Blood stained her clothes. A drop of it ran down her face, almost as if she was crying. The worst part, however, was the silver knife that had been plunged through her chest.

It was proof that Chisa Yukizome had really died.

Kyosuke stared in horror, his hands shaking. She lay on top of the now shattered chandelier, her hair wildly thrown about.

Tell me… Yukizome. I am not wrong… am I?

He gravitated towards her body, and gently reached out. Chisa was stone cold, like she'd been dead for hours.

Maybe she had been.

Kyosuke drew his hand away.

He wished that she could be sleeping. If it weren't for the blood splatter all over her, and her eyes wide with terror, then maybe he could have tricked himself into believing that.

Her smile was always so bright and comforting, and she was always able to make him happy. Kyosuke had loved her, he had loved her for so many years.

And now she was dead.

(Now she would never hear him call her Chisa.)

Tears fought at his eyes. Kyosuke clenched his fists, desperately trying to keep himself calm. She couldn't be dead, she was the light of his goddamn life.

Chisa meant so much to him, she had kept his hope alive during the time of despair, and now she was dead.

Just that very morning, she'd told him that we was working too hard, and needed to take a break. Just that very morning, she'd been at his side, smiling and encouraging him.

His throat tightened, and his stomach twisted in agony.

"Yukizome…" he hissed aloud, his voice trembling in horror.

(He never got the chance to tell her how much he loved her.)

She was gone, and in a way, so was he.


Kyosuke shot awake.

Beads of sweat rolled off his face, as he clutched his quilt between his fingers. His heart pounded tightly in his chest, so close to bursting out of his chest cavity and killing him.

He rocked back and forth in his spot on the bed, the same rush of sickly adrenaline still pumping through his veins.

The nightmare had first started just after the end of the final killing game a couple weeks ago, and it had come back every night after. Almost every time Kyosuke closed his eyes at night, it happened again.

It seemed he was cursed to see that moment for the rest of his life.

(This nightmare was even worse than the one that had plagued him for years prior, the one where he found her covered in blood and standing over the carved up orphan corpses.)

In time, his breathing eased, and his heartbeat went back to normal. He looked across the room, and squinted. He couldn't quite see the other side, but he wasn't sure if that was due to the darkness of the room, or his missing eye.

The other side of the bed creaked.

"Kyosuke? Are you okay?"

Kyosuke turned his head, and looked down on Chisa with a smile. His wife carefully sat up, rubbing her eyes.

He murmured softly, "Go back to sleep, Chisa. It's nothing, I promise."

Chisa yawned, ignoring his feeble lie, "You had that dream again, didn't you?"

Kyosuke looked down. Just beneath her thin nightgown was a jagged scar that ran down her chest. The knife hadn't been quite enough to her heart to kill her, but it had come horribly close. The two days that he believed her dead had been the worst hours of his entire life.

Chisa grabbed his hand, and whispered fiercely, "I'm here. I'm here, and I'm alive, and I'm with you. You can't blame yourself for anything that happened."

Kyosuke shook his head, "No, it was all my fault. If I hadn't asked you to try and call headquarters for help, you wouldn't have been the closest to the screen when we were gassed, and you wouldn't be the first person to… to…"

To die.

The words fell silent on his tongue.

He had killed her, and that was the only truth of the matter.

Chisa reached up, and lightly stroked the scar where his eye once was. She was the only person allowed to do that to him. Usually, he wore an eyepatch to cover it. He still tensed, but her hand soon moved away.

"You can't blame yourself," she repeated, "And remember, you were the one who saved me too. If you hadn't come back into the room after the game ended, and realized that I was still alive, then I wouldn't be here right now."

Kyosuke whispered, "But Chisa-"

"No!" Chisa exclaimed, "I won't let you do this to yourself anymore! Kyosuke, you saved me. And you did everything that you could to save the others."

Kyosuke bit down on his lip. Certainly, he'd managed to save Chisa, and by proxy, saved a few other victims of the killing game, but what did that change? Six people had still died, six people that should have been able to escape with the rest of them.

He was still a failure, and that was something that would always be true, no matter how bright a light Chisa tried to paint him in.

"I still… I'm not…" he broke off, voice trembling.

I'm not a good person.

Chisa climbed into his lap, and hugged him tightly, burying her face in his chest. Kyosuke wrapped his arms around her back, and held her closely.

"Tomorrow," Chisa murmured, "we're gonna go visit some of the others. Juzo and Kizakura-kun are still in the hospital, but I think they let Kimura-san out on watch."

Kyosuke hummed quietly in agreement, closing his eyes and rocking softly.

Chisa continued, "Then… we'll go see the kids down at the school. They're restoring Hope's Peak, and they want us there when it reopens."

"We should go," Kyosuke said softly.

Chisa yawned, "Y-Y-Yeah… In the morning."

Kyosuke agreed, "In the morning."

He carefully shifted her off of his lap, and pulled the quilt back over top of her. Then, Kyosuke lay back down, and snuggled close to Chisa, holding her close.

She was warm, and smelled like cinnamon and an indescribable feeling of happiness.

He didn't dream about the killing game again that night.