Chapter Text
Hinata jerks awake into sleep-dazed confusion with his face in his pillow, and it’s musty, and it’s late; and he rests for a moment before he rolls over, and right into a damp tacky patch on his sheets.
“Fuck –”
He shoves himself upright, grimacing, and wipes distractedly at his back. The room is still and shadowed; there’s nothing that should have woken him. A blip of blue light blinks on and off and on again from the mosquito killer plugged in down by the bathroom door, but it’s tiny in the dark, and it’s never dragged him up from sleep before.
Rat-a-tat and the glass of his window rattles in its frame.
“Fuck,” he says again, and sits very still for a moment in indecision before swinging his feet off the edge of the bed and dragging his sheet after him. His shadow’s grey and ghostly in the gloom of his room.
Rat-a-tat: it comes again, smart and precise.
“For God’s sake,” says Hinata, who has no doubt that it’s Komaeda out there, and he wraps his sheet around his hips and crosses to the window.
Rat-a-
He wrenches back the thin curtains. Komaeda’s hand freezes mid-knock, and then he crinkles up into a smile and waves.
Hinata slides back the window. “It’s too early for this shit,” he says.
“It’s never too early for hope!” says Komaeda, cheerfully. “You’re an inspiration to me every hour of the day, Hinata-kun.” There’s a sliver of moon out, glowing through a ring of ocean fog. The long dry grasses along the dunes behind him are vague and pale and murky; he’s breathing out smoke and he’s greyscale in the mist. “Hey, would it be okay if I came inside for a minute?”
“No,” says Hinata.
“Understandable!” Komaeda agrees, at once. “Of course!” He’s shivering, rubbing his elbows through his coat; Hinata sets his teeth against the chatter they’re trying to rattle out and inches his sheet up higher. He wants his shirt, he wants a jacket, he wants a scarf and gloves and a thermal vest but even more than that he wants to not let Komaeda sense weakness in him, even if that weakness is pneumonia. “If I were you, I wouldn’t want me anywhere near you – you deserve a better class of companion! – a partner with talent to match your own, an other half your equal –”
“You’re right I don’t want you anywhere near me,” says Hinata, “but it’s got nothing to do with my Super High School Level. It’s because it’s the middle of the night.”
“Oh, man,” says Komaeda, ruefully, and then he laughs like the ruefulness was kidding. Far behind him, past where the grasses stop and the sides of the sand dunes drop, breakers wash in: black waves rolling and crashing down, glimmering brightly in the moonlight.
“Also,” says Hinata, and lets go of his sheet with one hand to scratch out quote marks, “since when, exactly, have you been my ‘other half’? Outside your imagination?”
“That’s the hope I feel just from being near you! Just from being at your window! It can make me say things like that! – presumptuous, improper things – hopeful things –”
“Right,” says Hinata, and he slams the window but Komaeda’s already jammed his hand through the gap and there’s a thud, and then a beat of silence, and then Komaeda’s face screws up in pain. “Oh, shit –”
“It’s fine!” says Komaeda, with a smile so unconvincing it’s twisted itself back into a grimace within moments. “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s – you do what you want, Hinata-kun! You can do it again, if you like! – I’ll stay right here for you, look –” and as Hinata watches, horrified, mesmerised, he uncurls his skinny fingers and lets his hand hang back limp across the windowsill. “There’s no more fitting way to treat me than – getting what use you can from me, and if that’s the use you want – if that’s –”
“It was an accident,” says Hinata, and then Komaeda smiles such a fond, knowing smile at him through the glass that his state of suspended dismay breaks very suddenly and he blurts it again, too loud – “It was an accident!” – and slams the window back so wide the curtain flutters in the breeze from it.
“Well,” says Komaeda, studiedly casual, and tucks his hands back into his pockets, “maybe – another time, you could try it on purpose?”
The cold’s crept in till he’s so cold he doesn’t even notice: his fingers are clumsy when he tries to wrap his sheet round higher. “It’s fucking – two in the morning or something, you woke me up, you got me out of bed – for this –”
“You’re right!” – and Komaeda’s latched on and lit up and he seizes the sill, folds his arms along it and leans in – “You’re absolutely right, of course you are – I’m an imposition! –” his gaze flicking all round the room, wide-eyed and wild-eyed with his shadow cast on the floor beside Hinata in the square of moonlight from the window, and Hinata tries to follow where he’s looking in case there’s anything he shouldn’t be seeing – other than everything, because it’s his room – but there’s no pattern he can work out: his stripped bed, his barely-filled Monobear shelves, his tasselled lampshade, all equally fascinating to Komaeda, and Hinata’s pretty sure he should be panicking harder than he is. “The things you could be doing with this time, if I wasn’t forcing you to waste it on me! I couldn’t imagine –”
“Komaeda –”
“– although I do imagine, of course –”
“Komaeda –”
“– you’d be disgusted, Hinata-kun, if you knew the shameless reaches of my imagination! The most vulgar thoughts – as awful as everything else about me! – and you know I can’t say I haven’t wondered – about the marvels a Super High School Level imagination must conjure,” and his gaze unfocuses, dreamily, for visions only he can see, “and I think beside my dull, pathetic daydreams – yours must be like Technicolor, Hinata-kun! And I try to imagine what you must imagine – what the fantasies of someone so special must feature! –”
Hinata smacks his hand flat against the side of his cabinet and Komaeda startles into silence. “If you’re just here to make me uncomfortable,” he says, and it’s such an effort to keep his voice low that he forgets to keep it cool, and it comes out hushed, and stoked with irritation, “then congratulations, you’ve done it. Was there anything else, or are you gonna get lost now?”
“It’s about you killing me,” he says, like it should be obvious.
“You’re still –” starts Hinata, but Komaeda’s cocked his head, looks expectant, so he cuts himself off and says, “You are. Right. Of course you are. No.”
“Well – if you’re sure!”
“Totally sure,” says Hinata. “And we definitely got this cleared up earlier.”
“Oh, no, I know we did! And I respect all your decisions, Hinata-kun – I would never fault a thing you’d do! And there’s never a fault, anyway, not when the decisions are yours – but I just wanted to check,” he says, and he smiles, in weird and gloomy shades of grey and moonlit highlights. “Are you sure you’re sure? Refusing the chance to let your hope live? Brighter than ever? Refusing to let your talent soar?”
“Yeah,” says Hinata, flatly. “I’m okay with all of that.”
“Okay! Great! Of course! – I just thought I should offer you one last chance, that’s all.”
Hinata slides the window back across till it bumps on Komaeda’s elbows, still propped on the sill; and when Komaeda doesn’t move, but tilts his head, and frowns quizzically down, Hinata says: “See you tomorrow.”
“Hm?”
“Good night, Komaeda,” and when realisation dawns Komaeda steps back at once and lets out one long, shivery plume of breath.
“It was lovely to spend the night with you like this,” he says.
“If you start telling people we spent the night together I’m gonna –” Komaeda’s expression has taken a turn for the uncomfortably expectant, “– I’ll never do anything but compliment you again,” says Hinata, and feeling vaguely ineffectual he slides the window home. It clicks into place; he twists down the handle till it locks.
“Goodbye!” calls Komaeda. It comes in muffled through the glass.
Hinata draws the curtain.
----
The next morning there’s no breeze and the few clouds straggle nearly motionless out across the horizon. Koizumi’s locking up her cottage when Hinata passes on his way to the hotel, so he waves, and she tucks back her hair and joins him.
“I’d like to do a sunset project, maybe,” she says. “And I know we’ve all said we won’t – do anything – but I’m still a little uneasy going out alone in the dark here. And I wish I wasn’t.”
“I get it,” says Hinata. “Trust me, I seriously get it.”
Koizumi shoots him a sideways kind of smile, and her hand’s resting idly on the lens cap of her camera and her mouth’s open to speak again when the speakers lodged below the lip of every cottage’s roof blast into shrill, raucous life. “A body has been discovered! A real live dead body! After a short time for investigation, the school trial will begin – so till then, have fun, you bastards!” and Monobear’s still laughing when the sound cuts off and the island falls back into peaceful seashore silence.
For one blank moment Hinata stands staring at Koizumi, who’s motionless, but for her grip tightening painfully on her camera, and she stares back; and then at once their student files bleep and the silence shatters and the horror hits.
One last chance! says Komaeda, brightly, beaming out at Hinata from the inside of his memory.
“Oh my God,” says Koizumi, and claps a hand to her mouth and turns away, with a sound like retching, choked and dry, “again? – again? –”
“We need to –” starts Hinata, but one last chance one last chance – it’s chasing out every other thought louder and faster and more frenetic by the moment till it feels like his heart’s hammering out that same unbearable rhythm, so from his back pocket he fumbles out the file – his hands are too slow, his moves are too clumsy, he’s wasting time – and it takes him a moment to realise what he’s seeing: the silhouette of an unknown body drawn in white.
The victim’s body was discovered floating offshore from the central island’s eastern side.
There are question marks in place of a name; there are question marks in place of information. It’s not confirmation and it’s not denial and he presses his hand to the outline like he’ll feel the body’s contours through the screen and get some answers but there’s nothing, except a death, and he feels sick.
“Do you think they haven’t – fished it in yet?” says Koizumi, faintly, gazing down with repulsion at his file.
“No idea,” says Hinata. He switches it off and puts it away, and looks round, for a moment, just in case – ragged coattails twitching quickly away behind a wall – sun glinting from the links of a pocket chain – pale hair ducking surreptitiously down behind a windowsill – but the cottages are quiet, and deserted.
Hinata takes a breath and lets it out and runs for it.
There’s no one on the boardwalk; there’s no one by the pool; there’s no one in the hotel foyer, or at least there’s no one he catches sight of through the windows as he races by. Shouts carry up from the shore in the still air but nothing’s distinct except for Nidai’s ferocious bellow and Hinata keeps going, jumps the top of a dune and skids hectically down to the beach below with his socks and sneakers filling full of sand.
At the very top of the beach Tsumiki’s sitting alone in the cool shadows of a palm tree, winding and unwinding one long strip of bandage round her forearm. “Do you know who died?” he yells up at her, as he passes, and she flinches violently, and then she wipes her eyes and shakes her head.
“Nanami-san s-s-said they’ll c-call me when, when they n-need me – I’m n-no use in the w-w-water, e-except for – for swimsuits, or d-drowning –” Hinata strikes off two more check marks on his mental list of people who are alive and not Komaeda and keeps running. “I’m n-n-no use!” Tsumiki howls behind him, “I’m s-sorry –”
The shoreline jackknifes inward and he slews round, sliding wildly on the sand; the distant ruckus gets immediately less distant and down the beach he spots tiny figures, clambering on the jagged low rocks that lead a little way into the ocean from the shore. There’s a dark head in the water, bobbing up and down and up while the others holler frantically; he puts on speed till his breath burns in his throat.
The brightest and the pinkest of the figures on the rocks turns, and jolts in surprise. “Hinata!”
The sand gets less soft below him and then he’s scrambling his way up onto the rocks too. Souda – barefoot, his overalls a dark and sodden yellow from the waist down – grabs his arm and drags him up, and his expression’s panicked.
“Have you seen Komaeda?” demands Hinata, and at the same time: “Did Komaeda do it?” Souda blurts.
They look at each other for one bewildered moment and then a flourish of green cloth and washed-out bleached-out hair swishes through the edges of Hinata’s vision and he spins to catch it: but it’s Sonia, with her skirt hiked up in one hand and her bangs swept back with the other, picking her way up from the water. “Nidai-san requires assistance,” she tells Souda, soberly, and he looks between her and Hinata for a moment before realisation dawns, and he grabs at the zip of his overalls and launches himself down the rocks toward the shallow drop to the sea.
“Is it Komaeda?” says Hinata.
Sonia drops her gaze to a stagnant rockpool. “It is currently impossible to say.”
“Fuck,” says Hinata, and he skids his way down the seaweed-slippery rocks toward the water. Nanami’s sitting with her feet scuffed into the sand; Ibuki’s sitting on her other side, one arm wrapped around her, weeping hysterically. “Have you two seen –”
“No,” says Nanami.
“Ibuki’d got it in her head Hajime-chan would have seen him!” says Ibuki, and dissolves into wails.
“– Komaeda,” says Hinata, and watching Nidai determinedly front-crawling his way back into shore – great grunts escaping him with every one-armed stroke, a black-clad, white-hooded corpse hitched and bobbing grossly below his other arm – it occurs to him, very suddenly, that he was disappointed to see Sonia – that he’s glad she’s alive but she wasn’t the person he wanted to see alive – and Souda wades out toward Nidai in a greyed vest and neon pink shorts, with a look of utter horror, his overalls shed on a high dry rock. The body nods and floats and drifts from and back toward Nidai’s side, and Hinata looks away, because he suspects he’s going to puke if he doesn’t. If that’s Komaeda – if the face below that pillowcase is Komaeda’s –
“Nidai, you fuckin dumb old guy!”
“Allow me to deal with this business!” Nidai bellows back, but by the time Hinata’s looked round – and Nanami and Ibuki, and Souda, biting his lip, eyes creased up from sheer anxiety, and Sonia, hands folded above her heart – Owari’s already shucked off her skirt and her shirt’s half-unbuttoned and getting more so rapidly.
“Whatever shithead did it, you don’t kill people at fuckin mealtimes,” she yells, and hurtles for the sea and dives straight in with grace and just her panties on.
Heads turn to follow her, ploughing through the clear blue shallows; and then Sonia exclaims and beside her Komaeda clambers up with a fresh dark bruise on his cheek and blood in his hair and a look of great cheer.
“You’re not dead,” says Hinata.
“Not yet!” He hops and slides his way down the rocks toward Hinata. “Excited for the trial yet, Hinata-kun?”
“But you’re,” says Hinata, and then he looks back to the water, where Owari has shouldered Souda aside and taken half the body’s weight for herself, dragging it on doggedly behind her toward the rocks, “you were gonna –”
“I was at breakfast with Owari-san,” says Komaeda, and rubs at his bruised cheek. “She was quite convinced I had something to do with the body announcement!”
“Did you?” says Hinata, after a moment spent telling himself he doesn’t need to ask.
“Oh, Hinata-kun!” No one’s ever sighed his name before; no one’s ever even said it so affectionately. “Why would I give you answers? – when instead I could give you hope?”
Down where the water breaks and sprays across the rocks the yelling’s got louder and Souda’s sobbing in great wretched heaves, and Nanami’s on her feet, and Sonia’s running, hollering for Tsumiki and Owari’s got a boost-up on Nidai’s shoulders, shouting curses down at the lot of them: and in the moment Hinata looks from Komaeda to the water Komaeda slips his hand into the crook of his elbow, and squeezes it to his side. “I’d never take the privilege of your investigation from you,” he says, seriously. “There’s nothing more hopeful than overcoming the knowledge you might miss something vital! – nothing more hopeful than doing your best when you know someone’s going to die from your best!”
He’s alive: Hinata tells himself that’s enough reason to indulge him, not to shove him off or push him over or break free. He’ll go down to the shore in a minute. He’ll join the investigation in a minute. He’ll do it in a minute: just as soon as he’s done with Komaeda.
“And you know,” says Komaeda, conversationally, and they watch Nanami slip off her shoes and wade in, “selfishly, Hinata-kun, I wouldn’t want to take the glory of that spectacle from myself. To be able to watch you fight and conquer! Or fight and fall –”
“You can stop now,” says Hinata. Nanami’s in as deep as her knees at Nidai’s side and the body floats between them, its clothes drifting loose and black across the water.
“Either way you’ll be glorious,” says Komaeda. There’s not a shred of doubt in him. “Even if I’m alive.”
They watch Nanami peel back the pillowcase-hood from the victim’s head. “Thanks,” says Hinata, eventually, and Komaeda squeezes his arm tight.
A moment later Hinata realises he has no idea whether the gesture was in reaction to him or to the blotchy, drowned just-revealed face in the water: and then a moment after that it occurs to him that, either way, it doesn’t bother him.
A terrible mistrust begins to sink his stomach as it dawns on him: it’s entirely possible – it’s more than likely – that he may never, in fact, be done with Komaeda.