What You Carry

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

A cold sweat trickled down Ren’s 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. The children huddled in silence, just as they had since the strange door opened and freed them from whatever waited behind it.

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. Reina’s boots lifted a finger’s width from the concrete. The children’s collective breath cut through the quiet, their faces frozen in wonder.

“Hold on to each other,” he murmured.

Gravity surrendered its grip. The city dropped away as they hung suspended between buildings, neither rising nor falling—gliding through a pocket of stillness Ren carved from the air itself. 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 Ren’s arm, and the world’s weight crashed back upon them all at once.

The smallest boy tripped. Reina caught him by the shoulders, then turned her gaze outward. He followed. Below them stretched Hanamizu—a carcass picked clean. Sunlight flashed off glass teeth where office windows had shattered. Storefronts gaped like open wounds. Between the buildings, military helicopters lay on their sides, rotors twisted.

Three days ago, the world existed. Now it didn’t.

Ren’s 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 toward the distant dome. “They have to be there.”

Ren didn’t answer at once. His eyes lingered on her—the shadows beneath her lashes, the red smear drying along her jaw—then shifted to the children. The tallest one met his stare briefly. None of them voiced the questions turning inside them.

“They are,” he said at last.

A sudden gust scattered birds across the rooftop, their wings cutting dark shapes through the haze. He tracked their flight until the washed-out sky swallowed them. He toed to the ledge, measuring the gap to the next building—six meters of open air, twisted metal reaching up from below. The street crawled with emaciated figures drifting without direction.

“About what just happened—when we reach the Mall, keep it to yourselves.”

Reina’s brow furrowed. “I will.”

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. If the wrong people find out—” She stopped there, meeting each child’s eyes in turn. “It would be really bad for us. 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 quiet meant breath.

He met Reina’s gaze, his own dulled by fatigue. “Let’s get going.”

Each jump drained him further—small, precise uses of power. The cold crept through his veins. By the time they reached the final building overlooking the Mall, the hum in his chest had faded to an ache.

The Mizuhana Terminal sprawled below. Red smoke from a recent flare stained the sky above the complex, while fractured glass caught and threw back the orange glow of burning buildings.

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. “Something’s wrong with you. Your arm feels like ice.”

He cast one last glance over the wasteland below. “Don’t worry about me.”

Her frown deepened. They descended a weathered plank into the smoke-filled streets.

━━━━━━━━━━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. Behind them, the others moved in silence, their footsteps tapping against the tiles. Above a metal grate where a storefront once welcomed shoppers, an emergency light stuttered—washing the darkness in pulses of crimson.

“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.”

Haruka tilted her head back. Through shattered ceiling tiles, electrical cables hung loose, swaying like vines. 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.”

The toe of Haruka’s boot caught something. Metal grated against tile—a shopping cart, overturned and fused to the floor by rust-colored stains.

“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 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?” It was the first time she’d spoken since entering, still keeping close to Shigure.

Sakura’s lips curved into a grim smile. “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’s jaw tightened. “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 quietly, “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 power—” Her gaze lifted to the broken skylight where the monorail track showed a faint sheen overhead. “Our fastest way out sits useless above us.”

Kurobane lifted his head. “The monorail?”

Sakura nodded. Through the cracks, the elevated track cut a silver arc against the sky, vanishing toward the coast. “Airport’s at the end of that line. One of our people made it from there—said the military’s holding the airport, 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?” Midori’s eyes followed the track’s curve.

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.”

Haruka’s throat tightened. “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—” The rest caught in her throat. She steadied herself. “After everything that happened, I never thought I’d see her again.” Yuka’s face flashed through her mind—another loss in a world that only took.

Midori’s fingers found hers, warm and steady. 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.

From the far corner came a woman’s voice, hesitant but clear. “Naomi—you’re—”

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

“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,” Aki whispered into her hair, voice trembling. “My sweet baby girl.”

A sound escaped Haruka—half laugh, half sob. 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.”

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

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

Aki’s gaze 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, Sakura leaned close to Hayami, voices low. 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, following Haruka’s gaze.

“Tell me the truth,” Haruka murmured.

Aki’s eyes drifted away. “The city’s dying,” she said. “Another few days, and there won’t be anything left to escape from.”

The certainty in her tone made Haruka’s stomach knot. “Mom?”

“Not now,” Aki whispered, squeezing her hand. “Eat. Rest. Tomorrow is soon enough.”

“Dad and Grandpa—are they—”

“Tomorrow.” She shook her head. “Please, Haru-chan. Not yet.”

Haruka swallowed. The question lodged like glass.

Static crackled from Sakura’s radio, followed by a voice sharp with urgency. “North rooftop—movement!”

People 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.

Aki leaned closer. “The flares worked! Someone’s responding.”

“Wait.” Haruka’s voice trembled. Her fingertips brushed the screen. “That coat…”

The image sharpened for one brief heartbeat—white hair glinting under the pale light, a woman guiding three small shapes behind her.

Lilly made a sound—half gasp, half sob. “Reina,” she breathed, her sister’s name spilling out like a prayer.

The room came alive with movement and noise—hope breaking through disbelief. Haruka looked over at her mother. Aki’s face, once etched with exhaustion, now glowed faintly with something perilous and beautiful.

━━━━━━━━━━𝑾𝑪𝑨━━━━━━━━━━

The north entrance stood in ruins, barricades hastily shoved aside. Through the smoke-filled 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. Then Ren appeared—pale hair catching the light like frost. At his side walked another boy, taller, leaner, with watchful eyes.

Lilly broke first. Her sister’s name tore from her throat as she pushed through the crowd. Reina barely had time to let the child go before Lilly collided with her. The impact forced air from both their lungs; they crumpled together, clutching so tightly it was hard to tell who held whom.

“You’re here—you made it—you’re really here—” Lilly’s voice fractured with every word.

Reina pressed her face into her sister’s shoulder, shaking with quiet sobs.

Aki moved toward him with the steady grace of someone long used to tending the wounded. Her expression hovered between grief and joy. When she reached him, her touch settled on his shoulders, grounding him. Their foreheads touched. “Against all odds,” she heard her mother say, “here you stand.”

A small smile tugged at his mouth.

Aki studied his face as if committing each change to memory. “You’ve seen better days,” she murmured.

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.

Midori came next, smiling through the emotion thickening her voice. “I knew you’d find a way.”

Ren arched a brow. “You didn’t think I died, did you?”

Midori laughed. “Death wouldn’t dare take you. You’d argue your way back just to prove a point.”

“You look like death held you by the collar.”

“Look in a mirror.”

Ren’s gaze 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.

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

Ren’s posture eased. Reina knelt with Lilly, their sobs softer now, weaving into the quiet murmur around them. The smallest boy clung to her coat like an anchor; the older one stood apart, fingers tight around a borrowed cup. The room seemed to exhale as one.

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

“Where’s Fujimori?”