Another One Bites The Dust | KyouHaba

'Deadly' Tensions

Kyoutani stared up at the ceiling, at fifteen minutes past four in the morning. He could hear Yahaba sleeping down the corridor, the clock ticking and the radiator heating up the room. He was not tired. Kyoutani hadn't gotten a moment of sleep and he felt fine. A bird flew into the window, making him start but he relaxed soon after it.

He was safe in Sendai. He was safe with Yahaba.

Thinking about it, Yahaba hadn't actually changed that much, besides the sudden power upgrade. His witty, mean attitude was the same, and his bossiness was intact. He still had paperclips attached to his DocMartens, he was wearing the same bomber jacket and he had Kyoutani's sofa bed prepared exactly how he remembered it would be. It was like nothing had changed.

Apart from the fact he was undead and Yahaba was now studying necromancy. Those things could be counted as quite significant change. Kyoutani rolled over, facing towards the corridor where Yahaba's bedroom lay. He still knew the house like that back of his hand. At least that was one similarity from when he was alive.

Kyoutani felt like a stranger in his own body. Being dead was... odd, especially when you were experiencing it. He hadn't felt pain when he stubbed his toe earlier – he had felt the collision, yet nothing told him something bad had happened. It was the same sensation he was currently having, with the duvets over his body. A few years ago, he hated these things. They always caused him to get too hot, even on the coldest nights, and it took him at least two hours to shut his eyes and finally sleep.

He could sense the weight of them, but he could not feel the overwhelming heat. He really wanted to. His body felt clammy and cold. Some warmth might give the illusion of life again.

The coldness: that was another feeling he hadn't noticed until there was near silence around him. Everything about him felt so cold and dead. It was unsurprising, since he had died eight days ago, but it was unusual. Normally, Kyoutani would be as hot as a fever – now he was as cold as ice with nothing to warm him. Being a zombie really sucked.

He had also noticed that he didn't breathe anymore. It had been when the bird flew into the window, a few minutes ago. He hadn't gasped, he hadn't needed to take one or two deep breaths to get over the surprise. He had assumed it was because he was a professional, but he now realised it was because he wasn't breathing in the first place.

He started breathing in and out, feeling the air travel down his throat and out again. Had he respired like that? Did the oxygen turn into carbon dioxide? Or had he just breathed in oxygen and breathed out oxygen? Did dead people even need to respire?

Kyoutani sat up, holding his head in his hands with his fingers resting on his temples. Was he having a midlife crisis? A mid-death crisis? That was a first... Surely something would say something about this. Maybe Yahaba had a book about this.

Should he wake up Yahaba over this? Was that fair? He would probably tell him to wake him up at a reasonable time and wait until the morning... Kyoutani swung his feet out the bed and stood up. Four-twenty in the morning was probably not a good time to wake up his angry, old best friend. He made his way down the corridor to Yahaba's room anyway. If he were still alive, he'd have probably tripped on something, with how dark the flat was. It seemed being dead came with the nifty bonus of night vision, despite it being greyscale.

He reached the door, carefully creeping it open and glancing in. Yahaba was lying in his bed, as Kyoutani had expected, fast asleep. He was no longer wearing his gloves, which is something Kyoutani felt surprised about, and he had his head tilted away from the zombie, one hand resting on the pillow, a little before his face.

He shut the door, quietly making his way forwards and crouching at the edge of Yahaba's bed. His partner still didn't wake up, chest rising and falling. Yeah, everyone else seemed to be breathing... Was this going to become a 'him' thing, now?