The half turn of her body and the momentum of the heavy stereo carried it straight into the left side of Kyouji’s head, the drunken smile plastered across his face once again. She barely even felt or heard the impact. But she did hear the sickening thud of Kyouji’s head slamming backward against the corner frame of her bed.
Battered on both sides of his head within the span of half a second, the boy groaned and flopped forward. His grip loosened and the syringe started to slip out.
She didn’t know if the device was made for administering multiple doses in succession, but she clawed it out of Kyouji’s hand regardless. Its owner’s eyes were rolled back into his head and he kept groaning, but he wasn’t likely to move anytime soon.
Shino thought about getting a belt or something to tie up his hands, then remembered that there was something more important first. She turned and shrieked Kirito’s name, then crouched over his fallen form.
There was a softness to the boy’s face that she thought she recognized from his online character. He gazed up at her with barely-parted eyes and grunted, “He got me…I didn’t realize…that was a syringe…”
“Where? Where did it get you?!”
She tossed the syringe aside and tore down the zipper of Kirito’s jacket. Her thoughts were a jumble of half-formed impulses: Call ambulance—emergency care before that—but how to remove the poison? Her fingers trembled.
There was an ominous dark stain right above the heart on his faded blue T-shirt. She didn’t know how strong the piercing power of that syringe was, but it didn’t seem likely that a thin cotton shirt would have stopped it.
“Don’t die…You can’t die like this!” she shrieked, yanking the bottom of his shirt out of his jeans and pulling it upward. The skin of his chest and stomach was white and scrawny, as if someone had carved it down from its proper size. Just to the right of the center, in the very spot where the stain had been—something was stuck to his chest.
“…?!”
She stared at it, confused.
It was a small circle, about an inch across. There was a thin silver disc, surrounded by what looked like a yellow rubber suction cup. A socket-like protrusion emerged from the metal disc, but it wasn’t connected to anything.
The whole surface of the metal was wet; a single drop hung from it. The clear liquid had to be the fatal “succinylcholine” Kyouji had spoken of.
Shino looked around the floor for her tissue box and pulled two out, carefully wiping the liquid away. She leaned in closer to examine the skin around the odd patch to ensure that the high-pressure stream hadn’t broken into his flesh.
No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find any marks on Kirito’s skin. The tip of the syringe must have hit this inch-wide metal disc through his T-shirt and been absorbed by the stiff object. She touched the skin above the patch just to be sure, and felt his pulse racing away healthily.
Shino blinked a few times and looked up at Kirito. His eyes were closed and he was moaning and groaning.
“Um…hey.”
“Ugh…it’s too late…It hurts to breathe…”
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Dammit…now that the moment’s finally here…I don’t have any good final words…”
“What’s this thing stuck to your chest?”
“…Huh?”
Kirito’s eyes opened again, and he glanced down. His eyebrows furrowed and he brought up a hand to trace the metal disc.
“Are you saying…the injection went into this?”
“Uh…I’m pretty sure it’s…an electrode from the heart monitor…”
“H-huh? Why would you have one of those? Do you have a bad heart?”
“No, not at all…It was a safety measure against Death Gun…Oh, I get it. I was in such a rush to get disconnected, I must have pulled the cord out of this one by accident,” he muttered, sighing heavily. “Damn…You really had me going, there.”
“That’s—” Shino started, grabbing him around the neck with both hands and squeezing violently “—what I was going to say! I…I thought you were dead!!”
All of the tension and nerves suddenly drained out of her, and her vision darkened. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs and looked back at the collapsed Kyouji.
“Do you think…he’s okay?” Kirito asked. She reached out and picked up his limp wrist. Fortunately, there was a pulse there, too. She wondered again if they ought to tie him up, but with his eyes closed like that, Kyouji’s face was too innocent looking. She had to turn away. She didn’t want to think about him right now. Her chest was full, not of rage or sadness, but plain emptiness.
For several seconds, she just stared over at the high-pressure needleless syringe—the true “Death Gun,” in a way. Eventually she opened her mouth and said simply, “Thanks…for coming to help me.”
Kirito gave her a familiar one-cheeked smirk and shook his head. “Nah… I didn’t end up doing anything for you in the end…Plus, I’m sorry I was late. Kiku—my employer wasn’t getting the picture fast enough. You aren’t hurt, are you?”
Shino shook her head. Suddenly, she noticed something was flooding out of her eyes. “Ah…what the…”
Her head was as fuzzy and useless as if it were stuffed with cotton, but the tears streaming out of her eyes only picked up momentum, dripping off her face.
Shino closed her mouth, stayed still, and let the tears flow. She knew that if she tried to say anything, she would only start bawling at the top of her lungs. Kirito didn’t move, either.
Eventually, she sensed the howl of distant sirens approaching, but her tears were not going to dry up anytime soon. Secretly, as the big drops fell one after the other, Shino understood that the source of the void that filled her heart was deep, deep loss.