"Please, fight this. You have to fight it. You have to live."
In his defense, he’s trying his damnedest to do what she’s telling him to. That doesn’t make it easy, though.
It’s buried itself deep in his shoulderblade—the axe, that is. For all of his talk about how lances were better weapons than swords, they didn’t stand a chance against these sort of blades. Shinonome didn’t stand a chance against them when he was approached from behind like he had been. The wound burned agonizingly, but he didn’t scream. He couldn’t scream: Matoi was freaked out enough as it was, and if his father heard him, he wouldn’t focus on the fight that wasn’t finished yet.
He fights to keep his breathing steady and force it to slow in hopes of getting his pulse to stop racing—to keep him from losing more blood than he’s got to. Shinonome doesn’t want to admit the taste of fear that rises and rises more and more in the back of his throat as time plods on horrifically slowly.
He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die like this; not here; not now. He’s not ready. He’s terrified. He’s not ready to go.
「…It’s going to be okay,」 he says while a big, dumb grin plasters itself across his features, 「all right? Everything’s going to be just perfect.」
If nothing else, he can try to keep his cousin from being as scared as he is. That’s what a leader’s supposed to do…isn’t he…?