Chapter Text
March 5th.
One more day. One more minute. One more chance to say farewell.
When Makoto’s eyes slid shut in Aigis’ embrace (human, feeling, and a reminder of the care, kindness and hope he was able to experience during the only year he ever truly lived) he knew deep within his bones that he would never open his eyes again. Fight as he did to keep them open, he knew his time was up.
And, truly, what a wonderful way to go: surrounded by everyone who gave him a reason to wake up, keep going, and give up his own life so that tomorrow would creep in—and keep creeping in, because there always had been light in the darkest corners, he knew that now. In the great beyond, he expected to see the only one of those people absent, to see an ultramarine gaze just as he was promised.
‘We will meet again.’
No matter what, any way the wind blows, he had never experienced such bliss before, and Makoto’s head was filled with faith as sound slowly faded and slipped away from his grasp.
A fleeting existence.
There’s a beeping sound beside him. Opening his eyes reveal sanitised, clinical white.
Air enters his lungs and life breathes through his veins. There was no vast nothingness, no Great Seal, no Sea of Souls.
“You’re awake!” Deja vu. Yukari bobs into his vision with relief coating her features, clasping his hand in her warm grip as he can feel her tremble at his side.
He survived—but the Fall⸺
It seems too good to be true—too ideal. It’s a cynical, pessimistic thought—ringing true nonetheless—but once the wave passes over and Yukari flicks her phone open his mouth splits weakly into a smile.
The doctors found nothing wrong with him. Makoto was never overwhelmed by the same exhaustion—death, dying, the end of everything—after that.
Everything happens in a blink. University applications, graduation day—his graduation day—and yet another sushi celebration alongside everyone. Junpei’s arm is constantly slung around his shoulder and Fuuka’s disastrously endearing meals (they’re getting a little better is what he tells himself, not entirely a lie) are sometimes put on the table before they’re dragged away as Yukari chirps snidely, each time, that they’re being saved for Junpei to taste test.
The banter always remained the same, and so did the kindness.
Makoto always feels that something is missing. Or, someone, for that matter.
He supposes that what Ryoji said after fighting the Avatar wasn’t a lie: they would meet again, once Makoto’s life truly whittled down. If that is even possible, some kind of fatalism utters. However, there are many things of a similar vein that he finds himself thinking of frequently:
Ryoji could never be human.
It’s a cruel irony, for someone who loved humanity so much, and for someone whose love for humanity was able to rival Makoto’s own.
That is the thought process rushing through Makoto’s head as he hauls a box out of the Iwatodai Dorms next to Junpei. Mitsuru had pulled some strings at the university (owned by the Kirijo Group, as everything on the island is) weeks ago, leading to several jabs towards Junpei about how he wouldn’t have gotten into university in the first place if it weren’t for her influence—mainly from Yukari, to nobody’s particular shock, but even Ken seemed to direct quizzical looks at him.
It’s lively, Makoto thinks as Junpei runs back into the building, saying something about needing to call Chidori before they leave. It’s bright. Spring is in bloom.
His chest constricts at the thought that he should have died this time just over a year ago. The idea seems to manifest a dash of canary in his vision, fluttering just in front of him—a garment. Someone. Makoto rubs his eyes hard enough to hurt, wanting to rub out the imprint, but it only comes closer.
He only comes closer.
It’s clear—when he’s alone, it’s easy to get lost in his head. With everyone else just one wall apart from him, even that is enough to make him start hallucinating. It’s just the spring. After meeting everyone who was in SEES, it’s become harder to stay unaffected by the time of year and the tides of what was: it’s normal, everyone was unsettled a few months ago, in December, after everything that almost happened a year ago. It’s hardly a surprise.
He was supposed to die, he thinks, repeats, a mantra. There’s saffron directly in front of him now, just as his head is tilted down, and he can practically breathe in the scent of Death. Store-bought cologne, ironically, stupidly, just as it used to be.
Sometimes Makoto still sees Ryoji in his dreams, when the nights get particularly cold on full moons. He can’t remember his face. It’s always covered by feathers and cherry blossom branches.
It didn’t take long to forget it, really.
“Makoto…?” He instantaneously feels himself tense up at the sound. It sounds too real, and he’s not sure if he wants to look at its (his?) face.
The sound should be comforting, even if it’s a mere product of the pollen and pink in the air, or of his own train of thought.
He looks up, despite himself, to find every memory flood in like a tidal wave that threatens to consume him whole. Azure eyes, brilliant ultramarine embedded within—tides that Makoto could get easily lost in.
It’s not real. It’s not real.
He’s not real.
“It’s you,” Ryoji says, shuddering, pale, weak.
Are you real?
You’re alive?
I’m alive…?
Why are we here⸺?
Ryoji’s tall form folds in on itself, towards Makoto, collapsing and breaking down right then as he murmurs, barely awake, “Thank you.”
Makoto had stood there, paralysed by the surreality of it all until Junpei walked back out somehow, without him even noticing any words at all, or hearing the double doors open behind him, and got Akihiko to help him carry Ryoji into the building.
His ears hadn’t stopped buzzing. They could pop from air pressure at any second.
They probably could burst open in mere moments.
When he walks into the building, he hasn’t shaken off the pounding in his head or the ache in his ears, but finds that Ryoji is so peaceful as he sleeps.
In direct contrast, everyone is chatting, essentially panicked. Ken says something about The Fall. In response, Makoto feels his mind shuts off.
Spitefully, Makoto’s mind remarks just how Ryoji’s sleep seems to look the very same as death, a corpse, mortis.
Dead. Makoto died last year. How could he have ever forgotten?
Shouldn’t his body have stiffened, decayed to reveal nothing but bones beneath sinew?
Everyone commented last spring on how pale and sickly and discoloured his face had become. It was all horrifically obvious in hindsight: pallor, algor, then livor mortis.
Why, then, was he still fucking moving? When would rigor mortis finish the job?
Aigis says something to him that he can’t register. Something about Mitsuru. She doesn’t leave his side—she did promise, she did, and if he died she couldn’t have stayed there like she said she would last year, could she?—despite Yukari glancing at both of them intermittently.
Makoto’s eyes, despite the speech and movement surrounding him, were fixed on the corpse draped over the couch.
Not a corpse. He’s breathing. His chest goes up and down, up and down, up and—and—Makoto is sure that if he reached out for Ryoji’s wrist he’d feel the pulsing of his radial artery. He’s sure. He’s sure. He’s⸺
“Hey, dude! C’mon man, we’re talkin’ to you!!” Junpei invades his personal space like it’s a reflex and slings his arm around Makoto’s neck, “So, didja get any of that?”
Makoto makes a noncommittal hum that sounds nowhere near like a ‘yes’, wanting to return to his previous, riveting activity even though Aigis had been directing a concerned look at him in his periphery for twenty minutes minimum.
“Wow, look at you being all pally-pally. Seriously, do you even have any awareness?” Yukari says, sarcastically and exasperatedly, prompting a chuckle from Junpei.
“Whaaaat, Yuka-tan! You don’t gotta be so serious!”
Regardless of the fact that Makoto’s eyes remained fixed on Ryoji, he let warm air out of his nose as a moiety of a laugh.
In sharp contrast to Junpei, Mitsuru’s tone cuts through the air like a rapier, “Makoto, a word.”
It is agonising to peel his eyes away. Perhaps Death’s sleeping form shouldn’t be so bewitching—particularly not when all its presence seems to do is remind him of the grave that Makoto should be lying in (because, after all, he already dug it a year ago)—but the sight has filled him with a flood of simultaneous relief and dread. He manages, in the end, to leave the room with the sound of Yukari and Junpei’s banter carrying up the staircase as he trails behind Mitsuru.
“…I thought a change of scenery might do you a favour,” is the first thing she says, apologetically.
She’s probably right, Makoto thinks as he hums in response with his eyes flickering to and away from her gaze.
“I’m assuming you didn’t hear me earlier. I received a call from the university—more specifically a Kirijo Group member under my supervision. One who knew about the Dark Hour,” Mitsuru’s voice suddenly turns clinical and factual, objective and reasonable, “He said that a name that wasn’t on the register before suddenly showed up for a course. He didn’t recognise it, but it caused the class size to over-cap, and he had no records of who this person was or their entrance exam results,” She takes a heavy breath in, “I’m sure you know where this is going.”
Absently, Makoto’s hands find the cool weight of his MP3 in his pocket. What else could it even be?
He mumbles, “…Which course?”
“Philosophy,” Not the same as his, then, “I said I’d get back to him after looking into it, but as you know, this happened just as I got back. The semester is already starting late because of the earthquake, and this is another complication. I’ll…” Her sentence is punctuated prematurely with a sigh, expressing everything she could have with words.
Makoto only nods.
After a handful of discussions about when they can even move into the university in light of recent events, lugging boxes back into the dorms, and something close to peace, Ryoji hadn’t stirred for a moment. Just like a magnet attracting to its inverse, Makoto always returned to the couch where he slept to think.
At one point, Shinjiro was pulled along by Akihiko through the doors, bickering about cooking and feigning indifference.
It was lively.
After hours of chatter and a, supposedly, final meal at the Iwatodai Dorms, Makoto falls asleep mantling the arm of the sofa by Ryoji, kneeling, an idle prayer over a precipice—teetering over an edge.
Ryoji’s presence is comfortable. It’s inviting.
An irony.
He doesn’t dream and doesn’t feel. Thoughts put to rest. There is nothing but silence.
It feels as though he had been waiting for this for the entirety of the year that should never have been—from the very moment his eyes closed in a metal embrace and he waited for that familiar, friendly face at the end.
Minutes became hours. When Makoto wakes up, he finds a blanket haphazardly tucked around his shoulders and wrapped around him loosely, lights off, and gentle marine gazing back at him in the dim room.
“You’re awake.”
“Mm.”
There’s sleep in his eyes and his legs are stiff from crouching: when he readjusts his position blood instantly rushes through them and he can’t hold his weight, pins and needles consuming both limbs. Slouching on the ground with his legs outstretched and pulsing, Makoto rubs his eyes until dust comes out and the edges stop blurring. Ryoji chuckles, and it’s a baritone, nostalgic sound that causes every little thing to come crashing down in his mind like an obstreperous tidal wave.
‘Why is he here?
‘Why am I here?’
Instead of offering an answer to any one of the thousands of questions floating in Makoto’s head, all of which Ryoji could definitely guess, the other instead perches on the floor to sit opposite him and says, thoughtlessly, “You look different.”
It’s quite risible. Makoto feels himself snort before he can stop it.
“Not—not bad different!” Ryoji flails, then tacks on like a belated afterthought “Oh, but I guess time does that.”
Despite all of the familiarity, all of the jocundity, something snaps within him and the lightness in his shoulders crashes away. He freezes and barely suppresses a flinch.
He hasn’t really aged at all—he isn’t sure if he can.
He hasn’t died his roots in a year because his hair stopped growing when he was supposed to die. His face has barely changed. All Ryoji is pointing out, really, are the piercings across it (lips, nose, ears, eyebrows) that provide some kind of illusion that something is different. Anything.
Ryoji probably notices how Makoto’s blood suddenly curdles. He just doesn’t say it.
“Anyway, um, it’s been a while.”
“How are you here?” He asks, unmeasured, in stark juxtaposition to how he usually would. Forwardness was (is) always easier with Ryoji, he muses.
The other seems to stare through him, at one of the stains on the wall behind Makoto. “…Right. I’m not sure,” his eyes flicker in the same way Makoto has seen dozens of times, what feels like lifetimes ago: listlessness, quietness. His voice pulls taut, “It was easy to just slip back into it even though there was always this… dread. But when I saw you outside the dorm, it was…”
‘Overwhelming.’ The word doesn’t need to be uttered.
As he has no obligation to make eye contact, Makoto looks up at the pattern on the ceiling, thinking that it looks more like what would be seen on a carpet, and fiddles with the wire of one of his headphones.
“I only woke up this morning,” Ryoji adds, clarifying. He sounds exactly the same as he used to.
It would be easy to believe that the last time they spoke wasn’t when the world was on the brink of its end. It would be easy for Makoto to see Ryoji as a childhood friend who he has reunited with, talking as if no time has passed at all—and he is just that: someone who was by Makoto’s side throughout his entire childhood, his entire life.
It just took a decade to know.
Makoto half-whispers, hardly quiet enough to be a mumble but not loud enough to be speaking, “Mitsuru-senpai said you’re enrolled in university.”
He doesn’t see Ryoji’s face but can hear a startled hum from his general direction, “I am?”
It’s not a shock considering the month that Ryoji was at Gekkoukan also definitely wouldn’t have had any paperwork backing it, or any parental permission (unless Nyx was actually his legal mother, an entertaining thought), but it still raises so many oddities.
Reality can bend to fit him within its open gaps, and nobody will question it. It’s not the mould it seems to be: it can be distorted, pulled and broken into a new shape and most people won’t notice a thing. They’ll find something new to blab about and worship idly.
Nobody commented in December 2009 when Ryoji vanished without a trace, as if he had never even existed. He never seemed to take up any space, displace dust, leave any fingerprints—but everyone always had eyes on him that November regardless.
You can pay so much attention, and still never notice when your brief fixation is gone.
“I missed you,” Makoto breathes, and hears Ryoji scuffle closer to him until he can feel his warmth on his cold, bitter, defected skin.
“Me too,” Is the fond response from next to him. When he looks away from the ceiling and in the direction of the sound, he sees a smile he didn’t realise he yearned for nearly as much as he does.
Bright, like the sun, but sometimes Makoto feels afraid that Ryoji’s brightness is only a reflection of something else.
Still, he leans into that light. Twin orbits.
They stay that way until Makoto feels himself drift back into the tides of slumber—because it’s just how it used to be. Just how it always was.
If Death has followed Makoto to this point, there was never any time spent apart, was there, then?
Sunlight streams into the room, blinding and heavy. Makoto squints the, presumably, morning sun out of his eyes and feels pillows beneath his head with a hard back behind him, making it immediately clear that he was moved onto the couch at some point in the night.
…He’s never really been a heavy sleeper. He feels as if he would have noticed being moved.
“Good afternoon,” He hears Aigis’ voice come from behind him, not alarmingly. Her voice is patient, “Rise and shine.”
He pushes himself up and tries to not sink into the cushions. “Afternoon?”
When he turns around, Aigis’ expression shifts into something warm and her head tilts to the side, “It is roughly half past twelve. Your sleep was deeper than usual,” She pauses, stop-starting, “Ryoji-kun said he was able to move you from the floor without disturbing you.”
Aigis would have put a bullet in Ryoji’s head for that, in 2009.
She adds, “Everyone is in the command room.”
…Considering it, Makoto doesn’t remember the last time that the command room was used. Ever since SEES fulfilled their mission and the Dark Hour ended, there was no reason to use it as its sole purpose was monitoring shadows (and, for a time, everyone living in the dorms). Somehow, something within him twists at its mention.
What if The Fall is back?
He’s just stuck in 2009, is what he tells himself. Mentally and physically. He has to remind himself again and again of the day, month, year: May 2011. Ryoji’s appearance means nothing is the lie he shoves down his own throat unconvincingly, if only to create the illusion that there was—is—a chance for them all to just be normal. The past year has been the closest thing any of them ever had to normalcy, after all.
Makoto is dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s⸺
“Makoto?” Aigis snaps him out of it.
“Mm. I’m coming.”
As he stands, she frowns, “Something is bothering you,” She’s so human, nobody would ever guess that she was artificially made from metal and bolts and wires.
He doesn’t respond. Aigis will see straight through him (even though she hasn’t noticed that he’s supposed to be⸺) and, as such, he’s at a loss as to how to begin to respond.
In fairness, something has been bothering him for the past year. Or, maybe, all of the dread that he experienced last April is just coming back to him, is all. Maybe him being ‘out of it has’ always been normal. Maybe seeming apathetic is second nature.
It used to be so much easier than this to detach, to dissociate, to disconnect. That just isn’t possible anymore.
She continues, “If you would like to discuss it, I am happy to listen. Yukari told me that ‘all a girl wants is someone to listen without fixing the damn problem’, and I am happy to fulfil that role.”
“That applies to me?” Makoto mumbles sarcastically and facetiously, with a small smile as he walks towards the stairs.
“I had assumed that the statement was applicable to both sexes, is this incorrect?”
At that, he laughs through his nose, “Nah. Thanks, Aigis.”
The rest of the journey up the stairs is spent in silence. Though Makoto has spent a large portion of the past year on the roof—for air, it’s easy to breathe, easy to think, and looking after the plants is a distraction—he hasn’t lingered on the fourth floor for more than thirty seconds since The Promised Day, and it was unlikely that anyone else had done the same. Therefore, the room is unsurprisingly quite dusty when he and Aigis walk in, and he’s left to only imagine how grotty it was mere hours ago.
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear!” Is Junpei’s immediate clamour as his first instinct is to invade Makoto’s personal space, “Where’ve you been!”
“…Sleeping,” He murmurs, without the bandwidth to be dumbfounded by the question.
Almost habitually, Makoto’s eyes are drawn through Junpei and towards Ryoji, by the bookshelves, talking to Fuuka. He blinks himself out of it thrice before looking around everything else for good measure: the only other person in the room is Mitsuru, in the farthest corner near the control panel, whose meet his eyes and she begins to walk towards him and Junpei.
“Well, yeah, dude, I mean like⸺ nevermind, that didn’t make sense. Anyway! Allow the great Iori Junpei to catch you up!” He clears his throat dramatically before flinching and screeching as Mitsuru creeps up behind him, “Ah! Ahaha! Senpai!”
Her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly, “Go on.”
“Uh, well…” Suddenly shutting off his need for theatrics, Junpei takes one step away from Makoto and flounders, “Senpai told you ‘bout how Ryoji got into our uni, right? Well, you, me, and him ‘re gonna be roommates ‘till we figure out what’s happening!”
Makoto fidgets. They’ve all been awake far longer than he has, but the chatter yesterday still indicates that there’s a lot to process.
‘You raised that thing,’ 2009 beckons, in his head. The malice, hatred, discord.
No, they’ve all grown as people. They all can adapt.
Can something like this really be accepted so quickly?
…Or is Makoto simply unable to move on?
“Right. That’s the main crux, in any case,” Mitsuru cuts in, “It was just the most convenient solution, that’s all, as you both understand the situation better than any uninvolved students would. Makoto,” she turns to him, the same look as yesterday in her one visible eye, “I trust that you’ll do your best to help us understand this matter.”
“I will.”
“Good. In that case, you’ll be heading off as soon as you’re able to. Everyone else has cleared out already. There’s no rush, but the sooner the better.”
Makoto tugs at his headphone wire and nods as Mitsuru leaves the room.
“It was easy to just slip back into it even though there was always this… dread.”
That was just the past year, described by someone who had absolutely no part in it—ironically so.
“Well, dude,” Junpei bounces back towards him with enough energy to fuel a power station, “This is gonna be great, right!? I can, like, be a wingman for both of you! We’re gonna have the best uni life, right!?”
“Just make sure you do your bit.”
Just like usual, like always, Junpei laughs boisterously, “Y’know, you’re really startin’ to sound like a leader again! Didja miss bossin’ me around, or what?” His wide grin threatens to split his face open, “I’m gonna head outside for a sec! Lemme know when you’re ready to go!”
When Junpei practically runs out of the room, all of the air and sound seems to go with him, as if his presence was the only thing preventing the space from becoming a soundless vacuum.
‘Wingman’, huh?
On their own, Makoto’s legs drag him towards the bookshelf. The first sound in the room after Junpei’s ebullient display was Fuuka giggling softly, “He doesn’t change.”
He knows what she means—Junpei has always been joyous and energetic, ever since Makoto first went to Gekkoukan two years ago. It was the very first thing that struck him about Junpei: just how irritatingly cheery and upbeat he can be—something Makoto has grown to appreciate, though they still bicker frequently.
That doesn’t go without noting that Junpei has changed in many other ways, though, but it’s a kind of nauseatingly cheesy sentiment that Junpei changed for the better in the way that he did because of love.
“Good afternoon,” Ryoji smiles, though there are cracks in it. Fuuka’s expression suddenly turns thoughtful as he adds, “I hope I didn’t wake you up in the night.”
Makoto shakes his head. Waking up on the couch was more confusing than anything, “You didn’t. Thanks, Ryoji.”
There’s something about saying his name that he finds difficult. It no longer rolls off the tongue—as if he has to check if he really is saying that name again, if Ryoji really exists. The syllables lie limp on his tongue as the sound is overextended indiscernibly.
It feels like he needs to test if the name is real.
“Don’t mention it,” Ryoji says easily. There’s no trace left of the unspoken terror and vulnerability from last night.
After a few beats, “Um, if you don’t mind me saying,” Fuuka starts, breaking out of her mind, “While I can’t… sense anything out of the ordinary, something feels wrong.” Flinching somewhat, she flusters, “Nevermind! Sorry, that came out of nowhere. It’s just…”
Silence settles like dust.
It’s Ryoji who speaks, to Makoto’s surprise, “…You’re right. It’s really not that surprising, though, considering…” He glances at Makoto knowingly and bites his own lip. “I’m sorry.”
“Ryoji-kun…”
There’s a bitter taste left in Makoto’s mouth.
“We should start going, right?” Ryoji forces the somber atmosphere away, or at least tries, “I’ll help you with the boxes, Makoto.”
Makoto doesn’t say a word, but one look at Fuuka’s clear eyes is enough to let her know that he agrees.
Makoto really doesn’t need Ryoji’s help, is what he thinks as they walk towards the entrance only to push some boxes out on the porch. He doesn’t have many belongings: one box being filled with memorabilia and photo frames, and the other being clothes and daily necessities. He could have done it himself quite easily.
Admittedly, despite having been moved from family to family in the foster care system, Makoto had never had as many belongings as he does now, in Iwatodai. Until he could live on his own, he used to do his very best to take up as little space as humanly possible by only holding onto basic resources (sometimes even less than that—it depended on the home).
Ryoji probably knows this.
On that topic, Ryoji spends the time filling the empty space in the air by talking about everything and nothing in equal measures. As senseless as it seems, Makoto finds himself instinctively hanging on to each and every word, finding him barely any different from that November.
Barely, implying that there are differences. Barely, as in the melancholy from that December, from last night, is seeping through even slightly. Barely, as in innocence being absent from every last word.
It’s not a bad thing.
It’s still strange having him back, alive. Makoto can’t be sure if he’s experiencing some kind of necrosis-induced fever dream.
Oh, but it wouldn’t be necrosis. He’s already⸺
“Oh, we’re done! I’ll go get Junpei.”
Ryoji has run away by the time Makoto can consider responding at all. Having watched closely, he doesn’t seem to be breathing or need to watch his stamina like an ordinary human—laws Makoto still finds himself bound by.
Ryoji still isn’t human. He’ll never be human.
He never even had a chance. Even when he supposedly was one, he still doubted his own state of existence.
Cruel.
There are so many things he could say to Ryoji and not enough breath to say them all. So many questions that may not have an answer at all.
Then, when Ryoji runs down the steps with Junpei in tow, Makoto ignores the twist in his gut and loops one headphone over his ear.
Everything is completely normal.
Death is not sitting next to Makoto in this train carriage, with his fingers somehow interlaced with his. Death is not sitting there, having a loud, joyous conversation with his best friend. Death is not hours away from sharing one room with him and said best friend in a dorm.
Makoto doesn’t know the full extent of the chaos when he was detaching himself from everything yesterday, and doesn’t know if there was any uproar when he was oversleeping. For all he knows, the former members of SEES really do find this normal.
But they wouldn’t. It would be absurd and completely out of character for them to. They watched the world almost end at the hands of an avatar bearing the face of the very person (concept?) holding his hand right now. Fuuka was right: this is wrong. Blatantly so.
His hands tremor. He turns up the music in his one headphone loud enough to stop the thoughts, but still enough to hear the laughter from the menial conversation around him, and still enough to shut off just for a while.
When they eventually make it to the university, music is still blasting in his ear. It’s quieter than it was, and he doesn’t quite remember handing the other earphone to Ryoji, though that’s exactly where the object has found itself, even though the roistering, lighthearted conversation is still ongoing next to him.
Something about Chidori. Something about Club Escapade. Something about how hard the entrance exams were.
It is, moreover, abundantly clear just how many strings Mitsuru pulled for them. Makoto feels grateful, genuinely so, if only rather guilty for piling on more work for her. In any case, none of the staff members seem particularly perplexed, and Makoto would wager that the only ones questioning Ryoji’s sudden appearance on file are members of the Kirijo Group who had experienced the Dark Hour.
Once they manage to dump all of their boxes (of which Junpei has by far the majority, though there was never much competition) on the floor and slump on the only non-bunk bed, instead of beginning to unpack, Junpei chooses procrastination.
“Um, I’m gonna, like,” He flails, “check the shower. See if it’s working. Yup! You guys can go get started, I’ll be back before you know it!”
Nobody could really protest, considering he immediately darted for the en suite. Ryoji chuckles lightly in response and Makoto clicks the MP3 off as the last note plays.
“Thanks,” Ryoji says, handing the other headphone back, “It’s… been a while since I last heard music. I missed it.”
The metal is still cold. There’s still no sign of human touch—Makoto doubts that there would be any fingerprints left behind if he checked.
He only hums.
“Well, we should get started, right?” Jumping to a stand from the bed, Ryoji holds out his hand, “Shall we?”
In complete spite of his better judgement, Makoto takes his hand (it’s warm, unlike the imprints he leaves behind) and lets himself be pulled up before speaking, “Mm. We should wait for Junpei to decide who gets which bed.”
“Haha, pragmatic as ever. Well,” The way Ryoji fiddles with the fabric of his scarf isn’t lost on him, “since Junpei’s not here right now, I think we can still pick, right?”
Dear lord, this was exactly what happened at Kyoto, only now with beds instead of futons.
His eyes glitter. Always so bright, but it’s not as uncannily as that December, “I think I’ll take the top bunk. How about you?”
“I don’t care.”
Unlike Ryoji, who seems quite excited at the prospect of getting to sleep at a high elevation, Makoto doesn’t find himself minding. It’s only a temporary place for respite every night.
“Haha, is that so? You can take the bottom bunk then,” It feels almost like this was a preplanned agenda, but Makoto doesn’t see the need in arguing. It’s nice to see him again.
It’s wrong. Everything is wrong.
When Makoto looks down at their still conjoined hands, something immediately shifts.
There’s a Seal, somewhere. A barrier. One that is spending every last ounce of radiant life into separating the End from the Beginning. The vision threatens to twist him inside out—Thanatos is free from his side of that wall, but something else isn’t. Something else has to bear the brunt of that pain.
Someone.
“Makoto?”
Still, he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t want to.
He already knows that Seal well. He doesn’t regret his choice.
Something has killed him, and he doesn’t let go.
“Hey, Makoto?”
He squeezes hard at the anchor in front of him. It is warm, tender, and it is flesh.
“Are you feeling alright?”
Let go.
Something pulls him back, and Makoto reflexively loosens his grip before pulling away, “…Sorry.”
“You’re pretty pale. If you’re not up to unpacking, I can do it.”
Deja vu. All of it. Though, the feeling has subsided, and he feels himself come back into the room with little to resistance. There is no dizziness, no nausea, only the gaze in front of him.
“It’s fine. We should get started.”