Now that he was awake, fully awake and fully aware of everything that had happened, his mind was reeling.
They've all committed their shares of atrocities. He's among friends in that respect, at least.
If one were to look inside him now, what they would find would look almost like a television screen. Two distinct channels continued to flicker back and forth, battling for dominance within the mechanic as he tried to sort through his memories, tried to figure out what was fact and what was fiction... and whether or not any of it even mattered any more.
On one channel, there was something akin to a documentary; a documentary of despair, naturally. There was an enchanting blonde, almost constantly, and machines, so many machines... Crafted by his own hands, they were machines made for the sake only of torture and executions.
No, that wasn't quite right. They weren't like that at first, obviously. At first it was... nice. She was a cute-slash-hot-slash-fun-slash-everything underclassman, paying attention to him of all people, showing interest, no, not just that, enthusiasm in the things he cared about... She wasn't like those girls that just thought he looked like a good time. She was the real deal.
To him, Junko Enoshima was more real than anything he had ever encountered in all his life. She helped him live out his wildest fantasies, and she was there every step of the way. She personally tried out almost every one of his vehicles as he made them, and for the ones that she didn't, she made sure to find someone else who was just as willing.
He wondered if he ever realized that was all part of the plan. He wondered if, if he had, if he would have cared. Would he have acted on it if it meant losing that feeling she gave him?
But then... Making him feel loss, making him feel despair... She had wanted that all along, hadn't she...?
When the prototype of the specially-designed-just-for-her car crashed, she covered the death of the passengers up and helped him try again. She even provided funding and parts. When the made-for-two rocket he made for the pair exploded before raising above the trees, she not only got them out of the explosion's range, like she had seen it coming in a vision, but she made it so it was like the crew and the bystanders had never even existed.
And every time, every single wonderful time, she even managed to talk him out of his guilt and make him feel good about himself again.
She was like his angel.
By the time she locked herself up in the school building with her classmates, he had already had a dozen lives on his hands. He would do anything she said.
When she left him, she had even given him a new dream, surpassing even that of the rocket he had completed and given to her before she left him behind.
"Kazuichi, while I'm gone, I need you to do something for me. Something only you can do."
She had gently run her finger across his jawline when she whispered her new mission for him back then.
"If anyone can do it, you can."
And then she told him.
It really was beyond anything he had ever done.
He was to finalize robot designs. Robots! The ultimate dream of every owner of a Y chromosome!
"Only someone with your talent can fix this, Kazuichi."
She told him it was important. She told him how she had been given these designs by total and complete amateurs, how she should have expected such childish and worthless designs from the childish and worthless designers who had put them together in the first place, but they were too far along for her to scrap the project completely.
"I need you."
He didn't know what they were for. He didn't know who had designed them in the first place. He wouldn't be able to do anything about controlling them or artificial intelligence. He was just the one who would be able to put them together. That was all.
They needed a lot of work.
He did it all.
While she was locked away, he had perfected her robot designs. He made them so that even a child could control them if need be.
He began to live for the moment when he could show her, when he could proudly hand her those designs so that she could do with them whatever she pleased...
When he found he couldn't, as his world began to fall apart around him, he did the closest thing.
He gave the designs to one of his classmates to take to the island where the designs were needed.
If there was anyone who he was willing to hand those designs to... Who better than that one, right...?
He didn't care anymore.
She had been the only thing left, the only thing that wouldn't betray him. And then she went and did it anyway.
At last, with those plans handed away, with his angel gone forever, he descended into despair in full.
Whether or not he had known everything had more or less gone just as she had hoped was irrelevant.
And yet... From that despair, that Ultimate Despair, came the story told on the other channel...
On this channel, there was also a great deal of despair, but despair permeated by something more. A strange island. Memories being rewritten, friendships he hadn't even known he had had being formed, reformed, and torn apart when looked back upon from the outside.
There was death on this island too, and even executions just like what was shown on the first channel, but strangely enough... The conclusion to the story of what this channel showed him was something else entirely. Not despair, certainly, but not quite hope either.
A future.
Throughout the feature on this channel, there was even another blonde. A blonde that might have been on the first channel at some point, perhaps she had even had a role of importance when they were in school... but she had been quickly overshadowed when the blonde in pigtails took over that station.
The exact opposite of what happened on this one, funnily enough.
And wouldn't you know- She was a princess!
Like that other blonde, she was real too, but the princess... She was real in a totally different way. She was like... an ideal, but at the same time, not at all how someone would imagine a princess.
Every time she showed off how weird or unique or normal she could be, rather than sway him or make him wish she were more like some ideal, it made him all the more enamored.
Girls had always scared him. Hell, some girls had used to really like him, and been really forward about it, which just scared the hell out of him even more. What was he supposed to do with that?
Neither of the two women featured so prominently here were like that. One was subtle in her machinations, at least at first... The other was just herself.
With what he knew now, compared to the blonde on the other channel...
The one who almost always ignored him seemed exponentially more real than the one who gave him so much affection, always said what he wanted to hear.
Having woken up from the dream of the second channel to be able to watch the first in full, he understood now.
He, who had been so scared, so suspicious, so cowardly, in reality had helped kill so many... had caused so much despair himself...
He didn't know what to do.
Which was the channel he was going to turn off?
Which was the channel he was going to leave on?
Kazuichi Souda stood there, on the docks that those Future Foundation guys had left on, hoping to find a sense of calm. He was hoping to sort things out for himself, but the solution he had hoped would come to him wasn't here.
More confusion, more worries, more conflict. That was all he could find. Most worryingly of all was one particular thought, one that kept coming back to him every time his mind drifted far enough for him to silence out everything around him except for the waves.
He could just... fall off right now... Couldn't he?
This was the real world, you know?
At least, he was pretty sure it was, anyway.
Now that he was out of it... Now that he could see what had become of him... Unless this was a really cruel trick, a game within a game within a game... Then this... It would be legit, yeah?
This wasn't a game world. He had to admit, part of him still doubted even that, but even then...
Did it matter anymore? Whether he was dying in real life or dying in a game, he'd still be dead. The logistics of it didn't seem like they really meant anything beyond that understanding.
To his horror, as he watched the waves crash against the docks to and fro, he began to realize part of him was almost gleeful at the idea. There was a giddy, fuzzy feeling inside of him that seemed to wish for such an end.
The despair he was feeling... The despair it would bring his fellow survivors, those three who had just left after putting their faith in the five of them, knowing how important they could be if they made a recover... how important they were to each other...
The despair he himself would feel after he fell, the realization that he wouldn't be able to take it back once he did it... If he were to change his mind after he did it, wouldn't that be just...
She would like it, wouldn't she?
For a split second, maybe it would bring her just a little despair, and that would... That would... would... would would would would would...
A violent tremor ran over him. He gripped his arms so hard that he'd be digging his nails into them and bleeding if he hadn't had sleeves on, he was sure of it.
He was crying.
He mouthed an apology, a desperate apology to the friends he was betraying just by allowing himself to think these things, just by allowing these memories to dig their way in again, just by not manning up and ending it right here like he should to atone for his weakne- NO! NO!
He didn't want this.
He didn't want her.
He wanted his future back. He wanted his life back.
He wished he could be strong, like Hajime. He almost even wished he could have had a worse life before all of this had happened, so that he could adapt to what had happened after more easily.
He had his memories back. He had never been close to the guy, but he knew enough about Komaeda now, known him to have to leave school for doctors every so often, to have had that vague inkling why he hadn't seemed that different after everything went to hell.
His own life may not have been as bad, but people with similarities can tell... Or maybe that was wishful thinking. A leftover bit of brain damage from one of his old man's knocks to the head? It didn't matter.
If he thought about it, Hajime probably would have been able to tell the differences better. Freakin' Kuzuryu too.
All he was good for was...
He struggled to find an answer.
He knew the answer. He knew it. He had chosen it before he had left that world.
He was going to find his answer and make it for himself, wasn't he? In the future?
So why... why couldn't he...
Was it... in the water...?
A hand took his. Like he had been jolted with a stun gun, he was suddenly pulled back to reality.
"Please... Don't do anything rash."
Her voice was soft. It was a voice he would recognize anywhere. It carried an air of growth to it that half of him had known for a long time and half of him was still getting used to.
He glanced to the side. Sure enough, it was as he suspected. The princess.
A face very different from the one that had made up his whole world just a short time ago came into view. Somber.
His stomach twisted.
Her sins were great. In the grand scheme of things... They were far, far greater than his, no matter how personally involved he felt. What she had done to her nation, her people, her homeland... What she had personally done far outweighed what he had only put into motion with his machines and designs.
Among those sins- Suffice to say, that nation likely didn't exist anymore, and if there were any remnants... They would have had her head for sure if they knew. If they had the power to claim it, anyway.
Was she thinking the same thing he was?
Half of him jumped at the idea.
Half of him felt sick to its stomach at the idea.
Much to his surprise, without another word, she leaned against him.
Just hours ago, when the two of them were in that virtual world with the others, he would have swooned and squealed at the mere idea of being able to experience this kind of contact with her, forget actually being able to experience such a seemingly unattainable miracle.
With the weight of all he had woken to, he merely lowered his gaze, tears freely falling from his eyes as he was able to escape despair's clutches once more.
"Thank you... Thank you. And..."
Thanks to her presence, her reminding him in full of everything that had happened, everything he had sworn to change about himself, everything he had told himself he had been prepared for, it was as though he was able to really breathe again.
"I'm sorry." It was all he could manage, but out of everything he had said to her in the past few weeks, those words carried more weight and sincerity to them than anything he had said prior put together.
The princess of nothing was quiet.
She could not read minds, but judging by the state of the young man next to her... He had likely been thinking along the same lines as she had before she had arrived here.
If she had found anyone else... She wasn't sure how she would have felt. Would she have stayed? Would she have played the fool? Would she have simply gone somewhere else to follow through with her plans there?
She couldn't say for certain... She could only say that it was only with this classmate, of the ones who had been with her to the end, that she had been able to do this.
In the simulation, she had wanted nothing more than to be able to escape from responsibility and be the one who was cared for like a normal girl, rather than the opposite.
In reality, with nothing to return to... The princess realized that, much as her younger self wished to escape from that life...
"Thank you... too."
In reality... In this reality, that is... What she wanted was to be able to have both.
It wasn't like before anymore. She was older, and she had been through things that she couldn't have even begun to imagine in her youth. She had experienced and crawled back out of the Ultimate Despair... She couldn't let herself go back to that.
She needed to be able to be strong again. She needed to be able to have someone rely on her, just as she them.
This was why she had unknowingly needed it to be him that she found when she had gone to contemplate giving up.
This was why he had needed it to be her when he had done the same.
Owari and Kuzuryu would be okay. The strength they had would make it so.
Somehow, Hajime would make sure all of them would be okay — even the ones that had yet to wake up — but he couldn't be with all of them every second of every day.
But Kazuichi and Sonia... Alone, they weren't sure if they would be able to be okay.
That was how they had gotten to this point.
Someone who was "okay" doesn't stand in front of the ocean contemplating suicide.
... And yet...
Standing together now, like this, strange as it was, they felt like...
Maybe they would be okay after all.