#i know muu/rei isnt canon but even a misunderstanding about it would be important to him

[good-beanswrites]

Hello! I really really really love your writting, I just got into Milgram and yours is my favourite in the fandom!! I love how much depth and nuance you manage to fit into short stories and your characterization is on point! (Specially for Kazui, but I might be biased since I love him so much)

I'm not sure if you're still taking requests (if you're not, feel free to ignore!), but if you are I wanted to request Tears + Kazui

(I thought about maybe the old man finally having a moment where the mask falls? When keeping up the image he's built gets tiring, how does he deal with it, and is he by himself or is there someone nearby? Then again, just an ideia, have fun and take your time!!!)

Woo welcome to the fandom! And thank you so much omg, that's so kind!! ;--; I really like that concept -- I definitely think he'd only allow himself a break from the masks when he's completely alone, and even then it'd be hard to draw out of him, so I went for an unexpected release and even more unexpected company... (Haruka :3)

Kazui woke from a dream, immediately unable to stop his eyes from brimming with tears. It hadn’t been a nightmare. It hadn’t shown him broken glass, or blood, or screaming. He hadn’t faced another night staring into Hinako’s twisted expression. No, the dream was wonderful. He was happy. He was in love. He was just… himself. As he rolled over in his sheets, he couldn’t tell if it was the longing that made him cry, or the guilt of longing so deeply for something like that.

It was easier, there in the dark. He didn’t have to keep his cheeks raised in a pleasant look. He didn’t have to hold his chin high. He could hug his arms around himself, not worry about all those eyes on him, and cry for the life he would never have.

He’d kept the thoughts at bay for so long, there was something equally painful and relieving about facing them head-on. The more his body shook with sobs, the better he felt about the weight he’d been carrying on his shoulders. The more he thought about who he was, the worse he felt about being doomed in this life. As always, he was split in two.

“K-Kazui?” 

His stomach clenched in both shock and shame. He kept his face away from the cell bars. He coughed, though it did little to hide the thickness in his voice when he spoke. “Haruka? What are you doing out there?”

“Ah, um! I’m sorry! I was just getting s-some water.”

Kazui desperately scrambled for any kind of excuse to explain the sorry state he was in. Haruka continued, though. 

“It’s- it’s okay if you’re crying.”

His throat squeezed. How pathetic he must be, for a kid like Haruka to try and comfort him.

“No, no. I’m alright.”

“I cry in my cell all the time. And Muu comes in so we can talk. I feel m-much better after that.” His feet shuffled outside. “Do you… uh… do you want to talk? I’m not as smart as Muu, b-but it might help.”

Kazui kept his pained smile hidden. It was an incredibly kind gesture, to be sure, but the boy would never understand. He could open up about everything that had happened in the past forty years, and there was no way Haruka would understand a bit of it.

It was easy to dodge the question. When under the spotlight, he’d found it was helpful to place the attention on someone else. “What do you talk to Muu about?”

“Uh! Well.” There was more shuffling, and Kazui realized he was coming to sit right next to the cell. He hadn’t meant it as an invitation to stay... 

He rolled onto his back, hoping his face was still obscured in the shadows of the panopticon.

“I usually cry because… I’m not like everyone else.” Haruka said. “I don’t-don’t know why. I don’t know why everyone else can be normal and I j-just can’t. I try so hard. I try so hard. If I could be like them, m-maybe my mom would’ve loved me. M-maybe she wouldn’t think I was broken all the time. M-maybe,” he got quiet, “no one would have died.”

Kazui stared up at the ceiling. A few more tears slipped down his face. It looked like an old man like him could still be wrong, now and then. “And… what does Muu tell you, to comfort you?”

“Oh, she tells me lots of nice things. Mostly that she loves me very much.” Kazui could hear the smile in his voice. “And she also says that… that it wasn’t my fault. That there’s nothing wrong with being me. That we can’t be anyone d-different, even if we want to more than anything in the whole wide world. She says, she says people were mean to her too, just because of who she was.”

“Yeah?” The younger prisoners had avoided someone as intimidating as him, so he never heard much about Muu’s reason for being here. 

“Mhm. She said they would say all these awful things, b-because there was this one girl in her class, and… and, well… things were…” Haruka stopped. “Ah! I didn’t mean to make you cry again! I’m s-so sorry…”

Kazui sucked in a shaking breath. “No, I’m sorry you have to hear all this from me. It’s good, though. It’s really good.” 

“O-oh…?”

“I just realized, I’m a lot like that too.” 

Kazui didn’t know what possessed him to continue. He’d been hiding things for so long, he thought he’d be better at keeping it in. It must have been something about the darkness of the hour, and Haruka’s complete innocence, and the dream that still lingered around heart. 

“When I was her age, there was someone in my class like that. He was… well, I’m sure you know. My parents also said I was in need of fixing. I’m sorry you had to go through that too.”

Haruka let out a small sound of acknowledgement.

“You should head to bed, now. It’s late.”

“R-right. Sorry, again!”

“Don’t be. I think I needed this.”

Once Haruka’s footsteps had rounded the panopticon, Kazui brought his arm up to cover his eyes. He knew he had plenty of blood on his hands for what he’d done. This was his fault. But regarding who he was…

A sound rocked through his chest, something between a sob and a laugh. It was nice to think there was nothing wrong with that, after all.