celestos

Chapter V

The first thing Rei saw when she woke up was a switched-off alarm clock, and she had no idea what time it was.

Through the curtains, light was beginning to filter. The room looked hazy almost, dusted with darkness from the shroud of the curtains. What she could see - the window, a small chest of drawers by the door, an antique-styled electrical lamp, and the useless alarm clock - all looked as if they were part of a dream, their colours not quite right. The world around her felt duller, but that little bit warmer; not as chilly as it had felt the evening before, with cold water dripping from her as she had fallen asleep.

Wait…

Rei heaved herself up from the bed. An extra blanket that had not been there before slipped from her shoulders.

Her arms and shoulders no longer ached. Her back felt a little odd still, but the feeling of fatigue she had had as she dropped out of consciousness had eased, enough for her not to feel pain as she eased herself onto her knees from her stomach.

She was still in her towel, pale pink softness around her body like a cocoon. She could feel it slipping a little, just like the blanket, as she pushed up - but everything around her was silent, silent enough for her to not think about it as she looked around, trying to hold it together. Her body longed for warmth, and she had not slept under the blanket - stupid, she thought. She had fallen asleep far too quickly to notice.

Would Asuka mind if I did?

She could hear small sounds coming from downstairs as she focused. Plates were moving around, and what had to be cutlery was clicking softly on porcelain. The others were downstairs. She was not alone in the house, not like she had been for weeks. The house she was in was not her own, either, and all of it still felt a little surreal, not quite right, like the odd tint of daylight trying to come in through the curtains.

Still, she was already up. No use in staying, she thought. Her fatigue was gone, even if just for a while. Her stomach was empty, and she felt it, unpleasantly so. Staying on the bed, in her towel, was something she could not be doing all day.

Where did I…?

The sudden sound of footsteps jerked her out of her thoughts. Uneasy, she turned around. Her hands scrambled, wrapping both the towel and the blanket around herself for protection.

Asuka’s head, a little startled herself, peered through the doorway. “Good morning,” she said, giving her a small smile. “Did you sleep all right?”

Still holding on to the towel, Rei turned around properly and sat herself down on the edge of the bed. Her hair trailed past the pink, no longer clinging to her skin with the filth it had carried before. Her hands held on tight, not wanting to let go of her only source of warmth. Bare feet touched the cool floor, and she let out a shiver.

“Yes,” she yawned. “I… I’m all right.”

She had been lying for days to herself, saying that everything was all right - but this time did not feel like such a heavy deception. The pain from before had lessened. She was clean, and with company. She was no longer alone. Her parents were gone, buried and at peace.

“That’s good,” Asuka sighed with relief. “You were pretty exhausted yesterday. I wondered whether to move you last night.”

“Move me?”

“I mean, into bed. I’m sorry if you were cold. I was a little uncertain, so I just brought you a blanket.”

“Oh.” Rei clutched at the dark fuzz, far warmer than the simple pink towel had been. Small clumps of wool seemed to cling to her fingers, but it was soft, and so comforting that she did not want to let go of it. “Thank you,” she said, as sincerely as she could.

“That’s all right,” Asuka replied. “As long as you’re all right. If you’re ever cold, we do have more blankets. And you can borrow my clothes. I might be a little bigger than you, but if you want them, just say.”

“Is that… all right?”

“Of course. Everything around here is yours. It’s all ours to share.”

“What about the other two?”

“Well, I might not let them wear my clothes. They can have my brother’s if they really want. I don’t think he’d mind.”

Rei’s eyes widened. “Is Judai your brother?”

Asuka let out a small laugh. “No, definitely not. He’s a friend.”

“Shou?”

“No. Not him, either.”

It was then that Rei realised why Asuka’s brother would not mind if his clothes were taken, and why the house had been quiet, save for the voices of those that had taken her there.

“Is he… is he gone?”

It felt stupid to ask, but Rei could not stop herself. Her hands shook a little, thinking back to her parents, and Marty, from his voice to the last sight she had captured of him, to the twisting, foul memory that was the thoughts of his corpse.

Asuka’s hands drifted to tug at her hair, playing with a lock at the front. Her fringe fell forward a little as she let out a sigh, a heavy one that made Rei’s insides stir.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

She looked up a little, and Rei saw it then: the pain that came with the beginnings of tears, even if Asuka was older and stronger. She seemed to be in a world of her own for a moment, caught up in difficult thoughts that Rei could not bear to ask more about, no matter how much her heart and her head wanted to know, and she could feel Asuka hurting.

“I… I’m sorry,” she whispered, not knowing what to say or do next.

“It’s all right,” Asuka shook her head. Sighing again, she sat down next to Rei, not quite touching, but close for Rei to feel the comfort of the heat of another warm body. “It’s… I’ve been alone here a while. Or not alone.”

“How long have you known one another?”

“Who, my brother and I?”

“No. You, and Judai, and Shou. All of you.”

Asuka pondered for a moment. “Two weeks. I’m not sure. It might be.”

“Did you just… meet one another?”

It was making Rei wonder. She had spent almost four weeks alone, in her home, too scared to go out. When they had finally headed out and spent hours on the road, all of the bodies they had seen outside had been dead or rotten, or dead and rotten, or turned. How many more people there were, still inside cold houses, she could not begin to guess. How many had been wandering at the beginning was something she did not know, either.

Did all of them die? Is everyone else still at home? Like my parents were, before they… stopped them being in pain?

The virus had struck far too suddenly. Why she and the others had lived, she had no idea. The thought of it made her shiver.

Asuka’s hands pressed down on the bed as she leaned back. Her gaze lifted up to the ceiling, watching the thin lines of light that had streamed past the curtains, unwavering.

“Well, yes,” she finally said. “I… I was looking around for where my brother had gone, and we ended up meeting. Those two were already together. I didn’t know either one of them, though. We didn’t go to the same school or anything.”

The walk to Asuka’s house had taken them hours. It wasn’t surprising, Rei thought, that their schools would be different, if they were as far apart as their houses had been.

“Where did they come from?”

“South of town.” Asuka replied. “I think so, anyway. I found them near the centre, an hour from here. Or they found me. I’m not sure which one of us it was, but we found one another.”

“How did you know they were good?”

“Well, they replied when I shouted, and they didn’t try to bite me, either.”

On any other occasion, Rei felt like she would have laughed, but her chest felt a little too heavy. The thought that Asuka had had someone - and lost them - made her feel empty, even if it meant that she understood. She had not been the only one to face loss, she realised. Judai and Shou, too, had probably seen relatives turn, or die, or vanish out of sight, never to come back to safety again.

“That… that’s good,” she said, unable to think of anything else.

“Yeah. It’s a good thing. I’m not alone now. None of us are. We’re all here together, just for a while. I don’t know where we’ll go next.”

“Where?”

Asuka sat up, gaze hiding some kind of longing for something; maybe, Rei thought, to be outside again, to be free and happy, to laugh in the sunshine of the dusty, gone-by summer.

“It’s been a month. We’ve only searched a little part of the area. There might be others alive. We found you, and… since the day that we did, I’ve been wanting to go out there again. To see who else is out there. Who else is alive.”

She let out a heavy sigh. “If anyone else is alive. But I hope that there is.”

Your brother, Rei thought. She could see it in the heaviness of her expression, in the way Asuka’s hands played in her lap.

“…Asuka?”

“Yes?”

“Your brother. Is he… is he still out there?”

There was silence, before another heavy sigh. Asuka leaned forward, head tipping into her hands, and Rei hesitated to do anything else. She had upset her, she knew. A hand reached out to try and comfort her, by instinct, but froze in mid-air, uncertain what to do, and how to react. The words were stuck inside of her. She could not think of pushing them out.

Asuka did not move for a moment, barely being able to shake her head.

“He… he might be,” she sighed. “He wasn’t home with us on the night that it happened.”

The night. It had happened so suddenly. Rei could recall it still, even with a month of empty memories behind her between then and now; between beginning and wherever she currently was, at the middle or end.

It had happened so suddenly. The night before the morning she had lost both her parents and Marty, she had overheard voices through the door, from the television. The first report had been only a few days prior. A contained virus… mutated, airborne… no successful treatment… those showing symptoms are advised to remain in quarantine. The UN has announced a state of crisis in the case of a global pandemic - we’re sorry, there appear to be issues -

The night before, she had gone to bed and hoped she was dreaming.

She had not imagined that only hours later, everything would be over. She would wake up to a quiet house, to Marty trying to nudge her awake, telling her he had heard sounds from the living room, and that something had happened.

She had been half-asleep when she had let him open the door.

I let him go. I let him die.

Was that how Asuka felt, too? Had it all been sudden, too - knowing her brother was out there the night before, but waking up in the morning to hear the possibility that he was turned, out there, amongst the living, the dying and the dead?

“Where… where was he?” Rei hesitated to ask.

“At a friend’s for the night. I don’t know what happened to him. I tried to call, but he never replied. Then the phones went down.”

Her own signal had died three days after she had lost Marty. Nobody had been replying before that - not the police, nor the other emergency services. None of her friends had said anything back. She had come to the computer a little too late. Her connection was already down.

“I… I’m sorry,” she said. She could not think of any way to console her.

“It’s all right. It wasn’t your fault. And you’re hurt, too.”

Rei did not expect Asuka’s arm to be warm, nor for her to wrap it around her. She shuffled closer, feeling the warmth as something almost magnetic. She hated the cold. She was still in her towel and the blanket, bare toes skimming the smooth wooden floor. The morning was warmer than the others had been, but things were not as warm as she wanted.

Summer was gone. Winter drew closer.

“How are we going to live?”

The question was vague, anxious as the words echoed through the stillness. Rei thought of the tinned food they had eaten, of the towels Asuka had given her, of the clothes she had left in the bathroom last night and not picked up. Her hands felt a little bit colder, and she brought them a little closer to the rest of her body heat. They burrowed under the blanket.

“How?”

“I mean… will we stay here?”

She did not want to go outside again, not for a while. Outside was too quiet, too cold. The streets were empty, but they had been corpses. Judai had finished off one of the turned with the shovel. Icy-grey metal had scraped on the concrete. Rei had given a shudder. Stupid curiosity had demanded she pry open a gap between her fingers, and she had seen the last flash of silver colliding with red, then blood on his hands. Then, the body had fallen.

Outside was full of the dead. God knows how many corpses to bury, Asuka had said.

She did not appear certain. The silence was awkward.

“I’m not sure,” she said, finally. “It depends. We might stay here if you need to recover. We have food and water. We can stay and rest here, if you like. There’s a store nearby.”

Rei did not know the area well enough. “A… a big one?”

“Bigger than the place we found you near. It’s big enough. We can stay here a while, but… not forever. Nothing will last.”

“How long, though?”

“As long as we need to.”

Suddenly, Rei’s hands were clinging to the bedsheets below her, instead. Her whole body felt like an anchor. Warm house, warm lives - warm breaths, not outside where it’s cold, not where I’m alone, and not home. Please, I don’t want to go home…

Guilt washed over her in a flush. “I don’t want to be holding you back.”

Asuka turned to her, eye to eye, and she froze. It was sudden. She could not move - but she could feel her heart thrum as eyes looked back at her. They were not strict, but they were firm, adult eyes. The face before her was tired, and broken, but it was one she knew she had to listen to.

“You’re not.”

The look in Asuka’s eyes was steely; definite, certain. Rei tried to open her mouth to object, but stopped halfway, slightly agape and uncertain. It made her feel strange on the inside, some feeling she could not describe, even if Asuka’s words were things she could not fully believe.

“But…” She tried to say something, but the thought she had in her mind broke off. The little voice in the back of it, the same one that had told her to die, was starting to shout. Liar, liar, it said: l iar, don’t listen to her, you know you’re a burden… “But I am. I mean, you came out for me…”

“We did. But you’re not a burden. You’re a good person.”

“Good?”

It made no sense, not to her. She had come out of her house and into a stranger’s. She had used water and eaten their food and fallen asleep on a bed that was not, and would never be hers.

“Yes. You matter. You survived out there. You’re brave, Rei, and we couldn’t leave you. Not now, not in… not in the midst of all of this happening.”

Asuka’s head dipped into her hands, and Rei could not help but look up. “Not after everything.”

In her voice, at the edge, was a sound Rei remembered: the sound of tears.

The past month had been hell. She had tried to not think about it; what she knew lay behind the living room door, what she pretended she had not heard, or smelled, or had nightmares about, red seeping through the gap between the door and the floor. She could not imagine Asuka’s past. Her brother had not been lost to the turned, not in front of her eyes like she had seen Marty being pulled down. She had heard Marty screaming - but Asuka had nothing, not even a voice or a phone call. Her brother had gone, and what had happened, she would never know.

Was that it? Is that why you’re so protective of me? Because you miss your family?

Rei could not think of how to reply.

“I… I miss my family.”

It was the first thing on her mind, short and dry.

The silence that followed made Rei regret ever saying it out. It felt awkward to hear nothing back. Asuka was not crying, but she was not saying anything, either. What she thought of her, Rei could not begin to guess. The older girl’s eyes were concealed in her hands, and she could barely make out the movement of lips once she spoke.

“I know. I do too.”

She felt the familiar arm wrap around her again. Instincts kicked in, and Rei found herself leaning onto Asuka’s shoulder, the arm dipping down to wrap her into a half-embrace. It fought to keep the towel, and the blanket both on her, but pulled her in at the same time, the other hand sweeping gently into the inky tangle that was her hair.

She did not want her to let go, and she leaned in further. Asuka’s scent was different from the ones she remembered, from her stepmother’s floral perfume. She could smell sweat, and a small hint of what was probably fish eaten that morning, but she could not blame her. Food in itself was a pleasant thing, and it made her think of warm dinners at home, when all of her family had been there, alive, around one table, and each one had been happy.

Softly, she pulled away from the hug. She was still nestled in the blanket and wrapped in Asuka’s fuzzy pink towel, but being a distance away, she could see sadness in Asuka’s eyes.

She heard her sigh, and pulled the towel closer.

“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head, “I still can’t believe it. How all of it happened.”

Rei could not, either. It had been far too sudden: one night, and normal life had come to an end.

“…It just did, and… God, I don’t get it. I think about it, but it doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?” Rei asked, prying.

“How it all happened. I don’t know if I should be telling you this. It’s just been on my mind.”

“Tell me.” Now she was curious. If something had alarmed Asuka, then she needed to know, too. Her mind thirsted to know. Her hands jittered with apprehension.

“It’s strange,” Asuka continued. “I mean, how fast it all happened. It doesn’t make sense how it did. How it was so fast. How something… how something like this was even possible. And on this scale.”

It was true, Rei realised, eyes widening. One night had been far too sudden. Everywhere had come to a halt, enough for nobody to answer the phone. She had lost all connections, and then the heat in the house. Only by luck had there still been water - fresh water, not poisoned, she remembered, thinking back to how she had stared at the liquid that pooled in her cup, wondering if a small sip that morning would kill her one day.

“The virus got brought over here. I think that’s what they said on TV. They found it in monkeys, and that was months before all of this happened. It wasn’t dangerous. Nobody got ill. And if they did, then there was nothing in the news about it. And then, this. This was just sudden.”

Rei had never been keen on watching the news. Her parents both did. She and Marty had skulked past the room while the television was on after dinner, hoping there was something better on on some other channel. She had heard the report the night before she had lost everything, but it had been just another announcement. It had scared her, but she had gone on, and not paid it mind.

It had been a mistake.

“They said it was just monkeys, and only transmitted through bites. And then… suddenly, it wasn’t them any more. It was us. And then the virus went airborne and got everyone. And that was a day. Maybe two days. Did they keep it a secret?”

Rei wished it was not true, but the pieces were there. They were a mess. The puzzle was not coming together, and knowing it scared her.

“But… but why?”

“Maybe, they didn’t want us to panic. Or maybe they didn’t know it got out. Or… I don’t understand, but it shouldn’t be real. It shouldn’t just manifest in almost everyone in less than two days. It scares me, and I don’t know why this had to happen. And I think something’s not normal about this.”

The way Asuka spoke seemed to pull Rei in, closer and closer, curious and desperate to hear more of it. What she was saying was frightening; strange, and perhaps even mad . Had she heard anything like it a week ago, Rei knew she would have dismissed it as nothing but delusional rabble, but this - this made sense, in the worst ways, leaving her cold and shivering down to the bone.

“It’s just… it’s just so much to deal with. I don’t know what caused it. But… I just want to know. Why did it happen? Why did everyone… turn, or die? What about us? Why us? Why did we live? Why… why are we all still alive?”

Her head fell into her hands, and she saw her shaking it, as if in denial.

“Asuka!”

“It’s all right. I’m just… going on about something…”

Rei could make out sobs in the mumbling. It hurt to listen to; to see someone so strong reduced to something so… helpless, she realised. If what Asuka had been thinking of was indeed real, then it was frightening. All of them were mere pawns, mere specks of dust; things that did not matter because they had survived.

It killed so many others. Everyone else has to be dead… and we lived…

We had to be the mistakes.

If this wasn’t natural, then we were the errors.

We are mistakes.

“I… I know,” Rei murmured. Her tone sank down to the same volume. “I know we’ve lost everyone.”

Everyone who had been killed had been part of the plan. The turning had all been a part of some strategy, something Rei could not begin to describe or explain. There had been a reason. There had been some kind of plan. It had happened too fast for only an accident.

They had lost everyone, but those losses were not the accident, Rei thought. The survivors - like Asuka, like her - were the accidents. “We shouldn’t be alive, then… should we?”

The bed gave a creak. Asuka shifted, sitting up. One hand rubbed at her eyes, fighting back tears. “Don’t say that.”

Rei froze. “But - “

“I don’t know. All I said was just my idea. Even if it is like that, though, then that can’t be right.”

“But if we survived - “

“Then I won’t let it be right.” She stood up, staring ahead at the mirror. Her eyes looked into the reflection, as tall as she was. “I just won’t believe that we’re all the mistake. And we’re not the mistake. We’re the proof that we’re stronger than that. Stronger than whatever it is they threw at us, whatever happened.”

“Asuka…”

“We might have survived when all the rest didn’t. And that’s what defines us. We survived. We’ve been hit hard, but… but we still have those two. We all have each other. We’ll be all right.”

Something about her reminded Rei of a hero, of some actress in costume in some flashy movie, rays of light illuminating her hair and strong arms swinging out into battle. The light was not bright enough, and what Asuka wore was far from heroic - but the way she turned around, somehow stronger in spite of the pinkish-red ringing her eyes made Rei’s heart skip a beat, seeing just whom she had been admiring.

She tried to say something. The words didn’t come. Still, she felt stronger, somehow, in a way that she could not describe. Her words had shaken her, badly, but they had brought her back from the brink. It confused her, as did the new thoughts she had given her. Things had yet to make sense, but some things already did, and it made her want to follow.

Mirroring her, she stood up, grasping at her towel. The blanket fell from her shoulders. “I… I guess I’ll try.”

It wasn’t as certain as Asuka had sounded. Still, Rei thought, she was trying.

A faint blush emerged on Asuka’s cheeks. “That’s good. But…”

Her voice broke off for a moment. Silently, Rei saw her dip her head low, giving it a shake as if to deny something. It wasn’t pain on her face, but something… different, she realised. For a moment, she thought it might have been a little embarrassment.

“Sorry if all of this scared you,” she breathed out, still shaking her head. She was ashamed, Rei realised as she caught on. “I shouldn’t have blurted all of this out. I didn’t mean to. We’re meant to be keeping you safe, and here I am, talking about all of this crap.”

“It’s all right,” Rei insisted.

Asuka sighed. “I’ve just… been like this a lot…”

Rei only stood there, unsure of what to do next. Asuka was clearly distressed, but she had nothing to say back. It shamed her. How she could be so weak, so useless as to not say a thing to someone who had done so much for her - all of it felt like a stone in her heart, sinking down. She wanted to speak, but she couldn’t.

It was Asuka that broke the pain of the silence. “…You want to go grab some clothes?”

Rei had to pause for a moment. The topic had changed a little too suddenly. “Huh?”

“We’ve got food downstairs. Breakfast,” Asuka said, looking out towards the door. “I’ll go make sure those two have left something for you. I doubt they would eat what I told them to save, but come down. Come and eat.”

It was then that Rei realised just how empty her stomach was. She had not eaten since sometime the previous afternoon. It had only been a small snack. She had slept far longer than normal, she realised; she could not recall when she had fallen onto the bed, but all of her felt empty, in need of some kind of food.

She was not in her house. She had others around her. There was something to eat, too.

Rei nodded. Hunger guiding her on, she took a few steps before realising what she had on. The towel alone felt a little wrong. “I left my clothes in the bathroom.“

“I’ll get them,” Asuka finished for her. “You can wear those, or use mine.”

“I’ll just wear what I have,” Rei confessed. “I’ll be all right.”

It was pleasant to have hospitality. She could not lie: the pink towel around her felt less like a towel and more like a treasure, and the offers of food and fresh clothes made her think of being a guest. Maybe, she thought, it felt like a little bit much for someone like her. Only days ago had she been in a house of her own, but she had been lonely, and starving, and chilled to the bone.

She had company this time. She had others. The voice in her mind was still there, but for a while, it was silent.

“I’ll be fine,” she repeated. “I’ll be fine.”

She did not like telling lies.