A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, K23 – write 50k of a multichapter during NaNo or Camp. This is my April project…that's already butchered the plan I had for it, but oh well…
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Raibu mirai no tame, ni shinda kako o kiku
live for the future, listen to the dead past
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Prologue
2045
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Something exploded, somewhere.
Vision went white. Then black.
There were screams. Then silence.
A long, long, period of silence.
And then there was just the wind.
He opened his eyes and forked out a tongue to taste that wind.
It stung. His mouth was dry and scratched, and his tongue stiff. Like someone had rolled up a sheet of sandpaper and stuck it in. And there was no moisture in the wind to soften it.
He needed to find some – something to drink.
He tried to move a hand. It hurt and he quickly stopped, gasping for breath. That hurt too, against the raw mouth, the raw throat –
Someone was screaming again too. First a weak sound that was almost mute, but then they were full blown screams. Man, woman, child, animal – all of them indistinguishable, melting into a drawn out symphony that climbed in octaves as he lay, still gasping for breath, still in that spiral of clouded plain that would only grow until it met its limit, it plateau –
Why, why couldn't he stop? Why wouldn't it stop; that pain?
Live…
He didn't know where those words came from. From his mind…or whispered in the wind.
But there was the answer. He couldn't stop breathing because he needed to breathe to live.
But why did it have to hurt so much?
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She was a grave keeper, and it was a silly job to cling to in this day and age but she did so anyway. By doing so, she believed, some semblance of normalcy would remain.
And she was the only one of their little band who had a grave marker waiting for her. The rest had been swept up in the tragedy of 2009, or the chain of tragedies that had come after. In 2009, she hadn't even been born. None of them had been born. Few survivors from that initial time even remained. The professor was one. The crazed old man who lived surrounded by computers searching through all the records written by time, as though an answer existed there.
But, in their own ways, they all clung to something. Like she went at least once a week to clean the graves. Or to bury the dead when that need was called upon. But it hardly was. The world's population had dwindled far too much. What was once Asia was now a small corner of Tokyo, bound on one side by the bay. The bridge that once stretched across it had crumbled from destruction, or disuse.
In truth, it didn't matter which of those it was. It only mattered that the bridge was no more.
She did not remember the bridge either. Nor could she really understand its need. Yes, there was land on the other side. Too much land, in truth. There weren't enough people to manage it. Even with water barring their progress on one side, the land was just too much. She had never seen the bay in her life. She'd been busy elsewhere.
Like the cemetery, and she listened carefully as she went inside. The gate had collapsed during her time and she stepped over its rusting rails – they had started rusting when the dead had become too much to bury or mourn.
But now the tide of death had slowed again. There were too few for a tragedy to include more than ten or twenty. And those numbers could be buried, could be mourned. For the numerous dead before that era there was only a monument at the bay, another slave of time.
She wondered if it too rusted, or crumbled. Its peak could be seen, even from there. A small, white glimmer catching the afternoon light.
In night, it would be invisible. Everything would be invisible, except the memories they clung to.
But, for now, she still had her eyes.
She looked around.
Then froze.
Few came to the graveyard anymore and she knew them all by face and by name. All older than her. One as old as the tragedies themselves. But there was someone lying in front of one of the tombstones. Someone who looked closer to her age. Or maybe even younger.
She took half a step back: in surprise, nothing else. There was little to fear. So few the human race had become that they'd stopped killing others of their kind, and that was perhaps the only mercy in this new world. She'd never known anything different, except tales her parents and grandmother had told. Her grandmother more. Her parents had passed away when she was very young, and that was why their grave had a space for her.
She walked slowly closer, in case the boy was asleep and startled by her approach. He was awake, though his eyes were blank, staring at the sky. His lips were parted, and when she knelt by him she noticed they were bruised and cut sullied by dirt as well. And his gasps for air were pained.
Water… she realised. He needed water.
She had some with her. Still clean. What she'd planned to use to clean the graves.
It looked like that would be waiting now.
She carefully trickled the water into the boy's mouth and his tongue forked out, searching for more moisture. His fingers twitched as well.
'Don't move,' she cautioned. 'Drink first.'
He obeyed her. Or, perhaps, he had no other choice but to obey her.
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Something crawled into his mouth. No, trickled. Offered by that shadow above him. It vanished almost as soon as it entered his mouth. Sucked by those lips or that tongue or that mouth. Never reaching the throat that ached as well.
But the rest of him needed that cool thing so desperately as well.
He pushed his tongue out, pleading for more. His fingers trembled.
No! he thought to them. It still hurt, but it was fading, slowly. Agonisingly slowly.
'Don't move.' The words echoed strangely, but he still understood. 'Drink first.'
Water. It was water, then.
He wasn't sure it counted as drinking, but he drank.
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She set the pail down once she thought the other had had enough. He made a soft, whining sound. He wanted more.
'More will make you sick,' she said apologetically. 'Can you speak? Can you tell me where you live?'
She wondered if he could. The lips were vulnerable but the boy's fingers were likewise bleeding and dirtied. She wondered what the rest of the body was like, under those roughed up clothes.
And, like she expected, she got no answer. He tried, but the result was his body seizing. She restrained him like that. He'd start thrashing next, perhaps, and if trying to speak was causing that much pain (or he was hallucinating, which was the same thing in the end), thrashing about would be agony.
So she held him down. She had to climb on top of him to do it. Knees on legs. Hands on arms. But it was worth it. A cry escaped the other: clouted in that dry, parched throat. And then the boy stilled, fell limp.
She manoeuvred him onto her back with some difficulty and left the pail and brush there, carrying him to the place they called home.
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Home was once a doctor's clinic. It sort of still was, except there was no doctor there. Still, it was the only place for miles to go if something that couldn't be fixed at "home" was ailing someone. If only because of the books and what few packets of medication remained from what used to be the pharmacy next door.
She didn't remember the pharmacy. None of those who currently lived in the doctor's clinic did. But they knew it had been a pharmacy because of the map. Everything of use had been moved into the clinic by their parents and a few adults who'd left no kids to carry on their legacy. And maybe they'd had a hand in it as well. They'd been too young to commit those seemingly innocent times to memory.
She kicked the door now. Her hands were occupied in stopping her passenger from sliding off. 'It's Asako,' she yelled, when there was no footsteps or light approaching.
A light came. Then a boy's face, peeking from the gloom lit only by his flaming stick. 'Asako?' He blinked. 'We weren't expecting you for another couple of hours at – '
He came close enough to see what – or who – she'd brought along. His mouth formed an 'o' of surprise and he opened the door for her. 'How did -?'
'Found him at the graveyard,' Asako said shortly. Her arms ached and she wanted to put her passenger down. 'There's no-one in the clinic, right?'
The 'clinic' was what portion of the office which retained its former purpose. It had originally been a small, four roomed clinic. Now, only one of those rooms was still used for medicinal purposes. Two rooms were for the boys and one for the girls. There'd been a storage place as well: one filled with files, now with other odds and ends. The waiting room had been converted into a kitchen, dining and meeting area.
'It's clear,' the boy told her, and opened the door for her to bring her passenger in. 'Ichiro, Yuuki! Asako's got a stray.'
'I'd hardly count an injured person a stray,' Asako sighed, putting her baggage on the bed and collapsing into the only chair in the room. 'I think I'll clean tomorrow. I'm wiped suddenly.'
'Not a dog, please,' groaned a new voice from the door. 'Maruo, just toss – '
'It's a person, you idiot,' said another, and there was the sound of a thump. 'Who is it, Asako?'
'Dunno,' Asako replied. 'I just found him lying there. Gave him a bit of water and asked where he lived, then he passed out on me.'
The light in the room slowly grew. Maruo had set a few more sticks alight and put them in things. Vases, containers – anything that wouldn't burn. For years that was their way of lighting places after dark. 'Who wants the honours?' he asked lightly after that.
Asako shook her head. She didn't leave though.
'I guess it's my turn,' the smaller of the pair in the doorway sighed. He stepped inside the room and pulled out scissors from a drawer.
'Just rip it off,' the other boy sighed, leaning against the wall. 'Do we need all of us?'
Asako shrugged. 'Won't know until we see.'
With the help of the scissors, the boy ripped the other's shirt off – then gasped.
The others looked as well.
Asako had thought the skin was just battered and bruised and a little cut up.
It wasn't cut at all. But burnt. In the firelight, the blotches of skin were plain.
'This is going to be a job,' Maruo, recovering marginally, managed. 'Ichiro –'
'I thought we were done with the bombs,' the boy Maruo had looked towards mumbled, before lifting his head. 'I'll go check it out.'
'Leave this to Maruo and me,' Yuuki said, snipping at the pants. 'Asako, we'll need water first of all.'
They'd need a lot more than water, truthfully, but Asako dragged herself out of the chair to go get it.
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'There was no explosion,' Ichiro said when he returned that night. Rei, Natsumi, Kudou and Ryouta had returned as well: the eight of them who lived together. They say on the chairs scattered about in what they called the hanging room – though they left the door to the clinic open, just in case their new stray awoke. 'There might be something on the news tomorrow, but nothing I could see.'
Asako leaned back, feeling the cool plastic against her bare neck. Her hair wasn't bound; it was too short to bind. Short and black. Like the boy they'd found, once they'd cleaned him up enough. But cleaning him up didn't mean the risk of infection had gone. At least antibiotics were one of the few things they still had a supply of.
'I wonder how he got like this then,' Maruo mused. He'd actually planned to be a doctor. There was simply no-one around to teach him. Maybe across the bay – in other places like this little corner of Tokyo where a community still struggled to thrive. 'They're definitely burns, too widespread to have been from the sort of fires we have now and it's not like there's any oil around here…'
They all shrugged. Their faces told different things, different levels of interest. Ichiro was suspicious. Maruo was curious. Yuuki was sympathetic. Ryouta seemed entirely disinterested. Natsumi, like Asako, was exhausted…and Rei. Rei looked frightened, curled into herself. She was the newest of their eight. And the one who'd come knocking on death's door. Maybe she saw herself in their guest – a guest that may become permanent, if he had nowhere else to go.
'We picked up an interesting stray this time,' Ichiro said finally. It wasn't accusatory, just factual. In Rei's case, they'd known exactly what had been the cause. The last of the oil wasting itself: catching fire and burning the factory to the ground instead of giving the people just that little bit more…
Asako shook her head tiredly. 'People don't turn up like that without explanation. There must be a reason.'
'We won't find it yawning,' Natsumi said. She'd messed up her blonde ponytail like she tended to do when she was ready for bed. 'Since the clinic's occupied, who's taking night shift? I'm out.'
'So am I,' Asako and Ichiro mumbled together.
'I'll do it,' Yuuki volunteered after a pause. 'I didn't go anywhere today so I'm good to pull an all-nighter.'
They nodded, mumbled some semblance of good night and drifted off to sleep. And, no doubt, all of them were thinking about the unexpected new arrival – and the mystery surrounding his circumstances.