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Hajime couldn’t say he enjoyed his time on the island at any point, really. The people, the atmosphere, those stupid robotic animals, nothing helped ease him into their situation at all. That is to say, he wasn’t about to complain about sitting in this dusty, potentially hazardous, storage closet when there was a perfectly good jigsaw puzzle and a contemplative girl sitting across from him.
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“Hajime!” A loud voice was able to snap Hajime out of his reverie, and he turned to scold them, but his disdain was quickly replaced by confusion when he met the eyes of none other than Chiaki Nanami. He’d recently become close to her, aloof as she was, but they’d been too busy to talk after the second trial. It’d taken a lot out of everyone. He hadn’t expected her to be so loud.
“Chiaki–” he started, but Chiaki dove headfirst into him, effectively knocking the words from his mouth and his body to the ground. He just barely stopped himself from falling into the pool. She pants as she steadies herself, like she wasn’t accustomed to running around. Hajime groans, bringing his hand to his head as if it’d deter his blooming headache.
“Sorry,” she forces out between breaths, and offers him a hand up. “I wanted to show you something I found, but I didn’t want to be interrupted on my way here, and figured running would make it look like I was busy.” She’s stood in a way that couldn’t be comfortable, one arm twisted behind her awkwardly, but Hajime didn’t have the breath in his lungs to ask why.
“It’s fine, what did you need me to see?” Hajime takes her hand and she lugs him up with some difficulty. She still looks winded, and he can thoroughly relate to the sentiment.
Her cheeks puff out like he’d asked something that’d offended her, and wordlessly grips his hand just a bit tighter. He’d nearly forgotten they were laced together. “Just follow me.” She says it like a demand, and Hajime obliges without much hesitation. She seems to realize he doesn’t plan on leaving, so she snakes her fingers from his grip and lets them fall to her side as he trails behind her leisure pace. He notices whatever she’d been holding behind her back was now against her chest and stuffed under her jacket. This time, he decides not to ask out of courtesy. It must be a secret, best not spoil it for her.
She leads him not too far from where he’d already been standing, the old building Byakuya died in. He wonders if this is where she ran from, and how she could possibly be that out of breath from such a short distance, but quickly dismisses the thought as impossible. He’d have seen her come and go at some point, even if he was preoccupied with his thoughts. “In here,” she says, and she turns to him like she expects him to open the door for her. He stumbles for a moment, and after reminiscing a moment longer, pulls it forward to let her in.
“Thanks.” She responded to his action nonchalantly, but a smile played at her lips, and he followed her without question until they got to the closet he knew the iron and sheets were in from the last trial. There wasn’t anything of interest she could've found in there, and he started feeling a little nervous. Surely this wasn’t a murder plot, right? They were friends. Chiaki seems to notice his perturbed expression, and her eyes flickered with realization when she figures out what he must be thinking. She waves him back and opens the closet door herself to reveal a rather hospitable looking room. It’d been cleaned to the best of her abilities, he figures, noting the tops of some of the shelves were still covered in grime. The Ironing board has been pushed back to the corner of the room that previously housed an unattractive pile of boxes she must’ve thrown out or stored elsewhere, and the rest of the clutter he remembers seeing before has been neatly packed away and placed out of sight. Instantly, Hajime lets out a sigh of relief. This certainly doesn’t look like somewhere you’d kill somebody.
“What is this?” Hajime turned to look at her face again, and she almost appeared nervous.
“It’s.. Uhm..” Chiaki stalled for a moment, then pulled a thin box out from under her jacket and placed it on the floor. Quickly after, she knelt down and crossed her legs like she was trying to make herself more comfortable. She looked up at Hajime with the same look from earlier, and he followed soon after, settling into an unpleasant position. “Here, it’s a jigsaw puzzle. I found it earlier, in a drawer in my room. When I saw it I figured I should solve it with you, since you talked about wanting to do one a little while ago.” She said matter-of-factly, but her cheeks flushed in embarrassment and Hajime barely stifled a laugh at the sight.
“That sounds fun, I’m surprised you remembered. I probably would’ve forgotten.” He tried to recount the moment, and he does briefly remember mentioning wanting to put a puzzle together after Chiaki brought them up, but so much had happened since then..
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“Mm..” She grumbled, recapturing Hajime’s attention. She’d dumped the pieces onto a mat that he was certain wasn’t there before, and had already began flipping them over so they’re all facing right-side-up.
“You Alright, Chiaki?” He picks up a few pieces himself, and sets a couple aside to use later. She doesn’t meet his eyes, and instead glances at the small stack he’d put together. “I’m fine, just thinking.” She responds after a short wait, but Hajime lets out a breath anyway. He doesn’t ask what was on her mind, he’s confident they’re close enough she’d tell him herself if she wanted him to know.
.
.
“Do you think the people in ‘Havoc's Last Hope’ did jigsaw puzzles too?” She finally continues, and Hajime’s brain takes a long time to catch up.
“Uhm.. I’m not sure. I haven’t played that game.” He responds honestly, and she looks a little disappointed, but then her face quickly morphs into something brighter, and she launches into a long winded explanation of a game she’d played not long before ending up on the island.
“And then– Oh, we’re done flipping the pieces. How should we solve it, now?” She looks over at him, and he knows there’s only one correct answer to her question. He’d been asked this by her before, so it’s easy to come to the same conclusion.
“Let's start from the outermost pieces, then make our way to the middle.” She nodded in agreement, and they set to work putting the picture together, and if they spent more time talking than building, then at least no one was there to see it.