Chapter Text
Kaede, Miu, and Kokichi go out to the mountains together.
Some people would call it an odd combination, but, y'know-
(You sign up for a killing game with a bunch of strangers to fix a life you can no longer stand, you die after weeks of fear and confusion, and then you wake up and and a smiling HR team gives you more money than God and a ticket for free counseling and now sometimes you stare out the window for hours on end without seeing it.)
Stuff happens.
Miu drives because Kokichi is, quote, "you know", and Kaede never got her driver's license. Miu's a surprisingly good driver, even though she spends the whole drive leaning against the wheel and muttering to herself. Kokichi thinks her road-rage is hilarious, but only because it doesn't make him flinch anymore. Kaede doesn't really care.
Even though they're all rich now, Miu still drives a hot pink jeep with a cheetah-print wheel cosy and fuzzy dice that she treats like her baby.
(Kaede remembers meeting her for the first time and all she would talk about was dumping her 'trashy ride' and getting a ferrari after the game. You could practically see the dollar signs flashing in her eyes every time the staff talked about money.)
Kokichi is on the whole ride, but at least he's happy. He talks on and on, and blasts trashy pop music "because shotgun gets to DJ, Kaede, geez, have you never been on a road trip before", and eats all the snacks, and when he gets bored he bickers with Miu until she's well and truly pissed but she keeps smiling when she thinks nobody's looking.
Kaede's looking.
They're playing a game, like dogs jumping up and down and barking at each other. Kaede's never tried that, getting catharsis from yelling about stupid things with your friends. It seems contradictory, or at least tiring . It looks fun! She figures she'll get roped into it at some point in the trip, besides. Miu and Kokichi fight like it's their job.
She spends the ride talking in short snippets, or leaning against the windowsill in thought. There's a lot to think about, and most of it sucks. That's not true. Angie's going to art school now, isn't that cool? Most of the time, she's just watching, like someone else peering into the car from the outside. She tries to take a nap but ends up just sitting very still with her eyes closed for a while, listening to the others talk. Miu keeps remembering she's "asleep" and telling Kokichi to shut up before forgetting again. It's sweet.
-
They get to the cabin just as the sun is setting. Miu sighs in relief as she leaves the car, rolling her neck with an audible crack.
"God, mountain roads are such a fucking pain," Miu says.
"Which one of us is paying for this, again?" Kokichi asks in a bored voice, squinting at the cabin. He'd managed to tire himself out during the ride, and stayed in the car while they were getting the house key.
"I am," Kaede says.
"Oh fuck, Kaede's here!" he cries. Apparently not tired enough.
Kaede rolls her eyes. "You can't bully me into bantering with you," she says. He sticks out his tongue at her. There's a shiny new piercing in the center, a tiny silver ball instead of the rhinestones in his ears.
"Okay, I don't know about you bitches but I'm getting in there and taking a shower about right fucking now," Miu says, body half in the car as she excavates her luggage. She whines and grunts as hefts up her bags. Predictably, she brought more than Kokichi and her put together. Kokichi hangs around her shoulder, waiting for her to do the work for him so he can easily grab his own luggage. Finally, Kaede pulls out her own duffel bag, and Miu slams the car shut with her hip. She digs the paper envelope with the key out of her pocket and hands it to Kaede, who goes ahead and unlocks the door.
The weather outside is becoming too cold to be comfortable, but the cabin is well-insulated. The interior design is comfy and cheerful, perhaps leaning on the "rustic mountain retreat" theme a bit much if the omnipresent deer antlers are any indication, but it's something different, at least. When in Rome.
Kokichi comes in and goes off to the kitchen to "break shit". Miu wolf-whistles as she comes in on his heels, looking around the main room with bright eyes. It's a nice, spacious cabin -Kaede's certainly paying enough for one. She dumps her luggage on the ground and runs up the wooden stairs, beaming. She's kid-on-christmas giddy, and it softens Kaede just a little. She sets the key on a table beside the door and walks up the stairs.
There's a bedroom with a balcony and a view of the mountains, purple in the distance. The bed is queen-size, with the white-linen set typical of a hotel. She approaches the sliding glass doors and slips through them to investigate.
She's admiring the view when she hears Miu scream "Holy shit, look at this bathtub!" from the connected bathroom.
She peeks in and Miu is sitting fully clothed in the dry tub, cackling.
"You could fit like six people in here!" she cheers.
"More like two," Kaede corrects her. Miu looks offended to have her judgement questioned, but then she smiles and wiggles her eyebrows.
"Is that a proposition?" she says.
"Like hell."
"Hey, I'm a hot piece of ass and you know it!" Miu says, puffing up, but she forgets to be offended fairly quickly after she notices a jacuzzi option and begins giggling maniacally.
They go back down to explore further. The kitchen seems to have survived the third member of their party, so they head downstairs where they find a game room. They also find Kokichi, posing against a poorly stuffed bear, its face frozen in a lopsided roar.
"Smash or pass?" he asks Miu seriously, gesturing to the bear.
"Pass!" she says, trying to hit him and failing.
"What, you don't want to be held in his tender bear arms?" he asks, dodging her attacks with glee. They run around the room in circles trying to get the better of each other.
"I bet you want to be held in some bear's arms, you fucking-"
Kaede tunes them out and looks more closely at their surroundings. Another bedroom tucked in the back, a bathroom, a bookshelf full of board games, an ancient, broken arcade machine, a foosball table, and-
"Woah, is that a whole pool table?"
"What else would it be, dumbass?"
Miu squeaks in rage and aims another hit at him. Kaede strokes the soft green felt of the table. She searches the underside and finds cues on a hook underneath.
"Have you ever played?" Miu asks, apparently done with whatever she and Kokichi were up to.
Yes. Before the game started Kaede used to go to skeevy bars with a fake ID no one cared to read and drink with kids from school she hated. They went to one with a dinged up pool table in the back barely anyone used, and when they got too cocky, she'd beat their ass at pool. "I'm smarter than you," she said without speaking. "Don't forget it." She used to think it was true.
No. Kaede spent all her time playing piano. She didn't go to scary places like bars, she only played in concert halls and sometimes retirement homes or children's wards for charity. She grew up with parents and a twin sister who cared about her so much, who only saw a prodigy and a beautiful young woman in her, never imagined that she would do anything she wasn't supposed to, and of course she wouldn't. Darling Kaede Akamatsu had no reason to misbehave.
"...Kaede?"
She snaps back to reality, realizing she has gone silent for longer than she should have. Miu is looking at her with a soft, sympathetic look, something that would have been entirely foreign to the Miu she knew before they woke up.
"Hmm," she says. It's not really an answer, but Miu takes it as affirmative.
"Do you wanna play?" she asks with a grin.
Kaede shakes her head without even thinking. She doesn't want to look at it right now.
"I'll go unpack some. You guys can go ahead."
"Oh, speaking of, I claim the bed down here, and I'm not sharing," Kokichi pipes up.
"I wouldn't wanna sleep with your gay ass anyway," Miu sniffs.
"That's fine," Kaede says. "Miu and I will take the upstairs one."
Kokichi gasps. "Sharing a bed before marriage? You harlots! I can't be seen with sinful women like yourselves."
Miu sputters and argues with Kokichi, but Kaede just sighs. "Sure, whatever," she says, trudging upstairs to put away her luggage.
-
They have chips and beer for dinner to celebrate their arrival. Miu shoves them into the kitchen, runs off, and comes back with a massive bag of tortilla chips, a jar of guacamole, and a jar of salsa tucked under her arms, and a box of beer bottles in each hand.
"You sluts ready for a good time?" she cheers.
Kaede scoffs. Her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. (It hasn't decided if it's genuine or not yet.) Kokichi slams his hands on the table and yells something insulting at Miu, who is too pumped to pay attention.
She rids herself of her cargo swiftly, slamming each item onto the table.
"Making dinner is for chumps and I've been eating poptarts all day anyway, so this is what we get!
Kokichi pops open the bag with a bang! but the wrong end tears. Kaede claps for him sarcastically and he flips her off.
They spend a while just eating and chatting mindlessly, talking about their future, what they've been up to lately.
"I'm fucking aceing university. Those crusty idiots have never met someone as talented in their lives!" Miu preens.
"Or maybe they're so shocked by your stupidity they accidentally put the wrong grade in."
Kaede can't say anything because her mouth is full of chips, so she just flicks him. He looks at her like he'd never known betrayal until that moment.
"I'm thinking of moving to Tokyo. I might go to school there," Kokichi says a while later, looking at his fingernails, and Miu fucks up his hair in rage.
"You can't just announce that casually!" she says, scowling at him but clearly delighted.
Kaede squints in thought. "...Tokyo?" she says.
"Oh? What's wrong with Tokyo?" he says, pouting.
"...Tokyo," she repeats as if she hadn't heard him, and tilts her head with a lazy smile.
Kokichi smiles at her too-wide, probably in an attempt to scare her off. She flashes a smirk. That confirms it.
"So you're moving to be closer to Shuichi."
"What? Don't be ridiculous, I can't stand that guy," he says.
"No, you still have that weird crush on him," she says, and the still makes Kokichi flinch. He does the too-wide smile again and looks like he's going to lunge across the table.
( The game's a touchy subject to all of them. She shouldn't have mentioned it. Kaede doesn't care if she hurts other people. Maybe he'll kill her and this one will take.)
"Boooo!" Miu says, getting between them by laying half her body on the table and almost knocking over their drinks. "No more talking about Shuichi! I'm so fucking bored of him! Is Shuichi here, huh? No! It's Miu time, baby, and you should be soaking it in!"
Kaede pats Miu's arm comfortingly. Kokichi plasters on a less-threatening smile and calls Miu an attention whore.
The subject has been safely removed from discussion.
"What about you, huh?" Kokichi asks once they're all at least two beers in. He doesn't look mad at her anymore, but she knows he's stewing in his feelings. Guilt, regret, worry, flickering in his eyes. He's so much worse at hiding it these days. (And, well, Shuichi brings out the worst best in people .)
Kaede pauses to think.
Since she was released from the hospital, she's lived alone in a shitty little apartment that reminds her too much of her childhood to be comfortable, but that she's too lazy to leave.
It was incredibly easy to slip into old habits.
The fridge is full of six packs of beer and convenience store garbage. She sleeps in all morning and watches TV all afternoon and then hates herself all night. Since the game, though, part of her desperately needs to be doing something so bad it feels like there's an entire hive of insects under her skin screaming as she stares dry-eyed at the ceiling. She'll get in these cleaning frenzies, and organize everything in the house and buy a ton of groceries to make actual dinner. Then, a couple days later, all the food's gone rotten and she's back to eating microwave dinners.
"I do volunteer work," she says. There, that doesn't sound pathetic. Maybe even like a good person.
Kokichi snorts. "That's classic save-the-world shit," he says.
Kaede sips from her drink and nods. "I hate it," she admits before she can stop herself. The sudden feeling of falling smack on her face makes her feverish, and she bites her tongue too late.
Miu laughs like that's the funniest thing she's heard all week (she's maybe had the most drinks of all of them). "Why do you do it then, dumbass?" she asks cheerfully, face flushed pink.
Kaede cares too much, these days. She desperately wants everyone to be happy. But she can't trust humans, greedy, selfish, and lazy humans to do jack shit for each other, so she'll do volunteer work and hate every goddamn miserable second. But she has to. Or she'll go insane.
"Eh," she says, forcing a laugh.
They start talking about something stupid instead.
-
They're doing this trip now because Miu's school is out all week, and she wanted to do something fun. It all came down to coincidence- everybody else was busy around that time, Kaede just happened to be bored enough to check the group chat, Kokichi made a joke about a cabin in the woods and then-
"I'll pay for it," she said. Her newfound fortune was practically rotting away, anyway, with nothing to spend it on but ramen and rent. She needed something to throw money at. She wanted to do something that wasn't fucking picking up garbage in the park with a pointed stick.
A few weeks later she was at the train station getting picked up by Miu's shitty jeep.
It had been almost a year since she'd last seen Miu. She'd expected to immediately regret joining the trip, bored to tears listening to Miu's inane bullshit. Maybe even forced to babysit her trauma, comfort her when she inevitably broke down.
(She'd been fragile as glass when she first woke up. Jumpy. Once, Kaito bumped into her shoulder while turning a corner and she just started crying in the middle of the common room.)
Instead, when she looked up from her phone and spotted her, she saw Miu with half her body stuck out the window, curly hair pulled back in a bouncy ponytail, waving frantically and smiling like she couldn't have been happier to see her and Kaede felt-
Warm.
'Maybe it won't be so bad', she thought.
-
Kaede almost expected Miu to sleep half-nude, or wearing something scandalous, but once Kaede is done changing in the bathroom, she finds her wearing fluffy, winnie-the-pooh pajama bottoms and a too-big t-shirt.
When she enters, Miu looks up from her phone, gives her a once-over, and whistles.
"I'm wearing a shirt and basketball shorts," Kaede deadpans.
"Sexy basketball shorts," Miu says, wiggling her eyebrows.
Kaede sighs almost fondly, and turns off the light.
Miu falls asleep first.
The bed is just big enough that both of them can fit without touching each other. She's still awfully close, though. Kaede can smell Miu's shampoo, her hair still freshly washed and rolled into a loose bun.
The lights are all out, but the room is dimly visible by the moonlight coming in from the partially curtained glass doors.
Kaede has fucked her sleep schedule up to the point that she doesn't even feel tired. She drank more water than beer during "dinner", so the alcohol's all worn off by now. All she can really do is stare at the ceiling and try not to think about how much she hates herself.
She's just settled into a twilight state, half-asleep and not really thinking about anything, when she hears a noise from beside her.
She bolts up, immediately awake. Miu is mumbling to herself in her sleep. She relaxes. It's nothing to worry about.
She knows it's creepy to watch people sleep, but it shouldn't be that big a deal if it's just for a moment, so she keeps an eye on her bedmate, just to be safe. Miu keeps mumbling. She starts shifting in place.
Must be an intense dream.
Miu's breathing becomes heavier. She looks almost like she's struggling, kicking her legs and whimpering louder and louder against an invisible assailant. Then, her hands go to her throat and-
Oh . She feels the sympathetic urge to hold her own throat. It constricts in phantom pain, and she struggles to remind herself she can breathe. She needs my help.
She shakes Miu by her shoulder, becoming more desperate as her breathing becomes more labored.
"Wake up," she whispers urgently. "Wake up." Her heart squeezes with fear.
Miu wakes up like coming up out of the water, gasping for air. Kaede softens in relief.
"It's okay, it's just me, hey," she says. Miu has rolled onto her back, eyes darting all over the dark room.
"It's fine, you're safe. Slow down. Hey, breathe with me." She breathes comically loud so Miu can follow her.
Miu does, eventually, getting a hold of herself. She shuts her eyes in exhaustion and the rise and fall of her chest becomes more even. Kaede waits, watching for any bad signs.
"Sorry," Miu mumbles, rolling on to her side to face Kaede.
"It's alright," she says. Miu's face is shiny with sweat. A strand of hair has fallen out of her bun, so Kaede gently tucks it behind her ear.
Miu's breath hitches, and she freezes for just a moment despite herself. Then, calmly, as though it were a perfectly normal thing to do, she completes the action, and goes to lie down.
"Wait-" Miu says.
Kaede pauses.
"I don't, um-" Kaede can tell she's blushing, even in the dim light. "I don't have my contacts in," she admits. "I don't want to trip around in the dark, so… could you get something for me?"
Kaede hesitates, then nods. Realizing Miu may not have been able to see it, she asks "What is it?"
"It's in my big suitcase," Miu says. "It's... brown."
That's… worryingly vague, but she already agreed, so she stands up and wanders over to where she saw the suitcase last. She digs through Miu's stuff, looking to find... whatever she's supposed to be looking for, when she pulls out a teddy bear.
"Oh," she says out loud. That's not that big a deal . At least it's not heroin or something.
"You got it?"
"Yeah, hold on."
She slides back into bed and hands it to Miu, who smiles in relief.
"You could have just had it out in the first place," she said.
"Yeah," Miu mutters, hugging it to her chest. "I… I dunno. 'Rumi bought it for me as a going away present after I got into school. It's ironic, 'cause half of us are rotten murderers, but you guys make me feel… safe."
Kaede swallows uncomfortably. She kind of gets what Miu means. They've been through a lot together at this point. It's been at least a year since they woke up. They grew really close back then, like a family. But nothing good sticks around in life, so it was really only inevitable that Kaede lives alone, in an apartment she doesn't like, doing nothing worthwhile.
It was inevitable.
(She kind of deserves to be alone. She is a rotten murderer.)
"...I thought you would make fun of me for it," Miu says, snapping Kaede out of her train of thought. Miu looks oddly vulnerable, but not in the way she used to cower in the simulation.
"Huh?" She says stupidly. "Why would I do that?"
"I don't know if you know this, but you're kind of an asshole."
Kaede grimaces. "Okay, fuck you and go to sleep."
Miu grins sleepily. "Yeah, like that. Man, you're different."
She feels a pang of regret for… being who she is? Being too cruel? Not being the pretty pink musician she used to be? But then Miu yawns and says, "I still like you, though. You're Kaede, y'know…?"
No, she doesn't know. That's part of the problem, but Miu's already asleep. It gives her a little comfort. She settles into bed, lying just a little closer to her, so she can almost feel the warmth she gives off.
She likes me.