Work Text:
Kei kicks at the debris, watches the concrete that used to be a building in a city crumble under his foot. There might be someone under it, several people, or just several bodies, but at its core it’s just ruined junk, a sign of what used to be.
Kei wonders what’s supposed to happen after this.
“Yo!” Kou calls, standing a short distance away. He’s got a backpack in his hands, raided from an abandoned shop. It's covered in dirt and there’s scuffs all over, but it still looks functional. “Got a good steal, here.”
“Not really,” Kei replies, stuffing his hands into his pockets. It’s just the two of them now in the ruins, Tosaki and Izumi having taken off in an attempt to find shelter and survive the night. Kei has no idea if they both did, or if Izumi is standing without anymore responsbility and the remnants of a broken heart, and it’s the same with Kotobuki and Kai. Kei wishes – desperately, sometimes more than anything – that he could be there, protecting the ones he loves and cares about, but he’s rational enough to not want to see risk a seeing a broken body if he has to.
He doesn’t want to think about a blade against Kai’s neck, if he had to, and he thinks he might’ve had to. A doctor, clinical and calm, with shaking hands and a best friend with earrings smiling right up at him.
Kou frowns, eyebrows furrowing in obvious displease; he’s one of the most expressive people Kei has ever met, period. “It’s not like you have anything!” He huffs, sliding his arms through the backpack’s straps.
Kei blinks, glancing up at the sun. It’s shining, bright and warm against the skin, no remorse in how it’s looking down at the world. He wonders, exactly, what’s left, and how they’re going to find out about it now that all the technology is done.
“Anyway, we still have a week before we try to meet up with anyone else,” Kou says, stretching his arms out in front of him. “Whaddya say we go check out the countryside? I know how to make a pretty mean shelter – I watch a lot of survival youtube videos.”
“I bet,” Kei tries to snark, the result coming out more neutral than anything. But everywhere else is collasped and broken, the same and empty remnants of a human race, and there’s blood splattered on both their shirts from where they’ve died in the impacts. There's nowhere else to go.
It’s just him and Kou, and he remembers standing at a cliff, rope digging into his stomach in an attempt to keep them together. He kind of figured it would always be this way from now on, and the truth of it is no less confusing, provides him with no less buzzing in his veins. He wonders why it’s the both of them – Kou is gearing up, all brute physical strength, and it kind of makes sense, why he would be an Ajin. A boy meant to last the ages, a boy who’s good at surviving.
Kei wasn’t like that, not before he died, not before they started slicing off his fingers and yanking out his teeth and digging into the bloodied gums just to watch him squirm. Why he got chosen -– it’s kind of a mystery, in comparison. He just sort of got lucky, it seems, like they all did -- or, looking at the ruins, depending on who you talk to.
“We should still try to scavenge some more,” Kei says, stepping over a pile rubble onto some more. “Find some more supplies, some more gear.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Kou says, grinning, though it’s a little weak because of what’s happened. Kei knows he’s worried, about everyone they know, about everyone they don’t, and he wishes he could help but – he can’t. He can't comfort Kou like that, wouldn't even know where to begin. The best he can offer is the fact that he's not going anywhere, that they're in this together, just like at the start.
Kou catches up to him, stumbling over rubble and bumping into his side, pressing a shoulder against Kei's own. “But, after that,” he says, a bit of hope in his voice, like he’s proposing they go on an adventure. “The woods?”
Kei looks out at the debris, the downfall, all the overturned trees out in the distance, and bumps Kou back, impossibly subtle. “Yeah,” he says. “The woods.”