A/N Need to get this out of my system. Spoilers ahead from an amazing otome game called Monochrome Heaven. I felt very strongly about all of the options, but one in particular stood out to me: Touma, and his similarity to Sans from Undertale. Here's to both of your implied autonomy, and knowledge of the main character's Newgame/Resets. I don't own Monochrome Heaven.
"That is a story of a girl who is said to have eyes that can see the future and the boy who has dreams of the future," the man in a suit says. His face is impassive as always, and she cannot read him at all.
"...does it have a happy ending?" she questions him. He only raises an eyebrow in amusement, disbelief, or hopefulness. Perhaps it is all three.
"A happy ending for who, exactly?"
In the daytime, Touma attends to his masters' needs. He cooks meals. He cleans the mansion. He caters to the current bride candidate until the eldest Kamishiro becomes displeased. He plots with Marie.
The days are the grains of sand in an hourglass, pouring through until nothing, no time is left on the twins' twenty-fifth birthday. Monotonous. Predictable.
He brings in the fifteenth bride candidate. She hesitantly introduces herself as Misaki Runa, as if unsure as to her identity. She is a fragile slip of a girl to him, her demeanour reminding him of a small, fearful child. The type to only speak to appease the ones around. Still, she is different. Touma thinks that because she is different, her fate would be separate from her predecessors. He does not care too much, however.
But in the nighttime, Touma begins to have dreams.
In the dream, he listens from behind the door as Runa flatters and acts confident to Akito in an effort to ingratiate herself to him.
Akito comes to despise her and gives the order with a dismissive wave of his hand. Touma shoots Runa in the chest. Her death is long and painful as she bleeds out on the sheets, but he does not want to waste another bullet when one would do the job.
After, Touma speaks to the woman in a strange white room. "How could you?" she sniffles, hugging herself around the chest. There is no wound, no sign of the bullet that pierced her flesh moments before.
He is surprised, but he hides it, and instead placidly gives her advice in currying his master's favor. She nods and the white room melts into blackness.
Newgame.
Touma sees the woman alive again. Akito behaves exactly as he did before and Touma does not know how to react. Again, she introduces herself as 'Runa' and this time asks him for more information on Akito. Her eyes never quite meet his and she pretends to only just meet him. He follows suit and watches as she temporarily succumbs to anemia, orders the death of her cousin, and capture the heart of Akito Kamishiro.
Akito is spared from the 'curse' and instead of both twins dying, it is only Asuka that bleeds alone in his room.
He supposes Runa should be happy, but as he watches her sit on that hospital bed, her brow is furrowed and she whispers, "this can't be all."
Newgame.
Touma continues to have dreams. At some point the butler couldn't discern which was reality and which was a dream. He decides it does not matter and adopts the same behavior in both.
The scenery always shifts. Sometimes he is in the white room. Sometimes he is in the kitchens, a Kamishiro's bedroom, the hallway, the basement prison. Her room. Nothing seems to remain the same except for two things.
There is always the same woman brought to the mansion, and he is always there.
Touma vaguely recalls a dream of Runa in Akito's possessive embrace, but he never spots the two together after that save for mealtimes and Runa's initial visits in the afternoon.
She doesn't ask about Akito this time when first introduced. Instead, she inquires on the mansion's other residents and he warns her off, the image of her bleeding corpse fresh in his mind. A feeling of concern for this woman begins to bloom within, and he attempts to discard of it.
He is not to be a player on this board. The place by her side is not to be his.
He finds he is not successful when he feels a pang of regret shooting Asuka in front of her. Not because his master is dead, but that he caused her a different kind of pain. Runa screams at Asuka's corpse in despair, but the hall goes silent again when the bullet enters her skull.
"Make sure Asuka-sama likes you more," he merely says when she confronts him in the white room.
Newgame.
Akito is soon killed. Asuke survives his twenty-fifth birthday.
Runa ends up in the hospital infirmary once more. There, surrounded by the sterile whites and smells of disinfectants, Asuka lovingly takes her hand in his. Touma stands in the background and is surprised when she makes eye contact with him. He sees that same expression and he knows it could only mean...
Newgame.
Upon awakening in her room, the woman introduces herself to them by a different name. It is beautiful, but it is not a Japanese name. Her name does not flow off the tongue as such. It sounds like it might be English, so out of place is amongst the other names in the mansion.
Beautiful and misplaced. Touma thinks it suits her, and longs to tell her so. That, however, required a certain breach of invisible lines and he wasn't sure he could afford that.
As soon as Akito departed, Touma runs through the motions and hands her the map. She glances through it, pretending to memorize the layout that has already been burned into her memory. As she reads, the butler stares at her intently, trying to figure her out.
What is her game? What is she trying to accomplish with the repetition of the same two weeks?
She glances up. "Um…" she says.
He looks at her for a second longer, dying to ask her the questions. As if she could read his mind, the woman opened her mouth to speak, to explain. "It's nothing," Touma interrupts lifelessly. Then he straightens and asks the expected question, "what is it?"
Out of courage but full of curiosity of him, the woman grudgingly asks him about the mansion's other inhabitants once more.
Touma berates himself later over his momentary slip. His dreams of this woman are his to hold closely and secretly. And indifferently, or so he tells himself.
When he catches her in the company of Riku Kamishiro, she does not cower at his presence. She must trust me because of earlier, he thinks. She thinks she has me because I know what she does.
But he wasn't going to be a part of her hidden agenda despite whatever he felt towards her.
Touma ignores Riku's cry to stop and shoots her through the throat. An especially painful and drawn out death. She clutches her neck, her her eyes shocked as the blood trickles between her fingers. No sooner did she hit the floor that the world turned into a swirl of ebony and crimson.
"Why?" she asks, betrayal in those chocolate-colored orbs.
He stares at her intently. "Don't let me find you."
Newgame.
In his dream, his reality, she kills him. It is not by her hands that he dies, but Riku's as the knife embedded into his neck. This is familiar, though the roles are reversed, he sighs internally and he holds her gaze for a split second. This ceremony was a trap. I suppose trust is not to be had between us.
He feels himself dying, though he doesn't feel pain. He doesn't really care either way. This dream was all going to be scrapped, with only the two of them retaining any sort of recollection of the past events.
His duty was to become obsolete. He would kill the twins and the woman over and over and over during the same two weeks and never fulfill his program. He would fail and be forever doomed to watch his sad little dove in the arms of another.
Touma begins to feel the seeds of hatred. The fact that Akito and Asuka are killed in a car 'accident' a few days later does little to cut the their growth.
Newgame.
When she next reawakens, her eyes don't immediately turn to Akito in front of her, but to the dark butler in the shadows. She shoots him an apologetic look, but Touma refuses to look at 'Runa.' Unpleasant feelings churn within, and he holds onto them tightly.
...but when it is all over and it is just the two of them again, he can't avoid their shared dialogue and he looks at her and she looks back at him and suddenly they are close, too close. He staggers back and she blinks out of her stupor.
"I'm sorry," she mumbles pathetically, wringing her fingers. Her favorite phrase.
Touma sighs as all anger leaves his body at the sight. He realizes he doesn't want to see her unhappy and simply states, "it's nothing," signalling that she was to choose what question to ask.
He leads her into the arms of her cousin, that monster, Misaki Ryuuto. The monster that beat her, raped her, into submission and frailty. Though I suppose, in our own way, we are all monsters. Touma remembers her rewinds. She herself is no exception.
Still, he tastes ash as the two of them walk away, feels hatred burn in his chest when he sees Ryuuto's arm wrapped around her waist.
Thankfully, Newgame.
It is all over. He is the last.
His fist reflexively tightens as he tries to reign in his anger. In all his existence as a failed humanoid weapon, Touma had never really experienced much emotion. Sadness, happiness, both emotions and everything in between had always been locked away with clever programming.
This sudden surge of resentment and hate at this girl of many names, of the eyes that saw the future seemed natural.
"I… do not intend... to be another notch on your belt," Touma bites out. She had told him to reject his programming and to carve out his own path-no, the path she chose, so she could get her happy ending and complete her collection of hearts and men.
If she wanted him, there would be no more 'Newgame.' He knew too much and was tired of dreaming.
Silence hung heavily in the air, and Touma closed his eyes. The raven-haired butler suddenly felt a soft, tentative pressure on his lips. Touma stilled.
Her closed mouth met his shyly at first, but a growing conviction was behind it, in her. She cupped his cheeks tenderly with her rough, worked hands. He felt a wetness on his face and he realized… she was crying.
She let him go with a soft sigh and Touma looked at her doe brown eyes. Tears trailed down her face and coalesced at her chin. Seeing this unfortunate, pitiful woman crying… he gently rubbed the offending moisture.
"Idiot," she whispered, Riku's signature snark sounding foreign on her tongue. It took all of his willpower not to pull away at the memory. "Everything I did was for you. I 'like' the other guys, but I've always known that you were the only one for me. You're the only one that… understands."
And just like that, Touma's uncertainties and anger vanished without a trace.
"I… really like you, Touma."
Touma nodded once. Terse as always, but his eyes betrayed him by holding a certain warmth.
"You are valuable to me," the butler stated, gathering the fragile woman in his arms. "The most precious person in this world…"
"I'm sorry. I may not be able to stay. I can't control it."
It. The resetting, the 'Newgame.' Seeing her die to invisible schemes, her body next to someone else, shooting her as she begged for mercy…
It would happen again.
It would happen because she was who she was. She could see the future with her eyes and with a few actions she could determine the destiny of everyone in this world. She would always try to find happiness for as many people as possible, no matter how utterly impossible it was. It was his job to watch and act accordingly, while harboring their stolen moments in half-forgotten dreams.
"I know," he murmured, stroking her hair.
"I'm sorry. I'll… find a way to contact you. You remember. You understand."
He shook his head and buried his nose in the scent of her hair. "It would draw attention and your life would be compromised. I do not wish to see you die." Touma paused. "Stay. Happiness comes in many forms…" and I am happy with you by my side.
The woman hid her face on his chest to hide her expression, but Touma already knew her sadness. "Marie… there must be something I can do for her. I cannot stay for long. I must return and find some sort of missing clue to save her and everyone at once. I'm sorry. I will come back."
His heart clenched. So she was leaving him, at least for now.
But now, at this moment… she was here. She had chosen him. She, a damaged, pitiful woman had managed to awaken life in him, a damaged, pitiful robot.
She depended on him for safety and security. He on her for her conviction and purity of mind.
No matter which Route she took, there would always be the woman who felt so much and the un-man that felt nothing. One she and one he. Always together, together forever.
In its own way… was that not a happy ending?