Visual Kei

Muddy ass, wet shoes, raw palms, and shaking legs. I catalogued all the misfortunes I’d suffered in the past few hours and came to the conclusion that I was actually pretty lucky. Other than it being the rainy season in the Fukuoka City area, the weather was milder than usual. It was wet, but not hot or cold. We were all living. Another plus.

Chino nudged the pile of flaming sticks with a knobby, awkward one. Sparks shot skyward. I pulled the jacket tighter around me, drawing my knees up to rest my chin on them. I felt cold and tired as balls. Even when I trained with Samael, I never felt this horrible. My legs shook and ached and threatened to cramp up. Sweat plastered my clothes to me even now, and I could smell myself. It made me even more miserable.

I noticed, with a degree of happiness that bordered on psychosis, that I no longer had that headache. Nope. I’d traded them in for the inability to walk, think, or breathe.

Watching Chino use a stick to poke over the contents of the fire, I felt unhappiness from him. It was not a curious thing, exactly. None of us were all that happy to be in the boonies. And we were at least fifteen miles out from Fukuoka City. After about half an hour of silence, he tossed the stick into the flame and sighed.

“The inevitable has happened,” he said at last. He obviously didn’t want to talk, and his subject only made him more unwilling. “The cities are being overrun by the battles between the forces of Kami and The Oni.” Everyone was silent. I was listening intently despite my vacant expression. A lock of unclean hair fell into my face and I did nothing to remove it. “And there is worse news.”

“What could be worse?” Tsurara asked icily. He looked particularly vexed at having to travel in the countryside. Although he had hardly sweated, his makeup was perfectly intact, and his hair had hardly shifted, he was obviously pissed.

“We cannot return to the city anytime soon. The Shinigami we saw earlier are patrolling the major cities looking for us. We are more likely to survive out here.” Tsurara’s face didn’t change, but the glint in his eyes looked even darker. This new information obviously irritated him more, if that was possible.

“Are they just ignoring everyone and everything else?” Rei asked, surprised.

Chino nodded once. “It certainly seems that way. From what I can tell, the Shinigami had an agreement with Kami. They would bowl over a few cities to start the war if Kami would help them find Alice.” Everyone turned to look at me and I wanted to fold into myself more. I drew my knees up further. “But Kami isn’t stupid. His rule is meaningless out of city limits.”

“It’s pointless,” Tsurara said, clenching his jaw as he glared at the ground.

“What is?” Rei asked.

“This!” Tsurara’s elbows rested on his knees as his fingertips massaged his forehead. “We are only running from the inevitable. Eventually, they will find us and we will be forced to fight. We’ve nothing to gain from living out here like this.”

Chino cast a displeased gaze at Tsurara. “Nonsense. Alice merely needs some time to come into the next aspect of her divinity. She recently got the pain that goes along with such a development.”

“That means nothing. She probably isn’t even an immortal.” Although his words were spoken in a soft, melodic voice, they were cold as clay. I couldn’t bring myself to flinch or look away from his face, however. The look he gave me held blatant contempt. I was too tired to add his bitchiness to my already large stack of misfortunes.

Everyone looked at me as if waiting for me to protest. I just buried my face in my arms and tried to shut out everything else. Fatigue seeped into my bones. For a long time, no one said anything. Maybe they agreed with Tsurara. I didn’t care anymore.

“We’ve got to get to Tokyo and try to find a way to leave Japan. We’ll be safer elsewhere.”

“Where will we go?” Rei asked. “Europe might be nice.”

“We’ll go where we can. There will undoubtedly be very few flights or boats leaving that have room for us, even if we have the money to pay. Everyone will be trying to leave, I imagine.” He paused, but I didn’t look up. I felt no better hidden in the crook of my arm than I did staring into Tsurara’s eyes. But I was too tired to move. “That’s the plan. Any objections?”

“My stomach is objecting,” Rei said. Normally, we would have laughed, but we were too miserable for that. “Can I take someone to get some food with me?”

“Good idea. Take Kiiro. Tsurara and I will get water.”

I listened to everyone’s footsteps get quieter and quieter, and then I listened to Shinji move around camp. I could feel his eyes on me, wanting to console me, but uncertain how to. Regardless, the silence was comforting in its own right. I felt bad for not helping out, but I didn’t think I could move, even if I willed myself to.

Some time later, I heard Rei and Kiiro return to the camp. I looked up to see their arms empty. At first, I thought they hadn’t been able to get anything to eat, but when Tsurara and Chino returned, the boys turned out their jackets, which I hadn’t noticed balled up before. They were full of canned food, drinks, candy, and the occasional fruit or vegetable. I was surprised, having expected them to go hunting.

“Where did you get this?” Chino asked, although he had already opened a package of Kinokono Yama. He popped one of the chocolate mushrooms into his mouth, a look of bliss crossing his features. “I hope you didn’t steal it.”

“You can’t rightfully steal from nobody, can you?” Rei responded, slurping down a bottle of Coke. “There was an abandoned gas station about a mile that way. Kiiro and I just swiped some stuff from the shelves. Nobody will miss it.”

Chino nodded, but didn’t seem all that pleased with the idea.

I was hesitant to help myself to some of the food, but they had passed the jackets around for everyone to take a few things. I settled on Yan Yan. It wasn’t very filling, but it was better than nothing. After that, everyone lay out their jackets and slept on them. I didn’t have one, but Rei let me share his. Of course, that meant lying beside him. I wasn’t worried, though. Not yet.

It took a while for me to get used to the fact that I was sleeping outside. My legs still ached now, but they would be about 100 times worse in the morning. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t will myself to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. Instead, I stared into the fire for a while, hoping it would bore me enough to fall asleep. No dice.

Across from me, Kiiro was doing the same thing. I wouldn’t have known if the fire were the size of any normal campfire, but since we were burning it low for stealth reasons, I could see his face across the way. He caught my gaze and held it. For the first time since I’d trained my power, I wondered what he felt. Maybe he felt nothing. We stared at each other for a long time, and communicated without speaking mentally or verbally. I wanted to lie beside him instead of Rei, and I wanted to tell him everything. Instead, I rolled over and buried my face into Rei’s jacket.

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When we arrived in Tokyo, I wasn’t ready for what I saw. The once-bustling city was a hollow shell of its former self. Few people roamed the streets and those who did were either clearly nonhuman or they looked wild. All the electricity was still on in the city, although most places that still existed only did so under nonhuman dominion. Everywhere I looked, people were dressed in Visual Kei clothing simply to fit in. It was hard to tell who was human and who was hiding in the guise of humanity, but there were always nonhumans who could never pass. Still, it was unnerving to see so many nonhumans wandering around as if it were normal.

There were no Shinigami patrolling the city, as Chino had announced over the campfire days ago. All I saw were half-empty buildings, shattered windows, and more signs of recent anarchy. Bodies lay in the streets and crushed under fallen structures. Everywhere there was the heavy stench of death. The organization in charge of sanitation was taking its sweet time in keeping things cleanly.

We didn’t linger in any one place for long. We picked our way through the city toward the airport. As Chino predicted, the place was packed with humans and nonhumans alike, all yelling and furious. Even standing at the very back of the chaos, it was easy to see that we would never be heard, much less be served. We decided to try our luck at the docks.

The ocean was fragrant that day. There were only three ships remaining in the docks. One was a cruise ship and two others were obviously meant for shipping cargo. Unlike at the airport, there were few people here, but all were dressed in flashy clothing that was considered exotic and androgynous only weeks ago with heavy makeup and spiky hairstyles. The sailors were easily distinguished among the throngs, and Chino led us toward one. While he negotiated for our passage, I stood beside Shinji, who was admiring the boat we were to board. It looked plain enough to me. All I saw was a floating hunk of metal. Maybe Shinji knew something about boats and saw something I didn’t.

Chino rounded us up and we filed onto the boat with a small group of others, also dressed in Visual Kei attire. The captain ordered a sailor to show us all to our quarters immediately, which ended up being a big empty room with a bunch of cots all clustered together. Compared to sleeping on the ground, it couldn’t be that bad right? However, I wasn’t too eager to lay in them. They looked more than a little unclean, years of grime encrusted on each fiber of the ropes that made up the cots. They smelled like body odor and who knows what else. I didn’t want to think about that too much.

When the boat pulled away from the dock, I thought that stories about travelling on boats were exaggerated. The ocean didn’t cause the boat to jostle or rock that much. Just kidding. After we pulled completely out of the harbor, the swaying made me fall over and throw up. It was miserable. And we were stuck on that damn ship for the next two weeks.