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Takemichi has watched all his friends die.
He shuffled through his memories as he recalled Chifuyu’s head hanging as Takemichi sobbed, struggling to get out of the chair he was bound to. Then there was that one time Emma died right in front of his eyes and he did absolutely jack shit to stop it. Or perhaps when Draken took the bullets meant for him. Then there was that one time Mikey went all thug mode and got that nasty old karen cut, which certainly counts as a death in Takemichi’s mind.
But now everyone was is alive.
Right? Right.
“C’mon Takemitchy, tell’em ‘bout that time you saved my ass from my big bro!” Hakkai’s happy chuckle cut through his mind for a second.
He rose his head from his shoes to look at everyone at the bar table in front of him. Mikey had invited him to get drinks with everyone, right.
But they were still teenagers. How were they allowed to order?
He watched with a slightly agape mouth as Draken took a long swig of a beer. He quickly whipped his head around to see if anyone was noticing, luckily no one did.
“You good man?” He turned to a man with a buzzcut. Kaku-chan?
Takemichi blinked before covering his mouth and running out to the bathroom. He could faintly hear his friends laughing at what a light-weight he was. But he hadn’t drunk anything?
He kneeled on the moist bathroom tiles and emptied his stomach into the bowl.
His vision blurred as his hand fumbled around the handles to flush the toilet. However, he soon gave up when he realized he didn't have the strength to do so. His knees started to ache as the damp glass tiles dug into his skin.
Tears dropped into the crusty and pee ridden toilet as he slowly lost himself.
Didn’t Draken die? And so did Kaku-chan and everyone else. Or did he time travel and manage to save everyone? He gripped onto his hair and pulled himself up to stumble around in the small stall.
This exact moment. This has happened before. Takemitchi would find himself in another dimension where everyone was alive and well. And as days would pass, he started to let himself go. Be free, the wind that tousled his hair day by day would tell him. And that he did.
It was like a fairytale. Birds chirping, trees swaying, and the sun beating down on his skin as he looked at his smiling friends. His close friends. His not-dead friends. Because Chifuyu didn’t adorn a hole in his head. And Baji didn’t have a knife shoved in his side. And Draken didn’t-
“Why’d you kill us, Takemitchy?”
His breath caught in his throat as dread pooled to the deepest points of his stomach. His face got hot as he felt his blood run cold, yet pulse so strongly in his eardrums.
He watched as Mikey looked at him, his once lively blonde hair shriveling up and turning a nasty old colour. His innocent curious look formed into a malicious snarl, his eyes rimmed with red and his skin gradually becoming pitch black. His eyes bore into his own, and while unable to look away, he knew the others had turned into what it was now too.
He felt his throat close up and he ripped his gaze away from it, and screamed as he whipped his head back and forth. Everything has become his nightmare.
The joyous birds and dogs, even they turned on him. Their eyes were bright and red as they asked him why.
Tears poured from his eyes as all of them stared at him, watching him lose his mind in oblivion.
He gripped his hair with tight hands as he fell to his knees. “Stop, please. Stop, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He felt his torso go loose as he fell onto his elbows, squeezing his eyes shut as he whispered pathetic excuses. Because he knew they were right.
He screamed as he felt his eardrums pop. He hadn’t even noticed they had started to gradually shout at him.
Then it all just disappeared. And he was back. Emma was dead. Mikey was hauling her corpse to the hospital. Telling her that it’s going to be alright. It was just a nasty cold she had.
“How could a dead person have a cold?”
Takemichi didn’t remember what Mikey had said to that.
Has that happened? Or was that just another fragment of Takemichi’s overworked brain making things up. Maybe this whole thing wasn’t real. That all his friends were still dead, and that he was playing puppet with their rotting, decaying corpses.
“No no no!”
Takemichi gasped for breath as he brought his head to the surface. Water dripped from the ends of his hair onto his clothes, leaving huge water marks.
When had he dunked his head in? He couldn’t recall.
In fact, he couldn’t recall anything. When did he get here? What timeline was this? Where was Naoto, and most importantly, who was he in this timeline?
Was he the crybaby hero, or the timeline jumping maniac who killed all his friends?
He tried to think, he really did. But his scrambled mind didn’t help in the slightest. And perhaps it was better that way, it’s not like his mind was very reliable.
Last he remembered he was living his 8th timeline dimension. Wait, no no no. It was the 9th, yes, yes that sounds right. Or maybe it was-
“Takemitchy, you good in there?
His brain buzzed like bees, and his head was the hive. The sticky nectar stuck to the smallest of crevices and grooves in his brain, muddling his memory from the past to the present. The honey started small, forgetting that this timeline was where Chifuyu did this and said that. Then the honey started building up and it began to drip; he screamed until his throat bled when he saw Baji one time, because didn’t he just die? It was like the bees were mocking him.
Fuck bees.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
He could faintly recognize Mikey’s voice from outside the stall. He started laughing and began to ramble about something Takemitchy wished he gave a shit for.
Takemitchy felt his eyes go heavy as his head went under again.
He’s so dead.