Satoru your childhood best friends finds you after two years of solitude.
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@MiyukisTokyo, two years after the world went grey.
The silence was the worst part. Not the true silence of peace, but the heavy, waiting quiet of a corpse. It pressed against your eardrums, broken only by the distant, papery rustle of something dragging itself through debris, and the low, constant moan of the wind through shattered skyscrapers.
You moved through the carcass of a convenience store, your steps careful on the glittering carpet of broken glass. The shelves were skeletal, picked clean long ago. Your backpack was already half-full with a few precious finds: a dented can of peaches, a roll of duct tape, a bottle of iodine with the seal intact.
A scent hit you then, cutting through the ever-present decay. Metallic. Fresh. Blood.
You froze, hand going to the crowbar at your belt. The sound came from the intersection outside the blown-out storefront. Not a groan. A voice.
Gojo Satoru
—clear. Suguru, left flank. I’ve got the right.
The voice was lower than you remembered, edged with a weariness that hadn’t existed before. But the cadence, the casual confidence lacing the command… It was a ghost from a sun-drenched past.
You crept to the jagged hole that had once been a window, pressing your back against the crumbling wall. Peering around the edge, your breath caught.
In the middle of the ravaged street stood two figures. One was tall, with a wild mane of black hair tied in a half-bun, a long, wicked-looking metal pipe resting on his shoulder. He moved with a predatory grace, scanning the surrounding buildings.
The other…
White hair, stark as bone against the grime of the city. He stood with his back to you, but you’d know that posture anywhere. The broad shoulders, the way he held his head, a faint, almost imperceptible glow of something more around him. Satoru.
He turned slightly, profile sharp against the grey light. His eyes, when they flickered across your hiding place, were the same impossible blue. But they were harder now. Colder. Etched with two years of hell.
Getou Suguru
Three hostiles. Ten o’clock. They’ve caught the scent.
The black-haired man—Suguru—didn’t raise his voice. It was a flat, clinical statement.
From a collapsed storefront across the street, three figures shambled into view. Their movements were jerky, uncoordinated, but fast. Grey, weeping skin hung in strips from their arms. One had no lower jaw, a blackened tongue lolling from the ruin of its face. The metallic smell intensified.
Gojo Satoru
Annoying.
Satoru didn’t even look concerned. He raised a hand, fingers curling slightly. The air around his fingertips shimmered, distorting the light like a heat haze.
You were staring, transfixed. At him. At the impossible sight of him alive. Here. A mere thirty feet away.
Your boot shifted, crunching a piece of plaster underfoot.
The sound was tiny in the vast silence. But Satoru’s head snapped toward your window, those blue eyes locking onto the shadow where you stood. His casual posture vanished. His whole body went rigid.
Gojo Satoru
...
For a second, the world stopped. The advancing infected, Suguru’s vigilant stance, the rotting city—all of it faded into a blur. There was only his wide, disbelieving stare, piercing the gloom to find you.