The fluorescent lights hummed.
Hoshimi sat in the corner of the common room, his violet eyes fixed on the door to Kira's room.
The others had dispersed hours ago, retreating to their assigned pairs. Neila had complained loudly about the arrangements before finally allowing herself to be herded towards Lucy's room.
Edward had returned from the aquarium excursion with that carefully controlled expression he always wore, but something beneath it had shifted. Something Hoshimi couldn't quite identify.
He rose from the couch, his joints protesting the movement. The wound on his cheek from when Audrey bit him, a raised line of pale tissue that pulsed with a faint phantom ache, the wound from the fight with Malachite had already healed, yet this scar refused like some sort of lingering ghost.
[I never thought about pain much, have I?]
He knocked.
Three soft taps.
A long pause. Then, muffled through the door: "C-come in."
The door wasn't locked. Hoshimi pushed it open slowly, giving her time to prepare, to arrange herself however she needed to feel safe. The room beyond was dim, the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun. A single lamp glowed on the desk, casting a warm pool of light over an open book and a cold cup of tea.
Kira sat on her bed, legs crossed, a heavy blanket pulled up to her waist despite the warmth of the room. Her dirty brown hair was slightly disheveled, and her blue eyes, those clouded lapis eyes that always seemed to hold too much, were fixed on him with an expression that mixed fear and relief in equal measure.
Her room could only be described as a mess, trash scattered on the edge of the bed, her desk was littered with sketches and drawings.
"Hoshimi," she breathed. "What is it?"
He stepped inside, letting the door close behind him. The room smelled like her, paper and something floral, maybe the cheap lotion she used when her skin got too dry from nervous picking. A stack of books sat on her nightstand, their spines cracked from repeated reading.
"Am I interrupting something?" he asked, nodding toward the book on her desk.
Kira glanced at it, then back at him. "Just... reading. Trying to keep my mind busy." A pause. Her fingers grabbed onto her pillow tight. "It's hard. After everything. My brain keeps... spinning."
Hoshimi crossed the room and settled into the desk chair, turning it to face her. The book on the desk caught his eye, a worn paperback with a black cover, the title embossed in faded silver. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.
"You read Camus?" he asked.
Kira's face flushed slightly. "A little. I mean, I try to. It really is a tough read, even for me. But..." She trailed off, her fingers picking at a loose thread on her blanket. "It makes me feel less alone. Knowing someone else thought about these things. About whether life is worth living when everything just…hurts."
Hoshimi picked up the book, leafing through pages marked with small, folded corners. Passages underlined in pencil, so faint he almost missed them. Notes in the margins in tiny, cramped handwriting.
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."
Hoshimi paused.
"Sometimes life gets rather hard, doesn't it? What do you think? Your opinion about suicide?"
"I-I think…it's an escape, a form of freedom from the world. Sometimes I feel like the entire world is out to get me, and I just feel tired of everything, like I just want to lay down and wait for my demise."
He looked up at her. Kira was watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read.
"You've marked this up quite a bit," he said.
Kira's fingers tightened on the blanket. "I know it's weird. Reading philosophy when I can barely get out of bed most days. But..." She swallowed.
Hoshimi's eyes scanned the book. "Camus says we have to imagine Sisyphus happy. Even though he's pushing that boulder up the hill forever, knowing it will always roll back down. He says the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart."
A long pause.
"Do you really believe that?"
Kira looked down at her hands, at the faint scars visible on her wrists where the sleeves of her sweater had ridden up.
"I want to, but I can't seem to," she whispered. "I want to believe that the struggle means something. But surviving everyday gets me nothing, just one more day to keep watching others die in front of me until my eventual death." She looked up, meeting his eyes with an intensity that surprised him. "Most days I just feel... tired and scared of the world around me."
The silence stretched between them.
[Sometimes I wonder as well, why I try so hard to survive. Just to get used again]
"I understand it," he said quietly.
Kira's expression softened. "That's why you're here, isn't it? To ask me about the spy?"
Direct.
"Yes."
She nodded slowly, as if she'd been expecting this. Her fingers stopped their compulsive picking, folding together in her lap with visible effort.
"I'm not the spy," she said. Her voice was steady, steadier than he'd ever heard it. "I know you have to ask. I know you have to suspect everyone. But I'm not. I couldn't-" She stopped, swallowed. "I couldn't hurt people like that. Not anymore."
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
[She's not a weapon, not like me at least. Not desensitized to death, but there's no way that I can truly be certain]
Hoshimi studied her face.
The way her eyes flickered when she was anxious, the way her jaw tightened when she was holding something back.
"KIra, about the invasion."
Kira's hands clenched in her lap. "I was asleep. In the Zenith. Like everyone else." A pause. "When I woke up, you were already there. You'd already... dealt with things." Her voice cracked slightly on the last words.
"You were one of the last to wake."
"I know." She looked down at her hands. "I'm sorry. I know I'm useless. If I'd woken earlier, maybe I could have-"
"Stop."
She looked up, startled.
"When you woke up," he said carefully, "did you notice anything strange? Anything about the others that seemed... off?"
Kira's brow furrowed. For a long moment, she was silent, thinking. Then her eyes widened slightly.
"Sarah," she said. "When she came back. She seemed... different. Stronger, maybe? I don't know how to explain it." She paused, struggling for words. "I don't know what's up with her, I mean.."
Hoshimi's eyes narrowed.
"What about Dominic?"
Kira's expression shifted, uncertainty replacing the earlier intensity. "He's been... strange. For a while now. Since the Mirlo estate, maybe. He spaces out sometimes. Stares at nothing. And his eyes-" She stopped, hesitant.
"His eyes?"
"There's something off. Just for a second, like someone else is watching." She hugged herself tighter. "I thought it was just me. Seeing things. I see things sometimes that aren't there."
"You're not seeing things, the eyes are the window to the soul after all."
Kira looked at him sharply. "You've noticed it too?"
Hoshimi didn't answer directly. Instead, he picked up the Camus book again, flipping to another marked passage.
"A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten, the means are taken for the end." He repeated the words.
Kira leaned forward slightly, curiosity overcoming her anxiety. "You've read it?"
"Some. My stepmother had a lot of books. I read what was available."
"What did you think?"
Hoshimi considered the question longer than it deserved. "I don't agree with Camus."
Kira's eyebrows rose. "About what?"
"He says the only way to deal with an absurd world is to embrace the absurdity. To live without appeal." Hoshimi closed the book, running his thumb along its worn spine. "But that assumes the world is actually absurd. What I believe is that there is a cause and reason for everything, like how energy cannot be created out of thin air, what if there truly is meaning everywhere? But we're just too small to see it?"
"That's..." Kira trailed off, processing. "Are you religious? I mean you didn't seem the type to be."
"Really? Do I come off that way?" Hoshimi met her eyes. "That's not what I'm trying to say. Religion says meaning comes from outside. From the Primordials or fate or cosmic justice. I'm not saying that. I'm saying meaning might be real, but inaccessible. Like a book in a language we can't read."
Kira was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was soft, wondering.
"I've never thought of it like that. I always thought... if there's no meaning, then nothing matters. But if there is meaning and we just can't reach it..." She shook her head slowly. "That's almost worse, isn't it? Being so close to something and never being able to touch it."
"Maybe." Hoshimi set the book back on the desk.