『 Dying of Asphyxiation was seriously not my goal in life. 』
Neither was meeting a Governor of the Afterlife and getting sent to another world for a second chance at life.
Drew was assaulted by a group of men for reasons she didn't understand. Drown...
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Meeting; Separation; Cycling for the sake of meeting you again... ...Aiming at the distant sky, our feelings will connect one day.
-Oretachi no JOY! (Yamamoto Takeshi and Gokudera Hayato)
80. Truth
We had lit a small fire in the forest. Sitting on opposing sides of the light, we were watching the flickering flare in silence.
"So," Russo broke the silence, "What did you want to tell me?"
My voice was stuck in my throat. I bit my bottom lip-- and my fists clenched. I've been waiting for this moment for so long-- and yet, when the time came my voice didn't work.
"Are your bandages still intact?" I decided to ask instead.
Russo, hearing that, lifted his head slightly-- with a light chuckle, he shook his head. "Not quite. Mind helping me redo them?"
-
My eyes ran over Russo's wounds again.
His skin was in a worse shade than before-- and the larger wounds-- the ones that were deep gashes left open-- I had taken the time to sew them close in a prior wrapping session-- but most of them had reopened with movement.
His skin now felt like rubber.
"Rigor Mortis," he told me, "I'm quite sure that's what I'll soon experience."
"But you're a zombie," I reasoned, "How does that make sense? You're rotting through, it's been years since you've revived, and yet you haven't experienced rigor mortis?"
Russo closed his fist-- unfurled his fingers, and folded it back in.
"It's going really slowly." he told me. "Very, very slowly-- I'm gradually losing feeling in my limbs. Sometimes, my shoulder don't twist as well. Most of all, my wrists have gotten increasingly less flexible over time."
"The Void..." I realized.
"In short," he interrupted me, "I'm running out of time in this world."
I looked away. "Well," I tried to sound calmer than I felt, "I'm not so sure how I survived my next ten years either. At this rate, I'd be dead by the end of the year."
We both fell silent.
Pulling the last of the bandages into place-- I was just about done when I caught sight of a white trail running down his nape.
It was perfectly in the center, of the back of his neck-- and it seemed to extend further up his head. Curiosity got the best of me, and I reached up to touch it.
It was a scar.
Russo's body was littered with countless gashes-- but I had yet to see a single scar on him.
