Missing

Rating: K+.
Warnings: Spoilers for Week 1, canon character death, vaguely sorta Eri/Shiki, possibly OOC Eri just because her character's not really elaborated on so much in the game.
Disclaimer: I don't own The World Ends With You.
A/N: Just a quick little drabble idea thing that ended up being longer than a quick little drabble idea thing that exists because I've been on a major TWEWY kick and I suddenly felt motivated to write fanfiction again (and because it really had to be justified why Eri was out shopping less than a week after Shiki's death). Probably not the best thing I've ever written, to be honest, but I can't really figure out what I can do to improve it. Please leave a review?

It's been about a week, give or take a couple days, since Shiki… stopped coming to school. Maybe less because everything seems a bit longer now that Eri can't sleep, now that she's having trouble acting like bubbly, happy, loveable Eri anymore. She can almost ignore it, almost get to the point where it's just weird that she hasn't run into Shiki yet already today. She can almost pull out her phone and send Shiki a text message because she'll need to know what she missed today if she hadn't come back yet… and as soon as she catches herself doing it, she remembers all over again that Shiki isn't going to be checking her phone anytime soon (and of course it's better to put it like that, because being blunt isn't going to do any good. It's the things that Shiki won't be around for anymore that make the difference, Eri tells herself, because it's not as if she'd been particularly selfless around Shiki anyway, that was why she'd said that… nevermind. That wasn't why. All she had wanted was to be a good friend, really.)

The accident, everyone calls it. Even people who haven't even heard of Shiki Misaki know what it means, the way gossip spreads in this school- did you hear? That girl with the glasses in homeroom, everyone's saying she d—no. Everyone's saying she's gone.

It's easier if she doesn't say it outright, even if there's still that jolt of remembering.

Eri tries to keep track of every time she notices Shiki's absence, every time she tries to cover it up and forgets and notices that too, and it still just won't process that this had happened to her Shiki, who she never even thought about losing like this, Shiki who had her whole life in front of her just last week—no, it definitely wasn't a whole week yet since the accident, since it's Friday, and last Friday she was down in the art room sitting next to Shiki, huddled over a piece of paper where Shiki frustratedly scribbled things out and erased and tried to make the design work, where Eri just wasn't thinking and wanted to make things better and had to go and say it…

It's not a particularly good time to think about that now, since it's five minutes until geometry and an empty seat next to her instead of an ignored lecture and a concept sketch passed back and forth under the table, and she wants to talk to Shiki, wants to call her and apologize and take it all back… but she knows she can't, and maybe she's remembered this fifty times before, but it hits her like a truck again anyway. Not with no Shiki to pick up the phone, and for a moment she imagines Shiki's cell phone ringing and nobody there to pick it up. Or maybe Shiki's mom or dad would answer, or maybe the phone was turned off for good by now, and fine, Eri's not going to geometry today because she doesn't want the class to see her break down.

She knows enough not to consider herself completely alone. She's got other friends, people who can tell her they're sorry about what's her name, people who can try to make her feel better, because after all she's cute Eri, fashionable Eri, Eri who they'd say they knew back before she was famous—no, she doesn't think about herself that way. That was always Shiki who'd thought of her like that, wasn't it? Shiki who herself wasn't quite cute, but pretty in the sort of way that would matter long after Eri couldn't pull off the cute thing anymore, Shiki who was able to make the things Eri imagined into something real and tangible and somehow better than they'd been back when it was just something Eri had drawn, Shiki with that nervous little laugh of hers and that smile that always surprised Eri, even if she'd known Shiki was happy, even if they'd been laughing together just before. It was like the background of her phone (and Shiki's, too, Shiki's phone that Shiki couldn't answer anymore), where she'd practically tackled Shiki before pressing the camera button, and Shiki had been caught off guard, but smiled and laughed anyway (pretty, not just cute), and for a moment Eri had felt something like envy. But if she hadn't been bubbly Eri, exciteable, cute, Eri, then she wouldn't have been able to get away with what she'd done, wouldn't have been able to make her Shiki laugh.

It had surprised Eri how happy she's been that day, and up until the accident, she always believed Shiki was happy, too. She's not sure. She hopes Shiki was happy. She hopes Shiki was really, truly, genuinely happy before it happened, the accident, because Eri can't stop herself from thinking that if Shiki hadn't been happy, then this might, somehow, have been her fault.

The picture is still on her phone. She's going to change it, eventually, soon—she has to change it, or it's going to drive her crazy. She knows she can't delete. It's not the Eri everybody knows who would sob in a bathroom stall until her eyes were puffy and raw (concealer does wonders, she knows), or who would lock herself up in her room sobbing into the animal dolls Shiki had made her instead of going out shopping with Mina like she'd promised to do, but she can't picture just going around like nothing's different. She can't continue doing this.

She's told herself this before, but it can't be real. Everyone's lying to her, and Shiki's just fine. No. It's all a dream. It's all her worst nightmare, being stuck here while Shiki… wasn't, and maybe she's surrounded by people who call her cute, but it's Shiki she needs, and without Shiki, she can't be Eri, really. She can't design clothes without someone to make them real, and she certainly can't bounce around with a smile on her face. (And was she really being a good friend when she told Shiki to give up on being a designer? She can't help but believe she'd just wanted Shiki to stay her Shiki, didn't want her to go off on her own instead of staying and working together and being partners in this, and maybe she didn't mean it the way it sounded, but she can't deny the selfishness was there. She can't tell herself she was just looking out to make Shiki happy.)

Maybe… and Eri wants to believe that Shiki had been happy, because if Shiki hadn't, then maybe it hadn't been an accident after all, and no, she can't think about that. She tells herself it can't be real, but it's getting less effective as she goes longer and longer without waking up. It's real, truly and awfully real, and Eri needs to get ahold of herself because she can't bring Shiki back just by missing her.

She fixes her makeup, and maybe people can tell that something's wrong but her face is mostly the same as the Eri in the picture on her phone. She smoothes out her dress, almost freezes up again when she sees herself in the mirror (incredibly, painfully aware who it was that put her dress together, but she'd known that when she'd put the dress on in the morning, hadn't she?), and has to bite her lip to keep from cracking again. Maybe she'll let herself cry again once she gets home to Shiki's animals, but she's got a class to go to, and she won't let herself break down in the middle of it. She knows what the rumor mill does, and turning into a wreck would just fuel it further.

After a couple of minutes, she's under control and copying the diagrams on the board, and Shiki's just missing until Eri catches herself thinking it and no, there's a reason Shiki isn't here, don't you remember? Haven't you heard? She's dead.