The moments after Harumaki run off feel oddly infinite. Kaito listens to her harsh, scraping footfalls as they sprint away, though whether to hide from what she's done or find some way to correct it, he doesn't know. He listens to his own labored breathing, sickness and poison intermingled. He listens to Ouma's low, rasping chuckle to his left. And—despite all these little sounds, little scrapes and wheezes—he listens, too, to the eerie quiet that has descended upon them.

It's as if, in the moments after conflict, a rugged sort of peace has pervaded them. It's the kind of silence that rings. The kind of silence that's empty, utterly so. The kind of silence that makes Kaito want to hurl.

Then, a cough is ripping its way from his throat, and he stumbles back from the force of it. He feels as though it shreds his insides for how rough and guttural it is, and he's sure the poison isn't making it any better. With the end of the fit, his vision spots with darkness that he's forced to blink away, and it would be more alarming if he hasn't already accepted the fact that he's going to die here. He was already convinced he would, when Ouma first dragged him here—pulled apart at the waist by an exisal, maybe, or left to starve and rot in the bathroom. Maybe he'd entertained some delusions of survival, when Saihara visited and Yumeno delivered him the crossbow. Maybe he'd felt some fleeting moment of triumph when the bolt found its way to bone in Ouma's arm, and maybe it had sent a rush of adrenaline through him when he'd had his hands this, this close to Ouma's throat, this close to being able to grab it and squeeze—

but, as was inevitable, the acceptance wormed its way back in when he watched Ouma drain the bottle of its antidote, his hope draining from his chest in time with it.

He couldn't show that to Harumaki, though. The look in her eyes when she met his through the bathroom window, so wild and desperate with regret, was nothing like the one she'd emerged from the exisal with. She had been filled with such vile fire, such hatred. In the split second Kaito had had to process that look, he despised it. Even though the despair she wore now pierced him (like the crossbow bolt, ha-ha, he thinks distantly, and perhaps this is a form of shock), it was better than that fury. If he can stay strong for her, she can forget for an instant why she had shot him in the first place. She can forget that anger, if only for the moments he has left to look at her.

He finds his way to the bathroom wall and sinks against it, groaning. He intends to only lean there, but his legs betray him when they buckle, and he slides down to sit with them bent. He'd ripped the arrow from his arm as soon as he could, and now he puts pressure on his wrist, still bleeding. If he can stave off the pain there, at least, he can bear it. He's gotten used to the creeping, burning pain in his lungs. What's more? So what if it's poison instead of disease? So what if it's both?

Kaito's eyes screw closed. He can feel sweat bead on his forehead. He doesn't react more than a delayed flinch when there's a sharp pop like a firecrackerand a brief, bright light that streams through his eyelids, but he certainly feels the shock of whatever-it-is going off.

Then he feels something else. He'd open his eyes if he could, but he's too focused on the way the pain suddenly spikes, too focused on tensing up and trying desperately to control his reaction. There is… an arm around his shoulder, suddenly. A body presses up next to his, steadying him, and then he feels something smooth and cool against his lips.

His mouth opens in surprise, completely involuntarily, and the person holding whatever it is (ouma holding the bottle, the antidote bottle that harukawa tried to give him, the bottle ouma stole) takes advantage of it. A liquid spills into his mouth, and it's all Kaito can do to swallow it without choking. When no more comes, the bottle is removed, and Kaito gives a final, hard gulp as indistinct, muttered words reach him. They sound sweet. Low, comforting. Kaito slumps to his left on instinct, leaning in to the warm form there. It (ouma, you dumbass, it's ouma) grumbles, but supports him.

It's maybe a minute or so before he feels functional again, and with function comes higher brain processes. He knows, logically, who he's leaning on; he'd even opened his eyes after a bit to try to ground himself, and could see Ouma's obnoxious outfit in his periphery. The reality of who it is takes a backseat, however, to the agony Kaito is in. As he comes back to himself, he growls low and pushes himself away from Ouma.

"What the fuck?" he chokes out, coughing once to clear his throat. When he looks over at Ouma, his face is eerily blank, kneeling on the tile and watching him. "I thought you just drank that." As he looks, Ouma's face flickers through a series of aborted expressions before he settles on one. Not much is more unsettling than a perfectly expressionless Ouma, but the flicker of some unidentifiable emotion that Kaito catches when he meets his eyes this time is certainly up there.

"You know I'm a liar," Ouma says, flat and cold. As he looks at him, Kaito realizes that he's shivering, just slightly. The arrow still protrudes from his arm, and as Kaito watches, Ouma reaches a quivering hand up to grip at his bicep, carefully avoiding the shaft of the bolt.

"Why?" Kaito asks, bewildered. At this, a dastardly smile spreads on Ouma's face. It's only slightly offset by his eyebrows, knit with the effort of ignoring his pain.

"We could talk about motivations 'til the sun rises, my darling Momota-chan," Ouma says, sick-sweet. "But there isn't really time for that. I am dying." He says it so cheekily. Kaito knows he's a liar, but there's no way he could be so nonchalant about this if it had truly sunk in. He must be in shock or something.

This, Kaito thinks, is the moment all those sharp, serrated edges scattered around Ouma Kokichi dissipate. Kaito had always looked at him like he was serrated—like he had this invisible, built-in defense mechanism that cut everyone it touched (and the cuts were always exclamations and crocodile tears, always "it's a lie!" and faux pity). Now, though. Now, Kaito looks upon him through his wavering, blurring vision and sees him defenseless. Sees him malleable, pliant, sees Ouma Kokichi and thinks that he could touch a hand to his shoulder and it wouldn't hurt.

It probably has something to do with the fact that he's dying. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they both are.

"What do you want, then?" Kaito asks, because Ouma has to have a reason to die. He has to be getting something out of Kaito's survival, limited as it is (the sickness will kill him soon enough, he can feel it, organs failing cell by cell), and it must be something gargantuan. Ouma—who had always been a little eternal to Kaito, always been the one person he was sure would make it out—would not die to save Momota Kaito's life.

Here, Ouma drops any pretense of cheer. The masks slough off his face like shed skin, one instinctual cover-up at a time, and as he stands up from where he'd knelt at Kaito's side, Kaito feels oddly like he's intruding. No one was ever meant to see Ouma so vulnerably.

Then, he holds out a hand to help Kaito up. He takes it, though it's mostly by his own strength that he stands. He can feel in the slight tremble of Ouma's fingers that the poison is already breaking him down. It must be agony. He must be cold, Kaito thinks, distant, because that's a thing, right? When you get poisoned, you start to feel cold?

Ouma, clutching his wounded arm, does not wince as he asks Kaito to kill him.

Kaito has never been one to stumble. He's confident, he's brash—that's his thing, you know? He has to be the one who runs ahead without thinking. He can't falter.

Here, though. Here, Ouma stops him dead in his tracks, even forces him to stagger backward. He says "I need you to kill me," and his eyes are perfectly sincere, even hidden by one of those awful smiles of his, and Kaito's breath catches in his throat and sincere is not a word he ever thought he'd use to describe Ouma Kokichi. Here he is, though, looking into Ouma's eyes and seeing the truth there, bubbling up and popping amidst a boiling sea of falsehoods. It's not the sweet kind of sincere. It's the open-wound festering kind. The rotting kind.

Kaito has never liked Ouma in the slightest, and after Iruma's death, he's had all the more cause to despise him. But when he lays out his plan to defeat the true mastermind of the killing game, Kaito finds in him some semblance of respect. Yes, Ouma is absolutely batshit. But this is beyond anything Kaito could ever have done, ever had the balls to attempt. And he respects Ouma for it.

He doesn't want Harukawa to become the blackened, desperately so. What really gets him to agree to the plan, though, foolish and frantic as it is—what really gets him is the way Ouma utters the words "ruin this killing game." He spits it like a curse, and somehow Kaito finds it so earnest. So truthful.

When Ouma asks "I wasn't boring, right?" his voice cracks a little. And Kaito feels all the animosity he's built up dissolve. He can't hate him like this, so raw and aching.

Yes, Kaito thinks. Yes, that's the word. Raw.

Because Ouma is wonderfully, awfully raw here, in the exisal hangar bathroom, blood soaking through the arm of his coat and dripping down his back, down his legs to pool on the floor. He is raw, looking upon Kaito and asking, pleading for help (and it doesn't sound like one, really. it sounds like a demand, like an exchange, like an "i gave you the antidote, you help me end this," but kaito can see in ouma's eyes that he's scared. he can see that this is a plea).

So Kaito, even though the idea of killing another man makes revulsion churn in his gut, agrees by stepping forward and pulling the crossbow bolts from Ouma's flesh. He shakes violently in Kaito's grip, grunting in pain with both tugs. They start out a respectable distance away, having sunk to the floor for leverage, but by the time Kaito has ripped the bolt in Ouma's spine from where it's buried, Ouma's face is pressed to his shirt and Kaito's arms have wrapped around him instinctually. They stay like that for a moment while Ouma collects himself, breath ragged, fists clenched in the fabric of Kaito's button-up. Then, abruptly, Ouma pushes himself up and away and he barely sways on his feet before he's giving Kaito orders.

The three bolts, the crossbow, and the antidote bottle stay in the bathroom, all bloodied. To make a fake crime scene (if it can be called fake—they did bleed there, after all), Ouma claims. Kaito does not pretend to understand all of it.

Then, Ouma offers Kaito his arms and tells him "Drag me." In any other circumstance, Kaito would probably be glad to. But the distance between the bathroom and the hydraulic press is so far, and Ouma… well.

Ouma is dying a lot faster than he lets on. Kaito can tell as his skin gets paler. As his words falter.

Drag him he does, though, and every hiss of pain that Ouma lets escape smarts in Kaito's ears. The blood trail they create is impressive in its volume, and Kaito is sickened. Ouma leans back against the side of the press when they get there, avoiding his spine. He's breathing heavily and sweating. His face twists in pain as Kaito watches. Then, he gestures vaguely toward the press control panel.

"Over there… there's a notebook. Maroon. Get it." He screws his eyes shut. Kaito's gaze lingers on him before he moves toward the control panel.

True to word, a heavy notebook rests on the last metal step. Kaito takes it and startles a bit at its weight—it's a thick thing in the first place, but when he takes a closer look, he sees that there are countless papers stuffed between pages as well. Bewildered, Kaito goes back over to Ouma, who grabs for it.

Kaito hands Ouma the notebook, who lets it fall heavily to his lap before starting to flip through it. A couple pages in, he finds a paper stuffed inside that he pulls out and hands over to Kaito.

When he takes in what he's actually seeing, his eyes widen. "What the hell is this?" Kaito asks on reflex, though he understands perfectly what the diagram represents.

"That's exactly how we're going to fake your death, Momota-chan!" Ouma tries to sound upbeat in that infuriating way of his, but his voice is strained. He waits for a moment as Kaito takes it in. "Get it?"

The diagram shows the hydraulic press, and a crude image of the control panel. There's also a camera, and messy, scrawled notes that detail the exact machinations of Ouma's plan to make Kaito look like the victim. It's a perfectly clinical, step-by-step guide to killing Ouma Kokichi.

"Yeah, I—" Kaito swallows. "Yeah. I get it." He reaches up to run a hand through his hair, mostly loose from its gel prison after days of sitting around in a bathroom. He looks up from the page to meet Ouma's eyes. He looks tired. In the few moments since Kaito looked at him last, he seems to have gotten paler.

Unable to maintain eye contact, he looks backward toward the closed bathroom door, where all their evidence lies. "So that's all we had to do? Next is the, uh." He stops. The words seem reluctant to form in his mouth.

"The press," Ouma finishes for him with a rasp. Kaito nods in acknowledgement. Neither of them move. Then, Ouma opens his mouth again just as Kaito blurts something out.

"Why?" Kaito's surprised he says it, himself. Ouma blinks, closing his mouth again.

"I told you. It's to ruin this killing game. If we can get the mastermind to make a mistake, the rules will be violated and it will have to stop. The audience would demand it." Ouma's answer is halting, the strain of speaking at length evident. He pauses. "It's… getting harder to breathe, so…" He grimaces.

"Not that," Kaito says, clenching his fist. He crouches down in front of Ouma to look him in the eyes. "It's just… you kept saying how fun this game was." This gives Ouma, who had been shifting uncomfortably, pause. He stills, a darkness falling over his face. It infects his eyes like a plague, and the look Ouma fixes Kaito with in that moment is chilling.

"That was a lie… obviously," he murmurs, voice trembling with some emotion Kaito can't identify. "How… how could a game that you're forced to play be fun?" He breathes out, chest rattling, and Kaito thinks oh.

Oh. I get it, now.

"I hadto think this game was fun to survive!" Ouma's voice breaks as he speaks, weak and despairing. Kaito's question has ignited a fire in him, and he reaches forward suddenly, desperately, to grab fistfuls of Kaito's shirt. Ouma pulls him forward, and he has to put a hand on the ground by Ouma's hip to stop himself from falling into his chest. "I had to lie to myself!" Their faces are very close like this, and Kaito feels his breath leave him when he sees tears, real tears, well in Ouma's eyes. Ouma pulls a shaky breath inward.

It is so, so hard to hate Ouma like this. Kaito's face twists with his confliction as he looks upon him, so slim and pale and crying. Kaito tries to make himself think of the last trial—of Iruma Miu's hands, reaching for her neck and kept there in rigor mortis. Of Gokuhara Gonta's face, devastated as Saihara laid out his crime. Of Ouma's utter lack of remorse. Kaito tries desperately to remember the fury that made him vote for Ouma Kokichi in the end, finger pressed so hard into the screen it turned white. He tries to remember what made his fist clench and find purchase on Ouma's cheek.

Then Ouma is speaking again, and he tugs a little harder on Kaito's shirt, pulling him close enough to see the vile hatred that burns in Ouma's eyes. "Whoever made this game to toy with us, whoever the fuck is enjoying it… they all piss me off!"

Momota Kaito has always been weak for the people who push others away. What's one more sidekick, he thinks, for the last hours of his life?

Ouma's face grows cool again, and with a strained sort of determination, he says, "That's why… I'm willing to do whatever it takes." They look at each other, for a moment. Then Ouma lets Kaito's shirt go, his hands falling limply into his lap. Kaito only lingers in his space for a moment before he pushes himself away.

"What's the rest of the notebook for?" Kaito asks, unwilling to move on yet.

"They're lines."

"Lines?"

"For you. You have to pretend to be me during the trial, so they're convinced you're dead," Ouma says bluntly. Kaito exhales sharply. He says it so plainly. So easily.

Kaito reaches for the book, which Ouma lets him take from his lap, and he thumbs through the pages. Every single page in the notebook is full, and plenty of pages are stuffed in, scattered throughout. There's dialogue for what seems to Kaito like every possible scenario—most where he pretends to be Ouma, some where he masquerades as himself.

"This is…" Kaito doesn't know how to finish at the thought. He blows out, letting the book fall shut. "Wow." Ouma is just looking at him.

"Think you can do it, big guy?" he asks, and Kaito blinks as he realizes that, despite the way his body trembles and despite the pain he must be in, Ouma is teasing him. Kaito laughs, abrupt and short.

"Yeah. I've got it covered." Silence falls between them again, but for Ouma's labored breathing. He seizes up suddenly, face contorted. Kaito jerks forward in concern, instinctual, placing a hand on Ouma's shoulder, his knee bracing him between Ouma's feet. "You good?" Kaito asks. Ouma cracks his eyes open and glares at him.

"Yeah. No biggie. Just dying," he manages between gritted teeth. Whatever wave of pain he's dealing with subsides, and he slumps backward. Kaito squeezes his shoulder slightly. After a moment, Ouma meets his eyes again. "We should get started."

The air is not tense but anticipatory, and the hangar seems to grow quiet but for the low, distant groan of metal. Kaito looks over Ouma's shoulder to the press, sitting patient and looming, and thinks of laying there, watching it descend. He trusts Ouma not to kill him, accidentally or otherwise—he's not worried about that (and isn't that funny? trusting ouma. he thought the day would never come). It's just—how would it feel, to watch it come down and know it won't stop for you? How can Ouma stand the thought of it?

He realizes that Ouma is looking up at him, and he drags his gaze from the press. Ouma seems expectant.

"What?"

"You think," he pauses to breathe, "I can get up to the control panel by myself like this?" It's supposed to be a jab, halfhearted as it is, but Ouma can't push Kaito's buttons like this. All that wells in him is a deep, unbidden regret.

Kaito doesn't say anything as he reaches out to help Ouma to his feet, intending to support him with an arm over his shoulder. When Ouma figures out what he's going for, though, he shakes his head.

"I can't walk," he murmurs, avoiding Kaito's eyes. Kaito pauses for a moment before aborting the motion.

"Okay," he says back, soft, and instead hooks an arm under Ouma's legs, the other around his back, and hoists him up into a bridal carry.

Kaito has been steadfastly ignoring the stabbing ache in his lungs, accustomed to hiding it. He feels the pain exacerbated now, though not by much—Ouma is incredibly light, almost distressingly so. As Ouma leans into Kaito's chest, he gets a view down his scarf, and is alarmed by how prominent Ouma's collarbones are. They are stark and defined against his pale skin, and Kaito imagines that, without a shirt, he could probably see all of Ouma's ribs.

Kaito notices now, as he turns and begins heading toward the stairs, that Ouma isn'tcold. Rather, the warmth he feels where the curl of Ouma's body is pressed to Kaito's chest is like fever, and a high one at that. Ouma still shivers, though, as if he's freezing. Kaito bites back his concern, eyes trained on their destination. He ignores the tickle of Ouma's hair against his neck, and the way Ouma presses one palm flat against his chest. He ignores it, too, when Ouma snuggles into him just slightly.

When he sets Ouma down next to the control panel, Kaito has to move off immediately to cough into his hand (and he almost feels bad to, because ouma has a grip on his shirt that is ripped away as kaito moves), the tickle in his chest having bit at him as he carried Ouma. His chest rattles, the fit violent, and Kaito can feel the blood splatter into his palm as it goes on. When it subsides and he can finally open his eyes, his hand is dripping. He wipes it on his jacket. His appearance doesn't really matter anymore.

When he looks over at Ouma, he's being fixed with an intense stare. Ouma is wearing that eerily blank face again, looking at him, and it would be intimidating if he weren't leaning so heavily into the platform's railing just to stay standing.

"I'm fine," Kaito says, though Ouma didn't ask. He averts his gaze, to Kaito's relief, and turns to reach for the camera that is perched on the control panel.

Ouma pulls the screen of the camera open and turns it on, then sets it on the railing, close to the panel. He adjusts the angle for a moment before he's satisfied. "C'mere," he mutters, and Kaito obeys. "This isn't anything fancy, so the best shot we've got is the shit with the buttons. You saw, right?" His voice has so little substance to it, now.

"Yeah," Kaito replies, thinking of the diagram.

"You have to take your arm out of the jacket and leave it on the press, too." Kaito grimaces. He likes his jacket. Ouma lets out a breath. "That's it."

"I understand," Kaito murmurs.

"Get down there, then. Hurry." Ouma turns away, and Kaito finds that he really, really doesn't want to. He lingers for a moment, as he had when they'd had to move away from the press, and is only pushed into motion when Ouma fixes him with a withering look.

The press is cold when he sits on it. It takes a moment before he can bring himself to lie down, tugging his right arm from the sleeve and letting it drape over the side of the press. He hesitates, then takes a breath and lies flat in one smooth motion.

Looking up at the slab of metal above him is daunting in a way Kaito never thought something could be before. It's like seeing the weight of the world in all its enormity, and laying there even despite it is like accepting that weight onto his shoulders.

"Okay," Kaito calls, and he pretends that it isn't so wavering. It's a mercy on Ouma's part that he doesn't point it out (or kaito pretends that it is, because he knows in horrible truth that ouma probably doesn't have the strength to call back anymore).

Then there's a distant, tinny beep and the press makes an awful, screeching groan, and Kaito is forced to watch as it slowly, slowly moves downward. It is not necessarily close to his face when it stops, but it is far, far too close for comfort.

When it does stop, and he hears the camera beep again, Kaito lets out a shuddering breath, closing his eyes and collecting himself. The air between the top and bottom slabs of the press is doom concentrated, and it takes real effort to drag himself from between them, taking care not to disturb the jacket.

When he finally looks up to where Ouma is standing again, he's slid down the railing, legs curled in a half-kneel as he grabs onto the bars, face smushed into them. Even from this far, Kaito can tell his breathing is labored. Though he knows it only takes him closer to the moment Ouma dies, Kaito can't stop himself from rushing over, coughing sideways into his elbow as he goes.

Ouma looks bad.

He's pale, and his hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat. His entire body trembles. His chest and head are blisteringly hot, but when Kaito takes his hand and wraps it around his shoulders, ready to pick him up, his fingers are cold. Ouma's body is already giving up on his extremities, and that—that scares Kaito, more than he'd like to admit.

Kaito lifts Ouma, pulls him into his chest and manually wraps Ouma's arms around his neck and holds him at his hips, his legs wrapping around Kaito's waist (kaito remembers fondly when his grandmother would lift him like this, would call him her little koala. this is different, though. this feels more desperate. more intimate).

"Just a little longer," Kaito murmurs into the hair covering Ouma's ear, his face tucked into Kaito's neck. It doesn't matter that "just a little longer" is just a little longer 'til his death. Ouma needs the reassurance. Kaito can feel that in the way he fleetingly grips at his neck, tight and trembling.

He looks over the railing to the hydraulic press. A little over an hour ago, Kaito would call it a fitting casket for an asshole like Ouma Kokichi.

Now, though. Now, Kaito looks upon it, and wishes so desperately that it could be kinder.

He knows what pressure feels like. His astronaut training demanded it; the stress of leaving the atmosphere could not be endured by the average man. The difference there is that, however much pressure it was, however awful it felt—it was never, never enough to make the body cave in on itself. Never enough to split, and bend, and splatter.

The press, though. The press is enough, and Kaito knows that it will be excruciating.

Ouma tugs at the back of his shirt, squeezes his legs around his waist. He moans, a quiet, desperate sound, and Kaito knows that this is his cue.

He first removes Ouma's scarf, then his shirt (and he was right. every rib is on display). He sets them down, to be rid of later, and braces Ouma against the railing while he takes off his button-up, leaving him just in his flimsy graphic tee. He pulls Ouma's skinny arms through the sleeves (he can wrap his whole hand around ouma's ribs and overlap his fingers a little, oh god) before buttoning it up for him, desperate to offer Ouma some kind of comfort.

Then he readjusts his hold, one arm at Ouma's back and one under him, and heads down the platform stairs.

Kaito carries Ouma Kokichi to the press gently.

He holds him like a child, like a delicate thing. Cradles him, in fact, rubs a thumb along his thigh where his arm is wrapped under Ouma's butt and presses his other hand gently, comfortingly into the center of Ouma's back. He murmurs kind, nothing words into Ouma's ear, brushes his lips fleetingly against his cheek and doesn't question the instinct to do so. His own hair, limp and gritty with product, falls around his face and hides him, it feels like, from the rest of this facsimile of Hope's Peak. He and Ouma are an isolated entity as Kaito strides toward the press, utterly removed from the killing game and from the hangar.

When Kaito carries Ouma to his death, he carries him through a created sky, and he feels Ouma sigh into his chest (and he ignores, for his own heart, when Ouma convulses against him, when he chokes on his own spit and moans in pain, in agony eating him from the inside out).

The hangar returns to them all too suddenly when Kaito stops in front of the press. He's wearing slippers, but despite them, his footfalls come loud and echoing as he takes the final few steps forward. The press seems to groan even as it sits there, motionless, and Kaito clutches at Ouma like he's a precious thing. He doesn't want to do this, god, he doesn't.

But his body moves to place Ouma down anyway. He detaches Ouma's arms, then his legs, from where they are wrapped tightly around him, and there is just enough room between the top slab of the press and the platform to lean in over Ouma as Kaito settles him into place.

He moves to lean back, but Ouma has just enough strength to reach out with both hands and grab onto his shirt, tugging him back down. Ouma's eyes are open and alert despite the poison, and Kaito laments that he has to be conscious and present for this.

"Momota," Ouma mumbles, and Kaito's eyes drill into his, searching (no -chan, not momota-chan. no, please, call me that again, kaito thinks. please, call me that again. please don't go).

Then Ouma is tugging him down further, toward his face, and Kaito places his hands on either side of Ouma's shoulders, and his eyebrows crease as they look at each other.

"Please…" Ouma whispers, the word broken, no true voice to it. He tugs him again, and Kaito knows that there's no way he'll be able to hate Ouma Kokichi ever again. Not after this.

Kaito lets Ouma guide him to his lips, gently at first. It's mostly Kaito moving, but after a moment, Ouma finds the strength to lift his head just slightly and press into Kaito's lips harder, more insistently. It's a plea, Kaito realizes. Like blackmailing him by making Harukawa the blackened, this is a plea.

Ouma opens his mouth into Kaito as he pushes back, his head falling against the metal, and Kaito finds himself hungry for it. Ouma responds as best he can, and Kaito stays careful not to go too far, not to press too hard. If anything, he doesn't press hard enough, because Ouma's hands stay twisted tight in his shirt, tugging hard, tugging forever.

The kiss is wet with Ouma's hot, sickly saliva, and it's almost enough to make Kaito feel sick to his stomach. It's also sloppy, and unpracticed, and too hard or too uncoordinated at times. Neither of them have ever kissed anyone before.

(it was good, kaito will admit to himself later, in the exisal, one panel dented with the force of his fist. it was so good. it was perfect.)

(he will miss ouma, in the end.)

Ouma says, "Kill me, Momota-chan," when Kaito pulls back, and these are his last words. Kaito leaves him there on the metal, shivering, lips red and wet, only his button-up and galaxy-print jacket left for comfort. Kaito suddenly cannot bear to see him anymore, laid out so bare and suffering.

Kaito is at the press, and then he is standing before the control panel, hand reaching for the camera. His conscious mind has left him, for the moment. He reaches for the play button and the button to start the press in the same instant, and when he presses them, he looks down at Ouma. Kaito cannot see his face from this angle.

He can hear the creak of Ouma's everything being crushed, though, subtle and sickening. And he can see, can watch as Ouma's everything splatters out from between the press in a macabre painting of ruin. There is. So much blood.

There is so much blood.

Kaito takes Ouma's clothes to the bathroom and throws up in the toilet before he flushes them. He hears it clog and doesn't care. He coughs into his hand again, doubling over, sputtering blood all over himself, and he doesn't care. Except he does, it's just so far away right now, and every time he catches sight of the press it threatens to close back in. He knows it will be too much to bear when it does. He knows that, if he looks now, he will not be able to collect himself and hide in an exisal before the Electrobomb wears off.

So Momota Kaito, in a fashion more robotic than Kiibo, flushes Ouma's clothes and sweeps the room for any stray evidence that has to be cleaned up, and he retrieves Ouma's notebook and he coughs again into his elbow and he gets up into the red exisal and he closes the hatch and he sits back and he

splinters.

(and he punches the inside of the exisal so hard it dents and he spends the hours until morning reading ouma's notebook until his hands shake and his eyes leak freely and when the others come and find "his" remains he listens, sobbing, as they investigate and it's awful.

it's awful, because kaito has known from the start that saihara would see through them. he listened to ouma's plan and thought that it really just might fool monokuma, and it was brilliant, really brilliant, but he knew like he's known nothing else in life that saihara shuichi would see through it all.

and momota kaito killed ouma kokichi anyway, because his fatal flaw is how hard and how devastatingly he believes in people

and just for a moment, just for an instant, he believed it might work.)