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Something shifts in the snow (draft)
May. 17th, 2025 12:41 amTW: mentions of apocalyptic violence. gore. basically the whole list explained in this OPT-OUT post which are topics that I may dive into. Please proceed with caution but i promise he atleast won't bite in the first post dhdhd
He wakes up choking on the scent of velvet.
His body feels like scorched iron—like someone left him in a fire to melt and pulled him out too late. There’s pain in his hands, sharp and residual, and his mouth tastes like blood and dirt. The couch beneath him is soft, too soft, and it's wrong. Everything is wrong.
He gasps. Sits upright.
His white winter coat—charred, soot-licked, ruined—clings to him like a funeral shroud. There are black streaks where the fabric burned, and brown-red stains where it didn’t. A pipe clinks against the couch’s side, connected to the bag resting near his foot. The bag’s zipper is partially open, a shotgun muzzle poking through like some final judgment.
And for a long moment, Takuto Maruki just… breathes.
Smoke in his lungs. Blood under his nails. Akira’s face above him, blood-spattered and pale, machete stuck hilt-deep in his chest. I’m sorry too he says just as he sees the face of another young man.
His hope.
Goro. The dead boyfriend.
Dying out just as quickly as it awakened. Like cinders.
He remembers that. His last memory.
The pain blooms slow. His limbs ache from disuse or death—it’s hard to tell. The char at his collarbone crackles when he moves, and when he reaches to rub his neck, his fingers freeze.
There's no bandage over his left eye.
He hisses and leans forward, feeling around his face. His face is aged, grey clinging to brown dark hair with eye circles so deep that they might as well be the burrows of his own grave. He digs a trembling hand into his coat. Pistol. Familiar. He keeps going.
There's...a woman standing before him. He doesn't pull up his gun just yet. She's wearing interesting attire. Blue.
She has an emergency gauze. Small mirror. She has some tools as well but Maruki merely snatches the bandage and sets the mirror on his lap.
He doesn’t call for help. Just starts wrapping the gauze one-handed, clutching the mirror awkwardly in his lap. The wound hasn’t reopened, but it's gorey. Red in all the wrong places. Deep and ugly.
His breathing evens.
The room is quiet. Gentle music plays from nowhere. Everything smells like lavender and old paper. Or not. Where is he? It's shrouded in blue. Somehow, he imagined a less calming afterlife than this and then, and then—
Just as he's properly tying off the bandage on his head- it would whip at the direction of foosteps coming his way.
Maruki stares at the board like it owes him an apology.
Red thread. Maps, maybe. Diagrams with scribbled arrows and underlines and huge, frantic circles. But none of it—not a single word—makes sense.
He doesn’t speak Japanese.
He never needed to. Born and raised in Colorado. PhD in psychology from Yale. Worked at a private institute in California before the world ended. And after that, well—after that there wasn’t much room for language classes. He speaks English and sign, knows some psych jargon in German and Latin—not whatever this is.
But for all that, he knows that most of this is written in Japanese. He can read them anyway.
He glances around the room like someone might explain it to him. They don’t.
"...Right," he mutters under his breath, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His body still aches. His eye burns beneath the makeshift gauze as if that was the only answer he deserved. “Real helpful. Thanks, universe.”
There's a picture of...a bird. A demon bird there. He has brown hair and stark dark eyes, close to crimson- like Goro from the fire.
That..doesn't make sense. He's so sure he's alive. Somehow. Well right after his death. Then again. he's also dead. It's easy to memorize the face by heart, especially when he's sure it will haunt him when he comes across a creature like him.
There is English, though. Bits of it. Scattered. Not helpful.
Codenames.
Another one:
Maruki exhales, dragging a hand through his hair.
Okay, Akira. Turns out you become a captain. During the victorian era. The thought of it makes warmth flood in his chest which he quickly quells when he observes the rest of the details. He tried not to get caught off guard by things but really- he shouldn't be alive or this aware right now. Especially after death so maybe he doesn't have much to judge things for.
"And I still have no idea where the hell I am.”
He glances at the board again, desperate for context. For clarity. For anything.
"... Am I on Tumblr?" he murmurs.
"Crow believes it may have something to do with 'dumbass energy.'"
He lets out a small breath through his nose. Not quite a laugh.
That’s... familiar. Too familiar. He doesn’t know these people in a way he would have liked in a different context, but he knows this energy. Knows what it's like to build understanding from scraps. To put names to patterns that no one else even sees yet. To stitch your world back together with colored thread and hope.
He reads the next note.
Yu vs. Souji.
And then:
Vampires are real.
Demons, too.
And then:
Why is it mostly us?
He feels his stomach turn.
He hasn’t breathed in a while.
The threads spiral in every direction. Names, codenames, timelines, versions—fractals of people. Stacked realities. Layered lies. His eyes dart from corner to corner of the board, trying to take it in all at once.
He's seen something like this before. On a wall made of concrete and rot. Written in blood and nail scratches. But this? This is almost clean. Curated. A museum of fractured identities.
How quaint.
It’s too quiet.
No screams. No sirens. No gunfire in the distance. No helicopters buzzing overhead. No static bleeding from busted radios. The lights are on. It's...not as cold as it should be. It's pleasant. Everywhere.
Takuto walks slowly down the street, trying not to stagger. His boots feel wrong on the pavement—clean pavement, without dust or ash caked into every crack. Shibuya gleams around him like something from a dream he used to have. A place he only knew through half-watched anime and tourist blogs, back when he still had a mom or family to talk about those things with. Before everything fell apart.
It's cleaner than anything he’s ever seen. Too clean. Like the whole city’s a set someone forgot to tear down. Or a simulation running just a beat too smoothly. He remembered when he saw most of the major cities in his world were up in flames to prevent the outbreak and god, that time he was so naive. Thinking that he and his family could survive through the apocalypse.
He passes a convenience store—some narrow place lit up like a spaceship—and flinches when the door chime goes off. He startles again at the whirr of a vending machine kicking to life. Every person who brushes past him makes him twitch. He keeps his head down, glasses slightly fogged, the way they always get when the cold air kisses skin still warm from adrenaline.
He can’t read the signs. He catches glimpses—ファミリーマート, ホットスナック, 新発売!—but it’s all a blur of symbols he never got around to learning. Just decorations that somehow make the vaguest sense. Even the people—sharp suits, glossy bags, laughter drifting past like perfume—feel like part of the backdrop.
When he reaches a trash bin, he doesn’t hesitate.
The white coat—scorched, riddled with holes, soaked with things he doesn’t want to think about—goes in with a heavy, wet thump. It hits like a body. Slumps like one too. There's no ceremony to it. It just... leaves him.
The pistol stays. Tucked into the back waistband of his rough jeans, hidden under a sagging gray sweater two sizes too big for him- scavenged from other survivors. He hasn’t decided whether he’s ready to let that go. It’s the only thing here that makes sense.
His hair’s still matted. His face is a wreck—half-healed burns, dirt he couldn’t scrub out, shadows that make his skin look bruised even when it’s not.
Nobody looks at him.
Or so he thinks.
Nobody sees him.
No one’s asked his name. No one’s screamed. No one’s tried to shoot him, or eat him, or take the watch off his wrist or the shoes off his feet while he sleeps.
He finds a pedestrian bridge and grips the railing, hard enough to steady the tremble in his arms. Below him, hundreds of people move in all directions, smooth and fast and alive. Their voices rise in a low hum, constant and harmless.
He needs a phone.
Safety. He needs safety.
He stares at them like they’re an alien species. Maybe he’s the alien. Some stowaway from another world, dropped into this one without a map or purpose. Like limbo.
He doesn’t understand.
And he hates how warm it feels.
The ache sneaks in beneath his ribs, small and sharp. A tiny, fractured thing, not dead but not whole, either. It stirs in the silence. In the safety. In the normal.
It doesn’t know what to do with any of this.
Not with clean streets. Not with neon signs. Not with vending machines that work or children who aren’t starving or trash bins that aren’t overflowing with charred memories.
-----> PROMPT ONE: REAWAKENING
He wakes up choking on the scent of velvet.
His body feels like scorched iron—like someone left him in a fire to melt and pulled him out too late. There’s pain in his hands, sharp and residual, and his mouth tastes like blood and dirt. The couch beneath him is soft, too soft, and it's wrong. Everything is wrong.
He gasps. Sits upright.
His white winter coat—charred, soot-licked, ruined—clings to him like a funeral shroud. There are black streaks where the fabric burned, and brown-red stains where it didn’t. A pipe clinks against the couch’s side, connected to the bag resting near his foot. The bag’s zipper is partially open, a shotgun muzzle poking through like some final judgment.
And for a long moment, Takuto Maruki just… breathes.
Smoke in his lungs. Blood under his nails. Akira’s face above him, blood-spattered and pale, machete stuck hilt-deep in his chest. I’m sorry too he says just as he sees the face of another young man.
His hope.
Goro. The dead boyfriend.
Dying out just as quickly as it awakened. Like cinders.
He remembers that. His last memory.
The pain blooms slow. His limbs ache from disuse or death—it’s hard to tell. The char at his collarbone crackles when he moves, and when he reaches to rub his neck, his fingers freeze.
There's no bandage over his left eye.
He hisses and leans forward, feeling around his face. His face is aged, grey clinging to brown dark hair with eye circles so deep that they might as well be the burrows of his own grave. He digs a trembling hand into his coat. Pistol. Familiar. He keeps going.
There's...a woman standing before him. He doesn't pull up his gun just yet. She's wearing interesting attire. Blue.
She has an emergency gauze. Small mirror. She has some tools as well but Maruki merely snatches the bandage and sets the mirror on his lap.
He doesn’t call for help. Just starts wrapping the gauze one-handed, clutching the mirror awkwardly in his lap. The wound hasn’t reopened, but it's gorey. Red in all the wrong places. Deep and ugly.
His breathing evens.
The room is quiet. Gentle music plays from nowhere. Everything smells like lavender and old paper. Or not. Where is he? It's shrouded in blue. Somehow, he imagined a less calming afterlife than this and then, and then—
Just as he's properly tying off the bandage on his head- it would whip at the direction of foosteps coming his way.
-----> PROMPT TWO: CONSPIRACY BOARD
Maruki stares at the board like it owes him an apology.
Red thread. Maps, maybe. Diagrams with scribbled arrows and underlines and huge, frantic circles. But none of it—not a single word—makes sense.
He doesn’t speak Japanese.
He never needed to. Born and raised in Colorado. PhD in psychology from Yale. Worked at a private institute in California before the world ended. And after that, well—after that there wasn’t much room for language classes. He speaks English and sign, knows some psych jargon in German and Latin—not whatever this is.
But for all that, he knows that most of this is written in Japanese. He can read them anyway.
He glances around the room like someone might explain it to him. They don’t.
"...Right," he mutters under his breath, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His body still aches. His eye burns beneath the makeshift gauze as if that was the only answer he deserved. “Real helpful. Thanks, universe.”
There's a picture of...a bird. A demon bird there. He has brown hair and stark dark eyes, close to crimson- like Goro from the fire.
That..doesn't make sense. He's so sure he's alive. Somehow. Well right after his death. Then again. he's also dead. It's easy to memorize the face by heart, especially when he's sure it will haunt him when he comes across a creature like him.
There is English, though. Bits of it. Scattered. Not helpful.
"I propose a compromise: Cap
can be short for Captain or Capsize. or Capacitor!"
Codenames.
Another one:
"PLEASE DON'T FLOOD THIS BOARD WITH BICKERING."
Maruki exhales, dragging a hand through his hair.
Okay, Akira. Turns out you become a captain. During the victorian era. The thought of it makes warmth flood in his chest which he quickly quells when he observes the rest of the details. He tried not to get caught off guard by things but really- he shouldn't be alive or this aware right now. Especially after death so maybe he doesn't have much to judge things for.
"And I still have no idea where the hell I am.”
He glances at the board again, desperate for context. For clarity. For anything.
"... Am I on Tumblr?" he murmurs.
"Crow believes it may have something to do with 'dumbass energy.'"
He lets out a small breath through his nose. Not quite a laugh.
That’s... familiar. Too familiar. He doesn’t know these people in a way he would have liked in a different context, but he knows this energy. Knows what it's like to build understanding from scraps. To put names to patterns that no one else even sees yet. To stitch your world back together with colored thread and hope.
He reads the next note.
Yu vs. Souji.
And then:
Vampires are real.
Demons, too.
And then:
Why is it mostly us?
He feels his stomach turn.
He hasn’t breathed in a while.
The threads spiral in every direction. Names, codenames, timelines, versions—fractals of people. Stacked realities. Layered lies. His eyes dart from corner to corner of the board, trying to take it in all at once.
He's seen something like this before. On a wall made of concrete and rot. Written in blood and nail scratches. But this? This is almost clean. Curated. A museum of fractured identities.
How quaint.
-----> PROMPT THREE: downtown shibuya
It’s too quiet.
No screams. No sirens. No gunfire in the distance. No helicopters buzzing overhead. No static bleeding from busted radios. The lights are on. It's...not as cold as it should be. It's pleasant. Everywhere.
Takuto walks slowly down the street, trying not to stagger. His boots feel wrong on the pavement—clean pavement, without dust or ash caked into every crack. Shibuya gleams around him like something from a dream he used to have. A place he only knew through half-watched anime and tourist blogs, back when he still had a mom or family to talk about those things with. Before everything fell apart.
It's cleaner than anything he’s ever seen. Too clean. Like the whole city’s a set someone forgot to tear down. Or a simulation running just a beat too smoothly. He remembered when he saw most of the major cities in his world were up in flames to prevent the outbreak and god, that time he was so naive. Thinking that he and his family could survive through the apocalypse.
He passes a convenience store—some narrow place lit up like a spaceship—and flinches when the door chime goes off. He startles again at the whirr of a vending machine kicking to life. Every person who brushes past him makes him twitch. He keeps his head down, glasses slightly fogged, the way they always get when the cold air kisses skin still warm from adrenaline.
He can’t read the signs. He catches glimpses—ファミリーマート, ホットスナック, 新発売!—but it’s all a blur of symbols he never got around to learning. Just decorations that somehow make the vaguest sense. Even the people—sharp suits, glossy bags, laughter drifting past like perfume—feel like part of the backdrop.
When he reaches a trash bin, he doesn’t hesitate.
The white coat—scorched, riddled with holes, soaked with things he doesn’t want to think about—goes in with a heavy, wet thump. It hits like a body. Slumps like one too. There's no ceremony to it. It just... leaves him.
The pistol stays. Tucked into the back waistband of his rough jeans, hidden under a sagging gray sweater two sizes too big for him- scavenged from other survivors. He hasn’t decided whether he’s ready to let that go. It’s the only thing here that makes sense.
His hair’s still matted. His face is a wreck—half-healed burns, dirt he couldn’t scrub out, shadows that make his skin look bruised even when it’s not.
Nobody looks at him.
Or so he thinks.
Nobody sees him.
No one’s asked his name. No one’s screamed. No one’s tried to shoot him, or eat him, or take the watch off his wrist or the shoes off his feet while he sleeps.
He finds a pedestrian bridge and grips the railing, hard enough to steady the tremble in his arms. Below him, hundreds of people move in all directions, smooth and fast and alive. Their voices rise in a low hum, constant and harmless.
He needs a phone.
Safety. He needs safety.
He stares at them like they’re an alien species. Maybe he’s the alien. Some stowaway from another world, dropped into this one without a map or purpose. Like limbo.
He doesn’t understand.
And he hates how warm it feels.
The ache sneaks in beneath his ribs, small and sharp. A tiny, fractured thing, not dead but not whole, either. It stirs in the silence. In the safety. In the normal.
It doesn’t know what to do with any of this.
Not with clean streets. Not with neon signs. Not with vending machines that work or children who aren’t starving or trash bins that aren’t overflowing with charred memories.
