Chapter Text
Looking back, Hajime should’ve known something was up the second he logged into their video-chat. It wasn’t Naegi’s fidgeting that had given the game away — it was rare for him to go more than five minutes on any day without at least one nervous lip bite, a chuckle and a chin scratch — or even that he’d beaten Hajime to their online conference room for the first time since Hajime had known him.
No. It was the fact that he was alone. Makoto Naegi never went anywhere without his extremely blunt entourage flanking him, and he definitely never talked to Hajime solo.
“Hey, Hinata! Long time no see!”
“Morning, Naegi,” Hajime had said, because they’d met up like this just last week — they met like this every week. “Kirigiri and Togami couldn’t make it today?”
“Ah, yeah, about that! Uhm—” and there was that chin scratch, like clockwork, “—I guess I have something a little personal to ask you, and, well… You know how those two can be.”
“Alright, shoot.”
It was then that Naegi had let out a thoroughly unconvincing chuckle (again, clockwork), and dropped a nuclear bomb of a request on Hajime’s morning.
Hajime didn’t even want to know what type of look had crossed his face when the words ‘Neo’ and ‘World’ and ‘Program’ left Naegi’s mouth, followed by ‘Enoshima’s AI,’ and work-through-the-footage-and-see-what-you-find, and thanks-Hinata-you’re-the-best! Hajime was lucky his brain was wired faster than he was himself, because he might’ve missed Naegi’s request entirely otherwise.
Now, he was sat on a ratty office chair in front of the L-shaped desk where he did the bulk of his work. As soon as he’d gotten off call with Naegi, he’d mounted two screens to the wall behind his usual three monitor set-up. Each was presently split into quadrants, buzzing between threads of security footage that Hajime wished was just a bit fuzzier.
How Naegi had managed to get Future Foundation to hold off on this particular order long enough for Hajime to get his bearings post-program, Hajime couldn’t even begin to say — Naegi may have had the empathy of a saint, but the Foundation executives sure as hell didn’t.
In the end, the other shoe had dropped all the same.“You, uh— you remember the virus that corrupted the Neo World Program, right? We still don’t actually know how it… how Enoshima’s AI… was able to do everything it did. We really need your help, Hinata.”
And being helpful was kind of Hajime’s whole thing, nowadays. So, here he was, in the server room, a.k.a. the old pod room, a.k.a. ‘The Hinata Zone,’ which had gotten a revamp and a rename (not his call) this time last year when he’d successfully woken up the last of the Remnants from their comas. The room’s titular pods were stacked on the far side of the room, covered with a haphazard tarp that kept them out of sight, out of mind (so long as Hajime had the spare brainpower to convince himself it was succeeding at that mission even a little bit).
The bulk of the space had been filled with assorted tables and filing cabinets, a medical exam table and a sleeping-bag draped cot. Basically, it was his laboratory.
His laboratory in a passcode protected room, in a building that was key-card access only. So it was understandable that he’d startle just a bit when he heard the chirp of a satisfied keypad from the doorway behind him and a bolt clicking open.
He couldn’t exactly say he was surprised. Just disappointed.
“Seriously? I literally just changed the password.”
“You did. I just got lucky.” Komaeda — because who else would it be — approached the desk, his already light footfalls softened by the mechanical whirring of the computers around them. “You’re very predictable, Hinata-kun.”
Maybe he was. His track record on the passcode thing wasn’t great. 11037 had only lasted about a week after Komaeda had woken up from stasis, and Hajime’s birthday only lasted half that time. Recently, he’d taken to randomizing a new code once a week, up until a couple days ago when he’d gotten tired of the hassle and decided to pick a keeper.
42637. ‘Gamer.’
So yeah. Maybe it was time to just give up.
“I’m not changing it again.” Hajime huffed, glancing up to his right.
To his credit, Komaeda only looked a little self-satisfied. “I’d never ask you to.”
“Of course not.” He mumbled under his breath. “You already have what you want.”
Komaeda planted his hands, metal and flesh, on the back of Hajime’s chair. He leaned in over his shoulder to take a closer look at the monitors. “What’s this you’re watching?”
“Come on. Are you really going to make me say it?”
“No.” Komaeda paused. “I suppose I should change my question. Why?”
It wasn’t like he’d thought Komaeda was going to panic or burst into tears when he saw the footage, or anything like that. Hajime knew for a fact that the Neo World Program still haunted him, because it haunted them all. Komaeda was a little out there, but he wasn't bullet proof. Still, he'd always had a talent for keeping his cards close to his chest.
The total lack of inflection in his voice, though, was a bit much. It made Hajime bristle. “Because Naegi asked me to.” He spun his chair to the side a fraction to reach for his clipboard, dislodging Komaeda from his perch in the process. “Definitely not my idea of a good time.”
Komaeda swooped to prop himself against the desk instead. The drawstrings of his hoodie still hung down in Hajime’s face. “And he has you working on this to what end, exactly?”
“You know, last I checked, you’re not even allowed to be in this room, Komaeda.” He paused. Waited, and heaved a long-suffering sigh. His voice softened. “I’m watching it back to look for anything that might give us a better idea of how her AI was able to get as much control over the program as it did. It’s dangerous how little we know about how it did that.”
Komaeda redirected his attention from the screens to Hajime. “They didn’t tell you to look at the program’s output code? With all due respect to Naegi-san, I can’t understand why he’d have you waste over a month of your time combing through countless hours of video when you could look at the code and see how she edited it in a fraction of the time.” He hummed. “I can’t imagine that it would take you more than a few hours to find out what went wrong.”
“That’s the thing. She made sure we can’t read the output. Everything the program spat out past maybe the first thirty minutes we spent in the program is totally garbled.”
There were certain things that they didn’t need code or a research project to ascertain. They already knew what changes Enoshima had made once she took control of the program, and when she'd done it — not even a full day on the island had passed before the Neo World Program’s state-of-the-art security had crumbled to her attack. They already knew none of it could have happened if she hadn’t been uploaded to the program, and they knew that could’ve only been done physically, thumb drive in computer port. And, of course, nobody needed to guess who’d pulled the trigger on that.
(He hadn’t even tried to hide it: they’d found the damn thing in one of the towers a foot from his pod when he’d woken up.)
Hajime choked back any thoughts he had about that, because he’d given up his right to wallow the moment he’d signed his stupid name on that stupid form, all those stupid years ago.
He ran a rough hand through his hair. “So, yeah. We don’t have the program’s output code, no logs. But, we have recordings. Thankfully not just the edited down stuff she streamed live. We have access to all the cameras, and an untouched cache of other info about how we perceived the program as it happened. Think temperature, audio volume, touch sensitivity. For some reason, she didn’t bother messing with that record at all. So, I’m going through all of it. I won't really know what I’m looking for until I have some more data points. Once I find a pattern, I might be able to reverse engineer how she made it happen.”
“I see.”
Komaeda’s eyes were laser focused on the screen in front of him. There they all were: fanned out across the beach, most of them dressed in their school swimsuits and wading ankle-deep in the tide. Hajime stood to the side with the rest of the stragglers, shifting his weight from leg to leg and looking visibly rattled as he decided whether to join them.
It was almost funny, in retrospect — it was like the virus had been timed to go off just as soon as Hajime finally let his walls drop. He wouldn’t have put it past Enoshima. Himself, either. At the time, he probably would have seen it as sending his future self a gift.
Komaeda glanced back down. “How many hours have you been working so far? At least six?”
“Yeah. Nine actually. We’re just coming up on the seven hour mark in the program.” It took Hajime longer to analyze the footage he was watching than if he were just letting it run — there was a heavy dose of pausing involved, plenty of messy data to plug into his as-of-yet organized, complete disaster of a working spreadsheet. Still, leave it to Komaeda to remember exactly how long they’d been in the program before things had gone to hell.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
To that, Hajime raised an eyebrow. Usually, Komaeda extending his help came with a lengthy foreword about how whatever he did would probably have a body count, and that Hinata-kun would really be better off kicking talentless, unskilled swill like him to the curb, but if he truly couldn’t do without him, he’d be thrilled to lend a hand — swap out swill for scum or slime, add or drop a few disasters to taste.
Hajime let the offer sit for a moment before shaking his head. “I appreciate it, but not really. I should probably be the only one making observations, just to keep the data consistent.”
Komaeda was the most observant person he knew besides himself, and Hajime wasn't exactly sharp-eyed naturally. It took help from his Ultimate Analyst talent to accomplish what Komaeda could do by himself on a bad day. If Komaeda thought something in the footage was worth noticing, it probably was.
It felt wrong, though, to put him to work on this project. Hajime couldn’t bring himself to ask.
So instead, Hajime clicked pause on the camera footage, stretched an arm out far to his left, and grabbed the binder he kept on the corner of his desk. “But! While I’ve got you here, want to do some worksheets?”
Hajime barely bit back his laugh when Komaeda visibly flinched. Now that his lymphoma was in remission, Hajime had turned his full attention to treating Komaeda’s frontotemporal dementia. They’d started these worksheets a few months back, around the time Komaeda’s last round of chemo had wrapped. They were mostly puzzles, plus a few exercises to test his working and long-term memory. It was useful for keeping track of Komaeda’s cognitive function, just in case the scans he ran weren’t telling them everything they needed to know. How little atrophy they showed was a fucking miracle, given the fact that Komaeda had already outlived his most optimistic prognosis by a year.
The medical establishment may not have known how to cure dementia, but that wasn't going to stop Hajime from trying. They both knew that without intervention, Komaeda’s quality of life would only go downhill. The trouble was, Komaeda acted like he was allergic to just about any form of medical care.
(The irony wasn't lost on Hajime, who’d painstakingly kept him on track with his anti-cancer regimen for months. Keyword: painstakingly.)
Hajime watched Komaeda’s expression subtly speedrun four stages of grief. Hajime was a little smug when acceptance hit. “If that’s what Hinata-kun wants…”
He snagged the packet Hajime held up for him. Hajime shoved a pen at him as he walked off to a nearby table to get working.
They spent the next couple hours like that — Komaeda filling out his worksheets, Hajime tuned into his monitors. He listened to the quiet scratch of pen on paper behind him as his avatar had his world imploded, first in a rainstorm, then in a hail of bullets.
By the time Monokuma declared the killing game law, leaving Class 77-B-plus-1 to walk back to their cabins dazed or distraught, Hajime had gotten a solid start on his notes. He didn’t need to look very hard for fleeting visual anomalies, random discrepancies in the data from their biological response cache: Enoshima’s AI was crafty, but he wouldn’t call it discrete.
Still, he could feel his eyes getting bloodshot. Drawing from his bucket of analysis-adjacent talents for long periods of time like this really took it out of him.
He jumped when a touch on his shoulder broke his focus.
Komaeda dropped his work in front of Hajime, right over his clipboard. He hummed, bending down until the brittle tips of his hair brushed up against Hajime’s cheek.
“All done, as requested.” His lips ghosted the shell of Hajime’s ear. “Hinata-kun must be exhausted. It’s been such a long day, and he’s been working so hard.”
Ah. So that’s what this visit was really about.
“I could help you unwind, you know. If the thought doesn’t repulse you.”
A calculated thumb slipped its way under Hajime’s shirt collar to stroke the fabric of his tie. Hajime rolled his eyes even as his ears went red.
Repulsing him — that was complete bullshit. Komaeda knew exactly what he was doing.
This, whatever ‘this’ was, wasn’t new. Well, it was new, but not new new. It had started a little over a month ago, the night of a party they’d thrown in the old hotel building. They’d set the place up with everything they needed to have a good time: strong drinks, loud music, loads of food… and enough strands of high-octane disco string lighting to short circuit the whole building’s power.
In the very understandable aftermath of the very understandable panic that blackout had caused, Hajime had been sent to the storage closet to find a new extension cord for their speaker, which had gotten covered in vanilla ice cream during one of the most prodigious Tsumiki falls Hajime had seen to date.
Komaeda had tagged along. Emotions were running high. One thing led to another and the next Hajime knew, he had bruises under his collar and Komaeda on his knees. Their cosmic luck must’ve outweighed the party’s need for music, because nobody came to follow up about that cord, and when they snuck off to Hajime’s cabin later that night, no one was the wiser.
He didn’t think too hard about how Komaeda had tasted nothing like party punch that night, or the fact that he’d barely been buzzed himself. It wasn’t like blaming what they’d done on the alcohol would’ve helped much anyway, because since then, this had become a repeat thing: Komaeda propositioning him, Hajime giving in — if you could even call it giving in. When it came to this, Hajime’s backbone had the structural integrity of a wet paper bag.
If his breath caught in his throat, that was none of Komaeda’s business.
He kept his eyes on task. “I really need to at least close out this day of the sim before I leave tonight.”
“Alright.” Komaeda slunk his way around the desk chair. “If Hinata-kun wanted me to do it here, he just needed to ask.”
“God, no, Komaeda, that’s not what I—”
Hajime’s voice cracked as Komaeda braced a hand on each of his thighs and got to the floor between them. Hajime grit his teeth, because really, that wasn’t fair at all.
Komaeda smoothed his hands over the top of Hajime’s pants, pressing hard enough for Hajime to feel the warmth of his organic hand, and the distinct lack thereof in his neuroprosthetic.
(The neuroprosthetic Hajime had made for him. His mouth went dry. He couldn’t help the way he felt when he thought about Komaeda wearing something of his like that, every single day.)
Komaeda looked up at him, expectant.
Well. There wasn’t much going on in the simulation right now. If Hajime remembered correctly, he’d spent the next half hour or so screaming in his cabin. Even if he did end up a little distracted, he wouldn’t be missing much…
“I mean…” Hajime took a sharp breath. “What if someone walks in?”
He lowered his voice conspiratorially, as if there were literally anyone here to overhear him. Get a fucking grip.
Komaeda rested his cheek against Hajime’s inner thigh. “You said it yourself—” he reached up to trace over the zipper of Hajime’s jeans, which was cheating, actually. “Nobody’s allowed to be here. This room is password protected.”
Hajime had to laugh. “A foolproof system, obviously.” He pressed a palm to his face. His eyes flit down. “You’re messing with me.”
“Mmm…” Nagito’s smile wasn’t even aimed at innocent. The hand on Hajime’s thigh crept up higher. “I would never.”
Come to think of it, he still had no idea how Komaeda managed to get through the front door keycard authenticator. Whatever. Now really wasn’t the time.
Hajime scoffed. “Like hell you wouldn’t.”
Komaeda raised his eyebrows, toying with Hajime’s zipper tab. “Would Hinata-kun like me to continue?”
Komaeda’s head was still lolled against him, making for an environment where Hajime was way too aware of Komaeda sitting between his legs to be asked to think straight. He opened his mouth a second slower than he liked.
“Fine.”
Oh. He hadn’t meant to say that. Had he? God. Fuck. That definitely wasn’t the polite way to ask someone to suck you off. “Or, uh, yeah. That would be great!”
And that was even worse!
Thankfully, Komaeda was maybe the only person on the planet who could match him in social ineptitude. “I’m not so sure I would call my abilities in this capacity great—”
Hajime groaned. “Komaeda. Please.” He carded a hand through Komaeda’s hair. “Get on with it.”
Komaeda promptly quit his fidgeting. “As you wish.”
The head Hajime received in his lab that day was life changing. Well. Maybe not life changing — it was about on par with the head he’d gotten from Komaeda in other locations in the past month. He couldn’t let himself call every blowjob he’d received from Komaeda ‘life changing,’ though, even if it was a pretty spot-on descriptor. Hajime didn’t want his life to be changing that much, even just rhetorically.
Komaeda wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He pushed himself to his feet. “Ah. I think I could use a shower. Would Hinata-kun like to join me?”
His voice was airy, if raspier than usual. Hajime slumped in his seat, still catching his breath. He rubbed his eyes. Blinked hard.
“Oh. Yes. Sure!” The thought of being able to return the favor literally anywhere that wasn’t his desk was enough motivation to get him moving. He sat up to click pause on the security camera footage. He would rewind it later. The slightly hornier version of himself from ten minutes ago who’d decided to leave it running had held some pretty unrealistic expectations about the conditions under which he could navigate a spreadsheet.
“Let me just…” he slid Komaeda’s puzzle sheets back into their designated binder and clicked his long-abandoned pen shut. “There. All done.”
“Wonderful!” Komaeda was brushing dust off the knees of his skinny jeans. Hajime rolled his eyes internally, mentally drafting the email he’d be unsubtly nudged to send Naegi tomorrow, subject line ‘lab mini-vac.’ “So you’ll follow me in twenty? I’ll leave my front door unlocked.”
He barely waited for Hajime to nod before he shot him an amiable wave and turned to walk away. Hajime watched him go.
“Uh. I’ll see you in a bit, then.”
Hajime wasn’t sure why he assumed he’d be rushing to leave with Komaeda. They couldn’t be seen sneaking into a cabin together, even at this time of night, just past dark. Especially this time of night, if they didn’t want everyone talking about it tomorrow.
He bit the inside of his cheek. Not much else to do but get some more work done, then.
He rewound the footage he’d missed — he’d been right about it being a whole lot of nothing, but negligence was negligence. By the time he caught up to where he’d been before, virtual Hajime had just wrapped up his pillow abuse. He’d decided to sprawl out on the bed and repeatedly bang his forehead against the mattress top, instead.
Hajime vaguely remembered doing that. It hadn’t helped.
His virtual friends weren't faring much better. He tried to avoid looking at them directly, sticking to their surroundings and the data on the dashboard. He’d grant them whatever privacy he could, even if the nature of the assignment didn’t let him avert his eyes entirely.
He couldn’t stop his eyes from catching on the screen showing the inside of Komaeda’s cabin, though.
Hajime’s memory of that night was fuzzy. When he thought of it today, it was the raw wave of feeling that he recalled most vividly: like water rushing from a dam. The actions that wave had prompted? Hazy. The parts of it that Hajime could recall painted him as an ugly, solipsistic mess. It wasn’t until after he’d managed to sleep off his initial breakdown that he’d even begun to consider the idea that just maybe, nobody on the island was feeling good about the news they’d just heard.
That was the first time he’d thought about how Komaeda might have reacted to the killing game. Back then, he’d seemed to Hajime like the type who’d talk himself through it, who’d want an ear to bounce ideas off once he was ready to look for answers. Hajime had caught himself feeling guilty about denying him that.
Then, everything had changed. With Sagishi skewered and Hanamura fried, the Komaeda of Hajime’s imaginings had gone cold: he’d returned to his cabin, sat at his desk, and worked up his crackpot scheme to get blood spilled, no matter the cost.
Hajime’s thoughts on that had become a bit more nuanced in the year that had passed since everything had gone down. Still, he’d never pictured Komaeda the way he saw him in the program now: hunched over himself in the center of his bed, head to his knees. His shoulders shook. According to the dashboard, the volume of noise in the room was abnormally high. Hajime felt compelled to switch on the feed's audio. As soon as he did, he cringed. He didn’t know why he hadn’t put two and two together sooner — immediately, his lab was filled with halting peals of laughter.
It wasn’t a happy sound. Actually, Hajime didn’t think he’d heard anything more miserable in his life. He sucked in a breath. Komaeda's face was hidden from this angle. Part of Hajime (a big, prying part, that he didn’t like, but couldn’t begrudge) really wished it wasn't.
He needed to know that sound was real. He needed to see it in Komaeda's eyes — that this wasn't another lie.
On his walk to Komaeda’s cabin — trailing an obedient twenty minutes behind, as requested — it was all Hajime could think about.