part III of dark
last breath
"You can still stop, Nakamori-san. It's still not too late."
Hakuba isn't a liar and he is adamantly against it.
But sometimes, to save his own life, to bargain with a murderer, he has no choice but to throw his believes overboard and go with the flow. Because for Nakamori it was too late. She could stop and she'd still be prosecuted and probably receive a death sentence. There was no salvation for her, anymore.
But Hakuba treasures his own life, treasures it so much, and doesn't want to lose it.
"What would Kuroba-kun say if he were here?"
"But he's not."
That's true. He's not.
Kuroba is as dead as Hakuba will be in a few minutes. The only difference – as far as he knows, Kuroba didn't suffer while his own fate holds something much more sinister for him.
Aoko continues to tie down the remaining members of Snake's entourage – something he never succeeded in.
And it scares him, she scares him.
She's long past rage and hatred and a heated passion to kill – it's just a job now. It's a duty now, to make peace, to find a place in a world which took everything from her.
Most of them are already dead, some still breathe raggedly, after she continuously beat them, and how she managed that, Hakuba could only guess. And then she starts pouring something over them that smells too much like gasoline, wetting the rope around his wrists, sealing his fate.
"Why?" he can't help but ask in the end.
And she stops for a second and looks into his eyes. And Hakuba watches this murderer in front of him, her eyes blank and empty, the color long faded, just like her will to live the life she must have imagined for herself he imagines. Just like the justice she used to hold so dear.
She let go of it so long ago.
And she lets go of it now when she lights the match and lets in fall to the ground.