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Kazuichi is sprawled out across his bed, arm resting over his eyes, trying to think about anything and everything that isn’t the fact they’ve found themselves in some fucked up Killing Game.
He’s too young to die. He’s too much of a virgin to die.
His very first field trip, and this is how it turns out? Part of him is still hoping this is some sort of sick joke, that someone’s going to jump out and yell “Surprise!” and they’ll be able to go back to swimming and building sandcastles and doing whatever the hell else it is you’re supposed to do on a class trip.
The doorbell to his cottage rings, and Kazuichi nearly jumps out of his skin. He slowly turns his head towards the door, suddenly feeling like a character in a low-budget horror movie. His knees knock together, and he pulls his beanie down over his face. Maybe if he stays quiet, they’ll go away.
But no, the doorbell rings again, and this time Kazuichi can’t help the embarrassing yelp that rises from his throat.
Dammit. So much for pretending he wasn’t home. Seeing no other option, Kazuichi slowly climbs off his bed and tiptoes towards the door. “Who… Who is it?” he calls out, voice shaky.
“Open the door already, Souda! Jeez, are you just gonna leave a girl standing out here in the sun?”
“Mahiru?” he shouts back, bracing his hands against the door. “I never woulda pegged you as a killer!”
“Open the door, moron!” she snaps back and Kazuichi, despite his better judgment, finds himself following her instructions.
She’s standing in his doorway, arms crossed over her chest and looking aggressively unamused. She lets out a small huff as he finally opens the door, walking into his cottage before he even realizes what she’s doing.
“Hey. Hey!” he shouts, raising his hands in front of him in a defensive stance. “I didn’t say you could–”
She spins on her heel and stares at him. “Take off your clothes.”
Kazuichi nearly chokes. “Ma–Mahiru!” Is this why she’d come to his cottage all by herself? Not to kill him, but to get him alone, so that she can do dirty things to him?
…It’s not the worst idea Kazuichi has ever heard.
Mahiru can obviously see the leering look on his face, because she reaches forward and slaps him upside the head. “Oh, please! I’m just going to fix the hole in your jumpsuit.”
Oh. Right.
When she’d dragged him – literally kicking and screaming – off of the beach the day before, she’d managed to tear a hole in his pant leg. He’d been planning on fixing it himself, he swears, but the whole “trapped on a deserted island by a killer robot teddy bear” thing had kind of got him distracted.
“Wh–why didn’t you just say so!” Kazuichi snaps back, a blush still colouring his cheeks.
“Because I clearly forgot who I was talking to,” Mahiru says with a sigh. “Now.” She gestures at him. “Off!”
“You can’t… I’ll only be in my underwear! Word would get around, and then what would Miss Sonia say!”
Mahiru rolls her eyes again, and for a moment Kazuici thinks she’s going to head for the door and give up on this entire thing. Instead, she stands her ground. “Jeez, like I didn’t already see you in your swim trunks earlier! What’s the difference?”
Logically, he knows that she’s right. But there’s something about sitting in front of a pretty girl – because yeah, Mahiru is no Miss Sonia, but she’s still got big green eyes and freckles that dot her pale skin like constellations – in his neon coloured boxers rather than his school issued swim trunks.
“Well, at least let me put those on instead.”
Mahiru sighs, but it seems to actually border on good-natured this time. “Fine,” she says, grabbing his swim trunks off the tool cabinet where he’d left them to dry. She tosses them, hitting Kazuichi square in the chest. “But hurry up.”
He nods before disappearing into the bathroom. He changes quickly, the cool air of the cottage’s A/C prickling against his exposed chest. He returns to Mahiru only a few moments later, awkwardly handing over his jumpsuit.
Mahiru wrinkles her nose. “After we fix the hole, we should probably wash your jumpsuit too.”
“Wah– I wash my clothes!” Kazuichi insists. “That’s just a natural man smell!”
“It’s disgusting,” Mahiru insists, perching on the edge of his bed and opening up her sewing kit. Kazuichi parks himself on a chair, sitting awkwardly with his hands folded in his lap.
“So, what’re you–”
“Shh,” Mahiru hisses, needle raised up to her eye. “I need to concentrate.”
Kazuichi nods, falling silent. His leg bobs with restless energy as he watches Mahiru struggle to thread the needle.
“I could’ve fixed it myself, you know.”
She glances up with a look of shock. “You can sew?”
“D-don’t act so surprised!” Kazuichi says, hopping off the chair and crossing over to Mahiru. He takes the needle and thread from her hands without bothering to ask first. To his surprise, she doesn’t protest.
He twirls the thread in between his thumb and index finger, wets the end of it with his tongue, and slips it through the eye on his first try. He hands it back to Mahiru with a sheepish smile.
“Thanks,” she says. It’s the softest he’s ever heard her voice before, the first indication that Mahiru is more than sharp edges and a cold heart.
Kazuichi hesitates before sitting down beside her on the bed. He watches as Mahiru gets to work, the needle gliding easily through the yellow fabric.
“We grew up poor,” he says after a long moment of silence. “You learn really quickly how to fix your own clothes. Or your own toys.”
Mahiru doesn’t look up from her work, but her voice retains the tender quality from before when she asks, “Is that how you ended up as a mechanic?”
“I guess, yeah.” Kazuichi lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “There wasn’t much else to do other than take things apart and put them back together. And my old man ran a bike shop. I guess that was part of it too. Not that we ever sold much of anything.” His dad was a piece of shit, anyways. It was one of the reasons he’d dreamed of going to Hope’s Peak so bad. Boarding school meant getting away from home.
“I... I didn’t know,” Mahiru says.
“Yeah, well, It’s not like I go around announcing that kind of stuff,” Kazuichi replies, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. Guess I’m feeling vulnerable or whatever. Sitting in swim trunks can do that to a guy.”
“Or a life or death situation.”
Kazuichi groans, throwing himself back onto the bed. “Dammit, and I’d almost forgotten about all of that!”
“Did you really think I was a killer when I rang your doorbell?” she asks.
“No,” Kazuichi replies. And then, after a beat and a long sigh: “Yes. Look, it’d be just my luck to be the first one killed on this crazy ass trip. Before we even got to have a proper beach day!”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Mahiru asks, finally drawing her eyes up from the jumpsuit. “Not, I don’t know, getting off of this island and being able to live the rest of your life?”
Kazuichi shrugs half-heartedly. “I guess. I dunno. When we get out of here, what then? Do we just go back to the way life was before all of this? If that’s my only option, I think I might actually prefer Murder Island.”
Mahiru snorts. “You’re weird.”
“Yeah, well…” He allows his words to trail off, closing his eyes. The A/C whirs, and Mahiru sews, and he can imagine for just a few brief moments that this situation is absolutely and totally normal.
“Hey.” Mahiru pokes him in the middle of his bare chest. “Don’t go falling asleep on me. It’s almost done.”
Kazuichi reluctantly pulls himself up into a seated position, watching as Mahiru ties off. “Hey, that looks pretty good!”
Mahiru glances away from him. “Yeah, well. I felt bad about ruining it, okay? And I wanted to do something for you, so… Here.” She thrusts the jumpsuit into his hands without bothering to look in his direction.
Kazuichi turns it over in his hands, then looks up with a grin. “Thanks, Mahiru!”
“Just remember to wash it, okay!” she says, still unable to look him in the eye. What the hell’s gotten into her? “With soap!”
“Hey, I know how to do laundry!” Kazuichi protests.
Mahiru shakes her head, but Kazuichi is pretty sure he can see that she’s smiling. She quickly packs up her kit, then heads towards the door. She pauses there for a long moment, and Kazuichi wonders if maybe his doorknob is different then hers and she can’t figure out how to get out.
He moves to get off the bed, ready to offer her assistance, when she turns to look at him.
Or, well, not quite at him. She’s looking past him, more like, her green eyes focusing on the blank wall just over his left shoulder.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t want to see you get murdered,” Mahiru says.
Kazuichi snorts. “Really comforting, thanks.”
“I mean it!” Mahiru asserts. “I don’t want to see any of us get killed! I want all of us to get off of this island together, and get to live out our school days like we were supposed to!” Her cheeks are aflame, and Kazuichi finds that he can suddenly no longer look at her face without his own cheeks burning. “And you… you’re not as bad as I thought, Souda. When we get off this island,” – she doesn’t say if, she says when – “I’d like to get to know you better.”
“Y-yeah,” Kazuichi says, wincing as his voice cracks. “We can do that.” He pauses, tries to regain his composure. He puts on that silly, toothy grin of his, and shoots Mahiru a thumbs up. “Consider it a date!”
“Ugh!” she groans, throwing back her head. “You’re absolutely hopeless.”
But she’s smiling. He sees that, and his own smile grows. It morphs from the goofy grin of Kazuichi Souda, Ultimate Mechanic, into the genuine smile of Kazuichi, just a guy who wants to have a good class trip.
“Remember!” she says as she finally opens the door. “Wash your jumpsuit!”
“Yeah, yeah!” he replies. “Quit your naggin’!”
But she’s already out the door, and he finds himself alone in his room. What had once been a comfort, a way to lock himself up from the dangers of the outside world, now feels heavy and lonely.
Mahiru doesn’t want to see any of their classmates die, and neither does he. Surely everyone else has got to be thinking the same thing, right? No one here is evil enough to go around committing murder, right?
Kazuichi has never been very good at trusting people, but maybe right now that’s all that he can really do. He can put his trust in the others – the people like Mahiru, who are probably just as scared as he is – and believe that they won’t do anything to hurt him.
He smiles to himself as he slips back into his jumpsuit. He can wash it later. For now, he has an island to explore. He has friends to meet.
He has a class trip to experience.