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He could probably cope with the loss more effectively if it didn’t come with all these irritating afterimages. He calls them irritating because he doesn’t want to call them “heartwrenching,” because that would require him to admit to himself that he feels something deep and painful about what happened.
The fact of the matter is: Jonathan Joestar is gone, and the emotion Dio is experiencing is heartache.
Dio wishes that maybe he’d been smarter, older, something to have boosted him up a grade level so that they could have graduated the same year, something, anything. All he has are Skype responses (which over the summer had been robust and full of vitality but are now feeble as Jojo tries to find another job, one that lasts longer than just the summer) and the ghost of Jojo past.
Zeppeli’s gone, too, and that’s hitting Speedwagon so hard that he doesn’t even talk to anyone anymore. Dio doesn’t know if he sees the ghosts, too. He hasn’t asked. Hasn’t asked anyone but Erina, really, and when he asked her, she cried.
The worst part is that it’s been months and he still can’t walk anywhere without seeing Jojo. Walking toward his residence hall. Walking toward other residence halls. Going to lunch. Going to class. Going to the parking lot to go somewhere else. Restaurants. Shopping malls. Hallways. Lounges, kitchens, stairwells, even his own bedroom because Jonathan had helped to move in. The list goes on and on. They won’t go away.
The worst part, Dio thinks, is that this wouldn’t have even happened if Jojo hadn’t been genuinely invested in what Dio had to say, in his ideas and projects. If Jojo hadn’t said, “hey, you’re running a tabletop game? I’d like to play, if that’s all right.” Not in those exact words, he’s sure, but the conversations are never as clear as the images.
Dio likes running tabletop games because he likes to have an entire world that he creates. One where he can move all of the people inside it as he pleases. It’s something he can predict and control, for the most part. This is not the only reason, but it is the most prominent.
Jonathan’s character was immensely strong and very kind. Dio was enamored with his character (even if she was difficult to handle in combat encounters) and had numerous extensive conversations about the system, about the setting, about… nearly everything. And Jojo, damn him, was actually interested. Invested, even. Whether or not he gave this courtesy out to just anyone stopped mattering, because Dio knew that there was no possible way for there to have been enough time in the day for Jojo to keep this up with anyone else. There was something special about this interaction, and he reveled in being the main focus of Jonathan’s attention. Even when he went back home for the summer, the conversations made his home life tolerable.
But now they hardly talk, and all Dio has left is ghosts.