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“They would’ve killed us anyway.”
He asks the question on the bus. The wheels collide with a rough patch in the road; her head jostles limply against the glass window serving as her pillow. She doesn’t answer him. Keeps her hands folded in her lap. She scrunches her nose — she needs a shower. So does he. Her eyes burn as her stomach growls.
He scratches his neck and heaves a dramatic sigh.
“You’re upset,” he says, voice laced with defeat. He grips her shoulder and she tenses under the touch. The touch of a killer.
She reeks of iron and burnt flesh. She hadn’t even known what burnt flesh smelled like until a few hours ago, but now she can’t be rid of it. It clings to her clothes, taints her hair. Acid sloshes around in her stomach, corroding her from the inside out. It’s been so long since she’s slept.
“All right. I won’t push you, but I meant what I said. Better the two of us than none of us.” He withdraws his hand and stares absently out the window opposite to them.
“How…” Her voice is hoarse. Raspy. She swallows. “How can you be so sure?”
When he turns to face her, and when she turns to face him, she gazes deep into the abyss of his eyes and realizes where she is and where she’s going to be. They glimmer with dull amusement, as they might when someone dares to utter something terribly droll. Just three days ago, this proximity comforted her. She tries not to think about it.
His eyes say one thing. The subtle beginnings of a strained smile say another. It’s as though he wants to frown, to stay neutral, but something holds him back.
“There was no other way. You should trust your friendly policeman, Sara.”
They find temporary housing a few hours north of Tokyo. It’s a Western-style apartment, a studio — small, claustrophobic. The sole window peers out at the cream-colored wall of the next building and down at the grey concrete of the alleyway below.
At least there’s a closet. Not that they have anything to put in there. She turns the knob and emptiness greets her.
Their personal effects had been left intact — he, his wallet and keys; she, her school ID and train pass. They’re bereft of anything else. He goes to the convenience store and returns with the basics: soap, toothpaste, cup noodles, melon bread, miscellanea.
“This should at least get us through the next couple days,” he says, sticking two cups of noodles in the microwave.
She sits at the table near the minuscule kitchen and runs her fingers along the pleats in her skirt. She’s still not entirely convinced that this isn’t a dream and that she won’t awake within the confines of that prison.
He duly hands her a cup and a pair of chopsticks before sitting across from her at the table. The circles cradling his eyes have darkened from taupe to violet.
“Now what?” she asks flatly, stabbing at the noodles emphatically. She hasn’t started eating yet, but they already taste bland.
“You can probably come up with something better than I can. What are you thinking?” He guides the noodles into his mouth, never breaking eye contact.
“Is it even possible for us to go back to our old lives?”
However unappetizing, the smell of sustenance sends her stomach into a frenzy. It howls with hunger. She takes a bite of the noodles and chews mechanically. They don’t taste like anything.
He tilts his head. “Do you really think we’d be here if we could?”
“We didn’t even try,” she protests weakly. Her temples throb.
He takes another bite, pensive. “This is just to gather our bearings. You have to know they’d expect us both to run home after escaping.”
Silence falls over them, a heavy curtain.
“I wonder…” he begins, trailing off.
She studies him, the way he turns his head in deference, the way his eyes dart from the door to her lips. Her heart stutters.
“What?” she demands. It comes out far more aggressively than she intended, but she isn’t sure what she intended to begin with.
He leans forward, pinning her beneath his analytical gaze.
“Did you ever think that I don’t want my old life back, Sara?”
What had she felt in the moments that came to pass following the slaughter?
Blood pooled beneath their feet. Streams of it filled the narrow cracks in the floor. Limp bodies piled on top of one another. A cat plushie dyed crimson, still cradled in its loving owner’s arms. Red beads sluicing down stainless steel jewelry.
She can’t have felt much at all. She did faint shortly thereafter, after all. The floormaster’s voice, enveloped in fog as it was, still permeates every synapse.
Congratulations! You’ve won the precious gift of life!
It's just to gather their bearings, but their resources are finite.
“I could do something,” she insists as they clean up the remnants of their breakfast from the kitchen. “Maybe get paid under the table?”
He shakes his head and waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about a thing, Sara. It’d be easier for someone like me to go out and do odd jobs, you know?”
She wrings her hands. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“It’d be safer if you stayed here.”
A shadow falls over his face. Her chest tightens. He’s deathly serious. Doesn’t he know what that would do to her? She looks at the corner of the room where their futon lies flat. Joe sits cross-legged upon the sheets, two hollow spaces where his eyes should be. Blood cascades from the holes, dripping onto the floor. She looks at the other corner where the refrigerator buzzes. Nao is nailed to the wall, her body saturated in hues of red. Black fluid pools beneath her. The other corner — the other corner —
“Sara?”
She snaps her head around to meet Keiji’s concerned gaze with her own. He pulls her close against him, snaking an arm around her waist.
“I can’t just stay here all day,” she says tearfully. His chest muffles her voice.
The shadow darkens, a cloud prognosticating a storm. He lifts a hand to caress her cheek, his thumb rubbing slow circles with portentous affection. Her skin prickles, raised bumps rising across her arms. It’s the apex of summer and his hand is icy. Frigid.
“We don’t know who’s out there, Sara. Better me than you.”
Better the two of us than none of us.
“But — ”
He leans closer, lips hovering above her ear. Has his scent always been this salient? A chill travels down her spine, emanating outward and holding her nerves hostage.
“I can’t lose you too.”
He starts spending more time out of the apartment. Some days he comes back early. Some days he comes home long after the sun has set and her vision has gone bleary.
“It’s temporary,” he promises. “Give it a couple months.”
She trusts him, although she doesn’t know why. She certainly shouldn’t trust him. He watched impassively as they crumpled into heaps of skin, hair, tendons, meat.
A mote of dust floats across the window next to the futon, dancing on the incipient light of dawn. She bats at it absentmindedly. Maybe it’s because there’s no one else to trust. What was it that he had said right before the carnage commenced?
There was no other way. It was rigged against us from the start.
She thought she’d feel something more. Depression. Confusion. Consternation. Torment. She doesn’t feel much of anything. They were strangers.
That’s right — they were strangers.
“Hm,” he says over dinner one day. The circles beneath his eyes are gradually disappearing.
She quirks an eyebrow, asking him a wordless question.
He scratches his neck. “You look a little sickly. Maybe you need some sun.”
Sara had wanted to see the sun when they escaped, but it was a tempestuous day. A canopy of clouds hid the sun behind an opaque screen. She hasn’t left this place in — how long has it been? Her eyes flicker toward the bottom corner on the other side of the room near the closet door. One thin engraving on the wall. Two. Three, four, five. One after the other. They’ve been here for fifteen days. She hasn’t stepped foot outside in as many days.
“We still have an hour or two before sunset,” he says.
She thought she’d be more excited for a taste of fresh air, but the air here smells familiar. It smells like him.
Sara nods. “That’s not a bad idea.”
Her eyes take time to adjust to natural light. He holds her hand as they traverse down the slope leading down onto the bank of the river cutting through the town and doesn’t let go even when they sit down.
“You already look better,” he coos, and she blushes despite herself.
The sun sinks slowly into its grave in the sky and dyes the waters orange.
“I hate that it had to end that way. Killing one person...that was more than enough for me,” he says quietly. It’s the first time he’s brought it up in over a week. The remorse latent in his words rings surprisingly genuine.
She squeezes his hand. “You said that they were going to kill us anyway. You never told me how you knew that.”
Keiji remains silent for a long time. He rubs his neck and gazes into the flowing waters, contemplating the right words to say.
Fabricating? She shakes her head, banishes the thought.
“You remember those percentages? The floormaster left a document behind after he left somewhere. It updated our odds after the second Main Game. Straight zeroes.”
She sinks her nails into the cool, damp earth beneath them and exhales shakily.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he admits, unthreading their fingers to take her chin between his fingers. A reservoir of grief resides in his dark eyes. “I already hate to see you like this.”
“Maybe you were right. Maybe...it was better that at least two of us lived. But why me?” she asks, not quite knowing what to do with her hands. “Why not Gin? Why not Kanna? They — They deserved to live.”
Her face is hot, stained with tears. The lens of her tears render his face blurry, inexact. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that he was grinning.
It doesn’t matter because he’s kissing her, slowly, then fiercely, impatiently, his teeth sinking into her bottom lip, his tongue brushing against hers, forcing her to taste the salt of her tears.
She kisses back because there’s nothing else she can do. There’s nothing else she wants to do. Salt, salt, salt. He grips either side of her face between his hands, moving his lips along hers, lapping at her lip and leaving a wet sheen of saliva behind when he pulls away. She pants and touches her cheek.
“Oh, Sara.” His pupils are dilated, extending toward the outer rim of his irises. The reservoir has run dry. “You know why I chose you.”
They had been sleeping side by side. Now, when he returns from the odd job du jour, he slips into the futon wraps her arm around her, pulling her flush against his chest. Sometimes he stays silent, letting his thoughts ferment in the summer heat.
Other times he flips her over and hooks his fingers into her underwear before mercilessly tearing them off and shoving himself roughly inside her, singing her praises, saying things that both electrify and horrify her.
“Sara...Sara. You know I wanted you — as soon as I saw you. You — You know that, right?”
“You’re mine, Sara. Mine. Am I yours?”
“Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me.”
She notices it when she’s putting her clothes away.
Sara slips the white undershirt around the hanger. When she turns to hook it onto the rack in the closet, she glances down at the keyhole to see that the hole is gone, covered by thin strips of black electrical tape from both sides.
That hasn’t always been there. She could see through the keyhole just fine the other day. She grazes her finger along it experimentally.
She makes a note to ask him later.
He makes her forget about it.
Sara doesn’t ask when they’re going to leave anymore. She doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to hear his answer.
He’ll tell her eventually (whether she wants him to or not).
Someone knocks at the door during dinner.
“Ah. I had a feeling this time would come,” he says. He gestures to the closet. “Go in there.”
“Why?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “Do you know who that is?”
He shakes his head.
“Nope, and that’s the problem. Whoever it is, they’re going to get suspicious if no one answers, but I doubt they’ll search the closet. With any luck, even if they get past me, they’ll assume the door’s busted with that tape over the lock.” He flashes a lazy, lopsided grin. “So let me be on the front lines for you.”
She sits there, stunned, before nodding and doing as he says (as usual). She darts across the room and swings the door open, taking refuge beneath their limited wardrobe. She can hear him open the door and greet the undue visitor.
“Why don’t…”
His voice drops to an inaudible whisper.
She can hear the door shut. Minutes pass. The door opens again.
“You can come out.”
She emerges, narrowing her eyes in response to the light. “Who was that?”
“Ah, no one you should concern yourself with,” he assures, running a hand through his hair. Is he sweating? “But we’re fine now.”
Something possesses her to bound up to him and wrap her arms around him. A strange tang saturates her senses, but his warmth overwhelms her suspicions and turns them to ash.
“We’re fine now,” he repeats, softer this time.
It doesn’t occur often, but when there’s a knock on the door, she escapes into the closet. It becomes a trained response, automatic — her muscles go into motion even when he’s not there. He was right, after all. It’s difficult to know who’s out there looking for them, and it’s simply impossible to ascertain what those individuals might want to do to them.
She draws her knees up to her chest and sinks into the amniotic embrace of the tenebrosity. He put that tape over the keyhole. The question of why he would do such a thing gnaws at her, camps out in the trenches of her thoughts.
He did it to shield her. That’s probably it. Her heart sighs with something resembling adoration.
When she swings the closet door open, a new addition adorns the walls.
She gets on all fours and crawls underneath the hanging clothes to ascertain what it is. She drags her fingers gingerly along the black material. It’s slightly rough to the touch — foam.
Is this new? Has this always been here and she just didn’t realize? She touches a finger to her lips in thought. It’s soundproofing foam. What purpose would that serve within the confines of a closet?
Her eyes linger on the board for a moment longer before she retreats and stands up. She just hadn’t noticed it. It’s all the way in the back of the closet, after all. She’d never see it in the dark.
A knock at the door. She doesn’t wait for him to look in her direction. She absconds into the closet and hugs her knees close to her chest.
As usual, there are voices. One of those voices is strikingly familiar. It speaks with a haunting rhythm, a calming cadence.
She stabs her nail through one strip of electrical tape. She pierces the next, twisting her finger to expand the circumference of the hole. A thin beam of light shines through.
Keiji talks to someone at the door. He scratches his neck and shifts his weight from foot to foot. She narrows her eyes, scrutinizing him further. His lips are pressed into a thin line. He’s anxious. That makes her anxious.
She moves to her left and leans closer to get a clearer view of the person standing at the door. She sees a shock of light hair, a sliver of a distinctly feminine jawline. The person’s voice is still muffled, murky, as though underwater.
Keiji gestures. The person raises their voice. He steps outside and shuts the door behind him.
Minutes pass. Maybe it’s hours. Through the keyhole, she counts the marks by the corner. Forty-four.
Finally, the knob on the front door turns and he crosses the threshold, looking far more drained than he did when he left. He closes the door behind him. He’s panting.
“You can come out now, Sara.”
She breathes between her teeth and keeps her legs drawn up to her chest. She doesn’t know what happened with that woman, but she won’t come out. Sitting in front of the soundproofing foam is Q-taro’s bisected corpse. Intestines, coated in various fluids, spill onto the floor.
“Sara?”
He stands still for a moment before striding over to the closet and swinging the door open. The influx of light strains her eyes, making his shadow all the more prominent. His eyes are wide, wide with hunger and something else. Something rotten. Something necrotic.
Wrong. It’s wrong. It’s been wrong, but wrong is familiar and pacifying — and so she accepted it.
“You know they’re gone, right?”
Standing to her feet is a more laborious task than she anticipated. “I know.”
His gaze softens. “Scared?”
Yes, but not of them.
She walks over to the windowsill and gathers her school ID with a trembling hand before approaching the front door. He follows her.
“Going out? Not sure if that’s a good idea,” he says.
The tremors in her hand multiply like a cancer throughout her body. She doesn’t look at him.
“I want...to go home. Even if it’s dangerous.”
Her blood pounds in her ears. Her knees shake, but she stands tall, even as he approaches her. His shadow swallows her.
“Home?”
Bottled rage flashes across his features like a bolt of lightning. He reaches for her wrist and curls his fingers around it.
“You’re a smart girl, Sara. I’m surprised you’d say something like that. You already know the truth, right?”
He pulls her close. Close enough to sting. His lips twist into a smile. The familiar smell of iron ensnares her in its grasp. Her eyes dart down toward his hand. A key glimmers punishingly in the perishing light of the sunset.
“You’re already home.”