To My Sunflower - Chapter 91

_”Not possible.”_

Eiji’s mind cycled through reasons to justify what he was still processing as his truth. His memory lingered on Kei handing over yen to an impoverished young mother to give her a chance to a good life. Kei Ito was a man who respected life and fought against injustice in his own way. The unlikely good guy that others needed. It was impossible to see a world without him.

_”I’m the one the world could do without.”_

He cried, feeling his heart torn with guilt; wanting to believe Kei wasn’t dead verses his deep-rooted relief of being alive. Yet what had he narrowly escaped? What had happened? No. His eyes may have processed an exaggeration of the truth.

_”Maybe he’s alive! He ran off confused and injured!”_

His heart raced with a hope that was the truth. Kei was alive and had somehow fled to safety in a mad panic.

“He might be alive!” He blurted aloud and felt a mad shaking from his shoulders.

“Eiji!” Tyne called out to him from the back-seat of the car.

Eiji stirred awake from his spot in the front passenger seat. It seems he had been sleeping when the black rains were falling. Tama also stirred awake with a hearty yawn.

“Tyne. When the rain stops, we have to look for Kei.” Eiji’s words were a despondent whisper.

“It’s no use. Nothing else survived the blast.” Tyne soberly answered.

“Blast! That’s what you’re calling it!” Eiji angrily snapped back. “A bomb levelled the ground to ash! Your country dropped a bomb on mine!”

Tyne gasped and kept his words to himself. His expression was of shock and distress.

“We don’t know that.” Sean soberly attempted to add more reasoning to the conversation.

“What else is there Sean?!” Eiji persisted.

“There’s no reason for them to drop a bomb on civilians!” He snapped back with his eyes pleading for Eiji to accept his reasoning.

“Then what was it?!”

“It could’ve come from a factory explosion.” Tyne added to the pool of logical reasons.

Eiji slowly exhaled to calm his emotions and closed his eyes to set those reasons to be a belief.

“Okay. Then let’s look for Kei when the rain stops.”

He opened his eyes and saw both men nodding with understanding.

The rain eventually stopped to allow some of the natural sun to return to the sky.  The men ambled out of the car and slowly returned to the scene to find Kei.

There was nothing to find amongst the tree corpses and burnt grounds, which ran on for miles.

Regardless, they kept searching and calling out Kei’s name. Their hope ran wild when they heard a man groaning, within the shelter of a tree cluster at the undamaged side of the road.

He wasn’t Kei, but an elderly man who had taken shelter from the black rains. Half his body was severely burnt with his clothes melted into his skin. He was struggling with delirium and fever.

Tyne’s doctor instincts compelled him to do what he could to ease the man’s pain. The elderly man expressed his thanks before he gently closed eyes and became permanently still.

Tears rained from Tyne’s eyes as he realized this man’s burns were abnormal from those he had treated during Pearl Harbor attacks and his time at Iwo Jima. Even air raids weren’t capable to have a man burn and still keep burning to melt his flesh.

No civilian should die this way.

A fear nagged at his heart. What if Eiji was right? What if…?

His heart felt like breaking, as his mind recalled the maps he had handed over to his countryman. What if this man’s dead was caused by US retaliation in the form of a bomb drop?

“No.” He gasped.

They weren’t fighting to cause massive harm to civilians. The war between the US and Japan were being fought by enlisted soldiers. It was civil. It was justified. It was…

“Tyne. Kei is gone. This man is gone. If you can’t believe this. Look at my arm.” Sean soberly noted. “What if the cause was because of something we did?”

“No. Nothing our country has could’ve caused all this.” Tyne reasoned.  Nodding his head as he set this truth for himself. “It has to be some complicated accident.”

“Nothing my country has could’ve caused this too.” Eiji returned his reason to negate Tyne’s. “Who else is attacking my country?”

“Speculations.” Tyne brushed off Eiji’s words. “Let’s go to the city to find out the truth.”

“What about this man?” Eiji looked to the dead on the ground.

Tyne said a reverent prayer for the man.

They stood and returned to the car. Sean treated his own wound with a makeshift sling made from one of his shirts.

Eiji assumed Kei’s role as their driver with Tama as his co-pilot.  He drove them as close to the city as he could before the roads were obstructed with fallen trees, debris and damaged ground.

He parked the car to a discreet side of the road.

They ambled out and assumed the way forward on foot. All their recently set truths and justifications were unravelling as they saw more of the massive devastation. More burnt out corpses that were once sturdy buildings, ways of life and strong growing forms of nature, which had previously withstood aeons. Gone in a split moment of white.

“Oh my god!” Sean gasped and dropped to his knees when they approached one of the former bridges of the Enka River.

Floating upstream was a crimson river of many dead bodies, young and old. Civilians. The smell was incomprehensible and unpleasant.

“Please! God. This wasn’t caused by us!” He begged, pressing on his damaged arm to feel the pain.  “Ray! Please, God. Take my life. Not Ray’s!”

“No. We don’t know that. We don’t know if there’s more dead. Let’s keep going. Let’s find the truth.” Tyne persisted through his own tear shedding.

He stubbornly refused to see that the city was destroyed beyond this level of devastation. It had to be natural. It had to be something not caused by his kind. His Hinata and Sean’s Ray weren’t part of the same statistic as Kei and what they were seeing.

“We need to properly treat your arm,” Tyne said as he turned his gaze to Sean’s arm.

“Who cares about me?! Look at the river! Tyne…” Sean snapped. His emotions got the better of him. “What if the entire city is destroyed, Ray was there?! What if it was us that destroyed everyone?! Oh God, no!”

“Pussies! Stop fucking around and be doctors!” Eiji snapped the men out of their moment. “That’s what Kei would say. Let’s do what he would’ve said.”

Tama rubbed Eiji’s ankle and relaxed when he picked her up to give her a cuddle.

Tyne smiled through his tears. Of course, they were doctors in need.

“Yeah. Let’s go where people need help.”

Sean expelled a weary sigh. Eiji was right. Now wasn’t the time for crying and worrying about ‘what-ifs’ when there were people in need of medical attention.  He could cope with his pain, knowing that he was relieving others.

The men returned to the car and back-tracked to find a way closer to the epicentre where they could help as many people as possible.