Volume 3 – Chapter 27: A Map of Scars

Date: August 28

Last 33 Days. 

The morning has just started, but no sunrise is seen.

The heavy, gray, moody clouds completely filled the sky, leaving it dark and sealed from the light of the sun. Out there, everything appeared hazy, colorless, and lonesome, like hope was above. And inside the compound, the silence weighed heavier than usual—no one wanted to speak first, for fear that the sound of their voice may break some fragile element sustaining them in this near state of desolation.

Kaito was sitting alone, in the storage corridor, with an old notebook on his lap. It did not belong to him but to some other person, as filled with an elegant yet hurried, angry, broken handwriting-this was a man who had not lasted beyond the third week. Kaito found it stuffed under a cot in the disused western wing.

He flipped through the pages lazily, reading half-sentences and incomplete thoughts. Pages contained lists of items to find, names to reach out to, possible hiding places. Others were fragment pieces of memories written down as if the writer were afraid of their fluttering wings.

But he read a single entry:

"If the world ends and nobody remembers your name, did you ever really live?"

He stared at it for a significant time. That question did not bear one answer. Or maybe it had just so many.

Outside, Rika and Aya were patching a hole in the outer fence. The winds had wrought devastation beyond what they had estimated. Aya hummed a half-formed tune to herself, pulling it breathily from her lungs. Rika had the bits of metal in her hands but never took her eyes away. Her eyes told a different story.

"And what comes after?" Aya asked out of the blue, breaking the thoughtful silence.

"After the thirty-three days?" Rika asked, not looking about at her.

"Yeah. You know, if we survive," Aya blurted out, then after a moment, "What then?

Rika stopped for a moment, then blinked up to the horizon.

"I think... I think we would have to relearn living," she said. "Not just surviving. Actually living. And maybe that's harder."

Aya smiled a little. "You always sound like you're writing poetry."

"No, I'm just trying to make sense of something that doesn't."

That night, the usual storm warning came over the old radio. One of the last towers still functional sent a coded signal-one they'd memorized months ago. HIGH-WIND EVENT INCOMING. PREPARATIONS TO BE MADE. STAY INDOORS.

But they had heard it before. And yet somehow it felt different this time. The static at the end dragged on too long. Like the voice on the other end had hesitated. Or maybe there was no one left to finish the message.

Inside, everyone shifted into what was familiar as the emergency protocol. It was a machine now: Cover vents, check reserves, lock doors. But underneath the surface was flowing currents of something else. Fear, yes. But also exhaustion. And maybe even resignation.

It was Kaito and Rika who found their way into the west wing for shelter. It was next to better than being outside and hardly functional. Dim light spread from a lantern, bathing the two in shadow, as they leaned against the wall their knees connected.

Rika said the first words.

"Nobody talks about the past anymore."

Kaito looked at her, surprised. "You mean... our lives before this?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Like it has all been erased. Like it is not allowed."

Kaito sat for some time, weighing the merits of the question. At last, he spoke. "I remember my brother's laugh. It was somewhat stupid, loud, and with an infectious quality."

Rika smiled, her eyes glistening. "I used to sing in the shower. It was a very off-key performance. My mom hated it."

They exchanged long-lost fragments from their own vanished world. These stories were not tales of survival; rather, they were stories of feeling alive.

They had scarring across delicate, invisible, and deep hearts: proof of their lives, with proof of their losses, and proof that they were here for survival.

And when the storm came, it hit that building in a mighty howl. Wind shrieked, living and alive. The ground trembled ever so slightly. First, the lights dimmed; then, a flicker, then a second flicker.

But the lights would remain.

The walls.

Each other.

The past.

And perhaps even the hope that they would be able to live together once more.

If only for one day.