He still bleaches his hair. Or at least, he doesn't not bleach it; it's hard to say how it works up here, seeing as you're new and it isn't like you're omniscient, you're just dead. He's still got his long jacket on, too, with the embroidery down the back that he told you once he did himself, and the belt with the buckle that weighs five pounds in itself. He's still got the eyeliner dragged down over his cheekbones. It's all way too familiar and it sits heavy in your head, sinking slow but hitting hard on the bottom, you can trace the outline of him and it's exactly the same, like you've found out the formula for him and you can just graph him out again. You look at him real hard and your brain's on two layers, tracing paper laid over each other, sort of, because there's the part of you saying oh, it's him, he's here, and there's the other part saying he's been dead for days.
Yes, well, you too, says some third part.
He looks back at you. His mouth widens out and you can see the points of his teeth, it spreads into this open shock and then an open grin that fills up to his eyes. He changes his mind on a dime and swallows that down into a frown, a real one, eyebrows furrowed and you figure he's just realized this means you're dead too. You can see him swallow and you watch it move in his neck.
"Hey," he settles on, which is diplomatic. You nod and say "hello" yourself and it's stiff like the couple of feet that are still between you. You say, "Have you seen Chihiro-san?" because even though you know things, sure, there's a thousand extra things you know worming back into your brain. You can't believe you forgot.
"Yeah," he says, "she's…" and he gestures back behind him. "We haven't really … talked. I haven't talked to her, I mean. Dunno how I'd even start."
You nod sympathetically even though you have no idea and you have no way to relate and thinking about it makes your jaws clench and your fingers tighten and your chest twist into this mess of anger and pity and confusion. You remember him trembling at his podium and you remember him ruffling Chihiro's hair before class started and you remember him looking at her strangely sometimes and you remember him saying he killed her with his own hands.
You don't really know how to start with him. He swallows again. "So you, uh…"
"Yes," you say. "I must have been."
"Shit," he says. Language, kyoudai, you don't say. Instincts from years that practically didn't happen are pushing forward and you can't reconcile them with the things that have just happened days ago. You count the beats of the silence that washes up.
He breaks it with a "fuck" and runs his hand up over his face. "Fuck. I'm sorry, if it counts. For forgettin' about us, and for… you know."
"I do know," you agree, and he looks away. You feel almost like you should be crying by now but you're not. Death is a funny thing, you suppose.
His shoulders are hunched up like he's trying to look smaller than he is and that's laughable, the size of him, you could fit Chiriro twice over into that jacket. He ducks his head down and it makes you so, so mad for some reason.
So you ask, "Have you seen your brother?" and he cringes and you're satisfied and you hate yourself. He's got this grimace on his face which is only hardly familiar, something you only saw at that trial, you delight in it and you want to rip it out of his repertoire.
He goes, "Nah, I haven't," but in this voice like he's been thinking about that a long time and your cheeks heat up and now you feel the prickle of tears in your eyes and that's like a comfort.
You don't think you can handle this being mad thing. Well, you can, but you can't — you're not entirely sure. You still cry messy when you're dead, it turns out, you have to sniff hard a few times just to be able to talk again. "I," you say, "I didn't—"
"Yeah," Mondo says. "It's… yeah."
This is not exactly communication. You swallow down your snot and tears anyway and step close enough to touch Mondo's arm and he sort of stares at it with this wondering and you do too.
"We should talk to Chihiro-san," you say, and when you punctuate it with a "kyoudai" he brightens up a little and nods and you go together.