Ai remembered, with a slight uptick of amusement, what Yusaku 'requested' they do with his body: just throw me in the trash.

The Zaizens paid for his funeral anyway. They even chose a nice spot for him, perched on a hill in the shade of the tree that was his namesake. Scores of people came to say goodbye, faces Ai had only seen once but were still affected by Playmaker forever. After a certain point he half expected a news crew to show up, but it seemed the world was already moving past Yusaku.

Kusanagi Shoichi sat a few feet from the casket, numb from the sedatives he'd been prescribed to get through the service. His brother Jin made the point of engaging with everyone in his stead, his stoic eloquence doing well to ward people off. Zaizen Aoi cycled between crying silently and consoling others through their grief. Homura Takeru engaged with those who had not known Yusaku well but came to say goodbye to Playmaker, keeping them away from those who'd been closest to him while still conveying that their presence was appreciated. And Zaizen Akira filled the role of the priest Yusaku did not want at his funeral, keeping the service secular and orderly.

Ai remained perched in the wisteria tree, hidden from them all. His existence had long been common knowledge, but he didn't want to go down and see all those expressions change at once. What was a sudden death from their perspectives to him had been a long descent. He always knew it was only a matter of time before he saw the world move past his partner.

But to watch Yusaku die a few days short of his 20th birthday was beyond anything that was right or fair. Ai couldn't dwell on it for too long, not without wanting to tear his own programming apart until his lines of code looked more like broken glass than anything that could once feel or think. It was his partner's last wish that he not do that, but who was he without Fujiki Yusaku? He was just The Last Ignis again—and this time, utterly alone.

Seeing Yusaku's casket lowered into the ground was when Ai knew, at long last, what it meant to dissociate.

Jin often used that word to describe how he felt operating in a world he not only felt no connection to, but could hardly believe was real. Ai felt like he was watching a simulation and not actually living out his nightmare. It had only been a year since Yusaku's diagnosis, six months from when he finally told everyone, and it was all too bizarre. He half expected Yusaku to snap him out of his daydream, annoyed that he got lost in his thoughts again.

So when the service was finally done and most of the mourners went home, it was left to those who stood behind to coax him out of the wisteria. Whenever they caught sight of him he'd whine at them to leave him alone, retreating further into the winding branches, splotches of purple and pink shielding him. It was in the midst of this when Ai had the most pleasing thought: what if I can't get back out? He didn't care to be free of his partner's affection. It would be just as well if no one ever laid eyes on him again.

Suddenly, the tree shook. Without moving the rest of his body, he lowered his eyes and saw Go kicking at the base of the tree, petals sprinkling down on him, on everyone—even on Yusaku, littering the newly disturbed soil that was his grave. Aoi stood by him, cringing with every kick. "Oniz-Onizuka?! Hey—Go, stop it!"

He paused to look over his shoulder. "You said we needed to get him down!"

"Yes, but… the tree is why we put him here in the first place! At this rate, you'll knock it over!"

"Then what do you suggest?"

Ai was glad, the thin trunk didn't look like it could withstand much more. As they continued to bicker over what they should do, Ai's sights drifted to the Kusanagi brothers.

At first glance they looked much the same as they did every day: dark clothes and disheveled hair, ship tethered to its anchor. One had to know them well, intimately even, to notice the change. When the news of Yusaku's death began to ripple through their little group the brothers were among the first he told, and Ai saw every hint of emotion drain out of Kusanagi's face. His eyes clouded over in such a way that it alarmed Ai, and it took Jin shouting his name several times for his spark of being to return.

He blinked several times, but did not acknowledge his brother. He instead rose from his seat with the grace of an apparition, his brother following closely behind anticipating his fall. But he didn't fall, not immediately, and within the following days he managed to inform Akira (who long before pledged to pay for the funeral) and Ema (who made good on her promise to keep their enemies from the ceremony). He nodded along when Naoki suggested spreading the news on social media, when Aoi showed him the spot she chose for Yusaku, when distant allies and casual friends and longtime fans came to Café Nagi to express their shock. He even stood up with Ai on three consecutive nights and passively listened to him ramble about his feelings—which he could only kick himself for in hindsight, because couldn't he see that Kusanagi was choking? suffocating? withering?

The only person he paid no mind to was Jin, who repeatedly warned him not to 'overexert himself' (and that was just how he said it, as if such sterile phraseology could describe what Kusanagi was doing). And so it came to everyone's surprise but Jin's when he wound up on a stretcher surrounded by EMT workers, gasping for air. Ai watched on, fingers digging into the back of Jin's shirt as he tried to comfort his brother as best he could. Ai knew, and the boy knew, that Kusanagi heard none of it. He was too busy twisting in his restraints, head tilted back as he keened from some far-off place in his soul. And after he was whisked away the boy was left to pace the inside of the hotdog truck, fingers buried in his hair, unsure of what to do now that the tables had been so brutally turned.

The funeral itself had to be delayed until Kusanagi's release. He was still every bit the phantom he'd been since the moment he learned of Yusaku's passing, while Jin loomed around him like a bad dream, deflecting everyone who tried to approach his brother.

Ai wondered what Yusaku would have thought about this sudden change. Reviving Jin back to sanity had been one of Playmaker's goals since the beginning, but to see their dynamic not equalized but flipped would have shattered Yusaku. He loved Kusanagi to the capacity his crooked heart would allow, as the first and most enduring pillar in his life. (Enduring; not everlasting.)

Ai was shaken from his thoughts by the sound of rustling a bit too close. He looked up and saw Aoi at eye level with him, arms parting the thicket of leaves. No matter which way he analyzed her parts, she was still beautiful. Ai could fawn over her forever, and though Yusaku never admitted it she'd had him just as trapped: her long thin hands, her spine's protruding vertebra, the way her shoulders curled forward, her skin soft and moist as fresh bread. Gripping a tree branch with one hand she extended the other to him, cupping her palm so he could climb into it. "Come, Ai. It's time to go home."

"'Home'? You mean Yusaku's apartment? The landlord doesn't want me, says he's not renting to a 'goddamn robot'."

(He tried to sound unbothered by it, even amused, but as the words left him he pictured the man's face, blistering red at the idea of renting to anything that wasn't human. To him, what they had wasn't an abomination—it went far deeper, something so alien that the gods hadn't considered it possible. He was convinced Yusaku's illness was a result of his perversion, and he was simply extending that punishment by making that thing, the robot damned by the gods, homeless.)

Aoi, for her part, seemed to anticipate this. "Brother and I have room for you. So does Onizuka." She glanced down, and it dawned on Ai how she made herself so tall: by riding on Go's shoulders. "And Kusanagi-san's known you the longest, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you wanted to stay with him. We'd all be happy to have you."

Bizarre. Unreal. No one had ever welcomed him anywhere, and he knew it'd go back to being that way once his status as the-one-left-behind wore off.

"Please," Aoi went on, sensing his doubt, "you can't stay here forever."

"Says who? I'm an AI, it's not like I need to eat or sleep. I could just hang out here, watch the grass grow, hang out with the birds and the bees. This could be my new home."

Slowly, she lifted her eyebrows. "And you think Yusaku would be pleased with that?"

"Hey, you've got no room to talk about what Yusaku wanted! You gave him a funeral! You know he was serious when he said 'throw me in the trash', right?"

Aoi slowly drew in a breath of air, held it, and exhaled. "Instead of desecrating his corpse, I wanted to honor Yusaku by putting him somewhere beautiful. And Yusaku wanted you to move on because he loved you above all others. But you," she withdrew her hand, "insist on staying here because you want to hide from the world. Tell me, which one of us is wrong?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Go, please put me down. He knows where to find us."

He wanted them to leave, but was still disappointed when they actually did.