Chapter 6: What You Carry (1)

Fever-bright sunlight bleached the world beneath it. Abandoned cars formed metallic rivers, their surfaces winking dully under layers of ash.

A cold sweat trickled down his neck as he balanced on the stationery shop’s fractured roof. Reina watched their small group—the familiar boy from earlier, a younger one gripping her coat, and a dirt-smudged girl.

He inhaled slowly. The air shimmered and warped, drawing dust upward. A flick of his wrist, and gravity’s pull slackened—a shift in reality’s fabric that belonged to him alone. The children’s collective breath cut through the quiet, their faces frozen in wonder.

“Hold on to each other,” he murmured.

The city dropped away as they hung suspended between buildings. The next rooftop rushed up to meet them. Their descent ended in a whisper of dust, the children stumbling as their shoes found purchase on loose stone. A tremor crawled up his back.

The smallest boy tripped. Reina caught him by the shoulders. Sunlight flashed off glass teeth where office windows had shattered. Between the buildings, military helicopters lay on their sides, rotors twisted.

His attention drifted toward the coast where the bay shimmered through the haze, its surface a cold mirror beneath the bleached sky. The mall stood at the water’s edge, dome cracked but intact.

She followed his line of sight. “They have to be there.”

“They are,” he said.

He edged to the ledge, measuring the gap to the next building—six meters of open air, twisted metal reaching up from below.

“About what just happened—keep it to yourselves.”

Reina’s brow furrowed.

Ren faced the children, his gaze hardening. “That goes for you three too. Not a word about what you saw. Understand?”

A sigh escaped Reina as she crouched beside the smallest child, tugging loose threads back into place. “What he means,” she said, her voice soft where his had sharpened, “is that his… ability stays between us.” She stopped there, meeting each child’s eyes in turn. “Can you keep our secret?”

The older boy nodded first, quick and sure. The others followed, eyes clear of questions. Children of the aftermath didn’t need lessons on silence; the world before had already taught them that.

“Let’s get going.”

Each jump drained him further—small, precise uses of power. The cold crept through his veins. The Mizuhana Terminal sprawled below. Reina’s fingers found his forearm, steadying herself against him as much as him against her.

“We’re almost there,” she murmured, eyes tracing the hollows beneath his. “Your arm feels like ice.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

Her frown deepened.

-𝑾𝑪𝑨-

Stale air hung in the Mall, thick enough to taste with each breath. Haruka covered her mouth with her sleeve and followed Sakura down the dim corridor.

“Sorry for the mess.” Sakura motioned ahead. “There were plans for this place—checkpoint, shelter—but the generators couldn’t keep up. Now it’s just… half-alive. Or half-dead.”

She tilted her head back. Through shattered ceiling tiles, electrical cables hung loose. A generator coughed somewhere deeper in the building before settling into a labored rhythm.

“When did you get here?”

“Two days, give or take.” Sakura’s expression stayed neutral as her fingers traced the wall, guiding them into a wider concourse. “There was a rescue team at the start. Police, too. Most of them left to escort civilians here. They… never made it back.”

“She doesn’t look good,” Haruto murmured.

Satsuki had slumped against the wall, her complexion ashen under the pulsing light. When she caught him watching, she forced a smile that faltered at the corners of her mouth. “Nothing wrong with me,” she rasped.

“Right. And I’m the emperor.”

Haruto pressed his canteen into her palm.

They emerged into what had once been the Mizuhana Terminal’s heart—a vast atrium gutted by disaster. From the second and third floor, tattered paper snowflakes twisted in faint air currents, whispering through the gaps in the shattered skylight.

Amira hugged her arms to her chest. “How can we be sure they won’t get us here?”

Still keeping close to Shigure…

“Safe? No. But we’ve bought time. Radios and alarms scattered through the outer corridors keep the infected chasing echoes instead of us. They follow sound like moths to flame. It’s how we’ve lasted this long.”

“Playing with fire,” Shion muttered, eyes narrowing.

Sakura nodded. “We are. Those alarms cost lives to install. But without them, we’d have joined the dead days ago.”

Shigure shifted beside her, but one sharp look from Amira silenced him. Haruka noticed the rifle in his hands—the one Takemori-san used to carry. She drew a slow breath, unwinding one knot at a time in her shoulders. “If this place was supposed to save people,” she asked, “what went wrong?”

“Simply put, we were too late. By the time anyone organized a response, the infection had already reached the department wing. We sealed the evacuation tunnels after finding infected in the maintenance shafts. And without enough power our best way out is useless.”

“The monorail?”

Sakura nodded. “Airport’s at the end of that line. One of our people made it from there—said the military’s holding there, evacuation flights leaving daily. You must have seen the contrails. If we get power back to this sector, that line becomes our lifeline.”

“So that’s the plan? Fix the power and run for it?”

Sakura’s mouth twitched into something almost like a smile. “If we’re lucky.”

Even the word hope tasted bitter on Haruka’s tongue. She almost laughed at how silly it sounded after everything that’s happened. Yet something warm stirred behind her ribs when she thought of her mother. “She’s really here?” she asked.

Sakura’s expression softened.

“Yes. She is.”

“And she’s… okay?”

“As okay as any of us. Which isn’t saying much.”

Haruka blinked rapidly, fighting the sudden sting in her eyes. “I thought—” She steadied herself. “After everything that happened, I never thought I’d see her again.”

Midori’s fingers found hers. Their path wound through a maze of overturned benches and sandbags. Survivors huddled under blankets, watching them pass without a flicker of curiosity left.

Sakura swiped a keycard at a STAFF ONLY door, ushering them into what had once been an employee lounge. The harsh glow of a single bulb threw long shadows across a handful of people scraping the last bites from dented ration tins.

“Naomi—you’re—”

A woman rose from behind a table strewn with maps, gray-streaked hair escaping a messy ponytail, eyes wide in disbelief.

“Mom!”

Aki crossed the room and gathered her in. The hug crushed the air from Haruka’s lungs; for a moment the noise, the fear, the rot of the world all disappeared. “My girl,” she whispered into her hair, voice trembling. “My sweet baby girl.”

They clung to each other until her knees threatened to give. When they finally separated, Aki brushed tangled hair from her face, fingers pausing at the bruise on her cheek. “You’re safe now,” she said, the whisper barely there.

Midori shifted closer, unsure whether to interrupt. “Sumire-san, I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Look at you two. Yesterday’s children with today’s shadows.” Aki’s smile was weary but warm.

“Sumire-san…” Kurobane’s eyes fell to the floor.

Her mother’s eyes flicked toward Satsuki, noting the feverish sheen to her skin. “The pharmacy has beds. Get her there before she drops.”

Haruto nodded and slipped beneath Satsuki’s arm, leading her out.

At the far wall, Amira murmured something in Shigure’s ear; whatever she said made his jaw tighten.

“We’re all down to our last threads,” Aki said softly. “Another few days, and there won’t be anything left.”

The certainty in her tone made Haruka’s stomach knot.

“Mom?”

“Not now,” Aki whispered, squeezing her hand. “Eat. Rest.”

“Dad and Grandpa—are they—?”

“Please, Haru-chan. Not yet.”

Static crackled from Sakura’s radio, followed by a voice sharp with urgency.

“North rooftop—movement!”

The public crowded toward the monitor, its feed flickering through static. Figures emerged from the haze—dark silhouettes moving across the roof bridge beneath the crimson smear of a flare.

“The flares worked!” Someone said.

That coat…

The image sharpened—white hair, a woman guiding three small shapes behind her.

Lilly made a sound, “Reina!”

The north entrance stood in ruins, barricades hastily shoved aside. Through the narrow passage, Haruka spotted them first—emerging from the roof access, haloed by dusty sunlight.

Down came Reina, fingers wrapped protectively around a small palm. Behind her crept a girl with dirty cheeks, gaze darting across unfamiliar faces. Ren followed—at his side walked another boy, taller, leaner than the other.

Reina’s name tore from Lilly’s throat as she pushed through the crowd. Her sister barely had time to let the child go before Lilly collided with her. They crumpled together, clutching so tightly it was hard to tell who was who.

Her mother moved toward him with the grace of someone long used to tending the wounded. Her expression hovered between grief and joy. Her touch settled on his shoulders.

A small smile tugged at his mouth.

Her mother studied his face as if committing each change to memory. “You’ve seen better days.”

Something unspoken passed between them—an understanding tempered by years and loss. Haruka caught the look and remembered how her mother had always treated Ren differently: gentle, cautious, like he was something precious and breakable.

Grandpa had once sworn he’d never take another apprentice after the last one quit. Yet Ren had walked through the door—barely twenty—and somehow changed his mind.

His eyes caught hers, and she realized she’d been staring too long. He dipped his chin slightly. She felt her lips curve without meaning to. “Welcome back,” she mouthed. Hope, thin as morning light, slipped through the cracks.

Her mother turned to the gathered survivors. “If they crossed from the eastern zone, maybe others will too! Stay vigilant!”

Ren’s gaze swept the survivors—faces old and new, familiar and foreign.

“Where’s Fujimori?”