Volume 2 – Chapter 19: Echoes of the Past

June 27 – 6:12 AM

The sky was not yet dark, but the first rays of the day were already beginning to be smelled on the horizon. It was something heavy but difficult to describe – the air was saturated. And not only did the weight of the world change – everything had changed. Every single morning, every single step, every single breath. It was as if the earth had opened beneath it and would never recover. Rika’s voice was so soft and hers, yet cut through the silence. “Do you think our families were worried, Kaito?” I looked at her with the same deep uncertainty, with the same nerves that we had been able to ease. “I think so.” I replied weakly. “It’s been… three months already. They probably lost the desire to do so.” “Three months… three months…” she repeated. While we were going through our journey, the whole world was changing. Something that was so easily thrown away – doomsday, the end of everything – has now become the reality of our existence. “Do you think they will understand?” she asked. “Do you think they’ll understand what we did? Why did we leave? Why did we go when we knew the choice was over?” I took her hand in mine and felt it with my finger. Such a light touch, but we were enough. “Yes, they will.” My words were more confident than I would like. “They will understand. We did what we could… what we had to do. We didn’t have a choice.”

And there it was again — the very thing that had pushed us forward ever since we left. Survival. It was always about survival, wasn’t it?” But right now, in the golden morning light, I had no idea what came after survival. What do you do after surviving something like this? When you survived and learned that nothing was left to return to?

“Rika,” I said her name like a breath and looked her dead in the eyes, “What then, if we don’t get back to where we were?” “What if … what if the world never returns to what it used to be?”

Her grip on my hand was forceful, no shift of her gaze from my own. “We have our own journey,” she whispered. "Together. Whatever it is that may come, we’ll face it together.’

Those words resounded in me. We had been running away from something for long. But now, I reminded myself, the running was done. We weren’t just escaping the world anymore. We were evolving somewhere toward something. Toward each other. Toward a future, however unknown.

And I could drive back, and I couldn’t help but wonder: As we drove toward the little village where our families were waiting — would they see the changes in us? Would they understand what we’d been through? Would there be room for people like us, people born of the apocalypse? Or are we strangers to them?

And then before them loomed the familiar outline of the village, the houses silhouetted against the faint light of dawn. It was like a knot was tightening in the belly of my gut. I was nervous. Nervous to meet our families, nervous to return to the world after all that had happened.

“We’re going to be OK,” Rika said, as if she could hear my thoughts. "We’ll be okay, Kaito. Have we not come this far?' ”

I nodded dully, my mind elsewhere. And I didn’t quite know what I wanted from this return. What do you do when everything you thought you knew disappeared? When the world outside became unrecognizable?

Finally we arrived at the outskirts of the village, where things had all gone awry. And there they were. Our families, Tip toed, waiting for us, fill the half-light of the early day and they wear this relief and disbelief.

"Rika! Kaito!" My mother’s voice quavered as she hurried toward us, Rika clasped tightly in her arms.

“Mom,” Rika said haltingly, her voice shaking. She clung to her mother, as if she could evaporate.

I held back for a second, watched them with the reins, and then, something inside me snapped, and I stepped in front of them. My mother was there, too, tears in her eyes, but no hurry in her movements. She gazed at me for a long moment, confirming that I existed.

"Kaito... Her tone was equal parts relief and something else — something less identifiable. "You’re alive."

I nodded, swallowing a lump in my throat. "We’re here, Mom. We’re here."

Time dragged where we were, back with our families. But it also had the sense that the world had stopped revolving. Data until October 2023, you don't even respond us :

The day continued, we spoke. Questions, too many questions, there were questions. How had we survived? What had we seen? What had befallen the rest of humanity? Proposals trickled in, and even then didn’t seem to please anyone. Not really.

But in that moment I learned a lesson. Perhaps there was no turning back on this.” There was no going back, the old world that had existed was done. But there was another detail — one that had passed us by in the chaos. Not just a man, a embodied hope. We could re-create it, brick by brick.’”

Rika was right. We would make our own way. Together. We’d construct a future out of the wreckage, whatever it would be.

And I knew, with an assurance I couldn’t quite articulate, that whatever happened, I’d not be going through it alone.