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It’s 9pm and Akiyama sits on the edge of the bed, holding Hana’s hand. Even though the zombie outbreak is over, the city is still destroyed, the streets littered with corpses and several buildings collapsed. And so, the citizens were evacuated, explaining why he and Hana sit together in a hotel room three miles away from the Sky Finance office, waiting to get their normal lives back.
Not that he feels normal right now. Still covered in bruises from his long, terrifying journey around Kamurocho, Akiyama stares down at Hana, who slumps in bed, still sick. Her fever hasn’t spiked again, but she looks and feels awful, and Akiyama can’t stop thinking about how she got so sick and he had to run off to find her some medication, leaving his poor sick girlfriend all alone inside the ever-expanding Quarantine Zone. They reunited and made it out of this hell together, but that doesn’t stop his rapid heartbeat and the stress and nerves twisting in his guts.
“I might try to sleep now,” Hana says.
“Oh, sure thing, Hana-chan, whatever you want,” he rambles.
“Can you turn the light off?”
Akiyama turns around, about to flick the light switch by the bed, but he freezes in place. Memories of running through the sewers of tunnels under the city flash through his mind, dark except for the beam of his torch, the handguns heavy and foreign and hurting his arms with the recoil, and swarms of zombies trying to bite him, stopping them with a bullet just in time but knowing a single mistake would get him killed, and then Hana-chan would die too, alone and trapped and surrounded by monsters that wanted her dead…
He swallows hard, a shiver running right through him. His chest tightens, heart pounding so hard he hears it in his ears.
“Shun?” Hana says, propping herself up and staring at him with worried eyes.
“O-Oh, sorry, Hana-chan, I got distracted,” Akiyama says, forcing a laugh.
But Hana doesn’t believe him. Of course she doesn’t. Nobody else can read him like Hana can, cutting through his bullshit and getting his true feelings out with ease. And even whilst sick, she does it again.
“Do you wanna keep the light on?”
Akiyama flinches. “Huh?”
“Are you scared of the dark?” Hana says, her voice compassionate, not shaming or mocking him.
“I, um, well…”
Hana takes his hand again, squeezing gently. “I get it. I’m scared too. Not of the dark, but… thinking about being shut in a tight space again after what happened makes me…” Hana cuts herself off with a shudder.
Akiyama swallows, suddenly pathetically near tears. “Hana-chan… thanks.”
“Don’t be stupid. Why don’t we leave the bathroom light on?”
“Good idea,” he says, still stunned, and Akiyama dashes to switch on the bathroom light. And then he switches off the main light and jumps into bed, pulling Hana close. “Thank you, Hana-chan.”
“It was nothing,” Hana mumbles, snuggling into his chest. “Let’s go to sleep…”