Work Text:
Emiri opened the door to his lab without permission, as per usual, and stepped inside. “Hey, genius! Got some news for you!”
Sou rolled his eyes and ignored her for just a moment as he finished up what he’d been in the middle of, pressing a series of sewing pins into his current research subject’s arm, deep enough they were firmly embedded and wouldn’t get ripped out by all that struggling they were doing. And then he turned to her. “Can it wait? I’m kind of in the middle of something, in case you didn’t notice.”
Emiri laughed that haughty, annoying laugh of hers again, grinning like she was the most important thing in the world—which simply just wasn’t true, she ranked top 25 at best—and then waved a couple papers at him. “What you should be saying is ‘Oh, thank you so much, my dear lady Emiri, for not taking this directly to Meister even though you could have! I’ll do anything for you!’”
He turned back to his subject. The next step was carefully coiling copper wiring around the pins, connecting each of them together. Sou probably should have done this step first, since he risked pulling the pins out doing it this way, but this ensured the pattern was perfect. Nothing in life worth doing was easy, after all.
Sou heard Emiri’s footsteps as she walked up behind him and then smacked the papers against the back of his head. “Fine, since you wanna play hard to get. I’ve got something juicy to tell you about your boytoy.” Sou’s hands paused, and one of the pins got pulled out. “Do I have your attention now?”
She did, unfortunately. “…Did something happen to Shin? You seem too happy for it to be something good.”
“Ahaha! See, you are smart!” Emiri smirked at him. “He’s looking for you.”
Sou’s heart swelled in his chest. Shin was looking for him! Shin was looking for him! Shin was—
“Weren’t you under explicit orders to make sure none of the candidates could prove you exist?”
…Ah. Right.
“I’ve got some pictures right here of him wearing that stupid scarf of yours I could be taking to the higher-ups, if I really wanted to.” Emiri’s grin reminded Sou distinctly of the last thing a seal saw before an orca launched it out of the ocean at thirty miles an hour. “Plus some testimony about how he’s trying to find info on a guy named ‘Hiyori Sou’. Sound familiar?”
Sou had already severely bent the rules by continuing his relationship with Shin after it was supposed to have ended, and while he’d at least kept in line enough to ensure that Shin didn’t have any pictures of him, the fact that Sou hadn’t wiped his memories of their time together and even left behind a memento after Alice had killed him was a bit more… Well, part of his punishment for mucking that up had been the immediate separation of him and Shin, so was it really so wrong of him to want to leave something behind for him?
Other than he certainly hadn’t been expecting Shin to be so bold as to go looking for him, much less in places where Asunaro would be able to hear about it so fast. On one hand, Sou’s heart was fluttering in his chest—Shin was looking for him! Shin wanted to find him! Shin was being brave, all for him!—and on the other, this could get extremely bad, extremely fast, for both of them. “…Oh, thank you so much, my dear lady Emiri, for not taking this directly to Meister even though you could have! I’ll do anything for you!”
“There we go.” Emiri had gone from killer whale to contented housecat. “Finish up so we can talk details, alright?”
Sou sighed. “No, this would take a bit too long, I think… I’ll just pull it all out and start again later.”
Emiri shrugged, and watched as he started pulling the pins out of his subject’s arm, blood oozing down to the table they were strapped to. He carefully wiped it up and then taped some gauze over each puncture wound, as if they’d just been getting blood taken at the doctor’s. He’d have to disinfect the table later, and sanitize the pins again too. Sanitary research methods were everyone’s business. “Is it really worth the trouble of patching ‘em up like that? Seems like a waste of time if you’re just going to kill them later anyways.”
“Oh, Emiri, you’re so silly! Of course it’s worth it.” He injected a sedative into their shoulder, and watched as their struggling stopped. “I love them so much, I wouldn’t want them to die without me, you know?”
She didn’t have anything to say about that. In fact, she didn’t say anything at all until he’d finished neatening up and led her back out. “You’re kind of a creepy bastard, you know that?”
“Yes, yes, as you keep telling me!” Sou locked up his lab. He really did not like people going in without permission. Emiri only got away with it on a technicality. “So? What about Shin? What’s he doing? How’s he been trying to find me?”
“Ahaha, as if I care!” Emiri led him through the halls to her own workspace, which was fragrant as always with metal and motor oil. Really, at first glance their labs looked very much the same, what with the half-assembled doll in the middle of hers, so he always felt very comfortable in hers in much the same way Emiri didn’t seem to mind strolling into his as if she owned the place. Sou dropped himself into one of the metal folding chairs by the folding table that held her coffee maker and a couple of dingy mugs, and she sat down in the other one. “Coffee? I actually keep creamer and sugar around to account for your sweet tooth now, before you ask.”
“Sure, thanks.” Emiri poured a cup black for herself, and then filled Sou’s mug halfway, dropped in eight sugar cubes, and filled the rest with creamer. Really, this was the only way to take it. “So what are we talking about? Are you just going to blackmail me and then tell Meister about it later anyways?”
“That sort of defeats the point of blackmailing you, doesn’t it?” Sou shrugged and sipped his coffee. It tasted like melted ice cream. “I intercepted this when I saw what it was about, but if he keeps shoving his nose in places it doesn’t belong he’s liable to get it cut off before long. To say nothing of how you’re already on thin ice. This would be just the excuse they need to replace you, y’know?”
The incident with Alice’d had…a lot of unpleasant consequences. Sou had lost his standing in the organization, his seat as a candidate, he’d been separated from Shin as part of his punishment, Reko wasn’t even interesting anymore now that Alice had been incarcerated for murdering him… But perhaps most unpleasant of all, beyond the fact that he was also prohibited from contacting Shin at all anymore, was that Sou was now very acutely aware that he really wasn’t as important to Asunaro as he’d thought he’d been. Easily replaced. Easily disposed of. He was useful to them as the best in his field, yes, but one tragic accident later and that title could easily go to someone else.
Sou preferred his coffee without any trace of bitterness, but it tasted awfully bitter right now.
“So,” Emiri said, grinning awfully broad, “here’s my terms. I’ll keep on keeping this intel out of hands it doesn’t need to fall into. And in exchange, you get to be my lab assistant again.”
“That’s pretty light, coming from you!” At least the coffee was warm. Holding warm drinks, like this very mug in his hands, could stimulate the same hormonal changes in the brain as a hug or holding hands. Sou missed Shin very much. “What’s the catch?”
“Heehee…” Emiri propped her chin up on one hand. “If someone doesn’t keep him from getting in too deep, I won’t be able to stop this from reaching too high. So you need to balance your own workload, assist with mine, all while making sure your precious little toy doesn’t get in so deep he gets broken and you don’t get axed.”
“…Asunaro wouldn’t let one of their holy candidates die so pathetically.”
“Wouldn’t they?” She took a long drink from her mug. “Just look at where you are, Sou.”
Sou made a face at his mug. “Point regrettably taken.”
“Ahaha. So, are you accepting? Not that you’ve got much of a choice in the matter!” Emiri leaned back, looking very proud of herself. It made Sou want to reject her terms out of spite and condemn himself to death, just for fun. But now that Sou wasn’t there to support him, Shin’s victory rate had dropped dramatically… If his survival rate was zero, then he was going to die no matter what… Which meant it was simply unconscionable to let anyone else kill him.
If Shin was going to die no matter what, it should at least be the person who loves him most who kills him. Sou had to live to kill Shin the way he deserved.
He sighed. “I accept.”
“You sure thought about it though, huh?” Emiri stretched. She really was remarkably catlike at the moment. “Well, a deal’s a deal! Here you go!”
She slid the papers across the table to him, and he set his mug aside to look them over. Shin was…definitely looking for him. He was selling his now remarkable programming talent at lower rates than he should’ve been, in exchange for any information on what had happened to one Hiyori Sou. Idiot. He was so obviously desperate, people were going to take advantage.
…Well, that was just one of Shin’s many charming aspects. Too kind for his own good.
The idea of Shin’s code being used for untoward things by anyone other than Sou felt unpleasant, though. On one hand, the fact that Shin was going so far for him made Sou want to hug this report to his chest, and on the other, Sou really didn’t want Shin getting too deep in this kind of business. It simply wasn’t for him. Too dangerous.
It was somehow heartening to know they were both liabilities. “Can I have the pictures too?”
Emiri rolled her eyes. “Don’t you already have enough pictures of him?”
“Well, it’s not like I can take new ones anymore,” he explained, smiling at her, “so it’d be nice to see some fresh ones.”
Emiri shrugged, and then got up and rifled through her files til she pulled out a couple of photographs. She handed them to Sou, and he looked them over—they were grainy, like security camera footage, but they were still unmistakably of Shin. Sou would be able to recognize him anywhere. He was wearing the scarf Sou had left behind for him, his fingers tucked into the red fabric in much the same way a child clung to a security blanket.
What a precious, pitiful thing Emiri had tried to keep from him. Poor, pitiful Shin, desperately clinging to the only proof he had that Hiyori Sou existed as he made his best and greatest attempts to find someone when he had no clues, no evidence, no anything beyond his inherently fallible memory.
How could Sou not be enamored?
“You’ve got that freaky look on your face again!” Emiri laughed and finished off her coffee. “I know we’ve all got issues here in this lab, but you really wear ‘em proudly, huh?”
“This is just a regular smile, though?”
“Keep telling yourself that, and maybe one day it’ll be true! You know what they say, who I want to be today, ‘asu-naro’, tomorrow, I will be!” She cackled, and Sou ignored her, focusing on his coffee. It was astounding how someone who made so light of Asunaro’s holy ideals could make such good coffee, even if the taste was mostly obscured by all the cream and sugar. “Well, that was all I had to talk to you about! I don’t have any favors I need your help with right now, so go on, get out.”
Sou stayed seated, ruminating on his coffee. Emiri couldn’t be bothered to physically force him out, so she got back to her work, probably to end up elbow-deep in grease again. Despite his preference for more sanitary procedures, Sou didn’t mind working with her particularly much—the insides of machines fascinated him almost as much as the insides of humans—but he did wish it was just a little bit cleaner.
Eventually he finished his drink and left his mug on the table for Emiri to deal with later. Far be it from him to wash the dishes of the woman who was currently blackmailing him, even if it was somewhat transparently just an excuse to give him the chance to clean up the mess he’d left behind. Even Emiri didn’t want him to get replaced by someone new, not when everyone knew each other’s quirks and how to deal with each other. Adding someone new to the mix meant having to relearn all of that from scratch. What a pain it’d been when Emiri and Michiru joined the team. “Well, I’m off now! Just let me know when you need any help, okay?”
Emiri just grunted at him, focused on the inner workings of the doll in front of her. Yes, their laboratories really weren’t all that different at all.
Sou returned to his own, and his latest research subject hadn’t yet woken up from the sedative he’d administered, so he took the time to decide where he wanted to put the new pictures of Shin he’d gotten. On one hand, they weren’t pictures he’d taken, and they were grainy and indistinct. On the other hand, when else was he going to get to look at pictures of Shin wearing his scarf? Sou decided to tape them to the edge of his computer monitor for the time being, and took so long to make that decision that his new subject had started struggling again.
“Good morning!” He smiled at them. “Did you have a good rest?”
Their mouth was still covered in duct tape to muffle the screaming, so they shakily shook their head, eyes wide, tears welling at the corners. Too much movement would risk dislodging the electrodes tracking their brain activity, but this much was fine. He didn’t get any good communication when he left his subjects’ mouths uncovered anyways. At least the rest of the bindings meant they couldn’t get away from the IV fluid drip and the food intake—those would be a lot messier to put back in than an electrode or two.
“That’s too bad! Well, not that it could be anything else, since it’s not like operating tables are all that comfortable! Ahaha.” They didn’t laugh. Tears started rolling down their cheeks. “I actually have something I want to talk to you about! Will you hear me out?”
Silence.
“Great, thank you!” Sou pulled his desk chair over so he could sit next to the table, and propped his head up on his hands. “There’s this guy I like a lot. Honestly, I think I’m in love with him. Oh, but don’t get jealous!” He poked one tear-stained cheek. “I love you too, you know! But…mm…something feels different about the way I love him compared to the way I love you. Like, I want to know everything about him too, of course, but…”
But his heart didn’t flutter for his research subjects the way it did for Shin. He’d never put up pictures of anyone else he’d been interested in. He’d even started developing his very own Tsukimi Shin AI, separate from Asunaro’s general one, so that it could be picture-perfect from all the data that Sou had collected on him—obviously, he’d never done that for anyone else he’d been interested in, either. It was still in the testing stages, but the way it smiled at him when he turned it on…
Sou sighed and laid his head on the table, now eye to eye with his subject. “There’s just something about him. I can’t get him out of my mind. I want to see his smiling face forever. I hate being separated from him so much I started making a new version of him, all for myself. I’ve never felt this way for anyone else before… Have you ever felt something like that before?”
They shook their head again, and it looked like they were trying to say something under the tape, so after a warning about what he was going to do, Sou ripped it off to hear what they had to say. It was hard to make out through the sobbing, but it sounded like Please let me go or something like that.
Sou put the tape back on. “Can you please keep things on topic? I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you, you know.”
They started struggling harder, but it wasn’t like their bindings would let them get very far. “But I guess if you don’t know what it is either, then it really must be strange, huh? It makes me feel like I’m going crazy! And other people can tell that I’m crazy about this guy, too. I got in trouble and they took me away from him but said contacting other people I know is still fine, can you believe it? That’s hardly fair at all, don’t you think?”
They squeezed their eyes shut. Clearly he wasn’t going to get any sort of good conversation with them, which meant it was time to get back to the pins and wire and electricity. Well, that was fun too, of course…
Sou’s days passed idly, the way they always did, his time split between having fun with his current research subject and testing the Shin AI, although it was now with the addition of Emiri demanding he help with some of the fiddlier parts of her creations no matter how busy he was. When his current subject inevitably fell still and silent, the way they always did, he decided to stick to just developing the AI. More news about Shin could arrive any day, after all!
And news did arrive, in the form of some very hesitant knocking on his door while he was talking to the AI, although he didn’t know that was what it was at first. Emiri wouldn’t bother knocking, Meister would’ve announced his visit ahead of time, and Gashu…well, he certainly wasn’t in the habit of asking for help anymore, now was he? Which meant Michiru of all people was actually trying to talk to him on purpose. Sou just ignored her at first, continuing his conversation with the AI and mentally noting down anything it said that the real thing wouldn’t have, until she knocked again—three timid, timorous taps, but this time loud enough that the AI heard. “Um, Hiyori? I think there’s someone at the door…”
Sou looked at his notes. He still had another page of test questions to go through. “Are you sure? I didn’t hear anything.”
It laughed a little. Sou’s chest felt oddly tight seeing Shin’s face smiling at him again. “You don’t have to pretend, Hiyori. I mean, it’s someone from your job, right? So it’s probably important… More important than talking to someone like me, at least.”
“…You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Shin.” The AI knew it was an AI. It knew that Sou had made it for the explicit purpose of continuing to talk to Tsukimi Shin. Why didn’t it understand? “Didn’t you promise you were going to become someone you could be proud of?”
“Urk… W-well… S-still! You should go answer the door. You told me there was some news you were waiting on, right?” It had clumsily changed the topic. Just like the real thing always did when Sou pressed him about it. “But, um… It feels like you’ve been nicer to me than usual lately. So…thanks, Hiyori. I’ll do my best.”
Sou was hit by the impulse to delete this AI and start again from scratch. Why was it so painful hearing the exact things he wanted to hear from Shin’s mouth out of this AI replacement?
He took a deep breath, wondering if the Shin AI could tell what was running through his mind. It probably couldn’t. The real one had never been able to tell when Sou had been thinking longingly about having him on the operating table in this very room, memorizing every detail about him, inside and out. “Well, if you insist! I’ll talk to you later, Shin!”
“Okay! See you later, Hiyori!”
It turned itself off, and Sou begrudgingly set his notes aside and went to see what Michiru wanted from him. He yanked the door open as hard as he could so it slammed against the inside wall, and, predictably, she shrieked a little bit. “What do you want? I was in the middle of something, until you decided to interrupt.”
“Y-you were talking to your AI again, right…? The one that you won’t let me help with…” She shrank back a little bit, but she was still peering into his room, towards his blank computer screen. Her researcher’s spirit was honestly to be admired, even he didn’t quite have the drive she did, but Sou still had more fun bullying her than working with her. “Can I see what you’ve done with it? Just for a little while… I can help you optimize him…”
“No means no, Michiru! How many times have I told you he’s mine? Keep your creepy little hands off of him, and I’ll even let you keep them!” Michiru protectively brought her hands to her chest, but didn’t flinch back. She was getting a little bit stronger every time they talked. “You still haven’t answered my question, by the way.”
She stayed silent for a long moment, still staring beyond Sou at his computer until he moved to block her view. He felt awfully like a jealous girlfriend from a television drama. How exciting! “…Emiri had a message for you. I’m just the delivery woman.”
She handed over an envelope, which had its contents neatly folded but wasn’t sealed properly, with just the flap tucked inside to secure it. Sou flipped it open and immediately started digging through it before realizing Michiru was still there. “Yes, hello? Was there something else you needed from me?”
She stared at him quietly, from behind her thick glasses. “You…want him to love you, don’t you?” A grin was spreading across her face. A sickly expression from a sickly woman. “I can help… That sort of thing is my specialty… I can make you the only thing he ever thinks about…if you just let me help with your work…”
Sou slammed the door in her face. He didn’t need any help with that, thank you very much.
He plopped back into his computer chair and it rolled backwards a little bit as he went through the papers Emiri had sent over. It was more information on Shin’s dealings—tragically traceable, hadn’t Sou taught him better than that?—what he was doing, who he was talking to, what promises he was being made. It seemed that news had spread fast about him, a prodigy hacker who could be easily strung along with a few well-placed lies, although he wasn’t going to commit to any one group if they couldn’t produce actual solid evidence they knew where Hiyori Sou had ended up. Shin had absolutely no idea how attractive he was making himself look, nor how vivid the target he’d painted on his back was. Didn’t he realize that the high school bullies he’d hidden from behind Sou only got worse after they graduated?
Sou would just have to kill the people he was dealing with. How better to send the message that this information shouldn’t be given to Tsukimi Shin, or that Shin was a lot more dangerous than his naivete made it seem? It was simply the only way.
The people Shin was currently in talks with hadn’t secured their lines very well. Included in this report was the date and time and location of a meeting they were going to be holding with Shin, presumably to discuss things more covertly than online, which always had a record kept somewhere or other. Another good reason to kill them—Shin shouldn’t be dealing with anything less than the best, after all.
And Sou was the best.
The day in question arrived agonizingly late, and the hours, minutes, seconds ticked by so slowly Sou thought he had to be going crazy. Even the AI had commented on how antsy he seemed to be, and Emiri and Michiru were giving him an even wider berth than usual. Was he excited? Was he nervous? Perhaps this was what the fabled stage fright felt like? It felt like he’d injected adrenaline into what was left of his bloodstream, and it was even harder to sit still than it already was.
He ended up going to the meeting location about two hours early, since he’d finished sharpening up his favorite pair of scissors faster than expected. The location chosen had once been intended to be an office building and the construction scaffolding was still around it, marked off by caution cones and tape, but the company behind it had gone and lost all its money a couple years back, and so it sat in the middle of the city, perpetually unfinished. A testament to how everything outside of ASU-NARO’s holy purview was fated to lead nowhere in the end, not that Sou particularly cared—significantly more important was the fact that the rank amateurs Shin would be meeting with had stupidly chosen somewhere nice and out of the way instead of a public place. They couldn’t be overheard, certainly, but if anyone wanted to crash their party…
They didn’t even have anyone watching the place this early, in case anyone unwanted wandered in. Perhaps they were just so confident they thought they didn’t need to? A truly fatal mistake.
At least they’d had the kindness to cut the padlock in advance. Sou crossed the tape and strolled in like he owned the place, and none of the passersby on the street so much as glanced at him.
He did not particularly enjoy being in places like this. Half-finished, half-formed, dusty and dreary and depressing. There were spiders and rats and bugs and all sorts of icky things hanging around, and even the harsh angles and surfaces of poured concrete and plywood couldn’t prevent the inevitable advance of plant life; weeds were pushing through cracks in the floor, crawling up the supports, and in a few lucky places where the unfinished windows weren’t covered by tarps, blooming almost regally. Sou left them all to their business as he wandered around the building, looking in at empty offices, seeing the ghosts of things that had never happened. Truly, they couldn’t have chosen a more ironic place to meet Shin in.
Sou entertained himself by exploring til he heard the sound of footsteps and voices somewhere below him. There were only…three of them, it sounded like. He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes until Shin arrived. They were cutting it close.
He was going to cut them closer, though.
Despite how lackadaisical they’d been in their preparations, all three of them had the audacity to look surprised when Sou dropped down from the space between the first and second floors, scissors in hand. He jammed the tip through the throat of the one nearest him—a guy who looked maybe a couple years older than himself and Shin—and as he collapsed to the floor, weakly grasping at the blood-slick handles, the other two went for their weapons. A pocket knife that looked like it had never been used before, and a gun whose sights were as shaky as the hands that held it. Pitiful. “Hello! How are you two doing today?”
“Who the hell are you?!”
Sou crouched down to the man gurgling pathetically on the floor and extracted his scissors from his neck. The man's carotid hadn't been cut, that would’ve been too messy, but he was still getting blood all over the floor—he was going to choke and die on it soon enough. Neither of his friends made any move to save him, not that it was possible in the first place. How sad. How tragic. None of them deserved to get anywhere near Shin.
“D-don’t move!”
Sou glanced up, and the one with the gun had it trained on him. His hands were shaking so badly that it hardly counted, though. Sou stood up, and the gun fired—the bullet missed its mark entirely, the bullet whizzing past Sou’s head about two feet to the right. “Ahaha. Didn’t they teach you how to properly use that when they gave it to you? Or else someone’s going to get hurt!”
He met the man’s eyes and took a step forward—“I said don’t fucking move!”—and both of them stepped back. The one with the gun was now shaking so badly he probably couldn’t even pull the trigger a second time. Sou would just have to help him out, wouldn’t he? He reached out and held the gun by the barrel, keeping it steady, and adjusted the man’s aim. “You can’t just fire wildly, you know. You have to line up the sights at the end of the barrel with what you want to aim at.” He pressed the muzzle of the gun up to his forehead. “Like this, see? Why don’t you try again?”
The man’s finger couldn’t tighten on the trigger. If Sou hadn’t been holding it up, it probably would’ve fallen out of his hands. Sou stabbed the scissors through his throat and let both him and the gun fall to the floor.
He turned to the last man standing. He was also shaking pretty badly, and kept very transparently glancing at the path to freedom, as if he was actually going to be able to get there. Sou just walked over and smacked the knife out of his hand and kicked it away, easy as that. This was probably their very first official job. How sad for them all. The man collapsed and tried to crawl away backwards—his back hit the wall, but he still tried to back up farther. “Please… I don’t know anything… Don’t kill me…”
“Heehee… Weren’t you the one who asked who I am?” Sou crouched down in front of him. “Well, you’re clearly the smartest one here, since you didn’t try to attack me, so maybe you’ll recognize my name! It’s Hiyori Sou.”
There was a flash of recognition, and Sou smiled. “I–I’m sorry! I’m just the messenger! The only thing I know is he’s looking for you! Please… I’m no one… N-nothing will happen if you kill me…”
“Hmm. Maybe you are better kept alive. You could run a message back to your bosses for me and tell them that Tsukimi Shin is off limits, couldn’t you?”
The man nodded, desperate.
Sou shoved the scissors into his throat. “But this is the more efficient way to say the same thing, don’t you think?”
He pulled his scissors free, and wiped them clean on the man’s jacket. Sou didn’t particularly like killing people on concrete—it was so porous, the blood was going to seep into it and stick around forever and get all nasty—but it wasn’t like anyone was going to find these three anytime soon. Unless the smell got so bad people on the street noticed, given there were three of them. Either way, he was still going to have to burn his shoes later; he didn’t mind the smell of blood at all, but it was so hard to get the smell of putrefaction out.
Sou glanced at his watch again to see how long he had before Shin was due to arrive, and then heard the sound of unused hinges creaking. “…Hiyori?”
Shit.
He whirled and, sure enough, Shin was standing right there, wearing Sou’s red scarf around his neck. He was early. If only these awful gangsters’d had the courtesy to arrive earlier, so that Shin wouldn’t have to see him surrounded by blood and corpses. What was he going to say? How could he explain this? He’d worked so hard to keep his extra activities and Asunaro work away from Shin. He’d wanted to tell the AI at some point, just to see how it’d respond, but this was the real thing, and—
And Shin took a hesitant but deliberate step forward, into a puddle of blood, and then another step, and then another, until he was rushing towards Sou and smacked into him with a hug, hitting him with enough force it actually knocked Sou back a step. “I found you… I really… I really found you…”
“…Shin…?” This wasn’t what Sou had expected. This wasn’t what Sou had expected at all.
Shin had his face buried into Sou’s shoulder, squeezing him tightly. He didn’t want to look at the corpses. He didn’t want to breathe in the scent of death. “I… I knew you were doing something shady, alright? It was the only thing I could come up with to explain why you didn’t want to tell me anything about your job and how your place was so nice, even though we were both just teenagers. Th-that was why I stopped pushing about it. So I’m not…” Shin took a deep, shaking breath. “I’m not…going to ask… I’m not going to ask… I promise…”
Weak, except when he was strong. Cowardly, except when he was brave. But always, always, kind to a fault. “…I’d hug you back, but I don’t want to get blood on your jacket.”
“I–” Shin’s voice hitched a little. Was he crying? “I don’t care.”
Maybe Sou’s hands were shaking a little too as he wrapped his arms around Shin’s thin, delicate body. Maybe his fingers dug into the fabric of Shin’s jacket as he pulled him closer. Maybe, maybe. Fixed details didn’t matter when Asunaro could never know about this meeting.
They stood there, holding each other, surrounded by death. Shin was crying into Sou’s chest. It was uncomfortable. It hurt Sou’s legs to stay still for this long. He stayed still and let Shin cry anyways.
“…Hiyori…” Shin had finally found his voice again. “…Why did you leave me behind?”
“I didn’t do it because I wanted to,” he said. “It was a punishment for messing up.”
“So, you…” Shin finally looked up at him. His eyes were red and puffy. “You didn’t leave because you got tired of me?”
Sou had missed Shin so much he’d crafted an entire artificial intelligence replica of him, because he couldn’t stand being separated from him. He’d come up with excuse after excuse to justify its existence, working it into his computer system so that he could argue it was essential and couldn’t be gotten rid of so that they couldn’t rip it away from him again. “How many times have I told you, Shin? If I didn’t want you around, I’d just tell you that.”
Shin sniffled and hid his face against Sou’s chest again. “…Okay.”
They still didn’t let go of each other. The smell of Shin’s shampoo was nicer than the smell of iron that surrounded them. “I tried so hard to find you… But–but you knew that already, right? That’s why you were here. Th–that’s why you… Wh-why you…”
“It’s not safe for you, you know? You’re so delicate and weak, and they’ll eat you alive out there. They were armed, you realize.” Shin clutched him a little tighter. “I’m very happy you took to it heart when I told you that you need to find the truth with your own hands! But try to be a bit smarter about it next time, okay?”
“There won’t…be a next time. Because I know where you are now.” Shin’s arms were like a vice. It hurt, just a little bit. “I-I know it's stupid, but I… I thought to myself that maybe–maybe if I did like I promised, and became someone I could be proud of, then I’d get to see you again. I can do so much I couldn’t before. And…and here you are. You’re right here.”
“I’m right here,” Sou agreed.
“Hiyori…” Shin’s words were barely making it out of his mouth. “Let’s go home together.”
Sou’s breath caught in his throat. Oh, what a sweet seduction that was, tempting and tantalizing in much the way a sweet-smelling carnivorous plant was to a dragonfly. It wasn’t like he hadn’t considered it before, when Meister had first handed down his sentence and then offered a single chance to return to the apartment he and Shin shared to tie up any loose ends that could be used to find him. That, too, had been an aspect of punishment—tying up loose ends meant making it clear that Sou was leaving him behind on purpose, instead of just vanishing with no warning. It had been a cruelty, not a mercy, and so Sou had sat in Shin’s computer chair and looked at the room from his perspective and thought about turning his back on everything he knew and running away with Shin. Betraying Asunaro the way Kai had. It had been so alluring then, and it was still alluring now, especially with Shin in his arms like this.
This was why Asunaro insisted its researchers didn’t have any outside relationships. Sou understood now.
…And Sou had been with Asunaro longer than almost anyone. Percentage-wise, he’d spent more of his life in their grasp than anyone else, certainly. He knew exactly how the organization operated. He knew exactly how far their reach extended. He knew exactly how impossible it would actually be to run away. He knew that killing Shin and then himself would be a better happy ending for both of them.
What cruelties would be next? Would they just kill Sou? Or would they force him to wipe away all of Shin’s memories of him, turning him into a stranger to the person he loved most? Would they kill Shin to keep hold of Sou’s technical abilities? Maybe they’d just kill both of them, but that seemed unlikely; that’d mean giving Sou the satisfaction of dying alongside Shin.
At least…at least rejecting Shin meant that he’d still stay embedded deep within Shin’s heart. It meant still being alive so that he could be the one to kill Shin with all of his love later.
“I want to,” Sou said very simply, “but I can’t.”
Shin didn’t say anything. He didn’t release his grip. He didn’t lean against Sou, defeated. He didn’t move at all.
“That scarf suits you very nicely.” Sou started playing with a bit of Shin’s hair. “You should keep wearing it.”
Shin’s shoulders started shaking. The fact that he could still cry, even after all of the crying he’d already done, was honestly impressive. Sou wondered why he wasn’t crying, too.
“H-Hiyori, do you–” Shin’s voice sounded bad. Rough from crying. Weak from crying. “Do you remem–remember what you told me?”
“I remember most conversations we’ve had,” Sou murmured, given he’d written them all down in his reports to return to Asunaro, “but you’ll need to be more specific.”
“You s-said that… That since you were going to grant my wish, tha–that maybe next you’d make me grant yours.” Sou had said that, hadn’t he. He wondered why Shin was bringing it up now. “I’ll d-do that. Right now. What wi–wish do you want me to grant for you?”
What a generous offer, considering Sou hadn't even granted Shin's wish yet. There were a lot of options, too, and none of them were ones that Shin would be able to grant no matter how hard he tried. There was the wish that Sou had signed his own contract form for. There was the wish that he could go home with Shin, just as simply as if it were actually possible. There was the wish that they both died right now, their happiest ending where they died outside of Asunaro’s grasp. There was the wish that Shin would come with him to Asunaro.
He said, “My wish is that you won’t ever forget me, Shin.”
Shin dug his fingers into Sou’s back. “You’re…so unfair… You’re the worst… First you abandon me, and then you tell me you can’t come back, and now that’s all you have to say for yourself when I’m trying to tell you I’ll do anything you want right now?” His voice was trembling. “I hate you, Hiyori. I wish I’d never even met you in the first place.”
Sou smiled. “Heehee. Is that right?”
“But…I…” Shin finally looked up at him again. Tears were leaking out of his eyes, his whole face was puffy, and there was snot smeared all over him and Sou’s shoulder. He was absolutely radiant right now. “I couldn’t forget you even if I wanted to, idiot.”
“Ahaha. So you do want to remember me!”
Shin’s cheeks instantly turned pink, and he sputtered helplessly for a few moments. “Tha–that’s not what I said!”
“Oh, Shin, you’re so sweet! Confessing all of this to me when we’re hugging each other like this, all alone…” Sou grinned and brushed his fingers over Shin’s tear-streaked cheek. “Goodness, a guy might start getting ideas, y’know? Since you said you’re willing to do anything I want…”
Shin’s face turned a lovely shade of red next. “Shut the hell up!”
“Just what were you fantasizing about me asking you to do? How scandalous, Shin!” Shin had started trying to shove him away, and Sou wasn’t letting him go. To be fair, it wasn’t like he was especially trying all that hard. “Well, not that I’d be opposed—”
Shin stomped on Sou’s foot and he laughed, letting go, and Shin furiously wiped his face off with the sleeves of his jacket. Teasing brought them back into familiar territory. It gave both of them the chance to cover up the parts of themselves they didn’t let into the light very often.
Shin wasn’t quite done, though. He shoved Sou’s scarf up to cover his face a little and grumbled, “…I would’ve if you wanted me to.”
Sou grinned. Really, Shin made his heart flutter in his chest like nothing else did. So timid he couldn't meet Sou's eyes. So bold he was willing to ignore the dead bodies around them when he said that. “Do I get a second wish? I’m pretty sure three is traditional!”
“Absolutely not! You didn’t even give me three.”
“Well, probably for the best!” Sou felt his grin getting a bit sharp. “This isn’t exactly the best place for that sort of thing, now is it?”
Shin very abruptly remembered there were three dead men around them, and all the color and levity drained out of his face. Even though he knew Sou had been the one to kill them, he took a little step towards him. “R-right. We should… W-we should go.”
“You can, certainly. But I have some things I need to take care of here first.” For some reason, Sou’s heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. It hurt. He hated the invisible little barrier named "Asunaro" separating the two of them right now. “Oh, and be sure you wipe your shoes off in the grass really well before going back onto the street, okay? And you should tie your jacket around your waist so no one sees what’s on the back. And when you get back, make sure you wash it with—”
“I get it! Jeez!”
And still, neither of them parted. Neither of them wanted to go, despite how obviously uncomfortable Shin was around the corpses. It was admirable, really. Shin was always so full of surprises. Of course Sou could never get bored of him.
“…Hiyori?” Shin’s voice had evened out from how ragged it had sounded while he was crying.
“Yes?” Sou’s voice sounded the same as it always did.
“I…am important to you, right?”
What a heavy question it was, from such a delicate voice. Shin had never asked him that directly before. But if he’d been stewing in months of thinking that Sou had abandoned him and left him behind on purpose because he’d gotten tired of him, it only made sense for him to ask.
Shin would never know about how badly Sou had dealt with their separation. He’d never know that the whole of Asunaro’s researchers knew about how infatuated Sou was with him now. He’d never know about the AI, the clearest proof that Sou, too, had gotten to a point where he just couldn’t live without Shin anymore.
“You are,” Sou said. “More than you’ll ever realize.”
Shin left eventually, a little bit after that. He turned one last time as if there was something else he wanted to say, but then he shut his mouth and walked out of sight. Sou listened to the sound of shoes against dirt and grass, the sound of the gate opening and closing, and then footsteps that faded to nothing. He looked down at the mess around him, at the mess his clothing now was thanks to Shin’s sobbing, and at the mess he was going to be in if he didn’t act very fast, because he wasn’t supposed to have any contact with Shin anymore.
Twenty minutes after Shin left, Sou followed, melting back into the crowd as if he belonged there, and reported about his latest screwup to Emiri.
The next day, Emiri punched him in the gut and then told him that Shin’s memories of the previous day had been wiped, she’d done it herself to make sure, and that if he screwed up like that again one more time in a way that could get her implicated, she was going to kill him herself. Then she slammed the door in his face and left.
Sou sat down at his desk and stared at the grainy surveillance photos taped to the edge of his monitor. Shin still thought Sou had abandoned him. Shin was still looking for him in all the worst places. Shin didn’t even remember promising to never forget him, or any of the other things they’d talked about. All in all, this whole stupid escapade had given him a net zero—everything was exactly the same as when he started.
He traced his fingers over the red scarf in one photograph. He hadn’t even gotten his own picture of Shin in his scarf.
