Chapter Text
Maki misses the rain.
It’s a silly thing to miss, especially when there are far greater things to be worried about, but it is disconcerting how unnatural the walls of the Ultimate Academy are. She misses being unable to guess the weather, being surprised when gray clouds float over the sun, being able to look up at the night sky and see the same old constellations, time and time again.
She misses running out onto the grass after a downpour and peering up through the trees and watching the warm sun filter through the storm clouds, misses the calming smell of petrichor and wet dirt and soft, ephemeral peace.
Here, the sun sets at exactly the same time. The stars are foreign, like faces she thought she recognized but turned out to be strangers.
And it never rains, either.
Instead, it is always sunny, day after day after day. And if she glances through the windows at a specific time during the day, she swears she can tell when one sequence of clouds ends and another begins, an infinite loop that only makes her more uneasy the more she thinks about it.
Once, when she left the academy after the nighttime announcement, she looked up and thought the stars flickered for a split second. But perhaps that was only a figment of her imagination.
She misses the bad things, too.
Like how the rain would make her hair go all frizzy, which made it harder than usual to part her hair into twin tails. Or how her socks and shoes would always get muddy and grass-stained after walking through damp fields.
She remembers the countless nights where she would lie awake after a mission, unable to cry any longer, with just enough energy to listen to the rain falling gently on the roof. She remembers thinking the earth was crying for her because she was out of tears. Like it was crying because she was a monster, one with pointed fangs and poisoned claws, one who didn’t deserve to have nice things like sunsets and cloudy days and petrichor.
Maybe the academy is the kind of hell she deserves, one that is constant and eerie and unsettling. She doesn’t think most of the others notice. Shuichi is always looking at the ground, mumbling to himself about something or other. And while Kaito’s head may be up in the stars, he doesn’t truly see them. Not the way she does.
She’s outside one night, waiting for Kaito and Shuichi to show up at the gazebo, staring up at the sky as if that alone will decipher every mystery this place holds.
A shadow travels over her, transient and quick and unmistakable.
She doesn’t greet him, and he doesn’t, either.
Gonta’s voice is low. “You also see them?”
“See what?”
“The stars.” He pauses, stepping back to give her space, and in that vast void of dirt and stone between them Maki wonders if he, too, is afraid of her.
“Sorry,” he says. “Gonta only thought…”
It’s only then she remembers — the thing he said after the second trial. When her head was still reeling and all she saw was red as Kokichi spilled the very secret she had been trying to keep locked up and chained.
“I remember,” Maki says, so softly that her words blend into the surrounding darkness, like miniscule shadows settling into the emptiness. “You said they were different to the ones you knew.”
His eyes glimmer with surprise. “Yes, Gonta did say that before.”
“How different?”
He furrows his brow. “Gonta think… their positions are different.”
“The constellations,” Maki says, and he nods, his glasses gleaming like knives in the too-bright moonlight.
She tugs at one of her ponytails, an idle habit she had never been able to give up. In the silence between them, she wishes there were natural sounds to fill the silence, something that she can focus on to take her away from the stifling idea of captivity. But in place of crickets, there is only the clunk and whirr of the remaining Monokubs in their Exisals. A constant reminder that there is no escape.
“What do you think it means?” Maki asks.
Gonta pauses, but shakes his head. “Gonta not sure. Gonta always thought we were brought somewhere different.”
“Maybe,” Maki says, and she thinks about the looping clouds again.
He blinks. “Maki is… suspicious?”
“Something like that.” Not that she knows exactly what this all means. It’s only one more detail to add to their growing corpse pile of misery.
“Hm.”
Maki’s gaze darts in the direction of the dormitory, but Kaito and Shuichi are yet to appear. She tosses her ponytail over her shoulder and leans back against one of the gazebo pillars, bare wrists grazing rough brick. When she glances back at Gonta, he is still looking at her, waiting.
“Hey,” Maki says, because it’s Gonta, and surely Gonta of all people will not judge her for saying strange things every once in a while. “What do you miss most?”
“Miss?”
“About the outside world,” she clarifies.
Gonta frowns, lips pressed together in thought. “Family.”
Ah.
It isn’t something she can relate to entirely, but she thinks about the children she left behind in that crowded orphanage, thinks about sticky hands and bubbling laughter, and maybe it isn’t the same thing, but maybe she understands. Kind of.
“Gonta also misses forest friends.”
“Yeah?” Maki says.
“Yeah.”
It’s funny. She had thought that he’d be telling her about bugs or trees or the forest he grew up in, but of course he would be thinking about the people closest to him.
Of course anyone would.
Gonta turns to face her. “How about you?”
“Me?” Maki says. Warm blood splatter and sharp, cut-short screams flash through her mind like arrows, and she shuts her eyes, as if by doing so she’ll be able to shut off the memories. She presses the backs of her hands against the pillar, letting the cool grooves between the bricks drag her back into the present. “I don’t know.”
She doesn’t tell him about the rain. If she allows the letters to fall off her tongue, along with everything they’re connected to, she’ll never be able to take them back.
“Must be someone in outside world you miss,” Gonta says. “But it okay if you not want to say.”
Someone, Maki notes grimly. Not something.
Two oh-so-similar words that are worlds apart.
She keeps her mouth shut, tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth, waiting for the quiet around them to spread far enough so she doesn’t have to answer, to let even a single syllable betray imprisoned fragility.
She waits, and it isn’t too difficult because she’s used to it. She still remembers cramped muscles and aching joints from staying in one position for hours, waiting for her target to pass so she can strike at the right moment.
“Okay,” Gonta finally says, and the single word is like a dam breaking. “Gonta understand.”
Maki blinks up at him, feeling her chest relax as she remembers to breathe. She flexes her fingers, finding her hair again as she searches for something to nervously thread them through.
“It late, so Gonta go to bed now.” He smiles at her, the corners of his mouth lifting like she’s never done anything wrong in her life. “Gonta wish Maki good night.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Thanks.”
She watches him go, his back shrinking as he heads for the dormitory. A moment after he slips through the entrance, Shuichi appears. His gaze locks onto her, his face softening as he breaks into a small smile.
Maki rolls her neck, a little movement to help her reset for a different conversation. Shuichi may not be much of a talker, but she can’t say the same for Kaito.
It’s possible that by coming here to train, she’s adding to the loop, repeating the cycle again and again as they perpetuate the unnatural situation they’ve been put into.
But not all routines are terrible.
When she’s with Kaito and Shuichi, pushing to get all her exercises in before they can even get halfway through, the storm clouds in her head clear for longer than she’s used to.
Maki thinks about Gonta and his quiet, resilient kindness, and how he had not broken through the boundaries she had not allowed him to pass.
Exhaling softly, Maki reaches up to tighten her ponytails.
Under these foreign skies, she is grateful for moments to forget, to pretend that she is something close to normal. Moments where she can almost believe she is only a girl with dirt-stained hands and mud-soaked shoes, turning her face to the sun as it reappears after the rain.