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People die.
That was the reality of the world they lived in. The changing seasons a ticking clock, pressing ever onward, as the young became old and the old returned to the Earth. An unending cycle marching to an unavoidable end. With persistence playing its foil, humanity had forged their own means to live: remain wholly true to one’s fate. So that when Death came to collect their dues, they would look into its eyes and laugh. Laugh against the dying of the light.
There was beauty in this persistence.
This beauty—this world—it was not something he was meant to see with his own two eyes. It was a beauty not fit for his beating heart to carve memories of, weeping when its strings were pulled taut. This was not his world to play a part in any longer.
Yet here Ryoji Mochizuki sat, amidst the passersby of Paulownia Mall, as the last rays of the clear September day raged against the rising of the moon.
Whether the persistence of his life was at the hands of Fate playing him like a fool once more or a part of Makoto’s final wish… He couldn’t say. Six months wasn’t enough time for him to have found the answer. Though, he doubted he ever would, truthfully.
Ryoji’s thumb idly fiddled with the blue cardboard sleeve of the cup he held, his untouched coffee threatening to spill out from the plastic lid. He still hadn’t been able to enter Chagall Café. The memories that were waiting to flood him beyond those doors were always too painful to consider, let alone welcome into his grief. Instead, he’d opted for a cheaper drink with less personality elsewhere. It wasn’t as though he was going to drink it, anyway. The burning in his hands was all he’d sought for.
There’d been a lot of people out today, but Ryoji wouldn’t have been able to recite anything that may have occurred. Most of it had been drowned out by the steady thrumming of water cycling against the backside of the bench. Whatever hadn’t was chewed up by the static in his brain. Perhaps there were a handful of girls and guys that had approached him—overtly eager and plastic or red faced and nervous. He may have even tried to put on a smile for them or let empty words fill the silence. But their attempts were only added coins to the bottom of the fountain in his own brain. Wishful thinking, pointless pursuits. None of them were the one he’d spend the rest of his life searching for. Ever since the world welcomed him anew, Ryoji had known he’d never find him again.
And despite his absence, there was so much blue everywhere he went. The skies themselves had hardly seen a cloud, as if He’d parted the clouds so the warmth of the sun would tingle his skin. The sea waters were always clear and clean, as if He’d cleansed them with his own touch each night before dawn. The backwards baseball cap currently approaching him through the crowd, as if He’d sent him to meet with the ex-appriser, knowing he’d been actively avoiding the remaining members of the now defunct club.
Even beyond his own death, Makoto Yuki was as stubborn as ever.
“Mochizuki.”
It wasn’t a greeting; rather, a statement of the obvious, edged with exhaustion creeping into the anxieties that lay present in tone alone. Pulled back to the surface as though breaking for air, Ryoji’s eyes met with someone he’d long since lost the privilege to call a friend.
Junpei Iori, now a senior at Gekkoukan High School.
He’d changed in many ways since Ryoji had last seen him. His eyes looked aged beyond his mere seventeen years, yet the bags below them were gone. His hair had grown out quite a bit, too—tufts of wild hair fighting against the constraints of his signature cap as they peeked from under the edges. Familiar hues of bright blues now mingled with his typical navy attire, a reminder of someone that once was.
One thing remained unchanged, though. That same determined posture as the night of The Fall, as he looked up at Death through blinding fear and reached to catch the sun in his hands, screaming for a miracle he couldn’t fathom would come in the fashion that it did.
Iori had been persistent.
People continued.
No further words of pleasantries or greetings were exchanged. Instead, Ryoji’s body slid to one side of the bench, offering the now opened space to his company. There was a brief beat of hesitation before Junpei joined him, filling the empty space with his buzzing energy. Ryoji’s body wanted to relax at the familiarity of his presence, but his heart had long since built a wall around itself to avoid hurting those most precious to him. He couldn’t do that to them. Not again.
A wall so tall that nobody…
… can overcome it very easily?
Ryoji swears he can hear Makoto’s laugh at that. Not condescending or teasing but a sweet, twinkling laugh—laced with an understanding kindness he’d reserved for only those who dared scale high enough to peer over the edge of the walls around his heart.
There’s a crack, pop, and fizzling sound to his left and Ryoji is vaguely aware of Junpei cracking open a can of pop. He doesn’t immediately drink from it, though, eyes aimed ahead and distant. The ex-appriser tries to follow his line of sight, but they were both too busy reliving past memories.
“Y’know, I didn’t believe it at first,” Junpei starts slowly, as though the words he’d let out were nothing more than cotton in his mouth. He was never one for heavier topics and his awkward grasping at words reminded him of a simpler time. “When Aigis said she could no longer detect you as a shadow.”
A group of friends were leaving the karaoke bar behind them, laughing loudly as they poked fun at one another for being unable to carry a note or for picking an embarrassing song. Ryoji watched them as they rounded past their bench, a silent observer to their playful bickering as it dissolved into child-like wonder at the enticing display of the claw machine. The newest Jack Frost plush; its blue hat patterned for the upcoming season. It was enough to pull them into the arcade, their cheerful light being enveloped in the darkness once again.
"I mean, it's crazy, right?" Junpei continued, as if the ex-appriser had offered an answer to him, "You go from being..." There was a pregnant pause, as the senior grasped for the words Ryoji knew wouldn't leave his mouth. "... to going back to normal. It felt like a trap or like it was too good to be true."
And perhaps it was. A cruel fate destined to a cruel reminder—to walk the face of the Earth his very existence had signified an end to once upon a time. To live a selfish life, free to grasp at dreams and desires that felt too bitter on his tongue. The same dreams and desires he'd nearly robbed everyone of.
"But… We all faced hardships. And… Not just back then, either.” A calm look settles over Junpei’s face at that; as though he were untouchable in his own inner peace. But as quickly as it came, it left once more. “That’s why when Fuuka texted us that you were here, I knew I had to finally reconcile with some... Pretty tough stuff all over again. That I couldn’t just run and hide like I’d tried to before," Junpei admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. For the first time in their one sided interaction, Ryoji turns to look at the other. His eyes remained trained ahead of them, but were focused with sharp resolve now. One that painfully rips across the ex-appriser's heart in a twisted form of pride.
"I… tried to get myself killed back then because of all… that, y'know?" The heaviness of his statement lingers in the air and Junpei forces himself to take a sip from his soda, "I figured—'hey, it'll be much better than following after dad, right? If I taunted some guys, pushed some buttons—enough for them to snap. Get them to do what I was too weak to do myself.' For the first time in my life, I understood his reason for drinking. ‘A way to forget,’ huh…"
Ryoji tears his eyes away. Maybe his heart was the one who'd grown selfish, writhing beneath the cages of his ribs like a wounded animal, struggling to accept something so unfathomably painful. He bites his lip, fingering the blue cup sleeve, now useless as the heat from his coffee had long since left him to feel cold and numb.
People learned.
"Hey, are you listening? I know I'm not the best at this kinda stuff, but–"
"I'm sorry."
Ryoji's voice feels heavy and incomplete as the words lodge themselves against the walls of his throat. Incomplete explanations and apologies clung pathetically to the problem like a cheap bandage. What more could he say that expressed itself genuinely enough? Was there anything he could say to the face of someone he'd almost killed? Of someone he'd taken so much from?
"I, uh, didn't come expecting an apology," Junpei shifts, uncomfortable with the results his own actions had brought on. "Not that I'm ready to accept one from you. To be honest, I... don't really know if I ever will be."
The sharp, blunt edge of Junpei's words are what get the ex-appriser to look back up and study the other, who now distracted himself with a sip of his bubbling pop. Junpei Iori, always honest to a fault. He could see the conflict storming behind those gray eyes of his as caution battled hope, endlessly tearing away at one another.
A laugh bubbles up out of Ryoji.
"... Of course. I don't expect forgiveness. To be honest, I don't think I'd ever accept it from any one of you. That is not something I deserve," Ryoji's voice cracks through thick, wet laughter. Yet this was not sadness he felt welling in his eyes and lodging into the wounds of his heart. It was a surge of relief, "Even if it was not directly my actions, I take full responsibility for the things I put you all through. That is not something I'd like to be forgiven for."
Junpei turns and the two lock eyes. The world continues to bustle about them, as though measuring the truth behind their statements.
An old couple leaves the pharmacy together. The wife is fretting over her husband's insistence on holding the door open for her despite his old age. He challenges her about her own age. There's laughter and a promise of visiting a Persimmon tree before they shuffle away together, arms linked.
It's Junpei who eventually tears his eyes away, nodding solemnly. He peers up at the night sky through the skylights of the mall, deep in thought now. Ryoji's eyes find themselves casting upwards as well, observing the dimly twinkling lights against the expanse of midnight blue overhead.
He finds his thoughts wandering back to Makoto—wondering if he was one of the stars observing their conversation. Which one would he be? Was he watching over them with that silent, knowing look? Would he be proud of the people they'd chosen to become in the wake of his sacrifice?
"So... What now?" Ryoji asks up to the stars, as though they had the means to answer.
There's movement to his left that catches his attention. Junpei is holding something out to him—its metallic surface reflecting the light. Looking down, Ryoji takes in the familiar sight of a wired silver headphone being offered to him. He looks up at the other, who merely urges him to take it with a small nod, the other headphone already secured onto his own ear. Gingerly, the ex-appriser attaches the piece to his ear and, for a moment, he's taken back to a familiar rooftop with blue eyes that had bore into his very being.
And as the music began to flood his senses, Ryoji knew.
People heal.