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--Day 1--
Kirie could remember once, when she was a child, she'd found a baby bird in her back yard with a broken wing. Carrying it inside in the palm of her hand, she was unsure she'd ever held something so carefully; scared that one wrong move would break the other tiny wing as well.
Now, she felt quite the same way cradling Shuichi in her arms, just as careful, as though she feared that a small slip of her hand might snap his delicate neck. This fear of further injuring Shuichi was actually frighteningly close to truth, with him in such a state of deterioration, though thankfully, Kirie knew exactly how to handle someone nearly in a coma.
The Spiral Staircase was so long. Two kilometers, about. Ridiculous, really, but Kirie supposed that if the City of the Spiral had been closer to the surface, someone would have found it.
After god only knows how long, Kirie had caught herself breathing, and at that moment realized that her arms had returned to their natural state, and ergo, she was no longer frozen in time. She'd opened her eyes, and found Shuichi lying there beside her. No attempt to wake him had succeeded, but he was breathing, and he had a pulse, and if Shuichi was alive, then there was absolutely no way Kirie was leaving him here in this horrible place.
Actually getting to the Spiral Staircase was difficult. It would have been difficult even if Kirie was merely climbing the obelisk normally--but attempting to climb while carrying Shuichi was harder by far, and many times Kirie had nearly given up. However, after a ridiculous amount of time and effort, she'd reached the staircase.
--Day 2--
She'd been hiking up the staircase for two days, now. You might think two days to travel less than two kilometers is ridiculous, a snail's pace--but Kirie was not at her strongest, physically or emotionally, and she was carrying Shuichi, and it was a staircase. Sometimes she almost felt like giving up and staying there on the staircase to die. But somehow, she always decided to press on, up the staircase, approaching the surface slowly but surely.
Near the surface, a small body of water sat suspended in midair by some magic of the Spiral--Dragonfly Pond--that made it slightly difficult to tell when it was day and when it was night. But Kirie was fairly sure she was sleeping at night.
--Night 2--
At night, Kirie tended to sleep directly against the wall of the staircase so as not to fall; the Spiral had been kind to her once, but she dared not try her luck again. And as she lay there, pressed against the bricks, she would also hold Shuichi's body tightly against her own, to prevent him from falling; he'd fallen before too, and the Spiral had not spared him as it had Kirie. He wouldn't survive another fall.
It was while she was trying to fall asleep that Kirie figured Shuichi must have some degree of consciousness. After all, it was even colder at night, and had Shuichi been completely comatose, he probably wouldn't have clung so tightly to Kirie in his sleep. As it was, he could at night usually be found curled up in a ball in Kirie's arms, nuzzled into her shoulder for warmth. Kirie found this quite adorable. Really, she found Shuichi quite adorable.
--Day 3--
Slowly, step by agonizing step, Kirie walked towards the pond suspended in midair hundreds of meters above her. Days passed, and she had to take quite a few breaks from walking, as it was thoroughly exhausting. Sometimes, she anticipated how much more exhausting it would be to attempt to swim up through the magically suspended pond while holding Shuichi.
Other times, she spent hours just sitting there talking. Usually pretending to address Shuichi, as she knew he couldn't hear her. It was just easier to talk out loud if there was another person present to at least pretend to talk to. Though plenty of times, Kirie actually did address Shuichi, as if he could hear her.
"As soon as we get back up, we're leaving, Shuichi. Getting out of Kurôzu-Cho. Like you wanted. We're actually leaving!"
As she said this, Kirie would absent-mindedly stroke her unconscious lover's hair.
On some rare occasions during Kirie's seemingly neverending trek up the staircase, Shuichi would actually wake up. Granted, he only did so for maybe thirty seconds before falling back asleep. Usually, these thirty seconds involved a lot of incoherent muttering before being coaxed back to sleep by Kirie. "Spi...rals...uhhh...K-Kiri......?"
"Go back to sleep, dear. We'll be out of here soon."
--Day 21--
The pair spent days, maybe weeks like this, Shuichi mostly unconscious and Kirie mostly exhausted. Who would even build such a staircase? Who could build it?
Right foot. Left foot. One step. And another. And another. The longer Kirie spent walking, the more she wondered if she'd ever get to the top.
--Day 30--
Kirie was certain now that she'd spent weeks walking. She'd barely eaten, with only some of the snail meat she'd packed back in Kurôzu-Cho to eat, and not even much of that. She'd barely slept, which was easily understandable. She was fairly certain she looked as bad as Shuichi now.
--Night 30--
Finally, finally, Kirie stood directly beneath Dragonfly Pond. She could tell it was dark outside on the surface, but to hell with that. She had a lot of adrenaline at the moment and she intended to take full advantage of it. There were handholds on the walls of the staircase and Kirie climbed up into the mysteriously-floating water like she'd scaled the massive spiral obelisk a month ago.
The pond was deep. Everybody knew that. Kirie had to wake Shuichi up to make sure he could hold his breath. By the time they breached the surface, both teens felt like their lungs were about to burst--but they'd made it out of the Spiral city. And knowing that, they both started laughing like complete madmen.
--Day 40--
Ten days after her escape from the Spiral City, Kirie stood outside the hospital in the new Kurôzu-Cho. A kind woman had allowed Kirie to stay with her while Shuichi was in the hospital, and Kirie had been able to eat quite a bit over those ten days, as well as find out that eight-hundred years had passed since she and Shuichi had been frozen in time in the first place.
Nowadays, she was a historical figure. People talked about Kirie Goshima and Shuichi Saito the same way Kirie and Shuichi had talked about people like William Shakespeare or Kinnosuke Natsume. It was so shocking to Kirie, who knew herself to have been the epitome of an average Japanese 50s woman. And Shuichi! In their time, nobody had liked Shuichi! He was the town pariah, the orphan with no friends, the crazy recluse, yet eight-hundred years later, he was an important part of history!
Ten days passed, ten of the strangest days of Kirie's already rather strange life, and Shuichi was finally to be discharged from the hospital. Kirie was, frankly, astonished that he'd survived at all. She was no medical expert, but she knew a two-kilometer fall was in fact not humanly possible to survive, and that the Spiral had to have been keeping Shuichi alive for some reason. Yet...when Shuichi walked out of the hospital and rushed into Kirie's waiting arms, Kirie noticed that he looked completely normal again. There seemed to be literally no lasting damage!
Kirie damn near cried at the sight. Shuichi looked, well, like his old self again. He'd gained like thirty pounds, and the dark circles under his eyes were gone. He was clean, too; all the blood and dust was gone and his hair looked brushed. Shuichi no longer looked like a walking corpse. Kirie smiled.
"From how much better you look, I assume you're eating again."
"Anorexia wasn't an option in the hospital."
"I can tell. You look amazing."
"Interestingly enough. Twenty-eighth century prosthetics are amazing."
"Wait. Prosthetics?"
Shuichi chuckled nervously, and stared down at his shoes.
"Y-yes, prosthetics. There's no medical technology that can really heal the damage of falling two kilometers, b-because it's not supposed to be, you know, possible. To survive."
"So..."
"So, uh, both my arms a-and legs have been replaced with cybernetics."
Kirie's jaw dropped. She wasn't entirely sure she'd heard right.
"Sorry, what!?"
"Um...forget I said anything. It's, uh, great to be out of the hospital, and uh...c-can we maybe, you know, leave--"
"Leave town?"
Shuichi gulped nervously, almost as if he actually expected Kirie to be irritated at the question.
"I-I mean...if you want--"
"I think leaving town is a great idea. Let's leave as soon as possible! Before the Spiral happens all over again. We'll move to Midoriyama-Shi, assuming it still exists."
The look of pure and utter shock on Shuichi's face made Kirie burst out laughing.
"What, did you think I'd still want to stay after all that?"
"I, uh...it's not like...I mean...g-good thing we're leaving."
"Yes. Good. So. What was that you said, about cybernetic limbs?"
Needless to say, a very awkward conversation followed.