What Remains of Us
Pairing: chishiya x reader (no pronouns mentioned)
Summary: chishiya never thought he'd fall in love. and he never thought there could be an emotion that is even more consuming than love: grief
Warnings: heavy angst! reader dying, mentions of blood, a little bit of fluff
Word count: ~6k
gif credits
The King of Spades was nothing but chaos. Bullets ripped through the air, glass shattered, smoke stung your eyes and burned your throat. Screams echoed through the empty streets, but beneath the panic there was a strange, desperate determination. This was it. This was almost the endgame. Only two remained: the King of Spades and the Queen of Hearts.
You ran through the debris-strewn street beside Chishiya, lungs burning, heart hammering against your ribs. Every step, every breath, was weighted with the knowledge that if you made it through this, there might finally be peace.
Another gunshot rang out, closer than before. In the split second it took to realise the trajectory, you saw it: the bullet was aimed straight for Chishiya. Without thinking, you shoved him aside. The crack of impact tore through you. The pain was instant, molten fire blooming in your side.
His voice was raw, almost unrecognisable as he yelled your name. He caught you as your knees buckled, his arms tightening around you like he could physically hold you together.
You tried to laugh, tried to tell him it was fine, but all that came out was a wet gasp. “Guess… I wasn’t fast enough.”
“Shut up.” He sank to his knees with you clutched against him, his sharp eyes blown wide with panic. He pressed both hands against the wound and you could feel the tremor in them, something you had never felt from him before. “Don’t talk. Just- just hold on.”
Blood seeped hot between his fingers, soaking through his clothes. His usual calm precision was gone, replaced with frantic movements as he dragged you behind a crumbling wall, shielding you from gunfire.
“Shuntarō…” You coughed, the metallic taste flooding your mouth. “You need to go. You can still-"
“Don’t you dare.” His tone cut like a blade, but the crack in his voice betrayed him. “Don’t you dare tell me to leave you.”
You blinked up at him, his face hovering above yours. For once, the usual smirk was gone. But there was also no coldness, no detachment, just desperation. “This isn’t you,” you whispered weakly.
“I know.” His voice broke on the words. He pressed harder on the wound, muttering curses under his breath. “I can’t focus. I can’t- dammit, stop bleeding-" His hands shook, smeared red to the wrists. “You’re going to be fine. You hear me? You’re going to be fine.”
A shiver racked through you as the world blurred at the edges. “You sound so sure.”
“I am.” His jaw clenched, his eyes flicking between your face and the spreading blood. “Because I don’t lose. Not like this. Not you.” You reached up weakly, fingers brushing the fabric of his bloodstained shirt. “You’ve always been a terrible liar.”
His breath hitched. “Then believe me when I say this: you don’t get to die here.” His hands pressed harder, trying to stem the tide. “You don’t get to leave me.”
The street around you was still chaos, the King of Spades’ gunfire relentless, but in that moment, Chishiya didn’t calculate his odds or think of strategy. For once, he wasn’t the untouchable player. He was just a man on his knees, clutching the one person he couldn’t afford to lose, fighting a battle his brain told him he couldn’t win and refusing to let go anyway.
“Chishiya!” Usagi’s voice cut through the chaos as she and Arisu sprinted into view, ducking low behind the ruined wall. Their eyes widened when they saw you in his arms, your blood pooling beneath you.
Arisu lurched forward, calling your name, panic all over his face, but Chishiya snapped at him before he could even reach you.
“Tear your jacket, now! I need more fabric. Usagi, water, anything clean!” His voice was sharp, commanding, but shaking at the edges. His hands never lifted from your wound, pressing down, desperate to slow the tide that kept slipping through his fingers.
Arisu fumbled, tearing at his jacket with trembling hands, while Usagi scrambled through her bag.
Chishiya seized the torn pieces of fabric, pressing them against the wound, replacing sodden fabric with fresh ones as quickly as it soaked through. His teeth clenched hard enough to ache. “Come on, come on- stay with me,” he muttered under his breath, a mantra as much for himself as for you.
You choked, the sound wet and terrifying. Blood dribbled from the corner of your lips. Chishiya froze. For a split second, his world went silent. No gunfire, no shouting, no explosions, just the crimson stain painting your mouth.
His medical mind knew exactly what that meant. Internal bleeding. Lungs filling. The bullet had to come out. Surgery. You needed an operating room, a sterile environment, equipment he didn’t have. Without it...
No. Don’t. The thought hammered against the walls of his skull, but his chest burned with the truth he didn’t want to accept. This was not good. This was not survivable.
“Shuntarō…” You tried to speak, voice bubbling with blood, but he shook his head furiously, silencing you with the fierce press of his palm against yours.
“Don’t talk. Don’t.” His voice cracked as he barked it, eyes burning, jaw trembling despite the sharpness of his tone. “I can fix this. I can fix you. Just hold on.”
Arisu swallowed hard, looking between your paling face and Chishiya’s bloodied hands. He opened his mouth to say something, but one look from Chishiya kept him silent.
Chishiya’s heart pounded as his mind screamed calculations he didn’t want to hear: survival rate near zero, no surgical intervention possible, the inevitable dragging closer with every shallow breath you took. And yet his hands kept working, pressing, replacing, fighting against the truth.
You coughed again, weaker this time, and your eyes fluttered half-shut. Chishiya’s own vision blurred. His heart refused what his mind already knew: that you were slipping, that he couldn’t save you here.
“No,” he whispered fiercely, leaning closer, his forehead almost pressing to yours. “You’re not allowed to leave me. You hear me? You don’t get to leave me.”
The world around him dimmed, the noise of battle fading like a distant echo, as though time itself slowed. The warmth of your blood on his hands, the weight of your body in his arms, everything anchored him in this moment of devastation.
And then, like smoke curling in from the edges of memory, another image began to press against his mind. Not this battlefield. Not this day. Something older. The first time he saw you. The sharp words you had thrown at him. The way you would never let him hide behind his cold smirk.
The present wavered and the past began to bleed through. With the world blurring, the chaos of blood and gunfire slipped away, replaced by a different kind of tension. A memory pressed itself into focus: the first time you met him.
The game had been set in a massive, abandoned shopping mall. The rules were simple, the execution brutal. A puzzle with two possible paths. One that would allow a handful of players to escape quickly if they figured out the solution, and another, longer route, that gave everyone a chance to survive if enough people cooperated.
You had seen the solution almost instantly, the same way he had. The smug tilt of his head told you that much. He leaned back against a shattered storefront, hands tucked into his pockets, eyes glinting with that detached amusement you would later come to know all too well.
“Well?” he had drawled, looking at you from the corner of his eye. “Smart enough to see it. Smart enough to walk away. What’s stopping you?”
You squared your shoulders, pulse steady despite the smug challenge in his tone. “The fact that there are other people here who don’t deserve to die just because they weren’t fast enough.”
He arched an eyebrow, the corner of his lips twitching like your answer was amusing but foolish. “Ah. So, one of those. Self-sacrificing, bleeding-heart types.” He pushed off the wall and stepped closer, his gaze sharp. “That won’t get you far in here.”
“Neither will standing around acting superior while people die,” you shot back. The words hung in the air, as unexpected as they were. For the briefest second, his expression flickered. And it wasn't intimidation or anger, but surprise. Then that infuriating smirk slid back into place.
You ignored it, turning to the cluster of terrified players and explaining the longer route, urging them to work together. Some hesitated, some doubted, but you persisted, and slowly they began to move.
Chishiya followed, hands still shoved into his pockets, watching you with that unreadable stare. When the danger spiked and the panic threatened to ruin the plan, he intervened with quiet, precise words, guiding others in exactly the right way to keep them moving. Not for their sake, you suspected, but for his own.
In the end, the game was cleared. A few lives were lost, but far fewer than there might have been. Relief rippled through the survivors as they stumbled out into the night air, alive.
“That was reckless,” Chishiya said when it was over, his gaze fixed on you. “Reckless and far too good-hearted for this world.”
You wiped the sweat from your brow, exhaustion tugging at your limbs, but your lips curved into a sharp grin. “Funny. I was about to say the same about you... minus the good-hearted part.”
For a moment, silence stretched between you. Then his eyes narrowed slightly, not with annoyance, but with something far more dangerous: intrigue.
From that day forward, you weren’t just another player in his eyes. You were the one person who hadn’t flinched, hadn’t bent beneath his words, and that fact alone hooked something in him he couldn’t quite explain.
The Beach was a different kind of battlefield. Not bullets and blood, but politics, manipulation, and fragile alliances. Hatter had welcomed you with a grin wide enough to split his face when you first arrived, declaring you “a rare gem”, a Clubs player who excelled in strategy and cooperation. Someone who could win games not by force or brute intellect alone, but by leading others through them.
It didn’t take long for you to rise. Your ability to clear Clubs games and to keep people alive, made you valuable. And with value came rank. Soon, you found yourself seated at the long table in the executive meetings, surrounded by the most powerful players at the Beach.
Chishiya always sat slouched in his chair, arms folded or hands tucked into his pockets, his lazy smirk never leaving his face. He barely ever said anything. It was not hard for you to realise what he thought of the Beach and the executives. Only they never noticed.
Sometimes he couldn't hold back, when a plan was exceptionally stupid. He barely ever suggested a better plan, only scoffing and calling the current one 'absolutely brainless'. Most people let his words roll past, unwilling to engage with him. But not you.
“Do you ever contribute anything useful?” you snapped one evening after yet another one of his thinly veiled provocations.
His smirk deepened, eyes glittering with mischief. “I'm stating the truth. Someone has to keep these meetings interesting.”
“You mean you hide behind sarcasm so no one notices you never stick your neck out,” you countered.
The room went quiet. A few executives shifted uncomfortably, eyes flicking between you and Chishiya. No one spoke to him that way. Not Hatter. Not Aguni. No one.
For a heartbeat, he said nothing, only watched you with those unreadable eyes of his. Then, slowly, his lips curved. “Careful.” He muttered softly. A scoff escaped you before you could stop it.
The meeting moved on, but the tension lingered. His eyes found you more than once, following the way you spoke, the way you carried yourself. It wasn’t intimidation he felt. It wasn’t irritation, either. It was something far more dangerous: fascination.
That night, after the meeting, you found him leaning against a balcony rail, the glow of neon lights painting his pale features. You didn’t hesitate.
“You know,” you said, stepping up beside him, “for someone who pretends not to care, you work very hard at keeping up that act.”
He turned his head just enough to glance at you, one eyebrow lifting. “Is that so?”
“Yeah.” You met his gaze steadily. “You think no one sees through it. But I do. You’re not detached. You’re scared of what happens if you’re not.”
The words landed heavier than you expected. For once, he didn’t smirk. He didn’t argue back. He just studied you, like he was piecing something together for the first time.
And in that silence, something shifted. His intrigue, that spark of curiosity from your first encounter, began to settle into something deeper. Because no one ever challenged him. No one ever broke past the persona he wore like armour. No one but you.
Sleep rarely came easy at the Beach. The music, the shouting, the laughter of people pretending they weren’t living on borrowed time, it all seeped through the walls no matter where you hid. Most nights you wandered restlessly, letting your feet carry you. It turned out you weren’t the only one.
You would find him again and again. Sometimes in the library, idly leafing through books. Sometimes outside, leaning against the rail of the poolside bar. Sometimes on the rooftops, gazing at the ruined city like he was the only one left in it.
At first, the two of you exchanged little more than jabs. Witty remarks, sharp words meant to poke at each other. But over time, the conversations deepened. The silences between words grew comfortable instead of tense.
One night, you told him about your family. Just small details like your favourite childhood memory, the smell of your grandmother’s cooking. Tiny things, fragments of a life that felt impossibly far away. You hadn’t expected him to answer. He never did. But this time, after a long silence, he spoke.
“I used to think medicine was just a puzzle. Problems to be solved with logic. People only… complicated it.” His eyes stayed fixed on the ground below as if it was easier not to look at you. “I didn’t expect it to matter. Until it did.”
The admission stunned you. You didn’t push. You just sat beside him, the weight of his words sinking in. And slowly, he began to share more. Little fragments. Pieces of himself he swore he would never hand to anyone here. But with you, the risk felt almost… safe?
Safe. That was what he felt with you, a word so foreign to him it might as well have been from another language. Yet when your eyes found his, when your shoulder brushed his in the quiet of the night, that’s what it was. Safe. And strangely, it felt good.
It was on one of those nights, the both of you standing on an empty rooftop, the broken city sprawled endlessly below, that something shifted again. The wind tugged at your clothes and tousled his pale hair.
You leaned against the railing, staring out at the flickering lights far away. The games had just started. When you finally turned your head, you realised he wasn’t looking at the view at all. He was watching you. His gaze was steady, as if memorising every detail.
The silence stretched, heavy with something unspoken. And then, quietly, almost as if confessing to himself, he said, “I really want to kiss you right now.”
You froze, breath catching in your chest. For a moment, you thought you misheard. “What?” His lips twitched, “You heard me.”
When you turned fully to face him, the look in your eyes was all the invitation he needed. His hand lifted, brushing a strand of hair from your face with uncharacteristic gentleness. And then he closed the distance.
The kiss felt careful at first, like he was testing the reality of it. His lips pressed against yours softly, almost reverently, the warmth of him startling against the night’s chill.
But when you tilted your head, when your hand found the fabric of his shirt and tugged him closer, something inside him broke free. The kiss deepened, growing urgent, his fingers curling against your jaw as though anchoring himself to you.
For someone who lived in logic, in distance, it was uncharacteristically vulnerable. He kissed you like he had been holding back for far too long, like he had finally surrendered to the one truth he couldn’t outthink or outmaneuver: you.
When he finally pulled back, breath mingling with yours, his forehead rested lightly against your temple. “I- We shouldn’t,” he whispered, more to himself than to you. You whispered back, “But what's stopping us in a world that is already doomed?"
After that rooftop night, things shifted in ways neither of you acknowledged out loud. It wasn’t dramatic, not some sweeping declaration or visible change. It was subtler than that, the quiet gravity pulling you towards each other, undeniable even when you tried to resist.
Sometimes it showed in stolen moments. You would find him sprawled on a couch in the empty library, eyes closed like he was dozing, and he would wordlessly lift one arm, making room for you at his side. You would curl against him, your head against his shoulder, and he would go back to pretending to sleep, though you noticed his breathing always slowed, steadying only once you were there.
Other times, it was in small acts of defiance. During games, he no longer stood apart. He no longer seemed detached. He stayed closer, orbiting your side. When danger flared, his eyes always found you first, calculating not just his survival, but yours.
And then there were the nights. Nights when the Beach quieted, when the music finally died down. You would sit together on that rooftop, trading fragments of memory. He told you about the feeling of holding a beating heart in his hands during surgery. You told him about the way spring mornings smelled after the rain in your hometown.
One night, you laughed at something ridiculous he said. A rare and genuine laugh that slipped from you without restraint. You hadn’t noticed how intently he was watching until the sound faded, and his lips curved, not in a smirk this time, but in something softer, rarer. “You’re dangerous,” he murmured. You tilted your head. “Me?”
“Yes.” His eyes lingered on yours, unreadable yet warm. “Because I almost forget where we are when I’m with you.” You hadn’t known what to say to that. But the silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It was delicate, like glass you didn’t dare shatter.
There were arguments, of course. He would call you reckless, accuse you of risking yourself for people who didn’t deserve it. You would snap back that he was a coward for hiding behind his indifference. But even those clashes felt different now. They ended not in walls, but in doorways. His eyes softened when the fire in yours burned out, and more often than not, one of you ended up seeking the other out again by the next day. And slowly, without him even realising when it happened, admiration turned into something far more dangerous than any game the Borderlands could throw at him.
Love.
The rooftop, the laughter, the fragile moments of peace, they dissolved like mist against the fire of the battlefield. The deafening roar of gunfire crashed back, smoke choking the air, the metallic tang of blood heavy on your tongue.
Chishiya’s hands were still pressed desperately against your wound, his knuckles white, his movements frantic. He muttered under his breath, curses and pleas bleeding together, his usual calm precision shattered into raw desperation. “Stay with me,” he rasped, shaking his head as though the force of denial alone could undo reality. “You’re not leaving me here. You hear me?” His voice cracked, jagged at the edges.
You summoned what little strength you had left, lifting a trembling hand. Your fingers curled weakly around his wrist, halting his futile attempts to stop the bleeding. His head snapped up, eyes locking on yours. They were wide with fear.
You forced your lips into something resembling a smile, though pain pulled at every muscle. “Shuntarō…” Your voice was barely a whisper, wet and broken, but you pressed on. “It’s okay.”
“No.” The word tore from him like a growl, desperate and vicious. “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you-"
“It’s okay,” you repeated, firmer this time, though your breaths were shallow and ragged. “It’s time to let go.” His throat bobbed, his hands tightening helplessly around yours. You could see it in his eyes, the refusal, the devastation, the breaking.
“I'm ready,” you whispered, each word a battle. “I knew it might come to this ever since stepping into this world. But you… you gave me more than I ever thought I’d have here. You showed me things I’d forgotten. How to feel again. How to… love again.” His face twisted, anguish tearing through his mask like shrapnel.
“I’ll never forget you,” you continued, your vision dimming at the edges, though you fought to keep his face in focus. “I’ll always be with you. Right here.” Your fingers pressed weakly against his chest, where his heart thundered. Tears blurred his eyes, though he blinked them back with furious defiance.
“You have to make it out alive,” you breathed. “For me. Promise me.” His lips trembled, his jaw clenched, and for a long moment he couldn’t answer. Then, hoarse and broken, the word escaped:
“…I promise.”
Your hand slackened, sliding down his wrist. Your smile lingered faintly, even as your breaths grew too shallow to draw.
And for the first time in his life, Shuntarō Chishiya felt utterly powerless, cradling the one person he could not save, watching the light slip from your eyes, even as his heart screamed to hold on.
Your hand slipped from his wrist, falling limply to the ground. Chishiya didn’t move. His body hunched over yours, his bloodied hands frozen against your wound as if sheer will could reverse what had already happened.
“Chishiya-" Usagi’s voice cracked as she reached for him. He didn’t respond. He didn’t even look up. Arisu’s hands were on his shoulders then, pulling, shaking, desperate. “We have to move! If we stay here, we’ll die!”
“I can’t-" His voice was hollow, the words rasping out like ashes. “Yes, you can!” Arisu’s grip tightened, dragging him back with all his strength. Usagi whispered a soft farewell to you, thanking you for everything you endured together. Then she helped Arisu pull Chishiya away from your seemingly lifeless body.
His legs stumbled beneath him, but his mind was empty. Utterly, completely numb.
The King of Spades fell. But danger was still close. Niragi, his laughter fractured and unhinged, stumbled into the open. He raised the gun with gleeful cruelty, his aim swinging wildly until it landed on Chishiya. The shot cracked. Pain seared through Chishiya’s body as the bullet tore into him, just missing vital organs. And he mocked Niragi for it.
But when Chishiya saw Niragi's gun pointed at Usagi, he intervened. Before he could pull the trigger, Chishiya lurched forward, forcing his body between them. He stood, shielding her with everything he had left. He staggered, slumped back against the wreck of a car, blood soaking his side.
“Chishiya!” Usagi’s cry tore through the smoke. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even care. Death didn’t scare him anymore, not when he had already lost the only thing he wanted to live for.
Slumped against the car, breaths shallow and pain radiating through him, he managed a broken, wry smile. “A change in my usual character seemed just right,” he murmured, voice barely more than a rasp.
Arisu crouched beside him, eyes wide, face twisted in worry. But Chishiya only leaned his head back against the scorched metal, his gaze unfocused, his thoughts far away from the battlefield. "Now win that last card."
When the final game was cleared, when Arisu and Usagi brought the Queen of Hearts down and the fireworks tore across the dark sky, he lay there, watching the colours explode above.
The question lingered in the air, heavy and impossible: return to the real world, or remain here forever. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, so softly it was almost lost beneath the thunder of fireworks, he whispered, “I think… I want to return.”
His lips parted in a faint, broken smile, eyes glimmering with tears he didn’t shed. “To make it out alive,” he breathed. “To become a better person back in the real world.” His gaze drifted skyward, as though you might be hidden among the stars. “For you.”
The light swallowed everything. One moment, there were fireworks blazing across the sky, the sharp taste of blood in his mouth, and the weight of his whispered promise to you. The next, there was white. A brightness that pressed in from all sides until there was nothing else.
When Chishiya’s eyes fluttered open, it wasn’t the Borderlands he saw. It was a ceiling. Pale and sterile, humming faintly with fluorescent light. The faint beeping of machines filled the silence. A hospital.
For a moment, he lay still, the weight of his body foreign, every nerve raw.
“Yo,” a too-familiar voice rasped. Chishiya turned his head, his neck stiff. Niragi was in the hospital bed next to him, bandages wrapping his whole body, IV tubing dangling from his arm. His smirk was lopsided, weaker than usual, but still there.
“You finally up, huh?” Niragi chuckled dryly, tapping his temple. “Funny thing. Can’t remember a damn thing. Not the accident, not how I got here. Blank. Guess we got lucky, huh?”
Chishiya said nothing. He only watched him, his chest heavy with a dread Niragi couldn’t understand. Because he remembered.
Not all at once, but piece by piece, like shards of glass cutting through the fog. The endless games. The blood. The fire. And then you.
Your hand slipping from his wrist. The weak smile you forced through the pain. Your voice, trembling but steady, telling him it was okay. That it was time to let go. That you would always be with him, in his heart.
His breath caught, the sound sharp in the sterile air. He turned his face away from Niragi, pressing his eyes shut, but it didn’t stop the flood.
Every word. Every laugh. Every kiss on that rooftop beneath the ruined city. Every quiet moment of safety you had given him in a world designed to strip it away.
And then the memory of you dying in his arms. The devastation hit like a blow to the chest. His throat tightened, his stomach twisted, and for the first time in his life, Chishiya felt the weight of grief so sharp it was suffocating.
He had thought himself untouchable. Above it all. Detached. But you had dismantled that piece by piece until he had nothing left to hide behind. And now, with the memories flooding back, he realised what it meant to lose the only person who had ever made him want to live.
Tears pricked hot at the corners of his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall. He swallowed them down, his jaw tightening, his nails biting into his palms.
You were gone. And he remembered everything.
Recovery was a slow, suffocating process.
The surgeons told him he had been lucky. He was kept in bed for weeks, his movements limited, every shift in his body reminding him of pain.
At night, when the hospital quieted and the only sound was the steady beep of monitors, he would close his eyes and see you. Not vague impressions, not blurry dreams, but you. The weight of your hand in his. The curve of your smile on that rooftop. The way your voice cracked when you told him it was okay to let go.
And every time, he broke all over again. He didn’t cry. He refused. But grief hollowed him out, carving him into something unrecognisable. Meals went untouched. The doctors muttered about depression, about trauma, about therapy he wouldn’t accept. Niragi never noticed, too consumed in his own arrogance and relief at forgetting. But Chishiya remembered. Every second. Every heartbeat. Every loss.
And still, he clung to the only thing he had left: the promise. "Make it out alive. For me."
He replayed your words in his head like scripture. You wanted him to survive, so he would. He had never cared before. Not about life, about people, about being anything more than clever enough to win. But you had changed him. You had made him want more.
So when he forced himself to eat again, it wasn’t for himself. It was for you. When he pushed himself to stand, leaning on the IV pole with trembling legs, it was for you. When he looked out the window at the city, the world he had never expected to see again, it was with the thought of you.
He wanted to be a better person. For you.
Every step forward was agony, but every step was survival. And survival was what you had asked of him.
He carried your voice in his chest like a second heartbeat, a phantom rhythm guiding him through the emptiness. He didn’t know what becoming “better” would look like. He only knew that for the first time in his life, he wanted to find out.
Because you would have wanted it for him. And that was enough.
The first steps outside the hospital felt strange.
The city was alive in a way the Borderlands had never been. Cars rumbled by, their horns impatient. Neon signs buzzed overhead, some flickering with tired light. The air was full of chatter, laughter, the rustle of people living their lives without the weight of survival games pressing against their every breath.
For weeks, Chishiya had forced himself to notice these things. The way the sky shifted from grey to orange at dusk. The smell of fresh bread wafting from a bakery. The sound of a dog barking in the distance. Little things. Ordinary things. The kind of details you would have smiled at. The kind of details he had promised himself he would appreciate for you.
That afternoon, his steps carried him into Shibuya. The famous scramble crossing stretched wide before him, thrumming with life. He stood at the curb, hands shoved in his pockets, watching the sea of people swell as the lights changed.
And then his world stopped.
His heart lurched violently against his ribs, a blow so sudden it nearly stole the air from his lungs. His feet froze mid-step, rooted to the ground as if the earth itself had given way beneath him.
His eyes widened, every muscle in his body locking in place. For a moment, the sounds of Shibuya dulled, the honking horns, the shuffle of feet, the chatter of strangers all fading into nothing but a faint buzz in his ears.
Because there, in the shifting crowd, you walked. Alive.
Your face, so achingly familiar, so impossibly real, turned slightly towards the sunlight. No blood, no fear, no Borderlands. Just you. Your expression was relaxed, your steps unhurried, like you belonged here, like nothing had ever happened.
Chishiya’s chest constricted. His pulse thundered in his ears. His breath caught, shallow and trembling, as if one wrong inhale would make the image vanish. He didn’t blink. He couldn’t. He was terrified that if he did, you would be gone.
But you weren’t. You were right there, weaving through the crowd, alive in a world where you weren’t supposed to exist anymore. And for the first time since waking in that hospital, Chishiya felt his carefully rebuilt composure shatter all over again.
He couldn’t stop himself.
The second the crossing cleared, Chishiya stepped off the curb, his legs moving before his mind could catch up. His pulse thundered, drowning out the noise of Shibuya. Every stride closed the distance, though he stayed a pace behind, weaving silently through the throng of bodies.
You were alive. Walking. Breathing. Existing. And he couldn’t look away.
He memorised the way your shoulders moved with each step, the tilt of your head when the sunlight brushed your face. The little details, the ones he had thought were lost to him forever. They mesmerised him. His chest ached with every heartbeat, but he couldn’t let himself blink, couldn’t risk missing even a second of it.
Words caught in his throat. A hundred things he wanted to say, your name, his apologies, the promise he had carried for you, but none of them reached his lips. He only followed you silently, his gaze fixed like a man watching a miracle take shape.
And then you turned. Your eyes met his instantly, locking onto him as though you had been waiting. The world fell away, Shibuya dissolving into nothing but the depth of your gaze.
For a moment, everything inside him broke apart, the devastation, the grief, the crushing sadness he had been dragging behind him since the Borderlands. It all dissolved, washed clean in the quiet safety of your eyes. His chest tightened, his lips parting in a soundless breath. He felt weightless, suspended between disbelief and overwhelming relief.
You tilted your head slightly, your brows knitting together in faint confusion. “Do we… know each other?” The words hit him harder than any bullet.
Because in that instant, he realised: you didn’t remember. Not the Borderlands. Not the games. Not him. Not the love that had grown between you in the shadow of death.
The smile you gave was polite, uncertain. A stranger’s smile.
Your eyes narrowed slightly as though trying to place a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. “Though… you do look familiar,” you admitted softly.
Chishiya’s breath caught. Little did he know, when your eyes first locked, your heart had skipped a beat. It had been involuntary. A sudden, unexplainable flutter that left you unsettled, though you couldn’t begin to understand why.
His lips parted, the word trembling out of him before he could stop it. Your name. Whispered like a prayer.
Your eyes widened. “So we do know each other?” Relief and guilt flooded your face in equal measure. “I’m so sorry. I… I recently woke up from a coma after the meteor incident. There are still gaps. I don’t… I don’t remember everything.”
Chishiya just stared at you. Stared as though you weren’t real, as though at any second you might vanish back into smoke and gunfire. His whole body ached to close the distance, to wrap his arms around you, to feel the warmth of your skin beneath his fingers, to remind himself you were alive.
But he didn’t move. He couldn’t. Not when your memories had been erased, not when touching you might break whatever fragile thread had brought you back to him.
Still, the grief that had crushed him for weeks didn’t win here. Not this time. Because you were alive. That was all that mattered.
Perhaps it was better you didn’t remember the Borderlands, the blood and the countless horrors. Even if it meant you also didn’t remember the rooftop, the laughter, the nights of whispered secrets, the love that had bloomed between you.
He would carry those memories for the both of you. And he was certain of one thing: he would make you fall in love with him again. Just as it had happened before.
For the first time in weeks, his lips curved softly. He remembered the little detail how you hated coffee, how you would always wrinkle your nose when the smell drifted too close.
“Would you like to grab some tea?” he asked quietly.
And though you didn’t know why, something in your chest tightened, pulling you towards him.
A/N: I've been working on this one for far too long now. Did I break my own little heart while writing this? Perhaps. Did I still enjoy writing it? Absolutely.
