Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Darkness.

Not just any darkness, but one with no beginning or end, that offers neither comfort nor threat—only the suffocating presence of the absolute. Gen opens his eyes, or believes he opens them, because there are no eyelids to blink nor a retina to register any image. It is an impossible blink, a human reflex that crashes against a stone wall. His mind, little by little, begins to make headway like someone trying to emerge from a viscous bog, a thick substance that holds him fast and will not let go, that clings with invisible nails to every corner of his consciousness. He does not know how much time has passed since the petrification enclosed him. It could have been a fleeting instant, the blink of a breath, or an eternity that tore him apart without his noticing.

He is not like Senkū. He never has been and never will be. He cannot hold the relentless precision of numbers in his head; he cannot count seconds, minutes, years with the coldness of a human clock. His mind is different: it barely manages to retain fragments, scattered thoughts like fireflies that flicker for a second before going out. Sometimes, even, he gives in and falls into a deep stupor, as if he could actually sleep inside that mineral prison. Or at least that's how he interprets it, because in a space where time does not exist, even sleep is only an illusion.

The difference unsettles him. The first time they petrified him, the experience was different. He remembers that eternal confinement as a silent, serene void, where nothing spread clean and clear, like an undisturbed rest. Now, however, what he feels is fragmentary, like a thread of consciousness that is cut and knotted capriciously, as if an invisible hand were playing at unraveling it. Maybe it's the accumulated exhaustion's fault. It's not hard to arrive at that conclusion: Senkū, with his habit of exploiting him without respite, has wrung every ounce of energy from him and left him exhausted. That obsessive scientist, with his impossible plans and slave-driving schedule, hasn't even allowed him to rest in peace. He has dragged him along at such a frantic pace that not even petrification, which should be a refuge, offers him repose.

The only thing that remains firm is an immovable certainty: when Senkū wakes, he will know exactly what day, month, and year it is. Because Senkū always counts, because he never stops, because even when he bleeds, even when he staggers at death's door, he keeps calculating. That thought, absurd and comforting at once, draws a tired smile inside Gen—a smile invisible, buried in the rock.

"Go under the tower."

The words resonate in him like an echo burned into the deepest part of his memory. They were the last ones, the order entrusted to him when everything fell apart, and he cannot understand why. Why him? What twisted fate decided that a mentalist with thin arms and weak knees should bear something like that? Chrome would have been better, of course. Chrome, with his unbreakable energy, with that burning faith in science and in his leader, would have known how to react. Even anyone else… anyone but him. If only he had been able to drag Senkū a few meters, carry him to the foot of the tower, maybe everything would be different.

The memory pierces him like a knife: Senkū collapsing, covered in blood, his body broken by the shot, fighting to keep his eyes open until the last second. That image torments him; it is cruel and persistent. Yet, amid the pain, he clings to a desperate hope: petrification will have saved him, frozen him in that critical instant, preserved him on the very edge between life and death.

But then comes the idea that chokes him, the one that always returns like a snake coiled around his chest: what if there isn't enough fluid? What if, when the bottle breaks, everything is lost on the ground? He imagines himself alone, surrounded by a world of motionless stone, without Senkū, without anyone, with the burden of an impossible future resting on his fragile shoulders.

Silence becomes an enemy. Sometimes he thinks he hears something: a distant creak, a breath of air that caresses the rock, an echo of nonexistent footsteps, but he knows it's a lie. They are illusions, inventions of his mind to fool himself and not succumb to nothingness. In reality, only that remains: a mineral prison, endless, that traps him while his consciousness fades and ignites ever more weakly.

And yet he smiles. A crooked, bitter, invisible smile. Destiny, he thinks, never misses a chance to mock him. Even when the whole world freezes, irony finds a way to lodge itself in his heart.

However, there is a thought that pursues him, a promise he cannot abandon. If he wakes up, the first thing he will do is look for Senkū. Even if he trembles, even if he fails, even if it is useless, he will try. Because if he doesn't do it, no one else will.

That conviction stays with him one moment longer, like a solitary spark that refuses to die. Then, unable to prevent it, darkness covers him again, wrapping him in a new silence, and Gen sinks once more into nothingness.

Gen's body shakes violently when the stone that imprisons him begins to crack. First he hears the creak, a harsh, irregular sound, like dry branches breaking under an invisible weight. Then he feels the heat: a wave that runs through his arms and legs, that ignites in his chest like a blaze ripping him from lethargy. Cracks spread over his body like shining veins until, in a matter of seconds, the mineral shell explodes into pieces and falls around him. Gen collapses to his knees on the ground, his forehead nearly buried in the mossy stone. A rough cough shakes him as his lungs, rusted by years of confinement, strain to fill with real air.

He stays still while he pants a little with his head bowed, as if he fears any sudden movement might erase the miracle. The air is heavy, it burns, in some way it has a taste. The ground beneath his hands is not a memory but a real, tangible texture. Gradually he lifts his gaze and looks at his hands. They are free. The skin intact, with no traces of stone. He opens and closes them again and again, incredulous, as if expecting them to harden at any moment.

Cold drops hit his head. He blinks, looks up, and understands what happened. The bottle with the fluid has broken up there, at the top of the tower, and the liquid has trickled down to fall right on him. A brief, nervous laugh escapes his throat. It is a clumsy, improvised miracle, but enough to give him back life.

He makes an effort to stand. His legs tremble as if they do not belong to him, and he staggers toward the open. Crossing the threshold, the light strikes him full in the face and forces him to squint. Outside, an unrecognizable landscape greets him. The grass reaches above his waist, vines cover the remnants of the structure, and trees stand taller than he remembers. He grits his teeth. He does not need exact calculations to know: at least a couple of years have passed.

He smiles for a moment. He's alive. Against all odds, he breathes again, but the smile fades quickly. Silence crushes him. There are no voices, no laughter, no footsteps. Only the wind and the beat of his own heart.

"Senkū-chan…" he murmurs, barely audible.

He must find him. He doesn't remember exactly where he was left; his memory is lost in the chaos of the last instant. Still, he pushes through the tall grass, pushing it aside with clumsy swipes. He stumbles, spins unintentionally, stops in front of statues that tear him apart inside. Chrome, motionless, with a spark of amazement frozen on his face. Kaseki, hardened in a grimace of contained fury. Suika, petrified in an ambiguous expression of fear and determination. All trapped. All silent witnesses of the end.

Gen's heart leaps when he sees him.

Senkū is there.

Lying on the ground, turned into sculpture. His skin hardened into stone, his hair immobilized like rigid filaments. His clothes stained with the blood that spilled at the exact moment the shot hit him. It is a cruel picture, frozen in an eternal instant.

Gen approaches slowly, swallows, his steps unsteady.

"Senkū-chan…" he whispers, with a thread of voice that breaks when he says the name.

He raises his hand and rests it against the hardened cheek. The cold of the stone travels up his arm and hurts him more than any wound. He closes his eyes for a second, lowers his face, and then leans in to leave a quick kiss on the motionless lips. It is a fragile, desperate gesture, but in this silence it means everything.

"Wait a little longer, okay?" he whispers in a broken voice. "I'm going to depetrify you."

He lingers in front of him for a few seconds, trying to etch every line of that face trapped in stone into memory. Then he takes a deep breath, forces his hand away, and steps back. He knows what he has to do. He cannot afford to break.

He’s alone, but he won’t surrender.

His eyes lock onto the motionless figure, and though he wishes he could stay there forever, his mind begins to work, arranging memories within the chaos. The last bottle they had shattered right when Senkū collapsed, wounded. He remembers the mud exploding, the liquid spilling hopelessly. Suika had brought more, yes, but her fall smashed them all. Only one survived, and that was the one that saved him. There’s nothing left.

Or maybe…? He tries to think clearly, but his ideas get tangled. Did someone else have a bottle? Somewhere in the corners of his memory, he thinks he saw Luna and Chelsea stashing something, maybe a couple of spares. Yet the memory is hazy, stained by the disorder of the moment. He can’t place them, doesn’t know where they were when the petrification beam covered everything. If those bottles survived, finding them would be the only hope. But right now he’s dizzy, his legs heavy, each step threatening to make him collapse. Going too far is not a good idea.

He decides to limit himself to nearby areas. Through tall grass and the scattered remains of battle, he trudges forward, forcing a path. He soon finds familiar figures. François, immaculate even in stone, kneeling with a straight back and hands folded. Ukyo, bow still slung across his back, frozen in the calm that always defined him. Ginrō, caught in a grimace of panic, as though he had tried to flee at the last second. Matsukaze, rigid as a samurai statue, with the solemn bearing that characterizes him even now.

Gen pauses in front of each one, observing carefully, fixing their positions in his memory. One day he will need them—of that he is certain—but for now the search is fruitless. He looks around with despair. Not a single bottle, not a shard of clay, not even a drop of the precious fluid. Nothing.

A tired sigh escapes him. He is alone. He will have to accept reality and sketch out a plan. Chances are he won’t have company for quite some time, and if that’s the case, the first step is surviving the night. He can’t remain exposed, at the mercy of cold or wandering animals. He needs shelter, somewhere safe to breathe without flinching. The tower, he thinks immediately. At least there’s a structure to work with there. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll do to improvise a place to sleep.

He turns and starts walking back, dragging his feet through the grass. Just the thought of chopping and moving logs exhausts him. His body isn’t built for physical labor, and he knows it. Even so, he forces his mind to calculate. He needs an edge, a tool, anything that can serve as an improvised axe. A hard edge, a sharp rock, any object that could let him begin.

The fatigue strikes hard, a constant weight that won’t let go. It’s nothing new. He remembers it well: even before petrification he felt it. During the battle against Xeno and Stanley, his body reacted more slowly, his stamina shortening day by day. He had noticed it even in the days before, but ignored it—as always—with a smile and a flippant remark. He couldn’t afford to look weak in front of the others. Now, with no one left to cover for him, the fatigue falls on him like a slab, unmasked, relentless.

He stops by a tree, rests his hand against the rough trunk, and takes a deep breath. His lungs protest, but the air goes in. He closes his eyes for a moment and forces himself to focus.

“One step at a time,” he mutters to himself.

He’s alive. That’s something. Now he has to survive the day.

Gen staggers into the center of the camp, dragging his feet. The hot air dries his throat, and the silence clings to his skin like cold sweat. In front of him rises the tower: thick logs driven into the ground, still standing despite the abandonment. Their bases rest on a stone platform that barely rises a few meters from the earth, a sort of pedestal with three steps. Moss has claimed some cracks, and vines climb brazenly toward the wood.

Gen stops in front of the structure, tilts his head, and smiles wryly.

“How picturesque. A monument to Senkū-chan’s stubbornness.”

The stone steps seem solid, steady, and though they don’t fully protect him, they do offer a corner to lean against. He doesn’t have the strength to raise entire walls, but here there’s already a foundation, a ready-made base that only needs a disguise. He circles it slowly, testing the ground, until he finds a side half-covered in shade. That will be the place.

He moves away a little and begins gathering what he can find: dry branches, huge leaves blown by the wind, even grass pulled out by the roots. Not much, and not of great quality, but enough to improvise. The effort quickly leaves him breathless, so he takes long pauses, sitting on the steps with trembling hands resting on his knees.

When he finally has a small pile, he starts arranging it against the stone wall. First, longer branches set diagonally to form a sort of crooked skeleton, partly supported by the pedestal base. Then leaves and grasses woven into the gaps, like a badly sewn roof. The result is uneven, wobbly, but dense enough to cut the wind.

Gen steps back a few paces, arms crossed, and a dry laugh slips from his throat.

“A mediocre architect would give me zero stars, but at least I won’t be sleeping under the open sky.”

He returns to his improvised shelter and stuffs a handful of dry grass inside, spreading it across the floor like a mattress. He sits down carefully, testing the space. He fits just right, curled against the stone wall, sheltered under the flimsy roof of branches. The smell of damp earth and crushed leaves surrounds him. It’s not comfortable, not even remotely safe, but for the first time since waking he feels he has a corner to call his own.

He leans against the cold stone and sighs. Outside, the open sky stretches without barriers, and the crumbling walls around the camp offer only the illusion of a perimeter. Down here, pressed against the tower and its pedestal, he feels less small. Less vulnerable.

“It’s temporary,” he mutters lightly, like someone tossing out an excuse. He smiles weakly, though his eyes betray a deeper weariness. “Just for now.”

But as he settles into the dimness, as the wind brushes over the improvised roof and filters in only as soft gusts, he knows that “for now” could turn into much more. Even if he doesn’t admit it, that humble nook at the base of the tower will be the only thing that lets him survive the first night.

Night falls faster than Gen expected. The sky deepens into a dense blue, and the last orange glimmers die behind the mountains. The wind picks up, carrying with it the murmur of dry leaves and the crack of branches. Inside his improvised shelter, pressed against the tower’s stone base, Gen lies down on the grass mattress he spread out. He hugs himself, rubbing his arms with his palms to trick his body into warmth.

The space is narrow, but enclosed enough to give him the illusion of a protective roof. He rests his back against the stone, firm and cold, letting his head fall against it. He forces himself to smile, as if he were in a cheap hotel room, laughing at the absurdity of the comparison.

“Top-notch service. Even with a mold scent and uneven flooring,” he murmurs, almost as though expecting someone to laugh with him.

In truth, the silence gnaws at him. Too thick, too absolute. His thoughts run loose, each more unsettling than the last. He tries to convince himself he’s strong, that he’s been through worse, that this is temporary, but his mind betrays him: images of unmoving statues, of familiar faces cracked with stone, of the void left by Senkū’s voice—they flare behind his closed eyelids. He isn’t built to be alone for so long, and he knows it.

His breathing quickens. He runs a hand down his face and laughs again, nervously.
“It’s all just theater. Gen Asagiri doesn’t break that easily.”

The first crack pulls him from his thoughts. It doesn’t come from his shelter, but from the nearby forest. A harsh sound, like branches breaking under real weight, not from the wind. He opens his eyes and freezes, straining his ears. Silence returns, heavy—until a distant hoot replaces it, deep and guttural. The echo of a night bird… or something else?

He shrinks a little out of pure instinct and looks up, toward the gaps in his roof of branches. He sees nothing but the dark sky filtering through the leaves, yet the certainty that he is not completely alone weighs heavy on his chest. The shelter trembles faintly when a strong gust of wind rattles the branches. Part of the roof shifts, leaving an opening through which an icy draft seeps in.

Gen curses under his breath and hurries to fix it, but his hands are trembling too much. The branch gives way, falls to one side, and only with great effort does he manage to wedge it back against the stone. His breathing is uneven, and even that minimal effort leaves him drained. He leans back again, this time with his heart pounding hard, and tries to convince himself it doesn’t matter, that it’s just a “temporary” shelter, that tomorrow will be better.

The hooting repeats, closer now. This time it’s accompanied by a low rustle, like leaves being crushed under slow footsteps. Gen holds his breath, eyes wide open. Every fiber of his body tells him to run, but his legs won’t respond. He clings to the slab of stone behind him as if it were an impenetrable wall.

“Just… an animal. Nothing more,” he whispers with a trembling voice.

The steps—if that’s what they are—fade after endless seconds. The forest falls silent again, though the nerves on his skin hum like taut strings. Gen curls up on the grass, wrapping himself in his own arms, and finally manages to close his eyes. Fatigue drags him under, but even in sleep his body remains rigid, ready to leap at the slightest sound.

Dawn finds him awake before his time. In truth, he never really slept: only a couple of hours at most, restless, between jolts and the sound of wind slipping through the cracks of his makeshift shelter. When he opens his eyes, the grayish light of morning creeps over his face and wrings a groan from him. His body aches everywhere: his back stiff against the stone, his muscles tight from sleeping curled up.

He stays lying there a few more minutes, arms over his face, wishing it were all just a bad dream, but hunger claws at his stomach and forces him upright. His lips are dry, his throat scratchy. He barely drank any water the day before and, with the tension of the shelter and the crushing loneliness, he hadn’t thought of eating. Now his body is demanding payment.

He sighs, dragging the words out as though talking to himself could give him strength.

“Food first. Anything… fruit, roots, anything that won’t kill me. Meat…” he pauses bitterly and shakes his head. “No, I’m nowhere near being a hunter. Not yet.”

Then something comes to mind: the jars near François. Thinking of it, the image of the unmoving statue squeezes his chest, but it also gives him a point of direction. If he manages to get there, maybe he’ll find remnants of preserved food, and along the way he might stumble upon a tree heavy with fruit. No luxuries, no elegant dishes: just survival.

He gets up clumsily, stretching his numb legs. He looks at the tower and his shelter, as pitiful as it was the night before, and adds another task to the mental list that weighs on him like stone.

“Build something decent… because I can’t spend another night like this.”

But that’s not his only concern. He rubs his temples and lists aloud as though reciting a cursed spell: food, water, shelter, Chelsea and Luna, the fluid, moving statues, Kohaku, Tsukasa, Hyoga… Each name and each plan piles up, one on top of another, until the heap feels heavy enough to crush him. He sighs again, tired before even beginning.

Water is urgent. Without something to drink, food will mean little. He needs a method to purify it, even a basic one: boiling it, filtering it through cloth, anything that doesn’t require impossible materials. He promises himself he’ll think it through once his stomach is less empty.

He grants himself one last second of laziness, leaning once more against the stone base, but hunger drags him out of inertia. He can’t stay there, no matter how much he wants to. He forces himself to walk, shuffling his feet at first before pushing into the land.

As he moves away, he glances back at the tower etched against the sky. He thinks of the statues: all of them, scattered among weeds, exposed to time and nature’s cruelty. He wants to move them to safety, protect them from the roots that will eventually split them, but he has no idea how to do it without breaking himself in the process. Another weight on the list.

With a bitter laugh, he says aloud:

“Out of everyone, I was definitely the worst person to wake up first.”

The echo of his voice bounces off the stones, and for a moment, the loneliness feels more tangible than ever.

The sun is already slanting toward the horizon when Gen finishes gathering the last of the fruits he can find. Not many, and not sweet, but enough to trick the hunger gnawing at him since morning. He collects them clumsily, half-climbing low trunks and stretching his arms until nearly dislocating them to reach the most accessible clusters. More than once he slips and ends up sitting in the dirt, cursing under his breath, but in the end the small pile of fruit staring up at him from the ground feels like a modest but precious victory.

The campfire proves another torment. He spends hours rubbing sticks, testing sparks, cursing his lack of practice and barely recalling Senkū’s instructions. When he finally manages to coax the smoke into flame, he falls back laughing like a madman, eyes streaming from both the smoke and sheer relief. The fire isn’t big, but it’s enough to warm and give light. He guards it carefully, terrified that any lapse will snuff it out and condemn him to start over.

Then he remembers the water. His parched throat reminds him that, though the liquid looks crystalline, he can’t trust it as it is. He thinks of François and how quickly they would have solved something so simple; he thinks of Senkū and the thousand-and-one scientific explanations he would be spouting while throwing together an improvised filter. But Gen doesn’t have even half that ingenuity. He settles for the simplest thing: filling a glass jar he salvaged near the statues and setting it over the fire.

The container trembles as it heats, and Gen doesn’t take his eyes off it, terrified of the moment it might crack. The sound of the water boiling brings him both relief and anxiety: relief because it means he’ll survive one more day, anxiety because he knows this can’t be a permanent solution. Tomorrow—clay… or baked clay, something. He has to learn, he promises himself, in the same tone a magician swears their next trick without any idea how it’ll be done.

Meanwhile, his shelter takes shape. He can’t call it a house, not even a hut, but it’s no longer the miserable hole of the night before. He takes advantage of remnants of a foundation he recognizes among the rubble, dragging pieces of wood to the foot of the tower. With thinner branches he erects a frame, holds it in place with stones, and covers it with large leaves tied together into a makeshift roof. Each time the wind blows, the leaves creak with an unnerving sound, but the inside is wide enough to stretch out and sleep without his knees hitting the wall.

By evening, he allows himself to crawl inside and lie for a moment on the grass-covered floor. He closes his eyes and imagines a bed. It’s not real, but for an instant, the mental game works. His body begs him to sleep right there, yet his mind refuses to rest. Again and again, the same images: Chelsea and Luna petrified, with the fluid perhaps still among their belongings; Kohaku, Tsukasa, Hyoga scattered like pieces on an impossible board; the statues, all of them, exposed to the open air like abandoned museum relics.

He sits up, rubbing his face. The boiled water is ready, and after letting it cool, he drinks it slowly, careful not to crack the jar. The warm liquid tastes like the finest wine he’s ever had.

Then he thinks of Senkū.

The thought crashes down on him: it’s not enough to simply have him there, in the middle of the forest. He can’t leave him at the mercy of time, or worse, of some accident. If he nearly breaks himself just moving branches, what will happen to a statue under rain, wind, or the force of roots? No—he has to move him somewhere safe. Even if it costs every muscle he has.

He waits until the fire is nearly gone. Then he rises slowly, legs trembling, and sets out toward where he remembers seeing the stone figure. The sky deepens into dark orange and then blue, and the whole forest seems to watch him. He walks fast, trying to ignore the exhaustion, until at last he finds him.

There he is: Senkū, lying on the ground, petrified, the same confident expression frozen in stone. Gen stays still for a while, staring at him, as if he needs to gather his courage. Then he swallows hard and bends down to push.

The first tug barely shifts the statue a few inches. His muscles tense and burn across his arms and back, and he has to let go to catch his breath. He pants like he’s just run miles, but he tries again. And again. And again. Every foot gained feels like a victory; every pause, a half-defeat.

“Gen Asagiri…” he gasps out with a strained smile. “Professional statue mover. Limited bookings only.”

The joke falls flat in the empty air, but it gives him just enough spark to keep going. Inch by inch, he drags the figure through the dirt, finally managing to bring it up to the tower. He props it against the stone base, beneath the structure’s shadow.

He collapses beside it, sprawled on his back, arms outstretched like an actor who’s just finished his final scene. The sky is already full of stars glittering above the silhouette of the tower and the freshly built shelter. Gen’s breath comes in ragged gasps, but this time, his smile is genuine.

“I did it, Senkū-chan. Even if it’s just a little.”

The petrified scientist doesn’t reply, unmoving, eternal. But for Gen, having him there, only a few steps away, is enough. The fear of that first night still lingers, but the weight of loneliness feels a little lighter.

It takes him a long time to drag Senkū into the shelter. The space is cramped—barely an improvised hut with a roof of broad leaves and walls of branches tied together—but it’s enough to keep them both under cover. He eases him into a corner, laying him on the ground, then slumps down at his side, exhausted, breath still uneven.

He pulls out some fruit he’d gathered earlier in the afternoon. Not his idea of dinner, but chewing slowly while the last rays of sunlight slip through the leafy roof gives him the faint sense of normalcy he needs. He doesn’t light a fire tonight; he doesn’t want to risk a spark catching on the walls of his freshly built shelter. There’ll be time later to build something better—larger, safer. For now, he makes do with the fading light until it disappears.

The silence of night slowly closes in around him. Gen turns toward Senkū’s statue, still unmoving, his firm expression carved in stone. He studies his hardened features for a few seconds, as though searching for a sign that he’s listening.

“It’s been two days, Senkū-chan,” he says quietly, almost as if he doesn’t want to disturb the air. “Two days, and all I’ve got is this shoddy shelter and fruit that tastes like garbage.”

He laughs, but the sound is weak, cracked. Wiping his forehead, he lets out a sigh.

“Tomorrow I’ll head out. I’ll look for Chelsea and Luna… maybe one of them still has some fluid, and it won’t all be lost. And I’ll have to bring the others back, one by one, even if it wrecks my back. I don’t want the roots or the rain to take them.”

His gaze softens as it returns to the statue.

“I can’t do it all at once, I know. But at least I have this. A place to come back to at the end of the day… and you, right here.”

He stretches out his hand until his fingertips brush gently against the cold stone. It isn’t skin, it isn’t human warmth, but in that touch, he finds a strange kind of comfort.

“I know what you’d say,” he murmurs. “‘One step at a time, mentalist. Break the problem into parts and solve them piece by piece.’ Always so logical, so simple… and me, always circling around, always tired.”

He shifts onto his side to face Senkū, as though they were sharing their usual bed, even if all that lies between them now is rock.

“I’ll try. I can’t promise much, but… I’ll try.”

After that, he falls silent. Darkness closes in, the whisper of wind rustles through the leaves, and weariness overcomes fear. Slowly, his eyelids grow heavy, and sleep drags him under—with the fragile comfort of knowing that, even if everything else has stopped, Senkū is still there, close by.

Chapter Text

The days pass slowly, stifling. Gen forces himself to get up early, even when every fiber of his body begs him to stay under the coat he uses as a blanket. The dawn is not kind; it greets him with a cold air that seeps into his bones and with the certainty that his day will be a battle against weight, distance, and himself.

Moving statues has become a daily torment. Each figure, even those closest to the Medusa Tower, weighs like a sentence. At first, he tries to drag them with all the strength his body allows, panting, cursing, and stopping every few meters so as not to collapse. He wants to give up more than once, especially with those farther away from the shelter: Suika, Taiju, Chrome, Kaseki, Ryūsui, Ukyo, François, Ginrō, Matsukaze, Tsukasa, Hyōga, Kohaku, Max, Carlos… one after another, motionless and mute, they all seem to reproach him for his clumsiness.

The idea of using motorcycles keeps nagging at him. He imagines Senkū laughing at how pathetic it is that he can’t even put together half of one. In the end, the only thing he manages to salvage are the wheels. With them and a few crooked planks, he builds a crude cart. It’s not elegant or fast, but at least it spares him the humiliation of dragging stone bodies along the ground. Even so, the task leaves his muscles numb and his throat dry from the effort.

Luna and Chelsea still haven’t appeared. Every search ends with empty hands, a tight chest, and an anxiety he tries to cover up with muttered jokes to himself. The shelter, at least, is slowly improving. He reinforces the roof with wooden beams and keeps a small fire in the center, surrounded by stones to contain it. That weak flame is the only thing that gives him a little peace through the nights of sepulchral silence.

He manages to gather more fruit, though he’s already sick of the sweet and sour taste that repeats over and over in his mouth. He wants meat. He craves it with a primal urgency, but hunting is beyond him: too clumsy, too impatient. The river, on the other hand, offers a more attainable promise. The fish move like silver shadows under the surface, and more than once he watches them with feral hunger. The idea of a fishing trap begins to take shape; he needs flexible rods, something he can weave together to build it. That will be his project for the day.

Or at least, that was the plan.

That morning, the moment he tries to get up, a wave of dizziness hits him hard. Nausea, a dull discomfort that closes his throat. He lets himself fall back onto the ground, unable to stay on his feet for long. The mere idea of walking to the river becomes absurd. His arms feel powerless, his legs even weaker.

“Could it be the fruit?” he mutters, barely audible.

It’s the only thing he’s been eating these days, and the last thing he needs now is to get sick. He’s just managed to learn how to keep a steady fire going and to raise a roof that doesn’t collapse. The thought of food poisoning, of his body weakening all alone in the stone world, makes his head spin worse than the nausea. He squeezes his eyes shut, as if that could banish the feeling that everything is turning around him.

The idea of the trap, the river, the food… all of it fades away. That morning, the only thing he can do is resist the suspicion that his own body is beginning to betray him.

By the afternoon he feels better. The heaviness in his stomach has lifted, the nausea has faded, and his body, though still weak, responds with a little more energy. It isn’t much, but for Gen it’s a triumph. He takes a moment to look at Senkū, lying under the makeshift shelter, with the still and serene face the stone has stolen from him. He approaches with slow, almost solemn steps, and leans down to caress his cheek. The cold, rough surface contrasts with the warmth he remembers, with that skin that once pulsed with life and is now locked in mineral silence.

“I’ll be back soon,” he whispers, leaning a little closer, as if his voice could seep through the rock and reach the real Senkū, sleeping somewhere inside that immobile prison.

He gives him one last look before stepping away. It’s hard to move, not because his body fails him, but because the farewell always weighs heavy, even if only momentary. Still, he does it; he turns on his heels and walks into the forest, determined to find the rods to build his trap.

The environment engulfs him immediately. Araxá is not a kind place: the vegetation grows thick, damp, entangling itself with a vitality that almost feels hostile. The air smells of earth and resin, the buzz of insects accompanies him like a perpetual chorus, and every step on the ground feels like a struggle against a nature that threatens to swallow him whole. Yet Gen prefers it over staying still. Moving gives him the illusion that everything is still moving forward, that life still beats, and that he can still hold on to it—at least for the two of them.

As he advances, his mind inevitably drifts to Senkū. Their relationship has always been curious, secretive. No one would ever have imagined it. Senkū, the man who saw love as an unnecessary hindrance, a distraction from what really mattered. Gen remembers him, with that confident voice, saying without hesitation that love was nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain, a simple biological trick to ensure the survival of the species. Words that in anyone else’s mouth would have sounded cruel, but from him came naturally, logically, like everything else he said.

Gen smiles to himself, tinged with bitter irony. When he confessed, almost casually, that he was in love, he had prepared a carefully calculated backup plan. If Senkū rejected him, as in theory he should, Gen could always disguise the confession as a psychological experiment, a simple game to observe his reactions. That was the emergency exit. Just another mask, like so many he’s worn in his life.

What he never anticipated was the answer. Senkū didn’t reject him.

He still remembers that moment with painful clarity. Senkū looked him in the eye, no evasions, with that expression that never revealed more than necessary, and said that he had thought about it too. He explained it as if lecturing a class: he mentioned brain reactions, dopamine, oxytocin, processes of attraction studied in laboratories. He described his own feelings in scientific terms that were difficult for Gen to follow, but the message underneath was clear. Senkū cared for him. Or at least, the closest thing to caring that he could express.

And for Gen, that was enough. More than enough, it made him immensely happy. No declaration adorned with eternal promises could have carried as much weight for him as that concise, logical, almost clinical confession. It was so unmistakably Senkū that there could be no doubt of its authenticity.

That memory belongs to another time, long before leaving Japan, when the world was still hostile but not as cruel as now. They had six months together before the petrification claimed them a third time. Half a year of nightly arguments, of stolen moments amidst the relentless work of rebuilding civilization, of fleeting touches that no one else should notice. Their relationship was a secret that slipped between the cracks of duty and ingenuity, something theirs alone, shielded from prying eyes.

Now, in the middle of the Brazilian forest, with trees rising like green columns and a ground riddled with roots that force him to watch every step, that memory becomes his anchor. It keeps him moving, drives him to keep searching for the rods he needs, to not give up even though the silence of this new world gnaws at him. Because Senkū is there, even if he doesn’t speak, even if he doesn’t look at him. He is, and that’s enough for Gen to keep going.

He ventures a little deeper into the thicket. He notices long, straight branches sticking out of certain shrubs and bushes. He tests the resistance of one, measures its flexibility, carefully breaking off what will serve for the trap’s frame. One after another, he gathers several until he has a small bundle tucked under his arm. The afternoon sun filters through the leaves, tinting everything in golden light that contrasts with the damp air. It is a brief moment of beauty amidst adversity.

Gen pauses for a moment, rods in hand, and sighs. The memory of Senkū doesn’t fade; it follows him like a constant echo. And for the first time since he awoke, he feels that, though loneliness weighs heavy, he isn’t entirely alone.

Gen arranges the rods he’s collected and begins working on the construction of the trap. The process is clumsy; his hands aren’t used to the roughness of manual labor, yet he forces himself to weave the branches with what patience he has left. Every creak of wood under his fingers reminds him there’s no room for mistakes: if he wants to eat, he must do this right. He twists, adjusts, ties with fibers gathered from the surroundings, and little by little the structure takes shape. The sun falls behind him, tinting the treetops a muted orange, and the humid air tells him night won’t be long in coming.

When the trap finally looks solid, he holds it in his hands and inspects it critically. It isn’t perfect, but it will do. He heads toward the river with tired steps, following the constant murmur of water that guides him. When he arrives, the current greets him with a bright reflection of the evening sky. He kneels carefully at the bank, sets the trap into the water, and secures it with an improvised rope, pulling it tight enough so the current won’t carry it away. The finished work grants him a small relief, an illusion of control in the midst of chaos.

He sits down on a nearby rock, legs pulled up and arms resting over his knees. The murmur of the water should calm him, but instead it drags him deeper into his own thoughts. His mind still circles around the morning: that sudden wave of nausea that doubled him over, that weakness that feels beyond the usual exhaustion. It doesn’t seem like food poisoning; the fruit he ate yesterday wasn’t the first time, and if that had been the cause, the effect should have been worse. A virus, maybe? Is that even possible in a world where humans spent centuries petrified? There’s no way for him to know.

He’s not a doctor. He barely knows the basics about flowers, let alone diseases. If Senkū were awake, he would already have listed a thousand possibilities, ruling them out one by one with his usual calm, with that endless reasoning that Gen never fully understood. And though he often pretended he did, the truth was that he always got lost halfway through the explanation. It didn’t matter. Senkū’s voice, more than his words, was what calmed him.

He sighs, eyes fixed on the water slowly tugging at the trap. He misses him. And it isn’t a fleeting thought or passing nostalgia: he misses him with every fiber of his being, as if his body had learned to live in the presence of that man and now struggled to function without it. What’s curious is that their relationship was never marked by grand gestures, nor by sweet words, nor by the kind of theatrical displays of affection others might consider normal in a couple. On the contrary, Senkū was never one for that. He almost seemed incapable of it, and yet it was precisely that absence of the obvious that made the small gestures engrave themselves so deeply into Gen’s memory.

He remembers long nights when Senkū worked him to the bone, letting him collapse onto the ground for barely ten minutes before dragging him back to work again. And in that exhaustion, Gen would protest, pretending to truly complain, but deep down he smiled, because he knew it was Senkū’s way of saying he trusted him, that he needed him by his side. He remembers bits of food suddenly appearing in his hands without anyone else noticing, as if it were a slip from the leader who never slipped. He remembers the way Senkū’s voice sometimes dropped ever so slightly when speaking to him, barely perceptible, but enough to make him feel different, chosen.

And he also remembers the other things, the intimate ones, what they would never have admitted in front of anyone else. Senkū was warmer in those moments, almost unrecognizable. Not in words—because even in bed he’d explain topics Gen couldn’t follow—but in gestures: in firm hands that didn’t feel so calculating, in the focus that suddenly stopped dividing between a thousand theories and centered only on him. Those private instants were a refuge. And now, sitting by the river, he misses all of it with an intensity that overwhelms him.

He smiles bitterly, thinking that not even being boyfriends spared him from labor exploitation. Senkū never believed in favoritism, not even when it came to him. And yet, he misses that too: being treated just like everyone else, being pushed to the limit because Senkū knew he could handle it, never doubting his capabilities. He misses that faith disguised as demand, that trust hidden behind curt orders. He even misses the exhaustion Senkū caused him, because in that exhaustion there was a sense of belonging, a place at his side.

The water keeps flowing, and Gen feels the silence hitting harder than ever. There’s no voice next to him explaining which microorganisms might be in the river, no one debating the best way to build the trap, no one correcting him with that impatience poorly disguised as patience. Nothing. Only him, only the water’s murmur, and the weight of solitude. And in that emptiness, Senkū’s memory becomes a gentle ghost, one that keeps him company and tortures him all at once.

A low, broken laugh escapes him. He thinks he even misses the way Senkū would raise a brow, incredulous at his antics. He misses pulling that annoyed tongue-click from him, or that half-smile that was the closest thing to laughter. He misses the absurd arguments, the long nights where he spoke of illusions and Senkū tore them apart with logic. He even misses his own failed attempts at provoking him, because Senkū rarely let himself get dragged into his games.

But above all, he misses the invisible things, the ones no one else ever saw: the fingers brushing against his under the table when they were with the others, the shoulder pressing against his with too much precision to be coincidence, the quick glances that meant nothing to anyone else but meant the world to him. They were crumbs, he knew it—crumbs of affection from a man who didn’t believe in love—but to Gen those crumbs were feasts, irrefutable proof that what they had was real.

Now, with the water tugging at the trap and the weariness sinking into his bones, he feels he misses him so much it hurts to breathe. As if the absence were lodged in his chest with every inhale. And yet, that very absence is what keeps him standing: the promise that one day he’ll hear him again, that Senkū will open his eyes and look at him with that scientific calm Gen learned to love. Until then, there’s nothing left but to wait, to catch something to survive, and to cling to memories as if they were everything the world had left him.

Night falls slowly, like a dark curtain spreading over Araxá. Gen lights a small fire with the branches he gathered earlier and lays out the fish he managed to catch. It isn’t much, barely enough for a modest dinner, but he looks at it with a satisfaction that goes beyond the material. The crackle of the meat over the flames is almost hypnotic, and the smell, though simple, intoxicates him. After days of eating only fruit, this bite feels like a luxury from another world.

When he finally brings it to his mouth, the taste couldn’t be simpler, but for him it’s glory. He chews slowly, closes his eyes, and savors every fiber. There are no seasonings, no salt, only the smoke infused into the flesh and the firm texture that reminds him he is finally eating something different, something that required effort. That single difference fills him with renewed spirit.

“See, Senkū-chan?” he says suddenly, looking at the motionless figure in the shadow of the stone, faintly lit by the fire. “I made a trap. A real one. And it worked.”

His voice is light, carrying that theatrical tone he uses to mask deeper emotions. He takes another bite of the fish and smiles, as if expecting an answer he knows won’t come.

“You should be praising me, don’t you think?” he adds, laughing to himself. “But of course, praise was never your thing. ‘The results speak for themselves,’ right?”

He pauses, and the jungle’s silence envelops him. The crackle of the flames is the only thing that accompanies his one-sided conversation. Still, Gen keeps talking, as if the lack of answers could never stop him.

“I’ve kept searching, but still nothing on Chelsea-chan or Luna-chan.” His voice drops, almost a whisper. “Tomorrow I’ll try in the opposite direction, the one I haven’t covered these past days. I don’t want you thinking I’m giving up, all right? I just… need a little more time.”

He tosses a bone into the fire and watches the flames devour it.

“With luck, they’ll still have some of the fluid,” he continues, his tone softening with a touch of hope. “That would make things so much easier, wouldn’t it? More hands, more minds, more possibilities.”

The embers hiss, and Gen lets himself fall back a little, propping himself on his palms. His gaze drifts between the fire and Senkū’s figure, as if the world had shrunk to those two points of light and shadow. And though he laughs at himself for talking to someone who can’t hear him, he doesn’t stop. Because in that moment, in that crushing solitude, speaking to Senkū—even without a reply—is the closest he can get to feeling he isn’t completely alone.

With a slow, almost ceremonial gesture, he stands and approaches Senkū’s statue. It’s never easy to move, it never has been, but he’s learned how to tip the weight just enough to avoid the risk of a fall. He drags it a little closer to the fire, close enough for the light to wash over his rigid silhouette, as if the stone could feel that warmth.

Then, he slowly takes off his coat, lays it out on the ground like a blanket, and lies down beside Senkū’s statue, close enough that the stone brushing against his arm sends a shiver through him. He pulls the fabric over himself, trying to cover as best as he can, though he knows the midnight cold will seep in anyway. He tells himself he should find a way to make cloth, something that could become a sleeping bag that shelters him better than this worn-out coat. The idea lingers in his mind, tempting and frustrating at once. Because he doesn’t know how to do it. Well, he does—Senkū’s labor exploitation taught him something—but only with hemp, and he doubts he’ll find that material in Brazil.

His eyes slide to Senkū’s tunic, now stiff, marked by years and petrification. It’s deteriorated, the tears seeming to spread little by little like wounds left unhealed. Gen wonders if it would be better to take it off, to keep it safe from the elements, to protect it from further damage. Maybe if he removed it, time would stop gnawing at it. Or maybe, on the contrary, it would only make things worse. He has no way of knowing.

“Of course you would’ve figured it out instantly,” he whispers, with a soft trace of reproach. “A list of pros and cons, a theory, a quick test, and in five minutes there’d be an answer. Me… I can only guess.”

The confession lingers in the air like invisible smoke. Gen sighs and, carefully, lays his hand on the stone cheek. The cold seeps into his fingers, harsh, unyielding, incapable of giving anything back. Still, he strokes slowly, as if he could draw from that immobile surface the warmth he misses so much.

He remembers. He remembers what it was like to feel that living skin against his own: the way Senkū laced their fingers together as if it were the most natural thing in the world, without theatrics, without explanations, just an automatic gesture that always made him tremble inside. He remembers the nights when he woke and found him closer than expected, an arm draped half across his waist as if exhaustion had betrayed that shell of distance. For anyone else it might have been an accident, but for Gen, every brush, every touch, was a gift.

He closes his eyes for a moment, surrendering to memory. He sees himself returning late to the lab, dragging his feet after hours of work his partner had assigned. Senkū barely lifted his eyes from his notes, and yet he always found a way to shift aside and make space. He never said it out loud, never dressed it in words, but that silence was an invitation. And Gen, bone-tired, would collapse at his side, because he felt that cold corner became a habitable place only thanks to his presence.

When he opens his eyes again, the fire flickers, throwing sparks across the motionless statue. The contrast between that warm memory and the mineral reality is painful. He clenches his jaw, as if the act alone could contain the sting in his chest.

“I’m doing what I can, you know?” he murmurs, adjusting himself against the hard ground. “I barely know anything. I can’t make fire without fighting for hours with wet wood and stones, I can’t build more than crooked huts, I don’t even know if this cart will last another day—but I try. I try because you would. Because you’d never stop, not even if everyone swore it was impossible.”

His own voice sounds fragile, weak against the distant hum of the jungle. He cuts himself short, the knot in his throat too tight to undo. Instead, he strokes Senkū’s cheek again, tracing the outline with his fingers as if he could memorize it more than he already does. For an instant, he lets himself imagine the stone giving way, warm skin returning, Senkū’s fingers catching his with that effortless naturalness impossible to fake.

The illusion lasts only until he hears the crack of a branch in the forest. Gen opens his eyes, tense—only to realize it’s just the wind stirring the thicket. He exhales, collapsing back against the ground, and closes his eyes again.

Little by little, exhaustion takes hold. Even amid discomfort, the insects buzzing too close, the damp seeping into every gap, his body finally gives in. Gen lies there beside Senkū, cloak over his shoulders, the fire his only guardian. Before sleep fully claims him, he still manages to whisper, his voice a blend of fatigue, tenderness, and longing:

“If you were here—really here—I’d sleep so peacefully.”

Silence answers. The fire murmurs, and the stone remains unmoved. Yet Gen smiles with his eyes closed, clinging to the memory of warmth long gone, wanting to believe that illusion will be enough to survive one more night.

Two weeks have passed since that night by the fire—two weeks that feel like an endless sentence. The forest has given him no answers: no Luna, no Chelsea, as if they’d vanished into thin air. Every search ends in circles, in traces that lead nowhere, in exhausted returns to the shelter with empty hands and a heavy heart. Gen keeps telling himself he has to continue, that stopping would mean surrender, but each day weighs heavier than the last.

Loneliness is not silent; on the contrary, it echoes inside his head like a constant refrain. He catches himself speaking to Senkū even more than before, whispering lines he once would’ve said with playful theatrics, but now they sound broken, stripped of charm. Sometimes he laughs alone, too high-pitched, too desperate, and that laugh terrifies him instead of consoling him. He feels himself fraying, his mind cracking like stone struck too hard.

And as if loneliness weren’t enough, there’s the other thing: the nausea that refuses to leave him in peace. Every morning it hits like punishment, without warning. As soon as he opens his eyes, his stomach twists violently, forcing him to double over. He vomits until there’s nothing left, and afterward, hollow, he’s left weak and pinned to the ground for hours. He can’t even stand the smell of fruit—the very food that once kept him alive. The thought of biting into one makes his stomach churn, as if his body itself were rejecting any nourishment.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” he mutters again and again, lips cracked, body shaking, throat burning.

There are no answers. No Senkū to give them, no makeshift lab, no data, no formulas. Only the vertigo of the unknown. Maybe it’s an illness. Maybe something he ate that, absurdly, took weeks to bare its claws. Or maybe… who knows. Ignorance bites harder than hunger.

These morning sicknesses rob him of entire mornings. By the time he finally manages to stand, the sun is already high, and his body feels as if he’s run miles. Energy abandons him at every step; hauling water, carrying wood, even lighting a fire feels like torment. And still, he doesn’t let himself stop entirely. He does the bare minimum, even if it’s with a dragged body and a mind wrapped in heavy fog.

The worst part is the uncertainty. If he could at least give it a name, if he knew what it was, he could trick himself into thinking of a solution—but no. Each retch, each empty heave, each day lost in weakness drags him deeper into the sense that his body is conspiring against him. And he hates it, hates it with contained fury, because he cannot afford to be weak. Not now. Not here. Not with everyone around him turned to stone.

At night, lying beside Senkū, he confesses his frustration in a low voice. He speaks of the fatigue, of how even the smell of smoke churns his stomach, of how tired he is of being useless. His words break, sometimes followed by hollow laughter, sometimes by silences that stretch too long. The statue doesn’t reply. Only the faithful fire returns a crackling echo, indifferent.

And still, Gen pushes on. Because if he doesn’t, if he gives up, what will be left? Only an empty shelter. Only statues gathering dust. Only a stone world that will swallow him without a fight.

He forces himself to stand, though his body protests every move. His legs tremble like mud, his stomach twists with that sour feeling that has haunted every morning, but he refuses to lie down one more time. Not today. He pushes into the undergrowth, stumbling, forging a path on a trail he’s never taken before. He moves almost blindly, driven by desperation that won’t let him sit still, by the inner voice screaming that he must keep searching—that if he stops, it’s all over.

The forest feels denser this way. Branches tangle, forcing him to shove them aside, insects buzz near his ears, the humid air clings to his skin. He feels suffocated, trapped, but something inside him urges him on. And then he sees it: a dull glimmer among the leaf-covered ground. He freezes, heart pounding as if it might burst. He crouches, pushes the grass aside carefully, and finds the shards of a broken jar.

Clay. Small fragments beneath the diffuse light filtering through the trees. Not just any shape—he recognizes it instantly. One of the jars Senkū used for the revival fluid. He goes still, unable to breathe, hands hovering over the fragments.

Gen swallows hard, a useless gesture that barely calms his parched throat. He looks around, searching for more, hoping maybe something usable remains. He finds nothing. The only thing that greets him when he lifts his gaze is a low mountain, a rise standing among the trees. Tall enough to be bothersome, inconvenient, absurd.

“No… there’s no way they climbed up there, right?” he whispers, his voice breaking.

Common sense screams no, that no one would climb that high on their own—but hope, stubborn and relentless, pushes him. Before he realizes, his feet are already moving, and his body follows, even as every muscle resists. He climbs clumsily, hands grasping at rocks, worn-out shoes slipping on the slope. His breath catches, the air feels too heavy, and every step seems to steal another piece of strength.

When he finally reaches the summit, he comes to a halt. The air is cooler up here, and in front of him, motionless, are Luna and Chelsea. Frozen in stone, trapped mid-gesture, so human and so alive that for an instant it feels impossible they cannot move. Gen presses a hand to his mouth and exhales a ragged sigh, as if he had been holding his breath the entire climb.

He watches them in silence, unable to step closer right away. He can’t stop thinking about how difficult it will be to bring them down without breaking them to pieces. The slope is unforgiving; one wrong step, one slip, and everything could be lost in a second. The very thought sends a shiver through him.

In the end, he forces himself to walk around, to observe from every angle, searching for any clue, any sign that might explain how on earth they ended up there. He spots the bag thrown against a rock. Picking it up, he opens it with trembling hands and rummages through the contents. Food, water, containers—but none filled with the revival fluid. Nothing else. No vial. The most important thing he manages to find is Chelsea’s map.

Gen stares at the empty bag. His breath shakes, his forehead burns with cold sweat. He snaps it shut as if he suddenly cannot bear to look at it any longer. The conclusion is unavoidable: the shattered vial at the base of the mountain had been the only one. The only one. And now it’s gone.

He buries his face in both hands and presses hard, as if that could contain the storm raging inside. For days he has walked, searched, dragged himself through the undergrowth with only one illusion to push him forward: that each step would bring him closer to reviving Senkū, to giving meaning to all this effort. And now, with Luna and Chelsea right in front of him, there is no relief. No victory. Only an unbearable frustration that crushes him from within.

He sinks to the ground, legs numb, back pressed against a rough rock. He looks at the statues, then at the sky, unsure what he feels. Anger? Grief? Relief at no longer having to search? Everything blurs into a shapeless weight pressing down on his chest. A short, dry laugh escapes him, broken, fading far too quickly.

“At the end… what for?” he whispers, barely audible, his eyes fixed on the gray sky. “For nothing… absolutely nothing.”

The wind stirs the branches, but there is no reply. Only the eternal silence of the statues, mute witnesses to his defeat.

Gen finishes arranging Chelsea and Luna beside the others. Kneeling before them, his gaze runs across their stone bodies, the frozen expressions that once belonged to living people. The air hangs heavy, damp, and for an instant he feels as though all these statues are silently watching him, judging him for still standing. He sighs, a hoarse groan of exhaustion slipping out, and without looking back, he begins the walk back to the shelter.

Every step weighs on him. He has spent days searching, dragging himself along paths he never imagined crossing, enduring waves of nausea, nights of cold, and a silence that threatens to tear him apart. And now that he has finally found them, there is no satisfaction. Only a strange emptiness, as though all his effort has led to nothing. No fluid, no triumph—just more stones lined up, and the certainty that every move only pulls him deeper into exhaustion.

When he enters the shelter, the first thing he sees is Senkū’s statue, still and serene, that implacable calm etched onto his face. Gen approaches with heavy movements, as if every muscle betrayed him, and without thinking, he lies down beside it. He wraps his arms around him, presses his chest against the cold stone surface, and squeezes his eyes shut. He tries to trick his mind, to force himself to believe there is warmth, that there is life, that Senkū is still there answering with a distracted murmur or an annoyed gesture disguised as affection. But the cold seeps into his skin, reminding him that it’s all a lie.

He clenches his teeth. He wants to cry, but even that is gone. Too much time has passed bottling up every tear, every sob, until he dried up inside. All that remains is that bitter fatigue, that frustration swelling in his chest with no escape. He strokes the stone surface gently, as if the friction could restore the texture of Senkū’s skin, that warmth he misses so desperately.

Then he notices something different. A strange bulge beneath the worn fabric of Senkū’s coat. His heart leaps, as though something deep inside suddenly woke up. Clumsily, he fumbles through the folds until he pulls out a handful of crumpled sheets. In the dim light lingering from the day, he can barely make them out, but he recognizes the handwriting instantly. Formulas. Numbers. Diagrams.

Gen laughs. It bursts out abruptly, almost painful in his empty stomach. He laughs because he can’t believe it, because it’s so absurd and yet so perfectly logical that Senkū would have thought of this too.

“Of course… of course you’d think of everything,” he mumbles, clutching the papers against his chest, his laughter breaking into something far too close to a sob.

The formula is there, clear, as though it had been waiting for him. The recipe for the revival fluid. Gen scans it over and over, eyes burning from tension, from fatigue, from the certainty that there’s no escape. He has seen Senkū prepare it before, listened to the explanations—but always with the security that he would never have to do it himself. The genius had always been there, the brilliant mind, the tireless scientist. And now there’s only him, a worn-out mentalist, a man who barely knows how to improvise to survive.

The paper trembles in his hands. He wants to believe he can do it, that all he needs is to try, but the truth gnaws at him mercilessly: he is not Senkū. He never will be. And that truth hits so hard it nearly knocks the breath out of him.

“Do you really think I can pull this off?” he asks in a trembling whisper, searching the statue’s eyes for an impossible answer.

The stone does not respond. Gen presses his lips together, swallows hard, and lets out another weak, broken laugh, dragged out by despair.

“You’re giving me so much trouble…” he mutters, resting his forehead against Senkū’s cold shoulder. “It was always you, always you solving everything, always you with your impossible plans… and now you leave me with this.”

He stays there, in silence, clinging to the statue as if afraid it might vanish, the crumpled paper trembling in his hand. The fire crackles softly, filling the cabin with a faint glow that barely pushes back the chill seeping through him. Gen exhales, long and weary, and closes his eyes. He doesn’t know how he’ll manage it, or even if he can—but he has no choice. It’s this, or giving up.

And giving up was never an option.

Chapter Text

Morning doesn’t come gently; it crashes down on Gen’s shoulders with an unbearable weight the moment he opens his eyes. For a few seconds he stays still, sprawled on the cold floor of the shelter, hoping the nausea is just a bad dream. But it comes back, violent and relentless, like a wave that won’t stop shoving his body to its limit. It takes him a while to sit up. He plants his hands on the ground and breathes with effort, sweat beading on his forehead even though the breeze is freezing. He stays seated, hunched over, as if the posture itself could hold him together. Outside, the sounds of the forest announce another indifferent day—another day that won’t pause for him, even if everything inside feels like it’s collapsing.

Beside him, Senkū’s papers are spread out, creased from the nervous pressure of his fingers. He goes over them again and again, as if some magical answer he hasn’t seen yet might appear through repetition. The technical terms blur together: nitric acid, alcohol, Ostwald, voltaic arc. Three different paths, three methods that feel more like cruel trials than anything someone like him could ever succeed at. And yet there they are, written in Senkū’s steady handwriting, as if he’d carved the way out in stone. Gen lets himself fall back a little, rests his head against the rigid torso of the statue, and exhales a breath heavy with exhaustion and frustration.

He looks at the formulas, then at Chelsea’s map—paper marked with routes and notes that now feels like an ownerless treasure. Both lie on the ground like symbols of hope, but all they give him is an unbearable vertigo. He rubs his temples with his fingers and, miserable as he feels, forces a crooked smile. Humor has always been his instinct when everything else fails. This time will be no exception.

“Hey, Senkū-chan…” he murmurs softly, his tone somewhere between a joke and a reproach. “You didn’t leave me pregnant, did you?”

The laugh that escapes him is short, broken, almost a hollow echo that dies too quickly. He immediately clutches his stomach, as if his own body punishes him for daring to laugh through the dizziness. He closes his eyes and, in a whisper barely audible, adds:

“That would be a pretty convenient explanation…”

When he opens his eyes again, he stares at the statue’s unmoving hands, at the cold stone that should be moving, filling all this chaos with logic. His smile fades, replaced by the hard voice of reason.

“Of course not,” he answers himself, shaking his head. “My uterus doesn’t work. It never did.”

The weight of that truth hits harder than he expects. The word uterus still feels uncomfortable, a cruel reminder of a body that never fit into the simple categories people insist on maintaining. His fingers tighten around the papers. What could he expect from an organism that was always upside down? First the situs inversus—that diagnosis that had marked him as long as he could remember. Organs in the wrong places, a mirrored body, incomprehensible even to doctors. And then the discovery of the other thing, that organ found by accident, a shameful secret that stripped away any chance of feeling normal.

The memories come unbidden. He remembers the sensation the first time someone used that word in front of him—uterus—as if they had uncovered a truth he had never asked to carry. He was a child, and even then he felt strange, defective, as if built from the wrong pieces. They tried to examine him, analyze him, classify him, and in the end the conclusion was cold, scientific, distant: it didn’t work, it was useless, it would never fulfill the function its name defined. That sentence haunted him, making him doubt himself, his identity, his worth. And now, so many years later, it still weighs on him like an invisible chain.

The memory of Magma strikes too—the brutality of that blow, the sharp pain that stole his breath, the certainty he wouldn’t make it, and the image of Senkū leaning over him, calculating, checking him, diagnosing in seconds what others would never have noticed. Senkū saw it, understood it without anyone explaining. His eyes read him like an open book. From that moment on, Gen knew he could hide nothing from him, because Senkū would always see beyond appearances. And instead of disdain, he received care, attention, an improvised cure that kept him alive. That contrast between harsh truth and the comfort of those expert hands still disarms him.

Gen lets out a long sigh, clutching the papers to his chest as if he could draw strength from them. The nausea doesn’t ease; the fatigue is rooted deep in his bones. All he can do is laugh again, a fragile sound that breaks halfway through.

“If it were you, Senkū-chan…” His voice trembles. “You’d already know what’s wrong with me. You’d explain it with impossible words and then fix it with your formulas. All I do is… talk pretty. What good is smooth talk when my body is falling apart?”

He stays silent for a while, listening to the monotonous hum of insects outside, the faint creak of wind through the branches. Everything seems so normal, so alive, it hurts to think that for him nothing is. The world moves on, indifferent to his sickness, his doubts, the despair eating him alive. And in that silence, the only certainty is that he has no choice. Either he learns to turn those formulas into something real, or he resigns himself to losing Senkū and everyone else forever.

But right now, with his stomach churning, his forehead beaded with sweat, and his heart tight with frustration, all he can do is curl up against the rigid statue and pretend to receive a comfort that will never come.

He tries to breathe deeply, pressing a hand to his abdomen, but the letters on the papers blur in front of him. He blinks several times to focus, but the lines dance, mix, the chemical words mocking his ignorance. He swallows hard, bites his lower lip. “Hold on, just a bit more,” he tells himself silently, trying to trick his body. But the burn in his throat rises, the nausea swells like a wave that won’t stop.

Suddenly, without time to think, he shoves the papers aside and stands up too fast, almost tripping over his own feet. He staggers out of the shelter, covering his mouth with his hand, and as soon as he crosses the entrance, he bends forward. The retch doubles him over. He vomits onto the earth, a bitter, acidic mix that burns his throat and brings tears to his eyes. The harsh sound mingles with his ragged breathing; each spasm drags out an involuntary moan, a whimper both physical and emotional.

He stays hunched over, one hand gripping the wall of his shelter, gasping with his fingers digging into the wood. Cold sweat runs down his back and his legs tremble. He spits to the side, trying to clear the metallic taste in his mouth. He can’t help speaking out loud in a thin voice:

“Today… today it’s worse… it’s never been this strong…”

He straightens a little, though his stomach still churns and his head feels light, and he trudges back into the shelter. He drops to his knees beside Senkū’s statue, picking up the papers with trembling hands. He leans against the cold stone for a moment, breathing slowly. His other hand rests on his abdomen, rubbing it in an automatic, desperate gesture, as if he could soothe the storm inside. He closes his eyes and murmurs, barely audible:

“I can’t keep going like this…”

But he opens them again and forces himself to focus on the formulas. He starts reviewing each one meticulously, though tears gather at the corners of his eyes more from frustration than from physical pain. The first formula—the Ostwald method. He knows Senkū uses it, remembers it perfectly. He’s seen him explain it so easily, like boiling water. Catalysts, precise temperatures, controlled reactions. Everything exact, methodical… impossible for him. Just reading it overwhelms him. He tries to picture himself replicating it, and the image is absurd. If he tries, it’ll be a disaster. And even if by some miracle he finishes it, how would he know it’s right? What if the fluid is wrong and ends up hurting someone instead of saving them? That possibility alone makes him grit his teeth and shove the paper aside.

The second formula—the voltaic arc method. At first it looks less complicated, more direct. His eyes scan the diagrams, the notes, and for an instant he thinks he could get it. But as he reads, he realizes it needs electric power—more than he could produce with his rudimentary means. Senkū always made everything seem possible, but Gen, facing the same steps, sees only a wall of impossibilities. He rubs his temples and mutters:
“No… not this either… I’ve got no way to do it.”

He discards that paper too. Only the third remains—the rudimentary method. His eyes fix on the handwritten lines. It’s simpler, yes. More within reach for someone like him. Collect, mix, wait. Patience as a tool, nature as an ally. It’s doable. No machines, no precise calculations, no catalysts. He could do it, but…

Gen crushes the paper between his fingers. A year. At least a full year to produce enough acid. A year of tending a process that could fail at any moment. A year without Senkū—without seeing him, without hearing his voice. A year of waiting with a churning stomach and gnawing uncertainty, day after day. And that’s only if it works the first time.

The thought hits him hard. His chest tightens, his breath shortens. Tears well up in his eyes and his lashes tremble. Just thinking about it makes him want to throw up again. He clutches his stomach with both hands, as if to stop the nausea and the pain of despair alike. He presses his lips together to keep from sobbing, but the words escape in a trembling thread:

“A year… at least a year… how am I supposed to last that long?”

The knot in his throat feels as strong as the one in his stomach. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears. He breathes deep, but only succeeds in making the nausea surge again, that sharp sensation running up his esophagus. He leans forward a little, gasping, fighting not to throw up again. He stays like that, curled up, the paper crumpled in his fingers, his knuckles white from gripping so hard.

The silence of the shelter weighs like lead. Senkū’s statue, unmoving, seems to stare at him, and Gen feels a mix of rage and sadness so vast he can barely breathe. He strikes the ground with his fist once, weakly—more a gesture of helplessness than anger. Then, in a broken whisper, he speaks to the stone:

“You’re giving me so much work, you know? And I… I don’t know if I can do it.”

His voice cracks, and in that instant he feels smaller, more exhausted, more defeated than ever. He hugs the papers to his chest, his other hand rubbing his stomach in a futile attempt to calm the nausea and the emptiness. Outside, the world goes on, indifferent. Inside, Gen fights not to break completely.

The only thing Gen can do is wait. He forces himself to stay still until the sun climbs higher and the humid forest air begins to warm. It isn’t until the afternoon that his body finally gives him a slight reprieve—just enough for that constant weight in his throat to ease. Not that the nausea disappears entirely, because it doesn’t. It lingers, crouched like a predator, but at least he no longer feels as though he’s about to collapse at any second. He takes advantage of the fragile respite to sit on the ground again with Senkū’s papers spread out in front of him.

He breathes deeply, analyzing the situation, calmer now than he was in the morning. He doesn’t look at it with the same desperate urgency of someone about to vomit, but rather with the weariness of a man who’s accepted he has no way out. His fingers slide over Senkū’s notes until they land on the third method. The rudimentary one. The only one possible for someone like him.

He rereads it slowly, word for word, as if trying to engrave the steps into memory. Plant ash and excrement. Mix them. Bury them. Water them. Wait a year. That’s it. No complicated equipment, no formulas that sound like magic. Simple. Too simple, he thinks, and that’s exactly why it feels humiliating. An entire year spent tending to buried shit like some lunatic gardener. He drags a hand down his face, lets out a bitter laugh, and rests his head against Senkū’s statue.

“Really, my dear scientist?” he mutters, lips twisted in a grimace. “You leave me with the method that’s literally shit and ashes? You’re cruel even petrified.”

Despite the joking tone, he can’t help his stomach from churning again—though this time more from disgust than nausea. The thought of handling that much excrement fills him with revulsion. He’s never been good with those things; even fishing had been nearly unbearable. And now he has to dirty his hands like this. I’ll do it… I’ll do it if it’s what’s needed, he repeats inwardly, even though his face contorts like he’s choking it down.

He focuses on the ash. At least that part is manageable: straw, wood, plants. He can gather it. He remembers Senkū’s explanations, the gleam in his eyes when he spoke of how even the most useless things could be transformed into raw material. The notes mention shells too—that’s important, and he knows he has no choice but to find them. He sits silently for a moment, weighing his options, then his gaze falls on Chelsea’s map lying to one side. He picks it up carefully, almost reverently, like a treasure.

His eyes trace the lines, the marks, the routes. There it is: the solution. Guano. Birds. The droppings they leave piled on the rocks. Disgusting, yes, but with the advantage that he can collect it in bulk without chasing animals or wasting days searching. He thinks it over, frowning, then nods to himself.

“Shit is shit, isn’t it?” he says sarcastically, though his voice trembles faintly. “If Senkū-chan didn’t specify, it must mean any kind will work. Bats, birds, whatever…”

He sits a while longer with the map spread across his lap, tracing the routes with his finger. It’s not too far. He could go and come back in a single day, but he’d need to leave early. If he went now, with the sun already past its zenith, he’d risk being caught by nightfall on the road—and he refuses that risk. Sleeping outside without proper preparation would be a fatal mistake, especially with his body this weak. Just imagining it exhausts him before he even takes the first step. So he decides: not today. Tomorrow, with first light, when he has the whole day ahead of him to go and return without the danger of darkness.

He lets himself fall back, rests his head against the stone again, and rubs his stomach with one hand, trying to soothe the lingering unease. He doesn’t know if it’s hunger, fatigue, or the echo of the miserable morning, but the gesture feels like it might give him strength. He looks at the statue, at Senkū’s frozen expression, and smiles bitterly.

“I’ll leave at dawn tomorrow,” he says quietly, as if promising it to him. “I’ll bring shells, plenty of straw, and as much guano as I can carry. If something goes wrong, at least I’ll have what I need to try again.”

He closes his eyes, lets that resolve weigh on his chest. The thought of the trip fills him with doubts, yes, but he has no alternative. Not if he wants to see Senkū again. Not if he wants to hear that voice full of certainties that always pulled him back from despair. He opens his eyes, looks again at the papers, at the map, and whispers:

“It’s a short trip, yes… but I’ll need strength anyway. Tomorrow, with the light, I’ll do it.”

Curling closer against the statue, wrapping one arm around it, for the first time in days he feels he’s made a concrete decision, even if it’s a bitter one. Tomorrow, at dawn, it will begin.

The next morning greets him with the same torture as always: relentless nausea that wakes him even before the sun has fully risen. Gen presses a hand to his stomach, as if his palm could tame the storm inside, but there’s no reprieve. Even so, he gets up, because he can’t stay in the shelter waiting for the sickness to fade on its own. It won’t—not for hours. He has to move, to push forward, and he knows it.

The trek to the place drains him faster than expected. His breath grows ragged, his skin slick with the sticky sweat he hates. He loathes feeling like this, like each step drags him deeper into discomfort, but when he finally arrives and sees it—the lone rock in the middle of the water, coated in the whitish remains of thousands of birds—the disgust slams into him full force. He freezes, lips pressed tight, throat constricted, as though just looking at it is enough to make him gag.

The guano isn’t right on the shore but further out, layered thick on a rock in the water. Gen stands at the edge, staring at that pale blotch smothering the stone, and the mere sight triggers a reflex in his throat. Swimming isn’t impossible, he knows, but it wouldn’t be wise. Not with his weakened body, not with the nausea that’s plagued him since dawn, and especially not if he’ll have to carry the load back. The only logical choice is to build something to cross.

He lets out a long sigh and kneels by the shore. With still-trembling hands, he gathers thick branches, waterlogged wood dragged by the current, anything that might serve as a floating base. His face twists with distaste at the mud cramming beneath his nails, but he doesn’t stop. Piece by piece, he arranges them, binds them with cords braided from grasses, twists plant fibers however he can. The result isn’t elegant, nor stable, but it floats—and that’s all that matters.

Halfway through, he strips off his sweater and yukata, folding them to the side. The heat has turned suffocating, and every movement makes him sweat more. He feels the damp fabric cling to his skin, and he hates it. He always hated sweating, even in the old days, and now the stickiness irritates him so much he scowls with each drop rolling down his forehead. But he persists. Tightens the last knots, tests the raft with his foot. When it holds, he allows himself a brief, tired smile: it works, at least for now.

The memory of yesterday’s afternoon flickers. He had forced himself to build a clay furnace near his shelter, thinking of the plant ash, the shells, the straw he’d need. A small, tangible victory, a breath amid all the uncertainty. But now, faced with the rock whitened by layers upon layers of excrement, that victory feels overshadowed by what awaits.

Excrement. Birds. Stench. Every corner of it repels him.

Even so, he carefully eases the raft into the water, places the clay vessel and the heavy axe he’d salvaged from Stanley’s men atop it, and climbs on slowly, as though each move might shatter its fragile balance. Sitting down, he grips the makeshift paddle and dips it into the water. The splash greets him with a wave of brine mixed with the pestilence wafting from the rock, and immediately his stomach lurches.

But he refuses to turn back. He can’t.

The first stroke catches him off guard. The wood creaks, water sloshes beneath the raft, and the sway that follows churns his stomach like an explosive mix inside him. He clenches his teeth, leans forward slightly, and takes a deep breath, trying to steady the dizziness. No, not now, he thinks fiercely. He’s faked strength all morning, his hands trembling. He won’t fold here, in the middle of the water, he won’t vomit over the paddle and weaken himself further before he’s even arrived.

Every stroke becomes a titanic effort. Not because of the distance—the rock isn’t that far—but because nausea, heat, and disgust conspire to make him feel like he’s rowing in circles. Sweat blurs his eyes. He wipes it away with the back of his hand, a harsh gesture, and mutters under his breath, as though needing to hear himself to stay upright:

“Forward… There’s no choice, no other choice…”

The guano-covered rock creeps closer, and with it, the stench thickens. The air grows heavy with a suffocating mix of ammonia, dampness, and rot that sticks to his throat. His stomach contracts violently, almost folding him in two. He squeezes his eyes shut, grips the paddle harder, forcing himself not to think about what’s ahead. The water’s motion jolts him, his stomach flips, and he has to pause, leaning over the raft’s side, gasping as though he’ll vomit again at any second.

But he doesn’t. Not yet.

He clings to the thought that he has no other option. If he freezes on the shore, paralyzed by disgust, he’ll never move forward. Senkū, if he were here, would have already filled several jars without a single complaint, laughing at how “useless” a squeamish mentalist can be. That thought, cruel as it is, sparks the pride Gen needs to endure.

He knows he’s working in miserable conditions—that dizzy, weak, exhausted like this, everything will be harder—but he has no choice. Time is all he has. And time is the heaviest weight pressing down on him: a year at minimum to attempt the rudimentary method, a year that could be wasted entirely if he makes a mistake. The thought alone knots his insides as tightly as the nausea.

Still, he doesn’t stop. He rows slowly, clumsily, but steadily, swallowing every breath of contaminated air, every pulse of dizziness, every bead of sticky sweat running down his back. The disgust never fades, but it turns into a brutal reminder: no matter how much he hates it, he has no other way forward.

And so he advances.

The edge of the rock rises before him, a jagged wall coated in an uneven, whitish crust that gleams in the sunlight. Gen halts the raft with a sharp jab of the pole against stone, careful not to lose balance. For a few seconds, he sits there, breath ragged. The stench is stronger than ever, suffocating, invading his nose and lodging in his throat. His stomach seizes with a harsh spasm that nearly doubles him over. He shuts his eyes, holds his breath, and braces on the raft’s edge to push himself onto the rock.

Every movement is clumsy, unsteady. The surface is slick under his feet, the sun beating down on his neck, soaking him with sweat instantly. But there’s no room for hesitation. He sets the jar down, takes up the axe, and begins hacking at the hardened layers. The metallic clang echoes hollow, followed by small chunks breaking off and clattering into the vessel. It’s not quick work. He scrapes and strikes again and again until larger slabs snap free with a dry crack. Each piece releases a new wave of concentrated stench that rips through his insides.

Sweat runs down his forehead, his back, mixing with the dust and grime until he feels filthy, sticky, like the dirt has seeped into his skin. His breathing quickens, dizziness blurs his vision, but he grits his teeth and presses on. The vessel slowly fills, and with each chunk that falls, a strange relief comes with it. It’s revolting, yes, but it’s progress. Proof he’s moving forward. He secures it with the lid, handling it with both hands as if it held something fragile and precious.

The return is even harder. Climbing back onto the raft with the vessel full forces him to move slowly, with exaggerated concentration so he doesn’t trip or spill anything. Balance becomes a challenge: each time the raft sinks a little to one side, the water slaps against the edge and makes him fear it will all overturn. With effort he manages to steady himself and begins to row. The repetitive motion drives needles into his weary arms. He keeps his eyes fixed on the shore, advancing inch by inch. He knows a single mistake could cost him the work of an entire day, and that makes him slower, more cautious, more desperate to reach solid ground.

When the raft finally touches land, the accumulated tension drains from him all at once. He takes one step, then another, and as soon as his feet hit the earth he can’t hold back any longer. He bends forward suddenly and vomits, his body racked by spasms that tear the air from his lungs. The acidic taste burns his mouth and nose, and he remains hunched over his knees, gasping with tears in his eyes. There’s no way to pretend he can keep going as if nothing happened. The dizziness clouds his head, his throat burns, and he barely has the strength to stay upright.

The first thing he thinks, between ragged breaths, is that he can’t go into the water like this. Swimming would be suicide. He has no choice but to wait until it passes, even if the time slips away like sand through his fingers. And meanwhile, he has to make the most of what he can.

With trembling hands, he sets the vessel firmly on the sand in a safe spot where it won’t tip over. Then he takes the fish trap he brought with him and approaches the water’s edge. He lowers it carefully, fastening it with a knot to a large stone. The river cradles the object, and Gen allows himself the small illusion that, in a while, something might get caught in there and at least guarantee him a meal.

His gaze then falls on his clothes. The smell, the dampness, the filth are unbearable; every movement makes him feel covered in a sticky layer that only worsens his nausea. He decides at least he can rinse them out a little. He walks a few steps away from where he left the trap and, patiently, strips off his garments and dips them in the water. He rubs them against themselves, without soap, without real strength, just enough for the worst grime to dissolve and be carried away by the current. The cold water makes him shiver, but it also soothes him, as if the mechanical act itself could distract him from the sickness.

When he finishes, he improvises a clothesline with branches, stones, and part of the rope. It’s nothing elaborate, just a crooked frame, but enough for the wind to begin its work. With that done, he collapses onto a nearby rock. His body is still shaking and the dizziness hasn’t completely lifted. He rests his elbow on his knee and covers his face with one hand, breathing slowly in an attempt to ease the nausea. Then, almost without thinking, his free hand drifts to his lower abdomen. It feels tense, harder than he remembered, a strange rigidity that unsettles him. He doesn’t know whether to blame it on the effort, on hunger, or on some other reason he can’t grasp. The doubt lingers in his mind, but he has no energy to dwell on it.

A few hours later, Gen is back in his shelter. The air inside feels less suffocating than in the morning, maybe because his body, though still weak, has found a somewhat steadier rhythm. In front of him is the vessel with the guano, already dry and fragmented, and a large stone he uses as an improvised mortar. Patiently, he pounds it, strike after strike, until the hardened slabs turn into a whitish powder. The smell is still penetrating, revolting, but after what he endured on the bird-infested rock, it no longer overwhelms him to the point of gagging. Now he endures it with a twisted grimace, like someone fulfilling an unavoidable penance. From time to time he mutters complaints under his breath, exaggerating his sighs and laments as if Senkū could hear him.

“You know what, Senkū-chan?” he murmurs with sarcasm, shoving with his tired arm to reduce another piece of guano to dust. “When you wake up… you’re going to owe me an ice-cold soda. That’s the bare minimum. And with enough fizz to sting my nose.”

He pauses, lets the stone drop with a dull thud onto the mixture, and exhales a weary snort. He wipes the sweat from his forehead, wearing a smile that leans more toward complaint than humor.

“And don’t you dare come at me with formulas and calculations when I ask. You’ll hand me the soda and say, ‘cheers, Gen,’ like a gentleman. That’s it.”

The thought, absurd as it is in the middle of the stench, draws a low chuckle out of him, lasting only a second before fading into a long sigh. The whitish powder accumulates before him, and his gaze drifts toward the ash stored in another container. They still need to be mixed, buried, the process begun that will define the coming months. A part of him wants to put it off, to rest even for a while, but he knows he has no time. And yet, in the middle of that responsibility, his mind makes a sudden, unexpected turn: it thinks of something else.

Food.

Not an improvised meal of fish or some charred tuber, but real food. Food from the old era. The image strikes him vivid, so clear he can almost taste it: a hamburger. Soft bread, juicy meat, melted cheese, crisp lettuce, the smell of the hot griddle mixing grease and spices. His mouth waters just from imagining it, and immediately he growls, annoyed at himself.

“Damn it…” he mutters, letting his head fall back and closing his eyes in frustration. “Why now…?”

He knows François could prepare it, he remembers it like a flash from a dream too far away—when they had just arrived in America. That mastery of hers, turning ordinary ingredients into a feast, was, in its own way, another form of science. And now, with his stomach empty and exhaustion in his bones, that image cuts into him like a wound. The hamburger becomes an impossible symbol: a craving that makes him sigh in anger, because he wants the taste, the texture, the satisfaction of something that actually calms his hunger instead of just keeping him alive.

He rubs his abdomen in an unconscious gesture, as if his body itself were stubbornly demanding what he can’t provide. The sound of his own fingers against the rough fabric of the yukata feels almost unbearable, reminding him that the only things within reach are powdered excrement, ashes, and a map full of pending tasks.

“It’s cruel…” he whispers, gazing at Senkū’s statue with a bitter smile. “Here I am, dreaming of burgers while I stir up shit. You must be laughing your head off in there.”

The silence of the shelter wraps around him, and for a moment Gen remains still, contemplating the wrinkled notes, the guano dust, the ashes ready to be mixed. His body feels tired, empty, but his mind won’t stop. Amid frustration, hunger, and despair, there’s also a thin thread of resolve. For all his complaints, for all his mockery, he knows he’ll keep going. Because he has no other choice. Because Senkū left it written down as if for a clumsy disciple. Because time doesn’t wait.

He presses his open hand down on the papers, feels them crumple beneath his trembling fingers. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, as if by doing so he could hold on to a shred of calm in all the chaos. The imaginary taste of the hamburger still fills his mouth, and the anger of not having it mixes with a bitter determination: if he endures all this, if he survives the year ahead, if he manages to free Senkū from stone, then he’ll be able to demand that meal. He’ll be able to demand more than that.

A broken, brief laugh escapes him, fading quickly in the echo of the hut. He doesn’t have the strength to laugh for real, but the spark is enough to keep him moving. He picks up the stone again, grinds the guano back into powder, and without looking back begins to mix it with the ashes. Outside, the forest continues its routine, indifferent. Inside, Gen clings to an impossible desire, to the absurd promise of an ice-cold soda and a juicy hamburger, as if in those whims he could concentrate all the meaning of what he’s doing.

The light of sunset slants into the shelter, tinting the wrinkled notes, the particles floating in the air, the unmoving surface of the statue with gold. Gen sighs, runs a hand over his tired face, and allows himself one last thought before surrendering fully to the task: “Someday… I’ll taste it again. And that day, all of this will have been worth it.”

The shelter falls silent, except for the constant, rhythmic sound of the stone grinding what will soon be buried. Outside, life goes on. Inside, Gen works—stomach twisted, lips parched, but with an absurd promise shining like a spark in the dark.

Chapter Text

It’s been a month since Gen prepared the nitric acid mixture and buried it, just as he’d read in Senkū’s explanations. Every morning, with an almost ritual discipline, he waters the mounds with the exact amount of river water he collected the day before. He does it without hurry, without immediate hope—just out of inertia, guided by the impulse to keep alive that small chemical process that could one day return a piece of the lost future. Patience has become a way to survive.

With nothing more interesting to do, he’s tried to improve his surroundings, convinced that if he doesn’t move, if he doesn’t transform something, he’ll eventually crumble. His shelter—once a makeshift space—now looks more like a home. A small, quiet, precarious home, but his nonetheless. Gen sawed wooden planks with a clumsiness that at first felt absurd, until his hands learned the rhythm, the resistance of each fiber. He hammered, polished, assembled—and when he finally covered the floor, he felt a timid satisfaction, as if the simple act of walking on something solid were a victory. Sleeping on wood instead of sinking into the earth every night changed his mood more than he was willing to admit. Sometimes, when he wakes, he runs his hand over the floor just to make sure it’s still there—tangible, firm, real.

He even managed to make soap. It was much harder than he expected—not because of the process itself, but because of what it forced him to remember. He had to dig through his memory for Senkū’s words, the ones he’d heard so many times without truly paying attention. He remembered his voice explaining the process, the calculations, the chemical principles behind something so ordinary. «Soap is our doctor in that world of stone,» Senkū had once told him, and Gen had mocked him for giving something so banal such importance. Now he understands what he meant. It took him weeks to obtain sodium carbonate and the right proportions of oil; he failed several times, burned his fingers, cursed the fire—but at last, he succeeded. When he held that first rough, misshapen bar of soap in his hands, a short, incredulous laugh escaped him, followed by a long silence. In that soft, gray piece there was proof that he was still capable of creating, of remembering, of making something work with his own hands.

Then, with the same care he would devote to a ritual, he used the soap to wash himself. The water ran over his skin as if it were washing away weeks of exhaustion, of dust, of the dirt that had built up in the folds of time. The faint, acidic scent of the soap mingled with the air, and Gen felt, for the first time in a long while, that he was still human. That he wasn’t just a shadow moving among ruins. That feeling, more than the soap itself, was what pushed him to keep going.

With the same intent, he decided to care for the clothes of his petrified companions. He couldn’t stand seeing how the fabric withered on their motionless bodies. He removed each piece with almost reverent delicacy, carried them to the river, and washed them one by one—scrubbing hard, rinsing patiently, spreading them out over the sun-warmed stones. Each shirt, each pair of pants, each dress, each scrap of cloth became a way of keeping them present, of protecting them from decay, of not letting them fade away completely. When he folded them and stored them inside his shelter, clean and neatly arranged, he felt less alone. As if, somehow, they were still there with him.

His diet hasn’t changed much. He can only eat fruit, fish, and little else. He’s tried hunting, but the idea of killing something larger than a fish still unsettles him. There are no rabbits in this area, and the birds have humiliated him more than once, escaping his clumsy aim. Even so, he manages. He’s learned to ration the fruit, to waste nothing. He knows he doesn’t have many options, but routine has become his ally: hunger softens when you grow used to repetition.

The good thing is he no longer feels nauseous. It’s been a full week since he’s woken up without that morning twist in his gut, without the vertigo or the sense that his body is betraying him. The bad thing is that, without the discomfort, his mind now has room again for longing. Sometimes, while eating a tasteless fruit or chewing on a cold piece of fish, his memory betrays him. It brings back, with cruel clarity, the taste of toasted bread, the smell of tea, the sound of oil sizzling—things that no longer exist. He laughs to himself when that happens, though the sound is hollow. It’s a strange kind of torment to crave something that no longer exists in the world—or at least not within reach.

Time, meanwhile, has grown thick. The days blur together without clear order. Gen marks their passing with lines on a plank, though he’s already lost track of the real count. Sometimes he thinks he hears voices in the forest or footsteps near the river, but he knows it’s only the wind or the murmur of the water. Still, he talks out loud, comments on what he’s doing, gives shape to his thoughts. «The acid should be ready soon,» he sometimes mutters, though he knows there’s nearly a year to go. «The river’s lower today». He says it out of habit—because if he didn’t, the silence would devour him.

Gen walks down to the river to bathe and catch some fish. His body feels heavy; he drags his feet through the damp soil that clings between his toes. The midday light falls at an angle, filtered through the branches, and each step leaves a dark imprint in the mud. The air smells of iron and rotting leaves. In the distance, the water murmurs—steady, constant—the same sound that has accompanied him for weeks, and that, despite everything, still manages to soothe his mind a little.

When he arrives, he sets the jars aside and leans over the stream. His reflection wavers with every ripple—pale, tired, almost unrecognizable. He calmly sets the fish trap, ties the rope around a rock, and makes sure it’s secure. He watches the water rock it gently as threads of light break across the surface. It’s a mechanical gesture, repeated so many times he no longer needs to think about it. Everything he does has become like that—automatic, silent, devoid of emotion.

When he’s done, he undresses slowly. He folds his clothes and lays them on a rock, away from the dampness. The touch of the air on his skin makes him shiver slightly. He takes a few steps toward the center of the river, feeling the bottom with his feet, until the water reaches his waist. The first contact is always brutal. The cold steals his breath, tightens his chest, bites up to his shoulders—but he doesn’t stop. He closes his eyes and submerges completely. For a moment, he remains suspended in that liquid silence, then surfaces with a long exhale, letting the sunlight strike his face.

At first, bathing in that river was punishment. Now, it’s the only thing that still anchors him to the present. He rubs the soap between his hands until it foams and runs it over his arms, his neck, his back. His body reacts slowly, as if every muscle were waking with resistance. When his hands move down toward his abdomen, he feels something different—a barely noticeable curve, a subtle roundness that hadn’t been there before. He goes still.

The water keeps flowing around him, indifferent. Gen stares at his blurred reflection and feels the world stop for an instant. His breath catches. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or curse. In the end, he chooses the first.

“I’ve eaten too much,” he says, his laugh sounding hollow, fragile, as if the words were nothing more than an excuse to fill the air.

But even he doesn’t believe it. The smile fades before it reaches his eyes. He pulls his hands away from his belly with a sharp, almost rejecting motion, and focuses again on the soap, on his skin, on the tangible—on anything that isn’t that thought starting to form at the back of his mind. He finishes his bath in silence.

He leaves the river with his body numb. The air bites at his skin, but he doesn’t dry off right away—he prefers to let the sun do the work. He sits on a flat stone, knees bent, and lets the warmth stroke his back. Every droplet sliding down his skin catches the light. He watches the river’s current, how it drags leaves, branches, insects—everything too weak to resist its pull. For a moment, he envies the river’s way of going on—of moving forward without thinking, without clinging to anything.

When his skin starts to burn, he stands. He focuses on filling the jars, one by one, careful to collect only clear water, free of sediment. He covers them with large leaves and ties them securely with braided cord. This will be the water he uses to feed the acid—and also the water he drinks. He mentally calculates how long it will last, always rationing, always trying to prevent the next effort.

Then he returns to the trap. The rope is taut, and as he pulls, the weight confirms what he expected. Inside, a large fish is still struggling to break free. He watches it for a moment, expressionless, until its movements grow weak and desperate. He waits for the body to give in. When it finally does, he pulls it out and lays it on a smooth rock. The blade of the knife flashes for a second before sinking into the flesh. The body trembles, arches, then falls still.

Gen wipes the blood away with his hand and lets it flow into the river. The red dissolves quickly, devoured by the current. He feels no guilt—only exhaustion. He cuts open the fish’s belly, removes the entrails, tosses them into the water, and watches them float for a moment before they sink. The metallic scent mixes with the air.

“That’ll do for today,” he murmurs.

He spears the fish and leaves it on a branch under the sun. The damp gleam of the flesh disgusts him. Maybe it’s the heat, or the fatigue, or that constant twinge in his abdomen that becomes sharper every time he bends over. He straightens with a quiet groan, but doesn’t give it much thought. He doesn’t want to think about his body, or what he feels, or what’s changing inside him.

He walks a few steps toward the shore, squinting at the sunlight’s reflection on the water. Everything looks the same, but something inside him has shifted—something he can’t quite name. He takes a deep breath, as if that alone could steady him.

“Always the same,” he says, and this time he doesn’t even try to make it sound convincing.

Gen places the jars on his cart, the weight of the water making him feel the burden of the passing days. The sun, in its descent, begins to tint the sky a soft orange that seems to surround everything, while he watches in silence—as if those jars held more than water: a distant hope, a small daily offering to a future that doesn’t yet feel like his own. A future he can only imagine as long as he keeps that routine alive, that chemical process that could one day bring Senkū back—and with him, everything else.

The river murmurs behind him, a constant sound he’s learned to accept as company. Just like the shadows of the trees and the imprints of his own steps left in the wet mud. In that silence, with the jars already filled, he takes a few minutes to sit by the shore, unhurried. The calm of nature seems to embrace him, though he knows it: his shelter is still a lonely island, and there can be no real peace while Senkū remains petrified.

When he feels that his body is completely dry, he stands and, with automatic movements, begins to dress. The fabric, worn and torn by time, scrapes roughly against his skin, but he doesn’t care. He does it mechanically, without truly thinking—just another gesture in the endless cycle of survival. Even the act of putting clothes back on no longer feels strange; it’s simply one more step toward whatever is still to come.

When he enters his shelter, he stops for a moment in front of Senkū’s statue. The same face, frozen in stone—unshakable, as always. Eyes fixed on a future that doesn’t exist. Gen doesn’t know how, but seeing his partner’s statue every day has become heavier, harder to bear. Sometimes it feels pointless to keep waiting—but then he remembers that the fluid he prepares each day, with so much effort and patience, might be the only thing that can save him—and everyone else.

Outside, in the small corner he’s improvised for cooking, Gen lights the fire. It’s become an almost sacred act; the flame feels like a familiar presence that keeps him anchored to reality. He isn’t truly hungry, but he needs to do something—something other than think about the future, or the weeks spent working alone, or the weight of not knowing whether what he’s doing will ever be enough. It’s just another day, and in his mind, that’s the only truth that makes sense.

He stores the remaining water with the same precision he uses to order his thoughts, and sets another portion to boil, careful not to waste a single drop. He doesn’t have much, but routine is his ally. He tidies up, wipes the dust from his petrified companions—as he does every evening—while the fire crackles softly in the distance. Sometimes he pauses to look at them: their expressions frozen, their gestures so human and yet untouched by the death surrounding them. He cleans them with quiet respect, as if they might still wake up. As if they could still thank him for the effort—for the hours he spends by their side, waiting for the day the process finally works.

When the fish is finally cooked, he lays it carefully on the flat stone he found days ago. That stone, though simple, has become his official plate—washed and scrubbed so many times that it now feels like an extension of his own skin. It’s a repeated gesture, but a necessary one. There’s no luxury in this life, only survival—but even within that, something feels meaningful. The steaming fish, the fire warming it, the stone beneath his hands—each detail carries a weight he can’t ignore.

With the same care he used in preparing his meal, Gen approaches Senkū’s statue. He stops in front of it, studying his lover’s expression—frozen in time. He imagines Senkū freed from stone, the spark in his eyes alive again—that boundless energy, that brilliance. He knows Senkū is still there, alive beneath the surface, waiting for the revival fluid. And that’s why Gen keeps working, keeps creating, because there’s no other choice.

At first, eating with his hands had disgusted him. Now, though, he’s used to it—but the cold, rubbery fish tastes different. There’s no bread, no rice, only this fish and the lonely stone beneath him—but he has to wait. He has to let the heat fade a little before taking a bite. That’s his life now: everything must wait. Even eating.

He sits on the ground near the fire he’s just lit, watching the fish on the stone. His fingers—stiff and clumsy from constant work—trace the stone’s edge, searching for some sign, something that might make him feel like he’s progressing, like all this will someday bear fruit. He doesn’t know. He has no certainties, only that faint spark of hope that keeps him waking up every day.

In the end, he decides the fish is cool enough. He takes it in his hands and brings it to his mouth, but the fibrous texture is far from comforting. It reminds him that everything has changed—that what once was normal is now just a shadow of what it used to be. Still, he continues, because that’s what he must do—what he’s always done: survive. Eat, not out of hunger, but out of the simple need to keep his body functioning, even while his mind drifts among memories of all that’s been lost.

He ends in silence. No laughter, no words—only the sound of the fire, the steady passing of time. The statues remain there, imposing and cold, and Gen rises, emptied of everything yet still moving forward with the mission that keeps him alive. The jars are ready, the fluid in progress. The future remains out of reach, but as long as he keeps going, as long as he can still create things, there’s something—no matter how small—that keeps him holding on to hope.

When Gen finally stays still, with nothing left to do, he tries to keep his mind occupied but fails. The silence—uneasy and vast—wraps around him, and before he realizes it, his thoughts drift back to the river. To that small curve on his abdomen. He knows exactly what it is. He doesn’t need anyone to tell him. There’s no doubt. That feeling, that faint pressure in his belly, is the answer to everything he’s tried to deny—the morning nausea that dragged him down every day, the strange cravings that caught him off guard, the fatigue that made no sense. Everything fits together now, and it’s impossible to ignore.

It’s strange—almost cruel—how his body has chosen now to let it happen. As if some dormant part of him had woken up just to mock him. For so long, he’d had sex with Senkū and nothing ever happened. He never got pregnant. His uterus, that useless piece of flesh doctors once declared dead, seems to have defied every logic, every rule of science. Like an old, rusted machine that, after years of silence, suddenly sputters to life again—stubborn, creaking, alive. And yet, here he is now, with that small change, that unexpected growth inside him—something that shouldn’t have happened.

He feels anger toward himself for the thought that follows, but he can’t stop it. He’d assumed the petrification hadn’t repaired his uterus. He thought something so specific, so small, wouldn’t have been restored in the process—but now his mind won’t shut up. Logic, fear, trembling hands—all of it blurs together. His heartbeat throbs in his temples, every thought pounding from the inside. The petrification restored Mirai’s dead brain, and if the process could do that, then it could just as easily have repaired his body—even the tiniest defect. Maybe he hadn’t gotten pregnant before because of Senkū’s bad luck. Or maybe not. Maybe it was him—his body, his twisted fate, his own flesh turning against him. Everything tangles together, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth, as if something had gone wrong at some invisible point in time and now everything was out of his control. That same bad luck has him standing here, breathing too fast, cold sweat down his neck, his abdomen tight as a drawn string.

A baby of his and Senkū’s. A baby. The word drifts through his mind at first, light, almost absurd—but then it sinks, heavy, pressing against his chest until it steals his breath. He feels it lodged beneath his ribs, tightening slowly. What kind of world will his son be born into? Outside, the wind moves through the trees, carrying dry leaves, and that sound feels like the echo of an empty land. There are no doctors. No help. Nothing of what once was. Everything has turned vast and hostile. A baby who’ll be born into a world stripped bare, where fire is the only thing that mimics human warmth. Senkū—the one person who might know what to do—is petrified, cold, unmoving, as distant as a dead star. If this baby is born, if he grows, it’ll be in a place where every day is a battle. And Gen, breathing in that rough silence, feels the emptiness outside slip beneath his skin, reminding him he’s completely alone in this.

The thought drowns him; frustration burns through him. What is he supposed to do? What good is thinking about it when there’s nothing he can change? How can he bring a life into this world when he can barely keep his own together? The uncertainty crushes him, paralyzes him. There’s no answer, no comfort. Gen runs a hand over his face, his fingers damp with sweat, trying to drown out the thoughts that refuse to quiet.

And then, in the heavy silence of the hut, he thinks he hears it—a faint, unreal sound, like the distant echo of a baby’s cry. He knows it’s only his mind, but his heart clenches anyway. The air catches halfway down his throat; he breathes in raggedly, chest rising and falling unevenly, as if the simple act of breathing already hurts.

The baby. The damned baby growing inside him. Without Senkū. Without anyone.

The realization hits with cruel slowness—like a wave that takes its time to break, but destroys everything once it does. Gen stands frozen in front of the fire, not sure whether to laugh or scream. The air inside the hut grows thick, heavy, crawling down his throat like hot smoke. His chest aches. Every breath scrapes, as if his lungs refuse to cooperate. He bends forward, one hand braced on his knees, just to stop the world from closing in. The thought pounds in his head again and again, clearer each time, unbearable: A baby. There’s a baby inside him. It can’t be. It shouldn’t be possible. And yet it is. He knows it—feels it in his body as tangibly as the heat from the flames, as if the fire itself were breathing with him.

It takes him a while to react. His clumsy hands slide down to his abdomen, searching for denial that won’t come. The rough fabric beneath his palms makes him shiver. The curve is small, barely there, but undeniable. He squeezes his eyes shut, as if that could erase it, and a bitter laugh slips out against his will.

“This can’t be…” he whispers, though there’s no conviction in his voice.

He rises abruptly. The wooden floor creaks under his steps as he paces back and forth, trying to catch his breath. Everything inside him is chaos—disbelief, fear, confusion, all twisted together and ready to tear him apart. A baby. The thought alone feels absurd. He, Gen Asagiri, who could barely keep a plant alive for more than three days, now carries a life inside him. And not just any life—a baby of Senkū’s.

The irony burns in his throat. Senkū—the man who spoke of love as if it were a miscalculated equation, a flaw in reasoning; the man who saw the human body as a system of gears, reproduction as a dispensable biological function. Senkū, who could barely allow himself tenderness, who rejected every trace of emotional weakness. And yet here Gen is, carrying a life born from that same man.

He stops in front of Senkū’s petrified statue, the firelight trembling across that unmoving face. The calmness in the stone infuriates him.

“I’m sure you never even wanted kids,” he says, voice cracking into a bitter laugh. “You didn’t even want love. And look at me now. What a twisted joke, Senkū-chan.”

He covers his face with one hand. The silence weighs heavy. The walls of the hut feel like they’re closing in—not just around him, but inside his mind. It’s as if the wood itself bends and folds in on his thoughts, as if the air contracts until it crushes them. Every shadow seems to move, every spark from the fire flickers too long. He knows it isn’t real, but he feels it—the room breathes with him, shrinks with him, presses down on him with every exhale. He fumbles to open the door, letting in the damp night air, the sudden cold slicing through him like a bucket of water. Outside, the forest is still, but his mind isn’t. He’s never imagined himself as a parent. It was never part of any plan or fantasy. In his old life—surrounded by lights and empty applause—he never thought of anything as simple or terrifying as raising a baby. And now, in this dead world, where fire and water are his only allies, his body has decided to create life. A cruel irony pulsing with every breath.

He can’t understand it. He doesn’t want to accept it. He’s never held a baby. Never changed a diaper. Never had to think about feeding or protecting anyone. He barely knows how to survive himself—barely knows how not to break apart from loneliness. What is he supposed to do? How do you care for something so small, so fragile? His thoughts trip over each other, tangling into chaos; his mind floods with images he can’t control—tiny arms, cries he wouldn’t know how to soothe, a weak body he wouldn’t know how to hold. His experience with the Ishigami village children doesn’t count—they could already walk, laugh, understand words. A baby couldn’t. A baby depends on everything, and he has nothing.

He sinks to the floor, back pressed against the wall, knees drawn to his chest. The wood is cold, and that cold seeps into his bones. Desperation rises in him like a tide—slow, unstoppable—until it reaches his throat. His breathing turns shaky, but he doesn’t even notice he’s crying until the tears are already running down his cheeks, falling freely, as if his body decided to release them on its own. His mind jumps ahead to the birth itself, and panic cuts through him like a blade. There are no doctors. No help. No one. He doesn’t even know how it begins, how long it lasts—only that it hurts. And pain is something he’s always feared. Hated. Yet he breathes, trembling, his own sobs now part of the room’s rhythm.

“How am I supposed to deliver a baby on my own?” he whispers, his voice breaking. “I can’t… I can’t handle pain. How am I supposed to—how am I supposed to give birth?”

The silence around him feels alive, like a beast watching. The fire dies slowly, its soft crackling blending with Gen’s ragged breathing. Everything feels heavy—his shoulders, his chest, his belly. It’s too much. Too big, too absurd. He lets himself collapse sideways, curling in on himself, trying to make his body smaller, as if he could disappear into the cold floor. His hands come to rest over his abdomen without thought; he trembles as the air barely reaches his lungs. He can’t even comfort himself with the idea of Senkū beside him—because he isn’t there. And maybe he never will be. He’s alone. Completely alone.

And inside him, something grows—unstoppable, inevitable.

“I don’t even have a way to keep a proper pregnancy diet…” he finally says, his voice barely above a whisper.

And hearing himself say it makes the despair feel real. This isn’t a nightmare. It isn’t some remote possibility. It’s his body, his life, and there’s no turning back now.

The thought of the diet hits him like a blow. Until that moment, his worry had been abstract—fear, confusion, disbelief—but now, as he runs through the list of what he’s eaten these past days—fish, fruit, a little boiled water—panic sets in with painful clarity. He has no way to take care of himself. No red meat, no grains, nothing that can give his body what it needs. Just fish and fruit, and not even always. Sometimes days go by with only what the sea or the forest offers, and other times, he barely eats at all.

“It’s not enough…” he murmurs, his voice trembling as he presses a hand against his abdomen, as if that could somehow protect something.

The image forms in his mind before he can stop it: a weak baby, thin, too frail to cry. A baby who barely breathes, who has no chance in this world. His throat tightens. He knows nothing about pregnancy—nothing. He doesn’t know what vitamins he should take, what foods to avoid, or how to recognize if something goes wrong. He has access to nothing—no medicine, no help, not even someone to talk to. He’s alone. Completely alone.

And then, a darker, colder thought slips into his mind.

“What if the baby’s born too early?”

The sound of his own voice startles him. In his head, the scene plays out in a hundred different ways: labor coming too soon, without warning, without resources, without anyone there. He imagines himself on the ground, screaming as he bleeds, helpless to do anything. And the baby—small, fragile, so tiny he couldn’t even keep him warm. He knows that happens, that some babies are born early, and without care, they die. All it takes is one mistake, one bit of carelessness, one cold night.

“What will I do if that happens?” he whispers, louder this time, voice breaking.

No answer. The silence of the forest stretches through the open door—an immense emptiness that swallows everything. And still, his mind won’t stop. It starts conjuring other possibilities, each worse than the last.

“What if he’s too big?” he asks under his breath, barely holding back a sob. “What if I can’t… if I can’t get him out?”

The word “C-section” crosses his mind, and his stomach churns. If something goes wrong—if the baby can’t come out, if he gets stuck, if there’s too much bleeding—he’ll die. There’s no other option. He’ll die, and so will the baby. And if he dies, everything ends. Senkū ends, the others end, the chance to bring them back ends. The hope of the whole world will disappear because of something he never wanted, never sought, never asked for. The knot in his stomach rises sharply; he barely manages to turn aside before vomiting, shaking as his eyes start to burn.

The air grows heavy, unbearable. A lump in his throat makes it hard to breathe, hard to swallow. Tears begin to fall before he even notices—warm, silent. For an instant, he thinks it’s raining, that the forest’s damp air is seeping into the shelter, but it isn’t rain. It’s his tears, slipping down to mix with the dust and the bitter smell of vomit, until nothing’s left but the tremor in his chest.

“I… I don’t want this…” he murmurs, voice breaking. “I don’t want it… I can’t…”

The first tear falls quietly, but after that, he can’t stop them. He covers his face with both hands, trying to muffle the sobs, but it’s useless. The crying rips out of him, trembling and raw—a cry that makes no sound and yet fills the entire hut. Crying doesn’t bring relief. There’s no catharsis. Only a growing anguish that suffocates him, a pressure in his chest that won’t let go.

“I don’t want the baby…” he says through sobs, not daring to look at the faint firelight. “I don’t want to get attached. I can’t…”

Every word hurts. He knows how cruel it sounds, but it’s the truth. He’s terrified of loving something that could die at any moment. What will he do if the baby’s born and doesn’t survive? What will he do if he loses him before even holding him in his arms? The very thought tears at his soul. He’d rather not feel, not think, not imagine—but instinct betrays reason: he already feels him inside, already senses his presence, that faint weight that wasn’t there before.

He clings to his belly with both hands, with a desperation that almost borders on pain, as if he could hold the life that beats within him, or keep it from slipping away. And that terrifies him more than anything.

“How am I supposed to take care of him?” he asks the empty air, voice cracking. “How am I supposed to feed him, keep him alive?”

Even if they both survive the birth, nothing will get easier. Manual labor will be harder. He won’t be able to go down to the river every day to fish, or carry heavy loads, or sleep properly. He won’t be able to make fire if he must hold the baby. He won’t be able to move far from the hut. He’ll be tied down. And raising a baby in the middle of the forest… the thought feels like a punishment. The forest isn’t a place for something so small. The cold, the insects, the humidity, the animals—any of it could hurt him. Everything could kill him.

He curls in on himself, shoulders shaking, hands pressed to his chest as if trying to contain something spilling out. The fire casts shadows that stretch across the walls—wavering, almost alive, breathing in time with him. For the first time in a long while, Gen truly feels defenseless: muscles tense, hands cold, body curled up on the floor. Not before another human being, not before an enemy or a loss, but before life itself. Before his own body, acting without his consent; before a future that opens up like an abyss.

He closes his eyes, breathing unevenly, lips trembling too much to form words.

“Senkū-chan…” he whispers, voice breaking, barely audible through his tears. “What should I do? I can’t do this alone… I don’t want to be alone anymore…”

But Senkū doesn’t answer. The statue stands motionless, barely touched by the light of the fire, those stone eyes seeming to stare through the darkness—cold, unfeeling. For a moment, Gen almost believes he really is being watched, and that illusion shatters something inside him. Only the fire flickers, and the forest watches from the dark.

Then Gen understands there’s no escape, that reality won’t unravel no matter how much he wishes it to. The fear won’t fade. The night won’t bring comfort. And while tears still trail down his face, he feels something inside him collapse entirely: the illusion of control, the certainty of being a man who could talk himself into calm, who could persuade anyone of anything. All of that is gone.

What remains is the trembling, the uneven breath, and the terrible new knowledge that inside his body, a life is growing—and with it, a fate he never asked for.