Memories {Oumasai/Saiouma}

~ 26 ~ The History of DICE

< Author's Note >
This is more of a backstory chapter, if you don't want to read it you won't miss much but I felt like writing this so I'm doing it.
I also can't come up with names so I put words into google translate so I'm sorry if they're bad. If I should change any please tell me.

⚠️~TW~⚠️Child Abuse, Death, Homophobia, Transphobia.

*~*~*

Shuichi hadn't been the same since the... incident a few days ago. We had been sharing the bed together like usual but it hadn't been the same, he seemed so distant and detached from reality, and his eyes were unusually bloodshot. I didn't know what to do, but I did know I wanted to cheer him up.

I slowly pushed the office door open, the soft creaking being the only thing alerting Shuichi to my presence. My heart dropped when I saw him slouched over at his computer with his chin resting in his hand and dried up tears on his face. He glanced over at me with tired, dead eyes and gave me a smile without moving his head, normally his smiles made my heart melt, they were adorable, but this time it felt like a knife was plunged through my heart.

Fighting back tears, I grabbed one of the spare chairs in the room and sat next to him. I understood how he felt, he just saw a friend die and seeing a warehouse covered in body parts and multiple bodily fluids would traumatise anyone. Admittedly, I had found myself crying when I was on my own, but I had forced myself to hold back my feelings and push them deep into the back of my mind for my whole life, so this was nothing. That isn't a good thing to do though, it's always better to talk about your feelings rather than hold them inside and let them build up, it had landed me in pretty bad situations throughout my short life.

"Hey Shu, how are you holding up?" I slowly reached out my arm and wrapped it around him, being careful to not scare or annoy him by doing so. He sadly chuckled and turned to face me, clearly forcing a smile.

"I should be asking you that." I sighed and pulled him into a hug.

"From the looks of it, I'm doing better than you right now emo boy." He huffed into my shoulder. "I know it was a bit of a shock, but all we can do now is find the one who killed them, okay?" I knew I was being blunt, but I've never believed myself to be good at soothing people.

"But what if we can't... how many people have to die before we find the one behind all the deaths?"

"Whether we find the person or not, we've gathered a lot of evidence that can lead to them. You're going to be the main person behind this case either way, and you're going to be the one to help catch them in the end." I rubbed circles on his back as he silently cried into my shoulder.

We sat in silence for a few minutes as Shuichi once again let out his emotions, I couldn't help but wonder how he even had any tears left at this point. He started to push away so I let go of him to allow him to move. Assuming he was going back to work, I started to stand up, but I was stopped before I could get anywhere.

"Hey Kichi, what was everyone in DICE like?" Why is he asking that now? He already knows how I feel... no... felt, about them. He seemed to notice my mood change as his eyes widened and he looked away. "Sorry, now's probably a bad time, I was just curious about each member. Like how the group got together and the history and that..." Ah okay, I suppose it can't hurt to talk about them, maybe I'll feel better if I do.

"Well I'll tell you, as long as you promise not to share anything~ This information is extremely valuable to the police~ Nishishi!" I giggled, putting my finger to my lips. He huffed a laugh in response and genuinely smiled, which make me happy, and put one of his hands in the air.

"I, Shuichi Saihara, promise to keep this valuable information to myself." We both stared at each other for a bit before laughing. It was the first time in the past few days I had managed to get him to laugh, I was happy that he was getting better.

"Okay so, I'll tell you in the order that the members joined and why, okay?" Shuichi nodded, seemingly genuinely interested in my story. That's another thing I love about him, he was always interested in my stories whether they were real or fake.

"The first person to join, and the vice president of DICE, was Kaigo Amami." 

"Amami..."

"Yep, he was Rantaro's brother. I ran away to the Amamis a few times when things got bad at home and I sort of became a part of their family. Kaigo was a mischievous little shit but I joined in on his pranks whenever I could because he wasn't great at them, so I made him a better prankster! Rantaro was originally going to join us but he decided to run off and go on his little adventures for a few years instead.

Kaigo and I decided to start pranking people who we thought deserved a bit of trouble, we would trespass and steal a few minor things blah blah blah not important. Anyway we heard of a guy who was using his fame to scam people, so we decided to scare him with a few missing trinkets. His daughter caught us right when we broke in though but she joined us. Itazura, or Ita as we called her, never got to be a kid 'cause of her dad's strict rules, so she snuck out of the house a lot to join us. She was the one who came across that warehouse actually and helped us set up the lights and food stash.

Us three started really getting into the idea of being a group, so we came up with the name DICE. Kaigo decided we needed a logo and outfits though, and he knew a guy who created outfits from school. He invited Saikoro and originally he was just going to make the outfits and move on, but he actually wanted to stay so we let him. He told us he just wanted to be included in something for once and I kind of felt bad turning him away.

Kishi was the next to join, and they were probably the most protective over me before Rantaro and I moved. We met during a parent-teacher night and my dad punched me in front of them, that night they took me to their house and they said that from then on they were going to protect me as much as they could. That lead them to join DICE with everyone as the parent of the group. 

The next two to join were the twins, Tsueki and Tsuin. They both heard about DICE and came to us asking to join, so we let them in after a bit of investigation since no one knew them well. Everyone always confused the two, Tsueki hated it when we called her Tsuin on accident, so Tsuin actually cut her hair short so we could tell them apart better.

One day we found a boy hiding in our warehouse, so we got in a bit of a conflict then although we never hurt him. Turns out the boy, Hoki, had just watched his parents die in a car crash nearby and he ran away to the warehouse to get away from it. He went to our school, so we knew of him already, and we decided to let him into the group as a distraction for him which seemed to help him a lot in the end.

Matarashi then came to our school, and they were instantly bullied for being non-binary. None of us wanted that for them since most of us knew what it was like to be bullied, and that happened while stressing about being at a new school is bad enough, so we took Matarashi in. I guess I'm just an amazing leader since they got detention for beating up the bullies three weeks in.

The last one to join was Saru, well, second-last now I guess. He had been kicked out of his house for being gay, so he packed his stuff and moved in with Kishi since they were dating. Kishi felt bad for him, so he asked me if Saru could join us and I obviously said yes, mainly because they were adorable together and everyone always fangirled over them.

And that's it!" I was swinging my legs the entire time I went on about the DICE members. I looked up to face Shuichi, half expecting him to have drowned me out and continuing with his work, but he was still looking at me with wonder sparkling in his eyes.

"Wow, I knew you were close with them but, I thought you had a more work type of relationship with them." A sadness snuck in through his eyes, mixing with the wonder of finding out new information. "How aren't you crying right now? You haven't seemed that affected since we got home..."

I shrugged, "Guess I'm good at hiding it." Shuichi pulled me into a tight embrace which I returned.

"I'm just glad it wasn't you Kokichi."