Volume 3 – Chapter 26: Things Left Unsaid

Date: August 27

Last 34 Days

Rather, the wind carried an entirely different silence that morning-not peace silence but avoidance silence. Conversations had grown shorter; glances had become motherlike screams more distant. And all were counting, though no one spoke the number out loud. Thirty-four days. Like a second heartbeat, the reverberation was that it could follow you everywhere.

Kaito felt it in their halting, open-ended lines before speaking, in the distances their eyes put between them, even in the most mundane exchanges. He sat beside a rusted barrel all turned campfire, with his hands wrapped around a tin mug that was half full with something warm yet tasteless.

Rika came along to join him quietly. No greetings. Just that presence.

After a moment she said, “Do you think we’ll make it to the end…still ourselves?”

He didn’t reply right away. He wasn’t sure he knew what even that meant—what “themselves” meant anymore. They were different now- stripped down, weather-beaten and shaped anew, not by other stresses but by grief and necessity.

“I think we will be whoever we have to be,” he finally said.

Rika cast down her glance at her hands. “That is just what I'm afraid of."

Later, there came the storm- not rain, but wind and sand, copper-red across the sky, like the Earth exhaled its last. Everyone scrambled fast sealing the entrances, covering equipment, dropping tarps over supplies. But the storm battered more than just the world outside; it stirred something within, too. Tempers simmered. Small arguments erupted over infinitesimal incidents that didn't really matter.

Aya shouted at Jun over a broken latch.

Rei snapped at Rika for leaving a flashlight on.

And Kaito—he just watched it all collapse into slow motion.

When the storm passed, the bunker inside was intact-but the people inside? Cracks were starting to show.

That night, Kaito sat with Rei on guard. She was quiet for an unusually long stretch, her eyes glued to the door as if looking to dare something to come through.

"Bfd when it ends...if we don't make it, I'd at least hope one of us was remembered, " she said.

Kaito tilted his head. "You think it matters?"

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe it's just vanity, but I'd like to believe one, or even more, will remain knowing we were here. That we tried." She drew herself up in a disapproving stance. But she didn't answer Rei.

When Kaito went back into his room, Rika was already sleeping, her back turned to the door, and the blanket curled around her like armor.

He sat beside her without a word and stared at the wall, his thoughts turning over like waves hitting a stubborn shore.

Thirty-four days.

How many more truths would be buried in that time?

How many things would go unsaid?

And how many pieces of themselves would they lose just to survive?

He didn't know. But as night crept deeper and silence wrapped around him, Kaito promised himself this:

He would not leave this world without being understood-at least by her.