The end hasn't occurred yet. Does this look like an end to you?

If my end is to be stuck in a concrete box for the rest of my life then I am fucking pathetic.

Touya thought differently. He didn't mind dying in a concrete box. He wanted to die with honour. He wanted a certain symbolism in his life.

Fuck that. I don't have time to care about anything but my own self-preservation. I'll procure no lies about that. It is the truth, and I'm damn proud of it.

It is because of my self-preservation that I am still here now. Certain others who lack this trait are not. Did I mention that I think that's pathetic?

My legs were dead. My lungs were burning. My brain was dead. My stomach was screaming. I was in no mood for anything but curling up and crying. I didn't think about what Touya was thinking. I just felt awful.

However, we had made it to the edge of the city. I didn't care anymore. 'The end' was at the bare edge of my mind.

The city had tiny houses, with simple small front lawns, and two floors at most. There weren't many traffic lights and the roads were thin. I couldn't see much else in the darkness. Although there were street lamps, they glowed instead of shining bright light over the streets.

There were barely any windows lit up and not a soul walked the streets except us. I knew we were still in China because I couldn't really read anything.

Now that we had reached the edge of the town, I didn't know where we could go. The clear night sky rested above our heads, casting the glow of the moon across the landscape.

Just down the street, a great big shadow crossed my eye. It wasn't a threatening shadow. I looked more carefully, and the silhouette of a ginormous penguin sat backing the dim sky.

"Woah. That's so cool," I whispered. I was a little afraid to break this silence. I walked closer to it. I heard Touya's feet crunch quietly on the pavement behind me.

"Sakura, I know you're hungry and I know you're scared, but right now, I think we should rest and think clearly in the morning," Touya apologized. He put his hand on my shoulder gently, in an act of comfort.

In response, I yawned. Today had been way too much. Maybe it was tomorrow. I didn't know if midnight had passed or not. It was too dark to tell and we really had been walking forever.

We were already standing next to the big huge penguin and Touya climbed inside. He extended his hand to me to help me in. It was darker inside the penguin, but there was no wind at all. It was actually kind of cozy.

I had forgotten about our odour. I think my nose had become used to it: the pizza and the Coca-Cola. All I could focus on was the fatigue. The fear was left in a dark corner of my mind.

Touya and I lay down, huddled into the corner of the structure. I nestled myself into his chest and fell asleep in that moment.

Normally I would never have been able to fall asleep that quickly considering all the discomfort, but I simply didn't care anymore. It was all too much. I didn't know how long it would take for Touya to fall asleep.

I woke up and sat up, stretching my neck. My head knocked somewhere beside me. That was odd. I opened my eyes and was mildly surprised by my surroundings. The night's past events flashed into my brain. I wasn't too surprised. I had suddenly changed locations before. I could take it.

I looked over to Touya, who was still sleeping. I figured that he was tired so I let him sleep. He looked like a mess. The Coca-Cola had dried in drips oddly on his body. I was reminded of the awful stench we were expressing. His hair was mussed and a leaf was stuck awkwardly in it. I suspected that it had stuck to him while he slept to the stickiness on his body. I pulled it out and tossed it out of the side of the penguin.

My stomach growled. I clenched my arm over top of it. My stomach did not growl quietly, and Touya was still sleeping.

My legs had a dull burn in them. Is suspected that was from the running. My lungs had returned to normal. I still smelled really badly. I wasn't cold anymore. The sun had risen and the warmth had come with it. Touya had kept me warm while I slept. I was feeling revitalized from the sleep.

My stomach growled again. My head snapped toward Touya to make sure he wasn't waking up. This reminded me of when I stayed up to watch over him sleeping while we hid in the shed. However, Touya was stirring and I was frustrated at my stomach for waking him up.

He sat up, and stretched, twisting his body left and right. One of his elbows hit the right side of my ribcage slightly, and I yelped. I groped my side with pain. Touya's eyes snapped open with panic.

"Oh my god! Are you OK? Where do you hurt? Are you bleeding?" He asked frantically. I didn't respond. The pain in the right of my body was too much. Touya decided to check for himself, and pulled my shirt up very gently on that side. I didn't see what he saw; my eyes were clenched tightly.

"Thank goodness there is no blood. That still looks really bad though. Why didn't you tell me you hurt yourself last night?" Touya asked, the panic gone from his voice. The worry hadn't left him though.

Truth be told, I had forgotten that I had hurt myself. When I had jumped from the pickup truck, I had landed on my side. Normally I would have been unable to ignore the pain, but the adrenalin had distracted me.

Touya's body had left me side when I had woken up, and I was now starting to feel its absence. There wasn't too much of a breeze flowing into the penguin. Nonetheless, I felt a shiver in my spine, and wrapped my arms around my torso. I was starting to feel the cold. It was only spring. The mornings were still cold.

Touya looked concerned.

"We need to get you inside somewhere. You can't get cold now, not when you are hurt," Touya announced. I nodded jerkily in agreement. While I felt pretty comfortable right when I woke up, I was rapidly becoming more and more uncomfortable. My face was squished together with discomfort.

"Where?" I asked.

"Arg. We still look terrible. I don't know if we'd be let inside anywhere," Touya worried. "Wait, Sakura. Did you bring any money with you?"

Touya looked hopeful. Maybe he thought we could pay someone to let us in somewhere. Sadly, I shook my head in response. All I had were my outdoor clothes and our parent's photograph. There wasn't any money in my pockets, because there wasn't any need for money in the boarding school. Touya's hope was crushed.

"We'll just have to take our chances. Maybe someone will take pity on us," Touya said, hopefully. I nodded. I wanted what he said to be true.

Touya poked his head out of the penguin, then exited. His hand entered the entrance, offering help to stand up. I took it greatfully.

I noticed that the sun had risen completely. There weren't many clouds in the sky and I was grateful. I looked around myself in wonder, momentarily forgetting my pain. The city looked a bit different in the daylight.

The first thing I noticed was that I could see far in every direction. This shouldn't have been weird. Most people wouldn't have noticed, but I did. There weren't fences keeping me in a playground. There wasn't a wall with only a lonely window to look out. There was a certain liberty.

We didn't have an adult whose responsibility it was to look after us. All I had was Touya and I was glad. I trusted Touya. I wasn't fond of a household that trapped me, even if they were my precious family. I wasn't fond of a teacher who lectured lies. I hated police who thought it was their job to control everyone. I hated a murderer as much as the next person if not more, but there was no excuse for the police to follow us. There wasn't a single one. At least, there wasn't a single excuse that my five-year-old brain could think of.

"Let's get looking around. Oh, first we should tidy ourselves up a bit. Can you help me?" Touya asked politely. I complied.

We spent the next few minutes taking off pizza condiments and leaves off of each other. Touya also tried to tidy my hair, although I did not think he was successful. I couldn't reach his hair, so I left it as it was.

When we looked as tidy as we could get, we threw our waste into the park's garbage can. Then, we walked down the street, keeping an eye out for a public building. We were in a residential area of the town.

After walking a short distance, my legs were already hurting. That running yesterday must have taken a toll on me. However, I took a hint from last night and listened for the city.

I figured that I could hear shops if I listened hard enough. I mean, shops made noise. At least, they made more noise than houses did.

I closed my eyes and listened. I could hear a bird. I could hear... a bird. There is no way that I could only hear a bird. I knew there must be something else. I listened, and tried to ignore the obnoxious annoying silly bird that was distracting me. To my left, there was noise. I squinted my eyes shut and tried to make sure that I was right. Then I tripped over a curb. Feeling rather humiliated, I opened my eyes.

Touya was walking straight across the road.

"We should turn here, Touya," I advised, feeling very smart.

"Why here? I was thinking we could try to turn later if we don't find anything down this street."

"There is noise that way. That means that there is business that way, right?" I answered, becoming unsure of my conclusion. Touya always knew what he was talking about. If he didn't think we should turn here, we probably shouldn't.

"Oh really? I hadn't noticed. We'll turn here then. Good listening, Sakura!" Touya cheered. I smiled really big. I was quite pleased with my success and my praise. We turned.

This street was busier. There were still houses everywhere, except they seemed to be stacked atop one another. There were some people walking down it. They didn't take much notice of us. I guess that cleaning ourselves up worked.

I saw a thing flutter on the street as we walked by. I decided to pick it up, because it was pretty. I looked at it closer, and noticed some Chinese letters on it.

"Hey Touya, what is this?" I asked. He took the thing from my hands and looked a little shocked.

"You are the best sister ever, Sakura. You have found an amazing thing, money," Touya explained.

"Wow. Really? How much? How much?" I asked, quite excited that I had found something so useful.

"I believe this is 100 yuan!" he cheered. "We must spend this wisely."

I smiled at my success and nodded at Touya's idea. I would have smiled bigger, but I was still feeling pretty uncomfortable and cold. I shivered again.

"I think we should use this to get you warm somehow. We should also see if we can get some food. We haven't eaten in a long time."

My stomach had been growling a lot this morning. The hunger pains in my stomach had settled to a dull ache, so I was able to ignore it most of the time. However, Touya mentioning it again made me feel the ache.

"Let's do that now. I'm hungry," I whined.

"We have to think this through, Sakura. We don't know what's going to happen to us, so we must spend this precious gift well," Touya scolded. I was angry. I found the money, so I should be able to spend it!

"You big meanie!" I yelled. A few people looked at us. I remembered that we were in China, so people wouldn't understand the Japanese that we were speaking.

"Maybe we should speak Chinese again. We shouldn't stand out so much, especially if people are looking for us," Touya said. I didn't want to speak Chinese again. It was very hard and it was much harder to understand Touya when he spoke Chinese. However, I really didn't want those evil policemen to find us, so I agreed.

"Let's find ourselves some food, Touya," I whined again, but in Chinese. My stomach was gurgling, but it was impossible to tell over the noise of the street. I could feel it gurgle though. The street had become much busier over our short walking trip. I guessed that I had picked the correct way to go.

"OK. We'll only budget a few yuan for the food," Touya agreed. I didn't know what 'budget' meant, but I figured that it had something to do with money. Perhaps it meant 'use'?

Anyways, we walked down the street, and eventually approached the places with stores. The beautiful smells assaulted my starved nose. The pizza smell was drowned out by the delicious aromas. I was confused because Touya didn't turn and get food from any of the stalls.

"Touya. Why don't we get food now?" I asked. I wasn't particularly angry anymore, as much as confused. I knew that the food was coming soon, but why wasn't it coming sooner. I had no idea.

"I'm looking for the best value. All these stalls have signs, you see? We have to find a stall with cheap enough food for us to buy some and still have some money left over," Touya explained. I didn't quite know why we couldn't just spend all the money, but Touya knew what he was doing. I started looking intently at all the signs as we passed. However, I didn't know what I was looking for, so it was all a bit useless. It was fun though. I had learnt the Chinese number system in the past months, so I felt very accomplished when I was able to read the signs.

I noticed a sign with a particularly low number, so I tugged on Touya's sleeve. I wasn't able to read the other words on the sign though, so I didn't know if this sign was useful or not.

"Look at that sign Touya. It has a small number!"

Touya examined the sign for a moment, and smiled. He looked at me like he was about to tease me, and I was ready to be disappointed.

"That's not a sign for food, Sakura," Touya explained. I was disappointed. "That's a sign for a public bathhouse."

"What's a public bathhouse, Touya?" I asked. I hadn't heard those words before. I wasn't sure what he meant.

"It's a place that has a large bathtub, that many people can use at once," Touya explained. I nodded, that made sense. The word for 'bath' was in 'bathhouse'.

"So we haven't found food yet?" I pouted. I dropped the idea of the sign that I found. I was looking forward to food.

"Sakura, that sign is very useful! You can warm up in the bathhouse, and clean up. They have a sale today. You can get off that awful pizza smell," Touya explained, with a smile on his face. I cheered up immediately.

"Really?" I cheered. That was great. I could finally get warm. The sun had risen, but it was still cold, and my side was still hurting me. I was doing my best not to touch it, so it didn't hurt too much. The hunger had only left my brain for a moment, then the hunger pains returned. I put my forearm over my stomach. Touya noticed my action.

"Yes, Sakura. We'll go there after we find something warm to eat," Touya said. We continued our search for cheap food with more zest.