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Not a single sign of life breathed through these cracked pipes.
Large expanses of demolished buildings, fallen telephone poles, and dismantled military planes and tanks were all that was left in the landscape for the next few miles. The thick blanket of snow enveloped the decayed terrain, creating a dense and cold atmosphere.
"The sun is going down fast… Should we find somewhere to sleep?" Chito turned around and asked Yuuri, who was slumped in the back of their motorcycle-truck hybrid that they found in a pile of junk — Kettenkrad, as it was labelled — and cuddled with Nuko, the strange, pale organism that they picked up while exploring.
"We'll have to find somewhere suitable fast, or else the snow will eat us up." Chito drove faster, squinting her eyes to find any nook and cranny of shelter they could spend the night in.
"Hm… Why don't we go over there?" Yuuri languidly pointed in the direction of a small radiator that hid in the corner of a dilapidated warehouse. It looked broken considering there was a large dent on its side.
However, one can never be too sure.
"Hey, good eye!"
"Heh." Yuuri snickered.
Chito quickly turned the wheel and drove over to the warehouse. As soon as they pulled up to the machine, Yuuri hopped out of their Kettenkrad and inspected the radiator, giving it a few clanks with her fist before Chito could stop her.
"Hey- Don't whack it!!" Chito ran up to Yuuri and bonked her head in return.
"Sorry…" Yuuri's face looked cheeky rather than apologetic. Her teal eyes shone teasingly. Chito sighed.
It was hard to stay warm during the endless cold nights. They would normally start a fire with whatever sticks and cans of gasoline that they had in their backpacks, but they recently ran out of fuel, and Chito didn't want to burn any more of her books she had been collecting.
As Chito eyed the machine — searching for any way to turn it on — Yuuri scoped the area and made sure that they were safe. As she was wandering around, she found out that the warehouse had an enormous hole in the ceiling. It was a little unusual, as it was the only opening in the ceiling. Maybe a missile crashed in, or a bomb, or it was simply the roof giving out after carrying the burden of multiple winters. Or maybe a meteor flew in here. The wind was stronger in this spot, but the stars and comets shined brightly through it. Yuuri turned her head to see Chito still fiddling with the radiator, so she laid on the ground, directly under the hole in the ceiling, and counted the glowing dots in the sky. Nuko, the strange little thing, slithered around to find any spare weapons or ammunition that it could consume.
A few minutes of clink clanking later, Chito exclaimed, "I got it!!" and brought the machine to where Yuuri laid. She grabbed their small set of belongings — a quilt from her grandfather, her favorite book, the worn bag of war rations, and a container of water — from the Kettenkrad. Then, she laid next to Yuuri. The small heat radiated towards them, thawing their cold limbs.
—
"Twenty." Yuuri said.
"Huh?"
"There are twenty dots in the sky."
"Really? Your eyes are way better than mine..." Chito reached into her bag and pulled out their leftover rations, the hard bars of ancient chocolate that they found last time searching through old military tanks. She handed one of the bars to Yuuri. "Here."
Yuuri quietly took the bar and munched on it, her head still tilted up towards the dark sky. “Hey, if I squint really hard, I can see a fish in the sky." Yuuri scrunched up her face as she stared up high.
"Gee, are you that hungry?" Chito asked. Yuuri turned to face the black-haired girl.
"You should know the answer to that." Yuuri grinned widely for her.
The way that Yuuri articulated that sentence made Chito's cheeks turn red, so she reached into her bag to pull out her book to shift the conversation and ease her embarrassment.
"T-that reminds me, this book talks about how people back in the days used to make drawings of the stars. I think they called them 'constellations'?" Chito flipped through the torn yellowed pages, the comforting smell of old books wafting through the air. Yuuri leaned in to see the said drawings, but laughed at how some of them looked unrealistic and too silly.
"These are way too complicated. How do they even keep track of all this?"
"Well, you said that those ones looked like a fish." Chito pointed at the set of stars that Yuuri was previously looking at.
"Because it's clearly a fish. Those ones don't even look like what they're supposed to be. Ka-pree-cor-n? Now, they're just makin' stuff up." Yuuri scoffed. Crumbs of chocolate from her mouth landed on the pages of the book, and some of the bits were stuck in the corners of her lips.
"Well, I think your 'fish' constellation looks like Nuko instead." Chito said while she picked up the crumbs and put them on her tongue. Yuuri, as skeptical as she was, furrowed her brows and got up to grab Nuko, who was flopped in the corner eating a bunch of shattered bullets on the ground, to inspect Chito's claim. She brought Nuko up to the stars, and squinted her eyes once more.
"No, it doesn't." Yuuri said.
"Yes, it does."
"Nuko's too fat."
"Those stars over there look like it could be Nuko's eyes and mouth." Chito pointed.
"Fish have eyes and mouths too! Plus, Nuko doesn't have a tail. Nuko is shaped like a pipe with four legs, but it wiggles around so it obviously wouldn't-"
"Pft-" Chito stifled her laugh and gave up bantering with Yuuri, who was still spitballing a whole list of reasons why the constellation was a fish and not Nuko. As Yuuri kept talking, Chito grabbed the thin quilt, laid it over them, and leaned into Yuuri's shoulder. She listened to Yuuri's yap until the blonde-haired girl spoke herself tired, and her speech slowly trailed off. There was no light, except for the dim glow of the stars and the moon shining through the warehouse. A few moments of silence pass, and Yuuri looks up towards the night sky again. Her sleepy teal eyes glinted in a melancholic way — it was beautiful — and it almost seemed to Chito like she might've been thinking about something other than food.
"Yuu, what are you thinking of right now?" Chito asked. It took a few minutes for Yuuri to respond. She just stared at the stars, as if she was waiting for them to tell her something.
“... Are we even… alive if no one is here to perceive us?” She turned to face Chito, who was a few inches away from Yuuri’s face. Sometimes, there would be these moments of existential curiosity in Yuuri that really struck Chito. Both by surprise and by awe. Chito never thought too deeply about those questions, so she didn’t really know how to properly answer Yuuri's question without sounding so obvious.
“W-well, we’re here. Perceiving each other… Isn’t that enough?” Chito asked.
“Maybe. But there aren't any other humans here. We've searched so far. What if we’re just hallucinating each other or something? Maybe I’m sick in the head and so lonely that I made you up.” Yuuri looked into Chito’s eyes with a tinge of sadness. It flashed with anxiety, of their world and their future. Chito couldn’t bear to see her so sad, especially when Yuuri was such a bright light in her life. She couldn’t help but also feel offended at her words, like Yuuri was invalidating the tornado of emotions swirling inside Chito’s heart.
“That's not possible.”
Chito snapped and quickly shut down Yuuri’s ideas by pressing their lips together, melting into a soft embrace. Yuuri was caught off guard, but her defenses eventually sunk into the kiss. Chito’s hand held the back of Yuuri’s head, pushing them closer, creating a heat not even the radiator could match. Her lips were sweet, full of chocolate and life. They leaned into each other, faces fitting like puzzle pieces, finding their humanity deep within their bodies. Chito reached for Yuuri’s free hand and placed it on her own chest. Then, she put her own palm onto Yuuri’s chest. Gasping for air, Chito pulled away from the kiss and breathed heavily.
“If you can feel my heart beating as fast as your heart is, that is more than enough proof that we’re alive right now.”
She said it with so much determination.
A moment of silence lingered between them.
Settling into the cold.
Settling into their skin.
Their hot breaths and beating emotions slowed down. Their fingers still clung onto each other's hearts.
“Yeah.” Yuuri finally said, wiping her eyes from the small tears. Chito cupped her cheeks in her hands and then fixed the blanket that got messed up while they were kissing.
"You're here. Why am I worrying so much? It's not like I'd care about another human other than you. Nobody matters more than you." Then, Yuuri brought herself into another tight embrace with Chito. It was gentle, but intense. Chito could feel her emotions and commitment down to her fingertips. They leaned their heads into the curve of each other's necks, and sat in another few minutes of comfortable stillness. Of comfortable determination. Of comfortable love.
"You're warm." Chito eventually said quietly.
"Yeah, because you're warm."
"Heh, that's good." They both laid down and snuggled toward each other — sharing their warmth — with Nuko rolled up like a cat next to Yuuri's legs.
As the long night passed by, the radiator grew colder, exhausting the last of its energy. The hazy stars were fading. The wind bit harder. But as long as Chito and Yuuri's arms found each other, it was enough to prove that they were alive in this desolate world. As long as their hearts found each other, it was enough to keep living. It was their warmth that breathed life through these cracked pipes.