All That Bloodshed

Chapter 10: my knuckles were bruised like violets

Ryouhei didn't want to go to therapy.

While it had been nice to know that he wasn't the only one who remembered experiencing the Borderlands and also see all of his people in one place, it hadn't really been worth the intense anxiety involved in actually being there. There was something about the atmosphere that had just... made him share more than he'd planned to. In the aftermath, he couldn't help but feel incredibly uncomfortable. He hadn't meant to be so forthcoming. He hadn't known that there would be others who'd recognize him.

It seemed foolish to have assumed so, but when he heard how many survivors were left...

He'd seen the way the King of Spades had torn through the remaining Beach survivors who'd made it out alive from the militants' slaughter. He hadn't exactly had high hopes for anyone's survival. He'd been very shocked to see Chishiya approaching him back at Shibuya Crossing. He'd worried that the older man had been taken down when they'd gotten separated. No amount of intelligence could save someone from a bullet after all. It could have just been bad luck. He'd worried about Kuina and Ann too. Ann was capable, but her specialty was diamond games all the same. Kuina was committed to wearing a bikini top and jeans. Ryouhei didn't want to judge, but that couldn't be safe. He'd gotten fairly scraped up and he was typically wearing at least one or two layers. He can't imagine the shit Kuina found herself in considering her main method of defence was martial arts.

No matter how good she was, all it would take was some explosion or being thrown around on concrete to result in some less than stellar injuries. He'd been... worried when she'd broken away from him and Usagi. Part of him had wanted to go with her to try and find Chishiya and Ann, but they needed to clear as many games as they could. Sadly, it was a better tactic for them to split up, especially when there were all too many games that meant that only some of the players survived. They had an overall better survival rate split up even if it made his stomach sink.

The fact that Usagi, Chishiya, Kuina, Ann, Aguni and Heiya had survived was a miracle. Yes, he'd lost so many people , but he still had some, and that was better than he could have hoped for. Not everyone could survive.

But having his failures shoved in his face by veritable strangers? He hadn't been prepared for it. He hadn't been prepared to see Niragi. He just... hadn't been ready. But life wouldn't wait until he was so he had to keep pushing even when he wanted nothing more than to just lay curled up on a bed all day. Technically, he now had time to be depressed, but all the same, he was supposed to be trying. So he couldn't.

That meant putting up with therapy.

At first, he'd thought it would only be group. It was a thinly veiled excuse for the hospital to gather more information about their 'collective delusion' at best, so he hadn't really been anticipating that the hospital would approach him about individual therapy. He didn't want to ask if the others had been approached in case the only reason that he had been 'gently' encouraged to was because of his numerous breakdowns.

Either way, he didn't want to risk the hospital finding some reason to keep him, so he agreed. He wasn't above using this to find out more information either. He still had people to protect and he would do his part to the best of his ability.

This all somehow led to him finding himself sitting across from Dr. Shimada in a small white room. He was tense, unable to completely separate Mira's illusions from this experience. Part of his brain believed that they were one and the same and that made him scared . He hated that the door was behind him. It felt wrong to have his back so exposed, but if he said anything, then surely Shimada would use it against him. At the very least, he'd tell him to deal with it as exposure therapy or something.