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Ken looks over the room, eyes half lidded and gaze glassy, as he thinks about ending things.
“In a game like this,” He thinks, finger tracing the fresh scars on his arms. “Murder is it’s own suicide.”
This whole game has been a sham, anyways. How many deaths have been accidents? Suicides in their own right? Sasaki never meant to kill. Harada was a victim of circumstance. Okazaki...
He hates Okazaki. But it almost feels wrong to blame her for it all. It’s Ken’s fault, isn’t it? It was his job to keep Kazutoshi safe.
He checks the blueprints again.
“Are you always listening, or do you just tune in when there’s a murder?” He murmurs into the still air. “I don’t know what’d be so interesting about our day to day lives, but- I guess I don’t understand why you’d do the rest of this either.”
He’s developed a depressing habit of talking to himself.
Ken wonders what Kazutoshi would think- and for a moment his heart squeezes so painfully in his chest he feels as though he might join his friend.
Unfortunately, the moment passes.
“I’ve been thinking about my life recently.” He explains, getting up so he can flip through his journal. Checking again and again that he remembers what he needs to. “About Hasegawa Ken.”
He chuckles. “I think he died a long time ago. I think...” His grip tightens, and he watches the paper crinkle through the tears beginning to form in his eyes. “I think he’s still there. In the art room. Maybe we both are.”
He shuts his working eye- using all the muscles in that part of his body to lock it down. He doesn’t want to see anymore. He doesn’t want to be anymore. He’s so... tired.
“I wish I died with you, Kazutoshi. Physically. Because I know I died in that room with you. I know I did. And if you could see me, you’d know it too.”
He wonders what they use these recordings for. Maybe nothing. Maybe he really is talking to nothing- to no one.
He takes a shuddering breath in.
“I hope you can forgive me for this.” He smiles, then. A cracked and broken thing. “I hope you can forgive me.”
He prepares himself for Mai’s final note.