Taking in a shaky breath, Maki checked to make sure that she was in one piece before looking out at the broken grounds of the school crumbling around her. "We…made it out?" she asked, unsure if the voice she was hearing was her own or if it belonged to someone manipulating her. After the disaster that they'd just witnessed, she couldn't be too sure what was truth and what wasn't; the only thing she knew for certain was that she was whole and she was out of the rocks that had tried burying her and her friends.
"It does seem to be that way," Korekiyo's slow, soft voice replied, him already having gotten out from under the rubble and sitting on top of a large piece of debris, his hat in one hand as he used the other to shield his eyes from the blinding light. "I was hoping that I would not need to resort to using magic to get the two of you out, and my hopes have come half-true."
"Yeah, magic," she scoffed, beginning to brush dust off of the red sleeves of her jacket, knowing that Kiyo was most likely unamused with her rebuking of his talent even after having been through that nightmare. "I wonder where he is, though. You said half-true, so that means he's still buried, huh?"
"Astute observation from a detective." For some reason, the words Kiyo responded with felt like a deep cut to Maki's soul, but before she could bring herself to take issue with them, they both heard muffled screaming from underneath nearby rocks, and they both went to assist in moving the materials enough that the purple hair on the top of Kaito's head became visible, followed by the rest of him as they finished digging him out.
"Thanks for that," he coughed, a mixture of dust and blood coming out of his mouth before he could stop it, and the pained smile he gave his saviors was one that they knew they couldn't take lightly. He'd been complaining of a cough that wouldn't quit since before the previous murder had taken place, but his issues had been overlooked because someone else had been dealing with something more severe, and now that they'd been freed from the hell that was the killing game they could see that he hadn't been joking about the problem. "Must've taken in too much dirt when the rocks buried me, I felt like I couldn't breathe down there!"
Maki pursed her lips together and closed her eyes, hoping that she wasn't going to lose him like she'd lost the other people she'd trusted in the confines of the game, no matter how weak the trust was. She'd found out that her initial ally, who she only paired up with because of his insistence on deviant behaviors, hadn't murdered like they'd thought he had, and before that revelation she'd been dealt the back-to-back blows in losing the people with minds as sharp as hers. "Just don't die, I can't afford to have to bury another friend," she told him, looking him over with his bright clothing and the smile on his face, even as he was wheezing from the dust in his lungs. "You can do that for me, can't you?"
"Already promised Shuichi I wasn't dying in this place, I'm planning on gettin' out of here just like the two of you." Kaito's voice was rough, but he was at least breathing, and aside from the initial blood it didn't seem like more was coming up, unlike what had happened with the former friend he'd referred to. "So, what's the plan? Either of you know what to do? Anyone find Mugi in all of that?"
Hearing him ask about the robot that had saved their lives, even when she shouldn't have, made a pit form in Maki's stomach, so she glanced towards Kiyo looking for assistance in answering the question. "I searched and found no sign of her or Miu," Kiyo said after noticing Maki's gaze focusing on him. "I suppose that would be because Mugi had to sacrifice herself to get rid of the larger threat, and she chose to spare us in the end. How fortunate."
"She was kinda cool, even though she was a robot who didn't know how to not pry into people's lives. Wish she could've gotten out with us, but…" Kaito shrugged, finally taking in a deep breath without immediately coughing after. "It's all good! The three of us made it, and that's what matters now, yeah?"
"No, what matters now is getting out of this place for real." Maki wanted to stand around and talk about what had happened to them to get to this point, but she knew that there was still one mystery left to solve, that being how to get out of their former captivity. "Once we're out, we'll know what the real world holds for us, if any of the crap Miu was telling us was real or if she was just being obnoxious by trying to distract our focus."
The two men nodded, agreeing with her without needing to say a thing about it, but as they headed towards where they could see gaps in the bubble that had been trapping them, Kaito began to speak again. "It's kinda funny, I've been in this place the whole time labeled as a dirty assassin, but…I really don't know a thing about that kind of stuff."
"You helped Shuichi learn to build a crossbow." Kiyo pointed out, while Maki once again pursed her lips together, the revelation that was coming one she'd already pieced together not long after having met Kaito on the first day. Someone so jovial and so energetic couldn't have lived their life as an assassin, not without risking their life or limb. "If that wasn't assassin work I would not have the slightest idea of what to call it."
"While I was trapped down there, tryin' to breathe in the dark and not feel like I was dyin', I remembered what it was I did before I got roped up in this. What my title probably should've been about." He paused, looking between his companions to see Kiyo giving an interested expression while Maki's face was completely blank. "I guess one of you probably noticed it there in my room, huh? The whole collection of medical tools and stuff that no one could explain?"
"No need to talk vaguely about me, you know as well as I do that I saw it the first time you let me inside." It had been a fight for Maki to gain entrance to Kaito's personal lab, because he'd been insistent no one go in there, and when she'd entered for herself she saw that for every piece of typical assassin equipment, there was a piece of unrelated medical gear that no one could explain, not even Kaito himself. Matching that with the fact that he'd been vocal about how he'd never killed anyone and never wanted to, trying to denounce the title he'd been given and being so insistent about it, it meant that something hadn't been right about him being labeled as an assassin in the first place. "You were obviously something in the medical field, and whoever put you here—Miu or Team Danganronpa, or otherwise—didn't want you or anyone else knowing that for certain."
"But we saw the books, medical field people have been in killing games before, it doesn't make any sense that they'd strip me of my title if it related to that." Pinching the bridge of his nose, Kaito looked deep in thought for a moment before shaking his head, returning to his usually cheerful expression. "It's okay, though, I'll get over not knowing my real truth, if any of it was actually true in the first place. Did we ever find out about that, if Miu was lying about this being lies, or…?"
Kiyo shrugged, before pointing a bandaged hand towards their destination, the broken wall they knew they needed to cross. "We shall find that out on the other side."
"The last mystery this detective might ever solve," Maki said with a laugh, finding humor in such a bleak situation. She'd been forced to go through so many murder investigations, accuse and implicate people she'd called her friends, watch people die on her word, and now she was getting to leave the place with someone she really, truly trusted and someone that she was glad to see get to walk out alive, all things considered. They were going right into the unknown, not sure what was going to be waiting for them after all of the information and misinformation they'd been fed during their time in the game, and as they crossed over back into what they assumed was reality, Maki's last thought was how she hoped she'd get to see these two again.
The real world wasn't all that much different from what they'd known in the game, although it was clear that they'd been playing some caricatures of themselves while they'd been forced to kill each other to try and escape. No one had actually died, and no one was like they'd been shown to be in the false videos presented to them in that final trial, but they still weren't able to say they were actually the people they'd thought they were the whole time. Her detective skills hadn't been falsified, but Maki wasn't doing work with them by any means, aside from helping kids with missing pets that they were desolate without. She found out soon after waking up in the group home she'd lived in for most of her life that Kiyo was a magician that excelled in going beyond simple sleight-of-hand tricks, but nothing that could be classified as legitimate magic, but the understanding of how they'd gotten to that conclusion was there.
Kaito, on the other hand, was a complete mystery to her because as far as she could tell, there wasn't a Kaito Momota that lived anywhere in the area, based on her investigations. It wouldn't have made sense for them to give him a false name when no one else got one, but when she recalled that he'd been given a talent title that didn't relate to what claimed to have done, the fear built within her that she wasn't going to ever find him. But giving up was not something she'd done during the stressful trials in the game, and it wasn't something she was going to do in the real world either, so she buckled down, reached out to everyone she could, and hoped that someone would know where he'd ended up.
Her saving grace came in the form of a phone call from a particular inventor she'd gotten to know in the game, whose inventions had helped her out once or twice. "You'll never guess who we ran into today," Kaede said excitedly after Maki had answered her phone, expecting casual conversation and not anything more than it. "It took us both a second to realize who it was, but when he made eye contact with Shuichi I could just feel the tension there. You'll want to know where this was, won't you?"
"Don't be cryptic, just tell me where you saw Kaito."
"Touchy, aren't we?" When Kaede laughed, Maki wished she was talking to someone slightly less peppy and slightly more respectful with language, but if she was getting a clue to where to find her comrade until the very end she was going to take what she could get. "He was working at the hospital, that's where we ran into him. He came out into the waiting room right as we were getting ready to leave, so I don't know what he was doing there but I do know that he recognized at least Shuichi out of all this. Might be worth your time to check it out, if you can."
Sighing, Maki knew when she was defeated before she'd even made an attempt at sleuthing something out. "That's great, Kaede, but I can't just walk in and ask to talk to him. I have to have a reason for being there."
"So come with us next week, then. We're there every week just to make sure we're both as healthy as we can be, I bet you'd be able to get in with us." The offer was tempting, but Maki wasn't sure how well it would work; she ultimately decided to go with it if only because there was no harm in giving it a shot, and Kaede was elated to hear her decision. "Great! We'll swing by and get you before we go, just don't mind sitting in the back with all my junk. I'm working on getting a rocket made, because Shuichi just won't shut up about how he misses the first one I made."
There was more to that rambling, where Kaede began talking about the minutia about her project, and Maki ended up hanging up on her after trying to get a word in about needing to know specifically when she'd be getting picked up. The time to figure that out would come later, she assumed, and so she went on with her day a bit more excited for the future than she would have been otherwise. More calls were made later in the day to arrange the details of the trip, and when she went to sleep that night all Maki could think about was how she was going to solve the mystery of Kaito as soon as that glorious day rolled around.
The issue with following along with Kaede's plan was that there was no guarantee anything would work according to it, and when Maki found herself sitting in the joint waiting room in one of the wings of the hospital, staring down a nondescript door that she'd watched both of her supposed friends go through when their appointments had been called, she hoped that she'd see Kaito come through it before she saw either of them. She'd been told it'd be about an hour before they'd leave, because while Kaede's appointment was to make sure that the lingering strangulation wounds on her were healing nicely, Shuichi's was a lot more involved and required more time to check the scope of whatever ailment had struck him in-game. That meant there was an hour to see Kaito doing his job, or else she'd just have to try again the following week.
Like it had happened in the story she'd been told, it was when they were leaving that he came out from the door, a clipboard in one hand and his eyes scouting the room for whoever his patient was. When Kaito saw her standing there he dropped his papers and came towards her, looking confused to see her in such a place. "I know why they're here," he said, motioning at Kaede and Shuichi, who were talking about what their plans were after they dropped Maki back off at home, "but what're you doing? There's not a damn office on this floor that needs to see ya, I think."
"Seeing as I don't have the slightest of clues as to what else is on this floor beyond the doctors they saw, I…" Maki trailed off as she got a glimpse of Kaito's official badge, which didn't label him as a doctor or a nurse, but rather as a midwife. "O-oh, uh, yeah, if everything else on this floor is that sort of thing I really don't have any business being here."
He glanced to see what had caused her to start stuttering, and when he remembered what the badge said he chuckled. "Surprising, huh? Doesn't even closely match what they put me in the game as, and I know for a fact I've never killed anyone. Helped a bunch of babies come to life? Definitely. Killed someone? Nope."
"It would explain the medical tools in your room, that's for sure." Her face was feeling extremely warm talking to him, knowing that most of the people in there would know what department he was with and start making assumptions. "That's not what matters right now, though! I'm here to tell you I'd love to talk to you again. Outside of this place, obviously, but maybe we could…do coffee sometime?"
"Coffee's not good for a growing baby, you know," he teased, making her sputter and blush more. "No, but that sounds like a great idea, thanks Maki! Or, er, mind if I still call ya Maki Roll out here? It's a cute name for a cute detective like you."
"Smooth, but if you thought it'd make me forget what you already said you're dead wrong. The name can stay, though." She felt such a bond talking to him that it almost felt like they were back in the end moments of the game, but now that they weren't in such a desolate place she felt almost like she could actually connect with him, get to know him better, perhaps take a chance and romance him…
Her thoughts were interrupted by him asking for her number, because he needed to get his patient back to the office for a discussion, and she gladly obliged. Everything seemed to be fated to end in their favor, and when she heard her phone go off before he'd even left the room, she guessed he felt the same way.
Let's stick together until the end in this life too, his message to her read, and from that moment her heart was sold to him. He wasn't an assassin, never had been, but he'd managed to kill her doubts that they wouldn't work out in the end with one measly message. Her reply was simple: of course. now let's talk about that coffee date. and maybe a wedding one too? just to get the ball rolling, how about next week?
A/N: for the free slot I decided I'd write more of the talentswap AU I started with saimatsu week. this is another one that I can talk a lot about
but more importantly, this fic signals the end of momoharu week, and I think I wrapped up the week nicely imo