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It is Inumaki who sees the first light falling.
Like a towering star, it sat glittering over the skyline lined with the rest of the dazzling night sky constellation. The whole debacle was a pageantry of the highest celestial order, a thousand lanterns holding a torch to the world.
One moment it was shining up with the rest of them, and the next it seemed to altogether sputter and crash down into the shoreline, all within the blink of an eye. The sea curved around the small patch of island where they docked earlier, the glistening sea-blue kiss of ocean bouncing off its reflection in flight until it landed somewhere below the canopy of trees.
Inumaki furrowed his brows. He looked over to Yuuta—face seemed permanently fixed upward, a small light dancing on his face as he looked on with the widest grin of everyone on board—and made to alert him when it happened again. Inumaki would have missed it if he wasn’t already magnified into the scene.
This time there was no mistaking it. A fallen lantern.
He blinked.
Then suddenly it came all at once: the howling of the wind, the slow rumbling of the sky as each light went out one by one, and the unmistakable hush that fell over the deck as everyone slowly started catching feel of the sinister energy looming over the sinking lights. Like arrows shot from Cupid’s bow himself, the strings that bound the small firelights inside the thread lanterns ebbed off, plunging everything into darkness.
What had been once a sight to behold, one they’d been holding as tradition for many years, is now no more the smell of ash in the sea and dust in their lungs. A faint mist cloaked the ship, making the faraway land suddenly look so out of reach from beneath the fog.
Yuuta is the first to reach out, grabbing his hand and hauling him out from under their spot by the ship’s railings.
There is definite screeching now, with everyone going into the beginnings of mass hysteria. There is a low hiss from somewhere deep below them he couldn’t place to sound remotely human.
Inumaki tightens his hold on Yuuta’s hand and tries his best to keep up.
They’re all huddled somewhere beneath the captain’s quarters, Yuuta’s cream tunic torn to shreds and Inumaki’s corduroy laters soaked to the fibre. The wooden barrels bang against each other, an unpleasant sound on top of the thundering sky charging the room with even more weighed tension and silence.
The rest of the crew abandoned ship not too long ago, leaving their passengers vulnerable to the wailing.. thing. It hadn’t been human, that much they knew, but exactly what it was they hadn’t braved a longer look to check.
Inumaki looks over the lot of them who survived.
Maki, with her hands clasped firmly around Nobara’s shaking shoulders; Megumi who was in a quiet conversation with Yuuta, probably already devising the quickest plan to get them out of there; and, finally, Yuji who was staring directly at him.
“Hello,” he nods at him.
The barracks shake with every violent wave, crashing them together as everyone struggles to find purchase. His eyes look glazed and the tips of his hair wet, the ghost of the terrors from above not having left his mind when he takes hold on a railing. Yuuji gives him a shaky smile. “You okay?”
Inumaki takes awhile to respond, vertigo hitting at him with full force. He feels Yuuta’s hand on his elbow steadying him from behind. He tries to return the smile, failing miserably when he tries curving his lips upwards and feels only the threats of bile rising out his mouth.
Yuji gives him a sympathetic smile and looks away. No one says a word for the rest of the night.
It is midnight when Yuuta finally sinks down with him on the floor.
The hardwood is still wet from when some of the ocean water leaked into the tiles, but the noises have since died down to a lulling whisper and Inumaki can finally hear his own thoughts. The night wind is biting and his heart is still pounding, but he is alive.
“Hey,” Yuuta starts, placing a comforting hand on his knee as he turns to give him a half-smile. His cheeks are marred with specks of blood and Inumaki is scared to find out who it belongs to. “It’s gonna be alright. We’ll get out of here, I promise.”
Inumaki isn’t so sure they will, but some of the warmth from his hand seeps into his trembling knee and just like that the brain noise shuts down. Suddenly, like all of those times he threatened to unravel, Yuuta holds him down again.
Finally, Inumaki manages to open his mouth and speak for the first time since they stepped foot in the barren ship: “There are worse ways to go.”