Chapter Text
One moment, Eito is standing tall above Sirei, scythe strong in hand, ready to swing.
And then he blacks out. Or… something, because the next thing he knows, he’s on his knees without any recollection of falling to the floor, and Sirei is demanding to know what’s wrong with him, but Eito’s head is too full of everything to answer him.
Amidst the confusion and cacophony of his own screaming mind, though, one thought stands out clearly: Takumi should be here any moment.
He doesn’t know why he thinks that. He doesn’t know why he believes that, like it’s an immutable truth of reality that Takumi is going to burst through the doors of the gym any second now. He doesn’t know why it feels almost like betrayal the more seconds that tick by without Takumi doing exactly that.
“Aotsuki,” Sirei says, and while he’s playing up the concerned act, Eito can hear the annoyance in the undertones of his voice, “what’s up with you?”
Eito doesn’t deign to give him an answer; just stares hard at the doors as though his glare alone will somehow manifest Takumi Sumino.
Stubbornly, unbelievably, the doors stay shut. It’s just Eito and Sirei here; no one is coming to stop him.
“Maybe you weren’t ready to go so hard on the hemoanima yet,” Sirei is mumbling, and in what Eito can only describe as a fit of pique, he takes advantage of his distraction to slice him in half.
He dies then, of course. When he wakes shortly afterwards, stumbling out of the Revive-O-Matic, it strikes him that that had been a strange way to think about it—hadn’t Sirei’s destruction always been his intention? Why is it that sheer annoyance with Takumi Sumino is the main reason his mind has settled on for his actions?
His thoughts whirl and blur. Every single one of them feels extraordinarily heavy. His head aches.
Eito stumbles down to the gym to collect Sirei’s pieces, before stumbling back to his room and all but collapsing face first into his bed, still fully clothed.
He’s not tired at all, but the pain in his head steadily growing louder and harder to ignore has him out like a light.
-x-
Weeks and months of fake smiles and false overtures of friendship and it’s all led up to this, this one beautiful shining moment, where he drinks down all they have been fighting for and all that will save them, where he turns to meet their horror with his hatred and finally kills them all—
—A sword through his chest a burning declaration of hurt and betrayal, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again—
—a moment where the world goes still and Eito lays eyes on true beauty for the first time, reality becoming fundamentally changed for him in the moment he first lays eyes upon his God—
—a foul, disgusting monster smiling at him under fireworks as nausea claws its way through him but he smiles back like the ugly beast wants him to because if he falters now this will have all been for nothing—
—the vicious joy in seeing such blank, muted horror on Takumi’s face; the effervescent victory fizzing through his veins before Kawana lunges forward with a snarl and drives a cold blade into his throat—
—pain, at seeing his God being fooled by the heretic placed here to lead Him astray. Takumi is too nice. Just too, too nice. He wants to save everyone; even those who cannot feel and do not deserve His light. It’s okay. Eito’s not going to let anything take Takumi away from him—not even Takumi Himself—
—walking willingly into the infirmary with Shizuhara beside him, knowing that once he leaves it he will no longer be ‘him’ anymore, sickeningly grateful for some reason that Takumi isn’t here for this, that Takumi has no part in this—
—the warmth and pleasure of his God around him, inside him, a confusing blur of times where Takumi is actively guiding a willing Eito to his knees and times where Takumi is laying beneath him still and passive, eyes blank and unseeing but divine tears running down His cheeks. Love and adoration bursting through every part of him, Eito leans forward to lap them up—
—the searing, hysterical joy of seeing Takumi weep as Nozomi Kirifuji’s body goes still in his arms. Dies by his hand. Eito has never felt more alive than he does when they’re fighting, rage against rage, a dance meant just for the two of them as they kill each other. Sword through the chest, again. Takumi collapses next to him, bleeding almost as heavily as he is. Mumbled snarls as final words. The delirious, victorious comfort of knowing they’re dying together—
—Takumi choosing to kill him—
—Takumi choosing to spare him—
—bleeding out on the floor of the gym filled with wrath like no other, staring Takumi’s cold hatred down with hot rage of his own before the world goes black—
—letting Sirei’s drones escort him to the supposed courtyard cages, going quietly, mind spinning around the unfathomable outcomes that have taken place on this night; the regret on Takumi’s face—
-x-
Eito wakes up sobbing, vaguely aroused, and with vomit choking its way up his throat. He’s not going to make it to the bathroom in time; he twists as sits up so he at least throws up over his sheets and not himself. He’s sweaty, and shaking, and as he blinks tears from his eyes he remembers everything.
Well. Maybe not everything— he’s pretty sure Hiruko had mentioned she could remember 146 loops, somewhere in the jumble that is his mind, and even not quite being sure how much information is in his head he’s sure there’s not that much information in his head—but. Enough. More than he should. Eito might be as trapped in the loops as the rest of them, but he’s not one of the privileged two that gets to remember that.
Eito forces himself out of his bed. Gathers up his soiled sheets and staggers straight into the bathroom with them, turning on the shower as hot as it will go. He needs to scald himself of everything that just happened; everything his mind won’t let go of. Don’t think about the stinging of your eyes. Don’t think about Takumi at all.
Just do as you always do. Scrub until you’re pure.
By the time he’s done, he’s calmed down a little. His sheets are a sodden mess, but they’ve been rinsed well enough that they shouldn’t stain. He’s wringing as much water out of them as he can so he doesn’t drip water everywhere on his way to do laundry when a knock comes at his door.
He pauses and quite frankly considers ignoring it—he’s already feeling worn thin and doesn’t need to be subjecting himself to any filthy humans for the day, if he can avoid it—but then Hiruko’s voice comes through the door, and she doesn’t sound pleased. “Open up, Eito.”
He sighs, and lets his sheets fall to his bathroom floor. This is yet another divergence from how his memories tell him things should have gone—but of course, if someone was going to notice something, it was going to be either Hiruko or Takumi.
He’s barely unlocked the door before Hiruko’s swinging it open. Her visage is as ghastly as ever and the rotten scent of her is just as sickly as he remembers it being. “Good morning to you too,” he greets her.
She pays no mind to him or his sarcasm. “Where is he?”
Eito raises a brow. “Who?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I can’t find Sirei anywhere. And when I went to check the War Room, I noticed that an infuser was missing.” Eito curses himself for forgetting to put his infuser back with the rest the night before—his headache had really thrown him off. “I’m quite good at math, Eito. It wasn’t very hard for me to put two and two together.”
And, well. He could lie, but Hiruko unfortunately isn’t stupid, and his head is still sort of throbbing. He gestures vaguely at his locker. “He’s in there,” he says.
Hiruko stalks over to yank it open. She stares down at the pieces of their robotic commanding officer for quite some time. Eito tries not to think about how she’s permanently marring his room with her humanity.
A narrow eyed glare from a ruin of a face. “You’re not putting up your usual act,” she says. “You remember, don’t you?”
“Not as much as you, probably, but yes, I do.” He shrugs. “It all hit me last night.”
“Around Takumi’s reset point…” Hiruko murmurs. Eito can hear the frown in her voice. “I thought it was strange, when you weren’t in your cage this morning. I almost wondered if…”
“If this was a timeline where Takumi killed me on the night of Day 2?” Eito asks dryly.
Hiruko grimaces, but it’s pretty clear that’s what she meant. “But when I realized Sirei was nowhere to be found, and then I saw that someone clearly had armed themselves…I got concerned. Takumi…didn’t manage to stop you?”
“He didn’t show up at all last night,” Eito says, and now that—now that he’s thinking about it, that is weird. In all of the timelines that have made themselves snug and cozy in his head, there’s not a single one that doesn’t start with Takumi Sumino making himself impossible to ignore by ruining all of Eito’s plans before he gets a chance to kill even once on the grounds of Last Defense Academy.
“What?” says Hiruko, shaky with disbelief, and Eito feels the first eddies of true unease wash through him. That disbelief is correct, after all: no matter what else changes, no matter what else he decides, Takumi Sumino will always confront Eito on the night of Day 2 and emerge victorious.
Without another word, Hiruko barges past him. She doesn’t bother to close his door, her footsteps hurried. For his part, Eito stands frozen. He can surmise Hiruko’s goal—she is, more than likely, going to check on Takumi—but he can’t quite bring himself to follow after her. Not yet.
Because he’s scared. He can admit that to himself, in the safety of his own mind. It feels like it should be strange, to be so thoroughly changed in the course of a single night—but it wasn’t just a single night, was it? It was hundreds of them, over and over, and as many of them that were filled with hatred, there are still undoubtedly those that—where he—
There was love. There is love. Eito Aotsuki loves Takumi Sumino. Like a sword through the chest, over and over and over again.
This was just the spark that started the blaze! I fell in love with Takumi willingly!
That warped version of him, so cursed and so blessed, had no idea how correct he truly was. Eito thinks that is what makes memories of that timeline something he can bear—he knows that the capacity lies within him to truly love Takumi, whether or not a drug that makes him love Takumi is in the picture.
That timeline is probably something horrible to everyone else that remembers it. But it shines clear and bright in his mind’s eye, almost like a dream.
And now that he’s grasped it, he’s scared to let it go. He remembers loving Takumi as the monster he is, rot and all, but the Eitos who had loved him like that had never known what it was like to see him without distortion.
Eito Aotsuki will always love Takumi Sumino. Like his hatred for humanity, that love is unyielding and unending.
But love isn’t always enough. Loving something doesn’t mean that love will always win.
And in that frozen moment of indecision, Eito is terrified of laying eyes on Takumi—of seeing him as ugly and rotted as the rest of humanity and feeling that love change.
He squeezes his eyes shut. He knows, now, the shape of Takumi that is real and solid under the monster his mind makes of him. He knows the colours and textures that make him up, knows the scents and sounds that combine to form him. He knows what Takumi tastes like. He knows Takumi Sumino, down to every individual atom. He has seen through the nightmare and flowed through Takumi’s veins.
He might not have a drug to clear the veil from his eyes, but he doesn’t need that. He has something stronger, and truer—his own mind.
Let the rest of them stay as monsters. Eito doesn’t care. He’ll never see humanity on the whole as anything other than filthy.
But give him this. Let him have this. Let his righteous eyes fall upon Takumi Sumino and just see him as Eito wants to see him: pure and beautiful. Please, God, allow him this.
He opens his eyes, and inhales a shaky breath. Hopefully his Special Fortunetelling will nudge things enough in his favour that the outcome will be exactly what he wants.
Not wasting another second, he runs after Hiruko. His turmoil might have felt as though it had lasted an age, but in reality no more than seconds could have passed; Hiruko hasn’t even made it to Takumi’s door yet.
She sends him a look askance as he falls into step beside her, but doesn’t actually protest his presence as they reach out a hand to knock on Takumi’s door at the same time.
The silence they wait in stretches uncomfortably, but eventually, Takumi’s door swings open. Eito’s breath catches in his throat at the sight of Takumi, rumpled by sleep and clearly only having just woken up—relief tumbles through him like nausea as he fixes his eyes on a Takumi that looks just like Takumi. Skin. Hair. Limbs. Eyes. The only reeking smell in the vicinity is coming from Hiruko.
He’s embarrassed to admit it, but Eito almost starts crying then and there. It’s not like—it’s not like it was in the timeline with the cult; he doesn’t see Takumi as divine or feel any sudden urge to fall to his knees and start worshipping him. He just… sees Takumi. And that’s enough. It’s more than enough, it’s everything.
He’s so caught up in rapturous joy, in drinking in every inch of Takumi with eyes not clouded by adoring faith, that at first Eito doesn’t even register that anything’s wrong. But then he sees how Takumi is looking between the two of them with a furrowed brow; sees how Hiruko has gone stiff next to him.
There’s no suspicion in Takumi’s eyes as he looks at Eito, as he looks at Eito and Hiruko standing outside of his room together. There’s no familiarity in his gaze at all.
“Hey, guys. Sorry, did I miss some sort of morning meeting, or something…?”
“Sirei said he was going to explain some things to us today,” Hiruko says, voice stiff. Almost robotic. “Remember?”
Takumi blinks slowly, his eyes still a little glassy with sleep. He hides a yawn behind his hand. “Hm? Oh, yeah. Right. Are you all waiting on me?”
“No, Sirei…hasn’t turned up yet.”
Takumi nods thoughtfully. “Okay. Thanks for waking me up, I guess. I’ll head on down to the cafeteria in a bit.”
Hiruko nods shortly, and Takumi swings his door shut once more after sending them both one vaguely quizzical smile that pierces through Eito’s heart with even more agony than his sword would have caused him.
“Eito,” Hiruko says. “Come on. We can’t linger here forever.”
Hiruko Shizuhara is not his boss. But…
She’s also not wrong.
With one last forlorn look back at Takumi’s room, Eito follows Hiruko downstairs.
-x-
Everything is wrong with the world today. Hiruko has known it from the moment she opened her eyes and wandered down into a school without Sirei.
She has no fondness in her heart for their so-called Commanding Officer. But he’s still a cornerstone of her reality, in terms of keeping a loop on track.
Well. There’s no track to be found here; Eito Aotsuki remembers everything, and Takumi Sumino remembers nothing— and not just ‘nothing’ in the normal way, where he remembers their origin point and believes himself to have simply travelled back from Day 100 for the first time…but really and truly nothing at all.
If she was any less of a veteran, she’d be curled up and sobbing in a corner right now. If Sirei surviving Eito’s attempt on his life is a cornerstone of her reality, then Takumi Sumino himself is the very foundation of her world. The one person who, in any given loop, she can remain certain is real.
Compartmentalize. Adjust. Don’t think about what you can’t change, Shizuhara.
When she storms into the cafeteria, she’s expecting the gloom and the tension; everyone waiting for Sirei to appear and tell them just what is going on and why they have to fight.
But then the tension ratchets up when Eito walks in behind her. Tsubasa flinches at the sight of him; Gaku lets out a little meep!
An awful suspicion blooms in her mind, and she feels sick to her stomach. “Eito killed Sirei,” she says, before she can double guess herself and regret it.
Eito’s glare tries to burn holes through the side of her head. Hiruko pays him no mind, her attention on far more important things—like the grim but unsurprised reactions of everyone else in the room.
“You…all remember?”
“Tch. Yeah,” Takemaru growls, gaze never leaving Eito. “You wanna explain why he’s walking around free, Hiruko?”
Hiruko would love to do that, Takemaru, but at that simple confirmation that everyone in this room has memories of multiple timelines while Takumi Sumino doesn’t, Hiruko feels so overwhelmed she needs to sit down. She doesn’t even have the strength in her to stumble a few steps forward into a chair; she plops herself right down on the ground and buries her face in her hands.
She’s never had to deal with this before. She doesn’t know how to deal with this.
A hitching, wheezing sound rises from deep within her chest. Her vision swims. It’s been so long since she’s let herself be this weak that it genuinely takes her a few seconds before she realises that she’s crying.
She laughs, a little hysterical. Eito sends her a disturbed look, before floating off to the furthest corner of the cafeteria, as far away from all of them as he can get. Darumi, who had been curled up near Tsubasa, slowly approaches Hiruko once he’s gone.
She moves slow, and gentle, and it feels like a bizarre reversal of how things between them usually go.
Darumi reaches out with uncertain hands, but Hiruko, who no longer knows anything, also knows no hesitation. She clings to Darumi with a grip that surely must be painful; Darumi does not complain.
“Hi, Mistress Hiruko,” Darumi says, before slowly drawing her into a hug. Hiruko buries her face in Darumi’s shoulder and wails. “It’s been a while, huh?”
It’s been forever. It’s been a night. It’s never been at all, no matter how much Hiruko has tried to make it be, because it all resets to zero in the end.
But she can’t let any of that desperate, grieving venom loose on Darumi, the girl who deserves the most but somehow always gets the least. The member of the SDU with so much love in her heart that she’s scared to let free.
“It’s good to see you, Darumi,” Hiruko croaks out, finally, when her tears have run dry. She pulls back from the warmth and comfort of her, feeling deeply…wrung out.
Darumi shuffles to sit by her side so that they’re facing the rest of the room together, but does not truly leave her. She squeezes her hand tightly.
Takemaru rubs at the back of his neck awkwardly and avoids her gaze. “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he mumbles, and the laughter that bubbles up out of Hiruko then is at least genuine.
“It wasn’t you, Takemaru. I just wasn’t expecting…any of this,” she says.
“Tell me about it,” mumbles Tsubasa, before shooting Hiruko a weak smile. “You want to get off the floor and come sit with me and Darumi, Hiruko?”
“Mistress Tsubasa is really nice,” Darumi tells her, which Hiruko already knows, but she allows Darumi to tug her off the ground and lead her to the table.
“Since I’m sure you’re all wondering, I remember everything too,” Eito says brightly. “In fact, I’m fairly certain the only person who doesn’t remember a thing is Takumi!”
Hm. Maybe Hiruko’s not the only one here feeling a little hysterical.
At Eito’s words, everyone turns to Hiruko for confirmation—apparently, even if they’ve accepted that he’s not dead or in a cage, this time, they’re not just going to take his words at face value—and when she nods, grimacing, they all go a little pale.
“What?” Tsubasa whispers, dismay plain on her face.
Before Hiruko can attempt to explain—not that there’s much to explain in the first place, Hiruko has no idea what’s going on—the doors to the cafeteria open, and Takumi steps in. Still yawning, the sleepy-head.
If he picks up on any of the tension flooding the room upon his entrance, he doesn’t show it. He simply ambles happily off to the Ration-O-Matic, seemingly oblivious to how every pair of eyes in the room lock to him.
It would almost be enough to send a shiver of unease down Hiruko’s spine, to see them all so focused on Takumi like that—she knows what timelines she remembers and thus what sort of memories all the rest of them could have rattling around in their heads, too—but the vibe is melancholy enough that she doesn’t think she has to worry about anything like that. Probably.
(Eito Aotsuki is, as ever, a bit of a loose cannon when it comes to having any sort of certainty about things.)
After collecting his breakfast, Takumi makes his way over to where the rest of them are sitting. He slides into the empty seat next to Gaku. “Sirei shown up yet?” he asks before taking a swig of his can of cafe au lait.
“...no,” Hiruko says eventually, when it’s pretty clear no one else is going to speak. That maybe no one else can speak, feeling the pillar of their world start to crumble.
Takumi Sumino is their leader. Takumi Sumino is a little bit crazy. Takumi Sumino thinks he always knows best.
But the Takumi Sumino in front of them now is none of that. This isn’t a Takumi Sumino they remember from dozens upon dozens of loops, introducing himself to them confidently after having already lived through 100 days that they hadn’t—this is a Takumi Sumino waking up on his third day at Last Defense Academy. A Takumi Sumino who has no idea who he really is.
“Huh. That sucks,” Takumi says, and then summarily turns his attention to his meal. As if that had been some sort of signal to jolt the others back into life, cutlery starts scraping across plates and quiet murmurs of meaningless conversation fill the air again; nevertheless Hiruko is acutely aware of how all eyes—including her own—keeping inevitably finding their way back to Takumi.
Eventually, Takumi finishes his meal. He gets up to wash his dirty dishes, and it’s then that Eito makes his move, pushing off of the wall he’d been leaning up against to head straight for Takumi.
“Hey, Takumi,” he says, bright and friendly and not like Eito Aotsuki at all, “do you want to hang out?”
And Takumi, who has no idea that the boy smiling down at him so warmly is a serial killer that hates him more often than not, simply smiles back at him. “Sure, I guess? Did you have anything specific in mind?”
“A few things,” Eito hedges, shooting Hiruko a smug and utterly triumphant look while Takumi busies himself with putting his plates into the machine. “We can walk and talk so we don’t disturb everyone in here, how does that sound?”
“Oh, that’s probably a good idea. Sorry, guys!” Takumi says, looking sheepish and apologetic and just—following Eito out of the cafeteria like it’s nothing. Like it’s nothing!
If Hiruko had been holding a glass in that moment, it would have shattered to pieces in her hand.
“We’re not just…going to let Eito drag Takumi off to a dark corner somewhere and kill him, right?” Gaku asks, and Ima snorts.
“Oh, please. We all remember the same things, yes? If Mr. Aotsuki is dragging Mr. Sumino off into any dark corners, I doubt it’s murder he’s got on the mind.”
Takemaru furrows his brows in incomprehension, but the hot flash of shame and rage Hiruko feels burn through her seems to be shared by most other people in the room. Tsubasa all but launches herself across the table at Ima; only Darumi’s arms around her keep things from devolving into violence.
“Don’t you dare joke about that,” Tsubasa spits, eyes wild. “Don’t you dare.”
Ima’s expression is unchanged, but Hiruko thinks he looks a little paler than before. Slowly, he nods, and Tsubasa slumps back down into her seat with a sigh. “Mistress Tsubasa?” Darumi asks, confusion and worry as plain on her face as it is Takemaru’s. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”
“A timeline neither you nor Takemaru was alive to see, thankfully,” Hiruko says evenly. “A timeline that was not the fault of anyone in particular.”
“Debatable,” Ima says, but when Hiruko glares at him he raises both hands in surrender. “I don’t mean anything by it. And I wasn’t implying that I blamed Mr. Sumino, either. No more than I blame…most of us.”
Which means he does blame someone, but…ugh, this is not a conversation they need to be having right now. It’s not productive, and Darumi and Takemaru don’t need to know any of it ever happened. “We’ll talk later,” Hiruko tells Ima.
“Hell no, we talk now,” Takemaru says, and then cuts his glare to the twins. “You two got something you wanna fess up to?”
They both look away from each other, and from Takemaru. Apparently they all remember the Killing Game timeline pretty strongly—from glimpses of it she’s seen throughout the loops, they get pretty close there.
Under Takemaru’s firm and expectant gaze, Kako is the first one to crack. And once she starts blabbing, she doesn’t stop. By the time she’s explained all she can remember of the cult, Takemaru is faintly trembling all over.
“Takemaru,” Hiruko cautions, uncertain as to what exactly she’s going to say—
Takemaru halts her train of thought entirely by punching himself in the face. It’s both so stupid and so familiar that she can’t even scold him for it.
“Okay. I’m chill,” he says. “Might punch Yugamu whenever he gets here, but I’m chill.” He grimaces. “I hate to say it, but Eito might have had the right idea in killing Sirei. Pressuring Takumi and all of you into that shit…it ain’t right.”
“It wasn’t,” Hiruko agrees quietly, “but that’s not really relevant right now.”
“But—”
“I’d like us to stop talking about this now,” she says, a little louder. Getting the message then, Takemaru backs off.
“Okay, but… should we be worried that Eito has led Takumi off to ravage him?” Darumi asks, shrugging when they all look her way. “What! Legitimate question here!”
Hiruko doesn’t want to trust Eito—she doesn’t trust Eito, full-stop. But…
When she’d run for Takumi, he’d been right behind her. She doesn’t know what he’s after, but she’s pretty sure she doesn’t have too much to worry about on that front. For right now, at least.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” she reassures the room.
She just hopes she’s right about that.
-x-
Eito hadn’t actually had a plan when he pulled Takumi out of the cafeteria; he just wanted to get out of that room full of reeking monsters, and he hadn’t wanted to leave them all with Takumi. Two birds, one stone.
They’re just wandering through the school, chatting casually—Takumi had mentioned that he hadn’t really had a chance to fully get a grasp on the layout of the building yet and Eito suggesting that they explore it together—and while Takumi is wondering aloud just why they have all be dragged here and if everybody back home is okay (Eito making the appropriate noises of engagement in all the right pauses) Eito is instead updating everything his memories tell him about Takumi. The Takumi in front of him, who is real and beautiful.
His memories of the cult are half delirious, awash with pleasure from every moment spent with Takumi and spent thinking about Takumi; he might not have seen Takumi as a monster, but it’s clear to Eito now that seeing him as a god had been a cognitive distortion all its own. Takumi’s skin is clear but not perfect; Takumi’s eyes are bright but they don’t glow. His voice is pleasant to listen to, but it doesn’t echo in Eito’s ears and mind like the sole sound in all of existence.
And, most amazingly—his scent.
Sight has always been the sense that has worked the most against Eito; while his righteous eyes might have made him see humans for the monsters they truly were, they also made his day to day life a living hell. The only other sense that could possibly match up to it in terms of the sheer torture living with it brought him was his sense of smell.
The Takumi in his cult memories smelt… divine. There’s no other word for it. It was a scent that defies explanation, probably because it wasn’t a true scent at all, just more cognitive adoration. Eito wouldn’t have minded that much, even now, but…
The Takumi before him smells like a teenage boy with middling hygiene. To others, that would probably sound gross. To Eito, who has lived in a world of sensory hell and has only memories of a completely inhuman kind of bliss, that scent—warmth and yesterday’s deodorant and the breakfast Takumi had just eaten—is so real and lived in that it makes him nauseous in a wholly unfamiliar way.
(It almost makes him wonder how Takumi would taste compared to Eito’s memories of the cult, but that—that is a dangerous road to walk his thoughts down, when as far as Takumi is concerned they’ve known each other for all of two days.)
“Eito,” Takumi says, and Eito blinks back into focus at the sound of his amusement, “are you even listening to me?”
There’s a smile playing about his lips as he says it. He’s not being flirty; he’s just being friendly. Open with Eito in a way he normally isn’t, because Eito hasn’t done anything to make Takumi doubt him yet. His chest aches at the thought.
“Honestly, I wasn’t,” Eito says. “I guess I just got…lost in my own head, thinking about everything that’s happened since we got here.”
Takumi hums a sound of agreement. “It’s wild. It still doesn’t feel real, you know? Like maybe any minute now I’m going to wake up to my mum telling me I slept through the alarm I forgot to set again.”
He’s smiling wistfully as he says it, eyes distant. He’s not looking here, he’s looking back— at the TRC, and the humans he loves there. Ugh. Eito might have accepted that the SDU is important enough that he can’t just go killing them willy-nilly, but his hatred for humanity? His desire to see them all dead? That hasn’t gone anywhere.
“Hey, Takumi,” he says, inspiration striking. “I was lying before, when I said I didn’t have a plan for what we could do today?”
Takumi shoots him an inquisitive look. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, I was thinking that…maybe, you could show me how to use my hemoanima? Since you’ve already used yours, and all.”
Doubt and uncertainty flicker across Takumi’s face, chased by a pretty pink blush Eito chooses to label the result of Takumi feeling shy, how cute. “Are you—are you sure? I’m sure Hiruko or Takemaru could explain it better—”
“I don’t want them to explain it to me, Takumi,” Eito says. “I want you.”
Takumi sputters, cheeks flushing even brighter. “But, your health—”
“I promise you, I’m feeling as fine as I ever do right now. Better than usual, even!”
“I mean…if you’re sure…I guess it’s okay…?”
Eito smiles. He loves when things go his way.
A quick detour to the War Room to grab an infuser each—Eito makes a mental note to actually return this one since his is still in his room—and they make their way down to the gym.
Eito allows Takumi to give him an entirely useless lecture on how to stab himself properly (the lecture boils down to just follow your instincts, I guess? for the most part) and then together, in tandem, they raised their blades and slam them home.
His scythe pulling itself from his veins and putting itself in his hands feels like coming home. He feels exhilarated, every drop of cryptoglobin through him singing at the thought of clashing against Takumi. They hadn’t gotten to have their traditional fight the night before, after all.
But then he looks over at Takumi, and that joy trickles away into something cold and confused, because what he sees is wrong.
The sword Takumi holds at the ready isn’t the searing, pulsing azure Eito is used to, but a deep crimson red. Conversations and queries across timelines collide in his mind as Eito realizes that this isn’t just a bizarre loop: this is, somehow, a true reset.
And the Takumi standing before him has never drained a single Eito Aotsuki dry. There’s not a drop of Eito in his veins. There’s nothing inside of Takumi to stain his sword blue.
Given how complicated he’s felt across many timelines about the many times Takumi has killed him, the proof that the Takumi in front of him has never killed him shouldn’t piss him off. But it does.
“You ready to go?” Takumi asks. Friendly. Playful. Weaker than he’s ever been, for as long as Eito has known him.
Eito grits his teeth. Bares them in what he hopes passes for a smile in response. “I’m ready,” he says.
And as they clash, Eito pulling back the strength of his swings just enough to gauge what, exactly, Takumi has lost, there is only one thought on his mind:
He is going to make Takumi into everything Eito knows he can be.
(Whether Takumi likes it or not.)