some of the thoughts are, they all just end up reminding her how much of a mess her life is, and she hurries through the rest of her bath so her brain can’t idle on it.
She further goes through the motions rather mechanically as she drains the tub, dries off, and changes, keeping her eyes down so she at least doesn’t have to look at the romance-themed bathroom as it mocks her and her stupid thoughts.
Giving up on fully drying her hair, she pulls it into two buns on either side of her head, resigning herself to curly hair in the morning. With her sleeping clothes — a loose pair of shorts and a red tank top — on and the day’s held beneath her arm, Maki leaves the bathroom behind, shutting the door behind her with finality as steam escapes out into the room around her.
In more or less a reversal of before, when she looks over at the bed Kaede is there, sitting up while under the blankets, staring at Maki with an expression she can’t even begin to read accurately. Kaede continues to look, and Maki continues to flounder until she reaches a hand out and clumsily flips the light switch, abruptly cutting the overhead light.
It’s not like it does a very good job obscuring her; the lamp on Kaede’s side of the bed is still on, and there’s more than enough warm pink light for them to watch each other ad aeternum even with the main light off. Maki looks away first, moving towards the opposite side of the bed a little more stompily than she intends and feeling supremely awkward as she settles in beneath the blankets herself, very much not looking at Kaede as she lays on her back to rest on her own pillows. From the other side of the bed she hears a dull click just as the final light in the room is shut off, sending the room into relative darkness save for the dim glow leaking in through the slits in the window shutters.
For a minute or two it’s just quiet, the only sounds in the room that of soft breathing, and — much more pressing, to Maki — her heart beating way too hard in her chest. It’s not their first time sharing a bed together, though it’s still one of just a handful, all of them within the past week, but it just seems so…so different, now. The hard part is supposed to be over, they’re already girlfriends, but Maki just feels more inept and awkward than ever. She’s all too aware of brave, strong, radiant Kaede laying less than a foot away from her in a heart-shaped bed, all too aware of how that makes her feel, and she doesn’t have the right words or actions to express it in a way that isn’t haltingly, uncomfortably stiff and weird.
Maki is just so not built to fall into an intimate role like this, not like Kaede. So she’s almost thankful beyond her nerves when she hears and feels the sheets shifting as Kaede shuffles onto her side to face her.
“Harumaki? Are you alright?”
…Well, there goes that gratitude. Mostly. Where her hands are resting on top of the blankets she antsily curls them into fists, then grimaces at herself when she recognizes Kaede’s definitely seen it, and it’s going to make trying to articulate this all the worse.
Nothing comes to mind, not really, in the few moments she tries to piece something together. But she has to get something out. “…I hate being in this room.”
There’s another pause, where Kaede’s contemplation weighs heavy in the scant space between them, and Maki fidgets with her fingers. Finally, in a very soft voice, Kaede sheepishly asks:
“Is it because of me?”
What she’s said doesn’t register at first, and when it does Maki frowns, flipping onto her own side so she can look at Kaede properly. It’s her turn to not hold eye contact, and Maki immediately feels like an asshole for letting her own anxieties bleed out into Kaede after all.
“Of course it’s not. That doesn’t make sense at all.” Kaede’s face falls further, and now Maki’s really scrambling. “I—I mean, we’re — why wouldn’t I want to room with you? We’re…girlfriends, aren’t we?”
She shrugs, gaze still downcast. “Yeah, we are, but…I’ve kind of been thinking about that…”
When Kaede trails off, Maki’s heart drops, palms immediately beginning to sweat. That usually isn’t a good thing to hear.
“You…have?”
“Mhm. Mostly that…” Kaede heaves a deep sigh, a fingertip tracing across the bed sheets. “That I’ve been thinking I might have, uhm…come on too strong. Or, like, forced my feelings onto you when it’s really not appropriate? The last thing we need is a complication in our quest, and I just…I don’t want you to feel obligated, basically.
“Since we got to this weird place — and, uhm, for a long t-time now, honestly — I…haven’t been able to get you out of my head. I think about you, about this a lot, and this room and this place and being here with you just…it reminds me, how amazing I think you are, how incredible you are, and it makes me nervous, I guess. I really, really like you, and no matter what I want to do right by you, so I don’t want my own feelings to get in the way of me doing that. You know?”
Kaede doesn’t use the word ‘love’, this time, in this bed. Maki’s frown deepens.
“I’m not—” Maki cuts off with a huff, frustrated at herself. But Kaede’s being honest, even if what she’s saying is wrong, and as her friend and hopefully still her girlfriend by the end of this, she has to try and remedy it — especially since some of that doubt definitely stems from Maki’s gracelessness compared to Kaede at things like this. So she extends a hand, stopping Kaede’s continued fidgeting with the sheet and splaying both of theirs out on the mattress. Looking at her face still feels too hard, so her gaze mostly remains on their joined hands as she finds her voice again.
“I’m not good with…feelings, things. You know that. Obviously. But I know…what it is I feel for you. And it’s not forced, it’s not pressured, it’s not an obligation — it’s not anything like that at all. It’s…I feel so different from everyone else at camp. From you. I’m not good at this, and my feelings feel so big, and no matter what I do I feel like I’m messing up because you’re so natural at this relationship stuff, and I’m just so…not.
“I like you, Kaede. A lot. And I definitely want to keep being your girlfriend. I want to put this stupid spear stuff behind us, and I want to go back to camp with you and all of our dumb friends, and I want to keep being your girlfriend there, too.” Maki sighs, feeling a little breathless. “So you don’t need to doubt that at all. I’m just bad at talking about it…probably the worst at feelings out of everybody we know. Because of you, I can actually say stuff like this. Out loud. Instead of just keeping it to myself like I do everything else. That’s because of you, and I’m just…really glad, that you’re here with me through this, and I don’t want that to ever not be the case. That’s all I have to say.”
For an agonizing stretch where Maki continues to stare at their hands, there’s silence, until there isn’t and she’s jerking her face up at the sound of a weak sniff. Her eyes have at least partially adjusted to the dark, and the light peeking in through the window shades is enough to make clear there are tears in Kaede’s eyes, even if she tries hastily to hide it.
Damn it. “Did I say something wrong?”
Then it’s Kaede’s turn to startle, and they nearly knock heads as she shakes hers frantically. “No, no! I’m not upset, I just — oh, hearing that makes me so…I—I don’t even know why I’m crying! You just mean so much to me, Maki, and to hear you think that much of me…it makes me really happy. Gods, you’ve been flustering me all night, haha…my heart is beating so fast I feel kinda dizzy…”
It’s still embarrassing hearing that, and Maki still feels herself overheating under the weight of her sentiment, but…well, at least she isn’t alone in her floundering. With slightly more confidence Maki nudges herself further towards Kaede on the bed, until the space between them is just a matter of inches. Tentatively, she draws her hand off of Kaede’s to instead slide over her body, wrapping an arm around her and pulling them close enough to touch.
Under her breath Kaede giggles, whole body shifting with it a little in Maki’s hold as she slots her head in the space beneath Maki’s chin. When she speaks again her lips are close enough to Maki’s skin that each word practically vibrates through Kaede into her. “This is nice. I like being close to you like this.”
“Good. I like holding you.”
She stops dead in her tracks, mortified at saying something so…corny. But it just makes Kaede laugh again, and when Maki reflexively moves to pull away, she’s stopped by the sensation of Kaede’s hand grasping out for her in the dark, eventually settling very lightly on the small of her back.
“No, it’s okay, I’m glad! I mean, uh, I usually don’t…I’m not the biggest fan of people touching my body that much, but it’s nice when you do it. I like it, too.”
“O-Okay.” Hiding her face in Kaede’s hair is easy in this position, so she does, surfacing after she’s mostly collected herself, and pressed a short kiss to the top of her head. It earns a quiet squeak in response, and despite her nerves and growing exhaustion, Maki feels herself smile.
“It’s time for bed. We have a long day tomorrow…we should rest up.”
Kaede hums her agreement, relaxing fully into the mattress and their prolonged point of contact, and in turn Maki does the same. The hand on Maki’s back shifts just enough so Kaede’s thumb can graze across the skin beneath her shirt, and instead of sending her mind running in circles…for once, it quiets the noise.
“As long as we do our best, we’ll be okay,” Kaede murmurs. “I believe in us.”
“I believe in us, too.”
Despite her fears…with Kaede in her arms, it feels more like the truth than it ever has.
“I’m glad. Goodnight, Harumaki.”
“Goodnight. Sleep well.”
And with Kaede pulled close, in spite of the whole world stacked against them, Maki does.
Notes:
+ untoxic yuri for the win
+ but yes: maki pov! i *did* say last time we'd be seeing something new this time — and that (along with a few Other things) certainly qualifies! as i've alluded to, this is the first of three parts; think back to the museum heist arc, that's kinda-sorta what we're dealing with! kinda. in any case, there's LOTS to look forward to for next time; i'll let you all take your guesses as to what it might look like! from my usual update schedule, chapter 21 is set to come out right around valentine's day — does that hold any hints in relation to this and upcoming chapters, i wonder?
+ i don't think i have a ton else to say, so i'll leave us with shorter notes this time! as always i dearly love all kudos and comments, and if you'd like a response from me for anything, you can shoot me an ask over on my tumblr @ gontagokuhara ! thanks for being here, and i'll see you next time!
Chapter 21: welcome to the motel kumasutra: a love story told in three parts (part ii)
Summary:
“…But seriously, try and get some decent shuteye tonight, okay? I believe in all of us, duh, but hey — a good night’s rest can’t hurt when we’re trying to save the world, huh?"
Kaede’s voice a lingering hum in Kiibo’s sound receptors, she begins to move hand-in-hand with Maki, waving with her free one once more to the remaining group before walking alongside her towards their lodgings for the evening. And in anticipation of their early morning tomorrow, Kiibo is quite firm in their resolve to do the same. Paying no mind to Kaito and Kokichi’s continued bickering following the girls’ departure, Kiibo instead turns their focus to Gonta, holding in one large hand the key to their resting quarters for the night.
When they catch gazes, Kiibo smiles, and the one they receive in return leaves them feeling decidedly…happy. “Are you ready to find our room now, Gonta?”
Notes:
+ valentine's update is LIVE AND ALIVE!!!!!
+ there is a............slight word count disparity between part i and part ii. expect part iii to be no different. LMFAO
+ thanks as always to my darling kokichi correspondent/beta reader evan captorvatiing <3
+ and the rest of my yapping awaits in the end notes! for now: enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“…But seriously, try and get some decent shuteye tonight, okay? I believe in all of us, duh, but hey — a good night’s rest can’t hurt when we’re trying to save the world, huh?"
Kaede’s voice a lingering hum in Kiibo’s sound receptors, she begins to move hand-in-hand with Maki, waving with her free one once more to the remaining group before walking alongside her towards their lodgings for the evening. And in anticipation of their early morning tomorrow, Kiibo is quite firm in their resolve to do the same. Paying no mind to Kaito and Kokichi’s continued bickering following the girls’ departure, Kiibo instead turns their focus to Gonta, holding in one large hand the key to their resting quarters for the night.
When they catch gazes, Kiibo smiles, and the one they receive in return leaves them feeling decidedly…happy. “Are you ready to find our room now, Gonta?”
“Mhm! Goodnight, friends!”
His departing word called cheerfully over his shoulder, once he receives a wave of acknowledgment from Shuuichi — while Kokichi and Kaito are still preoccupied arguing, naturally — he turns again to Kiibo with a sunny smile, and with no further reason to delay Kiibo moves alongside him, lapsing into deep thought as Gonta graciously takes on the task of identifying their room.
This evening’s surprise run-ins have been…odd, to say the least. Kiibo themself has very little opinion or preference on where they end up for the evening, so long as it is suitably safe. Plush interiors inside the rooms attached to the casino complex, or the peculiar place that they’ve ended up now; so long as there is an outlet that they can connect to in order to charge their batteries, Kiibo will have all that they need to function at top performance heading into the Underworld. And while the ambience of the comparatively opulent casino hotel was incomprehensible to them, the themeing all-together very strange…
Well. Their mental processes are more concerned with what has happened since they left that place behind for the night.
Some kind of magic is at play in this motel the seven of them have ended up at, Kiibo is certain. In reviewing their archival footage from the drive to the casino, they verified that these two buildings the questing group have found themselves at were not present in this spot at first. Only after they were turned away from Taka’s reservations at Celestia’s Palace, and directed to glance down the road at Gonta’s suggestion, did this deeply illogical place appear. No, neither Kiibo — nor Maki and Shuuichi, for that matter — were incorrect in their apprehensions regarding the ‘Motel Kumasutra’. Odd locations like this do not just simply appear; but this one did, presumably for the seven of them, in this unquestioned godly territory.
It did, and while the sensationally-unpleasant exterior — at least as far as Kiibo heard from the others, complaining of the unpalatable scent in the air as Kiibo themself digested the odd crunching beneath their feet — did not match the interior…well, it is Kiibo’s assessment that the interior was worse, in consideration of the bigger picture. The inside of the first building was objectively rather pleasant; in recalling their past reading of Nagito’s wide array of interior design magazines, they were able to identify many traits in the decorations that are considered ‘fashionable’, and objectively ‘attractive’. Kiibo found the fountain quite tasteful, in their personal assessment, a rather attractive centerpiece for a place whose very existence defies logic.
It is also Kiibo’s assessment, however, that the fountain — the room’s centerpiece in name — was not itself intended to be the focal point of the extravagant motel lobby.
No, that was its inhabitant; appearing before Kiibo as a true-to-life — disregarding her size — depiction of their mother, Queen Sonia Nevermind, the ‘icing’ on the cake of very perplexing circumstances Kiibo still struggles to wrap their logic around.
Maki and Kaede had identified the strange person as the God of Trickery, and in reflecting on their own knowledge base, Kiibo finds themself in agreement on that deduction, as well. Given that person appeared not just cloaked in Sonia’s stolen identity, but rather as a parent or otherwise guardian figure — bar Kokichi, lying like always, Kiibo is certain — it did not strike Kiibo as odd at the time that their sensors had picked up decidedly godly readings. And on further consideration, an image-altering god sitting within an image-altered, clearly magical establishment…there is really no other conclusion to draw.
That is not what gives Kiibo pause about the whole affair, however. No, it is more so the shock of seeing Sonia’s face again after so long, even if it was not actually her. While there is no worry of succumbing to memory decay themself and therefore losing recollection of Sonia’s true appearance…it is also true that it has been quite some time since Kiibo saw her face in greater detail than a royal portrait in their history lessons. It has been…at least two years, yes, since she last visited camp in person…not long after Junko imposed her will on Sonia, close enough to a ‘parent’ for her to be barred from Kiibo’s life. For most people, and certainly for the gods, a stretch of time like that is a mere blink of an eye; but to Kiibo, that same stretch of time is — well, it makes up most of their life experienced properly as themself.
As much as they are certain that the strange keeper of the motel was not their mother…even knowing it was not, still to Kiibo it felt almost too real.
But such ruminations aren’t particularly useful at a time like this. The god, whatever their true identity, does not appear to pose a threat. Given their track record with gods that have, as far as Kiibo as concerned, that person ranks rather low on a list of most dangerous run-ins on this quest up to this point.
When Gonta pauses in front of a door so does Kiibo, shifting their focus up at him curiously, watching how he compares the number on the key to that on the door. Apparently satisfied that they match — which Kiibo also identifies, scanners compartmentalizing the data automatically — he moves to unlock it, humming under his breath as he does. Distantly, Kiibo registers some kind of mechanical movement happening through the wall, but before they can voice that strangeness to Gonta the door is being pushed open, and in moments Kiibo is threatened with the very real possibility of powering off from the sudden rush of mortified heat that overwhelms their systems.
It is, bar none, the most utterly embarrassing room they have ever seen, magazine or otherwise. Kiibo can practically feel the air around them sizzling with it as they process just what the two of them have walked in upon.
Every visible surface is patterned with hearts — pink and red for the curtains, black and pink for the plush carpeting, alternating shades of pink all across the wallpaper, even the bed is pink and heart-shaped and still covered with further hearts. The red headboard — and Kiibo is beginning to be overwhelmed by all the patterns their processors are cataloging, just a little — blinks bright white lights in time with the quiet music lilting through speakers hidden somewhere beneath the bed. The source of the movement they’d noticed is some kind of carnival carousel, the mechanical horses rather rudimentary as they follow their track endlessly around the bed in circles.
Off to the right side of the room is some kind of setup bracketed with lacy pink curtains, and Kiibo does not know what purpose it serves, but just looking at it for too long manages to leave them even more mortified.
All in all, they feel rather faint, and Gonta’s presence only exacerbates things as Kiibo flounders not two steps into the room, so red they likely match the rest of the decor.
“Kiibo?” Observant as ever, Gonta has clearly ascertained something is amiss, if the way his large hands float anxiously in the air around Kiibo is any indication. The fingers of his left hand graze across the metal plating of Kiibo’s face, and with a soft yelp Gonta pulls back, sucking the pad of his index finger into his mouth. Now Kiibo really, truly could faint, because—
Did they burn Gonta, they’re blushing so hard?!
“Did I b-burn you?!”
“No, Kiibo okay! Gonta sorry for touching on accident!”
“Y-You really needn’t apologize, Gonta, I apologize for heating up too rapidly, and—”
“Oh, is Kiibo too hot? Gonta can try to find thermometer to make room cooler! Does Kiibo think it might be—?”
“That’s n-not — Gonta, don’t go over there!”
“Gonta not really understand, b-but Gonta sorry!”
“Wait!” Huffing through their speakers, Kiibo stoops forward to brace their hands on their knees, butting in before this spiraling apology contest can devolve any further. Following another brief pause to turn around to shut and lock them both inside of this strange room, Kiibo again turns back to Gonta, trying their best to smile and push away how their insides still feel scrambled from the heat. “We will continue this all night if we do not cut ourselves off. It is late — it seems most rational to prepare for our very long day tomorrow, yes?”
In the middle of the room Gonta pauses, appraising in his hand the small bag Taka had purchased him earlier, holding what clothing of his that had survived the quest so far. Given the nod Kiibo receives, Gonta appears agreeable enough to that, even before he replies. “Kiibo makes a lot of sense. What should, uhm…?”
He looks around the room, eyes catching on the spinning carousel that Kiibo has been attempting with limited success not to pay attention to. There’s something almost hypnotic in the way the painted horses circle the bed, but nevertheless Kiibo makes a concerted effort to pry their gaze away.
“I believe the restroom is through that door.” In the exact opposite direction of what awaits on the other side of the room. “If you’d like to bathe and otherwise get ready to sleep, I can focus my efforts on…what is out here.”
It’s all still heart-shaped and ridiculous. Their nose turns up in disapproval, but they’re quick to soften when Gonta offers another nod, the bag swaying as he turns to offer his full attention to Kiibo.
Really, it feels quite nice. The confines of this ostentatious room notwithstanding.
With one more sweet smile Gonta goes to do as promised, the door shutting politely behind him as he disappears for some privacy. Given the chance for some themself, Kiibo takes advantage of their newfound loneliness to sidestep their stated aims of dealing with the room, and instead to drop with another huffed sigh onto the bed. The horses continue to dance around the perimeter. Lyricless, jaunty music fills the room along with the sound of muffled running water from the restroom.
Gods…how is Kiibo meant to endure a night inside of a heart-adorned room with Gonta, of all people?
Even just thinking about it too hard leaves Kiibo so flustered that their metal plating feels too-hot, leaves their vision hazy, like they’re looking out at the room over the exhaust fumes of a car engine. Their legs feel wobbly, even though they’re not even standing anymore, and though they plan to charge tonight, their battery has not yet dipped to its lowest levels, so it’s not a lack of energy making them like this. And when they somewhat miserably lift a hand to touch their cheek, their sensors pick up the increased heat signatures, and they feel more than consciously let out the groan that leaves their speakers.
A whole night in a room with Gonta like this?
Really, it’s silly how much they like Gonta.
They’ve been rather huffy tonight, to a degree they might otherwise expect from the likes of Miu or Kokichi while in a bad mood, and it’s hardly how they wish to be feeling, going into tomorrow. So after rolling heavily over onto their front they push themself into a stand, narrowly avoiding a collision with one of the stupid horses when they stop to try and find how to turn the carousel off. Dusting themself off following the close encounter they shift gears to covering up the inappropriate end of the room, eyes fixating hard on the lacey heart patterns on the curtains in an attempt at distraction.
Adjusting the curtains leads to disabling most of the redundant rosy lighting in the room, and then again the most pressing task becomes shutting off the horses — which Kiibo does manage, though not without reaching their inflexible fingers behind the headboard in search of a very badly-placed control panel. But they do manage it, and once the horses have come to a stand-still Kiibo allows themself a pleased hum before they once again return to the bed, sitting down much more casually this time, hands running over the luscious pink comforters blanketing the large, heart-shaped mattress.
Eventually their hands find one of the fluffy pillows, pulling it into their lap as they observe the silky covering that guards the soft interior. Beneath their fingers, Kiibo can sense that the pillow sheet is smooth. Flimsy. It won’t hold heat well. Should Kiibo slip the pillow out and pick up just the sheet, it will slip easily through their fingers. Nothing about any of these observations is wrong, but still Kiibo frowns down at where they now bunch the pillow up between their fingers.
Kiibo can calculate these things, but can’t actually feel the sensations. They know what ‘smooth’ is, but only in the abstract; only that it is different from rough, or bumpy, or sharp, or pilled, when compared by humans. Their sensors tell them that the material is cool — not their actual touch. They can’t experience the feeling of cloth slipping through their fingers while they watch it happen with their own eyes.
How can Kiibo feel so little, but at the same time, feel so much?
The love they feel for all of their friends. The sorrow they feel at having run away from camp and worried them all, worried Nagito and Hajime, worried their mother and presumably Kazuichi, too. The panic they feel when they think about what may await them tomorrow in the Underworld. The fondness they feel from somewhere deep within whenever they’re close to Gonta.
What Kiibo feels — it defies what they should. They are a robot, but they are one with a soul — one that gifted them life, gifted them a mother to be torn away from, practically the moment they ‘became’ as they know themself now. But where does that leave them? Why can Kiibo feel anguish, but not shed tears? Why can they feel excitement, but not feel it thrumming through their veins to the tune of blood pumping too-hard? Why can they feel love, but not put a hand to their heart and measure its beating in time with their thoughts of I feel so much?
…It’s times like these, left alone with only their thoughts and their insecurities, that leave Kiibo feeling rather like the abomination that Kokichi sometimes likes to tease them as being. Where they understand with unrelenting clarity just how different they are from all of their friends. Everyone they’ve ever known in their limited life, even.
No. No!
Kiibo shakes their head, pressing the pillow back down firmly on the bed where it was. No, it doesn’t matter that they are not human, that they don’t have blood, or a brain, or a heart. Kiibo has a soul, and that is what matters. They feel so much, it doesn’t matter that they aren’t human! Kiibo is alive, and capable of feeling just as much as everyone else.
Their differences from the others are nothing to be ashamed of. There is nothing about being Kiibo that they should be ashamed of being.
Against their too-warm cheeks Kiibo presses their hands, lips pursed as they blow a puff of air out of their mouth. They are real. They are alive. They are Kiibo, and they are not a boy, and they feel so much that it’s overwhelming, and they are learning, and they are growing, and they are changing, and they are living.
At the sound of a door knob twisting Kiibo looks up, just in time to watch Gonta emerge alongside a cloud of floral-scented steam from the bathroom, large frame dwarfed — somehow — by a set of pastel green pajamas. After turning off the light he sets his bag delicately on the floor, and with a sleepy smile he offers Kiibo a wave once he’s straightened back to his full height.
Gods. Kiibo feels so, so much.
“Gonta feeling very clean and refreshed after his bath!”
That much, Kiibo could ascertain just from looking at him. Keeping the urge to smile at bay proves difficult. “I’m glad you found it pleasurable. I did my best to make the room a little easier for you to sleep in…however, I’m not sure I can put to rest all the room’s…features.” Though the horses have been still for some time, still their painted faces beckon eye contact. Ignoring that proves even more difficult.
Politely, Gonta covers his heavy yawn with his hand, eyes a little bleary when they refocus again on Kiibo. “Don’t worry, Kiibo. Gonta used the purple bubbles, ones that…” Another nod, Gonta’s eyes squeezing shut from the force of it. “…Mm, make Gonta sleepy…”
Floral equals tired, hmm…
Standing up off the bed, Kiibo smiles over at Gonta to indicate he make himself comfortable, while they take up the job of shutting off most of the lights and searching for an outlet to plug into for the night. Overall, they come up rather empty; the only other sockets appear to be on either side of the heart-shaped bed. Gonta has claimed the side farthest from the restroom, so with a small frown Kiibo sizes up the other outlet, silently resigning themself to another night on this quest spent curled up on the floor, or somewhere similarly undignified.
As they retrieve their charging cord from its port in preparation to do so, Kiibo cannot help but watch Gonta out of their peripherals. Gonta wastes little time in climbing into bed, removing his round glasses only after he’s done so and carefully folding them up before placing them on the nightstand. Their attention is caught near-entirely in watching the motions of Gonta as he tightly tucks himself in beneath the covers, pulling them all the way up around his neck. He yawns again, red eyes blinking shut for several long moments, and when they open again it’s to peer over at Kiibo. It leaves them floundering, already embarrassed before Gonta even says anything.
“Is Kiibo not getting into bed?” he asks quietly, gaze floating between where Kiibo’s just plugged themself into the wall, and where their face is steadily warming again on the other end of the cord.
“Well, I—I don’t need to…sleep, per se, so I d-don’t require the bed! The floor will be suitable.”
The carpeting is soft, at least. As far as they can tell.
“But Gonta remember Kiibo said they…like comfort, even if they no need it. Kiibo can rest on the bed, too — Gonta don’t mind.”
Ah. Oh. Hmm.
Kiibo does not manage much intelligent thought beyond that for several seconds. When they do move past the near system shutdown the offer stuns them into, well…well, they have some options to assess, and quickly, before Gonta’s bright-eyed, affectionate smile is given the chance to dim.
Luckily, having a super computer as a processor makes one’s mental considerations rather swift. By the time Kiibo is slackening their power cord several more feet to account for the distance, they’ve already long made up their mind.
“That’s very gentlemanly of you to offer, Gonta. Thank you.” As Kiibo expects, Gonta’s face warms at the compliment, appearing rather bashful. Kiibo themself, feeling a little selfish and a lot nervous but more than anything rather giddy, nods their head once determinedly before sitting down on the bed, angling themself parallel to Gonta as they lay down flat on their back and attempt to remain as still as possible.
Seemingly appeased, Gonta undoes his tight tucking in — oops, should Kiibo have taken the initiative to do it for him? — to shut off the lamp by his bedside, sending the room into relative darkness. With slightly more privacy Kiibo settles their hands from where they’d been drawn up unsurely on their chest, settling their palms flat on the blankets beneath them. Again Gonta turns on his side to face them, and in the stretch where Gonta just watches them, Kiibo seriously debates entering rest mode without saying anything despite how rude it is because they just truly do not have the wherewithal to be metaphorically sweating over things like this, when the world could very well end tomorrow.
And yet they are. Which is ridiculous. But still they can only blink up at the ceiling, thoughts racing a mile a minute inside of this heart-shaped room, fingers twitching where they sit only centimeters from Gonta’s.
“Kiibo?”
They were anticipating Gonta opening his mouth, and he keeps his voice rather gentle in the otherwise quiet room, but regardless they jump a little. “Oh, yes, Gonta?”
“Is Kiibo nervous for tomorrow?”
Yes, they were anticipating something like that, too — Gonta has never been one to feign fearlessness in the face of very real danger. This is a more responsible train of thought, anyway.
“I am,” they answer honestly, matching Gonta’s assured candor. “No matter how many times I run through the possibilities…I truly do not know what to expect. But I believe in myself, and in my friends, so I have to believe that everything will be okay.”
For several moments Gonta considers that silently, and in the interim Kiibo keeps their gaze resolutely up at the ceiling, trying not to think too hard about whether or not Gonta is still watching them. They’re a little too nervous to check.
“Gonta will do…anything to protect Kiibo.”
They still don’t look, but it’s a lot harder to ignore the impulse. Something tightens in their voice box, and they attempt a swallow to clear away the feeling. It is not particularly successful. “And…all of our other friends, right?”
“Of course. Gonta just…” Gonta has never been particularly inclined to mask his emotions, either. Kiibo would describe the soft tinge to his voice as a little embarrassed. “Gonta just really, really want to keep Kiibo safe. Gonta always want Kiibo to stay happy and safe.”
Any intelligent thought escapes Kiibo entirely, and they can no longer effectively fight the impulse not to look at Gonta. Their head turns against the pillow to face him, and yet again they’re soundly flustered into continued, too-long silence when they find that Gonta is already watching them, his face right there. The look on his face is open, unguarded, expression marginally less asleep than it was before. Kiibo’s fans buzz so loudly they fear Gonta may actually hear it, in the agonizing quiet of the room while they just stare at each other.
Here, now, alone in a heart-shaped bed next to a boy they have real, true, genuine feelings for…Kiibo is struck with the sudden, urgent desire to tell him.
But perhaps they should get their mouth in somewhat working order first.
“I want to do the same for you, as well.” Instead of just their head Kiibo now turns their whole body to face Gonta, mirroring his position, save for the way Kiibo rests one of their hands beneath their cheek on their pillow, and the other into the neutral space between the two of them on the bed. Gonta’s eyes track the movement, and Kiibo’s eyes track his face. “There is…nothing I won’t do, to make that happen.”
After another contemplative, weighty stretch of silence, the only sounds in the room are Kiibo’s whirring fans, and then the soft shifting of fabric as Gonta undoes his tucking-in to instead rest a gentle hand on top of Kiibo’s. Kiibo’s eyes laser in on the novel point of contact, physically biting at their lower lip to keep the words on the tip of their tongue from slipping out. Not twitching their fingers beneath the weight of Gonta’s palm proves just as difficult.
“Gonta like being close to Kiibo like this,” he observes softly, killing Kiibo’s willpower to continue doing either, eyes finding Gonta’s again in the dark as they press their own fingers very lightly into where Gonta has them quite soundly covered. When Kiibo minutely inclines their head Gonta seems to follow, until they’re close enough for them to feel the tickle of Gonta’s wild hair against the sensors in their face.
I do, too.
And more than anything, touching him like this on the night before the world might end, Kiibo wants him to know.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Their voice is a little too loud, but Gonta is nice enough not to rear back, instead sustaining the moment by merely nodding his head, giving Kiibo the floor. Grounded by the weight of Gonta’s hand over theirs, Kiibo opens their mouth to speak.
“I…I am a robot. At times I have thoughts that I am just a robot, but…I have been thinking it over a great deal, recently. I am a robot, but I am alive. There is nothing artificial in what I feel. I have a soul, and I feel things so deeply, and Gonta, I…”
Kiibo can feel themself trembling. But Gonta’s hand is so warm. His eyes are so kind. And they’ve already come this far — what good will being a coward do, now? “In the grand scheme of things, I am relatively new to human emotions, but — but that doesn’t diminish what I feel. I know some very well — happiness, frustration, anxiousness — but others are…very new. Sometimes, certain things and certain people inspire emotions in me that I have never felt before.
“Gonta, with you I feel — I feel romantic attraction. Or at least, that’s what I believe it to be. Because what I feel when I think about you, it’s — it’s the most wonderful feeling. When I overheat because of you it’s warm, and lovely, not just a result of my hardware overheating. When I struggle to find the right words to say to you, it’s not a system malfunction, it’s nervousness at wanting to impress you. I…this must be romantic attraction, because I’ve never felt anything like this, anything this wonderful for anyone else, and I don’t think it’s possible for me to feel better than the way I do when I’m with you.”
Looking at him is harder now, but regardless Kiibo forces themself to, trying not to let their anxiety silence them at a moment like this. “I apologize for dumping all of my feelings onto you so suddenly, when our lives are already so stressful. I understand that if you do not reciprocate it may be awkward, but I want to assure you that won’t be necessary. It is okay, if you do not. I just needed to tell you how I feel.”
In the following quiet, Kiibo has very little to do except watch Gonta’s face, and await his answer — whatever it is. But ever the gentleman, Gonta does not leave them waiting long. At the sensation of their hand being squeezed Kiibo looks down just in time to watch Gonta flip both of theirs, shifting Kiibo’s palm to rest atop Gonta’s much larger one before he folds his fingers over to hold them securely. They can’t imagine a racing heart could feel much different than this, their fans buzzing loudly as their most basic, soul-deep desires no doubt scroll across their collar, all for Gonta’s ever-attentive eyes to find.
“Gonta…also new to romantic feelings. Before, Gonta not really sure what it means to feel it, or how to tell. But Gonta ask back at camp, and — and Gonta thinks he feels r-romantic towards Kiibo, too?”
Oh, may the gods help them. Kiibo could just about burst into flames. “Y-You do…?”
Against his pillow Gonta nods once, gaze flitting between Kiibo’s face, and where their hands are still joined on the bed. “Kaede tell Gonta that romantic feelings make her feel warm and happy. Kaito tell Gonta that romantic feelings make him want to be best possible Kaito, to keep other person safe, and make them proud. Mr. Komaeda tell Gonta, a long time ago, that romantic feelings make him remember all the good things, even when m-mad, or sad, or scared.
“Gonta think about it a lot, especially tonight, a-and — Gonta want all of that for Kiibo. Gonta want to be close to Kiibo, because they make Gonta feel warm, feel happy and proud and impressed. Gonta want to be best Gonta so he can be good to Kiibo. Gonta remember Kiibo, all the good things about them, when Gonta scared or mad, and h-he feel better knowing that Kiibo still good.”
…If Kiibo could cry, they’re certain they would be. But that fact bears very little relevance on what it is they feel; because nevertheless their vision swims, and when they find their voice again they’re hiccuping, just a little. “I’ve liked you for so long, Gonta. I am…very, very glad you like me, too.”
“Does this mean Gonta is Kiibo’s…boyfriend?”
“Wh-What?”
Jolting, Kiibo jerks up into a sit, hands fluttering nervously around the air at how things have just jumped from zero to a million in very little time at all. They haven’t even fully processed that Gonta likes them back, how are they meant to handle Gonta saying things like that?!
“Sorry!” Mirroring Kiibo, Gonta also startles enough that he sits up, hands embarrassedly over his eyes as he hurriedly shakes his head. “Kokichi just tell Gonta that when two p-people like each other, and want to kiss each other, they become partners!”
“Kissing?!”
“Oh no, talking about things like this so ungentlemanly! Gonta so sorry!”
Gods help the rest of their friends. Kiibo doubts they’ll make it to morning at this rate. They might be short-circuiting. They might be dying.
“If we k-kiss, then does that mean we’ll be partners…?”
Oh, there is nothing Kiibo would like more. And, at the risk of being presumptuous, though it is quite dark…Gonta is looking at them rather closely. The lack of light does very little to obscure the pink tint to his features from Kiibo’s attentive eye — ever focused on Gonta in this room, it seems.
“Does Kiibo…also want to?”
“Y-Yes!” Their answer is probably slightly embarrassingly immediate. They have always preferred candor in getting their point across. “Is it — if you do as well, h-how should we—?”
It takes some bumbling — as Kiibo hastily insists they retreat from the bed to do this, having enough to decency to recognize the indecency of doing such a thing while on the ridiculous heart-shaped mattress — but eventually they find themselves rather close together, both somewhat shier with a lamp on to illuminate things. Kiibo has absolutely no practical knowledge of how to do this, naturally, and certainly Gonta is in much a similar predicament; so it appears Kiibo will have to take the initiative on this.
As if that’s a problem, when it’s Gonta. Kiibo wouldn’t dream of complaining.
When their hands lift upward Gonta meets them halfway by leaning down, close enough for Kiibo to cup his face between their palms. His skin is warm, his long hair catches slightly on their fingers, and when Kiibo pushes up on their tip-toes Gonta leans quite naturally into his role to, well, lean down to meet their face, eyes squeezing shut just before Kiibo does the same.
The press of Gonta’s slightly-pursed lips to theirs brings about a wide variety of novel thoughts and sensations and feelings. It remains by all accounts chaste, reminiscent of every tender first kiss that Kiibo has only read about before this, but nonetheless it leaves them feeling positively electric. Internalizing that they are truly kissing Gonta is a thought too perfect to believe, even when they’re only just pulling back, and that speechless, almost dazed disbelief squeaks out of them in the form of an incredulous laugh hissed through their speakers.
“Wow,” is the first coherent thought Kiibo manages, their hands still on Gonta’s face. Nothing in them wants to pull away. They can feel the heat of Gonta’s skin. It’s something they’d quite like to keep doing. “That was…nice. Very nice. So…may I call you my boyfriend now — w-woah—!”
Their hands are dislodged from Gonta’s cheeks as his arms wrap securely around them, and as Gonta succeeds in hoisting them happily into the air, the shrill sound Kiibo lets out is perhaps a little embarrassing. But the smile that stretches his face is so bright it rivals the sun, and Kiibo is just so happy too, and when their hands swiftly find again their previous marks on Gonta’s face, they’re quick to pull him in for another sweet kiss, just because they can.
It’s Gonta that pulls back first this time, pressing his forehead briefly into Kiibo’s before carefully settling their feet back on stable ground again. While it no longer feels appropriate to keep their hands on his face, Gonta’s remain on the small of Kiibo’s back, at least as long as it takes for him to push past his own flustering and softly murmur, “Gonta definitely want to be Kiibo’s boyfriend. But Gonta also want us both to be rested for tomorrow…even if he do want to keep kissing…”
“So responsible, as always,” Kiibo hums, likely failing in not sounding like they’re swooning. “A rational idea…if contradictory to my own desires.”
Finally Gonta retrieves his arms, and the two of them are quick to retreat back to their previous spots on the bed. With the lights off again, both of them laying on their sides, their hands find each other atop the bedspread again, fully intertwining this time.
Gonta’s hand feels very, very nice inside of Kiibo’s, if they do say so themself.
“For the rest of our quest, Gonta will do anything to keep Kiibo safe.” Their fingers are squeezed, and when they offer one back, Gonta lets out a soft, pleased sigh. “And once we’re back at camp…Gonta will be Kiibo’s boyfriend there, and protect them there, too.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Kiibo promises, positively lovestruck. “Now…we should rest.”
“Goodnight, Kiibo.”
“Goodnight. I will see you again in the morning.”
Feeling on top of the world, Kiibo allows themself to admire Gonta’s peaceful expression until they’re certain their boyfriend has fallen into a restful sleep. As Kiibo finally enters rest mode themself, it is with a profound sense of gratitude that no matter what else may be going on, they can feel.
Notes:
+ LOVE WINS: 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
+ i know some people were expecting something Else for the vday update......oopsie doopsie. i think it turned out good though <3 my first time writing for kiibo in this way, and boy was it a learning curve! i'm very happy with how it came together, and it genuinely was quite fun giving another yet-to-be-explored pov/headspace a chapter. and anyone who knows me and my danganronpa opinions knows how much i adore the chance to give gonta the spotlight.
+ we ARE closing in on the final part of this little trilogy though; any guesses as to what comes next? you're all big enough smarty-pantses to chance some guesses, i'm sure! and either way, we WILL tip past the 200k word count next time, too......hoo boy i think i yap a little too much.
+ whatever it is, we're looking ahead to another fun little themed update! st. paddy's day update, anyone?
+ as always, thanks bunches for reading, and also as always, i am reachable through both the comments AND my tumblr @ gontagokuhara, the latter of which is best if you have any questions answered, or hear my specific thoughts! other than that — let's raise a glass to next time, huh?
+ content warnings: some identity issues are explored, and i belieeeeve that's it!
Chapter 22: welcome to the motel kumasutra: a love story told in three parts (part iii)
Summary:
“…But seriously, try and get some decent shuteye tonight, okay? I believe in all of us, duh, but hey — a good night’s rest can’t hurt when we’re trying to save the world, huh?”
By the time it strikes Shuuichi that it’s a good idea to respond to Kaede’s goodnight, he’s still in the middle of rubbing the back of his neck where he’d strained it hopefully not too badly when Kokichi launched his whole body straight into Shuuichi’s a few minutes ago. She’s already halfway down the building with Maki by the time he has a hand free to wave back, so it’s Gonta that gets it instead, as he calls happily over his shoulder, “Goodnight, friends!” before pairing off with Kiibo towards their own room. Leaving Shuuichi—
“Seriously, man, who did you actually see in there?!”
“Jeez, this again? Give it a rest, you’re so obsessed with me!”
—with just Kaito and Kokichi to keep him company in this dark, smelly parking lot.
Notes:
+ the st. paddy's day update is here, it's 5 o'clock somewhere — and here we are!
+ some things to start: as i speculated last time, the word count disparity between these 3 chapters continues. what we've ended up with here is longer than even the kaemaki chapter, at a whopping 11.6k words. i don't think it's my LONGEST chapter to date...but it's sure up there! and also as speculated last time: we are officially over the 200k word threshold. jesus fucking christ that's a lot!
+ i have more to say in the end notes, this time (where there are no content warnings i can think of); so for now, thanks as always to my darling kokichi correspondent/beta reader evan captorvatiing, and other than that — buckle in, chat, we're in for a doozy.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“…But seriously, try and get some decent shuteye tonight, okay? I believe in all of us, duh, but hey — a good night’s rest can’t hurt when we’re trying to save the world, huh?”
By the time it strikes Shuuichi that it’s a good idea to respond to Kaede’s goodnight, he’s still in the middle of rubbing the back of his neck where he’d strained it hopefully not too badly when Kokichi launched his whole body straight into Shuuichi’s a few minutes ago. She’s already halfway down the building with Maki by the time he has a hand free to wave back, so it’s Gonta that gets it instead, as he calls happily over his shoulder, “Goodnight, friends!” before pairing off with Kiibo towards their own room. Leaving Shuuichi—
“Seriously, man, who did you actually see in there?!”
“Jeez, this again? Give it a rest, you’re so obsessed with me!”
—with just Kaito and Kokichi to keep him company in this dark, smelly parking lot.
Morosely Shuuichi watches pink light flood out onto the pavement through the door Gonta has just opened, more than a little jealous of his and Kiibo’s comparative mellowness — though he does hear both of their voices an octave or two higher than usual from somewhere inside their room. By the time Shuuichi’s watched that patch of broken, cigarette-littered tar become awash again in darkness with the shut of the door, Kaito and Kokichi are still bickering, and he makes a point to cut in before either of them can say Junko’s name anymore and screw them all over with bad luck, or whatever.
He really doesn’t get how this stuff works, even now. A good night’s rest won’t remedy that much, but it’ll still help, anyway. “Guys, c’mon, this is…stupid.”
Not his most spirited suggestion. It works, if only to get the both of them to instead raise their eyebrows at him. Kokichi crosses his arms casually behind his head, the bright lights strobing around the motel catching in his eyes as he looks between them both.
Considering his words for a moment, Kokichi then offers: “Maybe, but so is the prospect of bringing the guy who cries at Casper to the Underworld!”
Kaito scowls, arms crossed defensively. “‘Casper’?”
“Yeah, the friendly ghost? The one’s in the Underworld are sure to be waaaay spookier, y’know.”
“Sh-Shut up! That’s not true at all, you prick!”
Despite himself, Shuuichi can’t keep the humor off his face when Kaito looks to him, as if for confirmation. “…Casper the Friendly Ghost, seriously?”
While Kokichi begins to giggle, Kaito throws his hands up in frustration, and with a bitten-back smile Shuuichi takes pity on him. “I’m just kidding, sorry. But, we should actually go to bed — I’m sure we’re all pretty tired.”
As if for emphasis Kokichi presses both hands to his mouth to yawn loudly into them, eyes squeezed shut from the force of it. Apparently done paying attention to him — probably for the best — Kaito instead shifts his full focus to Shuuichi, squinting at him with scrutiny before his expression cracks, bottom lip wobbling just slightly.
“Sure, man, just — you’re not actually gonna let that short punk convince you to break up the dream team, right?”
Shuuichi softens, offering Kaito a tired smile. “Of course not. Like you said, ah — we can’t separate the dream team, especially not ahead of the end of the world. We do this together, promise…so let’s sleep now, okay?”
His previous anxiety seemingly forgotten, Kaito lets out a yawn himself, glancing down at the key in his hand, then at the line of vacant motel rooms. “Hell yeah, sidekick. Alright, night — bright and early, ya got that?!”
Honestly, Shuuichi is sort of expecting Kokichi to cut in with something snide over the kind of corny note of his and Kaito’s conversation, but he’s looking rather disinterested at present. So like Kaede, Kaito’s already two doors down by the time he’s calling an anti-climactic, “G-Goodnight!” then somewhat-embarrassedly turning back to Kokichi, feeling a little nervous at the lack of…real thought, put into his last words to most of his friends before they wake up tomorrow in order to save the world.
With it being just the two of them, Shuuichi also kind of expects Kokichi — his roomie for the night, so it seems — to have more to say, be a little more enthralled by this whole thing, but other than his relatively lighthearted spat with Kaito, Kokichi’s appearing rather…muted. So it takes no more than a silent incline of his head in the direction everyone else had gone to get them moving, the quiet leaving Shuuichi room to think in a way he hasn’t really been able to since they were pulling up to the casino complex.
The ‘dream team’ indeed — over and over again, it’s proven to Shuuichi how utterly screwed this quest would be if any of his friends hadn’t signed on to join him in what is by all accounts a suicide mission. None more so than perhaps Maki; or at the very least, she’s won that honor today. Between getting rescued from their lack of funds by her dad, her other dad yelling at the weird man at the hotel front desk, and Maki herself handling the even weirder, apparent god that’s given them these discounted rooms for the night…who knows where they’d be without someone street-smart like her, in tandem with someone like Kaede, who covers any godly knowledge blind-spots the others might have.
Honestly…other than being the so-called leader at the forefront of this mess because two of the Big Five have a target pinned on his back, Shuuichi struggles to find himself a meaningful place in this quest — his quest. That might just be how tired he is, and his lingering frustration at being so clueless on things having to do with the gods, but it’s never been more apparent than it was inside of the magic motel a few minutes ago, how utterly out of the loop he is on all of this.
He’d known it wasn’t Byakuya, it couldn’t possibly have been the real Byakuya Togami and Shuuichi knew that, but still he’d been practically paralyzed with indecision as Maki dealt with the person wearing his adoptive guardian’s face herself. While he had gleaned from everyone else’s outbursts that they were all seeing some kind of authority figure, it still hadn’t — still doesn’t — made much sense to him. A god playing dress-up inside of a building that makes no logical sense, one that only appeared after they were kicked off another god’s doorstep…it makes him very, very uncomfortable not to know for sure what they’re dealing with and if it’s safe to sleep near this person for the night, but it’s something he’s going to have to let go if he wants to get any rest.
Well…almost. Even if Shuuichi does his deep breathing exercises and forces himself to put the nearby God of Mischief — and why they appeared as an especially-rotund Byakuya, as opposed to cookie-baking Makoto, or really at all — from his mind, there is something else that’s rubbing him the wrong way about what happened a few minutes ago…
…And he’s walking at Shuuichi’s flank, uncharacteristically quiet as they scale one side of the building’s perimeter, and turn off towards the other in search of their room for the night.
As he’s gotten an earful of multiple times these past few minutes, while everyone else saw parental, or otherwise known guardian figures in the shapeshifter’s face, Kokichi claimed as they were first confronting the god that he saw Junko looking back at him. Whether or not Shuuichi believes him — at the very least, Kaito and Kiibo don’t — it strikes him as just a little…strange. It could just be a lie, it’s probably the most likely answer, given how unperturbed he’d sounded in the moment. Even knowing as little about her as he does, Shuuichi does know that every person at camp has been tormented by her dominion over the gods. Maki and Kaito have each been revealed to have deeply personal, life-altering stories with Junko as the main villain — and those are just the two that he knows of.
If it was a joke and a lie, it wasn’t a particularly funny one. If it was the truth…no matter how Shuuichi examines the possibility in his brain, he just can’t see how the honest answer to who Kokichi saw in there could actually be Junko. More than likely, it’s a lie, and if Shuuichi were to chance drawing a logical conclusion as to the actual truth from what details he’s gleaned about Kokichi so far…like Kaede, his best guess is that Kokichi would’ve seen Nagito.
But…he supposes it doesn’t really matter. Whatever it is, thanks to the weird shapeshifter god and the many tricks in the motel he’s witnessed so far alike, he’s mostly just left feeling vaguely uneasy about this whole place, and not super excited to sleep in it.
The most pressing aspect of which, at least now, is not what they’ve already encountered, but rather whatever awaits them inside of their shared room for the night. Which includes sleeping in the same bed with Kokichi again. And…Shuuichi’s not really sure how he feels about that.
Though they’ve done this song and dance before, that night on the tiny RV bed together, it had been…sort of harrowing to make his way through. While things are okay now — he thinks — he’d made some pretty grievous missteps the first time around that nearly ended their relationship in disaster. And while he still cringes rather thoroughly whenever he thinks about how he’d snapped at Kokichi like that…they’ve been pretty good friends these past few days, right?
…Are they friends?
Shuuichi thinks so — he likes to think so, at least. Kokichi is by all accounts confusing, and contradictory, and paradoxical, and a lot of other words he could list out endlessly in his brain. An evil liar, is likely how he’d describe himself if asked, but Shuuichi knows better; as much as he’s witnessed Kokichi lying and teasing and meddling in less-than-innocent ways the handful of days he’s known him, he’s also had these shining moments of kindness, too. Like when he gave Shuuichi the Bewear plush during his roadside panic attack — when he saved the bear and the photo of his mom and all of his belongings from the RV wreck while trying to make their pit stop more efficient. So many times Kokichi’s made a point to try and make him laugh, to poke fun during tense circumstances in the name of cutting through his anxiety, done his best to distract from the non-stop horror show they’ve been starring in from pretty much the moment they met. If he thinks about it, Kokichi has done a lot for him, but…are they really friends?
When Shuuichi looks over at him as if it’ll give him an answer, he finds he’s already being looked at, and all thoughts of friendship grind to a halt as the keys he’d been given are deftly nabbed from his hand, glittering in the errant pink lights as Kokichi gently waves them at him. “Thought you were gonna make us circle the building a second time. Do you even know where our room is? Oh, well — here we are!”
Despite what he says, it appears they have come to a stop outside of their actual room for the night, and Shuuichi isn’t inclined in the slightest to stop him when he moves to unlock the entrance for them both. It’s an inclination he is soundly punished for when Kokichi throws their door open, revealing a mortifying scene that very quickly leaves Kokichi practically rolling in the doorway with laughter, and Shuuichi retreating into his hoodie in a doomed endeavor to escape what awaits him inside the Motel Kumasutra.
It’s…hideous.
The carpet matches the drapes — that is to say, not only are the curtains and flooring printed with hearts, but so is every other surface in the relatively snug room. Other than the bed — which is heart-shaped, and blinking, and apparently a merry-go-round, and way more than he is equipped to deal with right now — there are some extra features to the room; on Shuuichi’s left is what he sincerely hopes is the shut door to a bathroom, and on his right, framed with lacy heart-patterned pink curtains, is—
Oh, if he could die from embarrassment, he’d be joining Rantarou in Hell right about now.
For better or for worse, he cannot die of embarrassment. At the very least, he’s not given the chance to before Kokichi has recovered to his feet and is bolting into the room, headed straight for the source of all the noise he’s hearing — the two horses circling the carousel track, bleeding mechanical whir-ing noises and what appears to be clown music into the air — before Shuuichi’s slamming the door shut and dashing after him, Kokichi’s cackling echoing off the walls.
His main concern is Kokichi breaking something — or himself — by launching his body at the twirling horses, and it’s what gives him adrenaline enough to reach Kokichi before he quite gets there, hands ghosting around his middle just long enough to slow his roll a little in his new side quest to ride the ponies. Shuuichi only touches him for a few moments, and jolts away the second Kokichi’s momentum screeches to a halt, but nevertheless he’s left feeling weirdly guilty over such an intimate action, face burning hot for multiple reasons when Kokichi turns to face him, grinning ear-to-ear.
“This place is epic!”
Shuuichi can’t help but pull a face, glancing around their surroundings warily as he slides his duffle bag off his shoulder and onto the floor. The right side of the room is decidedly R-rated; he’s not sure he’ll be able to sleep if he’s unable to forget it exists, so he moves with purpose to pull the curtains over the whole display, responding as he does. “I disagree. It’s…so tacky.” He wrinkles his nose, not convinced by the faux-offended look Kokichi shoots his way once he turns around, the fetish corner dispatched for now. “How are we supposed to get any sleep when…it’s so…?”
Trailing off brings him no closer to a polite way to word it. “Colorful.”
Kokichi, for his part, appears rather unconcerned, his quietness from before seemingly forgotten as he ducks around the painted ponies and belly-flops onto the bed. Rolling around as if to get a feel for the heart-shaped mattress’s comfiness, he ends up satisfied enough to eventually turn over onto his back, head lolled to the side to glance up at Shuuichi appraisingly after he’s briefly turned to toe his shoes off by the door, and lock it for good measure.
“Sooo, a sleepover, huh? Whatcha wanna talk about?”
Hands crossed beneath his head, legs crossed at the knee with both propped in the air by one foot planted on the bed, he’s clearly awaiting a response. Shuuichi smiles sheepishly in recognition that it’s a lame one. “I just want to shower and go to sleep, honestly…long day tomorrow and all. But I know that’s a boring answer, sorry.”
While he boos quietly from his spot atop the bed spread, Kokichi doesn’t otherwise object to the soft-spoken request as Shuuichi pulls out what’s likely his last clean pair of sleep clothes from his duffle bag. Looking as though he’s intent to stay where he is, Shuuichi takes that as Kokichi’s sign he’s content to let Shuuichi shower first, and tries not to feel too awkward as he moves towards the bathroom door. He does, however, feel the sensation of eyes burning into the back of his neck as he grasps at the door handle. By the time Shuuichi is scrambling to shut the door behind him in a way that isn’t too loud or awkward he’s bright red, totally caught out by the attention, and the coy expression he catches on Kokichi’s face right before they’re separated by the door.
He doesn’t even know why he’s reacting like this to something that’s otherwise fairly innocuous — the strange themeing of their room for the night, maybe. Or perhaps it’s his stress compounding on the anticipatory anxiety that mounts with every second that ticks down towards their entrance to the Underworld.
Whatever it is, Shuuichi tries to will himself into forcing it from his mind while he turns around. He screams as he comes face-to-face with the decor of the bathroom around him.
“Oh sick, a hot tub!”
Kokichi, apparently alerted by Shuuichi’s unbridled horror, more or less shoves him aside in an effort to push into the bathroom and rush towards what certainly is not a shower, but rather a comically large, dahlia-red, heart-shaped bathtub, complete with an apparent jet and bubble feature — which Kokichi happily showcases, messing with both as he titters beneath his breath. Like the rest of the room he’s seen so far in this motel, the matching red interiors of the bathroom far exceed the dimensions it should be, when observed from a non-magic lens. There are no windows, but small bulbs built into the floor flood the room with dually-warm gold and pink lighting, casting an almost intimate glow across the whole space.
All in all, Shuuichi feels quite faint, and he has half a mind to lean back against the door to keep from toppling over. When from by the tub Kokichi opens his mouth, his voice is a purr, and Shuuichi goes and drops his clothes onto the floor when he hears the invitation Kokichi lilts out over the running water, steam slowly filling the room around them.
“Care for a dip in the jacuzzi, Shuumai?”
He’s going to die. Definitely. Shuuichi buries his head in his hands, Kokichi’s laugh audible over the long-suffering groan he heaves into his palms. “I just want to shower.”
No such luck. Kokichi hums happily over the sounds of water splashing into the tub, slowly but surely filling it up. Lifting his face, he casts one more morose look around the bathroom, as if he’s actually expecting a standard shower to jump out and save him from…whatever this is quickly devolving into. Obviously, he’s hung out to dry — save for the humidity beginning to stick his fringe to his forehead — and with nothing left to do he stoops down to pick up his sleep clothes, sighing heavily as he straightens back up. Lacking options Shuuichi steps over to the sink, depositing his clothing on the counter, then a few moments later hopping up after them himself, swinging his feet as he awkwardly watches Kokichi while he messes with the bath.
In what seems like no time at all, the closed room has begun to smell of the sweet, bubblegum-scented bubble bath Kokichi had poured rather heavy-handedly beneath the tap a few minutes ago. Steam cloys in the air quite densely, blanketing the warmly-lit room in a balmy heat that’s almost sort of cozy.
The water level slightly higher than Shuuichi himself would be comfortable raising it to, Kokichi finally twists the tap off, glancing up from where he’s crouched next to the floor-seated tub to look at Shuuichi, almost appearing on the edge of pouting.
“C’mon, New Kid!” Okay, he’s definitely pouting now. Much closer to the hot water, Kokichi’s hair is fully flat against his head from the humidity. “I won’t even skinny dip!”
At the face Shuuichi makes Kokichi laughs, pushing himself to his feet and eventually settling his expression into something more relaxed before he lightly continues: “We’ll have some character development, max out our friendship levels the night before the climax of our adventure, get some shuteye, and wake up totally ready to kick god ass in the morning!”
Now Kokichi pauses, hands shifting until he’s got his fingers idling at the edge of his shirt, though his eyes remain fixed rather intently on Shuuichi. It takes him several beats too long to realize that in a rather touching gesture Kokichi’s looking for consent, and despite the moisture clinging in the air Shuuichi feels his mouth go dry as he’s left to consider his options, with not a lot of time to do so.
If this is going where he thinks it is — being: sitting in a heart-shaped hot tub with Kokichi — then…well. From the sounds of it, he’s going to strip but not fully, and if he were to agree Shuuichi would likely do the same. There are so many frothy pink bubbles at this point that the water is hardly distinguishable, and he doubts much of either of them will be visible once they get in. He’s already out to Kokichi, they’ve already been in their boxers around each other in the pool, and honestly…a hot soak does sound nice.
Before he answers, though, he cocks his head to the side slightly as he looks back at Kokichi, a thought striking him at perhaps an inconvenient time, but it’s one he follows through on nonetheless. Just a second ago — for basically the entire time Shuuichi’s known him, actually — Kokichi used one of the several nicknames he’s coined for him: New Kid. It’s what basically the entirety of Camp Hope’s Peak called him before he was properly introduced, but by the end of the first day most everyone had given up on it. Except for Kokichi, who uses it just as often as he does Shuumai, and Shuuichi’s actual name.
It’s not as if he’s the only one that gets that distinction; whether more teasing or slightly meaner, Kokichi has a whole host of nicknames up his sleeve. Though, compared to some of the other one’s he’s witnessed — ‘Hokey Protag’, ‘Sushi Roll’, ‘Kiibaby’, ‘Space Case’, and those are just the ones he’s heard during their quest — being called New Kid even after all they’ve been through together…it could be a lot worse. And, either way…
The world might actually, legitimately end tomorrow. However this night goes down, it will finish with the two of them sleeping in the same bed again. He can envision only bad, awkward, painful interactions if he refuses, and the last thing he wants is to send Kokichi running away when he’s as sure as ever that going into tomorrow, the two of them are actually—
…Shuuichi’s pretty sure he already knows the answer. But it will do no harm to ask. “Kokichi. Are we friends?”
Not only has Shuuichi been quiet a little too long; he can see it flicker across Kokichi’s face, how the question blindsides him for a moment. In an instant he’s resummoned a casual smile, hands dipping now into the pockets of his pants as he rocks back on the balls of his socked feet. The contrasting lights in the room shadow his face in odd ways, leaving his angular facial features bathed in warm yellow and pink tones.
“Is this a set-up to a ‘no homo’ or something?”
Kokichi’s still smiling, but Shuuichi can see his hands bunching up into anxious fists in his pockets. His responding chuckle is genuine, but he consciously allows his own smile to bloom around the sound to maintain the lighthearted mood he’s really rather desperate to hold onto. “Serious question, actually.”
“…Seriously?” Said in another tone the question could come out accusatory, leave Shuuichi shrinking back; but there’s a genuine note both to it, and the thoughtful quiet that settles for a few moments as he considers.
Finally: “Hmm…hmm…alright, try this one on for size, Mister Detective. You’re kinda dumb, but not in the annoying way — you just don’t get stuff yet. Out of all the dummies on this quest with us, you’re the one I think about the most — hmm, but good or bad, who can say for sure?” He hums, copying Shuuichi by cocking his head to the side, though he doesn’t look near Shuuichi at all as he continues. “You heal my wounds, and tell me about your messed up family stuff, and ask me weird questions like if we’re friends, when you don’t even know me at all! No one normal acts like that, and your outlook on this whole thing has been kinda freaky from the jump…maybe that’s why you’re my favorite outta all these suckers! I think you’re pretty weird, and a huge sappy dope, and…definitely not boring, even though you look it. And maybe, just maybe…you might even be trustworthy, though you’re waaay too naïve for your own good.”
Now he does glance back at Shuuichi, violet eyes warm in the room’s ambient light. “…Seriously.”
It’s not a straight answer. Not a particularly normal one, either. Half of it is baked-in insults. But, from the bottom of his heart, Shuuichi does believe it’s honest — and that tells him more than any yes or no response ever could.
Above all else, it tells him that Kokichi doesn’t think he’s boring — and for once, it’s not insecurity that drives him to want to prove as much; but rather a desire to maintain his hard-earned status as Kokichi’s apparent favorite. There is something uniquely enticing in the label gifted to him by the most confusing person he’s ever met.
Shuuichi isn’t hiding anymore. And right now…he doesn’t really want to. “Okay.”
Kokichi continues to watch him for just as long as it takes Shuuichi to hop down from the sink counter and begin pulling off his socks, and thankfully he’s quick to understand Shuuichi’s nebulous agreement, without him having to voice it more explicitly — he’s not that confident. Kokichi’s also quick in undressing, his back facing Shuuichi while he goes through the motions of discarding his socks, jeans, and shirt, leaving him in just his boxers, not unlike what Shuuichi remembers of his appearance at the pool a few days ago — though now he’s wearing that unique red necklace he got yesterday at the museum. And this time, his hair is down instead of pulled up in a ponytail, having long since begun to cling to the pale skin of his face and neck from the humidity.
Spinning around for just a moment, Kokichi shoots Shuuichi a playful wink from the edge of the tub before unceremoniously hopping in, falling with a thick noise through the mass of bubbles and disappearing entirely beneath the pink foam for several moments. A not insignificant amount of warm water and bubblegum soap splashes out onto the platform the tub is seated in, which Kokichi notices and begins to giggle at when he surfaces. Slicking his soaked hair back, he observes the mess — and Shuuichi, still lingering by the sink — for a few seconds longer before turning his back to him yet again, an implicit vow of privacy while he gets to work massaging the sweet-smelling bubbles into his hair.
What an unfortunate moment, then, for Shuuichi to be seized with nerves again, and hesitate with his hands on the hem of the waistline of his pants.
He might be shaking, just a little as he works them off and kicks them away, doubly so when he’s faced now with removing his sweatshirt, too — where he’s not wearing a binder underneath. After briefly making a decision he pulls it off and discards it over his head, feeling extremely vulnerable in the few moments he’s left just in his boxers, though he doesn’t allow himself to run away from it. Quickly he pulls on the t-shirt he’d planned to sleep in in its place, and pauses just once more to deposit his phone on the counter. Then Shuuichi sucks in a very deep breath, briskly makes his way over to the tub, squeezes his eyes shut tight, and gently sets himself down in the water on the opposite side from Kokichi.
Immediately, the knowledge that the opaque bubbles are effectively blanketing everything below the shoulders from view has him feeling eons better — which he expected, but regardless, it makes prying his eyes back open a lot easier.
Kokichi, it seems, couldn’t be less interested in Shuuichi; over the swaths of bubbles between them, he can see Kokichi dunking his head beneath the water, scrubbing out the soap he’d rubbed into his scalp before Shuuichi got in with him. With his vision obscured by the dark, wet hair that hangs in his face, and not acknowledging Shuuichi’s presence at all, he himself is left to squirm a little bit, shifting nervously between two jets built into the seat he’s settled into while trying to figure out what he should be doing.
He knew what he was signing up for when he agreed. When he got in. And by all accounts, nothing is drastically out of place — as Kokichi accurately pointed out this is a hot tub, if the jets are anything to go by…just one that’s currently threatening to overflow with bubbles from Kokichi’s observable zeal in dumping the soap in to begin with. They’re both completely fine being in here, there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing, but even still it’s not just the wet t-shirt Shuuichi’s wearing that has him feeling so distinctly uncomfortable.
It’s…how intimate in nature it feels, maybe. Sitting in a hot tub — one that’s heart-shaped! — alone with a boy that rapid-fire switches between teasing, insulting, ignoring, or flirting with him; inside of a lavish room clearly designed for lovers, no less. The world could very possibly end in a matter of hours, and of all places he’s here, after everything they’ve been through the past week or so, watching the bones beneath Kokichi’s back move as he hums to himself just a few feet away from where Shuuichi sits.
It’s weird. Shuuichi’s mouth still feels dry. In the silence he flounders, occupying his eyes and his hands and his brain as best he can by playing with the bubbles in front of him while he waits for…something to happen, and give him even a sliver of an idea on how to act in a situation like this.
After a minute or two of them both silently doing their own thing, they get there; he hears shifting in the water, badly (likely intentionally not) hidden snickering, and then:
“I’m surprised you actually said yes to a soak with me, y’know. I was totally bluffing about getting in the jacuzzi with you — I was expecting Shuuichi to be all shy and virginal, not so bold!”
Typical. He should’ve figured when Kokichi opened his mouth, he’d hear something like that.
Unlike Kokichi, he does try to bite his smile back while he levels an otherwise unimpressed look in his direction. They catch eyes for just a second, and Shuuichi feels his lip tugging upward despite the teeth he has dug into it, so before he can crack he instead interrupts the eye contact to splash him with a massive wave of water and those sickly-sweet bubblegum bubbles he seems to love so much. Not only does he succeed in washing Kokichi beneath the surface; he also sends yet another tidal flood of water out of the tub, making the already bad bathroom mess a lot worse.
When Kokichi emerges again he’s coughing a bit, and Shuuichi feels a little bad as it dawns on him he probably wasn’t prepared to be splashed like that — even if he did deserve it, for all but calling him a prude, and making fun of him for not being one to boot. The following laugh he lets out is a little fractured, a little put-on, and there’s something strange in the way he eyes Shuuichi, mouth twitching as if he can’t decide whether to smile or not. In a few moment’s he’s considered his options and made up his mind, because when his lips pull open, it’s to spare him an odd smile and inform him:
“That’s fair. Guess I’ll take that as my cue to peace out — you’re fine cleaning up the mess yourself, right? Bye-o-naraaa!”
“N-Not a chance, Kokichi—!”
…And that would be the door, slamming firmly shut behind Kokichi as he dashes out of the bathroom soaking wet, only pausing long enough to swipe several towels off the rack before he’s off like a shot, and Shuuichi really is left behind with the mess.
Groaning, Shuuichi sinks back into the water, discarding his remaining garments after he’s sure Kokichi is gone for good, glad — if not more than a little bit confused — to be alone.
It’s — gods, how long has it been since Shuuichi got a real minute by himself? A real chance to think without one of his friends — as much as he has quickly come to adore them — lingering near his side enough that he can’t truly relax in the way he’s able to when he’s alone? While getting to work properly bathing he tries to move backwards in his head to when he last did have a second on his own, and though he’s sure his simmering anxiety for tomorrow and fatigue in anticipation of it plays a factor…he genuinely cannot recall when he was last alone for more than a handful of minutes.
Either way, well — he’s got that lonesome minute to himself now. And once he’s done in here and gets ready for bed, it’s going to run out, and he’s probably not going to have another stretch of time like this before…
Before however their quest ends.
So there is, in a rather literal sense, no time but the present to think things over. It may be his last chance to. And on the eve of the end of the world, there is quite a lot for Shuuichi to ruminate on as he goes through the motions of bathing slowly.
Beyond it being Gundham that awaits them all in the Underworld tomorrow, there are people that stick more firmly, more importantly in his mind, as people he knows are also there somewhere, too: Rantarou, and his mom. Shuuichi could think himself endlessly in circles for hours about just the two of them alone.
At the end of summer, it will be five years since Shuuichi lost his mom — just shy of his thirteenth birthday. If he makes it that far this year, he’ll be eighteen, and less than a month after him Rantarou will be, too. In the same way it feels as though a lifetime has passed since his mom died, the wound left behind by the grief is still bloody and fresh enough to leave his chest throbbing at the recollection. To leave him especially, deeply traumatized by not just the car accident that took her from him, but now those that both stole Rantarou away to the Underworld, and nearly took all of his friends out in one fell swoop with the RV explosion.
She was his best friend, he knew his mom like the back of his hand — and he still does, but it’s slightly fuzzed over with time. Her light hair, her dark eyes, her summertime freckles stick out in his brain, but the features of her face only really slot themselves together when he looks at a picture of her. Very soon it will be five years, and though he doesn’t know how any of this works or if the thought that wells up in him is even possible at all…going to the Underworld tomorrow feels a lot like getting a step closer to his mom. A feeling of closure, knowing that if Rantarou is still reachable then maybe she might be, too, and he can — he can escape the adrenaline-spiked, free-fall sort of feeling constantly creeping over his shoulder for the first time since he woke up that unassuming morning, and his mom was dead.
When Shuuichi’s eyes begin to burn, he dunks his head beneath the water, scrubbing at them as if it’s the soap that has him tearing up.
He at least has the foresight to recognize that’s a pipe dream, any notion of closure or reconciliation or just getting to say goodbye, I love you one last time. But what is actually in his reach — as far as Gundham has dangled the possibility in front of his nose like bait — is seeing Rantarou again. No matter how one looks at it, Shuuichi’s primary motivation in all of this is Rantarou, and it always has been. More and more it looks like Rantarou died for him, and as the only person with a shot of saving him from the clutches of a Big Five god…Shuuichi’s also been left to shoulder the other stuff.
Namely: being framed as the absolute moron that stole the Spear of Gungnir, and therefore the pitiable bastard tasked with keeping the gods from killing themselves and the rest of the world in search of it.
And Shuuichi didn’t know this stuff existed two weeks ago.
Be that as it may, he can’t not see this through. Rantarou, his best friend, his brother’s life is in his hands, and though Shuuichi is more than aware of how quickly life can be cut short, he won’t stop fighting to save Rantarou until his is. He owes everything to Rantarou, but more than that — this is so much more than just Rantarou, or any of Shuuichi’s friends, or even the narcissistic gods at the forefront of the whole spear fiasco. From everything he’s heard so far, if Shuuichi gets things wrong tomorrow, it might be game over for everyone.
Shuuichi snorts, rolling his eyes at himself. What a callous way to address the upcoming apocalypse — the one that has his name written all over it.
Briefly, more than a little resentfully, Shuuichi’s mind wanders not to his family amongst the Togamis, nor his newfound demigod friends, nor even his mom; but instead, to his godly parent — the so-called ‘father’ that he’s heard so very little about. In a twisted, deeply ironic sort of way Shuuichi spares just a momentary thought to what his parent must think of him right now. He couldn’t chance an intelligent guess as to his father’s identity if he wanted to, and there’s a distinct possibility that whoever it is might not know that the demigod accused of screwing up the world is his child. Obviously, he’s never made any appearance in Shuuichi’s life before this, and Shuuichi would bet a lot on his godly parent having no idea about anything in his life, least of all that the kid he abandoned is actually a son.
But that person is the least of his worries, and all thoughts of his godly parent sap from his mind as he unplugs the bottom of the hot tub, and slowly watches the water and what remains of the rose-tinted bubbles begin to swirl down the drain.
No matter what he preoccupies his mind with now…it all comes to a head tomorrow. That’s where all of this leads, where it’s been destined to lead since Gundham appeared in the flames at camp and gave him an opportunity to see Rantarou again — since whoever stole that stupid spear pinned it on Shuuichi, and ruined his entire goddamn life in the process. One way or another, the climax of their quest awaits them in the Underworld, just a matter of hours from now. And he doesn’t know what to think about any of it.
For the time being, at least, the tub has drained, and the fuzzy red towels hanging by the sink are calling his name. So it’s there he goes, forcefully pushing thoughts of the Underworld from his mind as he begins to dry off, and instead focusing on something…just the slightest bit closer than the realm of the dead.
Well — to say he’s pushed all thoughts having to do with the Underworld away isn’t exactly correct. Mostly, though, his thoughts drift to Kokichi; currently in the next room, oddly quiet, after proposing they get in the hot tub together and then making a hasty escape once Shuuichi actually acquiesced. All night, actually, he’s been acting a little strange. Still cracking bad jokes and snickering between chirped-out lies and throwing himself at Shuuichi with abandon — from what he’s observed so far, all of that is very Kokichi.
Maybe this weird, lovey-dovey themed place, and what awaits them all tomorrow has him feeling especially sentimental, and reading too far into things. Shuuichi’s anxiety is pretty good at doing that. But, if he allows himself to trust in what he sees and hears and observes, then…then it feels like, in his own way, Kokichi is as affected by their prospects in the Underworld as the rest of them are.
Which makes sense, obviously — Kokichi may be an excellent liar and performer and distraction alike, all of which feels incredibly purposeful, but he’s still human…uh, well, as human as any of them are, he supposes. There’s a certain mutedness to him tonight, even if he has been launching himself at merry-go-rounds and teasing Shuuichi endlessly and luring them both into hot tubs on a whim. Over the past stretch of days Shuuichi has spent a lot of time observing Kokichi, and though perhaps the close quarters should inspire in him a desire to keep his distance, he finds that the opposite is true.
He’s only a room away, he’s only been out of Shuuichi’s sight for a few minutes, but still he finds his mind wandering, curious as to what it is he’s doing in the main motel room. What he’s thinking about. How he’s feeling, going into tomorrow, after everything they’ve been through so far. Is Kokichi nervous, like he is? Is he excited — or would he claim to be, if asked? Is he afraid? Unsure? Totally out of his fucking depth, in the same way Shuuichi has been since basically the word go? Whatever it is, whatever the truth is that rests beneath Kokichi’s carefully-maintained mask…Shuuichi wants to know.
Abruptly he pauses, halfway through drying off, eyes narrowed as they fix on a random spot on the wine-red walls and he…processes, the weight of a sudden revelation that’s fallen over him.
Shuuichi wants a lot of things. He wants to save Rantarou from the depths of the Underworld. He wants the two of them, and all of the other friends he’s made since all of this started to make it out unscathed. He wants for the world not to end, least of all in his name, least of all on such a ridiculously false premise. He wants to know what Kokichi thinks about what awaits them tomorrow. He wants…
…It’s not just Kokichi’s thoughts on the end of the world he wants to know. No, Shuuichi…when it comes to Kokichi, maybe more than anyone else on this quest, it’s not just Kokichi’s thoughts he wants to know — he wants to know Kokichi.
Bar none, Kokichi Ouma is the most bizarre person Shuuichi has ever met, even compared to some of the other colorful characters in Shuuichi’s life. His best friend and brother, who apparently can see the future, is currently being held hostage in literal Hell. In the human world, Makoto and Byakuya — who are already strange in that they have vague, nondescript jobs that keep them out of the house until late and up for long hours talking in hushed voices — have been revealed to be gods, Makoto an especially powerful one at that, both of them prepared to rain down armageddon in the name of saving their kids. Even Hajime — his former history teacher turned camp counselor, who is not only one of the five most powerful beings on the planet but also has a dark dual side that, as far as Shuuichi has been filled in, has been working with the woman behind all of this misfortune.
Maybe Shuuichi just has really, really shitty priorities, but even still…something about Kokichi is just different, in a way humans, demigods, monsters, even gods themselves can’t replicate like Kokichi does, practically every second of every day.
Kokichi is coy, and playful, and neurotic, and smarmy, and whimsical, and convoluted, and brilliant, and reckless, and calculating, and quiet, and boisterous, and he is so much. Shuuichi, someone who so depends on and needs stability, needs straightforward intentions — he should hate Kokichi. Should find him frustrating, and infuriating, and nauseating to be around. And he does, to an extent; but the bigger, louder, more earnest and honest part of him wants to get to know Kokichi. Unravel the secrets he hides impossibly deep, wrapped in layers upon endless layers of lies and half-truths and actual truths slipped in where they’re least expected. Examine what lay under the hood and discover for himself the mysteries that reside beneath the surface of Kokichi’s fickle demeanor. Kokichi is a mystery, an ever-changing story, a riddle that Shuuichi feels almost desperate to crack open and take apart and disentangle until he knows why.
…But is that actually true? Is that actually what Shuuichi wants?
On further ponderance of the notion…honestly, the cold, clinical metaphor leaves him feeling kind of ill.
If there is one thing he knows he can accurately judge about Kokichi and the many faceted sides of himself he displays through his truths and lies alike, it’s that he presents all of those things for a reason. It’s a shield against some unknown, some…terrible, awful truth; and whatever it is, it has Kokichi convinced he’s better off keeping everyone at arm’s length, teetering eternally on the edge of flighty and frustrating because to be scorned and disliked is easier for him to stomach than genuine connection. It’s some force exerted on every observable aspect of his life, something Shuuichi doesn’t know, and something he can’t understand as things are now.
Whatever rests beneath the surface of Kokichi Ouma, it’s something that he’s desperate to cling onto; something he holds so close to his chest that he hides from it in every aspect of his outward identity, and in doing so, hides so much of himself from the people around him — not just Shuuichi, but all of his friends. And for Shuuichi to take that apart, to dissect Kokichi’s personality only for his own satisfaction, to quell his sudden, insistent curiosity…it’s wrong. It’s not what he wants.
Shuuichi doesn’t want to sleuth out Kokichi’s secrets for himself. He doesn’t want to take apart and dissect Kokichi’s life like a case. He…what he wants is to be granted permission to know these things about Kokichi. Shuuichi wants to be invited in, to be given glimpses, to have tiny bits and pieces of Kokichi’s thoughts and Kokichi’s life and Kokichi gifted to him on the basis of…what? Trust? Care? Friendship? Love?
The thought leaves him stalling, then a moment later roughly pulling his hoodie back over his head, willing the entire notion out of his mind. Surely, that’s just these embarrassing surroundings getting to his head.
Ugh, and speaking of — he’s about had his fill of this ridiculous bathroom, having spent much longer in here than he really would have ever liked to…not to mention the mess still flooding half the floor. Not just due to the mortifying edge his thoughts have taken on, but more realistically: if it’s not past midnight now, then it’s got to be very close, and either way, he would have much preferred to be in bed sooner. Though Gundham’s deadline isn’t technically up for another twenty-four hours, the plan is to head to the Underworld in the morning, and even though he kind of wants to, there’s no way he’ll be late to Maki’s call time. However this last sleepover with Kokichi ends…it all comes to a head tomorrow. And, in consideration of that, while already thinking about what it is he wants…
He wants Kokichi to be comfortable around him. He wants to be close to Kokichi. He wants to care about Kokichi, and be cared for by him in return. He wants to earn the privilege of learning what makes Kokichi himself — to truly know the very complicated, perplexing, interesting, deeply compelling person he’s found himself rather fascinated with, pretty much since the moment they met. He wants…
Gods, what does he want?
Naturally, he’s not found an answer by the time he’s hanging his wet clothes up to dry and emerging from the bathroom, where he does find something else: Kokichi now in dry clothes, back to Shuuichi as he messes with various light settings in the room. By the room’s entrance he’s discarded the towels he’d taken with him, and the wet clothing he’d escaped the bathroom in hangs on one of the painted horses — both of which are motionless. At the very least, sleeping will be slightly easier, even if Kokichi’s presence alongside him in the heart-shaped bed is the more pressing reason for his anxiousness at the thought of sleeping.
That, and the whole world ending thing. Shuuichi really ought to get his priorities straight.
Once he’s shut the bathroom door behind himself Kokichi hasn’t said anything, and he’s ignored in the time it takes for him to retreat over to his duffle bag, stow his dirty clothing away, and retrieve the Bewear plush and his phone charger. With nothing left to do, and no real reason to delay the inevitable Shuuichi moves first to shut off the overhead light in the room and then approach the bed, where Kokichi hasn’t laid any visible claim to either side of it. So he settles himself on the right-hand side, plugging in his phone ahead of tomorrow — though he can’t imagine it’s going to be particularly useful, while he’s in Hell.
A few more of the lights in the room cut out as Shuuichi is sliding himself beneath the thick, soft blankets, and it rouses his attention enough to pull him away from where he’s reaching to shut his bedside lamp off, and instead to focus on Kokichi, finally looking at him again. For once, Shuuichi’s pretty sure the exhaustion he sees on Kokichi’s face is as real as his is.
While still halfway across the room, Kokichi offers him a small smile. How genuine it looks is enough to well up a pleasant warmth in his chest, and he’s very strangely grateful for the excuse to break eye contact that arises when Kokichi turns to shut off one last light — leaving the two of them bathed only in the warm glow of Shuuichi’s bedside lamp, and the thin ribbons of pink that bleed in through the drawn window blinds.
Shuuichi uses the stretch Kokichi spends approaching the bed and crawling beneath the covers on the other side to get himself comfortably situated against the pillows he’s claimed. He’s facing the left-hand side of the room with the bear pulled close to his chest when Kokichi emerges a foot or so away from Shuuichi on the mattress, head propped up lazily on the mountain of pillows left over from the two Shuuichi had taken — though their faces are still close enough that it almost manages to not matter what pillows are whose. Nervous but sincerely hoping he doesn’t look it, Shuuichi turns more fully onto his back, eyes trained on the ceiling as his thoughts from earlier pick up again now that he’s in such close proximity to their subject.
He doesn’t want to mess this up again. Playing along with Kokichi’s moods, navigating what is and isn’t an alright thing to say and do, with him it’s so difficult — and nerve-wracking. The last thing Shuuichi wants is to be shut out again, Kokichi wounded and angry and pressed against the edge of one side of the bed while Shuuichi does the same, hating himself. Not so close to such a precarious situation, one that relies just as much on teamwork as it does luck and mercy from the gods.
Not ever, preferably, but especially not on the precipice of the most dangerous thing any of them will probably ever do.
“Hey, did that bath not help you at all? You’re all sweaty.”
…So much for having a tactful last conversation before the end of the world. Shuuichi rolls his eyes, keeping his attention focused on the ceiling while he tries to fight the equal parts self-deprecating and amused grin that threatens to crack his face. Kokichi must see as much, because a moment later he snickers, the sound much closer to his ear than he’s really used to.
“C’moooon, it’s a sleepover!” In his periphery he watches Kokichi prop his elbow up on the pillows, chin balanced in his palm as he openly appraises Shuuichi. “Let’s spill our secrets, play spin the bottle, have a pillow fight in our underwear, all that yucky stuff! It could be our last chance, y’know.”
Kokichi’s teasing, certainly, but he’s significantly less high energy than he had been the first time they shared a bed. And, well, he’s right about one thing: this could be their last chance for…a lot of things. The two of them should really sleep, but…
“Speaking of secrets.” When Kokichi hums his acknowledgement, Shuuichi turns his head against the pillow so they can properly look at each other. Their faces are still almost intimately close. “Who did you see before?”
“See when?” Kokichi retorts facetiously, tone still light.
“The shapeshifter,” Shuuichi clarifies, though neither of them have any illusions as to what he’s referring to. “Why lie about seeing Junko?”
For a few moments Kokichi silently considers that, apparently more comfortable retaining eye contact through the wait than Shuuichi is. Eventually:
“You’re kind of barking up the wrong tree looking for an answer to that question from me, Shuuichi.”
Perhaps. But his answer isn’t the misdirection that Shuuichi expects — it’s not a straight answer, but yet again tonight, what Kokichi says does feel like the truth. A liar who won’t, or can’t say why…yet another layer to his friend’s bone-deep complexity.
Yet again, it harkens back to a reality that Shuuichi has long discerned about Kokichi: behind every lie, there is a reason he chooses to craft a false narrative instead of offering the complete, transparent truth. Transparency is not a quality Shuuichi would ascribe to Kokichi in any respect; and for all that may drive him crazy…he knows what he wants. And it’s not to pry Kokichi’s secrets from his soul without permission.
Neither is it his desire to ruin this a second time. So he pivots, ever in search of that intangible truth resting just beneath the surface of Kokichi’s carefully-constructed mask — there for him to discover, but only if he well and truly earns it.
“Maybe. But either way…considering the actual Big Five god we’re going to be facing down tomorrow, I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, you’ll do great,” Kokichi replies breezily, content enough to leave that conversation behind. “You lived with one for years, and another one was your history teacher for like six months — you saw more of Hajime than Nagito did, at least. You’re practically an expert on the Big Five by now.”
While Kokichi titters under his breath at something he’s said, Shuuichi considers it a little more seriously. He’s not led to many life-altering conclusions. “That’s a bit of a heel-turn from all the time you’ve spent making fun of me, isn’t it?”
He succeeds in making Kokichi laugh again, and it helps him relax at least slightly. But not a lot, considering… “I think I could know as much about the gods as you and the others do, and I’d still be as terrified as I am now.”
“Pfft, what’ve you got to be scared for? It’s just Hell. You ever been to the Nether in Minecraft?”
Shuuichi snorts, louder than he expects, but his honest answer is contrastingly serious. “Because Rantarou is there…it’s a little different.”
“Oh.”
There’s a lot of weight in the single word Kokichi huffs out before belatedly finishing his thought. Shuuichi fights to keep the wince off his face. He does not want to ruin this. “Yeah, guess that’s fair…Underworld kinda operates on Hardcore Mode. I’d rather face off against the Ender Dragon, personally.”
“That makes two of us. Rantarou and I have done it a few times — if we actually pull this off, maybe me and you can do that on Hardcore together, too.”
The ‘if’ he uses hangs heavy in the air, and again he watches as what little effort Kokichi was putting into his playful act falls away, leaving him suddenly seeming much smaller, more subdued, even compared to his relative mutedness all night. It’s…more than a little uncomfortable, and both of them avoid the other’s eye for some time as they try — and in Shuuichi’s case, fail — to come up with something to say.
It’s Kokichi that manages it first — and what’s more, he manages it in a way that actually leaves Shuuichi smiling. “Are you excited to see him again?”
“Yes,” Shuuichi answers emphatically, though his voice remains relatively soft. “Incredibly. The first thing I’m going to do is hug him — then the second thing I’m going to do is punch him for keeping all of this god stuff from me.”
He laughs at the thought, and under his breath Kokichi does, too — probably a little put-on for his sake, but nonetheless he appreciates it. Eager to maintain this lighter, less stifling atmosphere, he latches onto a stray memory and pushes it out as a joke before he’s properly thought it through. “It probably won’t be the third thing I do, but if we do survive…maybe I will give Rantarou your number. He’s the handsome one, anyway.”
As soon as the words are out, Shuuichi’s stomach all of a sudden begins to hurt, insides twisting anxiously as his attempt at humor not only falls flat, but leaves his palms clammy and sweating, his heart beating uncomfortably fast. He chokes a little around his next swallow, gripping the plush tight as across from him on the pillows, Kokichi doesn’t so much as crack a smile at the joke, either.
“Oh, please. He’s so not my type.”
Kokichi doesn’t look anywhere near him as he says it, twisting that dubiously-obtained pendant around between his fingers while his voice comes out strangely strained and scratchy. But nevertheless Shuuichi finds himself practically immediately relieved, even over such a low-energy refutation to what was never anything but an offhanded tease in the first place. Not just relieved, even, he’s almost a little grateful to hear that Kokichi doesn’t actually want Rantarou like that, because Shuuichi, what Shuuichi wants is—
…Maybe, in more ways than one, Shuuichi wants Kokichi.
All of those weird thoughts from earlier make a lot more sense when he thinks of them like that. A lot of things make a lot more sense, when examined under the auspices of him desiring a bit more than friendship with the boy laying across from him in this stupid heart-shaped bed, the night before the world ends. He could almost confuse the sickly, ill feeling that washes over him with that he experiences while using his power, if not for how the world does not stop moving around him as the reality of his feelings turns over alongside nausea in the pit of his stomach.
Relax, he tells himself firmly, more than a little surprised when it kind of works, and the buzzing static in his head fades enough for him to actually think for a second.
Most of this, he’s already had this revelation — above all else, Shuuichi wants to know Kokichi. Wants to be his friend, someone he trusts, someone he doesn’t want to lose, like Shuuichi doesn’t want to lose him, after all they’ve been through since they met under probably the worst possible circumstances. Gods, and isn’t that sure to play a role in all of this; him and his stupid priorities, worrying over Rantarou ahead of the rest of the world that’s also at stake, and developing a ridiculous crush on a boy he’s known less than two weeks on the eve of the apocalypse.
As stupid and ridiculous as it may be…again, maybe it’s this awful room they’re stuck in influencing his thoughts…but the more he thinks about it, the more undeniable it feels. And, in recognition of how he doesn’t want to face the end of this — whatever it is — hiding…the more he’s sure he doesn’t really want to deny it. At least not to himself.
Shuuichi likes Kokichi. And that’s fine. Shuuichi likes Kokichi, wants Kokichi in numerous ways, enough that he’s not sure he could put a name to them all in the time they have left before their quest comes to an end. He…likes that they’re almost close enough to touch, even if he’s nervous to the point he’s still a little nauseous. And the thought that strikes him as he watches Kokichi through his peripherals, the one about closing the distance, curling up next to him, cherishing this moment in time like he thinks he really wants because who knows what awaits them tomorrow…he likes that thought, too. Wants that, too, in an indulgent part of him buried very, very deep.
Okay. That urge is a little too embarrassing to stomach right now, even if he is making an effort not to hide, and his face burns hot — which he’s almost certain Kokichi can see, given the lamp still on over his shoulder — as he makes the conscious effort to resist really ruining this beyond repair by saying or doing something stupid.
…But he’s not hiding anymore. It’s only a matter of time until they fall asleep, and the last morning of Gundham’s time limit breaks, and once they’re in the Underworld…there’s no telling what will become of them after tomorrow, for any number of reasons. If he wants something, and if he wants to make that known, in any capacity…it’s now or never.
Shuuichi wants to continue surprising and impressing Kokichi. He wants to learn how Kokichi ticks in a way that’s organic and earned, so he can pull more of those shocked, fascinated, maybe even pleased reactions when Kokichi’s well and truly caught off-guard by something Shuuichi says or does. Wants to maintain their emerging dynamic of bantering amidst dire circumstances, giggling with each other over nothing except the levity the other’s presence provides. Wants Kokichi to keep flirting, and keep flirting back himself because even when it embarrasses him terribly, it always leaves him smiling and his chest pleasantly fuzzy.
He wants to be the protagonist of his own story, however much longer that story actually ends up being. He wants to spend the rest of the end of the world in a way he can live with, if he makes it that far. Maybe Shuuichi won’t get everything he wants, not ever…but he’s not going to hide what it is he wants until the very end, anymore.
One arm still wrapped tight around the bear, he makes the first move either of them have since they lapsed into weighted silence by shifting his right hand to settle in the space between them on the mattress, just letting it sit there. No man’s land. As Shuuichi’s do, Kokichi’s eyes follow the movement, and if he were to chance a guess as to what the crease that forms between his brows on the otherwise emotionless look on his face might mean, he’d say…apprehension, maybe. Wariness. Awaiting further information before he makes up his mind, and allows his expression to be anything but artfully neutral, fingers frozen around the necklace charm.
Swallowing around the long-hardened knot in his throat, Shuuichi breaks the silence to quietly ask, “Are you scared?”
He doesn’t elaborate about what, but it’s pretty obvious what he means. In response Kokichi chuckles quietly, chain taut around his neck as he resumes twisting the pendant around with more vigor, avoiding Shuuichi’s eye even while he makes an effort to retain eye contact. Despite his feigned humor, his voice is mirthless through his reply. “Of course not.”
Maybe the truth. Maybe a lie. Maybe some other, vague third thing. It doesn’t particularly matter, as his follow-up question remains the same. “Do you really think the world might actually…end, tomorrow?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen.” That sounds more concretely like the truth. But also decidedly more brittle. Perhaps not intentionally a warning, but regardless Shuuichi backtracks, the memory of Kokichi’s acidity following the last time he was pushed too far while sharing a bed not distant from the front of his mind at all.
“…Say this wasn’t happening. Say the world was going to end, but we didn’t have any chance to save it.” Shuuichi can all but see the gears turning in Kokichi’s head, expression indiscernible. “If we weren’t in this situation, and the world was just going to end, unable to be stopped…what do you think you would do?”
Finally he returns Shuuichi’s eye contact, violet irises intense in the low light. His answer is near-immediate. “End it myself, duh.”
“Seriously,” Shuuichi amends, voice quiet. Kokichi’s focus doesn’t shift.
“I am being serious.” Instead of sounding detached, there’s genuine emotion underlying what he says — even if his voice is too low, and Shuuichi’s own brain is too fried to parse out what it is he’s hearing in his tone. “Waiting for the universe to take its own shit out on you is no way to live your life. Weak people die uselessly and stupidly by letting themselves be sitting ducks in the way of everyone else’s ambitions. There’s no point in living if you don’t take hold of your own destiny — I don’t ever want to be a pawn in somebody else’s game. So why wait around for this shitty world to use and discard you, when you can just take control and decide what happens yourself? No one else gets to be in control of my life. If the end is inevitable, then it’s going to be inevitable because I say so.”
That’s…
In the aftermath, Shuuichi…doesn’t really know what to think. On the one hand, it’s an answer that feels very distinctly and earnestly Kokichi. Most everything he’s heard tonight, in fact — save for the intentionally obvious lies — has struck him as earnest, as honest. At the very least, Kokichi isn’t usually one to shy away from triumphantly announcing his lies once a joke has run its course.
On the other hand, though, it’s an answer that feels strangely…familiar, to Shuuichi. Control to the bitter end, no matter what form that end comes in. It’s equal parts nervousness, understanding, and quiet sadness that twinges in Shuuichi’s chest as he silently turns over to set his alarm and shut the bedside lamp off, casting the room into soft, weighty darkness. He doesn’t think twice about his choice to return to his previous position once he’s finished, placing his hand palm-down back where it was on the bed between them. After an extended stretch where their vision adjusts to the low light, Kokichi huffs a weak laugh, not quite meeting Shuuichi’s eye.
“These bracelets are so dumb, you know that?” Tentatively Kokichi shifts his left hand close enough to reach a finger out, gently prodding at one of the frayed edges tied around Shuuichi’s right wrist. There’s something melancholy in the smile that slips across his features, touch feather-soft, gaze occasionally flickering up to meet Shuuichi’s. “I know, I know, they’re a Rantarou thing…but he’s rich. Shouldn’t he be able to afford something less ugly?”
Just as much as he doesn’t want Kokichi to fall asleep angry or hurt…he doesn’t want him to fall asleep sad, either. His own smile is definitely at least in part for Kokichi’s sake, but the warmth in it is genuine as what is said inspires a hopeful note in his brain, more than he’s managed all night. “I’ll be honest, that’s not really top of my list of priorities, either. But…I trust all of us, I think, to do the right thing. As long as we all trust in ourselves, and in each other. Once we make it out of this and save him, like I know we will…I’ll make him get me something nicer as a ‘thank you’.”
Yeah, right. He’s keeping Rantarou’s gifts forever.
Of all things, it’s what he says now that clams Kokichi up. The barest hints of a smile he’d seen before fall away, as do his eyes to their hands, fingers just barely touching atop the mattress. It’s likely he’s just tired — as is Shuuichi, his eyes slowly but surely beginning to droop — so Shuuichi forces himself to get his thoughts out while he still has the chance, voice very quiet in the scant space between them.
“Maybe, when this is all over…I could get something for you. Go somewhere with you. Because, you know…I actually got us these bracelets, even if the plush was a much better present from that dumb arcade trip. And just like I need Rantarou, I…I need the friends I’ve made this past week, too. I’m definitely not going to leave any of you behind. I don’t want to leave you behind.” He swallows. “If that would be okay.”
It’s an unassuming thought, true of all of his new friends as he says, but regardless it makes his heart race when he thinks about it in relation to Kokichi.
When Shuuichi lifts his own focus from their hands to Kokichi, it’s just in time to watch something sad twist his face. Wordlessly Kokichi worms their fingers together, just for a moment, squeezing his palm once before abruptly pulling away and flipping onto his other side, back to Shuuichi.
“…Why don’t you just focus on stopping the apocalypse first, New Kid.” A pause. In the dim pink light, as Shuuichi desperately runs over in his head what on earth the past week, the past hour, the past five seconds means, he can see Kokichi’s fingers worrying incessantly at a lock of his hair. “So stop thinking about dumb stuff like that and get some sleep. It would be boring if you slept through the end of the world, you know?”
Notes:
+ love....wins.....?
+ now that we're at the conclusion of this little three-parter, i'm sure some similarities have jumped out at people! as well as....perhaps some unrealized expectations as to who this chapter may follow along with, point-of-view wise. oopsies! wasn't kokichi. i've been jokingly calling this st. patrick's day update as much because heavy drinking is required after reading, AND in anticipation of what's on deck.
+ so....what IS next? well, to be frank, a LOT. i have my work cut out for me, and my next update tentatively situated about a month from now — the 4/20 update, naturally, because i'm a child and haha funny number. i say tentatively, because...
+ well, to be frank again, we are getting into the thick of things now! pretty much straight through the end, my expectations for chapter lengths are hard to pin down, because there's just a Lot. i am very, VERY excited as to where we're headed next, and i anticipate myself having a blast writing it — and giggling at everyone's reactions to where i'm leaving off now.
+ so, keep your eyes open right around weed day; and if i anticipate that changing, i'll for sure have updates on that on my tumblr, @ gontagokuhara ! also, at the risk of speaking a little early on something *non* pointy objects-related......my ao3 is likely going to become a bit more populated before the next chapter is up. what does that mean? who can say for certain! details WILL be on my tumblr though, so here's my shameless plug for the month.
+ other than that: thanks bunches for being here, i adore you all, and any and all comments will be happily read by me, surely kicking my feet in the air the whole time. whenever it happens, there WILL be a next time — and i sincerely hope to see you there! until next time, here's my P.S. notes to leave you off with <3
+ * this factoid didn't fit into the content of the chapter, but it is IMPERATIVE that you all know kokichi got the horses to stop moving with lube from the sex corner. poured it into the carousel tracks, watched it get REAL fast, until it eventually shorted out and sputtered to a stop. i just need you all to understand this <3
+ ** persona5heads in the chat may catch this, but that 'pawn' line is very reminiscent of a line of goro akechi's. full disclosure, i Have played the game, and definitely remembered the line when my beloved kokichi correspondent evan pointed out the similarities — but i actually had something else in mind (also courtesy of evan <3). shoutout to our headcanon of kokichi being the ultimate chess player who just lies about the supreme leader dumbassery — to ME chess nerd kokichi is real!!!!!!
Chapter 23: down here you're D.O.A. and you're here to stay!
Summary:
When Shuuichi wakes up the morning before the end of the world to the sound of his alarm, it is with a wide array of burdensome emotions weighing down and clogging up his chest.
Pretty sincere confusion, at what he vividly recalls from last night’s conversation with Kokichi. Electric, pulsating anticipation at the prospect that he’s going to see Rantarou again. A very unusual-for-him level of anger directed at the god that’s been holding his brother hostage for over a week, and the even worse goddess hidden at the heart of it all. Simmering, ever-present anxiety that reminds him of the many, many ways things could go from wrong to bad to worst.
It’s…kind of a lot, to put it lightly.
Notes:
+ hello! the 4/20 update is HERE, despite all odds!
+ hey, anyone remember how last time i was talking about chapter length disparity? yeah, go ahead and toss that out the window — unintentionally, i have brought with me today the longest chapter to date, to the point i considered splitting into two chapters for an update double-feature. but i think it reads better in one fell swoop (though i encourage you all to take breaks! 17.7k is a LOT of words!)
+ and for that reason, i won't yap too much up here; like always, for those interested, you can peek at the end notes for content warnings and my real chatterbox ramblings. so grab a snack, partake in some celebratory substances if that's your jam, and lock the fuck in!!
+ (& thanks, as always, to my dearly beloved beta reader/kokichi correspondent evan captorvatiing <3)
+ (&& title creds to 'D.O.A.' from the lightning thief musical <3)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When Shuuichi wakes up the morning before the end of the world to the sound of his alarm, it is with a wide array of burdensome emotions weighing down and clogging up his chest.
Pretty sincere confusion, at what he vividly recalls from last night’s conversation with Kokichi. Electric, pulsating anticipation at the prospect that he’s going to see Rantarou again. A very unusual-for-him level of anger directed at the god that’s been holding his brother hostage for over a week, and the even worse goddess hidden at the heart of it all. Simmering, ever-present anxiety that reminds him of the many, many ways things could go from wrong to bad to worst.
It’s…kind of a lot, to put it lightly.
But, very strangely — though Shuuichi knows much better than to take it for granted, all things considered — there’s a level of…not confidence, not really, but more…belief in his friends he feels, too. Bone-deep trust that until the very end, whatever that end is, they will be at his side and fighting alongside him for what they all know is right. It’s hardly insurance that everything will turn out okay — given what they’ve been through thus far, that kind of security doesn’t really exist for them — but…well, it’s something.
One way or another, Shuuichi’s got to be the main character of this story, because no one else can do this but him. He didn’t ask for this, certainly doesn’t want this, doesn’t think he’s anywhere close to qualified to be here and he would much rather pass the buck off to someone else much more capable and brave and heroic — but he can’t. Shuuichi is on the hook for how this plays out, regardless of his innocence in engineering this looming apocalypse, and that means being on the hook for a whole planet full of people, a few dozen gods of varied and questionable sanity, his new friends, and his brother. And for as long as he’s still kicking, he’s not going to let anything happen to the people he cares about. He just simply won’t accept it.
So it’s about time that Shuuichi gets his ass out of bed, lest he sleep through the end of the world after all.
Despite setting his alarm for exactly when he was told, and forcing himself up no more than a minute after he’s flailed the arm not wrapped around the Bewear plush out to shut it off, he’s sort of behind on the upswing of prepping for their stint in the Underworld. When he sits up and rubs the tiredness out of his eyes he sees Kokichi is already up and out of bed — about what he’d expected, just before falling asleep last night, considering the note they’d ended off on and the precedent set the first time they had to share a bed.
As opposed to last time, though, when Shuuichi recognizes as much and instinctively seeks Kokichi out he finds him pretty easily: perched lazily over one of the stationary horses paused in the track around the bed, scrolling through his phone before he realizes Shuuichi is awake, lifts his gaze to meet eyes, and then shoots him a bright grin. He’s dressed already, backpack secured over his shoulders and ready to go, and best of all…he’s not ignoring Shuuichi this time after a hard late-night conversation whispered between them amidst their shared sheets.
Were Shuuichi a betting man, he’d wager that Kokichi’s cheer isn’t exactly entirely genuine. But in consideration of what was said and done last night…really, he can’t be blamed for that. So Shuuichi returns it as he stretches his arms over his head, only dropping eye contact when the moment has sustained long enough to leave his own smile feeling slightly more real, and he’s moving to double-check the time on his phone.
A half an hour until Maki’s call time, and he doubts he’ll need more than twenty minutes of it. May as well start off on the right foot.
“Morning, sunshine!” By the time Shuuichi’s gotten to his feet Kokichi has as well, skipping over to the room’s window and yanking the curtains open to, uh, illuminate his greeting. Shuuichi snorts — there are worse uses for Kokichi’s flair for the dramatic. “Nice bedhead.”
“Thanks, I worked on it all night,” is Shuuichi’s brilliant answer, as he pockets his phone in the front of his hoodie before padding over on bare feet to his duffle bag.
“Good effort, but I’ve totally heard that one before. Plagiarism is pretty unbecoming, you know!”
Kokichi being in high enough spirits to be cracking jokes with Shuuichi is also a very good sign. A very reassuring one, frankly. Shuuichi’s now long past the point of putting on his dumb smile just for Kokichi’s benefit. “I’ll add it to the complaint box. But I’m not sure if I can squeeze you in before the end of the world, I’m afraid. Incoming apocalypse is kinda higher prio than my lack of an original standup routine.”
“Wooow, you’re sure in a chipper mood. I was kinda expecting you to wake up acting like something crawled up your ass and died!”
“Actually…” Everything he needs to get ready tucked inside of it, Shuuichi lifts his bag onto his shoulder, straightening up enough to levy Kokichi with another smile that isn’t necessarily easy, but is genuine. “I’m feeling…pretty decent, all things considered. Maybe I just had a good night’s sleep.”
Kokichi eyes him strangely, smile changing, but he doesn’t look away — doesn’t turn his back to Shuuichi, like he’s more than capable of doing. And as much as Shuuichi might like that, and want to think on it further; well…as has been said, he’s kind of got a world to save first, before he goes worrying about stuff like that. “I’m gonna go change. I won’t be too long — don’t go getting any ideas about leaving me behind, okay?”
“Fine, fine — but if you slip on the floor and crack your head open, I am gonna dip.”
Oh, gods, the mess they left behind last night. Shuuichi groans, and as he hops back onto his chosen horse Kokichi laughs at him, feet swinging in the air as he fishes out his phone from a stray pocket. “I totally forgot about that…”
“Jeez, you haven’t even gotten re-concussed yet and you’re already developing amnesia?”
“Half of that wreck is your fault, too.”
“Shuuichi sure is a bad liar!”
Idling in the bathroom door, Shuuichi intones emphatically over his shoulder, “I’ll be back,” more than aware of both his desire to keep up their stupid bantering, as well as the incredibly strict time limit keeping him from meaningfully doing so. After another bright burst of snickering from the bed Shuuichi shuts the door firmly behind himself, wrinkling his nose as he turns to face the puddle of bubblegum-scented tub water still very much making a mess of the bathroom. It takes very little consideration to have him deciding he’s just going to circumvent the issue entirely.
Surely, the god that runs this place is capable of cleaning up a little spill.
It’s in front of the mirror that Shuuichi gets ready, only checking to make sure he’s hovering near a dry patch of floor before dropping his bag to the ground by the sink and shucking his sweatshirt over his head, making contemplative eye contact with his reflection as he goes through the motions — again, on a bit of a time crunch.
Once he steps out of this hotel room, it’s go time, and he’s going to need to compartmentalize because there is no way he’s not going to give the end of the world the attention it so very clearly needs. To the end, he’s going to put his absolute everything into liberating Rantarou from the depths of the Underworld, and making sure all of his friends make it out, too. So…
So he needs to figure out how he’s going to deal with the Kokichi thing.
His course of action is obvious, ultimately — as much as the revelation last night had kind of slapped him in the face, it’s hardly the biggest thing he’s got going on. Kokichi hinted at as much right before he flipped over, and even if it was a deflection, there are some pretty major hurdles they need to tackle before he can waste time thinking about the developing crush on his new, kind of weird, but nonetheless captivating friend.
Once they make it out of this. Once they, despite the odds, save the world — which Shuuichi more than ever can no longer consider the alternative to; how can he, when it’s game over if he fails? — and drag themselves out of Gundham’s grasp, out of the Underworld, and…well, who knows where they end up after that. Once they do that…maybe, in the middle of taking the most necessary summer break of his life, he can also take a goddamn deep breath and put some thought into the other stuff. The feelings stuff. The stuff where he wants to do normal teenage things with Kokichi and hold Kokichi’s hand and take him somewhere, anywhere, as long as it’s the two of them together.
After they stop the crowning apocalypse, Shuuichi will go the full distance on this whole main character thing. And like it or not, he’s about as ready to face it as he’s ever going to be.
Shuuichi’s outfit for the end of the world is nothing particularly special, as he glances himself over one last time in the mirror. One of the several pairs of jeans that he’s cycled through over the course of this quest that has emerged from their escapades mostly unscathed, his one remaining pair of shoes, a navy blue shirt of Rantarou’s that looks as though he could have pulled it from his own closet, as well Rantarou’s green bomber jacket, tied around his middle in anticipation of…Hell…being hot. He considers, for the briefest of moments, pulling his hat on as a security blanket when he may honestly benefit from one, but…no. Shuuichi is going the full distance on this — and as much as that means saving the world, and being honest with himself about what it is he wants, it also means not hiding anymore. So his duffle bag is zipped shut with his hat sitting on top — but not making its way out, as it has in years past.
With little else to do, and even less time to waste, Shuuichi straps his bag over his shoulder — and isn’t that going to be annoying, dragging this thing around the Underworld on his back — and steps for good out of the awful, heart-shaped bathroom, leaving behind him with the shut of the door both the literal, and as much as is possible his emotional mess alike.
Kokichi has abandoned the merry-go-round in the time Shuuichi took to get ready, and as he steps back into the main room it’s in time to watch Kokichi pull the nail-spiked baseball bat smoothly from his backpack — always weird to watch, even though he’s long recognized by now the magical nature of it, and every other freaky supernatural event he’s been party to so far. The sight of it reminds him of something he’s got in his bag as well, and as he approaches Kokichi he’s maneuvering his duffle off his back again, a particular item in mind. Just as he gets it open, though, a pale hand is extending into his space and digging around where Shuuichi’s partially unzipped his bag in order to pull out — oh.
As opposed to the helmet he was intent on finding, instead Shuuichi’s attention moves to follow the motion of Kokichi pulling his hat onto his head, peering up and out at Shuuichi from beneath the brim. “It’s been a hot minute since I saw you in your trademark, even though you used to wear it all the time! I kinda thought you lost it. Guess there’s not much sun to block out down in Hadestown though, huh?”
Contrary to what is said about himself, Shuuichi notes as he briefly glances him over that Kokichi is looking more or less as on brand as he’s always been. His own signature chessboard-checkered scarf is tied in place around his neck, and the rest of his look is just as typical: torn, dark gray jeans cuffed at the ankles above chunky sneakers and an understated purple t-shirt donned beneath the worn denim jacket Shuuichi’s seen quite a bit of by this point. Other than Shuuichi’s hat on his head, he’s pretty picturesquely Kokichi.
It’s enough to have him smiling as he answers, at least. “I never wore it for its intended purpose — I’ve spent, ah…a long time hiding beneath it, and I don’t think I want to anymore. I figured Hell is as good a place as any to try my luck facing the world head-on.”
Not for the first time this morning, he’s given that same, pensive, dare he say impressed look he’s seen from Kokichi a few times, now. After another few moments’ consideration he removes the hat from his head, eyeing it once more before tucking it back into Shuuichi’s duffle bag with deft fingers — hiding it away, instead of its former wearer, and in its place offering him the baseball bat. As Shuuichi moves to holster it in the right hand belt loop on his pants, Kokichi flashes him a wide grin, and he knows that conversation has been effectively earmarked for another time.
“Can I be honest with you, Shuumai?”
“Be my guest,” Shuuichi replies with a matching smile, arms crossing loosely over his chest as he watches Kokichi approximate a photo frame with his thumbs and index fingers, looking at Shuuichi appraisingly through his new lens.
“Hmm…no, I really can’t decide if you look like a badass, or a total moron.”
Of course. Shuuichi goes back to looking for their stolen helmet with a laugh huffed out beneath his breath. “There are worse things to be than a maybe-total-moron. I guess I don’t need to ask if you’ve got room, but — want to trade anyway?”
Maki mentioned something yesterday or the day before about the helmet being best suited for Shuuichi once in the Underworld and faced with Gundham, but he knows he’s relegating it to being forgotten if he keeps it stowed away in his bag. Kokichi seems at ease enough retrieving items from it on the fly — he’s done it with the bat enough times, at least — and while Shuuichi is kind of throwing his whole back into the main character thing, that doesn’t mean he can’t acknowledge that it’s probably in better hands with Kokichi, at least until something significant changes.
“You’d be surprised how much room my balloon animals take up.”
“It’s bottomless.”
“Whatever!” Despite what he says, he allows Shuuichi to hand off the helmet, and it’s only a matter of moments before it’s put away, the bottomless bag is tied shut, and Kokichi is glancing at his phone closely. “You all set? Unless we both wanna be left behind, we should bounce and regroup with the others.”
“Yeah. What about the key?” Backtracking for both his charger and his bear, he wastes little time in grabbing both before storing them away into his bag. Zipping it shut takes only a few seconds, and then he’s rejoining Kokichi again by the door, glancing down at the key in his hand warily.
“Just leave ‘em. I’m sure not gonna go deal with the concierge again, we’ve got way bigger fish to fry.”
“Point taken.” Shuuichi half-heartedly tosses them towards the bedside table, but they land on the comforter — close enough. “Got everything?”
“Yup!” With his usual fanfare Kokichi tosses the room’s door open, and Shuuichi only cringes a little bit at the sound it makes as it collides with the wall. Whatever — he may be embarking on a suicide mission to Hell, but he is more than fine leaving this stupid motel behind.
The revelations he encountered within it…not so much. But the world is ending, and their night time reprieve is over, and all of their friends are already clustered away from the buildings in the parking lot, so — compartmentalization.
“Yo, Shuuichi!” While unnecessary, Kaito waving him over has him smiling, one he maintains on the short walk over to the rest of the group. “Good timing. We’re just gettin’ ready to strategize then head off.”
“Hey. I take it you all were about as eager to talk to the shapeshifter again as us?”
“I don’t think I could look them in the eye after spending the night in that room…”
Ah. Shuuichi wasn’t alone in his disgust, then. The smile he shoots Kaede is deeply sympathetic. “Agreed.”
“Hey, Maki Roll — it’s a little late now, but what’s with such an early call time? I did the math, like, five times last night, but we’ve still got a day left ‘til our time’s up for good, right?”
Now that Kaito mentions it…well, he’s not wrong. Maki levels him with a look that implies she’s about to tell him he is. “Time moves differently in the Underworld.”
“That is correct!” Kiibo pipes up, eager to put their knowledge to good use. “It will be impossible to tell once we arrive, but one hour in the Underworld is several hours in ours. The exact conversion gives us…yes, about eight hours in Underworld time will be more or less the remainder of our time limit here.”
“And I doubt it’ll take that long, but I’m really not eager to push our luck,” Kaede chimes in, backpack at her feet as she stretches her arms over her head.
“Mhm. If Gonta and friends want to be extra safe, then we go now.”
“I think we’re all in agreement there. Which, uh…”
“What is the game plan anyway, Maki?” After finishing the end of Shuuichi’s sentence for him, Kokichi flits his gaze momentarily over his way, a teasing glint in his eye. “I mean, it’s not like New Kid knows what’s going on.”
“True.” Kaede shrugs sheepishly when Shuuichi shoots her a faux-affronted look at her unnecessary comment. “It’s not your fault! Ugh — Harumaki?”
At that, the mood settles as the six of them turn their full focus to Maki, who by all accounts is the most well-equipped out of their whole group to head their plan going into the most dangerous part of their quest so far. No one is keen to face the final stretch of this underprepared — so all eyes and ears are trained fully on her as she relays to them their next course of action.
Their plan begins by making their way back into Celestia’s Palace, the stronghold hiding their portal to the Underworld. From what they heard last night, it does sound as though they’ll actually be allowed entry this time, at least into the casino where the portal is meant to be housed — though there’s no telling what obstacles might be in the way. Somehow, all seven of them will make their way into the casino, then somehow find and open the portal, where they’ll then end up officially in the Underworld; and given it’s her portal, right smack dab in the Goddess of the Dead’s domain. Hopefully, they’ll be able to circumvent her entirely, and push straight on to Gundham, who occupies another area in the Underworld. Once they make it to his location — wherever it is — somehow they’ll get inside, and from there find their way directly to Gundham, when Shuuichi will be tasked with explaining things to the God of the Dark Arts in such a way that he doesn’t immediately smite them where they stand. From there, somehow they’ll save Rantarou, stop the world from imminently ending, and hopefully Gundham will spot them a trip back to Camp Hope’s Peak before the issue of who actually stole the spear is officially placed back in the hands of the gods.
And. Well. All Shuuichi can really focus on in the aftermath of that explanation is how their world-saving plan sure is built on a lot of ‘somehow’s and ‘hopefully’s.
Be that as it may…well, it’s kind of all they have, at this point. And with their game plan mostly hammered down they take off back down the road and leave the Motel Kumasutra behind, the quiet that settles between the seven of them as weighted as it is pensive as they’re all left to digest on the return trip to the casino. As makes the most sense, Kaede and Maki are manning the helm at the front of the group, and in the shuffle out of the parking lot Shuuichi ends up walking in step next to Kaito.
For a few minutes Shuuichi is content — for lack of a better word — to walk in silence, but when from behind he hears soft conversation being shared between Kiibo and Gonta, and more than once he meets eyes with Kaito, the decision to say something in an effort to make their final traversal through the outside world slightly less stifling comes easily enough.
“How are you feeling?” That seems like a decent place to start, paired with what he hopes is a reassuring smile sent Kaito’s way once Shuuichi inclines his head to speak properly with his friend.
The early morning sun flashes off of the whites of Kaito’s teeth as he grins through his reply. “Me? Well, first off, I’m well-rested as hell — I slept great last night! I’m just pumped to not be headin’ into the final stage of our mission with my back hurting like my grandpa’s.”
“Silver linings.” Well, that’s not exactly the answer Shuuichi was in search of, but at least they’ve got that going for them. Silver linings indeed. “I guess we should have all the help we can get going into the Underworld, right?”
“Haha…yeah.” Instead of actually laughing he just says the sound ‘haha’, gaze darting away as the reaction encourages Shuuichi to look at him a little closer.
“Is…everything alright?”
“Yeah! Wh-Why — why wouldn’t it be?”
Honestly, Shuuichi can think of some very good reasons why one may not be peachy keen to arrive at their looming destination. Out of the corner of his eye Shuuichi can see they’re quickly gaining on the flashy casino complex, but for the time being he keeps his focus on Kaito, trying not to scrutinize him too visibly. He’s smiling at Shuuichi — even if he’s struggling to look him in the eye — and generally at least attempting to put on a brave face, but the closer they draw to their entry to the Underworld, the worse off he starts to look.
It’s not him that puts a tentatively-concerned voice to his question, though — it’s Kokichi, piping up from behind, and it is not concern that colors his voice as he interjects: “Gods, Kaito, you are such a bad liar. It’s probably less embarrassing for you to just admit you’re about to shit your pants ‘cause of your crippling fear of spooky stuff.”
Shuuichi’s heard this one before, but instead of drawing the usual argument in return from Kaito, he stares straight ahead, not giving a verbal response at all, as if Kokichi hasn’t said a word. Kokichi snickers and ultimately seems to let it go, and in the quiet that briefly settles again Shuuichi observes now how Kaito has had a reaction — just one he’s trying very, very hard not to have. The anxiety on his face is clear, expression pinched beneath the sheen of sweat beginning to shine off of his skin, the look in his eyes a little spacey as he chews his lip, hands forcefully pushed into the pockets of his purple jacket.
And…yeah. It’s cropped up a few times, and Shuuichi himself even joked with him about it last night, but it’s blatantly apparent what it is that’s got Kaito looking so ghastly and pale. Ghosts, death, the occult, and anything with tangential relation to those concepts are severe phobias of his, and while Shuuichi can’t possibly know for sure until they get there, he can only imagine that the Underworld is more or less a distillation of those exact three things. If his phobia is as severe as Kokichi had implied — and as Shuuichi himself expects, from what he sees now — then walking into the Underworld…it’s going to be even more difficult for Kaito to walk in terrified than it is for Shuuichi to walk in blind.
It’s not often that Shuuichi is the confident one between him and Kaito. But, as it has for some time now…strangely, falling into the role comes pretty easy to him. “I don’t really know what to expect going in, but whatever it is…I know it’s all going to be okay. We’re going to protect each other, no matter what — like you said last night, the seven of us are the world-saving dream team. And, besides…well, we can’t hide away from the protagonist role at the climax of our adventure, right?”
Thinking back to that conversation, as hard as it was at the time, makes Shuuichi smile, fondness heavy on his tongue as he repeats Kaito’s advice back at him, miming the motion of his hat on his head for emphasis. It takes him a minute, but Kaito gets there eventually, too; he’s still afraid — just as Shuuichi is, and he imagines all of them are, whether they admit it or not — but…they’re doing this thing together. They’re the seven people on the planet best equipped to actually succeed in this. It can’t overcome the fear — but the belief Shuuichi expresses for his friends, the same belief he sees spread across Kaito’s face in the form of a grin, is enough to instill in them a semblance that they can make it out of this alright, Big Five gods and monsters and spears and maybe even ghosts be damned.
“You are an amazing god damn sidekick.” When an arm hooks over his shoulders Shuuichi leans into it, keeping the bat on his hip out of the way as Kaito hugs him close, and he himself happily angles into his friend’s embrace. “…And an even better friend. Thanks, man.”
Kaito maintains his loose hold on Shuuichi for the rest of the walk. Neither of them says anything else, but — some things are just as well left unsaid.
When their quiet comes to an end, it’s not along that line of conversation, and it comes only after they’ve all stepped out of the sun and into the foreboding shadow of Celestia’s Palace — the Casino of Envy. Admittedly, it had been much more breathtaking last night, when all of the thousands of strobing and sparkling lights across the sprawling, Victorian-fashioned castle complex had been on full display in the dark, but its size is no less daunting in the daylight, sticking out like a sore thumb amidst its otherwise relatively modest surroundings. The tallest spyres appear to spear straight through the bright blue sky painted above them, and isn’t that a situationally-relevant little comparison Shuuichi’s mind draws, just before they close in on the entrance — modeled in the image of a castle drawbridge, though thankfully there is no moat — and the majority of the building’s grandeur is lost to them, in favor of…
…Well, in favor of a different sort of opulence, because the interior of the castle they’ve just stepped inside of is just as lush as the exterior.
Shuuichi has been here before, at least, very briefly last night — and he had the time then to categorize the bustling lobby, and more specifically the hotel area of the building, off to the left and generally in the opposite direction of where Maki leads them before stopping, calling the group’s attention with a deathly serious expression etched across her features. The opening to what has to be the casino from the sheer volume coming from within is guarded by several of those weird, vampiric-looking men in red contact lenses and starchy waistcoats he’d been unnerved by last night. But the ones by the entrance had let them in this time without issue, and those dotted around the lobby nearby do nothing but watch, apparently disinterested in interfering now that the sun is up.
“To get to the portal, we need to go through the casino,” Maki begins, a low, urgent note in her voice. “This isn’t a normal gambling den — this place is run by Celeste, and she’s as much a gambler as she is a goddess. Her operation here keeps her pockets well-lined, and gives her an endless stream of human victims high on the hubris of thinking they can cheat death, willing to gamble their lives away here…or just drop dead from exhaustion.
“It’s going to be confusing in there. Loud. Tempting. Stay together, don’t let me out of your sight, and whatever you do, don’t get distracted. I can pry you away from the slots, but if one of the dealers convinces you to make a bet, they’re not going to let you cash out, so just — just don’t. Come on, let’s go — and remember, don’t you dare wander off, unless you want to be stuck in this soul-sucking nightmare forever.”
She sounds as severe as Shuuichi has ever heard her. And he believes her, he does, but even still — he doesn’t really get it. Doesn’t really get the drastic, even dire framing she casts the casino and its games within — a ‘soul-sucking nightmare’. Not until they’re crowding close behind her back and following her inside, and Shuuichi is faced with, bar none, the most overstimulating scene he’s ever encountered in his life.
It’s like an arcade on crack cocaine that’s been hopped up on steroids to boot — that is to say, it is hyperactive, intoxicating, and aggressive. Nowhere he’s explored with Rantarou even comes close. All around him as he takes in the Casino of Envy are hundreds of glittering, melodious, endlessly spinning slot machines, the pull of each and every one of them hypnotic and almost definitely supernatural. He finds his vision tunneling with darkness each time he stares at one for too long, and the casino at large seems to physically brighten around him each time he rips his attention away from the screens.
Knowing better after falling out of step with his friends more than once, Shuuichi keeps his focus turned very far away from the slots, looking instead at literally anything else — of which there’s quite a lot for him to catalog as he maneuvers through the throngs of gamblers, holding onto the sleeve of Kokichi’s jacket when it’s wordlessly offered to him. Just as eye-catching — though significantly less dangerous, when he casts fleeting glances — are the spinning pillars of gold and scarlet lights, casting diamond-shaped shadows across the vibrant wine-red floors, carpet ornamented with swirled rainbows and shining golden patterns that almost seem to glow right alongside the noisy slots. When Shuuichi looks for the physical barriers of the room, he has to really search for them, as the walls seem to shift farther away when he tries to get a good look, just like the vampire butlers and their glowing red eyes that materialize only to seemingly melt farther away while lurking around watching them. The motivational posters papered across the walls caging them in are all, predictably, gambling themed, boasting phrases such as ‘HIGH RISK HIGH REWARD’ and ‘KINGPINS SPIN TO WIN!’.
No matter how far they traverse into the casino, despite how bright and overwhelming and confusing it is, there are things that serve as landmarks of sorts, at least enough to keep Shuuichi’s focus away from the allure of the machines. When his eyes instinctively rise above the screens, he finds that each one, no matter the other themeing of them, is modeled without fail around the branding of the same woman. At the beach, in the forest, on top of a volcano, in Las Vegas, in space, the list goes on and on and on — all of them have the same woman with piercing crimson eyes and spiraled black hair smiling placidly down at the poor suckers trapped at each individual machine. It’s not even just the designs of the machines themselves, either; interspersed between the hundreds of them that there have to be — and then the dozens of game tables they emerge into, each manned by a dahlia-eyed dealer beckoning them to sit and play a round — are illustrious golden statuettes of the same woman, on occasion with her vampire butlers modeled in at her feet serving her.
Eventually, mercifully, it ends — though it takes the physical slam of the door from behind him to fully pull Shuuichi from his stupor, blinking the haze out of his brain before finally letting Kokichi go, idly checking his phone as he waits for everyone else to do the same.
Gods, almost eleven already, and they left the motel right at nine. That is seriously the last time Shuuichi will ever underestimate something Maki says.
But they’ve defeated their first of several ‘somehow’s in making it here — what looks to be a neglected back room of the casino, dimly lit with only one main feature: a large roulette wheel, seated within a pristine mahogany table with most of its surface taken up by a checkered red-and-black roulette layout. And, speaking of — Maki’s moved to stand next to it after making sure everyone’s inside and out of the influence of the alluring casino games, arms crossed over her chest as she waits for everyone to regain their bearings. It seems they all have — and privately, on Shuuichi’s end, it seems a bad idea to interrupt where she looks to be waiting for all of their focus with a comment on the nearly two hours they’ve lost. So Shuuichi lets it, and his desire to mention the insanity of the casino go, repocketing his phone and turning his full concentration to Maki, just in time for her to open her mouth.
Her own attention, presently, is caught on the roulette wheel glinting in the low light of the room. “This is it.”
Uh.
“Uh?” Shuuichi offers, ever eloquent. Maki shoots him a vaguely-insulting look in response.
“This is the entrance to the Underworld?!” Kiibo is much more effective in getting Shuuichi’s sentiment out.
It’s Kaede that opens her mouth first, likely cutting off Maki from responding much more crossly. “Yep! I mean, not that it’s a good thing, really, but…well, Celeste is the only one with a portal still accessible. The, uhm, big guy,” she points helpfully at the floor for emphasis, for anyone a little behind on the uptake, “may have invited us in, but he hasn’t left the door unlocked, you know?”
“Talk about hospitality.”
While one of the more benign comments Kokichi could have made, Maki still turns to scowl at him. “I don’t exactly have any backups to bring us to.”
“It is not as if we have the time for that, anyway.”
“We really don’t,” Kaede agrees sheepishly, nodding her head vaguely in Kiibo’s direction before shifting her attention to the roulette wheel, openly wary. “Which I guess necessitates, uhm, figuring out how we…open it?”
Having taken the longest to recover from the casino, Gonta’s moved at this point into the room proper, leaning over Kiibo’s shoulder to eye the table curiously as he asks, “Is it…some kind of board game?
“Not exactly,” Shuuichi replies, eyes caught on the table as well. The pocketed rotor of the wheel spins endlessly, smoothly counterclockwise, as it has since they walked in; hypnotic to watch, like the slots had been, though not nearly as bad. “But I think you’re on the right track. I mean — it’s a casino, right? So it only makes sense to, you know…gamble our way in, I guess.”
“Shuumai’s probably totally right, but there’s a flaw in your plan.” Uncowed by the game as most everyone else still appears to be Kokichi waltzes right over, rounding the table to stand facing the door they’d entered through, palms down on the felted green section of the flat surface while he shrugs over at the rest of them. “We don’t have any chips to bet.”
“Or a croupier to screw us over.” Though Shuuichi has context clues enough to put the pieces together, for the rest of the room Maki clarifies: “A dealer. Though I can’t say I’m disappointed that we’re not trapped in a game here.”
“Even if there was, with what money? I’ve, like, triple checked — we’re seriously broke, you guys.”
“And I am not,” Maki cuts in over Kaede, face reddening in the low light at the mere thought of what she’s saying, “betting my dad’s credit card and letting you idiots bind him to Celeste somehow. No way.”
Kaito, from his spot leaning against the wall they’d come through initially with his arms stiffly crossed over his chest, pipes up gruffly for the first time: “I’m with Maki Roll — I don’t want that dead lady’s spooky gambling crap anywhere near me. Plus, I’m just shit at gambling, anyway.”
“Well, now what?”
It isn’t just Kokichi that looks to Shuuichi for guidance; he and Maki are the top candidates for figuring this out right now, it seems, and she has more than pulled her weight since they got here. It’s only right he at least tries to offer something useful. “No croupier to facilitate the game, no cash to gamble, no chips to claim our bets even if we wanted to…Celeste’s staff know we’re here, and in the Underworld he’s expecting us, and was very clear that we’re to go to his ‘domain’…so there’s no reason to assume it won’t work until we’ve tried.”
“But…try what? In my understanding of the rules and statistical odds of the game, winning is simply a matter of pure luck, and it appears this wheel is rather well-balanced. So anyone could feasibly toss the ball so long as it is a legal spin, but — well, a bet must be placed for that gamble to be possible at all…”
“And we don’t have anything to pay for chips, even if there were any. Hey, Kiibot — don’t suppose you have a surprise counterfeit printing ability we don’t know about, do you?”
“You’re insufferable!”
“That’s a real good way to get your ass kicked by the vampires,” Maki bites out, rolling her eyes. “Exactly what we need.”
“Probably wouldn’t work, anyway. No stakes.” Shuuichi frowns contemplatively down at the table, massaging his chin between his fingers as he tries to follow his thought through to completion. “No cash, no chips…but something else of value, maybe?”
“Oh! Good idea, Shuuichi!” Immediately Kaede’s digging in her pockets, spinning around to face her backpack towards Maki once she’s motioned for her to do the same. “It’s as good an idea as we’ve got, anyway — here, Maki, check my bag — does anyone have anything that fits the bill?”
After a cursory search through his things, there really isn’t much; other than the emergency card of Byakuya’s that he’s not at all inclined to use after Maki’s warning, a few dull arcade tokens with a combined approximate value slightly above zero, and an understated ring he finds in the pocket of Rantarou’s bomber jacket that might be real gold, Shuuichi’s not exactly one to keep ‘valuables’ on his person in the first place. The others come up similarly — Kaito’s staunchly opposed, Kiibo and Gonta are even less worldly-possession-possessed people than Shuuichi, Maki’s also come up empty, Kaede’s produced her studded earrings, and Kokichi’s got the necklace he acquired at some point at the museum pooled in the palm of his hand. All in all, they’ve got…five bets between them. Five bets that may decide whether they make it to the Underworld or not.
…Not odds that inspire much confidence.
“Oh, gods, if there was ever a time for Nagito’s luck to help us out…” Kaede murmurs anxiously, approaching the table from the front with her earrings in hand. “I don’t even care if I lose these. I just need this to work.”
Kokichi does the same, the chain of his necklace pinched between his fingers as he looks at the curved red charm appraisingly. “Nagito’s luck, huh…?”
For the moment Shuuichi spins the newfound ring around his index finger, the arcade tokens in his other hand already warmed through with nerves. “I’m not sure if this is worth enough to even count, but we don’t exactly have a lot of options, and it’s probably best if I don’t bet twice…so, ah, is anyone else feeling particularly lucky?”
Ultimately, it’s Kiibo that accepts the coins into their hand, and then it’s up to the four of them to assess their options, and place their bets. The decision is made that they’ll all bet on the same spin of the wheel, which theoretically should give them slightly higher odds of getting at least one hit; though it’s more or less a crapshoot whether their loose interpretation of the rules — and the fact that it’s Kokichi that’s chosen to spin, after he’s dropped his necklace onto the green 0 rectangle — will be enough to open the portal apparently lurking within the game. Shuuichi, after brief consideration, places the ring down to put his bet on black. One of Kiibo’s tokens ends up behind red — a good idea, so long as low-risk bets are enough to net them a ticket to the Underworld — and the other on the red 14 square. Kaede’s earrings are placed to split her bet between the black 17 and 20 squares, and then…
Well, then it’s go time. “You ready, Kokichi?”
“Aye-aye, captain.” Kokichi mock-salutes, glancing down at the little ivory ball rolling around the palm of his hand. “It’s been a hot minute since I tried my hand at ball spinning — here’s hoping I’ve still got the chops!”
“‘Still’? Implying you’ve actually done this before?”
“Well, I guess we’re about to find out!” The only one positioned behind the table, Kokichi glances over the layout one more time before waving a hand over the game. “Alright, no more bets — though I guess we’re kinda all-in already, anyhow. Say your prayers to the gamba gods…‘cause here goes nothing.”
Without further delay Kokichi turns his attention to the roulette wheel, the little ivory ball poised confidently between the thumb and middle finger on his right hand. For a few moments he watches the smooth counterclockwise motion of the rotor, lip between his teeth as he positions the ball in the curve of the wheel’s running rail. Then with a swift flick of his middle finger it’s off, and all eyes in the room are watching the ball spin in rapid clockwise circles towards their fate.
As it spirals around the wheel the hollow wooden noise it makes reverberates throughout the whole room, blotting out the sound of everyone holding their breath as they track the movement of the ball with their eyes. The same as all the other games have, the motion of the colorful spinning rotor and the white blur of the ivory alike keep Shuuichi’s attention rapt on the wheel, though in this instance it feels more a matter of anticipation than a supernatural pull drawing him in. It takes a lot longer than he thinks it should — and from his admittedly first-hand experience, he is pretty good at recognizing when time feels especially wonky — but agonizingly, eventually, the ball begins to slow, descending lower into the bowl, until finally—
Finally, like it was meant to be there, without so much as a stray bounce, the ball smoothly sinks into the little green 0 pocket on the spinning wheel.
“Wait, we — there’s a bet on zero! It’s Kokichi’s necklace!”
“Kaede, according to the rules, that spot has the highest payout in the whole game! Thirty five-to-one!”
“…Huh, look at that.” Kokichi’s eyes are shiny in the dim light as he glances between the pocketed roulette ball, and the slim red charm glittering from its winning spot. “What good luck.”
“If it was really good luck, it would have worked,” Maki points out, not incorrectly. “But nothing happened.”
Well, not quite; Shuuichi’s eyes shift over to his and everyone else’s losing bets just in time to watch them, as if the surface has become immaterial, tumble through the table and all the way through the floor, down to…
He’s pretty sure he can take a guess.
“Aww, I really did lose my earrings, lame…”
“Didn’t you say you didn’t care?”
Kaede frowns with her cheeks puffed out in Kokichi’s direction as he snags his necklace from the table, refashioning it around his neck with the charm hidden beneath his scarf. “I said I wouldn’t care if we opened the portal. What the heck did you even win, if the rest of us lost?”
“Good question.” Nothing on the table gives any indication as to what has become of Kokichi’s lucky bet, even though Shuuichi certainly looks. “And I guess another one is…now what?”
Cautiously, Shuuichi dips his finger into the spinning rotor, plucking up the ball without disrupting the wheel on its spindle. No dice. Gonta and Maki go the distance of looking beneath the table for anything of interest, while Kiibo’s scanners let them know that nothing in the room has physically changed beyond the disappearance of their bet ‘valuables’. For all intents and purposes…well, very decidedly, they have not opened a portal to the Underworld.
Eventually, it’s Kiibo that puts forth: “I am not sure what else we could try…other than placing another bet.”
“But…Gonta pretty sure we no have any more stuff to gamble, Kiibo…”
“Well, Kokichi’s on a winning streak.”
At his name being spoken Kokichi scowls in Maki’s direction, grip wrapped protectively around his charm. “Are you kidding? With luck like this? No way am I risking my necklace again for something that didn’t even work!”
“Well, then do you have any other ideas, or do you just suggest we twiddle our thumbs until time runs out?”
“God, screw this!”
For the first time in a while it’s Kaito that jumps into the fray, moving with jilted footsteps away from where he pushes off the wall to join the rest of them crowded around the roulette table. Whatever’s spooked him, it’s enough to get him pale-faced and sweating, pupils blown as he stalks up to them, mouth twisted in an anxious grimace.
“We don’t have time for this! Man, just — it’s just a friggin’ wheel, right?! How hard can it be to just — just spin it, or something!”
As Kaito says, he does, reaching a hand into the wide basin of the roulette wheel and jerking it in the opposite direction to send it careening clockwise this time, loud whiz-ing sounds filling the room as the rotor is spun way too fast on its track. And it spins, enough to leave Shuuichi dizzy as he watches, enough to leave his brain struggling to play catch-up as right before his eyes, the spiraling reds and blacks and greens of the wheel appear to blend together.
“W-Woah! Everyone back up—!”
“—What the fuck did you do, moron—?”
“—Screw you, asshole, I didn’t do shit—!”
“—Will both of you cease your arguing and back up before you fall in?!”
At Kiibo’s warning Kokichi and Kaito — and Shuuichi, too, eyes still caught on the wheel — do the sensible thing and move, though even pressed against the walls away from the table they needn’t worry much about missing the show. The noise level in the room from the rotor violently whirling around the base is almost nauseating, almost deafening, the force of it shaking the entire structure of the roulette layout until the wood begins to crack under the vigor of the tremoring.
With an awful tearing sound the table begins to fall to pieces entirely, jagged chunks of mahogany groaning while they’re yanked with supernatural strength to the floor as if magnetized to something far below it. And when finally, the whole display has collapsed in on itself save for the endlessly, raucously spinning rotor, the blurring colors within the basin of the roulette wheel begin to deepen. Into something darker, bloodier, something like an open wound leaching out of the bowl and spreading across the floor like gore staining the hardwood of Shuuichi’s home beneath the monster Rantarou had killed.
Eventually, the crimson ceases creeping further outward, the perimeter of the portal that’s opened up in the middle of the floor stopping at roughly the width that the table had previously occupied. Like their lost bets the ruined wood has fallen right through it, with the last part of the roulette game to disappear being the wheel, which doesn’t stop spinning even once it’s pulled through the portal entrance, leaving behind only an empty room, and seven people with a choice to make.
“…Well, I think that about does it,” Shuuichi observes, the first to break the settled quiet of the room.
“What. The hell. Was that?!” Kaito hisses out through ragged breaths, hands fisted in his hair tight enough to most definitely hurt.
To the contrary, Kokichi looks rather enraptured by the whole spectacle, dragging his gaze from the slow, spiraling movement of the portal to giggle coquettishly over at him. “It was our door opening, dummy! Man, it would be the scaredy-cat that blasts open the Hell door, huh?”
“Sh-Shut up! I didn’t do shit — it was you and your stupid gambling luck!”
“Then why are you calling it stupid, stupid?”
“Gods, do you two know how to bitch,” Maki interrupts tersely, physically pinching the bridge of her nose. “We won on our highest-value gamble, spun it in the opposite direction, and now we have our way into the Underworld. So can we get going now?”
Shuuichi can’t really help but agree. As they have been reminded so many times this past week, they really don’t have a lot of time. “It’s not like we have any other options, anyway. We’re as prepared as we’re ever going to be, so I think we should do it. Get in, get out of Celeste’s territory, and from there find our way to him, right?”
After everyone nods their heads with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Maki is again the one to cut in. “More or less. There will be landmarks — I don’t know…exactly what we’re going to see, but I should be able to get us there eventually.”
“Now I’m really thankful we’re so early,” Kaede chimes in weakly, hands antsily fidgeting with the straps of her backpack. It has Shuuichi doing the same, readjusting his duffle over his back while once again lamenting the heavy load he’ll be trudging through the Underworld. “So I guess we just…do it, right?”
“We do. Now everybody in, I’ll go fir—”
“See you dopes on the other side!”
With a sunny wink thrown over his shoulder and a peace sign flashed for flair Kokichi dashes forward, jumping through the portal with the same amount of zeal one might expect to feel when escaping in the opposite direction of Hell, not straight into it.
“That idiot,” Maki murmurs, before ultimately shrugging her shoulders and moving towards the portal herself, toes resting inches from the edge of the perimeter. “I hope something eats him. Kaede?”
Kaito’s face is beginning to look as purple as the rest of him. “‘Eats him’?!”
Sparing Kaito a sheepish smile — and Maki a flat look, as she steps closer to the portal to take her hand — Kaede offers another one more broadly to the group. “She’s being dramatic. It’s gonna be fine, we’ve got this. So we’ll see you guys there, okay?”
When she waves Shuuichi does too, and with that the two girls are, carefully this time, stepping and ultimately dropping into the portal — leaving, he can only assume, two groups left to be split off. As he inches his way towards Kaito he watches from the corner of his eye as Kiibo and Gonta move to stand at the lip of the portal together, hands clasped between their bodies.
“Is Kiibo nervous?” Gonta asks softly, eyes flitting between the similarly crimson-colored portal, and where Kiibo’s shockingly bright blue ones are glancing back at him.
“Yes,” they answer honestly, “but I am hopeful. I believe that everything will be alright.”
“Me, too. Is Kiibo ready?”
“I suppose we don’t have much choice, do we? Let’s be careful going inside so we don’t fall when we step through.” Turning briefly, Kiibo spares Shuuichi and Kaito a smile themself. “We will see you two on the other side.”
“You will. Right behind you.” At Shuuichi’s reassurance the two of them make their way into the entrance as well, their heavy bodies offering no resistance as they pass through the floor. And then it’s just Shuuichi alone with Kaito, who is not looking better the more time goes on, hands twisted into fists inside the pockets of his jacket. “Are you alright?”
“M’fine. Been, uh, better.”
“I think we’ve all been better.”
“No shit.” Kaito swallows, clearly wary to so much as look at the portal. “You think they all broke their damn ankles hoppin’ through?”
Shuuichi can’t help but snort — regardless, it seems to put Kaito slightly more at ease, at least enough to fake a grin. “I’m sure someone would’ve stuck their head through to warn us.”
“…Yeah. Yeah, sure.” Rolling his neck, Kaito’s posture loosens a little, and along with Shuuichi he takes one cautious step closer to the portal. Admittedly, it’s not the most inviting entrance he’s ever seen, and he’s not even particularly afraid of any dead things lurking around on the opposite end. “Man…we’re really doin’ this, huh?”
“Nobody’s gonna do this thing but us. Main characters and all.” That earns a huffed snort from Kaito, this time, and Shuuichi’s smile is easier to maintain along with it. “Do you want to go in together?”
“Nah, you go on ahead. Hey, don’t look at me like that — I’m not some coward that’s gonna abandon you guys at the finish line. Just gotta pep-talk myself, you know?”
Still a little concerned, nonetheless Shuuichi acquiesces, offering Kaito one more reassuring smile and a nod of his head. “I believe you. We do this thing together, okay? And like everyone else said…well, I’ll meet you wherever this thing leads.”
Kaito gives him a mock-salute, and knowing he’s seeking a second alone Shuuichi doesn’t mince further words or actions in approaching the floor-seated portal on his own, now himself facing the leap of faith it’s going to take to see Rantarou again. But they’ve come this far, and like he’s been telling himself and others ad nauseam at this point, the only way this turns out alright is if all seven of them, if Shuuichi does his damndest to keep the world that’s been cast upon his shoulders from collapsing beneath the warring of the gods. No matter his innocence in this, that’s not how the gods see it — least of all the god holding his brother hostage.
No, this is up to Shuuichi. One way or another, this ends today. On the other side of this portal is Rantarou, and he has come way too far not to jump into the belly of the beast beckoning him down, down, down. Even if that tendriled fear of the unknown still coils down his spine as he stares into the vast, swirling redness awaiting just past the edges of his shoes.
He’s afraid, yes. But he still has to do this, anyway. So with a deep breath, and with his eyes squeezed shut, Shuuichi takes the final step forward, and does his best to keep his stomach in its place as he awaits the feeling of falling as he descends to the Underworld.
Which…doesn’t come. Not with as much immediacy as he expects, in what he’d gleaned watching the others go through. A wave of something — not unlike what he remembers from passing through the barrier at Camp’s Hope’s Peak — rushes up around him that whistles dully as it passes over his head, and he opens his eyes just in time to watch himself almost trip; about as intense a feeling as stumbling over one’s own shoes is. Shuuichi catches himself easily enough, splaying his arms out to secure his balance, then casts a cursory look around where he — and thankfully, the rest of his friends bar Kaito — have ended up.
Though it’s never been sold to him, per se, as a prison of eternal damnation, he’s still a little surprised to find that the Underworld is not chock-full of screaming corpses. No streams of blood carving up the ground beneath his feet. No horned, fanged devils flaying victims. In fact, the Underworld is very quiet; and when on instinct he looks upward in search of the portal where he’d come from, he finds just empty air hanging in the endless space above him. It’s quiet, and seemingly calm, and really, it’s—
“Oof!”
Ah, it seems Kaito’s made his way in, too; he can’t be certain, given the warnings they’ve received about time moving differently here, but at least in Shuuichi’s perception, he seems to have made the descent down to join them in a relatively quick period of time. It also appears there isn’t a singular, literal other end of the portal spitting them all out; Kaito’s materialized some distance away from Shuuichi — hard to accurately gauge, given the strange atmosphere of the Underworld that his brain’s still struggling to adjust to — and stumbles the same as he did, closer to where Kiibo, Gonta, and Kokichi are clustered near each other. He also stabilizes himself before falling over, heaving a gasp with his hands braced on his knees, but all things considered…well, he’s still visibly freaking out, but the so far ambivalent nature of the Underworld in their immediate vicinity shouldn’t warrant any additional freaking out.
Already moving in the direction of Kaito and most of the others, Shuuichi’s opening his mouth to call out to them about that very thing, only to be abruptly and loudly interrupted as Kaito glances up from his feet, his jaw goes slack, and with a rattling shriek he jumps desperately into Gonta’s arms, screaming wildly about the ghosts.
Suffice to say, it spurs the rest of them into action, falling into step with each other and covering each other’s backs as best they can as they look around almost as frantically as Kaito in search of danger. But there…isn’t any. In every direction Shuuichi looks, he can’t see anything in his limited field of vision that gives the impression there is anyone in the Underworld except for the seven of them.
Even still, Kaito’s panic doesn’t die down — to the contrary, he only seems to get more distraught, scrambling away from Gonta without rhyme or reason to what he’s trying to throw himself away from. He’s frenzied, terrified, he’s clearly seeing something despite how for Shuuichi and presumably the rest of them, the Underworld is empty.
But that is not how Kaito sees it.
“Shuuichi, watch out, it’s t-trying to—!”
No matter what it is Shuuichi is or isn’t seeing, if this quest has taught him one thing it’s that he’s to move when one of his friends says move, and so he does without question, reaching for the baseball bat on instinct and poised in seconds to strike an enemy that never comes. That fact does little to settle Kaito’s nerves, racing forward to yank Shuuichi away from some unseen force with an arm around his elbow. Again he whips his head around in search of something, but all he sees around him are the faces of his friends — all of them, as Shuuichi does when he carefully lowers the bat out off offense mode, looking at Kaito strangely as they try to digest what the hell is going on that they’re clearly missing.
Because they’ve got to be; while Shuuichi hasn’t known him long, he has known him long enough to recognize that the Kaito in front of him, breathing raggedly as his whole body shakes with full-body tremors and visibly on the verge of tears, is not how he’d carry himself unless something was seriously wrong.
Approaching him from the side, Kaede’s voice is soft and placating as she delicately asks, “Kaito, are you alright? What’s going on?”
“My sensors appear to be malfunctioning since we entered this place, but even with the naked eye, I cannot see anything…”
“Holy shit, Space Case, you wanna pump the brakes and stop making your hallucinations everybody else’s problem?”
As is practically a given at this point Kaito only grows further agitated by Kokichi’s taunting, and before Shuuichi gets the chance to do it himself it’s Kaito that’s rearing on him, panic seeming to compound on itself as he yells practically at the top of his lungs, “Stop fucking me with already, you guys! This isn’t funny anymore, just stop!”
Defensively Kokichi backs off first, thankfully thinking better of biting back with a snappish comment and setting Kaito off even further. Already he’s inconsolable, jerking backwards and whipping around every few seconds in pure terror, kicking out into empty air at something no one else can see and continuously screaming at nothing to get away from his friends. Obviously, this isn’t going to resolve itself on its own, and if what Shuuichi thinks might be going on actually is, then he may just be the most well-equipped out of all of them to calm this down enough to figure out what’s going on.
“Kaito.” As he lashes out at something unseen Shuuichi steps into his line of sight, in the way of whatever it is that has petrified tears carving raw red tracks down his cheeks, holstering his bat again and facing his open palms towards Kaito. It’s enough to slow him down, enough to establish points of contact with a hand on his shoulder and the other holding him firmly by the chin, ignoring the hot breath that wafts into his face as he tries to keep Kaito’s attention on him. “Focus on your breathing and listen to me, okay? Four second inhale, like you’re trying to fill up a balloon in your stomach, hold it while you count for seven seconds, breathe out slowly for eight, then repeat. Four, seven, eight while you listen to me.”
With difficulty Kaito complies, eyes darting around frantically but nonetheless staying anchored to where Shuuichi keeps them both. He does the first few counts along with Kaito, until he’s no longer gasping, then keeps his voice steady and calm as he talks Kaito through the rest. “None of us are messing with you. We wouldn’t do that. All of us are telling the truth when we say we aren’t seeing what you are right now.”
“B-But there’s—”
“I believe you,” Shuuichi interrupts firmly, seriously, “I do. Right now, it looks like you’re the only one who can see what’s going on. Whatever it is, all of us are safe, and standing still right here none of us are hurt. I know what you’re seeing is probably really scary, but nothing dangerous is currently happening. We’re going to figure this out, we’ll fix this problem as a group, but first I need you to calm down enough to explain to us what we’re not seeing. Good, you’re already getting there — take as long as you need to catch your breath, alright?”
“Ghosts,” he replies weakly, but his voice is recovered enough for his whisper to come out intelligible. “It’s ghosts, Shuuichi. Everywhere.”
Yeah, he’d assumed as much. “I know. But they’re not hurting us. And even though you can see them, they’re not hurting you either, right?”
When Kaito moves to straighten up slightly Shuuichi lets go of his chin, but maintains the grounding hand on his shoulder as he blinks around a few times, assessing his surroundings warily, scrubbing beneath his eyes with his sleeve. “…Yeah. Y-Yeah, they’re not — they keep starin’ at all of us, g-gettin’ way too close, but…not hurting anybody. Thanks, sidekick.”
“Of course. Always.” When Shuuichi tries a tentative smile, Kaito manages a ghost of one — hah — in response. “Now, are you ready to explain wha—”
“Shuuichi Saihara?”
A petal-soft, childlike voice quickly commands everyone’s attention and pulls Shuuichi from his trance talking Kaito down, all living eyes in the Underworld lasering in on the little girl in the wheelchair that’s just said his name.
Immediately Kaito stumbles backwards and out of Shuuichi’s hold, falling back on the person next nearest to him — Maki — and grasping tightly at her arms as the rest of them freeze up at the something that’s unfolding. “You g-guys can see these ones too, right?!”
Yes, it seems, they can.
In all there are five children; somewhere in the ballpark of maybe ten to twelve years old, older than the Monokubs had been — and doesn’t that dredge up some uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing imagery. Around the green-haired girl the other four children flank her wheelchair, staring up at Shuuichi and his friends rather defiantly, for little kids who look like they belong in Hell even less than the seven of them do.
…That is, right up until one goes and says his name, intense eyes fixed on him like she already knows exactly who he is. So for the time being, it’s Shuuichi that’s the odd one out. “Ah…yes. That would be me.”
The little girl doesn’t blink, cocking her head to the side just purposefully enough for it to be unnerving. “Monaca knows that, Shuuichi.”
Oh, great. Another name he’s not got a clue about. “Who is Monaca…?”
“Monaca is Monaca!” Her smile is tight-lipped, though the voice that comes forth each time she cracks it open remains almost disarmingly, saccharinely sweet. Though her pupils flit around to assess each of their faces carefully, her posture doesn’t so much as twitch as she looks the seven of them over. “Hmm…yes, it makes sense that Little Bro and his friends don’t know us yet.”
Feeling some of Kaito’s franticness himself now, Shuuichi casts a harried glance around at his friends in full view of the children, who have cranked the fear factor almost up to the level the bear-form Monokubs had managed — and none of these kids even break five feet tall. Everyone looks equally as freaked out and as lost as he does.
“Hey, you heard Monaca! Get to introducing yourselves — here, I’ll start!”
Not unlike the Monokubs — and the more Shuuichi internally makes that comparison, the more his stomach really begins to hurt — each of the five children staring them down have a distinct color theme blanketing them from head to toe. The one that breaks the briefly-settled quiet is the red-headed one, jumping out from his position on Monaca’s right to place his hands on his hips and shout to address the rest of the children. Then he turns to look at Shuuichi, expression twisting into a scrunched-up glare before ultimately breaking into a grin, teeth bared.
“My name’s Masaru, and I’m the leader!” Masaru the ‘leader’ looks to be on the younger side, maybe ten, and plastered head-to-toe with bandages boasting various patterns. He appears to notice Shuuichi notice this, and turns his focus upwards to scowl at him in response. “You may be bigger than me, but you’re no match for the Warriors of Hope, alright?!”
“Oh, Masaru, you don’t need to scare them! I bet Little Bro and his friends are super nice, right?” The other little girl of the group — closer to Masaru’s age than she is Monaca — also falls out of sync at the wheelchair’s flank, though like Masaru, she consciously doesn’t cross to stand in front of her, instead content to twirl her ribbon-thin pink pigtails around her fingers as she continues, “I’m Kotoko, and it’s so nice to meet you! Hey, you two are super adorable — do you think my horns are nice? I thought they look nice, and Miss Celeste thinks so, too…but maybe she just said that to be nice? I like your pretty blonde hair…so do you like my horns, too?”
While Shuuichi focuses in on the mention of Celeste, Kaede very dutifully picks up the mantle on the winding questions Kotoko and her pink-horned headband have posed. “That’s…very nice of you to say, uhm, Kotoko! Pink is my favorite color, so I do like your h—”
“Seeeee? I told you they were nice!”
“Bleh, whatever! C’mon, hurry it up already — we don’t got all day!”
“O-Okay, yeah, sorry…I’m real sorry, Masaru, I’m just nervous ‘cause this is real important, I’ll go now…”
Somehow, it’s not the child in the patchwork mask that’s the hardest for Shuuichi to get a read on; Monaca’s still wearing that crown pretty firmly, though it’s close. But it is him that speaks next, rubbing anxiously at the back of his neck with a sweater-pawed hand, and through the low tremor in his voice and the mask obscuring his face, all Shuuichi can really gauge from him is the innate uneasiness he feels when dull gray eyes slide slowly up and over to his face.
“I’m, well…you can call me Jataro, ‘cause that’s my name, and uhm…I’m not really, uuuhm…I don’t really know what to s—”
“This is taking too long. I’m Nagisa, and we are Miss Celeste’s assistants, here on her behalf. There, introductions done.” The last of the children, Nagisa as he informs them impatiently, strikes Shuuichi as roughly the same age as Monaca, though he’s seen adults give less contemptuous looks than the one Nagisa spares him briefly before turning his attention back to where he’s not strayed far from her side at all. “What now, Monaca?”
“There’s no need to rush, silly Nagisa…Monaca is just so excited to finally meet the famous Shuuichi Saihara!”
Despite Masaru’s insistence, and Shuuichi’s observable lack of an idea of what the hell is going on here, it is very apparent to everyone present who truly occupies the leader spot among the children — the ‘Warriors of Hope’, apparently.
But as much as Shuuichi would love to continue being stared at by these creepy-Hell-children who know who he is and apparently are working for Celeste — which he wouldn’t, he can’t maintain that thought for even a second, and if he weren’t feeling so on the back-foot right now he’d be hearing Kokichi’s matter-of-fact that’s a lie! chirping in his brain — they are on a time limit. And, based solely on appearances, and how they’ve been happy enough to just look at him and his friends so far…
…Stranger danger is usually meant to ward against people way older than him, right? “Actually, ah…well, we kind of have other business with the…other person, here. Not Celeste. I…don’t suppose you have directions to find him?”
None of his friends put their head into their hands, or something equally demonstrative that Shuuichi’s horrifically fucked up. Score.
“Oh? You think you are leaving…? No, you all will be coming with Monaca!”
…Swing and a miss, then.
“That’s, ah…” Shuuichi smiles, sheepish, and really not sure how to interact with god-controlled children that aren’t actively trying to murder him and his friends. “We really need to go see him. It’s…kind of the most urgent thing going on right now. If you don’t know.”
Given who they’re working for, he seriously doubts that. His jilted explanation sways Monaca very little, if the subtle edge her smile takes on is anything to go by. “You are going to come with Monaca and the Warriors, yes, Shuuichi Saihara? To see Miss Celeste?”
Oops, there’s that hint of murder in pre-pubescent eyes. Shuuichi really hasn’t missed it.
“You better listen to what Monaca says,” Masaru warns, paired with the visual of his fist repeatedly slamming into his open palm in a flagrantly-threatening gesture.
Nagisa has already half-turned away, though he spares the seven of them an icy look over his shoulder regardless. “This isn’t a matter of discussion. It’s just up to you whether you’re going to make this difficult.”
“Uhm…” Sparing a helpless glance back at his friends offers Shuuichi a negligible amount of help. Looking back at the children gearing up to take them hostage isn’t particularly illuminating either, but he goes out on a limb regardless. “I don’t suppose we could have a quick recess to talk, just for a second? We’re…well, it’s not like there’s anywhere else for us to go. No risk.”
“Recess?” Jataro murmurs beneath his breath, movements languid and slow as he cranes his head to glance over his surroundings. “I don’t see a playground anywhere…”
“Stupid, that’s totally not what he means! They want to group up and tell each other secrets!”
“Not secrets,” Kaede interrupts gently — probably for the best, given that Kotoko seems more warmed to her than anyone else so far. “But we really weren’t expecting to meet you guys, and we just…well, honestly, we only actually got here a few minutes before you showed up. A second to catch our bearings a little would be really helpful.”
Like Shuuichi, Kaede has also caught onto the power dynamics at play among the children — her plea is directed towards Monaca, where everyone’s attention fully turns as soon as she’s done. For a few moments Monaca considers it, blinking serenely over at the seven of them with her hands clasped delicately in her lap.
Then: “Miss Celeste mentioned that Little Bro and his friends might be a teensy bit confused…as long as you don’t get any silly ideas about running away, then I guess it’s alright!”
She claps her hands together once, and just like that the kids sink back into their positions, poised at each of Monaca’s sides and while openly watchful, not putting up further disagreements. So there’s one issue solved, but not nearly the most pressing one they’ve got to deal with; and it’s with that in mind that Shuuichi and his friends all take several steps back, falling into a huddle and speaking in whispers as they try to figure out something in this briefly-allotted sidebar.
“‘Kay, Maki, uhm — do you know who these kids are?”
“No, I don’t. I’ve never heard of Celeste having any ‘assistants’.”
“And you guys see ‘em too, so they’re not ghosts, right?”
“For once, he’s not just full of hot air — demigods, maybe? Monsters in disguise, like last time?”
“I am scanning all through my memory database, but none of these names or their descriptions appear anywhere…”
“Why kids so young…in a place like this?”
All very good questions. But not ones they’re going to figure out now — and they’re quickly running out of time to figure out the real thing they need to be worried about, which is: “Right now, we need to figure out what we’re going to do. What our options are…sooner, rather than later.”
The group sobers at that, silent for just a moment. Shuuichi can feel the kids’ eyes burning holes into his back as Maki offers, voice pitched even lower, “…I don’t know. They’re working with Celeste, they presumably know this place much better than we do, and we don’t know anything about them.”
“I don’t think we can afford a fight right now, guys,” Kaede agrees, eyes cast warily over the heads of the group to watch the children for a moment. “This could be like the Monokubs.”
“Are you crazy?! And let them take us straight to the dead lady?!”
While Kokichi smacks him on the head for raising his voice too loud, Maki is restrained enough to settle on a nasty look. “Shut up, moron, are you trying to piss these kids off even further?”
“Let’s not fight,” Shuuichi cuts in, the urgent undercurrent in his voice enough to pull them out of it. “In both senses of the word. I…I do think our best option is to go with them.”
That sobers the group further. “If Shuuichi is sure…then Gonta will agree and protect friends no matter what.”
“But we’re not gearing for a fight,” Kaede repeats. “We’ll go with them, since it seems Celeste wants to talk to us, and…go from there, I guess?”
“Seriously, man?”
When not given the response he wants from Shuuichi, Kaito drops his gaze away, for once looking in agreement with Kokichi as they catch eyes, equal measures of unease written across their faces. “Shit. Just…watch each other’s backs, okay?”
“Always. Come on…we probably shouldn’t test our luck anymore until we know more about what we’re dealing with.”
Kaede offers one more vague but nonetheless persuasive, “Be cool,” before they break, cautiously turning towards and ultimately approaching the five children, who look very much unsurprised and very much expectant as they allot their full attention to Shuuichi.
“Did you enjoy your recess?”
No matter what she says, how she says it, he has yet to hear Monaca sound pleasant. “It accomplished what we needed to. We’re…going to come with you.”
“Yaaaay!” Happily Monaca claps her hands, delight well-matched by the cheering of the others. “Yep, Monaca knew you’d make the right choice, Shuuichi! I knew that before I even met you!”
Almost innocent, but not quite. Consciously keeping his hand off the handle of his holstered bat is uncomfortably difficult. “So…I guess you’ll lead the way, right?”
“Naturally,” Nagisa answers, as he and the other three children step back to give Monaca room to turn her wheelchair around in the opposite direction. “We know our way around. As long as you stay close, there shouldn’t be any major issues.”
Kotoko giggles. “Major issues.”
“You guys better not underestimate us just ‘cause we’re kids! No matter how fast you run, we’ll chase you down anywhere!”
“That won’t be necessary,” Maki counters evenly, though antsily her arms cross over her chest. “You’re getting what you want. Just bring us there already.”
While a few of the children appear poised to argue, Monaca begins rolling casually away from them, and a short giggle along with a soft, “Let’s go!” is all it takes to get the rest of the Warriors of Hope obeying, moving to loosely surround Shuuichi and his friends as they’re left with no option but to do as requested. Given his first moment of quiet and relative peace — so long as he ignores how he’s just been taken hostage by a bunch of barely-middle-schoolers — since arriving in the Underworld, as they follow behind Monaca’s lead at a mostly-leisurely pace, Shuuichi uses the gifted silence to get a read on his surroundings and actually absorb what…Hell…looks like, while simultaneously trying to navigate an escape route from the death march headed straight to the Queen of the Dead.
Since he arrived, Shuuichi has been struck by how…quiet, the Underworld is. Quiet, and unassuming, save for the ambient hum in the air that fills the space any other discernible surroundings would take up — of which there aren’t many. There’s an almost…oppressive neutrality coloring the air, devoid of heat or warmth or really anything that distinguishes his body and those of his friends from the strange, cloying sensation of stark nothing that clings like a thin film over his skin. It’s dark, too, like someone’s painted the whole of the Underworld in a blue-toned black-and-white filter and cranked the color saturation down all the way, the air around them drained of any hint of life…which he supposes makes sense, all things considered.
Still, though, it manages to be jarring, the way he can’t make out a horizon no matter how hard he looks; even after pulling out his phone to try and shine a light for some reprieve, he finds the brightness of his screen — no longer displaying his selfie wallpaper, instead nothing more than dull visual static — does nothing to fight off the feeling of being trapped in a softly thrumming black hole. Really, from where he’s positioned roughly in the middle of their rather large cluster of bodies, the only landmark he can make out is a languid, deathly silent river flowing to some unknown destination, its water — or whatever the sinuous, inky-blue substance is — the only thing other than the group of them that gives any reassurance that time is still moving.
It’s not a skeletal ferryman, or a death-driven kitamae-bune that awaits them when the endless shadow they’re walking through changes, but the reality isn’t much better. Instead it’s a gondola, a large one at that, and Shuuichi already gets a creeping inclination of what’s coming even before the kids begin working to lift Monaca and her wheelchair into the boat, clearly already familiar with it.
“What is this?” Maki is the first to break the silence, about as apt as the rest of them to join the children on the boat — which is to say, not at all, though there are varying levels of disagreement unfolding across everyone’s faces. “You didn’t mention anything about a boat.”
Kotoko pokes her tongue out disapprovingly, hands braced on the lip of the gondola as she stares over at them. “It’s how we get to Miss Celeste’s palace!”
“Via the creepy death boat,” Kokichi deadpans.
“Unless you’d like to get lost and drown, then yes.” The impatience is clear in Nagisa’s voice. “She won’t like being kept waiting.”
“‘Weighting’, huh…I bet Miss Celeste’s castle, like, has a lot of, uhm, weighting…”
“There’s no way in hell I’m getting on that goddamn thing!”
“You are in Hell,” Kaede shoots back, as gently as she can…considering. Kaito still spooks regardless. “We don’t have time to argue about this, Kaito.”
Gonta and Kiibo have already resigned themselves to getting on the boat and are helping each other in as Shuuichi inches in their direction to do the same. Kaito, back to being sweaty and pale and agitated again, has other ideas. “No way. S-Seriously, screw that thing, and these freaky kids — I’ll take my chances walking.”
He says that, but it’s clear in his face, the way his eyes continue tracing frantically across their surroundings that he’s just as terrified by that prospect. “But…the ghosts, Kaito?”
“Fuck — d-don’t remind me, dude!”
“We don’t have time for this.” Maki looks purposefully towards Shuuichi — then briefly moves her head to spare Kokichi, lingering further away than everyone else, a harsher glare. “If you don’t get on by yourself, I’m going to drag you on, and that goes for all of you. Go.”
That’s as much an order as the Warriors’ original ‘request’ to follow them was, so Shuuichi wastes no further time in getting things over with and making his way onto the boat behind Kaede. Over his shoulder, he hears Kokichi weakly offering to stay behind on look-out, and without looking at his face it’s impossible to tell whether it’s a bad attempt at a joke or not. Either way, with his hands twitching around the straps of his backpack, Kokichi makes his way over to the boat and allows Gonta to help him on, just as Shuuichi’s claiming a spot on a thin, rickety wooden seat relatively near the back of the gondola. While he’s content enough to get his duffle bag off his back and stowed beneath his feet — though he’s not stoked on the reason why — he’s much less interested in putting the baseball bat far out of reach. But with twelve of them trying to pack into this modest little boat, there really isn’t room for him to do anything but store it beneath him on the bench too, frowning down at the few inches of its handle that stick out between where he’s got his feet planted on the floor.
A few moments later, after gently batting Gonta’s helping hands away and securing his balance within the boat, Kokichi moves to drop into a sit right next to Shuuichi. The thought of saying something strikes him, but in their present conditions, he can’t think of anything that wouldn’t land wrong with Kokichi or the eavesdropping children — neither of which he’s keen on upsetting by any measure, especially not now.
So it’s in awkward, heavy silence that the rest of them sit as the kids settle into their own spots — with Masaru joining those at the back of the gondola, retrieving a singular long oar from the floor and testing it in the maybe-water. Maki does quite literally drag Kaito on by the sleeve of his jacket, depositing him in a seat between Gonta and eventually herself, presumably to keep him from bolting. It inspires Shuuichi to warily look down into the substance below them as Monaca claps her hands, and with a push off the ‘shore’ the boat begins meandering down the river; he doesn’t think he’ll be taking any chances trying to duck out into that.
But…for the foreseeable future, he and his friends kind of are at the mercy of the kids steering them towards the death goddess. It will do them no good to pass this stretch of time unencumbered by a rogue element immortal by doing nothing. Getting these kids talking, getting any information that can help them know what they’re getting themselves into is their best bet to actually making it out of Celeste’s clutches alright…one way or another.
Small talk, then. Shuuichi’s favorite. “So…you guys work with Celeste, right?”
Starting small seems…best. At the very least, it’s low-risk enough to elicit a response from Masaru, who shouts from behind: “That’s right! Miss Celeste leaves all her most important jobs to the heroic Warriors of Hope! Like me, steerin’ her boat ‘cause no one’s athletic like I am!”
“Like coming to find us?” He can always rely on Kaede being quick on the uptake. “What else do you guys do?”
“Well, to be honest, Monaca and the Warriors of Hope have never met people like you all before! So, that’s why…we’re just sooo excited to meet you, you know?”
“Our duties vary,” Nagisa offers, shrugging his shoulders politely. “What matters is that we always succeed at whatever we’re sent to do here.”
“Ah, then I guess that begs the question…why are you here? I’m not the biggest expert or anything, but…this doesn’t exactly seem like the place for—”
“For kids, like us?” Kotoko challenges, eyes narrowed in Shuuichi’s direction. He’s quick to take that hint.
“No, I just mean…well, we don’t really belong here, either. But you know well enough why we’re here, right? So I think we’re all curious about you guys, is all.”
“…Are you, uh, dead?”
“Kaito,” Kiibo hisses, aghast. From his position as far from any of the children as he can possibly manage Kaito throws his hands up, half hanging out of the gondola in an attempt to keep his distance from Jataro.
“Look where we are! It’s a valid question!”
“It’s rude.”
“Why is it rude? He’s right.” Nagisa approximates the seven of them with a look that suggests they’re all varying degrees of stupid. “We wouldn’t be here otherwise, would we?”
“But it is rude to ask a lady for details, you know!”
“Yeah, Kotoko’s right! You better not upset Monaca with talk like that, or I’ll stomp you!”
For emphasis, Masaru brandishes the gondola’s oar vaguely in their direction before returning it to guide them down a gradual bend in the river. Shuuichi certainly doesn’t need to be told twice, and thankfully it seems none of the others are particularly stoked at the idea of trying their luck in this regard. So with the warning lingering in the air alongside the strange hum of the Underworld’s atmosphere the crowded boat lapses into brief silence, most of his friends’ eyes on their indiscernible surroundings, and most of the Warriors’ eyes on them.
Eventually, though, it gets a little stifling — and probably more importantly, there are much better ways to spend this meandering trip towards Celeste instead of sitting and stewing in all of the many things they don’t know. Shuuichi’s acknowledged already that keeping these kids talking, even if it’s just innocuous at first, is their best course of action here; which even Kokichi seems to recognize, lifting his face from where he’d been staring down at his backpack in his lap to put forth: “I guess it’s pretty stereotypical to float us down the river of death in a boat, or whatever, but this thing’s kinda cool.”
Not the most convincing lie Shuuichi’s ever picked up on. It’s enough to get Monaca refocusing her attention their way again, at least, giggling over at Kokichi with her eyes intent on him. “Monaca is so happy to hear you like it, Kokichi!”
In an instant Kokichi’s posture has gone bowstring-taut, and he’s not the only one to react to what she’s said. He is, however, the first to call her out on it. “…I never told you my name.”
“Hmm, what’s that? Oh, Monaca and the Warriors of Hope know all about you all!” She touches a finger to her chin, considering. “Yep, yep. But don’t worry! It’s just for good reasons, promise!”
Shuuichi has his doubts about that, and anything these kids promise, no matter how small it seems. All of it, all of them are just weird, and he knows from his experience with the Monokubs not to underestimate supernatural children based on appearances alone, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that he’s over-reacting to how off-putting he finds them all. Especially Monaca, smiling sweetly over in his direction and always managing to catch his eye, no matter how discreetly he tries to assess her. He knows when he’s being lied to, being performed at, and though the candy-coated, childlike manner with which Monaca holds herself is so painfully artificial it makes his teeth ache, he still can’t shake the non- demigod part of him that finds the notion of being so genuinely unnerved by a bunch of kids kind of ridiculous.
At the very least, though, he’s not alone — Kaito’s made plenty clear how unwillingly he’s anywhere near them, and while all of his friends look varying degrees of uncomfortable…
Well, perched not even a foot away from him on their shared bench, Kokichi himself is very observably visibly alarmed, each time one of the Warriors pipes up with something intentionally creepy or anxiety-inducing. His kitty backpack is clenched protectively in his lap, foot tapping anxiously as he keeps his gaze pretty exclusively either on one of their friends, or outside of the boat entirely.
“Yeah, s’just good stuff, like Monaca says…uhm…” In his pregnant pause Jataro spins slowly in his seat to stare towards the back of the gondola, eyes wide and fixed on Kokichi beneath his mask as he waves a sleeve in his direction. “E-Even I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Kokichi…aww, and if you hate me, that’s even better…”
Next to him Kokichi full-body flinches, coughing out a strained laugh a moment later as he positions himself as far backwards on the bench as possible, looking about as willing as Kaito is to bail out and try his luck not drowning in the river if it means getting away from the kids.
“Holy shit. L-Look, you guys are cute and all, but just — don’t let anyone feed you after midnight, okay?”
There’s a tremor to his frame as he says it, hastily shifting his right arm through the straps of his bag and pulling it as close to his chest as he can manage. His other hand taps restlessly and without rhythm between them on the bench, betraying the sincerity of his uneasy jitters in a way the sharp edge to his joke sort of managed to, too.
Kokichi looks not too far away from how Kaito had looked fresh into the Underworld. And despite their clearly attentive audience, Shuuichi can’t help but let his concern win out, leaning in close enough for Kokichi to hear while he’s got his neck craned in the opposite direction, staring resolutely out into the Underworld. “Are you alright?”
The silence he gets in response is equal parts expected, but still disquieting, anyway. When reluctantly he pulls his gaze away from Kokichi he spares an annoyed frown at Nagisa, very openly watching their one-sided exchange. Feeling unsatisfied, anxious, and incredibly ill at ease, Shuuichi leans back into his own space, continuing to monitor his friend out of the corner of his eye as from further down the boat, Monaca takes it upon herself to fill the quiet.
“You know…Monaca has never actually seen a real robot before! Monaca loves to read and hear about them, but has never actually met one, or gotten to play around with one before! Isn’t that soooo cool, Kiibo?”
“O-Oh! That’s very flattering, ah, th-thank you…”
Under the cover of someone else taking command of the group’s attention, Shuuichi turns his back to Kokichi. He’s less visibly tense, at least, but with his chin leaned on top of the cat-head flap of his bag, the hand he has protectively woven through the straps of it he uses to twist a section of his hair around his fingers. If he notices Shuuichi watching him, he doesn’t let on as much; just continues drumming the fingers of his other hand restlessly on the wooden bench, eyes focused somewhere far away.
“Hey, you! Girl with the long hair!”
“…What?”
“That’s Maki, Masaru. You can’t be mean just because she’s a girl!”
“Whatever! Your dad’s Mondo, right? Miss Celeste doesn’t like him much, but I think he’s real cool! I like all the friends he’s sent us to play with, at least!”
“M-Maki Roll, seriously, why do these kids know everything about us?!”
Carefully, silently, but very deliberately, Shuuichi slides his right hand across the wooden bench between them, watching the trajectory until he sees and feels his fingers brush against Kokichi’s. They’re cold, and at the contact they stiffen up and cease their tapping, but Kokichi doesn’t rip his hand back into his own space — even when Shuuichi follows through on his intentions, and gently loops his pinky finger around Kokichi’s. Gentle pressure. Just enough not to be too much.
Neither of them pull away. Shuuichi uses it as a tenuous anchor to something resembling comfort as he resumes his listening to the conversation carrying on around him.
“Has anyone ever told you two you’re suuuuper adorable? And pretty, just like princesses! I don’t get to see many pretty girls, other than Miss Celeste!”
“Well, we don’t really see any alive people down here, y’know…oh, actually, it’s been a really long time since I got to talk to anyone alive. I almost, uhm, forgot what being around people with blood, and guts, and brains in them is like…huh, and I bet a lot of blood would come out if you got hit with that baseball bat, right…? Hey, could I maybe see it for a second?”
About a half-second before Shuuichi realizes he’s being addressed Kokichi does, pulling his hand away and back into his lap as several pairs of eyes turn their way. Shuuichi fights a frown for multiple reasons as he answers. “Ah — no, I don’t think so, sorry. It’s not mine to lend out…actually, about that.”
It’s not likely. But it’s possible. And if he doesn’t ask, doesn’t make sure, he’ll never forgive himself. “I…I don’t suppose any of you have seen Rantarou Togami, have you? He’s my brother, and I really need to find him. Soon. You’d know him if you saw him…well, honestly, he kind of has hair like yours, Monaca. Green.”
Shuuichi feels like he’s going out on a limb with that question, and drawing Monaca specifically into it, but — what choice does he have?
His question does dull the children’s cheer, if only slightly, and that is somehow almost as much of an answer as Monaca’s offered one is. “The Warriors of Hope are Miss Celeste’s assistants. That’s all.”
…Not reassuring. It’s Shuuichi’s turn to anxiously tap his fingers, gaze deferentially falling to his lap.
When he looks up next, it’s not because someone’s broken the silence; it’s yet again at the sensation of someone watching him very closely and very unabashedly. As it has been more than once, when he glances up through his bangs he finds it’s Nagisa staring at him, gaze sliding between him and Kokichi very purposefully. He doesn’t shy away when Shuuichi lifts his head fully, and they meet eyes; just holds it for a few moments before flicking his glance over to Kokichi, and then Kaito, nearer the middle of the boat.
Eventually: “…You look different than I thought you would.”
“Shhh, Nagisa! Don’t ruin the surprise!”
It’s impossible to tell for certain who he’s talking about, what exactly it means. Shuuichi’s skin is left crawling, and Kokichi summons and fires off at Nagisa the nastiest look he’s managed since boarding the gondola. Kaito, conversely, appears as though he’s just about had it, springing to his feet to stand unevenly with his hands curled into tight, agitated fists.
“I’ve had enough of this creepy, all-knowing crap! I don’t wanna yell at kids, but seriously, this is crazy! We’ve got a world to save, we don’t have time to mess around with…with her…!”
“Hey! Sit down unless you want me to whack you!”
“Th-The girl?!”
Now Kotoko does kick out at Kaito’s legs, succeeding in unbalancing him enough to send him tumbling back into his seat. “I’ll have you know I’m the fighter in the Warriors of Hope! And I won’t let you stupid adults ruin our reputation with Miss Celeste by being rude!”
Kaito scrambles away enough that she backs off, retreating into her seat nearer Monaca just as the other girl opens her mouth, frowning for perhaps the first time since they met her.
“There’s no need to fight, because there’s no argument to be had in the first place. Miss Celeste has been waiting so long to see you…so Kaito, I really think you’re better off talking about something else! Aha!”
Monaca doesn’t blink throughout her warning, through the ‘laugh’ she intonates in the least-amused way possible. From behind, Masaru loudly clears his throat, breaking the quiet again before it can properly settle. “And you better not be mean to her, Little Bro! Any of you! We’ve got a reputation we gotta uphold with Miss Celeste — so wise up, ‘cause we’re here!”
And…they are, actually. Out of nowhere through the cloying miasma of the Underworld, the river has lazily led them to what appears to be a courtyard entrance to…well, from context clues, he would guess the true Celestia’s Palace.
Unlike the technicolor, dramatically lit-up casino they’d first come across, the one they’re being pulled to a stop in front of now isn’t necessarily less opulent, but it is less of an advertisement of what is presumably contained within it, though Shuuichi can take some liberties from what he does see. Which, to be honest, isn’t a whole lot; from where they’ve stopped to begin deboarding from the boat he can approximate some of the shape he recalls from when they’d walked up to the casino, but the dark film over his already limited field of vision allows him to make out no more than a single story of the lofty gothic architecture of the castle. As it had in the real world, Celestia’s Palace sticks out like a sore thumb in the midst of the Underworld’s nothingness, elaborate and awe-inspiring right up until the strange haze blots the rest out of his view.
Once he’s on solid ground again with his bag on his shoulder and the bat loosely holstered, he reaches a hand out to Kaede, giving her something to hold onto as she hops out of the boat just ahead of Monaca being lifted out herself. She squeezes his hand once before letting go and following a few steps closer to the covered entryway into what looks to be a mostly-unused side of the palace, murmuring a wary, “Gods above,” while she, like the rest of their friends as they approach, look up into where the stunning castle picked out of a Victorian fairytale bleeds into the lifeless backdrop surrounding it.
For the Goddess of the Dead…grimly fitting.
“Hooray! We’re here!” At Monaca’s prompting Shuuichi and his friends glance over at where she’s wheeled herself closer to the archway entrance, spun around with her back to the rounded wooden portcullis to flash them all a wide, soulless smile. The other four Warriors scurry off to get the door open, which they do with relative ease, and then for the first time since they arrived here they’re greeted with light as the barest glimmers of an entry hall are made visible to them. “It’s almost time for the big reveal! Yaaay!”
Without awaiting confirmation from the seven of them Monaca turns around once again, wheeling without further dawdling inside of the castle. But they’re not left unattended; from either side of the entryway Kotoko, Masaru, Jataro, and Nagisa watch them, expressions betraying nothing except their collective desire to urge them into the palace. And with Shuuichi unintentionally positioned at the front of the group, it’s him that gets the brunt of the attention — the brunt of the hurry up energy hanging in the air around them. The brief look he spares to all of his friends echoes pretty much the same sentiment.
So with little other option, Shuuichi goes. As do his friends, sticking close together as the four Warriors slam the doors menacingly shut and once again encircle them, reminding them in no uncertain terms not to go getting any ideas about wandering off, and not marching directly into the hands of Death herself.
That march, however, isn’t the dreary, skeleton-filled, Hellfire-engulfed journey one might expect, given who awaits them on the other side of the high-ceilinged foyer beginning to take shape at the end of the hallway. To the contrary, though it matches the general dark aesthetic of the exterior, there’s actual light to be seen across firelit torches adorning the walls, though none of their warmth manages to reach them. Beneath their shoes are lacquered, ornate floors patterned in black-and-red diamond checkerboarding that manage to shine even in the low light, denoting their quality upkeep.
Though, that lack of traditionally-death-associated scenery doesn’t pay off in anyone’s demeanors — Kaito and Kokichi, especially, have been on edge from the word go and have done the opposite of improve the more time passes, and the closer they get to their unexpected rendezvous with Celeste. And while he can take some educated guesses as to why all of them, and Kaito in particular may be set so ill at ease in this place…Shuuichi really doesn’t know what to make of Kokichi’s withdrawn mood, and his aversion to straying too close to the children, perceptible even though they’re all feeling that way.
As the service hallway they’ve emerged from bleeds seamlessly into the comparatively-lavish foyer, Shuuichi can see hints of their real destination at the far end of the hall — though the throne room itself, and the goddess sitting at its helm don’t make themselves known until they’re passing through the double-storied entrance, and all seven of them are momentarily paralyzed by the grandeur of the crowning jewel of Celestia’s Palace.
Shuuichi has been in his fair share of nice places. The literal mansion he’s lived in for the past several years; a handful holiday homes across Japan and Europe, five stupidly-expensive private schools, some pretty stellar temples and theaters and event venues. Point is — he has spent a not insignificant amount of time in places that leave his jaw dropping, at least a little.
Yet all of that manages to be nothing, compared to the cathedral they stand within now.
There are certain colors that just ooze opulence, ooze wealth — warm gold, scarlet red, royal purple, midnight black — and that’s what adorns the extravagant grand hall they’re corralled into, from swooping cathedral ceilings to luscious woven rugs to the ornamental chandeliers glimmering with the thousands of individual candlelights lit up and shining within each one. It manages to pale in comparison, though, to the stained glass scenes set like individual gemstones into ceiling-scraping arched windows, the projection of artificial golden light shining through each unique depiction of Celeste in such a way it can only be explained by the supernatural. For the first time since arriving in the Underworld there is some semblance of life in the air, if only a thin veneer over the veil of death hanging over the entire place, its atmosphere exuberant enough that Shuuichi’s sure even Byakuya would balk.
And at the very end of it all, the dragon lounging atop her golden throne of hoarded treasures and souls sits the woman herself — the woman who he has heard so much of lately, since Rantarou’s name appeared on her registry of the Underworld-bound souls, and Shuuichi was forced to learn far more about Celestia Ludenberg, Goddess of the Dead, than he ever could have imagined two weeks ago.
Celeste is beautiful, as he had thus far gleaned from her hundreds of appearances on slot machines in the Casino of Envy, as well as the portraits of her canonized in each of the shimmering cathedral windows framing the room and her throne alike. But seeing her illustrated, or forged in golden statuettes, or even immortalized in the stained glass is yet again nothing in comparison to the real thing. Red and black appear to be her preference, and not for no reason; a frilled, gothic lolita dress the same shade of the night sky compliments her deathly pale, porcelain skin elegantly. The only spot of color save for her white long-collared blouse and her red-bottomed stiletto shoes is a wine-tinted rose pinned to her bust, perfectly matching the ruby-red of her piercing eyes, the actual rubies twinkling alongside the golden bauble earrings they’re set within. Her features are delicate, ethereal, angelic, save for the air of something dangerous possessing them. Even from just barely past the threshold to the room, there is much to be observed about the goddess who has so easily brought them here — where from atop her golden, illustrious throne, Celeste is watching them with knowing intrigue shining in her irises and a poised, polite smile crimping the corners of her lips just slightly as she parts them to speak.
“At long last…it appears the time has finally come for my son to return to me. How delighted I am to see you again after all of these years, my love.”
Notes:
+ woof! that sure was a lot!
+ and i mean that in EVERY sense of the word. it's the longest chapter i've written by far and i've been working to finish it non-stop, the demigods are in a lot of new places, there's a half dozen new characters to contend with, the list goes on and on! do we see what i meant, about things picking up in intensity just a touch?
+ to be very candid, i have not played ultra despair girls, and this chapter was conceptualized so many years ago that i WAS planning to play it eventually. suffice to say that did not happen, so my homework lately has been a LOT of voice files and wiki page scrubbing. but for juggling a whole bunch of new, loud personalities, i'm pretty happy with how it came out! i HAVE, however, played thh enough times to know and adore and love celeste, and i am SO excited we get to meet her now. i hope you look forward to that too!
+ and with that said, that's about it from me for now! despite all odds i DID get this chapter out when i planned to, and am on track for the next update being roughly a month from today (more or less on purposefully the anniversary of my college graduation, when pointy objects initially came back from the dead!). any and all speculation and thoughts and theories i will GLADLY read through, both here in the comments as well as over on tumblr, @ gontagokuhara !
+ so with all my love, thanks for being here, and i'll see you next time!
+ content warnings: a brief panic episode, and lots of talk of death
Chapter 24: almost, but not quite
Summary:
“At long last…it appears the time has finally come for my son to return to me. How delighted I am to see you again after all of these years, my love.”
Of all the ways Shuuichi was anticipating Celeste’s desire to see them panning out, it definitely wasn’t…well, it wasn’t that.
Because. Uh…what?
“Uh…what?”
Notes:
+ hi there!
+ this is coming out more or less a month on the dot from last chapter, and more or less right around the same time as i posted a chapter the night before my college graduation last year. i'm happy about that, and just as happy with how this chapter shaped up after it gave me a fair amount of trouble!
+ not much further ado this time, so i'll save my major comments for *after* the question we left off on last time is solved. other than the usual shoutout thanking my beloved beta reader/kokichi correspondent evan captorvatiing, that's all from me — let's do this thing!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“At long last…it appears the time has finally come for my son to return to me. How delighted I am to see you again after all of these years, my love.”
Of all the ways Shuuichi was anticipating Celeste’s desire to see them panning out, it definitely wasn’t…well, it wasn’t that.
Because. Uh…what?
“Uh…what?”
Ever eloquent, Shuuichi proves to be. But he’s not the only one left speechless by the Goddess of the Dead’s bombshell of a greeting.
For several seconds Shuuichi’s paralyzed, not even paying attention to the snickering schoolchildren who have all clustered towards one side of the sprawling throne room — no, as the jewel-toned stained glass surrounding them makes crystal clear, the true centerpiece of this room is Celeste, and her demure smile sharpens as the seven of them come to terms with that.
And with just that, honestly; he’s not got nearly enough bandwidth to process the other elephant that’s materialized in the room. But she wants them to, clearly, watching them with a shine in her eyes that betrays her simmering amusement as what she’s said takes hold, and gets the group of them scrambling.
Shuuichi also isn’t the only one who on instinct snaps his head over to look at Kokichi; they’ve hardly had much time to process and form actual theories, but the flash of oil-slicked plum hair in his periphery and the many memories Shuuichi has of Kokichi’s cunning, attention-stealing nature is what most draws his focus over to him in this moment. The same appears to be true of everyone else; even Gonta and Kaito, also unclaimed like Shuuichi and Kokichi are and therefore potential candidates for this little plot twist, have their wide eyes pinned on Kokichi for several seconds where no one says anything at all — just stares.
He’s clearly aware of all of the eyes on him; in the few moments where nothing happens, all Shuuichi can really focus on other than the Celeste’s son epiphany is how he can practically see the gears in Kokichi’s brain working overtime as he stands deathly still, bunched up with tension. Fully cognizant of what everyone’s thinking, and trying to work through himself before anyone else does whether the assumption has any merit. Whether he’s about to find out who his godly parent is after seventeen years as an orphan, in front of a rapt, wide-eyed audience.
…In the stifling silence, Shuuichi really, really doesn’t envy him.
Eventually, from across the room Celeste delicately clears her throat, drawing all eyes back to her; just in time for them to see the slightest wrinkle develop in her nose while she gazes down at Kokichi from her throne.
“No,” she says simply, clear as a bell. Unmistakably a little cold.
Amidst the gentle echo of her voice around the room, Kokichi tries and mostly succeeds at hiding a flinch at the denial — though he recovers soon enough, pivoting the motion to instead whirl around to face Shuuichi, mouth pulled into a smile that’s likely equally as defensive as it is genuinely curious. “Shuuichi Saihara, demigod of the dead, huh?”
Shuuichi isn’t left with long to idle on the flagrant deflection, nor any of the emotions it spurs — the fact remains it is a valid one, and with Kokichi officially out of the running on this particular mystery, the eyes that were scrutinizing his face for hints of his parentage now attach themselves to Shuuichi. Around him he can hear the telltale pitch of whispered uproar passing over his friends at the theory that is him quickly taking shape, but he’s a little too preoccupied with how dry his mouth suddenly feels — and how the creepy children keep giggling at him from across the room — to really comment much on the prospect himself.
Even to say that it can’t be him, because everything he’s been told so far suggests a godly father. But nope. Mouth firmly sealed shut.
‘Main character’, my ass…!
It’s not Celeste’s voice that distracts everyone from their theorizing this time — first it’s the motion of her rising from her throne, an air of grace to her movements that manages to put her back in the proverbial spotlight before she even opens her mouth again.
Which she does, her piercing eyes glued to Shuuichi, now.
“Mm…almost, but not quite.”
…Once again, Shuuichi is forced to dumbly ask himself: uh, what?
Unlike with Kokichi, while Shuuichi flounders under the very weird and very specific thing Celeste just said, the discussion this time around manages to be a lot louder, Kiibo starting off with a bang as they shout an explosive: “Wait a moment! So it is not Shuuichi, either?!”
“No, Gonta don’t think so…Shuuichi says he have an unknown godly father, right?”
“Aha, uhm, Harumaki — do you have any idea what’s going on? I’m a little…”
“No, I…I don’t. I’ve never heard anything about Celeste having a child…ever.”
“Hey, Gonts — dont’cha think you and her look toootally alike? Red eyes and all? My money’s on you, big guy!”
“K-Kokichi—!”
The buzz of his friends’ hushed devolvement into bickering registers as nothing more than background noise in Shuuichi’s brain as he just continues to stare at Celeste — and she, with that same prim, knowing smile, stares back at him.
‘Almost, but not quite’.
Celeste wanted the seven of them here for a reason. Whether or not she knew they would enter the Underworld in her domain — which would be an all-but-delusional assumption to make to the contrary, given their experience in the casino even before the dead kids showed up — she was able to bring them straight into her home without so much as a weapon flashed, with the very specific purpose of meeting her son again. Four of the seven of them are boys and unclaimed, so obviously: one of the four of them has her as a godly parent.
It’s not Kokichi. It’s not Shuuichi, either — almost, but not quite. As Kokichi has put forth, it could be Gonta, but it could also be—
…It could also be Kaito, who is looking exceptionally pale, even compared to how off his demeanor has been since they got here.
The impression worsens considerably when amidst the others’ arguing, Shuuichi’s theorizing, and Kaito’s skyrocketing distress, Celeste silently leaves her throne behind, and begins languidly moving in the direction of Shuuichi and his friends. Immediately it sends a ripple chilling effect across the room, efficiently clamming them all up — even the children, watching the goddess just as the seven of them do while she approaches the group, her lacy train gliding across the baroque floors in such a way as if to suggest she’s floating her way towards them, completely weightless.
When Celeste reaches the seven of them, she doesn’t stop; entirely she circumvents those of them standing closer to the front of the cluster in order to reach what — who, as is quickly dawning on Shuuichi — is trying very hard to hide in the background.
Even in her extreme heels and with her ornate, spiraled pigtails Celeste still doesn’t quite reach Kaito’s height as she comes to stand before him, hands clasped delicately in front of herself. For a few moments she simply appraises him, not so much as a stray breath to be heard in the room as the rest of them just spectate what is clearly not meant for any of the rest of them. When she raises a hand Kaito flinches, but even if his discomfort is obvious, she ignores it altogether as her palm finds his cheek, clawed silver rings glinting in the artificial light as she says with more affection than anything else she’s offered so far:
“Hello again, my beloved Kaito.”
As a reply, Kaito manages no more than a strangled, “Nngh,” before his severely-dilated pupils roll back into his head and he collapses to the floor, appearing to faint.
“…Oh, dear,” Celeste observes over the collective gasp the rest of them let out, hand poised over her mouth as she peers down at him for a few moments. Then, appearing rather unperturbed, she turns her head to address the children and asks: “I believe he may be in need of rousing. A bucket of water should suffice, yes?”
“I—I don’t think that will be necessary!” Shuuichi cuts in, moving as Maki does to rush over and crouch at Kaito’s side, where a few gentle pats on the face by her are all it takes to get his eyelids fluttering. In response Celeste shrugs, waving a hand at the Warriors to — hopefully — ward them away from waterboarding his friend who is already having an observably rough day.
As Maki tersely agrees, “He’s fine,” Kaito’s lids open fully, though he’s clearly pretty disoriented, not responding much to the hand Maki waves over his eyes — nor how Shuuichi leans over him to at least try and assess his condition. Not given much of anything for her efforts, Maki lets out a vexed huff. “I guess that explains the…ghost thing.”
With Kaito still out of commission, Shuuichi’s the one left to shrug his shoulders in response when she looks to him for input — this is very firmly out of his wheelhouse. Indignantly, from somewhere behind them Kiibo protests: “That is not the most pressing matter at hand — is his head alright?”
“Is his head ever alright?”
“Now is not a good time for jokes, Kokichi.”
“Are you kidding? No offense or anything to your humor sensibilities, Gonts, but I couldn’t crack a better joke than known ‘fraidy-cat Kaito seeing ghosts and being surprised with her as a godly parent if I tried!”
Unhelpfully, Celeste muses, “Such fears are a shame, especially with such a lovely gift…but I suppose they are only to be anticipated. And they are nothing some extended time spent adapting to things here cannot effectively remedy, anyhow.”
At that suggestion Kaito spurs — if only to clutch tightly onto one of Shuuichi’s hands, eyes still a little spacy as he weakly asks, “I just hallucinated the past few minutes, r-right?”
Shuuichi tries a sheepish smile down at him. “I’m afraid not.”
Kaito groans, thunking his head back miserably against the floor, apparently disinterested in making an attempt to get to his feet. And while Shuuichi is sympathetic to what he’s got to be dealing with, Maki isn’t — not enough to dissuade her from getting Kaito back into a vertical position, at least.
“Come on, up — Gonta, you can actually lift him, help me get him off his ass already.”
The implied dig at his physical strength is neither offensive nor untrue, so Shuuichi is quick to move out of the way in order to let Gonta do as he’s requested, and work with Maki to get Kaito at least slightly upright — though even while technically on his feet, he’s only kept aloft while bodily leaning against the two of them for support. Celeste hasn’t strayed far from where she was standing near Kaito when he fainted, continuing to watch him with lidded but no less attentive eyes, and from his new position Shuuichi can see the Warriors of Hope watching all of this unfolding just as rapturously, significantly more delighted by it than any of the rest of them.
Clearly, they were anticipating this from the start; their ominously-vague narration throughout their successful interception, and excitement about an upcoming big reveal just outside of the palace entrance makes that obvious enough to anyone who’s been paying attention. And that, coupled with the ‘Little Bro’ comments made more than once…
Things are quickly coming together in Shuuichi’s brain, but it’s Maki that voices their shared suspicions first, eyeing the children warily as she struggles a little under Kaito’s dwarfing weight and stature. “Am I correct in assuming that those are Kaito’s…‘siblings’?”
The implied air-quotes in her question are heavy, and not particularly flattering, either. But Celeste does answer, an amused laugh audible in her voice though she shields it behind her hand. “That is a logical, if also a juvenile assumption…though you are incorrect regardless. The Warriors of Hope are simply children who have joined me in my domain over this last millennia. Yes, they are merely dead in a way dissimilar to humans, or even demigods, and as a result have been left with nowhere to go but here. Hmm…I suppose one could call them my ‘assistants’. I have only ever had one child.”
Her gaze shifts to pin very intently on Kaito as she concludes her rather forthcoming explanation, leaving anxious sweat soaking his purple fringe to his forehead. Shuuichi, meanwhile, begins to stare all the more intently at Celeste, because…
‘Dead in a way dissimilar to humans, or even demigods’? If they’re not Celeste’s children and instead her assistants, then why their repeated insistence behind the ‘Little Bro’ moniker? And…what did Celeste mean, when she said what she did about Shuuichi?
Right now, she seems amenable enough to answer questions. No one else has said anything to fill the quiet settling over the room. Who knows how long her honesty will last — how long they can afford to spend here, with the time limit looming over their already distorted perceptions of its passage. It might not be the most important thing right now, not even close…but the strange feeling it sends up his spine is too unnerving to leave alone, when there exists an opportunity to dispel it.
“Excuse me, Celeste? I have another question, I—I…” Though he stumbles under the pressure of the goddess’s gaze turning on him, he doesn’t allow the sharpness of Celeste’s attention to dissuade him from seeing this through. “…Before. When Kokichi pitched the idea that you might be my godly parent, instead of fully denying it, you said…‘almost, but not quite’. And I don’t really understand what you meant by saying something like that. Something that…purposeful.”
It’s subtle, and something he’s only learned to watch for from his days spent with Kokichi, but for the first time since meeting her Shuuichi sees the barest hints of genuine surprise cross her face. While mostly obscured by the calculated motion she makes to cock her head to the side — not unlike what he remembers seeing earlier demonstrated by Monaca — her eyes do widen the slightest bit, like Shuuichi’s the one that’s said something out of the ordinary; not just parroted her own back at her.
“I do not understand. You are attempting a joke, yes?”
“…No?”
The smallest pinch forms between her thin, manicured brows. “You are truly unaware?”
Shuuichi shrugs, helpless. “I’m completely lost. I didn’t even know you were real two weeks ago.”
She blinks owlishly at him for a few moments, before resummoning her composure and puffing a genteel laugh in response, once again hidden behind her hand — though it sounds significantly more genuine than her previous ones. “Yes, I see now. It is not solely your godly parent who has left you in the dark…quite ironic, given Naegi and his boy’s, mm…homegrown means of insight.”
‘Naegi and his boy’? And is their ‘homegrown means of insight’ meant to be Rantarou?!
“Well, I suppose there is no time to mince words on bygone imbecility. No…but I believe I hold some insights of my own that may prove valuable.” With a soft hum she turns her back to the seven of them, though she levels Shuuichi with another protracted look cast over her shoulder, along with a simple hand movement beckoning them to follow. “Come. Perhaps you all will learn something useful.”
With that, she begins to glide across the floor and back towards her throne, the instructions she leaves behind clearly defined and even more clearly not up for debate — not that he would, after even the most nebulous of references to Rantarou. Shuuichi makes a point to keep a wide berth between himself and the hemline of her dramatic train until it’s followed her to stand atop the raised throne platform, and he is left along with the rest of his friends looking up at her, waiting.
Celeste takes her time in gathering her thoughts, but eventually, with her hands folded elegantly in front of her, she begins…whatever it is she’s deigned to tell them.
“As Goddess of the Dead, I am kept very busy by my divine duties…the obvious ones, of course, here in my home domain as well as those that on occasion demand my attention on Earth and in the Gods’ Realm. It is not easy, the level of dedication required to perform in my role, to keep the natural order of things in balance…and it is for that reason that for most of my existence I have never been in the position, nor even possessed the desire to mother children of my own.
“However…as the Warriors of Hope have come to join me over these last several hundred years, I have developed a sort of fondness for them. Not as my own children, but they have served as a gradual catalyst of…I suppose it could be called my realization of a desire for more. That is not to say that it is wise for one to simply rush into these things…the great many demigods like yourselves who have prematurely made their eternal home in my domain are caution enough against recklessness of that sort.”
For some time Celeste has projected her storytelling more broadly to the entire room, but as she draws to a wistful, extended pause her gaze again finds Kaito — on his own two feet at this point, but Maki and Gonta’s helping hands haven’t strayed far from his side. Closer to the platform than most everyone else Shuuichi doesn’t turn back to look, but he can’t imagine Kaito nor any of them feel particularly good about the note she leaves off on before continuing, less decadence in her tone as her mood palpably shifts.
“…Now, fast forward a few years — hmm, perhaps to you all, it will seem a bit more than that. In essence, despite my endless work here in the Underworld, I come to make an unlikely connection. I find myself married, and even stranger…I find myself wishing, for the very first time, to have a child of my own. Our own. And so we agreed to build a family.”
“Wait a minute,” Maki interrupts, cutting off Celeste in the process — to which she wrinkles her nose again, similarly displeased as she had been the first time. “No one has ever mentioned you being married before. Not even Hajime or Nagito. Not even…”
“Indeed.” There’s underlying derision in her reply, but her face slides into picturesque neutrality soon enough, casting aside the icy tone shortly after. “Both of us had appearances to maintain, duties that prove easier to perform without unwanted attention directed our way, when we shared a mutual preference for operating in the shadows. So it was additionally our mutual decision to maintain a…degree of secrecy, I suppose, in our shared affairs. And really…gossip amongst the gods can be so catty. You will find that I am well-positioned to understand this.”
The laugh Celeste allows at the brief aside is more so a feigned imitation of one than anything genuine. Her smile remains theatrically polite as she carries on. “And then one day, my partner simply left without a word, newborn demigod child in tow. It would take me some time to find that that demigod had been placed into the care of a human woman…with my spouse nowhere to be found. All at once my betrothed, and the young child meant to share a life with me and my Kaito simply vanished, leaving just us two in this place. And while there is nothing I will not do to achieve what it is I desire…there was little I could do for a fledgling demigod, with no practical knowledge on how to raise one on my own. No…I was unprepared to mother a child in such conditions. With Enoshima’s threat looming ever-presently over my home…and with Gundham’s own tragedy so fresh in my thoughts.”
Celeste sighs, posture unspooling the slightest bit for perhaps the first time since they arrived here. Shuuichi’s mind, already racing, seizes on the last thing she’s just said as she concludes. “My son, as much as I longed to hold him in my arms…I could not do so without imagining what may become of him if his existence was discovered. I am by no means a selfless woman, but I could not rationalize continuing to endanger him by his proximity to his birthright. I could not limit his horizons by relegating him to a lonely childhood with an ever-busy, ill-equipped mother. So to keep him safe, and allow him to properly flourish…I gave him up to an elderly human couple to raise in the human world, in hopes of loving him from afar until circumstances shifted in such a way that I may be allowed to see him once again. And now here we are.”
…Here they are, indeed. Shuuichi isn’t even close to understanding the full picture, but from what he hears of Kaito’s and…his background, their role in all of this…
Despite how it leaves his own stomach twisting, as Kaito gruffly speaks up from behind, Shuuichi, really, truly does not envy him. “S-So my grandparents — they knew? About…m-me?”
“They did,” Celeste answers with a minute nod of her head. “Such is the case for most demigods in comparable situations, I have come to find.”
Most, but not all. Almost…but not quite.
“I still don’t…really understand what you mean. What you meant, when you said ‘almost’.”
Shuuichi does — he thinks so, at least. But he needs to hear it for sure. He needs to know.
Having exhausted her longer, heavier story already, Celeste does not mince further words in clarifying his role in all of this.
“I am not your godly parent — my Kaito remains my only biological heir. However, I am still…technically married to your mother, so that would make me your…hmm, I believe humans may find it appropriate to refer to me as your step-mother.”
“M-My mom?” On reflex Shuuichi’s hand finds the bag strapped to his back, where he knows the cracked portrait of the two of them is inside, wrapped up safely in a sweatshirt. “But she’s — my mom is dead. And she never mentioned a wife, or a spouse, or anything else while she was alive — a-are you really married to my mom?”
Celeste raises an eyebrow, as if he’s speaking nonsense. “I am married to a goddess, of whom is your godly parent.”
“No, that’s — that’s wrong.” Shuuichi may be blind to most of his heritage, yes; but this he does know without a shadow of a doubt. “My mom was human, which means my biological father is my godly parent. I think you must be mistaking me for someone else.”
Not only is she regarding him in such a way to suggest he’s crazy; now something like offense crosses her face as she scrutinizes him from her position above him. “Well, when one takes into consideration that I am most certainly married to your godly parent, and was in fact present at your birth, I’m afraid it is you who is mistaken. It is not my place to dictate the intricacies of your human relationships, up to and including your human mother — but she did not give birth to you. I am betrothed to the woman who did, and subsequently placed you into that human’s care when she left. Furthermore, I have little personal nor professional interest in the consequences of not being transparent with you in this regard…when it seems no one else in your life has been.”
By the end of her retort Celeste’s tone softens into something more neutral, but it does little to dull the jarring, agonizing silence that settles after she concludes her correction of Shuuichi’s life as he’s understood it for the past almost eighteen years.
She just…says it so matter-of-factly. That for his entire life he’s been lied to by omission in more ways than he ever could have suspected — and nearly all of them he couldn’t have even comprehended two weeks ago. The people who took him in after his mom died are gods, his history teacher for an entire school year is a god, Rantarou is half-god and can see the future, they managed to keep all of this a secret from him until the world turned upside-down and suddenly he was thrust into the middle of it: a clueless demigod burdened with saving the world when for his entire life previous, the most notable things about him were his rich adoptive family, and his dead mother.
And…his mom…
It was always just the two of them. Rantarou and his family existed in his periphery, yes, but for the first twelve years of his life it was just Shuuichi and his mom. She never dated, never spoke of anyone else, never even really had the time — between looking after him, and working constantly to provide for the two of them, the only free time she had she usually spent with Makoto and Byakuya, because Shuuichi was with Rantarou more often than not after he started school.
Isako Saihara loved Shuuichi like a mother loves her child, because she was. He is. No matter what, whether or not they’re related by blood, Isako raised him, and Shuuichi is her son.
…He’s just never thought to ask that question — never thought to challenge the notion that she is his biological mom — because she never gave him any reason to think otherwise.
But if Celeste is to be believed — and despite what he’d like to believe, the more he dwells on the details, the more that appears to truly be the case — then…then that means his mom lied to him, too. When she’d make off-handed comments about how easy of a pregnancy he was, or reminisce about his birth name coming to her originally in a dream, or joke about how they didn’t look alike in the slightest, or wave away curious questions about his father…all of it was just to deflect away from the truth of who he is, the truth of how she actually became his mom?
Because that has to be it, doesn’t it? Maybe she could have just not wanted him to know he was adopted until he was older, and never got the chance to tell him before she died — but can he really convince himself that that’s the truth? Can Shuuichi really presume his mother to have been so naïve as to not have known what was going on, when she accepted the burdens of raising a child given to him by a goddess needing to be rid of the one she gave birth to? When he ended up at the same primary school as another demigod, and was immediately accepted alongside his mom by gods Byakuya and Makoto when their future-seeing son befriended Shuuichi on practically day one?
Coincidences exist, up to a point. But when he looks holistically at all of the pieces he’s been granted access to these past few weeks, and holds them up to what he does understand of his own past…there’s no way things like that just happen.
But why?
“So I’m really…a-and if Shuuichi’s your step-kid, then does that mean the two of us are…?”
“Well, who is Shuuichi’s godly parent? She’s clearly no friend of yours anymore. He deserves to know.”
“…And how did your wife even…find my mom?”
Under the three of them’s questioning — Kaito disbelieving, Maki impatient, Shuuichi just feeling kind of breathless — Celeste’s smile falters and eventually she sighs, gaze cast away from the rest of the room entirely. After several moments of silent consideration she slowly descends back into her throne, hands tightly folded in her lap as she turns now to frown down at them — frown down at Shuuichi.
“I so hoped I would not have to have this conversation with you alone, darling.”
“ …What are you talking about?” Shuuichi asks quietly, something that feels like both suspicion and dread creeping up his neck.
“Perhaps it should be self-evident that the Goddess of the Dead has few happy stories to tell.” Celeste’s attempted smile is flat, mirthless, as she makes no effort to feign one that’s genuine. “You will find this to remain accurate with regard to my stories of children like you.”
Before she can be asked to clarify what she means, Celeste continues. “Despite having no children of my own — until my Kaito, of course — I have what you may call a…complex relationship with the inevitabilities of you demigods. A professional relationship with the other gods, naturally, is integral to the maintenance of my role; and I am unique from my colleagues in that it is of course my home domain where all souls come to rest at the conclusion of their mortal lives…no matter when in their life cycles such deaths occur. However, unlike many of my peers, my work requires me to deal with the mortal caretakers of these children, and as such I have come to recognize a pattern in how they tend to arrive in this place.
“In truth, it took me some time to find you, after my wife left and chose to integrate you fully into the human world. Your godly parent hid you well, and to be candid, with ample reason — there exist very few beings inhabiting any of our realms that Junko Enoshima despises more than her, and she possessed the foresight to recognize as much to be true when she made the decisions she did. You are also well aware of the…differences between the child you were born as, and the young man you are today. It is for these reasons that for many years your existence went unchallenged by Enoshima, as for all intents and purposes her…limitations were adequately respected by your living arrangements, and therefore no reasons existed for you to incur her wrath.
“But Junko Enoshima is not a rational being. Just as my duties are to shepherd and oversee the souls of the dead, Enoshima exists solely to sow discord and wreak havoc for her own amusement. And once she learned of your existence, who it was exactly that placed you into the care of that human woman…I believe your new guardians chose to tell you that it was a car accident. Quick. Painless. For the sake of decency, I can only speculate, but nevertheless…
“…You, like your godly mother, have long been on Junko Enoshima’s radar, Shuuichi.”
Around him, the world as he knows it falls silent. One could hear a pin drop in the Underworld following the stark, desolate stillness Celeste’s final, lingering confession casts across her throne room. It’s not as if Shuuichi himself notices, his heartbeat echoing thunderously through his ears, struck with grief of a new, unfathomable kind as he combs through his recollections of the worst morning of his life under this new lens.
He still remembers the night before he lost his mom like it was yesterday.
It was a weeknight. He’d had a test in class that day, hadn’t studied enough for it, and was really not looking forward to telling her when she picked him up for school the next morning how he thought he’d failed it. Like he always did when her paralegal job had her working late into the night he was sleeping over at Rantarou’s house, but that night was weird; Rantarou had declined any attempts by Shuuichi to play video games together or any of the other fun things they usually did during sleepovers because he wasn’t feeling well with a headache, and really wasn’t up to speaking much with Shuuichi, either. Makoto ordered Shuuichi’s favorite kind of pizza because Rantarou didn’t want any, and with him not acting like his usual self, Shuuichi had gone to bed early.
The next thing he knew, Makoto was nudging him awake in the dark and early hours of the morning, crouched down by the couch he usually slept on at their house, crying for the first time in front of Shuuichi as he tried to get his attention. Byakuya was on the other side of Rantarou’s room by the door, making a hushed, terse phone call with his other arm wrapped in a hug around his son. Rantarou was just tightly clinging to his dad, staring off into space at nothing with silent tears dripping down his face. And then Makoto told him what happened, and then…
And then Shuuichi spent the next five years terrified of the kinds of car crashes he thought took his mom from him.
A quick, painless car accident — that’s what Shuuichi was told by everyone in the aftermath. The car accident was the reason Byakuya went to identify her body instead of him. The car accident was the reason for a closed-casket funeral. The car accident was the reason there were no interviews by police, no further investigation, no follow-up on more details — just a quick, painless accident while she was driving home from work. No reason for Shuuichi to question the circumstances of her death further, when already his head was under the water of paralyzing, blindsiding grief.
But the Goddess of the Dead is telling him another story. One he has no reason not to believe, given everything she’s said so far, her unquestioned authority on the subject as the person who registers each and every soul that passes through her domain. She knows who he is, claims to have known where he was ‘hidden’ by his godly parent after she left — and what reason would she have to lie? To bring them all here ahead of the end of the world in order to tell the truth about Kaito’s origins, tell what Shuuichi believes is the truth about his origins, only to spin with a straight face this gruesome, life-upending lie about how his mom was actually murdered? When above all else, her singular authority is over death and everything it encompasses, and any conceivable reasons for her to be dishonest are nonexistent?
…No, Celeste isn’t lying. As she said, for perhaps the first time, the circumstances of his mother’s death are being relayed to him with naked honesty, without skirting the grisly truth for the sake of decency. And as the realities of that pierce through his skin, burrow into the marrow of his bones, burn through his eyes and down his cheeks, it’s not just unfathomable grief that stuns Shuuichi down to his core — but an unknown, panoptic, all-consuming anger that possesses him, too.
Anger at Junko, who violently stole his mom from him for nothing. Anger at Celeste, for relaying this to him in that cool and collected tone, for turning his world on its axis with only a distant, reserved sort of sympathy — pity — spared to him in the process. Anger at his godly mother, whoever she is, for abandoning him and letting her enemies kill his real mom. Anger at Makoto and Byakuya, who lied about how his mom was murdered by one of their fellow gods from the word go, who lied about all of the god stuff for years until he was confronted with it on his own. And maybe even anger at Rantarou, too; because he was awake before Shuuichi that morning, he was acting weird the night prior, he knew about the gods and could see the future — did he know this, too?
All any of the people he loves have done for his entire life is lie to him, and it’s all just so much.
Everyone in the room is staring at him, stuck in dismayed, pitying quiet as they watch him collapse in on himself. They probably have been this entire time, likely thinking the same thing he is. So he might as well choke out the question burning a hole into all of their brains.
“Who is she?”
Who did this to me?
For some time, it’s been hard to see — or maybe Shuuichi just hasn’t been seeing, period, since somewhere in the middle of Celeste talking about his mom. Either way he finally lifts both fists to scrub at his eyes, vainly trying to clear away the grief leaking down his face and stifle his hiccuped breathing that serves as the only real noise in the room before he focuses his attention back on Celeste. As he anticipates, just like his friends and the Warriors are she’s already watching him, lips pursed into a discontented frown as she appears to wrestle with the very clear answer to the question he’s posed.
Eventually: “…I have revealed to you so much about who you are by myself. Revealed to you many…emotional things already, when you still have much of your mission ahead of you. It is simply not my place to be the one to reveal this to you, as well.”
“Are you serious?” Shuuichi demands, indignation putting power behind his otherwise fractured voice. “You tell me all of that, and wh-when I ask you to give me a name so the woman who abandoned me, a-abandoned my real mom to die — who abandoned you, and your son — can face some god damn accountability for what she’s done, you protect her?”
For the first time something like shame touches Celeste’s features, hands tightening in her lap; nonetheless, she continues, “I see I am upsetting you…however, my mind will not change on this matter. But not to fret; there is little reason to believe you will be left in the dark for much longer.”
Shuuichi scoffs, his hands bunched into useless fists at his sides. “So that’s it, then? You’ve said your piece, and we’re just m-meant to move on now?”
“No…almost, but not quite.” Celeste’s lips twitch at her attempted joke, hands sliding to settle on the armrests of her throne. He feels more than hears the involuntary, wounded laugh that tears out of his own throat in response. “Come here, Shuuichi, darling. There are a few more gifts I must give you before I send you on your way.”
Despite feeling firmly rooted in place, still he manages to detach his feet from the shining diamond-checkered floor and step forward on unsteady legs, his knees threatening to buckle as he marches up to meet where the Goddess of Death is now standing before her throne, waiting for him. Once fully elevated onto her platform and standing with the toes of his shoes only just brushing the hem of her skirt Shuuichi turns to face her, having to glance up at where she looms several inches taller than him in her dramatic high-heels. Gently she smiles down at him, at the tears still streaming miserably down his cheeks. “First, a promise.”
She takes a measured breath, nodding down at him once. “Throughout your short life, you have possessed many parental figures, most of whom are not by birth. Byakuya Togami and Makoto Naegi. Myself. Your mortal mother, Isako. You may not share our blood, but you are our son, and we love you all the same. You are my son — not by blood, but my son nonetheless — and so my home, and my dominion over the many souls that reside here are in part yours. When you have finished your mission, when you have righted our world, return to me at your leisure. When you do, I will ensure that your mortal mother is here to greet you by my side.
“Second, an heirloom.” For an altogether different reason Shuuichi’s hands begin to shake, his heart begins to pound loudly in his ears; Celeste does not give him time to respond, time to even process, materializing something into her hands and looking them over for only the briefest of moments before extending them, inviting him to take what awaits in her palms.
Perhaps fittingly — if confusingly — what she presents to him is a pair of gloves. Black, stitched together from a thin material he doesn’t recognize, their only discernible feature otherwise the two rows of small silver studs glittering across the third set of knuckles on each one. After a moment he takes them as she makes clear she wants, eyes on his hands as he carefully pulls the gloves on and tries to ignore how he can feel her watching him do so.
He flexes his fingers a few times, marveling a little in spite of everything at how as soon as he’s pulled them into place, it stops feeling as though he’s wearing gloves at all. Almost like a second skin. Magic, he’d guess; the look he spares up at Celeste confirms as much as she tells him, “These will assist you as you learn to control your abilities.”
“And finally…a hint.”
With the tenderness of a mother, and the grace of a goddess, Celeste slowly lifts a hand to gently grasp his chin, the pressure just enough to tilt his face upwards so she can press a long, tingling kiss into the center of his forehead. Under the weight of it and everything else about the past few weeks Shuuichi’s eyes fall shut, sniffing mournfully beneath this moment of desperately-needed kindness, and they don’t reopen until she’s carefully pulling away and murmuring to herself with apparent satisfaction, “I believe that should suffice.”
When his eyes do blink open several moments later, though he can’t for the life of him place exactly what, something feels profoundly different.
“I have held you all long enough.” Louder now, to the whole group, Celeste intones over Shuuichi’s shoulder: “The children will now take you to your final destination.”
At her dismissal Shuuichi steps back, retreating down off of the throne platform with his eyes on his new gloves. When he glances up again he finds Celeste smiling down now at all of them, red eyes warm.
“Except for my Kaito, who will stay here with me.”
From behind, Kaito lets out something akin to a strangled cough — the first interjection from any of Shuuichi’s friends for a minute, now. “N-No way in Hell, lady! M-Ma’am. Uh.”
“Mm…this is not a choice that will be made at your discretion, my love.”
There’s fondness in her tone, but she’s undeniably serious, too — it really isn’t her intention to allow Kaito to go with them to the penultimate confrontation with Gundham. Which is, very decidedly, despite how Shuuichi’s head still feels pretty firmly like scrambled eggs, not part of the plan.
“Th-That’s not really—”
“You can’t just keep him here,” Maki interrupts darkly, steamrolling right over where Shuuichi struggles to muster the same intensity in his voice. He may not agree with her…confrontational framing, but she certainly speaks for all of them in that separating their group, and kidnapping Kaito is a terrible idea.
The eerily familiar motion of Celeste cocking her head purposefully to the side is matched with her smile growing unquestionably sharper. More dangerous. “It is almost cute how you think you hold any sway inside of my home, little girl. But do not fret…I shall allow my Kaito to leave with you — once you are finished. In the meantime, there is much I wish to catch up on with my son.”
“W-Wait a damn second!” It looks as though reasoning with Celeste is a lost cause — so Kaito instead turns his pleas to the six of them, already looking a little sweaty again. “We can’t just — you guys c-can’t just leave me here!”
“It does not sound as though we have a choice,” Kiibo repeats, eyelights flitting nervously up and over at Celeste.
“Of course we do! We’re goin’ after the big guy next, right?! It would be super reckless to walk in there down a man!” Now Kaito looks to Shuuichi, shaking his head desperately. “I don’t want to stay here, dude! Not now that we’re — I want to stay on the world-saving dream team — I want to help!”
Shuuichi wants that, too. More than anything right now, he doesn’t want to split up. Let any of his friends out of his sight. But as everyone has been hammering into their heads from basically the word go, they’re running out of time.
“Kaito…”
“No! Don’t ‘Kaito’ me, Kaede!”
“She’s right.” Now that Shuuichi’s properly — outward-facingly, at least — caught his bearings, the eyes of all of his friends are quick to turn to him. “The clock on our chance is ticking down, and there’s just no fighting her on this.”
“B-But Shuuichi—”
“I know,” he redirects gently, “it’s not fair. It doesn’t feel good, I kind of want to throw up at the thought and none of us want this, but we need to do this now. You’ll be safe here, and we’ll — we’ll be safe when we finish this, too.”
“We’re not gonna leave you behind, bonehead,” Kokichi cuts in for the first time in a while — the same is true of the hint of a smile touching his lips as he says it. “Enjoy your quality time with mother dearest while we’re baiting the freak kids outta here, throwing down with the final boss. We got this.”
Of all things, it appears Kokichi is the most persuasive voice out of all of them on the matter — Kaito pins him with a serious, searching look for several prolonged seconds, before his eyes narrow with purpose. “You promise you got a handle on this? You promise you’ll come back?”
“Total cakewalk, pinky-promise.”
“He’s right, Kaito.” If Kokichi can smile, then Shuuichi can make himself, too — even if his eyes still burn a little, he hopes beyond anything it offers his friends even a shred of reassurance. “We’ll find each other when this is done.”
With a deep, resigned sigh, Kaito finally acquiesces. “‘Kay. Okay. Shit, okay.” Likely with a cue from Celeste, the children begin to move, drifting to surround their group and presumably corral them out towards, as Celeste put it, their final destination. “I’m not worried about you at all, alright? You got this, sidekick. No way the Demi Squad loses with my brother on our side.”
Shuuichi nods, determination to get them all out of this unshaken and firm, even now. “Not a chance in Hell.”
“A-Alright, shit — then I guess the rest of you better get going, you’ve got a world to save! I’ll see you all on the other side of this…whatever it is she wants with me here.”
“You will, I promise — oh, gods, group hug before we go!”
At Kaede’s prompting they all pack in — even the more reluctant of the bunch, namely Maki and Kokichi — to embrace, and Shuuichi uses the moment he spends surrounded and squeezed from all sides to try and ground himself after…everything, the past few minutes. It’s not nearly enough to process it all, not even a fraction of it, but it’s something. And it’s all he’s really going to get before confronting the end of the world.
When they all pull back, Shuuichi sees that Celeste has come to drift off her podium once more, standing at the ready to intercept Kaito with a pleased smile now that he’s accepted that he’ll be keeping her company here. He eyes her nervously, but thankfully doesn’t faint again as she steps up next to him to dismiss the rest of them, eyes on the Warriors poised to guide them out of the throne room.
“To Gundham’s.”
The flinch that ripples through all seven of them has no effect on the children; least of all Monaca, who beams as she sweetly cheers, “Yes, yes, Miss Celeste! To Gundham’s!”
“You heard her!” Masaru barks from up ahead, gesturing them out of the cathedral’s massive double-doors. “Miss Celeste says beat it, so hurry up already! Little Bro and his friends don’t have any more time to waste!”
No, they really, really don’t. So with final parting promises to reunite all in one piece, and departing, lingering looks to Kaito and his mom left behind in the throne room, Shuuichi and five of his friends are led out of Celestia’s Palace and back into the death-soaked ambience of the Underworld by the Warriors of Hope. He’s hardly even caught his breath in the cloying, foggy atmosphere when from in front of him Kaede gasps, racing forward to grasp his gloved hands and blurt out:
“W-Woah, Shuuichi, your—!”
And of course, it’s only once they’ve disembarked towards where Gundham awaits them that they realize that at some point, Shuuichi’s eyes have turned purple.
Notes:
+ not exactly at '17k word chapter' levels, but i'd say the 8k we got packed quite a punch!
+ a lot of questions got answered this time around, and i've been having lots of fun going through the commented theories and giggling at the people who were both very wrong in their guesses (i believe i saw someone put $100 on the line; oops!), but also some who were very RIGHT! we are getting into some of the most exciting territory for this fic in my opinion (as we got a taste of this time around), and i am so looking forward to hearing back about how this has confirmed or changed or otherwise impacted people's perceptions of the story's remaining mysteries! this is where my rereaders will have the most fun, i think — some of you have done a very good job sussing things out so far, and i'm so excited to see how what we learned this time around fits into people's theories of the questions still left to be answered (and perhaps prompt even more!).
+ ah, but that won't be this time! next time, though? i'm going to try my very best to drop the next update on kokichi's birthday, because that will be the five (5???!!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?) year anniversary of the beginning of this fic. oh huh i just had that realization while writing this. great googly moogly.......
+ well, in the meantime i am going to be chomping at the bit for what comes next; so if that also sounds like you, in addition to dropping any desired questions/comments/concerns/all that fun stuff in the comments, i am much more interactive on my tumblr: @ gontagokuhara ! so if you'd like a response from me, you'll definitely get one there — it makes my heart grow 3 sizes each time someone shoots me an ask about pointy objects <3
+ okey-dokey, that's about it from me this time! thanks bunches for being here, and i'll see you for the five year (gulps) anniversary!
Chapter 25: the one before the end of the world
Summary:
As it had in Celestia’s Palace, the dimensions of Gundham’s blot out the oppressive atmosphere of its surrounding Underworld; a physical relief, certainly, but the anticipatory unease is hard to beat down, even while believing in himself and all of his friends as much as he does. The moment his body registers the absence of the supernatural heat he immediately breaks into the sweat he couldn’t before, thankful for the comparatively cooler air though it leaves him breathing much less evenly.
“…Hey, Shuuichi,” Kokichi begins eventually, tightly, very quietly, the first to get his mouth working now that the reality of what they’re getting themselves into has more concretely set in. “Y’remember that thing I said about the Nether in Minecraft?”
Perhaps predictably, Shuuichi’s the only one feeling up to offering a nervous laugh in response.
“Hey! Stop right there!”
Notes:
+ hiya!
+ very happy to be here today, which i'll go on about in the end notes — as always, you'll find me there <3
+ in the meantime, though; i've got 9.7k ready and rearing to go, so with my obligatory thanks to beloved beta reader & kokichi correspondent evan captorvatiing and a brief shout towards the singular content warning in the end notes, i present to you: the one before the end of the world.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
To suggest that the walk to the doorstep of the God of the Dark Arts following the ordeal in Celestia’s Palace is an uncomfortable one would be an understatement, to say the least.
Which is a walk, for reasons Shuuichi nor anybody else bother to question at the onset; the gondola remains anchored and abandoned behind them as they’re guided through the Underworld on solid ground, getting no less unsettling to wade through the more time passes — only to eventually shift from unsettling into downright scary, from the inky, shadowed atmosphere of Celeste’s domain into something…else.
Well. If Shuuichi were in more of a position to parse through the context clues, he would attribute the change to moving out of Celeste’s domain, and into Gundham’s.
He can’t say for certain whether the change is really as abrupt as it feels in his brain, or if he’s too caught up in his own head to notice until the strange, second-skin-like atmosphere around him begins to rapidly die out, replaced with a dry, hollow, stifling heat that is quick to leave the sensation of a developing sunburn on the back of his neck. The dark, blueish film over his limited field of vision burns hot into something reddish and almost rusted-over that leaves the world around him hazy and shimmering, like exhaust fumes warping the air over a smoldering RV wreck — or, as the realization of what’s likely happening washes over him, like the world seeming to bend around Gundham as he appeared to them in the inferno that demanded they come here in the first place.
The silken rivers they previously traversed turn out of nowhere into languid, lowly-bubbling streams of molten lava, eons louder than the ambient hum filling the void before. Somehow the indiscernible ground beneath their feet, the desolate path before them seems to spiral even further downward than the Underworld itself. With no sun to account for the heat, it feels as though only the core of the Earth itself could possibly be responsible for fueling the oven that seems to bake them alive, but does not so much as cause any of them to break a sweat.
It’s not as though this place is just devoid of life, like Celeste’s domain had been. In Gundham’s — the “route to Gehenna,” as the cheerful Warriors happily intonate when they notice everyone’s reactions to the shift — it’s as though it doesn’t want there to be any.
Scorching beneath the suffocating atmosphere, physical and emotional, no one but the children are in high spirits on the walk. Least of all Shuuichi, for a whole host of reasons.
Grief, to start. That’s been the big one lately; mourning his mom, mourning Rantarou, mourning his life as he knew it, and now mourning his mom again after being blindsided with the revelation of her murder. There’s also been a lot going on to shave years off of his life from sheer anxiety alone, over more things than he thinks he can name, though his brain certainly tries. Being down a member of their tightly-knit questing group while being paraded on the way to the man who violently stole away his brother as a bargaining chip. The lives of uncountable scores of people being in his hands, in how this confrontation with Gundham goes down. Once again being haunted by the specter of his absent father, turned godly father, turned godly mother and all of the ways she’s managed to turn his life upside-down despite never being here. Least of all his apparently, suddenly very purple eyes. What comes after all of this.
Because despite his flip-flopping on his belief in himself — not to mention his penchant already for feeling a little frozen in time, when the urge so strikes — what awaits them on Gundham’s doorstep isn’t some hazy forever-after or a future suspended in time, free of consequences. There will be an after Gundham, and while on the final stretch of the journey there, now more than ever Shuuichi is thinking through what comes next.
Rantarou, his friends, the gods, the entire human world as he knows it — already enough responsibility put on his shoulders, already reason enough to fight until the final breath to escape the fate Junko and Gundham are set to wreak on everything he knows. But…
But if he does this, Shuuichi can see his mom again.
It’s not something he’s ever considered — not seriously, not outside of painful nights wrapped up tight in bed begging the universe to let her walk through the door in the morning. For all the time he’s spent agonizing over his last conversation with her, whether he said I love you enough as a miserable preteen before it was too late, all of the things he wants to, he wishes he could say to her — it’s never been more than a fantasy that more often than not leaves his day ruined.
These past…gods, has it really only been ten days since the monster attack at school? In the last ten days, a lot of things that he thought existed only in fantasy have revealed themselves to be disturbingly real. Next to none of them are good. But the possibility — the promise — that when he does this, he’ll be able to see, talk to his mom again…
It is no longer ‘if’ he manages to do this. There never was an acceptable ‘if’ he fails to save the world, even if his lack of confidence in himself kept him from seeing that. When he does, the fate of humanity will stay as it was, his friends will be alright, Rantarou will be home, and he’ll get to see his mom again.
When Shuuichi and his friends save the world, there will be an ‘after’, and they will be there to see it. All of them. There is way, way too much at stake for him to not do this right.
But in the meantime, in the ‘before’, he’s got a universe's worth of things to stress over, straight through to the end of this quest — the end of the world, at least in terms of the world he knew before being dragged into the one ruled by the gods. Both what awaits him and his friends with Gundham, and also—
And also what is following very closely behind Shuuichi: that would be Monaca, wheeling ever-nearer to where he’s ended up walking by Kokichi, her attentive eyes burning holes into the back of his head almost as effectively and as unpleasantly as this rather Hellish section of the Underworld does. Which…
“Hey.” Shuuichi keeps his voice pitched low, cognizant that Monaca is most definitely listening anyway — though he tries not to pay it any mind as he aims to grab Kokichi’s attention, grim irony twitching his lips when the other pair of bright purple eyes in their little group find their way to his. “I guess you were right about this place after all, last night. It’s a dead-ringer for Minecraft.”
The look he’s given in response could perhaps be insulting in another context — it’s not as though he’s in much of a position to be offended, all things considered — but it’s matched with traces of amusement lifting the corner of Kokichi’s lips, which is better than most everything else he’s seen from him in the Underworld, so far.
“Is that seriously the first thing out of your mouth?”
Fair enough. Shuuichi can’t quite force himself to smile, but the beginnings of conversation give him something to focus on that isn’t all that was unloaded on him back at Celeste’s — by all accounts, a vast improvement.
“Stealing your bad jokes is easier to think about. Especially in…Hardcore Mode.”
He gestures broadly around the two of them, earning a quiet snort from Kokichi, a light-hearted eye roll. “Plagiarism is so unbecoming, Shuuichi.” He hums beneath his breath, pausing as if in consideration before looking back up and over at Shuuichi. “Plagiarism and totally ripping my style.”
Tapping his index finger by one of his eyes clues Shuuichi in enough on what he’s getting at, and it’s his turn to puff a soft — mostly artificial, but he’s trying — laugh in response. “If Kaede and everybody else hadn’t been so serious when pointing it out…I’d think it was just a really, really weird prank.”
Not nearly for the first time, his eyes find his hands — his gloves, rather, just as new an addition as the thing with his eyes is, but the only ‘gift’ of Celeste’s that he can actually, tangibly look at right now. As he flexes his fingers beneath the thin, weightless material he’s not the only one watching; Kokichi openly does the same, shifting to walk slightly closer to Shuuichi with his hands swinging at his sides.
“Poofing your eyes a whole different color is a pretty good one, I gotta hand it to her.” For a moment it looks as though Kokichi plans to reach out towards one of Shuuichi’s gloved hands, but soon enough the rhythm of his arms resumes, and he’s merely leaning a little closer to glance over the studs dotting Shuuichi’s knuckles. “And speaking of hands.”
“Do you…know what it means?”
“I may not be as bad as you on the whole ‘knowing things’ thing, but I’m definitely not the top choice on obscure god trivia. I usually cheat off Kaede’s homework for this stuff.”
Before Shuuichi can respond — or really do more than wryly think typical, about his stupid godly parent and her disappearing act both physically and academically — they’re being interrupted by a fresh voice from several feet away in their traveling group: “It’s true, he does!”
For the moment Kaede breaks from Maki’s side, darting around Jataro to walk closer to Shuuichi’s left. Though she’s the only one to respond, everyone else seems to fall into the broader conversation her super-hearing has sparked; the children included, multiple pairs of little eyes clinging to their faces.
“I don’t suppose you’ve had many pop quizzes about purple eyes and magic gloves, have you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Kaede replies gently, maintaining the air of levity in her tone from a second ago. It doesn’t take a genius to guess why she might be pulling on the kid gloves with him, for lack of a better phrase. “Celeste and her wife must have done a really good job, if me, Maki, and Kiibo all have no idea. Sorry, Shuuichi…”
Yeah; from the looks of things, the two of them do seem to have managed to keep under-wraps the particulars of their apparently pretty shitty marriage, the results of which — Kaito and him — were kept secret enough to escape any scrutiny on the basis of their godly parents, with the exception of Junko. But…
Well. Escorting them to their final destination are five dead schoolkids loyally in the employ of the Goddess of the Dead, each of them chomping at the bit to rub in just how much they seem to know about Shuuichi, his friends, and their ‘Little Bro’.
“…What about you, Monaca?” She’s still behind him, still blistering the back of his neck with her gaze just as thoroughly as the Underworld itself does, but it seems a waste of what time they have left to bother with any of the other children at this point. “You wouldn’t happen to have any hints, would you?”
“Hmmm…” The cadence of her faux-conflicted exhalation is all Shuuichi needs to hear to recognize how this is going to go, so he doesn’t hold his breath. “It’s not polite to ask Monaca for secrets that aren’t hers to share, Shuuichi.”
Expected, if also disappointing — this would be the one thing they’re tight-lipped on. So no dice on Celeste’s secrets…ones that aren’t their own.
I wonder…
“You’re right, that it’s not my place to ask that. Celeste already answered the questions she was able to.” His breezing past Monaca’s rejection both interrupts Kaede with her mouth just opening to back him up, and also earns him a searching look from Kokichi at his other side. “There’s something she said about you guys, though, and it wasn’t my place to ask her…but I have to admit, I really don’t think I understand what she meant. When she said the five of you are dead, but not in the way humans or even demigods are dead.”
He’s less sure of what to expect, now, in the silence that falls in the aftermath of what he poses to the Warriors. For a minute, he almost expects to be ignored entirely; but with glances cast behind his back the four children that are in his line of sight draw to a gradual stop, and when he does the same and turns to look back at Monaca she’s already watching him, previous performance of cheeriness dulled to the point of being gone from her face entirely.
There’s still an air of insincerity to her, still something decidedly off in her presentation; but when she parts her lips to respond, the emotion in her voice is steeped in something…different.
“Monaca and her siblings have asked ourselves that question for a long, long time. We are old beings…ones that lived and died long before any of you. We are not monsters. We are not demigods. We are not fully mortal. We don’t know what it is we are, because there’s no one else here like us. Other than that…Miss Celeste calls Monaca and the Warriors of Hope ‘the universe’s best-kept secret’.”
With that, Monaca’s smile melts back into place as if it had never left, clapping her hands once. “Now c’mon, sillies! We’re almost there!”
Not given an opening to respond — not that he’d risk it, when Nagisa shoots an acidic glare his way as if anticipating his desire to press further — Shuuichi lets it go, turning as the rest of them do to continue forward, though the indistinct, hazed-over environment does nothing to indicate they’re close to…anything. The Underworld itself does seem heavier, somehow, the inexplicable feverishness in the air seeming to condense on itself, like they’re walking towards the thermonuclear core of a burning red star. But despite the steep discomfort itching his exposed skin from the sensation of the supernatural heat, there’s still not a hint of sweat or fatigue or dehydration to accompany it, and his relative clear-headedness leaves room in his brain for him to turn over the answer he’d received to his question.
Dead, all five of the children, in a way unique to anything else dwelling in the Underworld. Long before any of them were so much as a thought in their godly parents’ brains. Not quite human, not quite immortal. Not demigods or monsters. Siblings, and lending that notion to one of the seven of them, at least enough to purposefully and repeatedly identify one non-specifically as ‘Little Bro’. The universe’s best-kept secret.
The gods appear to be pretty good at having those. What’s a few more abandoned children, when there’s so many already?
There’s bitterness in that thought, certainly, but Shuuichi isn’t given time to unpack it — not when for the first time since they left Celeste’s palace behind, a structure begins to emerge in the distance through the dense, almost tangible haze of the Underworld. As the sinewy rivers in Celeste’s domain had, the molten ones in Gundham’s spread like spider-webbing veins towards where the tops of wrought iron spyres pierce through the burnt orange fog. Though his field of view remains limited, as it has been without respite except while shielded by Celeste’s castle, the dark ground beneath his feet clearly guides them in one direction: down a meandering, scorched-earth trail to what he can only assume is the heart of Gundham’s dwelling — the pulsing heart at the center of the Underworld itself.
So naturally, it’s at this point that the children stop, Shuuichi only noticing when from behind Masaru loudly clears his throat, and when he turns to look the five of them have clustered close behind Monaca. However, it’s Nagisa that first opens his mouth to speak, gaze flitting between Shuuichi and the five friends that have made it this far before finally saying, “This is as far as we can take you.”
“What?” Maki’s eyes narrow into slits, discontent radiating off of her like the heat waves off the ground. “That wasn’t the deal. Celeste said you’d take us all the way to him.”
“No way,” Masaru echoes, pressed tight into Monaca’s left flank. “Not that we’re scared, but this ain’t our fight.”
At their real leader’s other side, Nagisa’s arms are crossed tight. “We don’t work for Gundham…especially not today.”
How reassuring.
“Well…thanks anyway, for your help up to this point.” Shuuichi seriously doubts a touching goodbye is something any of them are anticipating, so he sees no point in drawing out his own departing word. All the better, honestly, if the kids leave and they’re left with one Hell-dwelling nightmare to deal with. Already he’s turning to look over at his friends, intent on talking this through with them before they approach the entrance to where they’re headed. “So, I guess we shoul—”
A loud, electric buzz, followed by abrupt movement in the corner of his eye cuts Shuuichi off, clamming him up as before any of the rest of them can think to make a move, it’s Monaca that does, lurching forward in her wheelchair the few feet it takes to close the distance and latch tightly onto Kokichi’s left hand. A gasp ripples over the six of them, startled into brief immobility save for Kokichi; though despite how genuinely he seems to struggle to yank his arm out of her grasp, Monaca’s bruising hold doesn’t so much as falter as she draws him down close enough to say something to him, fingernails digging into the raised scar on his palm.
“We wish you the best of luck,” she whispers, deathly serious, something undeniably urgent underlining her words. “Do what you must. Follow your heart, and the way forward will be clear.”
Shuuichi had recovered enough to move about halfway through what she says, and by the time he’s at Kokichi’s side with his fingers twisted protectively around the handle of his bat in his belt loop Kokichi’s finally wrenching his arm away, visibly rattled as he walks backward several steps, more or less colliding into Shuuichi and not straying far once he recovers his footing. Monaca watches it curiously, gaze shifting with simmering amusement between the two of them before offering one more placid, doll-eyed smile, shifting the gear stick on her wheelchair to turn around, and retreating without further preamble in the direction they’d come. The sound of her happily humming to herself is all it takes to get the rest of the Warriors of Hope to fall in line behind her, and leave them to their fate.
Which, admittedly, just got a lot weirder.
“What the hell was that?” Maki hisses, and if looks could kill Kokichi would be rendered nothing more than yet another invisible ghost, floating unseen around the Underworld.
“Gods, is it possible for anything here not to be creepy…?”
“Forget creepy — Kaede, you must admit that was very, very strange! We still do not know how those children came to know so much about us, and now — now that display with Kokichi…!”
In a much different tone, for the second time after a disquieting interaction with one of the Warriors, Shuuichi quietly asks, “Are you alright?”
“Me? Peachy.” Kokichi shoots a sunny, insincere smile up at him, rocking back on the balls of his feet with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jean jacket. “Being the cutest just so happens to coincide with me being juuust the right height for the sweet little tikes to latch onto, I guess!”
“Bullshit.” Shuuichi’s closer scrutinization of Kokichi is interrupted by Maki stepping much, much nearer, getting into Kokichi’s face and in doing so — with Kokichi’s elbow still grazing his from the proximity — moving into Shuuichi’s personal bubble, too, eyes narrowed into slits as she jabs an accusatory finger into Kokichi’s chest. “You can’t just handwave that away like you have everything else on this quest. What did she mean by that? What aren’t you telling us, you little freak?”
“Maki—”
“No, Shuuichi, I’m serious.” There’s genuine resentment, genuine mistrust in her eyes when she interrupts him and turns her glare at him instead. “I don’t know what he’s convinced you of this past week, but that was weird. That was suspicious, just the cherry on top of who even knows how much he’s been antagonizing things on this quest, since he stowed away like a rat when he was never even supposed to be here in the first place!”
…She’s not wrong. That’s the thing: she’s not wrong. Maki, Kaede, Shuuichi himself — at various points they’ve all been rubbed the wrong way by things Kokichi has said and done since he snuck his way onto the RV under all of their noses. Knowing Kokichi, it almost definitely means something, the precarious place he’s wiggled himself into amidst all of this…but in that same vein of knowing Kokichi, or at least trying his hardest to get somewhere close to it…Shuuichi can’t bring himself to feel that level of suspicion towards him. Not now, at least. Least of all right this second, a stone toss away from Gundham Tanaka’s front door.
“It was weird,” he acquiesces with his eyes on Maki, noting through his periphery that when he purposefully shifts his body around, Kokichi uses it as an out to draw behind him once the motion pulls her attention from the hand she still has on him. “But figuring out what that was isn’t going to happen before our time here runs out. We’ll have time to figure it out after we do this. And I really don’t think we should wait any longer before getting started.”
For a pregnant pause amidst the Underworld’s stifling heat Maki considers that, the ruby reds of her irises nearly indiscernible below the slits her lids narrow even further into as she looks back and forth between them.
Eventually: “Trust me, we will figure it out,” is hissed down at Kokichi before she steps back, gradually melts the contempt off of her face, and then looks back up at Shuuichi for direction, just as everyone else does.
“Actually, before we go — can I say something real quick, Shuuichi?”
He’s grateful for Kaede’s interruption, smiling as best he can over at her as for the moment everyone takes their eyes off of him, and he can use the moment to watch Kokichi; still lingering near his side, massaging the scar on his left hand now that the heat is off him for the moment, too.
Metaphorically speaking. Their present surroundings are still pretty blistering — the suspicion in the air following Monaca’s parting word notwithstanding.
“Okay, just — I know it can get a little cliché and corny, the pep-talk thing, but this is important and definitely deserved so just shut up and let me do this one last time, ‘kay?”
Receiving no objections, after Kaede takes a steadying breath, she continues. “I’ll be really, really honest…I’m pretty scared. We’ve seen and dealt with and done such crazy things on our quest so far, but even all of that doesn’t really…well, I think we’ll all agree that what we’re about to do is just different. But as much as I’m afraid of what’s going to happen once we’re inside, I’m even more hopeful, you know? Because I know that I’m doing this not just on my own, but alongside you guys, and I know that as long as we hold our heads high, there’s no way we can lose!
“Admittedly, this is probably — and, uhm, hopefully — the scariest thing any of us will ever have to do. But I believe in us more than I’ve ever believed in anything, I trust you guys more than I’ve ever trusted anyone, and no matter what happens, I believe that we’re all definitely gonna make it out of this. As long as we’re honest, and careful, and brave, I know we will. And once we do…guys, I am so, so ready to go back to camp and have a normal summer with my best friends in — well, not just this world but in all of them, you guys are who I’d want by my side through anything. Gods, I’m rambling a little — just, can we do one more group hug to tide us over in the meantime?”
As he’s observed to be broadly true across the board for everyone, Kokichi’s favorite nickname for Kaede — ‘Hokey Protag’ — holds a genuine kernel of truth, and it’s never been more apparent than in how she offers the five of them a blinding smile with her arms outstretched, and without hesitation all of them fold in to grant this request of hers that they all kind of need, honestly. Shuuichi certainly does; and though the absence of Kaito’s bruising embrace and his boisterous energy cheering on Kaede’s pep-talk is very deeply and painfully felt, it’s a pretty damn good hug, and when they reluctantly part, he finds himself managing a genuine smile for probably the first time since he dropped into the Underworld.
But as has been repeated ad nauseam: they are running low on time, as distant as it seems to them in this place, and what awaits them inside surely isn’t content to do so much longer. As they all draw back to restraighten their belongings over their shoulders and then look to Shuuichi for guidance, he allows the role of main character to wash over him as much as he physically and emotionally can. It’s his turn up to bat — hah, and his hand finds the holstered one at his side at the wry thought — and their only option now is forward.
So with as much summoned confidence as is possible swelling his chest, and propelled towards the end of this quest by the prospect that he is so close to Rantarou, Shuuichi takes the first step forward to lead himself and his friends up to and into the imposing bastion, and the fate that awaits them inside.
The front entrance that is open and greeting them when they arrive at the epicenter of Gundham’s domain is deceptively friendly — the moment the last of them have set their feet down inside the confines of the oppressively-dark entry room the doors slam violently and with finality behind them, cementing in every way that they’re trapped, and with no path onward but to trawl deeper into the catacombs. They’re not left to adjust to the pitch darkness and blindly shuffle their way to Gundham, however; as the rough wooden doors settle noisily behind them in their large frame, torches set at fixed points on the walls and leading down a narrow corridor at the other end of the space ominously flicker on one-by-one, casting the room and all of his friends in ghoulish, cerulean-blue light that is only rivaled by an occasional iron-barred window leaking in thin ribbons of a contrasting, deep orange glow. Around them the walls are thick, wrought of burgundy brimstone, the roughness of them and the ground beneath their feet alike more akin to an abrasive Medieval-style build than the sleek, ornate, Victorian inspiration Celeste’s home is built in the likeness of.
As it had in Celestia’s Palace, the dimensions of Gundham’s blot out the oppressive atmosphere of its surrounding Underworld; a physical relief, certainly, but the anticipatory unease is hard to beat down, even while believing in himself and all of his friends as much as he does. The moment his body registers the absence of the supernatural heat he immediately breaks into the sweat he couldn’t before, thankful for the comparatively cooler air though it leaves him breathing much less evenly.
“…Hey, Shuuichi,” Kokichi begins eventually, tightly, very quietly, the first to get his mouth working now that the reality of what they’re getting themselves into has more concretely set in. “Y’remember that thing I said about the Nether in Minecraft?”
Perhaps predictably, Shuuichi’s the only one feeling up to offering a nervous laugh in response.
“Hey! Stop right there!”
The instant that an unfamiliar voice hits Shuuichi’s ears he’s startling, falling as the rest of his friends do into a defensive stance, back pressed into Gonta’s with the bat poised in the air and ready to strike the source of the squeaky, babyish voice the moment it emerges from the darkness.
Which it…doesn’t. While the burning blue torches aren’t the best for visibility, there’s nothing to be seen by Shuuichi, nor any of his friends, if the harried murmurs he hears around him are any indication. It’s not until the voice clears its throat loudly — and, more pressingly, when something kicks out weakly at one of his legs — that Shuuichi gets the brilliant idea to look down, and finds—
Well. From the looks of things, he’s found a pair of stuffed animals — a white bunny dolled up in a garish pink dress and holding some sort of toy staff, as well as a naked, black-and-white bear that leers up at him with a devilish grin as it bats at Shuuichi’s right leg with its paws, and continues to do so until he knocks it away with his foot. It squeaks pathetically as it bounces across the floor.
What the hell…?
“Oh, gods, not more Monokubs,” Kaede whines, though he doesn’t take his eyes off the rabbit as she does. “And we just got away from those creepy kids, too…”
“Not to worry, I am here to help! And please, u-uhm — that weapon is really scary, so p-please put it down! I’m not going to hurt you, promise!”
Beneath the shadow of the baseball bat the rabbit cowers until Shuuichi begrudgingly lowers it, keeping it in hand but not actively raised towards the talking plushie. This would be the source of the initial voice — and as it gets up from the floor, the bear reveals itself as equally magical by irritably snapping, “The Monokubs? That’s old news! I’m not like those crappy has-been side characters at all!”
“Ahem! Thank you very much for your cooperation! Now that that scary violence business is done, I should properly introduce myself! My name is Magical Miracle Girl Usami…but you can just call me Usami! And I will be your adorably, squeezably soft guide to my mast—”
“And I am Monokuma!” In an instant the bear is back on its feet, rearing its paws up at the six of them with a loud cackle. “I’m not some stupid teddy bear, and you better watch your manners! I won’t be so forgiving the second time you kick me!”
Monokuma’s red eye pulses as he turns to glare up specifically at Shuuichi, flashing his claws for emphasis. It gives him very little reason to want to fully put the bat away. “So you’re…not monsters like the Monokubs were?”
“Huh? ‘Were’? Whaddya mean by that?”
“M-Monsters?! How rude! It’s rude to call a lady something so rude, Shuuichi!”
It never, never gets any less weird when someone or something on this quest knows his name.
“‘Lady’?” Maki’s question is less a question, and more of a scoff as she still looks to both stuffed animals with a visible air of suspicion. “We don’t have time for this. What are you?”
“Well, I guess to put it simply…we’re like Master Gundham’s helpers!”
“We’re the castle slaves.”
“Uhm…servants!”
“Slaaaves!”
“You’re so vulgar!” Usamai cries, toy wings fluttering behind her. “If you’re going to be like that, then just leave! I can bring Shuuichi Saihara to Master Gundham myself!”
Most of his friends seem to flinch moreso at the mention of Gundham’s name. Shuuichi, lacking such deep-set fears about the god at the heart of all this, is almost as put out by these things parroting his name as he is the suggestion that he may be intercepted and brought to Gundham alone.
“We’ll all be going together,” Shuuichi cuts in firmly, interrupting Monokuma just before he can fire something back at Usami. Reluctantly he holsters the bat again, eyeing the branching pathway that the illuminative torches seem to be demanding they start down. “I assume you can lead the way?”
Eagerly Usami nods, quiet sparkle sound effects emanating from…somewhere on her plush little body. Her toy wand, maybe. “Yes, yes! Leave this to me — I’ll get you to your destination safe and sound, or my name isn’t Magical Miracle Girl Usami!”
It’s not a straight shot all the way to their destination, wherever it is; as soon as they breach the first corridor it becomes clear the kind of labyrinth Gundham has forged the heart of his domain into. Past numerous winding, narrow, confusing pathways Usami and Monokuma lead the six of them, following a pattern of wall-lit torches Shuuichi can’t make sense of. The most he can really come up with between keeping up pace with their guides and watching his feet to stop from tripping over the uneven floors is something more or less analogous to the criss-crossed, carefully-carved tunnels of an anthill. Thankfully, though, the claustrophobic hallways are absent of the fire ants that the decor is reminiscent of.
“So…what, exactly, are you two?”
Shuuichi is the first to break the quiet that had settled following their proceeding single-file into the initial corridor; it feels decidedly more uncomfortable to do so than it has been in other instances, even while traveling with the Warriors of Hope. Being inside of Gundham’s house will have that sort of chilling effect, he supposes, and it’s with that in mind that he keeps the question he directs to the god’s helpers both quiet and neutrally toned.
“Uhm…does everybody here know what a rabbit is…?”
“Yes! Gonta think Miss Usami a very cute rabbit!”
“We get that part,” Kaede retries, from the sound of her voice walking closer to the front of the group near Shuuichi as opposed to Gonta, speaking up from the very back. “What I think Shuuichi is actually asking is…haha, uhm, how to put this…?”
“Why are you here? What’s the purpose of something like you working for…him?”
“O-Oh!” Instead of taking offense to Maki’s question Usami makes more delighted little twinkling sound effects, and from his spot at the front of the line, Shuuichi can see the little pink gem on her magic wand shine the slightest bit brighter. “Well, some years ago Master Gundham decided he needed a helping hand around the palace, you see! Something only a wonderful, marvelous helper could do! So he made me, Magical Miracle Girl Usami!”
Waddling not far from her side, Monokuma titters an unkind laugh. “Monomi was a mistake, and Gundham totally didn’t have the heart to kill her!”
“Hey!”
“Can’t imagine you are a huge hit with the big guy, either,” Kokichi offers unpleasantly from just behind Shuuichi, and he can’t help but agree. Usami may be a little annoying, and even more…unintelligent, but if given the option he’d take the rabbit over the leering bear any day.
No such luck on that one, unfortunately — at Kokichi’s comment Monokuma turns to look over his shoulder, red eye glinting as his jagged grin widens around another obnoxious giggle.
“Me, you say? Puhuhuhu! Why, I’m just the gift that keeps on giving! After Lady Junko made minced meat of Gundham’s brat, she thought me up and sent me down here to keep him company! ‘Cause empty nests can be so terrible, y’know. Ain't she just a doll?”
And all of a sudden it’s like a layer of ice settles over the group, as Monokuma’s nonchalant explanation of what he is freezes everybody in their tracks — most of all Shuuichi, the jarring silence echoing like tinnitus in his ears along with something else.
Maybe it’s the fact that they’re here, in the depths of the Underworld, the climax of their quest and what awaits them when they get there fast-approaching. Maybe it’s how what he hears reflects something he’s recently learned about himself and how he lost the most important person in his life right back into the front of his brain. Maybe it’s just that it’s the first time that it’s been put in such stark, callous terms, why Gundham has a stake in any of this at all.
Whatever it is, it stops Shuuichi up as what Monokuma says settles along with his ringing laughter, and he digests what, exactly, is being so jovially relayed to them right now — not just inside of Gundham’s domain, not even just at his doorstep, but in his home.
At every venture, every junction of this quest, Gundham has loomed ever-present — despite most of those acquainted with his existence never daring to speak his name out loud for fear of what might happen in reprisal. Even before Gundham appeared in the pyre at Camp Hope’s Peak and called Shuuichi forward, around that same campfire he’d gotten trace inklings, too — there’s a reason why all of his friends flinch at his mention, one they’re all privy to at least in part while Shuuichi is not, one that terrifies them out of so much as invoking his name. Whatever the history there is, whatever Gundham’s stake in this is that has had them on this week-long death march to his home, Shuuichi has known from the beginning that it was bad.
There have been hints, though, ones that he glazed over and that fell to the wayside in passing with everything else going on — at least until now, as his mind seizes on everything he’s been told but hasn’t truly heard.
Something the others explained to him at that motel with the pool, after Nagito managed to get a phone call through to them — after the details about his luck, after the tragedy involving him and Junko’s daughter that resulted in him losing an arm, after Junko forbade godly parents from raising their children…there was something else, too: about Gundham being made an example of. What Taka said of Gundham’s personal vendetta against Junko and her spear — which he would not directly speak about in fear of what may happen should he tempt fate, leaving it simply at the explanation of even the gods feel grief. And just a little while ago, Celeste mentioned that it was ‘Gundham’s tragedy’ that in part motivated her decision to give a very young Kaito up.
All of this…the source of every bad thing that’s happened to him, not just these past ten days since the monster attack, but for his entire life…all of it goes back to Junko murdering another person — a baby, no less?
The gods’ freedom, Hajime’s body, Nagito’s arm, Sonia’s son, Maki’s dad, Shuuichi’s mom, Kaito’s grandparents, Gundham’s child — all Junko Enoshima ever seems to do is take. Destroy. Savagely and senselessly snuffing out lives for no reason, for nothing more than one insane woman’s pursuit of chaos and cruelty for the sake of it.
Yet another person who should still be alive, but isn’t.
“…So Junko has a habit of brutalizing innocent people just for the hell of it?”
Despite his suddenly dry and scratched-up throat, Shuuichi’s question comes out with an undeniable edge. One his friends immediately catch on to — from behind he hears his name, and then a moment later he feels Kaede grasp onto one of the gloved hands hanging at his sides, coaxing it out of the fist he’d unintentionally bunched them into in order to squeeze his fingers reassuringly.
Monokuma, though. His stupid, mismatched eyes are positively sparkling. “Oh, don’t tell me, kid! You don’t know the story?”
“W-We’re not supposed to talk about that, oh, no—”
Usami, conversely, is somehow a little teary-eyed. But Shuuichi’s not really paying attention to Gundham’s monster right now.
“Hey, you know what? We aren’t too far from the grave at all. Why not stop for a quick little story time?”
“You better not even think about it, Monokuma! Time is running out, and you know bad things will happen, a-and Master Gundham will be very, very angry if he finds o—”
“Shut up, Monomi!”
With a shout Monokuma spins to pounce on Usami, tackling her to the floor and leaving them both a screeching mass of white and black plush limbs fighting in the washed-out blue light. They roll far enough away to be rendered out of Shuuichi’s sight, the only indication they haven’t been abandoned being the continued scuffling sounds on the rough floor and the two stuffed animals screaming insults at each other between apparent yelps of pain.
He hears his friends stiffen up behind him, prepping for something unexpected to happen though none of them make any major movements — all Shuuichi does is place his free hand on the handle of his bat, alert for any reason to pull it out but putting off doing so until he feels he has to. Slowly but surely, the fighting begins to die down; and he has a feeling of what to expect from the high-pitched, weepy noises emanating from somewhere deeper in the darkness, beaten down and defeated.
Eventually, when there’s movement out of the shrouded pitch black untouched by the ominous torch light, there’s only one stuffed animal that emerges; and rather predictably — if disturbingly — it’s Monokuma, leering victoriously up at him as he dusts his paws off, next words biting.
“Now that the trash is taken care of…it’s my turn.”
He cackles, then points auspiciously down another dimly-lit passageway, a sharp left turn from where Usami was leading them before. “And I think we have juuust enough time for a little detour to the garden. Oh, and I highly recommend you keep up, because trust me — none of you will make it out of here without a guide-bear leading the way. So move it!”
Lacking other options, mechanically, the six of them move to follow.
Monokuma doesn’t mince further words nor time now that Usami’s been incapacitated, humming happily under his breath with his arms swinging at his sides as he otherwise silently leads them to wherever it is he’s intent on taking them — the ‘garden’, apparently, though in the short amount of time that passes that it takes to actually get there, Shuuichi really can’t visualize what something like that might look like…here. With Monokuma — and, from the sounds of things, yet again Junko — at the helm, he doesn’t have high hopes that he’s going to like this very much. Not with the topic that prompted their detour in the first place still hanging heavily over their heads in the dark.
When for the first time they come across an actual door as opposed to more torches and hallways and the occasional window Monokuma stops, jumping several times for the nondescript turn handle before he finally gets it, and murky orange light floods the corridor as it slowly swings open. For several seconds Shuuichi is left to squint as his eyes adjust to the abrupt change, though he’s otherwise not given long to process; with an impatient, “C’mon, slowpokes!” and an insistent shove at the back of his legs Shuuichi walks as instructed out the door, though this time…it’s different.
It’s jarring, honestly, coming across something so lush when the surrounding atmosphere is otherwise how he remembers it: oppressively red, hot, and bleak, scorching the nervous sweat off the back of his neck but doing nothing to disturb the vibrant grass, the delicate flowers, and the otherwise even beautiful little garden. In fact, despite their surroundings and the context of why they’re here, it could almost be considered peaceful; save for the unassuming headstone, engraved with symbols he can’t read or even recognize, almost appearing to sleep beneath the lone willow tree.
Neither Shuuichi, nor any of his friends, are inclined in the slightest to breathe a single word. Gleefully observing as much, Monokuma fills the empty air instead.
“Hmm…hmm…where to start, let’s see…well, I guess a little backstory might be helpful! The man of the hour has some history with all his fellow Big Five gods, but none more than everyone’s bestie Junko Enoshima! He had a real listening problem, y’know? Liked to go on and on about how he wouldn’t ever take orders from someone so wretched as her, and totally acted like he had cotton balls in his ears when she tried to warn him! The missus is real saintly and all, but even she has her limits!
“Hey, didya know that none of the gods even had any idea Gundham popped out a little cherub until it was too late? It’s true, cross my heart — Junko finding ‘em was totally a freak thing! But Gundham got too big for his britches, and let himself get all soft and mushy alongside the teensy bundle of joy — honestly, like most things, it was probably totally Monomi’s fault, too! Once Junko caught wind that Mister Tall, Dark, and Moody had fashioned himself some kinda servant, she wanted to get her hands on one, get a piece of the action — and who wouldn’t? So she came alllll the way down here for an unannounced visit, but surpriiiiise…guess who she found all alone, with no one supervising except for incompetent Monomi?
“She may act all big and bad with that stupid Magic Stick of hers, but compared to Junko and the spear…well, I guess you can imagine! And by the time poor, stupid Monomi had the bright idea to call for help and daddy dearest was on the scene…what he found was the useless slave in tatters, and the kiddo bundled up all nice and sweet in Lady Junko’s arms. I gotta say, though…ever since that mess at Hope’s Peak, she’s got something of a bad association with demigods — she was just so shocked to find yet another Big Five god had spit out a kid while she was just innocently wandering the place, yanno? Shock makes people do crazy things, I guess!
“Man, it must’ve been quite the sight, too…‘cause Gundham was right there when it happened, you know. Right in front of his eyes, just like she did with that twin sister of hers all those years ago…not only did she kill the brat, but she destroyed his soul, too. So even if Gundham wanted to search the Underworld high and low for the spirit of the kid, he couldn’t. But nooot to worry! Junko figured the place might be a little lonely now, what with the unfortunate business of his only child being dead as a doornail…and that’s where I come in! Sent down to be a lovely little companion to Gundham and Monomi forever. Ain’t she just the sweetest? Puhuhuhu!”
In this quaint little garden housing the empty grave of a murdered child, while baking beneath Hell’s hottest heat with Monokuma’s monstrous words hanging in the air, Shuuichi thinks he may genuinely be sick.
And he thought Celeste was callous.
The heart of this, Junko and her pursuit of devastating chaos and that stupid goddamn spear…all around her are ruined lives. Torn apart families. Years of sorrow, and anger, and grief endured under her ironclad rule, not just suffered by demigods, or even the less powerful gods themselves — but by the rest of the Big Five as well. And no one has been able to do anything about it. And all of it is just a game to her.
Now here they are. In the heart of the God of the Dark Arts’ domain. Standing at the headstone of his slain child, at the precipice of the time limit imposed on threat of mass human casualty running out. And when they finally make it to Gundham himself…
It’s not just that he thinks Shuuichi is a thief. That he thinks Shuuichi is agitating the gods into warring with one another, tempting fate by slighting Junko. No — Gundham thinks that a rogue demigod, an unknown element, is doing all of that and has got their hands on the spear that killed his child.
And that is who they’re about to face off against?
“Junko created you?!”
Kiibo’s voice finally drags Shuuichi’s attention away from the incomprehensible symbols on the child’s grave, and it ultimately lands on Monokuma, tittering up gleefully at Kiibo in response.
“You bet! Outta the kindness of her heart, no less!”
Voice watery, Kaede chokes out, “You’re a monster!”
“Everyone, get behind Gonta…Gonta will protect friends from this horrible animal.”
“Aw, man, that really breaks my heart…not! Puhuhuhu!”
Shuuichi should have kicked that stupid bear way, way harder. From how Maki stalks up to him, she’s more than likely having that same thought. “How has he not killed you yet?”
Monokuma can hardly contain his delirious laughter at the reaction this little field trip has prompted, paws pressed over his split-open mouth in a not-even-half-hearted attempt to shield it. “He sure can try, but I’m stubborn like an elephant and indestructible like a cockroach! I just keep coming back no matter what he does! Huh…too bad my penchant for staying alive didn’t extend to the brat, huh?”
“You stop that right now!”
Placing the loud, squeaky voice is a lot easier the second time; turning to look reveals that Usami has managed out of the state Monokuma left her in and followed them out into the grave site, a sleeve on her dress askew and dirt smudged into her fur but nonetheless upright, holding her magic wand and — from the looks of it — absolutely pissed.
“Grr — get lost, Monomi! Did I not teach you hard enough not to defy me in front of these stupid halfbloods the first time? Shall I give you a follow-up lesson?”
“You’re so evil! That’s it!”
And then with a defiant shout Usami pounces on Monokuma, their fight much more visible — and much more disturbing, in the otherwise deathly still garden — the second time, though the two stuffed animals move too quickly for Shuuichi to process anything other than the broad strokes. It does come to an end, however; with a few wild swings of her ‘Magic Stick’ Usami ultimately ends up victorious, standing over the downed bear with the toy pointed down at his battered body until she’s satisfied he’s not going to get up. Huffing a few heavy breaths — and why the stuffed rabbit needs to breathe, Shuuichi doesn’t know nor particularly care to find out — Usami eventually relents, holding the magic wand now more casually as she quickly readjusts her dress, and awkwardly clears her throat to grab their attention.
As if they weren’t already watching.
“I sincerely apologize for the delay, a-and, uhm…well, let’s just get back inside now! Please come with me!”
There’s undeniable tension in the air when they’re successfully shooed inside and moving without observable rhyme or reason through the winding, harshly-lit corridors towards their unknown destination. Once they’re on the way again Usami tries to keep up her former cheery persona, but in consideration of where they are, where they’re going, and what they just experienced with Monokuma about Gundham’s tragedy…well, Shuuichi can’t blame any of his friends for being unable to tolerate it very nicely. When her attempts to apologize for Monokuma’s ‘rudeness’ that meander into anxious rambling about ‘that terrible day’ are met with Maki curtly asking her to shut up and take us there she gives up for the most part, fretting nervously under her breath as they move at a slightly more hurried pace.
It strikes Shuuichi more than once, as it had when traveling with the children, that this last stretch to reach Gundham would be better spent…not in silence. Better spent questioning Usami for whatever relevant information they can get out of her about the foe they’ve been racing towards for the past week. Sizing him up, so to speak, ahead of actually having to put the pedal to the metal. Getting a feel for what he’s like — beyond his brief appearance in the inferno at Camp Hope’s Peak, and the severe reputation that far precedes him. Whether he’s regained some composure, or god forbid gearing up for a fight. Hell, if she happens to know anything about his godly parent and these gloves he’s been given ahead of facing the end of the world, so he might be given some further help in controlling his powers with them. Anything they should know about what they’re getting themselves into with the rogue Big Five god awaiting them in the heart of his catacombs, and how they can give themselves the best shot of doing this right.
Shuuichi can’t bring himself to, for whatever reason. His throat feels a little too tight when he thinks about raising his voice and probing about Gundham; each time his mind wanders back to the child Junko massacred in front of him, and effectively clams himself up on the topic. From the lack of anyone else doing so, it seems all of his friends are in the same boat, too. Whether or not it’s for the best, they’ll be going in as prepared as they’re ever going to be — funny, he remembers thinking that just this morning.
But…there is one thing.
“Have you…seen Rantarou, Usami?”
Is it the most pressing question? No. The most responsible question for him to ask? Definitely not. But it is the most important, whatever it is that says about him and his priorities as they approach the end.
He knows it’s a good one to have asked when from directly in front of him Usami slows just slightly, seeming to startle at the question — or at Rantarou’s name — and glancing up a moment later to watch Shuuichi with wide eyes. For a decent stretch she seems to consider her response carefully, twisting her wand around in her paws as she does, and it’s with her gaze still on Shuuichi that she eventually replies:
“Uhm, I’m…not really supposed to talk about that, b-but…but I guess I can maybe say, as long as you promise not to tell Master Gundham…”
“I promise. Please.”
The desperate note in his voice does it. “…Then I promise, from the bottom of my heart…that your big brother is safe, Shuuichi. And…well, he’s very nice to me! You have a good big brother! Not like me and Monokuma…”
He’s here. He’s safe, and in communication with Usami, and alright enough to be nice to the rabbit and even say that stupid line about being Shuuichi’s big brother. It’s not a lot — nothing more than an uncorroborated promise from a monster servant created by the god who kidnapped Rantarou in the first place — but it sure as hell sounds like the truth, and it does bolster Shuuichi’s confidence, even if only marginally.
There’s no more conversation between any of them until they’re being led, finally, into an actual room and not merely one of the claustrophobic hallways. Usami urges them forward until they’re left with no choice but to stop in front of the imposing set of burgundy double doors serving as the focal point of the relatively small foyer the entryway itself is situated in. This room is slightly better-lit, and by all accounts feels…important. Distinct. Final.
“Alright, we’re here!”
…Yeah. They’d kind of figured that, though.
No one is up to replying to Usami’s excited declaration — if Shuuichi were to chance a guess, the rest of his friends have been hit by the weight of what they’re about to do as strongly as he has. So it’s in daunting, heavy silence that Usami disappears off to one side of the door, leaving the group of them to stew in the tension until the mechanical movements of the door slowly being worked open fill the stifling air around them, and Shuuichi is left with one last moment to prepare himself for the end.
At his side for the end of the world are some of his best friends, ones he’s known for less than two weeks but have become integral, innate to who Shuuichi is — who he’s become over the course of this quest, almost unrecognizable compared to who he was before. They may be missing Kaito, he may be missing Rantarou, but there is no one else in any realms known or unknown he would want to do this with. On the precipice of their destiny, whatever it is, Shuuichi takes this penultimate moment to look over his friends one last time.
Kaede and Maki stand side-by-side, hands clasped between them with their eyes on the door. Next to them Kiibo is stock still, staring straight ahead, and from his position Shuuichi can see that the running commentary of their thoughts on their collar is betraying their nervousness at what’s to come — though in equal measure their steadfast promise to protect their friends, no matter what. At Shuuichi’s right side is Kokichi, hands tightly gripping the straps of his backpack, eyes narrowed at what’s ahead of them — until with a minute movement of his head he catches Shuuichi’s eye, face purposefully blank though the prolonged moment of eye contact they share is undeniably meaningful, even if he can’t place a name to the emotion that passes between them.
The urge that strikes him to take Kokichi’s hand doesn’t go unnoticed in the slightest. Shuuichi anxiously wraps his own around the handle of his — Rantarou’s — baseball bat instead, nodding once to Kokichi as the doors finally begin to creak open, and they both turn their gazes to watch.
One way or another, this is the end. The time is now. Before them, just beyond the widening threshold, Gundham is surely expecting them. And with him is Rantarou, the main motivation for Shuuichi’s role in this quest from the start, whose final words to Shuuichi not even two weeks ago still ring loud and clear in his head.
“Whatever happens, wherever we end up, know that I love you, okay? You’re my brother, and I’m so proud of you, and I know you will make it through this. We’ll always have each other’s backs, and I’m going to need you to have mine right now.”
The doors fall to rest against the wall. The end of the world awaits. And as Gundham’s throne room opens to them, Shuuichi clenches his gloved hands into fists at his sides, resolve firmer than it has ever been to do this.
I will have your back, Rantarou.
Notes:
+ hi :)
+ first off: i made it on time! i mentioned in the previous end notes that june 21st is not only a special day for danganronpa in general (hbd kokichi, you little bastard) but you may also notice, in peeking at the upload date for pointy objects as a whole, chapter 1 came out on june 21st, too — five years ago today! wowzers!
+ i never expected it to carry on this long (and admittedly, a good ~3 and a half years at least were a covid hiatus) but i am so, SO happy it has, and i am SO excited to see through the end with you guys...which as we saw, is getting pretty close! how close? well...i'll get to that in a minute.
+ secondly: not only did we get some new characters and some new ~tensions~ this time, but we also got some rather old explanations, too. gundham's reputation does indeed precede him — and now, after many many years, we know why! ah, but we can worry about all of that next time; in the meantime...well, speaking of time!
+ my past several updates have stuck to a pretty decent 1-monthish schedule, but this is where things might...change, slightly. at the risk of saying too much i am looking down the barrel of a long, LONG gun re: the outline of the next chapter. that is to say...i am struggling to conceptualize just how what comes next will pan out, and likely won't until i get well into writing it. what does that mean? a few things!
+ i can't give an accurate look at my timeline approaching this next bit of the story, because while i am utterly obsessed with this fic, i do have a real life! one that has been very busy with 40 hours work weeks (despite me being hired as a part-timer 3), and being a Person, and also very soon (before next update) there will be a puppy in the house that i will have majority responsibility for! exciting, but busy. and i will definitely be able to work around that! BUT. it is also looking increasingly likely that this next chunk will reach lengths not yet uncovered for this fic (even after the 17k chapter...) and i need to figure whether we are getting a really long chapter, or one broken into more digestable parts.
+ and that's where you come in! this is gonna take me some time for sure, and alongside your usual questions/comments/theories, i would love to hear your preferences for how what comes next looks, considering you're the ones reading it! do you prefer a full-send, all-in-one chapter you need to take pee breaks to get through, or a split update where it's divided into two chapters, or a secret third option? PLEASE let me know! i'm all ears, both here in the comments and on my tumblr: @ gontagokuhara ! my 'pointy objects' tag is a great place to get extra lore not touched on in the fic, and it makes my day when people pop into my inbox with a word about the fic :)
+ LOOK at me writing a whole chapter's worth of end notes; that's enough for now, i think! as always, thanks bunches for being here, and (with all of my love and excitement) i will see you next time!!! <3
+ content warnings: off-screen, crude descriptions of child death
Chapter 26: the gundham tanaka power hour! or: the confrontation everyone has been waiting for
Summary:
Gundham’s throne room is smaller than Shuuichi would have assumed it to be, should he have spared a stray thought to the notion before actually being confronted with it. Somehow reserved, in comparison to the sprawling, ornate cathedral interiors that they bore witness to in Celestia’s Palace.
Much like what Shuuichi had gleaned from their time roaming the corridors, the throne room is funereal and cramped — windows that did once line the perimeter of the room have long been shuttered, or just boarded shut altogether. And alongside those same glowing torches affixed to the walls that have been searing his eyesight a brilliant sapphire blue, the room is artificially illuminated to a greater degree than the hallways had been by another, much more peculiar source:
That would be the hexagram sigil carved into and alight within the floor, the circumference of the complex, etched-in circle bleeding light the same color as the torches across most of the available floor space separating the entrance of the throne room from what awaits at the very heart of it.
Notes:
+ hi there!
+ despite not giving a solid update timeline last chapter, today is the day i had in my calendar that i hoped to update on (happy birthday sdr2 <3). despite a surprise 40 hour work week, a 9 week old puppy in the house, a 2-hour union meeting, this chapter being a little daunting to write, and some related stress to all of the above, here we are!
+ as always, you can find me in the end notes with more to say. in the meantime (with thanks as always to my beloved beta reader and kokichi correspondent evan captorvatiing), let's just get right into it, huh?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Gundham’s throne room is smaller than Shuuichi would have assumed it to be, should he have spared a stray thought to the notion before actually being confronted with it. Somehow reserved, in comparison to the sprawling, ornate cathedral interiors that they bore witness to in Celestia’s Palace.
Much like what Shuuichi had gleaned from their time roaming the corridors, the throne room is funereal and cramped — windows that did once line the perimeter of the room have long been shuttered, or just boarded shut altogether. And alongside those same glowing torches affixed to the walls that have been searing his eyesight a brilliant sapphire blue, the room is artificially illuminated to a greater degree than the hallways had been by another, much more peculiar source:
That would be the hexagram sigil carved into and alight within the floor, the circumference of the complex, etched-in circle bleeding light the same color as the torches across most of the available floor space separating the entrance of the throne room from what awaits at the very heart of it.
Very softly, from somewhere off to the side Usami instructs them all inward. Shuuichi and his friends move as a group, stepping past the doorway and fully into the belly of the beast, coming to a collective stop as a single united line maybe two steps away from the edge of the encircled hexagram. He makes the conscious effort not to cross the pulsating blue line in the floor with his shoes.
The relative modesty of the room allows its main occupant’s eyes to burn all the harder into them, and for the first time Shuuichi is truly face-to-face with the same man who stole his brother, called his name within the fire pit at Camp Hope’s Peak, and baited them to this high-stakes confrontation in the first place: Gundham Tanaka, God of the Dark Arts.
Off to the far right of the room, almost anticlimactically, Rantarou is seated in a rocking chair, limbs bound and mouth gagged shut with a pink piece of fabric tied around his head.
And for a second, it’s like Shuuichi’s whole world stops — not physically, not like he’s legitimately capable of doing with his ill-controlled ability, but when he actually sees Rantarou it’s as though his vision tunnels, and all he can think about is Rantarou. He’s alive, he’s here, right in front of Shuuichi for the first time in way, way too long, and the impulse to to rush to his side, ignore the very real apocalypse hanging over their heads more concretely than ever in favor of untying and hugging his brother is almost unbearable.
Around the gag, Rantarou smiles, as if he was waiting for this to happen. Bastard.
Shuuichi could cry with relief.
But before Shuuichi himself can bolt, and more than likely screw this whole thing up it’s Usami that does, darting past Kokichi on his right side to cross to the other end of the room. The out-of-nowhere movement is enough to startle Shuuichi back to attention and focus on the other person occupying the throne room.
Gundham Tanaka is no less intimidating now than he was when cloaked in flame during their first meeting one week ago. As the rest of this room is, his throne is a flat burgundy, nondescript, doesn’t draw attention to itself — no, the god perched stock-still atop it does that well enough on his own. It’s hard to gauge his height while sitting on a raised platform above them, but even then his presence is no less striking. Wrapped in loose, flowing dark robes he just projects an air of something sinister, something magical humming in the space around him. Curled possessively around his neck is a long, rippling purple scarf, its ribbon-like fringe practically scraping his heavy-duty heeled boots and the scuffed, roughed-up floors beneath them.
The mismatched, scarred eyes that had looked down upon him at Camp Hope’s Peak are the same pair that stare back at him now, the intense red of one iris the antithesis of its opposing silver one, skewered through with a deep, jagged facial scar that renders him no less sharp and watchful. His dark, graying hair stands in deep contrast to his noticeably pale complexion, as does his left arm — wrapped well past where his elbow disappears into the sleeve of his coat in pristine white bandaging.
He is war-torn. Imposing. Powerful. And, as is made utterly transparent when his grimace twists open to break the long-settled tense silence, he is angry.
“Shuuichi Saihara.”
Gundham’s voice is deep, commanding, pitched with the same heavy note of revulsion as it has been every other time he’s uttered Shuuichi’s name. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s fear, magic, or both that immediately compels him to lock eyes with the god who has been screwing his life up for the past week.
“Your tenacity in arriving on the eve of my deadline is bold. Or is it perhaps stupidity?”
Weakly, Shuuichi gathers the courage to defend himself. “You haven’t exactly made it easy.”
Whatever bare hint of a wry smile that threatens to twitch Shuuichi’s lips is quickly dispelled by how visibly unimpressed Gundham is by his speaking out of turn. In one fluid motion he aggressively rises from his throne, ebony robes and inky scarf billowing out around his grandiose frame, like a peacock fanning out its tail feathers — or a poisonous animal warding off predators with colors ostensibly signaling danger. At the same instant Gundham gets to his feet he raises his bandaged hand, and from behind Shuuichi hears and feels the loud, abrupt slam of the room’s doors being thrown shut, rapidly prompting a dramatic shift in tension as genuine, justified terror washes over Shuuichi and his friends in the moments that follow the outburst.
But they all hold firm. Even when their only path of escape has been sealed shut, none of them turn to look, none of them so much as turn their backs to Gundham for a second. At either of his sides, Kaede and Kokichi stare straight ahead at the god, unwavering despite how Shuuichi knows they’re both terrified, just as he is. On instinct again Shuuichi’s eyes find Rantarou, where he’s already being watched; though his smile is gone, nonetheless his gaze is intense, confident, and the meaningful look shared between them gives Shuuichi the nerve to hold firm, too.
Shuuichi’s ears are still ringing from the noise of the door and his physically-manifesting anxiety when Gundham descends the two steps down from the platform his throne is sat upon, the echoing of his harsh footsteps sharp and leaving Shuuichi’s hair on end in the oppressive, stifling atmosphere of the room. At the opposite end of the glowing circle Gundham pauses, closely appraising Shuuichi with dark, severe eyes.
“You possess something that does not belong to you. If you truly value the fate of the souls in this room, you will give it to me.”
…Right to the point, then.
Whether or not Shuuichi was expecting some fanfare in the lead up to Gundham’s penultimate demand, in order to perhaps think through what it is he’s going to say when pleading his — and his friends’, and the gods’, and the entire world’s — case, any such time has long passed Shuuichi by. He’s got nothing planned, no script in mind, no real idea how he’s possibly going to get them all out of this.
But he has to. Shuuichi knows that. Whether or not they like it, all of the gods they’ve come across thus far have known that — with a fair number offering them help along the way. All of his best friends in the world know that, the ones standing side-by-side with him throughout this entire quest, all looking to him in this moment to take the lead. Even Rantarou, bound and silenced and held hostage as he is knows that, and despite knowing better than anyone that Shuuichi can’t possibly have the spear, he just looks to him with that same confidence he has known his brother to possess since the day they met.
For what feels like the very first time, it is up to Shuuichi Saihara to be the protagonist that saves the day. No one else is going to save the world, save his friends, save Rantarou — and someone has to. Whether or not he feels he’s prepared for it, worthy of it, truly capable of it — it’s all up to Shuuichi, and now it’s his turn up to bat.
“Gundham.”
Another ripple of horror-stricken noise passes over his friends as he says the name none of them have ever dared to. But he’s not struck down where he stands, not set alight by the god he’s invoked — the man in question simply watches, waiting, eyes narrowing the slightest bit but remaining otherwise impassive.
Emboldened, Shuuichi breaks from the line of his friends and steps forward, breaching past the edge of the burning cerulean sigil in the floor. Nothing happens once he’s inside.
“I don’t have the spear.”
“Halfblood,” Gundham spits venomously, expression pinching further, “it would serve you and your companions well to know your place, and cease this pitiful artifice attempt at once. Have you contemptible mortals truly grown so audacious, as to develop these delusions of grandeur that you may go toe-to-toe with me in a battle of wits and deceit? Creating worlds within games, against an opponent that far outmatches your dithering intellect…has the brief whisper of stolen divine power corrupted your soul so deeply already? Pathetic.”
Even when his heart physically stutters in his chest, still Shuuichi doesn’t stand down. He can’t.
Of course Gundham thinks that he’s lying. All of the gods have, so far — Junko has been rather persuasive in that respect, her abject insanity otherwise apparently notwithstanding. And all of the ones they’ve been given a chance to explain themselves to — Celeste, Taka, Fuyuhiko, Peko, Nagito, even Hajime, another Big Five god — have believed them, believed Shuuichi, enough to trust him to make it to this point and ultimately convince Gundham not to end the world, too.
He’s only gotten this far because he has been painfully, transparently honest about his place in all of this, despite how much such a prospect scared him for his entire life before these past few days. But through this quest, through his friends Shuuichi has learned not to cower away from the truth beneath his hat, beneath ignorance, and it has been that earnesty from the word go that has brought them to this point. Powers passed down from the gods have helped, the varied skills between himself and the six people who have believed in him enough to have done this with him have been crucial to their survival, pure dumb luck has saved their skin more times than he can count — but all of that will be rendered meaningless if the truth isn’t enough to save the world as they face down the end of it here, now, in Gundham’s throne room.
The best possible defense he has against the accusation that he stole the Spear of Gungnir is the truth — and it is up to Shuuichi alone to make sure that that’s enough.
“…I don’t have the spear,” Shuuichi repeats candidly, doubling down on his innocence despite the way Gundham’s eyebrows draw together with displeasure. “And I never have. But I’m here anyway, I had to come here anyway, and now — now it’s time for me to tell you why. Why I would run away from my entire life, put myself and my friends through all that we’ve had to deal with this past week, soldiers with guns and gods trying to kill us and so, so many things I never would have even dreamed of before this quest, all to end up here. That didn’t happen on accident. This isn’t a suicide mission — I didn’t do all of this for no reason. All I can give you is the entire truth as I know it…and all I ask is that you listen, and give me a chance to explain to you why we’ve ended up here.”
In the brief moment he allows his appeal for charitability to hang in the air, Gundham doesn’t rebuke it. Shuuichi is quick to fill the quiet before he gets the chance to. “The truth is that I’m scared. The truth is that most of this is going on way, way over my head, and I can barely keep track of most of it, all of the different powers at play in this conflict — but what I do know, is that the ones working against me are wrong. And the plain truth of the matter is that…that just as much as all of that is true, it’s just as true that I believe in myself and my friends more than all of that fear and doubt and uncertainty.”
Kaede said something like that, before. Shuuichi believes it more than he thinks he’s ever believed in anything. And now he needs to prove it.
“Before this week, I didn’t know anything about you — and at every turn since then, your reputation has far preceded you. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, in trying to figure out what I’d do once we got here, but now I’m realizing…that in that respect, the same can be said of me, among all of the gods. Everything I was led to believe about you tells me you should have killed me the second I didn’t give you what you wanted — but you haven’t. Everything you’ve been led to believe about me tells you that I’m your opponent in this, but just like you’ve proven me wrong about your reputation — the one that has preceded me is wrong, and it’s up to me to point out all of the contradictions in order to show you why.
“Like I told you, like I’ve been saying to everyone this past week: I did not steal the spear. Before Rantarou was brought here, I didn’t know…anything about the existence of the gods. Didn’t know anything about what I am. No one ever breathed a word of it to me.” Very briefly, his eyes find Rantarou’s. He still hasn’t looked away. “I didn’t have any clue about the true nature of what you are, your role in the world I have known up until this point. Not until days after the spear went missing — it took days after Rantarou was already here for me to hear the word ‘demigod’ for the first time. Even after Hajime and Nagito and everyone at camp tried to explain things to me, I was still so clueless. The first time I ever heard anything about a spear was when you accused me of stealing it, in the fire at camp — when it was already long gone.
“Even now, I still barely understand what it is. What it signifies. Why you even want it, why you demanded it be brought here at all — all I know are bits and pieces, and each one I discover just makes me hate that stupid thing all the more.”
Gods, does Shuuichi despise that spear. The woman behind it. All of the senseless cruelty it’s been wielded to inflict on the world. He can’t let her win this time, too.
“Before this week, I didn’t know anything about the gods, or Junko, or her spear. But now that I have even the slightest inklings of the sort of pain it’s caused for me, for my friends, for the gods who have looked out for me so far — for you, to have you seeking revenge for the tragedy and loss it personally caused your family…now more than ever, I am thankful that I have never been anywhere near that thing. And if I ever did end up with something that terrible in my possession, I would have rid myself of it at the first chance I got. No amount of power, or leverage, or anything could possibly be worth the misfortune that something like that has caused me when I don’t even have it. I can’t imagine the state we’d be in if I did.
“Whatever conclusion you’ve come to, about my place in all of this…you’re simply wrong, Gundham.” Shuuichi swallows around the dryness in his throat from speaking for so long, taking a half-step forward with his palms exposed placatingly to fill the lull. “I’m not — we are not your enemy here. We never have been, and we don’t want to be. I do not have the spear. I never have had the spear. Whether it be some kind of misunderstanding, or a lie, or whatever else the gods want to try and claim…you’ve got the wrong demigod, because this one has only come all this way because I am confident I am right. The sole reason I am here is to tell the truth, so I can save my brother, do right by the friends who have helped me get this far, and to stop the gods from tearing themselves apart over a complete fabrication — one that doesn’t stand to benefit anyone except for Junko. And that is the truth.”
Left sort of winded as his final declaration hangs uncertainly in the air, it takes considerable effort for Shuuichi not to stoop over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath in the aftermath. His gaze doesn’t even shift over to Rantarou anymore; all eyes in the room are on Gundham, silence buzzing almost nauseatingly in the air as they watch him consider, not so much as a twitch in his stonewall expression while he does.
As they have been since they came face-to-face, Gundham’s eyes are still on Shuuichi, not straying a fraction when he moves to draw his arms up stiffly to cross over his chest.
“…And is that all?”
“It — it doesn’t have to be,” Shuuichi answers, a little clumsily, slightly disarmed by the question. “I don’t — anything else you want to know, I can tell you. I don’t have anything to hide.”
“My demands have not shifted. You were summoned to, permitted to traverse this circle of Gehenna not for fanciful storytelling, but for the explicit purpose of fulfilling our trade deal on the eve of calamity — of which my terms were, and continue to be: Junko Enoshima’s spear for the Naegi boy. Are those ears of yours mere baubles affixed to your head? Have I not made sufficiently clear to you mortals, the ruinous consequences of your impertinence?”
This time, the way his heart skips a beat causes Shuuichi to falter for a moment, stalling his reply slightly too long. Something anxious, itchy, like pins and needles begins to cluster at the base of his spinal cord, painful and distracting like a pinched nerve. “I don’t…I don’t have it, Gundham. Junko’s blamed the wrong person — you’re blaming the wrong person. If we want any chance of actually fixing this, you need to believe me.”
Gundham’s lids narrow the slightest bit further. The silvery skin of the scar running through his white eye shines dully in the low light cast up from the floor beneath his feet. “So you are sticking to your extravagant fable to the bitter end.”
In here, the supernatural heat from outside is kept at bay; he’s known that since they entered the castle, obviously, but Shuuichi feels it now in how the back of his neck and his palms beneath his gloves grow slick with anxious sweats. Slowly but surely, the thick atmosphere of tension hanging over the room begins to compound in on itself as an almost tangible mass weighing down on them.
No longer do they need to walk towards the black hole to feel the imploding pressure warping the air around them — they’re right in the heart of it, and it’s only getting worse.
“It’s not a fable…and my story won’t change. I’m telling the truth.”
“…This is why you have come here?” Around his arms Gundham’s fingers tighten, the scornful frown he’s been wearing since they got here creasing further into an outright scowl. “To meander and waste my time on the precipice of armageddon? To attempt to manipulate my emotions by invoking my name and family within your tales of death and tragedy? To accuse me, Gundham Tanaka, the Supreme Overlord of Ice, of falling prey to that foul woman’s tricks and working at her behest?!”
The gravelly note to Gundham’s already rough voice grows harsher and louder the more he speaks, his lingering question hanging haltingly in the air alongside the echo of him raising his voice well past where it had been at the onset. That eldritch, lethal anger that Shuuichi has been warned about, that his friends have been petrified of on every occasion they’ve so much as recognized his existence begins to swell around him, powering his next words as he spits them out at the rest of them:
“Tch, the gall of you wretched halfbloods, stinking of stolen magic as you do and daring to lecture your superior with such reckless abandon…I shall teach you all to defy me!”
And all at once, it becomes clear to the entire room, when Gundham’s intentions to let them leave this place alive fizzle down to zero.
“M-Master, you can’t…!”
Usami’s admonishment in their defense is severely undermined by the genuine note of terror in her voice, the way her button eyes fill with tears as she cowers near Rantarou behind the rocking chair.
“Enough!” Gundham rebukes sharply, and despite being nonviolent Usami flinches as if she’s been struck, immediately falling into submission as the god’s ire quickly turns back on Shuuichi. “The time for child’s play is over.”
As a backdrop to his threat, both the torches lining the walls and the sigil on the floor beneath Gundham’s feet begin to burn brighter, casting the room in an ever-deepening blue haze — one of many quickly developing hints screaming at Shuuichi to move. Belatedly he does, retreating entirely from the circumference of the hexagram and back into line with his friends, observing with mounting horror as the rest of them do the way Gundham only seems to grow more angry — more dangerous. Not unlike Hajime’s red eye had back at camp, Shuuichi watches now as Gundham’s white one begins to glow as a clear warning of something, gaze searing into Shuuichi as his arms uncross to pose them offensively in front of himself.
And Shuuichi, like the rest of his friends, has to very rapidly come to terms with the fact that it is looking as though there may be no choice out of this except to fight.
Dull, electric thrumming beginning to pass around them, along with Gundham’s magic swirling in the air, tells Shuuichi that Kiibo is arming their gun even before he spares a brief moment to look. At his immediate left no longer are Kaede and Maki holding hands; now they move in tandem to fall into defensive positions against one-another, guarding each other’s backs with their gazes laser-focused on Gundham. At his right side he finds that one of Kokichi’s hands is occupied by the boxcutter he’s pulled several times on this quest; and in the other, closest to Shuuichi, he has Mondo’s helmet gripped tight, poised behind his back for Shuuichi to grab at a moment’s notice. Rantarou, expression determined and green eyes resolute beneath the gag and his bindings, looks back at Shuuichi like he holds all the world’s answers within him.
Paralyzed with indecision, Shuuichi’s own eyes fall to his gloved hands, desperate for them to help him stop thi—
“Wait.”
It’s not Shuuichi’s power that stops the brewing fight; instead, it’s a single spoken word that grinds the room to a halt. And it’s the last voice he expects to hear — Gundham’s, ceasing his predatory advance all at once within the middle of the hexagram, arms faltering slightly as his eyes scan with purpose over Shuuichi and his friends. His voice is quieter this time, less bombastic, but Shuuichi’s hardly in a place to analyze. No one else so much as moves an inch.
“…Usami.”
From where she’s still trembling near Rantarou’s side Usami whimpers, jumping to attention and pulling her paws away from her eyes to spare Gundham a watery look. “M-Master?”
His gaze doesn’t stray as he answers. “This is not the full party that has made the journey to my home.”
“O-Oh! Yes, one of the children stayed behind with Miss Celeste!”
“And yet…” Gundham makes a point to spend a moment examining each of their faces closely, eyebrows creasing when his gaze comes to focus once again on Shuuichi. “…That still leaves one halfblood unaccounted for.”
…Unaccounted fo—?
The words haven’t even fully registered in Shuuichi’s brain before he’s jerking a half-step backwards in alarm, whipping his head around to catalog for himself the line of his friends, because all of them except for Kaito are here. Kokichi at his right hand, Kaede and Maki on his other side, Kiibo past them, and—
And oh, gods — where is Gonta?!
Within seconds all five — five! — of them come to that same conclusion, and of all of the blue and pink and red and purple eyes blown wide and staring back at each other, not a single pair are Gonta’s distinctly bespeckled, crimson ones.
“Wasn’t he just…?”
“Gonta…? Wh-Why isn’t he here, I am certain that we were together until—”
“—W-Woah, holy crap, Gonta’s seriously not—!”
“—Where the hell could he have gone, we were all—”
“—How the fuck did we lose the goddamn skyscraper—?!”
“—Gonta? Gonta?! Where is he?!”
In an instant Shuuichi and his friends are plunged into uncontained chaos, shouting over each other as they cast frantic glances around the modest room — as if there’s anywhere a six and a half foot demigod could actually hide — and ultimately come up empty, because Gonta’s not here. Shuuichi doesn’t know how, when they were all crammed single file through those hallways after Usami saved them from Monokuma’s detour in the garden, but — one of the stuffed animals mentioned something about the corridors, right? About getting lost in them? And — and Gonta was with them once they left the garden, wasn’t he?
“Silence!”
In lasering all of their focus in on their inexplicably missing friend and freaking the hell out over it, they’ve largely been ignoring the reason they’re here in the first place: the god whose home they’ve lost Gonta in. At least up to this point, when his explosive shout succeeds in calling everyone’s attention back to him despite their spiraling hysteria. But Gundham, on the other hand — he’s not terrified or confused like the rest of them.
No, Gundham is livid.
“Do you mortals take me for a fool?!” All at once the previously-dissipated rage and magic around Gundham returns with renewed vitriol, white eye burning almost as brightly as the sigil, his scarf caught up in the swelling energy and poising supernaturally to coil like two extra limbs around his body. “My so-called suspicions of you recreant mongrels were thoroughly merited from the beginning! Peddling to me your farcical sob stories and attempting to hoodwink the Evil Fourth Eye himself, all of which was a mere contrivance crafted with the animus of sending a covert agent through my home?! You loathsome halfbloods — prepare to spend your final breaths and eternity everlasting wailing in agony for the sheer gall of endeavoring to thwart Gundham Tanaka!”
Left off-kilter by Gonta’s unexplained, horrifying absence and terrified by the genuine malice behind Gundham’s threats, none of them are even close to prepared to counter Gundham’s advance the second time he rounds on them. Operating purely on instinct, blanking on where he is, what the stakes are, forgetting about the apparently magic gloves he’s wearing, Shuuichi’s awareness blurs over into an almost primal haze as his hand twitches towards the bat still holstered in his belt loop, no plan in his mind other than protect my friends as he—
BOOM!
—As he catches himself mid-stumble yet again, the brief spell breaking, while his movement along with all of the activity in the throne room is sent screeching to a halt out of nowhere by a very, very loud noise.
Kaede manages to grab Shuuichi around the wrist, not so much keeping him from falling as she does use him as an anchor while the whole room shakes with the reverberation of the thunderous sound. As they stare desperately into each other’s eyes neither of them find any answers nor solace about what that was, what new nightmare is unfolding now, where the hell is Gonta — they’re only met with the same intense fear reflected in the faces of everyone else in the room, totally on the back-foot against one developing disaster after another.
And amidst all of that, despite everything else going on, Shuuichi has the most fleeting of moments to notice that it’s Gundham, out of all of them, that looks the most perturbed; once again his anger dies away almost all at once, expression dissolving this time into one that Shuuichi would classify as nothing short of…spooked.
Yet another thing to throw atop the burning Hellfire that has become of this quest.
“Gonta!” Conversely, the most visibly and vocally despaired among them is Kiibo, eyes spinning in their sockets as they scan the room frantically for any sign of him, voice pitching higher the longer they’re met with nothing but bad news. “How did no one notice that he was no longer with us in the catacombs?! He must be lost in there, w-we need to find him, we need t—”
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
By the end of the fourth distinct sound sent harshly reverberating through the thick brimstone of the palace, the shaking beneath their feet is violent enough for Shuuichi to seriously consider for a moment that the room may fully collapse in on itself from the force of it. He’s glad Kaede’s got a hand on him, as it keeps him upright, though that’s all that’s worth celebrating. Because there is clearly something outside of these four walls on the verge of bringing Gundham’s basilica to the ground, Gundham himself has made glaringly obvious he wants to kill them and right now he’s just as alarmed by whatever else is going on, Gonta is still missing, and Shuuichi has no idea how he’s going to get him and his friends out of this, his confidence from before slipping through his gloved fingers like sand as the Underworld threatens to cave in on him.
…At least one minor reprieve emerges, as the building ceases its powerful rattling: all that remains of the previous rampage is the dull echo of the booming before it, too, eventually dies into suspended, unexplained silence. Reluctantly, when nothing bursts through the room — and Gundham doesn’t make any aggressive sudden movements — Kaede lets go of his wrist, hardly moving otherwise as they share another searching, bewildered look.
“Hmph.” It’s Gundham that unsettles the quiet first; when Shuuichi snaps his head over to look he finds the god with his arms crossed, lacking homicidal posturing in both his body and magic alike as he stares off to the side, lips pulled into a sneer. “Foolish halfbloods…surely, whatever fiend you mortals have charged with your doomed reconnaissance mission has perished at the wretched hands of the Four Dark Devas of Destruction.”
The…what?
What a stupid thought to come to mind first. This quest has proved over and over that Shuuichi doesn’t have to recognize the name of, doesn’t have to understand something for it to pose a very serious threat to his life and the lives of the people around him.
And either way, like in most instances this past week, he’s the only one out of the loop — from across the room Usami squeaks, and when his gaze turns over to her it’s just in time to watch her bury her face in her paws and begin to wail, her anguished cry of, “No, how terrible!” sending a genuine, visceral wave of dread down his spine as it underlines her apparent belief in what Gundham’s just said. And what Gundham’s just said…is…
‘Perished’…?
The more that Shuuichi runs over that second thought again and again in his head, the worse that the prickling, painful terror spreading from the base of his neck through the rest of his body gets. Impossible to put a name to, impossible to comprehend even in his own brain, but nonetheless a feeling that’s become almost familiar to him. It’s the same feeling that Syo caused when she was centimeters away from skewering him into a wall. When Fuyuhiko had a gun pointed at Maki’s head. When Kaede nearly took a syringe to the neck from Mikan. When Hajime told him that Rantarou’s soul had entered the Underworld. When Makoto woke him up five years ago to tell him about his mom.
Only when Shuuichi thinks someone is dead, does he feel like this. The taste of bile burns up his throat and on his tongue as that reality begins to set in on him, and everyone else.
With a gasp Kaede’s hands fly to her mouth, tears welling in her eyes as she turns abruptly to look towards the door. In the flickering light of the sigil something in Maki’s eyes darkens, deadens, grimacing as if in pain as she shies away from the direction the booming had come from. Kiibo is still screaming, desperate, rationality long gone as they uselessly try to pry the entrance open and beg anyone to assure them that it can’t be true. At Shuuichi’s side Kokichi is shell-shocked; expression blank, fingernails digging into the flesh of his palms where his hands are curled tightly around the straps of his bag as he just stares at his shoes, whole frame trembling. Gundham is silent, motionless; Usami continues to sob from the far corner of the room; Rantarou’s eyes move repeatedly between Shuuichi and the doorway behind him, trying to communicate something that he can’t even begin to try deciphering as once again, grief threatens to cave in the whole world around him.
Not again…I can’t lose him…please, I can’t lose anyone els—
BOOM!
With as much intensity as Gundham had initially slammed them shut, the doors to the throne room fly open without warning, the force of the crash against the thick walls startling the living daylights out of everyone in the room and immediately calling their attention to whatever has just exploded into the fray.
Whatever turns out to be — of all things — Gonta, very much alive and absolutely starry-eyed as he bursts dramatically into the room that is mourning him after shouldering the strong doors open. In his large, cupped hands, are what appear to be four softly-squeaking hamsters. Behind him Monokuma stumbles as he follows on his heels, looking dazed and almost a little disbelieving.
“Friends! Gonta finally found you! Gonta try to keep bad animal Monokuma away from important quest, and we got lost…but look! Helpers led Gonta back to help friends!”
In the aftermath of Gonta’s surprising — relieving — arrival there’s yet another loud noise; this time it’s the unpleasant sound of Kiibo’s metal body collapsing unceremoniously to the ground. When Shuuichi can bewilderedly tear his eyes away from not dead Gonta, he’s met with the sight of Kiibo’s eyes swirling violently around their sockets, an electric hissing vaguely reminiscent of human hyperventilation leaking out of their speakers.
And yet again, their head has fallen off.
By the time Shuuichi and Maki have detached their feet from the floor and scrambled over to assist Kiibo they’ve begun to openly weep — as much as a robot can, but that is not a relevant thought right now, when Shuuichi’s kind of choking back overwhelmed tears himself — and as a result the motion has sent their head rolling, so Maki has to chase after them a little while Shuuichi clumsily helps their body to their feet.
“…Impossible.”
Gundham’s aghast — if subdued, in comparison to his earlier demeanor — utterance interrupts the two of them as Shuuichi’s propping Kiibo’s torso up and Maki’s muttering expletives beneath her breath while working to reattach Kiibo’s head. Kiibo continues to babble kind of incoherently, while Shuuichi and the rest of the room — Maki included, once her hands are free — watch Gundham as he raises a hand to point a single finger at…Gonta.
Gonta, whose former cheer has begun to ebb as he glances with mounting concern over at the hysterical robot, the hands holding the hamsters drooping as his smile does, too. “What wrong with Kiibo? Is everyone okay?”
His question goes ignored, as Gundham turns his dumbfounded gaze sharply towards where Shuuichi is standing near said hysterical robot. “No…absolutely impossible! Shuuichi Saihara, I command you at once reveal to me this tall child’s godly parent!”
Kiibo is mostly standing on their own two legs, but right now it’s Shuuichi left feeling a little unsteady in the face of Gundham’s impassioned demand. The open horror and just plain shock Gundham is displaying kind of exacerbates how caught-out and breathless the question leaves him, as he falls back once again on his painfully transparent honesty to answer. “I—I don’t know, ah, no one does. Like me, Gonta’s unclaimed by his parent.”
At that Gundham’s eyes narrow, turning away from Shuuichi entirely to instead focus the full weight of his fiery gaze on Gonta — still none-the-wiser about what happened and what almost happened in this room while he was missing. For a tense stretch of time that feels endless Gundham just silently appraises Gonta, one hand pensively held to his chin, expression otherwise unreadable.
Until finally, lacking his usual boisterousness, he dolefully declares, “…It simply isn’t possible.”
And speaking of being none-the-wiser — there’s not a flash of recognition across any of his friends’ faces in the brief moment Shuuichi has to look them all over in the aftermath. There’s another beat, and then Kaede is opening her mouth to ask after what’s unfolding only to be abruptly cut off by Gundham as he once again draws his hand up with a dramatic flourish, pointing squarely at Gonta with renewed passion as he stares him down, eyes alight.
“Tall Child! You shall duel me to the death in order to prove without a shadow of a doubt whether or not you are, in fact, the heir to the sprawling empire of Gundham Tanaka, the Supreme Overlord of Ice!”
…Uh, what?
Did I hear that correctly…?
Kiibo — who has at this point made their way over to Gonta’s side, clinging tightly to his flank — abandons their position without hesitation in order to step between him and Gundham as a buffer, apparently undaunted now that Gonta is in a Big Five god’s crosshairs. “No one will be doing anything to the death, especially not my boyfriend, thank you very much!”
In another context, maybe Shuuichi could have focused on the other thing hidden in that rather dramatic proclamation. But him and his friends have been in mortal danger way too much for something like that to take center-stage to any of them; least of all when Kiibo’s darkening demeanor signals even more harshly than their words that what they’ve said is a threat — their bright blue eyes burning hazardously down to a savage red, and the unmistakable whirring of their gun arming makes that crystal clear.
But thankfully, before Kiibo — or Gundham — can do something stupid, it’s Gonta that once again ends up being the much-needed deterrence from any sort of outbreak in violence. This time it’s him shifting the hamsters in his palms to crawl up the length of his arm and onto his shoulders, using a newly-free hand to lay placatingly on Kiibo’s shoulder as he side-steps past them, smiling affectionately down in their direction before turning to address Gundham with a concerned frown.
“Kiibo is right. Gonta definitely no will fight to the death. But, uhm…sorry, but Gonta not really understand. What does Mr. Gundham…mean?”
There’s another ripple of uneasiness that passes through the group at hearing Gundham’s name spoken aloud again. The effect quickly wanes, however, as Gundham’s severe expression softens just a fraction in response, hands falling without fanfare to hang at his sides.
“…Tall Child. Come here.”
More than one person moves to interject and stop him from doing so, but for one reason or another it doesn’t reach Gonta’s ears as he nods and obliges, not hesitating to break from the line of their friends and step forward towards where the god awaits him. He doesn’t look the slightest bit daunted to go toe-to-toe with a Big Five god that has the power to destroy their lives and everything that they love about them in an instant, a hint of a polite smile on his face as he approaches.
And then, the very moment that Gonta’s feet pass the threshold of the sigil carved into the floor, Shuuichi and the rest of them observe with mounting shock as the deep blue of the flickering, glowing symbols and lines carved into the floor shift instead to burn a warm, forest green.
Silence falls over the room. No one says a word — more than likely, several of them are holding their breath as they just watch this unfold, flabbergasted and left speechless despite none of them really understanding what’s going on — not even Gundham. When Gonta steps up to fully face off with Gundham, for the first time Shuuichi is struck by how the god isn’t nearly so larger-than-life as he appeared to them earlier, especially now: staring up at Gonta with wide, awed eyes, almost dwarfed by his massive frame.
“Gonta really like your pets. Very cute and polite.” One of the hamsters, a fat orange one with round cheeks, had at one point abandoned Gonta’s shoulder in favor of crawling its way through his hair to ultimately rest atop his head. Gently Gonta lifts his hands up to move it, making sure it’s safely settled in his grasp before he extends the animal towards Gundham with a smile. Shuuichi watches it all without so much as blinking, so he doesn’t miss as the other three hamsters immediately run down the length of his arms to rest as well in his large, cupped palms. “And they have such unique names!”
Gundham lets out a choked puff of air, but doesn’t say anything. Gonta, conversely, turns to face Shuuichi and the rest of his friends, making sure all four hamsters are sat comfortably in one hand before using his other to point at each one as he speaks. “San-D. Jum-P. Maga-Z. Cham-P. So cute, see?”
“My son!”
Following his shout, seeming more human than he ever has, Gundham lurches forward to wrap Gonta into an abrupt, slightly uncoordinated, vice-tight hug. Looking confused — though not as if he particularly minds — Gonta leans down to reciprocate, once again nearly dwarfing his father when fully engulfed in his massive arms.
Wait.
His father?
Is that even — well, like Gundham was saying just a minute ago, is that even possible…?
Right in front of Gundham’s eyes, Monokuma said, Junko killed his child — from the sounds of it, his son. ‘Destroyed his soul’, so Gundham would never find him should he search the Underworld for any sign of his child. And Gonta…he said around the campfire the night Gundham summoned them here that he spent the first several years of his life with his ‘forest family’, which seems to have literally been a pack of wolves. Shuuichi himself always thought it was weird, was horrific, the idea that not only was Gonta abandoned by his godly parent, but he was left alone as a little kid — a toddler? — in the woods…
…But what if he wasn’t?
What if Junko, Goddess of Chaos, had yet another trick up her sleeve with that stupid spear of hers? What if she abandoned a toddler of a Big Five god to fend for himself in the woods, left to be taken care of by wolves and his ability to commune with bugs and animals, until one day he was stumbled upon by the God of Luck and taken in as unclaimed, because nobody was any the wiser about whom he inherited those abilities and vibrant red eyes from?
“Yes, of course! Truly, no mortal except one with Tanaka blood coursing through their veins could possibly dare to understand the vile, eldritch whispers of the Four Dark Devas of Destruction without leaking spinal fluid from their ears! Let alone coax them from their horrific, demonic forms and allow themselves to be wielded by an unknown hand! Hah!”
Well…maybe?
That’s about as far as Shuuichi’s gotten, before the others around him are at least beginning to vocally come to that realization themselves, and he’s pulled from his ruminating while staring at the two embracing inside the hexagram, the others loudly berating Usami (kind of euphoric) and Monokuma (even more spacey-eyed and aghast than before) for answers in the god’s stead.
“D-Did he seriously figure that out because of his hamsters? That’s kind of crazy, but I’m…happy, I guess? I’m feeling kind of emotionally exhausted with everything that’s happened the past few minutes, honestly…”
“Jeez, tell me about it, Blondie…ugh, all this mushiness is making my allergies act up…”
“Oh, shush, Monokuma! I’m just so happy, I—I can’t stop crying…!”
“I still feel rather faint…Kokichi, does my faceplate feel hot? All of this stress is putting strain on my cooling fans — oh, gods, did I truly threaten Gonta’s father?! What a terrible first impression, I’m so embarrassed!”
“Jeez, how did progressing past the gross pining phase somehow make you more annoying?”
“…Talk about a stroke of goddamn luck.”
Maki’s comment is huffed out more quietly than everyone else’s swirling conversation, and Shuuichi might be the only one to hear it over the crowing of the others as they meet eyes. He shrugs — so not his wheelhouse, this kind of thing — and offers her an openly relieved smile. “I’m mostly just glad that we’re all still alive.”
She shrugs back at him in response, humming her acknowledgment — though her own lips twitch with that same sort of palpable relief. “I’ll take it.”
Before Shuuichi has a chance to throw his own burgeoning theory into the ring about the logistics of how the family reunion in front of them is maybe, kinda, sort of possible, their conversation is dimmed out when Gundham pulls back from his close conference with Gonta, and there’s a ghost of a smile on his face as he stares up to meet Gonta’s eye.
“Gonta Tanaka. The fates themselves could not have conceived of a stronger name for my heir.” There’s genuine pride in his voice as he says it, mismatched eyes shining with it as he squeezes Gonta’s arm — allowing his hamsters a path to perch now on their owner’s shoulders — then pulls away to instead shift his gaze over to Shuuichi. His smile wanes when he does, but otherwise his face and body language remain neutral; the supernaturally-charged anger that radiated off him before is gone. “…Shuuichi Saihara.”
It’s a visceral, almost instinctive action to straighten up at the sound of his full name being spoken, these days — especially by one of the gods, especially by this one. Slowly Gundham departs from Gonta’s side, approaching to stand within just a few feet of Shuuichi. Another suspended, weighted stretch is marked by how closely Gundham scrutinizes him, what he’s thinking impossible to gauge from just the way he stares back at Shuuichi.
“You have returned to me my son, who for years I have grieved as being lost forever. Hmph…to think all this time, while I was under the spell of that accursed woman’s chaotic power, he merely was residing in the hands of those fools at camp…”
“Hey, hold on a sec…!”
At the end of her objection Kaede squeaks nervously when Gundham turns his head to give her a sharp look. Only slightly cowed, she laughs a little to break the tension, then poses to the room: “W-Well…there’s two godly parent mysteries solved in one day! Guess that just leaves you, Shuuichi, huh?”
His immediate impulse to counter that with, “Kokichi, too,” is cut off by a startled noise from Gundham, who brings his bandaged hand to his mouth as if genuinely surprised. “Does your mortal companion jest in your name, Saihara?”
“Ah…no?”
Gundham’s thin eyebrows arch nearly all the way to his hairline. “You are truly unaware?”
“…I mean, yeah. It’s like I told you earlier — before this week, I didn’t know anything about the gods. No one in my life ever said anything, and that includes about the…one who gave birth to me, too, I guess.”
In response Gundham frowns, crossing his arms across his chest before nodding once over at Shuuichi. “How can you not know, when as we speak you wear your mother’s own gloves?”
Hah. Good question. “I only just got them once we arrived in the Underworld, actually.” Not nearly for the first time Shuuichi glances over his gloved hands, flexing his fingers beneath the weightless material but still coming up empty on what he’s actually meant to do with them, let alone who they belong to. “Celeste gave them to me when she intercepted us, but she wouldn’t tell me who my godly parent is. It’s the only thing she wouldn’t say, really.”
When Shuuichi looks up, he finds Gundham seeming to consider that, eyes narrowed down at the gloves for another extended period. Then, long-suffering, to break the moment he darkly mutters, “That undead witch…”
Shuuichi is pretty sure Gundham is talking about Celeste when he says that, but certainly he’s not going to be claiming that title for his…step-mom?
After a moment Gundham actually rolls his eyes. The action is so human it nearly manages to distract him from what the god says next.
“Given the Queen of the Dead’s…personality,” Gundham does not sound very enthused as he lingers on the word, “I should have anticipated that trickster may hold her silver tongue, even on the eve of utter worldly calamity. Tch…frankly, I am just shocked she has succeeded in containing this secret to the confines of our shared home for so long.”
“W-Wait, you know?” Shuuichi can’t help his surprise at what he thinks Gundham is implying with that last statement. “But she said—”
Gundham waves him off with a laugh. “Kehehe…foolish demigod…” And isn’t that markedly different from the ‘halfblood’ verbiage he used before. “The Netherworld is as much my domain as it is Ludenberg’s. It is well within my power to oversee every move made here…and that includes those that your mother and her wife went through great pains to conceal.”
So he does know — and he doesn’t seem particularly well-inclined to obscure the truth as Celeste had, if Shuuichi is reading this right. That’s what everyone else seems to be thinking, too; all of them look to Gundham expectantly, varying levels of intrigued and excited to find out who Shuuichi’s godly mother might be, after all they’ve been through to get to this point — with Gundham’s threat level seemingly neutralized following the revelation about him and Gonta. But Shuuichi…
…Honestly, Shuuichi is much more concerned with Rantarou, still gagged and bound to a chair at the opposite end of the room. Perhaps a bit rudely, instead of asking after his godly parent he shifts away from Gundham entirely, eyes on his brother as he takes a half-step in his direction. Gundham’s gaze first follows the movement, then aligns to Shuuichi’s line of sight, only seeming to remember Rantarou’s presence in the room now. He jolts a little, eyes widening, then sharply turns his head to address Shuuichi squarely.
“Yes, of course. Shuuichi Saihara, you have returned to me my son, a feat I could never conceive even a god capable of…though I have certainly tried. Furthermore…you do not have Enoshima’s spear. Of this I am certain.” Gundham sighs, then looks down at where Usami is hovering by his feet. “It seems the matter of Enoshima once again rests in the hands of the gods. Go, fetch the Queen’s child — she will allow him to leave. Especially now that there is work to be done.”
He lifts a hand to rub irritably at his temples, not sounding pleased in the slightest as he spits out the word, muttering curses in an unrecognizable language — probably for the best — beneath his breath before huffing a heavy sigh, and returning his gaze to Shuuichi with a single, solemn nod. “For these reasons, I shall allow you and your friends to leave, and grant you passage back to Hope’s Peak. There are words to be had with Hinata and Naegi…once you are returned to the safety of the barrier.”
The relief that floods the room is physically palpable as Gundham tells them without reservation that somehow, this plan of theirs has worked. Not waiting for a proper dismissal, Shuuichi doesn’t hesitate to race off towards Rantarou, leaving behind his friends and a surprised Gundham that’s forced to ask the group instead of Shuuichi if they wish to know the truth of his parentage as Shuuichi runs until his lungs burn headlong to his brother, smile bursting wider as he closes the distance.
He couldn’t care less about any of it as finally, finally he approaches Rantarou, gets within arms reach, kneels at the rocking chair’s side and hastily pulls the gag from his mouth.
“Right on time, little brother.”
Shuuichi sobs openly as he throws himself around Rantarou, squeezing him tight enough to almost definitely hurt where his arms are tied behind his back, but he can’t bring himself to care because Rantarou’s here, he’s alive, Shuuichi did it and when he goes home, it’s going to be with his brother by his side again. His laugh, his voice, his everything fills Shuuichi’s ears, and with overwhelmed, relieved tears burning down his face he can’t help but admonish Rantarou, at least a little bit.
“I can’t believe you never told me about any of this, you dick.”
Rantarou laughs again, voice a little hoarse but otherwise sounding okay as Shuuichi reluctantly pulls back to begin working at the bindings around his ankles. “Guilty. Don’t suppose I can promise an arcade trip to make up for it?”
“You’re so stupid.” Shuuichi sniffs, gloved hands fumbling as he struggles a little through his crying to untie the rope efficiently. It’s not too tight, but he still kind of hiccups through his follow-up of, “A-Are you okay? You’re not hurt?”
“All good over here.” He sort of awkwardly shrugs his shoulders, interrupting Monokuma’s grumbling as he works at the ropes around his hands with his stuffed paws. “I get the feeling you’ve been roughed up way worse than I have. And between you and me, I think the big guy did this just for show. He’s a little theatrical.”
It’s impossible to say for certain whether that’s meant to be a joke to get Shuuichi to stop crying or the actual truth. But he looks healthy, and he’s alive, and Shuuichi genuinely cannot bring himself to care about anything else as he hurries to unwind the ropes around his legs.
As soon as he’s free Rantarou is pulled up onto his feet and into another vice-like hug, embracing Shuuichi back hard enough to bruise as they’re properly reunited for the first time since the car crash, where they were separated for the first time in years. With his mouth near Rantarou’s ear, he tries to say something, but through the swell of emotion choking him up he can’t force out anything else. But it almost doesn’t matter, because he’s just so happy.
Rantarou is here. He’s alive, and breathing, and laughing, and hugging Shuuichi back when for the past ten days he thought he was gone for good, and he’s here. Screw everything else — he has quite literally gone to Hell and back for one person; the rest of the noise can wait until he’s cried the rest of his elated, pacified tears into his brother’s shoulder.
And there is noise to be heard over his extraordinary reunion with Rantarou: five of his friends and a Big Five god, all of whom he sort of left in the dust in his haste to free Rantarou. All of whom also seem to disagree with his priorities right now; over Rantarou’s mirthful chuckling in his ear, from behind them he hears Kaede boom, “Shuuichi, c’mon! Hurry up and bring your other brother over so we can all meet him already!”
At the same time both of them reluctantly pull back, Shuuichi to laugh at Kaede’s energy and Rantarou to look at him with an eyebrow raised, curiosity piqued at his apparent reputation amongst the other demigods, and probably that ‘other brother’ comment, too, and — oh, yeah. That will likely take some explaining, right alongside what exactly Rantarou knows about all of this thanks to his infamous precognitive ability. For the time being Shuuichi just shakes his head fondly, taking Rantarou around the wrist to lead him eagerly back over to the others.
Before any of them can do more than appraise each other on the walk over, Gundham interrupts them to say, “It would be wise to hold your introductions until I have delivered you all safely back within the barrier, into Nagito Komaeda’s care.” The relief Shuuichi has been coasting on since he freed Rantarou quickly spreads across Kaede and the others’ faces too, and by the time Shuuichi and Rantarou have made their way over to join the rest of the group Gundham is once again staring at Shuuichi, expression pensive and eyes much, much more open than they’ve been all night.
“I shall give you one final chance to know the identity of your godly parent. However…” Now his gaze shifts between Shuuichi and his brother, then slowly down the line of the rest of them. “Should you have no use nor care for such knowledge, I will not force it upon you. If you would prefer to maintain your…current family.”
With that, Shuuichi feels the weight of all eyes in the room zeroing in on his face, and it leaves him sort of flustered as the question settles. He honestly doesn’t know what to do, after being asked if he wants the answer so plainly, even when he demanded it from Celeste earlier and grew angry when she refused. On instinct, he looks towards his friends for help, finding each of them watching him intently, waiting. And…
And even if Shuuichi is content with his life the way it is, imperfect as it may be. With Rantarou, and Makoto and Byakuya, and his friends, and Celeste’s promise to let him see his human mom, his real mom.
Even then…this mystery, in one form or another, has persisted for all of Shuuichi’s life. So much of who he is and where he came from has been shrouded in omissions and outright lies. He isn’t hiding anymore, and he has no reason to give whoever his godly parent is even more leeway to hide, like she has for his entire life so far.
It’s about time he cracks this case, too.
“I am going to keep my family. I’m not leaving any of them behind.” He meets Gundham’s gaze confidently, resolve firm. “But I would still like to know.”
Laughing, Gundham brings one hand to his chin, appraising Shuuichi openly with warm eyes. “Kehehe…I expected nothing less. You share with your mother the same…inquisitive spirit. Even to your detriment.” Another chuckle, eyes scanning from Shuuichi’s face to his hands then back again. “You are not the only one who has embarked on an enduring, fraught quest. Very soon after your birth, your mother realized the gravity of the threat posed by Junko Enoshima. The one that now extended to you, her son, by virtue of her blood running through your veins.
“She left in search of a power that could with finality, once and for all, put an end to Enoshima and her infernal reign of terror across our realms. On this journey she has remained, since she put you into the care of that mortal woman, then through the relinquishment of your half-brother, through my own…tragedy,” Gundham struggles a little on the word, but pushes on regardless, “through your childhood and adolescence, and now through this crisis, as well. I have hope that one day, she will return…and she will return with whatever tools necessary to defeat that wretched creature for good.
“Your mother, Shuuichi Saihara, possesses power which rivals that of my own. Rivals that of Hajime Hinata, Makoto Naegi, and even that of Junko Enoshima herself. The woman who brought you into this world…your godly mother is Kyoko Kirigiri, the Goddess of Justice.”
Kyoko Kirigiri, Goddess of Justice.
The name holds little meaning, to Shuuichi. But once again, he’s clearly alone on that; all around him he watches as shock explodes across his friends’ faces and out of their mouths as the revelation settles.
“Kyoko is so cool!” Kaede croons, starry-eyed, palms pressed into her cheeks with her mouth agape.
Excitedly, Kiibo rattles off, “Indeed! The possibility did not cross my mind, as most Big Five gods choose not to have biological children, but with this in mind…! I suppose it is a bit awkward given her… absence from Shuuichi’s life thus far…but she is of exceptionally high acclaim amongst the godly community! How exciting for you, Shuuichi!”
“Gonta just happy that Shuuichi found his family, too! Even if she not here!”
“…Hmm.” Arms crossed, Maki almost looks a little embarrassed as she mumbles, “I can’t believe the gloves and the purple eyes didn’t tip me off.”
At the sensation of an elbow nudging at his ribs he looks over to find Rantarou wearing a look in his eye that Shuuichi would describe as proud, and sporting the kind of smile that has only ever spelled trouble. Only at the sound of pounding footsteps does Shuuichi look away from his brother, just in time to watch an utterly flabbergasted Kaito — his other brother, gods, that’s going to take some getting used to — dash through the open throne room doors, Usami on his heels as he incredulously, loudly questions what he was told on the run over, accepting an embrace from Kaede and Maki before he’s even caught his breath. All around, the resounding energy among the group is that they’ve won.
Shuuichi wouldn’t have it any other wa—
“Yaaaaahahahahaha!”
Manic, delirious cackling shatters the optimistic air of the room in an instant. Every single person in the room bar one recognizes it, from the tangible wave of unbridled terror that twists each of their faces. But Shuuichi is fairly quick on the uptake, when he turns as the rest of them do to look towards the source of the laughter.
Monokuma stands in the threshold to the room, but it’s not him that’s laughing: in both paws he clutches a bejeweled, gaudy, charm-adorned flip cell phone, and on the other side of the two-way video call, a woman that can only be Junko Enoshima is waiting.
“Sur-priiiiise! Well, I guess not really, right?”
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting the goddess at the heart of all of this to look like, if he’s being honest. There’s hardly been a free moment to spare to the notion. Now, he has no choice; though the framing constantly moves as she swings her own phone around, for the first time since he learned who she was, Shuuichi is finally getting at least a taste of the real deal.
Strawberry bleach-blonde hair, tied off in two thick, matted pigtails on either side of her head. Icy blue eyes framed by dramatic faux-lashes and heavy-handed makeup. Long, clawed red nails clicking obnoxiously against the receiver as she taps away carelessly on her screen. Cleavage spills out of her popped top shirt buttons as she lazes back on some sort of chair — or throne, the small little crown clipped into her hair makes the more likely scenario — and pulls her hand back from her phone, waving her fingers cheerfully at her camera while offering a razor-sharp grin.
“It’s awful soon for you guys to be acting like you’ve won, isn’t it? Like…it’s sort of like bragging about getting first place before you’ve even crossed the finish line. Thinking you’ve got the girl when your damsel’s still in distress. Blowing your load way too early, y’know? All of that to say — well, I’m getting kind of bored. And the theater kid’s time limit just ran out, anyhow!”
Junko giggles, her phone jostled by the motion of her kicking one knee to hook over the other, legs thrown off one arm of her throne as she adjusts her camera’s framing again. “Y’know, while I was debating whether or not you’d all end up smashed into a fine paste against the castle floors, I came to a pretty hopeless realization — that you can’t send a softie like Tanaka to do the main antagonist’s job. And he already snatched my leverage away once…so I guess what I’m saying is that ahead of our little meet-cute, I decided to up the stakes a little. They say two’s company, three’s a crowd, seven’s probably a stampede in the making, or something — so I wonder, what do you suppose I should call a group like this?”
It’s hard to make out, due to the distance Monokuma stands from them and grainy quality of the camera as Junko pans it around, but as she’s delighted to show off, the point she’s making is clear: all around her, trapped like bound hostages behind dozens of wooden podiums, are the faces of various gods Shuuichi has come to know in varying degrees over the past ten days — and from context clues, he can assume those he doesn’t recognize are the faces of most of the gods still unknown to him. But the several he does know stand out starkly against the much more numerous ones he doesn’t: Byakuya, Makoto, Hajime, Nagito, Taka, Touko, Fuyuhiko, Peko, nearly all of the gods they’ve crossed paths with have somehow been compelled to join her, wherever they are. He can only imagine it’s everyone else’s parents that make up the rest of the roster she’s amassed, too.
“Ooooh, have I left you small frys speechless? I toootally tend to have that effect! Hard not to, with a rack like this — jeez, are any of you even old enough to take a peek? Hey, what were we talking about again? Oh, yeah — a group this big and eager…how does a ‘party’ of happy gods sound? Sooo sickly sweet, I wanna skip the toothache and just rip ‘em all out! Peanut gallery, heeeeey — we’re all having fun, right?” Nothing but silence carries over the receiver, and a moment later Junko groans. “Uuuuugh, leave it to these dorks to ruin a touching moment — you’re so meeean! Actually, I’m getting pretty bored of this little interlude, too…so let’s just move on to the main fuckin’ event already, huh?!
“Here’s the sitch, guys: I’ve clocked practically every word out of your stupid mouths this week, and all this predictable lameness is making me itchy like I’ve got lice! So as much as I think it’d be pretty fun to switch from a party of gods to a massacre of ‘em, that’s not really what I’ve got in my itinerary for today, dig it? Buuut, I’m not really known for sticking to my plans to a flawless tee either, y’know? And I doubt you hero types could stomach a full bloodbath, so unless you’d like to see one live-streamed straight to your eyeballs starring king-of-the-chumps, mister Friendship is Magic over here,” Junko flings her upper half over one of her throne’s arm rests to briefly thrust her phone into the face of Makoto, inexplicably sitting below her at one of her flanks, “I suggest you brats haul ass to the Gods’ Realm, before the final boss battle starts without you. Because I promise — you are not gonna want to miss this. Toodles!”
Slumping back in her throne, Junko indulges in an obnoxious blown-kiss towards the camera alongside one final shriek of deranged laughter before unceremoniously hanging up, leaving just dead air buzzing through the receiver, and everyone’s heartbeats pounding in their ears as Junko’s clearly-meant threat — promise — lingers alongside her cackling.
“…She has our parents,” Rantarou observes lowly, the first to break the reforming sound barrier in the room.
“She has e-everyone…” Kaede rubs her fists against her eyes, then squares her stance to glare hatefully down at Monokuma. “What did you do?!”
“Don’t you dare ignore her!” Kaito shouts, taking a dangerous step closer to the bear, knuckles cracking as they twist into fists at his sides. “Tell us what the hell she’s up to right now, or I swear to god I’ll—”
“You are wasting precious time interrogating that mongrel,” Gundham interrupts urgently, unable to keep at bay the reproachful look he gives Monokuma as the bear does nothing more than titter mockingly at their blooming panic. “He exists only to torment, not to provide answers about his patroness's corrupt machinations. And spear or not — it appears a showdown with Enoshima has become imminently inevitable.”
There’s a brief moment spared towards discussion between the eight demigods, but there’s really no arguing with Gundham’s point on the matter — there really is only one option. Kiibo and Maki’s parents are there, Rantarou (and Shuuichi’s adoptive) parents are there, Hajime and Nagito are there, practically everyone is there. And though she doesn’t have the spear, there is no doubt among any of them that Junko will go down swinging, and to delay their arrival any more only puts the gods in additional danger.
As Gundham moves to the middle of the glowing hexagram — dyeing it once again a deep violet — and begins to summon a portal, the rest of them look significantly at each others’ faces. This isn’t how any of them imagined today would go down, though from what Junko said, maybe they should have been anticipating this confrontation from the start. Either way, the climax of their life-altering quest awaits on the other side of the shining, swirling golden doorway that opens in the middle of the sigil, and more than ever there is no telling for certain what might become of them all.
But they won’t go down without a fight, either — they all have too much to protect to let Junko win after everything they’ve gone through. Shuuichi has too much to protect. Rantarou, Kokichi, all of his new friends, his parental figures known and unknown, each and every one of the gods no matter their allegiances, the whole world — all of it rests on Shuuichi’s shoulders, and one way or another, Shuuichi decides how this ends.
And as he steps through the portal into the Gods’ Realm last, he knows that he will not fail.
Notes:
+ :)
+ anyone ever notice how we only got the names of four of the big five gods? me neither <3
+ truthfully, i want to run my mouth much, much more about this chapter, but i will end up writing an essay down here, so i'll invite you all to hit up my line @ gontagokuhara on tumblr should you want my thoughts on anything (or, if you want me to respond to YOUR thoughts on things). moving swiftly on...
+ so, you remember what i said last time about wonky timelines and chapter lengths? yeah, this is where it's really gonna kick in. so i am preemptively setting realistic expectations that we will likely not see the next chapter until september. i have my sights aimed on shuuichi's birthday, but as was evidenced this time...we're kind of staring down the barrel of the end here. i have no idea what it's going to look like (length wise) (format wise) but one way or another we will get there! and i am so looking forward to it, perhaps more than i have looked forward to any chapter thus far. i will leave you all to speculate on what that may mean :)
+ in the meantime: i am looking forward to YOUR reactions to this little doozy more than i have looked forward to any comment section, so rest assured any and all will be loved and adored and giggled at by me (and possibly posted on my tumblr to weep over a little, too). as you wish me luck on completing this next chapter, i wish you luck in preparing for what comes next.
+ because i promise — you are not gonna want to miss this. toodles!
Chapter 27: enter junko enoshima, or: the confrontation that everyone has NOT been waiting for (but perhaps was kind of inevitable, anyway)
Summary:
“Save us the soliloquy, drama queen. You are not the titular character of today’s tragedy.” Now she bangs her gavel down in front of her, and she’s quick to abandon it once she’s fully commanded the room again, now tapping a finger against her chin as she blinks owlishly down at the group of errant demigods still left without an assigned seat for…whatever she’s gearing up to. “Nah, that’s so last week. But the real shining star of today’s main event…let’s see, that would be…eenie, meenie, miney…”
Junko takes considerable time sustaining the tension of the moment as she switches her attention between each of the eight of them, as if there are any doubts as to who’s about to be called up to bat. When she finally deigns to speak again, she’s decided to drop the impish lilt in her voice, affect flat as she quits her attempted, bluffed suspense and levels her finger squarely at Shuuichi.
“…You, New Kid. You’re up.”
Obviously. But she still manages to beckon him forward in what is feasibly the most skin-crawling way possible.
Notes:
+ hi there! happy shuuichi birthday day!
+ i have been tirelessly working on this chapter pretty much since the last one dropped due to the ever-present challenge that is junko, and despite it being my Literal everest over the course of this fic thus far, i am very, VERY happy with where i've ended up. and on shuuichi's birthday like i wanted, to boot!
+ i'm sure we all want to get right into the action, and no one can be blamed for that! so with many additional thanks as always to my beloved beta reader / kokichi (+ junko!) correspondent evan captorvatiing, let's get going; and here's hoping this is a decent enough birthday gift for our main character shuuichi, huh?
+ content warnings at the top, this time, for anyone who may need a heads-up: brief bursts of misgendering/transphobia, homophobia, nsfw commentary (directed at adults), callous suicide jokes, and general cruelty a la one junko enoshima
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The Gods’ Realm, as Shuuichi comes to understand it when he emerges on the other side of the radiant golden portal he steps through, is much less a realm akin to Earth or the Underworld as it is…some kind of room. An honestly pretty grotesque one, as becomes immediately apparent; though for much of his initial scan over his new surroundings he’s left squinting as his eyes adjust to the harsh, vivid brightness the realm is saturated in, especially compared to the dark, brooding ambience of the Underworld they just left behind. For what has been described as the focal point of the gods’ most urgent gatherings and discussions, as a realm fit for and created solely for the gods themselves, it’s rather…lackluster, to put it lightly. Perhaps juvenile is a better word, when held up to the prideful air he knows most of the gods to project around themselves.
When he can get his wits about him enough to acclimate himself to this undeniably hostile territory — and put himself in front of his friends, knowing well enough by now how this part usually plays out — what immediately jumps out at Shuuichi are the patterns. Framing the entirety of the large, seemingly boundless — in a way not dissimilar to Celeste’s casino — room are mind-numbing patterns, plastered across every surface of the cage boxing them in. Like someone’s vomited up technicolor optical illusions all over the walls; from floor to ceiling its patterns are discordant, and garishly bright, and almost seem to physically shift around if he looks at them for any significant stretch of time. Hearts, spirals, dots, plaids, chevrons, patterns he doesn’t even know how to describe paint the walls every shade of neon in the rainbow, each one more painful to look at than the last. Jerking his gaze down to his shoes proves comparatively less visually noisy, but no less badly-designed and executed: what appear to have been formerly-pristine white floors underfoot are now checkered with poorly-drawn black squares, and the occasional…poster of Junko, glued haphazardly to the tiles.
Gundham’s portal has spit them out to stand some small distance from the true centerpiece of the Gods’ Realm: a wide, crescent-shaped arc comprised of well-maintained wooden podiums, spanning almost a full circle save for a gap wide enough to serve as a rather convenient walkway into the center of the proverbial ring. Behind nearly every podium stands a god, all bearing diverse range of faces he both does and does not recognize; and though he is still a fair stretch away from even the closer ones, the faces of the gods that he can make out tell him that this is as much a hostage situation as Junko’s phone call made it out to be. Those podiums that don’t have a god standing at the helm instead have black-and-white portraits propped up on wrought-metal displays behind them, each of which is defaced in bubblegum-pink paint; though from this distance — and the more pressing matters at hand — he can’t make any of them out beneath the obvious disfigurement.
At the very center of the arched line of gods sit what are clearly the podiums belonging to the Big Five, raised onto three levels of elevated, ascending gold platforms to sit strikingly above the rest. The two podiums on the lowest rungs are devoid of their corresponding god, though only behind one of them stands a portrait. And with Makoto and Hajime unwillingly flanking her on the second rung, unsurprisingly it is Junko Enoshima that is poised at the apex of the elaborate golden podium: sat atop her gaudy throne far above everyone else, examining the new arrivals curiously as they digest their surroundings.
But not for long. When Shuuichi’s gaze finally lands on her she’s quick to forcibly catch his eye, straightening her overly-casual posture draped over her throne and sticking a manicured hand into the air to wave to him energetically, as if all of the attention in the room is not already zeroed in on her. Satisfied — and more than likely, bored — Junko drops her arm, intense eyes never straying from his as she leans forward to pick something up from in front of her on her podium. It’s a remote, with one large red button that she wastes no fanfare in pressing in view of all to see; then, after carelessly tossing it over her shoulder, she instead drops her chin into her palm, intent to just sit back and watch.
Junko’s attention doesn’t stray from Shuuichi, but his attention is naturally drawn to the middle of the semicircle of podiums, the sound of several tiles cracking apart in the ground being what breaks the tense quiet that’s persisted since Shuuichi stepped through the portal. Something mechanical whirs beneath the surface, but it’s in otherwise silence that the entire room is left to stare at the sleek, metallic blue podium that slowly materializes in the center of the ring. From another split tile a ruby roll of fabric is propelled up through the floor, its sizable length unfurling itself leisurely while creeping backwards from the podium, with the red carpet ultimately reaching its end and coming to an unceremonious stop no more than a few inches from the toes of Shuuichi’s shoes.
…Not a podium, no. By all appearances, Shuuichi feels as though he’s looking at a witness stand. And from the way Junko looks with purpose between it and the demigod who has bore the brunt of her fixation thus far, he has a sneaking suspicion on just who is about to be hung out to dry on it in the middle of this elaborate courtroom.
After a moment she reaches out for something else on her own podium: a gavel, this time, soon held high above her head ready to be used. But abruptly she stops with her hand hanging limply in the air, briefly glances over the group clustered close behind Shuuichi, then drops her neutral expression into an indignant pout.
“C’mon, Tanaka, you’re already late to our playdate. Be a doll and quit making toxic BL eyes at shorter, gayer Scarface so we can get this show on the road, would you?”
A new voice, now: Gundham hissing those same foreign, no less vile curses that Shuuichi remembers from before, which he makes absolutely no effort to keep Junko nor anyone else from hearing loud and clear as at his own podium across the room, Fuyuhiko goes a deeply unpleasant shade of purple in the face. Nonetheless he complies; with a bright burst of blue light and a sound like a firework going off Gundham disappears, teleporting into place at the third-tier Big Five podium that does not have a portrait sitting behind it. He openly scowls, his mouth continuing to move though Shuuichi can no longer hear him; Junko, conversely, does make every effort to project her voice as she bats her eyelashes sweetly down in Gundham’s direction.
“Save us the soliloquy, drama queen. You are not the titular character of today’s tragedy.” Now she bangs her gavel down in front of her, and she’s quick to abandon it once she’s fully commanded the room again, now tapping a finger against her chin as she blinks owlishly down at the group of errant demigods still left without an assigned seat for…whatever she’s gearing up to. “Nah, that’s so last week. But the real shining star of today’s main event…let’s see, that would be…eenie, meenie, miney…”
Junko takes considerable time sustaining the tension of the moment as she switches her attention between each of the eight of them, as if there are any doubts as to who’s about to be called up to bat. When she finally deigns to speak again, she’s decided to drop the impish lilt in her voice, affect flat as she quits her attempted, bluffed suspense and levels her finger squarely at Shuuichi.
“…You, New Kid. You’re up.”
Obviously. But she still manages to beckon him forward in what is feasibly the most skin-crawling way possible.
”Oh, and ditch the goods, would you? You can keep the hardwood on your way up to home plate, but that trash bag is a hard veto.”
In perhaps not his smartest move, Shuuichi turns away from her to instead look back at his friends — still vainly barricaded behind him as he intended in stepping in front of them, though they’re all well aware of what little protection they’re offered with only his body in the way of the enemy they’re facing down now. The first to react, Kaede takes a half-step closer to grasp onto one of Shuuichi’s hands, grip firm as she squeezes him tight and offers him the barest hint of a smile.
“Be brave. We believe in you more than anything, Shuuichi…and if you need us, we’ll be right there with you.”
They all know what the outcome of a scenario like that would be, too. His duffle bag and everything contained within it handed off to Gonta, Shuuichi’s bat weighs especially heavy on his hip. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t come to that.”
When Kaede nods and reluctantly lets go it’s Rantarou that cuts in after her, holding Shuuichi’s shoulder until he’s sure he’s being paid attention to.
“You’ve got this, as long as you keep your head up and stay smart like I know you are. Be careful who you trust here, because it isn’t everybody. And don’t give up hope — you’re going to need it.”
As if there was ever any doubt; Shuuichi can’t remember a time where he wasn’t hanging off of every single word Rantarou says. Let alone the same words he’s already heard from Rantarou once; the ones that drove Shuuichi to get them all here in the first place.
So Shuuichi finds his own parting words rather easily: stolen from Rantarou, but meant for all of his closest friends from the bottom of his heart. With a nod, he scans each of their faces one more time. “I’ll be waiting for you guys on the other side of this.”
With his friends’ eyes burning resolutely into his back, and the weight of the world resting more literally on his shoulders than it ever has, Shuuichi walks the red carpet to the witness stand awaiting him — steps with distinct finality into the belly of the beast to put himself fully in the metaphorical spotlight at the center of Junko’s colosseum.
During his slow approach he passes many of the occupied podiums, and the eyes of the gods cataloging his every move are of no real surprise to Shuuichi. His eyes do, however, catch on the several empty spots intermixed between the arrangement of gods — or rather, the defaced portraits standing behind them, and the details of them he can now make out more clearly as he grows nearer to them. Both podiums on each end of the incomplete circle are vacant, he notes immediately. On his right is the portrait of a round-faced woman drawn to have her eyes shut and cartoonish ‘Z’s coming out of her mouth to indicate sleep; on his left, the face of whoever it is meant to be is scribbled over to the point their identity is indiscernible, and unique to the rest of the podiums, this one is heavily vandalized with…increasingly crude, vulgar names scrawled in pink all over it. Mikan he recognizes from her face alone, though her features are a little harder to make out beneath the two crossed pink syringe illustrations X-ing through her effigy. Hifumi he also recognizes, through the pig nose, ears, and curly tail drawn onto him, but the god himself is present, and standing one podium to his portrait’s right. One empty spot bears no portrait at all, but instead a placard displayed as all the rest are that simply reads ‘The Imposter’.
And the final empty podium, the one sitting on the rung below Makoto, he can only assume belongs to the sole member of the Big Five that Shuuichi has yet to be properly introduced to. If it is his godly parent’s assigned spot, if it is Kyoko Kirigiri’s photo hung on Makoto’s left, he’s still left none-the-wiser on what she looks like: her portrait, suffering a level of savage vandalism rivaling that of the podium at the end of the line, is slashed beyond recognition with five claw marks ripping right through the textile of the photo itself.
Admittedly, it is not the most reassuring of omens as Shuuichi steps obediently into his place in all of this, and Junko makes a show of boredly examining her bloody red, talon-like nails in his view when she catches his gaze wandering. Lacking other options, Shuuichi looks to her, waiting.
She’s got him right where she wants him. And it is very clear to everyone in the room that Junko Enoshima is running the show now.
“Actually, before we get to all of that — I see some empty seats in the house, which is sooo disappointing, considering I made sure the whole Brady Bunch got an invite. I think a quick attendance call is in order! Ahem.”
Junko loudly clears her throat, materializing a clipboard and pen from the seemingly endless supply of props she’s got on-hand. Clicking the pen open against her chin, she spends at least three uninterrupted minutes monotonously reading out a god’s name, pointing them out amongst the crowd, scribbling something down on the paper in front of her, and then repeating the process, leaving all of them to squirm as she takes her sweet time. When she’s finished she braces a closed fist against her cheek with her elbow propped up on her knee, scanning the room with a put-upon air of disappointment.
“Siiiiigh…most of today’s absences are the usual predictable nobodies, but it’s still a massive drag considering all of the set-up, you know? Fine, let’s see…Mikan’s totally busy stuffing her useless whore mouth with ice cream and getting fat post-breakup…Imposter’s probably getting their cock wet banging that human boy-toy of theirs in the freaky sex dungeon, now that the joint’s empty…Celeste is a chronic flake, so that’s not exactly breaking my heart, but — wait a sec.” Tossing her attendance sheet aside, she stands from her throne to peer down at the larger circle of gods with her palms braced on her podium, pitching a scowl down to some unknown offender to her right. “What’s with the identity theft, Pigpen? You do not have the waistline to be impersonating that frigid, skeletal bitch, but you didn’t even try putting on the lolita dress to sell the bit. Humiliation kink goes away once you’re not actively huffing her farts, does it?”
There is a lot there for Shuuichi to digest, but he’s hardly given a second to breathe, let alone reckon with any of that; from where he’s standing next to his own portrait Hifumi yelps, unable to look anywhere in Junko’s direction as he squeaks, “Y-Your characterization of me is all wrong!”
“You are not even faceless, nameless, violently-killed-in-the-background character material, jagoff. Why’s the bloodsucker still shut away in her coffin, huh?”
Hifumi is very anxiously sweating now, vainly mopping at his gel-matted hair with a red handkerchief and not so much as even acknowledging he has a left side anymore, he’s that openly terrified of Junko. “Th-The…the lady of the palace sends h-her regards alongside myself in her place, but she is…rather busy, with her multifaceted duties, a-and—”
“Move it.”
With a much more strangled noise Hifumi rushes to comply, literally throwing his bulbous body over the solid divider between his podium and the one he’s been occupying in a desperate effort to appease her demand. Celeste’s podium left empty and Hifumi himself left panting in front of his, he very reluctantly drags his gaze up to look at Junko, awaiting a reaction — as does the rest of the room, as does Shuuichi, a sinking feeling dripping into his gut as he watches Junko ponder her next move, not even a crack in her impassive expression as she stares. She doesn’t so much as blink.
Then: “Well, since you are such a pathetically compliant bottom bitch, and since I’m already in a decent mood…”
Another pregnant pause. Another large red button displayed openly to the room. Another razor-sharp smile flashed to her captive audience.
“…All the more reason for me to enjoy doing this. Surprise, game over, thanks for volunteering to be today’s example!”
With the press of a button, Shuuichi hears the sound of something else cracking to pieces for no more than a fraction of a second before the air is harshly cut through with an ear-splitting shriek. Alarmed, like the rest of those present Shuuichi is only just quick enough to jerk his head in its direction, and to watch with mounting horror as Hifumi appears to just…drop, the ground beneath his feet caving in and sending him careening downwards through the floor, the only noise haunting the room being his screaming until that, too, dies out of earshot.
Behind the trap-door on Hifumi’s podium, the only remnant of the god that used to stand in place there is his defaced portrait.
Celeste’s portrait, only newly made visible, remains where it is. And while the devil horns and flame illustrations scribbled across her photo are a little on-the-nose, Shuuichi is left really, really hoping through the pit in his stomach that Hifumi has just been sent back down to his mistress, and not…what that kind of scream very heavily implies. When Shuuichi can pry his eyes away from that portion of the line of podiums, he finds that the rest of the gods seem largely unperturbed, not so much as batting an eye beyond their already present tension — when he spares a desperate look back at his friends, he finds them appearing just as horrified as he feels.
Either way, Shuuichi’s eyes still flit down to his shoes, where the floor beneath him could crack open and be his definitive game over, if he pushes this psychotic, apparently omnipotently-powerful woman the wrong way.
“How…unsatisfying.” Junko’s tone is haughty, drawled, but not projected at the god she’s just cast out; instead, she’s looking rather squarely at Hajime, drumming her nails on the arm of her throne impatiently. “All of that foreplay, and yet my comparative favorite of the bunch still hasn’t showed his delectably despairing ass to the party. Heeeeey, Hinata…I get the impression you’re becoming rather bored with all of this. Any chance you’ve decided to let Kamukura out to play yet?”
That would make this catastrophe somehow even worse, which everyone else in the room, including Shuuichi, is well aware of. As is Junko; because as he’s rapidly coming to recognize, catastrophe is kind of the point, with her.
Hajime’s expression has been stonewall and mostly unchanging thus far, but when callously challenged by name — when the God of Despair lurking within him is called upon — he grimaces, emotion creasing his face much more openly as he turns his head to glare up at her. “You wish.”
“Yeah, babes, I really do. C’mon, I know he’s just itching to break out.” Leaning precariously over the divider separating her throne from Hajime’s lower-rung podium, Junko grasps out at him, tugging on his prominent cowlick and chirping in his ear while dutifully ignoring the way he is not in the least bit gentle in trying to shove her off. “Kamu-kuuura, this is exactly your shit — let out your dark side, come bask in the glory of despair, baby! You think you’re ever gonna get a situation as unpredictable as this again? The band’s back together, sunshine, come on out while the going’s still good, while the plot twist’s still unspoiled!”
Someone very purposefully clears their throat, loud enough to distract Junko for as long as it takes for Hajime to roughly remove her claws from his hair, pushing back against her arms until her flighty attention is called elsewhere. As her gaze does, so too does Shuuichi’s follow to where the interruption has come from: it’s Nagito, puffing a limp curl out of his eyes as both his gloved and ungloved hands tap with visible agitation against his podium.
“This isn’t what you’ve arranged all of this for. Just get to the point.”
Junko clicks her tongue, for now settling back in her throne with her gavel in hand, idly thumping it against her other palm as she scans over Nagito with open disinterest. “Oh. Panties in a twist ‘cause you think I’m drooling over your dibsed man-meat, huh? Take a chill pill, pussycat — I’ve only got the hots for Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dreary. And even that’s pushing it.”
Scowling, Nagito tersely shoots back, “I can only hope that push comes for you off of the edge of a steep cliff.”
“Scathing,” Junko replies flatly, though her eyes narrow the slightest fraction in his direction. She’s quick to let a nasty edge creep into her voice, though it’s anyone's guess if it’s insincere or not. “You know, I don’t think I remember calling on the peanut gallery for input. Trying to punt your ass into detention might be interesting if nothing else, but alas, I’m just not feeling it. Testing my new detention methods on the halfbloods, though…now there’s an idea. Oooh, that’s a wicked little look — cat got your tongue?”
Shuuichi has never seen Nagito’s face so red — even the anger he witnessed from Nagito the night they ran away in the RV doesn’t come close. That, as well as the frantic glances he sends towards Shuuichi and his friends, the anxious twitch of his fingers while they’re tightly wrapped around his biceps, the much more hushed muttering beneath his breath is all the answer that Junko needs for that question, it seems. Having left Nagito adequately cowed — and having apparently decided she’s done poking the fuming bear that is Hajime, looking positively murderous with his pulsing red eye while trapped at the right hand of the woman threatening his husband and his children — Junko shoots him a wide, soulless smile, then lazes back in her throne to tap her gavel contemplatively against her cheek.
“Well, whatever. Maybe Kamukura will get a quick bump off his unfortunately-timed game of hooky, even if he is leaving a very enticing opportunity on the table. Back onto the main event, then…hmm, where were we again?”
Without missing a beat, Junko’s gaze now finally finds Shuuichi, one manicured eyebrow raising as she looks him up and down. “Oh, yeah. You. Man of the hour, huh?” Tone passionless, she crosses one leg over the other at the knee, elbows braced on her thighs with her face propped up in both hands as she glances him over with unblinking, cold blue eyes. “Name’s Junko Enoshima. Goddess of Chaos, international diva, bestest tits in the business, leader supreme of the Big Five, you get the picture. It is so exciting to finally meet you.”
It really isn’t, from the detached way in which she addresses him. Perhaps the singular thing that the two of them agree on. Her gaze doesn’t stray. “Well, this is a little awkward, but…who are you, again?”
She hasn’t stopped playing games since he arrived here. This whole quest is just a game to her — but in the precarious position he’s in, it will do Shuuichi, nor his friends, nor the world at large any good to try and break the rules or draw her observably-spontaneous ire, when she’s got such a vice-grip around every single person here. Not yet.
“Shuuichi Saihara.” You killed my mom. You tried to take my brother from me. You hurt my friends. You ruined my life. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Now Junko does crack a grin, drumming her fingertips against her cheeks. “Oh-em-gee, you are so polite and obedient! I didn’t think they taught that kinda stuff in school these days. Huh, maybe that explains how you’ve avoided getting torn to shreds beforehand — oh, and speaking of hands. I gotta say, those hand-me-downs from the old lady aren’t exactly my cup of tea…always function over fashion with her. Some people just choose to live life ugly, I guess. Sad.”
Unconsciously, Shuuichi’s eyes find his hands when Junko brings them up, the studs on his knuckles flashing the room’s bright lights back at him with his gloved palms laid flat on the witness stand. He doesn’t do it on purpose, and as soon as he does he wishes he hadn’t, because with how closely Junko is watching him — from some of the things she’s said, how closely she’s been watching him this entire time — of course she sees it, and of course she points it out.
“Hmm? Don’t look so shocked, I mean, really — I know all about you. I’ve been watching you, like, super closely.” She leans forward, peering down at him curiously to gauge his reaction — of which he tries to give her very, very little to go off of. “I had to, I mean…just like the harpy hag that popped you out, you’re real good at the vanishing act, y’know?”
Wearing an innocent smile and fluttering her dramatic lashes sweetly down at Shuuichi does little to mask the way her steely gaze hardens behind her narrowed lids. The way her grin is all wicked, razor-edged teeth. “It took me aaaaages to sniff out even the scantest of details on you…I suppose I’ve got to hand it to her. She did have an unexpected boon, though, that threw a wrench in my treasure hunt for a while there: imagine my surprise, when I find out that mommy’s little princess I was on the prowl for was just playing hide-and-seek under housewife Naegi’s nose the whole time! And I guess we’re…still playing dress-up.”
Junko allows her heartless attempt at humiliating him to hang heavy in the air, openly awaiting a reaction. Shuuichi grinds his teeth together until his jaw aches, but doesn’t allow himself to outwardly give her what it is she wants.
He’s not hiding anymore — and this vindictive, catty, absolutely batshit mean girl won’t make him run away from who he is, either.
It’s not Shuuichi she gets her desired reaction from, no; for the first time since he arrived here, for the first time since before Rantarou was kidnapped it’s Makoto’s voice that he hears, cutting in with almost unrecognizable sharpness as he looks pointedly to the podium positioned above his and snaps, “That’s enough, Junko.”
“Na-egi!” she shrieks, as expressively delighted as Shuuichi has seen her, abandoning her focus on him to instead throw herself over the divider between her platform and Makoto’s. Her long nails click obnoxiously as she makes grabby hands in his direction; he does nothing more than lean out of her reach, disgruntled frown unchanging. “There you are, honey bunny! Gosh, and here I was shivering at that cold shoulder you’ve been hitting me with all week! Who knew it was that easy, huh? One pot shot at Miss Marple’s mini-me and I’ve got that frosty attitude melting like a glacier in the heat death of anthropogenic climate change!”
She giggles, fawning with her hand cast dramatically over her forehead. “I never do know what to expect with you, y’know — it’s so exciting I’m getting yucky boob sweats! Mmmn, I’m positively tingling…gee, if it’s that easy to get the patron saint of friendship and gumdrops and rainbows all riled up, I wonder what might happen if Mr. Moneybags’s precious little brat catches a stray!”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Makoto shoots back firmly, not so much as flinching when Junko cranes her neck to pin Rantarou beneath an undeniably bloodthirsty look. Pouting, she abandons her efforts as soon as Makoto opens his mouth again. “This is all just a game to you, and you’re hoping that the demigods aren’t smart enough not to play right into your hands and lose the game you’ve had rigged from the start. It’s not going to work. You are going to lose.”
“Whaaat, no rousing speeches about saving me from the depths of chaos and despair this time, sweet cheeks? Jeez, way to give a poor girl the third degree!” Junko sniffs through the tears that out of nowhere begin to drip down her cheeks, kicking her feet in the air petulantly then crossing her arms with a huff when Makoto doesn’t relent. “Making a lady cry isn’t very friendly of you at all, is it?”
“You deserve a lot worse than a few crocodile tears. Lay a hand on any of them, and I’ll make sure you get it.”
In one fluid motion Junko removes herself from the divide between her platform and Makoto’s, straightening the crown affixed in her hair before turning her attention back to Shuuichi. In his direction she juts her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout. “What a buncha joyless suckers these dopes are, huh? I’m just teasing, honest! I’m actually, like, suuuper progressive, y’know — I barely even screech ‘cooties’ anymore when Na-gay-to starts slurping on Hinata’s hope schtick! Whatever — all this prologue, has-been talk has carried on a little long, dont’cha think? We’ve got a main event to get to, and we’ve barely even scratched the surface yet…let’s see, where to begin…
“Well, you’re no vegetable, right? I don’t need to waste our time on the nitty-gritty exposition. Blah blah, my shit got jacked by some stupid kid, blah blah, the whole world is gonna end if I don’t get it back, blah blah, my grand plan unfolds perfectly as expected — and a hop, skip, and a jump later I’ve successfully baited the world’s most intriguing group of brats right into my claws! All my Big Five besties showing up to play ball was just the cherry on top — even if I knew the whooole time it’d be easy as pie!”
Yes, Shuuichi had gathered that much by now. All of this was always going to end at a standoff with Junko, even if his and his friends’ horse-blinders regarding Gundham’s role in the oncoming armageddon kept them from seeing as much until it was already too late. Pinning the spear’s theft on Shuuichi, coming after him and Rantarou first at their school and then in their own home, invoking Gundham and Makoto’s ire to make the situation all the more chaotic, and forcing them out of the barrier at Camp Hope’s Peak so they’d be left vulnerable enough to be brought here: Junko has played her own game perfectly, has positioned herself as the unquestioned final boss at the heart of it, and now basks openly in all that has apparently unfolded exactly as she wanted it to.
But…
“You’re missing a head,” Shuuichi informs her plainly, eyes scanning over the four apocalyptically-powerful gods that do stand at their podiums — and the tattered, boldly displayed remnants of the one that does not.
“Bzzrt. Incorrect buzzer noise. Nice try, Sherlock, but you’re wrong.” Rolling her eyes, Junko once again drops her chin to rest into her palm, not even looking at him as she sighs heavily through her apparent boredom. “Really, Nancy Drew — the disappearing act is so predictable from you, don’t you think? Just give it a reeest…ugh, I’m totally falling asleep over here waiting for you to quit edging us with the surprise guest cameo and get the hell on with it already.”
Flopping back unceremoniously into her throne, Junko remains committed to loudly snoring while her accusation sends a palpable ripple of unrest through the long line of gods, a low murmur of conversation humming over the realm as what she’s implying settles in the air around them. As they all can, Shuuichi can read between the lines well enough despite her windy, biting, obnoxious way of monologuing to get what it is she’s playing at. But from everything Shuuichi has heard these past ten days, everything he has lived through for almost eighteen years, he cannot imagine that forcing Kyoko Kirigiri to show her face for the first time since he was born is going to be that easy, even for Junko. That simple. That anticlimactic.
With his eyes on his hands — his hand-me-downs, left for him by a parent he didn’t even know existed two weeks ago — Shuuichi uses the lull in the more actively dangerous chaos to take a second and think, willing his brain or these gloves or the power that’s been passed onto him by a god to get him and the people he so desperately needs to protect out of this.
He’s so absorbed in obsessively combing over his options that he doesn’t even notice the borderline-serene quiet that creeps over his shoulder, and leaves him feeling blessedly suspended in time until the atmosphere around him almost seems to ice over with a clinical chill, and the voices of the gods no longer register in his ears. Immediately on the defense, fearing whatever has left them speechless Shuuichi jerks his head back up, hand readying on the grip of his bat but falling short of pulling it out of its makeshift holster when no new enemy jumps out at him.
Nothing jumps out at him, actually, no voices or commotion or fights or offensive movements; though it lacks the usual visual cues and symptomatic triggers that leave him at least able to somewhat orient himself as being the one actively meddling with time, undeniably the realm around him has been frozen in its tracks, everything around him crystalized in place. With the exception of Shuuichi himself — perilously anchored onto the witness stand as he struggles to catch his bearings and figure out what’s going on now, because he’s pretty sure he’s not doing this. And that’s despite his best efforts to slip back into his own honeyed, warm state of stasis for long enough to generate a game plan that doesn’t involve anyone here permanently meeting their end.
Though he searches all around the semicircle of gods, Shuuichi’s still left none-the-wiser on what — who — has their hands jammed in the wheels of time; and while it may not be the most pressing thing he needs to focus on right now, just before the lavender film holding the Gods’ Realm in place melts over he does see the eyes of the Big Five twitching around with recognition, with watchfulness in their frozen faces, though he’s given no chance to reckon with what that means before time is back in motion, and he’s forced back on high guard. But unlike with his own short-lived slowings and stoppings altogether of time, there’s no stuttering, no jittery lagging as the world around him catches up with the anomaly. It’s seamless, one moment bleeding fluidly into the next, and he can almost convince himself as the sound in the room resumes that no one but him and the four present members of the Big Five have noticed the lapse, however brief.
“ …If you really insist.”
A new voice joins the fray. All eyes in the room follow it to its source instantaneously, the chilling effect of it so sudden and stark it casts the entire realm into paralyzed quiet.
…And then there is Shuuichi’s godly parent, already in place in front of her badly-vandalized portrait two purposeful steps below Junko’s throne, at Makoto’s other side. Her demeanor is collected. Frosty. Her hands are ungloved and deeply scarred as she calmly pushes a ribbon of hair out of her face. Her eyes are purple, intense and calculating, and hell-bent solely on Junko.
She doesn’t pay Shuuichi any mind.
The same, however, cannot be said for the rest of the room about how they regard the surprise appearance of Kyoko Kirigiri. Gundham and Hajime both crane their heads over the row of podiums, openly gaping as they stare over at her. Makoto looks as genuinely shocked as Shuuichi has ever seen him, attention fully caught by the woman who stands nonchalantly at his side, not offering any discernible reaction as he sputters over her name several times. The other gods, operating on a comparative delay to the Big Five, react much more electrically and vocally: from far across the sea of podiums Taka along with several other gods begin to cheer, and the sound of Nagito’s pitching laughter is audible over the rapidly climbing din of the room.
But all Shuuichi himself can do is stare, left honestly sort of dumbstruck in the face of — well, actually seeing the face of the woman who gave birth to him for the very first time.
A goddess that abandoned him as an infant demigod with Isako Saihara, who never gave any indication that she was anything but the same mother that brought him into the world. Who never once made any sort of appearance in her son’s life, even when it was her enemy that got his human mom killed in the first place. That has only arrived now, not even on the eve of the apocalypse but in the midst of it, disinterested in holding an audience with anyone except for the miserable wretch that’s holding all of the rest of them hostage on the precipice of the end.
Another distinct, jarring noise cuts through the commotion: the sound of a gavel slamming down hard on a wooden surface. For those who aren’t drawn fully back into her orchestrated shitshow at her first warning, Junko’s voice serves as a second, final one:
“Jeez, would you nerds cool your fucking jets already? This mushy-gushy mini reunion shit is so goddamn lame that I want to brain myself with this thing.” Miming the motion of an aggressive whack against her temple with her gavel, Junko then leans over her throne to tap it against Makoto’s cheek, popping her tongue loudly as she does. “Naegi, darling, you best close your mouth before you catch flies. We haven’t even gotten to the exciting part yet. But not to worry — we are just about done with the distractions. C’mon, big money, no whammies — New Kid, yooou’re up!”
‘Just about’ done. Shuuichi holds his breath as Junko once again turns her focus down at him. “Well, you must know what I’m getting at here, don’t you? Spear of Gungnir, pointy object drenched in death and deceit and despair, paired with threats of physical and emotional harm and total worldwide armageddon if I get a little too bored waiting for it, all that fun stuff — catch my drift?”
…More or less the question he’s coming to expect from the gods, these days, regardless of her phrasing. That doesn’t make his rehearsed answer any easier to say; but what choice does he have? “Yes, I…understand well enough, what it is that you want from me. But you’ve got this wrong, Junko. Whatever happened to your spear, whatever started all of this…it wasn’t me. I can’t be any more truthful than I’m being when I tell you that I don’t have the spea—”
“Wow, piece that together, did you? Everybody give it up for the boy genius in our midst.” The edge of open derision in Junko’s tone paired with the blank look she interrupts him with gives the impression she thinks that he’s rather stupid. Even when she’s as crazy as she is, it still manages to needle at him, at least a little. “News flash, dummy: I know that.”
“You — you do?”
“Uh, yeah, duh. I mean, just look at you. A week ago you were still getting your scrawny ass shoved into lockers by teenage girls — you couldn’t steal your own lunch money back out of a paper bag, cream puff. You’re the kinda walking pimple patch that gets jealous of the lights in the school gym ‘cause they get to spend their days hanging from the ceiling; so at the risk of sounding like a broken record, anyone who thinks a kid like you’s got the balls to do something as exciting as stealing my spear is dumb as rocks.”
Now Shuuichi fully falters, not just beneath how she digs into his especially weak points in front of all of these people, but at what she’s actually saying while trying to get under his skin. Out of everything he’s been through this past week, all of the blame he’s endured since Junko first pointed the finger and Gundham made it Shuuichi’s problem, he just…this is not an outcome he saw coming, even in the slightest. Such is the nature of Junko and her chaos, he can only assume, but — but what the hell is he even meant to say to that? Where are they meant to go from here? All of this, this entire past week and the days before that when Junko’s monsters failed to kill them, Gundham’s monsters succeeded in stealing away Rantarou, every bit of it predicated on the deliberate falsehood that Shuuichi stole her spear, as the son of another Big Five goddess; the one that Junko hates enough to have sought out and murdered Shuuichi’s real mom for the crime of Kyoko Kirigiri’s blood running through his veins — all of that was for what?
“Then…then why am I here?” Shuuichi demands, more resentment coloring his voice than he anticipates, though he makes no effort to temper it as he carries on with hands balled into fists at his sides. “If you know that, then why did you attack me and my brother in the first place? Why did you blame me for your spear going missing? Why — why have you done any of this?”
“Oh, because it’s just so much more chaotic this way, isn’t it?!”
All at once it’s like a flip has switched; one second she’s blinking boredly down at his indignation and the next she’s cackling into the open air, screeching like a hyena until her inexplicable, zealous, utterly hysterical laughter drowns out the entire rest of the room. In an instant she shoots out of her throne, seizing forward with her hands braced on the flat of her podium to leer down at him expectantly, eyes swirling in their sockets as she grins wickedly his way. It sucks all of the air out of the room; though it’s not as if she leaves any space for them to talk or even breathe as she gets into the meat of what she’s really here to say, fully in command of her captive audience with the spotlight all on her. “I mean, that’s what I’m here for, right? Well — I guess you are meant to be the slow one of the bunch, aren’t you? Not up to snuff on the lore, despite our despairingly smelly Hinata’s best efforts.
“Alright, picture this, pipsqueak: a brilliant, gorgeous girl mastermind, her entire existence centered around being anarchy distilled, chaos incarnate…and yet, she’s just so talented that she can see it all coming before it even happens! Your run-of-the-mill apocalypse is about as suspenseful and exhilarating as an episode of Cocomelon, or whatever the mortals are melting their brains with these days. Chaos for everyone except wittle ol’ me…why, what’s a girl to do, other than turn to the all-encompassing embrace of despair?”
In the midst of her monologue she takes on an almost childlike — and entirely unnatural — air of innocence, and she spends the purposeful pause batting her eyelashes down at him. After feigning a few tears through the cutesy affect she’d adopted her expression drops, eyes lidded as her delivery becomes much more clinical. “Chaos can be calculated like a formula. Chaos can be purified down to an exact science and executed with sterile precision, if one lingers within it for long enough. Chaos can so quickly, inevitably become nothing more than a chore when it becomes too predictable to really mean anything anymore. And it is just so painfully boring.
“But despair, on the other hand, as the ultimate unknown…”
At the mere thought of it Junko’s cheeks warm with pleasure, face drawn in ecstasy as drool seeps past her full, painted lips, and she grasps at her shoulders tightly enough to dig her nails into the flesh of her arms while devolving into delirious giggles. “Just the very thought of it makes my heart race, makes my brain turn to mush, makes my slippery pink parts tingle! Ahhhh…and isn’t it just suuuper convenient that the total heartthrob that holds dominion over the most devastating, the most delectable of despair finds himself so hopelessly bored with his gift, tragically left to seek out the thrill of even the briefest bursts of bedlam when he’s let out to play?”
She sighs dramatically, draped across her throne with her hand laid atop her forehead. “A glorious, show-stopping team like that…gosh, no wonder these hokey-pokey killjoys broke up the band. And with poor, aimless Kamukura relegated to the camp skeeze post-get-along lobotomy, and the fat ugly runt sister booted out of Destiny’s Child…well, here we are, I guess. I’ll be honest, this philosophizing shit about the nature of what the heck we are or whatever is kinda putting me to sleep — this is sooo not the main event that is just screaming to be given its moment in the limelight. Let’s make this next part simple, then, since I can smell from all the way over here how you’re all sweaty just thinking about my deep-as-the-ocean motivations for why we’ve all ended up like this. Why on earth I’d do such a horrifically awful thing, and why you, Shuuichi Saihara, are standing at the center of it.
“So try and wrap your noodle around this one: there is no ‘why’.”
Another mood swing. Another demeanor change. Another game: this one played with a straight face, deadpan tone, maintaining her severe, penetrating eye contact with an intensity that suggests that she can see straight through Shuuichi. Given the slimy chill that washes over him, leaves the base of his neck itching uncomfortably, he really wouldn’t be surprised.
“There is no reason for any of it. At all. It’s nothing to me, except for the cheap thrill of trying to outdo my own boredom despite the chaos of my existence. None of this is about you. You are not the victorious hero of this story, you are not the protagonist, you are not the main event: you are an ant skittering across my plate at the picnic, and I just haven’t bothered to squish you yet. You were a useful pawn, a means to an end — an end that, when you think about it outside of whatever fantasy land you’ve been living in, is just utterly meaningless for everyone involved. No reason, and therefore there are no arguments to be made about the why; so really, you can spare us all the debate pervetry you inherited from mommy dearest. I think I’ve heard enough out of you.”
Though she says that, the silence she sustains following her ‘explanation’ very much feels like a challenge — bait, rather. Though countless venomous, spiteful responses burn on his tongue, unlike many of the gods before him Shuuichi keeps his mouth shut, grinding his teeth together to keep his composure long after Junko scans him up and down, unimpressed, and continues on with a vicious little smile that only widens the longer she bats him around like a sadistic cat playing with an incapacitated mouse.
“I’ve got my short- and long-term projects, y’know? And the persistent issue of my immortal companions and their tumorous demigod teeny-boppers is such a slow burn kinda deal. If I really put my heart into it, I could’ve settled on just picking you, Naegi’s golden boy, all you little monsters off one-by-one — it’s not as if it’s exactly hard. That’s my whole dilemma, really…it’s slow, and it’s boring. But when a spontaneous, unforeseen opportunity presented itself, why wouldn’t I take advantage and see what happens, just for funsies? And for good reason: in absolutely no time I had Tanaka in a tizzy and encouraging all the other do-gooders to interfere, a whole RV jam-packed with arrogant, hopelessly clueless rugrats outside of the camp boundaries, and practically the entire god roster all careening forward towards this date, this time, and bringing everything right to me without so much as having to lift a finger through the whole affair myself. Honestly, I was so glued to the big screen watching what happened, I hardly had time to scheme at all! Funny how life works out that way, huh?
“Aww, just look at you.” Junko pinches her own cheek, the lilt in her voice syrupy-sweet and nasty, the chirpy giggle that accompanies the call-out openly mocking as she leers down at him. “Coming all this way to slay the dragon, beat the game, save the world…you showed up prepared to play ball and everything. Only for it to turn out that this entire time, you weren’t cut out for the big leagues like you thought you were — like you tried so desperately hard to prove that you were.
“And now we’re here, and it’s all gone so perfectly it’s almost boring — hey, anything, Kamukura? Is this seriously not enough for you to make an appearance? Oooh, I know, should I go ahead and give your secret up early? Nothing? Fine…even that is just so hopelessly predictable, so here’s hoping this last bit makes this whole thing worth it. Everything’s all tee’d up; and now all I need is for the final piece to fall into place — I guess you can call that the real gamble baked into this weeks-long little game of mine.”
“The spear,” Shuuichi surmises correctly, when she glances him up and down in search of an actual answer. She clicks her tongue, mockingly tipping her crown down at him.
“Oh, give the little halfblood a prize for that extraordinary display of intelligence.”
“But I don’t have it.”
“Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner! Here, how’s this for your prize: I don’t only know that you never had it — but I know who does, too. Neat surprise, huh? I know where it is, I have this entire time; and now, all he’s got left to do is decide.”
Junko, she…what?
…’He’?
“And to be perfectly candid, the real man of the hour better make it snappy. All this foreplay has got me rather excited — rather impatient, ya dig?” In a flash Junko is once again leaning over her podium, lightning-quick to gouge her talon-like nails into Hajime’s head, hauling him up one-handed and sinking her claws through his flesh until blood begins to leak from each puncture. “Come on already…surely you’ve made your choice by now, right? Like you’ve known from the start, the end is inevitable — now, it’s time to pony up and take control.”
Where…have I heard that before…?
Over the collective gasp of horror that rushes through the room when Hajime is snatched up and left struggling in Junko’s grip, roaring debate breaks out amongst the gods, too, throwing theories back and forth about the true holder of the spear almost too quickly to keep up with. Whether Shuuichi really does have it. Whether it’s Gundham. Rantarou. Hajime. Kyoko. Names ring around like desperate pleas throughout the trial field, confused and angry and scared voices alike forming a cacophony of discordant chaos, the perfect backdrop to the scheme Junko has ensnared them in.
But absolutely none of it registers to Shuuichi, as he stares wide-eyed down at his trembling hands and thinks.
At the slightest drip feed of recognition Junko’s words prompt in him his mind begins to race, silencing out all of the gods, all of the mortal peril, all of the chaos crashing down around him, errant clues and overlooked details and memories that just don’t feel right slotting together in his brain so rapidly it leaves him feeling whiplashed. Moments where he’s ignored the sticky, pulsating feeling of suspicion in situations where it’s warranted. Where he’s scraped the bottom of the barrel for reasonable excuses in entirely unreasonable circumstances. Where he’s given the benefit of the doubt, because it’s felt earned, even when the everything else about the optics and implications of so many things that have gone horribly, horrifically wrong have pointed some of the others, pointed Shuuichi in a much different, darker, unthinkable direction.
Something’s wrong. Something about this isn’t right. There’s an answer on the tip of Shuuichi’s tongue, but he can’t believe it. He can’t possibly believe something like that is the case, has been the case this entire time. Since he woke up at Camp Hope’s Peak after the car crash — since the monster attack that nearly killed him and Rantarou before he even knew about any of this.
Because he wouldn’t. Not after everything they’ve been through, everything they’ve endured, everything they’ve somehow managed to survive together, side by side. He wouldn’t.
But when for the first time since Junko called him forward Shuuichi desperately whips around, for the second time today, one of his friends has gone missing at the worst possible moment. At the line of his friends standing near the perimeter of the circle of gods, though the number he has to keep track of is different this time, there’s still a head missing when he rakes his eyes over those of his friends staring back at him, and none of them are the vivid, violet pair he’s frantically searching for.
Kokichi is no longer where he should be, and Shuuichi doesn’t know what the hell to do.
And then, halfway between the rest of their friends and where Shuuichi has his back pressed into the witness stand, Kokichi does pop back into view.
On his head is Mondo’s helmet. On his face he wears a twitching, off-kilter grimace. Clutched tightly in both hands, braced defensively over his chest where he stands opposite from Shuuichi, is a spear. And from behind, over the thunderous uproar already reverberating across the Gods’ Realm, Junko begins to laugh.
No, no, no, no, n—
Notes:
+ ~5 years in the making, and here we have finally arrived. surprise :)
+ and yet this is where i will be holding my tongue and simply listening <3 i'm having enough fun as it is. so for once, i won't be talking up a storm down here. other than to shout out my beloved sdr2 chapter 4 trial room that i drew heavy inspiration from. and emphasize how fucking FUN writing junko is (despite how difficult it was for me to accurately catch her character and tenor. her voice lines play on loop in my brain). maybe i do have a fair bit to say, but...better to keep it short and sweet here, i reckon.
+ if you WOULD like my thoughts (or, rather, would like me to respond directly TO yours as opposed to kicking my feet and giggling reading through the comments section), i am reachable and always happy to pointy objects chit-chat should the mood so arise on my tumblr: @ gontagokuhara ! we have lots of fun over there. either way, i look forward to seeing how this chapter...changes some people's perspectives, as it were.
+ all i have to plug is my tumblr, my other danganronpa fics on my ao3, and the usual probably-monthish-timeline on the next update. many apologies for leaving you here. but, well, no i'm not.
+ here's to next time <3
Chapter 28: the spectacular life and times of shuuichi saihara, or: how to stop the end of the world for real
Summary:
—o, no, no, this can’t be happening...!
That’s Shuuichi’s first, utterly paralyzing thought when his spiraling brain catches up with reality, and he sees the spear in Kokichi’s hands. That this can’t be happening. This can’t be real. At the very least, that’s what he wants to think — and that’s what his mind seizes on in the suspended, endless moment where he grasps at straws and desperately tries to comprehend what is playing out right before his eyes.
But this is real. He’s staring right at Kokichi, and the Spear of Gungnir is winking back at him from within his hands. It feels as though time has ground to a complete and utter halt — the nausea clawing up his throat is familiar enough in that respect — but this is happening, and no amount of time meddling will stop it; and through the blindsiding disbelief glazing over his brain, Shuuichi is left rooted in place regardless.
Notes:
+ ...heyyyyyyy, guys...
+ you know me at this point. i'll cower and drop my explanation in the end notes, but here's my tl;dr list of excuses for why this chapter is almost 8(!) months late: american elections/falling apart, full time job, 2 serious illnesses, 2 moderate-to-severe injuries, executive dysfunction, got distracted by video games, became active on twitter, big expectations of myself for this chapter, the list goes on!
+ yeah. oops! but for the first time in 2025, new pointy objects is HERE: hopefully my apologies and a chapter i am very proud of help soften the blow of such a long cliffhanger.
+ thanks as always to my beloved kokichi correspondent / beta reader evan captorvatiing; other than that, thank YOU for being here, and...happy birthday, nagito (another birthday update...i guess that luck has a sense of humor!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
—o, no, no, this can’t be happening…!
That’s Shuuichi’s first, utterly paralyzing thought when his spiraling brain catches up with reality, and he sees the spear in Kokichi’s hands. That this can’t be happening. This can’t be real. At the very least, that’s what he wants to think — and that’s what his mind seizes on in the suspended, endless moment where he grasps at straws and desperately tries to comprehend what is playing out right before his eyes.
But this is real. He’s staring right at Kokichi, and the Spear of Gungnir is winking back at him from within his hands. It feels as though time has ground to a complete and utter halt — the nausea clawing up his throat is familiar enough in that respect — but this is happening, and no amount of time meddling will stop it; and through the blindsiding disbelief glazing over his brain, Shuuichi is left rooted in place regardless.
So, too, is the rest of the Gods’ Realm; around him all prior fanfare dies away like a fast-spreading plague as each and every other person in the room, god and demigod, comes to terms with what it is they’re seeing — all except for Junko, whose ricocheting laughter threatens to cave in the whole realm around them.
Whether or not the sky does fall down on them, it’s not what’s above him, nor even the threat of the floor beneath him cracking to pieces that has Shuuichi’s world functionally collapsing in on itself. It’s what — who — is in front of him that leaves his understanding of these past few days and his heart in tatters, Kokichi staring back at him with an intensity that is familiar but with emotion that, for all Shuuichi scrambles to recognize it, isn’t. The face Kokichi wears now is perhaps the most expressive that he has ever managed in Shuuichi’s presence, and yet it tells him absolutely nothing about what it means, what he’s thinking, why he’s standing in stark opposition to Shuuichi while holding the spear.
The spear everyone has blamed Shuuichi for stealing. The spear that all of them have sworn up and down they have nothing to do with because of how dangerous its mere existence is. The spear that ruined Shuuichi’s life.
Shuuichi just can’t possibly begin to understand why this is happening, but he has to. In this nightmarish, incomprehensible moment, thus far playing right into the hands of the woman responsible for all of it, Shuuichi has to comb over every strange thing he’s cast aside, every perplexing scenario he’s ignored the lingering suspicions around, every happenstance he’s written off as just bad luck, in search of answers he somehow has to turn into salvation. How Kokichi got the spear in the first place, how Junko knew, how they got to this point, how Shuuichi didn’t see it, and at the end of it all hopefully figure out the why before Kokichi or one of the gods does something stupid, and Shuuichi loses his chance to salvage this.
At some point, somehow, Kokichi obtained possession of the spear — given his underhandedness in sneaking onto Nagito’s RV in the first place, and his efforts to stow away until well past the point he could be reasonably be left behind if discovered, more than likely he’s had the spear since it was stolen, or very shortly thereafter. The circumstances under which they subsequently lost the RV he has regarded as murky and uncomfortable to consider the implications of at best, but the pieces rather quickly click into place now: the RV left running as Kokichi set a fire inside of the mall to send them all into a mad-dash out; Kokichi’s palpable unease as they drove in search of a gas station, his deliberate insistence that Shuuichi take with him his duffle bag filled with all of his belongings with him when they deboarded for the last time; and of course, everything to do with the RV explosion itself — up to and including Kokichi recognizing the Monokubs as Junko’s monsters well before anyone else did.
That awful cut on his left hand, the one that only appeared while digging through his bottomless backpack in the dark. His cageyness in allowing anyone to point it out, let alone actually get a close look at it while it bled for hours in the aftermath. How long it took him to finally blame the injury on the nail-studded magic baseball bat, well past when Mikan had decided that alongside Shuuichi and Kaede, Kokichi would also be handed over to her lover Junko on a silver platter. And when he talked with Kaede after the fact, when things had settled down somewhat, her and especially Maki’s suspicions matched Shuuichi’s own as they aired them out beneath the streetlight.
The fact that it was Kokichi’s idea in the first place that they spend a whole day detouring away from the Underworld to steal Mondo’s helmet and that strange, dubiously-obtained necklace at the museum. When kicked out onto Celeste’s doorstep and left with no option but the magical motel that they only barely agreed to sleep at, as all of them gazed into the face of the Imposter, the authority figure that Kokichi claimed to see was Junko. His deflated demeanor almost immediately after that encounter, which lasted all the way through the night…the expression on his face as he miserably squeezed Shuuichi’s hand in the dark before turning away entirely.
His refusal to gamble again when he won the first time at the casino. How utterly unnerved he was as soon as they stepped foot in the Underworld, on-edge and jittery to a degree that never seemed to go away — that only got worse when they were intercepted by the Warriors of Hope. Monaca’s foreboding final message, delivered solely and seriously to Kokichi while gripping his scarred hand tight enough to bruise. Gundham’s accusation that the group of them stunk of stolen magic, just before Gonta’s reappearance saved them from certain death at his hands.
This entire time… Kokichi was…
Amidst his degenerating mental spiral, Shuuichi has not missed much from the rest of those present and currently witnessing the unfolding main event: the entire room has been effectively frozen in place by the appearance of the spear. Each person is as deathly still as they had been when Kyoko iced over the realm with her powers earlier — though no such interferences are necessary to keep everyone exactly where they are now, all of them hardly daring to breathe in the vicinity of the weapon and its wielder. Given the spear’s bloody origins, its infamously-destructive history, and the fact that an unknown demigodly element is the one brandishing it…there are very few people willing to make any significant moves.
Until, at least, the spell is broken from over Shuuichi’s shoulder as Gundham shouts: “Mongrel!” at the same moment that Junko’s raucous cackling ceases, fractured by a noise akin to that of metal tearing apart in a car crash, followed by the zap of a searing white flashbang that results in Junko’s teleportation down from her throne, and subsequent materialization several meters off to Shuuichi’s right.
“There’s my oily little traitor!” Junko’s voice is sharp to the point of overstimulation in the stark, stifling quiet of the realm, the grin splitting her mouth so jagged and severe that the lack of blood dripping from the corners of her lips is almost unnatural. “I totally thought you gave the whole game away when you managed to nail yourself with the spear inside of the magic bag, so color me impressed that you made it to the main event, Judas! That’s the kinda back-stabbing you only get from the real monsters — I really didn’t think you had it in you.”
Before another word can be said by anyone, with a burst of lavender light and the distant sound of a falling icicle splintering to pieces yet again a new figure joins the fray — and yet again it is Kyoko Kirigiri, popping into place with a much more understated movement, mirroring Junko where she comes to stand some distance from Shuuichi’s left side. Now, offering him an indifferent cold shoulder for the second time, her hawkish focus doesn’t stray a fraction from the spear clutched tight in Kokichi’s white-knuckled hands.
“This game of Enoshima’s isn’t over yet. Because as she has said…you still have yet to decide how it ends.”
“Uuugh, so much for dodging the debate pervetry after all. What a drag.” Junko groans, the formerly grabby hands she had grasping out towards the spear now falling petulantly to rest on her hips. “Oh, well — what’s one more symbolic betrayal from the actual man of the hour before we get to the fun stuff? Sure, I’ll bite…even if I really didn’t miss you playing the ace attorney during these meetings, while you were fucked off this past little while. Talk about longing for the good ol’ days, huh?”
Kyoko doesn’t acknowledge that the other goddess has spoken, posture stock-still and eyes narrowed as she assesses Kokichi frigidly. “You are not merely some naïve demigod, nor a stupid person. Better than anyone else, you understand that you are being manipulated into doing the bidding of a goddess who could not care less about you.”
“Bzzrt, objection!” Junko whirls around briefly to jab an accusatory finger over Shuuichi’s head at Kyoko, blowing an obnoxious raspberry at her before returning her attention to Kokichi. “Counterpoint: I didn’t have to do jack shit. I’m not the ultra-manipulative gal these meanies make me out to be — how could I be, when we haven’t had the pleasure of an introduction until today? I haven’t so much as made a peep in your spam texts, let alone put any amount of effort into making you do anything.
“Really, the most I had to bother with was taking a few mental notes on some chats with my bestie Kamukura, making a few leaps of logic and a couple educated guesses, and stuffing the spear inside of that irresistible bag ahead of Camp Chummy-Chump’s little field trip. Oh — aaand a pesky little wiretap that even your paranoid ass would have no reason to prematurely pull like a rabbit out of a hat. That’s all, promise! A fun-sized, not-even- half -breed twist villain with some unchecked kleptomaniacal tendencies, or Nanami whenever she finally woke up from her nap and went back for her shit she left lying around for anyone to get their hands on…whatever worked, honestly.”
When Junko punctuates her sentence with a half-step forward Kokichi pivots the spear’s blade much more forcefully in her direction now than he has thus far, unambiguously warding off anyone even making an attempt at drawing closer as he glares out at her from beneath Mondo’s helmet. In response she raises her arms in a faux-placating motion, her formerly flippant tone strengthening into something much more pointed as she decides on a different avenue of attack. “You’ve done your scheming, and I’ve done mine — separately. We may have arrived at some similar conclusions, of course, but all of this? Eat your heart out, Kirigiri, here’s some real detective work: jury’s in, and this knife in the back has got your sticky fingerprints all over it. This spotlight, this end is solely in your control, superstar — and it’s about goddamn time you started acting like it!”
“Vulgarity aside, she is not wrong.” Just as Junko manages to leave her captive audience hanging off of every word, so too does Kyoko, not missing a beat in countering the other goddess. “But she is, naturally, withholding the context in which this scheme of hers is taking place — that she has known about, and has been actively working towards exploiting for longer than she would prefer to let on. The most important piece of this puzzle has yet to be fully brought to light…and her metric of success hinges on keeping you in the dark for as long as she can string you along.
“Before you go making any rash decisions, you should know that you are missing vital information about your place in all of this…information that I have spent the entirety of your life trying to track down. For as long as you and your mortal friends have existed, I have been aware that a confrontation like this at Enoshima’s behest was inevitable…and I have rather literally gone to the ends of the earth to figure out the focal point of her plan before her ambitions can be realized. I may be cutting it down to the wire, but I have found what I’ve been looking for…and it is not just the spear, Kokichi.”
“Wooow, figure that one out, did you?” Junko feigns a yawn into her palm, but her brief aside to Kyoko is undeniably sharp before she switches off to shrug helplessly in Kokichi’s direction. “Whoops, totally busted. But it’s not like this is coming out of the blue — I know we’re having oodles of fun at the grand ol’ Gods’ Realm shindig or whatever, but the prologue couldn’t have chewed up and spit in your face the shock-parent-reveal-thing more, y’know? You guys unlocked, like, three different sob stories in the past few hours alone. About as subtle as a brick to the head or a spear to the gut, tee-bee-aitch.”
Again she makes a show of examining her nails boredly, allowing what she’s dropped at Kokichi’s feet — what she intends on lording over him, after she makes her point — to linger long enough to spur a reaction. It’s a ploy that she’s rewarded for, at least in terms of what she’s hoping to get out of it: in the aftermath Kokichi’s gaze falls much more heavily onto her, eyebrows creasing, his rigid posture bowing the slightest bit as he lowers the tip of the spear enough to openly watch her, waiting. It’s not as though he trusts her, not in the slightest, but he is listening, right alongside everyone else — but Shuuichi gets the sinking feeling it’s once again only the focal point of her own main event that has Junko’s eyes lighting up as she gauges his intrigue.
“Well, I suppose there’s no point in beating around the bush anymore, now that I’ve got your attention — you really didn’t think I was gonna let you walk out of this with just the spear, did you? Boy, do we have some stuff to chat about! Starting with the cliffhanger these curmudgeon-y hacks have kept you dangling off of for as long as they’ve had your potential shut away and squandered inside of the barrier. Indeed, things are not as they seem at sunny Camp Hope’s Peak, superstar. Those imposter-y feelings you’ve endured since Hinata trapped you there? You’re not crazy, they weren’t for naught, because spoiler alert: you’re actually not the tragically power-deficient halfblood they’ve got you believing you are! Not a demigod, not a god, but a monster in your own right…an unpredictable little bundle of hope or despair, and even I don’t know which it is!
“So let’s say we find out together, huh?” Junko’s eyes positively sparkle in the face of the chaos — the despair — she intends her unfolding explanation to inflict upon the room. “That is the crux of this plan of mine that we have so diligently been working towards: whether the once-a-century monstrous tyke will join the likes of the yucky little hopes, or a beacon of despair like the dearly departed Monaca?! I know what my money’s on!”
“That is not how this has to go,” Kyoko cuts in urgently, countering hard and fast before anyone so much as has a chance to breathe in Junko’s words. “There is still hope left to be had for you. Just as the potential for despair runs through your veins, so too does that of hope. And if there were ever a time for you to prove it, now would be a damn good opportunity to turn the spear over to me before things get any worse.”
“Are you seriously gonna let yourself be lectured into giving everything up, after all that you’ve sacrificed to get here? Like you have any good reason to put your fate in the hands of another system that’s only ever used and abused and abandoned you for your entire life. Don’t you want to try something else for a change? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a reprieve from the boredom, for once? You want the power to settle a few scores, I just want to put on a goddamn show and give these chucklefucks some true entertainment — you’re in the driver’s seat, baby, I’m just along for the ride!
“Think about all that we could do together, Kokichi,” Junko insists emphatically, expression darkening into something artificially sober to match Kyoko’s demeanor as she openly speculates on the prospect. “The two of us, twisting the precious truths and dubious lies that these hacks are so up-in-arms about beyond even immortal comprehension. Wrenching power away from all of these ancient oligarchs and watching them fall by turning everything they’ve done to you your entire life back on them. It’s what they deserve, after casting aside a good kid that they just couldn’t figure out how to take advantage of. The world might get a little, er, helter-skelter beneath the boot of one leviathan freak kid and the Goddess of Chaos, but hey — anything’s better than this, am I right? You wanted your very own armageddon, superstar, and now you’ve got it! Now how’s about we do something with it, huh? You and I are gonna have so much fun with that thing — all you’ve gotta do is hand it over so I can take care of the rotten leftovers here, and then it’s your time to shine!”
Poised on either side of Shuuichi, Kyoko and Junko’s dueling ambitions outswell his own presence entirely as they assert themselves as the only two options available to Kokichi: hope or despair. Order or chaos.
Martyring himself in the name of atonement, or burning the entire system down around him in revenge.
While each goddess rapid-fire argues their case, as has been true since they left the Underworld for the Gods’ Realm — and as is very uncharacteristic of him — Kokichi himself doesn’t say a word while both attempt to incite him with creeping urgency to accept the olive branch that they have each extended in his direction. He glances agitatedly between them, body stock-still, save for the shaking of his hands that leaves him fumbling with the weapon clutched between them. Every time Kyoko or Junko trade off with the other to speak, the point of the spear pivots to aim at the corresponding moving mouth, vigilant in keeping the entire godly roster but especially the biggest power players within it at a safe distance from him.
And yet, each time…Kokichi’s gaze finds its way back to Shuuichi. His eyes burn into Shuuichi’s during each lull in the debate, every moment his wide-eyed terror isn’t trained on the women on either side of him, expression screaming at him from across the room in a way that’s almost louder than Junko or Kyoko manage to be.
The spear is never pointed at him.
…God, or demigod, or monster, or whatever, Kokichi has never once threatened Shuuichi. He has looked out for Shuuichi, even to his own detriment. He has protected him, has saved him, has genuinely cared about him, in ways that are undeniable — in ways that don’t make sense, if he allows himself to jump to conclusions based on admittedly very, very bad appearances. Who, with the power to end the world held in his hands, where it has apparently been this entire time, still has not raised his weapon at Shuuichi. Still has not betrayed him in the way that everyone spectating this thinks he has.
Kokichi is caught between a rock and a hard place — a rock and a nuclear bomb, more like, parallel to Shuuichi as he stands as reprieve in the middle between each rival Big Five goddess. There is no doubt in Shuuichi’s mind that Junko will exploit Kokichi to further her own ends and then callously discard him the moment it becomes convenient, or even just proves to be of passing interest to her. And while Kyoko may be the Goddess of Justice, there is no telling what her brand of justice actually is. Once all is said and done, once she finds in Kokichi what she has been after for all of his — and hell, all of Shuuichi’s — life, and Kokichi is no longer in her eyes a ticking time bomb in his own right, there’s no telling what she may decide is righteous justice for what he’s done to get them all here.
But…
But Shuuichi is still here. Despite what Junko tried to convince him of, he is here, standing right in the thick of things along with her, and Kyoko, and Kokichi. He has been at the forefront of this from the beginning, regardless of anyone else’s idea of just where his place is in the end of the world.
He has Junko’s spear in his sights. He has Kyoko’s gloves wrapped around his hands like a second skin. And this entire time, he has had Kokichi, who has never turned his back on Shuuichi, despite having had countless chances to do so up until now.
On more than one occasion he has sought Shuuichi out to offer an avenue for him to talk about Rantarou, and his mom, and his fears looking towards the climax of their quest. Prior to engineering the RV explosion, he took the time and made it a point to gather Shuuichi’s belongings and insist he take his bag with him. Specifically tucked away the Bewear plush protectively in his own bag until he could safely return it to Shuuichi, in a moment when Kokichi knew he needed it.
Kokichi came to Shuuichi and Kaede’s aid when they were mere moments away from being skewered by Mikan; they knew at that point that Mikan was collaborating with Junko, and yet he swooped in to save the day just in the nick of time, when absolutely no one else would have been able to — when, if he truly wanted to end up here, he could’ve liaised with Junko days earlier instead of bothering with everything they’ve dealt with since then. He threw himself in front of all of them at one point or another while Syo was bearing down on them with her scissors, and left a confrontation of theirs once again as one of the bloodiest of the bunch, then in the aftermath offered Shuuichi help in patching up, and showcased what Shuuichi knows was genuine delicacy and kindness after silenting coming out to him in the process.
Complimenting Shuuichi’s mom. Thinking to fish out the plush and hand off to him in the midst of his panic attack. Their entire night together in the Motel Kumasutra. Cracking stupid jokes after the revelations with Celeste. That look they shared before facing down Gundham. There are a million little moments that Shuuichi has shared with Kokichi over the course of these however many days — where Kokichi has looked out for Shuuichi, opened up to him, made him smile for nothing more than the sake of it, and where Shuuichi knows he’s genuinely earned the smiles he’s pulled from Kokichi in return.
No matter how much Kokichi may lie, there is still undeniable truth interwoven into everything he’s said and done since they first met under these tumultuous circumstances, too. Behavior like that, no matter how much he may try — no matter how bad things look now as Kokichi stands before him with the spear — doesn’t lie. Shuuichi won’t believe that all of that was a ruse, some grand plan crafted and executed with the intention of ending up here: pinned like butterfly wings to a pegboard by two Big Five gods hellbent on ripping his only leverage out of his hands, his petrified gaze darting back to Shuuichi over and over again in a silent cry for help.
Shuuichi may not be the victorious hero of this story. He may not be the protagonist. He may not be the main event. But he is here, and no matter how grim things seem…as he has been this entire time, he has got to try to be the person that saves the day and gets everyone out of this.
Last night, when Shuuichi asked Kokichi if they were friends, he didn’t dodge. He didn’t lie. When he said that Shuuichi is too naïve for his own good, but still trustworthy, he said it while in possession of the spear…and he meant it. Despite all of the odds stacked against them, there is a part of Kokichi that trusts him — that isn’t sent running scared and falling back on protective dishonesty when he probes too deep.
And even while facing Kokichi down in a situation like this…Shuuichi still wants to be permitted to be in Kokichi’s life. Still wants to be trusted by him. Not to try to pry him open and steal the truth for himself like everyone else wants to. He doesn’t want to trap Kokichi in a box and exploit him one way or another for his own ends, as is the inevitable end result of the options Kokichi finds himself cornered in now. Shuuichi wants Kokichi as he is — now matter how messed up either of them are.
…Screw hope. Screw despair. There’s only one thing that matters anymore: and as he has been since the moment they met, Kokichi is looking right at Shuuichi — over the tip of the blade that he has never once aimed at him, or any of the rest of their friends. But at the end of the world, here and now, instead of using his hat and his own insecurities to hide behind, with these gloves and the resolve he’s built over the course of this quest, it is Shuuichi’s time to finally do.
Not just to take the world into his hands by the grace of a gift from a god…but a chance to do what the Big Five, what his godly parent, what no one else can do.
“Stop.”
And with his gloved hands raised, the universe does.
All at once, the world around him lags to a stand-still; but unlike the lavender frost that briefly crystallized the Gods’ Realm as Kyoko made her entrance, this shift in his surroundings is honeyed. Weighted, and familiar enough not to immediately send him stumbling with disorientation, as had bowled him over and nearly crashed a goddamn car when he first wielded it in the midst of his panic attack a few days prior. But despite the permeable sensation of déjà vu immediately it feels different, now that Shuuichi’s invoked it voluntarily: instead of being wrenched from his control after barely a millisecond’s opportunity to let the calm glaze over his mind and body alike it’s sustained, tangible, a breath of fresh air he can flex like a pair of lungs and allow to fill his chest without spasmodic asthma choking him up and sending him flailing.
Golden syrup drips like a narcotic IV line through his veins and into his eyes, alluringly warm and tinted with intoxicating chemical euphoria, and in fighting the urge to wipe his face his hands remain where they are: poised firmly in the air in front of him, as if grasping the dials on a clock and ceasing their rhythmic ticking — physically holding time in place. Shuuichi can feel the kinetic energy of it straining between his fingers, can feel his gloved hands chafing with the effort it takes to thread himself into the wheels of time and be the stopgap in its intrinsic urge to march forward.
If he reaches for his bat, if he drops what he’s holding, if he so much as startles — his tenuous grasp could fall apart, and there’s no telling what will happen if it does, before he’s pleaded his case to Kokichi.
Kokichi, who is…still watching him, from across the trial field. He was, at least; his purple irises are no less vivid as they shine back at Shuuichi like amethysts cast in the candied stasis of the inert world around him. And he does now, as Shuuichi renews his focus and carefully, minutely twitches one of his hands to draw Kokichi through the veil into this timeless space alongside him.
Still largely unpracticed, Kokichi’s emergence is much more inelegant than Shuuichi himself had managed, and as he stumbles on his feet through the time differential Shuuichi feels acutely how the added presence transforms the surrounding picturesque silence into one that buzzes lowly, anxiously, like the ceaseless trilling of cicadas in the night. Like a tasteless fizz beneath his tongue, Kokichi flavors the liminal plane around them with something white-hot and brittle and all but noxious in its intensity.
With his previous avenues of escape iced-out, Kokichi again lasers his attention onto Shuuichi once he’s regained his bearings. Trembling behind the point of the spear he now aims unsurely at the ground, Kokichi looks lost. He looks terrified. He looks desperate.
…And for all of Shuuichi’s life, he has felt much the same. Lost. Terrified. Desperate. Not due to the circumstances of his life itself, even, but almost in spite of them. No matter his own feelings of insecure, innate deficiency; no matter the undercurrent of bone-deep, existential discomfort in existing as he does that he’s held internally for as long as he can remember, a very fundamental part of who Shuuichi is and has become is that he has never been given up on by any of the people in his life — not the ones that truly matter. Irrespective of how difficult he may have made things for them, the overarching reality is that Shuuichi is here because when the going has gotten tough, those he needs and relies on most have been there for him, and not cast him aside as a lost cause and unworthy of even the effort of trying.
Not by Isako, for as long as he had her in his life. Not by Rantarou, straight through to the end of the world — and not by Makoto and Byakuya through five schools in as many years and counting. Not by Hajime, through the innumerable ways Shuuichi’s failed his expectations both as his student and as his charge at camp; not by all of the gods whose help ever since he learned of their existence has played a massive role in any of them making it to this point. Not by his friends who have worked by his side and have multiple times over saved his life on this quest — including Kokichi.
Shuuichi has only gotten this far because people have believed in him, and trusted him by some measure or another with their lives, and in return had his back when he’s needed it most. At every crucial moment, he’s had the support necessary to push through even the most impossible of circumstances and make it out alive along with the rest of the people he cares about — all of them, no matter how hopeless things have seemed. And now more than ever, it’s about damn time for Shuuichi to stick to his beliefs, and show that same hard-earned trust he’s survived off of this long back to Kokichi.
The end of the world is in Kokichi’s hands. Shuuichi has no doubt that he’s scrambling, that he doesn’t know what to do as he looks past the spear at Shuuichi, no idea how he’s going to pivot off the back foot like he always does out of this massive mess in which he’s found himself standing center stage. If Kokichi loses faith that he can make it out of this, then…
Then nothing. No. For more reasons than Shuuichi could ever possibly detective his way through, that just simply isn’t an option. He will go down doing everything in his power to ensure that when he walks out of this place, so will Kokichi, right along with the rest of their friends. Shuuichi promised as much just last night, when he vowed not to leave him behind, no matter what — no matter what spears, or gods, or monsters, or otherwise may try to stand in his way.
While the clock may not actually be ticking around them, Shuuichi’s time in control of this place certainly is, and he’s stalled for too long already just trying to maintain that fragile hold. Once again, he is left with no time, no preparation, no semblance of a game plan heading into yet another world-altering confrontation on this quest. But being authentically himself has gotten them this far; and as Kokichi’s friend, it’s up to Shuuichi to place his faith in him, as he has and been rewarded for countless times up to this point, and show him that none of this has to end here.
“…Hey.”
Speaking even just a single word through the strain of holding the realm in place proves more challenging than Shuuichi expects; both the physical and emotional tension has him huffing out a breathless chuckle that also proves as awkward but as earnest as everything else he’s stumbled through these past few days. “I…hope you’re not expecting some sort of grand speech out of me, or anything. I’m not sure how many of those I even have left in me. I don’t even know how long we have…ah, here. So I’ll just worry about the m-most important stuff, for the minute.”
Each subsequent word has the effect of not only stealing the breath out of Shuuichi’s chest, but also sapping the air from the entire realm itself — or at least, whatever pocket of it he’s currently commandeering. He takes a distinct pause not just to gather his thoughts, but also to push through the wave of disorientation that hits him in the aftermath. The molasses that creeps further into his eyesight and eats away at his field of vision — in a way not dissimilar to his migraines — is nauseatingly familiar to how the world around him would look in his earliest attempts at using his power. But he can’t let himself lose control of it, and he doesn’t; instead Shuuichi swallows thickly through the feeling as it washes over him, forcing himself to remain focused not just on what’s between his fingers, but also to ground himself in what he sees of Kokichi’s minute reactions to…well, to being spoken to like a person again, for the first time since he pulled out the spear.
At first hearing Shuuichi’s voice Kokichi had flinched, but he has resummoned his defensive posture at least somewhat since then, hackles visibly raised — but notably, the spear is not. He holds it tight in both hands, knuckles white and tendons straining as he maintains an ironclad grip on it, but as he has since they both emerged into this space he keeps its tip trained down near his shoes, on-guard but decidedly not hostile.
Whatever his reasons may be, he never pries his gaze away from Shuuichi; even when Kokichi can’t look at him in the eye dead-on and he has to instead warily watch Shuuichi’s suspended hands, his attention doesn’t stray, and the expression he wears as he does is more perplexingly neutral than any other he’s managed since the reveal.
He’s waiting, he’s listening, he’s trusting Shuuichi for at least as long as it takes to hear him out — and it’s his own acute awareness that that time is slipping away from him that has Shuuichi finally getting to the heart of what it is he needs Kokichi to hear, without anybody else breathing down their necks.
“I believe in you, Kokichi,” Shuuichi tells him simply, an unsteady inhale from both of them serving to punctuate the weight of what he says before he licks his lips, and continues. “I’ve believed in you up to this point, even when it’s been hard, or things have gone wrong, and I still do now. We’ve been through too much together for me not too, I think, but honestly…honestly, none of those things matter anymore. This choice is, I think, the only thing that matters anymore — not anything you may have done in the past. Not what anyone else thinks you will, or expects you to, or wants you to do…it’s all just background noise now.
“I can’t pretend I know what’s going on in your head right now. What you’re thinking. You’ve, ah, always been much better at that than I am. But as true as that may be…well, you’re always telling me I’m the detectiving type, right? A-And, when it comes to me and you…I like to think I’ve done a pretty good job figuring things out. Like I said…the important stuff.”
He can feel his control slipping. The ticking clock spasms agitatedly between his fingers. A faint smile twitches Shuuichi’s lips that he doesn’t bother to hide, because it feels genuine — because if there is one thing he hopes to get across before he loses this final chance to make things right, it is how wholly and sincerely he believes in every single word that he says; and he has to hope that Kokichi can tell that, too.
“You asked me once why I even care, and my answer is the same now as it was back then: because why wouldn’t I? You’re my friend, and I’m not leaving you behind — and there’s not a single thing in this insane, scary, magical, fucked up universe that could make me. Because when this is all said and d-done — I’d still really like to go somewhere with you. Anywhere, as long as it’s just the two of us. If th-that would be okay.”
It’s getting impossible to breathe in enough air to keep himself speaking. He can feel the heat against his palms and between his fingers beginning to blister and burn his hands beneath his gloves from the painful effort it takes to hold the two of them inside of this fragile pocket of time. Kokichi’s form and features begin to rapidly warp through the heavy, molten darkness bleeding into his eyes.
But even now, Shuuichi knows that Kokichi is still paying attention. They’ve found themselves in the middle of the mess of a lifetime, the apocalypse is threatening to rain down around them as soon as either of them breaks the delicate, artificial and very finite calmness crystallized around them. Shuuichi is still here, their chance to somehow maybe make this right is still here, and so is Kokichi. Not the traitor everyone else thinks he is, not the pawn Junko wants him to be, not the missing piece in Kyoko’s yearslong investigation she’s declared his existence represents — but the Kokichi that Shuuichi knows, and cares for so much it hurts, and wants in too many ways to count, and who he believes in more than anything else.
“All you need to do anymore is trust in yourself. You are not a pawn for anyone to puppet around, or a villain that needs to be controlled, or an unwanted reject that’s deserving of being left behind. God, monster, or otherwise — you’re just you, Kokichi. And that’s enough.”
Managing a watery smile, Shuuichi nods to him once more. “So I’ll be waiting for you on the other side of this, okay?”
Faith unwavering, and without even a moment’s hesitation, Shuuichi takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and releases his hold on the world around them.
He is all too aware of the fact that the entire Big Five more than likely spectated all of what just happened in some capacity or another; not even Kyoko’s abilities were capable of fully freezing them out as she made her entrance earlier. Nevertheless, Shuuichi allows himself just a moment to savor the immediate reprieve of the agonizing chafing in his hands dying down to a dull sting in his palms and the scent of burnt leather hanging faintly in the air. When he does finally open his eyes, it becomes apparent that the time buffer from when he first stopped the realm around him to now was an abrupt and obvious one, with several of the gods and his demigod friends being sent stumbling as their bodies catch up with the extended lag.
And yet before any of the gods can react, before most have fully recovered on their feet from the violence of the adjusting time difference, before Shuuichi has so much as caught his breath, another massive shockwave is sent out across the realm: as abruptly and as dangerously as he had initially appeared with the spear, for the second time Kokichi uses the stolen helmet to vanish from sight, once again leaving the fate of where he and the spear end up after all of this buildup in turmoil.
All eyes in the realm dart rapidly between Junko and Kyoko, desperation sky-high across the room as all of those present and left clueless as to what it is they’ve just missed try to gauge which goddess will get her way — whether hope or despair will win out at the end of the world.
But it’s not either of the Big Five goddesses that have presented themselves as the only options, it’s not a god or goddess at all that Kokichi reappears in front of, that Kokichi chooses. No — when Kokichi blinks back into view, it is standing no more than a hair's breadth away from Shuuichi as he does, purple eyes burning into his in a mutual show of trust that screams louder than any words ever could as he presses the spear without hesitation into Shuuichi’s gloved hands.
And then, for the first time since this whole thing began…Shuuichi is the keeper of the spear. The world is at his fingertips.
Even through the shield of his magical gloves, he can feel the raw, all but unrestrained power in the spear. Can feel how prolonged exposure to something like this could corrupt one into doing something unspeakable in the name of holding onto it. Can feel just how much destruction and death this thing has wreaked upon its victims from how heavy it weighs in his hands.
But, even more than that…he can feel something else rumbling from deep within its core, too. Something almost desperate to escape the confines of the spear. Something tangible.
Something… alive.
With his ability, and with these hand-me-down gloves, Shuuichi can slow time. He can stop time around himself altogether by brute forcing his way into the spinning cogs that make it turn. He can move through the very fibers of time itself on his own, weave himself into that barely-there in-between space, and pull others through it with him.
I wonder…
On either side of him, Kyoko and Junko’s eyes snap with purpose over towards Shuuichi, Kokichi, and the spear. Before either of them can be given a chance to make a move or get a word in edgewise Shuuichi — with Kokichi, still pressed close into Shuuichi’s side, close enough to be caught up with him — yet again jams his free hand into the wheels of time to grind the world around him to a halt.
And now, he tries his hand at turning it back.
It is no easier wrenching control one-handed then it was when he had use of both of his hands the first time; wrapped tight around the spear one hand spasms against unseen, sharp, needling pain that rivals even that of Syo’s biting scissor blades, his other arm extended out ramrod straight as the skin beneath his gloves blisters and burns against an even heavier, more powerful force than before. He has to grind his teeth together against the pain, but with some finagling and intense focus he can feel that it is possible. Once he gets into something of a rhythm, it’s almost like trying to manually unspool a large ball of yarn — or pulling a novelty clown scarf out of a bottomless backpack — tightening his fingers around the outermost strand and yanking it out meter by meter in order to unearth what hides at the epicenter.
And as he does, that something resonating from within the spear grows stronger, grows closer, buzzing electrically beneath his fingertips as he winds back time layer by layer in search of what awaits him at the beginning. The faster he moves, the faster time turns, the faster the spear itself begins to spin and spin and spin in his grasp until the pulsating heat and brightening red light becomes too much and the force of its violent whirling causes it to lift out of Shuuichi’s hand entirely.
On its own the spear levitates in the timeless pocket of space, its endless rotations becoming nothing more than an impossibly fast motion blur of molten fibers and searing, bloody red that eventually becomes too much for him to look at even with his free hand cast as a visor over his eyes. Cringing back with Kokichi shielded behind him as well as he can possibly manage, all Shuuichi can do is grit his teeth against the sensations and watch as it unspools to the point it almost seems to be coming apart at the very seams, only to eventually reform as…
…Well, from the looks of things, as a woman.
As the red shadow the spear had cast out in its final moments is leached out of the air by the familiar honeyed darkness of Shuuichi’s time-meddling powers, some features do become clear pretty quickly as he watches her come to awareness, unwilling to let go of his hold on the realm around them just yet. The woman is lithe, slim, but considerable athleticism shows in the modest muscles that ripple beneath the scarred skin of her exposed arms and legs. She is no taller than Shuuichi, where she sways on her feet a small distance in front of him. Dark black hair bobbed above her shoulders, complexion pale and heavily freckled across the bridge of her nose, deep gray eyes wide and utterly confused as she blinks through her lingering disorientation down at her body, at her hands — one of which bears a black, circular tattoo he can’t immediately discern the design of — and finally over at Shuuichi.
An unknown woman emerging from the heart of the Spear of Gungnir, a weapon of war used for millennia to maim, kill, and ‘kill’ an untold number of gods, demigods, and their loved ones, wielded by no one other than Junko Enoshima for all of its storied existence. With all of that in mind…
Shuuichi doesn’t know for sure. But, if he’s followed this through to its root in the way he thinks he has—
“Are you…Mukuro?”
From behind him, he hears Kokichi suck in a startled half-breath. Shuuichi doesn’t pull his eyes away from the woman as she narrows hers over at him upon hearing the name, expression caught between hostile suspicion and just…genuine bewilderment, he’d guess.
Finally, having decided her intrigue outweighs her trepidation, she lowly replies, “…Yes? And just who are you? Where…where am I…?”
By the end of her sentence Mukuro has lost the dangerous edge in her voice, trailing off to cast a wary look out at the world around her — which, with all of his quickly-burgeoning theories taken into consideration, she has just cause to not comprehend what it is she’s looking at. Shuuichi has hardly got a grasp on things, and he’s been in the thick of it for what feels like a lifetime.
And for that reason — many, many reasons, honestly — Shuuichi is perhaps the least equipped person to try and explain any of this to Junko Enoshima’s sister, of all people.
Mukuro’s gaze focuses in on his hands: the strain on his right arm from the painful, heavy pressure of holding the realm in place forces him to wrap his left hand around his wrist to keep his arm upright. Shuuichi forces a weak smile and a pivot in topic so he doesn’t have to reckon with her spoken and unspoken questions directly. “What…is the last th-thing you remember, before being p-put… in the spear?”
She’s caught sight of Kokichi, if the stiffening of her shoulders is any indication; even if Shuuichi could turn to look, he’s not in any position to worry about that right now. At his question her brow creases unsurely, gaze darting between the teenager shakily probing after her memories, and the one badly-hidden behind him. The palpable lack of trust or legitimate nonchalance at their unexplained presence remains clear in the ramrod-rigid posture of her spine, but once again either Mukuro’s disorientation or her desire to get a grasp on her current surroundings wins out — because she does answer, eyes warily drifting over their frozen surroundings as she does.
“Not ‘put’ — I am the spear. Or I… was, in every conflict Junko has waged with me at her right hand. In whatever form my sister needs me, no matter what it is or what it requires of me, I will be as valuable as I can possibly be to her so I may deserve my place in her new world. Though it’s…it’s been a long time since I’ve been let out, hasn’t it?”
…So Junko really does have a penchant for peddling the lie that she’s permanently killed someone for the sake of the resulting chaos, only for them to be hiding in plain sight the entire time.
And a bad habit of turning on her own allies at the drop of a hat.
But Shuuichi just simply doesn’t have the time to be worrying about that right now. Every muscle and blood vessel and atom in his body screams at him for every infinitesimal, impossible to gauge increment of time where he doesn’t release his grip on the realm, and Mukuro is looking more suspicious by the second, and beyond everything immediately in front of him he knows that at the very least the Big Five can spectate things even when he’s frozen the world around them completely — he can’t give Junko any more time to scheme. Not when they are so close.
So he looks past Mukuro, looks past Junko, looks past Kyoko, and instead focuses his gaze resolutely on the two people watching him from the elevated podiums that he knows he can trust. Nodding once more firmly up at where Makoto and Hajime’s eyes look staunchly back at him, with a searingly cold inhale and with honey bleeding down into his eyes Shuuichi finally drops his arm, releases his hold, and all around him the world as he knows it propels back into motion.
The prolonged use of his power has taken its toll, and gods does it hit him the second he lets go. He remains upright through the abrupt readjustment the realm around him has to the time difference, though it knocks the breath out of him and leaves him wincing against the harsh pressure that radiates from the base of his brain stem and pounds like a thunder drum in his ears. Rainbow auras glitter and zigzag in front of his eyes, leaving his head swimming and his body’s equilibrium so-so as he catches his bearings.
Through his receding headache he distantly recognizes that the calamity coming from everyone else in the room has peaked past its former high and crescendoed into something raucous and decidedly chaotic, and through his acute recovery Shuuichi can’t make out with picture perfect clarity what the individual reactions of the people in the room are, when they see what’s become of the confrontation in the middle of the trial field. No longer does Kokichi or Shuuichi have the spear, no longer is there a spear to be stolen or returned at all, and in its place is a woman; one who certainly raises even more questions than anyone else present does — apocalypse-harbinger Junko Enoshima and formerly-missing Kyoko Kirigiri included.
Shuuichi can’t make out the finer details, at least not right away — but the broad strokes are clear enough. The threat of the god-felling spear and the most foundational piece of Junko Enoshima’s leverage is gone. The entire room is yelling. Shuuichi’s headache worsens, and when his bleary eyes seek out its external source, he sees and then hears as Junko begins to shriek with laughter again; at the crest of her mania the noise threatens to deafen him entirely, her mouth split euphorically wide as the rest of the room finally throws itself back into reactive motion.
Finally, finally, the gods move to swarm and subdue her — none more happy to do so than the Big Five themselves, Hajime’s knee crushing down on her back as he pins her down while Kyoko tightly binds her arms behind her. And in her defeat, Junko is utterly ecstatic; her laughter never so much as falters as her main event falls apart on top of her.
For his part, as the apocalypse seemingly — hopefully — is kicked down the road for another day, Shuuichi can only spare the bare minimum consideration towards its waning daylight to make certain that Junko has been incapacitated before he turns away from it, and her, and everything else entirely. With his senses mostly recovered, Shuuichi focuses them and what little of his energy that remains now on facing Kokichi; and not for the first time since this whole nightmare began, taking Kokichi’s hand securely in his and not letting him stray far as Shuuichi carefully, quietly shifts them out of the way of the descending crowd of gods — before Kokichi can get any bad ideas about disappearing with the helmet and running away, or before any of the gods can go getting any bad ideas about doing something to Kokichi.
Standing at the base of Junko’s vacant throne Makoto jams down a button on her podium, and somewhere past where Shuuichi has cordoned off himself and Kokichi nearer the circle of podiums, amidst the colorful mess outside of the bounds of the trial field a trap door opens. Along with Hajime, several muscular gods that Shuuichi doesn’t immediately recognize roughly haul Junko up onto her feet, expressions grim and mouths moving urgently against the constant howl of Junko’s ceaseless laughter.
Too late, Shuuichi realizes that the gods’ trajectory will have them marching Junko past him and Kokichi one last time. Throughout her entire takedown Kokichi keeps his gaze firmly on his shoes, eyes purposefully shielded with the front guard of the helmet he still wears — but notably, does not use to disappear — to put distance between himself and anyone else who may glance in his direction, while trying to make himself as small as possible. And Shuuichi, still feeling sluggish and as if his brain is lagging far behind where his body has ended up out of the way of center spotlight, isn’t given a chance to weigh over whether or not to warily watch Junko’s final defeat as one might would regard a rampaging wild animal, or do as Kokichi does and ignore her entirely.
Junko recognizes just as well as he does how this is going to go — so it’s only as she’s rushed towards the outer perimeter of the trial field that she allows her laughter to die out and digs her elaborate heels into the tiled floor beneath her, stopping herself and the four gods herding her away in their tracks in order to stand parallel with Shuuichi one last time. Her expression has been wiped of her prior victorious bombasity in the midst of her main event unfolding, and even the ear-piercing ecstasy of her ultimate defeat that has only now died out to a shrill, echoing ring in Shuuichi’s ears.
Now Junko just watches, eyes slightly narrowed, head cocked purposefully to the side as she rears back towards him one final time to flash a wide, razor-sharp smile.
“Jeez, talk about an absolutely hopeless ending — and that’s not even to mention Little Miss Smell Ya Later getting a surprise revival in the last phase of the boss battle. No…not even in my wildest fantasies could I have conceived of the chaos and despair that would be wreaked by one of Kamukura’s little hellspawns all over my apocalypse plans! You slayed the dragon this time, superstar, but I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon enough…so ta-ta for now, boys, TTYL!”
While Junko’s purred, departing threat lingers and remains suspended in the air around her, several things happen in responsive succession. Hajime, among the small cluster of gods trying to push her forward with a hand wrapped insistently around her arm, physically stalls in place the moment the name Kamukura breezes delightedly past her lips, his grip on her faltering as his red eye begins to pulse rapidly. While she had been until now eyeing Mukuro, quickly Kyoko discharges from where she’d been spectating and moves with brisk intensity towards Hajime, reaching him just as the other three gods take over hauling Junko off on their own. Shuuichi watches her lean in close and murmur something urgently in his ear, but it appears to have no impact on him as he just continues to stare — no longer at Junko, but at the main event that her words have just dropped one last bomb on.
Eventually, Kyoko has to take him by the shoulder and forcefully steer him away, their hushed, harried whispers soon drowned out entirely by the much louder, much more wholesale chaotic force in the room: everybody else reacting as Junko is marched away bound and unarmed, and the end of the world as they were all anticipating it…well, not ending. Stray shouts ring through the realm as Junko is carted away, and by the time she has been disappeared into the trap door and Makoto has shut it behind her with another press of the button the rest of the gods have begun abandoning their podiums, crowding around Mukuro, and altogether devolving into an entirely different kind of chaos.
Amidst the commotion, the yelling, the gods having reunions with each other and the gods having reunions with the other demigods now that the risk associated with interacting with their birth children is now soundly locked away and the gods loudly asking to the open air what now? it all just sort of overwhelms Shuuichi, leaves him feeling sort of glazed over and numbed — until his eyes are, as they have been more or less constantly since the beginning of this quest, instinctively drawn again towards Kokichi.
…And for the third time today, Kokichi is no longer there.
It’s different this time, for one key reason: Shuuichi still has Kokichi’s left hand clenched tight in his gloved right one. They’re still anchored together, Shuuichi can still hear the sudden rattling of Kokichi’s distressed breathing, Kokichi is still here — he’s just finally used the helmet to phase out of sight, and…and honestly, at this point, Shuuichi can’t really blame him for that. Not after everything they’ve been put through — and not after that kind of reveal.
So to the best of his ability Shuuichi just hangs back, outside of the bright spotlight he feels as though he’s been under constantly since this whole spear thing began, never releasing his grip on Kokichi’s hand.
Shuuichi can’t possibly fathom what he could say right now, to make things any degree of right. To make things even by any measure okay. The things that need to be said are endless, but Shuuichi is just…he’s so tired. Manipulating time so much in the past few minutes, all of the stress from the high stakes of the past two weeks have left his brain feeling heavy, slow, and absolutely aching to just slip into spacey, barely conscious, auto-survival mode.
…All of his friends, all of his family, all of the world as he understands it have survived this ordeal, despite everything. That’s enough for now. It has to be.
So under the cover of Junko’s persisting chaos, hardly sparing a passing glance to the energetic upheaval all around him, Shuuichi leads himself and Kokichi by the hand even farther out of the way, silently maneuvering them outside of the ring of podiums in order to follow the arch of the circle in the opposite direction of the majority of the crowd gods and demigods, concentrated where his friends have been standing since Shuuichi was initially called up alone.
The circuit naturally brings them behind the much taller, more solid pillars housing the Big Five podiums and Junko’s throne, providing a massive physical and visual barrier between the two of them, and everyone else still populating the Gods’ Realm. As far as available options, this is about as private as Shuuichi can possibly manage in a place like this — but for right now, that’s all he really needs, and so without much hesitation he pulls himself and Kokichi to stand with their backs flush to the middle-most pillar. Without letting go of Kokichi’s hand Shuuichi allows his buckling knees to give and his feet to slide out from underneath him as he uses the wall behind him to slip into a haphazard sit against the checkerboard-tiled floor — and though he’s too exhausted to offer even a raised eyebrow in reaction, he watches in his periphery as Kokichi silently releases his invincibility halfway through him collapsing like a house of cards into a seat next to him, leaving him visible as he mirrors Shuuichi’s exhausted posture, and stares rigidly out at some far-away point in the boundless realm stretched out in front of him.
Kokichi doesn’t say a word. Shuuichi doesn’t stray an inch from his side. And together, in this endless, perilous moment, having only narrowly escaped the siren song of the apocalypse, they sit and they wait for what comes next.
The world is no longer in their hands. It’s in the hands of the gods now, and until they decide what they’re going to do with the both of them after this mess they’ve ended up in, Shuuichi is going to stay right here — with Kokichi’s hand held tightly in his feeling just as important as the world itself.
Notes:
+ sooooo!
+ yeah. oopsie doopsie on my part because this was definitely Not a one-month break between this chapter and the last. i gave you the main highlights in the beginning notes, but...life happened, in a lot of little and big ways! the time got away from me, though rest assured i agonized over the sad state of my tardiness every damn day. and most of all, i kept kicking it down the line because this is kind of The penultimate chapter of this little project of mine, and i wanted to make sure it was perfect — and was then subsequently so nervy over not doing it justice, i just kept putting it off! which reminds me, now that we're on the other side:
+ pointy objects IS in fact coming to a close...Relatively soon. but we've still got a ways to go, so don't fret; i plan to have this story fully closed out by the end of 2025, which means the next chapter will certainly be coming much sooner than this one did. i won't say too much, as i from the bottom of my heart want to hear YOUR thoughts, but here's a little hint to tide you over: this next interlude is going to be what a LOT of you guys have been waiting for, particularly when it comes to rounding out which of our main group has had their very own chapter <3
+ now that i AM back in a big way, i'll also be active again on my tumblr @ gontagokuhara that went sort of abandoned for the past four or so months out of guilt for delivering this chapter so late! so feel free to seek me out there with any questions or comments you'd like me to respond to (otherwise i will read them here and giggle and kick my feet over them <3).
+ otherwise...once again happy birthday to nagito the love of my life, enjoy this LONG overdue pointy objects update, and i'll see you next time!
+ content warnings: none, this time around!