A Changed World (1)

The groan of pain slipped from my lips the instant I regained consciousness.

Thud. Clatter.

I heard the sound of small pebbles and debris rolling off my body as I struggled to open my eyes. But even when I did, all I saw was pitch-black darkness. The only thing reaching my ears was my own ragged ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠breathing.

What the hell happened…?

My thoughts kept short-circuiting like a blown fuse. Still, I desperately tried to piece together how I’d ended up in this situation. If I didn’t do something, even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if I couldn’t see, I knew I wouldn’t be able to accept the reality bearing down on me.

The freshman orientation that had been lively enough despite the early hour.

The young professor cracking jokes while the students awkwardly played along.

The sudden blaring of warning sirens and alarms in the middle of roll call.

The building shaking violently without mercy.

The emergency alert that filled the smartphone screen.

The sky cracking like glass, revealing ruins beyond it.

Two cities standing face-to-face like mirror images, yet clearly different.

The ominous debris beginning to rain down from above.

And finally, Zeta shoving me out of the way.

“…!”

Only now did I remember that Zeta had pushed me right before the building collapsed. She’d done it to keep me from being crushed by the falling ceiling debris.

“Z-Zeta…! Cough! Cough…!”

I called out to her desperately, but my voice was pathetically weak. I must have inhaled too much dust; my throat felt parched and scorched.

I decided I needed to figure out my surroundings first if I wanted any hope of finding her, so I tried moving my hands. The first thing I felt was the gritty floor. The next was a wave of blinding agony that slammed into my brain.

“Ah, ugh…!”

The problem was my right arm. Moving my left hand only caused a dull throbbing I could endure, but the moment I twitched my right hand, pain like paralysis shot through me.

The unexpected agony made my breathing even more labored. My already hazy consciousness blurred further before barely stabilizing again.

Even so, I kept groping around desperately, muttering her name without pause. I couldn’t lose her here.

“Zeta… Zeta…!”

Maybe my efforts paid off. I didn’t grab Zeta herself, but my hand closed around something that told me where she was. A rectangular object that filled my palm. It was a smartphone.

Click.

With trembling fingers, I fumbled for the button and pressed it. A brilliant light burst out instantly. Forcing my eyes, which had grown used to the dark, to stay open, I swept the beam forward.

The moment the light exposed my surroundings, a horrific scene unfolded before me.

Burst water pipes.

Puddles of murky water pooled everywhere.

The metallic stench of blood vibrating through the air.

Snapped electrical wires.

Shards of glass and broken electronics reflecting the light.

Shattered concrete and twisted rebar.

People—no, corpses—that didn’t stir.

Limbs sticking out from under debris.

The sight was so unreal it made bile rise in my throat. I realized the source of the pain in my right arm was a steel pipe lodged in my forearm. Yet even as fear, terror, and anxiety threatened to overwhelm me, I suppressed it all and crawled desperately toward where Zeta had to be.

Scrape… scrape…

With the sound of countless tiny fragments dragging across my clothes, I pushed forward with legs that barely obeyed me, not even bothering to avoid the glass shards scattered everywhere.

The distance wasn’t that far, yet it felt endlessly long, like it lay at the edge of the world. After passing through a puddle of blood that made wet slapping sounds, I finally reached Zeta.

“Zeta!”

I flipped over her motionless body, her hands stained red, and pulled her into my arms. Without even thinking to brush the dust from her white hair, I pressed my ear to her nose.

It was faint, like it could vanish at any moment, but I could clearly hear breathing. The proof that she was alive sent an overwhelming wave of relief through me.

But it was still too early to relax. In an environment like this, her condition could deteriorate suddenly without warning.

After confirming she was breathing, I checked her for additional injuries. Fortunately, aside from a small gash on her forehead, she seemed to be in better shape than I was.

…No life-threatening wounds visible.

I wasn’t a medical expert, so I couldn’t be certain. I just wanted to believe it. I deliberately ignored the possibility that she might have internal injuries I couldn’t see.

I’d seen that message on the smartphone I’d checked earlier. Even the emergency call only produced a ringtone with no one on the other end.

The only survivors in this wreckage were Zeta and me. Or more precisely, the only survivors in this lecture hall.

I leaned my back against a large chunk of debris and stared blankly at the steel pipe embedded in my forearm. Blood dripped steadily from between the torn skin and the pipe.

The very thing that had punched a hole in my arm was ironically preventing me from bleeding out. At first I’d tried to pull it out without thinking, but I stopped when I realized removing it might kill me.

My stiffened muscles were also gripping the pipe tightly, and there was no way to stop the bleeding even if I did remove it.

…Am I going to die like this?

I’d survived the building’s collapse thanks to Zeta’s quick action, but it seemed my luck had run out. I didn’t have the strength to shout for rescue, and the blood steadily leaking from me was making my mind grow distant.

The oppressive feeling that this pocket of space created by chance between the debris could collapse at any moment.

The terror that the oxygen trapped in here might run out and suffocate us.

The horrible imaginings stirred by the faint screams I thought I could hear.

The helplessness I felt as Zeta’s body temperature seemed to grow colder in my arms.

I worked so hard to live…

I’d lived harder than anyone else because I didn’t want to hear people say I was just another pitiful orphan. The thought that my life would end here left me utterly hollow.

What had I been running so desperately toward all this time?

I must have lost too much blood. Now I was even hallucinating. It wasn’t mocking anyone, yet it kept laughing with that “hehe.” It was just letters, but it somehow pissed me off.

I had no idea what it was trying to say. And I didn’t want to know.

Covered in dirt and dust.

My body scraped raw by glass shards on the floor, beads of blood forming across my skin.

My body with a steel pipe lodged in my forearm, torn and ragged.

There wasn’t much I could do in this state.

At first I’d planned to wake the other survivors and escape the debris together, but once I realized Zeta and I were the only ones left, even that sliver of hope had vanished.

Ring… ring…

All I could do was keep tapping at the smartphone, dialing the emergency number over and over. A call that no one would ever answer, no matter how much time passed.

“…What now.”

My cracked voice came out weakly.

The current time was 5:24 PM. Considering the incident had started around 9 AM, it was reasonable to assume rescue wasn’t coming.

If rescue operations were underway outside, this place wouldn’t be this quiet. At the very least, I should have heard the sound of drilling or even knocking.

Right then.

Whoooosh…

A faint breeze reached me from somewhere.

“…!”

The single gust of wind brushed across my feverish skin, cooling the heat. My eyes flew wide open.

The fact that wind was entering this completely blocked—no, this space that felt completely blocked—meant there had to be an exit somewhere.

I remembered a documentary I’d seen in passing. If you’re trying to escape a cave when you can’t see an inch in front of you, follow the flow of the wind.

I struggled to my feet, clinging to this last thread of hope. Standing on shaky legs, I wet my hand with water and began searching for the direction the breeze was coming from.

Blow… Please, just one more time…

I waited for the wind with as much composure as I could manage. Before long, it came from the right.

Following the breeze that dried the moisture on my skin, I swept the smartphone’s light across the wall, searching as thoroughly as possible. And finally, I discovered a hole hidden behind a slab-like piece of debris.

The debris was closer to a pillar than a slab. The shape felt familiar. Of course it did—this was part of the wall that supported the window side.

The Business Hall, Room 203, was closer to the outer side of the building. The fact that the wind was coming from the right told me that was the window side.

Realizing that simple fact helped me recover some of my lost sense of direction.

The spot where Zeta and I had been sitting was a little ways from the windows. We’d chosen that spot because Zeta disliked sunlight.

The distance to the windows is at most two or three meters.

Considering the massive amount of debris that must have poured down on us, even two or three meters was by no means a short distance.

I lay flat and checked the size of the hole. It looked like an adult man could barely squeeze through if the opening was forcibly widened.

I wasn’t sure if I should pull out the rebar blocking the hole, or if removing it would even keep the hole intact. Since it was the only exit I could find, I hesitated to touch it recklessly.

One wrong move and I would end up killing not only myself but Zeta as well.

Even though nothing was certain, there was one thing I could be sure of: doing nothing would lead to death all the same.

If I was going to die either way, I’d rather die after trying something. I didn’t want to let go of this last hope that had fallen ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into my hands.

“Hup…!”

Having made up my mind, I pulled on the rebar with all my strength. As expected, the bent rebar tangled with other debris didn’t come out easily.

Grrrk…

Still, it wasn’t completely immobile. I simply gritted my teeth and kept pulling. I couldn’t die here. I didn’t want to die. And above all, I had to save Zeta.

Whether by getting out and calling for help or by any means necessary.

The message floating in the air flickered like a hazy hallucination before vanishing quickly.

Grrrk—!

The bundle of rebar covering the hole came out as if by a miracle. In the process, settled dust rose and irritated my airway, but I didn’t care.

Whoooosh…

A stronger gust of wind blew through, as if to prove the hole was now open. When I shone the smartphone light inside, I judged that I could crawl through.

Sparks occasionally flew from severed wires, but as long as I avoided the puddles of water, it should be fine. The inside of the passage looked blunt and melted in places, as if it had fused together.

I couldn’t see any glass shards that had been tormenting me earlier, so even if Zeta was dragged along the floor, she probably wouldn’t get hurt.

The passage itself was just big enough for me to crawl through. There was no way Zeta and I could get through at the same time.

That meant I had to go first, and she would follow. Since she was unconscious, I’d have to pull her with a rope.

I need a rope.

Obviously there wasn’t one. But there were things I could use in its place. My trembling gaze turned toward the clothes of those who had lost their owners.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

I apologized endlessly in my heart as I stripped the outer layers from the dead. It was a small mercy that quite a few people had been wearing light cardigans or similar garments, since even though the day had been hot, the evenings were rather chilly.

At least I wouldn’t have to disrespect them any further than this.

Even after checking once, I examined the people again to make sure no one was alive. When I confirmed there were no other survivors, I let out a low groan and wrapped one of the removed garments around Zeta. I tied the knots as tightly as possible so they wouldn’t come undone even if the fabric tore.

After confirming her breathing one last time, I connected the knot to my wrist. This way, if I moved while holding the “rope,” Zeta would be pulled along automatically.

…Will my arm hold out?

My left arm, already overworked, now had to drag both my body and the rope connected to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Zeta while my right arm had a steel pipe stuck in it. The one saving grace was that Zeta was lighter than most people her age.

Dark thoughts kept trying to surface, but I forcefully suppressed them. I changed the question from Can I do this? to I must do this.

“Hoo…”

I took a slow, deep breath and pushed my body into the narrow hole.

The only light guiding me was the beam from the smartphone clenched between my teeth.