Windborne wanderers / kazuscara

7

despite both of them not wanting to, they ventured deeper inside.

BOOM!

"the hell was that?! an explosion...?" kunikuzushi exploded in shock, and took a few steps backwards.

"uh..."

kunikuzushi recollected himself and walked towards the sound of the explosion, fear written all over his face.

one step.

two steps.

three steps.

"what the..."

how fun! they've awakened an old ruin machine with the noise they made. it was rusty, and had randomly grown vegetation. the eye of it grew increasingly bright, and the duo's will to escape also grew increasingly bright.

then the machine made some weird clanky noises.

it was attempting to stand up...

that's it, they thought! time to run!

they booked at the direction they came from, and quickly stacked some stones together as a platform to help them climb back up.

kazuha got up first, and immediately extended his arm for kunikuzushi to latch onto.

"quick, use me to climb up!"

kunikuzushi could only nod. he's never been motivated enough to go this far in any of his adventures, and this was certainly why he shouldn't.

kunikuzushi looked back, and saw a glimmer of a red laser on the ground behind him. he frantically whipped his arms up to hold onto kazuha's arm and the ledge of the stone opening and wiggled his legs around, clutching his core as hard as he could to pull himself up.

he escaped within a margin of his end.

right after he got back up, the ruin machine's laser beam was right where he was. he and kazuha quickly ran around the cave and moved and threw boulders to crush the machine. as soon as they saw electric sparks from under the rocks they nicely decorated the now severely dented machine with, they ran for it. they ran until their legs were sore. they ran until their lungs cried for help.

they eventually got back up to surface, and realised there was a sign next to the well:

"do NOT enter the well UNLESS you are part of the assigned engineering group from the tenryou commission."

"gah, we well fucked up didn't we..." kunikuzushi said, wiping blood off of his arms.

"should've been more careful..." kazuha said, while dragging kunikuzushi to a safe place to sit.

they did it. they were alive.

once the exhaustion hit them, the both of them
immediately collapsed onto the ground, gaping for air.

"haa... hah.... t..hat... was...hah...something...." kunikuzushi blurted out in between breaths.

kazuha turned his head to face the beat-up looking boy on his right. "cer...tainly..."

they went silent for a while, slowly catching their breaths.

after a few minutes, they could finally breathe again. they sat back up.

"...let's not go this far next time. sorry, it's my fault for suggesting this."

"no, no, kazuha. we are both equally to
blame for this shit." kunikuzushi said in an uncharacteristically soft voice.

"you're right... well, we've both got wounds to treat. wait."

kazuha took something out of his backpack (that was somehow still intact) and opened it. it was a first-aid kit.

"give me your arm."

kunikuzushi reluctantly extended his arm for kazuha, and he watched as the latter carefully cleaned his wounds and patched them up. kazuha made sure that there was a minimal chance of the wounds getting infected.

"did you break anything?"

"...no, i don't think..."

kazuha cocked an eyebrow at the uncertainty of kunikuzushi's response, and sighed.

"i'll check all four of your limbs and your ribcage area for any broken bones, since they were the most likely to get damaged back there. lay down for me."

kunikuzushi said nothing and did as he was told.

kazuha shifted positions to kneel next to kunikuzushi, and started pressing on certain areas, asking if they hurt internally, to which kunikuzushi said no to all of them. after double checking, kazuha asked kunikuzushi to sit back up, so he could treat the wounds on his legs.

kunikuzushi was weirdly quiet and compliant during all this.

after kazuha finished patching kunikuzushi up, he started cleaning his own wounds up.

"holy..." kunikuzushi thought, as he jerked his head away from kazuha's direction, covering his mouth with one hand.

he was shocked, to say the least. he was astonished at how gently he just got treated. he's never gotten such golden treatment before. nobody he knew would go so far out of their way to do that for him.

his eyes were widened as he was recalling the memory, and he felt his face heat up.

was this sensation occurring to him just because he craved such attention and care, or was it something else?

he'd have to find out, for sure.