There were days when Togami didn't know how he would have survived life in the this hollowed-out corpse of a school if he didn't have Naegi at his side. Someone he could love… someone who loved him in return… that was one of the last fragments of brightness that he'd managed to cling to through the death and darkness they'd endured. And when the suffocating walls closed too tightly around him or when nightmarish visions of the world outside kept him from sleep… on those days, he couldn't fight the thought that Naegi was all he had left.

He didn't think that way every day… not even most days. But it came on him just often enough that the fear never entirely left him. He could feel it in the way his eyes flew to the other boy whenever he entered a room, the nervous energy twitching through his veins whenever one of them had no choice but to step out of reach, the breathless pressure weighing on his chest when he didn't know exactly where in the school Naegi was.

And that was why, no matter how determinedly he stared down at the book in his hands, Togami couldn't shake the gnawing awareness that his treasured boyfriend wasn't in the library with him as he tried to read in the middle of the night. No, Naegi was back in their room, mercifully asleep for once, and Togami hadn't wanted to wake the other boy with his own insomnia. At least one of them should get some rest.

But he hadn't taken into account the sheer impossibility of concentrating on any task when Naegi's absence consumed so much of his mind. Being apart from Naegi in the silent hours between midnight and morning was somehow more difficult than during the day, even though there was no logical reason for it to be different.

He sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose where his glasses pressed too heavily. He'd thought that perhaps the quiet library would help calm his mind enough to rest a little, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect. The longer he sat alone in the silence, the more his thoughts spiraled into paths he didn't want them to take.

There was really only one option. He stood, tucking the book under one arm as he headed for the library door. If the quiet room was dragging his mind down dark paths, he would just have to head back to places where he could find other fellow insomniacs. Night or not, it was rare for many of the students to sleep at the same time. All he had to do was head back towards the dormitories, and it would be easy enough to find half a dozen people as awake as he was.

Or so he'd thought, anyway… but as he walked through the empty halls, the other students he'd expected to see never materialized. Even though he passed the locker rooms, the pool, and the gym, he didn't hear any indication that they were in use. The AV room was dark and silent, every monitor inside blank. And when he made his way back into the dormitories to see that even the cafeteria was empty and still, alarm began to prickle along the back of his neck.

The school hadn't been like this when he'd gone upstairs. Quiet, yes, in deference to the lucky few who could manage to sleep… but even so, there had still been sounds and motion in the halls. One room or another might not have been occupied in that particular moment, but the building as a whole had life infused through it. But now… he could have been walking through a tomb.

Could something have happened in the short hour he'd been gone? It seemed unlikely that anyone could have gotten past all the layers of the school's defenses without setting off dozens of blaring alarms… but he'd seen far more apparently impossible events come to pass. And if that were the case…

Before the thought could reach the full horror of its conclusion, a hand caught his arm in a tight grip. Togami spun, poised to strike at his assailant — and came face to face with a grim Kirigiri.

"Something's wrong," she whispered, voice barely audible even in the quiet hallway.

The dread in his heart grew even colder, blooming into a full rush of fear. "Someone got inside?"

Her lips tightened. "Something like that. Have you seen anyone else?"

"Not since I went upstairs." The vast expanse of empty space pressed in around the two of them, a claustrophobic reminder of all the people who weren't present.

"That's two of us, then." She shook her head. "Not enough, if we're the only ones."

She kept talking, plans and messages and keys, but he could barely hear her words over the terror pounding through his blood. The only ones… if they were the only ones… "I left him alone… I should never have left Makoto alone!"

Makoto?

The name felt strange on his tongue, both unfamiliar and well-known at the same time… like a foreign language he'd forgotten how to speak.

Makoto…?

Why had that name come so easily to his lips?

No… that wasn't right. Why did he think it was strange to use his boyfriend's given name? What else would he call the boy he loved?

He would never get the chance to find out.

The scene fractured around that realization, splintering the school into a thousand blade-edged fragments. There was no one left to answer to that name, no one to care what he was called. The world around him had frozen in the instant before he'd bolted back toward the dorm rooms… but even if it had continued, there was no one left to find.

No one left

Makoto.

Naegi.

The name didn't matter… not when it was nothing more than the twisted byproduct of a nightmare… but that truth would never disappear. There was no one left to care about.

Makoto Naegi was dead.

The knowledge sank down into his soul, with a weight that had been absent in the twisted alternate dreamscape his mind had created moments ago. He could still feel the clammy remnants fear coursing through his veins, pounding in his heart… the same fear that had gripped him when the trial vote had shown Naegi's face as its result. It didn't seem fair that he'd had to endure that terror in sleep as well as in reality. Would he be forced to relive the terrible realization of Naegi's loss every time he woke?

There was no peace to be found… not in sleep, not awake… not anywhere. It didn't matter where he was or what he did… he couldn't change anything.

He might have stayed there on the floor forever, eyes closed against a world that hurt in ways he'd never known it could… but a voice pierced through the fog of his mind to jolt him back to awareness.

"Finally awake again, I see."

Togami's eyes slammed open to see Kirigiri staring at him from across the bathhouse, every bit as cold and grim as she'd been in his dream.