The mall was too quiet.
Every footstep that Kaai or the girl took against the dusty tiles echoed back at them. The sound was too loud against the eerie silence of the mall, reminding them they were nothing but intruders.
They reached the counters, but what Kaai saw made his stomach twist.
The registers still sat open, drawers half-pulled, bills crisp and waiting as though the cashier had only stepped away for a moment. Shopping bags lay abandoned mid-fold on the counters, receipts curled where the printer had stopped mid-line. Even the air felt stale, preserved, like a snapshot stolen out of time.
It wasn't the chaos of looting. It wasn't the ruin of years.
It was worse.
It looked like everyone had simply vanished.
Kaai's throat tightened. His mind couldn't help but imagine people frozen in motion, erased from existence, leaving only their traces. He felt the phantom press of ghosts in the silence, watching, waiting.
His mind began to ache from the weight of it all — the sheer unnaturalness of everything he encountered that refused to align with reason.
The field of swords that pierced the heavens, blades so tall they cast shadows across horizons.
The ironclad beast whose body broke every law of anatomy, each joint bending where no joint should exist, its proportions grotesque and deliberate.
The blind monster shrouded in black cloth, moving with a certainty sightless things should not have.
The ruins of human civilization, stone and steel gnawed down by centuries…
And now this mall — preserved as though sealed in amber, not a week old, untouched by time while the outside world had been devoured by it.
It was too much. His thoughts bent and buckled, logic fraying against the enormity of contradictions.
He forced himself to move. He rubbed his temples. 'At least there is someone not trying to kill me.'
Kaai stepped behind the counter. The shriek of cart wheels against tile shattered the stillness, and he hated how loud it sounded. When he turned back, he saw the girl staring daggers at him. '…Yet.'
"We can use these," he muttered, not looking at her. His voice came out rough, almost scared, as if speaking might stir the ghosts still lingering here.
The girl didn't reply. She only watched him, her eyes sharp, her levitating strands of hair drifting forward as if testing the weight of his words. Then, as if to balance his intrusion, she moved to take a cart herself. The clatter of metal against metal sounded less like cooperation and more like an uneasy truce.
Together, they pushed their carts into the ghostly aisles, the silence of the mall pressing in on them like the gaze of a thousand unseen witnesses.
The carts rattled as they rolled into the bakery aisle. Plastic-wrapped loaves sat in neat rows, the labels as crisp as if they'd just been stocked. Kaai slowed, staring. Bread shouldn't survive a week without mold, let alone the centuries needed to erode buildings. Yet here it was — soft under his squeeze, the faint scent of yeast lingering like a ghost of warmth.
His stomach tightened. It felt wrong. Bread was supposed to go stale — proof that time still marched on.
Every time his hand reached toward a shelf, he felt her gaze track it. Not the casual glance of a companion, but the sharp, unblinking watch of someone measuring if a sudden move meant danger.
Beside him, the Ediron girl finally reached out, though she didn't touch. Her hair, alive with its faint blue shimmer, extended like fine tendrils. They hovered just above the loaves, brushing invisible currents Kaai couldn't sense. A faint hum ran through her aura, her brows narrowing as if she were listening to the bread itself. After a breath, she took multiple loaves and placed them in her cart — but each loaf now glowed faintly after her touch.
Kaai stared too long. She turned and locked eyes with him.
He immediately folded. Kaai turned back to the aisle, rubbing the back of his neck.
He forced a shaky laugh. "Guess carbs survived the apocalypse."
She didn't answer. She didn't need to. The silence between them stretched, but it was no longer sharpened with hostility. It was watchful. Weighing.
Kaai and the girl returned to inspecting what the bakery had to offer. But he couldn't help thinking about her reaction to him.
'Her silence pressing on me harder than any words… like she lingers on every action I take, with that judging gaze. Every time I reach out my hand to a loaf of bread, I can feel her unsettling stare.'
Kaai was no stranger to calculating threats and sizing up opponents. But being on the other end — being the one sized up — made his skin crawl.
'Am I leaving too many openings? Am I leaving myself too defenseless?'
He panicked, thinking about what to do if she attacked him now. 'It's fine. I still have my gun and years of airsoft experience. If she comes at me I… I…'
He shifted his weight, trying to make it look casual. His heart slammed against his ribs.
He almost laughed. 'Years of airsoft experience. Ahaha… That'll save me. Sure.' His hand slammed against his face.
Kaai swallowed. He told himself he wasn't panicking. He lied.
So he busied himself with motion. More loaves, more plastic bags thudding into the cart, the noise covering the silence he couldn't bear. The cart filled too quickly, and his hand froze mid-reach.
That's when he saw it.
Tucked behind the neat rows of rolls, hidden just enough to feel deliberate, sat a chocolate cake. Its surface gleamed under the lid, untouched, unrotted — perfect, like it had been sealed away from the world and left here for him.
Kaai stared. Bread was survival. Meat would be fuel. But this… this wasn't food.
This was memory.
A sterile hospital room, and the nurse sneaking him a slice. His mother lighting a candle when he couldn't leave bed. A rare hour when sugar meant life wasn't just pain and wires.
His chest tightened. His throat ached. Slowly, as if afraid it might dissolve if he moved too fast, he lifted the cake and lowered it into the cart. The hollow clunk against the bread was deafening in the silence.
The girl's eyes flicked toward it, lingered longer than they should have. Something unreadable passed over her face — not suspicion, not quite curiosity. Almost… recognition. Then her hair drew back, veiling her expression again.
Kaai didn't explain. He didn't need to.
The air grew heavier as they turned into the butchery section. Glass counters stretched ahead, displaying slabs of beef and mutton — red, rich, glistening as though cut that very morning. Too fresh. Too alive.
"Wrong," he muttered under his breath. "Dead things don't stay perfect."
Her levitating hair uncoiled, fine strands glowing faintly like threads of molten glass. They slithered across the rib cuts, brushing the flesh without piercing it. The contact hissed, soft and unsettling, like fat sizzling on fire. Kaai swore the sound wasn't in his ears at all but in his bones, as if the strands weren't just touching meat, but tasting the echoes of what once lived inside it.
His hands refused at first, then forced themselves to move. He bagged cuts of beef — too red, too clean.
Her hair drifted closer, strands humming faintly. For one breath, they seemed to waver toward him, not the carcass. Kaai flinched, nearly dropping the bag. His grip tightened until the plastic screamed in protest. The sound echoed back too loud, like a confession.
'She's watching. Not the meat. Me.'
Her face betrayed no disgust, only judgment. The meat shuddered once under her touch, then stilled. Whatever test she had applied, it seemed to pass. She wrapped the cuts with precision, neat and unshaken.
Kaai exhaled, shallow and uneven. His own body felt heavier, with the weight of being measured and found wanting.
He grabbed some too, though his hands shook. Meat was food. But here it felt like carrying an omen.
Kaai forced himself to breathe as he bagged the meat. "At least vegetables won't bleed," he muttered, more to steady himself than anything.
But when he stepped into the next aisle, color slammed into him. Carrots blazed orange, lettuce gleamed with dew. His relief soured instantly — even plants weren't allowed to die properly here.
The vegetable aisle burst with impossible color. Carrots blazed orange. Lettuce gleamed with dewdrops that hadn't dried in centuries.
He recoiled, wiping his hand on his jeans. His brain screamed rot, mold, decay, but his senses betrayed him. "I… I hate this place."
The girl didn't recoil. She stepped forward. Her hair lifted in strands, drifting through the air like silver feelers. Each thread brushed over the produce, not touching flesh to skin but hovering, humming. Kaai heard it faintly — a low thrum, like static alive.
Her eyes softened. Not wide with suspicion, but bright, curious, almost reverent. The strands lingered on a head of lettuce, curling around it in a delicate embrace. For a breath, the leaf's veins shimmered faintly, pulsing back in rhythm with her.
She plucked it, set it carefully in her cart. Then another. Then more, until the cart's metal rattled under the growing weight of green.
Kaai frowned. "It's just lettuce."
She didn't understand the words, but she looked at him all the same — as though pitying him for not seeing what she did. Then she turned, scanning the shelves with hungry precision.
The lettuce gleamed like glass under her touch, humming faintly as though answering her. Then she saw the fruit.
Her restraint broke.
Where Kaai saw food, she saw something sacred.
The moment her gaze fell on apples stacked in a pyramid, her entire stance shifted — rigid shoulders relaxing, hair flaring out like a living halo. She surged forward, faster than Kaai had ever seen her move.
One apple floated into her grasp, strands weaving around it protectively. She drew it close, as if the fruit were precious ore pulled from the heart of the earth. Her hair pulsed faintly blue; Kaai swore the apple glowed back.
"…You've gotta be kidding me," he muttered.
She didn't hear him. Or she didn't care. Apples, pears, bananas — her cart filled with them, her movements brisk but careful, like she was stockpiling relics of an ancient temple.
Kaai shoved a bag of carrots, apples, and many other bundles of vegetables and fruit into his own cart, grumbling under his breath. To him, it was food. To her, it was treasure. Watching her, he caught a strange thought, unbidden:
'She looks more alive holding apples than she did holding a sword.'