Okay, I thought for sure Midori was dead. I'd call this pointless fake out death, but I guess post-memory loss Butama just didn't have the guts to finish her off, so he just left her there beaten up.
So is this gonna be the same case with Ao? Honestly, I was 100% certain that he was dead, I wasn't going to have hope. Now I'm only 90% certain that Ao's dead. Not very optimistic, but enough that if he is really dead it won't hurt me.
Unlikely, but IF Ao really is alive, I'm going to guess that someone knew they were gonna kill him, so they swapped him with the dead body of someone that looked like him. This ain't copium, I can make peace with Ao's death, I'm just imagining how I would fake his death as the author.
I just want Nezumi to be happy.