I See One Second Into The Future: Loner In The Apocalypse

Kairos soon lost sight of anything other than the flesh that he was eating. He couldn't even recognize anything around him anymore. As for Nyoka and the others, they simply extracted the cores before watching silently.

Even as he was doing it, Kairos couldn't understand why he found this enjoyable. It felt as though there was a complete contradiction in his brain. However, it was just too hard to stop himself, even when it just didn't make any sense.

He consciously wanted to stop, and logically, it made sense for him to stop, as he had already eaten more than enough for the sake of his starvation. An obsession overtook him, one which he had attempted to fight.

Not to much success, but he continued resisting it, as difficult and futile as it may have been.

It was a rather desperate fight, one where he hardly made any progress the entire time. However, he slowly made progress, gradually regaining control over himself. And soon enough, he no longer had this extreme compulsion to eat the corpses any longer.

Along with that, Kairos found himself sitting among bloodstains, with the actual corpses themselves nowhere to be seen. He looked around, confirming this before he gradually came to an explanation as to why they were gone.

Because he had already eaten them all.

He hadn't regained himself because of wrestling control over his own mind, but rather because there was nothing left for his gluttony to continue on towards. Kairos put a hand on his forehead as he closed his eyes. A small sigh escaped him as he tilted back slightly.

It was at this point that he could no longer lie to himself or doubt that he had a very serious problem.

After a little while, he let out a laugh as a bitter smile etched itself onto his face.

"It looks like I'm really fucked up, aren't I?"

Contrary to his expectations, Nyoka and the others didn't have all that much of a reaction. It was Sara who had spoken up after a short silence.

"As I said, I've yet to find anyone down here that fits an exception. Regardless of who it is, everyone has something very wrong with them, whether it's clear or not. At most, this simply makes you just like the rest of the population."

Kairos let his hand fall as he looked up into the infinite blackness.

"Yeah, I guess. But... this doesn't feel like something I would do normally."

He was too tired to explain the whole situation, so he just dumbed it down to that. That he wasn't acting like how he normally was. Nyoka didn't think much of it, shrugging his shoulders.

"A place like this just makes you do something against your usual actions. After all, your character gets tested to its limits in a place that puts you at your limits."

He didn't think it was anything strange, and neither did any of the others. This sense of acceptance was almost uncanny to Kairos, as he simply wasn't used to that kind of thing. For the most part.

Kairos recalled the previous words of Azami. That he essentially had to recall himself and his defining features to fight against his misunderstandings of living other lives. While trying to recall them, he found the sudden strange acceptance from Nyoka and the others had made him remember another time.

It was a time when Edward had decided to break off their friendship. The actual path there wasn't very smooth exactly, and there was no true formal statement of it. However, it was something that they had both understood.

In the end, Edward just couldn't see him as the same person anymore after the one time Kairos had killed a wolf.

The two of them silently agreed to stop talking and pretended they never knew each other.

Along with that sentiment, Nicole had tried her best to patch things up. But in the end, she didn't truly understand the sentiment and her efforts ultimately didn't do anything. Regardless, she felt that Edward was being unreasonable, and nearly came to resent him for that fact.

It was ironically Kairos that defended Edward most of the time, much to Nicole's dismay.

There may have been bumps along the way, but it wasn't a relationship that concluded a fight. Instead, it was a rather quiet one. The last parting words that Kairos could remember was when the two of them said goodbye to each other. Both calmly, yet softly.

Almost as though they were still denying that this was reality, despite accepting it.

Nicole was the one hurt the most by this, despite the fact she was never directly involved. Kairos tried to explain but didn't really know how to do so. In the end, Nicole eventually lost interest in trying to understand, before accepting that this was how things would be.

Albeit with some distaste towards Edward.

At the end of everything, Kairos found himself sitting at the top of a hill, looking off in the distance towards a river. It was the place where he had his last real conversation with Edward. Nicole was there with him, with an uncharacteristically aggressive hold over Kairos, with one arm over his shoulder and the other holding onto his waist.

As though he would suddenly run off just as Edward did.

They were silent, but it was still an incredibly painful moment for Kairos because it reminded him of when they were all still kids. In this exact same spot, years ago, Kairos suddenly felt a sense of exhaustion while playing with Edward and Nicole.

"I'm really tired..."

He expressed this and was met with a somewhat normal response. Edward showed a bit of concern before saying the obvious.

"Ah, I guess we should go back home. We have been outside for a while and need to go to sleep!"

Nicole pouted slightly.

"Aw, I wanted to play a bit more, but if you're tired then I guess we should stop."

However, it was at this point that Kairos sat down and looked off as he had before.

"I... don't want to go home yet. Could you guys just stay with me for a little bit?"

Edward grinned rather widely and didn't ask any other questions. Sitting down next to him and laying on his arm on top of Kairos' shoulder. Nicole saw that example and meekly tried to match that energy, essentially hover handing an arm over Kairos.

They all sat together silently for a long while, and it was a moment that mattered to him so much, even if it was a rather random moment for the other two.

Yet, it was also unreasonable to ask for good times to last forever. But it wasn't too painful for Kairos, as it wasn't as though bad times had arrived. Nicole had stayed with him for so long, despite all the reasons to leave and lack of response he gave in return.

And in recalling all of this, it only made it clearer how he took her presence for granted. 𝒃𝙚𝒅𝒏𝙤𝙫𝒆𝒍．𝙘𝒐𝙢

It wasn't even like she had died, or that he would never be able to see her again. As that was a very real thing that would happen soon. Kairos had simply underestimated how much Nicole was what held him together more often than not.

He was recalling who he was as a person. But that only made the lingering absence of Nicole in his life further pain him.

Regardless of whether or not it was the right choice, Kairos stopped thinking about it all. Deciding that he would do it later. As for when exactly that later was, he had no idea.

"You alright?"

Nyoka had called out to him while he was in a daze, and he simply nodded.

"Yeah. As alright as I can be. Let's go into the dungeon. However the hell you are supposed to do this."

With a sigh, he climbed up the stairs. Nyoka and the others silently followed after him. After a moment of standing outside, Kairos pushed in the doors, revealing the inside. The room within was large and tall, expanding out into a very long hallway.

There were engravings on the walls and floor. However, it was quite hard to see, since the walls were all covered by blood and flesh. Among that, Kairos could make out four corpses at the entrances. There were holes in all their chests, showing a rather deliberate attack.

He also saw that the blood and flesh were being absorbed into the ground of the dungeon in real-time.

Nyoka and the others walked up from behind, looking down at them. They didn't care too much about all the flesh, instead opting to walk on ahead past, without giving it a second look.

Kairos stayed back for a second, taking another look as the corpses gradually disappeared as though they never existed in the first place. People that were forgotten just like that.

"Hey, you coming?"

Sara called out to him. Kairos blinked a few times before clearing his throat.

"Yeah, I am."