kiss of death - corpse x sykkuno

chapter five: aftermath

Corpse took a step toward Sykkuno.

He grabbed him lightly by the shoulders, causing Sykkuno to tense up.

No... he can't be upset with me, can he?

He should know what it's like.

"Y-you know," Sykkuno started, "You um.. You-? Sorry, I feel like I'm in shock," he chuckled, but there was no humor behind it. "That was really impressive..."

Corpse blinked at him. "You.. don't seem impressed. Sykkuno, you're not upset with me, are you?"

"No, no! Of course not," Sykkuno quickly replied. The lime suited man brought his arms up to rest on Corpse's upper arms. "I just.. don't really know what to think. The things you pulled off, I just..."

Corpse waited for a reply.

"You just...?"

"Can't believe you did it," Sykkuno said. "No one suspected you at all until the very end."

Corpse nodded, "I don't know how I pulled it off either. You were completely convinced it wasn't me."

"..yeah. Corpse, can I be honest?" Sykkuno asked. He took his hands away from Corpse, but grabbed Corpse's hands on his shoulders. He brought them down in front of him.

"Of course, do you think I would say no?" Corpse replied.

Sykkuno squeezed his hands. "I saw you leave Admin, when you killed Spedicey. I saw him in the cafeteria when we first walked in but I was scared for you so I didn't want to report it. I knew you killed Rae because I came to find you and found Rae's body instead. I knew it was you the whole time, Corpse."

No... no...

No.

"Sykkuno wha-"

"Because I didn't want you to die your first time here! You seemed so friendly in the beginning... and the whole time you protected me, and now I realize that I would have died to Dream if it weren't for you," Sykkuno said. It was like words just poured out of his mouth. "And when we were here in the cafeteria, when we took our helmets off, I could see in your eyes that you were scared, even though you're the thing to be scared of!"

Corpse listened to him ramble on.

"A-and then when you killed in Electrical, I didn't know what to do so I panicked and walked away but then Grease would have definitely known it was me so I hesitated for a long time before reporting it, I never went back up to check if anyone was following, and I hated you for a second for leaving it up to me to report Pewds and," he released Corpse's hands to take off his helmet. He let it fall to the floor. "then I was really scared Greaseball would think it was me, but he couldn't think it was you, but then I couldn't let you know I knew it was you so I had to listen to Greaseball so that I could seem convinced to finally vote him and I-"

"Sykkuno," Corpse interrupted. He reached up to take his own helmet off. "I get it. I should have known you knew, it was pretty obvious I guess. But... why would you let so many other people die for me to survive?"

"Oh," Sykkuno breathed. "This reminds me of the train with four people tied on one track and only one tied on the other... I guess I've always picked one person."

"Why would you pick one person's life over four others? What if ten, twenty, a hundred people's lives were on the line...? Would you still pick one person, then?" Corpse asked. Even though he was the one who took those crewmates' lives, Sykkuno could have stopped it. Why, why didn't he? Why?

Sykkuno didn't reply. His eyes searched Corpse's like they were searching for an answer. "I just... I don't know. That one person might hold something special that the rest never did."