Tami’s gaze remained fixed on the fire for a mont longer, the flickering orange light reflecting in his eyes as though pulling the mory forward from sowhere deeper than surface thought.
When he spoke again, his voice carried a quieter weight, less like narration and more like sothing being carefully replayed.
"When I woke up," he said, "I saw Maya sitting a short distance away from ."
He shifted slightly, glancing toward her as if checking whether she would interrupt, but she remained still, her attention resting on the fire in a way that made her expression difficult to fully read.
"She told she had found unconscious," he continued, "and that she had been taking care of for the past day."
The fire cracked softly between them, sending a small burst of sparks upward that dissolved into the night air before they could rise far.
Yuto blinked once, the information settling in more slowly than he expected.
"She stayed with you?" he asked, his tone carrying a faint edge of surprise that he did not bother hiding. "And you two didn’t even know each other before that?"
Tami gave a small shrug, leaning back slightly as though the answer was too simple to require emphasis.
"Nope."
The single word lingered awkwardly in the air for a mont before Yuto’s attention shifted fully toward Maya.
She did not et his gaze imdiately, her eyes still resting on the fire as the light danced across her face, softening and sharpening her features in alternating pulses.
"Why would you stay with a stranger like that?" he asked.
For a brief mont, there was no response.
Only the sound of burning wood and the faint movent of wind across the hilltop filled the silence, carrying heat from the fire outward into the surrounding cold.
When Maya finally spoke, her voice was steady, unhurried, almost detached from expectation.
"It felt right," she said simply.
Yuto nodded slowly, but the answer did not settle into him in the sa way it seed to settle into the space around them. It was too clean, too unstructured, too detached from the kind of reasoning he was used to associating with survival. Maya did not strike him as soone who acted on impulse, nor did she seem like the type to extend trust into a dangerous environnt without calculation.
That contradiction lingered in his mind longer than he expected.
It made her harder to understand than before.
More distant in a way that was not physical, but conceptual, as if he was missing the frawork through which she interpreted the world.
He wondered, briefly and uncomfortably, whether he had misread her entirely since the beginning.
What kind of person chose actions like that in a place like this?
The thought refused to leave cleanly.
It circled.
Then it shifted, without permission, into sothing else entirely.
Maybe she stayed because she found him attractive.
The idea appeared abruptly, intrusive and uninvited, and imdiately created a strange tightening sensation in his chest that he could not fully explain or dismiss.
Yuto’s gaze drifted sideways toward Tami.
The boy sat comfortably near the fire, posture relaxed in a way that suggested he had already let go of whatever tension the earlier conversation had stirred. His build was slightly rounded rather than lean, his skin warm-toned with a faint reddish undertone from exposure and exertion, and his dark brown hair fell loosely across his forehead in uneven strands that caught the firelight as he moved.
There was nothing especially striking about him in any singular sense, nothing that called imdiate attention or suggested exceptional refinent.
Yuto lowered his eyes to his own hands instead.
Pale under the firelight.
Thin, angular, the structure of bone and tendon visible beneath the skin in a way that suddenly felt more noticeable than it ever had before.
Maybe being thin was not appealing here.
The thought developed further without invitation, pulling itself into speculative reasoning that felt increasingly irrational the longer he considered it.
Maya ca from one of the Great Clans after all.
Maybe in her perspective, physical presence carried different aning.
Maybe strength and appearance were not aligned the way he assud.
Maybe soone like Tami, with a more solid fra and warr coloration, appeared more wealthy, and therefore more attractive in a way he did not naturally register.
The thought was painful to him, and it plagued him, refusing to leave.
Yuto stood up abruptly.
The movent was sharper than necessary, breaking the rhythm of the mont.
Both Maya and Tami looked up almost at once, the firelight shifting across their faces as attention snapped toward him.
"Where are you going?" Tami asked.
Yuto turned slightly away from the fire, avoiding direct eye contact with both of them.
"Just scouting the area," he said. "Making sure nothing’s nearby."
Maya’s gaze lingered on him a mont longer than Tami’s.
"We’ll co with you," she said, already beginning to rise.
Yuto shook his head imdiately.
"No. Stay here. If anything happens, I’ll call you."
There was a brief pause, as though Maya considered responding, but before either of them could press further, Yuto had already turned and walked away from the warmth of the fire.
The further he moved, the more the world changed around him.
The heat that had clung to his skin near the fire faded quickly, replaced by the sharp, unfiltered cold of the desert night. The wind moved more freely here, cutting across the open terrain with a quiet intensity that carried grains of sand against his clothes and exposed skin, each touch faint but constant, like the environnt refusing to acknowledge human comfort.
Behind him, the fire beca a small, distant point of warmth and color, shrinking as the darkness reclaid space.
The desert stretched in every direction, wide and empty, its silence no longer passive but almost watchful in its stillness.
After walking a short distance, Yuto ca to a stop.
The wind continued around him, uninterrupted.
"Shinny."
The swordsman appeared beside him instantly, erging from the darkness as though he had always been standing just beyond perception.
Shinny tilted his head slightly, his gaze moving across the empty dunes as if assessing a battlefield that did not yet exist.
"Why are we not with the others?" he asked.
Yuto exhaled slowly, the breath visible only in feeling rather than sight.
"We’re going for a walk," he said. "And we’re going to kill as much as we can."
For a brief mont, Shinny looked upward toward the night sky, expression unreadable beneath the dim starlight and violet haze that still lingered above the horizon.
Then he nodded once.
"Understood."
User Comments
0 comments from readers