Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Corpse Party franchise and never will. This is a story I wrote just for fun because I'm a fan of Corpse Party.

A/N: Been a while since I posted a story. Heh.

Tbh I've had this finished for like... half a year now? Never had the chance to post it until now haha.

Well, this takes place directly after Extra Chapter 1 of Blood Drive. God, writing this was hard. Revising was hard. What happens to Mayu and Morishige in canon is already heart-wrenching enough, but I feel like I made it ten times worse by writing this extension to the chapter.

Hope you enjoy~

Afterlife

Agony.

The single word dominated in his mind, as it was what he felt most intensely when he regained consciousness. It resided in his left arm, the left side of his head, his left shoulder… but the aching mainly circulated in his chest.

But aside from that, his body felt… light. It was a strange sensation that he couldn't quite describe himself.

What happened to me…? Morishige wondered, blinking away the blurriness in his weary eyes and mustering all of his strength to ignore the pain that overcame his entire body. He glanced around in an attempt to understand the situation around him.

He appeared to be in an auditorium, but he had no recollection of how he ended up there. He found himself positioned against the wall in an uncomfortable slump, as if someone had dragged him into that spot.

I know for a fact that this isn't Kisaragi. The last I remember was when we all performed that charm upon the class rep's request… and then I blacked out, and found myself in a corpse-laden place by the name of Heavenly Host Elementary School. Therefore, I must be in this school's auditorium…

After deducing these facts, Morishige's mind suddenly went blank. He urged himself to remember beyond that, and after a long, painful moment, the memories came flooding back in an overwhelming rush.

Corpses. The blinding flashes of his phone camera. The female student splattered on the wall right outside the infirmary, her beauty preserved for all eternity inside his cell phone. And worst of all, Mayu's soft, pain-stricken voice whispering to him: "Shig… don't look…

"Don't look… at my insides…"

The pain in his chest intensified. His eyes burned with the desire to cry, but for some reason he couldn't fathom, no tears were produced. A soft sob escaped his lips as he clutched his chest in an effort to stop the agony.

"M-Mayu…"

A second chorus of whimpers joined his own, catching his attention. Slowly, he looked up and to both sides to find the source.

That was when he spotted her.

"Ma-Mayu…?" Her name rolled off Morishige's tongue in an almost soundless whisper.

Between rapid blinks and rough massages from his fingertips to clear his vision, he observed the girl that crouched on the floor several feet away, her face buried in her hands. He couldn't believe the girl before him was Mayu Suzumoto, but he was one-hundred-percent positive that she was. She had the same short brown hair, the same petite body that trembled with her quiet sobs, and the same Kisaragi Academy uniform that she shared with their many female classmates. There was no doubt about it.

But… Morishige stared at the girl with wide eyes, the image of the girl splattered on the wall vivid in his mind. This girl appears to be in one piece… It just doesn't match up...

He swallowed, wincing at the dry feeling in his throat, before finally uttering: "Mayu…?"

She didn't respond; he wasn't too surprised, considering his voice was so hoarse and quiet. He opened his mouth to try again...

But he froze, noting two things that he failed to notice beforehand.

The first, was the bluish glow that emanated from the girl's body. He could also clearly view the auditorium's stage through her transparent form.

This must be Mayu's spirit, he deduced, swallowing hard, his eyes stinging.

The second point that he didn't catch before, was a corpse, a visibly fresh one, that Mayu was crying over. It appeared to be a sixteen-year-old boy, with a stab wound in his chest. The blood that seeped from it stained his gray school uniform and pooled on the hardwood floor beneath him. And something about him was achingly familiar: purple hair, hollow green eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses…

Morishige's entire body stiffened.

That corpse was himself. Looking upon the lifeless boy was like gazing into a mirror.

"H-how…?"

To test his theory, he raised a shaking hand, observing it with eyes the size of saucers. His own flesh displayed the same pale blue glow that Mayu's body did, as well as the same translucency.

All of the pieces of this surreal puzzle clicked together in Morishige's mind.

Mayu was dead, her physical body painting the wall in a horrific mosaic of blood and meat.

And he was dead, having taken his own life with Yuuya Kizami's blade to be reunited with her, his one true love.

And there they were, two spirits bound to the dimensions of Heavenly Host for all eternity.

The urge to cry overcame him again, but he pushed it aside, focusing instead on the spirit of the girl before him. Entire body screaming with pain as he strained himself to move, he dragged himself across the floor in an effort to get closer to her.

"Mayu…!" Though still ragged, Morishige's voice projected better than it had in his previous attempts.

Mayu's head snapped up, and her despair-filled green eyes met his. She remained rooted in place as she watched him inch toward her, half-crawling with the right side of his body. For a brief moment, her eyes shifted away from him to glance at his corpse in uncertainty.

"Sh-Shig…?" she whispered.

The sweet sound of her voice uttering his nickname filled his disembodied self with a pleasant warmth—the most joy he had felt since awaking after his death. This feeling urged him forward, granting his battered body the strength to move onward until he reached her.

He pathetically slumped onto the floor at her knees; she lifted him up into a crouching position that mirrored her own. Her soft hands were cold as ice as she ran them from his shoulders and up his slender neck. They fell upon his cheeks, gently cradling his head as she gazed at him.

Mixed emotions flooded Morishige in the long moments of silence that followed. Seeing Mayu's precious face again brought him joy, but the agony present in her twisted facial features broke his heart. Another part of him felt an overwhelming sense of dread—what if she hated him for the disgusting way he fawned over her corpse?

Her expression was unreadable, only displaying the despair and pain from her moment of death, and that only made him all the more anxious.

Of course she despises me, he thought, reflecting on his last words in life before he plunged the knife into his chest. She could never forgive me for what I've—

A sob suddenly broke through Mayu's frowning lips, and she threw her arms around him in a tight embrace. "Shig!"

The action caught him by surprise, and he wound his arms around her torso, using all of his willpower to ignore the pain and cherish the feeling of holding her close to him.

"Mayu…" He wished to continue, to say the words that he had so desperately wished to tell her when he was finally reunited with her.

But there was no possible way he could've known their reunion would be like this.

Initially, Morishige planned on telling her, "I'm so glad to see you're okay," and he would have went on to comfort her with promises of getting out of the hellish, corpse-ridden school safely. They would've reunited with their classmates, discovered a way to escape, and made it back to Kisaragi Academy alive and well. The following day, Mayu would've transferred schools as planned, and he planned on confessing his love to her that night…

Those ideals all seemed like a delusional fairy tale to him now. As he held her icy, weightless, disembodied form in his arms, his own body sharing the same characteristics, he knew they had no chance of escaping. Their souls were now bound to Heavenly Host. There was a high probability that their classmates were dead, as well.

And he wished to say that he was glad to see her, but in all honesty, he wasn't. If they were both still alive, holding her warm body in a comforting embrace and seeing her bright smile would have filled him with joy. But given the unexpected circumstances, he was only overwhelmed by more grief.

We're together again, but not in life. This is not how it should've been…

"Shig…" Mayu's soft whimper broke him from his negative thoughts. She pulled her head away, her sad eyes meeting his. "Shig, you idiot…!"

He gulped. "So, you really do hate me…"

"No!" she snapped back, and he shot her a puzzled look. "No, I don't hate you! I could never, ever hate you!"

"H-how…?" Morishige was at a loss for words once again.

But she already knew of the worries lingering in his mind, so she elaborated, her firm voice gradually beginning to waver: "I don't hate you for fawning over my dead body. You had no way of knowing it was me. And I don't blame you for not being there to protect me, either. T-there was nothing that could've been done, Shig. All of this was so out of our control…" Slowly, she averted her green eyes downward as her tangent trailed off to its conclusion.

Relief flooded Morishige, and he felt a little more at ease. He raised his hand to caress her tousled brown hair, weaving his fingers in her soft locks. "Mayu, I…"

"I-I can't believe…" she whispered then, her voice so low and hoarse that he could barely hear her.

"C-come again…?"

Her head suddenly snapped up, and her eyes locked with his once again, anguish swirling within the depths of her green irises. "I can't believe you did that!" She removed her hand from his face to gesture at his lifeless body that laid beside them.

His eyes flickered over for a brief moment before he tore them away, shutting them in an effort to block out the negative emotions that now returned to eat away at him. For someone who had admired corpses during his last few hours of life, seeing his own slowly-rotting body was devastating, horrifying.

Plunging that knife into his chest seemed like the best choice of action in those last few moments of his life. Morishige never felt that his life had much meaning at all, and continuing to live without Mayu—the only person that truly mattered to him, the one that saved his life and gave his existence meaning by introducing him to acting—seemed entirely pointless.

"Shig…" Mayu whimpered between shaky breaths, leaning forward to nuzzle her face in the crook of his shoulder. "Why did you do that?! I wanted you to live! You should've escaped this place and gone on to live a fulfilling life…"

Heaving a pained sigh, Morishige pulled her trembling figure closer to him, forcing his aching left arm to curl around her torso in comfort. How ironic… he thought, somewhat bitterly. I took my own life out of guilt for allowing her to die, and now I'm overcome by guilt again… because I should've lived for her despite that.

"I-I'm so sorry, Mayu…" He swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. "But I couldn't. I couldn't live without you…"

"Shig…"

"I'm so sorry, Mayu," he repeated, voice wavering uncontrollably. "I'm s-so sorry, for everything…"

Her face still hidden against Morishige's shoulder, Mayu managed a small, sympathetic smile. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Morishige swallowed. "Mayu, I… I have something I—"

She drew back and silenced him with the gentle touch of her lips to his. "You don't have to say it. I heard you before, silly." She cracked a smile. "I love you, too, Shig… I always have."

A mixture of feelings swarmed the boy's heart; he embraced her again to calm them.

He was overjoyed that she loved him back, that she forgave him, as much as he felt he didn't deserve it. He was devastated that they both met such horrid ends whilst inside Heavenly Host, never able to escape.

But one sensation overpowered his swelling emotions.

Agony.

The unbearable pain that dominated his body since the moment he awoke in his life after death never once ceased. The pain that resided in the left side of his body and his chest was so overwhelming and agonizing that he could barely focus on his thoughts or emotions, and he could hardly shift his facial expression from the soul-crushing frown that he wore.

This was the pain that he felt in his moment of death—his physical injuries from his failed attempt and his successful suicide, as well as his heartbreak. This was the pain that he had to suffer with forever, as all unfortunate souls that perished in Heavenly Host had.

But the agony was bearable, so long as he had Mayu by his side, for all eternity.

The End

A/N: If I ever write Mayushige again it's gotta be fluffy and goofy, I can't handle any more angst.

So this is one of my theories about Extra Chapter 1, probably the happier one. Another one is that this extra chapter is merely a dream that Morishige has as he lays dying, since the chapter does play out so dramatically that I get the feeling it isn't real. Whether the events of the chapter are real or not, though, my last theory is that Mayu and Morishige's spirits wander the closed spaces of Heavenly Host, unable to reunite because fate is just so cruel. Or something.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed! Thank you for reading, and please leave a review to let me know your thoughts and feelings! :)

~Hayley