IC Inbox

[waitingforplayer2]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, CHIAKI NANAMI.

FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

*** galagamer has joined XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
<galagamer> This is Chiaki Nanami.
<galagamer> I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

Comments

[luckless]

I... I don't care about me...!

[Komaeda's voice pitches with a canid whine. His ears have peeled all the way back, his fluffy tail coiled around his hip. He doesn't look at her still, but he can feel her attention on him.

It feels like daggers.]

For you to have to endure something so awful... As if one death trap wasn't enough to live through... Why did it have to be mine?

[waitingforplayer2]

But it wasn't your fault...

[ She reaches for him again, placing a leafy hand on his shoulder. Trying to think of what to say, to drag him back out of his despair, into the world again. ]

Komaeda-kun-- even with things like that-- you tried so hard to save me... you were hurt just like me... there's no reason to blame yourself for what happened!

[luckless]

How could I not...? When I promised to protect you, and I nearly got you killed instead...

[He doesn't lean into her touch, neither does he pull away from it. It's comforting, even if he feels selfish for indulging in that warmth when he simultaneously feels undeserving of it.]

...If we weren't so lucky, if that memory had kept going... What part of you would I have lost to it...?

[waitingforplayer2]

[ Nanami falls quiet. It's the very loss of her own friends' memories that has distressed her so much, since the memory fog left the peninsula. Komaeda's right in that - had she lost any of them permanently, things might have been much worse.

But still she pulls him into a hug, even if he protests, or remains limp. ]

But you didn't lose me, Komaeda-kun. We were lucky. Even if it's a kind of unluck that we both went through it...

[ A long shuddering breath. ] Would it have been the same, if you hadn't jumped on top of me? Maybe in a way, your luck did help save both of us in the end, too...

cw suicide mention

[luckless]

Stop it.

[Komaeda pulls his head up from his arms, and though fur hangs in front of his eyes, the gaze he casts sideways to Nanami is full of pain—seen or not. She knows better than to bring up his luck like this, right? It feels like stabbing open an old and barely healing wound.]

What that was... My memory, it would've killed us both if there magic made it realistic enough. Don't you get it? I told you beofre that the past me used his luck to kill himself and make you throw the poison, that's what happened.

Me doing what I did in the memory... That wasn't luck. That was... Was me trying to die with you. I didn't want to be without you.