Singers Sing Sad Songs When They're Sad

[Kermit]

((Greg continued from the banks of the ohio))

Slowly, room by room, corner by corner, Greg went and checked every room of the house for... someone. Shu's corpse, Shu hiding from whoever killed Kiera, or whoever killed Kiera. Those three. At one point, while he was looking under a bed, a rat popped out from the wall and scurried at him, and he got spooked so bad he nearly reflexively murdered it with his machine gun before recognizing it was just a rat. In all, searching the whole house took him at least an hour.

Kiera was still sitting in a chair in the living room, with a ring cut into the circumference of her neck.

Shu was gone.

Greg found no murderers hiding in any closets.

It was completely dark outside now.

Greg huddled down on the ground in the corner of a top-floor bedroom with his gun.

---

Greg didn't know what to do. He definitely wasn't going to sleep. He was just going to... going to wait here, in this corner, until the sun came up. He knew it wasn't safe in this house anymore. Even though he'd looked everywhere and found nobody, maybe he wasn't alone in here. Maybe there was somebody who was better at hiding than he was at looking. He couldn't be sure. There had to be footprints in the snow outside, and they'd help him figure out what had happened while he was gone -- or at least whether Kiera had been killed by someone new who had arrived at the house or if she'd been killed by Shu, and whether Shu or the killer were still around -- but he would need to go outside at night with his flashlight on to do that, and that wasn't something that... felt safe at the moment. If the killer was here, they had to know he was also here, given how much noise he'd been making before he'd realized there was anything wrong. So he didn't want to let them know his specific location, in case they wanted to kill him (which they probably did want, since they killed Kiera). And he couldn't go searching for a new place to stay, because if he couldn't find anywhere he'd freeze to death overnight. He was stuck here.

Something skittered around downstairs.

Greg's ears pricked up.

It was just the rat, he told himself.

---

Greg wasn't sure whether this feeling was shock or if it was grief. Greg wasn't sure what grief felt like. He wasn't sure if he knew Kiera well enough to feel grief instead of shock. It was like when the terrorists had killed Mr. Perez and that nice teacher who had the model train collection.

Kiera had been kind to Greg despite having no obligation to, despite the situation they were in, so that told him enough to figure out what kind of person she was.

She deserved better than dying like this.

Most people did.

---

Kiera had been so alive, and now she was dead. Greg had been gone for five minutes and in that five minutes someone killed her.

He hoped Shu hadn't done it. He really really hoped Shu hadn't done it. He didn't know the specifics of Shu and Kiera's relationship or if they were just friends or if they were dating etc., but it... hadn't seemed - at the time - it hadn't seemed like it would be dangerous to leave the two together. To Greg, they'd seemed like they... trusted each other, at least. Kiera had definitely at least trusted Shu, since she was the one who asked Greg to step out. But maybe that was wrong. Or maybe Greg shouldn't have left. Maybe nothing bad would have happened if he'd stayed.

Or maybe not.

It was tough to not dwell on it.

---

Greg had always tended to avoid introspection, as a rule. Asking yourself questions that you couldn't actually answer had always seemed to him like it was something that couldn't lead to happy places.

A lot of the songs he listened to were actually really sad. They were about loneliness and regret and longing and dying alone. He just didn't actually focus on the lyrics enough while listening to really fit them together and process any melancholy.

All of Greg's friends were really sad. Gerard was gay and couldn't come out to his parents, Sadie's parents couldn't even speak to each other without getting into an argument and yet they lived in the same house together, and Heidi was.... well, there was a lot going on with Heidi. But Greg was always just Greg. Sometimes he felt guilty about that.

---

What did he believe in?

He believed that philosophy said more about the philosopher than it did the universe.

That's alright. But what did he believe in?

He believed in... being nice. He believed in not hurting people, he guessed.

Okay. But what did he believe happened to people after they died? Did he believe in something?

He wasn't sure. He'd never needed to, before now. Nothing had ever pushed him into that.

---

It was a long night.

---

The sun hadn't come up yet.

The speakers blared.

Eleven people were dead.

Eulogizing about people you didn't know was a difficult thing.

Shu had garroted Kiera.

Greg covered her with a duvet, packed his bags, and walked out into the morning dark.

((He couldn't stand being in this house anymore.))