What You Lost II

They stumbled out of the woods like survivors of a shipwreck. Lilly's feet registered the change before her eyes did—soft earth giving way to broken pavement. The road stretched vacant in both directions, littered with abandoned vehicles and the shapes of those who hadn't made it. Behind them, through the black mesh of branches, the night's horror lingered: flames still licked at the darkness, echoes of screams still rang in her ears, and the smoke—the smoke was everywhere. She tasted it with every breath, felt it coating her skin, felt it deep in her chest where each inhale burned.

They weren’t running anymore. No one had the strength for that. Shion moved first, as if she were being tugged forward by an invisible line—her weapon bloody, shoulders squared. Behind her, the others formed a ragged procession: Haruto limping and pretending not to. Satsuki whispering someone’s name under her breath, Hayami counting them twice, three times. Amira watched with a guarded look, as if she’d decided to trust no one, least of all herself. Shigure brought up the rear with his head lowered, a hand on his side like it hurt to breathe. He’d said very little after they left the farm behind.

Night was retreating, though morning hadn't claimed victory yet. The horizon wore a narrow crown of pale light. Each exhale bloomed white in the bitter cold, and fingers turned stiff and clumsy even when buried deep in pockets.

The road bent sharply, revealing a service station they'd passed on their way up—the same rusted canopy that now rose from the landscape like something shattered. In the corner, two vending machines glowed with dull crimson lights that never blinked. Lilly should have felt relieved at the sight of civilization, but instead her insides coiled tight. Out here, nothing stood between them and the sky. Out here, the things they were running from had all the space in the world to find them.

Shion lifted her palm. The group froze mid-step.

Gravel shifted on the far side of the road. Three figures emerged from shadow—Midori first, his massive frame somehow diminished, shoulders bearing invisible anchors. The slash across his sleeve revealed a makeshift bandage gone gray with dirt. Behind him, Kurobane moved like a man sleepwalking, his face drained of color except for the muscle jumping in his jaw. The blood on his collar had turned the color of old engine oil. When Haruka appeared last—her eyes raw and swollen—Lilly felt her lungs forget their purpose.

Where…?

They stood like strangers at a funeral, measuring the distance between them in heartbeats. Eyes cataloged the living, counted the missing. The silence stretched until it nearly snapped.

"You survived," Shion said finally, her voice steady but thin.

Midori tried to speak, but his throat closed around the words. His gaze swept over them, eyes moving from face to face with the mechanical precision of someone checking inventory and finding items missing.

Hayami's eyes caught the weak light. "You made it," she said, her voice flat as if reading from a medical chart. The words settled in the space between them like something fragile no one wanted to touch.

Lilly's feet carried her forward while her mind was still deciding whether to be brave. "Reina," she said, not quite a question, the name itself demanding answers. “Where’s my sister?”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty; it was full of every answer she didn’t want. Midori's shoulders tensed like someone had struck him. Haruka's face crumpled inward, her gaze dropping to study the ground with sudden intensity. Kurobane’s eyes slid away to the line of trees and stayed there.

A cold weight settled in her stomach. She forced the names past lips that no longer felt like her own. "What about Hanashiro-san? And Fujimori-san?"

Midori's fists clenched until bone showed through skin. He opened his mouth, closed it, then finally pushed the words out like they were stones. "We got separated from Ren and your sister in the chaos. And Yuka…" His voice cracked on the name. "She’s gone. We lost her."

The way he said it—flat, like a verdict. The way Haruka folded a fraction smaller without moving. The way Kurobane, who always had something to say about everything, didn’t say anything at all.

If Yuka was dead, what were the odds her sister wasn’t?

Lilly’s ears filled with that fizzy hum you get before you faint. It seemed wrong that the machines still hummed in the background, that a strip of cheap promotional flags along the canopy still flapped in a breeze.

She reached for memories of Reina like lifelines: morning whispers still warm with sleep, that absent gesture of fingers tucking stray hair behind an ear, her hands pulling Lilly behind her whenever trouble found them. Always between her and the world. Always there. But darker visions crowded in, uninvited and merciless—her sister's mouth stretched in a final scream, crimson blooming across fabric, fingers grasping at empty air where Lilly should have been.

Reina was alone out there, somewhere in the dark.

The guilt slammed into her like a physical blow. Lilly’s hands trembled where they pressed into the seam of her jeans. She had spent years accepting her sister's protection without question, mistaking dependence for closeness. It had felt like love then. Now it tasted like rotten fruit in her mouth.

"The explosion," Midori said at last, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond their circle. "The house came down. Everything after that is just… fragments."

Kurobane's mouth twisted, holding back whatever he'd planned to say. When he finally inhaled, the smoke caught in his throat and doubled him over. After the coughing subsided, he straightened and looked at each of them in turn. “We watched her die.”

Haruka's face contorted as though she'd been struck. The heel of her palm dragged across her wet cheek, leaving a dirty streak behind.

A muttered curse broke the silence behind Lilly. Shigure's voice, or maybe Haruto's—she couldn't tell anymore. The road seemed to tilt, just a little. She locked her knees and stared down the center line stretching down the road—the one fixed point in a world that refused to stop spinning.

The ground vibrated beneath her. Her heart lurched—helicopters? She remembered how the dead reacted to rotors, hurling their bodies against windows in a frenzy. But no—this sound rolled past them, distant and low. It lingered too long to be thunder, too deliberate to be wind. A plane? Yes—like the one she'd glimpsed, cutting low across the dark sky beyond the ridge.

Haruto scrubbed a hand over his face as if it might erase the last hour. “What now?” His eyes cut to Shion as if defaulting to the person who looked least like she might fall apart.

Shion's answer came without hesitation. "The airport. It's all we've got." The words hung in the air like a compass needle finally settling. For the first time since the explosion, they had somewhere to point themselves.

Haruka's voice scraped against the silence. "So we just leave? What about your families? Your parents? Are we really going to abandon them to die while we run away?"

Satsuki's voice cracked through the stillness. "Nobody wants to abandon anyone!" Her fingers twisted around the frayed edge of her sleeve. "But my mom was already sick when this started, and my father—" She swallowed hard, blinking rapidly at the sky. "He wouldn't even pick up my calls before phones went dead." Her shoulders slumped as she whispered, "Some of us don't have anyone left to save."

"My parents…" Haruto swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing. "Dad was downtown when it hit. Fifty-third floor. And Mom—" His fingers twisted around his backpack strap until the knuckles went white. "She would've stayed with her patients. She… she always was…" His words trailed away.

Haruka's eyes fluttered closed, then open. "I’m sorry. That wasn't fair of me," she whispered. "Everyone's lost someone."

"That aircraft wasn't just passing through. Radio towers, fuel reserves. It means something better than dying on this stretch of road," Shion said, drawing their attention like gravity.

Shigure's throat clicked when he swallowed. "The airport," he mumbled, as if the words cost him something. "That plane means people." His gaze traced the scuff patterns on Haruto's sneakers, the mud caked around Satsuki's boot heels. "Like you said. It's all we've got left."

Amira's face remained a perfect mask, but her index finger drummed once against her leg before going still. "And who exactly decided the airport was our salvation?"

Shigure's mouth opened, closed, then tightened into a hard line. "Whatever is back there, I've seen enough of it."

"The fire at our backs," Hayami said, her smile stretched like something that might snap, "is finally working in our favor." Her gaze drifted back to the empty road where she'd been counting utility poles like prayer beads. "The infected will follow the flames. We won't get a better window than this."

Kurobane's jaw clenched. "Save your breath for walking," he said, already turning toward the road.

One by one, they came alive again—shifting weight to tired feet, adjusting backpack straps with mechanical precision, gazes locking onto whoever moved first like survivors following a flare in the dark.

Lilly remained rooted while the others began to move. She couldn't stop seeing it—Reina cornered somewhere in that burning building, infected clawing at whatever barrier separated them. Something hot and thin as wire threaded through her chest. A twine of anger warmed through the cold. At herself. At the version of her that had always accepted the safest place without checking who had to stand in front to make it safe. At the universe that kept taking the people who knew how to be brave and asking them to be braver.

"Lilly." Shion's voice pulled her from the undertow of her thoughts. The others had already started moving, their backs receding down the road. She tilted her chin toward the group. "We should go."

Lilly met her gaze. Something in those eyes steadied her—the way river stones hold their ground against the current. Shion's smile wasn't the kind that promised everything would be okay; it was the kind that acknowledged the darkness and stood in it anyway. If Shion hadn't been there in those woods, guiding them through the chaos… Lilly shuddered. She would have curled into herself, become another nameless tragedy in a burning building.

"I'm with you," Lilly said, the words scraping past something raw in her throat but holding steady all the same.

When someone's boot sent a bottle cap skittering into the ditch, they all went statue-still, counting the seconds until they remembered to inhale again.

Their path curved around the skeletal remains of a gas station, its canopy casting knife-edge shadows across their faces. A sun-bleached billboard promised paradise somewhere else. They passed a pickup truck crumpled like discarded origami, its driver's door yawning open to nothing, a cartoon unicorn peeling from the window as if trying to escape the wreckage.

Lilly shadowed Shion's steps, re-calibrating herself with each footfall—left, right, inhale. She studied Shion's vigilance like a foreign language: the subtle rotation of her neck that never stopped scanning, the way her eyes flicked to every ditch before her feet drew near. She tried to imitate it.

That thread of anger—fragile as kindling but just as capable of starting a fire—remained. Lilly couldn't shape it into anything useful yet, but she tucked it beneath her ribs anyway, guarding it like the last ember in a world going cold.

A mile marker tilted sideways in the dirt like a gravestone. The number on it meant nothing now. Left. Right. Breathe. Keep moving.

The sun broke the horizon, pale and cold. It didn’t feel like morning.