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Getou was the first to go.
Shoko was with him, hanging up the laundry and putting aside dried rags by the river. It had been a gradual unravelling, she said, the fibres of his skin molding against each other and flexing against his strong musculature. She was shaking the entire time when she recounted the details to them: Getou realizing what was happening first and making her promise to look after the twins, making sure Yaga didn’t neglect his health, and nearly begging her not to let one of the kids go if it all came down to it.
The tides had come for them, and they were powerless in its taking.
“No matter what,” Getou urged on, his skin almost translucent and voice fading by the second. “They have to survive this. They will survive us.”
Shoko was the village healer. But she could do nothing in that moment but look on, helpless and desperate, as the man she’d known for all her life disintegrated right before her eyes.
The pine trees enclosing the stream withered, flaky branches threatening to spill over with every strong gush of the wind. The hiss of the water was deafening, strong currents crashing over boulders and pavement.
But even then Shoko’s wails were louder.
It happened a few more times after that, every instance just a little more heartbreaking than the last.
They heard of the horror stories from the next town over, of their own backwoods howling angrily through the night and disrupting their slumber. There was a hug of houses in the green that together made a village, and how quickly it could crumble overnight.
The story goes like this: the sensation of unravelling sprang from beneath the belly of the jungle and didn’t cease its endless tantrums until sedated with mortal flesh. The only catch was they wanted—demanded—youth.
“You’ll know it needs something,” Getou told them very very early on, when they were too prideful to listen and too late to apologize. He caught the warning signs of decay long before it took its first victim. “When someone starts decomposing.”
The irony isn’t lost on them.
It is Utahime, the neighbouring town’s educator, who braved the trip to warn them in advance.
“We still don’t know what it is,” Utahime admits, rubbing her hands up and down a still numb Shoko. Since that first reaping, they’d lose ten more: Yaga, regrettably, one of them. “Just that no one comes back alive.”
They were at the village center, the centre point of the entire town. Colorful banners hung from the top points of the brick buildings, encasing the whole space with a radiant glow and spreading what little warmth could be passed around. There were kids throwing a ball around the plaza, some of them orphaned to the phenomenon and under the care of the system. A tall man was situated a few paces around them, a carefully measured distance where he could get to the children quickly if needed.
Gojo didn’t need to turn his head to know that Nanami had more or less been stealing glances their way the entire time.
Instead his eyes sweep over the citadel one more time, making sure Megumi was accounted for, before turning around and locking eyes with Utahime.
“Well,” Gojo says warily, face set in a grim line. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t take any more. You stayin’ the night?”
“What should we do?”
Gojo pauses halfway into scanning the monthly expenses for the orphanage. His reading glasses hang low in his nose bridge. The lights from the kerosene lamp flickered dangerously, but Nanami’s tone had been rougher. “To be honest, I don’t know yet.”
Outside his office window, the skies had greyed in a matter of hours. He excused Utahime not too long ago, after making sure the complimentary room in the local inn was taken care of. Shoko was a trickier one to let go of, and he had half the mind to just let her crash by the townhouse again if only to keep a closer eye on her. Ijichi made a passing comment about her wrists the other day, and he felt his insides churn. Thankfully, the single room Meimei booked could squeeze in another bed.
Then there was the other problem.
Gojo chances a look up and feels a pang in his heart immediately take hold. The look on Nanami’s face had been stern, but he could see the tell-tale quiver in his jaw and the tremor in his eyes; betraying any sort of tranquillity he displayed since the first sirens blasted.
It wasn’t easy seeing an empire crumble, especially one that Nanami devoted most of his life to building.
“They can’t just—” Nanami starts, voice lodged in his throat. His posture sagged. “I mean, what are we even doing here? They’re just kids, Gojo. Yuji is barely even twelve.”
Gojo springs from his chair, nearly knocking over his letterboard in the process of crossing the distance between them. “I know,” he cooes gently, stopping just a feet away from him. Closer, the brown flecks of his eyes seemed more vibrant under the pale moonlight. It had an edge of steel underneath, distanced, but not altogether lost. “We’ll get through this, you know.”
“But how? ” Nanami presses, his voice barely a whisper. It was delicate, fickle, barely on the brink of being put together. “If we don’t give them what they want, then is this it? Is this life for us now?”
A beat of silence falls over the room.
It’s not uncomfortable, more a quiet contemplation as they let their thoughts carry over into words they can’t say. Gojo searches his eyes, braving through the cold undercurrents of his panic and trying to find ways to nurse it back an easy rhythm. There are kings and queens, empires built and trampled down, all in a day’s work; but then there are the quiet little strengths that have come from a lifetime of conditioning.
They were diamonds in a rough, and they would come out of this steeled.
“No,” Gojo declares, finality in his tone. “But it’s the only life we’ve got. And isn’t that worth protecting?”