別の / Another - Puro X Male Reader

Chapter 11: Apples. Too many apples

The landscape that surronds a highway is, often, ignored by those who travel in them. However, an imminent death threat does have an effect on people. One would even try to look through the trees' leaves to distinguish a possible enemy, which is quite characteristic of prey to do so.
Which was kind of your case.
You and Puro took turns to look out for any possible foes. It was 7AM, but you hadn't slept a single minute still. Puro's head rested on your face, and if it wasn't for the thought of black vans about to explode your collective asses, you'd be falling asleep as well. In this case however, your senses were as alert as a sleep-deprived person or bag of latex and fur could be.
You checked the time on Puro's phone. Both of you had agreed to take turns every 30 minutes. But minutes felt like seconds when one is asleep, and those same minutes feel like hours when you're awake, watching out for any dangers.
Dr. K looked at you, and exhibited a faint, mostly tired smile. Taking a Monster 6-pack under his seat (because his car appeared to be better equipped than a damn house), he took one out of the pack and, with a single hand and his teeth, opened it, producing a single crack that made Puro twitch his ears.
After a quiet, long sip, he offered you some.
Dr K - Wanna take a sip? I'll warm you, it's enough to keep you awake for a couple' hours. Although, after drinking dozens of cans like I have, the effect kind of weakens itself over long-term consumption.
You silently nod. He hands you the black-and-green can with the Monster's  logo, a green "m", standing brightly above the rest of the can's elements.
You take a sip.
It fills you with... determination.
Or whatever energy gives you. You're too damn tired to care.
It tastes like someone made kiwi juice, but added a kilo of sugar to it.
Sweet.
Literally. Very sweet.
As dead quiet as before, you hand the can back, already feeling the effect of the energy drink... or maybe feeling the placebo effect.
Again. Too damn tired to notice. Or at least, you were.
Before taking another sip to make sure it had an effect on you, you hand over the can back to its original owner, resisting the urge to be rude.
As Dr. K takes another sip, you check the time on Puro's phone. 28 minutes left.
Fuck.
At this sloooooow pace, the next event was unpredictable: another black van, Puro's shift beginning, or a meteor hitting the earth and creating the next Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extincion event (or, in other words, haha dinossaur go dead.). Alright, maybe the last one was an exaggeration, but it really did feel like time stopped for you and you only.

You look at Puro's phone. An unusual piece. The OS on the device itself felt rather different, and altogether with a plastic body, a removable battery, and lack of any biometric scanners made the glass-and-plastic slab feel like a resume of the early 2010s.
Turning the screen on, it appeared to have a subpar HD resolution. It saved some battery consumption, back in the day, but now? The battery had lost its original qualities. It barely held any charge if used.
There's no pattern, PIN or other sort of security measures to lock unwanted "visitors" out.
The home screen reveals a rather empt y phone. A closer look at the e-book application revealed otherwise, however.
Despite the fact they were all downloaded off sketchy websites (because, let's face it, no one likes to pay for apps or games, let alone books), therein lied many books, all of them somewhat familiar.
Who even reads books nowadays?
I mean, Dr. K did. But it was more like something he had to do every day because of his job.
Puro did too... but he's a little different than most people.
Still, people in general started reading much, much less. Perhaps the virus took fantasy worlds out of people's minds and replaced it with worries about how could they be protected from the virus, or how to get enough money to pay for a cure, or simply the fact they became adults already made them boring, or, at least, most of them became boring.
Perhaps, the virus took fantasy worlds out of people's minds and gave them an incentive to work harder, and not get fired for being unnecessary weight to their companies' employers, who were cutting off massively on costs as to not enter bankrupcy. Yet, productivity is affected if you do not enjoy what you do - and turning it into something fun could help. Before the virus, about 10 years ago, the word "gamifying" quickly became very popular. If employers (and employers) made tasks feel like games, productivity could... no, would skyrocket.
It's enough to say that anyone who was exposed to such trend physically cringes at the word. Companies tried to push it way too hard. (Or else someone made promises they couldn't keep.) It'd help to make the process of laboring easier, if used with caution.
Lost in your thoughts, you unawaringly let your phone slip through your fingers, almost falling out of your hands. The phone vibrates, almost going nuts with so many touch inputs.
Picking it up, the gallery app is right there, a single album, "photos", stares at you, and you look at Puro.
I mean, he's asleep...
No. It's rude. It feels wrong.
Come on, he won't know! Besides, he'd do the same, wouldn't he?
Uh, no. No, I don't think so.
Fine, then. Whatever. But you can't ignore the fact he's deeply asleep, and you won't get another chance like this anytime soon.
The demon over your left shoulder wins the argument.
There weren't those many photos. 20? 30?
Yeah, around 30.
The oldest ones appeared to be part of a simple camera test. It... Yeah, it sucked. 10 years ago, however, it was the pinnacle of smartphone cameras. (Who'd tell technology would evolve that fast?) Still, though, it wasn't awful. There were pictures of books, more books, more books, a black mug, another book and the same black mug.
Next, a small video played of him playing with a Butterfly Knife in first-person perspective. Impressive.
Then, a pic-
Wait.
Was that you?
...
It was you.
You were asleep. Or so you appeared to be.
Cringing at yourself (because who doesn't own a bit of self-hate these days?), you decide to skip past the half dozen photos starring a sleepy, unaware you, and scroll to the last photo, the most recent one. It was a selfie. The black wolf was eating a chocolate happily, and his mask had a chocolate stain.
It was... heartwarming.
You closed the gallery, and put the phone back where it was, along with a tiny feeling of guilt for snooping around.
Ah, yes, the obligatory weight of consciousness. How convenient.
Your shift was over. But looking at Puro sleep, you didn't mind staying awake. The energy drink had already taken effect, and you felt... well, not energetic, but not sleepy either. Enough to easily keep you awake.
Seeing Puro sleep was rewarding enough, too.
Doctor K audibly crushed the can he was sipping this entire time with an audible crush. Puro woke up, his sleepy eyes quickly analysing his surroundings. He calmed down once he saw the gently compressed can of Monster in the white wolf's grasp, and yawned.
Dr. K - We're here lads. Time to wake up.
He turned left, and an obnoxiously big sign read "Welcome to Appleville".
What a lame-ass name. Almost feels like I'm reading a stereotypical fanfiction made by an average 16-year-old with close-to no imagination.
Puro (yawning) - Appleville. How original. I bet they like oranges.
Lame or not, that town really appeared to be all about apples. Every square feet (or, actually, every 10 square feet) something allusive to apples (or actual apples) had been strategically placed. Apple trees, apple jam, apple sauce, apples, more apple jam, ads all over the damn place about all the apple-derived products you could imagine...
In fact, you had arrived at the best time of the year - every 2 years, a major Apple festival was celebrated.
Shocking, I know, shocking! You'd expect oranges, not apples.
Every town inhabitant set up a table and a couple' chairs (much like a garage sale), and sold their finest specialities (or the closest thing to that), from jam to wine, sauce to juice, all using apples as their main ingredient. (Shocking! Oranges, people, where are the oranges?) Sadly though, you weren't on a touristic route today. None of you would even like to know what the hell an apple omelette was.
Ew. That sounds wrong on so many damn levels.
Dr. K slowed down. He tried not to run over anyone - apparently no one cared about standing right over the road cars drive on, and such an incident would be, at the very least, inconvenient.
People barely moved out of the way to let the white wolf drive towards his unknown finish line.

-//-

After what appeared to be hundreds of houses but were only 11 or 12 buildings, Dr. K grabbed "his" phone. The iPhone he had borrowed had no SIM card. The one it had had been removed on the crime scene, to make sure it couldn't be used to track him.
Dr. K - Puro, mate. Gonna need your phone. Could you lend me yours?
Puro simply hands his phone over as a response.
The other took the Note 2 and dialed a number (very painfully, since it wasn't very fast at... anything at all.)
After a couple rings, someone on the other line picks up.
A woman in her mid 20's looks at her phone and lifts it to her ear.
Dr. K - At your 0900.
She looks directly at your car.
Moving towards it, the doctor opens the driver door's window, and with a sly grin, his red eyes stare at the woman.

Unknown - Hi, dad.