Fanfiction: Understanding (ERASED)
Managed to write something! It's been a challenge lately. Here is a weird, dark ERASED timeloop fic.
Title: Understanding
Fandom: ERASED
Rating: 14ish?
Pairing: one-sided Yashiro/Satoru implications
Wordcount: 3,500
Summary: Everything plays out a little too perfectly on the rooftop. It's almost as if Satoru's been through it before.
Warnings: Canon-typical dark themes
It’s strange to realise you’re in the last place you’ll ever see.
Satoru’s memories only came back in the elevator up here: Yashiro’s gloved fingers tapping on his wheelchair, just as they tapped on the steering wheel fifteen years ago. Just before-
And now he’s alone with a murderer on the hospital rooftop, with a body that’s still struggling to relearn itself, and it’s too late to stop this scene from playing out.
“There’s no way to save yourself,” Yashiro says, “but you can still save Kumi. Just tell me how you supposedly knew my future. Tell me how you knew what I was thinking.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Satoru says. It’s almost a reflexive response. He doesn’t want to know what Yashiro is thinking; Yashiro is sick in the worst way, a dangerous person to understand.
“Hmm.” Yashiro takes hold of his wheelchair. “I suppose you can’t save her after all, then.”
“Wait,” Satoru says, urgently. This is all happening too quickly; he can’t think. “I can tell you. It’s just-” He cuts himself off, hesitates.
“It’s just?” Yashiro asks, letting go.
“You won’t believe me.”
“Tell me anyway,” Yashiro says.
Satoru closes his eyes. Breathes in, breathes out.
That time in his past, the new connections he made and the old ones he strengthened: all of that was important to him. He doesn’t want to hand it over to Yashiro. But he has to do what he can for Kumi; those kids have been saved already, and she’s the one in danger now.
“I went back in time,” he says. “I was twenty-nine years old. I’d already lived through 1988, and you’d killed those children. I went back into my eleven-year-old self, and I stopped you.”
“You went back in time,” Yashiro echoes, flatly. “How?”
“I don’t know,” Satoru says. “It just happens.”
Silence.
“You’re right,” Yashiro says. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’ve told you how I knew everything. Let Kumi live.”
“Tell me the truth, and maybe I will.”
Satoru lets out a hard breath. “Is there anything you’d believe? Wouldn’t any explanation I could give be impossible?”
“You’re probably right,” Yashiro concedes, after a moment. “Which I suppose means you couldn’t have saved her, if that’s any consolation.”
He has to do something. “What if I throw myself off the roof without any fuss? Just like you want? Will you save Kumi then?”
“Are you in a position to negotiate?” Yashiro asks. “I don’t imagine you can fight back. I’m the one who decides how this ends.”
Satoru tries to take a deep breath. It’s unsteady, shaking. “Do it out of the goodness of your heart, then.”
Yashiro laughs a little at that. A moment passes before he speaks. “I’ll think about it.”
It’s better than nothing, at least. And it’s the only way Satoru can see to help Kumi. He’s been working hard at his rehabilitation, but he doesn’t have a chance of overpowering Yashiro. His life is the only thing he has left to negotiate with.
Satoru doesn’t think his mother will believe he was responsible for sabotaging Kumi’s operation. Maybe she’ll dig into this; maybe she’ll end up exposing Yashiro. Beyond the possibility of Kumi’s survival, that might be all he can hope for. But he won’t get to see it.
Grimly, he starts wheeling himself towards the edge of the roof.
“No.” Yashiro takes hold of the wheelchair, starts guiding it towards the edge himself. “Allow me.”
“How generous,” Satoru says, through gritted teeth.
They linger at the edge of the roof. Satoru looks out across the buildings, stares at the overcast sky. His heart is beating so hard he can barely think. None of this feels real.
It could end at any moment. It’s in someone else’s hands, now.
“It’s been a pleasure to play this game with you.” Yashiro leans down to speak into Satoru’s ear. “Goodbye, Satoru.”
It doesn’t feel like there’s a moment Satoru goes over the edge. It feels like one instant he’s up on the roof, and the next instant he’s falling. He thinks he might hear something like a gasp from Yashiro as gravity takes hold, as if Yashiro didn’t personally push him, as if he didn’t orchestrate this entire thing-
There’s a flash of blue wings in front of his eyes.
-
He’s surrounded by walls, closer than they should be; his wheelchair is a solid presence beneath him. It takes him a moment to adjust. He’s supposed to be dead.
Of course, that’s not the first time he’s thought that.
Revival?
The sound of Yashiro’s finger tapping on his wheelchair tightens up Satoru’s spine. He’s back in the hospital elevator, on his way up to the roof.
Why would Revival send him back here? What can he do from here? It’s too late to escape Yashiro, or to prevent him from laying his trap for Kumi. Satoru has been given a second chance, it seems, but what is he expected to do with it?
Talk his way out of this, maybe. But Yashiro isn’t exactly a reasonable man.
He can try, at least.
The elevator doors open.
“I know what you did to Kumi’s IV,” Satoru says, as Yashiro is pushing him out onto the roof.
Yashiro stops walking abruptly, lets go. “Oh?”
Trying to seem unruffled. But he wasn’t expecting that; Satoru can tell, even though he can’t see his expression from here.
He could go for a bluff. “I’ve already told the staff. Kumi’s safe. If you want me to tell you how I know these things, my life is the only leverage you have.”
Yashiro moves around to the front of his chair. Stoops to put himself on Satoru’s level, looking straight into his eyes. “If you know these things, why would you let me bring you up here? I assume you didn’t tell the staff who was responsible, or I’d be arrested and you wouldn’t have to bargain for your life at all.”
“Just more mysteries you’ll never know the answer to if you kill me,” Satoru says, looking steadily back at him. “Take me down off the roof and I’ll talk.”
“You’re the one person who could connect me to Kumi’s attempted murder,” Yashiro says. “You think I’m going to trade my freedom to satisfy my curiosity?”
Satoru raises one shoulder in a half-shrug. “You were prepared to murder a child to satisfy your curiosity. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that that’s worth so much less to you. You’ll be arrested either way; you don’t have Kumi’s death to point to as a reason for my suicide any more. People will investigate. You’ll be caught.”
Yashiro seems to hesitate a little at that. Maybe Satoru is on the right track. “Is that a guarantee about my future?”
Satoru summons all the confidence he doesn’t feel into his voice. “It’s a guarantee.”
Yashiro nods, slowly. Straightens up. “Okay.” He moves around behind Satoru’s chair, takes the handles. “We’ll go out together.”
“Yashiro,” Satoru says, urgently.
“Goodbye, Satoru,” Yashiro says, and he breaks into a run.
-
Revival again. And again, and again.
Is Satoru being thrown back in time to save himself, or to save Kumi? Whatever the case, if he lives, he can get back into the hospital and save her.
He just doesn’t know how.
Yashiro wants to know how Satoru knows the things he does, but Satoru always ends up dead, whether he talks or not. If Yashiro thinks he can get away with his crimes, he’ll push Satoru over the edge. If Satoru bluffs him into believing he’s going to be arrested, they’ll both go over together.
Satoru doesn’t have his strength; all he has is his voice. It isn’t enough.
Whatever Satoru does, it always ends the same way: a “Goodbye, Satoru” in his ear, a plunge from the rooftop, a flicker of butterfly wings. And then he wakes up in the elevator again.
-
“Strangle me right here,” Satoru says, the moment his eyes open.
It’s a moment before Yashiro speaks. “What?”
Satoru tips his head back to look up at him. “Strangle me right here in the elevator. Let’s get this over with.”
He’s so tired of falling to his death. It would be something different, at least.
“I take it you know my intentions,” Yashiro says.
Satoru nods, as much as he can manage while still looking up at Yashiro. “You’re here to stage my suicide.”
“Do you think I can persuade everyone that you strangled yourself?”
“I’m sure you’d enjoy it.” Yashiro always refuses when Satoru offers to push himself over the edge, after all; he always wants to take that final step himself. “It’s your kind of thing. You like getting your hands dirty, don’t you?”
The doors open, and Yashiro pushes him out onto the rooftop. Walks around to the front of the chair. “I doubt I’d enjoy being arrested as much.”
Satoru takes a deep breath. “I’ve told the police what you did to Kumi’s IV. You’ll be arrested either way.”
Yashiro stares at him for a long, long moment, and then strips off his gloves in a decisive, clinical motion. Satoru goes still; he wasn’t expecting that.
When Yashiro takes hold of his throat, the feel of his bare hands - warm and living and human, none of the expected barriers between them - disturbs Satoru more than the moment his air cuts out.
-
He has to kill Yashiro.
There’s no other option. Right? Whatever he tries, Satoru keeps ending up dead.
There has to be a way. Satoru may be wheelchair-bound, but the fall is as deadly to Yashiro as it is to anyone else. He knows Yashiro’s movements by now; he knows how to guide him close to the edge. He can be quick on his wheels when he has to be. It should be possible.
Better a killer than killed. If Yashiro is removed from the scene, Satoru can leave this rooftop alive and make sure Kumi is safe. Satoru hasn’t seen any cameras on the rooftop; he doesn’t think there’s video surveillance. Even if he’s caught on tape, he’ll be able to argue that it was self-defence. If he manages to expose Yashiro’s crimes, he’ll be believed.
It should be an easy decision to make. Yashiro is a serial child abductor and murderer, and he’s here to kill Satoru. He deserves to die. It would be stupid to hesitate.
It feels easy, in the moment, when Satoru manages to turn Yashiro’s momentum against him, lets him stumble off the roof. He hasn’t killed anyone; Yashiro is still alive as he loses his footing, still alive as he falls. Anything that happens next is in the hands of gravity.
The impact is just a sound, but Satoru feels it in his body; it’s as if he’s hitting the ground himself. He buckles over and throws up.
The justifications and rhetorical tricks melt away, and all that’s left is one fact, as hard and cold as iron: Satoru just murdered someone.
He thinks for a moment that Revival won’t kick in. Technically, he’s averted the fate he was trying to prevent; it’s over, and now he just has to live with the way it ended.
It’s hard to know how to feel when he catches the flutter of wings in the corner of his eye. He doesn’t want to keep going through this. But a part of him is relieved.
Maybe Yashiro deserves to die. But Satoru deserves better than being the one to kill him.
-
Satoru’s tried a few times already to call or text for help from the rooftop. Yashiro always catches him, always takes the phone away. But he still keeps trying, just in case there’s a route out he’s missed somewhere.
He tries turning his back on Yashiro this time, making it look like it’s just for dramatic effect, desperately improvising a speech about Yashiro’s villainy while his hands fumble with the buttons.
The phone slips from his hand and hits the roof.
Satoru closes his eyes for an instant. Fuck.
He races for the open gate in his wheelchair. He’s messed this up already; he might as well skip to the end and try again.
Something yanks him back just before he reaches the edge. Yashiro-
Satoru cranes around to see what’s happened. Yashiro has grabbed his chair, his face strained, his knuckles pale.
What?
Yashiro has killed Satoru so many times. The ground beneath this rooftop is littered with the memory of Satoru’s corpse. Why would he save him now?
“Why?” Satoru asks.
Yashiro stares at him, for a long moment, and then shoves him over the edge.
-
It feels like he made progress, that time. He still ended up dead by Yashiro’s hand. But something was different; it feels like he’s managed to catch a glimpse of something beneath the surface of this moment on the rooftop, something he hadn’t suspected was there.
There’s a mystery here, and Satoru has become very adept at playing detective.
Satoru hurtles for the edge of the roof again. He swings his chair around just before it goes over, this time. So he can see Yashiro’s face, so he can try to work out what happened here.
Yashiro catches him again. Just barely, this time, the wheels of Satoru’s chair almost hanging over the edge. But Yashiro is there, clutching the barrier, his other hand holding on to Satoru’s wheelchair in a white-knuckled grip.
Satoru assumes it’s white-knuckled, at least. There’s no way to tell beneath his glove. It’s been haunting him, the memory of the moment he looked at Yashiro’s hands on the steering wheel and really registered the fact he was wearing gloves.
He stares into Yashiro’s eyes. Takes in the strain on his face, the visible effort. It’s hurting him to keep Satoru from going over the edge. But he’s still holding on.
Yashiro can kill him. He’s done that plenty of times before. But he can’t just stand there and watch Satoru die.
Why?
Satoru casts his mind back to his own deaths. To the soft, intimate murmur in his ear across countless versions of this moment: Goodbye, Satoru.
There’s a connection between him and Yashiro, even if his mind resists describing it in those terms. There’s an intimacy in dying at someone else’s hands.
Is that why? If Yashiro kills him, it’s a powerful moment, a final cementing of their connection. If Satoru simply dies, without Yashiro’s involvement, their relationship ends with no climax. And Yashiro can’t let that happen, it seems.
“Are you... in love with me?” Satoru asks.
Yashiro flinches, or grimaces, or grimaces to cover a flinch. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I see,” Satoru says, his voice so cold it sounds strange to his own ears. “My mistake. You’re only interested in young girls, of course. Nothing distasteful.”
For once, it looks like Yashiro has nothing to say to that.
Yashiro has visited Satoru often, according to the staff. Satoru was in and out of consciousness for a while after he first woke up, but apparently Yashiro was a regular presence even when he was sleeping. It had made Satoru a little uncomfortable, hearing that, although he hadn’t really understood why before his memories returned.
If Yashiro is in love with him, where did it start?
Satoru remembers his terror spiking when Yashiro leant close in the car. It’s been haunting him, the thought of what Yashiro might have been thinking or feeling or planning in that moment. Perhaps just being drowned was a mercy.
“I’m the only person who can see you,” Satoru says. “Aren’t I? Fifteen years, knowing that the only person who knew the truth about you was unconscious. It must have been difficult. I’m willing to bet you’re the one who pulled me out of that lake.” He tilts his head, in an exaggerated questioning gesture. “And now you’re going to kill me?”
“Why aren’t you afraid?” Yashiro asks.
Satoru considers the answers he could give. The lie: I know you’re not going to kill me. The truth: I’ve died so many times in this moment that I’m almost bored of it.
“Looks like you still don’t know me, though,” he says.
Yashiro’s whole body jerks at that, so sharply that he loses his grip on the wheelchair.
-
Satoru wakes staring at a ceiling. It takes him a moment to make sense of it.
He’s in his hospital room. Kenya and his mother are having a low conversation next to his bed, evidently trying not to wake him.
He thinks for a moment that he survived the fall, that there was no Revival this time, and his body seizes up. How long has he been unconscious? He’s the only one who knows what Yashiro did to the IV; is Kumi-?
When he checks the date and time on the clock, though, he realises he’s back in the past. Further in the past than he was expecting; Yashiro won’t be taking him up onto the roof for another couple of days.
Why would Revival send him further back this time? It’s always just sent him as far back as he needs to go. To the root, to the point where he can change things. It kept throwing him back to just before the roof; he’d assumed the way out was there, somehow, although he didn’t seem able to find it.
But now he’s back in his hospital bed.
Because something changed? What changed?
Satoru stares at the ceiling, searching for answers in the lights.
He realised how Yashiro felt. Or managed to grasp some aspect of it, at least. He’s not sure he’ll ever truly understand what Yashiro looks like on the inside.
Maybe he’s just telling himself that because he doesn’t want to understand.
And now he’s back here. Because he needed that information? He needed to repeat his time on the rooftop until he learnt a little more about Yashiro, and now, with that knowledge, he needs to be here?
But what can he do? He can’t physically do much to stop Yashiro; he doesn’t have the strength. He can’t report Yashiro and have him arrested; the statute of limitations has expired. The only crimes he could take Yashiro down with are Kumi’s murder or Satoru’s himself, and neither of those has happened yet.
He could ask his mother to take him away, hide him, keep an eye on Kumi to make sure she’s safe. He knows she would. It might prevent Yashiro from killing anyone, or at least from killing anyone here, at this hospital.
But he’d still be out there, and someone would suffer for it eventually.
Kumi’s murder: that’s the key to his arrest. Kumi’s attempted murder, ideally. In the near future, Yashiro will take Satoru up to the rooftop and confess to it; Satoru could record it. He knows from experience that Yashiro will take away his phone, so he’ll need to borrow someone else’s, have a second phone on him. Once Yashiro has taken the decoy phone, he’ll have no reason to look for another one.
But then Satoru needs to get out of that situation with the recording, needs to make sure Kumi is safe, and he can’t see a way out other than over the edge.
“Satoru?” his mother asks.
They’ve realised he’s awake. Satoru opens his mouth to send them away; he needs to work this out, he needs to think.
The words catch in his throat, obstructed by something that feels a lot like tears. Looking at his mother, at Kenya, it’s starting to hit him that he was half-convinced he’d never see them again. It felt like he was never going to get off that roof. And maybe that’s still in his future, but he’s back here for now, at least.
It felt, over all the repetitions of that moment on the rooftop, as if the world had narrowed to just him and Yashiro. But there are other people here, other people who love Satoru. His friends, his mother.
Perhaps their love is the only way to defeat the twisted love Satoru’s found himself faced with. Perhaps that’s what he needed to understand.
He takes a deep breath. Reminds himself of how, in the end, it was only the support of others that let him save anyone.
“I need your help,” he says.
-
His friends and his mother catch him when he falls. They’ve done it figuratively more than enough times, and now it’s literal.
Satoru wonders what Yashiro is thinking. Whether he’s noticed that everything on this rooftop played out a little too perfectly. How long the thought of Satoru will haunt him in prison: the boy who seemed to know the future. The boy who managed to reshape the entire trajectory of Yashiro’s life, despite spending so much of that life unconscious.
He can’t hear Yashiro’s thoughts; he wouldn’t want to if he could. But he’s probably closer to understanding him than anyone else ever will be. It’s not a comfortable thought.
He winks up at Yashiro: a declaration of victory, and a goodbye. It feels like he owes him at least a goodbye. Yashiro reshaped his life, too.
Title: Understanding
Fandom: ERASED
Rating: 14ish?
Pairing: one-sided Yashiro/Satoru implications
Wordcount: 3,500
Summary: Everything plays out a little too perfectly on the rooftop. It's almost as if Satoru's been through it before.
Warnings: Canon-typical dark themes
It’s strange to realise you’re in the last place you’ll ever see.
Satoru’s memories only came back in the elevator up here: Yashiro’s gloved fingers tapping on his wheelchair, just as they tapped on the steering wheel fifteen years ago. Just before-
And now he’s alone with a murderer on the hospital rooftop, with a body that’s still struggling to relearn itself, and it’s too late to stop this scene from playing out.
“There’s no way to save yourself,” Yashiro says, “but you can still save Kumi. Just tell me how you supposedly knew my future. Tell me how you knew what I was thinking.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Satoru says. It’s almost a reflexive response. He doesn’t want to know what Yashiro is thinking; Yashiro is sick in the worst way, a dangerous person to understand.
“Hmm.” Yashiro takes hold of his wheelchair. “I suppose you can’t save her after all, then.”
“Wait,” Satoru says, urgently. This is all happening too quickly; he can’t think. “I can tell you. It’s just-” He cuts himself off, hesitates.
“It’s just?” Yashiro asks, letting go.
“You won’t believe me.”
“Tell me anyway,” Yashiro says.
Satoru closes his eyes. Breathes in, breathes out.
That time in his past, the new connections he made and the old ones he strengthened: all of that was important to him. He doesn’t want to hand it over to Yashiro. But he has to do what he can for Kumi; those kids have been saved already, and she’s the one in danger now.
“I went back in time,” he says. “I was twenty-nine years old. I’d already lived through 1988, and you’d killed those children. I went back into my eleven-year-old self, and I stopped you.”
“You went back in time,” Yashiro echoes, flatly. “How?”
“I don’t know,” Satoru says. “It just happens.”
Silence.
“You’re right,” Yashiro says. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’ve told you how I knew everything. Let Kumi live.”
“Tell me the truth, and maybe I will.”
Satoru lets out a hard breath. “Is there anything you’d believe? Wouldn’t any explanation I could give be impossible?”
“You’re probably right,” Yashiro concedes, after a moment. “Which I suppose means you couldn’t have saved her, if that’s any consolation.”
He has to do something. “What if I throw myself off the roof without any fuss? Just like you want? Will you save Kumi then?”
“Are you in a position to negotiate?” Yashiro asks. “I don’t imagine you can fight back. I’m the one who decides how this ends.”
Satoru tries to take a deep breath. It’s unsteady, shaking. “Do it out of the goodness of your heart, then.”
Yashiro laughs a little at that. A moment passes before he speaks. “I’ll think about it.”
It’s better than nothing, at least. And it’s the only way Satoru can see to help Kumi. He’s been working hard at his rehabilitation, but he doesn’t have a chance of overpowering Yashiro. His life is the only thing he has left to negotiate with.
Satoru doesn’t think his mother will believe he was responsible for sabotaging Kumi’s operation. Maybe she’ll dig into this; maybe she’ll end up exposing Yashiro. Beyond the possibility of Kumi’s survival, that might be all he can hope for. But he won’t get to see it.
Grimly, he starts wheeling himself towards the edge of the roof.
“No.” Yashiro takes hold of the wheelchair, starts guiding it towards the edge himself. “Allow me.”
“How generous,” Satoru says, through gritted teeth.
They linger at the edge of the roof. Satoru looks out across the buildings, stares at the overcast sky. His heart is beating so hard he can barely think. None of this feels real.
It could end at any moment. It’s in someone else’s hands, now.
“It’s been a pleasure to play this game with you.” Yashiro leans down to speak into Satoru’s ear. “Goodbye, Satoru.”
It doesn’t feel like there’s a moment Satoru goes over the edge. It feels like one instant he’s up on the roof, and the next instant he’s falling. He thinks he might hear something like a gasp from Yashiro as gravity takes hold, as if Yashiro didn’t personally push him, as if he didn’t orchestrate this entire thing-
There’s a flash of blue wings in front of his eyes.
-
He’s surrounded by walls, closer than they should be; his wheelchair is a solid presence beneath him. It takes him a moment to adjust. He’s supposed to be dead.
Of course, that’s not the first time he’s thought that.
Revival?
The sound of Yashiro’s finger tapping on his wheelchair tightens up Satoru’s spine. He’s back in the hospital elevator, on his way up to the roof.
Why would Revival send him back here? What can he do from here? It’s too late to escape Yashiro, or to prevent him from laying his trap for Kumi. Satoru has been given a second chance, it seems, but what is he expected to do with it?
Talk his way out of this, maybe. But Yashiro isn’t exactly a reasonable man.
He can try, at least.
The elevator doors open.
“I know what you did to Kumi’s IV,” Satoru says, as Yashiro is pushing him out onto the roof.
Yashiro stops walking abruptly, lets go. “Oh?”
Trying to seem unruffled. But he wasn’t expecting that; Satoru can tell, even though he can’t see his expression from here.
He could go for a bluff. “I’ve already told the staff. Kumi’s safe. If you want me to tell you how I know these things, my life is the only leverage you have.”
Yashiro moves around to the front of his chair. Stoops to put himself on Satoru’s level, looking straight into his eyes. “If you know these things, why would you let me bring you up here? I assume you didn’t tell the staff who was responsible, or I’d be arrested and you wouldn’t have to bargain for your life at all.”
“Just more mysteries you’ll never know the answer to if you kill me,” Satoru says, looking steadily back at him. “Take me down off the roof and I’ll talk.”
“You’re the one person who could connect me to Kumi’s attempted murder,” Yashiro says. “You think I’m going to trade my freedom to satisfy my curiosity?”
Satoru raises one shoulder in a half-shrug. “You were prepared to murder a child to satisfy your curiosity. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that that’s worth so much less to you. You’ll be arrested either way; you don’t have Kumi’s death to point to as a reason for my suicide any more. People will investigate. You’ll be caught.”
Yashiro seems to hesitate a little at that. Maybe Satoru is on the right track. “Is that a guarantee about my future?”
Satoru summons all the confidence he doesn’t feel into his voice. “It’s a guarantee.”
Yashiro nods, slowly. Straightens up. “Okay.” He moves around behind Satoru’s chair, takes the handles. “We’ll go out together.”
“Yashiro,” Satoru says, urgently.
“Goodbye, Satoru,” Yashiro says, and he breaks into a run.
-
Revival again. And again, and again.
Is Satoru being thrown back in time to save himself, or to save Kumi? Whatever the case, if he lives, he can get back into the hospital and save her.
He just doesn’t know how.
Yashiro wants to know how Satoru knows the things he does, but Satoru always ends up dead, whether he talks or not. If Yashiro thinks he can get away with his crimes, he’ll push Satoru over the edge. If Satoru bluffs him into believing he’s going to be arrested, they’ll both go over together.
Satoru doesn’t have his strength; all he has is his voice. It isn’t enough.
Whatever Satoru does, it always ends the same way: a “Goodbye, Satoru” in his ear, a plunge from the rooftop, a flicker of butterfly wings. And then he wakes up in the elevator again.
-
“Strangle me right here,” Satoru says, the moment his eyes open.
It’s a moment before Yashiro speaks. “What?”
Satoru tips his head back to look up at him. “Strangle me right here in the elevator. Let’s get this over with.”
He’s so tired of falling to his death. It would be something different, at least.
“I take it you know my intentions,” Yashiro says.
Satoru nods, as much as he can manage while still looking up at Yashiro. “You’re here to stage my suicide.”
“Do you think I can persuade everyone that you strangled yourself?”
“I’m sure you’d enjoy it.” Yashiro always refuses when Satoru offers to push himself over the edge, after all; he always wants to take that final step himself. “It’s your kind of thing. You like getting your hands dirty, don’t you?”
The doors open, and Yashiro pushes him out onto the rooftop. Walks around to the front of the chair. “I doubt I’d enjoy being arrested as much.”
Satoru takes a deep breath. “I’ve told the police what you did to Kumi’s IV. You’ll be arrested either way.”
Yashiro stares at him for a long, long moment, and then strips off his gloves in a decisive, clinical motion. Satoru goes still; he wasn’t expecting that.
When Yashiro takes hold of his throat, the feel of his bare hands - warm and living and human, none of the expected barriers between them - disturbs Satoru more than the moment his air cuts out.
-
He has to kill Yashiro.
There’s no other option. Right? Whatever he tries, Satoru keeps ending up dead.
There has to be a way. Satoru may be wheelchair-bound, but the fall is as deadly to Yashiro as it is to anyone else. He knows Yashiro’s movements by now; he knows how to guide him close to the edge. He can be quick on his wheels when he has to be. It should be possible.
Better a killer than killed. If Yashiro is removed from the scene, Satoru can leave this rooftop alive and make sure Kumi is safe. Satoru hasn’t seen any cameras on the rooftop; he doesn’t think there’s video surveillance. Even if he’s caught on tape, he’ll be able to argue that it was self-defence. If he manages to expose Yashiro’s crimes, he’ll be believed.
It should be an easy decision to make. Yashiro is a serial child abductor and murderer, and he’s here to kill Satoru. He deserves to die. It would be stupid to hesitate.
It feels easy, in the moment, when Satoru manages to turn Yashiro’s momentum against him, lets him stumble off the roof. He hasn’t killed anyone; Yashiro is still alive as he loses his footing, still alive as he falls. Anything that happens next is in the hands of gravity.
The impact is just a sound, but Satoru feels it in his body; it’s as if he’s hitting the ground himself. He buckles over and throws up.
The justifications and rhetorical tricks melt away, and all that’s left is one fact, as hard and cold as iron: Satoru just murdered someone.
He thinks for a moment that Revival won’t kick in. Technically, he’s averted the fate he was trying to prevent; it’s over, and now he just has to live with the way it ended.
It’s hard to know how to feel when he catches the flutter of wings in the corner of his eye. He doesn’t want to keep going through this. But a part of him is relieved.
Maybe Yashiro deserves to die. But Satoru deserves better than being the one to kill him.
-
Satoru’s tried a few times already to call or text for help from the rooftop. Yashiro always catches him, always takes the phone away. But he still keeps trying, just in case there’s a route out he’s missed somewhere.
He tries turning his back on Yashiro this time, making it look like it’s just for dramatic effect, desperately improvising a speech about Yashiro’s villainy while his hands fumble with the buttons.
The phone slips from his hand and hits the roof.
Satoru closes his eyes for an instant. Fuck.
He races for the open gate in his wheelchair. He’s messed this up already; he might as well skip to the end and try again.
Something yanks him back just before he reaches the edge. Yashiro-
Satoru cranes around to see what’s happened. Yashiro has grabbed his chair, his face strained, his knuckles pale.
What?
Yashiro has killed Satoru so many times. The ground beneath this rooftop is littered with the memory of Satoru’s corpse. Why would he save him now?
“Why?” Satoru asks.
Yashiro stares at him, for a long moment, and then shoves him over the edge.
-
It feels like he made progress, that time. He still ended up dead by Yashiro’s hand. But something was different; it feels like he’s managed to catch a glimpse of something beneath the surface of this moment on the rooftop, something he hadn’t suspected was there.
There’s a mystery here, and Satoru has become very adept at playing detective.
Satoru hurtles for the edge of the roof again. He swings his chair around just before it goes over, this time. So he can see Yashiro’s face, so he can try to work out what happened here.
Yashiro catches him again. Just barely, this time, the wheels of Satoru’s chair almost hanging over the edge. But Yashiro is there, clutching the barrier, his other hand holding on to Satoru’s wheelchair in a white-knuckled grip.
Satoru assumes it’s white-knuckled, at least. There’s no way to tell beneath his glove. It’s been haunting him, the memory of the moment he looked at Yashiro’s hands on the steering wheel and really registered the fact he was wearing gloves.
He stares into Yashiro’s eyes. Takes in the strain on his face, the visible effort. It’s hurting him to keep Satoru from going over the edge. But he’s still holding on.
Yashiro can kill him. He’s done that plenty of times before. But he can’t just stand there and watch Satoru die.
Why?
Satoru casts his mind back to his own deaths. To the soft, intimate murmur in his ear across countless versions of this moment: Goodbye, Satoru.
There’s a connection between him and Yashiro, even if his mind resists describing it in those terms. There’s an intimacy in dying at someone else’s hands.
Is that why? If Yashiro kills him, it’s a powerful moment, a final cementing of their connection. If Satoru simply dies, without Yashiro’s involvement, their relationship ends with no climax. And Yashiro can’t let that happen, it seems.
“Are you... in love with me?” Satoru asks.
Yashiro flinches, or grimaces, or grimaces to cover a flinch. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I see,” Satoru says, his voice so cold it sounds strange to his own ears. “My mistake. You’re only interested in young girls, of course. Nothing distasteful.”
For once, it looks like Yashiro has nothing to say to that.
Yashiro has visited Satoru often, according to the staff. Satoru was in and out of consciousness for a while after he first woke up, but apparently Yashiro was a regular presence even when he was sleeping. It had made Satoru a little uncomfortable, hearing that, although he hadn’t really understood why before his memories returned.
If Yashiro is in love with him, where did it start?
Satoru remembers his terror spiking when Yashiro leant close in the car. It’s been haunting him, the thought of what Yashiro might have been thinking or feeling or planning in that moment. Perhaps just being drowned was a mercy.
“I’m the only person who can see you,” Satoru says. “Aren’t I? Fifteen years, knowing that the only person who knew the truth about you was unconscious. It must have been difficult. I’m willing to bet you’re the one who pulled me out of that lake.” He tilts his head, in an exaggerated questioning gesture. “And now you’re going to kill me?”
“Why aren’t you afraid?” Yashiro asks.
Satoru considers the answers he could give. The lie: I know you’re not going to kill me. The truth: I’ve died so many times in this moment that I’m almost bored of it.
“Looks like you still don’t know me, though,” he says.
Yashiro’s whole body jerks at that, so sharply that he loses his grip on the wheelchair.
-
Satoru wakes staring at a ceiling. It takes him a moment to make sense of it.
He’s in his hospital room. Kenya and his mother are having a low conversation next to his bed, evidently trying not to wake him.
He thinks for a moment that he survived the fall, that there was no Revival this time, and his body seizes up. How long has he been unconscious? He’s the only one who knows what Yashiro did to the IV; is Kumi-?
When he checks the date and time on the clock, though, he realises he’s back in the past. Further in the past than he was expecting; Yashiro won’t be taking him up onto the roof for another couple of days.
Why would Revival send him further back this time? It’s always just sent him as far back as he needs to go. To the root, to the point where he can change things. It kept throwing him back to just before the roof; he’d assumed the way out was there, somehow, although he didn’t seem able to find it.
But now he’s back in his hospital bed.
Because something changed? What changed?
Satoru stares at the ceiling, searching for answers in the lights.
He realised how Yashiro felt. Or managed to grasp some aspect of it, at least. He’s not sure he’ll ever truly understand what Yashiro looks like on the inside.
Maybe he’s just telling himself that because he doesn’t want to understand.
And now he’s back here. Because he needed that information? He needed to repeat his time on the rooftop until he learnt a little more about Yashiro, and now, with that knowledge, he needs to be here?
But what can he do? He can’t physically do much to stop Yashiro; he doesn’t have the strength. He can’t report Yashiro and have him arrested; the statute of limitations has expired. The only crimes he could take Yashiro down with are Kumi’s murder or Satoru’s himself, and neither of those has happened yet.
He could ask his mother to take him away, hide him, keep an eye on Kumi to make sure she’s safe. He knows she would. It might prevent Yashiro from killing anyone, or at least from killing anyone here, at this hospital.
But he’d still be out there, and someone would suffer for it eventually.
Kumi’s murder: that’s the key to his arrest. Kumi’s attempted murder, ideally. In the near future, Yashiro will take Satoru up to the rooftop and confess to it; Satoru could record it. He knows from experience that Yashiro will take away his phone, so he’ll need to borrow someone else’s, have a second phone on him. Once Yashiro has taken the decoy phone, he’ll have no reason to look for another one.
But then Satoru needs to get out of that situation with the recording, needs to make sure Kumi is safe, and he can’t see a way out other than over the edge.
“Satoru?” his mother asks.
They’ve realised he’s awake. Satoru opens his mouth to send them away; he needs to work this out, he needs to think.
The words catch in his throat, obstructed by something that feels a lot like tears. Looking at his mother, at Kenya, it’s starting to hit him that he was half-convinced he’d never see them again. It felt like he was never going to get off that roof. And maybe that’s still in his future, but he’s back here for now, at least.
It felt, over all the repetitions of that moment on the rooftop, as if the world had narrowed to just him and Yashiro. But there are other people here, other people who love Satoru. His friends, his mother.
Perhaps their love is the only way to defeat the twisted love Satoru’s found himself faced with. Perhaps that’s what he needed to understand.
He takes a deep breath. Reminds himself of how, in the end, it was only the support of others that let him save anyone.
“I need your help,” he says.
-
His friends and his mother catch him when he falls. They’ve done it figuratively more than enough times, and now it’s literal.
Satoru wonders what Yashiro is thinking. Whether he’s noticed that everything on this rooftop played out a little too perfectly. How long the thought of Satoru will haunt him in prison: the boy who seemed to know the future. The boy who managed to reshape the entire trajectory of Yashiro’s life, despite spending so much of that life unconscious.
He can’t hear Yashiro’s thoughts; he wouldn’t want to if he could. But he’s probably closer to understanding him than anyone else ever will be. It’s not a comfortable thought.
He winks up at Yashiro: a declaration of victory, and a goodbye. It feels like he owes him at least a goodbye. Yashiro reshaped his life, too.