[ If Shinpachi would have to sum up all the feelings he has after last week and especially yesterday, he would probably just call it "tired". Trying to help out people as much as he could all week wasn't that bad although constantly being on guard made him more exhausted than usually, but it really was the last day that did it. Just when he relaxed for a moment halfway through the week, of course it would all just blow up like that again at the end.
And the message he spots from Souji of all people only reminds him more of everything that happened. Even now his body feels heavy at the very thought, even though he tried to distract himself just as much as Souji did by dragging the supplies around. ]
think so just gott he last bits
[ Not that it had been very easy with all these vines around. This place sure knew how to make everything more difficult when things are already shitty to begin with.
Shinpachi stares at the device for a moment or two, wondering what else to type. Part of him almost wants to ask if he's okay, but it'd be a dumb question. Of course Souji's not okay, just as much as he's not okay either.
There's other stuff he wants to say about the situation from yesterday that he didn't get to say back there though, but he delays it for a moment. Until he can figure out how to say it. ]
you done too? [ Stalling for another moment of thought. ]
[ after last day, souji's body switched into autopilot and the only thing he could think of doing was distracting himself with all the supplies. saitou would throw a fit if they didn't make an attempt to take everything with them, and so would hijikata over their lack of effort. kondou-san would also probably...
the plan had been to distract themselves, not dwell on something like that. but you can pretty much see just how well it's working on souji. ]
yes. they can't complain after this, surely.
[ talking as if everything is okay and that no one just died thanks to them should maybe help a little... right?
[ Shinpachi might usually be good at talking - it comes easily to him - but this is entirely different. For another moment he stares at the device, but then some sort of solution comes to him, at least. ]
wanna walk to th egraveyrad?
[ After all, he might not be entirely keen on facing what happened again, but on the other hand, now they're done with the supplies there is nothing left to do. Nothing but this much. And even if they don't exactly make it there (which he actually wouldn't mind all that much, if he's being entirely honest with himself) it would still give him a chance to actually talk things over with Souji in person instead of awkwardly typoing his way through it on these things. ]
[ souji finds himself staring at the device for the longest time, too. it hadn't occurred to him to go there, but then again, he figures after what went down, the last thing anyone wants is to face each other...
still though. maybe it won't hurt to try. ]
shall we meet halfway?
[ honestly he would have said to meet there instead, but something tells him he might not make it there entirely, so this seems like a good compromise. ]
[ At least there's not outright refusal, even though the other probably feels just as conflicted about is as him, if not more so (he still remembers that tone Souji had right after Kondou died, just for a few moments). It seems like a good sign. Relatively speaking. ]
ill see tyou near the edge of campus [ It's still a bit to the graveyard from there, after all.
Shinpachi doesn't waste much time after that, just tucking the device back without waiting for a reply. He at least wants to make sure to be the first one there so the other doesn't have to wait by himself. So when Souji arrives he'll mostly likely already find Shinpachi standing around there, looking a whole lot more thoughtful than usually. ]
[ it's a good thing shinpachi decided to be the first one to arrive since souji doesn't get there until a little while later. he's spent the better half of his time wondering if this is even a good idea, if he even has the right to face kondou-san right now after what happened, but at the same time...
it's not like he can really put it off.
if anything, it'll be a good opportunity to say something to the man who stopped him from doing something unthinkable. souji wasn't really sure if he'd been able to live with himself if he had allowed kondou-san to kill him right there and then, now that he understands the other man wasn't himself and would have likely blamed himself to death if that was how things turned out, so.
he feels like he owes shinpachi, at the very least.
the way he walks is a little sluggish, like his mind is only focused on taking one step after another, but he arrives at their designated meeting spot in the end. he only looks up once he's close enough. ]
[ He actually already watches as Souji approached from a distance - mostly to see how he was carrying himself. It's hard to tell what exactly the other would feel like right now without using a general description as "like shit" which would probably just apply to both of them. But if anything, this conversation is a good way of checking up on that. Subtly. Even if being subtle might not exactly be his strongest point.
He lets out a deep breath as the other man finally fully approached, shaking his head. ]
Nah.
[ It was a little bit, but Shinpachi honestly doesn't care. He needs to do something with himself to keep his thoughts from wandering, after all.
After it he opens his mouth once, then twice-- like he keeps wanting to say something but isn't sure how to put it. But in the end he just decides to go with the most simple version. ]
About Kondou-san.. [ .. anything involving him is their heaviest topic at this point, huh. ] .. you know that he didn't mean what he was saying or doing back there, right? He wasn't himself.
[ Even if, at that moment, it had seemed like Souji had taken every single bit of it at complete face value. ]
souji waits, and waits for whatever shinpachi has to say, since it's obvious enough that he'd like to, but when it comes, souji isn't sure how to react. had he really taken everything kondou-san said at face value? probably, most likely. it was kondou-san, after all, it doesn't matter much if he hadn't been himself. it didn't make what he said any less true—that souji had been lying to him all this time, that he had killed people.
he's starting to think this was a bad idea after all. he can't make sense of how he feels or what he wants to say. ]
Does it matter if I did? [ he avoids it for the time being. ] ... I thought we were heading for the graveyard, to wait for them.
[ For a moment Shinpachi isn't entirely sure what kind of response he expected to that, but he does realise that maybe he should've just seen this coming either way. Tiptoeing (although not exactly subtly, this time) around issues wasn't a surprising thing to see from Souji, after all. Or most of them.
He pulls up his shoulders a little bit, not exactly feeling like pressing the matter immediately with that response. ]
I just wanted to make sure you knew.
[ It's not necessarily that he thought he was going to instantly convince the other of anything (besides, it's not like Shinpachi thinks the excuse that Kondou wasn't being himself makes up for him killing the man either), but it's at least something to consider. ]
Let's go then if you don't want to linger around here that badly.
[ he doesn't say anything more to add to that. instead, he makes sure he pays attention to his every step, one foot after another. he doesn't know when something like this turned into a task he had to watch out for, but he suspects it's thanks to the numerous things on his mind. there must be a way to clear it, he's never had to deal with this kind of mess before.
then again, when had he ever started to doubt his own actions? hadn't he always just kept going no matter what the consequences were?
(he gets it, really. what kondou-san said affected him more than he could ever imagine, and he's left at a loss with how to deal with it.)
when shinpachi mentions that they should leave and head for the graveyard, souji stays put. ]
Shinpachi-san. [ he doesn't even know where to start. ] Back there, I'm— [ grateful? that shinpachi was the one left with the dirty task? ] ... Sorry.
[ sorry that he was the one to do it, that souji wasn't able to finish the job himself. ]
[ He stops when Souji doesn't walk. Or rather, when he actually hears those words.
"Sorry"? Shinpachi might not exactly be sure what he did expect Souji to tell him (as much as he does trust the other, most of the time it's pretty hard to actually understand him), but he's not sure either if that was on the list of things he might potentially have thought about. It's why he doesn't turn around at first when he listens to the words despite his slight surprise. ]
I don't recall you forcing me to do anything.
[ No matter how Souji might feel about all of it, in the end-- ]
It was my own choice. Both of you told me to leave, but I just decided what to do by myself. [ Sure, if he hadn't done it then Souji would have ended up dead and only god knows what would have happened to Kondou in that state. But in the end he still entirely decided by himself, even in some ways it might have been the better decision.
.. He lets out a breath. ]
To be honest, back there for a moment I actually thought you might start to hate me for it. [ And instead he got a "sorry", huh. ]
[ it's deja vu, he thinks, that's what this feels like.
listening to shinpachi talk like that sounds a lot like him whenever chizuru questioned his own choices, that it was his own decision, that he's never regretted it one bit, even if it was the hardest thing he ever had to do. then again, now that souji thinks on it, all of them are like that in their own ways, aren't they? it only took something as extreme as last week to make him realize that.
he finds himself staring at the ground for a second longer, then he looks up, blinks at the next thing shinpachi tells him. ]
If anything... [ this time, he starts walking, and it's only once he's passed the other that he continues his sentence. ] I owe you.
[ he isn't exactly sure what for, to be honest, but that's the closest thing he has to describing how he really feels about all of this. ]
[ Owe him..? Shinpachi might be a huge mooch and an ass at times to his friends, but he wouldn't think of something like this in terms of owing anyone anything at all. Especially not if he didn't do the right thing - because there just was no "right thing" to do in that kind of situation. He just did what felt like the best thing to him personally at that moment, even if by now he finally has time to actually reflect on it.
But even so, he already knows why he did it back then, and he still knows it now. It's simple, even if the deed itself wasn't. ]
You can call me a moron considerin' the kinda stuff we're usually doing [ it's not exactly like they have the safest job ever, after all, quite the contrary ] but I don't exactly feel like seeing my friends die.
[ Sure, he might not be as close to Souji as he is to Sano or Heisuke, but he still can't help but think of all of them that way - they've been together ever since everything at Shieikan. Shinpachi doesn't mind fighting, hell, he loves it, but if there's anything he does hate about all of this stuff in general it's the way it jeopardizes his friendships. Especially considering what he already knows about the future. ]
Of course that means it's not like I wanted to see Kondou-san die either, but.. [ His tone is a little wry and it ends up trailing off. Kondou obviously had lost his mind, so there wasn't much of a choice. ]
[ souji doesn't have anything to add to that—well, more like is there anything to add at all?
shinpachi made it pretty clear that he didn't owe him anything even if that doesn't feel right to him, not when he'd practically saved his life back there. it usually wouldn't have been a big deal, things like that happen so often with the kind of lives they have that it wouldn't been brushed aside as part of their jobs, but—
shinpachi saved him from kondou-san.
... no, that's not right. it's the other way around.
shinpachi saved kondou-san from him. ]
... Shinpachi-san. Do you think he'd even want to see me right now?
Any answer he'd give to that would probably be hypocritical. After all, he's not sure if Kondou would want to see him either after what he did. But Souji isn't the one who killed Kondou-- and even if Kondou was intending to kill Souji, surely that was just because of whatever exactly it was that took hold over him.
There's no way that Kondou would want to even hurt Souji of all people normally otherwise, right? ]
To be honest, it might be a little awkward. [ And that's putting it lightly, but from his wry tone it's pretty obvious Shinpachi realises that as well. ]
Even so, all the stuff that happened back there was because of whatever happened to him, so I'm sure he's not actually that angry at you. But.. still, it's Kondou-san. [ As much as Shinpachi might complain about him, he does know about Kondou's kindness and the very extent of it. ] He probably would feel bad over doing that stuff to you, so I dunno if he'd be able to face you right away.
[ souji listens, he digests what the other man has to say, and this is what he comes up with. it's said in hushed tones, he doesn't really want anyone else to hear this but he won't put up much of a fight if shinpachi takes note of it. more than ever, he's just—scared. that's still putting it lightly though. he doesn't know what to feel at this point. ]
Shinpachi-san, you should go ahead. [ by now, he is already backpedaling. ] I'll come see them [ him ] later.
[ It's only barely, but he does manage to catch the words. And he doesn't even blame the other guy for them - after all, with the way he basically laid out his thoughts just now, it's like he too was saying it's probably better to talk it over later instead. ]
.. Yeah.
[ So he just accepts Souji's decision. There's no way he'd drag him along against his will in general, but especially not since his own heart is only half made up on all of this either. In the end he won't make it to the graveyard either, after all-- but for now he doesn't know that yet and still wants to at least try, even if he'd have to go by himself.
Shinpachi is already walking up to where the other man stopped ahead of him, lingering in the spot next to him for a moment like he's thinking of what to say. His expression turns half-wry, and for the briefest moment his hand lands on Souji's shoulder. ] Don't think too much about it, Souji.
[ Even if not thinking about it is fairly impossible. But it's all the advice he can give him. After he's said it, he's practically already turning again to walk on. ]
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And the message he spots from Souji of all people only reminds him more of everything that happened. Even now his body feels heavy at the very thought, even though he tried to distract himself just as much as Souji did by dragging the supplies around. ]
think so just gott he last bits
[ Not that it had been very easy with all these vines around. This place sure knew how to make everything more difficult when things are already shitty to begin with.
Shinpachi stares at the device for a moment or two, wondering what else to type. Part of him almost wants to ask if he's okay, but it'd be a dumb question. Of course Souji's not okay, just as much as he's not okay either.
There's other stuff he wants to say about the situation from yesterday that he didn't get to say back there though, but he delays it for a moment. Until he can figure out how to say it. ]
you done too? [ Stalling for another moment of thought. ]
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the plan had been to distract themselves, not dwell on something like that. but you can pretty much see just how well it's working on souji. ]
yes. they can't complain after this, surely.
[ talking as if everything is okay and that no one just died thanks to them should maybe help a little... right?
souji isn't very good at this. ]
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wanna walk to th egraveyrad?
[ After all, he might not be entirely keen on facing what happened again, but on the other hand, now they're done with the supplies there is nothing left to do. Nothing but this much. And even if they don't exactly make it there (which he actually wouldn't mind all that much, if he's being entirely honest with himself) it would still give him a chance to actually talk things over with Souji in person instead of awkwardly typoing his way through it on these things. ]
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still though. maybe it won't hurt to try. ]
shall we meet halfway?
[ honestly he would have said to meet there instead, but something tells him he might not make it there entirely, so this seems like a good compromise. ]
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[ At least there's not outright refusal, even though the other probably feels just as conflicted about is as him, if not more so (he still remembers that tone Souji had right after Kondou died, just for a few moments). It seems like a good sign. Relatively speaking. ]
ill see tyou near the edge of campus [ It's still a bit to the graveyard from there, after all.
Shinpachi doesn't waste much time after that, just tucking the device back without waiting for a reply. He at least wants to make sure to be the first one there so the other doesn't have to wait by himself. So when Souji arrives he'll mostly likely already find Shinpachi standing around there, looking a whole lot more thoughtful than usually. ]
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it's not like he can really put it off.
if anything, it'll be a good opportunity to say something to the man who stopped him from doing something unthinkable. souji wasn't really sure if he'd been able to live with himself if he had allowed kondou-san to kill him right there and then, now that he understands the other man wasn't himself and would have likely blamed himself to death if that was how things turned out, so.
he feels like he owes shinpachi, at the very least.
the way he walks is a little sluggish, like his mind is only focused on taking one step after another, but he arrives at their designated meeting spot in the end. he only looks up once he's close enough. ]
... You weren't waiting that long, were you?
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He lets out a deep breath as the other man finally fully approached, shaking his head. ]
Nah.
[ It was a little bit, but Shinpachi honestly doesn't care. He needs to do something with himself to keep his thoughts from wandering, after all.
After it he opens his mouth once, then twice-- like he keeps wanting to say something but isn't sure how to put it. But in the end he just decides to go with the most simple version. ]
About Kondou-san.. [ .. anything involving him is their heaviest topic at this point, huh. ] .. you know that he didn't mean what he was saying or doing back there, right? He wasn't himself.
[ Even if, at that moment, it had seemed like Souji had taken every single bit of it at complete face value. ]
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souji waits, and waits for whatever shinpachi has to say, since it's obvious enough that he'd like to, but when it comes, souji isn't sure how to react. had he really taken everything kondou-san said at face value? probably, most likely. it was kondou-san, after all, it doesn't matter much if he hadn't been himself. it didn't make what he said any less true—that souji had been lying to him all this time, that he had killed people.
he's starting to think this was a bad idea after all. he can't make sense of how he feels or what he wants to say. ]
Does it matter if I did? [ he avoids it for the time being. ] ... I thought we were heading for the graveyard, to wait for them.
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He pulls up his shoulders a little bit, not exactly feeling like pressing the matter immediately with that response. ]
I just wanted to make sure you knew.
[ It's not necessarily that he thought he was going to instantly convince the other of anything (besides, it's not like Shinpachi thinks the excuse that Kondou wasn't being himself makes up for him killing the man either), but it's at least something to consider. ]
Let's go then if you don't want to linger around here that badly.
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then again, when had he ever started to doubt his own actions? hadn't he always just kept going no matter what the consequences were?
(he gets it, really. what kondou-san said affected him more than he could ever imagine, and he's left at a loss with how to deal with it.)
when shinpachi mentions that they should leave and head for the graveyard, souji stays put. ]
Shinpachi-san. [ he doesn't even know where to start. ] Back there, I'm— [ grateful? that shinpachi was the one left with the dirty task? ] ... Sorry.
[ sorry that he was the one to do it, that souji wasn't able to finish the job himself. ]
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"Sorry"? Shinpachi might not exactly be sure what he did expect Souji to tell him (as much as he does trust the other, most of the time it's pretty hard to actually understand him), but he's not sure either if that was on the list of things he might potentially have thought about. It's why he doesn't turn around at first when he listens to the words despite his slight surprise. ]
I don't recall you forcing me to do anything.
[ No matter how Souji might feel about all of it, in the end-- ]
It was my own choice. Both of you told me to leave, but I just decided what to do by myself. [ Sure, if he hadn't done it then Souji would have ended up dead and only god knows what would have happened to Kondou in that state. But in the end he still entirely decided by himself, even in some ways it might have been the better decision.
.. He lets out a breath. ]
To be honest, back there for a moment I actually thought you might start to hate me for it. [ And instead he got a "sorry", huh. ]
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listening to shinpachi talk like that sounds a lot like him whenever chizuru questioned his own choices, that it was his own decision, that he's never regretted it one bit, even if it was the hardest thing he ever had to do. then again, now that souji thinks on it, all of them are like that in their own ways, aren't they? it only took something as extreme as last week to make him realize that.
he finds himself staring at the ground for a second longer, then he looks up, blinks at the next thing shinpachi tells him. ]
If anything... [ this time, he starts walking, and it's only once he's passed the other that he continues his sentence. ] I owe you.
[ he isn't exactly sure what for, to be honest, but that's the closest thing he has to describing how he really feels about all of this. ]
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But even so, he already knows why he did it back then, and he still knows it now. It's simple, even if the deed itself wasn't. ]
You can call me a moron considerin' the kinda stuff we're usually doing [ it's not exactly like they have the safest job ever, after all, quite the contrary ] but I don't exactly feel like seeing my friends die.
[ Sure, he might not be as close to Souji as he is to Sano or Heisuke, but he still can't help but think of all of them that way - they've been together ever since everything at Shieikan. Shinpachi doesn't mind fighting, hell, he loves it, but if there's anything he does hate about all of this stuff in general it's the way it jeopardizes his friendships. Especially considering what he already knows about the future. ]
Of course that means it's not like I wanted to see Kondou-san die either, but.. [ His tone is a little wry and it ends up trailing off. Kondou obviously had lost his mind, so there wasn't much of a choice. ]
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shinpachi made it pretty clear that he didn't owe him anything even if that doesn't feel right to him, not when he'd practically saved his life back there. it usually wouldn't have been a big deal, things like that happen so often with the kind of lives they have that it wouldn't been brushed aside as part of their jobs, but—
shinpachi saved him from kondou-san.
... no, that's not right. it's the other way around.
shinpachi saved kondou-san from him. ]
... Shinpachi-san. Do you think he'd even want to see me right now?
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Any answer he'd give to that would probably be hypocritical. After all, he's not sure if Kondou would want to see him either after what he did. But Souji isn't the one who killed Kondou-- and even if Kondou was intending to kill Souji, surely that was just because of whatever exactly it was that took hold over him.
There's no way that Kondou would want to even hurt Souji of all people normally otherwise, right? ]
To be honest, it might be a little awkward. [ And that's putting it lightly, but from his wry tone it's pretty obvious Shinpachi realises that as well. ]
Even so, all the stuff that happened back there was because of whatever happened to him, so I'm sure he's not actually that angry at you. But.. still, it's Kondou-san. [ As much as Shinpachi might complain about him, he does know about Kondou's kindness and the very extent of it. ] He probably would feel bad over doing that stuff to you, so I dunno if he'd be able to face you right away.
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[ souji listens, he digests what the other man has to say, and this is what he comes up with. it's said in hushed tones, he doesn't really want anyone else to hear this but he won't put up much of a fight if shinpachi takes note of it. more than ever, he's just—scared. that's still putting it lightly though. he doesn't know what to feel at this point. ]
Shinpachi-san, you should go ahead. [ by now, he is already backpedaling. ] I'll come see them [ him ] later.
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.. Yeah.
[ So he just accepts Souji's decision. There's no way he'd drag him along against his will in general, but especially not since his own heart is only half made up on all of this either. In the end he won't make it to the graveyard either, after all-- but for now he doesn't know that yet and still wants to at least try, even if he'd have to go by himself.
Shinpachi is already walking up to where the other man stopped ahead of him, lingering in the spot next to him for a moment like he's thinking of what to say. His expression turns half-wry, and for the briefest moment his hand lands on Souji's shoulder. ] Don't think too much about it, Souji.
[ Even if not thinking about it is fairly impossible. But it's all the advice he can give him. After he's said it, he's practically already turning again to walk on. ]