It was dark inside the school.
Not a single beam of light had permeated their entire tour of Heavenly Host, save for the feeble and painfully artificial lights of their cell phones. It was a strange sort of dark, thick and choking, with a strangely tangible quality about it. As if it were alive, and could reach out at any second to claim you.
But for these final moments, they had managed if not to escape it, then at least to hide. There was a closet behind classroom 1-A, as Nayuki had discovered earlier on, and it was here that he and Hotaru sought refuge.
It was a counterintuitive place to be if one was hoping to be found by rescuers, tucked away in a classroom in the very heart of the building. But nobody was coming. Nobody, at least, they would welcome the sight of.
Nayuki finished pulling a cabinet across the door as best he could from inside the small room, and turned to go to Hotaru's side. She was splayed out on the floor, back to the wall, with her one remaining hand pressed to her side, pain twisting her delicate features.
There was too much blood.
"Nayu…ki…" she panted, raising her hand to his face, which he took and grasped tightly. "We're…safe now, aren't we?"
"Yeah. Safe," he replied quietly.
She laughed weakly, her head falling back against the wall with a dull thunk. "That's…that's good."
He gently placed her hand back at her side, and went to examine the wound. Her left arm was…no. It would hardly even be called an arm any more; it was a mangled and broken mess of blood and severed tendons, dripping out from the half-empty sleeve of her school blazer. And her side…as carefully as he could, Nayuki pulled back the blood-stained cloth that covered it, and drew in a sharp breath.
It was bad. He expected that, but to see it—partly congealed and still fresh blood pooled in a gaping hole, bone and viscera poking up through the mire—was another thing entirely. He retched once or twice, swallowing the bile back down with a sour burn in his throat. Years of watching horror films, torture flicks, watching brutality unfold on a tv screen, flat and sterile, had not prepared him for this.
"Nayuki…?" With an effort, he tore his eyes away from the carnage and met Hotaru's. She said, "How does it…look?"
He wanted to say, "fine". Wanted to tell her she'd be all right, that he'd get her out of here and everything would be okay, and they'd go back to school and everybody would be there, and she could have her hand back. They'd managed to fool themselves into thinking that so far, never giving up on finding an exit, trying ever door and window, examining every room, and moving with a frenzied sort of optimism that kept them ahead of the ever-encroaching tide of despair.
But now, after so many minutes, hours, days in this accursed place, there wasn't anywhere to run anymore. The man with the hammer had chased them to this claustrophobic corner, all at once an oasis and a prison, and he had shattered every hope of escape in his wake. A flash of memory assaulted Nayuki, of Hotaru's clammy fingers sliding from his, the crack of a board beneath her feet, and the look of panic in her eyes as she tripped, silently begging him to save her.
Then the scream as the hammer came down on her outstretched arm, smashing through it straight through to her ribs and shattering her bones like priceless porcelain, broken beyond repair.
She'd screamed, and screamed, and screamed until the blood welled up in her throat and it came out as garbled sobs instead, and Nayuki tackled the giant and picked up Hotaru with strength he didn't know he possessed and ran and ran and ran.
And now they were here. Nayuki looked into Hotaru's eyes, and saw there a truth that neither of them were prepared for, but was no less inevitable for it. He cleared his throat roughly.
"You'll be fine," he lied.
She smiled, but tears welled up in her eyes. "I'm dying" she whispered, and the words struck him with all the force of the hammer blow she'd endured. "Nayuki, I'm dying."
"That's not true. A doctor—"
"There aren't…any doctors."
"I'll get you out—"
"No," she interrupted, shaking her head as the tears overflowed, "no."
Nayuki's hands clenched and unclenched by his sides helplessly. He reached out for her hand and held it, using his other hand to wipe tears away from her face. Her long lashes fluttered against his thumb as they lowered.
"I'm so tired," she said, voice painfully small. "It hurts."
"Don't go to sleep. Don't close your eyes , Hotaru. Please don't," he practically begged. "I don't want to be—"
"Alone," she murmured, finishing the statement. "I know. I don't…don't want to be alone either."
"Then don't go."
There was a long silence where he stared at her face, desperately waiting for a response. Finally, she said, "I'm really scared."
More tears leaked from her eyes. Nayuki leaned forward to enclose her in a hug, murmuring empty reassurances into her soft hair. He felt numb.
"It's gonna be okay, Hotaru, it's gonna be okay….shhhh…they'll put it back, it'll stop hurting…."
"My hand's gone, it's gone, Nayuki, and it hurts…I want to go home…"
He was crying too, now, both of them sobbing quietly against each other as the events of the last ten hours finally caught up with them: the deaths of their friends; the dwindling hope of rescue, snuffed out like a candle; the terror and exhaustion and pain and hunger and misery of this place, far too much for two unassuming high-school students to handle. They outpoured all their grief and pain, clinging to each other for their final vestiges of comfort, and in that moment the reality crystalized in Nayuki's mind that they would die in this nightmarish place, lost from the world forever.
They stayed that way for a long time, pressed against one another, and eventually fell into silence. Hotaru broke it, her voice barely more than a croak.
"Are you…are you holding my hand?"
"Yeah…"
"I can't….feel it anymore."
Nayuki pulled back to look at her. Her eyes were half-lidded, and her chest rose and fell in shallow movements.
"Hey, hey…Hotaru," he pleaded. "Hotaru, look at me."
With obvious effort, Hotaru lifted her gaze. The spark in it had dulled and faded, and she struggled to focus on him.
"Nayuki…"
In the wake of acceptance of his inevitable demise, sudden determination struck him. He gripped Hotaru's hand in both of his.
"You're not gonna be alone."
A question rose sluggishly into her eyes, and he reached into his back pocket retrieving the box cutter hiding there. He held it up, and the question shifted to confusion.
"Nayuki?"
Willing his hand not to tremble, he pushed the blade out.
"See? Look, I can…I can come with you."
Confusion morphed to horror. "No…you…what are you saying?"
His voice was shaking now, too. "We're not going to make it Hotaru, neither of us. Nobody's here, nobody's coming…you saw all of them, all those bodies. We're gonna end up just like that." he trailed off, and when he picked up again he couldn't raise his voice above a whisper. "I can't lose you, Hotaru. I don't...I couldn't."
Very slowly, she stirred, squeezing her fingers weakly against the hand still held in her own. Understanding was reflected in her eyes, along with resignation.
"I want…to go with you. I love you, Nayuki."
He ducked his head, overcome with an emotion he couldn't place. "God, why did it have to be like this?"
He'd loved Hotaru since middle school, when she'd played soccer on the same team as his sister Anzu. She was beautiful, she was graceful, she was kind, she was clever. He'd never thought of even speaking to her in those days, back when they seemed a world apart, with her on the field and him in the bleachers. The following year, she had switched schools, but he didn't forget her.
Then they ended up going to the same high school. It had to have been fate. She was one year ahead of him, class 3-2 to his 2-4.
He hadn't the courage to approach her directly, but she gradually drifted into his circle, the friend of a friend of a friend. They slowly became closer, as if cautiously dancing a dance neither of them knew the steps to. On Valentine's Day, he found anonymous chocolate in his footlocker. On White Day, he left a love letter in hers. Neither of them had confessed to leaving them.
It seemed so ridiculous, in retrospect. Now that they were here, now that it was obvious, now that they had nothing else to lose. It was, perhaps, the only good thing that would ever come out of this cursed place: it was where they discovered their mutual love.
In the tucked-away room of the haunted school in which she was dying, Hotaru spoke. "I'm glad…"
Nayuki looked up in surprise.
"I'm glad we could…be together, at the end."
He nodded. "Me too," he said hoarsely.
Her gaze wandered past him, to the room beyond. "Our parents…"
Nayuki's mouth tightened, and he glanced at the blade of the box cutter. It represented the culmination of despair, of cutting one's losses; a finality that gathered all the 'what if's and severed them at the roots. There would be no going back.
But going forward there was nothing but darkness. Nayuki stood up, and walked across the small room, beginning to search for a scrap of paper.
"Nayuki? Where…"
"I'm going to write a letter," he told Hotaru, digging a pencil stub out of his pocket. "In case anyone finds it, and can bring it back. They can give it to our parents, so they…" his voice faltered, "…so they'll know what happened to us."
"…Okay," she said. Somehow this resigned response drove the situation home, and the tip of his pencil hovered over the ragged sheet he had just located.
"I don't know what to say," he admitted. The sheer absurdity of it all almost made him want to laugh, but in a painful, choking way.
"Tell them…we love them," Hotaru murmured. "We're…not hurting."
Nayuki nodded, even though she probably didn't see.
"Say it…say it like Shakespeare," she added, eyes slowly sliding shut. A tiny smile touched the corner of her mouth. The rise and fall of her chest was barely visible now.
Like Shakespeare. It was how she'd described the love letter he'd written, months ago now. He'd written it in embarrassingly flowery wording, which greatly contributed to him never admitting to Hokuto that he wrote it.
Well, at least until a couple of hours ago. But she turned out to be delighted. It was the first time he'd heard her laugh since they got trapped in Heavenly Host.
And he'd likely never hear that sound again.
Nayuki put his pencil to the paper and began to write.
"I'm so glad we could find each other before we died. We'll set off on this journey together, holding hands forevermore. There's nothing to be scared of as long as we have each other. We know there was meaning in our lives, because we were fortunate enough to find out soulmates…to find one another amongst all the fish in the sea.
To our mothers and our fathers, take heart: we died happy, and wanted for nothing. And when we finally pass over to the other side, our hunger pains will be gone. We'll fly up to Heaven, and be joyous forevermore. Our only regret is the pain our deaths will cause you. But one day, we'll meet again, up in the golden realm of the ever-after."
He stared at the words for a moment. It was better not to mention the grisly methods of their deaths. But, even so…writing the words hurt. Imagining the reactions. His mother would cry and cry and cry, his father would stare stone-faced at the letter, expression betraying nothing.
And they would mourn.
He tried to tell himself it was better this way. Better than not knowing, at least. He put down the letter, carefully placing it on a desk, and laid the pencil next to it before picking up the knife again. Moving back to Hotaru, he sat down on the floor next to her and brushed a hand over her cheek. It was cool to the touch. Her eyes fluttered open weakly.
"I'm done," he told her.
She gave the barest hint of a nod, and tried to smile.
Nayuki leaned back against the wall, and pulled up his right sleeve. The veins in his wrists stood out plainly on his pale skin, and he looked at them, transfixed. His blood. His life. He could feel his heart pulsing faintly in his chest.
His trembling hand laid the blade against his skin, and sucking in a sharp breath, he drove the blade into his arm and sliced upwards.
The pain was blindingly sharp; he couldn't hold back a yelp of pain as the knife clattered to the floor and he clutched his wrist reflexively. Blood poured out in a crimson stream, and he felt a stab of panic at the sight of it all, pouring out of him like water from a punctured bag.
Beside him, Hotaru made a vague noise of distress at his cry of pain, and Nayuki put on a shaky smile to reassure her.
"L-look," he said, showing her the wound. "We'll be t-together. Always. We're not…we're going to get out of this place, the two of us, and it-it's not going to hurt anymore, ever again."
She turned her head towards him, so weak now that it just sort of flopped to the side. "Do you…promise?" she whispered.
"I promise," he vowed.
"That's…good," she murmured, eyes growing distant. "Nayuki, it's cold. Can I…go to sleep now?" She moved her head ever so slightly, exposing her throat.
The sight of her soft, tender skin sent chills down his spine as he realized what she was asking. He fumbled for the knife, hands shaking even more than before.
Hokuto seemed to sense this. "It's okay," she said, smiling at him ever so faintly, "you promised."
He nodded once. In a single, decisive movement, he plunged the knife into her throat, tearing it open.
And he was alone. He couldn't look at her; she was too beautiful to ever have come to this ugly place, let alone die here, mutilated, lying on the floor like a discarded doll. Instead he stared at his slit wrist, examining the blood coating his arm, wet and cold.
It wasn't enough. He'd be late to meet Hotaru.
He raised the now-bloody knife once more, managing somehow to grip it with his mangled right hand. It was easier the second time. Blood poured afresh from his other arm. The knife toppled to the floor.
Then he took her hand, settling back against the wooden wall. His fingers, slick with blood, twined together with hers, which were slack and unresponsive.
"I love you, Hotaru," he said, and closed his eyes.
In the darkened halls of Heavenly Host, time didn't flow; it stagnated, rotting like a carcass in the sun. The brief tenure of visitors to the school stirred up the air with their panic-filled journeys, but inevitably the dust would settle on their corpses and the air would once again go still, congealing in a viscous paste of agony and despair.
In the classroom with a small closet in the back where two corpses lay, hand in hand, a tattered piece of paper lay on the floor, tossed there carelessly by some long-gone explorer.
The only other thing left behind was a message scrawled on the wall, the jagged letters radiating nothing but contempt.
Idiots. There's no getting into heaven from here.
Hotaru Kanzaki, 17. Lexern Senior High School.
Cause of death: Gave up on escaping and committed suicide with beloved.
Nayuki Minatogawa, 16. Lexern Senior High School.
Cause of death: Gave up on escaping and committed suicide with beloved.
A/N: Oh boy, look who came crawling back. This seems to be a developing pattern for me, writing a couple chapters then popping off for some months. Many thanks to the people who are still reading this! I appreciate your feedback very much :)
Now, about this chapter...what really caught my interest with these to is their dying note. The first time around it was appropriately haunting, until I realized, wait, who writes like that!? The reason I came up with was "say it like Shakespeare", as you can see. I know it doesn't sound anything like Shakespeare, but these kids are Japanese, what the hell do they know besides maybe hearing the name in English class?