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Chapter 2: Fantasy No. 1
"U-uhh… you can let me down now."
"Do you promise you won't be slow?"
"Y-yeah."
Yumi had been carrying the man, who'd fallen asleep on her shoulders, for several hours. She had no idea where she was going, so she'd simply been walking straight ahead, never stopping to take a rest.
"Okay," she conceded, reluctantly setting him down on his feet.
After a few moments of silence, he muttered, "Sorry. I fell asleep, didn't I?"
"That was a good thing," she replied. "What's your name?"
He lifted his eyes off the ground and looked at her. "Sasha." He swallowed, fidgeting uncomfortably before adding, "…what's yours?"
"Yumi."
She took her backpack off (the one that was actually his) and asked, "Can you give me my bag?"
He handed it to her, and she unzipped it before rifling through its contents. While doing this, she said–or rather, commanded–"Sit down, Sasha."
He did as she asked, and right in front of his anxious eyes, Yumi whipped out a pair of scissors and a razor.
"Aren't you glad I'm here?" she said, brandishing the scissors in his face.
He instinctively scooted backward. "Ah, no, you don't need t–"
But it was too late, as she'd already grabbed a hold of his beard and slashed away half of it.
"You look homeless," she chided disapprovingly.
"W-well, I kinda am," he replied, flinching at the sharpened metal as it whizzed back and forth across his chin.
"No excuses. If you want to hang out with me, you have to look good."
After reducing his beard to a few short, uneven tufts of hair, she traded her scissors for the razor and a bottle of shaving cream.
Sasha cringed at the sight, wondering how many wounds he was about to sustain. "Where'd you get that?"
"That's a dumb thing to ask," she replied while her hands got to work, first applying a thin layer of the shaving cream. "I brought it with me, stupid."
Within minutes, his face was shaved completely bare, clean and cut-free.
Yumi curled her fingers into the handles of the scissors. "Your hair might take a while."
"Oh, no," Sasha hastily said, holding up a hand. "I'm really grateful for you helping me, but my hair's fine."
Sasha's long, tangled hair was tied back with some string in a low ponytail. While it didn't necessarily look bad, Yumi had other plans.
"You're being ridiculous," she said, grabbing a fistful of hair. "If only I had hair clippers."
"Hair clippers?" he mumbled uncertainly. "What are you going to do?"
"Don't worry about it," she told him, closing the scissors with a snap.
Nearly an hour had passed when she circled around his head for one final time, taking in every angle before confirming that the job was finished.
"All right! You look… well, your face still looks like a skeleton, but other than that, you look great!"
"Thanks… for the haircut," Sasha muttered softly.
"How old are you?" Yumi asked, completely out of the blue.
"Twenty six," he replied slowly, as if he'd forgotten his own age.
"Woah!" she exclaimed. "You look like you're fifty!"
"I've barely eaten for weeks," he countered. "My face doesn't usually look like this."
"Then I'll look forward to seeing your normal face," Yumi replied as she rezipped her bag.
Hearing this, Sasha's expression instantly darkened. "I don't think you will."
"You have me now," she reminded him.
"I think you're underestimating how hard it is to live in the woods"
"I think youuu're underestimating me," she said, pointing first at Sasha and then at herself. "I know all the edible plants around here."
"What?!" he exclaimed, nearly leaping up in excitement.
"Yeah, my dad taught me about them."
"Nice," Sasha said, nodding as he calmed down a little. "...but, is your dad still around?"
"Oh, yeah," Yumi replied, realizing what he was trying to say. "But don't worry. My parents don't ever expect to see me. It's just an exciting surprise when I go visit them."
"Do they not live in Greenfield?" he asked.
"They do," she said. "I visit them once or twice a month."
He squinted at her in confusion. "Do you not get along well?"
"We get along," Yumi replied, "but I'm kind of a wandering child."
"Oh."
Sasha stood up, and he noticed that Yumi had put her own backpack on instead of his. "Are you ok with me carrying my own stuff now?"
She cocked her head at him. "I guess… but don't try to shoot me."
"I won't," he promised, slinging his own backpack over his shoulders.
– – – – –
22 Days Later - 10/03/2009
It had been over three weeks since Yumi and Sasha first met, and Sasha had come to realize that Yumi hadn't exaggerated her own abilities at all. She'd been finding more edible plants than he'd thought possible, and she had even become the designated hunter, replacing Sasha and his terrible aim.
Somehow, the two of them had found a way to live in as much comfort as one could find in the wild, and, slowly but surely, Sasha's health was fully restored. His face finally matched his voice, and he even looked younger than his age.
Most of the days passed in the same way, with Yumi happily searching for food and exploring the forest while Sasha either tagged along behind her or stood guard over their campsite. He never spoke more than he needed to, and Yumi seemed to be chiefly interested in her new way of life, so they didn't interact very often.
One night, as the two of them sat by the fire that Sasha had made (one of the only tasks he seemed to be capable of), Yumi asked him something.
"Sasha, why did you decide to live in the woods if you can't do anything to survive?"
He quietly stared at the fire, wondering how to respond.
"I was sad."
"So you just grabbed your stuff and ran away?"
He shook his head. "It wasn't that easy. It took years for me to actually do it."
Yumi sensed his discomfort, so she decided to change the subject. "Where'd you live?"
"Iron."
"Mmmm?" She hummed in surprise, pressing a finger to her lips. "I wanna go."
"What?"
"One day," she added softly.
They sat there with the night at the backs and watched the fire crack.
Sasha cleared his throat nervously.
"W-why'd you want to come with me so badly?"
He forced the question out. It was something he'd wanted to ask her for weeks, and he'd been rewriting the sentence over and over in his mind, trying to figure out which words would be best.
Yumi smiled. "Part of that's a secret, but I basically got bored. I tried everything, and everything got boring, but I thought running away might be fun."
She shifted her gaze from the fire to his face.
"I thought it would be nice to go with someone else, but I haven't had any friends for a while. I think they all got scared of me." She closed her lips thoughtfully before adding, "You came at the perfect time."
Sasha met her gaze and nodded. He looked down, but then he returned his eyes to hers and asked, "What do you want to do next?"
She grinned broadly. "Good question, Sasha. I've had fun just living out here so far, but it's time for something new. I have some fantasies that I need to try out for real."
– – – – –
Over the previous three weeks, the two of them had been traveling with no clear direction in mind, and they'd ended up around 15 miles south of Greenfield, very near to Mini City #3, Gambrel.
The sun broke into another clear sky, and both Yumi and Sasha were up at the crack of dawn.
"There'll be a road soon if we keep going this way," Yumi said as they walked in the opposite direction of the rising sun. "We can follow it to Gambrel."
"And what will we do once we get there?" Sasha asked nervously.
"I already told you: I won't say anything until we're inside," Yumi declared, brushing away his question. "If I told you now, you'd probably get scared."
Sasha took a deep breath before reluctantly following his terrifying new companion.
"Woah! We made it!"
Less than five minutes had passed, and Yumi had already spotted the road. It was less than forty feet in front of them, but the trees were packed so densely that it was still barely visible.
They bushwacked their way through the pines, scraping between sharp, tightly packed needles before finally breaking clear of the forest and following the wide strip of pavement southward.
Yumi gasped. "That must be it!" she called to Sasha, pointing at a high wooden wall in front of them. It was nothing like the frail fence that surrounded Greenfield.
Sasha and Yumi stepped up to the wooden barrier, which towered high over their heads.
"Do you have any ideas?" he asked, looking up at the smooth wooden wall that was clearly over 10 feet high. He began brainstorming the best way to build a simple ladder, but Yumi had something else in mind.
"It's not too tall," she determined, taking a few steps back from the barrier.
Under Sasha's inquisitive gaze, the girl strode forward confidently and jumped, grabbing the top of the wall with both hands and gracefully swinging her legs up over it.
"Huh?" Sasha stammered in disbelief, staring up at Yumi's satisfied smile.
"Come on," she said, straddling the wall and reaching her arms down as far as she could. "Grab my hands and I'll pull you over. Oh, and give me your bag first."
Sasha took his bag off, blinking like a puppy.
He squatted a little, readying himself to throw it into Yumi's waiting arms, but his hands suddenly froze, and the backpack thudded against the earth.
A low snarl cut through the air behind him. Goosebumps crawled across his body, and he jerked around only to see a mouth of bared white fangs.
His eyes, about to be punctured by sharpened teeth, widened. There wasn't even enough time to react.
Just as the wide open jaw began to close on his face, a blurry figure came falling out of the sky, slamming directly into the rogue animal's back before crashing to the ground on top of it.
The massive fox yipped and snarled as it tried to escape from under its opponent's weight, but Yumi grabbed a fistful of fur on the back of its head and yanked it into a headlock.
Sasha, who had stumbled backward and landed with his arms out behind him, panted as he watched the mouth of the cute, young girl he thought he knew crack into an impossibly wide grin, showing every one of her perfectly white teeth.
"Bad boy," she whispered before snapping the animal's neck.
Sasha gaped at the dead beast's body as it thudded onto the forest floor.
With a slow, shivering movement, he raised his gaze to his companion's face, which wore its usual subtle smile as if nothing unusual had happened.
"Alright!" Yumi said happily. "Let's try again!"
After the two of them went up and over the high wall, dropping to the ground on the other side, Sasha finally began to regain his sense of the world.
"W-what if someone was defending the wall?" he asked meekly, quickly looking around at the vast, open area they'd entered.
"They wouldn't do that here," Yumi assured him as she wiped her dirtied hands off on the grass. "Let's go!"
She started forward into the farmland they'd fallen onto, but Sasha didn't move a muscle.
"Can you tell me what we're doing now?"
He asked, but he wasn't sure if he really wanted to know.
"Oh yeah," Yumi said, remembering her promise and turning back to look at him. "We're gonna steal a car."
Sasha's mouth opened slightly, and he stared back at her with an empty look in his eyes.
Oh, god, he thought.
"Well," Yumi continued thoughtfully, "it doesn't have to be a car. Just something that can drive."
In spite of himself, Sasha let out a snort of laughter, and his face broke into a smile–the first real smile in longer than he could remember.
On that field under the shining sun, Yumi returned his expression of joy.
"I'm glad you like my plan, Gloomy Sasha."