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The leaden canvas of clouds that had covered the wounded city on this mournful night was gradually yielding to the first rays of a crimson dawn. Hope. Tokyo was breathing. Weakly, staring through the darkness of shattered window frames and twisted power lines. Both humans and ghouls were still reluctantly leaving their fragile temporary shelters in the ruins, suffering from the aftermath of a massive toxic emission and the subsequent spontaneous "ghoulification" that turned them into mindless, unwilling flesh-eaters of their own kind.
Some were adorned with hideous, bizarrely grotesque growths.
The man was slowly descending into a hollow buried in debris. Why? Right now, even he couldn't give a rational answer to this question. Had his face not been covered by a respirator mask, one could say with certainty: he was still surprisingly handsome despite his mature age and the traces of deathly fatigue cutting through his regular features. His dark hair, usually perfectly styled, was now disheveled, his expression focused.
Finally feeling solid ground beneath his feet, Itsuki jumped down carefully. He took out a flashlight. Being here now could hardly be called safe; he knew that. He looked around, listening to his own alien-sounding breathing, heavy from the mask, walking almost by touch despite the weak beam of the flashlight guiding him. And... there it was. A dirty wall with brown streaks, heavily attacked by mold spores and moss. Dampness. Blood. Mustiness. He closed the distance, now standing before the one he had risked coming down for. The silhouette slumped against the wall was missing an arm; the black combat uniform was soaked in blood that had already begun to change color—from terrifyingly deep wounds on the chest and stomach, the kind not even the strong survive. And yet... in the cloudy eyes, glazing over from dull pain, life was still faintly flickering—fading away.
"Marude-san...?"
It seemed the young man genuinely thought he was hallucinating on his deathbed, or perhaps he wasn't thinking anything at all anymore, barely clinging to the crumbs of a fading consciousness. His pupils focused on the man's face. A semblance of a smile touched his thin, bluish lips—for once without malice, without mockery, simply exhausted. After that, his breathing stopped, just as the man's hand touched his pale forehead to brush away the tangled strands of hair.
To find peace, his torn heart had lacked only this: someone had come, someone cared. Maru... had come for him, even if he hated and despised him to the core for all his vile crimes. Deservedly so.
"What have you done, you little bastard? Why, for what did you cause so much pain?"
This was said literally into the void; an answer would never follow. The question was rhetorical and left a bitter taste on the tongue.
Something inside Itsuki's chest trembled and shattered at this sight—something that made him human despite everything, a human capable of compassion and acceptance. Closing the young man's eyes with two fingers, he carefully picked him up in his arms and carried him away. Even a mad dog deserves a burial, as long as it does not deserve paradise.