"This might hurt. Killing disease is new to me."
Knife raised, Shiki strikes down. Fujino bares her teeth, eyelids shut, palms caved over, as the blade is dragged across a bloodless line above her abdomen, just skimming the surface of her school-dress.
"It's gone. Feel any pain?" Shiki asks, sliding the knife into the sheath that's fastened against the small of her back. She shifts herself off Fujino, to her side, and sits on the slope. Breath stuttering, Fujino clutches at her stomach, back against the grass.
"No. What am I, without it? What should I do?" Her voice is taut. Drawn across hot coals.
"How would I know?" Shiki asks. Her hand combs through Fujino's hair, down to its blunt edge, where the strands slip between her fingers. "Ah."
Shiki thinks of holding flowers. Handfuls, barb-sown, pecking at the skin. And then to see lines, but never before their time, never green - only crow's-feet, smile-lines -
"If only," Shiki mutters.
"What?" Fujino parts her hands, eyes red.
"Oh, your hair colour reminds me of lavenders. Violets, maybe. I like it."
"You pity me? Even though I-"
"No, it's pretty bad, but I'm alive." Shiki touches the rag knotted tightly above her left elbow. Sodden, warm, red. Above her cork-screwed forearm, where bone bursts through. "I'll get it fixed. What now, Asagami? For you?"
"I've nowhere to go," Fujino replies, looking ahead at what remains of the bridge: a steely five miles, riverbank to riverbank, centre sunken, split.
Bare iron beams, croaking against the wind.
A week's rage, made weight. After eighteen years, agony absent. Off-duty.
Shiki hums, rubbing her thumb against her bloodied fingertips. "Tricky. I've got an apartment, though. Want to crash?"
Amongst engine-hums and exhaust-judders from standstill cars, caught in the bottleneck-jam on the highway winding above their heads, there's no immediate answer. Fujino fidgets with some blades of grass. She finds no words between them.
"It's up to you," Shiki says.
"...I've never had a sleepover. Can I really stay at yours for a bit?"
"Yeah. What's that saying? Water under the bridge."
They remain for a while on the riverbank incline, gazing up at the empty sky. The air is cool by the water.