Ultra Blue Violence (Dabi)

Chapter Ninety - Six: Parallax

The communicator in Yui Kurotaiyo's hands vibrated violently, its sharp buzz slicing through the tense atmosphere inside the car. The sudden noise startled her, and her eyes flew wide open as she instinctively tightened her grip on the device. Her breath quickened, coming in uneven gasps, her hands trembling as they held onto the lifeline she'd been anxiously waiting for.

In the driver's seat, Renji Asano glanced over at her, his eyes flicking briefly from the road to the device in her hands. The dim hopefulness in his voice was masked by a grim resignation, as if he was already steeling himself for disappointment. "What does it say?" he asked, his tone carefully neutral, as though bracing for bad news.

Yui's heart pounded in her chest, her pulse echoing in her ears. She hesitated for a moment, forcing herself to steady her hands before flipping the device over to read the message. The soft glow of the screen illuminated her face, highlighting the mix of fear and anticipation in her expression. Her eyes darted across the text, taking in each word, and as she read, her lips slowly parted in a disbelieving smile.

"It's her!" Yui almost screamed, her voice trembling with a mix of relief and joy. The realisation hit her like a wave, and she gripped the communicator even tighter, her knuckles turning white. "It worked! A doctor responded—she's there!" Her voice rose with each word, the disbelief and excitement bubbling over.

Renji's response was an incredulous laugh, a sound that escaped him before he could even process it. It was a laugh tinged with shock and relief, like the first breath of air after being submerged underwater. He had barely allowed himself to hope, not in a world where hope was such a fragile thing, easily shattered. But hearing Yui's exclamation made it real, made it possible.

"It actually worked," he murmured, almost to himself, as if needing to hear the words aloud to believe them. His grip on the steering wheel tightened as he let out a slow breath, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. For the first time in what felt like forever, there was a flicker of light in the darkness they'd been navigating.

Yui's eyes were bright, her earlier anxiety melting away as she clung to the one thing that mattered now—the possibility of finding Miya, of bringing her back. "We have to move, Renji. We can't waste any more time." Her voice was firm, resolute, the fear replaced with a fierce determination.

Renji nodded, his expression hardening with the same resolve. He pressed down on the accelerator, the car surging forward with renewed purpose. The weight of uncertainty still hung in the air, but now it was tempered with the hope that maybe, just maybe, they were one step closer to the end of their long, gruelling search.

The drive was short in distance but agonizingly long in feeling, each passing second dragging as they crawled through the desolate remnants of what once was a thriving city. Renji kept his hands steady on the wheel, navigating cautiously yet with a speed that betrayed the urgency both of them felt. He could sense the tension radiating from Yui, a mother on the edge, desperate to find her child in a world that seemed to have swallowed her whole. He was determined to be her lifeline, the hand that guided her through the darkness, if only to ease a fraction of her burden.

As they moved further away from the city center, the landscape grew increasingly bleak. Buildings stood as hollow shells, crumbling under the weight of neglect. The streets were littered with debris, a patchwork of broken glass, twisted metal, and remnants of a life that once thrived here. It was a scene ripped straight from a nightmare, the kind of post-apocalyptic vision you'd expect to see in a dystopian movie, not in the reality they now faced.

"We're close," Renji said, his voice cutting through the silence like a knife. He slowed the car to a stop near a cluster of dilapidated buildings. "We'll stop here. It's just a short walk from this point."