Archive of Our Own ^beta

"What would you do if you knew the world would potentially end in a month?"

The question caught Kenji off guard. Arisato hadn't spoken since he arrived at his house, and while that wasn't entirely unusual; something about his best friend felt strange today, but he couldn’t tell what it was yet.

Kenji paused the game he'd been playing and glanced next to him. Arisato stared at the TV with tired eyes, but it was obvious that he wasn’t paying any attention to what was happening to the screen. ‘ If the world ended in a month, huh… ’ It was a loaded question for sure, and while it wasn’t entirely out of character for Arisato to ask or say something morbid…

“What… do you mean?”

Arisato shrugged after a moment of silence, “it’s only hypothetical…” he mumbled, eyes not moving to look at Kenji. Something about his best friend was strange today, but Kenji made no move to call him out.

A few things came to mind when he thought about it seriously. He’d probably spend more time with his sister than he did normally (for as much as she bothered him, he did care about her), he’d been meaning to catch up on a few of his favourite shows, and someone had beaten his score on one of the arcade games; ‘ I should probably see how Rio’s been doing, huh… ’

“Um, doing the things I like doing I guess? Spend time with people I like…” Kenji finally replied, then chuckled, “I’d take you eating Ramen with me at least once a week!” They hadn’t hung out like this in a while, with Arisato frequently being busy with… whatever he was doing, Kenji wasn’t entirely sure what it was, to be honest.

He missed spending time with Arisato, he missed him . The times he spent with Arisato were the world to him, even if Arisato himself didn’t feel the same. He’d never say that out loud though, Kenji knew what these feelings were, he’d felt them for a long time now and he was frankly still too afraid to properly unpack it all.

He supposed if the world really was ending in a month, he’d do it. He’d tell Arisato how he truly felt, how Kenji saw him, how being with him was when he was the happiest, how grateful he was to have met him, how he was-

…

Kenji stopped himself, ‘ Calm down, Kenji. ’ The world wasn’t going to end, the world was fine. Everything was fine, he was fine, and Arisato was fine. The world ending was only hypothetical, it wasn’t real.

He wasn’t going to think about it anymore, he decided, picking up the controller and unpausing the game he’d been playing. The world was right next to him and alive, and that was all Kenji cared about at that moment.