Always

"…Neku, did you ever think it was weird that we could see the Noise?" Shiki asked out of the blue in their apartment one day, after Neku had—thankfully—gotten out of the Game after three years.

At that, Neku paused the game he was playing on his Switch—Breath of the Wild, which was a great game, but he thought he could do better—and gave his girlfriend his full attention. He slid his chair closer to hers, so he could hold look straight into her eyes: the eyes that had always been hers, even in the Reapers' Game. "Uhh… Nope? Cause the whole Game was weird. This about that one story of yours, where there's Silence and Noise, and if you defeat one, you get the other?"

Shiki balked at that, clearly embarrassed that she had ever written such a thing, and that Neku at all remembered it. He laughed, and pulled her into a hug, whilst she cursed him all the while, clearly humiliated.

But honestly? Neku could hardly blame Shiki for what she'd penned, as many writers found inspiration from things that happened to them, and it had probably helped her deal with her trauma.

Finally, seeming to have calmed down—and have seemingly decided that she owed Neku some explanation—Shiki muttered with her face close to Neku's, "I guess I bring it up because Scanning is still weird to me. But you don't think it was at all, do you?"

There was a whole undercurrent to that question that Neku didn't want to get into now. That he wasn't sure Shiki wanted them to get into now: that of course Scanning wasn't strange to him, because he'd gotten to a place where he'd had to do it for three years.

But knowing that an answer from his first Game would suffice, Neku chose to give her that—squeezing her shoulder—and hoping to give her some peace. "…I guess not? Cause, sort of the opposite of what Shades was thinkin'… I feel if we all tried to see how the other heard things, the world would be a better place. And I think there's some beauty in that. You agree, Chic?"

Shiki giggled and pushed Neku away good-naturedly, adjusting her glasses. "Yes, of course, Neku. Those are some beautiful thoughts. Thank you." And when Shiki smiled at him after saying that, it made everything that they had been through together to get to this point worth it.

And now it was Neku's turn to beam, "I may not know exactly what was on your mind with your question, Shiki… But know that I'm always here to help. Always."

And forgetting Breath of the Wild, Neku thought that maybe he should fish out his Playstation 2 and see if he could get stuck on the red screen of death, that would also always be stuck there, to even moreso drive his point home.

Author's Note: I wrote you a NeShiki piece for your birthday, of course, because they're how we met and Neo is here!:)

The "Silence" idea is based on the fan "The World Ends With You Too" videos, that were fun. I guess in this AU, Shiki wrote them;)