i’m so sorry this was SUPER late but here’s your tenkaede roleswap gift from antikarmas to you, kibasniper! i hope you have a good rest of your holidays!! :-D ⭐⭐⭐
Here’s kaemaki in a festival for @suhana2505 from @izuvi !!
Happy Holidays! I’m terribly sorry for my giftee and the mods for taking so long, there’s probably mistake I have forgotten to fix I still hope you like it nonetheless ;w;
Happy Holidays Rilie! ( @kisikils ) I hope you like the fanfic I wrote for you! Sorry it’s a bit late but tumblr ate my submission;; I hope you had a merry christmas anyways and have an amazing new year!
Sunlight shone through the simple white curtains and onto Shirogane’s closed eyes. The combination of the bright light and loud music playing loudly from her alarm caused the sleeping cosplayer to stir from her sleep. Rubbing her eyes Shirogane could plainly see she was not sleeping in her bed. Not only was the surface she was sleeping on hard as a rock but instead of seeing the blue of her pillowcase next to her bright pink was clouding her vision.
She raised her head slowly taking a look at her surroundings trying to figure out her sleeping place before she suddenly jolted upright after realizing her makeshift pillow was the cosplay she had spent all night working on. Panicking she looked around for any drool stains or rips she might have accidentally made in the fabric, once she was sure the costume was still in perfect condition she let out a sigh of relief.
Slumping back into the chair she woke up in Shirogane stretched her achy body, which was not too happy with her for falling asleep at her desk yet again.
This bad habit of hers she knew she had to stop but every night she thinks ‘just one more stitch’ or ‘I’m not that sleepy’ and always ends up sewing into the dawn passing out on her desk. But as everything was turning out fine staying up late to see once, twice, or fifty-three times wouldn’t hurt, right?
And besides, the extra work had paid off. Now that her scare left her more awake she properly looked over her latest creation and smiled to herself. Deciding to cosplay a character with such an elaborate design was a challenge but the ornate dress was turning out perfectly so far. She let out a noise of satisfaction at her late night work and starting humming along to the alarm which was still loudly playing.
Reaching over to her phone she picked it up and went to finally turn off the alarm.
Once she did, her eyes widened as she noticed the time. Not only did she sleep in a place that was plainly not her bed she also had slept in for hours making her incredibly late for school. She raced out of the chair nearly tripping over the assorted sewing materials scattered on the floor as she did so and ran to the bathroom to get ready.
After throwing on a tightly fitted purple sweater, a pair a jeans and a beret to hide her half brushes hair quickly as possible Shirogane dashed out the door toast in mouth (not being able to pass up the chance of living one of the most famous cliches in anime) but her quick pace turned into a slow crawl as playing DDR at an arcade every so often barely counts as exercise. Eventually, though she stumbled up the school stairs panting and groaning the entire way. Nearly collapsing as she finally reached the top of what she felt was a mountain she leaned on the wall next to her and attempted to get her breath back despite the fact she was half an hour late and getting later by the second. Walking into the building looking as if she had run a marathon would turn heads no matter who it was but if she casually strolled in Shirogane’s ability to blend into the background would work out in her favour and she could just act like she was there the entire time and no one would be the wiser.
While her stealth mission had been a success and she had joined class easily Shirogane soon realized that staying up late and making a mad dash to school was making it hard for her to stay awake. She had noticed this as the homeroom teacher was speaking one second then she 'blinked’ and the history teacher was giving a lecture about some war.
Leaving the building Shirogane decided a trip to get a coffee was needed if she wanted to actually learn anything. She buttoned up her brown coat and began to venture out down the streets in search of a coffee shop instead of just taking the short walk to the Starbucks nearby. Lunchtime in that place was usually a nightmare filled with normies who took forever to order so the journey to find a more quiet place was needed. While she walked down the street none of the coffee places caught her eye. Some were very full and others looked unappetizing to her. Just as she was about to give up and just get something from the next place she saw a sign leading down a rather odd looking alleyway caught her eye. It didn’t exactly look like a good idea but her curiosity got the best of her and she soon found herself in front of the surprisingly nice looking coffee shop in a not so nice looking alleyway
A bell rang out as she opened the glass door. Piano music floated through the air and the warm scent of freshly brewed coffee gave the Shirogane a warm welcome as she stepped inside.
“Hi there! I’ll help you in just a minute!” The soft voice of the barista called to Shirogane complete with a bright smile on her face. Shirogane returned her greeting with a smile of her own and took her place in the rather short line.
Her blonde hair which has been tied up in a ponytail, save for one odd strand that stood up oddly, with a hair tie that had a treble clef hanging from the side. Her hair swayed as she quickly tended to the other customer’s orders. The smile she had on her face as she greeted Shirogane hadn’t left her face even as she moved to every inch of the counter grabbing various items for the drink she was currently working on. Shirogane could also faintly hear her voice humming along to the music, cheery as can be despite the hard work she was currently doing. Her bright, lively, kind personality, her sunny hair with an odd quirk, everything about her just screamed,
“Protagonist.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t quite catch that?”
Shirogane’s faced burned red as she looked right at the confused face of the blonde barista, the people in front of her conveniently all having been served just as Shirogane’s inner thoughts became not so inner. “O-oh it’s nothing,” Shirogane’s eyes wandered to the plant on the counter finding it more comfortable to look at than the girl still looking at her curiously. “ I was just thinking out loud. Anyways I’ll have a Latte please.”
“You’ve got it!” The barista replied. Shirogane nodded, at who judging from her name tag was Akamatsu, and took a seat on one of the bar stools that were arranged by the counter waiting for her drink to be prepared. Shirogane reached into her purse trying to dig out her phone amongst her wallet and emergency sewing supplies when the bright voice from a second ago spoke up. “So, do you work nearby?”
“Huh?” Shirogane looked up from her search and looked at the owner of the voice who ended up being the barista yet again.
“Do you work nearby?” She repeated, smile still on her face. “Not many people come to this place unless they’re a regular so I was just curious what brought you to the area.” The girl pulled some ingredients off a shelf as she spoke.
Shirogane blinked, not used to random conversations, or well, people noticing her in general. “Ah well, I go to school nearby. The coffee place nearby is always so busy and the coffee usually is just plain bland so I thought I’d take a look at the places nearby and ended up here.” Shirogane thought that would end the small talk between the two of them but the other girl managed to seem even happier with her answer.
“Well, you’re in luck! The coffee here is top notch and much better than any chain shores will ever be! I’ll make sure yours is so good it’ll blow your socks off!” Akamatsu’s ponytail bounced as she pumped her fists in the air before moving to grab something from a cupboard. “You’re a college student right? What are you studying?” She said as she pulled a small jar of some sort of spice out.
“I’m in scriptwriting and costume design,” Shirogane replied. “I’m learning about behind the scenes of tv shows in general.” Akamatsu looked up from the drink she was mixing the spice she had recently grabbed with a smile.
“Really?! That’s so cool! Your costumes must look amazing with your sense of style.”
A blush grew on her face as Shirogane was awestruck by Akamatsu’s compliment. She hadn’t thought just a pair of plain jeans with a blue sweater was anything special but she appreciated the comment none the less. “Thank you, but I’m not that good at with style.” She twirled a strand of her hair. “My outfits are so plain and ordinary that people forget I exist, I’ve even managed to sneak into movies because I went unnoticed.”
“Really?” It was hard to tell who was more surprised. Akamatsu at Shirogane’s story or Shirogane at Akamatsu’s surprise. “But you look so beautiful?”
“W-what?” If she thought Akamatsu’s comment before made her face feel warm Shirogane’s face now was on fire. Akamatsu just nodded happily unaware of the other girl’s embarrassment.
“Yeah totally! You’re like a supermodel oozing with sexiness! I would have thought you’d have people staring at you all the time!”
Now Shirogane’s jaw was on the floor. This was just supposed to be a quick trip to keep herself awake not fall straight into a fanfiction.
“W-well, thank you I guess. Hearing that is kind of embarrassing though.” Shirogane tried to brush off the other girl’s words but Akamatsu persisted.
“It’s true though!” Akamatsu grabbed a lid as she spoke and put it onto the paper cup she had in her hands. “I’ve seen my fair share of good-looking people come in here but you’re definitely one of the prettiest.”
Shirogane tried to get out some form of an argument but she noticed Akamatsu putting the finishing touches on her latte and was thankful her drink was here to save her from any more embarrassment. “Aaaand here’s your drink!” Akamatsu said as she was quickly writing something on the napkin oddly enough before handing both to Shirogane. “I hope it’s much better than the one by your school,” Akamatsu said with a giggle. Shirogane nodded and mumbled out an embarrassed thanks before shoving the napkin into her pocket and took a sip of the latte. Like Akamatsu promised, it was delicious. It was easily the best coffee she’s ever had, it was just sweet enough but it didn’t overpower the drink, it felt smooth and creamy and faint flavours of cinnamon made it taste perfect. She sighed now feeling more awake already she could tell that the rest of the day would be much easier to handle now. As she moved to take another sip she could feel a pair of eager eyes on her and noticed Akamatsu looking carefully at her reaction.
“This tastes amazing! This is plainly the best coffee I’ve had ever.” Akamatsu’s eyes lit up at the compliment and Shirogane was happy to see her so happy.
“I’m so glad you like it! I wanted to make it extra special and convert you into a regular.” Shirogane found herself softly laughing with Akamatsu as she said that.
“If it’ll always be this good I might have to.” She replied before taking another drink. “Have you been working here for a while?” Shirogane asked wanting to keep the conversation going.
Akamatsu seemed happy to hear Shirogane speak up and answered happily as she put on a pair of rubber gloves and began running some hot water in the sink nearby. “Yep! This place is run by my best friends family, so when I was old enough to get a job they offered one to me.” Shirogane thought to herself about how her placement of Akamatsu as the protagonist type seemed to be fitting as ever.
“I had a feeling you weren’t new at this with how good it was,” Shirogane said. “That was very kind of them to give you a job so easily. So then you’ve known your friend for quite a long time I’m assuming?” Akamatsu nodded in response.
“Mm-hm! We met when we were kids and have been together ever since!” Akamatsu moved to turn off the water and began scrubbing some mugs. She looked over at Shirogane who was still listening clearly and enjoying her drink and took her enjoyment as a sign to keep speaking. “I moved next door to him right before we started grade school. he was really quiet so at first, he would just wave if he saw me then leave to go do something else. But eventually, I got tired of seeing him so often and not talking so I yelled at him and he ended up climbing the fence and we played until it was dark. From that day on we were inseparable, even if we’re total opposites. He’d always want to go run around outside and explore but I’d prefer staying inside and listening to music” A soft smile spread against Akamatsu’s face as she spoke and Shirogane caught herself thinking that she looked quite nice right now. Akamatsu hair moved with her as she continued scrubbing dishes and Shirogane took note of the music note hair tie once again. Considering her story and the little accessory she began wondering about that and found herself voicing her thoughts.
“Do you happen to play any instruments?” Akamatsu spun her head around as soon as the Shirogane finished speaking and she felt regret starting to pull at her until Akamatsu’s face broke into pure joy.
“I do! I play the piano, it’s my favourite thing in the world! How’d you know?! You couldn’t have guessed it from just my rambling.”
“Your hairpiece has a music note, it wasn’t that hard to guess,” Shirogane said acting humble, but she was fairly proud that she could make the barista this happy. But even if she didn’t think it was a big deal Akamatsu sure did.
“Don’t be silly, that’s so cool that you noticed such a small thing! You’ve got beauty and brains!”
Shirogane was yet again flustered by her compliments but they made her heart race slightly this time. “It looks really nice on you so I couldn’t help but notice it. Plus you’ve got that kind of aura about you, like a normal school girl who works hard at an ordinary coffee shop to make her dream of becoming a world-famous pianist come true. Ohh, but then something happens! Her single Mom falls ill and she has to use the money she’s made on hospital bills instead of the train ticket she needed to go to her next concert and has to find a way to get there or let her dreams turn to ash.” Shirogane’s eyes sparkled as she went on about her new fantasy, the sound of Akamatsu holding back her laughter brought her back to earth.
“That sounds more like an anime, a really good one though,” Akamatsu said. “Tell me when you figure out if she can find another ride to the concert, I need to know what happens next.”
“I will,” Shirogane replied with a giggle. Shirogane went to take another sip but realized it was empty when nothing touched her lips. “I’m all done, it was so good I didn’t even notice.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Akamatsu replied. “I hope this means you’ll be here again.” Shirogane gave her a smile.
“Of course, after I finish writing that anime.” Akamatsu laughed and waved as Shirogane left the building much more awake, warmer, and happier than before.
Soft snow was falling from the sky as Shirogane walked down the street back to school. While the wind blew softly Shirogane was hardly bothered still having the heat from the drink keeping her warm. She wasn’t immune though so she stuck her hands in her pockets and felt the napkin Akamatsu had given her earlier. After she remembered watching her write something on it she pulled it out and unfolded it to see what it said. When she did she saw a string of numbers with Akamatsu’s name next to it with a smiley face.
She blinked in surprise not exactly realizing what it was at first, once she did she ended up red-faced and heart racing all over again. After realizing that Akamatsu had given her her number and probably flirting with her she was shocked. Once she had calmed down slightly she found herself repeating the number to herself.
Here’s a gift of Togahina for @healing-hanyou, from umekopyon! I’m so eager for you to finally read it! It must have made tumblr too hungry to keep from eating it…
It’s actually a good thing I had to re-submit because Merriam-Webster just tweeted about a common misspelling that I happened to make in this very fic 👀 Now it’s fixed!
Happy holidays, and I hope you enjoy!
The Cornerstone of a Japanese Autumn
It all began for an admittedly juvenile reason. But it really wasn’t her fault; Togami started it!
It was early September, and Class 78’s first practical exams at Hope’s Peak Academy were quickly approaching. For athletes like Asahina, the process would be incredibly straight-forward; just go out there and show those proctors what you do best! For others, though, displaying their talents would take a little more thought and preparation, so their homeroom teacher had given them several free periods each week to get ready. With their class quickly growing as close as it was, they naturally gathered together to brainstorm, which quickly devolved into gossip and speculation about other classes’ presentations.
“Man, I wish we had culinary students in this class so we could taste what they’re making for exams,” Asahina groused, beginning to salivate at the mere thought of it. "Isn’t there one in Class 77? So lucky…“
"Um, the Ultimate Cook, right?” Maizono fidgeted a bit in her seat. "I think I’ve met him. I, uh… wouldn’t consider it luck to be in the same class as him…“
"Besides, who says he won’t make enough for the whole school to try?” Kuwata grinned as he leaned back in his chair, feet propped up on his desk.
“Because it’s against school regulations!” Ishimaru slammed a hand on a desk and stood up, pointing at Kuwata accusingly. "And sit properly!“
Grumbling, Kuwata returned his feet to the floor.
"What do you mean, against school regulations?” Enoshima asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Doesn’t that perv make lunch for the whole school every day anyway? No one’s had a problem with that before.“
Kirigiri sighed. "The practical exams are a different story. After last year’s incident, anything prepared for the proctors is being closely inspected. It would be a logistical nightmare to enact those precautions for all the students, too.”
“Still…!” Asahina kicked her feet petulantly. "I wish I could taste what he’s making! And it’s almost autumn, too…!“
Togami peered over the book he was reading. "What does autumn have to do with anything?”
“Well, duh.” Asahina rolled her eyes. "All the tastiest ingredients are in season this time of year. Autumn’s the season of eating!“
"Ridiculous.” Togami returned his attention back to his dumb super-intellectual book. "Such a plebeian manner of thinking. Autumn is the season for reading, not eating.“
Asahina paused her feet mid-kick before lowering them back down to the floor. "What? No way. Autumn is for filling up on good foods!”
Togami scoffed. "Hardly. Reading is the cornerstone of a Japanese autumn. Fukawa, you tell her.“
"R-reading is the cornerstone of a J-Japanese autumn!”
Now that just wasn’t fair! One, because of course Fukawa would readily agree with him—she was a literary girl, and she had a huge crush on Togami. And two, because Asahina didn’t even know what “cornerstone” meant! Using complicated words like that was just playing dirty! She was determined not to back down, though. "Nuh-uh, eating is the cornerstone of a Japanese autumn! And I can prove it, too!“
"Enlighten me.”
Asahina pointed dramatically at the heir, grinning smugly. "It’s ‘cause autumn is also the season for sports, and how are you gonna get all those burned calories back by reading? You can’t!“
"Stop arguing, you two!” Ishimaru commanded. "Eating, reading, and sports are all traditionally considered to be important facets of autumn in Japan! There’s no reason to declare one to be more true than the other!“
"Bro, shush,” Owada said, pulling the hall monitor back into his seat. "Let them duke it out. You gotta admit it’s kinda funny!“
"Do you have no shame, brother?!”
Togami snapped his book shut with finality and stood up. "This is foolish. I’ll be going elsewhere to prepare my presentation.“
Asahina quickly moved to stand in his way. "Oh, yeah right! You weren’t even doing that in the first place. You’re just trying to run away because you know that you’re wrong!”
Togami’s eyes flashed dangerously. "I’m wrong, you say?“
"Guys, stop this,” Naegi spoke up, trying to defuse the situation. "Like Ishimaru-kun said, neither of you are wrong, so this argument is just—"
“Shut up Naegi!” the two shouted in unison.
“Asahina…” A heavy hand was placed on the swimmer’s shoulder, and she looked up to see Sakura gazing down at her, gentle but stern. "Don’t you think you’re taking this a bit far? At the very least, there’s no reason to snap at Naegi.“
"Oh…” She looked over at the luckster guiltily—that really hadn’t been fair of her, now that Sakura mentioned it. "Yeah, I’m sorry about that, I guess that was getting kind of childish… right, Togami?“ She turned her attention back to the heir—only to realize that he had disappeared. "Hey, where’d he go?!”
“He left,” Ikusaba deadpanned.
“Ugh, that sore loser!” Asahina stamped her foot in annoyance. "Whatever! I’m definitely going to prove him wrong the next time I see him!“
The argument, however, took a backseat as the pressure of their looming practical exams continued to build; Asahina focused her energy on training with Sakura to make sure they were in top physical shape, and Togami was presumably off doing whatever stupid affluent progeny stuff he needed to do.
Eventually, the exams came and went, September melted into October, and by that point their disagreement had completely slipped from Asahina’s mind.
That is, it slipped her mind until one afternoon in late October, when Asahina decided to burn off some excess energy by jogging around campus. After running a few laps between the eastern corner of campus and the Reserve Course gates, she looped through the central plaza one last time before heading south towards the student dormitories. As she jogged that last stretch, though, she caught sight of someone sitting on one of the benches lining the path: Byakuya Togami, the antisocial butthole, calmly relaxing with his nose stuck in a book.
Seeing the Ultimate Affluent Progeny reading a book, framed by the rusty autumn leaves, prompted the memory of their argument to come rushing back and Asahina slowed to a stop in front of him. "Hey,” she said, trying to catch his attention.
He didn’t respond, and simply turned a page in his book.
“I said hey!” she repeated, leaning in closer to make her point clear.
Sighing, Togami shot a withering look at her over the top of his glasses. "What do you want?“ he asked, as if doing so pained him more than anything else in the world.
Asahina crossed her arms. "You’re still convinced that reading is the ideal autumn activity, huh?”
“This again?” Togami rolled his eyes and returned his gaze to the book. "I don’t have time for your foolishness. Leave me alone.“
Not one to drop the subject, Asahina leaned over further to catch a glimpse of the book her classmate was so engrossed in. "Whoa, are you reading something in English?”
“It’s Russian. How did you mistake Cyrillic for— never mind.” With a sigh, Togami snapped the book shut. "Do you have no intention of leaving me alone?“
"Not really.” Without bothering to ask permission, Asahina plopped herself down on the bench next to him. "Gosh, I can’t even read something in Japanese if I’m feeling a little bit hungry. How can you concentrate on reading in another language without a belly full of food?“
"Don’t make me out to be like that half-baked imitation of myself that enrolled last year,” Togami huffed.
Well, at least there was some sort of baking going on with the other guy! she thought. "I just don’t get how you can say that reading is more of an autumn activity than eating.“
"Eating exorbitant amounts of food is a vulgar pastime, regardless of the season.”
“Hey, you better apologize to all the hardworking farmers of Japan for what you just said!”
“Reading, on the other hand,” Togami continued, ignoring her completely, “is a worthy intellectual pursuit. And there’s nothing quite like indulging in a good book while sitting in the crisp autumn air, the colorful foliage offering an aesthetically pleasing backdrop.”
Asahina felt like she was about to vomit from the long string of words that took too much brain power to understand. "Yeah, well… food tastes really good in autumn.“ Even as she said it, she knew it was far from a convincing argument, so she thought for another moment before perking up. "Hey, I have an idea!”
“I want no part of it.”
“Oh, come on!” She grabbed Togami by the wrist, causing him to nearly lose his grip on his book. "It’ll be fun, just come with me for a sec!“
Togami jerked his hand away, glaring darkly at her. "What in the world do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s a surprise!” Asahina grinned.
“Not interested.”
“Oh come on, Togami!” She grabbed his arm again, this time making sure to use the best holding techniques Sakura had taught her so that he couldn’t shake free. "Come on, we’re just going to the edge of campus! It’s not far!“
Sighing in defeat, Togami got to his feet and only barely managed to pack his book safely inside his bag before he was dragged down the path. "And where are we going, exactly?”
“Like I said, it’s not far!”
“That’s hardly specific.”
“Oh, just chill out for a moment!” They passed the dormitories, coming in sight of the southern gates, and Asahina grinned when she spotted exactly what she was hoping to see. “There it is! Come on, Togami, you’re gonna love this!”
She pushed open the gates to reveal food stalls and carts lining the street, hoping to attract the patronage of hungry Ultimates. She honed in on one stall in particular and pulled Togami over to where the savory smell of grilled sweet potatoes enveloped the street. "Here we are! Let’s eat some sweet potatoes!“
Having finally been let free of Asahina’s grip, Togami straightened his cuff indignantly. "Here? It hardly seems like a sanitary eating environment.”
“That’s part of the charm! Just give me a sec!” She pranced over to the stall and placed an order for two sweet potatoes, waiting impatiently as her stomach began to growl; she hadn’t realized just how starved she was after her jog! As soon as the sweet potatoes were in her hands, she returned, pleased to see that Togami hadn’t tried to escape in the meantime. "Okay, here you go!“ she announced, handing him a foil-wrapped potato. "Enjoy!”
He glared in disgust at the foil, charred and darkened from the grill. "I’m meant to eat this?“
"No, that’s foil.” She unraveled the foil on her own potato as way of demonstration. "The food is inside of there.“
"I’m fully aware of the function of aluminum foil.”
“Good! Now let’s eat!” Unable to bear the grumbling of her stomach anymore, Asahina peeled aside the purple skin and bit eagerly into her sweet potato, relishing the way its sweet flesh seemed to melt on her tongue. She hungrily took another bite, then another, then another…. Yeah, there was really nothing like eating a grilled sweet potato on a brisk autumn day!
She looked over at Togami, who seemed to have taken just a few tiny bites of his potato. "Wew?“ she prodded. "Whayyou fink?”
“I think you should swallow your food before talking like a dignified human being.”
“Ugh, you jerg!” Asahina swallowed her mouthful of potato and tried again. "So how does it taste?“
"I fail to see the allure.”
“Oh, come on!”
He gave a long-suffering sigh. "I suppose it’s somewhat decent.“
"See?” she gloated. "And this is just the tip of the iceberg! There are soooo many good things to eat in autumn! It’s definitely the season for eating!“
"I’m sorry to tell you that this isn’t exactly the most convincing argument for your position.” Togami shifted the potato in his hand boredly. "I require a more sophisticated dining experience, and this falls dreadfully short.“
"Yeah, well not all of us are made of money like you,” Asahina pouted. "You can’t really expect me to do much better than food stalls, you know.“
"I suppose you’ll remain unable to convince me, then.” He shrugged and handed his sweet potato back to Asahina. "Now if you’ll excuse me, I have better things to be doing than stuffing my face with garbage.“
As she watched Togami walk back to campus, Asahina continued chewing her potato, thoroughly miffed. If that stupid heir thought that was enough to make her give up, then he had another thing coming! She’d just have to be a little smarter about her approach the next time.
But hey, at least she got two potatoes out of it.
Asahina spent the rest of the night brainstorming, and by the next day, she had come up with another idea to get Togami to see things her way.
The only problem was that she couldn’t seem to find him.
He hadn’t shown up for class—though that wasn’t so uncommon. Togami would often declare his own self-studies to be more beneficial than sitting through lectures tailored for the rest of his classmates. Once class was dismissed, Asahina checked various locations inside the school before moving outside to search the benches around campus, to no avail.
It seemed like he was nowhere to be found… but Asahina wasn’t to be deterred. He was just trying to hide from the inevitable! And that was all the more reason to locate him!
Then she checked the library, and she felt a bit silly, because of course that would be where he was.
"Found you!” she exclaimed, jumping out at him from around a shelf.
“Do you mind?” he hissed under his breath, while trying to pretend that he hadn’t started in surprise—but he did; Asahina saw it with her own two eyes! "This is a library.“
"Yeah, obviously.”
His glare hardened. "So be quiet.“
Ohhh yeah… she was talking a bit loud. "I was looking all over for you!” she continued in a whisper. "You’re so afraid of being proven wrong that you felt the need to hide from me, huh?“
"If I had been trying to hide, I assure you I would have chosen a less obvious place,” Togami deadpanned, pulling a book from the shelf and inspecting it with muted interest. "I’d hardly consider the library to be an unexpected place to find me.“
Asahina chose not to mention that she had actually checked the pool, the training room, the rec room, and a dozen other places more in line with her own interests before even thinking of the library.
"Well, whatever, at least I found you now!” She grabbed on to the sleeve of his blazer and pulled, prompting him to roll his eyes and return the book to the shelf. "Come on! I found a place that will definitely change your mind about the true autumn pastime!“
"Let go,” Togami said, jerking his sleeve from her grasp. "I have no obligation, nor desire, to accompany you.“
"Aha, I knew it! You’re trying to run!”
“Why would I run from such an inane argument—” He cut himself off, turning his focus somewhere over Asahina’s shoulder. Curious, she turned and followed his gaze to see a figure idling around the corner of the far shelf, and she could just barely make out the hem of a skirt and a long, dark braid.
Togami pulled his mouth into a hard, thin line. "I’m getting out of here,“ he said, turning and heading quickly but quietly towards the door.
"Oh, hey!” Asahina jogged after him. "Come with me then! I found a coupon, so I’ll treat you to some pumpkin croquettes.“
Togami breathed a deep, agonizing sigh. "Fine. I don’t care. Just as long as we’re out of here.”
Grinning, Asahina grabbed his arm again and all but dragged him down the flights of stairs, through the school gates, and into town.
Crisp, golden-brown panko bread crumbs coated the croquettes, almost seeming to glitter in the restaurant lighting. Fresh out of the fryer, the hot oil still crackled slightly between the tiny nooks and crannies. Asahina felt herself begin to salivate as soon as the server set the plate in front of them, and her fingers itched to grab her chopsticks and dig in immediately. But no, it would be best to let Togami take the first taste—after all, Asahina wasn’t the one that needed convincing!
Unfortunately, Togami’s response wasn’t to start eating, but to glare down at the croquettes with open distaste. "What are these?“ he demanded.
"Like I said, pumpkin croquettes!” Asahina pointed at them with her chopsticks, eager to start eating. "Go ahead! They’re really good!“
Togami arched an eyebrow. "Aren’t croquettes those fried amalgamations of whatever low-quality ingredients commoners can cobble together? And you thought to feed them to me?”
Rude! Rude rude rude!! Asahina gripped her chopsticks tightly, trying to keep her cool. "These are pumpkin croquettes, though,“ she explained through gritted teeth. "They’re different. They’re… they’re made of pumpkin.”
A pause. "I see.“
Nailed it.
"W-well, come on,” Asahina said. "Just try one. They’re gonna get cold!“
"Help yourself,” Togami responded. "I, however, will pass.“
"But I’m treating you! This is my money going to waste here!”
“Exactly—I have no financial stake in the matter, so I lose nothing by refraining from consuming deep-fried garbage.”
The chopsticks were beginning to splinter in Asahina’s grip, so she instead channeled her frustration into grabbing a croquette and taking a big bite. "Fine then!“ she countered after swallowing, not even taking the time to relish in the nutty, slightly sweet flavor of the pumpkin. "I’m just gonna enjoy these by myself!”
Togami nodded decisively. "Next time, you’d do well to choose a dish more suited to my palate.“
Asahina peered at him curiously as she chewed another croquette. ”'Next time,’ huh?“
The heir said nothing and, save for a slight downturn of his lips, gave no indication that he felt he had slipped up.
"Well, okay,” she relented. "Next time, I’ll choose something that even Mr. High-and-Mighty Togami will want to eat. Except maybe he’ll have to chip in some cash, too, if he’s gonna be so picky about eating only the best of the best, yeah?“
He scoffed. "You’ve chosen to take on this ridiculous challenge on your own dime. I’m nothing but an unwilling participant.”
“I think you know by now that I hate to lose.” Asahina grinned. "If you’re so sure you’ll be so hard to break, the least you could do is make sure your dear classmate doesn’t drive herself to bankruptcy over it.“
Togami gave a huff of derisive laughter. "Your negotiation methods are far from impressive, you realize.”
She shrugged. "Yup, I’m fully aware that my brain’s just pure muscle at this point. Can’t fault a girl for trying, though.“
They fell into a long silence, Asahina steadily making her way through the plate of croquettes as Togami watched, arms folded across his chest.
When there was just one croquette left on the plate, though, she was surprised to see Togami take up his own chopsticks and snatch the last piece, begrudgingly placing it in his mouth and slowly chewing, as if nothing could inconvenience him more.
In the end, he even paid half the tab.
Over the following weeks, somehow, they fell into a routine of sampling various seasonal cuisines every other day or so. Asahina would scour food blogs and imageboard threads for the best places to go, then drag Togami to pig out on shinmai, or salt-grilled saury, or matsutake mushroom soup. Or the limited edition chestnut doughnuts at Asahina’s favorite bakery—they made that trip several times. He would complain about it at any given opportunity but, to his credit, he wordlessly took on the financial burden of their outings.
Asahina hadn’t given the arrangement much thought beyond "hanging out with Togami until he admits defeat,” because that’s really all it ever was. Seriously.
That’s what she thought, at least, until she parted ways with Togami one day outside a sweets bar boasting a special autumn selection of apple, pear, and persimmon-flavored pastries.
“Aoi-chan!”
After waving off the heir, Asahina turned around to see she was being flagged down by some girls across the street—Yuka, Sana, and Kazumi, classmates from her old high school. "Oh, hey!“ she greeted back cheerfully, dashing across the crosswalk as soon as the light turned. "Long time no see, guys! What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing really,” said Yuka absently, her gaze focused over Asahina’s shoulder for a moment before returning to the conversation. "I mean, I’m sure nothing going on at Asunaro could compare to Hope’s Peak, you know?“
"Come on,” Asahina laughed. "It’s not really that big of a deal…“
"Oh, let’s quit beating around the bush!” Kazumi cut in forcefully. "Aoi-chan, was that your boyfriend just now?“
Asahina was genuinely puzzled. "Boyfriend? Who are you talk—” She put the pieces together a bit too slowly than she should have, and burst out laughing. "Him, my boyfriend? Oh no way! Togami’s such a jerk, not dateable at all!“
To her surprise, that sent the girls into even more of a titter. "Togami? You mean Byakuya Togami?”
“The Ultimate Affluent Progeny? That’s him?!”
“Aoi-chan, you’re dating him?! He must be such a gentleman, you’re so lucky…!”
“No, wait,” Asahina tried to quiet them down. "I just said I’m not dating him, didn’t I? As if I’d even want to! He’s got the worst personality. Definitely not a gentleman.“
"Really?” Yuka leaned around Asahina’s shoulder again to catch a last glimpse of Togami’s retreating back. "That’s a bummer. He looked pretty hot to me.“
"Hot?” Asahina’s scrunched her nose up. "No way. With his dumb blond hair and dumb blue eyes and dumb height…“ Wait, those were all considered attractive traits, weren’t they? She felt her cheeks grow warm. ”…Okay, maybe he’s a little cute,“ she conceded.
"See?” her friends chorused.
Sana poked her shoulder playfully. "You’re spending time alone with such a cute guy, and you say you don’t even want it to be a date?“
"Really guys, it’s not like that,” she assured them. "We’re just trying to settle an argument, so we’re going out and eating a bunch of food together. There’s nothing date-y about it.“
Her friends were silent as they took in that information.
Finally, Kazumi broke the spell. "Sounds like a date to me,” she said.
“It’s not!” Asahina sighed. "But anyway, forget about that! I wanna hear what’s going on at Asunaro!“
The girls mercifully went along with the change in subject, and they spent a good fifteen minutes chatting as they walked before they finally had to part ways at the Hope Peak’s gates.
But left to her own thoughts again, Asahina felt her heart beating hard against her ribcage and a quick glance in the central fountain on campus confirmed that her face was growing awfully red.
Because now that she thought about it, her outings with Togami did pretty much fit the definition of a date.
On their next trip for lunch, Asahina was a nervous wreck.
But could anyone really blame her?! She’d never been on a date before, so how was she supposed to know if that’s what it was or not? If it was a date, how was she supposed to act?
Did she even want it to be date? After all, Togami was… Togami. He was a total jerk! It wasn’t even any fun to hang out with him!
Well, okay, maybe it was kind of fun… but still.
She managed to fumble through lunch in a haze, and after stopping off at a coffeehouse for some warm drinks, they made their way back to campus for afternoon classes.
As they walked along the path lined with benches, Asahina was reminded of the first time she had forced Togami to partake in the tastes of autumn. "Hey,” she said finally. "Did I manage to convince you at all?“
Togami scoffed. "About autumn being a season for exorbitant eating? No, I can’t say I find the idea any more appealing now than I did before.”
“Yeah, I figured!” she laughed, then took a sip of her maple latte, pondering. "But you haven’t tried to convince me that reading is the preferred autumn activity, either.“
"That’s because it makes no difference to me that you’re wrong.”
“Man, that’s harsh!” Asahina finished off her latte before stopping in her tracks, right in front of a bench. "But hey, I’m willing to give it a try. Wanna read here for a bit?“
Togami turned towards her, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Read? You?”
“I’m not illiterate, you know!” She sat herself down on the bench with a huff, then held out a hand. "So come on, gimme a book to read. You keep going on about how it’s so much better than attending classes anyway, right?“
Rolling his eyes, Togami sat down beside her. "Do you really expect that I’d be carrying around a selection of books?”
“Are you?”
Togami frowned, then opened his bookbag and dug around inside, quickly extracting a small paperback. "This is probably the only one that comes close to your reading level.“
"Thanks!” Finding herself to be strangely excited, Asahina accepted the book, cracked it open, and flipped to the first page.
She was immediately bored.
What in the world was Togami even reading? All the words were so long… but she had resolved to try, so she powered on, even though she didn’t understand most of what was written on the page. It was pretty nice to be sitting there in the open autumn air though—Togami was at least right about that—and with her belly full and her body warm from good food, she was quite content. Even as the text seemed to swim in front of her eyes, she slowly made her way to the second page.
Asahina blinked, and suddenly the sunlight had turned from the bright gray of midday to a honey-gold glow. Her hands that had been holding the book just moments before were empty, and Togami was gone from her side.
…Whoops. She must have fallen asleep while trying to read. And Togami had just up and left her there, the butt.
But at least she could say with certainty that reading was not the cornerstone of a Japanese autumn.
Sighing in irritation, she stood up to stretch her limbs, but the soft fwump of something hitting the ground caught her attention, and upon looking down at her feet, she saw a crumpled pile of brown fabric.
She picked it up and recognized it instantly as a Hope’s Peak Academy blazer. Not only that, it smelled distinctly of Togami’s cologne—a scent that she hadn’t even known she’d be able to identify.
Asahina flushed. Come to think of it, she didn’t feel as cold as she should have after being left asleep in the chilly November air…
Huh. Well, maybe Togami was kind of a gentleman sometimes, after all.
MERRY CHRISTMAS FLORIAN!!! ( @bells ) This was really fun to draw, and I really hope you like this drawing! These three have a really interesting dynamic and I'm happy you shared with all of us this interesting trio, so yeah! Enjoy, and I wish you the best!!
All of the gifts we have received have now been posted! If what you made has not appeared, please resubmit it! Tumblr has eaten a couple of submissions already.
To everyone who’s gifts haven’t arrived yet, I’m very sorry. I’m in the process of contacting people right now, but please know that I will make all of you gifts myself if I have to. - Mod Tsumugi
The mattress creaks under his squirming weight, springs denting and folding in on themselves with each of his movements. The air whistles with the choppy breath of an electric heater’s humming mechanism. Saihara’s eyes flit open, beaming sunlight puncturing the semi-shade that blankets the spread of their bed. His lungs flood with a mouthful of corrupted city air - half cleansed by the pure white of freshly fallen snow - and his mind kicks into whirl once more.
A chill runs down the length of his spine, and he can’t help but wonder if Kiibo’d left the bedroom window peeled open on insistence that ventilation was always necessary, despite the icy breeze winding through the cityscape. Most likely.
The biting chill seeping from the ceramic tiles leaves him grateful for the thick wool socks slipped over his feet as he shuffles past the gaping bathroom door. Water trickles into cupped palms. Saihara drenches his face with the flick of his wrists.
The residual droplets track down his face and dye his tongue with a soured spill, a chemical taste lingering long after the last of the droplets had halted their dribbling path and clung to his skin. Winter winds leaked from the misaligned window frame bat at his cheeks. Heaving a deep sigh, he slips out of the bathroom and into a new day.
The kettle huffs a last steam cloud just as he enters the crook of the kitchenette. Kiibo’s back - adorned in a sweater bought sizes too large for a human of their length that stretches snugly over their armour plating - remains turned to him as they dig out a spoon of finely ground rich brown from an unlabelled jar.
Saihara shuffles close enough to Kiibo to trace the endearingly tacky festive pattern printed across the bright red material of their sweater, peeking over their shoulder just in time to see them empty a last spoonful of sugar into a chipped mug below.
“Morning,” he breathes into Kiibo’s shoulder. It’s always a foreign experience to so casually brush up against another, no matter how often Saihara’s given the opportunity to grow accustomed to initiating contact between himself and Kiibo’s own synthetic skin. From the way they shudder beneath the light flutter of his breath against their sensors, it’s surely a foreign exchange for them too.
Saihara supposes it’s only natural for any touch other than probing fingers prying at their circuits to feel unnatural, for any human contact beyond wrenching hands examining their body as a hollowed metallic shell whose wired intestines were open to rearranging to feel anything but abnormal. He steadies his hesitantly hovering hand and steels his oddly shaky nerves and lays a feather light palm between the arched angles that might classify as their shoulder blades. Months pass, yet he still can’t seem to begin to truly understand their body.
“A-ah, good morning, Sh-shuuichi-kun,” they stutter, their speech’s forced intervals not unlike that of a computer’s audio reduced to static. They awkwardly push away from Saihara, reaching to pluck the kettle from its heating plate.
The mixture of instant coffee and clumped sugar dissolves the moment Kiibo drowns the powdered mix in a steady flood of steaming water. They set about stirring the sloshing liquid at a steady pace, before extending the mug in Saihara’s general direction with a head bowed low and mitten-clad hands clasped tight.
Saihara murmurs his thanks in passing as he settles onto a stool haphazardly pushed beneath the counter. He picks at a loose strand coloured navy unraveling from the cuff of his nightshirt, looping the thread between his fingers as he looks up at Kiibo. “Anything specific you have in mind for today?”
Kiibo’s back straightens even further if possible, their gaze catching on the widespread field of snowy ice blanketing the streets below. Children’s chirps sing through the cracks lining the apartment floor and Saihara watches as Kiibo’s eyes dim with a hopelessly yearning flicker. “Nothing in particular.”
Saihara pulls his lips into what he hopes to be a sympathetic smile, but that had more likely curved to resemble an awkward grimace in condolence. Perhaps Saihara couldn’t see all too much appeal in drenching oneself in frost, but he supposes it is something of a winter ritual, and for Kiibo it’d never been a possibility, for melted snow meant liquid corrosion and malfunction.
“Let’s stay in for today,” Saihara says, then pauses at the realisation of how final and unmoving his suggestion may sound. “I-I mean if that’s okay with you…”
“If that’s what you prefer, it’s perfectly fine with me.” Kiibo shifts to settle their gaze onto the pinewood floor spread beneath Saihara’s feet.
He gives a slight nod, smiling as brightly as the dim shroud of lingering half-sleep allows. Saihara’s fingers drum against the counter in an offbeat thrum of doubt. “Well then, help me move these?” Saihara says, half-gesturing towards the cluttered arrangement of chairs beside him.
.
Kiibo meticulously bundles the last of their throw pillows into the corners of the alcove of piled blankets and neatly aligned stools.The topsheet of the blanket fort sticks up at an odd angle where Kiibo’s metallic tuft of hair pokes into the material. Saihara smothers an amused snort into his cupped palm.
“There! All done,” they brush off the lint sticking to their sweater and proudly place their hands on their hips, beaming Saihara’s way.
Saihara smiles back from where he fumbles with the disc of a shoddily produced Christmas film. “I’m almost done on my end too,” he says, slipping the first of many discs Kiibo had somehow procured in an attempt to bring about seasonal cheer into the slitted mouth of the disc player.
By the time he fumbles his way into the fort Kiibo’s already stiffly propped themself up in the center of the blanketed space. “A-ah, could you please scooch up a bit, Kiibo-kun?”
“Of course!” they say, voice grinding loudly as they shift with just a bit too much vigour, pulling the quilt beneath them askew.
Saihara shifts into the space next to Kiibo, their creakily spread leg pressing into his own. The murmured volume of the playing movie tickles at his ears, a dull lull of background noise in comparison to the contentedly steady thumping of his own heartbeat thudding in his ribcage.
And perhaps there was no heartbeat to pulse against his skin in turn, but the weight pressed into his side is familiar, as is the clean cut cent of sterile detergent cloying to their sweater, and the firmness of the shoulder he slumps into. Saihara feels his eyes droop.
Oddly, he finds his mind at ease as he drifts into unconsciousness, because as sure as melting snow giving way to spring, Kiibo would be right beside him as he wakes.
Hello! This is a gift for @giritina (@kokichiomaa on Twitter), from @healing-hanyou.
My apologies in advance for this coming quite late. Also, I’m sorry I couldn’t manage to fulfill the entirety of the request. As it is the holiday season, I have to spend it around family members, which means I have very little access to computers (and very little spoons left to do anything at the end of the day), so, as much as I loved your prompt, I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish all of it on time, and I thought I shouldn’t stall any longer before submitting this.
Since your prompt was about idols, here is an idol Ouma! I have no idea what decent character designs are, but I had fun drawing this, so I hope that this is to your liking!
Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to you!
(Note to others: this will also be posted on my artblog at a later date.)
dhfhdbJADGKJDFH I AM S O SORRY THIS IS SO LATE it was really stupid of me and i should have gotten in touch sooner but!! i’m here now-
my gift is for @psythethinggg who asked for angst and a multitude of ships - I selected Leonaegi from this list, because of course I would, but there is v3 mentions if you squint - think of it as a holiday easter egg!!
Happy holidays, Psy, and everyone else!! I hope this is good!!
AO3 Mirror!!
“Yo, Naegi.”
His eyes show open and he looked around, for a moment forgetting where he was until he felt the summer sun hitting his face, and the gentle white noise of voices in the park. A sigh escaped him as he slouched slightly against the bench, letting his arms hang over the sides. For a moment, he thought about closing his eyes again, but considering how much he’d obviously spaced out beforehand, he didn’t want to burden the boy sat next to him - who was apparently amused by his disconnection with reality if the laughing was anything to go by.
“Hey, you slept good, right?”
“Huh?” Naegi glanced over, meeting Leon’s gaze over at him, before laughing at himself and sitting up again, stretching his arms above his head. “Honestly, no. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, lately, I’ve just been… really tired, I guess.”
“Well, rest in pieces, dude.”
“Kuwata-kun, can you at least be a little more concerned?”
“I run on like 4 hours of sleep and pure caffeine and adrenaline most of the time, my man,” he commented offhandedly, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m not sayin’ I recommend it, but it’s workin’ for me, so-”
“Says the man who tripped over his own feet on the way here and couldn’t get up for five minutes because he couldn’t stop laughing.”
Leon paused and stared at the floor, before half-glaring at Naegi, “Dude, en dolphins are good for healin’ and shit, right?”
“…They’re called endorphins, Kuwata-kun.”
“…Shit.”
Naegi shook his head and couldn’t find it in himself to suppress a smile as he looked at Leon’s genuinely dumbfounded expression before he rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Maybe we both need to sleep?”
“Yeah, ‘prolly.”
After that, the two fell into silence, staring aimlessly at the clouds - a clear blue sky, a shining sun, the picture-perfect image of summer, and the break that they both had dreamed of.
The first year at Hope’s Peak had many surprises for them - including them even becoming friends in the first place, Naegi often thought, let alone getting this far - and now, the second year had just begun, and a few weeks of summer to relax and unwind was well deserved.
Especially after it was found that Leon could not get along with some of the underclassmen… he still had bruises and a band-aid on his nose to prove that fact… the excuse of “he’s too tall and too purple” was still funny, even weeks later.
And really, could Naegi ask for anyone more? Sure, he felt like he was in Leon’s shadow sometimes, but the guy was well-meaning behind his flashy facade of wanting to be famous… he had moments of reflection and was slowly getting better at not being a jerk when it came to needed to be an emotional support, and sometimes, he even needed help himself, when anxieties were running high and he couldn’t keep them bottled up anymore… Naegi felt that, even in all his boring normalcy, that in the eyes of this superstar sportsman, he was someone special, and that feeling was the best in the world.
“Naegi?”
His name brought him out of his introspecting, and he looked up, noticing Leon’s face had grown a little more serious now. “Uh, yeah?”
He paused for a moment, letting his jaw hang loose with the words he wanted to say, before closing it and trying again. “Don’t you think… it’s time for you to wake up?”
“Huh? Kuwata-kun, I-”
He was cut off by suddenly being pulled into a hug, one he didn’t fully register the meaning of until he felt the tight grip - one that almost seemed like he didn’t want to let go - and the feeling of a kiss being planted on his cheek. Then there were tears, and finally, the hug was returned desperately, and he felt like his throat was caving in, as if he’d been screaming for years on end-
–
“Naegi-kun.”
His eyes slowly opened and he looked around, for a moment forgetting where he was until he shivered in the chill of the office fan and heard nothing but silence ringing in his ears. A sigh escaped him as he rubbed his face with his hands, wondering if he was hallucinating the wetness of his cheeks, as he always did. For a moment, he thought about closing his eyes again, thinking it might be for the best if he never woke up, but considering how often he thought that and how the girl stood beside his desk holding papers stared with the slightest of concerns - a face both full and devoid of emotion - he didn’t want to burden her any more than he already had - she’d been through just as much as him, anyway.
“…It’s not been getting any easier, has it?”
“Huh?” Naegi glanced over, meeting Kirigiri’s gaze down at him, before forcing a laugh and sitting up fully in his chair (ignoring the piercing cramps in his neck from falling asleep on his desk), stretching his arms above his head. “Well, no, but there would be no point in lying to you, would there?”
“Of course not.”
“…And what about you?”
“I have work to keep me busy, and the meddling of the leader of Branch 3 hasn’t ceased any, even after my memories returned and I expressed my need for space,” she replied, placing the stack of files on the corner of Naegi’s desk and folding her arms across her chest. “It’s not a remedy, that’s for sure, but regardless… it’s better than nothing.”
“Work huh… that really is like you, Kirigiri-san.”
Kirigiri paused and stared at the floor, looking up again with an expression slightly softer than before, “…You were saying his name in your sleep, you know.”
“…Huh?”
“Saying his name and laughing, yes.”
Naegi shook his head and couldn’t find it in himself to force a smile as he looked at Kirigiri’s almost sympathetic expression before she began to twirl a piece of hair between her fingers. “Oh… I see.”
“…” She stared silently, watching him space out again.
Of course, every time he fell asleep he saw Leon’s face again, the memory of the second summer they spent together playing over and over, always starting and ending the same but nothing warning him it was nothing more than that - a dream, a repeated memory of a time when he could hold his boyfriend’s hand and say "Yes, he is alive and I can say that I’m happy and I didn’t watch him die right before my very eyes in a twisted murder game where his only choice was to die or kill.”.
And really, could Naegi ask for anyone more? He was one of the people who voted for his demise, one of the people who voted for him to die against that post, bloodied and bruised and unable to escape his doom that was much more painful to experience than it was to watch - Naegi knew that for sure. No, he could never judge what Leon felt in his final moments - pain, surely, but was he mad? Probably. Did he remember what the two of them had been through? No, of course not, the memory wipe would have been too strong. This was one of the things he thought about more than anything else - did Leon Kuwata, the boy he loved more than anyone he ever had loved before, hate him in his final moments? …He wouldn’t say no, because the other option was much more likely, more realistic, even
“Naegi-kun?”
His name brought him out of his introspecting, and he looked up, noticing Kirigiri’s face had grown a more serious once more. “Uh, yeah?”
She paused for a moment, bringing her hand up to her chin and thinking for a moment, before going ahead with her thoughts. “Don’t you think it’s time you opened your eyes to what’s around you?”
“H-huh? I-”
“Our classmates died to see us live and end the game. We lost them, yes, and we will never get them back, but in the end, we will make sure their memories are not in vain. Isn’t that what they would have wanted… isn’t that what he would have wanted you to do?”
Naegi stared for a moment, processing her words as he looked down at his hands. She was right, he knew that, she was always right about these kinds of things, but every time she said it, he found it a little harder to believe.
Then there were tears, and finally, she moved herself to hold his shaking hands, and he felt like his throat was caving in, as if he’d been screaming for years on end.
Here’s my gift for Ace ( @shuuichi-san ) - I saw you like Saimota, so that’s what I wrote! The premise of this fic was rather randomly inspired, and not nearly as wintry as I would have liked to make it, but I hope you enjoy it anyways. Happy holidays!
A low whine and the rustling of plastic stops Kaito on his leisurely walk home from the grocery store, a large paper bag in each arm. He casts a glance around the street of the ordinarily too-quiet neighborhood, wondering if he’d just imagined the sound, before it echoes again from around a corner up ahead.
Curious, he continues walking towards it until he finds the source tucked way in the shaded alley between one house and the next. A mass of brown fur pokes out from a tipped-over garbage can, fluffy tail waving behind it like a little flag, and Kaito can only stand there in surprise for a minute and watch it rummage.
“Oi,” he calls once he’s collected himself, “knock that off!”
The dog withdraws from the trash to return Kaito’s stare with dark, inquisitive eyes. It has a soft round face and triangular ears that perk up amicably at the sound of Kaito’s voice, and its tail wags faster as the two study each other.
Then it trots right up to Kaito, and he feels his resolve crumble. With a sigh, he shifts one of his bags into the opposite arm and squats down, one hand extended to sniff. A cold nose and short puffs of warm, condensed air graze his palm, followed by a brief, wet brush of tongue, and then another and another until Kaito moves his hand up from the dog’s snout to pat its head.
“Well, aren’t you friendly,” he murmurs, trying not to smile. “You smell like shit, though. What were you digging through trash for, huh?”
His fingertips run along behind the dog’s ears, then down its neck, feeling the absence of a collar. He frowns. “I see… you don’t have a home, then.”
The dog doesn’t answer, not that he’d expected it to. He can’t help but to feel bad for it, though, and he gives it a few consoling scratches between the ears. Then he takes another deep breath and stands, regarding the smelly creature before him with pity. “I’d take you home with me, but I don’t think my partner would like that… ‘sides, I’ve never had a dog before.”
He reaches down to pet it one last time before reluctantly turning away. “Sorry, buddy. I hope someone comes along who can actually help you.”
As he resumes his trek home, however, he hears the soft clicking of claws on concrete. He turns to look over his shoulder to see the dog trailing behind him and pauses, glaring at it sternly. “Hey, hang on,” he says, and it comes to a stop with him, eyeing him expectantly. “Quit following me, I already said I can’t take you home with me!”
He makes some shooing motions with his free hand, and the dog takes a couple of steps back. The moment he turns away to keep walking, though, the soft tick tick tick picks up again, and he starts to wonder if this dog is seriously intent on following him all the way home.
He stops again, turns, looks around for something to distract the animal with. There are no interesting items lying about - of course not, that would be too convenient - but then he notices the taiyaki sitting at the top of his bag. He’d intended to bring it home for his boyfriend to eat later, but he decides that sometimes, sacrifices must be made.
“Here, boy, you wanna treat?” he asks, more tersely than he had intended. Still carefully balancing both grocery bags in one arm, he picks up the little cake and waves it. The dog’s ears flick up, and Kaito grins, certain of his victory. “Yeah, I bet you’d like this.”
He draws his arm back, and with a shout of, “Go fetch!” he chucks it as hard as he can down the sidewalk. As planned, the dog whirls immediately to run after it, and Kaito takes the opportunity to jog away in the direction of his house. It only occurs to him a minute later to worry about whether that sort of food is bad for dogs, but he supposes it’s too late for that now.
Shrugging it off, he walks the remaining block home. As he stands in front of his front door and reaches to dig his keys out of his pocket, though, his ears pick up on that soft quadrupedal ticking again. The dog comes over and stops a few feet away from him, licking its chops, a glob of sweet potato paste dotting its nose.
Kaito groans. “Are you fucking kidding me? Really?”
The dog tentatively wags its tail again in response, and Kaito stares it down, halfheartedly hoping that that will intimidate it away. It doesn’t. All it serves to do is weaken Kaito’s already shaky determination to resist. The dog inches a few paces closer, its beady eyes trained on Kaito’s groceries, and Kaito realizes that it’s probably still hungry.
It gives Kaito a quizzical tilt of its head, and he caves.
“All right,” he sighs, trying not to smile, “you win.”
He unlocks the house and coaxes the dog in, wondering what he’s going to tell his boyfriend. He supposes he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
-
A couple hours of research and an extra trip to the store later, Kaito is fully confident that he can handle this newfound responsibility. He’s obtained the dog’s basic needs, according to the internet. It’ll take a little time to figure out, but he’ll manage. Things always have a way of working out for him in the end.
He does the most dangerous thing one can do with a stray animal: he gives it a name, solidifying his attachment. He calls it Orion, which he thinks is a fitting name for such a big, fearless dog. A proud name. He thinks that Orion likes it, too, given the way his tail wags in response.
Unfortunately, he spends more time figuring out a name than figuring out a selling point for his boyfriend, so when he hears the click of the front doorknob, his first instinct is to panic. The dog is too big to lift, so he hustles it into the bedroom closet instead and slides the door shut, effectively trapping it there until he can find a better solution.
He’s quick to meet his partner at the front door after that, forcing a grin in greeting. “Hey Shuuichi, you’re home a little early today!” he says. He has no idea what time it is. “How was work?”
Shuuichi shrugs off his jacket and hangs it on a hook by the door. “It was all right, I guess. Nothing too exciting.” A hint of a smile plays upon his lips, a sign that as worn out as he probably is, he’s happy to see Kaito, too. “Did you really stay cooped up in here all day?”
“Nah, I went and got groceries,” he says. When Shuuichi raises an eyebrow, he hastily adds, “Only the stuff we needed, though. Don’t worry.”
It’s a half-truth that Kaito doesn’t feel like elaborating on, but Shuuichi’s brow smooths itself out, so he must be satisfied with that answer.
“I see… in that case, maybe I can make something for dinner,” Shuuichi murmurs thoughtfully. “I should change into something more comfortable first, though.”
Shuuichi begins to brush past Kaito to head to their bedroom, and Kaito’s heart jumps into his throat. “Uh- hey, wait a second!”
Shuuichi pauses and glances back at Kaito, his expression one of bemusement. “Hm?”
“I mean, uh.” Kaito fumbles for an excuse, anything to keep Shuuichi from going to peek in the closet. “Maybe we don’t need to make dinner tonight. Maybe we can just, like, go out and get something to eat instead. Right now.”
Shuuichi frowns. “Well… normally I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but I don’t really feel like going anywhere else right now. I’m a little tired since, you know, I just got home and all.”
“Oh. Uh, sure, I get you,” Kaito stammers. “In that case, why don’t we-”
Shuuichi cuts him off, slightly narrowed eyes flicking up and down his body. “Kaito, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re acting kind of strange.”
“Nothing’s going on!” Kaito insists, forcing a laugh. “Nothing at all, just- I haven’t eaten all day, so it’s making me kind of antsy, y’know?”
“You’ve never been a good liar,” Shuuichi says disapprovingly, but his gaze no longer holds Kaito’s. It’s trained on a point near the bottom of Kaito’s shirt, and before Kaito can say anything about it, Shuuichi reaches forward to pluck something off of it. He raises whatever is pinched between his thumb and forefinger to squint at it. “Is this… animal hair?”
Kaito’s tongue feels stuck to the roof of his mouth, and before he can muster a good argument in his defense, a muffled whimper from down the hall breaks the silence. Shuuichi’s eyebrows shoot up, and he gives Kaito a disbelieving stare. “You didn’t.”
Kaito tries for a smile, but it doesn’t feel right. Not that it matters, because in the next few seconds Shuuichi’s already turned on his heel and begun striding down to the bedroom.
“Uh- Shuuichi, hang on a sec,” Kaito stammers, trailing after him, “I can explain-”
“Save it,” Shuuichi sighs, taut with impatience. He enters the bedroom and glances around, and upon finding it empty he steps over to the closet and opens it in one swift, aggravated motion.
Orion stares up at the two of them, one of Shuuichi’s house slippers wedged into his mouth. Shuuichi stares back, open-mouthed. Orion lets his jaws open too, dropping the slobbery, slightly torn article and trotting closer to sniff at Shuuichi.
Shuuichi closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You really brought a dog in here.”
“Well, yeah, but-”
“You brought a dog in here. A big dog,” Shuuichi interrupts him. “And you hid it in the closet. Were you just… planning on keeping it there? Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
Kaito starts to speak, but Shuuichi shakes his head and cuts him off again. “No, you know what, nevermind. That’s beside the point,” he says, frustration evident in his tone. “You can’t just decide on your own to bring a dog home out of the blue like that.”
“But it was a stray,” Kaito says. “It’s not like it had anywhere else to go- and besides, it wouldn’t stop following me. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Take it to a shelter?” Shuuichi suggests, crossing his arms. “Or, I don’t know, ask around to see if it does belong to someone?”
Kaito frowns, and Shuuichi gives him an exasperated shake of his head as he continues. “Look, I understand feeling bad for it, but we’ve never talked about having a pet before. We don’t know the first thing about handling dogs… and also,” he says, rubbing uneasily at his upper arm as his gaze trails back to Orion, “I’m allergic to animal dandruff.”
Kaito blinks. “Wait, really?”
Shuuichi nods. “I thought I’d mentioned that before, but I guess not.”
“I thought you were just allergic to, like, pollen and shit,” Kaito says, and now he almost feels bad.
“I am, but I react the same way to petting a dog. If I haven’t taken my medication I’ll get a rash, and my nose will start to run, and…” he trails off, shaking his head. “Well, you get the picture. The point is that even as much as I like dogs, I can’t be around them for too long.”
Kaito falls silent. Orion nudges Shuuichi’s hand with his nose, tail wagging, then licks it. Shuuichi’s expression falters.
After a few long moments, Kaito speaks up again. “I already bought some stuff that we’d need to take care of him, but… I guess I could see if one of the neighbors would be willing to take him off our hands and just give it all to them.”
Shuuichi bites his lip, silently letting Orion smell him, and Kaito sighs. “All right, c’mere, Orion. We’ll figure something out.”
“Orion?” Shuuichi asks, taken aback.
“Oh yeah, uh. That’s the name I gave him,” Kaito says. Orion turns around and pads over to him. “It just… felt weird not having something to call him by, I guess.”
“I see.” Shuuichi looks down at the dog again, something unreadable in his eyes. A few seconds pass before the corners of his lips twitch and he points out, “You know this is a female dog, right?”
“Wait, what?” Kaito blurts, unable to conceal his surprise. Shuuichi starts to crack a smile, and Kaito feels his face getting warmer. “I mean, uh- whether the dog’s male or female doesn’t matter. Orion’s still a good name.”
“Right,” Shuuichi says, cupping a palm over his mouth as he so often does when trying not to laugh. “You know that nicknaming breeds attachment, right?”
“I guess, but…” Kaito shrugs. “Well, she got attached to me first.”
Orion stands calmly by Kaito’s side, looking as content as a dog possibly could, and Shuuichi’s eyes flit back and forth between them for a long minute. He purses his lips, exhales long and slow through his nose, and when he talks again his voice is soft and laced with an air of quiet concession. “I’ll do some investigating tomorrow. I want to make sure that she doesn’t belong to anyone around here, and if she really is a stray, then… well, we’ll figure something out.”
Kaito’s back straightens. “Does that mean-”
“I don’t know. I just said we’ll figure something out, that’s all,” Shuuichi says. “And in the meantime, you can take care of her. Just keep in mind that she’s your responsibility, okay?”
Kaito isn’t sure why Shuuichi’s acceptance makes him so giddy, but it does, and he ignores all the conditional statements in favor of scooping Shuuichi into a tight squeeze. “Yes! You’re the best, Shuuichi!”
Shuuichi makes a noise much like a chew toy that’s been stepped on, and only then does Kaito think to release him and let him breathe. Shuuichi dusts himself off with a few heavy puffs and grumbles, “I mean it when I say that I’m not going to be the one taking care of her, regardless of how long we end up keeping her.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get you! I can handle her, I swear,” Kaito says with an earnest nod. Then he stops, recalling that he should be concerned. “Wait, but what about your allergies?”
“They should be fine, as long as I’m taking my cetirizine,” Shuuichi assures him. “And we’ll probably need to vacuum and dust more often to get rid of the fur, but other than that… I guess we’ll just have to see.”
Orion’s tongue lolls out lazily, and it almost looks like she’s smiling. Kaito finds himself hoping, however selfishly, that she really doesn’t have anywhere to go home to. He wants to believe that she’ll get to stay.
Exactly two days pass, and the search for an owner proves fruitless. Kaito doesn’t have to do any begging at that point. Shuuichi already lacks the resolve to take Orion to a shelter and effectively abandon her.
Orion stays, and for all of Shuuichi’s prior exasperation, neither of them seem to mind that their house feels a little smaller now.
-
They manage, somehow.
Orion likes to chew footwear, socks and shoes alike. She’s extremely resistant to baths, as Kaito finds the first time he has to chase her around the backyard with a hose because she won’t stay still long enough to get cleaned. Keeping her off of the couch and the bed proves to be a futile endeavor, and Shuuichi has to make a point to keep a lint roller handy. In spite of all that, they manage, and as weeks pass Kaito starts to forget what it was like to come home without being greeted by the excited skittering of Orion’s paws against the hardwood floor.
He sits on the couch with her curled up at one of his sides and Shuuichi leaning against his other one day, and it all feels so absurdly normal. His fingers idly massage the back of Orion’s neck, and his eyes go in and out of focus as Shuuichi switches on the TV to look for one of the crime shows he recorded.
He tilts his head to peer down at Orion. Her face is half-smushed against his thigh, her eyes closed and her ears twitching faintly. He can’t fight the grin that forms on his face at that, and he whispers, “Hey, Shuuichi,” as though he’s sharing some kind of secret. “Look at her. You think she’s dreaming?”
Shuuichi looks at Kaito and then at Orion, and he starts to smile a bit, too. “I’m not sure, but she seems happy regardless,” he says. “Then again, she’s probably happy a lot of the time, since she spends at least twelve hours a day napping in places she shouldn’t.”
“Nah. If anything, she’s happy because she’s got people to take care of her,” Kaito says, patting her head gently. “People are like that too, you know?”
“I suppose?” Shuuichi’s vision returns to the TV. “I’d say with people it’s a bit different, though.”
“Well, duh,” Kaito says. “But the principle’s still the same. We need people.”
“Ah.” Something akin to understanding flashes in Shuuichi’s eyes, though he’s not looking at Kaito. “Yeah… I guess you’re right. Otherwise there would be no point in families.”
“Yeah, you get me.” Kaito lets his head fall back against the couch cushions then, staring up at the patterned plaster of the ceiling and contemplating Shuuichi’s words. Families… they’re a family, aren’t they? An arguably complete one, he thinks, though some would probably disagree. Not that he cares what other people think, of course not, because if he did he wouldn’t be cohabiting with Shuuichi in the first place.
Still, his train of thought takes odd turns as it always does, and before he can tether his tongue back to his consciousness he asks, “Do you think having a dog is anything like having a kid?”
“Huh?” Startled, Shuuichi gives Kaito his full attention again.
“Ah, nevermind. That was a weird question.”
“Well. It was, but mostly because it was totally out of the blue,” Shuuichi says, shoulders tight with something Kaito can’t identify. “Why do you ask?”
“Because people always coddle their pets and say they’re like their kids and shit,” Kaito replies, still aimlessly thumbing over Orion’s ears. “And that always struck me as kinda weird beforehand, but now I think I get it. I don’t know if having a pet is anything like having a kid, and I don’t think I want to, but we can sort of think of Orion that way, right? Like, she fills that space.”
“I see.” Shuuichi seems to relax a bit at that. “I don’t have a point of reference for how kids act, besides what I’ve seen when helping out Harukawa-san… and frankly, I don’t think I want to, either. To be honest, managing Orion is difficult enough.”
“You think so? I don’t think it’s that hard,” Kaito says. It’s half a lie, because Orion is tricky to deal with sometimes, but Kaito’s figured out by now that that’s simply part and parcel of the dog ownership experience.
“Well, it isn’t much harder than managing you, at least,” Shuuichi quips, and Kaito is almost too stunned to be indignant.
“H- Hey! Don’t go making me sound like a little kid!” he protests, but he’s not really mad. He can’t be when he can so clearly see Shuuichi trying not to giggle. “Besides, I’m a grown ass man. I don’t need to be ‘managed’.”
“I don’t know about that,” Shuuichi teases. “But at least I’m not allergic to you. I don’t know what I’d do then.”
Kaito scoffs and tousles Shuuichi’s hair in a deliberate attempt to muss it, and Shuuichi snickers and elbows Kaito in the side, and Kaito responds by digging his fingers into Shuuichi’s own sides to make him squeal.
Orion jumps a bit at the noise, then observes them with her ears raised. Kaito pulls away from Shuuichi to scratch beneath her chin. “Whoops- sorry, girl. Didn’t mean to scare ya.”
Shuuichi rolls his eyes and settles back against Kaito’s shoulder. “You really are something else.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Kaito asks.
“It is,” Shuuichi replies softly, then after a beat adds, “usually.”
Kaito pretends to act annoyed and Shuuichi laughs and Orion, disturbed by the noise they’re making, crankily gets up to flop down at the opposite end of the couch. It’s like clockwork, a clearly molded routine taking shape. It’s a bit rowdier than it was before, but none of them seem to have any problems with it, given the way Orion contentedly huffs and the smile that won’t leave Shuuichi’s face.
Kaito no longer considers himself a gambling man, but he concludes that it’s worth believing that good things happen by chance.
GOODNESS IM SO SORRY THIS IS LATE I COULDN’T GET AHOLD OF A GOOD SCANNER FOR FREE SO I WAITED FOR SOMEONE WITH AN IPHONE, this is for Remy!! ( @tiramisulesbian ) Tenkaede is a super cute ship and I really hope you like this gift…! Have a good day!!
Hello @idaate!! Your long time question is finally answered… I’m your Secret Santa!! Remember you said you literally just asked for angst??? Big mistake, because you enabled me to write this. Enjoy eating your heart out.
“Ouma, did you do the laundry yet?”
Ouma taps down on the ‘grab’ button on the screen, watching as the virtual claw plunges down into the piles of toys lying inside. Amidst the cluster of normal-rated toy-carrying eggs, the claw establishes a tight grip on the Rare egg. Ouma heaves a big sigh.
“Hey, small dick! Uglyrumi asked you a question!”
“Oh, they are in, somewhere over the rainbow!” Ouma replies without once moving his eyes away from the screen of his phone. The egg has a soft vibration to it as the timer goes down, 13 minutes to 12 minutes to 11 minutes.
Toujou neither sighs nor carries out any action expressing dissatisfaction. Or if she is, Ouma can’t see it, for his eyes remain glued to the slight bouncing motion of the egg. The timer is clocked at 9 minutes now.
“Dickichi, you ever thought of doing anything productive around the house or what?” Iruma shoots Ouma a death glare from across the couch. Unlike Ouma’s small phone, Iruma carries a pretty big laptop on which she is apparently trying to crack a code on.
“Doing anything productive like you talking with Kiibaby twenty-four seven?”
Iruma’s instantly rouge-tinted cheeks give Ouma a chuckle. “Kiibo is our only connection with Team Danganronpa, remember? It’s going to the infirmary ourselves, or asking Kiibo to tell us.”
“Oh, since you are so invested in our fake classmates’ health status, I guess you’re just lazing around instead of being productive too, aren’t you?”
“Say that all you like, Dickichi,” Iruma scrolls through something on the pad, lips tugged downwards and even more impossibly furious. “we all know you are worried for Stupidhara and your worry is oh-so-thinly veiled.”
The egg on the screen is now bouncing up and down, waiting to hatch as soon as Ouma taps on it.
Ouma turns off the phone and throws it across the room.
“Tch, Idiotma, there’s no need to get that pissy now…” Iruma closes the laptop and clutches it tight to her chest. If Kiibo can have an audio outlet in that laptop, he might have protested about the situation. “I mean… It’s not like he won’t—”
“Of course I know that you, stupid bitch! Iruma-chan continues to be as dumb as ever even after the simulation. I’m so sorry for your parents!” Ouma springs up from the couch and retrieves the phone. He turns it on again. Apparently, there are no bugs or other issues, but the egg is already open and the pop-up gone.
“Wow! I got a really shitty toy this time. It looks so ugly that I had to throw my phone away on impulse!” Ouma mashes the phone to Iruma’s cheeks, and Iruma swats him away. Ouma giggles. “Hey! Come to think about it, it looks just as ugly as you!”
“Hey! I’m just pointing out a fact, fucker. At least stop pestering me about it!”
Ouma blanches, eyes turning dull as they focus on Iruma’s. “Then why don’t you fuck off and leave me alone too?”
Then Ouma resumes his toy-hunting back on his couch, and Iruma leaves the room hurriedly.
Ouma opens the collection and looks for the new toy. It is a chessboard with a lazily-painted smile on it.
Ouma throws his phone into the rubbish bin properly this time.
⁕
Iruma stops hogging the laptop to herself and plugs up an audio program to let Kiibo vocalize his thoughts. That’s about the only two good things Iruma have done for everyone so far.
To be fair, Ouma has done none. And never will.
“Hello guys! It’s been such a long time since we have convened!” Kiibo’s floating head, or more precisely-speaking, the pixelated image of it, flies around the screen against a blue backdrop.
Ouma scoops another spoonful of cookie and cream ice cream into his mouth. “Last you have convened with us is with Iruma-chan here though, isn’t it?”
“But this is the first time I can talk to you guys instead of just Iruma-san! It is, after all, rather difficult to establish contact in the first place when they have tight surveillance and can cut me if they… Well, but that’s beside the point!” A task window opens in the corner and starts loading, until it divides into four sections, each a birds-eye-view of a locked, private patient room.
All of the walls contain the bloodless white of a regular plain wall, but you could almost imagine the pink bloodstains the walls would have when you saw the patients’—classmates’—violent struggles against their personally hired caretakers.
(your blood is red, like a real human’s)
“Um, Kiibo, I didn’t tell you to show us… Them?” Iruma closes the window. Ouma swears he can hear a peal of laughter before it closes completely. The kind of maniacal laughter that precedes regretful wails.
Kiibo immediately blanches (as much as a robot’s avatar can). “M—my apologies. It is rather hard to remember everyone’s requests. Even not taking that into accounts… No one would have wanted to see that. I truly am sorry for doing so.”
“Oh Kiibaby, if your so-called apologies drill on and on mushrooms will start growing in my ears before we know anything! How horrible of you to want mushrooms to attach to my body!” To add to the punch of his statement, Ouma starts digging his nails into his ears and gasping out (rather dramatically) at the pain.
“That’s a lie! But please if you keep doing that your ears will… Anyway, let me search up the feeds.” Kiibo opens a different task window that has runs through hundreds of items rapidly. Gradually the list stops scrolling and an arrow appears, pointing at one specific item, underlined in red.
survivor-saiharashuuichi
“Kiibo-san, if you don’t mind me asking, how do we know for sure that this is a live feed and not a version that the Team plugged up in order to fool us? Or a past version and such?” Toujou’s equivocal eyes are not doing any favour for Ouma’s stomach and neither is her finger poised to click down on the ‘confirmation’ button.
“It is. I am very sure of it since my network is no longer connected to them, this is definitely live from where it comes from.”
“Okay… Then.” Toujou presses down on the button.
Ouma reaches for his phone. Before remembering that his phone is now in the rubbish bin. He gets off the sofa and walks towards the bin to retrieve it.
“Hey… It’s okay if you don’t really want to—”
“I don’t know what Mama is talking about! Of course I am!”
Ouma launches his face right into the screen of the laptop, expecting animalistic screams to assault his ears and making them bleed.
Only to be met with silence.
Ouma steps back and takes a real look at the screen.
There Saihara is, still asleep, face still attached to the oxygen mask and arms still having IV drips into them.
(still locked in the glass coffin he doesn’t deserve to be in)
“So. He’s still not awake?” Toujou shoves Ouma aside to look at the screen closer herself. “Didn’t the Team’s medical team said that most survivors only need a few weeks to recover at most? What is the meaning of this?”
“Well, obviously that means they are still full of chickenshit and Dickichi’s precious prince isn’t waking up anytime soon!” Iruma slams down the laptop—as Ouma had guessed, Kiibo did let out a sound of protest—and shoves it back into the carrying bag. “Get on with your stupid lives now bitches! Kiibo will meetcha in, like, two weeks’ time.”
“Iruma-san, do you mean that Kiibo-san can’t talk to us anytime we like? Or is there any other technical reason?”
“Take it as both, Slutjou. Kiibo and I don’t have the whole fucking day even when we are roommates.” Iruma takes up the bag and rushes for the door, disappearing in no time.
Ouma boots up the phone and opens the toy-collecting game.
Toujou moves back to the laundry she was tending to. “Ouma-kun?”
“There there, Mama, I already know what to expect, there’s absolutely no need to console me or anything! I know that’s gonna happen and it’s not like I really care or anything, y’know?” Ouma puts down the phone on the table and gets into the pantry for a bag of chips. He takes the garlic flavour, and Toujou, predictably, frowns in an obviously unsubtle manner.
Getting Toujou to frown in contrast to her in-game ability to disagree while agreeing would have been satisfying, if not for the fact that Toujou no longer possesses the full arsenal of the Super High School Level Maid’s tactful proficiency. Doing so doesn’t warrant much effort at all, but seeing Toujou ticked-off by his own hand carries a deeply rewarding sensation.
“Anyway, Ouma-kun, I hope what you said it’s true. For now, I have to head out for the day. Please don’t eat all of the chips.”
“Most certainly, Toujou-chan!”
Toujou strolls out of the room, out of the house, and out of Ouma’s mind. Ouma brings the bag of chips and phone with him to his bedroom, where he lies down and stuffs himself more while waiting for yet another egg to hatch.
Bits of chips fall down and adorn the floor in a pattern that would most certainly tick both Iruma and Toujou off to no end. Getting bored of the game, Ouma opens up an Internet browser.
He turns off the filter function and opens up a search engine.
It only takes the letter ‘s’ to bring up a menu of pain to him.
saihara shuuichi alive? — saihara shuuichi is actually dead conspiracy — saihara shuuichi cheats — saihara shuuichi hat merch
Ouma chances clicking on one that is just ‘saihara shuuichi” and millions of search results sprout from the ground, like a dodder that just found its prey, where Ouma is the healthy tree that it wraps around with. Is he even healthy in the first place? Backtrack; more like the dying tree that the dodders are dead set to consume to the fullest.
Ouma snickerrs at that thought.
He presses down onto the fan forum he had an account in and looks into the ‘Daily Saihara Shuuichi Love Thread’.
Day 389 – I still really really love Saihara Shuuichi! Have you seen that boy’s smile? It can cure depression! At least it definitely can for me!
Ouma presses his lips into a tight fault line and down the checker-patterned keyboard.
oh u again??? don’t u ever get bored of this???
A reply pops back up immediately.
Why does doing that bother you??? Everyone in the game gets a thread like that! I feel like making one for the protag, in particular, shouldn’t be weird!
Ouma continues the game and advances onto the chessboard upon typing a few more black keys.
it is weird dood. cmon think abt it saihara is the only one still not awake why would u still maintain this thread it’s not like he’ll wake up and suck ur dick lol
The anonymous, non-existent opponent of his stands his ground with his white pieces.
Get back into your own cave you fucking troll!!! And whether or not I treat Saihara as my dearly beloved is not your business lmao are you jealous of what I have with him???
lmao ofc i won’t be interested in whatever imaginary thing u have w/ him!!!! i’m just sad that ur this pathetic
Ouma bites back expletives and curses that would poison even the clearest well of water, forcing himself to breathe and keep calm properly.
The chain of replies suddenly break.
i mean whatev ur thinking they are fake dood!! the thread is lit made 10 days ago i watched u make it and start on day 289!! why the fuck u lyin why u always lyin
As the moderator of the thread, Ouma reserves the right to delete messages when he needs to. Usually, he challenges himself to just dissuade trolls like he had just now, but it looks like even the Internet folks don’t approve of his love, after all.
Ouma deletes all the messages back up to “Day 389” and contents himself that this small space still exists, and whether this exists in the void or not it still brings him small relief.
⁕
“Slutjou, is bringing him out with us really a good idea?” Iruma scrunches up her nose and holds back a sneeze. “I mean, God why the fuck would he wear so much fucking perfume! We have enough camouflage materials that are not stupid like perfumes!”
“Hey, Hyena-chan, you do realize I have ears and can hear you, right?” Ouma circles back to Iruma’s side and fake-pounds onto her chest. Iruma lets out a shrill scream, not unlike that of a fire siren. “Nyaaa, Hyena-chan is so loud and rude to me! Mama, what should I do?”
“Ouma-kun, we shouldn’t be making too much noise out here.” Toujou looks forward with remotely no changes in her expression at all. She almost resembles a bit of her older maid self. “Today we are going to have some kind of fun without the burden of our classmates still on our backs.”
“Clever of you to immediately bring them up, Kill-me-san,” Iruma takes out her phone and scrolls up the searches she has done prior to coming out. “There’s a flea market around the corner. Anyone interested?”
Ouma unwraps the end of his scarf and mock slaps Iruma with them. “Why would you bring it up if you weren’t thinking of going?”
“Your astute observations are duly noted and absolutely with no fuck given on it.” Iruma struggles to swat the heavily perfumed scarf away from her face and soldiers into the sea of faceless people. “I’m heading in myself, see ya fucks later.”
Toujou and Ouma, by contrast, are keeping themselves to the sidewalk, where fewer people amble on. The flea market might have more confections and delicacies anyone could obtain if they so desire, but the sidewalk is the only passageway with a more reasonable amount of flow of people.
“Ouma-kun, is there any particular candy you are eyeing for?”
“Candy? How old am I, Toujou-chan? You think some candies can appease my demons and all that? Hmm?” Ouma opens the doors into the small shopping mall nonchalantly, greeting the somewhat festive interior with a bright smile. In the time Toujou has spent with Ouma, it is already obvious that this is not a genuine smile.
“Then is there anything in particular that you want to get?”
“Hmm, these mistletoes look really torn… Must be old ones just being recycled yet again!”
“Contrary to popular belief, we don’t really have much time to be out for that long—”
“Annnnd that doll just looks so ugly! Why did they even put it out—”
“Ouma.”
Toujou stops walking with a telltale clink onto the ground with her heel. Ouma comes to a halt.
“I know you’re heading for the boutique around the corner and I advise strongly against that idea.”
The silence hangs heavy with a palpable tension, one that is not too disparate to that of when Ouma had first woken up. The faux cheerful background music of the mall drones on and on about the miracle of love.
“It’s just one visit, Toujou. It’s not a big deal.”
(The only other occasion to when Ouma dropped his cutesy honorifics for everyone is when he woke up to a tangle of wires, liquid that he will come to repulse at the very sight of dribbling from his mouth and Toujou appearing in front of him helping him to get up)
“Ouma-kun… Despite everything you believe here, I still get to let you know, you can’t keep holding on forever. You still have a life to live.”
Ouma chuckles. His lips seal in a poisonous excursus. “I know that Toujou-chan, and that is the precise reason for why I’m going to get into that boutique and buy the cutest clothes I can find there!”
Toujou’s shoulders tense, a veneer superimposing her exasperation and anger. It must be anger. Ouma sees it too many times to not know the shape of anger and its shadow behind people’s eyes. He prepares himself as well, small frame coiling into a snake ready to bite and tear.
And that’s why Toujou acquiescing with a respire switches off Ouma’s flight-or-flight mode. “Alright, Ouma. Let’s head to that store and gets you some nice and comfy clothes.”
Ouma resists the urge to dissolve right there and bounces up on his heels. “Yes! Let’s go!”
The store greets the two of them with a nice chime completely deviating from the jingle the mall itself uses. The interior is encased in a candy-like decor that embellishes the soft-colored clothes it contains, in hues of purple and pink mostly. Toujou can understand why Ouma seems to dig the aesthetics.
But instead of settling for the rows of soft dresses and sweaters at the front of the store, Ouma instantly scurries to the leftmost corner of the store, a section that is rather invisible to the eye of a mere passer-by.
Toujou follows Ouma deep into the rabbit hole and finds herself in front of a row of velvety black dresses she had once worn with pride.
“There! Aren’t these clothes just wicked, Toujou-chan?” Ouma all but bounces around and touches every single piece of clothing there. “It’s all the Danganronpa Season 53 merchandise! Or you could say, pieces of our pasts!”
“I know that Ouma-kun, why else do you think I will want to…” Toujou’s thoughts are lost in translation as she too, establishes contact with one of the dresses. She contemplates the fact that no one is yelling for them to stop or offers faux-enthusiastic attempts at selling the products, then surmises that it is best not to come up with theory as to why.
“Hey Toujou-chan, are you gonna buy one of these?”
“I. I don’t think I have brought enough for that.” Toujou takes out her wallet and counts two one-thousand notes. “I only have five hundred dollars.”
Ouma narrows his eyes at Toujou then, something almost resembling joy radiating from him. Aureate, but stilted joy. “That’s up to you then! But for me, I’m going to buy a set myself!”
Ouma takes a set of pre-packed clothes (pre-packed? Huh?) and pays for it, promptly walking towards the fitting room.
Toujou swallows involuntarily. The so-called cozy atmosphere of the store is not helping.
A few minutes later, Ouma emerges,
in Saihara’s detective wear and hat.
“Toujou-chan! Do I look good in my beloved’s clothes?”
Toujou surveys this Ouma. She knows the Ouma in front of her has not changed in the slightest. And yet. And yet.
“You… Do look nice.” Toujou dances with the idea of praising Ouma’s new look and resisting gravitation towards the plan of tearing the clothes off him. The latter is coquettish and Toujou feels liable to capitulate to it, but she stands her ground. “They have a pretty good grasp on how to make the clothes, huh?”
“You think so, Toujou-chan? That I really look good in that?” Ouma ruffles the sleeves and plays with the hat, cavalier but almost with a latent astriction waiting to be released.
Toujou wonders why and gambles with a “yes?”
Ouma’s small frame folds in and releases in a strike.
“Well, it shouldn’t!”
Ouma’s fingers enclose seams along the fabric and apply pressure to them, and after a short respite, the fabric starts tearing into nothing. He rapidly tears off the buttons on the shirt and takes it off, along with the hat and the shorts. Before Toujou can gauge Ouma’s reactions further, the clothes are already semi-torn, pieces of the black fabric falling off and with Ouma turning on a lighter and—
“Ouma! No!”
Toujou wrestles the lighter away from Ouma quick enough, toppling Ouma headfirst onto the ground, into the suffocating clothes instead, and Toujou blows off the lighter.
Ouma lies on the heap, torso completely limb, face unidentifiable from being smashed into the clothes.
“Ouma-kun?”
Silence save for the sound of clothes ruffling and the boutique’s chime.
Then Ouma slowly gets himself back up again.
(Only physically and not metaphorically)
“Toujou-chan, now you’ve ruined my master plan of destroying the store!” Ouma kicks the clothes around, in a manner almost like a child throwing tantrums at the parents for not getting their favorite gifts. Or a circus tiger charging at its cage. “Now what am I supposed to do to look normal and walk out of the store alive and free!”
Toujou watches Ouma burying his face in his hands, tears streaming out from behind the gaps of his fingers. Fake crying. Real crying. That’s not something Toujou is in the position of understanding.
“… Hey, Ouma-kun? How about I buy you other clothes?”
Ouma ceases his kicking movements gradually upon hearing that, and he turns around, peeling his own hands off his face finger by finger. “Really?” He asks in the most thespian manner.
“Of course! I have five hundred on me, we can definitely buy something much nicer.” Toujou takes out the banknotes and flaunts them, and Ouma’s renewed smile solidifies. “Go pick what you want!”
“Yay! I know Mama is always the best and I was never wrong about that!” Ouma all but plucks the notes from Toujou’s fingers and runs off to the opposite side of the boutique.
Even when Ouma walks out afterward in the softest and most warmly-colored skirt and stockings and boots, Toujou knows all too well that the latent tautness of the thread linking his conscience and tenacity is slowly threatening to fracture, and this is one knowledge she is in a position to be sure of.
⁕
Iruma slurps up the instant noodles she bought from the flea market—Ouma heard that it’s flavored with something rare and unavailable in any other place, but who is he to know that—in an utterly swine-like and ravenous manner. Bits of the soup keep flying out of her mouth and Ouma tamps down the desire to outright beat the noodles out of her. “What are we watching on Christmas’ Eve?”
“That movie I watched back when I was a kid with the train to Santa Claus’ base of operations.” Iruma takes the remote control as she elucidates, the oil stains from the noodles spilling onto the remote control. Ouma recoils in horror. “It’s a fucking timeless classic and the only movie that yours truly can admit is good despite the utter lack of interesting action!”
“I wonder about your definitions of interesting, but I suppose I will keep quiet!” Ouma wrestles the remote control to him and switches the audio to Polish.
“None of us here know Polish!”
“You will understand it in time Iruma-chan! Even a dust-gathering brain like yours are capable of something eventually!”
“Knock it off now, let’s change it back.” Toujou effortlessly takes back the remote control and switches it back to Japanese. Ouma’s pout springs up on his face instantly. “Can’t we have some fun in this night at all!”
“You’re already having fun with those toy trains I gave you earlier, remember?” Iruma puts down the noodles and moves onto the bag of chips, pulling open it with chips flying everywhere and Toujou’s immediate scowl. “Sorry for that, Slutjou!”
“You will be sorry about that soon enough, Iruma-san,” Toujou comminates gently with the promise, then turns her focus back to the television. The hero boy is now standing hesitantly in front of the train conductor, who is quite ready and eager to leave him shall he not get up onto the train himself.
“Is this how you feel every time a boy tries to date you, abortion?”
“Tch, Iruma-chan underestimated my capacity of shame! I would do so much more! Like—”
“Um nope! Nobody here wants to hear about your nonexistent romantic life here.” Iruma grabs the remote and speeds to a different scene. Now the scene has shifted to when hero boy has to get hero girl’s ticket back to prove her innocence and right to board the train.
“And this is Iruma-chan as she hunts for an opportunity to be even more outrageously disgusting! Look at you go!”
“It is not and it sucks as a metaphor so it doesn’t coun—hey give back the chips!” Iruma makes a wild snatch for the bag while Ouma all but shoves every piece directly into his mouth. Iruma screams and gets up onto the table to obtain a better vantage point to grab back at Ouma. Ouma dodges at the last second with a giggle and the table slides off with a squealing Iruma falling onto the floor.
Toujou gets up and pauses the movie, a capitulator in a war that doesn’t involve her. “Do you ever think twice before deciding on an action?”
“Nope!” They singsong synchronously. Toujou sighs in an almost affectionate manner and starts sweeping away the bits of chips on the floor. “When I come back, at least be done with not killing each other, alright?”
“Maybe!” Ouma aims a bit onto Iruma’s face, and Iruma retaliates without missing a beat. They get bored by it quite quickly, however, so soon they settle back onto the sofa with something else for snacks, and into a rare, agreeable silence.
The silence lasts for some time before Iruma speaks up again. “This is my favorite part when I was a child, and it still is. Look at them!” She points at the hero boy who’s bequeathed with the bell from Santa Claus’ sleigh. “This is the kind of magic that you believe in.”
“Magic? Iruma-chan, I thought you aren’t Yumeno-chan! Are you taking over her role?”
“Jeez, Ouma, don’t you ever take anything seriously at all? Is nothing sacred to you?”
Ouma gives that a hard and good thought. Then he shakes his head.
“Tch. But then again, when you have lived through some bullshit like us, I guess it’s pretty hard to think of anything still as sacred, right?” Iruma redirects her attention to the screen, and now the hero boy is boarding the train back to his home when he found out that his bell is missing.
“So. What really happened to you when you found out this movie isn’t a reality?”
Iruma is silent for once. Ouma waits for a response that he knows very well won’t really come. Toujou, on the other hand, is tempted to break the metaphorical ice the question creates when Iruma suddenly bursts into tears.
“I know it isn’t real… Why else would I do something as stupid as joining Dan—” She grabs a tissue instead of finishing her sentence, harsh breaths expelled in snowflakes that taste of sorrow and penitence. Balls of tissue papers ornate the floor. “I have never… Look. Look I know the truth. I have never even watched this wretched movie. It isn’t me, it was the me in Danganronpa.”
The soft music of the credits underscores the roiling emotions of everyone present. Suddenly the movie is a much more preferable alternative to talking.
But an unspoken moxie takes roots in Ouma, and keeping on talking he must. “And is the you from Danganronpa worthless and means nothing to you?”
Iruma wipes her face harder, as if desperately wiping the smirk the SHSL Inventor wears on a daily basis would yield anything good for the situation. “Funny of you to say that, Ouma. Out of all of us, you have absolutely no change. Zero. Nil. Even Toujou over here loses her super capabilities in doing everything and yet you stay being the liar you always have been in the game.”
Iruma’s words aim a precise laceration on the surface of Ouma’s heart, and it bleeds and bleeds and bleeds more lies. “Iruma-chan, you’d be naive if you think all of me is still here with you.”
“Huh?”
“Because… The truth is… I came back with powers unbeknownst to mortals like you!” Ouma springs up onto the table and dives into Iruma with his hands outwards, and Iruma freezes on impulse and amplifies her whimpers. “I now possess the power of controlling your emotions! And I will use this power for evil! Be sad, you imbecilic temptress!”
“Ouma-kun, what even are you talking about at this poi—” Toujou gets up to interfere, but Ouma pauses right there, hands going limp and staring down at Iruma.
“Why do you have to hang onto me like a lifeline? What did I ever do?”
“What, what are you even talking about?” Iruma attempts to slither out of Ouma’s weight, her features increasingly contorted in confusion.
Ouma, on the other hand, gets up voluntarily and walks back to his room upstairs.
⁕
when ouma’s eyes fluttered open to the bleached white wall of the infirmary, paparazzi were surrounding him in every direction.
― ouma kokichi! you finally wake up! share with us how you feel?
ouma’s throat unfettered a few unintelligible notes into their mics, and the doctors on duty circumscribe him, blocking the paparazzi and stopping them from invading his space. ouma attempts again to talk, and it ends with throwing up onto the floor. at least the paparazzi recede at the sight of that.
― hey team danganronpa were you taking proper care with ouma ― is ouma kokichi-san going to be okay after all ― will they be present for the conference?
gradually security guards entered the scene and herded the thirsty news-hunters out of the infirmary, and a few doctors left with hushed instructions to one another. only one person remained after the tide of people abates from the room and ouma’s consciousness.
― alright, i’m here to gauge your necessity for a memory re-transfer.
shirogane, the blue devil herself, was standing over him, clutching a board with a passive look in her eyes. if not for the obvious eyebags she had and her moribund complexion, ouma would doubt that the game has any ramification on her.
― it’s really quite simple. all i need you to do here is to give me some responses to this survey i’m taking that will determine whether or not you want to get back your memories.
― my memories?
― trust me, this will only take a few minutes. question one, are you capable of thinking about the last seconds of your death?
― i do. but what does that have to do with—
― that’s good. question two, can you describe to details your personality during the game?
― tch… merciless, driven, cruel…
― yeah, that’s enough there to go for. question three, if you have the chance to choose…
shirogane finished asking her questions soon enough and promised to get back to him when the team had determined whether he get his memories back or not. before she could take her departure, however, ouma yelled for her to stop.
― wait! did you have your memories back?
― i don’t have any memories beyond being part of danganronpa, but thanks, the concern is touching.
― no i mean like—do you remember what happened in the game? are you, like, coping at all?
shirogane let out a cold chuckle.
― people like me don’t have any need to remember mundane things like that when i have more i need to do up ahead.
that was when ouma realized that he hasn’t been playing by the rules that shirogane established.
― nishishi, perhaps it’s just that shirogane-chan is too inane to understand my question!
― perhaps that is so! i am but a cosplayer, what do i know about the arts of lies?
― so! shirogane-chan, i think you’re doing just fine because you don’t remember anything about yourself just like the idiot you are! you stink as well! but is that a lie?
― i’m really flattered that you think so, ouma-kun! a mere intern like me needs to do so much more in order to advance in this industry, so it’s only natural that i have to give up my whole self for that! it’s just my passions! so, i do think you state something that is and is not a lie! i don’t remember anything, but i also remember everything! that was nice talking to you, but i gotta go now!
ouma struggled to get up before pain shot through his sternum and ribcage, a paroxysm throwing him into begrudging oscitancy. before shirogane truly leave, however, ouma managed to choke out words he intended to say.
― do i have a say in whether i want this or not?
shirogane pauses.
― are you this desperate to go back to your old self? then why did you join the show to begin wi—
― no. i don’t want any of my memories back. keep them or delete them, i don’t care. i don’t want to go back to my past.
shirogane does a double take.
― why not?
― just respect my wishes. let me keep this me intact.
shirogane blanches, but then a borderline cruel smile adorns her face.
― i see what it is! you’re afraid of going out of money and popularity, so you want to literally keep being this cash cow! very respectful wishes! i will pass them on!
then she truly leaves, taking ouma’s uncertain regrets with her.
⁕
Today is not going to be a good Christmas Day, Ouma surmises.
He is still in his pajamas at the current hour of twelve, when he realizes that he does not even feel like getting up or moving his limbs. Maybe he should stay in this bed forever until even his bones wither into dust. At least Iruma and Toujou will have one less person to worry about, if they ever worried about him.
Before this reverie relatively becomes true, however, Iruma barges in. “Ouma? You awake?”
“Yes, I’m awake, Iruma-chan, doesn’t erase the fact that my soul is still deep asleep in somewhere else!” Ouma reluctantly rolls off the bed and grabs his usual wear of sweater, expecting a crude smile and lewd words barraging from her mouth.
Iruma’s face is not painted with a smile. Rather, there is a vacant look with a latent sense of dread. “Follow me downstairs. Now.”
“What, I can’t even go brush my tee—” Ouma yelps as Iruma establishes an iron grip on his wrist, roughly dragging him with her. “We’re going downstairs right this fucking second, you shit.”
Ouma gulps down his renewed vexation and lets himself be dragged down, right into the hall where the television is located. Loud music blares from it, but that is the only precursor to the pivotal moment of this chapter of his short, nugatory life.
“Saihara Shuuichi is awake.”
⁕
They take slots for everyone who wants to visit Saihara, but Iruma and Toujou take the courtesy of visiting together so that one less slot is placed in front of Ouma.
“Iruma-chan, it is unwise of doing that when you definitely have so many raunchy and oh-so-romantic promises you have to make to the protagonist, right? Why don’t you go take back your slot?” Ouma unwraps one of the gift boxes below their Christmas tree and takes out a generic notebook. “Ha! Even though I have spent so much to buy you guys a gold-generating machine, this is how you guys treated me?”
“Ouma-kun, today is Christmas Day, let’s have the decency to be more honest and open.” Toujou chuckles, and Ouma hates that look in her eyes as if she is a mother watching her child grow up and find a partner. “We know you just bought a roomba for me, and a shampoo for Iruma-san. And the notebook has its crucial functions, trust us. We intend for you to take this to when you see Saihara-kun.”
“And then we make drawings and chat like some nine-year-old boys or something? And what makes you guys think I’m going?”
“Why won’t you go? Do you really not miss Stupidhara even once?”
The question pierces more than Ouma’s usual armor, so he pouts and stays quiet.
“That’s what I’m thinking. Now go prepare for a bit, our session should sometime after one thirty, so be sure you’re there at two.”
With that, Ouma is left alone in the house, feeling like the biggest idiot and asshole in the world.
“Tch… This is so fucking annoying.” Ouma takes one more bite of his toast and shoves everything into the fridge for later. Come to think about it, hasn’t it been some time since Toujou feels happy enough to make them breakfast? Is it just the charity spirit of Christmas Day, or is Saihara Shuuichi’s charm truly that powerful?
Ouma wishes he has requested Shirogane to fracture every single neuron in his head that contains memories of Saihara but well, life won’t ever go the way you want, huh?
You went to forget yourself.
I know.
Or at least, that’s what I’m going to assume, even into the graves.
Ouma takes a water bottle, a small gift, and packs them all into his backpack before gorging out on more rubbish instant noodles and gets on his way.
⁕
When he arrived at the hospital, the influx of reporters and more paparazzi has only calmed down for a bit. After all, the whole world is waiting for him to wake up, but that does not ameliorate that fact at all.
When he passed by, though, the distant sense of claustrophobia only becomes much worse.
“We have more private visitors, so we would appreciate it if you could please take your departure until we notify you of further details regarding this.” A doctor, almost laughably identical to the one that had briefly tended to Ouma, waves the reporters away. They persist, so the doctor called for security backup, and they reluctantly disperse.
Ouma lets out a subtle enough sigh that he hopes will not give away his presence, then he crashes right into a stray reporter with a feverish look in their eyes.
“Oh my… What good fortune! Aren’t you Ouma Kokichi?”
Ouma recalls his irritating perfume and scarf and chastises himself mentally on the fact that he didn’t take them. “I am not—”
“There’s no need to hide! You’re safe here with me! I just need one interview done with you, then I’ll leave!” They whip out a pen and notepad in no time. “So. If you don’t mind, I will also record this interview to serve as audio evidence. As a responsible reporter, I will inform you so as to give you a chance to think about whether you want that. So are you okay with that?”
“I am not—”
“Alright! Good to know you are okay with that, Ouma-san, it really means a lot. My first question is, what do you ultimately think about the entire Danganronpa Season 53? Like were they good with all the preparations and character settings and plots?”
“Why aren’t you listening to me I said I don’t want thi—”
“I suppose that as the supreme leader, you must be rather satisfied with it! Let’s move onto the next question then! My next question as to whether or not you have enjoyed your role as a secondary antagonist right after the mastermind? After all, it is in your script to be the main villain other than the mastermind by the virtue of being a Remnant of Despair following Enoshima Junko. So, is the role enjoyable? Anything you found interesting and memorable in particular?”
“I do not find anything memorable or interesting,” my only thought process was that i want to die, Ouma barely bites back the bullets. “the only thing I found interesting is—”
The reporter closes the notepad all of a sudden and turns to look Ouma into the eyes for the first time in this conversation. “I see how it is! I have wrongly judged your disposition. Your focus is more on the romantic side, right! Let me change my questions then.”
“I never even agreed to—”
“Question one then! Is your love towards Saihara Shuuichi written into the script, or merely improvised? Better yet,” The reporter nigh-pushed themself right onto Ouma’s face. “could it be you fall in love with him on-set?”
Every phantom inside of Ouma, threatening to spill out at any given opportunity, has scooped in for the kill. “What the fuck makes you think you can just keep giving me shit like that? Do everyone a favour, shut the fuck up and take your pathetic excuse for a functional being to nowheresville of asshat-land!”
Taken aback by Ouma’s sudden furor, the reporter stutters a few steps back. “Um, I’m, I mean, I don’t mean any harm and I just want a—”
“Like hell you fucking do! Fuck right off and never appear in front of me ever again!”
The look of admiration behind the reporter’s thick spectacles slowly turns into that of belligerence. “Alright. Alright! I see how it is! You fucking attention-seeking kids just want to be all secretive to keep being celebrities, right? Or is it because you think I’m not a good enough reporter to sell you? Guess what, Ouma Kokichi, I’m exactly going to write an article about how bad your behavior is and how much of a threat you are to society! Let’s see who the world believes in!”
“Don’t, don’t you fucking dare—”
“You’d honestly think any desperate reporter running on only one news article every week is not going to dare to do tha—”
“Hey.”
The duo pauses and turns towards the source of the voice, and Ouma wishes he has just dodged into the room rather than doing whatever he had done to lead to this.
Momota himself is staring down the reporter, an uncharacteristically tired look in his eyes.
“Hey. Leave my friend alone, a’ight?”
Friend? Ouma wisely keeps his mouth shut and panics internally as the reporter stands his ground. “Easy for someone like you to say, when you no longer need to worry about a job or anything! I just need to hand in one article! Why is it so hard for you fucking kids to—”
“There,” Momota stuffs a few notes into the reporter’s outstretched hand. “That should be enough for a whole month for you, right?”
“But…” They grind their teeth together and stares daggers once again at Ouma, then huffs and walks off.
“So, here to visit Shuuichi?”
The unprompted question tingles Ouma’s self-preservation instincts, and they are telling him to run out of the hospital and into a place no one will ever find him in. “W—What if I am, does that matter to you in any way?”
“Well, it’s still gonna be some more time before your slot begins, right?” Momota looks up from his watch and gestures towards a bench. “Wanna catch up a bit?”
The trap tightens up Ouma’s entire body and his lungs collapse.
⁕
Or at least that’s what Ouma feels like. His lungs have not collapsed, but if that really had happened and he is spared from talking to anyone other than Momota, he is looking for a way to punch a hole into his chest right this second.
“I’ve heard from Harumaki that you’re rooming with Toujou and Iruma… So how are you guys doing so far? Gotten into any trouble with them?”
For whatever ungodly reasons, Ouma feels a smirk not truly belonging to him consolidates on his face. “They have been living just nicely with me, Momota-chan. I mean, they are now living with a supreme leader without any other bothersome people attached! Under my glorious leadership, there is no way their lives could go awry!”
Momota looks at him with the same tired look he casts at the reporter. “What is the truth, Ouma?”
Ouma strains himself to mollify, to change into a him that is more palatable for everyone involved in the game, but then he remembers he is never intended for entertainment consumption anyway. “What does it bother you how we are doing anyway?”
“Because I care about you guys and Shuuichi would’ve done the same?”
Ouma bites back more bullets deep back inside of him, which would eventually scorch his insides, he is sure. “Fine. We are doing fucking excellent. End of the story.”
Momota heaves something of an agreeable sigh. “That’s good. Harumaki and Amami have been terrific roommates too, and if Himiko’s condition gets better she may live with us as well. Always good to gain more company if you ask me.”
Ouma keeps his mouth shut and waits, staring across into the infirmary room opposite where they are sitting at. Let this silence commence.
Momota, however, did not get the mental memo. “Are you really doing good yourself?”
“Why does that matter to you? And bringing up Saihara-chan again does not count.”
“Well, then I told you already that I do care about you guys, what more excuse can I use?” Momota puts the plastic bag he has been carrying around onto the seat between them. Then he looks down at it and Ouma can tell from the sparks in his eyes that this tribulation is far from over. “Oh, right. Are you developing a habit or anything? I mean, having no jobs must make everything boring after awhile. I personally have started taking care of potted plants. It’s calming, y’know? Just watering plants and getting rid of bugs occasionally.”
“Nice. I heard those plants are very interesting and challenging to take care of. But then again! Nothing is too challenging for the luminary of the stars, right?” Ouma turns around and plops his head on his hand and elbow on the bench, in the most overt way possible. If he has turned around, he bets he could see Momota glaring daggers at him, probably imagining Ouma with his usual smug face. Two o’clock has never been that far away.
Momota’s voice remains surprisingly calm, or surprisingly enervated, Ouma supposes. “Sarcasm and lies like that aren’t exactly going to get you far, Ouma. It’s fine if you want to say that in front of me, but I’m not discounting the fact that people in the outside world are going to hate you for that.”
The fuse burns in an instant. “And what makes you think you’re particularly good for the outside world right now, Momota-chan? Your indistinct persona? Your ability to indulge in some ultimately meaningless habits that yield nothing? The fact that you have remembered everything about your past and you can just go and give everything you’ve earned in Danganronpa up? Just fucking like that?”
“Then have you considered how much you have fucking done and how little you have done for literally anyone yourself!” Ouma flinches from the screech and balls himself up upon the sound of a pot breaking onto the floor. In the periphery of his vision, a little bit of dirt is visible, along with the shadow of a raised fist. Ouma hugs himself tighter.
Momota freezes in motion, looking dumbfounded and petrified at his own fist. He slowly puts it down to the side, sitting back down on the bench heavily. “Hey? You okay?”
Ouma’s mouth is sealed with self-administered thorns. “No.”
“Fuck. That’s another thing I fucked up here. Look,” Momota reaches across the empty seat between the two of them, and Ouma flinches away further. “that’s understandable. Wait where was I? Oh, right, I was about to, like, apologize for that.”
“Please don’t apologize for a minor fuck-up that you don’t think yourself wrong for.” Ouma’s voice is raspier than he himself thought, like a blade being dragged across a stone. A senseless act of violence.
“This might surprise you, but I do know what I have done is completely unsolicited and—”
“Unsolicited? Momota-chan knows big words like that?” Ouma tries to bring his leader’s charming smile back on his face, but it takes too much of him. And he is so tired.
“You may not see that coming but anyway,” Momota scratches the back of his neck and looks up at the ceiling. Looking anywhere other than Ouma. “it is a completely horrible move on my part, I apologize to you. That being said, I do think my point still stands.”
“What point did you make at all? That I should get a habit like taking care of potted plants like you?”
“Nah. My point is, you have to learn to move on and stop being the you from the game.” Momota pauses the scratching and digs into his pocket, fishing his phone out. He takes one close look at the screen and promptly turns it off. “Like, seriously, I just talked to you like for two seconds and you are already back to your lying ways and being your supreme leader self like no man’s business. It would actually be fair to say that you have not changed even one bit if I have to be absolutely honest. Except being a bit more rightfully rude, I guess. Scratch the rightfully part, more like unnecessarily.”
“For all you know, I’m already incorrigible, or I have already tried too many times to want to try again.” The refutation can be shattered by even the most bullheaded Danganronpa contestant, but Ouma spits it out regardless. “I’m just a washed-up Danganronpa competitor who has lost the spotlight. And of course, I love that. Nothing wrong with it. But of course! That could be just my trademark lies!”
Momota starts looking at Ouma with something almost like sympathy. Sympathy from a bystander who has never fallen and is now looking down at him comfortably from the top. “I guess I have overestimated your ability to change then. Like, I understand being defensive and aggressive, but. You are still not opening up.”
“Let me open up to you right this instant then?” Ouma redirects his blank stare towards Momota and forces his mouth open. “I’m done. I have shrivelled up completely into a poor replica of both versions of my former self. I’m too tired. I don’t want to do anything again, save for daily routines and finally going in to see Saihara-chan. Is that satisfying enough for you?”
“Ouma, look, I know all the wrong I have inflicted on you, but if you keep yourself closed up like that—”
“I’ll be just safe and sound because nobody can hurt me and I can’t hurt anybody. Right?” Ouma gets up abruptly, takes his backpack and finally walks into the patient room.
⁕
Saihara is reading a book when Ouma walks in. The cover is blank save for the title, almost reminiscent of the kind of classics that you will find in an English bookstore. The sentiment does not last, however, as Ouma gets closer and realizes that the title says “Saihara’s ideas”. Whatever that means, it has nothing to do with a classic novel.
“Ouma-kun?” Saihara pokes his head out of the book and stares right at Ouma. Unlike everyone’s gazes, Saihara’s always feels soft but firm, without feeling like a piercing glare. It’s crazy that Saihara could pull that off.
“Hello there, Saihara-chan,” Ouma just remembers that he has brought instant noodles here and is tempted to punch himself. “are you doing any better? Feeling any maggot still drilling into your brain?”
“Ouma-kun, you know technically there couldn’t be anything like that in any of our heads…” Saihara puts down the book entirely and sits up. That must have induced some pains onto him, but he still maintains his smile when he looks back at Ouma. “I’m really glad to see you here. I was starting to think nobody would come here after all.”
“Nobody? How could anyone resist the charms of the great Saihara Shuuichi though?” This comes out much more sarcastic and sincere a question, but Ouma asks it anyway. Saihara merely chuckles in his old good-natured manner. “I don’t exactly mean anyone in particular. I was just worried that you wouldn’t come.”
“… Huh?”
“I know what you want to ask, how you matter and all that.” Saihara scratches the back of his left hand, eyes cast down in this opportune moments. Does Saihara fear to look at him? “I start remembering a lot about my past before joining Danganronpa and realize quite a lot of things, I suppose. And looking back at everything that had happened, I think it’s not unfair to come to the conclusion that you are nowhere near as evil as you like to project yourself as.”
“That’s foolish of you to say, Saihara-chan. Do you have any evidence at all that would point to that?”
“Did you watch the in-universe Chapter Six of the game? Wait. That is a terribly awful thing to say, who would want to do that?” Saihara raises his head back up to look Ouma in the eye, unaverted but still with a note of hesitancy. “We found out all that you’ve done to stop the killing game. We know you’re not pure evil because of that.”
“Heh, that doesn’t matter now though, right?” Ouma takes out the instant noodles from the backpack and places them on Saihara’s lap. “We are supposed to move on and forget all these happened and all that.”
“That is absolutely not true.” Saihara picks up the noodles and places them on the counter next to the bed. In the gentle and serious way he puts them down, Ouma almost feels that Saihara does cherish his ‘gifts’. “We all went through this. Just because all our fates vary from one another doesn’t mean we haven’t been victims of this cruel game in our own ways. It is important for us to connect with one another still, and to find a way to heal ourselves by doing that.”
Good luck dragging me into group therapy then. “So, Saihara-chan, do you intend to start anytime soon? Our great protagonist leading us to a peaceful road to healing seems to make a lot of sense if I have to be honest. Or this could lead to us burning and crashing into nowhere, all these could be a lie.”
“It doesn’t have to start that soon. Whenever we are all ready, I hope I still command some sort of respect for you guys.” Saihara takes up the notebook again and opens to a particular page. Ouma takes that as his cue to leave.
“Oh! Right here.” Saihara gestures for Ouma to come closer to the bedside, eyes still glued to the page for no palpable reason. Ouma obeys, moving his own eyes to look into the notebook.
“What exactly are all these?”
“I used to be a writer before joining the game. At least I think so.” Saihara points to a line near the middle of the left-hand page, but Ouma detains himself from reading in too deep into old Saihara’s utterly unintelligible writing. “This used to be one of my ideas. I figured I could use it someday if I want to be a writer again.”
“So what is it about?”
“It’s about a suicidal kid who hires a biographer to write down the story of their life, so when the day they decided to die they could read this biography and feel how deeply worthless and meaningless their life had been. This progresses as a more hopeful story as it goes, however, and in the end, the kid realizes they are not worthless and feeling like living again.”
Ouma frowns. “Why exactly do you feel the compelling need to tell me that?”
Saihara redirects his innocent gaze at Ouma, a harmless smile with knives hidden tugging his lips into a curve. “I reserve myself to share an idea with everyone who has visited me. I thought that could be a fun way for us to connect instead of going directly into the heavy stuff if that makes sense.”
Ouma nods, his head filling up with nothing but dark waters. “That is nice of you, Saihara-chan. I hope that story didn’t turn out bad.”
Saihara smiles again and Ouma feels the knife plunged into him, twisted and turned. “Of course it didn’t.”
⁕
Ouma takes one bite out of the pizza slice Iruma stuffs him with. The pizza is nearly cold with pieces of pineapple on it, creased with the touch of a human being he still despises. All crimes against humanity, if Ouma can count as a human.
Soon enough, however, the cold pizza becomes too much, and Ouma gives up on munching it and opts to survey the room instead. There’s the fourteen of them here. Shirogane and Akamatsu are out of commission for whatever unknown reasons. Let’s hope their declines to this offer doesn’t sting Saihara in any way. If Saihara’s vaguely detached countenance is anything to go by, it does sting.
Once he is done with a cursory glance, however, the smell of bullets overwhelms him again, the latent tension he feels whenever he is around with anyone is at a full time high again, so Ouma goes back to munching on the pizza to alleviate it.
“I do not see how assembling all of us will assist us in any way, shape or form.” Shinguuji raises his voice slightly louder than the volume of a rusty piano choking out its last notes. “… I mean, by all means, don’t let me be a spoilsport, I should not have spoken, I should—”
“It’s alright, Shinguuji-kun,” Saihara stops sipping his fruit punch. “We are here to check on each other and speak our minds after all. Or if you don’t feel like doing so, that’s up to you.”
Silence occupies the room instantly with a side dollop of tension. And nobody feels that it is their responsibility to defuse it.
Except for the ever immobile Kiibo. “So! Perhaps we can start with how everyone is doing? Do you guys have any sort of routine or just doing anything fun in general?”
“I’m rooming with Hoshi and Angie,” Everyone stares across the table towards Tenko, who fumbles around uncomfortably and is leaning towards Toujou next to her as she seeks more words to fill the gap and farther away from the trembling Shinguuji. “Angie and I tried to find some fun for Hoshi, but he is a hard one to please. We tried volleyball and nearly killed him.”
“‘Tis ain’t no fun for me, but at least they have their own fun, I guess.” Hoshi speaks in the most resigned tone Ouma has ever heard, and yet there is an undeniable smile there and everyone is laughing. Everyone. Except him.
“Angie loves volleyball though! She is no expert in sports, but volleyball is just like ‘don’t let the balloon touch the ground’ as a more intense version, and Angie loves games like those!” Angie bounces around wildly, occasionally tripping herself onto the various baggages Saihara has taken into the house. “You keep your hands lower to the ground and punt the ball when it rushes to your direction!”
“That does sound really fun! Is daily life alright with you guys then?”
“Angie is taking Hoshi to therapy sessions and he’s making good progress to quit smoking! Tenko does her best to look for volunteer week outside, and soon Angie would love to join them as well!”
Ouma observes the minute details of everyone’s countenances. They are all changing every time he lays eyes on them, but not once do they look remotely sad or anything resembling brokenness.
“… Anyone else wanna share? Ouma-kun?”
Kiibo’s robotically cheerful inflection brings Ouma’s consciousness back onto the surface. Now everyone’s faithless eyes rubberneck him.
What do they see? Something they hate? Something they could tolerate?
“Of course I have everything to share, unlike you heathens who have nothing better to do in your life other than wasting out the rest of your lives!” Ouma does a fancy pirouette and musters up the most humane gait he could to get to Saihara. “The supreme leader is not just a rusty title! I do everything with gusto and the moxie only someone like me has!”
“If that’s so, Idiotma, you wanna tell everyone about how courageously you go and collect your toys from the ever-dangerous gacha machine?” Iruma’s cackle precedes what might be the most embarrassing moment in Ouma’s short life; with the click of a remote, the room darkens and a screen lights up, with said gacha game showing up in full view for everyone.
Ouma makes a mental memo to tighten up Iruma’s choker and makes the choker actually do its job in the not-too-distant future.
“Oh, so Kokichi does have some sort of gusto and moxie to collect things like that!” Angie instantly rolls with Iruma’s action, hands clasped together like a worshipper who had first witnessed a miracle done by God. Or in this case, by an all-around horrible person. What’s worst, Angie actually goes up and surveys the toys shown on the screen, and some of the others follow suit.
“You… Iruma-chan! Have you considered that while you have my collection in your grips, I also have your collection of erotica in my grips!” The mask slips comfortably onto Ouma’s chassis. “You really think none of us could see those gross books you have on your table all the time? Too bad, while you were setting my phone up, I studied your gross books and took them away!”
Iruma’s face falls faster than a drop tower going awry with no speed restraint. “Hey! What do you mean I own lewd stupid stuff like that! That’s just a lie of yours, right!”
“I am not! A good boy like me never lies! I have leverage against you now, so I’ll suggest handing my phone back!”
“Never! I cannot just stand here and let you slander my name! Now listen, you little twink—”
“Knock it off, both of you.” Toujou gently pushes both away from one another. It feels almost just like any other day in their household, if not for the uproarious laughter going off in the background like fireworks. His lungs getting just a bit easier to breathe, Ouma smiles. A smile he cannot hide and does not want to hide.
“Tch, Twinkma, here’s your stupid phone back.” Iruma pulls Ouma’s violet-shelled phone and hands it back to him. Ouma immediately opens the game and scrolls through his entire catalog of toys before remembering that toys cannot be sold or deleted in any way, and heaves a sigh of relief.
The fireworks gradually ebb into sparkles, and Saihara takes the lead again. “Hm, so, Ouma-kun, you wanna share anything else? Out of your own volition, of course.”
“As a matter of fact, I do!” Ouma points at Iruma yet again. “Iruma-chan loves baying like a hyena every day before breakfast, and it is really really annoying!”
“Hey! I gave you your phone back already, stop slandering me like that!”
“I’m not lying though, you’d know that, Iruma-chan! Sometimes the baying sounds a bit lower, and I think that means it’s mating season to attract better—”
Iruma slams a hand up to Ouma’s face desperately, but Ouma dodges out of the way before Iruma could get anywhere close. Toujou sighs deeply again upon realizing the two are at their throats once again. “Please. I believe you two have a better mode of interactions. Both of you can do better. Otherwise, either of you would be dead already.”
“Toujou-chan, you did forget to remark on the fact that you, me and Hyena-chan have died before though.”
The sights are so much more than a verbal declaration of detestation, so much more deafening.
Even Kiibo needs to take this comment in for a few seconds before he could say anything. “So. Does anyone else want to?…”
“Well, not me.” Iruma pushes herself away from Ouma. “Preferably, I’ll go find a pillow to bay like hyena into. It’s mating season.” With that said, she quickly disappears up the ladders, but everyone could see stray tears spilling from the crevices between her eyes and arm.
Toujou looks back at Ouma, then to the staircase creaking with Iruma’s pounding steps, and quietly excuses herself as well.
“Well,” Ouma chokes back the scalding sobs threatening to erupt inside him (those are not sobs, obviously, they are only crocodile’s tears, you can only cry those tears), and along with those all the lies, lies, lies. “I think it really is best if we can just disappear off the face of this Earth and never come back.”
“You know, if you don’t have anything good and comforting to say, Tenko—I think you should shut it, Ouma.”
“Tenko-chan, you know, your lies are very very easy to detect. You could just say it out loud.”
Tenko’s face flushes up. “Ten—I just don’t think you should say anything more when your brain is empty and can’t find any emotion to stuff in there.”
“That’s fair. I never want to speak to any of you anyway—or is that a lie?” There is a crack in the smile, and Ouma imagines it is not pretty to look at.
“Nah, I bet that isn’t a lie, and I don’t need my magic to know that.” Himiko says, then adds air quote gestures just to drive in the point that she is no longer the magician in Danganronpa.
“It could be just that Yumeno-chan is as dense as ever! Anyway, I think it’s pretty unfair that I have to share more when most of you didn’t say anything at all? Anyone else wanna share and make Saihara-chan and Kiiboy happy?”
Nary a susurrus or shift can be detected, until Maki stands up. “I have enough. I don’t want to do this fake-ass group therapy thing anymore.”
“Oh, so you’re just going to disappoint Saihara-chan like that, Harukawa-chan?”
When Maki looks back at her, the flames in her eyes have long cooled into embers. And yet, Ouma can’t imagine a universe where Maki is not staring at him with murder in her eyes. “I’m just tired of all this. I’m tired of everything any of you try to concoct, and especially you, Ouma. So yeah, I’m going to just leave. Momota, if you try to follow me I’ll beat your pathetic ass up. My bat-swinging skills haven’t gotten that rusty.”
“Tch, Harumaki, can’t you just?…” Momota casts another frustrated look towards Ouma, then follows Maki out of the house. The resounding thud of the closing door kills the suspense altogether and Saihara coughs to clear his throat.
“Well then,” He stands up, his fruit punch forgotten on the table. “let’s meet another time when everyone feels up to it again. Or if they don’t ever want to talk, just meeting up is good enough too, I suppose. Thank you for coming, guys.”
⁕
“I’m glad I get to move in with you guys,” Saihara is unpacking a box of novels, putting them all onto a black bookshelf while Ouma is lying on the bed with his phone. His fingers vacillate between the web browser with the forum tab and the gacha machine game. “it’s always a pleasure to see you guys more instead of moving out on my own. That would be really bad.”
“It can’t be any worse with us, Saihara-chan, I mean I’m here to take care of you! So your decision is absolutely right.” Ouma presses on the browser and watches as hundreds of slandering comments pop up below the thread after he forgot to update for a week. He moves to delete all of them.
“That’s true. I don’t mind moving in with anyone in particular, but Toujou-san is really reliable and Iruma-san does bring this house some joy in her own ways, not to mention Kiibo-kun is mainly with us too.”
Ouma throws down the phone with a pout ready. “Saihara-chan! It’s great to hear that apparently, my presence doesn’t mean anything at all! As the supreme leader, I request you to get out until you recognize my reign, which is the only thing that is holding us all together!”
“Yes, you are absolutely right too, Ouma-kun.” Saihara steps away from the bookshelf and sits down on the bed next to Ouma. Ouma consciously moves a few inches further away. “Having you here feels nice too, especially because…”
“Because…”
Saihara looks out towards the window, seemingly at a loss for words. “To be honest, I can’t really pinpoint a particular reason why I think your company is comforting and something I prefer. But I just do. Having you here really feels nice, almost like home in some ways.”
“That’s flattery you reserve for girls and boys outside of the killing game, Saihara-chan. No such thing as feeling like home with us.”
Saihara lies down. “No such thing as feeling like home with you guys? Ouma-kun, the sixteen of us survived a mutual killing game. I think that’s about as bonding as it gets. Fire-forged friends, if you will.”
“As if! Saihara-chan, you aren’t blind, you can definitely see that everyone currently hates my guts, and Shirogane-chan is still so hated that she has to decline coming today. And let’s not even start with Akamatsu-chan.”
Ouma waits for Saihara’s fuse to burn and snap into a million splinters in the form of libels and tirades and leaving this house forever, but the fuse holds tight with a smile. “I think it’s unfair to assume so simply that they cannot change though, Ouma-kun. We all have more capacity for change in us if we just try. I’m sure someday they will turn around.”
Ouma opens his mouth to argue, only to realize all the words about to slip off his tongue are traitors to his mind and heart. So he shuts it, lies down just a little bit closer to Saihara, feeling up the little warmth he gives off in the close distance.
“Hey, Saihara-chan?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you ever think we can recover from this? Who will we be in the future? The we from the game, or the we from before? Or somebody in-between?”
Saihara tilts his head towards Ouma. “Ouma-kun… Does it matter, really, who we will be right now? There’s no real clear line between who we are. I know this whole memory retrieval procedures still carry fuzzy effects on you, but—”
“Saihara-chan,” Ouma will lose himself after this. “I did not get my old memories back.”
The fuse melts off slowly; so this is what becomes of it instead of the explosive end Ouma predicted. “You don’t. You don’t remember?”
“Yeah, I’m not getting them back, those rusty useless memories. Everyone prefers me as I am now, right? So why bother?” (Now you’re just telling lies for the sake of telling lies) “Why remember the obsolete me?”
Watching that radiance and smile freeze into paralysis is more painful than Ouma has thought, not that he would mind (of course you don’t mind, please keep up the lies we are all thrilled to hear them) “Obsolete? You think your past is obsolete?”
“That’s only a fact here, Saihara-chan.”
“Do you remember all the stories I have told you?”
A part of Ouma nearly switches on. “Stories?”
“All the stories I used to tell you before I gave up on being a writer, do you remember them?”
At that, Saihara starts peddling off congeries after congeries of his story ideas, but Ouma remains static, both his mind and heart and takes in all of them without a second thought, without any input of his own.
Saihara is gradually reduced to tears. “You… Don’t remember anything?”
“Saihara-cha—Saihara,” Ouma gets up and draws himself further away from him, further away from Saihara. “tell me, tell me yourself. Why should I get them back? Because everyone else is? Because this would magically make me more agreeable?” He grits his teeth then, as if that would make these words true. “I’m sorry for making this decision, but there isn’t a version of me that’s agreeable or good for anyone. So this is how I have remained. Better to be what everyone already knows than somebody else entirely.”
“There is a universe where you are agreeable and that’s the you from before.”
“And do you really think I can just abandon everything I have done in the game to be that me again?” Ouma gets up in a fit, looking down at Saihara’s petrified expression. “I can’t. I’m sorry I’m not that me from before or want to be that me anymore, because there’s only the me now. There’s no going back and there’s no returning from.”
Saihara remains silent. Ouma takes that as his cue to exit.
⁕
Ouma is filling up the forms when Shirogane appears in front of him.
“Oh, Ouma-kun? Why are you here?”
“What I am here doesn’t seem to be your business.”
Shirogane narrows her eyes, surveying Ouma in all his checkers-patterned attire glory again. “Perhaps I really have misjudged your disposition. You want your memories back just like everyone else, right? That’s understandable, you aren’t some intern like me who have to go through more and therefore can’t—”
“I’m not here to get back any more memories.” (what have they done for me anyway? what are memories? proof that i exist?) Ouma fills in his name, then moves onto the home address section. It just occurs to him that he doesn’t remember where his “home” really is. “And for the last time, stop pestering me.”
Shirogane fake-pouts (Ouma of all people would recognize that) and walks off mock-casually out of the waiting room.
Ouma’s eyes unintentionally gaze up at the header of the form yet again. Memory Erasure Procedures for Traumatized Participants. It seems hilarious, as if the form indicates that only some participants are traumatized enough to want to forget. As if not all of them are traumatized.
“478. Ouma Kokichi. Ouma Kokichi. Please head to room 14 for your appointment .”
Ouma heads in and is promptly faced with a thickly-spectacled nondescript doctor, one that is just like any other in this bloody headquarters of the producers.
“So, before we can proceed with this series of procedures, it is necessary for you to fill in this questionnaire before we can decide if the procedures fit you.”
Ouma takes the questionnaire and reads.
Can you provide a valid reason why you must go through these procedures?
Is there a possibility of abuse? Will you regret this ultimately?
Ouma skims through the entire thing and tears the paper into pieces.
“Hey, that doesn’t fit our pro—”
“I cannot and will not give two flying fucks about your procedures, mister.” Ouma produces more than twenty banknotes out of his pockets and places them right in front of the doctor. “Either you get me into those erasure head gears and finally wipe all these bullshit memories out of me, or I’m just going to leave this wretched place.”
The doctor casts a skeptical look at him, but they don’t argue any further and pockets the cash. “Do you have a preferred time to carry out the procedures?”
⁕
Ouma pockets the confirmation slip and walks back home. Around this time, Toujou would have been finished with her barista job, and Iruma should be somewhere upstairs carrying out whatever weird experiments she had in mind. Saihara could be in any corner of the house.
Ouma opens the door and Saihara pulls him in.
“Wait wh—” Before Ouma can properly process what is happening, Saihara digs deep into his pockets and scoops out the one thing he never wants Saihara to take possession of.
“Are you going to explain this?”
Ouma forcefully puts on his mask. “Oh, that’s just my backbone surgery paper, Saihara-chan may not know but my back has been hurting like—”
“This is your memory erasure surgery papers, right?”
Ouma does a double take. He didn’t use the house’s landline for the appointment. He didn’t use the computer to send any consultation email.
“I know because Kiibo-kun watches you looking for the Team’s hotline and calling them while everyone else’s out.”
“Well, well, well, Saihara-chan has once again become such a good detective, I’m impressed! And—”
“Ouma, be honest with me once.” Saihara takes a broad step towards Ouma, and Ouma instinctually takes a step back closer to the wall. Upon seeing that, Saihara takes a step back. “What were you trying to do?”
“Nothing! I just realized that taking all these memories along with me while I try to dominate the world will only create obstacles, so I’m making a move to—”
“Your real reasons. Not more lies.” Saihara detaches himself from the wall, leaving a convenient opening for Ouma to run. “Please. I trust you. Please.”
“Trust me? Saihara-chan, you trust a liar like me?”
Saihara swallows hard, but his eyes are not filled with uncertainty. In fact, they have definitely softened somewhat. “I trust you no matter what.”
Ouma takes in his surroundings; the dark house obviously not holding Iruma or Toujou, who might be on his side on a good day, and while Saihara did not do anything more, he is still in front of him and demanding an answer, a truth.
wanting to know an answer, a truth.
“… Once upon a time, I didn’t live in this world.”
Ouma expects another accusation of him lying, but Saihara stays silent, the haze of sadness in his eyes clearing a bit.
“Once upon a time, I am not a supreme leader or live in a TV show to entertain everyone.” Ouma continues. “Once upon a time, I was nothing. Then I came to Danganronpa as a villain.
“A villain of lies who challenges everyone and is rightfully punished at every turn for it. But then it turns out I am not the proper villain and then I am easily vanquished and returned to reality.
“I wonder about my purpose… Everyone else is informed the option to become the nothing they used to be, but I abandoned the choice. I was nothing and so the villain inside of me is all that I still have. I cannot lose it.
“The us now… I am surrounded by the everyone that wants to forget this has happened, despite their promises to stay friends with one another. I cannot tolerate that, but I have no power to overturn it. So, I will remain the one crux of remembrance towards this game. By doing that, I must not fear everyone, I must not continue indulging everyone in their routine of forgetting.
“But I failed. Don’t you see? You may argue it is a one-off occurrence… But it is not that simple. I know that in my bones. I know that as clearly as I know everyone carries a burning hatred towards me except you. My existence no longer carries any meaning beyond as an object of hatred for everyone else and a burden for you and Iruma-chan and Toujou-chan and Kiiboy.
“And thus, I must erase myself, and once again return genuine balance to these people. To this whole world.
“There’s no moral to this story,” Ouma sputters out from loose lips, his frisson increasingly violent and frequent. “it’s just my sto―story and I hope I haven’t wasted too much of your time.”
Saihara takes up Ouma’s hand unwarned, gently dragging him to the sofa in the hall. “Does it make the fact that we are still alive any less impressive though?”
“Anyone else being alive is impressive,” except me, Ouma keeps in those words. But his power of will is not any more powerful than the need to speak them out, so Ouma buries his face into his hands, clawing into the delicate skin that barely keeps in every phantom inside his body. “anyone has a chance to walk a path they believe in. That’s a lie of course. W―Were you, you expecting,” the words splinter and disintegrate into dust before they could come out. “some―something,”
Saihara places his right hand on Ouma’s shoulders, then gradually drags Ouma into an embrace. Ouma starts bawling then, hot tears scorching every inch of his skin, threatening to spill and drag tracks onto the ground.
“Ouma… We all have a story, I believe, and yours is no less important than the rest of us. And the story is far from over.” Saihara tentatively pats on Ouma’s head, reaching for a tissue paper and hands it to Ouma.
“Every story has to have dark chapters before a good ending can be reached. The villain gets the hero’s loved ones, someone the hero considered a friend betrays them… But after the hero gets their loved ones back, and the friend sacrifices themself for the hero and is redeemed, the good ending comes. Or a good interlude. That’s nice too.”
“Then,” Ouma starts wiping his eyes, all raw red from crying too much and being rubbed too much. “what is the moral? Sometimes the hero is the villain?”
“There’s no need for a moral to make a story worth reading and hearing, right?” Saihara softly presses a kiss onto Ouma’s forehead. “What it means to the storyteller and the audience differ, and it’s up to us to give meaning. But if you ask me the moral of this particular story,” Saihara, at last, grips Ouma’s right hand tightly. “I think it’s that everyone deserves a second chance and a chance to be happy.”
hello! this is my gift for @sai0um0ta! here’s some kirukaede domestic fluff.
Title: Thinking About Thursdays
Characters/Pairings: Kaede Akamatsu/Kirumi Toujou
Word Count: 5650
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Kaede and Kirumi’s first year living together.
i. checking things off a to-do list early in the morning
“All right! We did it! That’s the last box!”
Kaede raises her arms, victorious, and stretches, cracking her aching back.
“Oh, is it?” Kirumi calls out from the living room. “That took less time than I anticipated.”
Kaede grabs the empty box with one hand and rises to her feet, moving toward the living room. Kirumi stares at the arrangement of furniture, seemingly dissatisfied. The spring breeze rolls in through the open window by the balcony and whispers through Kaede’s hair. She sets the box down by the front door with the rest of the garbage that needs to be taken out.
“It wasn’t that hard.” She throws herself onto the sofa and lets the zephyr lull her into a state of tranquility.
“I just fluffed those pillows,” Kirumi laments, rubbing her temples.
It’s the first of May, and it’s all just beginning.
※
Kirumi is already awake and dressed and scurrying around their apartment when Kaede wakes up the next morning.
She rolls out of bed with an inhuman groan and walks out into the kitchen, where Kirumi is wiping down the countertops to glistening perfection. Incipient guilt creeps up Kaede’s back at the sight of it. She looks down at her own pajamas and scowls.
“If we’re going to do this, we need to make it fair,” she proclaims as she approaches Kirumi. “It’s my house too, after all.”
“Ah, good morning to you too,” she responds. Her smirk tempers that sharp edge of sarcasm.
“Oh. Right. Good morning.” Kaede shuffles her feet sheepishly.
Kirumi sets the cloth down on the counter and faces her.
“In any case…you know I enjoy this and that I’m good at it. I fail to see the problem with my doing the bulk of the housework.”
Kaede shakes her head and reaches for Kirumi’s hand. “This is something we’re doing together. You’re a maid when you leave the house, but you’re my girlfriend when you come home. Got it?”
Even after all these years, Kirumi’s eyes widen and she blushes when Kaede holds her hand like this. It’s endearing — so much so that Kaede feels her own cheeks begin to flush.
“In that case, I’ll write a list for both of us,” Kirumi concedes.
Kaede nods and pecks her on the cheek. “Good!”
※
“Time to get up, dear. Remember what we talked about yesterday?” Kirumi whispers. She shakes Kaede gently, prompting her to open her eyes.
“Kirumi,” she drawls, rolling over in bed. “I don’t wanna get up…”
“In that case, I suppose the chores I wrote on your list simply will not get done.” Kirumi sighs with melodramatic flair and walks into the bathroom to get ready for the day.
Just another minute. She just needs another minute to drum up the will to get out of bed and get ready for the day. Just one more minute. Okay, she’s getting up now. She’s really doing it! She props herself up on her elbows. That’s a start. At that moment, she hears Kirumi emerging from the bathroom and immediately condemning her with her resigned gaze.
“My goodness…”
ii. going to buy some strawberries
The Nagasaki summer strikes them with all the grace of a freight train. The temperate, breezy weather of spring gives way to unrelenting humidity and vicious sunlight.
“Ugh…”
The heat is, quite literally, going to be the death of her. If it’s assailing her this early, she doesn’t want to think of how the rest of the day is going to go.
Someone shakes her shoulder, pulling her away from the sweet temptation of sleep.
“Why don’t you come to the morning market with me?” Kirumi beseeches. Her voice is soft and soothing, doing nothing to aid her desire to linger in bed.
“Have you been outside today? No way,” Kaede plains, planting herself more firmly into her spot on the bed.
“Kaede, you will feel more tired if you lie around the house doing nothing.”
“So what? Today’s my day off…”
“Weren’t you the one who suggested that we split our duties?”
“…Fine, fine. I’m getting up.”
She slides sluggishly out of bed and stumbles into the bathroom.
Kaede throws on a pair of shorts and a loose white tank top and follows Kirumi out of the apartment. They stroll through the neighborhood, walking along the winding roads, until they reach the morning market by the seaside. Merchants and their stalls line either side of the closed off road. The sweet, luscious scent of fresh fruits and vegetables and the salty tang of seafood converge and assail Kaede’s senses.
“Wow,” she says wondrously, “where should we start?”
“We should get some strawberries, shouldn’t we?”
She follows Kirumi to the fruit vendor on the furthest end of the market, away from the fracas of the crowd. When they peruse the stall’s selection of berries, however, an unsettling sight greets Kaede.
“Oh my gosh! These are giant!” Wide-eyed, Kaede picks up a clear carton of strawberries and examines it. “They don’t even look like real strawberries anymore.”
“Yes. We’re looking for less…bulky varieties,” Kirumi says absentmindedly as she appraises cartons of blueberries.
“But isn’t bigger better, Kirumi?”
“Please don’t say those things while we’re out.”
She throws up her hands, affronted. “You’re the one who decided to make it dirty!”
Kirumi rolls her eyes, but Kaede is feeling gracious enough to let it slide.
After Kirumi’s indecision regarding which vendor to patronize for eggs and tomatoes, they’re finally done with their shopping. Kaede is reasonably confident that they won’t need to buy any fresh food for an absurd length of time. Arms full with brown paper bags teeming with fruit and vegetables, they begin their trek back to their abode.
“Now we have to put all this away,” Kaede bemoans as she huffs and puffs her way into their apartment. She sets the paper bags down on the kitchen counters.
“And then we’ll be done for the moment, so no complaining.”
Kirumi wastes no time in putting each bag and carton in its respective space in their refrigerator.
“Really? We can’t just take a quick break?” Kaede pulls a box of strawberries out of one of the paper bags and lethargically makes her way over to the fridge. Her shoulder bumps up against Kirumi’s, and the latter pinches her ear playfully.
“No, we cannot. Unless you want all of this to go to waste, that is.”
※
“We’re gonna be eating a whole lot of fruit salad this summer,” Kaede says. She chops strawberries into thin slices and tosses them in a bowl along with a handful of blueberries. In her peripheral vision, she can see Kirumi watching her, amused.
“Just don’t put pepper in it this time, please.”
iii. still feeling the waves when you go to bed
“Is that everything?”
Kaede inspects their floral print tote and mentally goes down their checklist: sunblock, check; books, check; wallets, check; sunglasses, check. Towels, bottles of water, earbuds. Check, check, check.
“I think we’re good!” she declares with a grin.
“Then let’s go, shall we?” Kirumi says, hooking her free arm around Kaede’s.
They live a short bus ride away from one of Nagasaki’s more obscure beaches. They waddle down the road toward the bus stop at the bottom of the hill. Kirumi is no worse for the wear, but these things never fail to remind Kaede just how woefully out of shape she is. She’s panting by the time they finally reach the stop, where two young parents wait with their toddler to take a trip to the beach if their sizable tote is any indication.
“You really must start exercising more. Your profession means that you don’t get nearly as much of it as you should,” Kirumi chides. She runs her hand along Kaede’s arm, feeling the lack of tone, and sighs.
“I’ll get around to it. Maybe when it isn’t so hot…”
They stand in silence as the couple near them fusses with their child. The bus comes into view after ten minutes and rolls to a stop in front of them. They let the family next to them board first before lugging their gear and themselves onto the bus. Kaede follows Kirumi to the back of the bus, where the latter allows her to have the window seat.
Kaede gazes out of the window, willing the sight of the sea to emerge any moment now. Struck by a sudden thought, she turns to Kirumi.
“Hey, have you ever thought about kids?”
Kirumi stiffens in surprise.
“What makes you ask?”
She shrugs. “Just wondering.”
“Well, how do you feel about children?”
“I asked you first!”
“Kaede…”
They continue bickering, and by the time the bus driver announces the arrival of their stop, neither of them has elicited a satisfactory answer from the other.
“Okay! Let’s go!” Kaede shouts as soon as she steps off the bus.
Kaede runs toward the boardwalk and descends down the dunes toward the shore. She sets their bag down and waits for Kirumi to catch up so they can plant their umbrella in the spot she’s staked out for them.
“You really are like a child, aren’t you?” Kirumi says as she approaches the spot. “This is the most excited I’ve seen you in a long time.”
“I haven’t gone to the beach in years, so yeah, I’m just a little excited.”
Kaede gets to work opening up their umbrella while Kirumi sets out their towels.
“Okay, wake me up in fifteen minutes! I want to go in the ocean later.” Kaede throws herself onto the towel, stomach-down.
“Here, let me put some sunblock on you first,” Kirumi says. She produces a bottle of lotion from their bag and pumps a dollop into her hand as she gets on her knees and moves toward Kaede.
She slathers the lotion on her back, massaging it into her shoulders, before moving down toward her legs. Her ameliorating touch rekindles a sense of nostalgia; Kaede closes her eyes and recalls the night before their final exams prior to graduating from Hope’s Peak. Kirumi had massaged her stiff shoulders just like this in Kaede’s dorm room, gently encouraging her to keep working hard in the dim light of her desk lamp. Of course, Kirumi had studied quite a bit as it was, and she was naturally intelligent in a way that Kaede couldn’t claim of herself. She carved out the time to make her life easier even back then.
The thought brings a heat to her face that has nothing to do with the sun.
“Kirumi,” she mumbles.
“Yes, dear?”
She turns her head and opens her eyes.
“I love you a whole lot.”
Kirumi presses her lips into a thin line; her eyes shine in the scintillating light of the sun. Her hand rubs reassuring circles around Kaede’s back.
“I love you too, my dear. Now flip over for me, please.”
※
“I’m so tired. Why does the sun make you wanna sleep for the rest of the week?” Kaede grumbles, stifling a yawn.
“When our body temperature is raised by lying in the sun, our body’s natural response is to slow down. It is the same principle as having a fever,” Kirumi explains.
“Gosh, is there anything you don’t know? I don’t know what I did to deserve someone so smart.”
“Hush. You are very intelligent. I would not have been so drawn to you if you weren’t.”
Kaede rests her head on Kirumi’s shoulder the rest of the bus ride home. The sun begins to set on the horizon; by the time they reach their apartment, the sky is a deep purple hue. Kirumi makes quick work of the laundry while Kaede showers; Kaede cleans the doorway of errant sand while Kirumi showers.
When they slip into bed, Kirumi turns over and looks coyly up at her.
“I enjoyed myself today. And I must say, you look rather radiant with a tan.”
Is that sunburn on Kaede’s cheeks? It feels like it.
“Maybe you can get some yourself the next time we go!”
“Absolutely not.”
Kaede falls asleep with Kirumi in her arms and the scent of sea salt on her mind.
iv. finding a leaf in your girlfriend’s hair
Summer gives way to autumn; brutal heat yields to a mild chill. Nagasaki’s humidity doesn’t relent, but simply changes form. At Kaede’s insistence, they’re finally embarking on their momijigari pilgrimage for the year at Mt. Unzen.
“Wow! You don’t see foliage like this in Tokyo,” Kaede gushes.
“You’re right. It’s refreshing to be so close to such natural beauty.”
They meander along the mountain’s hiking trail, admiring the spectrum of colors: the grey clouds above them, the green of the pine trees, the rich reds and golds of the leaves above them. They stop at an overlook that presents a view of the entire mountain.
“It’s gorgeous,” Kirumi murmurs.
Kaede looks up at the tree above them to see a red leaf drifting down from its home branch. The lack of wind means it doesn’t travel very far; indeed, it flutters almost directly downward and lands squarely in Kirumi’s hair.
She doesn’t appear to notice, however, and continues exalting the picturesque view of the mountain unaware of the leaf perched in her hair.
There is nothing innately humorous about the sight, but something about it — between Kirumi’s cluelessness and her typically pristine appearance — makes Kaede burst into laughter.
Kirumi looks at her and tilts her head quizzically. She quirks an eyebrow at Kaede’s mirth.
“What? What are you laughing about?”
“No, it’s just — it’s nothing, sweetheart,” Kaede gets out between her giggles.
“Kaede. Please tell me what is going on.”
Kirumi now looks actively irritated, which means it’s most certainly time to give up the gun. Kaede reaches over and plucks the leaf out of her hair.
“You had this in your hair.”
Kirumi blinks — once, twice.
“That’s what you were laughing about? If only I could be so easily entertained,” she says, still bewildered. Nonetheless, Kaede can make out the beginnings of a covert smile. She laughs and wraps her arm around Kirumi’s waist.
“Yeah, you’re saying that. But if you could’ve seen yourself, you’d have been laughing too.”
“I suppose I’ll just have to take your word for it,” Kirumi mutters, concealing her smile with the back of her hand.
v. seasonal produce
“Wake up, dear.”
This October day’s balmy air drifts in through the bedroom window, carrying Kirumi’s words to her ears and rousing her from her sleeping state.
“Why? We don’t have anything to do today…”
“It’s the best time of year.”
“What, spring cleaning?” Kaede grumbles, stuffing her face into the pillow once again.
“Kaede. There should be no ‘spring cleaning’ if we keep our space tidy year-round,” Kirumi explains irately. “And to answer your question, no. This is the best time for autumnal produce.”
Kirumi’s insistence on using only the freshest ingredients available is at once endearing and frustrating.
“Okay, okay. I’m getting up,” Kaede announces as she drags herself out of bed. She follows a familiar routine: she dresses herself, brushes her hair, and bounds out of the door with Kirumi on the way to the morning market by the sea. The air is much more merciful than it was in the summer; Kaede’s hardly broken a sweat by the time they finally arrive at the marketplace.
Less people peruse the stalls than in the summer, giving the two of them much more space to breath. A vague sense of nostalgia washes over Kaede as she takes in the colorful sight of sweet potatoes, taro root, mushrooms, pumpkins, sudachi, chestnuts, and squash aligned along their respective stalls.
“This reminds me of when we went to the morning market in summer and bought all those strawberries. Time really flies, doesn’t it?” Kaede says. She sighs as she studies sweet potatoes, deliberately dropping them in her paper bag one-by-one as she finds suitable candidates for whatever stews Kirumi will be making this season.
“Only when you’re having fun, of course,” Kirumi responds. Kaede turns her head to see her smiling warmly. The sight instills in Kaede the sudden urge to melt completely and sluice into the sea.
“You’re right. It’s been…it’s been a lot of fun.”
Kaede doesn’t complain when it comes time to put away the groceries.
vi. just walking around
Kaede comes home early from her job at the conservatory one calm November evening. As soon as she hears the door open several hours later, she darts down the hallway and into the foyer before Kirumi can take her shoes off.
“Let’s go out for a walk!”
Still dressed in her maid attire, Kirumi blinks and sets her bag down. “Right now? It’s getting dark…”
“We haven’t spent much quality time together lately, have we?”
It’s true. Their jobs have grown increasingly more demanding. Being a teacher requires more work off the clock than Kaede anticipated, and being a maid necessarily requires one to throw their all into their working. Frowning, Kaede considers the last week and how few words were exchanged between them. A “good morning” here, a “good night” there; otherwise, they mutually succumb to exhaustion.
“It wouldn’t hurt to get some fresh air,” Kirumi admits. She presses a finger to her chin in thought.
“Great! Let’s get changed!”
They slip into clothes more appropriate for taking a walk in the surprisingly balmy November air and make their way out of their apartment and into the street below.
Kirumi slips her hand into Kaede’s and they make their way down the road. People have long since arrived home from their commutes to work; the sun has largely descended. The streets are empty, thankfully. Kaede’s hair flutters in the autumn breeze.
“Gosh. We used to do stuff like this all the time when we went to Hope’s Peak. I really miss that…it makes me feel like I don’t have a care in the world.”
“This is quite nice, I’ll admit,” Kirumi murmurs. The lights from the street lamps and people’s windows glow in her pale eyes. “I miss those days.”
They continue walking in comfortable silence until they reach the park a few blocks down from their apartment. The streetlight illuminates the weatherworn benches and shrubbery at the park’s entrance.
“Hey. Can I…kiss you?” Kaede asks quietly. She squeezes Kirumi’s hand in affirmation of her earnest desire.
Kirumi’s eyes widen and she looks away sheepishly. “H-Here? In public? I’m not sure…”
Kaede flashes a wide-eyed, pouting look that she reserves exclusively for emergencies — a look that earns her pity without fail. Kirumi purses her lips and buckles with the ghost of a smile playing at her lips.
“Just a quick peck, then.”
Kaede leans in and kisses her, caressing her soft lips with her own and running her fingers fondly through her hair. Kirumi slowly — slowly, as she always does — wraps her arms around Kaede’s neck and presses herself against her, reciprocating with the passion of someone seeing their lover after a homecoming. That is something that Kaede has always cherished about her, she supposes; her unfettered enthusiasm for all that she does, from the most menial task to the most sweeping display of devotion to the one she loves. The thought of it causes her heart to flutter, and she kisses Kirumi with even more gusto and abandon than before, wrapping her arms around her waist and pulling her close.
When time begins to materialize once more, they pull away from one another, albeit still holding one another.
“That was not a quick peck, Kaede.”
“I think you’ll live,” Kaede says with a giggle as they turn back toward their home.
vii. an awkward dinner conversation at a family gathering
“It’s been so long. Do you think they’ll still approve of me?”
Kaede puffs her cheeks indignantly as Kirumi zips her coat up for her in light of her occupied hands. “Don’t be ridiculous! They loved you when they met you last time and things have only gotten better since then. I don’t see what they wouldn’t like!”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Kirumi says, pecking her cheek. “But you’re rather biased, aren’t you?”
They board the train to Fukuoka and Kirumi gracefully puts their luggage in the overhead storage before slipping into the seat next to Kaede and resting her head on her shoulder.
“Anyway, as I was saying, you’re perfect and I’m sure nothing has changed,” Kaede says. She runs her fingers through Kirumi’s hair.
Kirumi sighs contentedly. “I’ll take your word for it.”
※
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Akamatsu-san,” Kirumi lilts, bowing profusely.
“Ah, you’re finally here! Come in, come in,” Kaede’s father bellows with cheer. He stands aside to allow them in and they cross the threshold into her childhood home.
Kaede leads a reluctant Kirumi into the sizable home’s kitchen where her mother stands at the stove, presumably cooking something with beef and onion judging from the savory scent saturating the air. Both her and Kaede’s father are mostly gray-haired now, she thinks with a bittersweet smile.
“Welcome home, dear! And welcome to you too, Kirumi-chan,” her mother greets.
“The honor is mine.” Kirumi curtsies with a deferential smile.
“Why don’t you two get settled and come down in a moment? Dinner will be ready any moment.”
Silently, awkwardly, they ascend the staircase into Kaede’s room, which has largely remained the same since she left for Hope’s Peak Academy. She can feel a blush creeping up her face.
“Let’s just toss our luggage here and go back down,” Kaede says.
Kirumi hesitates, but ultimately sets their suitcases down. “If you insist, dear.”
Thus, they descend once again and take their seats at the kitchen dining table, where Kaede’s father is already sitting and conversing with her mother.
“It’s no joke when people say that attending Hope’s Peak Academy really has you set once you graduate. You’re both doing so well for yourselves!” Kaede’s mother says as she distributes portions among the four of them.
“Hopefully you pull your weight at home, Kaede. You don’t leave everything to Toujou-san, do you?” Her father’s eyes narrow in accusation.
“H-Hey! Of course I do!” Kaede protests.
“Are you sure? You always were lazy about cleaning growing up,” her mother chimes in.
“Not you too, Mom…”
“Kaede takes very good care of our space, actually,” Kirumi says. “In fact, she’s insisted that I not take my work home with me.”
Kaede laughs nervously. It’s the same laugh as her father’s. She just wants to phase through the walls.
“That’s good to hear. I think we were both worried about Kaede living on her own,” her mother says with a laugh.
Kirumi giggles, reserved, and Kaede feels her soul escaping her body.
※
“Was that awkward for you? God, it was awkward, wasn’t it?” Kaede groans, hugging her pillow to her chest.
“Not at all. Actually, I found it rather amusing. My worries from earlier have mostly gone away.”
Out of respect for her parents, Kirumi has agreed to sleep on a spare futon in the living room. Kaede’s heart aches at the idea of not being able to hold her while they fall asleep, but if this is what it takes to avoid her parents’ consternation, she’ll deal. For the moment, Kirumi is reclined on Kaede’s bed as Kaede sits against the wall.
“You’re not just saying that, are you? Because that would make me feel even worse.”
Kirumi leans over and caresses her cheek; she leans into her touch.
“Stop fretting. Everything went fine. You’re lucky to have your parents, and they’re lucky to have you,” Kirumi says.
“You should tell them that when I mess up on a note in a recital!”
viii. a photograph from the day you were born
Their time at Kaede’s parents’ house is coming to an end. Kaede feels somewhat melancholy about it, but she’s eager to get back to her everyday life in Nagasaki. She taps her fingers against the table as her mother and Kirumi idly chat.
“We lived in Tokyo when Kaede was a baby, but we moved to the country for her father’s job. Then we sent her off to Tokyo again to attend Hope’s Peak. Oh, Kirumi-chan, let me show you some pictures of her from when she was little!” her mother says, producing a photo album from the small bookshelf that doubles as a television stand.
This conversation has escalated far more quickly than Kaede was prepared for.
“Mom, come on! Don’t show her that!” she begs. She reaches over the <i>kotatsu</i> to seize the album from her mother’s grasp to no avail.
“Come on, dear, you were a cute baby!” Her mother laughs as she opens the album to the first page and points to the second photo. Kirumi leans in and her eyebrows shoot up. “Kirumi-chan, that picture is from the day Kaede was born. It was the happiest day of my life, but looking at me, you certainly wouldn’t think that!”
Kaede wants nothing more than to sink into the earth at that moment, but she notices that something changes in Kirumi’s eyes as she studies the photograph. Their silver sharpness softens to something more sentimental and fond. The affectionate smirk that had been playing on her lips is all but gone.
“I’m going to get some drinks from the <i>konbini</i>!” Kaede announces. She rises to her feet and yanks her coat off the hook on the front door and darts outside.
It’s only a five minute walk to the nearest convenience store. She takes refuge at the back of the snack aisle when she gets there, retreating into her white scarf and stifling a groan of embarrassment.
She whips out her phone and, in a moment of unusual boldness, texts her girlfriend.
hey what was that look when you were looking at my baby pictures? it’s because i was an ugly baby isn’t it www
Ugh. She already regrets sending that text. She slaps her forehead in a moment of self-admonishment. Before she can stew in her own stupidity, however, her text tone goes off. Covering one eye, she opens it.
No, it wasn’t that. At that moment, I was just thinking of how thankful I am that you were born.
Not that I wasn’t already thankful, of course. But seeing a glimpse of your life before I was in it reminded me.
When she reaches the checkout counter, she’s grateful that the cashier pretends to not notice the tears streaming down her face.
※
After they’ve bid their farewells to her parents, they board the train to Nagasaki. Kaede wraps her arms around Kirumi’s free arm.
She never wants to let go.
ix. perfectly organized cleaning supplies
“Kaede! Did you rearrange the cleaning supplies cabinet?”
Even after all this time of knowing Kirumi, she can’t tell if that shout was irritated, surprised, or a mix of both.
She swings her legs off the bed and wanders into the kitchen. Kirumi is crouched down, examining their cabinet of various soaps, detergents, sponges, brushes, and disinfectants with the concentration of a surgeon.
“Yeah, I did. It’s almost time for spring cleaning, after all,” Kaede says.
Kirumi’s head whips toward her. “Thank you. It really had gotten to be a mess and I haven’t had the time to tidy it up myself, unfortunately.”
Kaede smiles and rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet.
“I just wanted to do something nice for you. I wasn’t sure if you’d even notice, but I know you wanted to clean this weekend, so I thought I’d do it before then…”
“Every day I wonder what I did to deserve you.” Kirumi sighs and reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a pack of hydrogen peroxide wipes and countertop cleanser. “In fact, why don’t we start today?”
And so, as the incipient March wind filters through their window, Kaede finds herself scrubbing the kitchen floor on her knees. A sigh brews in her chest, but as Kirumi sweeps across the room with a smile on her face, she thinks better of it.
x. waking up on a picnic blanket
Today is the day, and she couldn’t ask for a better blessing: the sky is a perfect blinding blue with not a cloud to be seen. The April sun isn’t too strong and the breeze is just right.
“Let’s not lollygag, Kaede. I want to be back in time to make dinner at a reasonable hour,” Kirumi calls from the living room.
Kaede looks out their bedroom window and tucks her hand into her jacket pocket.
※
They’ve laid out the blanket at the park near their home, demolished all of the grilled salmon they brought, squabbled over who would eat the last <i>onigiri</i>, and promptly forgot all about the matter when a bird swooped and begun to peck at it. They dozed off, woke up. Now, they lie under the sky that Kaede so admired upon looking out the window this morning.
It hasn’t changed a bit.
“Kirumi,” she says, turning to face her. “It’s been a fun year, hasn’t it?”
Kirumi blinks and tilts her head in an attempt to discern her ulterior motive. “Why, yes. I thought that went without saying.”
“I just wanted to hear it myself. I guess we got in some tiffs, too.”
“We did bicker quite a bit.”
“We really fought a couple times, too.”
“I would argue that those were more of a temper tantrum on your part than a true fight.”
“Hey!”
“I was just kidding, dear,” Kirumi assures.
Kaede feigns upset and Kirumi rubs her arm, laughing quietly.
“I didn’t know what to expect when we agreed to move in together, truth be told. But…I find myself always looking forward to what another day with you will bring.” Kirumi squeezes her hand and basks in the warmth of a genuine smile — the perfect image of contentment.
This is it. This is the moment she’s been waiting for. Kaede swallows and wills herself to stop trembling.
“We’ve only been living together for a year, but…we’ve been together a lot longer than that. Do you remember the day I asked you out?”
“How could I forget? You asked me to come to the music room and wanted to hear what I thought of an original song you’d been writing,” Kirumi recalls. “I can’t remember the lyrics, but they were very transparently about you and I getting mochi together.”
Kaede’s cheeks practically radiate heat at the memory of it. “I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was, was I?”
Kirumi says nothing, giggling quietly to herself, before looking up to the sky. They sit in pleasant silence before Kaede decides that it’s finally time.
She takes a deep breath. There’s no going back.
She fishes in her pocket for the small black box she’s been hiding for all these months.
“I want all of our years to be fun together, you know.”
Kirumi’s eyes move from the sky to her hand and widen in epiphany. She brings a hand to her lips. “Kaede — ”
Kaede doesn’t get down on one knee. She knows that sort of formality isn’t what Kirumi loves about her. She rolls onto her stomach and delicately opens the black box, looking up at her.
“Kirumi Toujou, will you make miso soup for me every day?”
Tears fall from Kirumi’s eyes in quick, thin streams, not unlike the one in front of them.
“What an antiquated proposal. Did your father tell you to say that?” She laughs and wipes her tears with the back of her hand, her shoulders still quivering with emotion. “Yes, Kaede Akamatsu. I will make miso soup for you until my final breath.”
Now it’s her turn to cry. Once the dam breaks, she can’t stop the flood. She slips the scintillating diamond ring onto Kirumi’s outstretched finger and cups her face between her hands.
“I never knew I could be this happy,” she says through the lump in her throat. “Thank you for showing me…how good life can be.”
In typical Kirumi fashion, she says nothing and lets the wind speak for her.
※
They’ve started making their preparations straight away, and today they find themselves at the wedding dress outlet.
“Kirumi. I love you, and I love that your closet is mostly black clothes. But we are not wearing black dresses on our wedding day!”
The irritation on Kirumi’s face intensifies before melting into something resembling amusement.
“What?” Kaede demands, spinning around from the dress display in front of which they currently stand.
“You know, dear…this is a good argument to have.”
The tension melts from Kaede’s face as she gazes into Kirumi’s eyes. The eyes that enraptured her from her first day at Hope’s Peak Academy, the eyes that acted as a beacon in the dark — the eyes that she gets to admire every day for the rest of her life.
She stretches her fingertips out and reaches for Kirumi’s hand.
“You’re right. It’s the best argument to have.”
Kirumi holds tight.
Kaede is sure that she’ll never let go.
<center><b>i. checking things off a to-do list early in the morning</b></center>
“All right! We did it! That’s the last box!”
Kaede raises her arms, victorious, and stretches, cracking her aching back.
“Oh, is it?” Kirumi calls out from the living room. “That took less time than I anticipated.”
Kaede grabs the empty box with one hand and rises to her feet, moving toward the living room. Kirumi stares at the arrangement of furniture, seemingly dissatisfied. The spring breeze rolls in through the open window by the balcony and whispers through Kaede’s hair. She sets the box down by the front door with the rest of the garbage that needs to be taken out.
“It wasn’t <i>that</i> hard.” She throws herself onto the sofa and lets the zephyr lull her into a state of tranquility.
“I just fluffed those pillows,” Kirumi laments, rubbing her temples.
It’s the first of May, and it’s all just beginning.
※
Kirumi is already awake and dressed and scurrying around their apartment when Kaede wakes up the next morning.
She rolls out of bed with an inhuman groan and walks out into the kitchen, where Kirumi is wiping down the countertops to glistening perfection. Incipient guilt creeps up Kaede’s back at the sight of it. She looks down at her own pajamas and scowls.
“If we’re going to do this, we need to make it fair,” she proclaims as she approaches Kirumi. “It’s my house too, after all.”
“Ah, good morning to you too,” she responds. Her smirk tempers that sharp edge of sarcasm.
“Oh. Right. Good morning.” Kaede shuffles her feet sheepishly.
Kirumi sets the cloth down on the counter and faces her.
“In any case…you know I enjoy this and that I’m good at it. I fail to see the problem with my doing the bulk of the housework.”
Kaede shakes her head and reaches for Kirumi’s hand. “This is something we’re doing <i>together</i>. You’re a maid when you leave the house, but you’re my girlfriend when you come home. Got it?”
Even after all these years, Kirumi’s eyes widen and she blushes when Kaede holds her hand like this. It’s endearing — so much so that Kaede feels her own cheeks begin to flush.
“In that case, I’ll write a list for both of us,” Kirumi concedes.
Kaede nods and pecks her on the cheek. “Good!”
※
“Time to get up, dear. Remember what we talked about yesterday?” Kirumi whispers. She shakes Kaede gently, prompting her to open her eyes.
“Kirumi,” she drawls, rolling over in bed. “I don’t wanna get up…”
“In that case, I suppose the chores I wrote on your list simply will not get done.” Kirumi sighs with melodramatic flair and walks into the bathroom to get ready for the day.
Just another minute. She just needs another minute to drum up the will to get out of bed and get ready for the day. Just one more minute. Okay, she’s getting up now. She’s really doing it! She props herself up on her elbows. That’s a start. At that moment, she hears Kirumi emerging from the bathroom and immediately condemning her with her resigned gaze.
“My goodness…”
<center><b>ii. going to buy some strawberries</b></center>
The Nagasaki summer strikes them with all the grace of a freight train. The temperate, breezy weather of spring gives way to unrelenting humidity and vicious sunlight.
“Ugh…”
The heat is, quite literally, going to be the death of her. If it’s assailing her this early, she doesn’t want to think of how the rest of the day is going to go.
Someone shakes her shoulder, pulling her away from the sweet temptation of sleep.
“Why don’t you come to the morning market with me?” Kirumi beseeches. Her voice is soft and soothing, doing nothing to aid her desire to linger in bed.
“Have you been outside today? No way,” Kaede plains, planting herself more firmly into her spot on the bed.
“Kaede, you will feel more tired if you lie around the house doing nothing.”
“So what? Today’s my day off…”
“Weren’t you the one who suggested that we split our duties?”
“…Fine, fine. I’m getting up.”
She slides sluggishly out of bed and stumbles into the bathroom.
Kaede throws on a pair of shorts and a loose white tank top and follows Kirumi out of the apartment. They stroll through the neighborhood, walking along the winding roads, until they reach the morning market by the seaside. Merchants and their stalls line either side of the closed off road. The sweet, luscious scent of fresh fruits and vegetables and the salty tang of seafood converge and assail Kaede’s senses.
“Wow,” she says wondrously, “where should we start?”
“We should get some strawberries, shouldn’t we?”
She follows Kirumi to the fruit vendor on the furthest end of the market, away from the fracas of the crowd. When they peruse the stall’s selection of berries, however, an unsettling sight greets Kaede.
“Oh my gosh! These are giant!” Wide-eyed, Kaede picks up a clear carton of strawberries and examines it. “They don’t even look like real strawberries anymore.”
“Yes. We’re looking for less…bulky varieties,” Kirumi says absentmindedly as she appraises cartons of blueberries.
“But isn’t bigger better, Kirumi?”
“Please don’t say those things while we’re out.”
She throws up her hands, affronted. “You’re the one who decided to make it dirty!”
Kirumi rolls her eyes, but Kaede is feeling gracious enough to let it slide.
After Kirumi’s indecision regarding which vendor to patronize for eggs and tomatoes, they’re finally done with their shopping. Kaede is reasonably confident that they won’t need to buy any fresh food for an absurd length of time. Arms full with brown paper bags teeming with fruit and vegetables, they begin their trek back to their abode.
“Now we have to put all this away,” Kaede bemoans as she huffs and puffs her way into their apartment. She sets the paper bags down on the kitchen counters.
“And then we’ll be done for the moment, so no complaining.”
Kirumi wastes no time in putting each bag and carton in its respective space in their refrigerator.
“Really? We can’t just take a quick break?” Kaede pulls a box of strawberries out of one of the paper bags and lethargically makes her way over to the fridge. Her shoulder bumps up against Kirumi’s, and the latter pinches her ear playfully.
“No, we cannot. Unless you want all of this to go to waste, that is.”
※
“We’re gonna be eating a whole lot of fruit salad this summer,” Kaede says. She chops strawberries into thin slices and tosses them in a bowl along with a handful of blueberries. In her peripheral vision, she can see Kirumi watching her, amused.
“Just don’t put pepper in it this time, please.”
<center><b>iii. still feeling the waves when you go to bed</b></center>
“Is that everything?”
Kaede inspects their floral print tote and mentally goes down their checklist: sunblock, check; books, check; wallets, check; sunglasses, check. Towels, bottles of water, earbuds. Check, check, check.
“I think we’re good!” she declares with a grin.
“Then let’s go, shall we?” Kirumi says, hooking her free arm around Kaede’s.
They live a short bus ride away from one of Nagasaki’s more obscure beaches. They waddle down the road toward the bus stop at the bottom of the hill. Kirumi is no worse for the wear, but these things never fail to remind Kaede just how woefully out of shape she is. She’s panting by the time they finally reach the stop, where two young parents wait with their toddler to take a trip to the beach if their sizable tote is any indication.
“You really must start exercising more. Your profession means that you don’t get nearly as much of it as you should,” Kirumi chides. She runs her hand along Kaede’s arm, feeling the lack of tone, and sighs.
“I’ll get around to it. Maybe when it isn’t so hot…”
They stand in silence as the couple near them fusses with their child. The bus comes into view after ten minutes and rolls to a stop in front of them. They let the family next to them board first before lugging their gear and themselves onto the bus. Kaede follows Kirumi to the back of the bus, where the latter allows her to have the window seat.
Kaede gazes out of the window, willing the sight of the sea to emerge any moment now. Struck by a sudden thought, she turns to Kirumi.
“Hey, have you ever thought about kids?”
Kirumi stiffens in surprise.
“What makes you ask?”
She shrugs. “Just wondering.”
“Well, how do <i>you</i> feel about children?”
“I asked you first!”
“Kaede…”
They continue bickering, and by the time the bus driver announces the arrival of their stop, neither of them has elicited a satisfactory answer from the other.
“Okay! Let’s go!” Kaede shouts as soon as she steps off the bus.
Kaede runs toward the boardwalk and descends down the dunes toward the shore. She sets their bag down and waits for Kirumi to catch up so they can plant their umbrella in the spot she’s staked out for them.
“You really are like a child, aren’t you?” Kirumi says as she approaches the spot. “This is the most excited I’ve seen you in a long time.”
“I haven’t gone to the beach in years, so yeah, I’m just a little excited.”
Kaede gets to work opening up their umbrella while Kirumi sets out their towels.
“Okay, wake me up in fifteen minutes! I want to go in the ocean later.” Kaede throws herself onto the towel, stomach-down.
“Here, let me put some sunblock on you first,” Kirumi says. She produces a bottle of lotion from their bag and pumps a dollop into her hand as she gets on her knees and moves toward Kaede.
She slathers the lotion on her back, massaging it into her shoulders, before moving down toward her legs. Her ameliorating touch rekindles a sense of nostalgia; Kaede closes her eyes and recalls the night before their final exams prior to graduating from Hope’s Peak. Kirumi had massaged her stiff shoulders just like this in Kaede’s dorm room, gently encouraging her to keep working hard in the dim light of her desk lamp. Of course, Kirumi had studied quite a bit as it was, and she was naturally intelligent in a way that Kaede couldn’t claim of herself. She carved out the time to make her life easier even back then.
The thought brings a heat to her face that has nothing to do with the sun.
“Kirumi,” she mumbles.
“Yes, dear?”
She turns her head and opens her eyes.
“I love you a whole lot.”
Kirumi presses her lips into a thin line; her eyes shine in the scintillating light of the sun. Her hand rubs reassuring circles around Kaede’s back.
“I love you too, my dear. Now flip over for me, please.”
※
“I’m <i>so</i> tired. Why does the sun make you wanna sleep for the rest of the week?” Kaede grumbles, stifling a yawn.
“When our body temperature is raised by lying in the sun, our body’s natural response is to slow down. It is the same principle as having a fever,” Kirumi explains.
“Gosh, is there anything you don’t know? I don’t know what I did to deserve someone so smart.”
“Hush. You are very intelligent. I would not have been so drawn to you if you weren’t.”
Kaede rests her head on Kirumi’s shoulder the rest of the bus ride home. The sun begins to set on the horizon; by the time they reach their apartment, the sky is a deep purple hue. Kirumi makes quick work of the laundry while Kaede showers; Kaede cleans the doorway of errant sand while Kirumi showers.
When they slip into bed, Kirumi turns over and looks coyly up at her.
“I enjoyed myself today. And I must say, you look rather radiant with a tan.”
Is that sunburn on Kaede’s cheeks? It feels like it.
“Maybe you can get some yourself the next time we go!”
“Absolutely not.”
Kaede falls asleep with Kirumi in her arms and the scent of sea salt on her mind.
<center><b>iv. finding a leaf in your girlfriend’s hair</b></center>
Summer gives way to autumn; brutal heat yields to a mild chill. Nagasaki’s humidity doesn’t relent, but simply changes form. At Kaede’s insistence, they’re finally embarking on their <i>momijigari</i> pilgrimage for the year at Mt. Unzen.
“Wow! You don’t see foliage like this in Tokyo,” Kaede gushes.
“You’re right. It’s refreshing to be so close to such natural beauty.”
They meander along the mountain’s hiking trail, admiring the spectrum of colors: the grey clouds above them, the green of the pine trees, the rich reds and golds of the leaves above them. They stop at an overlook that presents a view of the entire mountain.
“It’s gorgeous,” Kirumi murmurs.
Kaede looks up at the tree above them to see a red leaf drifting down from its home branch. The lack of wind means it doesn’t travel very far; indeed, it flutters almost directly downward and lands squarely in Kirumi’s hair.
She doesn’t appear to notice, however, and continues exalting the picturesque view of the mountain unaware of the leaf perched in her hair.
There is nothing innately humorous about the sight, but something about it — between Kirumi’s cluelessness and her typically pristine appearance — makes Kaede burst into laughter.
Kirumi looks at her and tilts her head quizzically. She quirks an eyebrow at Kaede’s mirth.
“What? What are you laughing about?”
“No, it’s just — it’s nothing, sweetheart,” Kaede gets out between her giggles.
“Kaede. Please tell me what is going on.”
Kirumi now looks actively irritated, which means it’s most certainly time to give up the gun. Kaede reaches over and plucks the leaf out of her hair.
“You had this in your hair.”
Kirumi blinks — once, twice.
“That’s what you were laughing about? If only I could be so easily entertained,” she says, still bewildered. Nonetheless, Kaede can make out the beginnings of a covert smile. She laughs and wraps her arm around Kirumi’s waist.
“Yeah, you’re saying that. But if you could’ve seen yourself, you’d have been laughing too.”
“I suppose I’ll just have to take your word for it,” Kirumi mutters, concealing her smile with the back of her hand.
<center><b>v. seasonal produce</b></center>
“Wake up, dear.”
This October day’s balmy air drifts in through the bedroom window, carrying Kirumi’s words to her ears and rousing her from her sleeping state.
“Why? We don’t have anything to do today…”
“It’s the best time of year.”
“What, spring cleaning?” Kaede grumbles, stuffing her face into the pillow once again.
“Kaede. There should be no ‘spring cleaning’ if we keep our space tidy year-round,” Kirumi explains irately. “And to answer your question, no. This is the best time for autumnal produce.”
Kirumi’s insistence on using only the freshest ingredients available is at once endearing and frustrating.
“Okay, okay. I’m getting up,” Kaede announces as she drags herself out of bed. She follows a familiar routine: she dresses herself, brushes her hair, and bounds out of the door with Kirumi on the way to the morning market by the sea. The air is much more merciful than it was in the summer; Kaede’s hardly broken a sweat by the time they finally arrive at the marketplace.
Less people peruse the stalls than in the summer, giving the two of them much more space to breath. A vague sense of nostalgia washes over Kaede as she takes in the colorful sight of sweet potatoes, taro root, mushrooms, pumpkins, sudachi, chestnuts, and squash aligned along their respective stalls.
“This reminds me of when we went to the morning market in summer and bought all those strawberries. Time really flies, doesn’t it?” Kaede says. She sighs as she studies sweet potatoes, deliberately dropping them in her paper bag one-by-one as she finds suitable candidates for whatever stews Kirumi will be making this season.
“Only when you’re having fun, of course,” Kirumi responds. Kaede turns her head to see her smiling warmly. The sight instills in Kaede the sudden urge to melt completely and sluice into the sea.
“You’re right. It’s been…it’s been a lot of fun.”
Kaede doesn’t complain when it comes time to put away the groceries.
<center><b>vi. just walking around</b></center>
Kaede comes home early from her job at the conservatory one calm November evening. As soon as she hears the door open several hours later, she darts down the hallway and into the foyer before Kirumi can take her shoes off.
“Let’s go out for a walk!”
Still dressed in her maid attire, Kirumi blinks and sets her bag down. “Right now? It’s getting dark…”
“We haven’t spent much quality time together lately, have we?”
It’s true. Their jobs have grown increasingly more demanding. Being a teacher requires more work off the clock than Kaede anticipated, and being a maid necessarily requires one to throw their all into their working. Frowning, Kaede considers the last week and how few words were exchanged between them. A “good morning” here, a “good night” there; otherwise, they mutually succumb to exhaustion.
“It wouldn’t hurt to get some fresh air,” Kirumi admits. She presses a finger to her chin in thought.
“Great! Let’s get changed!”
They slip into clothes more appropriate for taking a walk in the surprisingly balmy November air and make their way out of their apartment and into the street below.
Kirumi slips her hand into Kaede’s and they make their way down the road. People have long since arrived home from their commutes to work; the sun has largely descended. The streets are empty, thankfully. Kaede’s hair flutters in the autumn breeze.
“Gosh. We used to do stuff like this all the time when we went to Hope’s Peak. I really miss that…it makes me feel like I don’t have a care in the world.”
“This is quite nice, I’ll admit,” Kirumi murmurs. The lights from the street lamps and people’s windows glow in her pale eyes. “I miss those days.”
They continue walking in comfortable silence until they reach the park a few blocks down from their apartment. The streetlight illuminates the weatherworn benches and shrubbery at the park’s entrance.
“Hey. Can I…kiss you?” Kaede asks quietly. She squeezes Kirumi’s hand in affirmation of her earnest desire.
Kirumi’s eyes widen and she looks away sheepishly. “H-Here? In public? I’m not sure…”
Kaede flashes a wide-eyed, pouting look that she reserves exclusively for emergencies — a look that earns her pity without fail. Kirumi purses her lips and buckles with the ghost of a smile playing at her lips.
“Just a quick peck, then.”
Kaede leans in and kisses her, caressing her soft lips with her own and running her fingers fondly through her hair. Kirumi slowly — slowly, as she always does — wraps her arms around Kaede’s neck and presses herself against her, reciprocating with the passion of someone seeing their lover after a homecoming. That is something that Kaede has always cherished about her, she supposes; her unfettered enthusiasm for all that she does, from the most menial task to the most sweeping display of devotion to the one she loves. The thought of it causes her heart to flutter, and she kisses Kirumi with even more gusto and abandon than before, wrapping her arms around her waist and pulling her close.
When time begins to materialize once more, they pull away from one another, albeit still holding one another.
“That was not a quick peck, Kaede.”
“I think you’ll live,” Kaede says with a giggle as they turn back toward their home.
<center><b>vii. an awkward dinner conversation at a family gathering</b></center>
“It’s been so long. Do you think they’ll still approve of me?”
Kaede puffs her cheeks indignantly as Kirumi zips her coat up for her in light of her occupied hands. “Don’t be ridiculous! They loved you when they met you last time and things have only gotten better since then. I don’t see what they wouldn’t like!”
“Of course <i>you</i> wouldn’t,” Kirumi says, pecking her cheek. “But you’re rather biased, aren’t you?”
They board the train to Fukuoka and Kirumi gracefully puts their luggage in the overhead storage before slipping into the seat next to Kaede and resting her head on her shoulder.
“Anyway, as I was saying, you’re perfect and I’m sure nothing has changed,” Kaede says. She runs her fingers through Kirumi’s hair.
Kirumi sighs contentedly. “I’ll take your word for it.”
※
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Akamatsu-san,” Kirumi lilts, bowing profusely.
“Ah, you’re finally here! Come in, come in,” Kaede’s father bellows with cheer. He stands aside to allow them in and they cross the threshold into her childhood home.
Kaede leads a reluctant Kirumi into the sizable home’s kitchen where her mother stands at the stove, presumably cooking something with beef and onion judging from the savory scent saturating the air. Both her and Kaede’s father are mostly gray-haired now, she thinks with a bittersweet smile.
“Welcome home, dear! And welcome to you too, Kirumi-chan,” her mother greets.
“The honor is mine.” Kirumi curtsies with a deferential smile.
“Why don’t you two get settled and come down in a moment? Dinner will be ready any moment.”
Silently, awkwardly, they ascend the staircase into Kaede’s room, which has largely remained the same since she left for Hope’s Peak Academy. She can feel a blush creeping up her face.
“Let’s just toss our luggage here and go back down,” Kaede says.
Kirumi hesitates, but ultimately sets their suitcases down. “If you insist, dear.”
Thus, they descend once again and take their seats at the kitchen dining table, where Kaede’s father is already sitting and conversing with her mother.
“It’s no joke when people say that attending Hope’s Peak Academy really has you set once you graduate. You’re both doing so well for yourselves!” Kaede’s mother says as she distributes portions among the four of them.
“Hopefully you pull your weight at home, Kaede. You don’t leave everything to Toujou-san, do you?” Her father’s eyes narrow in accusation.
“H-Hey! Of course I do!” Kaede protests.
“Are you sure? You always were lazy about cleaning growing up,” her mother chimes in.
“Not you too, Mom…”
“Kaede takes very good care of our space, actually,” Kirumi says. “In fact, she’s insisted that I not take my work home with me.”
Kaede laughs nervously. It’s the same laugh as her father’s. She just wants to phase through the walls.
“That’s good to hear. I think we were both worried about Kaede living on her own,” her mother says with a laugh.
Kirumi giggles, reserved, and Kaede feels her soul escaping her body.
※
“Was that awkward for you? God, it was awkward, wasn’t it?” Kaede groans, hugging her pillow to her chest.
“Not at all. Actually, I found it rather amusing. My worries from earlier have mostly gone away.”
Out of respect for her parents, Kirumi has agreed to sleep on a spare futon in the living room. Kaede’s heart aches at the idea of not being able to hold her while they fall asleep, but if this is what it takes to avoid her parents’ consternation, she’ll deal. For the moment, Kirumi is reclined on Kaede’s bed as Kaede sits against the wall.
“You’re not just saying that, are you? Because that would make me feel even worse.”
Kirumi leans over and caresses her cheek; she leans into her touch.
“Stop fretting. Everything went fine. You’re lucky to have your parents, and they’re lucky to have you,” Kirumi says.
“You should tell them that when I mess up on a note in a recital!”
<center><b>viii. a photograph from the day you were born</b></center>
Their time at Kaede’s parents’ house is coming to an end. Kaede feels somewhat melancholy about it, but she’s eager to get back to her everyday life in Nagasaki. She taps her fingers against the table as her mother and Kirumi idly chat.
“We lived in Tokyo when Kaede was a baby, but we moved to the country for her father’s job. Then we sent her off to Tokyo again to attend Hope’s Peak. Oh, Kirumi-chan, let me show you some pictures of her from when she was little!” her mother says, producing a photo album from the small bookshelf that doubles as a television stand.
This conversation has escalated far more quickly than Kaede was prepared for.
“Mom, come on! Don’t show her that!” she begs. She reaches over the <i>kotatsu</i> to seize the album from her mother’s grasp to no avail.
“Come on, dear, you were a cute baby!” Her mother laughs as she opens the album to the first page and points to the second photo. Kirumi leans in and her eyebrows shoot up. “Kirumi-chan, that picture is from the day Kaede was born. It was the happiest day of my life, but looking at me, you certainly wouldn’t think that!”
Kaede wants nothing more than to sink into the earth at that moment, but she notices that something changes in Kirumi’s eyes as she studies the photograph. Their silver sharpness softens to something more sentimental and fond. The affectionate smirk that had been playing on her lips is all but gone.
“I’m going to get some drinks from the <i>konbini</i>!” Kaede announces. She rises to her feet and yanks her coat off the hook on the front door and darts outside.
It’s only a five minute walk to the nearest convenience store. She takes refuge at the back of the snack aisle when she gets there, retreating into her white scarf and stifling a groan of embarrassment.
She whips out her phone and, in a moment of unusual boldness, texts her girlfriend.
<i>hey what was that look when you were looking at my baby pictures? it’s because i was an ugly baby isn’t it www</i>
Ugh. She already regrets sending that text. She slaps her forehead in a moment of self-admonishment. Before she can stew in her own stupidity, however, her text tone goes off. Covering one eye, she opens it.
<i>No, it wasn’t that. At that moment, I was just thinking of how thankful I am that you were born.</i>
<i>Not that I wasn’t already thankful, of course. But seeing a glimpse of your life before I was in it reminded me.</i>
When she reaches the checkout counter, she’s grateful that the cashier pretends to not notice the tears streaming down her face.
※
After they’ve bid their farewells to her parents, they board the train to Nagasaki. Kaede wraps her arms around Kirumi’s free arm.
“Kaede! Did you rearrange the cleaning supplies cabinet?”
Even after all this time of knowing Kirumi, she can’t tell if that shout was irritated, surprised, or a mix of both.
She swings her legs off the bed and wanders into the kitchen. Kirumi is crouched down, examining their cabinet of various soaps, detergents, sponges, brushes, and disinfectants with the concentration of a surgeon.
“Yeah, I did. It’s almost time for spring cleaning, after all,” Kaede says.
Kirumi’s head whips toward her. “Thank you. It really had gotten to be a mess and I haven’t had the time to tidy it up myself, unfortunately.”
Kaede smiles and rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet.
“I just wanted to do something nice for you. I wasn’t sure if you’d even notice, but I know you wanted to clean this weekend, so I thought I’d do it before then…”
“Every day I wonder what I did to deserve you.” Kirumi sighs and reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a pack of hydrogen peroxide wipes and countertop cleanser. “In fact, why don’t we start today?”
And so, as the incipient March wind filters through their window, Kaede finds herself scrubbing the kitchen floor on her knees. A sigh brews in her chest, but as Kirumi sweeps across the room with a smile on her face, she thinks better of it.
<center><b>x. waking up on a picnic blanket</b></center>
Today is the day, and she couldn’t ask for a better blessing: the sky is a perfect blinding blue with not a cloud to be seen. The April sun isn’t too strong and the breeze is just right.
“Let’s not lollygag, Kaede. I want to be back in time to make dinner at a reasonable hour,” Kirumi calls from the living room.
Kaede looks out their bedroom window and tucks her hand into her jacket pocket.
※
They’ve laid out the blanket at the park near their home, demolished all of the grilled salmon they brought, squabbled over who would eat the last <i>onigiri</i>, and promptly forgot all about the matter when a bird swooped and begun to peck at it. They dozed off, woke up. Now, they lie under the sky that Kaede so admired upon looking out the window this morning.
It hasn’t changed a bit.
“Kirumi,” she says, turning to face her. “It’s been a fun year, hasn’t it?”
Kirumi blinks and tilts her head in an attempt to discern Kaede’s ulterior motive. “Why, yes. I thought that went without saying.”
“I just wanted to hear it myself. I guess we got in some tiffs, too.”
“We did bicker quite a bit.”
“We really fought a couple times, too.”
“I would argue that those were more of a temper tantrum on your part than a true fight.”
“Hey!”
“I was just kidding, dear,” Kirumi assures.
Kaede feigns upset and Kirumi rubs her arm, laughing quietly.
“I didn’t know what to expect when we agreed to move in together, truth be told. But…I find myself always looking forward to what another day with you will bring.” Kirumi squeezes her hand and basks in the warmth of a genuine smile — the perfect image of contentment.
This is it. This is the moment she’s been waiting for. Kaede swallows and wills herself to stop trembling.
“We’ve only been living together for a year, but…we’ve been together a lot longer than that. Do you remember the day I asked you out?”
“How could I forget? You asked me to come to the music room and wanted to hear what I thought of an original song you’d been writing,” Kirumi recalls. “I can’t remember the lyrics, but they were very transparently about you and I getting mochi together.”
Kaede’s cheeks practically radiate heat at the memory of it. “I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was, was I?”
Kirumi says nothing, giggling quietly to herself, before looking up to the sky. They sit in pleasant silence before Kaede decides that it’s finally time.
She takes a deep breath. There’s no going back.
She fishes in her pocket for the small black box she’s been hiding for all these months.
“I want all of our years to be fun together, you know.”
Kirumi’s eyes move from the sky to her hand and widen in epiphany. She brings a hand to her lips. “Kaede — ”
Kaede doesn’t get down on one knee. She knows that sort of formality isn’t what Kirumi loves about her. She rolls onto her stomach and delicately opens the black box, looking up at her.
“Kirumi Toujou, will you make miso soup for me every day?”
Tears fall from Kirumi’s eyes in quick, thin streams, not unlike the one in front of them.
“What an antiquated proposal. Did your father tell you to say that?” She laughs and wipes her tears with the back of her hand, her shoulders still quivering with emotion. “Yes, Kaede Akamatsu. I will make miso soup for you until my final breath.”
Now it’s her turn to cry. Once the dam breaks, she can’t stop the flood. She slips the scintillating diamond ring onto Kirumi’s outstretched finger and cups her face between her hands.
“I never knew I could be this happy,” she says through the lump in her throat. “Thank you for showing me…how good life can be.”
In typical Kirumi fashion, she says nothing and lets the wind speak for her.
※
They’ve started making their preparations straight away, and today they find themselves at the wedding dress outlet.
“Kirumi. I love you, and I love that your closet is mostly black clothes. But we are <i>not</i> wearing black dresses on our wedding day!”
The irritation on Kirumi’s face intensifies before melting into something resembling amusement.
“What?” Kaede demands, spinning around from the dress display in front of which they currently stand.
“You know, dear…this is a good argument to have.”
The tension melts from Kaede’s face as she gazes into Kirumi’s eyes. The eyes that enraptured her from her first day at Hope’s Peak Academy, the eyes that acted as a beacon in the dark — the eyes that she gets to admire every day for the rest of her life.
She stretches her fingertips out and reaches for Kirumi’s hand.
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