VI: lovers

They're all in the lounge when Mitsuru gets the call. (All of them but Aigis, but Yukari supposes that nothing but God himself—and then, maybe not even that—could convince her to move. She thinks her shattered heart will have feelings about this, at some point, but for the last thirty-six hours, all she's had room for is terror.)

Mitsuru gets a phone call as the sun sets, and Yukari cannot hear what the other person is saying. But whatever it is, it isn't good—because Mitsuru is suddenly on her feet, unsteady, turning her head so her hair blocks her face from view. "I'll be there as soon as possible," she says quietly, and hangs up.

"What happened?" Akihiko stands as well, his face pale as he stares at her. Mitsuru shakes her head, doesn't look at any of them, and nearly runs out of the dorm.

Akihiko collapses back onto the couch, burying his head in his hands. Ken hugs Koromaru closer to himself, curled up together as they are in the armchair. Junpei clenches his fists, wipes at his eyes, and makes a low, growling sound in the back of his throat.

Yukari, too, knows what this must mean, but she only clutches at a sobbing Fuuka's hand, and begs for it to be false.

Aigis returns before Mitsuru does; her eyes are not red, but her face is wet with tears and her expression is one that Yukari has never seen before. "Aigis," Junpei says, too loud, and Yukari flinches. It's so clear on her face what has happened—so clear in the fact that she is here at all, without Minato—and she seems incapable of telling them outright. After a moment of silence, Yukari feels everything bubble up in her chest, suffocating and horrific and unimaginable, because—

She hasn't felt this since she was six years old, since her dad—

Fuuka is clutching to her, sobbing all the harder into her shoulder, and Aigis has not moved from the doorway, and Koromaru's whimpers go unheeded as the dark lounge seems to swallow them all whole.

Mitsuru doesn't return for the rest of the night, and none of them get any sleep.

.

She realizes that her phone is dead when she thinks to check the time, somewhere in the middle of the night. She only convinces herself to charge it the next morning, when she needs to use the bathroom anyway, and trudges upstairs.

Her eyes are red and her hair is greasy and awry, and she hasn't felt normal in a month but this is different. She splashes water on her face with shaking hands to try and calm down. It doesn't work, and she plugs her phone into her bedroom wall before collapsing onto her bed.

Fuuka knocks on her door some time later, waking her from whatever haze she's fallen into, and says quietly that it's lunchtime, that they've ordered delivery. Nobody wants to cook.

It's reasonable, she supposes, and she hasn't eaten for almost twenty four hours; but she doesn't have the energy to respond, let alone go back down to the lounge. She wonders, suddenly, if this is what he felt, when he was slowly dying, surrounded by his stupid, useless, ignorant friends.

She muffles a sob into her pillow and doesn't respond, and eventually Fuuka leaves.

.

Her phone screen is lit up with notifications when she's next aware, and she wonders whether they're from her friends, concerned for her well being, right up until she sees the contact.

Mom. She had…

They were supposed to meet, on the afternoon of graduation day. He had promised to go with her, to make her more comfortable, to make sure she didn't put her foot in her mouth—

He was supposed to meet her mother; he had even said "the sooner the better" when she promised to let him know once she made plans. She had assumed then that it was because he didn't want her to lose her nerve, but now

Half a dozen missed calls and twice as many texts, the most recent simply reading, "Yukari, please call me," and Yukari considers them before dropping her phone back to the floor, burying her face in her pillow. She'll deal with it later, maybe. He promised, and now he's broken it—he'll never meet her mother, never do anything again, and—

.

It's Mitsuru who knocks next—but she doesn't wait for a response, only opens the door carefully and steps inside. She looks exhausted, as Yukari looks up reluctantly; her hair is tied back thoughtlessly, tangled and greasy, and her face is pale.

"Your mother called me," she says as greeting, glancing to the blinking notification light on Yukari's phone. "She was worried that you weren't picking up your phone, and she'd heard that a student from the dorm had collapsed at school."

She supposes viciously that there's a first time for everything. Her mother hasn't worried for her well-being in years—not when she never came home over breaks, or ignored her calls, or got beaten up nightly by manifestations of humanity's consciousness. Why should she bother now?

"I told her that you were fine," Mitsuru continues after a moment, "but you should probably call her back."

"I don't want to," she whispers, and hates herself for it, because acting like a child in front of Mitsuru Kirijo will get her nowhere. But Mitsuru sighs heavily, stepping further into her room, settling down at her desk.

"I can't handle this either," she says quietly, and Yukari glances over to her. "I need to sign all the paperwork, at the hospital and morgue, since he doesn't have any family. And—plan his funeral, and make sure everyone hears so they know to come, and…"

She trails off, reaches back to fuss with her ponytail, and takes a shuddering break. Yukari understands what she means, at least; to have to plan three separate funerals for her loved ones in less than six months…

She wants to offer her help. She should, and she's sure all the others are busy tracking down his far-flung friends, making calls and paying visits, but—

She can't. She can't, and she hates herself for it, but she won't do anything but turn away from Mitsuru, hold onto her sheets tightly, and try to hold herself together.

When she looks again to her friend, eventually, her eyes are squeezed shut. "I need you, Yukari," she says eventually. "We can't let ourselves fall apart now."

"What else are we supposed to do?" Yukari asks, lashes out, because the Dark Hour is gone and so is he, and what's the point of SEES anymore if—

"How would that be any different than if the Fall had happened?" she asks sharply, and Yukari recoils. "He…"

She trails off, the strength suddenly gone from her voice, and rubs at her eyes before standing sharply. "Call your mother, please," she says, and closes the door behind her as she leaves.

Yukari watches her go through blurring eyes, and then looks down to her phone. Another text: "I just want to talk, please," lights up the screen, and she hesitates.

Her mother has been insufferable, an awful parent to her for the last ten years, but Minato had seemed so relieved when she said they were going to meet up. He was dying, but he had agreed in an instant to come with her. He had even asked for it to be scheduled as soon as possible, surely hoping he would still be alive when it happened.

The cheer in his eyes—always rare, but rarer still in the month after the Fall—is burned into her memory, and she prays that she will never forget the sight of it as, with trembling fingers, she picks up her phone.


XVI: tower

He's sure he's never met Mitsuru Kirijo (though he's certainly heard of her corporation), but when she calls him personally one afternoon to ask if he could officiate a wake and funeral in Iwatodai, he supposes he's not one to refuse such a powerful woman.

His first question, of course, is who has died—and he nearly drops the phone when she tells him, her voice quiet. "What happened?" he asks, before he can stop himself, before he realizes how unprofessional or unwelcome such a question must be. Right now he doesn't care, because Minato was fine, perfectly fine, the last time Mutatsu saw him, months ago. It must have been an accident, he thinks. He's sent off plenty of teenagers due to car wrecks and drug overdoses and sheer stupidity, and Minato never once seemed ill when they talked—

"The doctors said it was exhaustion," Kirijo says, and Mutatsu recognizes her quiet voice for what it is: someone desperately trying to hold onto their control. "A fancy way of saying that they don't know."

Mutatsu grimaces, swallows, runs his free hand over his face. "I understand if you're too busy," Kirijo continues after a moment. "I just thought, since the two of you were friends—"

"No," he says, once he's found his voice, because—damnit, it's Minato, that kid who never should have meant this much to him, and—"I'd do anything for that damned kid, of course I'll come down. When…?"

"Two days from now," she says, and he thinks something has relaxed in her tone. "At the local temple. I can meet you there to discuss the details, when you arrive."

His wife is there, when he ends the call after promising to leave in the morning; the anger that has so often been on her face, these last months, is absent as she asks quietly what's happened.

He shakes his head, rubs harshly at his eyes, and finds that he does not have the words to explain.

But he thinks it must be somewhere in his choked voice, on his old, wrinkled face when he tells her that he needs to officiate a funeral in the city he swore he left behind. He thinks it must be clear enough, at least, because his wife grips his arm and asks him to drive safely, and even his son—who has come out from the living room with furrowed brows—is empty of snide remarks and sharp eyes as he watches his father crumble.

(Didn't he consider Minato his son, when he had lost everything, when he knew exactly how stupid such a thing was? Hadn't he thought, on some of his worse nights, that Minato was the only thing keeping him on the rails at all?)

He has never—never—thought that he would outlive Minato, not with the kid's health and the wisdom that a sixteen year old should never have. Mutatsu knows that he is nearing the end of his life—and after leaving Iwatodai, he was sure he would never be asked to send anyone off again.

But here he is—and he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before turning to his bedroom, preparing to pack a bag for the trip, to leave tonight, no matter what he told Kirijo.

Once, he told that kid that nothing mattered in life because everyone died, anyway—but he finds, as he pulls a suitcase from the closet with shaking hands, that his friendship with Minato Arisato meant more to him than he ever realized.


X: fortune

The flash email goes out late that evening, and Keisuke almost ignores it, so wrapped up as he is in studying for next year's medical exams.

But it's just about time for a short break, anyway—so he marks his place in the book, pushes his glasses further up his nose, and opens his email client, wondering what Gekkoukan could want with a recently-graduated senior.

Wake and Funeral Service for Minato Arisato, the header reads, and his breathing stutters in horror and shock as he reads the information below. A short paragraph about the boy's life (now a senior, if he had survived to attend school again—) above the details of the services.

Keisuke stares blankly at the included photograph—Minato looks bored, and tired, and his headphones dangle around his neck as if he was forced to remove them for the picture. He thinks it must be an old photo, because the Minato he's known in recent months hasn't looked quite so dead-eyed or apathetic to the world around him.

(But didn't Minato look so exhausted, when he sought him out last week to ask what he was planning to do with his future? Didn't Keisuke see the dark bags under his eyes and the sunken cheeks, the way his uniform hung off of him, and ask if everything was all right?)

(Didn't Minato assure him he was fine—and despite all the evidence to the contrary, hadn't Keisuke believed him?)

(What kind of medical student would he make, anyway, if he can't help keep one of his best friends alive?)

It haunts him, for the next few days, as if Minato's ghost is blaming him for not doing anything to save him. It continues as he dresses carefully for the wake, his fingers trembling as he tries to button his suit. He rubs at his eyes a bit too often as he mumbles to his dad where he's going, why he isn't studying—and he isn't stopped as he grabs his wallet and keys, walking slowly out the door.

It's late afternoon, not uncomfortably warm, and he sees plenty of people out and about. But he sees plenty of people dressed in black, too, making their way to the temple, and his heart swells to see so many willing to pay their respects to his dear friend. He recognizes many faces—people from art club, people he took classes with that never would have interacted with Minato during school hours. But, he supposes, his friend was part of the track team as well as Student Council; he's not terribly surprised that he made friends outside of his own class.

The wake is officiated by a large man with a bald head and red eyes, who reaches often into his sleeve for a handkerchief as he moves around the temple, making final preparations. It seems that the better part of the school—and plenty of other people from around town—have shown up. The casket at the front is open, and many huddle forward to pay their final respects—but Keisuke finds that he's utterly unable to follow them. He sits heavily in a seat near the middle, pulls his glasses off to rub at his eyes yet again, and fails to convince himself to look up as the ceremony begins.

(What kind of a medical student is he? More importantly, what kind of friend has he ever been, if Minato didn't deem him worthy enough to hear of his own problems?)

The wake passes by in something of a blur, and he stumbles to his feet only when he sees others moving around him. His vision is unfocused, but he sees Fuuka, walking with a few of her friends several feet ahead of him. He blinks at her for a moment before remembering that she and Minato weren't just acquaintances from club; they were dormmates, and likely close friends. Maybe (he wonders with something approaching urgency) she will know more of what happened.

"Fuuka," he says, loud enough to be heard over the dull roar of a tightly-packed temple vacating, and she turns.

She looks awful; there are tear tracks on her cheeks, and deep bags under her eyes. But still a small smile grows on her face—and she pauses in her step, allowing Keisuke to catch up. "Thank you for coming," she says quietly, once he's in earshot, and then she resumes walking after her friends. "I know you're very busy with studying…"

"Of course I came," he says immediately; the thought of skipping this for his work never once crossed his mind. "I—tell me if this is out of line—but I was wondering if you knew what happened. He seemed okay when I talked to him at school last week, but…"

Fuuka grimaces, looking away as she hugs herself tighter. Keisuke's just about to retract his question, promise he doesn't need to know (though it will bother him more than he can say), when she looks back up to him, swallowing thickly.

"He...the doctors said his body had been shutting down for a month before—he passed. They...couldn't find a reason for it, so his official cause of death is exhaustion."

A month—Keisuke mentally counts back from graduation day, trying to see the significance, but he comes up empty. He supposes that was around the time that cult disappeared, though he hadn't been paying much attention to it—so buried in studying as he was. And, after all, what would that cult have to do with Minato's death? He knows his friend wasn't the type to join up.

And, too, it must have been a strange disease, for the doctors to chalk a healthy teenager's sudden death up to simple exhaustion. He frowns, staring at nothing in particular as he walks beside Fuuka, and wonders what mystery disease could kill someone like Minato in just a month.

He can think of nothing—and, based on Fuuka's face and those of her friends, they don't know either. He parts from them a couple blocks later with a small wave, as they turn toward their dorm, and he has to keep wiping at his eyes harshly as he walks alone back to his house.

His father isn't home, but there's a package of his favorite chocolate and a note set neatly beside his books. Keisuke swallows thickly before grabbing the candy off his desk, ignoring the scrap of paper as he turns away.

He knows studying tonight will be pointless, though he also knows that it's what Minato would have wanted him to do. He smiled, last week, when Keisuke told him of his renewed determination to enter the field of medicine—and had wished him the best of luck.

Now that he thinks on it, it felt like a final conversation. He had assumed at the time that it was because he was graduating, but now… Now.

(Did Minato know that something was wrong? He had to have. But then why didn't he tell anyone?)

He grimaces against the sudden lump in his throat, and eats the chocolate in three bites, and doesn't bother to take off his suit before collapsing on his bed, suddenly exhausted.

He knows it's not what his friend would have wanted, but Keisuke doesn't touch his books again until almost a week later.