Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Why, good morning, beloved! Did you have nice dreams?”

Shuichi locks the front door behind him and sighs up at the deep grey clouds. There’s something unusually hard to read in his expression today, something quiet but troubled. I can understand that much— he’s never been one for stormy weather. He’d want to stay inside instead with those mystery novels he likes so much.

“Hmm, that’s a ‘no,’ then. Well, did you have something for breakfast aside from coffee, at least?”

He shakes open his umbrella and brushes past me as he steps down to the sidewalk, and I scramble off of the banister to keep up, falling into pace beside him. He’s in the middle of the walkway, leaving me only the curb, and his umbrella’s only big enough for one person, but it’s all right. He couldn’t know to step aside for me anyway.

Because I’m not really here.

“I’m guessing that’s also a ‘no.’ Shuichi! Haven’t I told you you’ve got to take better care of yourself?”

The rain pattering against the pavement is my only answer.

Shuichi’s phone buzzes in his jacket pocket and he pauses to check the text from Maki.

Don’t stay too long, she says. Call me if you need to talk.

Okay. Thanks, he replies.

“Oh-hoh? Where are we off to today, Shuichi?”

As if I don’t already know.

We walk in silence toward the quieter part of the city, past the library and the park and that weird antique shop. That somber look in his eyes is still there, the look he wears when he’s thinking too much. I reach out toward his hand, incorporeal fingertips brushing through his.

“Shuichi, what’s on your mind? You can talk to me, you know! …Ugh, yeah, that lie was terrible.”

If only. If I could take his hand, kiss that deep dark sorrow away, let him know everything would be all right….

Shuichi stops again at the nice old lady’s flower shop— she recognizes him by now, calls him sweetheart, and it makes him blush and makes me laugh because that’s as close as he gets to a smile these days and I miss it. They talk about the weather and the lady’s nephew for a bit, and Shuichi finally chooses a small bouquet of purple carnations before continuing on down the road.

“Aww, you remembered! How sweet of you, my beloved!”

My smile is as wide as I can make it and completely fake, but I’ll hold onto this lie as long as I can bear to.

It’s June twenty-first. I’d be turning eighteen if I was alive.

It’s also a Sunday, and Shuichi goes to the graveyard every Sunday. There’s nothing special about today.

I bend down to give the flower lady’s cat a scratch behind the ears even if it can’t feel it, because it sometimes looks at me like it knows I’m there, then I follow Shuichi around the corner.

“Are you okay? You look really tired.”

 Inside the cemetery, Shuichi closes his umbrella— it’s hardly sprinkling now— and stows it in his jacket, examining the flowers as he walks toward the Danganronpa 53 memorial.

It still makes me shiver when I approach it— the white slab of marble with the crest of the Ultimate Academy emblazoned on its surface in brilliant crimson. Thirteen headstones form a circle around the rock, adorned only with our names and dates of death. A stark physical reminder that Danganronpa’s victims were just as physical, that they bled just the same as anyone else buried here.

“Suitably grim,” Kiyo had called it the last time we’d spoken, just before he’d turned his back on it and Left for good.

I run my fingers along the OUMA KOKICHI stone. Can’t really touch it, but I can tell it’s cold.

“Hey, Shuichi, why do you think they gave me one of these? Graves only make sense if you’ve got a body to bury. There wasn’t anything left of me, so….”

Not funny. Shuichi would probably have gotten upset if he’d heard me. He never liked dark humor.

I bite my lip as he moves on to Tenko’s headstone, murmuring a few words— probably about Himiko.

“She’d probably beat you up for standing on her grave, you know….”

Not funny. Every day it gets harder and harder to imagine him laughing at something I’ve said.

I miss his laugh so much.

“Did you know Angie believed that if you pour milk over someone’s grave under a full moon, they’ll come back to life? Aha, that’s just a lie, though.”

Not funny.

“Shuichi?”

No response. Shuichi moves to Angie’s grave, pulls up a few overgrown blades of grass there.

“Shuichi, please say something.”

The words come out in a sob as a wave of desperation breaks over me all at once, sudden and sharp as a punch in the gut. The force of it doubles me over until I slump down against my headstone. Distantly, I’m surprised by it. I haven’t cried since the night I died— never thought I needed to, let alone deserved to. Maybe I’ll blame the weather, then, for this sudden bout of weakness. Or the fact that it’s today, of all days, and it hurts so much to imagine whose grave those flowers are for.

“You’ve reconciled with everyone else, Shuichi, can’t you please just talk to me one more time? All I want is to say goodbye.”

It doesn’t matter how much I cry, scream, beg. He can’t hear me, not even in his dreams. I know that— I’ve known since I woke back up in that place, dragged my essence through the slab of solid metal and ended up on the floor in a pool of my own gore, watched the others burst into the hangar and look past me like I wasn’t there. Kiibo and Himiko, slack-jawed and disbelieving; Maki, teeth clenched and seething with fury; Tsumugi, hiding a sick grin behind her hand— really should have kept a closer eye on her— and Shuichi. Shuichi, who I’d rushed for unthinkingly, pleading— save me, I’m so scared— who I’d phased right through. Shuichi, pressing a shaking hand to the side of the machine.

Not you, he’d whispered, eyes on the jacket sleeve hanging out of it. I can’t lose you, too.

Everyone else has already Left, one by one. Everyone else has accepted this. I should, too— they all said as much at one time or another, before moving on to whatever waited After. I know I should follow them— every day it gets harder to hold on— but I just want… I just want.

“Did you forget about me, Shuichi?”

Shuichi steps up to Miu’s grave, and gives no answer.

“Please, Shuichi. I’m so tired.”

I must look so pathetic. A dead boy on his knees and sobbing against his headstone, wishing everything was different, wishing I could just Leave and stop mourning for a future I never had.

It’s just not fair. I was just a kid. I never got to be free from that awful place. I never told the boy I loved how I felt.

“Is this hell, then, Shuichi?”

I can’t say I don’t deserve it. Not after everything I’ve done. But I’d thought fate would be kind enough for me to see him smile again. I just want him to be happy.

...A dead boy can’t make him happy.

So it’s better this way, isn’t it?

“I won’t ever be anything more to you than a bad memory, will I?”

Shuichi would probably disagree, if he heard me. He’s… kind, like that. Practically incapable of hatred, even for someone like me who’d hurt him like I did.

But the killing game, and everyone in it… it weighs on him, ties him down. He deserves to move on and forget about it. About me. And I don’t think even he could disagree.

“I could never forget you, though. Not in a million lifetimes.”

This is it, isn’t it?

No. It’s been ‘it’ for me for a while now. Ever since I died… but really, wasn’t I dead the moment I woke up in that locker? The moment I joined the hundreds of kids sacrificed to that game?

But the game’s over now.

And even though I lost, even though everything precious to me was taken away, maybe… that means he’ll be okay. He’ll be okay without me.

I’m tired. I’m… really tired.

I think…. I think I want to sleep, now.

I use my gravestone to pull myself to my feet, taking a deep breath and drying my eyes on my sleeve. Maybe I’ll get to meet him again, sometime in the After, or in another life, another time. Maybe that’s a lie, but it’s another one I can allow myself to hold onto, just for a while.

“Goodbye, Shuichi.”

I can feel myself start to slip as I walk away, the world fading behind me— no, I’m the one fading. It’s softer than death was. More like falling asleep.

I’ll… be okay. We’ll both be okay.

I pause just before the After takes me, allowing myself one final glance over my shoulder. Remembering the soft hands bandaging the cut on my finger, the way he said my name, the sound of his laugh… everything.

“I love you.”

And I Leave.

Shuichi kneels in front of the lonely headstone, tracing his fingers over the kanji carved into it. “Hey,” he murmurs. “I’m… sorry it took me so long to visit. I guess… I didn’t feel ready to say goodbye.”

He lays the bouquet of flowers atop the grave.

“Happy birthday, Kokichi.”