The golden light of dusk flicker it's last breath on the alley concrete, englobing more warmly than it should the slumped form of what it's left of Suguru.
He is already half dead when Satoru find him.
There's more red than the tan olive colour skin he would normally lay his eyes on. There's less flesh than it should be. Left side completly blasted off.
It doesn't bleed anymore.
Satoru try not to let his mind linger too much about what that mean.
It linger anyway.
It's more of a corpse than Suguru.
"You're late. As ever, Satoru… "
A pause. Unfocused black eyes find Satoru and he try not to flinch.
"…Ah. I guess it's logic that all of this end with you..Is my family safe ?"
Satoru can't move, rooted in place, even if he wanted to.
Ten years ago, They already both knew this moment would come. Trying to hold back, and tear out with his claw a fatality did not change the outcome nor did anything good to his sanity, so Satoru doesn't dare try to anymore.
He doesn't shy away from the heartbreak too, it would be futile, he think.
To deny that they broke each other heart, and hope there will be a day where they could talk about it fondly. This reality doesn't exist and wont come true. Their story found in the way some love- Satoru doesn't forget all the love they found-how could he ? In all the way Suguru let his trace on him, love was the biggest legacy he found.
But- Their story held it's origin in horror and blood,
Intrinsically, they always knew this would end in it as well.
"Yeah. They all managed to ran away.." it's a wonder his voice bypass the painful lump in his throat and achieve to come out steady and even.
"Ah.. I'm glad."Suguru breath.
Satoru pause."Maki and Yuta, they're alive, thank you."the words feel clumsy, it's weird but not unfamiliar, Suguru always made him feel like an inadequate and akward child he never been.
But he is. Grateful.
Suguru ragged inhale come next. "…You orchestrated this didn't you ? Sending me these two, what were you thinking, sensei ? " It's caustic, a little harsh for a dying man. But it's a normal that is almost cruel coming from Suguru.
Satoru close his eyes, forget the blindfold isn't there-he wanted to bare his thoughts and his face a last time and not going there yet- open them again, part his lips on word that won't come out.
He didn't doubt one second of Suguru deductive skills, even on the verge of death, he is as sharp as ever. Satoru knew he couldn't have fooled him, wouldn't have dreamed too.
He hoped nonetheless Suguru would have let the pathetic weakness Satoru hold for him unsaid.
Whatever, shame -of this innate trust he couldn't and still can't shake out of him even while knowing he should-don't have space to take right here, in this conversation.
It doesn't matter anymore.
" I trusted that you wouldn't hurt them if you could. I was right. " Satoru leave his speak to the essential part of what they have to say to each other. Doesn't deign to lie, or argue about all what was implied in the condescending inflection Suguru have by default. Can't really retain the vindictive tone of telling facts either.
I was a fool for trusting you, but you were a bigger one for proving me right.
Satoru doesn't have an ego or a dignity to spare, won't have anymore soon. But he always have space for familiar dynamics of unecessary spitfulness and honest godforsaken vulnerability.
"..Trust, huh ? To think you still had some of that for me...After all this time ? "Suguru doesn't hide the disbelief from his tone.
Satoru doesn't say anything.
They doesn't have the time to argue.
"I see."
Suguru doesn't mock him. It's a mercy. A really gentle and terrible thing to inflict.
It give him strength for leading what come next.
"Any last words ?"
Suguru close his eyes. Satoru almost do the same vision too hard to handle.
For a moment, Satoru think he held these words too close to his chest, that they didn't came out.
But he felt them wiping out the air with their existence, sentencing the outcome of this conversation.
He felt them burning his thoracic cage on their way out.
He feel them now, here.
Like a physical weight; a deeply screwed spear twisting between his ribs.
"You know… I never hated any of you..Satoru…I was- In this wretched world, I just couldn't smile from the bottom of my heart."
It's hard to let go.
Satoru doesn't really know how to do that, he had been raised to always get or taking what he wanted.
Risibly, he thought he grew out of it a little.
Suguru have been gone for more than a decade now. They have been ennemies and stranger longer than lovers- and if that's not an enough maddening reality-In eachothers lives, what they shared was a flicker in the perspective of time.
Suguru turned his back on him and spitted on everything they ever shared or holded dear long ago, and Satoru thought he made peace with it in a certain way-foolishly though that made him used to the loss even a little.
But it's terrifying to let him go.
Well, it would have been foolish to think it could have been otherwise. But, Satoru always been a foolish foolish man. And while he already seen his best friend, his first love leave it doesn't equate the way this time-
This time it's for good.
Satoru is a very very foolish man.
" Suguru."
Nothing prepared him to the way it would really felt.
It feel a lot like gravity. It's not.
He have infinity turned on. Beside, he would know what gravity feels like on his skin, intimately so actually. He can put it in number, variation and wavelength. So he knows it's not.
It's worse- knowing it's not.
If Satoru had time, if Suguru had, he would ask a billion of questions-he asked himself for ten years. Will probably ponder about them for the rest of his life. They're all for Suguru. And they will die unanswered before ever reaching his throat tonight.
It's silly and it is not; to grieve that before him.
Satoru would have wanted answers, explications, even if it was meaningless for Suguru.
He know it wouldn't have made him feel better. It might've even made it all worse. But it could have given him closure.
Is it something you didn't think I deserved or needed for never giving it to me ?
Or were you just selfishly holding onto the fact that I could never let you go ?
Knowing that without any more words from you, I would still desperately waiting for them ?
Knowing I would then never looking forward ?
Always searching behind my shoulder looking for you ?
Hey, Suguru, we've been ennemies longer than lovers, doesn't that sound crazy ?
Is it shitty of me to not condemn you ?
Was I not enough for you ?
None of these questions he asks,
none of them matter.
"I'm sorry, thank you for loving me. " The words are out before he can comprehend them, but it's good-
I'm sorry that I couldn't save you. That you didn't want to be.
I'm sorry that love wasn't enough.
Thank you for giving me the chance to knowing you.
Suguru is visibly surprised. Eyes like saucers and all that jack. Satoru forgot how good of a look it was on him.
Then he smile, small, rare and tender, all directed to him. It ache. A kind of hurt he haven't see coming. Throwing his inside upside down in a mean knot that leave him nauseous and bittersweet all at once.
Satoru didn't thought he would have seen this expression ever again.
It's what matter.
Bright pearl flicker in the corner of the crinkle eyes Suguru throw at him. His head thud soundly against the wall in the silent alley.
He exhale, soft and sweet, fragile in a way Satoru haven't heard of him in more than a decade.
The last time Satoru listened to a similar sound coming out of Suguru, it been held between his lips, englobed by crumpled sheets still smelling like sleep, morning lights and warm skin touching each others. Young hearts beating in symbiosis under the blue sky of spring. The future outstretching it's arms to them.
Endless and bright.
It's devastating, to let him go.
"Ah… What A shame.. " Suguru rasp.
Satoru try to brand the sound of his voice with burning red steel onto his brain. Frantically.
Can already feel it slipping out of his grasp. Like groplets of water falling trought the crack and crevice of his hands.
insanity edging him over the feeling of losing one more piece of him.
Thank you for loving me too.
Suguru doesn't say this sort of thing, he had always been allergic to taking what he wants. Saying what he think and meaning it.
But he mean this, they both know it. And Satoru forgot this too. (Crazy how times make you forget even the smallest thing you always thought for granted) how it was as easy as breathing to talk the language of the other, even their most modest words recoiled on themselves petrified by feelings too bigs for them.
Satoru always used to think it was the same for Suguru too, before they couldn't understand each other anymore and a rift too large to cross was raised between them.
Wretched thing, to be his last moment that bring them together again.
"…At least, curse me a little in the end ?"
Love me beyond death.
Don't let me go.
Oh if Satoru had been less of a coward man, a little more than the shell of himself he became in ten years. If he still had a sample of the way he'd been at sixteen, in fire, brash and naive enough to think nothing will ever change them.
He would have. He would have said the words in a heartbeat, he knows them viscerally, they're already on the tip of his tongue, ready to be spill out, Satoru can feel them, sweet cursed energy it would demand like honey on his tastebuds (not much really-not much to keep Suguru by his side, alive-at least a mockery of it-but alive),
But, he doesn't.
He think about it, It would be a farce to say he don't. He think about it, too long to not be wretched a little by the possibility of it. Linger a second to much in the wave of cataclysmic hope and longing and…
Doesn't.
Suguru scoff.
Satoru exhale, the white noise invading his ears don't cover the sound of his shaky breath trembling out of his throat.
Humid trails burns a path down his cheek.
The day die.
Leaving Suguru eyes,
Stars lights in the sky,
They become brighter than they could have ever hoped to be.