A Harsh Reality

A low soft rumbling echoed through her ear starting to stir her awake. So exhausted from the battle with Hokuren, she didn’t even have a dream or awareness in her subconscious. If she had any thoughts, she might have considered herself dead. Yet, consciousness came back to her so that clearly wasn’t the case. Despite the pain in her body, she survived as he wanted.

Yumi groaned softly, starting to move her body while still not fully awake. ‘I’m still alive…and not in pain…’ The active thoughts gave her focus to her situation and pushed her to open her eyes. It took a little more struggle to do so, even if she wasn’t in pain it seemed that she lacked the energy to do much. Opening her eyes hardly seemed like a challenging effort. ‘I guess that fight took more out of me than I expected. Didn’t seem like that in the moment, but I guess I wasn’t thinking about it…’ Battle heightened adrenaline must have been what kept it all back. It was her only guess.

At her left, she could see the back of Yuki hunched over. It was as she figured. “…you found…me…” Her voice didn’t project as well as she wanted.

Turning towards his right, Yuki looked over his shoulder towards her. “You’re awake!” Visible relief washed over his face as years of pain and sorrow seemed to just melt away for him. There seemed to be more that he wore on his face that she understood, but she didn’t recognize it at the time. She was just happy to see him once more. They had gone into a battle that they likely could have died, but survived. Happiness filled through her in the moment.

Ignoring her lack of energy, she managed to get her body to move and sat up able to hug him tight, reaffirming that he was real. “I’m so glad to see you!” She paused for a moment thinking how that might have sounded and implied to him. “I knew you would win! You were the only one that probably had it the easiest! Though I guess with your powers maybe not. It’s hard I guess thinking about it.” Yumi continued trying to roll back to a place of safety in her words, failing to find what she was looking for how she felt.

He gave her a soft smile with a chuckle at her fumbling. “You’re not wrong. I had a hard fight with her.”

As she hugged him tighter, she noticed something was wrong. It finally started to realize things were not right with Yuki. He had been intentionally placing his body in a way to hide it. However with her strength, it was easy enough to turn around him so that she could see him clearly. The damaged kimono from the Lord had the left sleeve completely missing along with his arm. She looked at his shoulder seeing where the skin was all closed up, healed by something he did. “Yuki! Your arm!”

Yuki glanced down at it casually trying to not make it seem as bad to Yumi. “Yeah, it was the cost I paid for killing the demon. I managed to stop the bleeding, but that was it.”

“But what about your powers? Can’t you just heal yourself?”

“They don’t work like that. I’ve mentioned it before, our powers don’t work on ourselves. I had to do some workarounds to manage this.”

“But your arm. Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah I’ll be fine…” He looked around at the apocalyptic scene around them. “I don’t need an arm to function. So I’ll be fine. We should be more focused on you. You managed to kill their leader!”

Yumi fell silent to Yuki’s remark, with him not knowing what happened. She just figured that he already knew the outcome. Her turned away expression started to tell him everything that she needed to know.

“You didn’t?”

It took a little bit to get to the truth of what happened. “No, he beat me. He even beat Masa. We couldn’t do anything in the end…”

“Then where is he?”

“He just left looking for someone else to fight.” Yumi looked off to the massive crater that used to have a mountain. Their intense battle played out in that arena, something that her body could feel as though it was physically reliving the moment. The first time that she enjoyed herself in a battle and let herself be free in the fight not worried about anything. In the end, she felt satisfied, yet also disappointed. She wanted to win and still had a strong urge to challenge him again.

She looked back at Yuki remembering what he said. “He said he’d be back once I got stronger.”

“So we’re just supposed to wait for him to return?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really want to think about the future right now. Let’s just find the rest of our friends.”

Chapter 465 – A Harsh Reality

“Yuki?” Yumi asked, wanting him to say something. He went silent the moment that she said it to him. The way that he withdrew started to frighten her and leave a sinking pit of despair within her stomach. Her mind and body had already reached the conclusion that her heart didn’t want to hear. “Answer me, Yuki! Where are our friends?”

He still didn’t say anything. Yumi grabbed him trying to force him to confront it and give her the answer that she needed to hear. However, he continued to refuse her. “Yuki! Say it! Tell me!”

That sadness that she had missed before became clear to her. It had been painted all over his face the entire time, she just didn’t understand the meaning to it. He just seemed to be down or worn out from the fighting, maybe from the lost arm. That was all that it had seemed like at the moment. Yumi completely glossed over any other possible deeper meaning to it.

Yet now that she stared at him directly and he couldn’t turn away, she forced herself to see it now. It was because of something that he refused to say and she didn’t want to be told. He wasn’t going to tell her what she wanted. Even still she pressed for an answer, the one answer that she would accept from him. “Tell me what’s going on! Stop being silent and just tell me already!” She grabbed him by the collar demanding him to speak.

“They’re dead…all of them…”

Even though she knew that was what he was going on to say, it still left her completely stunned. Yumi let go of Yuki and fell back, nearly falling over as she staggered into a seated position. “It can't be…no…” Shaking her head, she tried to figure it out. More of her started to deny it following in the flow of her heart. She couldn’t accept it. It couldn’t be true. “…but…Saki…she…”

As time ticked away for her, everything continued to progress in the processing of the truth. Denial transitioned into deep stabbing pain. Tears streamed down her face. The world started to fade away from Yumi with her shrunken pupils turning gray without life. Everything began shutting down for her.

It was night when she woke up and found herself no longer laying on the ground. She looked around trying to figure out where she was. Everything was in ruins around her only aiding in her confusion. The moonlight only could do so much to help her. It danced highlights over the ruins of the whole area. “Where is this?”

Yumi looked down to see that she was on some wood that looked salvaged. If she had to guess it came from the Capital or some nearby village if they had gone away. She had no concept of the range of their destruction. It hadn’t even really clicked with her the results of her fighting.

Stepping off the makeshift bed, she walked around trying to find Yuki. It previously would have been difficult for her, but between her sight and heightened hearing, it was easy to locate him. He sat upon a massive chunk of rock, likely thrown about by the fighting. She floated up to sit next to him. “Hey Yuki…”

“You woke up. How you feeling?”

“A little better…but numb…”

“…yeah…”

She stared out at the completely foreign land before her. The day before it would have been something that she could recognize, but their fighting changed it all. Out in the different directions she could see the massive corpses of the Demon Lords that were killed. He found three of them to mark for each that died. Knowing what she did about them, the vast damage that they would cause couldn’t even be imagined. ‘Will this land even recover from this?’ It seemed a little impossible to imagine.

It all gave her a lot to think about. “It’s hard to take in…it’s not real, yet I have trouble at this point not thinking of it as anything but…”

“If anything it’s a good cautionary reminder…a safer place to see it…”

“Yeah…do you think they’re still alive? You said you weren’t certain how it worked here.”

A heavy long sigh came out of Yuki. There was uncertainty in his tone when he spoke. “We don’t know how this is set up. Our minds are linked to this world, there’s no telling what sort of effect that has on the real us. Under normal circumstances, we’d be safe as Phoibe wouldn’t make it dangerous. But we’ve lost control of it. So the only way to know is to clear the conditions of this world.”

It wasn’t the clear sort of answer that she hoped for, but it wasn’t a surprise either. They had the discussion before and Yumi didn’t believe he would change how he viewed it, since they hadn’t learned anything new about their situation. If anything it felt like they had gotten further away from it.

Yumi looked down at the rock pensive for a moment. It wasn’t an easy thing. “So what happened? Do you know?”

“Are you sure?”

“They’re my friends. If they have really died I don’t want to look away.”

Another long sigh escaped Yuki’s lips as he came back to the current reality. “I have only pieced together what I know. So I can’t be exact.”

“That’s fine. Whatever you know.”

“Saki…looks to have died from rotting out. I only found part of her that I managed to save. Best guess is that she succumbed to the demon’s energy that kills life. I have no idea if she was alive or not.”

Tears dripped down Yumi’s face as she braved the horrific news. Terrible images of what might have happened surfaced in her mind. “…Saki…” She could only imagine her going down fighting bravely standing to the end facing down an opponent that she couldn’t beat, but still determined anyway.

Yumi sniffled a little trying to focus. “…and Seiji?”

“I don’t even know. All I found was his blood and small pieces…”

“…how…” She looked at Yuki to see how he was doing. The tone of his voice seemed to hold up well for what he was delivering. ‘How is Yuki managing to keep it together so well? He’s hurting so much…’ It seemed like he shouldn’t even be able to talk. But she also didn’t know how long he had been dealing with the news himself. It was still fresh for her, unlike Yuki.

“Nerine? Yori?”

“They were in the Capital when the meteor hit. They died instantly. I could only find the slightest trace to know that they were there and not somewhere else.”

“So many…everyone…our friends…”

“The Capital’s gone and the whole area is a wasteland, even without our fight the demon corpses will make it completely uninhabitable.”

Yumi finally could pick out parts of the Capital, mostly the wall. There was little that seemed to remain of it after everything. She could see a deep crater in it along with parts of the wall that still struggled to remain upright. Though Yuki was right about it. They couldn’t tell the citizens that their lives could go back to normal like they hoped. They wanted to keep the damage to the Capital light so that they could just aid in the recovery, but this was no longer possible.

She breathed in deeply trying to recover herself from everything. Mentally focusing, she cleansed her mind of all of her thoughts pushing them back. Yumi stood up and looked out upon the Capital. “I think it’s time that we figure out the real objective here. I think we might find some answers if we can locate Masa. She’s the only clue that we have that might lead me back to my personalities!” She worked up the façade to cheer herself up and slapped her cheeks. “Let’s start the new journey!”