Surprisingly, that conversation with Kazuo, everything I'd learned about his past, about the history of The Little Night, should've broken me. It should have made everything worse, made me feel even more shattered.
It didn't.
Instead, something in me shifted. I held on to the thought that I wouldn't let it end like this. I wouldn't let them destroy something that had taken so long to build, something that meant so much to him and me.
It pushed me forward. I started working three times harder. It even cleared my head a little.
I stopped wandering through the ruins like a lost puppy. I showed up and worked. Really worked. Because it no longer seemed pointless.
That heavy, numb state started to fade, and my mindset began to change slowly.
Also, I was completely sure those two, Anton and Erica, wouldn't stick around for long. Whatever their reason was for helping us, it couldn't last. Maybe they felt sorry for us. Maybe it was guilt. I didn't know. But I was certain they wouldn't come back. Why would they? They'd already done their good deed, showed up, and played the part of decent people. Why keep going?
I thought the onlookers would drive them away for good. There were fewer of them, yet they still showed up from time to time. Who would want to join this mess? Who would want to end up in another video, the way I had?
No one.
So when we came back the next day, I was one hundred percent sure that there would be no one else there but us.
It wasn't.
I was wrong. Completely wrong.
Lately, I'd started to notice a pattern. I kept getting things wrong. Guess I was terrible at reading people.
Over the next few days, more started to show up at the ruins. First one. Then another. Then a third.
And somehow, the place began to feel alive again.
It'd been just Kazuo and me not long ago. Now there were so many of us. I couldn't even wrap my head around it.
Even though more and more people were showing up. Even though we suddenly had extra hands, things should have picked up. Nothing really changed on our side. Everything was still a mess. We hadn't sat down to talk through an actual plan. We hadn't figured out what we were even going to do with all of this.
And when all those people arrived, ready to help, we realized how little we actually knew about what came next.
At first, we kept going the same way we had before: clearing what was left, throwing out anything that couldn't be saved, piling everything into heaps that, honestly, didn't serve much of a purpose. For a while, it even looked productive.
But it wasn't.
It only looked that way.
After some time, people started to slow down. They'd stop, glance around, unsure what to do next, waiting for someone to give them direction.
Yet, no one left.
The strangest part wasn't that they stayed. It wasn't even that our obvious helplessness didn't scare them off. It was that somehow it made them bolder.
Instead of waiting for us to give them directions or come up with anything remotely smart, they started talking to each other, exchanging ideas and raising questions.
Someone said it was probably time to clear all this crap out for real.
Someone else suggested gathering the metal and selling it. Said a little cash wouldn't hurt, not when we would need it.
Another guy complained he kept cutting up his hands. Said he was sick of it. Worried he would end up with some infection or worse, lose a finger.
Someone overheard and jumped in right away. Said they knew where to get gloves, maybe some other gear, so that no one would be hurt.
Problems came up and were solved without us.
It was strange.
Then someone started talking about the walls. What to do with them. What to do with what was left of the bar counter? Whether we should rip it out or try to salvage it.
People began arguing. Debating. Until someone interrupted them.
"Wait. Before we decide anything that big, we should figure out something more important."
That shut everyone up.
"What are we doing with the bar?" A pause. "Are we rebuilding it or not?"
Everything went still because no one had ever said it out loud before. And then every single one of them turned to look at us. At Kazuo and me.
And we had no idea what to say.
Neither he nor I had ever brought it up. Not once. All this time, we had just been moving. Doing things without actually deciding anything. So when the crowd turned to us all at once, we didn't have an answer. There was nothing we could tell them.
Kazuo looked at me, then exhaled slowly and turned back to them.
"To be honest, I haven't thought that far," he said. "I'd love to bring everything back, rebuild, reopen. Realistically, that takes a huge amount of money. And I don't even know if we could get all the permits in the current situation. Maybe it wouldn't even be safe anymore, and…" He trailed off, shaking his head slightly. "I don't know. It's complicated. I really appreciate the help, but..."
Someone scoffed lightly from the group. "Oh, come on, Kaz. I don't remember you giving up this easily."
"Yeah!" someone else shouted. "We'll figure something out."
"Actually," another voice chimed in, "I've got a friend who works in local administration. I can ask him what kind of permits you'd need now. But you should tell us what you had last time."
"That building already existed back then," someone said. "Now we're basically talking about building it again."
"Do you even need a special permit for a bar, or would a general construction permit work?" another person asked.
The place erupted into noise. Kazuo got pulled into it, answering, listening, and arguing. For the first time in days, he looked… inspired, as if the shadow of everything that had happened had loosened its grip a little.