Work Text:
“You know they aren’t…real, right?” Ouma watched as the last of the dirt covered the vapid, painted-on eyes staring up from plastic faces toward the sky, blue and cloudless, so unlike the rainy funerals found in fiction.
Saihara could recall miniature coffins being sold in the holiday aisles that past October, but neither of them had access to such things during the chill of January. It had been difficult enough jamming the shovel into frozen earth without need of making the hole any bigger.
A silence fell between them as the last load of dirt fell into place, Saihara stamping it down with the same loafers he had worn to school. He should probably have changed before screwing around in the dirt, but then again, when did he ever bother to do what he should have? Maybe he’d shower tonight, get changed then. It had been a while… or maybe just last night? Running his fingers through what portion of his hair wasn’t covered by the hat, he gave it a quick check.
He certainly wasn’t Ouma, he reminded himself for the tenth time that day, glancing downward at the smaller boy still frowning at the disturbed ground as if the figures had been from his modest collection, rather than Saihara’s. Always impeccably clean, perfect and smart- Saihara couldn’t understand why the other boys at Ouma’s school disliked him so vehemently. They were so lucky…they couldn’t possibly understand… They’d never know, although it was just as well, wasn’t it? If they knew, someone would surely take him away…Delicate face, that slim body hidden underneath the gakuran, a size too big...
All of him…
Saihara licked his lips, dry, unlike Ouma’s, who always seemed to have some sort of lip balm with him, the kind that tasted like something artificial and saccharine that Saihara couldn’t place. His mind tended to be on other things whenever the flavor would cross his tongue.
“No less real than your friends…” he croaked out, wishing as he did whenever he spoke, that some merciful force would strike him mute.
It should be him under that mound of soil, one and the same.
“DICE…” Ouma gulped, dark eyes stealing away from the tiny burial plot to cast the briefest sharp glance Saihara’s way. “They’re all real. I’ve told you before… Yumi lives in Osaka, and Greg is in all the way in New York… His pranks are brilliant though! One time he-“
“Are you sure he isn’t just… lying?”
Never having once bothered to ask for an invite to their chat, Saihara knew very little of Ouma’s other ‘friends’. Why couldn’t Ouma just join his DR threads on 2chan instead? It was all anon anyway. He was a fan of the show too, after all. …Or at the very least, he sat quietly beside Saihara on the couch every Saturday night. Each time Saihara would tear his attention off the screen in order to eagerly appraise Ouma’s reaction, he could always be found smiling at all the right parts- the close-calls and body discoveries alike- praising Saihara whenever he would correctly guess the killer, which happened to be most times, although he began to strongly suspect that Ouma knew long before he did, holding his tongue so as not to spoil the detective-enthusiast's fun.
“You know how I hate liars,” Ouma replied, kneeling beside the make-shift grave as he spoke, scanning the area before grabbing for a twig, and jamming it into the center of the mound, creating a marker that would only topple come the next icy gust. “And besides, you and I...it’s not like we’ll even be real people soon… Our characters will both be a lie, anyway, I mean...”
“It…it is real, though,” Saihara insisted, handing slipping into the inner pocket of his blazer, savoring the familiar crinkle of paper, so satisfying as it sliced itchy little cuts into his fingers. Ever since receiving his acceptance letter, it hadn’t left his person save for infrequent bathing. “They call it ‘real fiction’ for a reason, Ouma-kun… The plots, the killers, …victims, clues…murders…even the blood! None of it’s staged! You have to agree that’s incredible, right?”
Just the thought of being a part of something that amazing, that incredible, made his knees shaky, not having remembered to eat for the entire day likely not doing him any favors. Sinking down onto the lifeless shreds that had once been grass during warmer months, Saihara took hold of Ouma’s hand, fingertips cold as a dead man’s.
“But you still want to be one of the culprits?” Ouma’s hand jittered within Saihara’s grasp, before giving a tentative squeeze in return, wide eyes searching. “What if you wind up executed early on? Don’t you think you’d be disappointed with not seeing the rest of the game?”
Saihara shook his head fervently, nearly dislodging his hat. “The killers are the ones everyone remembers!” he could feel the individual bones in Ouma’s hand now, squeezing tightly as the grip that reality tv had on his mind, his fervor to explain taking over, “Danganronpa has done so much for me over the past few years… I… I really owe it my life, and this is the best way I could ever hope to give back! It…it allowed me to meet you, after all…”
If they hadn’t met at initial try-outs some months ago, Saihara didn’t know where he’d be, other than not around for long enough to have received his acceptance.
“Were they… ’practice’?” Ouma asked, glancing at where the resin figures- limbs arranged haphazardly around and on top of torsos in their shallow plot, like the contents of a smashed up bag of animal crackers - had met their final resting place. He made no move to pull his hand away, although his knuckles turned pale as Monokuma’s right paw.
“Don’t be silly… I don’t need them anymore!” Saihara laughed, only for it to come out as a snort instead, warm breath creating a misty puff in the chill air. “Why would I, when I’m dating an actual character from the show?”
They were dating, weren’t they? They’d kissed an awful lot for ‘friends’, although what may have constituted as ‘dates’ comprised of little more than binging past seasons late into the night, Saihara detailing animatedly how he would have improved upon each murder if he had been there himself.
Closing the gap that had been rapidly decreasing between them as they spoke, Saihara relinquished his grasp on Ouma’s bony hand, instead guiding him by the shoulders until he lay flush with the frozen ground, purple mop of hair coming to rest just beneath the rustic grave marker, their lips meeting in a cautious certainty.