They had lights inside their eyes.
/
His tennis shoes are worn, holes digging through the fabric and the color scuffed and faded from the once bright logo on the side of the shoes. The shoelaces are thin and he has to constantly retie them as they aren't able to keep themselves up anymore. If things were normal, his parents would look over and immediately tell him, "time to do shoe shopping! Get dressed!" and he would run to his sister's room if she was inside, telling him of the good news. Then they would all head to the store, and he and his sister would run through the aisles, excitedly pulling out new tennis shoes and trying them on. Their parents would struggle to keep up with them, and often, when they had finally caught up, Asahina Yuta and Aoi had already picked the perfect pair.
Yuta thinks back to that as he travels through Towa City, or rather the remains of what used to be an amazing city. He really should be getting used to the sight of dead corpses, but each time he looks at them, his mind flashes back to his parents. His sister. Their laughter, their smiles, the way they would always ruffle his hair when he was proud, the smell of donuts, the defeated sigh as her mother gave up on properly tying her tie, his father's rapid hand movement as he told him bedtime stories...
who knew if they were dead to? Who knows if somewhere, in some city or even worse, this city, his parents and his sister are torn to bits, left to rot in pools of blood...
'No,' Yuta would always think to himself, rubbing away the tears that sprung out from his negative thoughts. 'Mom and dad won't go down easy. Neither will Aoi!'
Surely, they were all running around, avoiding Monobears without fear and defeating them with a strong kick. All of them were fighters, all strong in their own respective fields and they all had positive, optimistic and hardworking attitudes. For them, he had to be strong to. For them, he had to keep on moving, no matter what. Even with his worn down shoes, even with Monobears and children hot on his trail, even with everything else, Yuta was going to hold onto the hope of seeing them again.
Even when he heard the tell-tale end to his doom, the rapid beeping of his bracelet before the blinding flash of white- he desperately believed he was going to survive and keep on moving to find them all.