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Would you rather die a quick but painful or slow but painless death?
His whole life, Arisu has leaned towards the former. He just wants to get it over with. After all, what does the pain matter if it's done in a split second? He won’t have to worry about it after that.
That probably would have been his choice even during his stay in the Borderlands—especially during his stay, if anything. He’s both heard stories and seen first-hand the sick “punishments” for losing some of the games, knows that he’s lucky (can it be considered that?) to have made it this far and without some of the severe—not debilitating, because debilitating injuries don’t last long in this world and are only seen on bodies that can no longer tell how they gained them—injuries that he’s seen.
After he intertwines his fingers with Usagi’s, and they say together that they want to leave (and never, never return), they sit together and look up at the stars, and they say nothing. The look he sees in her eyes, which he presumes is reflected in his own, is one of fear and longing. Before, he would’ve said that those two emotions are too wildly different to be present at the same time within the same person, but now he knows that they are all too similar, and he understands. Neither of them knows what is going to meet them on the other side of… whatever this is. Neither of them knows what answers they’re going to receive, assuming that Mira told them the truth in the first place. He doesn’t know how long the two of them sit there together, waiting for the other remaining survivors to make their decisions. This is the slow death, he realizes, that he’s sworn off. It’s blessedly painless but still achingly slow.
And yet.
He finds that if he gets to spend his last moments with Usagi, holding her hand in his and feeling her warmth against his palm, doing nothing except basking in each other’s presence, he would be fine with a death that lasts an eternity. If he could get a death like this, he would stretch it out as long as he could. He would be content with that.
She leans her head against his shoulder, and he gets the feeling that she agrees.
It’s not a laser that does it, not the way that he had assumed he would inevitably die the very first time he saw it. No, it ends up being a fade into darkness, like the death screens in all of the video games he used to play. It’s… peaceful. Ironically peaceful, considering the horrors that the games had put them all through. But he doesn’t complain. He figures that they’re owed this much.
He slumps his cheek onto the top of her head, letting himself truly rest for the first time in a very, very long time.
His eyelids slip shut.
His eyelids snap open.
It doesn’t register right away where he is. All he knows is that he’s not in the garden anymore and that Usagi is gone.
The lights are all too bright and all too loud—it’s been a while since he’s heard the constant buzz of electricity in a place that’s not designed to lead him to his death. For a moment he panics, thinks that maybe (and wouldn’t that be in-character) Mira had lied to them and had them transported to another game and separated. That the big truth had all along been that the games continued on forever. That they would never get back to the real their world. (The Borderlands are real. They have to be. Because if they’re not, if none of it was, then how much of his original world was? It felt so real. As real as his whole life. They have to be real). But then there are two hands on his cheeks and two more on his waist, guiding him down the wall to sit on the cold, disgusting, germ-filled tile floor of a public restroom.
“Arisu, Arisu, it’s okay, we’re out now, it’s over, Arisu, Arisu,” the first voice chants his name, a voice that he hasn’t heard except in his dreams (nightmares) in months. Chota.
His hand grips onto one of Chota’s wrists like a lifeline. His friend yelps at the pressure but can’t complain because another person (Karube, oh thank god it’s him, thank god they’re both here) slaps him on the shoulder and scolds, “Shush, Chota, now’s not the time!”
He forces himself to slow his breathing enough to respond, voice croaky and raw from the screams he didn’t even realize he was letting out. “It’s over?” he whispers cautiously, not daring to believe—
“Yeah,” Karube replies, “it’s over. We got out.” His voice is shaky with relief, and only when Arisu looks up at them, really takes in the sight for the first time, does he see that both his and Chota’s faces are wet with tear tracks, droplets hanging on desperately at the chin and then finally dropping off onto the ground below when they can fight no longer.
He leaps forward into their arms and knocks them straight onto their asses, with two simultaneous “oof”s being the only reaction he receives from them. Both of them are shaking just as much as he is, though they take the time to wrap their arms around him and each other as well.
“I thought I would never see you guys again,” he cries, a new surge of emotion washing over him. It’s a miracle either of them is able to understand him, his words practically unintelligible through his sobs. “It’s been so long. I thought—I thought I lost you guys. It’s been so, so long.”
His friends pause for a second and share a confused look, not that he can see from where his face is buried in between their torsos. Karube’s hands come up to grip the sides of his face this time, pulling his head out from its hiding spot to look him in the eyes. Karube’s eyes are red-rimmed and watery, but he still manages to pull himself together enough to sniffle and say, “Arisu, what do you mean, ‘it’s been so long’? We only saw each a few minutes ago in the garden, remember?”
“No!” he manages to choke out, squeezing his eyes shut. “No, it's been months! I didn’t d—die with you guys. I lived for—for months!”
“You were alone?” Chota gasps. “In that… place?”
“The Borderlands,” Arisu corrects tiredly, any and all adrenaline that had fueled him leaving his body at once. “They’re called the Borderlands. And I wasn’t alone. I had—I had Usagi.”
He can hear them mumbling to each other (“What… who… Usagi?…”) before they finally look at him again. “Arisu,” Karube says seriously, voice strong, “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
And together they wander out of the restroom and back into the streets of Tokyo. Arisu had forgotten that, at one point in time, Tokyo had been loud, bursting with noise and movement and life—the opposite of the desolate, overgrown, hopeless wasteland that he had become accustomed to over the past months. He wonders what his life’s come to, for the sound of cars whizzing by and people shouting in the streets (notably not pained ones, but rather ones of amiability) to be more disturbing and foreign to his ears than that of gunfire.
It takes them a while, and when a car honks at them in the street after they take a second too long crossing it’s enough to just about send them all into a panic attack, but they eventually make it to a little café that Arisu remembers frequenting with his mother when he was younger. And they sit, order real, good quality coffee, and talk. Arisu tells them all that he can about what happened after they—died (for some reason they’re both more willing to call it that than he is, even if he knows it’s true) and how he got back here. About Usagi, he says nothing more than that she’s the girl who was with them during his and Karube’s second game that was climbing around a lot, and that the two of them had teamed up. He doesn’t—can’t tell them anything else, wants to keep that to himself for as long as he can. He thinks that after being watched in death matches for months, he deserves this small bit of privacy. But, judging by the looks he receives, they get it well enough.
Things go back to normal. Well, as normal as they can be.
None of them ever talk about it with anyone besides each other, and as there’s no news of increasing rates of police reports from “crazy” people, they assume that anyone else who got out is in the same boat. After all, what would be the use? What would telling anyone achieve aside from convincing everyone that they’re delusional?
Neither Arisu’s father nor brother notices anything different about him, not even the several times they see him sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night after waking up in a cold sweat. He supposes that’s about what he should’ve expected, though that doesn’t stop the sting of it. After a while more of getting in fights because he can’t get a job, he begins sleeping on Chota’s pull-out couch more nights than not. He quickly gets used to pretending not to hear when his friend gets into arguments with his mother over the phone in the very public kitchen, but he can tell that it’s weighing on Chota’s mind even more since their return.
“Y’know, I think I’m gonna cut it off with my mom once and for all,” Chota says one night. The two of them—Karube had been invited, but couldn’t make it because he was still trying to make things work with the girl from the bar—are sitting on the couch that’s still fashioned as Arisu’s bed. Empty cans of beer sit on the floor, but somehow Arisu can tell that it’s not just the alcohol talking.
“Yeah?” he asks, only half out of common courtesy.
“Yeah,” Chota confirms. “Did you know that she called again today and asked for more?” He pauses to take a swig from his drink but continues without giving Arisu time to answer. He laughs bitterly. “I was hoping—not expecting, but hoping—that we would be able to get past it. But then she called today and asked for even more fucking money. And I thought about being in the Borderlands, and I thought of being genuinely scared for my life for the first time, and I realized that I don’t need this. Anything can happen at any moment—why should I stick with someone who is clearly only interested in using me when I could spend that time and energy on someone who actually cares?”
Arisu leans against the back of the couch. His head hurts. “Good for you,” he mumbles.
“Good for me,” Chota echoes.
Both of them fall asleep on the couch that night.
It finally happens a week later. They’re at the new bar that Karube had somehow managed to get hired at, waiting out the rest of his shift, when a call comes through on Chota’s phone. Arisu can’t make out the caller ID from his spot, but the way Chota’s face hardens says well enough who the contact is.
“Excuse me for a minute,” he says to them, already walking away and into the bathroom.
When he returns, the skin of his knuckles is broken and there’s a slightly crazed look in his eyes.
“What happened to you?’ Karube asks, taking in the sight.
“I told her,” Chota says to Arisu, and then clarifies to Karube, “I told my mom that I’m not going to talk to her anymore as long as she keeps asking for money.” He runs a hand through his hair and winces at the feeling against the wounds. “I may have punched a wall just a little bit.”
The two of them grin at him, and Karube claps his back. “It’s about time,” he says, and then grabs three glasses and a bottle from the shelf behind him. “I’ll drink to that.”
They put their glasses together to toast. “To new beginnings,” Karube says.
“And to all of the endings that get us there,” Chota finishes, smiling proudly.
Arisu thinks that maybe he should keep that in mind.
It takes him almost two months to gather up the courage to search for Usagi.
He starts by looking up her name, which leads him to mostly articles about her father. There aren't a lot of new stories that aren’t about his disappearance. Arisu chooses to take this as a good sign; no news is good news, after all.
In the end, she finds him before he can find her.
They’re all out at the same café. It’s become one of their meeting spots that they cycle through, and Arisu can honestly say that it feels more like a home than his house with his father and brother ever did. They frequent the place so often that most of the employees know their names without having to be told anymore.
One of them comes up to their table in the window with their drinks on a platter. She sets them down and pauses for a moment, seemingly thinking about whether she should say what she says next.
“You know, Arisu,” she begins, “a few days ago this girl came in looking for you. Asked for you by name and everything, said that you had told her once you used to come here a lot when you were a kid.”
It doesn’t take even a second for Arisu to realize who she’s talking about. Hope rises up within him like a wave colliding with the rocks, violent and all-consuming. “Did she mention her name?” he asks, mouth dry. Karube and Chota are looking at him carefully.
“She didn’t,” the employee says. The bell above the door rings, and her eyes go up to meet it. She smiles. “But it looks like she just walked in.”
He turns around, heart pounding like he’d just run a marathon, and scans the room.
They lock gazes.
Usagi looks like a deer in the headlights, eyes wide and mouth half-hanging open, but he’s sure that he’s not doing much different. He leaps up from his chair, uncaring about the fact that they are surrounded by a bunch of people in a public café, and runs forward, wrapping his arms around her waist. He would be tempted to pick her up if he didn’t know that doing so would almost certainly earn him a kick to the shin—and not a gentle one, either. As it is, though, she returns the hug, arms coming up to lock around the back of his neck, face burying itself in the crook. In turn, he tucks his nose into the top of her head and breathes in deeply.
“I found you,” she whispers finally, once they’ve pulled away to press their foreheads together.
“You did,” he confirms. “And I’m so glad for it.”
She hits him on the shoulder, laughing wetly when he jerks away with an “ouch!”
“That’s what you get for hiding so well.”
“I wasn’t hiding,” he protests, though the way he’s smiling as he says it takes away any weight. “I just don’t have any reason people would want to find me.”
“You do now.”
Karube clears his throat, drawing their attention back to the people watching their entire exchange. Despite the air of confusion surrounding him, he’s smirking, which lets Arisu know that there’s no way that he’s ever going to hear the end of this.
Arisu grabs Usagi by the hand, linking their fingers together, and after glancing at her to confirm that she’s fine with it, he leads her to sit down at the table. There are still other patrons watching them, until Karube turns and barks, “Nothing to see here.”
“Usagi,” he begins, “this is Karube and Chota, my best friends.”
She nods. He can see her scanning them, taking in their presence and analyzing it based on what he’s already told her about them. The movement of her eyes is so minuscule that he doubts anyone else can tell.
“Guys, this is Usagi, my—we worked together in the games after, well…”
“We died,” Chota offers. Arisu swallows and nods. Even after this long, it’s still a hard thought to stomach.
“I’m glad you two were there for each other,” Karube says after a moment. He turns to Usagi. “Thank you for helping him out. God knows he’s not really the survivalist type.”
She smiles briefly at that, which Arisu chooses to count as a win. He doesn’t know what he’d do if his three favorite people didn’t get along.
She comes over the next day while Chota is out.
“I went to the hospital after I got back,” she says. They’re sprawled out together on the carpeted floor, staring up at the spinning ceiling fan. “Guess who I saw.”
He glances at her. “Who?”
“No, you have to guess.”
He chuckles. “God, you’re such a dork.”
She sits herself up on her elbows and turns to look at him, eyebrow raised. “You’re one to talk.”
“You wanna go?”
“Oh, please, we both know who’s winning that fight,” she scoffs.
“Me, obviously.”
The air (and facade of bravado) is knocked out of his gut when she jumps on top of him. They roll around for a while, trying to pin each other. Eventually she ends up on top, pinning his arms to the floor with her legs. They’re both laughing when he says breathlessly, “Damn your mountain climber legs!”
This time she decides to punch him in the shoulder (which she seems to be doing a lot lately). “You’re even dorkier than me.” She rolls off the top of him and settles at his side. “No, but seriously, guess.”
He closes his eyes, thinking. “I don’t know, Usagi. Can’t you just tell me?”
“Ugh, fine,” she says. “I saw Chishiya. Did you know that he’s a doctor?”
“Really?”
“Really.” She nods seriously.
“Oh, wow. He always seemed too ‘strong and silent type’ to have a job where he’s around people all day.”
“That’s what I said!” He laughs at how self-satisfied she sounds. “Anyways, I have his phone number now, and I was thinking that maybe we should try to get together with him sometime. Plus, who knows, maybe Kuina or Ann have found him by now.”
They quiet down after that, just basking in the fact that they’re with each other. And, as long as they can help it, they’ll never have to be apart again. She adjusts so that her ear rests just above his heartbeat, and he leans down to rest his cheek on the crown of her head.
If this is the beginning of the end, Arisu thinks, I’ll gladly march towards death. But I’ll take my time.
I want this to last as long as possible.