At the end of beauty, anything not fitting into the perfect picture deserved to be snuffed out.
Leave the inconveniences behind, and embrace your choices to the end.
(Spoilers for Romance Route(?) sorta?)
“So, tomorrow, Sirei will come by and…bring you onto the escape pod, before we leave,” Shouma said before he slipped Eito’s meal onto a capsule and fled to the door. For the 97th (and final) time, Eito wondered whether he had his chance now to overpower the tiny monster and make his escape.
He shouldn’t have hesitated.
As Shouma locked Eito inside the capsule room, he offered him a pathetic, thorny promise: “We won’t leave you behind.”
“I wish you would,” Eito said, smiling. “I’d rather kill everyone on board than share space with even one of you putrid meat bags.”
“I know!” Shouma sniffled. “I know, but, Sirei told me to tell you—so—I—goodbye!”
Eito imagined Shouma bowing to nothing before footsteps signaled his departure, out of the hallway, out of Eito’s life. Good riddance.
Good…
Eito’s chest twinged. He scratched at the offending point until his skin burned red and he scraped it out of his system.
Despite it all, Shouma had been the only person to speak with him anymore, after Eito long established his hatred for everyone. Not even Takumi visited him anymore.
Of course, that meant he never got the chance to reveal it.
Well. Maybe once he got on the escape pod. Once everyone had to hear what he hid for so long, Takumi’s dirty little secret of feigned ignorance. Wasn’t he playing some silly romance game with those other monsters? If he managed to make one of them fall in love with him, ah, he could only imagine the feelings of betrayal that’ll brew.
Human love always looked so disgusting, but Eito adored watching everything fall apart when it hurt the most. When Takumi would be convinced of his future’s safety, his lies, his security!
Hah, ha.
He might’ve been robbed of his opportunity to sabotage the war, but for some stupid, stir-crazy reason, sabotaging Takumi’s love life carried a similar amount of appeal. Tearing him apart from his friends—Eito expected to be jailed or killed once they returned and all eyes who’d want to spare his life forgot about him, so maybe he’d convince Takumi to free him in the fallout, to exact revenge himself instead of waiting for the rest of humanity to do it.
Then what?
Eito squeezed his eyes shut.
Maybe he’d finally get somewhere, then. Takumi, that coward, avoiding his room for so long. Once he’d caused problems in his cage and got dumped here, did Takumi decide Eito wasn’t a threat anymore? That he’d be stuck there until they deemed it necessary to let him out like some infected animal?
…Had he been wrong?
“I thought you’d be interesting,” Eito griped, to no one in particular, about nothing important. “But you care more about wasting your time on love games and leaving the rest of your ‘friends’ to face reality.”
Hmph.
Of course Takumi would do such a thing. Of course.
…
Eito wished he asked Shouma to bring dessert later. He would’ve done it. Then Eito might’ve tried to make his escape at last, or maybe he’d tell the small creature Takumi’s secret, just to see what would’ve happened.
He would’ve liked to talk again—to someone, anyone, not that he’d ever admit that, even to his dying breath.
Some random fumbling brought a book to Eito’s hands that he’d read three times over. Rather than sleep, he spent the night cycling through it once more. With no tell for the time, Sirei could intrude whenever he liked to whisk Eito off to whatever fate awaited him.
At any time, any time he liked. Eito wondered how many hours passed by the time he finished the book, and fumbled for another one.
His eyes glazed over the pages.
Yet he kept the object and all its hazy, unreadable pages in front of him as he let his mind wander.
Just what was to come after humanity purged World Death and invaders alike from the surface? So much had been left in ruins, or at least, their immediate area seemed impossible to live in for at least half a century. They’d need to clear out the rubble and toss it away somewhere—into more rubble? How do you build dumps among garbage? Ah, but in humanity’s short sighted selfishness, they’d likely decide to eject it all into space, the last frontier they hadn’t polluted yet, the only place willing to give them an escape.
That was the exact kind of selfishness Eito expected. Besides, what about the local ecosystems? How could they ever hope to repair all of that? Did they really think their wanton destruction would spare nature like some sort of magic sense? Assuming they held some animals in a safe place, it didn’t seem feasible to have enough to raise a planet from the dead.
Eito hoped it wouldn’t be enough. That when humanity left him to rot, they’d be following his stench before long.
Their deserved fate. He’d hang the guillotine over their necks by any means he had, even if revenge didn’t come as soon as he would’ve liked it to. He just needed to wait.
Wait.
Wait.
…
How long had it been?
The light under his door dimmed as night arrived, and brightened with the rise of the sun. It’d long since become bright—around this time, Shouma usually came with a plate of breakfast and more of his pithy reassurances and books as a token gesture of ‘kindness’ or whatever he thought he was doing. He wouldn’t come today, though. Sirei would. Sirei would restrain him and bring him onto the escape pod so the others could board later without any trouble.
Right.
Shouma said that, so he had nothing to worry about. Sending him to tell Eito lies seemed so stupid and meaningless, anyways.
His heart thudded, and skipped. Eito clutched his chest and ignored his rapid breathing. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he had it in him to wait longer than needed. As soon as he got the chance, he’d tell the group of Takumi’s time travel. He’d make everyone acknowledge him again—even Takumi, especially Takumi.
What a vile group. He closed his eyes and imagined their shock, their horror, all eyes widened as they lashed out at their leader and made a selfish little mess with all their delusions of grandeur.
And the guest of the hour, Takumi Sumino—he’d look at Eito again like he did when he ran to stop him seconds before he killed Sirei.
Just like that. It’d be so easy. And he’d get his chance. After all, Takumi went through the trouble of sparing him. Eito stayed in his prison, caused little to no trouble. As despicable as Takumi acted, he wouldn’t—
Things wouldn’t just—
…
Was that music?
Eito crouched against the tiny gap between floor and door and strained his ears. A twinkling, simple graduation song slipped through the cracks and carried with it a warning.
An omni-directional attack, set to go off in minutes. Evacuate to the escape pod, everyone! Get to the escape pod! Rejoice in your victory!
Rejoice!
What a wonderful day it would be!
Eito grabbed a handful of books and tossed them at the door. He kicked at the knob several times, and when all else failed, threw himself against the door until he collapsed, sore and immobile.
Ha.
Hahah, ha, ha, ha, of course of course! Of course he’d been lied to.
Of course!
Humanity never changed. They discarded everything inconvenient, and in the end, they chose to discard Eito Aotsuki, their most supreme failure. Why they’d allowed Takumi to spare him, or even why they chose to bring Eito here in the first place…such a mystery. One he’d never solve, a minute away from burning to a crisp.
…His throat hurt.
“Shouma?” he said and bit back bile. Why that name, of all names? Why, in the end, did he only have a small, pathetic monster to cling to? The only face he’d seen in so long. However rotted, however obnoxious, his chest hurt all the more as he knew it left, too.
In the end.
“It was all—your pathetic, little show,” Eito mumbled, to no one and to someone. “And you’d forgotten I was a part of it.”
Coward. Rotten, disgusting, despicable cowards—with his last thoughts, his last clinging fears and hopes, he cursed everyone on the escape pod, everyone on the satellite, even the sitting ducks, disgraceful invaders who couldn’t even finish the job.
I never got the chance to tell anyone, Eito thought once more, what a
.
“Sumino, by the way, with Aotsuki, we’re going to need to figure out what to do with him before the end.”
Sirei once asked Takumi, who stopped and tapped his foot with impatience. “Uh—what?”
“When we leave on the escape pod!” Sirei yelled, exasperated at Takumi’s indifference. “You were the one who wanted to spare him. Come on, give me something to work with here!”
“Okay, I know, just—I gotta go meet with Kawana,” Takumi said, already taking off down the hallway, “I’ll leave him to you! You’re in charge here!”
Sirei called after Takumi, but he disappeared before long. “Kids these days are so impatient,” Sirei grumbled, arms crossed. “Fine…if he’s leaving it to me, then I’ll go with the plan I had from the start.”