Nishitani dropped to his knees before the empty room, the world around him dissolving, melting in cascades of turbulent crimson. His grip on the knife slackened, the handle falling from between numbed fingers, disappearing somewhere beneath the ruby coloured tide. Billiken had always said his wild lifestyle was going to earn him a place straight down in the blood pits some day, hadn't he? This wasn't exactly how he'd imagined that looking.
Majima had been right – no matter how close the exit seemed, something always latched on, kept you from taking that final step. Pulling you back in. He realised, then, in a curious moment of acute awareness: they had done this all before. Different ways; different places; new characters added or removed from the roster. They'd killed Kazuma before, too. Not just him, but Majima as well, and that kyoudai of his. Others, too, he was sure. Yet the outcome never changed; always ending in a restless sea of red, the ebb and flow directing everything back into place beneath its murky depths. And if Kiryu's death wasn't the end of it, then what was? Not that working it out now would do him any good, of course; the memories would be long gone by the time they were necessary, slipping out of reach with the same ease as his discarded blade. A mirthless laugh escaped him at the sheer futility of it all, and Nishitani brought himself down lower into the rising scarlet, allowing it to wash over him. His eyes closed, welcoming the warm sensation; ready and waiting for whatever came next.
The blood, the blood
The blood is red
Nishitani
Falls through the ground
Blood in veins
Blood is wet
The blood, the blood









