What if it Repeated? (Oumasai/Saiouma)

Chapter 18- Looming

A couple of days had passed with nothing too eventful happening in regard to the invention except that a few ideas had been tested and failed. It had only been a few days so he shouldn't have expected anything to come of it so far, but the longer it took, the more danger they were all in. The first death was to happen 2 days from now and Rantaro and Kaede's fates were set unless Shuuichi did anything to change it. But what could he do?

If he did anything to prevent the killings from happening it would either draw attention to himself again, or it would maybe cause a different death, one he didn't know would happen. Which would then set off a chain reaction of events he had no knowledge or power over. The only option was to play it low and continue his efforts with Miu and Kokichi. He still felt as though he was depending on the purple haired boy too much, but he had been glad he hadn't asked Kaito.

Once the first chat with Miu and Kokichi had concluded, he had went straight to Kaito to ask him what he knew about blackholes. He had been met with a bemused face and a little wave that beckoned him to come closer. Kaito had then told him rather sheepishly that he had cheated his way into the astronaut program as he was too young to have the actual degrees to be eligible meaning he didn't have a great deal of knowledge he should've had. Although he had assured Shuuichi quite quickly that he was knowledgeable in most areas of space and was still learning. Kaito had seemed pretty enthusiastic to help him with his quest for information and had agreed to peruse books with him to find out more.

And that's what he had been doing the last few days. Noses seemingly glued in large books of physics and space related phenomena such as black holes. Kaito had often just sat around recounting his own stories of his time while he was on the sea which was both quite irrelevant and completely fake. He had heard these stories before from Kaito in a different reality, but no matter how many times he heard them they always made him smile in amusement. The way Kaito talked about them made them sound believable except for their subject matter.

Kaito's lack of help also reminded him of the times he, Kaito and Maki had trained at night under the stars. Kaito would often daydream instead of doing any actual exercise. It was a fond memory, but it also brought a deep sadness with it. It felt like so long ago now and he missed those times immensely. He missed so much. Everything he had experienced meant nothing here. No one except him knew about all these memories that were stored within him. All the good times and the bad times...
It was thoughts like these that made everything seem all the more real. He was truly alone. No one was going through this with him, everyone he grew close with forgot him the next time.

Not to mention Kokichi's attempts to distance himself from Shuuichi. They may have been subtle, but he had noticed how his answers seemed to be shorter and more to the point instead of some large convoluted statement he usually came up with. He must have done something wrong. This behaviour wasn't normal from Kokichi.

"Bro, are you alright?" Kaito was looking at him wide eyed. He had evidently stopped reminiscing about some- most likely untrue- story and had finally became aware that Shuuichi wasn't listening to a word. "You're pretty out of it, maybe we should take a break from looking." He motioned to the books scattered around their table. Shuuichi frowned. He wanted more than anything to mention that someone had technically been on break this whole time and had no right to have another one now, but he restrained himself with a sigh.

"Yeah I'm fine, just got a lot of things to think about." Kaito watched him looking rather like he was going to question this, but simply slapped a hand onto Shuuichi's shoulder.
"Well you shouldn't worry about that." He cleared his throat conversationally and grinned, "I hereby appoint you my sidekick! Your problems are now my problems, so don't hesitate to share the load a bit."

"Thanks Kaito, I appreciate it." He returned the smile and marked the page he was up to in the physics book he had open in front of him and closed it with a snap. "I think a break is in order, dining hall?" Kaito beamed and stood up without a second thought as he had no book in which he needed to mark.