Chapter Seven: Soon:

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Day Thirty-One

I met a girl from another one of the camps today. She’s about my age and doesn’t know what to do with her life now that the human race has been “exiled”. I met her when three of my friends and I were out looking for any source of food or water. Our camp keeps running out of everything. The old men keep using up the matches for their cigarettes. They refuse to listen us younger folks.

“Mind your damn business!” they tell us. They don’t seem to get that we need those matches for the fire. On top of that, water and food keep vanishing. I don’t know how long we can keep this up. Some of the boys in our camp is talking about killing the old men just to stop them from using up the matches for their cigarettes. (I hope it doesn’t come down to that.)

Today started out normal. (Ha, normal! I still can’t believe that we call all of this “normal”.) My friends and I handed out west for our search. We’re still not use to this city looking so deserted. I think we all gave up on looking for survivors at this point. They are all dead now. Funny thing, we’ve yet to see any bodies either. It’s like the sand just made them all disappear.

Most of the morning, we came up with nothing. About all of the resources in our area had been picked clean.

“I think it’s time to move on,” I told my party. “There’s nothing out here.”

“Keep looking!” Sho yelled. I frowned as I looked at the endless sand around us. I remember thinking, look where? I thought that we might have gotten here too late. Just when I thought that we would go back empty-handed, I saw a flash of yellow and blue out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head.

“What are you looking at, Soon?” Sho asked. I didn’t say a word as I wandered away.

“Soon?” I heard in the distance. The blue and yellow came from a little short dress. Skinny legs started to run away from me. I reached off for the dress owner’s back.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Come back here!” I managed to catch up and grab the owner by the shoulder. She tried to struggle out of my grasp, but I wouldn’t let go. After about three minutes of struggling, she jabbed me in the ribs, but I wouldn’t let go. We ended up falling down onto the sand. I leaned over as this girl looked up at me, panting.

“Why did you run away from me?” I asked her. She closed her mouth.

“Why were you chasing me?” she asked.

“Why did you run?”

“I’m sorry.”

“But why did you run?”

This girl pushed herself up and turned to me. “You looked like thieves coming into our camp.”

I tilted my head. “Your camp?”

“Yes.”

I looked around at the vast sand. “Where?”

“Over those hills there.” She pointed to the rolling hills in the distance.

“Oh.”

This girl tilted her head. “What are you doing near our village?”

“Looking for supplies. What are you doing outside of your village?”

“Patrol.”

I tilted my head as I stared at her dress and cute black shoes. “Dressed like that?”

She looked down at her dress. “This is the only clean thing I had to wear today.”

“So… you’re out of supplies too?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” I remembered my friends wandering around in the sand, looking for their own supplies as well. The sand had killed all of the electricity and the plants. I even think some of the animals are dead. Most of the stores in the city have been cleaned out. We had to go back to the doing things the “old way”. (I could’ve sworn that I have built up muscle from washing clothes in an old tub. Laundry is probably why we keep running out of water.

“We won’t stay long,” the girl spoke up.

“Why?” I asked.

“There isn’t much around this city anymore. My camp is going to pack up and leave by morning,” she said. “You should probably do the same with your camp too.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “How do you know this?”

Her lips curved into a little smile. “My camp took the last can of tuna yesterday.”

“So?”

“This city has no more food, water, clean clothes, or anything useful. Your friends aren’t going to find anything because we took it all already. So you might as well do the smart thing and leave the area just like we are.”

“And go where?” I asked. This girl shrugged her shoulders. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to stop talking to her.

“Will I see you again?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” the girl said, brushing sand off of her skirt.

“Well… tell me your name at least.”

“Mai-Pai.”

I blinked. “Mai-Pai?”

“That’s right. And you are?”

I put my hands on my hips and smiled. “Soon!”

She giggled at me when I tried my best to look cool while grinned. “Nice to meet you, Soon.”

“Same here.” For some reason, I had to learn more about this strange girl named Mai-Pai.