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For too long he had been alone, but he had to be because it was safer. He would rather be safe than fall into the cold hands of the deep feeling of loneliness and have someone around him that would give him a weakness—someone that he cared for. Protection? He had himself and his sword and whatever power he had to put into it to swing before he bolted off. Because he hated fighting, and he hated the cold, and he hated the loneliness, but he loved living. Existing in a world that he knew was more appealing than whatever consisted of the so-called ‘afterlife’ because what was there exactly?
There were multiple theories. Nothing was the most terrifying. A little slice of heaven with all your loved ones was the most appealing. Reliving your greatest hits—that could get boring after a while. Reincarnation. Now, that would put the blonde boy back at square one. He wanted none of it. Even though life right now was hard, it was kind of fun. He wasn’t sure. It had its moments but so did everything. So did he. Like, finding himself crying without anything particularly bad happening to him, or running out of food without realizing and having to search on an empty stomach. But he had the thrill too. Like, sneaking around quietly under the pressure of being caught and maybe even killed, or finding a nice stash of supplies to last him a good while.
So, instead, he survived with a backpack on his shoulders and a small sword in his right hand. He walked down a crumbled street for however long searching for something new that he could find. There had to be something somewhere from when the city when alive. Now, the city was dead. How was the afterlife? Because he knew now that the remains would only be left to rot. Stores with hanging front signs and broken windows with glass scattered feet in front—he didn’t want to be left like that, he stayed alone amongst the dead cities.
He entered a random building, one that looked the most intact and the least broken into. It made sense when he walked in. There were shelves that were knocked over with scattered books all over the place. It was either a library or a bookstore, something that no one would find quite useful in the current way of living. He was about to turn and leave. There was nothing to find, unless he wanted a book to cure his boredom, but he could always find his way back if he really wanted to.
But he froze because he wasn’t alone. He didn’t figure out by seeing anyone, but he could hear something. More specifically, he could hear thick drops of blood dripping and the breathing of mixed fear and pain. So, he didn’t run but searched around, walking softly so that he could try and hear better, which was never an issue.
In the back of the library, he found a man.
Or was it? A man? Hybrid? Were there hybrids now? What was the world coming to? But after a nuclear blast, it kind of made sense to see something of the sort. Regardless, he jumped at the sight. They had the body of a person but the head of a boar. There was a cut on his chest that was bleeding, and blood fell to the floor, adding to the puddle that was below him. One of his hands were planted over the wound and his other clutched onto a chipped sword while another in the same broken condition laid on the ground beside him. Still, what was he?
Whatever the man was, he wanted to help him.
The second that he took a step closer to the hybrid it raised its sword and pointed it directly at him.
“Stop right there. Don’t.”
It spoke. Like, it actually spoke. He was shocked but cleared his throat to respond.
“It’s alright,” he said. One hand was held up, and he slowly kneeled and placed his own sword on the ground so that the other could trust he wouldn’t attack him. “I want to help.”
“I don’t need help.”
“I would beg to differ.”
“Then beg,” the boar responded in a thick tone. “Get away from me.”
“I want to help you,” he repeated. He slowly reached for his bag and took it off, going for the zipper to open it up. There had been a hospital nearby that he went through, and he got lucky enough to find clean bandages. And he was going to use them on this stranger man-boar hybrid. “I’m Zenitsu.”
“I don’t care, Tonitsu. Get away!” The boar waved the sword around in the air toward Zenitsu.
“Zenitsu,” Zenitsu repeated. He pulled a small satchel from his bag and dropped the larger pack. It made a thud that caused the boar to flinch, but he still held his weapon up to the approaching stranger.
Zenitsu wasn’t threatened by the blade, that was because he could hear the other’s shuddered, scared breath. He wasn’t scared because he knew the other was just, if not more, frightened than he was.
So, he reached forward and touched the chipped sword, slowly pushing it down so it wasn’t a threat to him. And the boar let him do it. He kept his eyes glued on Zenitsu the whole time, but he let his arm drop with the weapon and Zenitsu to kneel by his side.
Zenitsu opened the bag, and the boar was on alert. He sat up and tried to move away but his back was already against the wall. There were no other words that Zenitsu could say that would let him know that he wasn’t a danger, so he looked at him and gave him a soft, genuine smile. The nose of the boar mask twitched, and Zenitsu had no idea what that meant. He moved on and grabbed one of the clean cloths from his bag. It safety stayed in a Ziplock bag so that it stayed clean for the exact situation—cleaning wounds.
“This might hurt.”
“I’m not a coward, Monitsu.”
“I said—” Zenitsu harshly pressed the clean cloth to the other’s chest, blood immediately soaking into the material, and the boar let out a hiss, “it’s Zenitsu,” he said through his teeth.
“How’d you even find me?” The boar muttered instead. His eyes looked down to watch Zenitsu’s hands which stayed planted on the wound and held pressure.
“I heard you.”
“From back here?”
Zenitsu nodded.
“Through the mask?”
“Mask?”
Zenitsu almost moved, but he knew he should keep applying pressure to the cut, so he watched as the boar awkwardly reached up through Zenitsu’s arms and grabbed the sides of his boar head.
And he pulled it off.
“Oh.”
The other had hair up to his shoulders with black roots and dark blue ends. His eyes were—well, if Zenitsu was being a hundred percent honest, they were a bit hard to look away from. Pretty green eyes.
“Did you think it was real?”
“I honestly wasn’t sure.”
“You thought I was a boar man?”
Zenitsu was at a lost for words. He felt a little stupid. Instead, he pursed his lips and put his attention back to the other’s wound. And before he could pull away to grab a bandage, he heard perfection. It made him freeze. The booming sound of laughter. Light but, at the same time, so loud, filling the room perfectly. Something that he hadn’t heard in so long—genuine laughter. Something real and so beautiful.
And it ended quickly when the boar—or man, actually, began hacking coughs. He wrapped his hands around his gut, moving Zenitsu’s hold away from the cloth, but at least his arms were holding it in place.
“Ow! Shit! Fuck!” The man cursed loudly.
“Good. Stay there,” Zenitsu said. He had free hands to grab the bandages and unwrap them.
“’Good’? You serious right now?”
“You’re holding it in place,” Zenitsu replied. He shuffled closer with the bandage. “Slowly move away now.”
The man took one deep inhale, glaring at Zenitsu, but Zenitsu didn’t look at him, he kept a concentrated stare on the other’s wound. As he let the breath go, his shoulders dropped, and the man slowly retracted his arms from the cloth. It began to fall. The blood that had been leaving the cut was slower than before, the cloth had stopped some of the bleeding. Now, the bandage would have to do the rest.
“Straighten your back.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” the man grumbled, but he listened. Zenitsu leaned over and carefully placed it over, smoothing down the edges against the other’s skin to get it to stick. “Ow.”
“Sorry,” Zenitsu apologized. The other would survive for sure. Zenitsu was deadly curious of how he had gotten hurt that badly to begin with. “Are you alright?”
“Inosuke.”
Zenitsu blinked. “Now, that one isn’t even close—”
“No, idiot,” the man interrupted. “My name.”
“Your name?” And then Zenitsu realized. The man finally told him his name. “Your name is Inosuke.”
“You’re making me regret telling you,” Inosuke muttered, squinting at him, “but yeah. Hashibira Inosuke,” he grumbled. Zenitsu was—happy? Glad. He was glad because he wasn’t sure that with the way things were going that he would ever get the other’s name from him, but he got it. Hashibira Inosuke.
“You always get hurt, Inosuke?” Zenitsu asked, and maybe it was an excuse to say his name, but at the same time, he was curious.
“Sometimes. What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” Zenitsu said with a quiet chuckle. “I was wondering.”
“I do just fine on my own,” Inosuke snorted.
“Yeah, and that was pretty obvious when I walked in here and you were bleeding to death,” Zenitsu said. He began to pack away his things. The bloody cloth returned to the small bag, which he returned to his medical satchel, and that returned to his larger backpack. He left the bandage wrappers on the ground because littering wasn’t necessarily the world’s biggest concern.
“Whatever, you were helpful, sure, but it’s not like I needed help,” Inosuke muttered. He reached for his sword. His fingers dribbled on the handle as he stared at it. With one quick, sudden swing, he stabbed it into the wooden floor below him and used the blade to help pick himself off the ground, pushing on it and the soles of his feet for a boost. “You just came walking in here with your blonde hair and your bag of shit and your soft touch.”
Zenitsu paused while packing his things away. “’Soft touch’?”
“Yeah, like—” Inosuke paused. “The way that you—like—when you were—” he struggled and eventually gave up. “Shut the hell up,” he suddenly snapped. “I felt safe,” he whispered quietly, but Zenitsu heard.
“’Safe’?”
“How the hell did you even hear me?”
“I thought we already got past the fact that I have good hearing,” Zenitsu said, and he stood to his feet, holding the straps of his bag that now sat on his shoulders.
“Well, quit questioning me. Are you finished?” Inosuke asked.
“Yes, I’m done. Just don’t move around too much so the bandage doesn’t fall off,” Zenitsu said. “Give it some time to heal before you take it off,” he added. He walked over to his sword he had placed on the floor before and picked it back up.
“Great,” Inosuke said. He retrieved his boar mask and put it back on, then he reached back down for his second sword, then slid both between a strap that wrapped around his waist, a sword for each side. “Bye.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“That’s it?”
“What do you expect?” Inosuke asked.
What did he expect? What did Zenitsu want?
He wanted to be safe and Inosuke seemed dangerous. Not dangerous—willing to get into danger. Zenitsu worked to stay far away from that.
But something about Inosuke reminded Zenitsu of the old vinyl he had in his room before it all—before life went down the drain. The ones that he would flip through and pick one and set on repeat until he got sick of it. He would lean back on a soft bed with the AC running with a quiet whistle. The small sparrow would chirp from in its opened cage and fluttered its wings every once and a while. Home. It was all home. All before everything turned rotten with blaring sirens and distant screams and hushed breaths of panic.
“Join me,” Zenitsu said.
“What?” Inosuke asked.
“Come with me. A team.”
Inosuke laughed, and the vinyl in Zenitsu’s head skipped. “Go with you? What am I going to do with you?”
“Well, I did just fix you up,” Zenitsu said with a sigh. “We might go insane,” he said quietly, but he knew it was loud enough for Inosuke to hear. “People need people, you know?”
“I don’t need anybody.”
“But you don’t know that,” Zenitsu said, and it began to sound like he was begging because maybe he was a little bit. “You don’t know that because you’ve never had someone before, have you?”
Inosuke didn’t reply but he let out a huff through his mask.
“Give it a chance,” Zenitsu said. “Give me a chance, and if you hate after a while, you can leave, I promise.” He took a step forward, because the more that Zenitsu thought about having someone by his side, the more he thought about ‘fuck safety’, and he grabbed Inosuke’s hand, cupping it in both of his. Because with someone right in front of him, the offer was too appealing.
The sudden movement made Inosuke jump, Zenitsu could feel when Inosuke’s fingers twitched against his palm. “I’ve never been with someone either, not during this. I’ve kept alone,” Zenitsu admitted. “It’s a test for me too to see if I’m better off alone or with someone else,” he said. “You said when I touched you, you felt safe. Let’s figure out why.”
It took a minute, and that minute felt like an hour. The record was stuck. But Inosuke suddenly took a deep breath.
“Okay,” Inosuke finally said. He pulled his hand away from Zenitsu and placed his hand protectively over the one Zenitsu grabbed “Just—don’t touch me again. We’re doing what I say. My hideout.”
Zenitsu nodded. “Sure.” And he skipped in his step to catch up with Inosuke, who didn’t waste a split second to leave the place.
For too long Zenitsu had been alone, but he had to be because it was safer. He would rather be safe than fall into the cold hands of the deep feeling of loneliness and have someone around him that would give him a weakness—someone that he cared for.
But maybe not.