Chapter Text
It isn’t a routine – yet, thinks Hinata, and pulls the knot of his tie tight in the bathroom mirror – but breakfast the morning after a trial: he’s expecting tears, he’s expecting fights, he’s expecting, most of all, this hard flat grief and the sense that whatever drama bursts out, no one’s got their heart in it. There are long dark stripes below his reflection’s eyes; he runs a comb through his hair and doesn’t meet them.
He scoops his door key from his bedside table and lets himself out. This early in the day there’s a breeze, clammy and salty, skimming in from the ocean and whipping round the cottages, whistling through their gaps. Even locking his door feels like a pointless –
“Hinata-kun!” says Komaeda, and Hinata startles so violently he fumbles his key.
“Have you been waiting for me?”
“Off to breakfast? A great idea! It’s very important you keep your strength up!”
Hinata shoves his key into his pocket and then he takes in a deep breath, and he lets it out. The damp brackish smell of the ocean fills him up. “How long,” he says, very deliberately, and Komaeda offers him a bright and encouraging smile, “have you been waiting out here for me?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it waiting,” says Komaeda, and he pushes himself away from the wall of Hinata’s cottage. “You are off to breakfast, aren’t you, Hinata-kun? I meant it when I said it’s important you keep your strength up! – for everyone else’s benefit just as much as for yours! It wouldn’t do for our hope to starve – our greatest hope, just – withered away! You’d be dead, and not even the challenge of a trial to show for it!”
Hinata waits for a moment, just in case he finds, somewhere, a final reserve of energy he can use to get angry; but none manifests, and he pushes past Komaeda down the boardwalk. “I’m not talking to you.”
“No problem! I’m happy just to be at your side! Hey, Hinata-kun –” footsteps hurrying after him, and he fixes his gaze on the distant red-slate hotel roof and doesn’t look round, “– there was something I wanted to talk to you about, actually! A sort of idea I’ve had. About us!”
The wooden slats squeak, creak, groan in protest at the stamp of his sneakers.
“An idea to raise you up – light you up, like the beacon I know you can be! – shining out in a dark and worthless world, drawing moths toward your light –” voices veer up from behind the cottages, raucous and distant, and Hinata isn’t listening, isn’t listening to a single one of Komaeda’s breathless words, either – and he hates that he knows how little time it takes Komaeda to lose his breath when he’s talking – when he’s raving – “except the moths are ordinary people, and they don’t catch fire and die when they’re close to you – they catch fire and burn! With hope! Because of you! You can keep them burning, Hinata-kun, with my plan!”
“Komaeda,” says Hinata, and when he turns around Komaeda has clenched his fists from the sheer extreme delight of being directly addressed. “If I give you thirty seconds to explain your plan – can you fuck off after that? And never tell me about it again?”
“Of course! Anything you like!”
“Okay,” says Hinata. He feels like he ought to brace himself against whatever bullshit bombshell Komaeda’s preparing, but he hasn’t got a clue where he could even begin; so he rubs a hand down his face and keeps his voice steady. “I’m counting – now.”
“The most important part is going to be working around the littering rule,” says Komaeda, at once abruptly, uncannily businesslike. “So after – maybe an hour? –” he’s talking with his hands, wide choppy gestures, “– or more –” and he fans one hand out, “– or less –” and he fans the other hand out, “– whichever you prefer! –” and he presses them together at his chest as the wind whisks up his hair into a pale feathery mess and he beams, “– you’re going to have to drag my body back onto the beach. From the sea! You’ll leave me in the sea to destroy evidence – once you’ve killed me, that is! That’s the plan,” he clarifies, and laughs. “You kill me!”
“Okay,” says Hinata, again, after a moment. “No.”
“I’ve thought the whole thing through,” says Komaeda, earnestly. “It’s watertight! If anyone cracks your case, it won’t be without true talent – won’t be without inspirational levels of hope –”
“I don’t give a shit,” says Hinata, and he turns and keeps walking. The door to Souda’s cottage is propped wide open; he doesn’t stop. The boardwalk squeaks.
“Hinata-kun –”
“Not even talking about it.”
“No problem!” says Komaeda, again, sunny as the clouds are threatening to pull back and make the day; and then it’s quiet, except for the whistle of the wind and the damp heavy creaks of the boardwalk’s bolts, and the wind rushes and rustles through the long grass outside the cottages and Hinata walks faster.
“If you did kill me,” says Komaeda, after a moment, “would you rather it was hands-on? – or hands-off? Or –”
“Just – stop it,” says Hinata; and, unexpectedly, Komaeda does.
----
At breakfast he pulls out the seat beside Saionji and drops down and scoots in close, as fast as he can; and it must be too fast, too obviously desperate, because she says: “Don’t worry, Hinata-kun – I’m more than used to big boys who wanna get close to me,” and kicks his ankle with the hard wooden edge of her sandal, smirking down at his buttered toast.
At the far end of the table Komaeda sits between two empty seats and eats rice with his elbows on the table and his eyes on his food, and he wears a private smile of great serenity. Saionji lets the wide hanging sleeve of her kimono drag slowly up Hinata’s thigh and: “Can you stop?” he snaps and she whispers, wide-eyed and syrupy, “Isn’t this what you’re after, big bro?” and when he says: “It’s seriously not,” she kicks him, harder, hard enough he flinches and drops his glass. Water splashes across his plate and she presses her hand to her mouth and giggles.
Conversation at the table carves itself out carefully round the sides of the execution and Komaeda doesn’t try to talk to anyone; Komaeda doesn’t promise death to anyone; Hinata doesn’t catch Komaeda’s stare of unbearable, fanatical fondness fixed on him even once. Though Saionji on the rampage is enough to drive any man to distraction, it’s not her who’s drawing his uneasy attention; it’s not her who’s setting him on edge and brittle with discomfort.
----
“And here we have History of Bears,” says Sonia, with a tone of such reverence the capitals fall audibly into place, and she trails her fingertips down the sleek polished side of the closest stack. “There are many fascinating tomes within these shelves! I’ve never known a library like it, Hinata-san – Japan is truly an astonishing environment!”
Hinata trails after her, round the library’s mezzanine floor. The arching dark wood beams that support the ceiling start only a little way above their heads, up here; the main room is a long way down and gloomily lit with shaded ornate lamps. If he could think of a less tedious way to spend the morning he’d take it; but as it is he’d rather be bored than dead, or talking to Tanaka. “I guess?” he says, after a moment, because there’s something weirdly commanding about Sonia’s constant bubbling effervescence. “When you’re not being memory-wiped and murdered, at least.”
“That’s the spirit!” she says, and merrily shakes one squeezed-shut fist at him.
She dances between shelves; he trudges behind her. When the main doors swing back with a burst of outdoor noise – wind and crashing surf and Ibuki hollering raucously – and then back with a whump, and silence, Sonia seizes his shoulder and presses one perfectly manicured finger to her lips, eyes wide and thrilled and seaside blue. Hinata sighs, and then he nods, and they sneak quietly across to the railing.
It’s Komaeda. It was never not going to be Komaeda. Komaeda padding up and down the aisles, peering round for – for what? there’s no way of telling but regardless, Hinata feels entirely certain it’s him he’s after – tracking sandy footprints behind him on the dark rose carpet.
“Should we hide?” whispers Sonia, noisily, and looks up at him, still clutching his arm to her. She offers a smile she probably means to be mischievous but instead it comes out so radiant Hinata’s temporarily blinded, and he blinks, suddenly speechless. “Or should we startle him? Do let’s!”
“Uh,” says Hinata, “we should – what?”
“Give Komaeda-san the shock of his life!” she says, and then she slings herself half across the railing and waves, wildly. “Up here, Komaeda-san!”
“Sonia –” says Hinata, but it’s too late.
“There you are! And Hinata-kun, too – what a wonderful surprise! Good afternoon!”
“I hope you are well!” says Sonia, who’s maintaining her hushed and respectful library whisper but at such a ridiculous volume she may as well speak normally, for all the good it’s doing.
“Very much so! Thank you for asking!”
“It’s my pleasure, Komaeda-san!”
“You’re too kind to me, Sonia-san!”
Sonia’s dimpling again, ready to respond, and Hinata – drumming his fingers on the smooth and finely sculpted railing of the mezzanine – is heading right on course to lose his temper with the both of them. “Sonia,” he says, in an actual whisper, “why are you talking to this guy?”
“Manners!” she says. “That’s something you learn as royalty, Hinata-san. It doesn’t matter how awful your people may be – they are still people, and, unless they’re trying to usurp you, they must always have first dibs on your respect!”
“Right,” he says, unconvinced. “Except Komaeda’s not even from your country.”
Sonia tuts at him.
“Hey, Sonia-san –” down on the ground Komaeda’s still standing with his head tilted back, hands in the pockets of his coat, calling softly up, “– would you mind if I borrowed Hinata-kun for a couple of minutes? I promise I’ll have him back right away, good as new!”
“Two minutes!” Sonia calls back. “As long as I may supervise!”
“Two minutes is perfect, Sonia-san! Two minutes of Hinata-kun’s time is far more than I deserve! Two whole minutes he’d choose to waste in my miserable, worthless company!”
“I didn’t choose –”
“My ears are zipped!” says Sonia, and winks, in a terrible parody of confidentiality, and then she dips her head so far it sets her bow flouncing and she whispers: “I have your back, Hinata-san – don’t worry about a thing!”
“Right,” says Hinata, flatly. “Sure. That’s comforting.”
Komaeda hurries up the narrow curving staircase. “Two minutes!” he says, before Hinata can remind him, and seizes his wrist to pull him into the depths of Modern Literature, in a strip of musty light from one of the high windows. “I’m ready to make this brief!”
“Good,” says Hinata. “Let go of me.”
“Hm?” says Komaeda, and looks down at the grip he’s still got, cold and clammy and squeezed uncomfortably tight. “Oh – that! Of course! You know, sometimes, Hinata-kun – sometimes I forget, when I’m touching you! Because it feels so natural. Like you and I are one, almost! Like we were always meant to be this close – do you know what I mean? Do you feel it?”
“You’re still holding my wrist,” says Hinata.
Komaeda lets him go, and then he touches his elbow, gently, as though in consolation. “With my luck the way it is,” he says, “no one’s gonna be able to kill me unless I let them.”
“Right,” says Hinata, after a moment, stilled by a blank, incredulous horror that’s really not as incredulous as it should be: because, at this point, he’d believe anything of Komaeda. “You’re still on this?”
“It’s not a problem if you don’t want to do it, Hinata-kun! It’s what I’d prefer – but my preferences don’t come into it – you should know that! I don’t have the right to a say in anything!”
“Hushed tones in the library, if you don’t mind!” sing-songs Sonia, behind the stacks.
“It wouldn’t matter if Sonia-san heard,” whispers Komaeda quickly, reassuringly, and his coat’s too baggy on his narrow shoulders and it falls too loosely when he shrugs, and it’s not reassuring in the slightest. “Not in the long run! If you won’t kill me then I’ll take my plan to someone else. I’m sure someone here would be willing to trade my life in for all of your sakes, Hinata-kun, even if you’re not!”
“But,” says Hinata, and before he licks his lips he raises his hand to his mouth, so Komaeda won’t see, “but if you did that – I’d already know your plan. I know your plan. The trial would be a joke.”
“Oh, no,” says Komaeda, “you don’t have any idea! – not of the full plan! You’ve got scarcely the barest bones of it, really!”
Hinata looks at him. It’s a dubious look. Round the corner Sonia’s humming, quiet and tuneless; there’s the soft thump of leather spine against leather spine as she flips through the shelves but he doesn’t trust for a moment that she’s not eavesdropping. “So – what’s the full plan,” he says, voice as flat as he can flatten it.
“Well!” says Komaeda. “Did you know there are shelves upon shelves of disposable barbecues in the supermarket?”
“No,” says Hinata, and then, after a moment: “So they’re in your – plan?”
“A-ha!” says Komaeda, and brightens up even brighter than before. “I think I see your interest perking, Hinata-kun! But – I’m afraid I’m not like you, you know. I’m selfish – I’m chronically selfish, utterly self-absorbed – I couldn’t possibly tell you the details till I’m sure you’ll kill me. Say, is that two minutes?”
“Wait –”
“Time sure flies when you’re having fun, huh? And you know all I ever have with you is fun – just looking at you I enjoy myself – hey!” and abruptly Komaeda raises his voice to the same ridiculous pressurised whisper Sonia was using earlier, noisy in the stillness of the library, “Sonia-san! Time’s up, and I promised you Hinata-kun back!”
“Wait,” says Hinata, and grabs for Komaeda’s elbow as he moves to turn away. His coat’s thin; his elbow’s bony; his eyes are wide and he stares at Hinata’s hand like he’s sighted God. “Wait – is that what I have to do? To get the details? Of your plan, I mean – you’d tell me if – if I promised to kill you?”
But Komaeda’s attention diverts entirely to returning the hearty fistbump Sonia offers him when she swoops in, round the end of the aisle, the breeze of her skirt swishing out around her stirring up dust in the muted daylight. “A prompt and excellent exchange, Komaeda-san! Good job!”
“Oh, there’s no need to waste your compliments on me, Sonia-san!”
“A compliment is never a waste! Compliments are all kinds of essential for first-class friendship to develop!”
“But you’re simply wasting your breath by directing compliments to such a base, unessential lifeform as me!”
“You are not that variety of lifeform! – you are a young man!”
“A base young man!”
“A fine young man!”
“An unessential –”
“Komaeda – Komaeda –” and Komaeda, caught up in passionate argument with an equally passionate Sonia, falls nevertheless obligingly silent. Hinata clears his throat before he speaks, in case it stops his voice from catching. “There’s something in your coat pocket.”
“Is there?”
“Yes,” says Hinata, and Komaeda turns back toward him and looks curiously down at his own coat, at the bulky, heavy object weighing it down on one side, dragging the stitches out of their ordinary shape into something Hinata hopes to God isn’t what it looks like, “yes, there fucking is.”
“I’ve got – hmm, sunflower seeds? You’re welcome to them if you’d like them, Hinata-kun, there’s no need to be shy in asking! Just tell me if you –”
“Other pocket,” says Hinata. “The one with a – with what I hope,” he says, and he’s keeping his voice so steady it’s toneless and that’s a good start, at least, “is not a hammer inside it.”
“Oh! – oh, the other pocket,” says Komaeda, “the other one,” and he rummages for a moment before pulling out what is, in fact, a hammer: a mildly tarnished clawhammer of a compact size with an orange rubber grip, and he slings it hand to hand and laughs to himself. “I should have guessed – of course you wouldn’t be interested in food my hands have already touched! There’s no reason you’d want that filth in your mouth –”
“Why are you carrying a fucking hammer about with you?” interrupts Hinata, and Komaeda widens his eyes meaningfully and says: “For you, Hinata-kun!” and Hinata’s stomach twists and lurches and drops right out of him. Every single time – every single time he thinks he’s heard the worst, he’s seen the worst, he’s dealt with the worst that Komaeda’s got to offer – every single time he’s wrong –
“Do you know,” he says, and though he tries to keep it even he can tell that’s not gonna work by the time he’s realised what he’s gonna say, “I actually – I’ve actually tried to understand you before – but I can tell you about unessential wastes of time – you’re one, for a start, and talking to you’s another –” not even the fact Komaeda reacts to that with a sharp breath in and increasingly shifty-eyed, flustered-looking swinging of the hammer is going to put him off, “– and expecting to ever get anything out of talking to you, and expecting to ever get anything back – and expecting to go five minutes without getting reminded that –”
“Please!” says Sonia.
“– oh, wait, Komaeda’s fucking crazy – and so am I for humouring him –”
Her whisper is outraged. “Quiet in the library!”
Hinata glares at Komaeda, but he’s let out a long, shaky breath and turned to Sonia, so he glares at the clawhammer, but all it’s doing is tapping gently against Komaeda’s thigh, so he glares back at Sonia, who’s raised one hand like an indignant traffic warden, utterly unfazed by the fact Komaeda’s carrying heavy steel weaponry round with him. She’s glowering at Hinata like he’s the one in the wrong here: so Hinata folds his arms, and glowers back at Sonia just as hard.
“Hinata-san, I have encountered this situation many times before in my reading! Murderers can often be found doing in those they best care for.” The glower drops; a starry look’s overtaking her. Hands clasped below her chin, she rounds on Komaeda. “The pathology of a murderer – it fascinates me! A quite absorbing topic! I don’t suppose you would be willing, perhaps, to tell me a little of your feelings for Hinata-san? Of the emotions that stirred you into wishing to beat down on him?”
“Sonia,” says Hinata, “he’s not –”
The starry look’s overtaking Komaeda, too; the hand that’s not still tight on the hammer he clenches, and presses to his mouth, and then he says, quite earnestly: “I love him, Sonia-san, it’s really perfectly simple!”
“As I suspected,” says Sonia, and tips a look Hinata’s way that twinkles.
“I love all of you,” says Komaeda. “You, Sonia-san! And Tsumiki-san, and Nanami-san, and Togami-kun, even though he’s dead – especially because he’s dead! – it was very important, I feel, to kickstart proceedings – and Togami-kun certainly got us going! And Kuzuryuu-kun, and –”
“That’s enough, thank you,” says Sonia.
“– Hanamura-kun, another wonderful loss! The loss of a remarkable, incredibly talented person – but the gain of such hope! I’m sure you felt it, Sonia-san –”
“That’s enough,” says Sonia, and the look she’s got is a little less starry and little more distressed, “that’s plenty, thank you –”
“– watching him crisp and bubble up there – the most despairing of deaths! Leading to the most magnificent – the most breathtaking – the most incandescent hope for the survivors! There’s nothing else like it, Sonia-san! I adore you, I adore Hinata-kun, my worthless love is yours –”
“Komaeda-san!” says Sonia, sternly, and Hinata wouldn’t be able to tell from her perfectly even tone just how close she is to cracking if he didn’t know full well just how hard it is to stay stern in the face of Komaeda getting glassy-eyed and breathless over hope and dead friends and murder. “If you do not bring this conversation to a halt on the double, I will – I will allow Owari-san to push you about to her heart’s content! No holds barred! Not one!”
“Really?” says Komaeda, instantly derailed and instantly excited, and he jams the hammer down into his jeans pocket, hidden below the long tails of his coat. “Do you mean it, Sonia-san? I’d have brought it on myself, after all – and if Owari-san would enjoy it! –”
“Do you – want her to hurt you?” says Sonia, and when she looks to Hinata and crinkles her forehead in utter bewilderment he feels a new heaviness settle down around him at the realisation he’s being turned to as Komaeda’s interpreter – Komaeda’s keeper – Komaeda’s last link left to reality. He wants to be angry. He doesn’t have the energy left in him.
“You don’t even wanna know,” he says, and he jerks his thumb to the doors. “Komaeda – come on.”
And every time Hinata thinks Komaeda can’t reach greater heights of horrifying ecstasy he’s wrong then, too: his breath skitters out, suddenly uneven, and his voice comes husky when he says, “You’re asking for my company, Hinata-kun? You’re asking for me beside you?”
“I’m asking for you to get out of here,” he says, as he’s turning to leave, and when he looks back Sonia dips her head in gratitude and Komaeda rubs his hands down the sides of his coat in a kind of frantic anticipation; and outside, back in the glare of the mid-morning sun and the relentless rasp of sand below his sneakers across the tarmac paths, he says: “Leave off. Seriously. No one wants to hear your shit.”
“You could kill me so easily,” says Komaeda, “and I’d even handle the logistics! Ropes? – grenades? – paralytic toxins? – I’ve got it under wraps! All you’d have to do is pull the trigger – which wouldn’t even be a trigger! – hey, Hinata-kun, do you know how strange the settings for the gas stove in the diner are?”
“No one wants to hear your shit,” says Hinata, again, very slowly, very deliberately, “including me.”
“Sure!” says Komaeda, at once. “If you want me quiet – I’m quiet!”
“Good,” says Hinata. Komaeda claps one hand to his mouth and his eyes crinkle amiably above it. Hinata tries not to look at the bulge the clawhammer is denting in his coat. It’s incredibly difficult. “I’m gonna – leave now.”
Komaeda nods. Apart from the rapid eager whistle of his breath behind his hand, he’s keeping extremely quiet. It’s considerably more unnerving than Hinata could have guessed.
“Don’t follow me.”
Komaeda nods again.
“Okay,” says Hinata. “Good,” he says, again, and gives Komaeda one last mistrustful look before turning and starting off down the empty path, in the direction of the island bridge. The sun is very bright in his eyes; his shirt’s growing damp beneath his arms; there’s not a sound from behind except the distant crash of waves against the rockpools on the north shore. The path crooks right at a patch of low dry grasses before the bridge and Hinata whips round as fast as he can, just in case – in case something – but Komaeda’s there outside the library, on his own, small and green and white with a hand still pressed across his mouth.
With his free hand, he waves.
Hinata crosses the bridge rapidly and doesn’t wave back.