While my colleagues and I were busy planning an unlawful (but creative) appropriation of WeElMed’s servers, Yuta had gone on the journey of a lifetime. It had started before Letty’s slaughter, and kept going for a while after.

Yuta took a moment to rub the sheets’ fabric as he sat up in his strange, elevated metal bed, to remind himself that this was real.

Not even the one-eyed hag that lived down by the mill could spin threads as fine as these.

The doctors of this era had given him, Hoshi, and Ichigo a new treatment for the Green Death. A Dr. Rokanoku had administered it. The same doctor had also explained that, for her own safety, Hoshi had to be taken to a separate room. Hoshi appeared to be uninfected, and the doctors were desperate to keep her that way.

“Be brave, Hoshi,” he’d told her. “We’ll see each other soon.”

Now, Yuta worried if he’d have the strength to make good on his word. Compared to the Green Death, as they called it, the akumani was a gentle kiss.

The treatment had certainly given him some of his strength back. And yet, Yuta couldn’t shake his suspicion that the relief he felt was only temporary. Death had never been a stranger to him. He’d known the shadows of its wings since childhood. He could feel those wings embracing him, here in this place of marvels he did not deserve.

He knew by the throb that pulsed in his aching bones, and the trickle of sweat down his brow. He knew it through the fire that crackled in his chest with his every breath and made him spit up black and green. He knew it in the corrupted ink that calligraphed decay beneath his skin. He wanted to believe that these people were as wise as their technology suggested. They’d brought peace to Mu and Trenton. Surely, with their miraculous knowledge, they would be able to conquer the Green Death as well.

And yet… he could still feel the plague festering within him.

It was an ominous tiding, to be sure.

Yuta’s focus was broken by the sound of the sink turning on once more. He turned toward the noise. “Leave it alone, Ichigo,” he said.

“I think it might be able to make sake,” Ichigo replied.

Yuta sighed. “There is only one problem in the world that alcohol solves, and that is sobriety.”

“If I am going to die,” Ichigo said, “I’d rather not do it while sober.”

“And I would rather not die in ignorance,” Yuta said.

Carefully, Yuta rose to his feet, grasping tight to the tall, wheeled metal cane beside his bed. He glanced once more at the soft-glass serpent whose impossibly thin coils ran down through the cane and stung him in the arm. The bag at its head was half-emptied of fluid. Horosha insisted it cultivated health, and was not to be removed.

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Ichigo’s bloodshot eyes widened. “No! Lord Uramaru, what are you doing?!” He rushed to Yuta’s bedside. “You need to rest!”

“No,” Yuta replied. He briefly closed his eyes and shook his head. “Soon, I will have more rest than I could ever ask for.” He turned his gaze to the door. “Ichigo… I do not know if I will survive. If I am to die here, I would rather die having seen some of this dying world. I want to know if they built something worthy on top of all our suffering.”

Ichigo pointed to the luminous consuru hanging from the wall by the door. “Why not use the glowing win—…” he rolled his eyes and snorted, “The consuru?” Ichigo paused as he was wracked by another horrid coughing fit. “Or call… Horosha,” he added, smacking his lips together.

Darkened spittle gathered in the corners of his lips, which he wiped off with his sleeve.

“I never liked being patient,” Yuta said, “and…” he gasped, panting for breath, “I am tired of struggling to be… understood.” He shook his head. “I wanted to spend my twilight years strolling the gardens, contemplating the stars.”

Yuta coughed. His breaths and throat were caulked in so much purulence and slime, it made him wonder if he had any flesh left in his lungs at all.

Stepping forward, Ichigo knelt on the strange, cold floor. “Lord Uramaru, please… you must rest.”

He looked Yuta in the eyes.

Yuta watched him cough into his sleeve. His retainer’s black hair had lost its sheen. The way his lengthy bangs draped over his head on the top and the sides hid the advancing tips of the fungus’ tendrils.

“I am tired,” Yuta said. “Tired of being chained to what cannot be changed.” Groaning, he lifted his metal stand and clacked its foot on the floor. “There is no hope of freedom in motionlessness” He sighed. “I know I have been… forgetting—just as Horosha said we would. I’m worried the same is true of you.”

“No,” Ichigo said, keeping his head low, “don’t say th—”

Yuta cleared his throat. “—Look at me, Ichigo.” He stared his retainer in the eyes. The younger man was doing a poor job of hiding his tears—and there was nothing wrong with that.

The world would be a kinder place if more men felt safe to cry.

“I don’t want to lose who I… who I was,” Ichigo said. “The legacy that made me who I was.” He shook his head. “Without that… I have nothing… only anger and despair.”

“And that,” Yuta said, “is why we should go out and see this world while we still can.” Kneeling opposite his retainer, Yuta gently placed his hand on the young man’s back. He could feel Ichigo trembling beneath the hospital’s stringy gowns.

“Before you became my retainer,” Yuta said, “long before I was…” he struggled to remember, “respected… before that… I was a man from nowhere.” Yuta smiled through his tears. “Ironic. I can remember never belonging, now… I can hardly remember my efforts to belong.” He coughed, and inhaled. “And now… my daughter is cured of incurable disease, only to be struck by another one.” He shook his head. “What a world.”

Ichigo nodded.

Yuta briefly closed his eyes. “Do you remember what I told you when you first came to me,” he said. He dared to smile.

Ichigo nodded. “I will never forget it.”

“A man should strive to be more than other people’s identities,” Yuta said.

“I think…” Ichigo said, his lips quivering, “I think my family would like to know what became of the world after they left it.” He dared to smile, as did Yuta Uramaru.

The two men really had no reason to stand, but they stood up anyway. They leaned into one another as they helped one another to their feet.

“Careful…” Ichigo muttered. “Careful…”

Yuta glared at him playfully. “I’m not an old man yet.”

“Neither am I,” Ichigo said, “but, as you taught me, that’s never a reason to turn down help.”

Then, reaching together, they opened the strange door, turning the knob the way Horosha and others had done, and they stepped out of their erstwhile tomb, to see the world and what wonders still lived in it.