Content warning: grief.
Hoshino drew up plans to search the golden ocean. It wasn't enough to follow the most-likely path. Yume had gotten lost; she could've been anywhere.
Hoshino reconstructed how Yume would have navigated. As Hoshino progressed past the parts of the city conquered by the desert, the landscapes became more shallow. Concrete roofs and steel-scaffolds poked above the surface of yellow, marking the graves of buried stores and radio towers. Hoshino drew paths in the sand between the tallest and most memorable – if Yume were here, she'd write these down in her notebook as important landmarks. In a precarious excursion into the desert, she'd be at least this cautious – but cautious in a Yume style.
With that trickle of memory, that weight in Hoshino's stomach grew that much heavier.
Every second counted, so she ran. It was only when the sun reached its zenith in the sky that Hoshino remembered that Yume had said she left her the notebook. In other words, she had never brought it, and she wouldn't have noted landmarks anyway.
This far out, the landmarks had long sunken into the shifting dunes. Hoshino's water canteen was full.
Hoshino, Hoshino! I read a story today – well, it was more like a fable, but it was sad.
The gusts shaved blades of sand off the dunes. A grim feeling sunk in. Hoshino had prepared a shovel, but on a whim, nature could undo and augment her efforts by hours. The effect was more pronounced in the long stretches in which the desert resembled a stormy sea frozen in time. When those large waves were made shallow, a new arrangement of buildings would form a weak skyline. It was a strange thing to think about – that a whole civilization's ruin could make one girl's struggle a bit easier.
As Hoshino entered the garden of steel and concrete, she scanned for any traces of life. Despite being further into the desert, the buildings were less buried than the ones at the border closest to Abydos HS. This place must have been at a higher elevation; Hoshino could peak into abandoned store windows that had been long looted of all their contents, until she neared the end of the stretch of humanity. The slightest, abnormal glint in the distant sands set Hoshino running towards it.
Broken glass – unburied, in front of a convenience store.
The consideration that maybe the gusts had uncovered old glass didn't cross Hoshino's mind. It was incontrovertible proof that Yume had been here. With her chest and throat constricting anew, she dashed out into the desert, shooting out in the direction of the road she was on.
The sun sat on the golden dunes in the distance, as if it were an orb on a pedestal. Hoshino's water canteen was full.
There was a tale of a well-prepared woman who took a journey into the desert and died. That's so tragic – don't you think, Hoshino?
It was a half-moon. A chill had overtaken the sands, a reminder that winter was only a few months away. The dunes cast ponds of shade behind them. In the ethereal light, it was as though Hoshino were on the moon, and she was walking up and down misshapen craters. Although Hoshino had long since slowed to a walk, the air felt thin. Her gaze remained locked on the horizon. She scanned for those pieces of sky that were unbroken and straight – the shadowy figure of towers and buildings. In the transition from day to night, Hoshino adapted to spot buildings by the way they created a negative-space in the sparse blanket of stars.
One time Yume had shown her a photo of what the night sky was supposed to look like without light pollution. Yume made Hoshino promise that they would take a photo just like that in the middle of the desert – a rare, realistic goal for Yume – but it could only be in the middle of the desert, when the light pollution would be at its lowest. Otherwise, she wouldn't be satisfied.
When Hoshino looked at the night sky, she might as well have been blind. The slightest pin-prick of starlight easily fell out of focus once Hoshino's eyes became maladjusted in a fit of dizziness. Hoshino's water canteen was full.
… Hoshino, are you really saying the woman meant to die? … No, I don't think it was that, and I don't think it was that she conserved water too much, without listening to her own body.
The sky split at the horizon. The night fell back like a gelatinous oil being pulled away, only allowing a crack of pale blue before the overpowering orange of sunrise exploited the breech. Hoshino couldn't recall when she had fallen down, but as she watched the sunrise, fatigue arrested her halfway up the slope of a dune. The dagger of sleep sank in between her eyes. It was a cessation of thought, a shunting-forward in time. Hoshino startled, realizing how far she had descended.
In her rush to launch herself to her feet, Hoshino's face grimaced, and she crashed back down on her knees in a harrowing daze. There was a splitting pain in her head; her lips had cracked in the sudden movement.
A cloud of dust rose above the dunes in the distance: a deathly promise. Midway between the cloud and Hoshino were a couple of buildings. Knowing what she had to do, Hoshino sucked on her lip and broke into a sprint to reach the buildings before the sandstorm did. Hoshino's water canteen was full.
I think the woman knew she was thirsty, but she didn't want to drink yet. If I were her… I think I would do that if I thought I was almost to my goal – if it was that important to me. I think I'd do it without thinking. If I drank right before, then that would be like admitting something I wouldn't want to admit.
Hoshino crashed into the backroom of an abandoned convenience store and failed to catch herself as her lungs and legs gave out. Shortly after, a dull, continuous roar announced the arrival of the sandstorm outside. Hoshino clawed at her throat with her hands; the pressure in her throat oscillated between complete occlusion and letting a plastic straw's worth of oxygen pass through. Hoshino curled up into a ball. It continued like this for minutes. Once the occlusions relented, Hoshino worked to breath with enough force to deepen each subsequent inhale.
She wanted to fall asleep. Once the adrenaline coursing through her abated, the full consequences of breaking into a dead-sprint from near-unconsciousness would catch up to her. It has been hours since she could focus on an object without having to endure a migraine. The contradictory weights that fatigue imparted onto her – the lightness of the sprint, and the heaviness of the sleep deprivation – made every movement fragile yet unbearable to execute.
Hoshino wrangled off the straps of her backpack and hooked her shotgun's strap between her thumb and index finger, pushing it over her head. In the midst of the motions, something fell from her vest. It was her phone. Hoshino's hand had brushed and dislodged it from her vest's interior pocket. Her lying on the ground let gravity do the rest of the work.
Without thinking about it, Hoshino picked up the phone and stared at the lock screen: no notifications. With great effort, Hoshino forced herself to sit up against the wall. Something drew her to open up her contact list again and stare at Yume's contact. Her finger hovered over it. When she pressed it, she hadn't really meant to; it was a consequence of being unable to suspend her fingers properly above the screen.
This time, it went immediately to voicemail, and Yume's prerecorded voice sounded: "Hello~, you have reached Kuchinashi Yume, the President of the Abydos Student Council!"
As this played, Hoshino gazed into nothingness. All light had fled from her eyes.
"I'm busy doing something right now – but I promise to get back to you! Thank you for reaching out. If you're going so far to call me… I just know that we have the same dream for Abydos."
She clenched her teeth and scrunched her eyes closed, holding her phone with both hands and bending forward, nearly bringing the phone to her forehead.
"No matter what, we're going to get through this – together."
The phone beeped, and the message was over, but Hoshino did not press the red button to end the call.
Hoshino became conscious of how shallow and sharp her breathing was. She spoke up: "Yume…" Despite her best efforts, her voice warbled. "I really want to hear from you. It's okay if you're mad at me – I want to hear about that, too." Overtones of desperation invaded her voice. "I'm over it – I promise, I just-" a dry sob interrupted. She started again, but the rest of the sentence was captured in the high tone characteristic of the beginning of tears. "I- Yume, I just don't want it to end like this-" she chokes and coughs. Hoshino is silent for a while, collecting herself. "I… I will believe in miracles. Just show me this once, and I'll believe in them forever. Please-" but she didn't finish.
Hoshino hugged the phone to her chest and rocked back and forth, tensing her body as much as she could withstand. As if cutting a taut rope, Hoshino dropped the phone and slammed the ground with her fists. The splitting pain only lasted a few moments before being eclipsed by a throat-searing wail. Hoshino screamed Yume's name, hitting the floor repeatedly. She could not bear to open her eyes. Her forehead touched the floor. When her arms shook too much to continue striking, she folded her arms around her head and sobbed. A long whine sounded from her. It waned and in her uneven breaths restarted again and again – reaching its peak and waning all the faster until the full sound occupied less than a second. Hoshino's breath caught in her throat, and she descended into a coughing fit. As brutal as the interruption was, it subjugated the worst parts: for the minutes afterwards, Hoshino laid on her side and let the sobs course through her until she became still.
The backpack Hoshino wrestled off earlier rested a little to her side. The canteen of water hung on an elastic strap. The injury of striking the ground made it so that when Hoshino reached for it, it was less of a grasp and more that she let her fingers fall around the neck of the canteen. Not bothering to relieve it of the elastic strap, she drug it to her with both hands. The twist-on cap wasn't fastened very tightly; nevertheless, cross-legged, Hoshino had to work at it until her diminished strength cracked it open.
When Hoshino brought the canteen up and it touched her lips, it hurt. She tilted it slowly, and the first trickle of water made her withdraw. Sensation, Hoshino had learned, was often defined by opposition. Once that water touched the back of her throat, the overwhelming dryness of her entire esophagus became pronounced. Rallying herself, Hoshino tried again and managed a continuous flow. Somewhere between a quarter and halfway down the canteen, a thought that Hoshino had previously excluded from her realm of possibility returned.
Hoshino twisted the cap back on the canteen and stood up. Her gaze lingered on the shovel that had fell from her backpack when she had first arrived. She traced the reinforced shaft and the steel shovel-head. It was a shovel made to last through all of Yume's antics.
The sound of the sandstorm had dwindled; it must have been a localized storm. Hoshino reached down and picked up her shotgun, returned her phone to her pocket, and slung the backpack over her shoulder with one strap. Bracing her chin to her chest, she turned away and began the return-trek home.