Work Text:
At forty his world ended in one night that lived on for many more: forty eight, to be precise, during which life as he knew it ended on a sharp note. The ball was over and it had been dropped.
The night lived on for many days, and so did the corpses that came, that flooded the streets, living but dying, dying but not dead, dead but living, and the days to come were plenty but growing fewer: they lived on a fiftieth floor around a small fire and smoked cigarettes as short-lived as the city. Kamurocho was done; they should go soon.
At forty one they were in the hills: in a cabin made out of rock and stone, cut-logs very thin and badly hewn. The cabin was misshapen; their days stiffed: every day was survival from dawn til dusk: the cutting of trees, the logging of forests, the sowing of rips, the damming of tears. People come to them sometimes, in one or two but far too few. The sixth chairman comes: he'd brought many men and were left with many corpses. They are glad to see him but he has brought problems: the hills are alive down with the sound of undying feet, the gurgles and groans of pleasured friends; pleased to meet you, pleased to eat you.
"Kid," Majima grumbled. "Next time shoot all your friends when they start sneezing. Why don't you learn? Ya ain't a kid no more."
"There's room at the back," Kiryu said, kinder.
At forty two the world grew rather darker: the ash had blown in from whence they did not know; possibly the world had been lit, had been burned like paper: its edges smoked up and curling, smoldering, turning in its fiery dreams from the edge-rift of the world that everyday grew nearer, outpaced only by the ash that blew on as the storm, that coated everything, left it all dark-black. Kiryu wiped a streak off Majima's face. His thumb comes away as dirty as it went in; Majima's face came away no cleaner.
There is a streaky nature to the ash on Majima's face: it moves downwards. It is not tears; those had dried up a long time ago. It is sweat. Living with the fatigue, leaving is the fatigue. It would be kinder if they could sit down and stay and not move, so that the world ending in its rift-tear comes clearer and nearer to them and they may sit upon a hill and watch the world bite in on them.
"Maybe a rest..." Kiryu said.
"Naw," Majima said. "We came so far we might as well go. Let's see if this piece of shit world can run out of itself."
They do not kiss; it would be like putting ink on ink. They hold hands and find the rest and move on.
Forty three found them in a sleeping city. The convenience store was dark but its cavernous cold interior promised a limitless supply of grape juice and Asahi. A bag of flour still sits upon its shelf even while its brethren had burst and talcumed the floor with white so that they may know they have walked upon the tiles and that they exist. Majima bagged all the beers and met Kiryu at the highway, where he leaned upon it and looked at the black sea and the no-sky. There was nothing above and the sea was falling on its knees. Now that the edge of the world was coming to them they saw that it was a ring of white waterfalls and not black. It don't change the fact that it will swallow them.
"What do you think's at the bottom of it?" Kiryu asked, cracking open the Asahi. They drank it all down in one go; got buzzed. They might not have tomorrow. "You think everyone else we know is in there somewhere?"
"Haw? 'fuck should I care? 's long as ya ain't in there I ain't goin' over, that's for sure."
"Just wondering," Kiryu muttered.
"Ya wonder too much. Ya don't wander enough."
They wander: by the long grey road bordering the sea, the railing up to the knees of their car, the wind in their hair and howling out of the speeding skies into their quiet time. Outside there are no gulls nor thunder nor ash, only now the blackening sky. The sea-cliff was tall and ended as abruptly as their world; the cliff face was a tiered jagged curtain that fell down feet by feet into white drumming seas. Seafoam and shells brought in yesteryear. No more time to be had, but tides every minute, every second, weaving under them an endless backbone shifting in the sand. They look back at the city, and it was all rust and stardust.
In the interior of the car, Kiryu removed his hand and put it on Majima's. They drive on like so, with just one hand on the wheel. They hardly need slow down, for there was no one on the road.