The Day the World Went Away (4)

Ren's pace faltered at the access road's perimeter, his boots grinding against scattered rubble. He heard it before he saw it. A tinny pop song looped through broken speakers, warping and skipping as if the music itself were dying. Beneath this distorted melody were screams and the crack of gunfire.

The mall was teeming with the dead. They poured from every breach in the building's shell. They hung from second-floor railings, clambered across abandoned vehicles, tumbled down dead escalators. A human flood surging. Dozens hammered against metal gates, others drifted aimlessly through open spaces, their vacant faces turning toward any flicker of movement or burst of noise.

"Impossible," Mori breathed, retreating backward. The crunch of gravel betrayed him as he lost his footing, his composure crumbling visibly. "That's suicide—we'd never make it."

A string of curses spilled from Tanaka's lips.

Neither man awaited Ren's command. Terror seized them both—Tanaka fled toward the shadow of nearby structures while Mori disappeared into a narrow passage, his frantic footfalls echoing briefly before dissolving into the surrounding bedlam.

Abandoned on the ridge, Ren watched. Ice crystallized in his veins. Another gunshot echoed from the chaos. Someone's final cry stretched thin before snapping into silence.

One step forward and the earth retreated beneath his feet, his form rising with unnatural grace while the laws that anchored all else seemed to make an exception just for him. The wind clawed at his clothing as he tilted his trajectory downward, gliding toward the pandemonium below in a deliberate descent.

━━━━━━━━━━𝑾𝑪𝑨━━━━━━━━━━

Nothing remained. Fluorescent lights blazed overhead, casting no shadows to hide the aftermath. Crimson streaks painted across the floor tiles, chairs and tables thrown aside in panic, medical supplies scattered. The dead were frozen in their final moments, while the nearly-dead jerked as the infection claimed what little humanity remained.

Carnage squelched beneath his boots. Room after room revealed the same story. Storage closets stripped bare, sleeping areas, medical bays. Where there weren't bodies, there were signs of flight.

Aki stood alone when he found her. Harsh light spilled from the control room, where dozens of monitors cast their blue glow across her. Each screen showed a different horror—infected pouring through corridors, barricades collapsing under waves of bodies.

Where the monorail platform had been, the screen now displayed only a churning mass—limbs and jaws and torsos flowing into the station. The cameras captured it all in perfect, merciless clarity.

Aki braced herself, knuckles white against the console. She remained still, back to him. "Forgive me," she whispered.

Words failed him. His insides clenched. Time was running out. He backed away and shut the door with a click that echoed through his bones. His palm lingered against the cold metal. Reina's face floated before him.

The mall distorted around him. Floors meant nothing now—he glided across their surfaces in controlled bursts, his mass flickering between existence and absence, propelling him in soundless, elegant trajectories. Vertical surfaces offered no resistance. Railings, ceilings, empty space—all became his highway. His form wove through the architecture at speeds beyond human perception. Any survivors would have felt only a whisper of displaced air, never knowing what phantom had passed them by.

His gaze darted through the manmade labyrinth—down broken escalators, across abandoned food courts, into darkened suites. He launched himself over toppled display cases, ghosted above the grasping hands of the infected below, and ricocheted from wall to column without leaving so much as a fingerprint behind.

Behind him: shouts, desperate pleas for help. A chilling clarity had seized him, narrowing his world to a single point ahead. Nothing else mattered. Not the cluster of survivors who gasped as he streaked past their barricade of overturned tables, not the flicker of hope in their eyes. He kept his attention fixed forward, refusing to let their faces become memories he would carry.

Reality smeared into streaks of color and shadow as he moved, each bound pulling memories from the depths of his mind. The faster he flew, the more his past caught up with him, fragments of who he'd been rising to the surface.

He'd once had a place in the world. All of it reduced to ash and echoes now. Even his own body bore witness to what had been taken: the phantom ache where his arm should be, the countless other wounds that had healed just enough to leave their marks. He'd stopped measuring his life by what remained and started counting only by what was gone. In that emptiness, he'd learned to exist. Not to live.

Until she appeared.

Reina hadn't stormed his life. She had infiltrated him slowly—a smile here, a moment there, until he found her occupying territory he'd sworn would remain forever empty. He'd resisted with everything he had, choking on guilt whenever Sera's ghost whispered accusations from the shadows of his mind. The thought of betrayal burned.

Yet every day without her became its own kind of torment. Her smile—how it softened the rough edges of his world. The scent of sugar that clung to her skin, and the heat that radiated from her. The way his name sounded in her mouth. Without meaning to, he'd begun orbiting her presence, saying yes when no had been his only language. Following her lead, watching minutes stretch into hours he couldn't spare.

He'd walled himself away from this world, brick by brick, and still she found a way through. Even as the ghosts of his past hissed warnings, even as his own mind insisted he had no right to her warmth.

Sera had been moonlight—all silver edges and distant beauty. Reina burned like the sun. Their faces might echo each other, but where one had been ice, the other was fire.

She wasn’t Sera.

She was Reina.

And somehow, impossibly, that had been all he needed.

Gravity released him silently to the floor, his boots settling behind the horde. The infected swarmed the clothing storefront—its windows decorated with faded "Happy New Year 2013" banners—their bodies crashing against the metal security gate in a mindless rhythm. Limbs tangled as they pressed forward, jaws working, teeth clicking against teeth in their hunger for what lay beyond.

Blood caught his eye first—a dark, wet trail smeared across the tile leading toward the entrance. He raised his hand. The infected lost their purchase to the earth, their bodies suddenly untethered before being violently propelled outward.

They collided with concrete and steel—wet sounds of rupture filling the air as limbs twisted at impossible angles. Some hit the far walls with such force they exploded on impact, leaving only dark stains sliding down the surface. The aftermath of violence collapsed into stillness.

Through the mangled entrance, he found her at last. There, beyond the threshold, Reina's body had collapsed against the wall, her pallor winter moonlight, chin resting on her chest as though she'd simply paused to rest.

The gates vanished in a heartbeat—metal bending, glass exploding inward as invisible hands crushed the barrier to nothing. Before the first shard hit the ground, he was already inside.

“R-Reina?”

Her name left him as a ragged whisper, the syllables fracturing against his teeth. Her chest lifted against the bloodied fabric of her shirt. Just once. Just barely. A flutter of life so faint he might have imagined it.

Her head lolled sideways, chin rising just enough to show she still lived. Her eyes were pools of shadow, struggling to focus. The corner of her mouth twitched upward. "Ren… I think I messed up…"

He caught every detail at once—crimson painting her chin, dark fingerprints where she'd clutched herself, purple shadows blooming beneath torn fabric, and there, at her center, a perfect absence where life was pouring out.

"Don't talk," he whispered, voice cracking. He thrust his hand forward, fingers quivering above the ragged opening in her flesh.

Power answered his desperate call, flowing through him. The air wavered and distorted around his palm as the wound began to obey—torn edges creeping toward one another, tissue rebuilding itself molecule by molecule.

"Stay with me," he choked out, voice raw and unsteady. "Just hold on."

Air rushed in and out of his lungs in shallow bursts. Moisture gathered at his hairline, one droplet breaking free to trace a path down the curve of his face. Inside his skull, a single thought crashed against itself.

Not again.

Not again.

Not again.

Not again.

Not again.

Not again.

Something brushed his skin—her fingertips, impossibly gentle, coming to rest against his jaw. The contact pulled him back from the edge, a tether in the void.

"Why so grim?"

Words. She was forming words. His power knit her flesh together, cell by cell, the wound yielding to his desperate command.

"That look doesn't suit you."

Her eyes captured his—blue and impossibly clear. Summer sky after rain. The corners of his mouth twitched upward.

"This? This is just my face."

She huffed a breath that might've been a laugh. The color returned to her face. Dawn breaking across winter fields. Her heartbeat steadied beneath his palm, each pulse a defiance against death itself. His mind raced ahead—the route out, the others waiting.

"My sister… is she safe?"

The lie came easily. "She's safe," he whispered, throat tight. "She's waiting for you." He leaned closer, his shadow falling across her face. "Look at me. Stay right here with me."

The wound bled again, refusing his power. A violent spasm rocked Reina's body. Her mouth opened in a wet gasp as crimson bubbled past her lips, streaming from the ragged wound beneath his palm.

Warmth splashed his face. A sound tore from his throat. He forced more power through his palm—dangerous amounts—into her failing body. The edges of his sight darkened as blood thundered in his skull.

The wound remained.

Time had run out. Just as it always did, slipping through his fingers, no matter how tightly he tried to hold on. He was too late. He was always a little too late.

Her fingers trailed down his forearm, leaving warmth that faded with each inch. "Promise me… She'll be safe…" Her gaze drifted past his shoulder toward something he couldn't see. The blue of her eyes clouded.

"Wait,” he said.

Wait.

Please wait—

Don't go. Don't—

Her fingers slid from his palm, trailing across his skin. The light dimmed to nothing.

“I…”

Something tore through him then—a pain so complete it became a presence. As if death had reached inside him instead of her.

Sometimes the world contracts until there's nowhere left to run. The beast that's been stalking you is suddenly everywhere at once—its breath hot on your neck, teeth gleaming, claws already piercing skin. The walls press inward with each heartbeat. Your lungs forget their purpose, throat closing as if invisible hands were squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

Ren had known that feeling before. It didn’t make it any easier.

“Reina.”

Her name barely made it past his throat. He gathered her against him, pulling her close. Salt stung his eyes, the world dissolving into watercolor smears as something feral clawed beneath his ribs. The sensation climbed upward, emptying him of everything.

It doesn’t matter anymore.

What happens to me. What happens after.

His eyelids lifted to reveal his own face fractured across the broken glass of the storefront. Her blood streaked down his cheek. From within the shattered mirror-image of himself, an unnatural luminescence leaked from his irises as something fundamental inside him came undone.

I’ve nothing left.

Beneath him, the floor surrendered. Thin lines etched themselves outward from where he stood, a web of destruction racing through tile and concrete. The building itself seemed to cry out, its joints failing as walls began to separate at their seams.

She no longer weighed anything in his arms. Her body drifted upward, suspended before him. Her limbs hung loose, her face composed in death's perfect mimicry of sleep.

His feet abandoned the earth as dust motes and fragments of debris began to spiral around him in slow, deliberate orbits. Bodies ascended. The infected—both living and dead—lifted from the floor as if something were pulling them skyward. Furniture, glass, portions of ceiling and wall breaking away, all drawn inexorably toward some cruel focal point hovering above.

Mizuhana Mall gave voice to its own destruction. Steel twisted with shrieks that mimicked human agony. Support beams wrenched free with deep, resonant moans. Whole segments of the building rose, crumbling into suspended ruins. Countless bodies—mere specks against the enormity of devastation—hung motionless in the storm of circling debris.

Suspended in the eye, Ren gazed at the fractured world—so familiar, yet alien—and felt a bitter thought settle in his chest.

It probably felt the same way about him.