Hajime Hinata slowly lifted his face off the tabletop and squeezed his eyes shut against the harsh sunlight coming through his window.
Groaning as he wiped the dust off the side of his face that was squished against the desk, he blearily looked around as he realised where he was.
Ideally he would be home, in his bed, probably having another nightmare about certain past events, but accidentally falling asleep in his office had its perks as his mind was so overcome with work when he dropped off that he didn't have to deal with the image of a smiling stuffed bear whenever he went to sleep.
Hinata sighed as he rubbed his eyes and then remembered the huge stack of paperwork he was working on before he gave up and repeated his action over again before realising going on a cosmic adventure wouldn't help him right now.
He decided to start up his computer in order to pass the time. Sitting through the opening screen, he was about to fall asleep again when a voice chirped at him.
"Hello, Hinata-san."
"Ah, Nanami. Good morning," he smiled at the small person standing on his desktop. Extremely advanced technology, given to him by his friend Makoto Naegi, who had discovered how to alternate it from the original copy from one of his long gone friends.
"Incorrect. It is 4 o'clock in the afternoon. 'Good morning' is not an appropriate greeting." She was altered to become one of his own long gone friends, the only one who didn't even have a chance to get out, even after she was dead.
This Nanami wasn't real. She never was real.
"Ha, sorry then. Good afternoon."
The digital face smiled. "Good afternoon. Are you ready to start work again, or would you like to sleep some more?"
Hinata laughed a bit. "You knew?"
"Your face is showing obvious signs of fatigue. I advise you to take a longer rest in order to work to your full potential."
"I don't need to, this stuff doesn't matter."
Nanami narrowed her eyes. The emotion in this little computerized person was astounding.
"You're worrying about him again, aren't you?"
"Huh?" Hinata looked at her, confused, before realising and looking away distractedly. "N-no. There's no point. He's not coming back, none of them are."
"Do you know how upset he would be to hear that? He looked up to you as one of the most amazing beacons of hope, you told me yourself."
"But I turned out to be the exact opposite."
Shaking her head, she rebutted again. "That isn't you anymore. He also said despair has no right to be considered an equal to hope in any way, shape or form. Please have faith, Hinata-san."
Looking at her small, sad smile, he sighed defeatedly. Chihiro Fujisaki truly was a prodigy. "Alright, just, can we just do this work now?"
The program nodded, and pulled up a document. "We've got a new client scheduled for tomorrow, so we should focus on the work we have now. Here is today's."
"-and you must understand that certain parts of the powerpoint do not have to include your particular thoughts on the requester's face, Hina-"
"Okay, okay, I get it, would you just be quiet for a bit? The phone's ringing." Reaching for the phone while Nanami muttered something about obscene literary skills, Hinata rolled his eyes and waited for the other person to speak.
"Hello, is this Hajime Hinata-san?" The voice was unfamiliar, and far too happy to be a client of the run down dirthole that was Hinatas workplace.
"Uh, yes? Who is this, if you don't mind me asking?"
"This is your city's local hospital sir!"
Hinata raised his eyebrow at Nanami, who shrugged. She could hear his conversations on his work phone in case he needed any help for surprise requests..
"Alright. I'm already donating to another charity, thanks." A blatant lie, but if he said he hardly got enough spare money at this job to buy a new pillow, she would be badgering him until he was kicked out his apartment.
"No, sir, a certain person at this hospital has asked to see you."
"I don't know anybody who's hospitalized."
"Regardless, sir, I've called for a man named, um, Nagito Komaeda. Does he sound familiar to you in any way?"
Hinata felt like his own heart had stopped.
There were two birds loudly chirping by the window. There was the nurse breathing on the other side of the phone. There were the worried questions shot at him by Nanami, but nothing could be heard other than those two words ringing around his head. Nagito Komaeda. Nagito Komaeda. Nagito Komaeda.
"Tha-that's, not possible. He can't be," Hinata said finally, standing up.
"I saw him myself, sir. He's as healthy as he can be!"
"You've got that wrong."
"Please come and see for yourself. He refuses to eat until he sees you, which is a problem for newly awoken coma patients."
Nanami smiled at him when he looked back to his computer. "I told you to not lose hope, Hinata-san."
"Tell me the address. Please."
Hinata seriously regretted not getting a motorbike at this point.
His workplace was close enough to his apartment to walk to and from, but now his head was thumping, his heart was racing and his feet were pounding into the cement of the city streets until he burst into the doors of the hospital panting heavily and hardly able to speak to the frightened intern at the desk.
"I'm, here to see, Nagito, Komaeda," taking a large intake of breath between the words, Hinata accepted the instructions to sit in the waiting area and went to catch himself.
He didn't have to stay long, as the nurse, easily recognized as the one on the phone earlier by her voice, smiled and said he could come right in, coma patients were on the second floor.
Hinata swallowed nervously. It had been years since he had last seen this boy, now an adult, and that time was with a pole through his stomach and a mouth taped shut.
But now he was here, behind the door Hinata was standing at. It was unbelievable, even if everything that happened wasn't real, it was too good to be true, that he was alive.
"Are you alright, sir? I'm starting to think that he's getting rather hungry."
"Oh, ah, yeah, sure, um, I'll just, go right in, I guess..."
Clutching the handle tightly for a second, he finally pushed down and opened the door.
There he was.
White, extremely messy hair falling on his slender, smiling face, dressed in a hospital gown and eyes filled with joy, Komaeda Nagito was alive, awake and happy sitting in his bed.
"Hinata-kun! I didn't think you would be able to come, I'm so glad!"
Hearing his voice was like an arrow stabbed in Hinata's heart. Hearing it again, hearing it so happy despite everything, it was almost painful. Hinata stumbled over to the chair next to the bed.
"Komaeda, it's, it's really..."
"Now that you're here, I can start eating so I'll be fine! Ah, thank you, Namiko-chan."
"Alright, I'll just leave you two here for your reunion. Visiting hours won't be over for a while, so stay as long as you like."
"That is much appreciated." Komaeda smiled at Nurse Namiko while she left the room.
They both sat there in silence for a while, Komaeda eating the convenience store bento the hospital had provided him, Hinata staring at him with his mouth slightly open.
He couldn't get over the fact that this was real. That he wasn't having another wish-fufillment dream where they could actually be happy and together and not worry about a death right around the corner and...
Well, there were a lot of "and's" when it came to his dreams about Komaeda.
Finishing off his last grain of rice, the patient put the container on the bedside and smiled at his visitor.
"I'm so glad you came. I would have killed myself if you weren't able to."
"W-what?"
"Well, while I was waiting for you I asked all the names of the other students that died and they said they had none of them listed here, so then I thought if you hadn't just happened to be nearby, well," Komaeda shrugged. "Didn't seem like a life worth living, even if mine already isn't worth anything."
"Don't say that. Dammit, Komaeda I am so sick of hearing you saying that." Hinata felt incomprehensible anger bubbling in his chest. He clenched his fists, almost ready to punch the stupid man in the face, something he's deserved for so, so long.
"But it's true, Hinata-ku-"
"NO IT ISN'T!" Hinata stood up suddenly, slamming his hand on the table and shaking the fragile bed. "All this time, these past years, I've lost count of how many times I have screamed your name at night because of how sickly worried I was about you, and you're just sitting there with this stupid smirk on your face pretending like nothing matters, that you don't matter and I am so fucking tired of it!" The reamains of the bento flew to the ground as Hinata breathed angrily. Komaeda didn't stop smiling, but it had turned worried.
"A-are you alright, Hinata-kun?"
Hinata closed his eyes softly. "It's -san now."
"Haha, I guess it is now, isn't it?" Komaeda looked down at his hands. "We're all grown up..."
Hinata suddenly realised that the man sitting in front of him had missed out on, how many was it, five, seven years of his life? He had lost track of how many days went by after they got away from the island. Even if he thought his life was worth nothing, he must be upset to some degree about it.
"I'm sorr-, no, just, fuck, Komaeda, you shouldn't be alive."
"I am super high school good luck, aren't I?" His smile came back in full. "However, now that I've had that, I guess my cycle of good and bad will continue soon." He sighed. "It sure was nice avoiding it for a while."
"You don't know that. You could stay lucky!" Hinata felt ever so vaguely desperate. He'd spent so long waiting for Komaeda to come back, to be real again, and nothing was going the way he thought it would. Everything was too sad, too heart wrenching.
"Hinata-san..." Komaeda sighed. "It has to happen. Especially because I woke up and met you off some some flimsy hope, sooner or later I'll-"
Thwack!
Komaeda stared at Hinata out of the corner of his eye in surprise. Hinata was so angry he felt like crying, his hand stinging where it had hit Komaeda's razor sharp cheekbones. "There's your bad luck!" Hinata half shouted. "It's been and gone! We can move on now!" Grabbing the other's shoulders on a complete whim, he pulled them together to bring their lips in a heated, messy kiss.
Truth be told, this wasn't exactly planned, but when they pulled away from each other, he could see in Komaeda's eyes that neither of them regretted it at all.
"H-hinata-kun..." Komaeda stared at him in bewilderment. Hinata looked away embarrasingly.
"L-look, that wasn't really, I mean like maybe I might feel something for you, I don't-"
"H-hinata-kun!" Hinata snapped his head back towards the other mans face to see tears welling up in his eyes.
"Shit, Komaeda don't cry, fuck I didn't-"
"Th-that makes me so, hic, happy!" Komaeda reached for a hug and Hinata willingly pulled him in and started petting his hair to try to be comforting, staring at the wall with confusion.
"Ah, there there? I guess?"
"I-I l-love you s-so, hic, much Hinata-kun. Ever since you, hic, since you tr-tried to understand me even though I-I'm such trash," Komaeda continued to mumble into Hinata's shirt.
"No. Komaeda. Don't say that. Don't say it anymore. Please." Lifting the Komaeda's face up, he looked into his eyes and said with the most sincerity he could muster. "Nagito, I love you. You're not worthless to me, so you're not at all." His straight face disappeared as soon as he realised what he just said, blushing and looking away nervously.
"Uh, H-hajime-kun?"
"It's -san! A-and anyway you shouldn't use honorifics with your...your..." Hinata muttered something that Komaeda didn't catch.
"Can you repeat that, uh, Hajime?" Hinata could almost feel the excitement radiating from him by just the simple fact that they were calling each other by just their first names. God, they really were stupidly in love.
Hinata mumbled again, going even redder. He felt like he was going to get a nosebleed like Teruteru always did if he didn't cool down.
"Hajime, I can't really hear you..."
"Y-your boyfriend, alright? You shouldn't use honorifics with your boyfriend, s-so just stop it would you?" Hinata finally said audibly and then slapped his hand to his mouth in embarrassment right after he said it.
"Ah, agh, H-h-hajime, I-" Komaeda stuttered out. Hinata looked at him to see him equally as red.
"I l-love you, Hajime."
"I love you too, Nagito."