Volume 3 – Chapter 3: The Weight of Being Human

 Sometimes introspective and sometimes almost wicked, this was the kind of silence that reminded you to listen to your own heartbeat. Kaito stared blankly out the window while a tiny flickering candle shone feebly on the ground next to him. It bathed him in uncertain light, and his shadow wavered against the wall behind him, uncertain in other words. 

His diary had been laying on his lap for some time, now; he had not written in it for hours. The pen lay between his fingers, untouched, as if it were an uncensored thought. If you'd last long enough, you ought to understand the Why. With endurance comes clarity, but they were still here, breathing—and the Why felt farther than ever. He discerned soft footsteps behind him: Rika appearing like a ghost under one of those thin, scrap-instructed blankets they had added to their haul. Her hair was damp because, a while ago, she had hurriedly rinsed it off in lukewarm rainwater. Not a word. 

She sat beside Kaito and stared into the darkness beyond the cracked window. After a few moments, silence reigned. Then Rika said softly, "Do you think people are supposed to survive no matter what?" Kaito had ceased to be astonished. Not anymore. These were just the kind of heavy, naked, uncomfortable sorts of questions they had been living along with now. He inhaled deeply.

 "I think...we're built to try. It's instinct. But that doesn't mean we're meant to." Nodding her head, she began to shift her attention to the art flickering candle flame.

 "Sometimes I wonder if this is really living, or just...not dying." Now, it seemed as though he were looking down at her, tired, and weighed by the heavy sleepiness of his soft eyes. "Maybe right now the two would be the same." 

 "Maybe," she said softly. "But it doesn't seem like enough." Her eyes fell on the diary on her lap.

 "This is what keeps me awake at night. It can be considered a legacy from me to the uncertain future of Humanity. The old times, those crowded and beautiful days are now a thing of the past in this diary. We still fight on. But why? We marry, we rebuild, we start planning for a world that seems almost oblivious to what it is we want to protect. She snuggled up to him with the whispered words, "Do you?" 

Kaito held still; the dust of her question settled around him. Of what did he understand that they were trying to safeguard? Their love? Their humanity? Something nebulous whose fate seemed to be unlikely to cause anything to make sense anymore? "Well, what frightens me most is the fear that this may just be who we are now," he said. 

"Animals obsessed with control, with survival—ever since the meaning of this has been lost." "Do you regret saying yes to this second time?" Rika asked. "No," he said. "I just wish I knew how to make it worth something." Drawing near to him, she closed the journal with tenderness. "Then stop trying to make it mean something to the world. Make it mean something to you first."

 This was quiet yet loud, sharp as niether reproach nor acquittal. Just plain, bitter truth. That nasty kind that cuts deep but needs to be swallowed whole. Kaito let the silence settle back in. But it wasn't like last time. This absence was sound-neither void of words nor script. Drawing near, she gently closed her journal. "Then stop trying to make it mean something to the world. Make it mean something to you first." 

 It was quiet yet loud, containing sharpness that fell neither into reproach nor acquittal. Just tiresome, bitter truth: the kind that digs deep but must be swallowed whole, without question. Kaito welcomed the quiet that settled back in. But this time it was unlike last time. This absence had its own sound: one neither filled with mere utterances nor signs. There was a long distance barking of a dog, then silence. With her knees drawn to her chin, Rika gazed at stars peeping through the clouds. "Do you remember what you told me right after we came back?

 Something along the lines that some things remain because they are remembered?" Kaito nodded. "Yeah." "I'm continually pondering that. Not everything can be preserved, not everyone. But memories... stories... perhaps they are the only true form of immortality we possess." "You want us to be remembered?" "I want us to remember ourselves-before we lose who we are striving to survive against what we are becoming." 

 There it was again: the quiet weight of truth. And it fell weightier than any storm or threat outside. He touched her hand. "Then let us remember, together. Not all the good stuff. All of it. The fear, the doubt, the questions that won't ever have answers." She smiled, faintly. "Even the silence?" "Especially the silence," he whispered.

 Because in the end, silence had become their language. The in-between spaces where everything unspoken waited to be understood. And maybe, just maybe, understanding didn't come from explaining-but from sitting with it long enough not to run. Again, the flickering of a candle leaned to the darkness. And finally, after days, Kaito picked his pen again.

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 A new journal entry began: "July 18th- It is strange how the mind becomes accustomed to absence. How quickly you learn to live without the very things once deemed essential. Music. Noise. Crowds. Laughter. But silence? That stays. And in it, we find what we are." 

 He stopped as if waiting for the ink to catch up with his thoughts, and then scrawled more lines: "If we were to disappear tomorrow, we may say that we had tried to remember it-not the version that made sense to others but the one that trembled in the dark, reached for another hand, and didn't let go." 

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 He had finished just as Rika closed her eyes. She lay curled beside him, something fragile, like a promise whispered in a world too loud to hear it. Kaito watched until the candle burnt itself out. It didn't need another flame. Somehow, the dark did not feel empty anymore.