I'll Save You ~ Amamatsu

Ch 4, Part 4

"Kaede? It's like, 3 pm."

I slowly opened my eyes to see Rantaro standing over me.

What happened..? Oh, right.

I fell asleep in Rantaro's room because there was nothing else to do. It felt good, honestly. I needed that.

"Oh, hey, Taro.. Are you feeling better now?" I said as I sat up.

"Much better, yeah. Thank you, by the way."

"It's no problem. Anytime." I smiled and Rantaro sat down next to me.

"Well, what happened in the meeting this morning?" He asked.

"Right, well.. Kokichi was just suspicious about who was behind the whole note thing, so we attempted to figure it out before Tsumugi interrupted us."

"Mm.. Did you get anywhere?"

"Kinda? Not really, though. We did figure out that all of our notes were printed, for some reason. And Kokichi pointed out that anybody could have done it, including everybody who received a note. But that's about as far as we got."

"Ah, okay.." Rantaro nodded and then sighed.

"Rantaro? Is something wrong?"

"No, no, I just figured I should tell you what happened now.. It's only fair."

"Oh, okay.. You know, you don't have to if you don't want to."

"I know, but I want to."

"Alright, go ahead then."

Rantaro nodded and let out a breath.

"Okay, well.."

*Flashback*

Kokichi said he needed to talk to me about something, so I accepted. Because I thought we were friends.

Kokichi let me into his room and then closed the door behind him.

"..Do you know why I want to talk to you?" He asked me.

"Uh, no.. Why..?"

Kokichi went silent for a moment, then spoke up again.

"Because I think you're the traitor."

"Wait, what?"

"The signs are there, Rantaro. You know I'm very observant. I can tell you've been working with that bitch Tsumugi behind the scenes."

"Huh? No, I haven't, I swear. I don't know where you could've gotten that from."

"Rantaro. You can stop denying and admit it. Admit you've been tricking us this whole time."

"But I haven't! I genuinely don't know what you're talking about. I'm not the traitor."

"If you were, would you tell me?"

"Well, yeah! But I know I'm not the traitor."

Kokichi just laughed.

"How pathetic. You're gonna keep denying because you want to keep your relationship with Kaede, isn't that right?"

"What- No! I wouldn't lie to her like that, hell, I wouldn't do that to anyone!"

"Sure, whatever. We'll see how Kaede feels when she finds out her little boyfriend is a big fucking manipulator."

That was when he went too far. I got really angry.

"Keep her name out of your goddamn mouth."