Usumi kept both hands on the wheel as he drove, his posture steady and composed despite the tension that lingered in the air. The city stretched out before him in long ribbons of neon and shadow, the lights reflecting faintly across the windshield.
Inside the car, everything was quiet except for the low, uneven hum of the engine—if it could still be called that. It lacked the seamless, near-silent glide of modern electric drives. Instead, there was a faint mechanical churn beneath it, something layered and irregular, like an outdated system forcing itself to keep running.
Pondaru lay unconscious in the back seat, where he had been placed without ceremony—unmoving, untouched by the strange, anachronistic rhythm carrying him through the city.
His small frame shifted slightly with the motion of the car, his breathing shallow but steady. A thin line of dried blood traced along his cheek, stark against his skin. He looked fragile like this—far too fragile for everything that had just happened.
Usumi did not look at him right away. His gaze remained fixed on the road, his expression unreadable. For a while, there was nothing but the steady rhythm of the drive.
Then something stirred.
It was not a sound in the car, nor anything reflected in the glass, but something deeper, something buried. A faint metallic clink echoed through his mind, quiet but unmistakable. It did not belong to the present.
His eyes flicked briefly toward the rearview mirror.
Pondaru had not moved.
Still, the sensation lingered.
Another faint sound followed, sharper this time, like metal shifting against itself. The image came with it before he could stop it—chains, worn and cold, drawn tight around wrists that were far too small. They dragged across a hard surface with a slow, grating sound that seemed to vibrate through him.
Usumi's jaw set, and his focus snapped back to the road ahead. The image vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving behind only the quiet interior of the car and the distant glow of the city.
"...not now," he muttered under his breath.
Usumi exhaled slowly through his nose, steadying himself.
For a few seconds, he said nothing else, letting the silence settle back into the car as the city lights slid past in long streaks of neon and shadow.
Then another flicker broke through.
A room began to take shape at the edges of his thoughts—dimly lit, enclosed, suffocating in its stillness.
It was a place of restraints and silence, of bodies held where they should not have been held. Chains that clinked softly against metal when someone moved too much. Figures slumped or trembling in the half-light, indistinct enough that the mind refused to name them properly, yet human enough that it could not mistake what they were. Women, men, children—no difference in what had been done to them, only in how they endured it.
There had been sound there once, he remembered that much, or perhaps only the echo of it: suppressed voices, broken breathing, the dull rhythm of suffering that had long since been stripped of detail but not of weight.
He didn't let himself think about who had been in that room.
His eyes drifted again to the rearview mirror, where Pondaru's head shifted slightly with the movement of the car, his body limp and unguarded. The sight of him stirred something uneasy in Usumi's chest, something he did not welcome.
He was too small, too still, and for a brief moment the thought surfaced that he should check on him. Usumi forced it down, keeping his focus ahead as he resisted the impulse, maintaining the steady rhythm of the drive.
And then—
A voice surfaced, soft and distant, yet so close it felt as though it brushed against him.
"Usumi… please… don't leave us…" Then it changed, sharpening as if it had never been gentle at all. "Don't just sit there and watch," it snapped. "Do something. Anything. You said you would—so why are you just standing there?"
The sound faded just as quickly as it had come, leaving nothing behind but the noise of the car and the faint vibration of the road beneath the tires.
His breath faltered for the briefest moment, but he did not turn his head or acknowledge it outwardly. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on the road, as though refusing the sound any space to exist. Then, almost against his will, his eyes flicked to the mirror—lingering just long enough to see that Pondaru was still breathing.
"Y-you're looting him?" the girl had said, her voice tight with disbelief, almost breaking on the edge of it. "He's still alive. Why are you doing that instead of helping him?" It paused, as if allowing the moment to settle before continuing. "How can you tell me to calm down?! This is crazy, it isn't right—l-let's find another way!"
The memory held in that moment—the dying man's broken breaths, her shaken voice, and Usumi's unbroken focus—before it began to fade back into the steady motion of the road.
He did not look away. He didn't acknowledge the voice, didn't give it shape or space, but something in his expression hardened all the same, the tension finally breaking through in a small, audible slip.
"Tch."