We spent the following days living among those charred ruins.
Kazuo was still trying to grab onto anything that even remotely resembled hope. Now and then, he'd stop, pick up some half-burned piece of junk, then say something along the lines of, "Hey, this isn't that bad. We can wash it, clean it up, and probably still use it." Or he'd glance at the blackened remains of a wall and shrug. "Come on, it's just the walls. We can rebuild those."
He said it in a tone that sounded as if he were trying to convince himself that everything was fine, that nothing serious had happened. Still, sometimes I caught him freezing over some broken fragment, and his back trembled, like he was on the verge of breaking down.
Because the truth was obvious, these ruins were everything he had.
His optimism annoyed me. But what annoyed me even more was that I could not understand whether he was doing it for himself or for me. Maybe he thought I was so fragile that I would fall apart the moment he showed any real emotion.
I also couldn't understand why he kept holding on to that useless hope when everything was gone, everything destroyed. I couldn't make sense of it.
Yet I couldn't bring myself to leave and abandon him there either.
How could I leave him there when I was one of the hybrids he'd let in here in the first place, one of the ones he'd even allowed to work in his bar? And because of those very principles of his, he'd lost everything he cared about, everything he valued so much.
So I stayed, even though part of me wanted nothing more than to crawl under a blanket and never come out again.
I slowly soaked in the smell of ash. My clothes were covered in gray dust. My nails stayed permanently black. My hands were scratched raw, the skin around old burns reopened again and again, but I didn't feel it, not really. I only became aware of the damage later, usually when we got back to the apartment. Kazuo sighed heavily, took my hands, and started cleaning the wounds, rewrapping bandages, and applying ointment. He kept telling me to be more careful. To slow down. To stop tearing myself apart.
I didn't have the energy to answer.
For days, I tried not to think, so I worked until my legs barely held me upright, until my mind was so exhausted it couldn't replay memories and spiral into what-ifs.
And it worked.
Exhaustion quieted everything.
I dragged myself home each night and collapsed.
Every time Kazuo got upset. He said I was being careless, that I needed to take care of myself, that this wasn't the answer.
I pretended to listen, nodded as if I agreed, and held out my hands so he could wrap them or smear something over the burns again.
What I really wanted to ask was why. Why should I take care of myself? For what?
I wanted to ask it so badly, yet the words wouldn't come out. I couldn't bring myself to say that if I stopped even for a second, it would all come crashing back. The memories. The ones buried in every piece of rubble, in every blackened corner, in every warped fragment of that place. They were everywhere. Those memories were tied to an entire part of my life. That place had been a part of my routines, my sense of safety, my past. I'd been so certain it would also be a part of my future.
Now… there was nothing.
Nothing left to hold onto. And the memories, fuck them! They didn't comfort me. They only hurt. Hurt because everything had burned. Because everything had disappeared. Because everything that mattered had been reduced to ash.
On top of all that, Ed had disappeared too. After that day, he never showed up again.
There was a stretch of time where my mind refused to accept it, where I thought that maybe I had imagined it. Maybe it was a bad dream. Maybe he hadn't really been there, hadn't been standing with a cigarette between his fingers, hadn't been looking on with that empty, indifferent expression. Or maybe there was a reason. Maybe he was scared. Maybe he couldn't act. Of course, he couldn't. He had a business, a family, a life to protect, so many things to lose.
And here there was just me.
Sometimes I got angry at him. Sometimes I tried to find an excuse. Then the anger came back again. This went on and on until, at some point, my mind was in a complete mess.
I was tired of it.
So no.
I refused to slow down. I refused to give myself space to feel any of it. I would rather drown in exhaustion than sink back into those thoughts again. At least fatigue was simple. At least it shut everything else up.
Also, I believed that staying at the site of our bar wasn't such a bad idea at the time. The place would be completely deserted, and no one would care. I was sure people would be afraid to come too close, that they'd see the ruins as dangerous and choose to stay away.
I was certain of it. Certain that Kazuo and I could go about our business without worrying about curious eyes.
God, I was so wrong.