DAY TWO ; 12:45 A.M.

He breathed heavily through his mouth. It hurt his ribs to breathe, it hurt his stomach to breathe, it hurt everything to breathe, but it hurt to be staggering along like he was with a branch as a makeshift crutch, and he was doing that, too.

Immediately after Sakura Oogami had thoroughly kicked his ass, he had managed to drag himself back to the clinic. He'd found a mirror and taken inventory, because if he was going to be bruised and bloody, he was going to see what in the hell was bruised and blood.

And everything had been bruised and bloody. His nose was broken, blood framing his mouth and soaking into his shirt. He'd lost at least three teeth, and several more were loose. He couldn't see out of one eye, and the other eye was just a blur. There were bruises along his neck and jaw and shoulders. He had to have several ribs that were at least cracked if not outright broken. And more bruises. Bruises littering every inch of his body. Abrasions. Bruises. Hurt.

But nothing hurt more than his pride.

Sakura Oogami or not, a girl was a girl. And a girl had just kicked his ass and had the audacity to just leave him there. To leave him whimpering on the ground with tears mixing with his blood. She'd stood up and turned and left, and now he was going to go after her and kill her if he had any sort of say in it.

He didn't know where she was, but he was betting that she was with Asahina. Which could be a pain, but Asahina would be too soft to kill anyone. He would have to kill Oogami first – she'd taken the guns. That was true. But he'd be creative. He'd suffocate her with the bag if he had to. But Leon Kuwata was going to kill Sakura Oogami.

He made sure to keep going north. He didn't exactly know where he was – his limited sight was too blurry to see the map, so all that he'd known when the announcements were being made was that the clinic would be gone soon. So he managed, after a hell of a lot of work, to squint at the compass until he managed to head north.

He tripped over a branch and let out a shout of surprise as he crashed to the ground, knocking his shoulder against a rock painfully. He gasped for breath, ribs aching, and burst into tears. It didn't do much for the pain, really, it was more of gasping breaths and tears leaking out of one eye and nose being clogged with snot as well as blood, but he was just so goddamned sick of this. Souda was dead, Oowada was dead, it probably wasn't going to much longer before Fujisaki was dead, too – he'd killed Maizono, he'd killed Tanaka, he'd killed two people and was planning on at least one more. He'd probably end up killing Asahina along with Oogami, and if he wanted to survive, he'd definitely end up killing more.

He hadn't wanted this. He hadn't wanted to be lying in the middle of a forest, beat to hell, in a situation where he would probably be murdered soon, because he was sobbing and he couldn't control his volume no matter how hard he pressed a hand against his mouth. He thought back to the last day they'd all been together, as a class – he'd been with Oowada and Fujisaki, they'd been chilling and talking and he'd gone up to Maizono and made a fool of himself and Naegi had looked at him in that vaguely Jesus-like way. Ibuki had asked him if he wanted to put on an impromptu concert with her and they had, it had been wonderful.

He remembered buying hair dye with Souda, he remembered asking Souda how he got his so even, he remembered Souda flushing and grinning and going into a lengthy explanation about bleaching and rinsing and redoing. He remembered Souda lying on the ground with his neck gaping open, Kiyotaka Ishimaru standing over him with a fucking katana of all things.

He remembered laughing with Oowada, playing card games and tossing a baseball back and forth. Trading girl stories – not exactly talking about how far they'd gone with girls, but about girls in general. Cute ones, hot ones, all of the above ones. He remembered seeing Oowada groaning on the ground, legs shattered by the Uzi. Oowada lying dead in the clinic, wounds hastily bandaged but ultimately failing.

He remembered finally getting up the courage to ask out Maizono, and getting her resulting giggle and "I'll think about it, Kuwata-kun!" and going back to his seat and grinning like an idiot. Feeling like he'd blown it but overwhelmingly hopeful at the same time. He remembered her taking aim and firing at him, at firing bullet after bullet into her, at how damned sexy she'd looked spread out on the ground. Her legs, splattered with blood. Her face, splattered with blood. Her shirt, splattered with blood.

Blood, blood, blood.

He wouldn't be traveling anymore tonight. If he was still in the clinic zone… he didn't think he was. He thought he was safe. But he would just sleep for the night. He didn't think he could get up again so soon. Even getting up after waking would be a stretch. So he would sleep for as long as he could, with his injuries, and then he would continue on with his mission.

Leon Kuwata fell asleep on his back, mouth open, blood crusted over most of his skin, bruises taking over the rest, with one hand on his back and the other on his makeshift crutch.

19 STUDENTS REMAINING

this poor boy