15

Countdown: 152 Days Remaining.

Makoto spotted Rui’s heat signature well before the boy emerged from around the corner. He lacked the energy to stand from his seat on the crumbling wall of Kichijouji station, but he trusted Rui to find him.

Before Makoto turned off the heat scan, he noticed several injuries on Rui, designated by an increase in temperature. Both of his hands burned red, especially around the knuckles. His bad shoulder, which he’d forced himself to use to help Makoto, hung limply at his side and appeared to be dislocated. Several red spots lit up on his legs, and his feet were as red as his hands. A few marks dotted his torso, but nothing appeared alarming from this distance.

Rui stopped a dozen feet away, looking at Makoto with a pained exhaustion across his face. His mechanical eye still shone red, permanently stuck on that color setting. “Your lungs weren’t altered, right?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, because he knew Makoto could pick it up. When Makoto shook his head, Rui dropped his backpack and sat where he’d been standing. “Then we should keep our distance until the poison evaporates from my clothes.”

So he gassed them. Didn’t even give them a chance to fight back. Makoto’s stomach twisted in disgust, horrified by the idea even though the intruders were the enemy.

Rui sighed, having noticed Makoto’s change in expression. “Look, I knew you wouldn’t approve, but I had to do something. You knew from the start that I’m not a pacifist; you can’t expect me to change now.”

“I didn’t expect you to slaughter an entire group. I knew you were a fighter, not a killer.” Guess that’s what I get for trusting a chameleon.

“Why are you making me out to be the villain here?” Rui asked, incredulous. His voice rose an octave, and his mechanical eye glowed a brighter red than before. “They murdered our entire camp, or have you forgotten that?”

“Poisoning them didn’t bring anyone back. It didn’t amount to any damn thing.” Makoto heard his voice rising to match Rui’s, but he couldn’t bring himself to control it.

“Better than moping around here.” Rui’s tone had gone as ice cold as the air around them. “At least I fight back when someone attacks me -- I don’t hide behind an ‘oath’ like a coward.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d called Makoto a coward, yet Rui grimaced the moment the words were out of his mouth. Makoto half-heartedly wondered if he’d made a face, though his skin was so numb from a combination of the cold and his sorrow that he couldn’t imagine a single muscle moving.

“I’m sorry,” Rui said, his tone softening with regret. “I understand your oath is important to you. I’m just not the type to turn the other cheek when someone hits me.” He trailed off for a moment, a far-away look in his eyes as he gazed at something behind Makoto. “I didn’t fight back when I needed to, so I guess this is my way of making amends. I knew it wouldn’t bring them back -- I’m not stupid -- I just had to feel like I was doing something to atone for abandoning everyone I knew in the Before. I’m doing what I should’ve done then, even though it’s too late now.”

So he’s as haunted by his guilt as I am, Makoto thought. He sighed and leaned back, looking up at the sky through the holes in the ceiling. Guess it’s time to admit to my sins, too.

“Do you know why I’m a coward?” Makoto asked, still searching for what Sumire had seen, even though he knew stars had long since vanished from their sky.

He could imagine Rui’s stricken face as he tried to interrupt. “You’re not-”

“It’s because I’m a killer, too.”

Silence dropped between them, broken only by the wind whistling its haunting lullaby. Makoto tilted his head to the side to look at Rui.

The boy sat in the same spot, frozen. His wide eyes looked directly at Makoto, jaw a little slack. He took a moment to collect his bearings, then tried to plaster a reassuring smile over his shock. “We’ve all killed someone -- that’s how us Defectives survive. We don’t…”

Makoto shaking his head made Rui trail off, losing confidence in his attempt at comfort. “It was in the Before,” he started, looking over Rui’s head because he couldn’t look him in the eyes. Makoto swallowed around the lump in his throat and continued. “I was six years old, and he was my neighbor.”

In the encroaching dawn, he saw the memories playing out like a movie projected onto the haze. The house stood tall next to his, made by the same architect. He used to run up to the gate at the side, and wait for the boy to come downstairs and let him in.

Makoto used to say hello to his mother, whose face he could no longer recall, before following the boy up the stairs, past the family portraits, and into his bedroom. The bed was always unmade, the desk perpetually messy. He remembered the room in vivid detail, but the boy’s face was blurred. Even as he tried to focus in, he could only remember dark hair and dark eyes.

“He was Pure,” Makoto continued. “A Pure family, living next door to Defectives, back before anybody cared about the difference.”

“I didn’t know what the heart did, back then. I just knew that I was born without one, and that the thing beating in my chest was a machine.” Out of the corner of his eye, Makoto saw Rui shift. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Rui’s face.

“Being Pure, he had never even seen any altered organs, so he always asked me what it was like, and I would ask him back.” Makoto felt his throat close up, trying desperately to cut off his next words, but he forced himself to continue.

“I’d wanted to be a Surgeon from the time I was young, so one day I asked if I could practice on him, to see what a real heart looked like. We thought we could switch them, that I would take his real heart, and he would take my mechanical one, just to see how it felt, for a day, then put them back.”

Makoto shuddered, and he found himself glad to be seated. He didn’t trust his legs to keep him up, not with how hard his entire body trembled. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t keep his voice steady. “I didn’t know it would kill him. I thought that, since I was born without a heart, it was something you could remove, just like that.” He could still see the boy’s body, so still, so lifeless. The horror forever imprinted in his wide brown eyes, even as they dulled beneath him. Makoto’s hands burned at the memory of the blood -- there was so much of it, everywhere. On his hands, his clothes, his face, the floor, in his hair, in his memories.

“I tried to put it back, as soon as I realized something was wrong. I tried to make him move again, and I couldn’t understand why he’d gone so still.” Makoto’s voice came out as barely more than a whisper now, and in the back of his mind, he wondered if Rui could even hear him from that distance. He looked up to pull back the tears still coming to his eyes, even after a decade.

“His father came in, checking in on us as he always did when he got home from work. Everything else is a blur. They rushed him to the hospital, and he was fitted with a mechanical heart, just like mine, and I was never allowed to see him again.”

With the secret finally out in the open, Makoto let himself take a shaky breath. He still felt a tightness in his throat, like the boy’s tiny hands were once again trying to strangle him, to make him pay, but it had lessened now.

“I swore, after that day, I would never hurt anyone again. I would never cause harm, no matter the reason, because I couldn’t stand the idea of having tainted blood on me again, of being the reason someone suffered. I dedicated every hour to studying, and got into medical school at an early age, so that I could fix his heart if he ever needed it, to make amends for being the reason he had one in the first place.”

All the hours he’d spent at his desk, studying late into the night, rushed back to him. He remembered looking out the window every so often at the house across the way, wondering what the boy was doing. How he was faring with the deformity Makoto had caused. Every time he saw a curtain move in the window, he longed for a glimpse of the boy, for a little reassurance that he was still as alive as he could be.

“So that’s why I don’t fight. The oath is just the excuse I hide behind, so I don’t have to admit that I’m a murderer.”

Silence once again settled between them, simultaneously lighter and heavier than before. Makoto watched as his memories faded from the sky, returning the world to a dusty gray.

“I’m sorry,” Rui said. His voice was subdued, his body language shrinking away from Makoto. There was no judgment in his tone or behavior though, only regret, certainly over pushing Makoto to fight.

Before Makoto could say anything, Rui continued, “But if they gave him a mechanical heart, that means he lived in the end, so you’re not a killer.”

Makoto tried to smile at Rui’s attempt to comfort him, but the weight of remorse hung in every muscle of his face, making his expression more sad than grateful. “Would you still say that if I told you he isn’t here today because of what I did?” He paused until Rui’s confusion made him add, “He was killed in the raid, since he was no longer Pure thanks to me.”

Rui shook his head, resolute. “That’s on the Pure who killed him, not on you.”

“Even without the raids, we’ll all be dead by winter, us defectives. I would’ve killed him sooner or later.” Makoto slid off his section of the wall and lowered himself to the floor, laying back with his arms folded under his head. Staring up through a hole in the ceiling, he said, “Maybe at least he didn’t suffer as much.” The thought brought him no comfort.

Rui’s silence led Makoto to think the boy had fallen asleep. Minutes ticked by on an invisible clock before Rui spoke up, saying, “You know, I think you more than made amends for it, in the end. Even after the Revolt, you’ve continued trying to help people, to save the lives of everyone you come across.”

“What’s it matter now? They’re all dead.” Makoto spat the words out in an attempt to replace his sorrow with anger. At least anger would give way to adrenaline, while grief would only weigh him down.

“Not everyone,” Rui said adamantly. “I’m not dead yet, and you fixed my lungs, remember? So there, you’ve saved at least one life.”

Not for long, Makoto thought, but didn’t say. It felt wrong to remind Rui that he wouldn’t survive the winter, either, so he swallowed the words and the fresh wave of sadness they brought. Instead he closed his eyes and wished for sleep to whisk him away, to let the horribly long night finally end.

Rui spoke up again, undeterred by Makoto’s silence. “What do you plan to do, after rescuing your sister?”

“I don’t plan to do anything,” Makoto said. Exhaustion seeped into his limbs, and he found it hard to move even his lips. “Once she’s safe on the outside, I don’t care what happens to me.” Rescuing Miyuki is the only reason I’ve tried to stay alive for so long anyways. After that, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Rui chuckled, but it was a nervous, mirthless laugh. “Always the optimist, I see.” He waited a moment, as though giving Makoto an opportunity to ask the question back. When he didn’t, Rui answered anyway, “I’ve always wanted to go to the beach. Maybe we could all go together, you, me, and Miyuki.”

Makoto yawned. “Maybe,” he said. Finally the world started to fade away, and Rui’s next words came to him muffled by sleep. He rolled over, and let himself drift away, letting the bliss of sleep help him forget, even temporarily, about everything he’d lost in just a few hours.