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Even after all this time… Hinata still couldn’t believe it. He still couldn’t believe Komaeda was gone. After the simulation, all the survivors had woken up, and eventually the others woke up as well, one-by-one. All but him. He never woke up -- alive but comatose for months, until one very early morning when Hinata woke, gasping, at 2 am; and he just knew . Komaeda had already been weakened by his cancer, dementia, and the effects of despair - they’d known it was a long shot all along, but he’d hoped… well. He’d hoped. Not that it did either of them any good in the end. The others were upset, sure; but to them, all Komaeda had ever been was a classmate. Never a friend. Hinata supposed he wasn’t exactly friends with the other boy either, but he’d made an effort to understand him, and he’d once considered himself close to him - that was before the first trial on the island, but… he knew the boy who was so worried for him that first day on the beach was in there somewhere. He just wanted to talk to him one last time after waking, but he never got the chance and he never will. Hinata wiped away the tears that had begun to form. He was on a mission today.
They’d built him a gravestone, on a small plot of land near the library they’d designated as a gravesite after Komaeda had died. Naegi had asked Hinata if it was alright if he put a memorial for the members of the first killing game in the cemetery, as well. He hadn’t objected - the idea of Komaeda’s headstone, alone in an empty expanse of grass, felt uncomfortably symbolic of the way they’d treated him. The grave itself was simple - an obelisk of stone, with a short inscription.
When Hinata reached it, he gently placed an envelope next to the headstone, then sunk down next to it, sitting on the grass and leaning on the hard marble/granite(?) for support. Sighing heavily, he reflected on what brought him to this situation. In the simulation, he had exchanged letters with a “secret admirer”. He had long since found out it was Komaeda by this point, of course, but then he hadn’t known. The last letter he ever got from him was the morning of the day they were transported to the Funhouse. He’d responded once they’d escaped, but he never got another response. He realized later that it was because Komaeda had probably wanted nothing to do with him after learning Hinata was not only just a Reserve Course student, but an Ultimate Despair as well. Still, he missed talking to him a great deal, and writing letters helped him imagine that Komaeda wasn’t gone at all, and that he could slip his message under his cabin door and eagerly await a response. He hadn’t tried to send one yet, though - but he’d decided that today was the day. He figured it was a good way to get his feelings out physically (seeing them sitting in his cabin, piled on a desk, was a jolt of pain through his heart every time), and maybe Komaeda might even see them, wherever he was right now. He’d never believed in the afterlife or ghosts or anything else like that, but both Naegi siblings swore they existed, and there was no harm in trying, right?
He sighed, and moved to stand up, brushing off his pants as he did so. As he turned to leave, he paused, and turned back to face Komaeda’s headstone.
“I… don’t know if you can hear me… but, um, I wanted to say that I’m sorry that I never did a very good job of understanding you. I got upset at you too easily… sometimes it did seem like you were making me mad on purpose, but… I still wish I’d tried harder. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have to talk to you like this … If Naegi were here, he’d be scolding me for saying something like that, but I can’t help it. I just… I wish you were still here, Komaeda. I- … I miss you.” Abruptly feeling very foolish for talking about something he’d kept in his heart for so long to the empty air, he flushed red, and quickly turned on his heel and walked away.
Above him, sitting on top of the headstone bearing his name, Komaeda sat, eyes wide and face faintly flushing. It was actually quite hard to tell he was blushing, though, in large part due to the fact that he was mostly transparent, and that nobody he’d seen since his death had been able to see
him
. In other words, Komaeda Nagito was a ghost, and he’d heard every word of Hinata’s speech.