Volume 4 – Chapter 7: There Is Steel Time to Feel

Date: September 13

Last 18 Days. 

There's been a lull in the sounds of the world for a long time.

Not the cessation of the sounds—rather, on account of the din deserving to be blasted against the silence.

Kaito awoke before the rest. He had found himself unwillingly waking early many times these days. Too many dreams were chasing one another through his consciousness. So he sat by the door to the shelter, gazing into the misty trees.

There was a peculiar sense of calm in the early morning...plus a heaviness.

Later came Rika, wearing a thick sweater that was two sizes too big for her, and leaning her head against Kaito's shoulder without a word. They stayed like that for a long time without saying anything.

“Ever think we could forget how it felt...before all of this?” she asked later.

“I already have,” Kaito said, still not looking at her. "Sometimes I can't even remember a normal morning. Breakfast...school...laughing without feeling ashamed."

Rika shut her eyes. "That's just so scary."

He took her hand; she took his.

"Maybe it isn't about remembering how it was," he said. "Perhaps it concerns more laying out how one may feel human now, though the reality around us isn't."

Rika did not respond, instead leaning in closer, and her grip on his sinewy finger tightened just a bit more.

Afterward, Kanna joined them, sitting Cassie-style into the dirt; old kettle, badly dented.

"I'm boiling tea," she said, without much ceremony. "It's mostly just dried leaves and bark, but it sure smells nice, so...why not?"

“Sure,” Kaito said faintly smiling. “Why not.”

They treated the making of tea like a sacred rite. It may well have been.

As the three of them sat in the early light with steam rising lazily from their cups and their breath hanging in the still air, something stirred in each of them. Not hope, really; something softer. A memory.

That they still were.

That it still counted.