Mirai

A cracking sound came from the sky.

Like an ancient ceiling groaning, dust came sifting down.

Toshio wandered blankly through the thick smoke and haze, staggering along. Voices seemed to be coming from afar, someone shouting. He opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out, as though he had swallowed burning charcoal. Whenever he opened his mouth, he felt a charcoal fire ignite in his throat.

He tried to break into a run, but he could no longer find the person who had shouted.

There was only half a corpse buried beneath the rubble.

Auntie Uchiyama, Uncle Bandō, Uncle Mochida, Yudai, Ayano, Yoshiko, and Sōta... everyone was dead.

Perhaps he was dead too. Perhaps he had already come to the world after death.

That was why it was so lonely, so painful.

But he only wanted someone to talk to. Even one living person would do. If only someone would tell him not to be afraid, then he could keep breathing. His heart would still have a reason to keep beating.

So he passed one mangled corpse after another in numbness, stumbling forward, crying out soundlessly, with no one to answer.

Until, amid the ruins, a hand twitched painfully.

Toshio froze in place, even thinking he was hallucinating. But that hand was clearly twitching in pain, as though struggling through a nightmare.

The ecstasy of that moment was beyond words.

Someone else was here. Someone else was alive!

Besides himself, there was someone else in this hell!

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid! I'm coming to save you!"

Toshio scrambled over on hands and knees, shouting hoarsely, imagining all the things he wished someone would say to him, wanting to comfort him and tell him not to be afraid.

The child used all his strength to dig away