hanako can tell that he’s angry. from the way that he’s carrying himself to his overall body language, it’s… not hard to see. mitsuba’s more honest with his feelings than hanako is, so he can deal with him being mad. it’s easy enough to put up with. because there’s a level of apprehension that mitsuba has that’s preventing him from thoroughly lashing out more, he’s guessing.
“‘Why?’ You know already, don’t you? You, Aoi-chan, the other mysteries… don’t matter as much to me. But that’s not news, is it? You knew that from the start. That’s why I left you to the kid, I just didn’t want to bother with you.” which is a half-lie, in that he was hoping that he would be able to help mitsuba before tsukasa… did what he did to him. but life goes on.
and… no, hanako isn’t any different. he wanted to stay. but he wanted a real life, not one after as an apparition. a ghost. a miserable excuse for an existence. but that’s what mitsuba wants too, isn’t it? hanako knows that.
“I guess we aren’t different after all. Not a lot of good that does either of us, though.”
and hanako’s want to be cruel is there, of course it is, as ugly and calcified as it is. mitsuba’s miserable, but so is he, and he wants more than anything to dig into and tear apart everything that he’s saying. because it should be obvious; it should be obvious that it wasn’t hanako. that, no, if he had a choice, why would he bring mitsuba here? to save him? does he think he deserves that? someone that most people didn’t remember, sans some boy?
most people didn’t really remember hanako after he died either, though. or, well, they did. but it tapered off, spoken more as a hush-hush behind rumors of 'did you hear what happened at the yugi house? the family had—’
people naturally forget, after a time. they stopped referring to it by his family name, long forgotten, and just refer to it as something else, now. they still don’t dare go in, still do nothing but walk a little faster to the other side of the street when they cross it. but mitsuba didn’t really have anything, did he?
hanako’s clenching his teeth, so he tries to relax enough that when he speaks it’s not as a snap.
“Would you believe me if I said it wasn’t me that did this? You seem pretty convinced that it was.” and the part about yashiro, what’s he even going on about? “She’s alive, so. I’m not happy that she’s not, but she’s alive. You should stick to minding your own business, though. Don’t you think it makes you look kinda stupid? I don’t want to makeout with her.”
he’s not friends with him, so the thought of sharing something about him feels off-kilter in the way that something’s just unnatural. he’s not going to say no, you see, i’m seeing someone else, because it’s none of his business in the first place. hanako doesn’t care about making friends.
“But enough about that, I doubt Tsukasa had a hand in this either. I know he does whatever he wants to, but I haven’t seen him around, and if he is, he hasn’t seen me. I don’t care all that much if you blame me, or if you stop, because it’s easy to, isn’t it? Chalk it all up to number seven’s made a mess of things again? So, go ahead. I won’t stop you. Whether you like me or not, I’ll put up with you. Yashiro likes you, for some reason, so I don’t really have a choice either!”
because maybe hanako doesn’t want to be friends with him, but he still has some semblance of… maybe they could get along, if hanako stopped being selfish, if hanako stopped doing whatever he wanted. but he wants her to live. he wants her to live so badly that it almost feels like he can’t breathe, like he’ll do anything to see it through, no matter the cost. even if it costs him everything. he doesn’t want her to end up like him.
“Even if it upsets her, even if you hate me, even if it means killing another person—I’m going to make sure that she lives. I have to.”
“–you know that wasn’t me, right?”
And it stings to say, because Mitsuba knows some part of him is. Was. He doesn’t know anymore. He knows somewhere along the line, if you follow the path of Mitsuba way back, it would lead to Sousuke. He knows that. He knows, too, that following Sousuke’s line forward... doesn’t inherently lead to Mitsuba. Sousuke stops where Mitsuba begins.
So Hanako says, that’s why I left you with the kid. Hanako says, I just didn’t want to bother with you. But he isn’t talking about Mitsuba. He’s talking about Sousuke. Sousuke, who Mitsuba used to (still does) envy with every fibre of his being. Sousuke – the face who stares back at him from any mirror Mitsuba tries to watch the memories of, reflected back like some cruel joke, that this is the life you can never have. Sousuke’s heart beats in Mitsuba’s chest alongside Number Three’s – neither one is his own. He could almost laugh.
And Mitsuba knows there are parts of him that are decidedly Sousuke. He still understands cameras; the first time he picked one up it felt like home in his hands, but he’s heard that Sousuke liked taking photos of things, not of people. Mitsuba tried that before, he really did. He tried to take photos of birds, of dead cockroaches or whatever else Sousuke might have considered “art”, but it never fit as well as taking a photo of a person. A memory; one that you can hold in your hands. A memory in physical form that says, I was here, once. I lived, or I at least played the part of something alive.
Every time he talks to Hanako is exhausting because Mitsuba isn’t Mitsuba, isn’t Number Three, isn’t whatever he tries to be. He doesn’t know what he is to Hanako, because he’s not Sousuke to him, either. He’s... something. He doesn’t like that he can’t put a name to it. He wonders if Hanako hates him so much because Mitsuba’s a perfect imitation of everything Hanako knows he can’t have either.
The only difference is just that Mitsuba hasn’t given up on it all yet.
“... uwa... I’m not stupid, you know, Number Seven? Look at how you treat her! Everything you do for Daikon-senpai is the same that I’d do for Kou-kun – do you even hear yourself right now? What is that? ‘Even if it means killing another person I’ll make sure that she lives’? And you don’t want to–”
It’s annoying. Hanako’s annoying. Mitsuba heaves the most dramatic sigh he can muster, raising his hands up to muss with his hair (but only a little bit; he doesn’t want to mess up how cute it is, after all).
“These things happen and they inconvenience me and always, always work out well for you. Being tossed into that other place wasn’t your fault, but whatever happened back home... and even this, after everything... what am I supposed to think? Anything that works out well for Daikon-senpai can be pointed back to you, and the two of you may as well be married already... you don’t care about anyone other than her, or what they might want, at all. What am I supposed to think?”
He leans back just as dramatically as his sigh had been.
“If your whole schtick is supposed to be keeping the balance or... that I can’t become a human or whatever... why’s it fine when – you know, I don’t care, actually. The two of you can hook up and I’ll – it doesn’t matter, y’know? You’ll just make me mad again.”
