“What’s wrong?” asked Reiko, patting Sam's back, while Taara took out a tissue.

“My stomach hurts,” Sam gurgled, clenching it while curling up. As she wiped tears out of her eye with the base of her thumb, to Emika’s confusion, small bits of vegetation immediately sprouted from the skin around her eye. A few stalks and young leafs, with an unnatural speed, meandering outwards, softly jittering around like seaweed in the ocean.

Reiko screamed. But, as Emika soon realised, not from shock, but from pain. Like wings from her back, suddenly large branches from some kind of tropical plant burst out from the inside of Reiko’s body, splattering a mist of blood throughout the room.

With a strong grip, Mina pulled Emika’s up and pushed her towards the exit of the room. “Run!” she screamed.

Emika did as told, jumping towards the stairs, immediately tripping over some vines growing out from Sam’s stomach. She tried to gain back her balance, but it was too late. In full fall, she slid over the uppermost step and then tumbled down, feeling the cracks as her body collided with the edges of the stairs. As she hit the back of her head on a cupboard on the ground floor, Emika lost consciousness.

“Hey, hey, hey!”

Emika felt a slap in her face. “Hey! Wake up!”

She opened her eyes and saw Eva’s close face. She had a few scratches on her forehead and blue lips — but other than that, she seemed okay. Emika groaned as Eva took her hand and helped her up.

“We have to get out of here,” Eva whispered.

“What about the others?”

Eva’s grip on Emika’s hand tightened a bit. She didn’t look at Emika and just dragged her along without giving an answer.

They left the house through the front door and turned into a side street towards a park area. At first, Emika didn’t understand where they were going, but then, she remembered that this way would eventually lead to Eva’s home. They then ran over a small bridge, behind which was a new patch of woods — where Eva then veered off the path and pulled Emika in among the trees of the forest.

Eventually, Eva collapsed, gasping.

“I can’t go on,” she said, supporting herself on a spruce. Emika propped her up by the waist and realised how cold Eva’s muscles were — her whole dress was completely soaked through with sweat. Her breaths were short, cool, and irregular, too…

Then, Eva closed her eyes, sinking to the ground, taking Emika with her.

“I can’t go on,” she repeated, “I’m exhausted.”

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“Yeah, me too,” Emika said to comfort her, but in fact, she didn’t feel tired at all. Was there something wrong with Eva? “… Let’s rest a little.”

“Do you have your phone? We should call for help…” she said in a quavering voice.

Emika pulled her phone out of her pocket. The display was splintered into a thousand pieces, and it wouldn’t turn on. “It must have broken when I fell…”

“Ah… I left mine at Mina’s place before I went out for groceries… it must be buried somewhere beneath them…”

Emika’s heart pounded terribly loudly. The crickets chirped in the surrounding woods.

“Sorry we ended up here,” Eva murmured. “When I came back, I saw things weren’t okay… I ran up and saw them… Their faces hanging within a bunch of plants… What the hell happened? It seems like they exploded into vegetation? You were the only one left, so… I just took you and ran somewhere…” Her voice broke as she uttered those words, but she forced herself to keep talking. “But my home isn’t too far, we almost made it.” Tears were still welling up under her eyelids. “Please, can you explain to me what happened? I’m so glad you are okay…”

Emika gently rubbed her back. “Just calm down, take some very slow deep breaths, and then we’ll figure out together what to do now, okay?”

Eva nodded and hugged Emika a little tighter. “Are you sure you are fine?” she asked in an increasingly low voice. “It looked like you fell down the stairs… And… whatever killed the others… it didn’t get you, right?”

Emika just sat there, silently. She didn’t even know how to begin to answer. Yesterday, deadwood had begun growing from her. Today, her friends had exploded into plants. A connection was almost guaranteed, right? This was, quite probably, all entirely her fault.

“Still not sharing with me, huh…” Eva mumbled. “Silly thing…”

Emika’s stomach turned. “I’m sorry. This is my fault,” she blurted out, her voice breaking. “I’m not okay. I’m not sure how. But this all must have been me.”

Eva’s consciousness was almost gone. “No… it can’t be your fault. Don’t worry about that, Emika. Ahh, I feel so tired…”

It didn’t take much longer for her to actually fall asleep. Slowly her chest rose up and down, still cold, with at least her pulse calming down. Emika would have also closed her eyes and taken a break, but she didn’t have the courage. The queasy feeling in her head would not leave her alone. She looked at her arm, which she had always kept a bit hidden from Eva until now.

The growth was now much larger than before. The deadwood twisted in an elegant, irregular spiral around the arm, with several branches — it was very thick where it sprouted from the wrist, but it ebbed off after surrounding her hand the second time. Small twigs with tiny green leaves had also grown out of the stem.

Cutting them off again would certainly do no good. Rather, Emika suspected that the growth was only getting larger with each pruning.

Was she contagious? Maybe it just happens more slowly to me than to others, Emika thought.

But on the other hand… Emika’s deadwood and the plant sprouts that had come out of her friends were completely different. Emika’s looked like a century-old bonsai tree. But with the others, she remembered the wood of a mature linden tree growing out of Sam’s mouth, a bit of sheep’s sheaf growing out from between the leaves of an elderberry bush on Reiko’s arms. Of some native species of flowers, and a small bush of chanterelles in her ear. In a matter of seconds, they all had become the breeding ground for a wild, diverse garden.

This was quite different from Emika’s own proliferation. Maybe they weren’t connected after all…

Emika looked at the peacefully sleeping Eva, whose chest was rising and falling with slow breaths. She was now her only friend left in the world. She had to protect her. In fact, she never ever wanted to let her go.

But, despite her best wishes, it didn’t take Emika too long to realise that something was off.