Following Hideharu's death, Shinji became even more quiet. At school, he acted like he couldn't see anyone but Akihiko. When someone else talked to him, he ignored them, whether it be to tease him or offer him food or to apologize for almost running into him in the hallway. Sometimes he'd get so into the mood that he would ignore Akihiko, too. It took maybe a week for him to start returning back to normal, and even then, it felt like he had lost something. The light-hearted childishness that showed through that gruff exterior was suddenly gone. He was always serious, always stern and quiet and hollow. He stopped playing in the fields with Akihiko and Miki. It saddened the boy, it really did, to see his friend like that - but he knew he couldn't do anything to bring Hideharu back. More than that, he couldn't do anything to alleviate the guilt of that death from Shinji. Because the brunette had admitted, he would never forgive himself for what happened.
The evenings after school Akihiko spent, then, were often just him and Miki. The two of them would walk along the riverbed, sometimes race, though more often than not, he would just carry her around on his back. She always enjoyed that. They would sit in the trees and point out the stars, or talk about what they wanted to do when they got older. None of it was serious banter, though. Miki wanted to be a vet so that she could help animals like Hideharu get better if they were ever sick. Akihiko didn't know what he wanted to be. He had never really taken it seriously. He had years to think about it, anyway, right?
Since Shinji didn't go outdoors with them, he stayed inside and usually helped Riyeko with dinner. Now that Hideharu was dead, he wasn't a secret anymore; Satoru knew about him, as did the rest of the faction, and so did Riyeko. She sympathized greatly with Shinji's loss and so tried to do what she could to make him feel better. Letting him cook soon became that 'something'. "His eyes light up, and he gets all absorbed in what he's doing," Akihiko remembered her telling him. "I think it helps him forget everything else."
It took a few months, but eventually Shinji started coming out of the kitchens again in his time after school. He would race Akihiko from time to time, and participated in their play and their idle conversation, albeit sometimes less whole-heartedly than before. If something happened at school, or he was just not feeling up to leaving that night, he was back in the kitchen. When the weather got warmer, the Sanadas started to visit the beach without him on those nights when it was just the two of them, and Akihiko would swim while Miki collected seashells and dipped her feet in the water until nightfall, and they would go back to the orphanage. Things had finally gone back to what felt like normal again. Their struggles had molded them into different and more mature people than before, but that was normal, Satoru told them. Things happened. People grew up, changed, and moved on. That was life.
Usually, that 'moving on' never bothered Akihiko. Children came and went in his faction. When they graduated, they would leave the orphanage to start their own lives. Natsuo was maybe the only one who didn't; he graduated when Shinji and Akihiko were in 5th grade, but he never left the orphanage. He was too attached to the place to leave it - and laughing, he said that Satoru could use the extra hand, anyway.
Once in a blue moon, someone would get adopted. Children came into the orphanage, too, some of them much younger than Miki, some of them almost old enough to live on their own; all of them did their own thing and didn't associate more than your average impersonal roommates would. The orphanage actually got crowded after some incident on the Moonlight Bridge that killed a bunch of people in some kind of freak accident, and left a few orphan survivors in its wake. Most of those children were moved out of Kawatani, though. There were too many of them for the establishment to sustain.
Shinji and the Sanadas often remained indifferent. Riyeko was their exception.
The day that she left was, at first, like every other day. Akihiko had spent that day mostly in idleness, trying to break his record for the number of trees climbed in a day. He was nearing the end of his 5th grade year, with Miki in her 4th; that day had been a Sunday, and he didn't know how else to spend it. Both him and his sister returned to the orphanage that evening tired and covered in leaves. Climbing trees usually meant he fell out of one or two.
"You should have Chichi look at that gash," Miki was telling him.
Akihiko waved off her concern, brushing a hand past his forehead. Even now, there remained a white patch in the top-left corner of his forehead, which was now the product of habit more than anything else. Surprisingly, no one ever asked him why he had a perpetual cut there. "Look, it's not even bleeding anymore. I'll be fine."
The girl frowned, but they both entered the eating room without a word.
Riyeko was inside. She was putting down cups of milk and pieces of bread next to every cushion on the floor; a typical routine before dinner. She greeted them cheerfully - she was sweet on the Sanadas since they were friends with Shinji.
That never bothered Akihiko. Sometimes he got extra food for it. "Is dinner ready?"
"Almost. Sit down, it'll be right out."
Akihiko and Miki shuffled on their respective cushions until they were comfortable. Members of their faction, and some from others, all began to gradually wander into the room and take their seats, some drinking part of their milk and eating their bread while others waited until the main course of their meal arrived to indulge. They didn't have to wait long, because Riyeko and Shinji both departed the kitchen just minutes later and began handing out servings of curry rice, which was happily received by everyone.
Shinji headed back into the kitchen when everything had been distributed. His own bowl sat nearby the Sanadas, while Riyeko, who often took on the job that Shinji was now handling, seated herself on his cushion and watched them eat.
When Akihiko started to speed up his ravenous eating, she asked, "How is it?"
As if his devouring it wasn't any indication. "It's really good! Spicy."
Miki took another delicate spoonful of it. After swallowing, she asked, "What is it?"
"It's a recipe for curry rice and Shinji and I thought up together. He cooked it all on his own." She smiled fondly, "You should tell him you like it. He'd be happy to hear."
"Shinji made tonight's dinner? Wow, he's gotten really good at this."
"That's because he takes after yours truly," Riyeko made a dramatic hand gesture, which brought smiles to both of the siblings' faces. She laughed and waved it off afterwards. "Just kidding. He's actually taught me a few things myself, you know. He's a natural at it."
Akihiko couldn't bring himself to talk again until he had devoured what was left of his dish. There was never enough to completely fill him up, but he was pleased with what he got tonight. At least it wasn't soup again. "So, now we'll have two great cooks in the kitchen!"
Riyeko smiled, though there was a melancholy sense to it.
The dinner following was expectably short. Shinji stepped out of the kitchen when he was done wrapping up affairs in the kitchen, and Riyeko stood up to check after him. As he seated himself on his particular cushion and picked up his bowl to begin eating, Miki sipped at what was left of her milk and made sure to compliment his expertise in preparing food now. Akihiko pitched in, and their conjoined praise brought both flattered embarrassment and genuine happiness to his face, however much he looked down and tried to hide it.
Both siblings glanced up when Riyeko stepped back out of the kitchen. Shinji carried on eating his own small portion of the meal he prepared.
"All right, everyone! Tonight is my last night here with you." A chorus of sad moans and inquiries rose up to meet this statement. "I remember when I was one of you guys, growing up in this place, and I was begging the last chef to teach me how to cook... now I've got a pest of my own." She stuck her tongue out at Shinji, who blushed and kept his eyes strictly down on his food. "I've got so many memories here, good and bad... I've even watched some of you grow up myself." The woman laughed and looked across the room at one of the faction parents. "Listen to me, Misao. I'm only in my twenties, and I sound so old."
"You will be, before you know it!"
"Don't remind me!" Everyone laughed, amiable in the light-hearted albeit bittersweet atmosphere. She paused wistfully before she went on, "But after all my time here, I've decided I need to move out and try to pursue a career. Thanks to everyone in the orphanage who helped me get enough money to enroll in culinary school - it's been something I've wanted to do my whole life. I couldn't have done it without you all."
Miki looked particularly upset. "Riyeko-san is leaving?" She turned to Shinji, who was just taking the last one or two bites of his meal. "Did you know, Shinii-chan?"
The brunette nodded solemnly. "She got the acceptance letter from the school she applied for a few months ago. She decided to stay here until she was given the okay to move into a dorm closer to the school, so that they had more time to look for a new chef." Given the circumstances, he was surprisingly calm. "She told me as soon as she got the news."
Akihiko nudged his friend playfully. "Are you the new chef?"
"Nah. I don't know who it is. They had a hard time finding someone to take over the position, but I think they'll be coming in next week." He absently collected his now-empty dish, stacking it with Akihiko's and Miki's, standing to his feet but remaining there until he finished. "Riyeko told the new chef about me, so she wants me to help her get adjusted to everything when she moves in. But that's the only job I was given."
He was just making his way to the kitchen when Riyeko intercepted him. "Could I speak with you one more time before I go, Shinji?"
The boy looked nervously up at her. Akihiko, watching them, noticed how Shinji had a tendency to soften in her presence. "Oh - sure, I'm just going to put these away."
۞
She followed him into the kitchen, where he set down the dirty dishes in the large communal sink where he would be required to clean them later. That was one chore he wouldn't miss doing when the new chef moved in. He was fine with cooking, and he made a respectable effort to keep things tidy as he prepared the food - Riyeko had commented many times that it was astounding how OCD he was when it came to cooking - but cleaning the piles and piles of dishes afterwards, he could do without.
"When I graduated from high school, the orphanage bought this for me," The girl was saying. He gave her his undivided attention when she walked across the room to open a drawer, from which she retrieved a small, compact knife. "I've held onto it ever since then. I've used it a lot, but I keep the blade sharp." She smiled and handed it to the brunette, "They engraved it special for me. But I want you to have it, as a memento."
He held out his hands, and she placed the blade there, delicately, folding her fingers over his palm. "Don't ever forget where you started out."
Only when her hands slipped away from his did he turn the blade, seeking out the engraving written into the blade handle. It read, 'Kawatani Orphanage 1994 Graduation'.
He wasn't sure why it came to him then. But the wave of emotion that came made his heart twist, and It hit him that he would probably never see Riyeko ever again.
"Hey. Don't make that face, either," The dark brunette woman brought her hand to the much shorter boy's shoulder, lifting his chin with the other. Gently and yet forcibly meeting the depths of her amber-hued eyes, Shinji found himself grimacing against the tears collecting on his eyelids. Standing there almost evoked the feeling as if Shinji were a child again. He was brought back to that very same time where he had been a newcomer here, a child as young as three, when she had allowed him to stay with her in the kitchen while she cooked her meals. Back in those days, he remembered feeling so empty. He hadn't met Akihiko or Miki, and the whole world was strange, alien... he knew no one. He had nothing. He was a poor orphan boy, emerging from the depths of the unknown without parents, siblings, a home - nothing to him but his name.
But now, here he was. The orphanage here had become such an overwhelmingly large part of his life, it was impossible to think of life without it. Riyeko had always been there, indulging his childish interest in cooking which had grown to be much more than that. Akihiko had become his best friend, his little brother; and Miki, too, his own little sister...
Her voice pulled him back. "It'll freeze that way, you know."
He gave her a somber smile. "I'll miss you, Riyeko."
The woman bent over and kissed her lips to his forehead, something that he shut his eyes and felt his cheeks flush with pink at; when he did part them again, it was to see her tell him goodbye, to see her walk away from him with such calm and even strides that foretold her confidence in the path ahead. Wherever that path led, he could only hope it led her to a happy and peaceful end that allowed her to look back on her life and realize how much fulfillment she had brought not only to herself, but those she touched on the way. While he watched her, she refused to look back. Once she reached the door, she did.
"I'll miss you too, Shinji." It was the first and last time that Shinji had heard, would ever hear, her voice charged with such emotion. "Goodbye."
The door closed behind her, and Shinji gazed back at the knife, gleaming in his palm.
۞
In the few days that followed, the orphanage's loss of Riyeko was felt not just in their hearts, but in their stomachs. Shinji and the Sanadas obligated themselves to get up and go to school in the morning, as it had become a routine, a part of life, for years now; when they got back home, made the relatively long walk back to the plains and the orphanage that rested there, they got home with their bodies yearning for the chance to eat. The new chef had yet to arrive, though. Satoru told them that she had been delayed, and it would be another few days before she could make it - until then, they would have to improvise.
By 'improvise', they meant, essentially, starve. As much as the children loved him, they could not bring themselves to be anything less than honest that he just downright could not cook. The other three faction parents were in a similar condition. None of them had ever learned to do it, was all. Shinji offered to take up the job in an effort to create at least some kind of semi-edible meal for the many hungry mouths, but the parents refused on the premise that Shinji was too young and might accidentally mess something up. "I could do better than they could," Akihiko and Miki had listened to him bitterly complain. "I can hardly stand the smell of whatever this shit they put in front of us is."
When the chef was delayed yet another day, irritation became even more apparent for the woman's tardiness, and it was helped little by the fact that many of them were all going hungry with lack of proper food. Upon finally arriving, she was met with both praise and a looming sense of irritability that came with their first impression of this woman; someone who could not fathom punctuality in the most basic sense.
That particular day - the new chef, Mikako's, first day of preparing dinner - was March 26th. Everyone had gotten out of school for spring break, and were enjoying their very small window of opportunity to relax between the last school year and the year to come. Shinji was so restless at the thought of leaving the new chef unattended that he told Akihiko and Miki he would have to pass on visiting the beach; he couldn't possibly stand one more day of half-ass prepared food. The Sanadas agreed with him, so there were no complaints.
However, when the two fair-maned children returned back home that evening, tired and dripping wet from the sandy beaches, Shinji was full of nothing but complaints.
He followed the two siblings on their trek to the sleeping room, where they dried themselves off with towels and wrung out their clothes, still drenched in salt water and grains of sand. Miki took Akihiko's soaked set of clothes after he changed and folded them, telling him that she would put them all in the laundry before dinner, which he absently responded to with his consent. All the while, Shinji regaled them with every nitpicking detail that Mikako had gotten wrong; she used one teaspoon too much of this, spilled that ingredient into the dish, or put this other ingredient in way before she was supposed to. Eventually Akihiko stopped and asked, "Was she really that bad?"
"She forgot to turn the stove off, Aki." Shinji grabbed the younger boy's shoulders to express the extent of his seriousness. "What kind of moron forgets to turn the stove off?"
The boy frowned, "Isn't that dangerous?"
"No shit, Sherlock! That's one of the first things you learn not to do!"
All three of them halted in their steps when a voice broke through the wooden corridors of the orphanage. "Shinji!" It was a voice that Akihiko didn't recognize himself, but one look at the brunette's face made him aware that Shinji, unfortunately, did. "Come back!"
"She can't tell a cup from a teaspoon, Aki. She didn't even know what a fucking spatula was. This woman is driving me insane."
Akihiko must not have gotten his point. "...What is a spatula?"
The brunette just shook his head and left, unable to find words.
Miki was rounding up their soaked laundry and told her brother that she would be right back; all she had to do was throw it all in the washer and fix up the settings.
As he waited, he lied himself back on his bed in the room, taking a moment to glance around the expanse of it. It had never changed, not once, from the time he first came here. Except the fact that he had gotten considerably taller since then. He found it hard to believe that there was a point in time where he was so short that seeing over the edge of his bed when he was standing next to it had been difficult; now it came up to his thighs.
Those nostalgic thoughts were quickly interrupted by the door flying back open. Miki had claimed that she would be 'right back', but laundry usually took her a little longer. The boy was just turning his head as he commented, "That was fast-"
"She forgot to cook the sauce for the dish." He was biting his lip, an expression of Shinji's that Akihiko had learned to mean 'very irritated'. "That makes up half the recipe. I refuse to ask how this woman could cook her way out of a paper bag, because she can't. I had to get out of there. She would lose her fucking head if it wasn't tacked onto her shoulders."
"So she's not as good at cooking as Riyeko is. Maybe she's just nervous, Shinji."
"Maybe she's just intellectually challenged."
Akihiko rolled his eyes and folded his arms back behind his head, his eyes growing heavy with fatigue. Today had been a long and busy one, as he had struggled to beat his last record time for swimming up and down the length of the beach. Miki raced him, while full-well knowing that she could never beat him, and went back to collecting seashells. Now that she had a sizeable collection from many past trips to the beach, what she would do was search for new, exquisite shells, which she would take back home and compare against the seashells she already had. If she liked one more than any of the others, she would discard the old one for the new. Whatever shells she brought home that were left behind were dumped into the nearby river. Why did she collect them, Akihiko had asked many times? She told him she didn't know. She just liked that thrill of finding such a beautiful work of art in the dull and unremarkable sand which hid such beauty in the confines of the earth.
He let his eyes close. He felt at peace. Next year would be his last of elementary school; then he would have middle school to contend with. Then high school, and college... where would he go from there, he asked himself? To this day, he hadn't a clue...
Something hit his leg. Akihiko blinked and looked over, still somewhat sleepily, and noticed that Shinji was uncomfortably still with his eyes on the door. "Do you smell that?"
The platinum boy half-complained, "What did she do now?"
"It smells like something is burning." There was a gravely dark note in Shinji's voice that sparked some fear in Akihiko. "I smell... smoke. Don't you?"
That wasn't a big deal, was it? "Maybe she burned something in the kitchen..."
Shinji shoved himself off the bed and ran out of the room. If for no reason other than the fact that the brunette's panicked behavior had set him on edge, Akihiko jumped off the mattress as well and chased after him, coughing once or twice when the lingering scent of smoke became more and more oppressive in the air. The two boys ran through the dining room and burst through the door to the kitchen, finding that without a doubt, this was the source of the smell; a raging fire had started on the stove and was now proceeding across the contents of the counter, with Mikako fanning the fire with a towel.
"What the fuck are you doing?" The brunette was the one who took the initiative. Just as the edge of the towel also caught on fire, Shinji filled a bowl with water from the sink and dumped it in the woman's direction, putting out the weak flame. Taming the monstrous fire that was extending from the stove was another story. "Start throwing water on it! Aki, you look around and check whether we have a fire extinguisher!"
He coughed again, waving the smoke from his face. "D-Do I ask Satoru?"
"I don't care what you do, just find one!"
With the adrenaline starting to kick in, the boy turned and raced back out of the kitchen, striding down the many long wooden corridors of the orphanage in search of one of the adults - Satoru or not, one of them, any of them, would have to know what to do. What if he couldn't find them? What if they couldn't stop the fire? Would the orphanage burn to the ground, just like that, taking all the years of life and memories along with it?
He turned another corner, whereupon he crashed right into one of the adults.
The woman was taken aback for a moment. "Are you all right? What's wrong?"
"There's a fire in the kitchen!" He panted, pointing frantically in the direction of the kitchen. "We have to stop it before it burns the whole building down!"
"Oh, good lord!" The hazel-brunette veered around and ran back down the hallway from where she came. "Satoru, Misao! There's a fire in the kitchen!"
"What?" The raven-haired man who Akihiko so swiftly recognized appeared from one of the doorways. "What the hell-! That woman has only been here for one night and she's already started a fire in the kitchen?"
His fellow adult shoved past him. "You can complain after we stop the fire!"
"I'll find Hachiro!" The woman huffed, taking off in another direction. Akihiko chased after the two who were on their way to the kitchen, suppressing his panic enough to retain some of his calm and asked him where the fire extinguisher was.
Satoru's answer made his heart sink. "We don't have one!"
Please tell me Shinji managed to put it out!
Breaking back into the dining room, there was no sign of Shinji, and yet flames were now licking at the open doorway leading inside. Akihiko darted his way around the two men who protested his action, and once inside, he saw the brunette tirelessly struggling to fill up the glass measuring cup with water and dump it on the flames. He did this time after time, and had actually managed to stop the fire from eating away at the kitchen counter - but that didn't stop it from traveling onward and out of the room. By now, a layer of smoke had begun to accumulate in the air, and Akihiko could hardly breathe through it.
"Shinji, you have to get out of this room!"
"I have to stop the fire!" He, too, coughed several times, and gasped for air. "There's no way the fire trucks will make it here in time to save the orphanage!"
"That doesn't matter! You need to get the hell out of here before it traps us!"
He stood still in one perilous moment of indecision, and in it, Akihiko grabbed his arm and jerked him toward the door. Thank God, the brunette followed him without protest, and they skirted past the flames in the doorway without getting lit themselves.
Satoru was the only one in the dining room when they emerged. He ran up to the two boys and grabbed Shinji's shoulders, "Where's Mikako? Wasn't she in there?"
"She went to go warn everyone!" All of them were yelling to be heard over the uproar of the flames. "I'm not sure where she went!"
Satoru took another long look at the fire corroding at the door borderframe between the kitchen and the dining room, and made an expression that could not be described as anything short of anguished. "...I don't think we can stop it! We have to evacuate everyone!"
Akihiko's heart plunged. Were they going to lose their home...?
Shinji brought a strong hand to the platinum boy's shoulder, his eyes meeting Akihiko's with utmost seriousness. When he met them, the glow of the fire illuminated the calm and earthen tone, adding a viciousness and urgency there that all the more instilled in him the sobering truth of their situation. "You find Miki, okay? I'll go with Satoru!"
Miki. Akihiko felt his heart start racing. "Okay! Be careful!" He grimaced, putting one of his own hands on his companion's shoulder. "We'll all make it out!"
The brunette nodded at him, and he took off at Satoru's command.
Running through the orphanage, Akihiko found it hard to believe how rapidly it had degenerated into such a state of chaos. Some of the children from different factions were all fleeing through these hallways, coughing and sputtering and shouting over the noise at one another. The faction parents were trying to calm everyone down as they evacuated, doing head counts every few minutes to ensure nobody was getting left behind; another of the parents was outside, checking everyone's conditions, while others still ran back in and fled with as many of their belongings as they could grab in their arms. People flashed past Akihiko in all directions, even as he himself was running. He knew where the wash room was. As long as he could get in there, and find Miki, he could make sure she was safely inside and go back in for Shinji - they would all be okay, they would all make it out safely, and he had to reiterate this time and time again in his mind to steer away from a sense of panic.
"Miki!" His shout reverberated through the contained space that was the laundry room, his eyes squinting through the haze of accumulating smoke. This room was some distance from the kitchen, and so it was likely one of the least affected rooms - but even still, he had to regulate his breathing and hold one of his sleeves over his mouth in an attempt to filter the smoke away from the oxygen he needed. "Miki, where are you?"
He darted about the room, his eyes stinging and red from the polluted air. But he caught no sight of her. She had just gone in here, hadn't she? Where was she now? Maybe she had already escaped? But what if she hadn't? He would never forgive himself if he had just waltzed outside under the assumption that she was okay, and she ended up hurt!
He flew back out. The back door of the orphanage had been blocked off by the fire, and so everyone was rushing to the front door. Akihiko lingered in place by the laundry room before taking off for the sleeping room assigned to his faction; little did he know, Miki flashed past him when squeezing her way through the mob, headed back for the laundry room in the fear that her brother went there in search for her.
The sleeping room was just as empty. Akihiko rummaged through the blankets, the beds, crawled down to the floor and looked around, but there was no sign of his little sister. With panic finally starting to set in, he gave in to a fit of coughing and brought himself to another shaky stand. "Miki! Miki, please, if you hear me, say something!"
Maybe she really had gotten out. He smothered himself with his sleeve again, withstanding another barrage of coughs before he squeezed out of the orphanage's front door, in frantic search for any glimpse of his kinsman.
Shinji ran up an instant later; the rest of their faction had already been evacuated by Satoru. In fact, it looked like a majority of them had all successfully escaped. But one look at the brunette's face told Akihiko that he was as clueless as himself; "Where's Miki?"
"She's not out here? I can't find her anywhere!"
Shinji grimaced and ran past him into the building. Akihiko gave chase.
They went again through every room they thought she might be in; the dining room was completely absorbed by the fire, as was the kitchen, and it was now crawling closer to the door in its ravenous feast of their home. They both shouted for the girl at the top of their smoke-strained lungs, but no shouts returned back to them. They checked the sleeping room again, and found nothing. They ran back to the laundry room, and still, nothing. It started to become difficult to differentiate the infrastructure of the building from the fire and the black air that accompanied it. Akihiko started hitting walls, pillars, and had to shout up ahead to Shinji once or twice so as to not get separated from him, too.
Finally, it was Akihiko who heard something light, high-pitched, near one of the nearby bathrooms. He darted off toward it with another call for Shinji, bursting into the room to see that Miki was just about to depart it; she had been searching for them both inside when she heard their voices, and started to call back. "Akinii!" She burst through the doorframe toward them, her small, fragile, trembling body pressed needily against him. He held her close, too, feeling tears swell in his eyes at the happiness of being reunited with her when he was beginning to fear that he had lost her. "Shinii! Are you two okay?"
"It's okay," The fair-skinned boy, too, was trembling. "I'm here with you now."
"We're fine! But I think the fire is just about to reach the front door!" The oldest of the trio ushed them off down the hallway. "We have to go, now!"
With a few coughs, they all took off running for their last and only means of escape.
As small and fragile as Miki was, she could still run fast enough to generally keep up with the two boys. It was Shinji that Akihiko had started to worry about; since he had been up close to the fire for the longest period of time, he was wheezing so badly that he couldn't run straight, and his movements were becoming weak and lethargic.
Out of concern for his friend, he ran up alongside him and tried to keep him on track as they made it out toward the door. They turned their last corner and found themselves in the main hallway, the last stretch between them and their freedom, and Akihiko shouldered himself up next to his friend so as to keep him on track and ensure they all made it out safely.
But he hadn't expected them to cut it so close. He never imagined that those few feet of space between him and Shinji as opposed to Miki would mean so much.
They were just running underneath the last major support beam when the whole world exploded into a huge confliction of crunching wood and roaring fire. Miki heard it all above her and strained herself to run faster, but felt the oppressive heat so near her that it began to terrify her. Something collided with the ground just to her right, but she kept running. She kept running and running, but she must not have been fast enough, for she felt something impact her from that same side and knock her off-balance.
She collapsed with a shriek, a sound that was swallowed by the roar of the crackling fire and devastation surrounding them; pain shot up her leg like an electric current, her ankle smashed beneath some large and imposing weight that suddenly thrust itself onto her. The world around her spun, her perception clouded by smoke and the flames. The deafening crackle of splintering wood and the building's collapse further crippled her senses, all she had left to reassure her that she was still conscious. "Nii-chan!" Her panicked scream put the boisterous noise to shame. Her hand went out, reaching blindly for the boy who was but a few feet's distance away, blocked from her view by an ignited support beam. "Nii-ch-" But she could not call for him. The smoke was overwhelming, stinging her eyes, stealing her breath away. She broke off to a fit of coughing, the flames eating away at her pinned legs.
Every gasp making her weaker than the last, she reached down and grabbed the knee of her trapped leg, pulling with all the strength she could muster to free herself. But it was in vain; it wouldn't budge. For all the blood she could see, through the black, gray-red haze, pooling at her ankle... her leg felt numb. It didn't hurt. And her head, she felt... cloudy...
"M-Miki?" Through all her terror, regardless of the noise that surrounded her, she heard her brother's voice. Tears poured from her eyes. She opened her mouth to call for him, for she was scared, terrified, and she wanted him. Wanted him to come and save her from this terrible nightmare, hold her, tell her that she was okay... that he would never let anything, ever, hurt her again as long as he lived. But the smoke had stolen her voice. All that came were hoarse croaks, impossible to hear over the turmoil that engulfed her.
Her heart stopped when she heard him. "Miki! Where are you? I-I'm coming!"
The girl pressed her face against the stinging soot on the floor, hearing the rumble above her precede the building's continued collapse. More of the orphanage's infrastructure combusted, crashing around her and yet never onto her, surrounding her entire world in a haze of smoke and flames. She was trapped. There was no way that he could reach her. She heard him shout again, but she couldn't distinguish the words, for the weight of something immense finally began to crush into her back. Still more tears glowed in her eyes.
But for some reason, she... smiled.
He couldn't save her this time.
Yet she was happy. What a funny feeling... like the thought of him alone was enough to comfort her in her final moments. All this time, he had given her everything he could...
He did his best, until the very end.
I'll miss you, Akinii-chan.
۞
No! Why did this have to happen? Where had she gone? She had been right behind him! No, no, he couldn't let this happen! He couldn't lose her, too!
There wasn't the slightest bit of hesitation in his step when he skidded to a stop, his feet stinging with the embers that gathered there, and turned to launch himself back toward the festering pit of fire and death that had emerged from the same hallways that once sheltered them. All they had to call a home for as long as either of them could remember, and it, too, was being stolen from them. But he didn't care. No... he could handle anything. As long as he had her. As long as she wasn't taken from him, too...!
But something caught his arm. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"
"Let me go!" If he had been conscious of himself, the elevated pitch of his own voice would have startled him. But he didn't care. The silver-haired boy grimaced and fought with all his strength against the grip of the slightly taller, slightly older, slightly stronger figure that had taken hold of his arm. Akihiko could not break it. Tears began to stream from the corners of his own eyes as hysterics bled through his voice and into his violent movements, and he, too, screamed; "Let me go, Shinji! I have to save her!"
"Aki, you can't-" The borderframe of the orphanage's entrance - their only prayer for safe escape - began to sag, corroding away into a film of ash onto the blackened wooden flooring. "It's too late! You're gonna die if you go back!"
"I'll die before I let her burn to death without trying to save her!"
Satoru's voice, hardly discernable from the uproar, called in at them. "You two, get out of there before the whole building crashes down on you!"
With the strength granted to him in his fit of panic, Akihiko made a final, last ditch effort to throw the entire weight of his body against that grip Shinji had on him by jerking himself backwards, and his arm, red and imprinted by the brunette boy's fingers, tore itself free. He turned, again to launch himself after the silenced screams of his sister, but just when he had placed all weight on one leg to sprint away, he felt something catch it. Shinji had intercepted the younger boy's foot with his own; a single pertinent tug sent him slipping on the ashes, losing balance and falling to the floor with something between a protest and a miserable wail. All attempts to struggle away were in vain against Shinji.
He could do nothing. He was powerless. He grabbed at the scalding floor, but all that he clenched into his palms was the gray and stinging embers, laced with splinters and debris - there was nothing to hold onto. He had been so close, and yet... she was gone...
۞
"Shinji!" Satoru's voice was suddenly much stronger, much clearer, when they both neared their passage of escape. He clamped his teeth against his bottom lip, biting it hard so that the pain reassured him that he was still awake, still sprinting to the door; it was with great struggle that he finally tasted the kiss of fresh air just outside the building. The boy in question felt a ripple of weakness run through his body, as the burst of adrenaline strength that surged through his body began to wear out at the first sign of relief. Breathing in all the smoke had made him as weak and dizzy as the others, and carrying the deadweight of his friend did not help matters. "...Did he collapse?"
Shinji did his best to stay on his feet. Satoru's arms encompassed him, helping to support both him and the fair-maned boy who was slung over his shoulder. "No," He couldn't speak the single word without wheezing. But his answer was vastly unnecessary if for no reason but that at it, Akihiko started to struggle again.
"Let me go! I... I-! Miki!"
The adult's eyes widened with shock. "Where's Miki?"
"One of the beams collapsed on her..." Finally being outside the grip of the caustic flames and the smoke that belched out of them like a black fog, his head became exhaustingly heavy. His body was weak. He had to gasp in great quantities of air just to feel a fleeting wisp of the oxygen that was necessary to sustain his life slip into his lungs. Akihiko struggled from his shoulder; he was too delirious to sense it. Perhaps it was for that reason that the impending despair of realizing that Miki was gone, that she had almost no chance of survival back inside of the building, was so subdued in him. "She got... trapped..."
If Satoru heard him, he gave no indication. Shinji blinked his hazy, red-rimmed eyes, trying to find the caretaker with them; but he was absent. No... instead, turning his perception onto the orphanage, a blackened shadow of what it had once been, he saw the adult had been forced to put a choke hold on the friend he had tried so hard to save. Akihiko had tried running back into the building. At Satoru's stern command, some of the older children from the orphanage ran up to his side, helping to restrain the boy who still was screaming and fighting against them in his hysterics.
Shinji had promised her, hadn't he?
"Akinii needs someone to look after him as much as I do!"
He remembered sitting in that waiting room in the hospital, spending every restless moment in fear that Aki wouldn't make it through the accident.
"If something happens to me... will you make sure he doesn't get hurt?"
But it should have never come to this...
"Miki!" Akihiko's cries echoed in the stagnant air, unchallenged by the grave silence that was the rest of the orphanage's members, clustered tightly around each other as if seeking consolance from the presence of one another. Akihiko was not among them. He, the few who restrained him, and Shinji were the only ones who stood on their lonesome between the mob who dared not breathe a word and the fires that even still, dancing with a malicious mischief, ate away at what was left of their home. "Miki...!"