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Everyone said Momoi wouldn't last long.
Well, everyone who didn't know Momoi said she wouldn't last long. They'd taken one look at the pink hair, perfectly shiny and smooth; the delicate hands with calloused middle fingers from scribbling down onto old scraps of paper. She wasn't Survivor material, they said, pressing a hand to their hearts.
That is, until they saw her swing a machete down in a full arc onto a zombie's head, unfazed by the squirting blood that stuck in clumps to her round cheeks. They stopped underestimating her then.
She'd been up in her room when it started; writing furiously into neat columns in her binders to hand to Imayoshi in the morning. She'd spent the day observing a rival team they'd be playing the week after, despite the team's arrogance that it wouldn't be needed. She remembered sniffing primly, annoyed, and insisting they'd be lost without her. After all, even the famed Generation of Miracles had needed her. A knock sounded on her door and she groaned, annoyed at the idea of her mother disturbing her after two shouted complaints of interuprrtions. However, opening the door had only welcomed a shriek of unintelligible garbling and rotting flesh.
Objectively, Momoi praised herself for not hesitating. With a scream akin to a battle chant, she'd grabbed the baseball bat Daiki had given her a few years prior to keep by her bedside and swung it directly at the creature's head. It went flying off and rolled down the stairs with loud thumps. She watched, horrified, as the pink strands of hairs fell off the head on each step.
She threw up in the bathroom, a mix of bile with no tears.
After that, she went looking for Daiki. It hadn't been hard; finding him. She always knew where he was; his hiding spots were places they'd grown up together; nooks and crannies that were as familiar to her as the spaces between her own bones.
And she'd found him, sitting in the Touou's locker room with a kitchen knife and a hollow look on his face and Momoi couldn't keep it together. She lets out a loud sob and lunges towards him, clinging to each other quietly, like they used to do when they were kids.
They're still kids.
As they trekked, people came and went. Most that found them quickly learned that sticking with the duo is the best way to go: Aomine's brute strength matched well with Momoi's calculating strategy. It spread that if you wanted to survive, you stuck with the best. But still, people made mistakes. People died.
They kept dying.
And the more she watched them fall, the more Momoi saw her hands stained with blood. It didn't take long for the miracles to find each other, tethered by a magnetic pulse that was hard to ignore. They all coped in their own way to the new world that had been shoved into their closed fists: Aomine takes up smoking cigarettes, long drags before meals and away from everyone else. Kuroko disappears for days, only to return with bruised arms and still hands, clenched and quiet. Kagami gets angry at no one; he shouts in his empty room until his voice is hoarse and then retreats back into himself, helping in any way he can. Kise smiles, close-mouthed, and tells jokes, clutching a phone that never rings. But Momoi, she stays silent and keeps planning, keeps working, keeps going.
It's the only way she knows how to stand it.
"Hey," Aomine sets a cup of tea next to her. She's created an office in the produce section of the abandoned mini-mart they'd found, miles away from their old home. Old maps are stretched out in front of her, held in place by cans of food pulled from the 's faltering already; eyes pried open by sheer will as she stares at the old radio perched on the fruit weight across the table. Four days, five nights. Not a sound. "You need to sleep."
He fingers the edge of the domino table she found near aisle seven and sighs. Aomine has been trying to coax her out of this room for days, return to what was left of civilization with him, to no avail. Kuroko had attempted, once, and came back silent, insisting Aomine leave her be. Which only served to piss him off even further; why did it seem that Tetsu got an explanation as for her obsessive behavior and all he'd gotten was a dismissal? And so, here he was, trying for a...gentler approach, at Kagami's suggestion.
However, she continues ignores him, tinkering with her latest project, a motion-sensor to place near the front entrance. "I'm serious."
"You want to get safe? I'm working on it."
"Hey," he demands gruffly, pulling on her shirt when talking doesn't work anymore. She trips over a bit at the sudden contact, eyes narrowed. Her shoulders feel narrow and brittle under his large hands.
He's never thought of Momoi as small.
"You need to get it together," he says quietly, resting their foreheads together. She tries looking anywhere but him and he steadies her face in his direction with a nudge. "Look, you're trying. We're all trying. That's what matters. That we're alive and all that good shit. There's no point in driving yourself crazy like this."
"If I don't, who will?"
"We all will," he says firmly. She wonders when he'd found all these words of wisdom but doesn't voice the thought; knowing moments such as these are rare. She counts them on her fingertips with other fond memories. "You and me, remember? We share burdens."
"You and me," she repeats, a mantra from better days and better lives. Daiki gives one curt nod, suddenly uncomfortable, and grumbles something about needing to sharpen his knife. But instead of leaving, he pulls up a plastic chair and sits down in front of her, unmoving.
She rests her head on the plastic table and lets the soft sound of honing metal soothe her to sleep.