The underground station smelled of iron and mildew, the sharp tang of rust mixing with the damp weight of uncirculated air. They had been walking for what felt like hours, weaving through half-collapsed tunnels, and the silence between Shitsubo and Juro had grown louder with every step. Neither had spoken since the last flare of argument, but their silence pressed on the group like a stone upon a chest.
At last, Daigo raised a hand and gestured toward a half-broken staff lounge door. Its frosted glass was shattered, its frame bent, but inside was a space large enough to sit without feeling buried alive. A long-dead vending machine sagged in one corner. Chairs were overturned, their plastic cracked and warped by heat. It was not safe, not really, but safer than another mile of walking blind.
"Here," Daigo said. His voice was rough. "We rest."
The survivors filtered in slowly, shoulders slumped, bodies shaking from exhaustion they couldn't afford to admit. A young woman lowered herself against the wall and covered her face with her hands. An older man—his hair gone to grey stubble, his shirt clinging with sweat—sat heavily in one of the surviving chairs and let out a breath that sounded like a prayer.
Shitsubo leaned against the far wall, arms folded, his shadow clinging to him like another skin. His eyes never stopped moving—scanning doorways, ceiling cracks, the black mouths of the tunnels they had left behind. He would not allow himself to sit. To sit was to let the curse inside him settle, to let its hunger creep closer to his own thoughts.
Across the room, Juro lowered himself deliberately, almost ceremoniously, into a chair opposite the survivors. He looked like a man who had never learned how to rest but insisted on mimicking it for the sake of others. His voice, when it came, was steady.
"This can't go on."
It was not loud, not sharp, but it cut clean through the room. The survivors stirred, uneasy, watching the two men who had led them this far but also dragged them through bitterness and threat.
The grey-haired man in the chair spoke first, surprising even himself. His voice was gravel, but it carried weight.
"He's right. You two—" he gestured between Shitsubo and Juro "—pull at each other until it feels like the ground beneath us is splitting. We can't keep living like that. Not if we want to live at all."
Shitsubo's eyes narrowed. "You want to stand in the open? Pretend the world will leave us alone? You'd be bones before the week's end."
"No one said that," the man replied, calmer now, almost weary. "I'm saying you make enemies of each other more than of the things out there. That's what'll kill us first."
Juro nodded once, as though acknowledging an ally in thought. "You see it too." He looked at Shitsubo, not mocking, not confrontational, just… factual. "We cannot be dragged between your fear and your fury. If survival is the goal, we decide now how we do it. Or else we collapse."
For a moment, Shitsubo said nothing. His hands tightened on his arms, and Daigo saw his jaw clench—saw the flicker of shadow coil behind his eyes.
But before Shitsubo could answer, another voice cut in: a young man, barely twenty, who had until now kept to the background. His face was gaunt, but his words were sharp.
"I've watched my brother die because people couldn't agree. Because someone always thought they knew better, and someone else thought compromise was weakness. That's how whole families fall apart. So you two, I don't care which of you thinks you're right—you'll either agree to something now, or I walk back out there alone."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was the silence of people who realized this was not simply bickering anymore, but a fracture that could not bear more weight.
Daigo stepped in carefully, voice steady. "Listen. Shitsubo, your strength keeps us alive when the Aggressors find us. None can deny that. And Juro—your clarity stops us from walking into blind deaths. Neither cancels the other. We need both. But if you keep clawing at each other, you'll dig all our graves."
At last, Shitsubo pushed himself from the wall and stood taller, though his face was tight with distaste. "So what then? I sheath myself every time his tongue sharpens? Pretend unity while he spits doubts into every ear?"
Juro's reply was smooth, stripped of heat. "Not unity. Balance. You do what only you can: fight. I do what only I can: plan. The group decides what paths we take. But you don't decide alone, and neither do I."
A murmur rippled through the survivors. Relief, maybe. Not victory, but the sense of a weight shifting slightly off their backs.
Shitsubo looked around the room, at their tired, hollow eyes fixed on him—not with love, not with loyalty, but with the desperate need for stability. He felt the curse coil tighter in his veins, whispering that they didn't deserve his strength, that compromise was weakness, that his path alone was the path of survival.
But he forced his voice low, cold, deliberate.
"Fine. You want balance? You'll have it. I kill what comes for us. He points where we walk. But don't mistake this for trust. One mistake, one hint of betrayal, and I will not stop the curse from deciding for me."
Juro inclined his head, a soldier saluting without a smile. "And I'll speak plain if your curse drags us toward ruin. I won't hide the truth. That's my oath."
It was not friendship. It was not reconciliation. But it was consensus.
The survivors breathed easier, some slumping against walls, others whispering to each other in weary relief. The older man closed his eyes, as though finally he could.
Daigo, standing between them, felt the tension loosen but not break. He knew it was only buried, waiting. Still, for tonight, the weight on his shoulders was lighter.
As the room settled, the young man who had spoken earlier muttered, almost to himself but loud enough to be heard: "Balance won't last forever. But maybe long enough."
His words hung in the stale air like smoke.
And in the corner, unseen, the curse inside Shitsubo stirred, amused.