Visions Of A Tragedy

|1: Distant Memory|

Juzo felt pain all throughout his body, yet he'd grown so used to the burning and the bleeding that he was somewhat numb to it all at this point. He was hurting but it had become a new normal for him by this point because of this stupid killing game. Besides, he could care less about his own suffering.

The idea of Yukizome or Munakata suffering was much more of a concern to him and he had a hard enough time accepting that of all people, Yukizome had died and been the first to die in this new twisted killing game. If you could call it a game.

In spite of his jealousy, he was greatly upset by Yukizome's death. After all, she was a close friend, even if she wooed the man they both were deeply in love with. Juzo knew that she would always end up with him in the end but it still hurt his heart to see them all lovey dovey. He couldn't stand it yet he forced himself to tolerate it for their sakes because he loved both of them too much to risk tearing them apart. He refused to allow his jealousy to ruin his friendships even if doing so meant destroying his own sanity. Even though he was hurting because of Yukizome (which of course, he'd never admit), he hated seeing her dead just as much.

It was especially hard to believe she'd done it to herself, out of despair. She'd committed suicide because of the monitor in the room. Enoshima had been dead so long yet her claws were still sunk deep into the world, refusing to retract her horrible impact on the cruel world.

How and why could this have all happened? Enoshima had been dead for a long time by that point, and yet Future Foundation had been turned against itself from the inside. At a reschedule of Naegi's trial for treason no less, which looked incredibly suspicious given that he had intentionally hidden and protected the Remnants of Despair from Future Foundation, against their orders calling for the Remnants to be executed.

Though Juzo now knew that realistically Naegi wasn't responsible for this killing game, he still couldn't help but feel like somewhere along the line Naegi was to blame for their suffering. For a while, Juzo did genuinely believe that Naegi had caused this killing game and that Naegi had been influenced by despair.

It was ironic how the tables had been turned on Juzo during the killing game and he had become the one suspect of being despair. Munakata had come to be convinced that Juzo had been despair meanwhile the green haired man had been trying so long to fight it and destroy it with everything he had alongside the silver haired man. Subconsciously, Juzo's remaining hand drifted to the slice made through his abdomen. The injury was still fresh and it still felt like he had been slashed with molten lava but at least it wasn't bleeding for now.

The fact that Munakata had become convinced he was despair had stung the most but Juzo carried on trying to save Munakata because even still Munakata was always his priority. Juzo had long sacrificed his own dreams and ambitions to be a tool for Munakata's. He couldn't even fathom wanting to stop being used by Munakata because then the rest of his short-lived life would seem so hopelessly meaningless at this point. He knew he was at the grim reaper's door step but if nothing else, he wanted to make himself useful to his beloved one last time, even if his beloved hated his guts.

He had many severe injuries and yet he always forced himself to carry on. His shoulder ached and bled, never fully having the time or care to completely recover from Kizakura's trap because Juzo disregarded his own injuries. What was left of his left arm was haphazardly tied up in a makeshift tourniquet and still bleeding. He had racked up so many injuries over the course of this torture that an emergency medic would nearly faint from the amount of trauma that had been dealt to his body.

Of course, Juzo wouldn't stop gambling with the grim reaper now. He had to make himself useful even if he had been thrown away by the most important person to him. So he was going to end this all by shutting down the switches in the breaker room. Even if it killed him.