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A police siren jolts Saruhiko awake. He watches the alternating red-blue lights through the only window in the apartment. Below, Yata sleeps undisturbed, t-shirt ridden up and blankets long kicked off the mattress. Saruhiko finds himself watching the steady rising and falling of Misaki’s abdomen, soothed by the unchanging rhythm. He wills himself to slow his breath down to the same pace.
Misaki turns in his sleep, trapping his right arm under his weight. Saruhiko lets himself smile a little when he thinks about how the other will surely complain about not being able to feel his limb in the morning. He wonders, for some time, whether it would be appropriate to turn Misaki onto his back and tuck him in—after all, it was Misaki who agreed to pull through nights shivering under the air-conditioner at full blast on account of Saruhiko’s waking up sweating all the time.
“It makes sense to adjust the temperature to your needs if you wake up in the middle of the night more than me. I’ll just sleep the cold away; I’m not that weak.”
Saruhiko remembers Misaki’s toothy grin when he said that—how could he forget? He catalogues every genuine smile Misaki flashes him: completing a mission, planning revenge together, sharing soda popsicles while sipping bottled coke. He thinks it’s pretty useless to keep an archive of his best friend’s expression when they’re almost always together, but the memories don’t really ever go away and Saruhiko finds himself going through the snapshots whenever he’s doubting HOMRA, doubting his friendship with Misaki, or doubting himself.
He’s never really stopped gathering the smiles, but he’s inevitably come to realize that the recent collections are rarely in focus. It’s always blurry, and at first Saruhiko thinks that he needs a new prescription, but then he zooms out of his tunnel vision and sees that it’s because he’s only observing in the newer snapshots—observing from a distance, clicking his tongue at the close proximity between Misaki and the other HOMRA members.
These are the snapshots clouded with jealousy and craving.
He doesn’t stop holding onto albums and albums of the trademark Yatagarasu grin though—he just buries it deeper, threateningly close to memories he’s haunted by in nightmares that he wakes up sweating from. And sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly self-destructive after a bout of envy, he goes through the archive to drown out his thoughts with a numbing bitterness.
Those nights he wakes up at least thrice, sweating. It’s a mishmash of his father and the bullies and HOMRA and Misaki.
He faints during a mission one day, fatigued, and can only feel disgusted at his own relief when he sees Misaki running over with concern written all over his face. He catalogues that, right before blacking out.
He tries to imagine what expression Misaki will display for his collection when he leaves tomorrow—when he confronts him straight on and calls him out for failing to notice when and where things started becoming very wrong. Desperation maybe, or even hatred; Saruhiko finds that easier to sit with than a placid expression. He’s long given up updating the smiles, but he can’t delete the archive, memories don’t work like that. Even if they did, he wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. Misaki is so deeply, grossly rooted into his being that cutting him out would be akin to tearing his own heart out and beating it into a pulp. He would be fine with this reliance—as he was in their lost small world—if it weren’t as one-sided as it is now.
The parasite never gets much say if the host decides to pluck it out or starve it.
So he climbs down the ladder leading to Misaki’s level. One last time, one last night. A last self-indulgent act. He makes sure that the blankets wrap around Misaki entirely, leaving no skin exposed apart from the neck and face. He makes sure that Misaki doesn’t wake up when he turns him onto his back so his asleep face, his thin eyelashes, his chewed-on lips and slightly tinged cheeks all face up. Saruhiko inhales; he misses being this close to his friend.
He catalogues the serene face with the smallest of smiles—a little sad, a little longing, a little guilty and shameful for how things played out ultimately. Then he leaves through the front door quietly, duffel bag in hand.