Volume 3 – Chapter 18: The Quiet Before the Storm

[August 19 - 42 Days Left]

The subsequent days were like a breath held for too long, the silence thickening with every heartbeat. Kaito and Rika seldom spoke, while their shared conviction weighed heavily on them. Day after day, they lived not for victory but for one another and the fleeting moments they had together.

Outside, the world moved rather slowly as it began to fall into its impending doom, with cities ablaze, governments toppling, and civilization beginning to unravel around its seams. But out there, in what seemed like the gentle eye of one corner of that raging storm, Kaito and Rika embraced their shared spirits and memories of silence before the next storm.

Kaito had started thinking often about Rika’s advice—to live in the present. He was beginning to get a deeper insight into it, but this understanding was not making the future seem any less daunting. The fight was still there, always visible on the horizon. As if this moment wasn't already dramatic with their sheer will to survive, now it fell quiet before it.

That evening was just like any other; the last rays of sunlight drained behind the horizon. Kaito sat by the window staring at nothing again. Rika joined him, sitting silently beside him. There was no need for words between the two of them. They had begun to be almost like two sides of one coin; each was being pulled by the force of tomorrow but was also beginning to feel that the meaning of their lives was being written in these moments of togetherness in silence.

"I once thought," Kaito said, his voice barely a whisper, "that life was about struggle towards something bigger than oneself. But now I wonder if it is perhaps about these small moments. Regarding the people we fight for, the people we love."

He held his hand and squeezed it a little tighter. "Maybe it is both," she said. "Maybe it is about fighting for larger things, but also knowing that to take, for the other's sake, for yourself really has to be equally important. We have to embrace that even through all this chaos."

Kaito nodded, staring at the two hands that were linked together. The world disappeared for an instant, and even for that fleeting moment of silence; Kaito felt a long-wished-for peace. Not victory. Not survival. Just being. And maybe that was enough. For now.