Nozomi Kirifuji lived, once. Twice, far too many times. She lived in her mother, then alone, then in a place she'd die to keep happy. So she died, over and over, until...
What?
What remained of Nozomi Kirifuji?
Nozomi twisted in her bed, a new, blossoming disgust exposing all those ugly thoughts festering before she smothered them with a pillow and turned onto her stomach.
Takumi.
Takumi Sumino.
Takumi…Sumino, called her by a different name. He insisted she was someone she’d never been. Like they knew each other—like they were friends. But that couldn’t be. Nozomi remembered her life, she remembered it all with such clarity, importance, no one could take that away from her.
No one could make her stop being herself. Even if—
Sleep did not come yet. Nozomi wondered, turning onto her back again. The rooms upon the rooftop somehow kept a perfect, temperate consistency, not too cold as to require extra blankets but not so hot as to make someone reject them. But her nervous sweating wouldn’t stop, and so she threw them to the ground and let the cold air hug her.
Nozomi Kirifuji had been her name since she was born. Her mother died, as Mrs. Kirifuji wanted. Her father died, too—as some twist of fate decided. She hated the sirens because they took her father away, and she yearned to see the real night sky.
Moko had been there, when she first witnessed it. She was gone now. And of course that had to do with Nozomi’s failures, just as she failed to keep her mother from killing herself.
But they saw the stars together. The same stars she’d clung to in lieu of everything else.
Nozomi sighed, sliding out of bed, putting her jacket back on and stepping outside. If she had little else, she had her dream, hanging over her head and watching her every move.
She reached for it—as she did, once. Moko’s soft smile stuck to Nozomi’s mind, a disgusting fixation.
A handprint lingered on the window. The teacher scolded Nozomi, but she just couldn’t help herself, eyes trained to the sky over the lecture. Her embarrassing, abnormal fixation.
She already understood the material anyways. She earned high marks without even trying, took immaculate notes with only half a mind trained on the noise, all while something far more beautiful captured her imagination. She took a front seat to better hear the teacher while staying next to the window so she could capture every glimpse allowed.
The world beyond the repetition of the clouds—she named them, each puff, after her favorite characters from her favorite movies filmed under a real sky, she granted them these titles so they’d know she noticed; the pattern of clouds repeated several times a day until the lights turned off for the night. She decided if no one else would bother to remember the same shapes that watched over them she would, she knew what it was like to be ignored—and if in this way, in this beautiful way, the real sky heard her, she could…
She—
“What’re you looking at?”
A girl from the neighboring desk leaned over, staring Nozomi down with even, hungry eyes. Ah. The break must’ve come before she knew it. She lost herself too much in her daydreams, so she assumed, but Nozomi soon looked down and ran her hands over the immaculate scrawl of notes taken until the end.
Well. At least she was good for something.
"Um,” Nozomi began, biting her lip as she tried to puzzle out what she’d been looking for. “The…sky.” The only explainable part, and she hardly needed to brace herself for—
A laugh, “Again? There’s nothing there, Kirifuji-san. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” An arm gripped Nozomi’s left, another her right, and scenery slid like a poorly edited video from a lively classroom to a quiet hall, Kirifuji-san, you like to see the sky, right? Have you heard of this really old thing called rain? A splash of smelly mop water thrown over her head. Stop playing in the janitor’s closet, Kirifuji-san, you’re such a troublemaker. Wait until the teacher hears about this—more muscling, more laughter, smiles, “You’re gonna get stuck with cleaning after school again. But we’ll be there to help you. Maybe later you can tell us more about this weird ‘rain’ stuff you always talk about?”
At least she never told them about hail, the rot of the world clinging to Nozomi’s teeth as she smiled in a way a chimpanzee did before tearing you to pieces. “…Of course. Thank you.”
Thank you. You’ve been so good.
By the end of the day, the girls found a way to dunk Nozomi’s notebook in the mop bucket, too, ruining all her hard work. Notes smeared away like words in the old, old near disintegrating books the little girl struggled to read until her mother snatched them out of her hands and scolded her for the oil on her palms harming the pages, something or other always changing. Always destroying.
She shook it, watching droplets of water tear from each page and pang against the ground. With each plap she imagined more, more, until a raincloud hung over her head, hung over the world.
Her mother told her all kinds of stories: this one had been translated, Mrs. Kirifuji said, whatever that meant, a short about a girl who lived on a planet where it always rained. She yearned to see the sun again—having grown up on Earth—but being so hated meant dreams remained just out of reach.
The girl’s classmates locked her away so that she wouldn’t see the sun during the only time it emerged in years. If Nozomi grasped one chance to see the sky, surely, possibly, certainly, her classmates would destroy it. Another laugh, another snide smile, another disbelieving expression, more gossip about the weird girl and her weird sky obsession.
Don’t they both look the same, anyways?
…Nozomi tried not to mind too much. She was too busy to get to know them—but if things were different, just a little different…
A dream played in her mind, of friends and slumber parties, picnics, ventures to the mall, the movies, karaoke—but it played, played on a half-dead TV, a flimsy fantasy set before a quiet, curious, clueless child.
The video played, and Nozomi huddled before it.
Recorded on an old phone her mother discarded before she finished primary school, burned onto a CD, the corrupted video played on the television over and over again. She’d run out of things to watch, having played all the documentaries her mother bought for her. Desperate for entertainment, yearning to see her mother’s face again, Nozomi’s chubby fingers glided over the collection of home movies and inserted the earliest one into the DVD player.
Her mom kept a lot of vintage tech—not that Nozomi processed it as vintage, having little frame of reference of other people’s lives. She went to school, yes, she sat in her seat and raised her hand and answered all the questions the teachers wanted her to, but she lived in a bubble.
She lived under duty. At eight years old, Nozomi Kirifuji prepared her heart, soul and blood for war.
Smears of red glitched out half of the video, but Nozomi watched her weak, shaking legs take their first steps as her mother hummed in approval. Though even such a small sound, filtered through the broken lens of the past, crackled with distortions. Maybe it’d been laughter. Maybe it’d never been kindness at all.
Not to say Mrs. Kirifuji never encouraged her daughter. Far from it.
As soon as she came home—Nozomi replaying the documentary series about the ocean half-distorted from age—her mother turned the TV off, kissed her daughter on the head, then went to her room. Nozomi waited for her to return; when she did, she hoisted the girl on her lap.
“We managed to achieve our next milestone,” she said. “Our newest test subject is retaining the power we’ve given them. We’ll need to monitor them for a very long time, but if they manage to produce the results we need, then it’ll ensure humanity’s future. You know how important that is, right, sweetheart?”
Nozomi nodded. Mrs. Kirifuji narrowed her eyes.
“Do you understand?” she repeated, and Nozomi tensed, her vocal chords straining to say anything at all.
“…Yes, it’s very, very good. Thank you, mommy.”
She smiled, and poked her daughter on the nose. “We’ve been fighting for so long,” she continued, Nozomi hanging off every word. “Working tirelessly to protect the future of humanity—your future.”
Mrs. Kirifuji gestured towards the black, dead TV screen. Nozomi followed her regardless. “The world you see there—I’ll bring you to it. We live sheltered, hiding from a rot that threatens to wipe us out. This is our sanctuary, but it won’t last forever. By the time you’re grown, everything will be descending into a state of collapse.
“Your favorite foods will be gone. Your teachers will be lost, all your favorite books and movies will be destroyed. Humanity, doomed. But we cannot let these evils destroy our home, right?”
Nozomi nodded. “Yes.” A simple answer, but it always worked. It was always so good.
Mrs. Kirifuji smiled, rocking little Nozomi in her arms for a moment before she continued. Nozomi craned her neck to watch her mother speak with warmth and passion, cheeks flushed and leaking spirit despite the starved, pale cold of her skin—not that Nozomi was much better with her complexion.
“You’ll see the sun,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
As if she knew.
“And the ocean—it’s an entire world inside a world. Creatures beyond your imagination. We have an excellent aquarium, but there’s so much out there you’ve yet to see. Mommy will work as hard as she can until she can take you to the ocean, okay?”
The rocking continued, and Nozomi’s eyes fluttered closed, but she fought sleep, clinging to her mother’s every word.
Moments like these brought her peace. Moments like these shattered the memories of a cold home and nights left alone, the neighbors coming by with food, checking in on her before leaving her alone again. All the loneliness, it was her own burden to bear.
So her mother could save the world.
“I promise,” Mrs. Kirifuji muttered, “you’ll see all you’ve ever wanted to see. You’ll look back on these days and realize it was all worth it. This is what we have to do to save people, to give everyone a shining future to hold on to.”
Nozomi nodded—though her mother failed to see it.
“Are you walking home alone today? Again?”
Nozomi stopped at the gate of her school, fingers curled around the straps of her backpack. Many other children walked home alone with the permission of their parents—the streets were as safe as could be, and families knew each other. Even if a young one wandered off the beaten path, there’d be someone to help them.
Surely. Likely, right? No child was ever left behind.
Mrs. Kirifuji had been no exception in entrusting her daughter with the responsibility of getting home. Even then, she’d been a special case, with the other parents often walking their kids home occasionally, mostly out of an unspoken desire for connection—familial love, bonding. Memories.
Since the beginning of primary school, and to her last day of high school before she left for war, Nozomi Kirifuji made the journey on her lonesome, with only the fewest exceptions.
Of course she complained. Threw tantrums, begged for the time and attention she craved—but she was punished for her selfishness with a dead father and an ugly scar. Nozomi’s mother often reminded her of what she had to be in order to grasp the future they both wanted, and so, she learned to lock those self-centered thoughts of hers away. Her mother was a savior, and here she was, complaining Mrs. Kirifuji wouldn’t abandon her important duty of saving humanity to eat dinner with her daughter.
How selfish. How cruel.
Nozomi could make sacrifices, too. She accepted each lesson as it came, letting each comet of desire pass, circling again and again, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Until a teacher approached her at the school gates, selfish thoughts long since stopped tempting her. A young woman, the newest teacher; she bent down and regarded Nozomi with a worried gaze.
“…Yes,” Nozomi said, head bowed as she shuffled around, away, but the woman followed her, bore a frown which made Nozomi’s heart race—she wouldn’t want this lady to think badly of her mother. She was just busy doing important things, far more important things. She worked to save humanity; Nozomi couldn’t say that, though.
She promised. So she moved, so the teacher spoke.
“Is your mother busy?”
Nozomi nodded. She quickened her pace, but it did nothing. “Let me walk with you. I know you’ll be fine, but it gets lonely by yourself, doesn’t it?”
Nozomi nodded. The trees, roads, houses, streets, people, people, cars, cars cars cars—they all blurred into a mess, the way Nozomi stirred her yolk into her rice and made a pile of it all before she took a bite.
She imagined stirring her life up with a pair of chopsticks until it faded into a distorted image one could compartmentalize and come back to later. Her mother must’ve done the same; she’d never have time to focus on saving humanity if too much distracted her.
“Will she be home? May I speak to Mrs. Kirifuji?”
Nozomi nodded.
“I see. What’s your mother like? What kind of work does she do?”
Nozomi nodded.
“…Does she work? Is someone else providing? A boyfriend?”
Nozomi said nothing.
“I hope I’m not overstepping. After what happened to your father—”
Nozomi said nothing and did nothing and nodded and smiled and said yes and believed, with all her heart she could make this end by making the teacher happy even if it turned her guts inside out tore open her scar displayed her entrails and tears to the world and made them go oh, this poor nice girl, when will the world leave her alone?
When everyone left her alone. Maybe.
Nozomi made it home and locked the door behind her. She couldn’t remember what made the teacher leave. The nice lady seemed scared, though.
Terrified. Of something.
Maybe this ugly, ugly—
Nozomi darted to the bathroom, pulled her shirt up, reminded herself. She was bad, but she was punished for being bad, and now she’s good. She tried to be as good as possible given the ugly thing etched onto her.
Maybe the nice lady saw it. Maybe she realized how bad Nozomi was, and left her.
Just like daddy did, right?
Mrs. Kirifuji held Nozomi, her lifeline, with a tight, urgent grasp which left imprints on Nozomi’s soul. This time, though, she performed the empty motion of letting go, placing the little girl on the ground and looking her in the eye.
Nozomi froze.
As long as she’d been alive, her mother had never looked at her so. Why did it strike such terror in her?
Those sames eyes fixed on Nozomi the day she woke up in the hospital. After the accident.
Ah, she must’ve done something bad again. Mrs. Kirifuji leaned forward, lips parting and closing as only small noises escaped, half-formed words breaking free and dying upon learning their destiny.
For this mother had a choice to make: humanity, or her daughter. But in the grand scheme of things, was there ever a chance she’d pick otherwise?
“Nozomi,” she said at last, smiling, a dull thud of emptiness in her eyes, “You’re going to do something very special for your mother. You’ll be my assistant, and together, we’ll save everyone. Doesn’t that make you happy? Everyone’s smiling faces, sun and the seas and the distant stars, they’ll all show everyone the beauty of being alive. We’ll have hope, we’ll have an open sky and a world all our own.”
Mrs. Kirifuji took Nozomi’s hands into her own. The small, soft palms against the older woman’s rough and scratched up ones—she squeezed them. Overshadowed their shape, their size, their innocence, taking it all for herself. Childhood, love, devotion, a dream—all intertwined with one another.
“Nozomi,” the teacher asked, brows laced with concern. “Is your mother…overstepping? No—what I mean to say is, she’s not…doing anything to you that you’re uncomfortable with, right?”
…
“If she is, please let me know. You deserve to live a happy life with someone who treats you the way you should be treated. I’d hate to cast doubt onto Mrs. Kirifuji’s character, but—”
A happy life? Discomfort? How could Nozomi understand those things? She watched shows and movies no one else did. Whenever she opened her mouth, the other kids ignored her—and when the teachers turned their backs, there they went, making sure she’d never speak up again. What frame of reference could such a child have?
“In instances where a traumatic incident occurs, the remaining parent and child are forced to bear it in their own ways. Sometimes, that leads to…inappropriate—”
How could Nozomi possibly understand what she was going through, when the only person who held her, kissed her head, said everything she wanted to hear stood before her, ready to open up her own daughter if it meant she accomplished her—their dream? Nozomi felt no discomfort as she tried, pitifully, to squeeze back in reassurance, only to find her hands locked within her mother’s grip.
Even if the time they spent together was sparse, when Mrs. Kirifuji came home, she always kept Nozomi close by.
And so—
“…Yes,” Nozomi said, and Mrs. Kirifuji brought her close. Just like always.
And just like always, just like always, just like always, just like always and forever and every single day of her life, Nozomi smiled, the happiest girl in the Tokyo Residential Complex, heart bursting with love.
Everyone looked at Nozomi as though she faced her grave. Adults, mostly—the other children just seemed confused. You’re not supposed to be here, they’d think (so Nozomi thought), we shouldn’t be here either.
We shouldn’t be here.
We don’t—
“Keep your eyes forward,” Mrs. Kirifuji whispered, and Nozomi shook her head and resolved to ignore every piercing stare until they reached the elevator. The older woman swiped a card against a reader underneath the pin pad, and without further prompting, the old device creaked and sent them down, down, past windows of light and into empty, dark, abandoned wings.
Warmth traded for cold; when they reached their destination, the reflection from the clean tile floor seemed more sterile than the light which created it. No one crossed paths with the two, a moment frozen for Mrs. Kirifuji to poke and prod and open up, dissect each drop of warmth, drink it up so greedily before it grew as freezing as the dinners Nozomi ate at home, waiting for her mother; everything would be okay now, though, Mrs. Kirifuji promised the hopeful little girl that they’d eat out every night after they went to the hospital, that Nozomi got to order all the expensive dishes she liked, though oftentimes she struggled to order things like meat and fish without imagining the creature, torn and bloodied all for her taste buds, her enjoyment; how fair was that, exactly?
How was this fair?
Nozomi shook the thought out of her head, hitting it until her hair grew red, bloodied, clumped.
She craved those moments of company. Even something as simple as a IV needle piercing skin filled her with a sickening, sugary delight. The first procedure went well—so little Nozomi assumed. Mrs. Kirifuji seemed apprehensive up until she administered the first dose of something, filling Nozomi with such unease she almost threw up as her mom watched, silent, some line moving on a screen Nozomi couldn’t see.
Right. She was just nervous. Nozomi’s sickness had nothing to do with the odd red substance flowing into her veins. Hours of scans and muttering later, Mrs. Kirifuji led her daughter out with a bright, welcoming smile. She ruffled Nozomi’s hair and lathered her bruises and punctures with all the praise such a wonderful mother could muster.
“You did so well,” she cooed, planting a kiss on Nozomi’s nose before she went back to leading the girl. “Now—oh, eyes forward,” she guided Nozomi’s head straight stiff, “now, where do you want to eat?”
Ah.
“Anything,” Nozomi said, “anything you want.”
“But,” Mrs. Kirifuji said with a pout as she patted her daughter’s shoulder, then her head, “You were the one who worked so hard and was so brave today. I think you deserve to choose.”
Her hand hovered over her daughter’s head—over every messy, imperfect strand. Grimace barely disguised, she tucked away every out-of-place chunk, all the while her daughter fixated on her mother’s face.
“…I like whatever you like,” Nozomi said, smiling, and it was true. It was the truest thing she’d ever said.
“Mh.”
Mrs. Kirifuji frowned. They made it back to the hospital lobby, and she released the little girl’s head from her grip. “Then—how about sushi?”
Gross.
“Please!” Nozomi chirped, and that was that.
The two went to a decent revolving sushi establishment, Nozomi picking off plates of whatever didn’t have seafood on it while her mother focused on the nigiri, skipping over all the odd alternatives and trying to ignore how the restaurant inflated their offerings with non-seafood options to disguise the dwindling amounts of fish.
Everything was fine, until it wasn’t, but for this fleeting moment, please, let it be fine.
Nozomi clasped her hands together. “Thank you for the meal,” she said, before picking bits off each of her accumulated plates. She finished maybe two of them before setting her chopsticks aside, watching her mother indulge in plate after plate. Happy, until she wasn’t.
The third month of testing beget the near-death of Nozomi Kirifuji; the beginning of the end.
Her vitals didn’t seem off—though months of testing altered the level of normality the little girl operated on. Mrs. Kirifuji noticed the weakness in Nozomi’s steps and focused on the data. She noticed the lack of energy in Nozomi’s stare and worked on her charts. She noticed the way Nozomi pushed more and more of her sushi to the side when they went to their usual place after work.
“Um, mommy,” Nozomi said, tottering like a toddler, teeming on the brink of falling. She held a permission slip in her hand. “My school wants to go to the aquarium. Can I go?”
She tripped, and splayed on the floor. Her mother helped her up with a laugh, smile falling when she saw the date the field trip was scheduled for.
Nozomi spent that day staring at a hospital ceiling.
Mrs. Kirifuji ran her fingers through Nozomi’s hair as she inserted the IV into smooth, undamaged skin, avoiding the many little marks of recent procedures. Nozomi shivered, reaching for her mother’s hand as it moved away and a bright red liquid took its place, traveling from the bag into Nozomi’s veins.
She grit her teeth, pushing back the headache pounding and begging and screaming at the forefront. She didn’t want to worry her mommy with her daughter being a human being. A desperate, sad one—Mrs. Kirifuji needed the perfect subject, and she’d deliver.
Even if it hurt.
Even if it tore her apart.
Even if it bit at the edges of her consciousness and replaced each waking thought filled with love and enjoyment and hope and passion with pain, pain, leaving her staring at a flailing butterfly with a torn wing thinking of how it must’ve hurt, how its whole existence now defined by agony suffered and writhed and tried, tried to fly away only to find itself in an endless pit of pain and—it always hurt, it didn’t stop hurting, and nothing caught her, Nozomi—saved by no one!
Not even her own mother, administering her love with poison.
Nozomi passed out, awakened by her mother’s sobs. Vague words. Apologies, even, though Nozomi refused to hear a word. If she focused on them, she might’ve started to wonder.
To doubt.
Eyes flickering, pain kept at bay, a new IV pack filled with a clear liquid flowing into her veins, Nozomi’s smaller hand laid over Mrs. Kirifuji’s. “I…I’m here, mommy,” she cooed.
Mrs. Kirifuji sobbed. But even through her tears, she clutched her daughter’s hand. “I’m…I’m here, too. Mommy’s here. And she’ll…make you feel all better, okay?”
“So I can help humanity?”
“So…”
Something flickered. Changed, warped, wrapped around the scientist—the mother, the precious mommy to her glimmering, dimming daughter. Her mouth fell open, shut, then she smiled.
“So we can help save humanity,” she said. Nozomi clung on, the two embracing in stubborn silence. “I’ll make you feel better. Give me some time, please, and all the pain will be gone. We’ll even end research early today—and I’ll give you a special treat for being so brave.”
Mrs. Kirifuji ruffled Nozomi’s hair again, before adjusting it all back into place. Bit by bit, she took her daughter apart, and put her back together.
A pained smile crossed Nozomi’s face. “I want…to go to our usual place.”
So Mrs. Kirifuji went to work. After disappearing for a couple hours, the little girl trembling with ripped wings and a forced smile, her experimenter—mother returned with a glass of water and a couple red capsules. She poured the liquid and pills down her daughter’s mouth, and in a snap, she jumped back to life.
It didn’t end, though.
Of course it didn’t.
A week later, Nozomi held a toy gun. Designed to respond to hemoanima, she raised it, fired a beam of light at the target—and collapsed. The next week, she used the weapon to heal a small animal, and collapsed. The next as before; she cured her own mother of a headache before she collapsed.
Mrs. Kirifuji excused herself. To check her charts. To cry, outside of her daughter’s view. Nozomi waited, confused when her mother didn’t return, when she stayed away. She tottered to her feet and paced about the room.
Why wouldn’t her mother return? Was it because Nozomi didn’t do a good enough job? Were the experiments going to end? Maybe everything would go back to normal, Mrs. Kirifuji a creature of the hospital, recalling charts better than her own daughter’s face, cold dinners waiting at home.
Nozomi would eat ten pieces of nigiri right now if it meant her mother would be there.
So she ran.
The little girl got lost, as she tended to. Lost in her mother’s lofty dreams, and now lost in the darkened halls buried within the depths of Kamakura hospital. She ducked around doors and corners at the sound of footsteps and voices she didn’t recognize.
On some level, she knew she did something wrong by wandering. She should have stayed in the lab—her mother always kept her head forward, and the second she had the freedom to turn away, she ran off and ruined everything on a whim.
At this rate, she’d never save humanity.
Itching at the marks of IVs marred over her arm, Nozomi continued to walk, stumbling upon one lab where no voices emerged. The one place she knew not to go. She’d been told, time and time again not to wander, but to especially not go here.
And yet.
Nozomi intended to pass it by—the sound of other voices approaching made her jump, though, and she ducked inside before they saw her. As she closed the door behind her, the murmur of machines stole her interest, followed by the musky smell of sweat, the atmosphere of stress.
Of something deeply wrong. Of something so familiar.
Two lines of pods greeted her. Swallowing the lump in her throat, Nozomi, good yet so curious in a way only fitting for a bad child, continued. Glanced at a pod, just one of them, gasping and covered her hands with her mouth as if she could muffle the sound after the fact.
But it was too late. She saw—him.
A young boy. Around her age, head shaved as if thrown into the military. Nozomi remembered—they forced recruits to throw their hair away, a mark of their identity, a symbolic act of sacrificing everything to become just another soldier ready to protect and die.
Nozomi gripped a fistful of her own hair and placed a hand against the glass. The boy twitched; she pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He said nothing. His eyes stayed close. For all Nozomi knew, she didn’t exist to him—he seemed to be in a deep sleep, with electrodes stuck to his head, connected to an ever-humming device.
She paced around the room, looking over all the other children encased in glass and trapped in some eternal slumber. She tapped on them, shook the devices, yet no one so much as twitched. They all bore different appearances, her mind racing with possibilities.
Were they…
Like her?
Surely not. Nozomi stopped in front of the boy’s pod again. A nameplate: ‘Takumi Sumino.’
“Sumino…Takumi,” she said, and looked down at the sleeping boy, hands pressed against glass. “Is that your name?”
He stayed silent.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, expecting silence. When she received nothing but—a smile creased her face, something so unkind amidst the broiling nerves within the beeps, the swirling shadows—people passing by, yet these two stayed still.
All these bodies, all the same. Static. Waiting. Like Nozomi, waiting. Waiting to be used.
“Is it lonely here? Are you working hard to save humanity, too?” The boy’s prone, wired body as Nozomi once laid before her mother, mysterious substances injected into her veins before Mrs. Kirifuji handed her a weapon and asked her to fight. Maybe they were learning to fight too.
Maybe they’d be poked through, inside and out. Maybe they’d be told stories of the skies above, the twinkling stars, maybe they’d learn each prick of light’s name before they bothered memorizing the names of their peers. Maybe they’d live in a world long dead, striving to raise it out of the ground. Tear each clump of dirt up, stain their hands until they built a shoddy substitute.
Until they reached the sky again.
The world.
The world, and a sky. A beginning and an end. Stretching on to—
Nothing
“Mommy is always late coming home from work—I buy dinner from the store, but it goes cold and she eats it for lunch the next day. I’ll bring you some next time…but would you be able to eat it?” Now that she thought of it, she probably wouldn’t be able to sneak something with a smell into this lab. She’s not supposed to be here. She’s not supposed to—
She lifts up her shirt and shows the scar. “When my daddy died and went to heaven, the…the accident left me with this. The kids at school think its ugly, and they said I wouldn’t ever find a husband now that I’m disfigured.” Her shirt drops. “…I miss him. Do you…um, will you be my new daddy, now?”
But he never opened his eyes—
“Are you sick? I can try to bring soup next time. You look really sweaty; when I have a fever, my mom puts a cold cloth on my head and it always breaks it eventually—”
“Before we started—” No, that’s supposed to be a secret, only bad girls would spill secrets, Nozomi isn’t a bad girl, so she stops. “…um…I mean, when my mom would leave for a really long time, I got afraid she’d never come back. I thought, maybe, she’d realize she loved her research more than me. Or she might’ve forgotten about me—she could come home and ask: ‘Who are you? I don’t remember a girl with your face.’ You won’t forget about me…right? If you—if you step out, and you forgot everything about me, and went to go save humanity and left me behind…”
But she didn’t know him.
He didn’t know her.
He was…
“I promise I won’t forget about you. So don’t forget me too. And if I buy you movie tickets, please don’t forget about it either and buy me a burger to make me feel better—”
“Have you ever tried chocolates?”
Nozomi smushed one against the pod glass. It left a gross brown streak, and she frowned, wiping it off as best she could, “Mommy…she didn’t eat these, so you can have them. It was the first time I tried to make them myself—”
“All by myself—”
“I got lost, and she couldn’t find me. The nice lady from next door did. Mommy’s not very good at finding people when they’re lost. But I got to have more of her rolled eggs. So it was fine, right?”
… “If we get to meet, one day…maybe you’d be able to find me.”
For the first time, Takumi Sumino opened his eyes and smiled. Nozomi smiled back, grasping the light of his kindness in her hands. Dazed, distracted, unknowing of the open door behind her, and the hand reaching for her neck.
Nozomi didn’t remember a lot about the hospital.
It wasn’t bad. Of course it wasn’t bad. It was lonely, hovering between medical procedures, experiments, and physical training, but it wasn’t bad. They gave her a toy gun with some weird effects. They had her fit and ready for saving humanity—whatever that took.
Whatever she had to be strong against.
But it ended, one day. And soon after her mother’s life ended too.
Nozomi’s neighbor watched over her for a while, and in condolence Mrs. Kirifuji’s workplace offered rent coverage until Nozomi finished high school. They destroyed the woman’s research and killed her inside and out, but at least they had it in their hearts to not leave her daughter homeless.
How nice.
Over abandoned assignments Nozomi fixated on the suicide note. She found it, the body and every bloodied regret before the authorities came, and even now they knew nothing of it. Based on its contents and her own lived experience, Nozomi knew no one would want her to have this—but it was her right, she deserved to know what killed her mother.
Herself, in part. Nozomi’s failure, her inability to stave off rejection symptoms and control her cryptoglobin.
Kamakura Hospital and its higher ups, their impatience and willingness to throw Mrs. Kirifuji to the curb when she seemed to not be up to snuff.
Mrs. Kirifuji herself, for giving up on humanity.
The woman and her swollen face, choked out and rotted. Nozomi bore it into her brain, and even closing her eyes did nothing to banish the vision. To accomplish the grandest goals, one needed a deep motivation, something driving their every breath.
For a girl who had nothing to live for, clinging to the simple, the obvious, the un-kind; revenge, so sweet.
Revenge.
It suited her fine, even if Nozomi would never call it that.
Sometimes Nozomi wondered what her mother wanted of her after her death. Mrs. Kirifuji poured out everything, information Nozomi should’ve never been allowed to know, why she got those weird injections and why her mother gave her such a precious, sad look as she inserted each needle. Did she want her daughter to move on? Now that she had all the answers, Nozomi had to return to a ‘normal life’, a precious bubble ready to pop the moment she tried to be a part of it?
She couldn’t destroy something so precious. Nor could she forgive her mother for dying after spending years telling Nozomi how important it was that they save humanity. Fight for humanity. Live for humanity.
Die for humanity.
Nozomi had to be careful, though. Without her mother’s work nothing kept her rejection symptoms at bay, so she avoided tapping into that mysterious power. She reached out to her mother’s research friends, twisting their pity (just asking questions, she told herself, I just want to know more about my mother, don’t I deserve to know what her life was like?) to learn more about Mrs. Kirifuji’s work. Like, for some offhand example, where exactly she used to have her office. Maybe Nozomi could come collect her things.
It really wasn’t so hard, for a nice girl.
Once again, a few hours before school, Nozomi ran her hands over the note.
Enemies of mankind. In Nozomi’s veins ran a power capable of destroying these enemies and accomplishing all she was created—no, born to do. She began each morning with an exercise routine, just in case.
“Um…Kirifuji?”
Nozomi looked up from her notes to see a girl. She couldn’t remember her name, but she seemed popular among the other students, and apparently was a rising star in the Kendo club. She waved, flashing Nozomi a smile.
“How about we walk home together?”
Nozomi dropped her pen against her notebook. “But…class doesn’t end until—”
“Oh, I meant after class! Practice is canceled, and, like, I’ve been sitting behind you all year but we’ve never talked once! If you don’t got anything going on, why not? I’m pretty sure we share the same route, anyways, I see you all the time on my morning walk.”
Grappling for her pen, Nozomi put on a smile. “Um…that sounds fine, if I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Girl, I’m offering, what’re you talking about?” She laughed, the girl who Nozomi still couldn’t remember. “Ok~ay, see you then!”
Nozomi thought hoped she might forget, but there the girl lingered by the gates after school. The two began the long trek back—not so long at all, honestly, but to Nozomi, who hadn’t talked with a girl her age in eternity, it might as well have been harder than her entire weekly training routine.
“You know,” she said, spit flying with every sentence, “if you ever wanna come by my house, feel free. I think my parents’ll like you! I have a lot of guy friends; they always make ‘em sleep in the guest bedroom, but since you’re a girl we can totally share my room.”
“Um, I don’t know…” Nozomi said.
The girl looked up at the artificiality. “Sorry, I’m just—like, super excited to finally talk to you. Usually you’re gone by the bell, so I figured if I wanted to nab you and steal your killer skincare routine, I’d better get more proactive!”
Nozomi laughed, however she could. The girl gave her an odd look, and the burning shame left in Nozomi had her gaze traveling into traffic. Regardless she kept going, until they both reached their destination.
“I have to go this way,” Nozomi said. The girl smiled and waved—maybe that’d be the end of that.
The day passed. A morning walk alone, followed by several hours of school, the ringing of the bell, and a familiar grinning face looming over Nozomi’s desk before she dared to reach for her bag.
“Wanna walk home together again?”
“Um—actually, I wanted…I was going to go somewhere,” Nozomi said, huddling her arms close. “I don’t know if you’d want to go with me. It’s not the most glamorous place.”
The girl tilted her head, confused. “Hmmm…why not? Unless it’s somewhere super shady. You’re not sneaking off to a second job, are you?”
A sickness struck Nozomi. “No—no, nothing like that! It’s…”
The world.
A world—a single standing monument to the world Nozomi wanted to be a part of. She reached out, fingers grazing the surface, before it pulled away from her.
Nozomi brought her new ‘friend’ to a forest. A beautiful place—as Nozomi walked, she took care to stick to treaded ground, to only disturb as needed. A lot of visitors didn’t think before walking, never realizing the damage they inflicted on the diminished wildlife, but she dared not be angry.
Only as needed—she only be angry as she had to, so she wouldn’t forget her mother’s choked face.
The calls of the birds, the buzzing of insects punctuated the other girl’s words.
“It’s been forever since I’ve been here. I used to play catch with my dad around this, like, a biiiig lake? Or maybe it was only big ‘cause I was so small?”
Nozomi nodded and took the lead. “I know what you’re talking about. I love seeing the beautiful underwater ecosystem—the surface is so clear, it’s like polished glass.”
“Ooooh, yes! Let’s go!”
The two hurried, stopping at the edge. A clear, still body of water, surrounded by a trapping of trees opening up to reveal the artificial sky.
Nozomi crouched and peaked into this view of another world. Though the one above and around her might have been built on an obfuscated truth, this one, these quiet waters held only the scant lies they were built on. The shred of beauty they revealed to Nozomi held true.
Until it all exploded into ripples.
“Looks like an awesome place to take a swim!” the girl laughed, soaked to the bone before Nozomi blinked. She held a hand out to her new friend, trapped on the other side. “Wanna join me?”
Nozomi smiled, lopsided. “I…I’m sorry, I can’t swim.”
“Seriously, don’t apologize. That just means I gotta teach you another time! For now, just watch my form, and you’ll have something to work with.”
“Um—okay!”
Back when books documented hundreds of years worth of information on ecosystems, humans knew to avoid still bodies of water. Those lakes held brain-eating parasites that’d strike the victim dead within days.
This girl didn’t know—neither did Nozomi, until her new friend never came to school ever again. In her honor, Nozomi came back to the lake, standing over the edge as she stared at her mother’s flickering reflection.
But she could not join her yet.
White as a ghost. Her hair suited that of a phantom—inviting death.
Nozomi didn’t kill her mother, but she failed her. She didn’t kill her friend, who didn’t know any better, but she was made—born, to protect humanity. She should’ve known better.
So she shut her heart away and focused.
By all accounts, Nozomi was the worst daughter. She failed to be a good experiment, she failed to be good enough to bring her mother home. So she had to make up for it by giving her life to her mother’s dead dream. If that became a lie—if all her mother’s work amounted to nothing because Nozomi gave up, then she’d just have to kill herself.
A lot of Mrs. Kirifuji’s friends stayed in contact with her daughter, out of pity for the girl left behind. It wasn’t hard to get some more self-indulgent things from these connections: the scant books about the outside world she treasured were gifts from them. Though only one, a fellow researcher with no work to her name, provided a connection Nozomi used as a defense while she explored the halls of Kamakura Hospital.
The connection came from an older, senile man, who owned a development company. Nozomi later learned it was a weapons development company; something unheard of in the Tokyo Residential Complex. Weapons. War. Such foreign concepts, but it meant something and so Nozomi clung as she clung to the suicide note.
He had a personal say in all the hospital’s projects. He liked blonde hair, too, and bossy women.
Information that had nothing to do with anything, Nozomi told herself.
When she snuck around the hospital she took care to not draw attention. She didn’t want to plunge too deep in and end up stuck on the outskirts until the day she died. If she wanted to find out why the hospital cut her mother’s research and what they replaced Nozomi with, she needed to make sure she could come back as many times as it took.
Someone else cleaned out her mother’s office the first time she asked, before she ever arrived. The second time, she faked an injury and slipped away as the nurses became swamped with work.
The third time, she happened upon an injured stranger in need of help. Clinging to the thank you note the stranger gifted her assuaged the guilt somewhat.
In every visit, the tale unraveled. She learned of a Special Defense Unit designed, recruited, molded—something or other, something similar, something different—to defeat the threat looming over humanity.
They succeeded where she failed. They harnessed the power of hemoanima without a flicker of rejection symptoms. Special from the start or gifted the power through tired research by someone better, Nozomi never figured it out, nor did she think it mattered much. Either way, she failed.
Either way.
Nozomi held her breath.
She entered the room, and never looked back. Her eyes traveled to a name plastered over a pod, one of many.
‘Takumi Sumino.’
Nozomi entered the room, and saw her mothers body swaying to and fro, a note clutched in her rigid, cold hands.
Nozomi entered the room, and grabbed mom by the ankle, pulling, thinking it might save her somehow. Her mother’s body toppled and landed on her, muffling her sobs. Maybe if she let her mother eat yummier foods, she wouldn’t have died! Nozomi had been too needy, too greedy, she planted death with each selfish choice she made. She was bad, and with each mistake she paid the consequences.
But even then—she set up her mother’s portrait and ate dinner across from it. She’d scoop up a spoonful of curry, waving it before that unmoved smile.
“Don’t you wish you could’ve tried it?” she said. “If only you lived long enough to taste your daughter’s super yummy new curry recipe.”
If only you hadn’t killed yourself. Maybe we could’ve been a family.
But I can’t be angry…I still need to fix things.
I still—have so much I need to do, before I can see you again.
The last remaining human, Nozomi Kirifuji, walked, a group of children behind her. Her arms pulled close, she glanced back and forth. Without cryptoglobin she couldn’t hope to understand what they spoke of when she wasn’t looking. No, even when looking right at them, they mumbled indecipherable gargles which left Nozomi at a distance.
She lived, and the others died. And with their lives her power joined them. Takumi said it was okay, that she could be a normal girl again, but that was never an option—a normal human in a planet filled with another species was just another oddity.
Something on the outside.
Nozomi watched the children from the outside, hands clasped in front of her. It would be all right—she was used to living this way.
A snap stole her attention. She threw an arm out, and the children fell in line behind her. Biting back the instinct to pick up a stone for self-defense she waited.
Another, smaller face peered back at her from behind rubble.
Nozomi smiled and held a hand out.
The last remaining living beings, Nozomi spent her days working. Jumping from the gardens Shouma led, to the construction of houses spearheaded by Moko, she alternated between more physically demanding tasks and a few she settled on as ‘cooldowns’ when her muscles screamed for a break.
Still, she worked.
“Kirifuji…” Takumi said, pushing a tray of food towards her. Nozomi rested on a bench in the courtyard, head leaned back before she snapped to life at the offering. “Aren’t you working too hard? I get you wanna get everything set up for us as soon as possible, but come on, there’s plenty of us. And you got me to help, too. It’s okay if you gotta take a break every now and then.”
Nozomi smiled, picking up the chopsticks with only a touch of hesitance. “Thank you for the food. But I’m fine—in fact, I’ll be better than ever after I eat the delicious food you brought me.”
“Uh—” Takumi put his hands up, “Don’t get too excited. Kawana just fixed the Ration-o-Matic and all, so I figured someone had to be the first to test it out.”
“Mhm, but this means you’ll give me meals between jobs, right?”
“I—uh…I mean, sure, if you want.”
Takumi scratched his cheek, looking away. “I…I got time.”
“We have time,” Takumi breathed, holding onto Nozomi. Clinging too hard—but still, he clung. Nozomi sobbed and reached for the withered corpse a few feet away, shoving the man to the ground and cradling the remains of Kamyuhn. A girl. Just a girl, just like she once was.
What was Kamyuhn’s childhood like?
Did she make dinner for her mother and wait? The dishes growing cold, Kamyuhn crouching out the window, Eva’s shadow not crossing into sight until the dead of night came? And when those two finally united, did Eva apologize? Promise to spend more time with the little girl?
Eva holding a crying Kamyuhn. It wouldn’t happen again, I promise. I’ll be home tomorrow for dinner, and we’ll eat together—and you’ll tell me about all the wonderful things you did today. Won’t you?
She ruffles her daughter’s hair. Remember, mommy loves you—mommy died because you couldn’t save her, but at least she loves you. And your sister let mommy die, let you die, but at least she loves you too.
“…I don’t care about time,” Nozomi said, fixated on the corpse. The empty body, dried. “I want—more time, with her…”
Takumi stayed silent for a while. “I’m sorry,” he said, choking on the words before he looked away. “I’m sorry, but…”
But.
“But, if you don’t like it,” Nozomi said, flipping through a magazine, “I’m sure we can find a place near everyone else so we can stay together.”
How nice of humanity to provide the bare minimum of entertainment for the saviors of humanity: booklets for vacations, articles chock full of real estate advertisements.
But did they really save anything?
Nozomi stopped to think about it, Kamyuhn leaning over and flipping through the pages herself. They were meant to wipe out the…invaders, so they’d been told. But it wasn’t so bad down there. Nozomi found a new family, and the last thing she wanted to do was sit back and watch them all be destroyed. The more she thought about it…how much did she care about the people up there?
No—she wouldn’t leave them all to die. Of course not. But she didn’t want to kill her new sister for the sake of the mission. Maybe another solution existed. Nozomi would convince everyone of that, and if everyone wanted to believe her and come to live in peace with the people of this planet, then they could. But she just wanted to stay with her sister.
Kamyuhn took the magazine from Nozomi. “I just want somewhere where I can think. Noisy neighbors are an automatic disqualification. Preferably not too many people, either.”
“That may be a little difficult…” Nozomi said. “But we can make it work.”
Nozomi glanced down at the baby in the pod. “And if you have any preferences, please tell us. I want you to feel included, too.”
They’re all together, for now. Nozomi would cling to that for as long as she could.
She would cling, and cling…
“Hey! You’ve been hugging for long enough! Hmph—an Oosuzuki should be treated with more dignity than this…”
Despite her grumblings, Kurara let Nozomi cling to her. She offered not an ounce of resistance, nor did Moko, nor did Yugamu, and especially not Kyoshika, who stayed in the group hug until the very end.
“You fought all this time on your own,” Moko said, flexing, “but now it’s our time to pick up the slack! Go take a vacation, pick up some new fighting moves, and come back when you’re raring to go.”
“I can still fight,” Nozomi said, putting a hand to her heart. “Please, I’ve made it all this time.”
“All by yourself,” Kurara scoffed, sending a glare towards a familiar redhead in the distance.
…
Nozomi’s hand tightened, bundling white fabric between her fingertips. She let go before anyone noticed. “He helped bring you all back. Him and Amemiya. So…it’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Rightly so!” Kyoshika said, slinging an arm around Nozomi and knocking some of her complicated feelings loose. “We’re all back in the realm of the living, and isn’t a happy ending much more meaningful to muse on than all the suffering which came before?”
Kurara scoffed. “You’re basically telling her everything horrible she went through doesn’t matter.”
“What?” Kyoshika paled. “No, no, I hardly meant that at all! Lady Nozomi—”
She lunged, pulling Nozomi into another hug. “You know you are more precious to me than even the Holy Jumonji Sword’s bedtime wear?”
“Not even the sword!?” Kurara snapped. “Hey, Omokage, do something!”
Yugamu laughed, silky and steady. “And what am I supposed to do about this, huh?”
Nothing at all.
Nozomi liked this. This little pocket of love, all her friend surrounding her. They all survived, and now, they all could finally rest.
…Right.
Nozomi tried the best she could, but even her best efforts hadn’t been enough. And now here she’d die, all her friends surrounding her. Lacing each punch and kick with hatred, cold eyes and hardened hearts to greet Nozomi as her consciousness wavered over the edge.
‘Till the end she kept her eyes open.
How could she? Abandoning her friends at the very end, she’d never. The second she saw Takumi’s limp body hit the floor, she stopped feeling anything. Though the others likely hoped she’d suffer until her last breath, they never succeeded—they couldn’t, because she died too, became an unmoving pile of meat to be violated until everyone was satisfied. Unable to confront their fears and face haunting reality, they turned to the last remnant of another world.
The frayed rope tethering them snapped alongside the crack of Nozomi’s bones.
To do nothing would be just fine. It’d be good for all of them; they’d be able to move on towards the future, with all the happiness they clung to enough to bloody their fists and beat down their own spirits.
Moko drove her heel into Nozomi’s eyes, and she knew this was where she was meant to be.
She was right where she was meant to be.
So why?
“Why…Sumino…” Nozomi’s breathless lips spilled, a horrified Takumi looming over her with bloodied weapon in hand. A pure white room which belonged to someone else. Someone she never got to meet—but the hatred in Takumi’s eyes…when she imagined the horrible person they described who lived in this room for a day before deciding to tear apart the fates of everyone around them, she imagined that exact pinprick of disgust.
That sort of rotten thing, festering, in his eyes.
She choked, and only silence ruled.
Only silence ruled in their journey departing from Last Defense Academy. Like the many other residents of this planet, they sought shelter from the end. But like everyone else their hopes had been in vain from the start. Kyoshika, Shouma, and Nozomi—Nozomi, like anyone else, knew the flames were inescapable. Why would humanity resort to such extreme measures if they had even the smallest doubt in their methods?
They’d all be casualties. Sacrifices for the greater good. Nozomi put a hand to her heart and found no regret in it, thinking, wondering if she had anything to miss from her life in the Tokyo Residential Complex.
Her only regret rang clear: the fact that Shouma and Kyoshika had to die with her. Despite her best efforts they shared her doom.
She muffled tears, wiping them against her sleeve—a familiar swordswoman grabbed her arm, lowering it, then flashed Nozomi a smile. Kyoshika swung her arm, too, as if they were children taking a walk. Shouma grabbed onto Nozomi’s other hand, offering a sheepish smile of his own.
“We will find our future together,” Kyoshika began, “Come what may. We’ve made it this far.”
Nozomi nodded. “Mhm. Th…Thank you. Thank you both.”
“I have to thank you both—You and Omokage, you were so easy to kill.”
Nozomi ran a hand against the leg of Kurara’s suspended corpse. She yanked, watching blood trickle through the cut on her ankle. The Revive-o-Match tried to save her, but Nozomi-G did an excellent job of tying Kurara down so the girl bled out before the machine managed to scoop up anything of importance.
There was no number on Kurara’s back. Nozomi-G scoffed, watching her sway.
She couldn’t stay long, not if she wanted to get caught, but a long buried consciousness kept her rooted to the spot. A spark of fondness—towards this girl, towards the other one to wither and decay, towards the many more who needed to die if she wanted to claim what she most craved.
Please, don’t leave her here, something pleaded. It could be called a conscious, in some respect, but Nozomi-G knew better than to heed the words of the weak girl she used to be. Slicing Kurara apart was no different from how Nozomi blew bullets into the brains of those pitiful transformed people.
Another body. And another. Mechanically, until—
Nozomi blew a hole into another invader. It screeched, almost seemed to scream, but as it fell, dead, a hand landing on her shoulder.
“Go provide backup to the east group,” Hiruko instructed, and Nozomi nodded and ran off. Takumi held off V’ehxness on his own, Hiruko joining him in the fight before the Supreme Commander tried to overpower him. Nozomi joined the twins and Gaku as the mowed down more invaders.
Once these monsters died they’d ensure humanity’s future. Once they killed them all—they’d get their happy ending. Nozomi would finally return to the satellite and prove all her mother’s work hadn’t been for nothing.
Everything she worked for—everything she sacrificed, it’d all be for this. Nozomi raised her gun, fired, splayed more brains with a pained grimace, as if their agony hadn’t been what they felt but merely a feigned display to torment Nozomi with pity for unfeeling, disgusting, wretched monsters.
That was what war was.
That was what all her training had been for. Not the injections, not the weapons practice, but the days spent in her mother’s lap. Fed story after story about an old beautiful Earth they needed to return to. So she, a nice, normal girl, could look each of these creatures begging for mercy in the eye and kill them without a twinkle of guilt. They all seized and screamed, draining of life with every little drop, even the dead twitched, essence resurrected, soon blown to bits in resentment. From humans, to Futurans, back and forth on a scorched, dying planet.
The battlefield, stained with blood, became a thing of dreams. With her friends Nozomi tore through the stragglers. By the time they returned to backup Takumi and Hiruko, Eito had joined them, and the three fighters made quick work of the commander.
They stared at her dried-up corpse. The former commander’s blood dripped off Takumi’s sword, steady as a heartbeat.
Nozomi put a hand to her heart, and looked up.
Upwards, up there, the baby’s light danced into the horizon. Though the Wall of Flames was no more, a violet light still shone from the capsule hanging in Takumi’s arms.
“…so we have no way back?” Nozomi said, though even if the reality seemed daunting, it filled her with no sadness.
Her life was here, with everyone. Her only friends.
“The pod’s completely eaten through,” Takumi said, scratching the back of his head as he kept their friend cupped in his other arm, “So Kawana’s gonna take a look at it. But she’s not optimistic—since we’ll need to refuel it ‘n all. Maybe we can look around some of the relay bases and find something to work with?”
“I’ll help,” Nozomi said. “I’d hate for everyone to be stuck here—you all have families to return to, and…there are people up there who surely want to know what happened.”
“I mean, we kinda failed…?” Takumi said, biting his lip. Whether or not they failed in their mission had become a point of debate among the group. On one hand, objectively, they failed. They never fired the missiles—the original residents of this world afraid to die via the Undying Flames, refusing to sacrifice a dear friend in order to purge Earth of World Death and the invaders. Those who traveled here, Nozomi included, even brought a supposed invader along, albeit emptied of anything from her previous life.
Nothing like the Eva from this world—so Nozomi heard.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t know. Whatever entities are still—here, maybe there’s a way we can talk to them. We have a way to communicate, and…no one’s tried to attack us yet. So we might be able to find another solution.”
Maybe that was just Nozomi’s selfish hope. The mission mattered most, it mattered more than her own life, but she couldn’t stand the idea of everyone throwing their lives away too for that lofty goal. Call it guilt—call it a lingering sentiment from seeing all her friends bloodied and battered in the timeline she came from, but she refused to lose the people she loved again.
She refused to lose anyone—especially Takumi. As weird as he could be, he did his best for everyone, and she wanted to repay his kindness.
“Maybe,” Takumi said, running his fingers against the pod’s glass, past the baby’s face. “It could work out. If we can talk with ‘em, we could probably come to a solution now that their leaders are gone…? Or whatever the commanders were? Did you guys ever figure that out?”
“Um—no, I don’t believe so.”
“Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
“Is that something our leader should be saying?”
“Oh—” Takumi coughed, covering his mouth, and subsequently his blush, “I mean, it’ll be…I’ll keep an eye out for anything weird. Promise.”
Nozomi giggled, resting her hands in her lap. A flickering warmth lapped at her cheeks, and on Takumi’s left, a tiny ember formed, growing, melting and shaping into the figure of a young man. He smiled, not to join, but content enough to be a participant in their lives.
She held a hand out.
“You don’t have to watch. You can be a part of this, too.”
That was right.
In the end, all Nozomi wanted was to be a part of…this.
This life. A normal life. She wanted a normal life, each day the same as the next. Only on her deathbed she remembered what she once told a little boy, sealed inside a pod which became his entire world.
“I wish my mom would come home more often,” Nozomi bemoaned. For once, she wasn’t feeling nice. For once she’d be a person instead. “It’s not fair she only spends time with me when we’re doing experiments. I know it’s very very important and we’re doing a lot of good, but—
“…But…
“I want…I want a normal life,” Nozomi said, voice dropping to a whisper. “With each day the same as the one before.”
Takumi remembered, too.
Nozomi remembered, as Takumi cradled her beaten, broken body. A peaceful life, a normal life, a perfect life, one without cold dinners where she watched the same movies as everyone else, went to school and hung out with a group of girls between classes, participated in a nice normal club—maybe something to do with agriculture, she always liked that, or maybe she’d help in the nurse’s office—before going to spend time with her boyfriend at the cafe. Then she’d go home. She’d eat with her mom, laugh, talk about her day while Mrs. Kirifuji treated each memory like a precious jewel.
Maybe Mr. Kirifuji would be there too. Maybe that’d make it perfect, somehow, maybe Nozomi didn’t have to suffer after all.
Instead she sacrificed it all. Love, happiness, normality, and earned a sword to the gut for her troubles. Dying for friends who spit at her and threw her away the second they learned of her lies, her very first friends. The kind of friends she watched from afar for years, only for them to die, to abandon her.
But she couldn’t abandon them.
That wasn’t what good girls did.
If one thing didn’t leave her, if one lingering attachment still hung on, it was the blurry red figure looming over her, weeping.
How could she have forgotten…? Even if no one else listened, he did. Even if Takumi treated her strangely, acted like she was someone else for a time, he cared. He cared to keep her secret and to keep her alive no matter what it took.
He held her, even now, just as she tried to hold onto him once, far too long ago, before pairs of hands far bigger than hers dragged her away to forget.
Despite it all, they were the same.
Each wanting this ‘normal life’. With normal friends, and normal love. They reached, they ran, desperate to be a part of it all before falling short. Nozomi rested a hand on his.
This time, she wouldn’t let go. If one of them lived, let it be Takumi. She’d be content with just memories, a fading video playing in the lingering pulses of her mind until the film ran out, the credits rolled, and she stood up. She had to get up eventually but she lingered before the screen lost its warmth. The audience long since filtered out from her life. Her father, her mother—the fleeting friend she had before she abandoned the TRC for a mission doomed from the start.
Then more familiar figures. The original members of Last Defense Academy, however chaotic they were she still considered them friends, she wanted to. Her closer friends, those who’d been hers! Moko, Kyoshika, Kurara, Yugamu—even Nigou, sacrificing his life for them twice over.
The video played, and she refused to leave. The video played, and Nozomi watched, and what were once floating images of her life morphed into the starry sky, into the vast ocean, into forests and a still, empty lake, and she fell in, and she knew what it meant to live before it all happened to be destroyed.
And even if it rejected her—the video played, up until her last breath.
All this time—all this time, and she never knew just how important she was to anybody. But now that she learned, this kind, desperate girl could finally drown.