2025-11-12: Nothing is Without Poison
- Cutscene: Nothing is Without Poison
- Cast: Koh Katsuhiro
- Where: SEES Dorm, Koh's room
- OOC Date: 2025-11-12
- IC Date: Wed, Aug 08 2012
- Summary: Koh has a chat with an old friend about meeting his maker.
"How are you doing?" The voice on the other side of the line was clipped and professional.
Awful. Terrible. It feels like someone's putting a hammer through my skull because my organs are turning into goo.
"Fine. Good, I mean. How are you, Morikawa-san?" Koh presses two fingers to his temple, attempting to quell the stabbing pain.
"You don't sound fine." Even over the phone you could tell she was a no-nonsense scientist. The kind of person that liked people more when they were numbers on a spreadsheet.
He snorts, flopping from his hunched position onto the bed into a full on sprawl. He was dying, and now he's dead. "Just a headache."
"You're taking your medicine?" Miyoko Morikawa waited until he made an agreeable sound before she continued. "And you're settling in? No trouble?"
"No trouble."
"You meet any girls?"
This was a trap. She was just asking the same question he answered. "Not really." Koh replied.
"Don't get beat up again." There was something there. Amusement, maybe.
A choked laugh escaped from Koh, unbidden. "I didn't get beat up. It was just a black eye–"
He could hear what must have been a chuckle on the other end of the line. Then, quiet. A small stretch, but not uncomfortable. The line was still open. He felt…better. Or just distracted enough.
"We're going on a trip. Tomorrow." He broke the silence. He hadn't been planning to let that out, but it just came. Who else could he talk to? "To Yakushima."
"Any reason?"
"Takeharu Kirijo will be there."
Koh didn't think he'd ever meet the man face to face. Not really. He'd seen Mitsuru Kirijo in the SEES dorm, directing and organizing from an icy distance, and that had been easier to swallow. It was easy to tell himself that she had nothing to do with it. The sins of the father and all that. He knew that one pretty well.
It was his father that carried the sin, after all. But that didn't always make it easier.
There were dozens of times he'd been lying alone in a sterile hospital room–completely alone in an hour that didn't exist–that he thought about Kirijo. The conglomerate, but also the man. He'd thought about how righteous it would feel to grab every white coated bastard who made this happen and let Zagreous breathe toxic down their throats until their eyes bulged out of their heads and their lips turned cold and clammy as the blood stopped in their veins.
"...You have the right to be angry." Morikawa spoke again. Koh must have gone quiet. Or maybe he'd just tuned her out.
He pushed back the intrusive thoughts, and the ones after that said he should tell her to shut up. That she wasn't his mom, that she was just saying that to make herself feel better. Because...it didn't matter.
"It's." Koh let out a breath. "It is how it is."
"You sure?" There was a hint of concern there.
"Yeah." Koh's eyes flickered toward the little clock next to his nightstand. The one next to the stack of boxes he'd been putting off unpacking for the past month. 11:47. "I should rest. And…"
"It's almost time. Right. Call if you need me." She waited until he agreed before she hung up.
Koh let the phone fall from his fingers and to the floor. He stared up at the ceiling and waited for the familiar shift in the air and clench of his stomach.
Kirijo, Morikawa, his own father. None of them ever gave Koh a choice but to be what he is. And some things can't be changed.
But he can at least choose not to poison the time he has left. And Yakushima sounds nice.