#i am now also imagining kaito having a nightmare along these lines during my actual version of the story

[elyvorg]

Imagine a scenerio where Shuichi attacked by a killer who still has their weapon then Kaito shows up, but doesn’t notice Shuichi. Shuichi could’nt scream or refused to in order for his friend to not get killed and hopes the killer doesn’t kill him. Thankfully Kaito left, but sadly he’s left in the mercy of the killer. Imagine Kaito’s realization that Shuichi was dying under his nose the whole time and talking to his soon to be killer.

[For context: this is the AU anon is presumably thinking of in which this situation would even be able to happen. Go check that out too if you haven’t already.]

I’m not entirely sure whether or not you’re implying Shuichi ultimately ends up getting killed here… but for now let’s assume you are.

Obviously, any situation in which Shuichi was killed, no matter how it happened, would absolutely destroy Kaito. Not only with grief, but also with the guilt of feeling like he failed his sidekick and should have been better at protecting him, regardless of whether it was even remotely possible for him to have prevented it in any way. But, yes, a particular situation like this in which Kaito realised that he absolutely could have saved Shuichi and simply failed to do so would be even worse. If only he’d noticed, been more observant.

(But being observant and noticing things in that way was always what Shuichi was good at, not him, wasn’t it? Shuichi would have been able to save him if the roles had been reversed.)

It’s much more interesting to think that Shuichi refused to call out to Kaito rather than that he just physically couldn’t, so let’s go with that. That’d be some incredible courage he’d have shown in the face of death, to stay calm enough to realise that the assassin will very much kill Kaito too if he interferes, and that, despite how much Shuichi’s always looked up to him, Kaito will realistically barely stand a chance against a trained assassin. So Shuichi decided it wasn’t worth the risk and chose to give up his own tiny chance of getting out of this alive just to be sure Kaito would be safe. God, that would also destroy Kaito if he found out - not only that Shuichi sacrificed himself for Kaito (it’s not meant to happen that way around! Kaito’s meant to be the hero who makes that kind of sacrifice! Didn’t Shuichi know that?), but also that, in his final moments… Shuichi didn’t even believe in Kaito and didn’t think he could have saved him at all. Gah.

(If it’d been Maki there instead of Kaito, Shuichi would have believed she could save him and called out to her for help, wouldn’t he? But not Kaito. He couldn’t notice things like Shuichi, and he couldn’t fight like Maki; he was utterly useless when it mattered most. And apparently, Shuichi knew that all along.)

In short, thank you for allowing me to imagine Kaito’s hero issues causing him to absolutely tear himself apart with undeserved guilt and self-loathing on top of the grief he’d already be feeling, when really none of this should reasonably be blamed on him at all.

If Shuichi had somehow managed to escape this situation with his life, then… well, Kaito would thank Shuichi for trying to protect him, but also tell him that he shouldn’t have, because Kaito is happy to risk his life for his sidekick and would totally have stopped that assassin! But also, hey, since things turned out all right in the end, they should just be grateful for that; there’s no point dwelling on what might have happened if Shuichi hadn’t been able to miraculously escape by himself, because he did get out alive and that’s that. (So no need whatsoever for Kaito to think about the fact that he didn’t notice Shuichi in deadly peril, or that Shuichi apparently didn’t even believe Kaito could have saved him; this definitely isn’t going to keep eating away at him every time he remembers that this happened.)