To Wait For You- Komaeda Nagito X Reader

Chapter 3: The 'Hope' that becomes You

A silence ensued, and the pair didn't know what to do.

"Ah... It's raining."

The girl muttered, hesitantly, almost shakily as she averted her gaze from her hands to the window beside her, wet with streaks of liquid that the clouds refused to carry. The meaningless burden they couldn't be bothered to hold.

Or perhaps; were they tears? Signs that even entities as divine as heaven, as vast as the sky, will break its elegant facade, and break into a magnificent display of the dark and the grey? An indication that sorrow and pain are as real as everything else, an entity far so great, an entity so universal, that not only the mere human race are exposed to and left to drown in, but was also inescapable, even to the sky the over sees all?

The boy simply followed her gaze, and nodded. The lack of reaction from the girl had him reminded that she couldn't see him, and thus, he sighed. "Yeah..."

The silence was uncomfortable- uneasy, tense and strained, the 'pitter-patters of the rain that thudded the window in an inconsistent sequence, and occasional distant talking of the people outside the room, the only sounds he could hear.

Fragments of thought, splinters of words, and droplets of silence spun into a kaleidoscopic jumble, as the silence stretched thinner and thinner, like a balloon blown big, until the temptation to rupture it was too great to resist.

"Hey..." [Name] started hesitantly.

"Yeah?" Komaeda replied, mentally grateful for the silence being broken, it made him uncharacteristically uneasy, nervous.

"How come... I mean, why can't I see you?" The female continued uncertainly, not wanting to overstep her boundaries as she turned her focus to the ceiling that filled her vision in plain white.

The male glanced at her and held his gaze. He looked at her quietly, contemplating on how he should phrase the answer to her question.

In the silence that ensued again, though she should be used to it, the girl panicked internally, about to stammer and make an utter embarrassment of herself while apologising- but she didn't get to.

"I wonder why?"

His silent, modulated voiced, adorned with a hint of a smile, shattered the silence of her soundless world, and she noted how, although the voice was disembodied, it sounded so real, so close, and although obviously impossible, she felt like it was so physical, she could almost feel it.

She almost smiled.

She couldn't indulge in the excitement of hearing again as she registered the longingness, loneliness and bitter acceptance lanced between his words. Suddenly, he seemed like someone who had been strong for too long, and suddenly, he seemed so fragile, like he could break with a careless touch.

"One day, I was there, and then the next, someone else was. And suddenly, I was forgotten, invisible, untouchable, and until today, unhear-able."

He glanced at her face, and a ghost of a smile framed his lips and he couldn't help the soft, boyish, laugh bubbled from his throat at the expression she wore.

Immediately, she turned her head at his laughter with widened eyes.

"Is that pity?" He asked, still laughing slightly.

She blinked, before frowning.

"No. Of course not..."

She couldn't pity him, he didn't do anything worthy of pity.

If anything, his ability to move on after everything was worthy of all the praise this world has to offer. All it ever had and all it ever will have.

~*~
"Ah! Right, and so-"

Nineteen days had passed.

And in those nineteen days, Komaeda had found himself constantly with the female. He would like to say that it was the obvious thing to do when she was the only one who could hear him, and that it was the only reason why he was always with her. But although the first bit was true, and the latter was for a while, he had to admit that he had gotten attached to [Name], as a person, as a whole, more than he should have.

Being with her made him forget the 'what if's and 'what-could-have-been's that occupied his thoughts and gave him no rest only until the day he had met her. Before he had noticed it, they had gradually dispersed into nothingness as he spent more time with her.

Instead of the self-loathing and wishing how he would have liked it better if his painful existence - no, conscious - would hurry and end already, he found himself wishing that he could physically exist and be there for [Name]. He would find himself thinking about how nice it would be if he was physically there for her, instead of being a mere voice, silent to the rest of the world.

In her, he had found reason; meaning. In her, he had found a place where he could be - who he should be. In her, he had found somewhere, though not physical, where he was free to smile, to laugh, without the constant nagging of his conscience that he had no right to be happy.

For the first time -

He had found 'home'-

-A home for a hope so bright, it enveloped him; everything else, and all the in betweens.

~*~