A/N: Happy Kagerou Day everyone! I didn't spend a lot of time on this because I got swept up in conventions, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
The pavement was still warm beneath his body.
Streetlights had just begun to turn on, though the sun hadn't set far enough that the sky would be what one would consider dark, when the sound of approaching sirens finally met his ears. He'd gotten tired of waiting enough that he'd lay down on the ground, but as the noise got clearer, he sat up to watch them approach.
He had no idea how long he'd been lying there already. Long enough that he thought his tears had run dry and his whole body had settled into numbness, but as the police cars came into view, he felt his heart twist in his chest all over again.
No one saved her. Not even me.
Kano resisted the urge to slam his fist into the pavement.
No pain, he reminded himself, with an insistence that was as terrified as it was angry. Absolutely no pain right now.
The cars had come to a stop already, and several policemen had gotten out and were approaching slowly. Their expressions all ranged between grim and outright horrified, and a small part of Kano felt a twisted sense of satisfaction.
Ah, so I can do even this well enough to fool.
He pulled his legs a little closer to his body as they approached, and then lay down again. He knew that he could position his illusion outside of his own body, but he wasn't quite sure what would happen if someone happened to bump into him in a space that, by his power, was empty. Now was definitely not the time to find out.
"Ah, it's always worse when it's a kid, too. Look at how young she is…"
Saying useless things like that, hollow remarks. Talking like it was inevitable; a product of society.
Maybe she was bullied, or maybe she hated her self-image, or maybe she was rejected by the boy she liked.
As if she could have been broken by such frivolous things.
He wanted to scream at them, standing around her body and discussing her when they had no idea, no idea at all what a twisted and messed-up world was hiding just past the edge of their eyes. This world where a snake could possess a person and use him to kill his own family without a second thought. This world where Kano was the one who could deceive, only Kano, so when he had watched her fall off the building and get swallowed up the only truth he could be sure of was that it had been real the whole time.
What had she died for?
When the very one she had tried to stop had kept going as if nothing had changed.
Had nothing changed?
This was going to have to make it back to the rest of them. To Tsubomi, who had been so happy to finally have another girl she could be close to. To Kosuke, who was so fragile yet never found any reason to be unhappy with her. To Marry, who had learned that someone didn't need red eyes to be a friend.
This would make it back to them, that she'd jumped, that she'd leapt off the building and fallen to the ground, for—what? For nothing. For nothing at all, because they didn't know, they couldn't know, why she had jumped, how she had disappeared. Those three, who shared his red eyes, could never know about how he was lying here, lying here for all their sakes, lying for them, lying to them…
"You were right, sir. There was a pair of shoes in the entryway. If they're hers, then her name is Tateyama."
"Ayano." He said it, knowing that they wouldn't be able to hear him, because it was his own voice, the voice smothered beneath the illusion of the person he cared about the most lying dead on the concrete. "Her name is Ayano, and none of you have any idea—"
His voice cracked as his words gave way to a sob.
This was so fucked up.
"Tateyama, huh? Make a note of it and we'll look up her parents once we're done here. The examiner shouldn't be much longer."
He felt the tears sliding down his face all over again.
What if he hadn't allowed himself to lay here like this? What if Ayano had simply disappeared from this world, leaving her sad message to only himself and the snake? There would be a search conducted, maybe…
Or maybe, there wouldn't after all. That was just how this world was, after all. Children ran away from home and disappeared without a trace, and that was something normal. Teens were bullied and jumped from the roof of their schools, and that was normal.
It was so easy for all of them to look normal, when there was nothing normal about any of this.
But, the risk of a search was apparently something that the snake couldn't chance. A search for a missing girl, an inquiry into her background, into her parents, relationships she might have had, anything that could lead them to where she might have run away to… and maybe somewhere in all of that would be information that would make things more inconvenient for the snake, so in the end he couldn't risk it.
In the end, he forced Kano to lie here and make it look like all she had done was jumped to her death. A simple, common death. Though, she had jumped to her death. That much was the terrible truth.
She'd just been caught by something outside of any human reason right as she'd hit the ground.
He was drawn back to reality by the sound of a camera. Above him, above her, there was someone else now, taking pictures. Kano swallowed the lump in his throat as he felt the bile threaten to force itself out of his stomach. Right, this was all he was good for. Lie here and let them take the pictures. Take the actual, tangible evidence that she was dead, she died, she didn't disappear and leave behind a mystery to be solved. No one would think about it any more than that. 'Teenage girls jump all the time.' Something normal. Something expected.
Pictures that were only as real as the assumption that no one could falsify another's appearance.
No one would question it, while the snake who killed her was free to move about with no new suspicion pointed his way.
In the end, nothing had changed after all.
"Alright, we'll clean things up here. Thanks for your help, officers."
As a gloved hand touched him for the first time, he realized with a start that at some point, the illusion needed to return to reality. What did they do with those dead bodies, anyway?
He'd just need to wait for his chance and he'd slip away from them.
At least, it seemed the people who were cleaning up 'her' body were neither the officers nor the person who had been taking pictures.
But then he was being put into a body bag, and though Kano felt a wave of panic rush through him, he held it down. If nothing else, he had a knife. He could cut himself free.
They handled him surprisingly carefully, lifting him up and carrying him a ways and then putting him down again, on a surface that felt hard like metal. A vehicle, maybe?
Definitely a vehicle, as he heard the sound of two doors slamming shut, soon followed by an engine starting up, vibrating the floor beneath him.
He waited until he felt a lurch of motion, and then Kano began to squirm. They'd zippered it up right in front of him, so probably, he could get it open without too much difficulty.
There was no light to work with but he tried to work his way out anyway, freezing each time the vehicle stopped. The last thing he wanted was to be caught. He didn't think he could manage to make the body bag part of his illusion.
Far sooner than he was expecting, he heard the sound of one of the front doors opening and startled. Frantically he tried to pull the zipper as far back up as he could, before they had the chance to look in and see—
The back door of the vehicle opened, and a voice echoed into the space.
"Shuuya Kano?"
Above him, a dim light flicked on, and then someone climbed in next to him and pulled the zipper on the body bag all the way open. Now he could tell that they were definitely in a van. There were no windows, just the lights and a man with a completely forgettable face leaning over him.
"You're Shuuya Kano, correct? Mr. Tateyama explained the situation to us."
Ah. So this person worked for the snake. He really did have terrifying, impressive resources.
He let Ayano's eyes open up, and sure enough, he didn't seem startled in the least. Kano slowly sat up, and realized there was a second man outside of the van, looking in. He, too, had a completely forgettable face.
"Does that mean I can go?"
He hadn't meant to direct it at the second man in particular, but he seemed to take it that way, and moved so that he wasn't blocking the door any more. When neither said anything in response, Kano pulled himself the rest of the way out of the body bag and slid out of the van onto the ground outside.
They seemed to be pulled off on a side road, nestled between two buildings, out of the way of any streetlights. Though it was dark, Kano was sure it was somehow familiar, and without so much as a glance back at the two men, started walking.
"Ah—be careful. She's supposed to be dead now."
Supposed to. She was dead. She'd died, and unlike the rest of them, she wasn't coming back. "Don't tell me what to do."
He stepped out from between the buildings and suddenly realized why this place had seemed familiar. It was along a road that he hadn't walked often, but apparently a part of him remembered it anyway.
His legs felt heavy. No, not quite. His entire body felt heavy. Walking along, it felt like he was genuinely carrying the weight of the both of them at once. Her, with all her life and vibrancy and energy that had been cruelly torn from this world. Him, with his hollow shell and a hundred different masks. The two of them walking along together, at the same pace, with the same steps.
So heavy that his legs collapsed under him, banging his knees to the pavement and jarring him. He picked himself back up and continue trudging onward anyway, still carrying the weight of both of them. Even though, definitely, that pain would return him to his original form. It would be better that way, for sure. This way he could be himself by the time he reached the house, and had to deal with the others as if he had no idea of what they were about to learn.
He felt like throwing up.
"Hey, ah…"
At the voice, Kano looked up at the figure in front of him. Wasn't that Shintaro? What was he doing out this late? Well, it didn't matter. With the stinging in his knees, there wasn't any reason that Shintaro would be able to recognize—
"Ah, that is you, isn't it Ayano? What are you doing here at this time?"
… That wasn't how this was supposed to work. With all this agony coursing through him, it should be impossible that his illusion would still hold. That wasn't how his ability worked. But Shintaro's expression said it all, even clearer than his words, framed under the streetlight like he was the main character in some play with the spotlight on him.
If he was a main character, he should have done a better job of it.
The words came out before Kano could stop them.
"It's your fault for not noticing anything!"