1.3
"Hey, are you ok?"
Yumi reached out a hand and waved it under the gunman's face.
Slowly, the person lifted their head, revealing the face that had been hidden beneath the shadow of their hood.
Exhausted eyes and an emaciated face. A thick, scraggly beard clinging to their bony cheeks.
"Woah," Yumi murmured. "You've been going through it, huh?" She smiled and said, "Do you want something to eat?"
The man's eyes met hers, and he slowly tilted his head up and down in a motion that barely resembled a nod.
"I'll bring you some food," she promised.
She couldn't imagine him reading the menu, let alone making a decision, so she got up and started towards the kitchen, but something stopped her dead in her tracks.
"You're not going to shoot me, are you?" she asked, looking back at him over her shoulder.
Still, the man said nothing.
She turned around, bending over to unstrap the man's gun from his backpack. "I'll take the gun with me–just to be safe."
When she entered the kitchen, she was greeted by both Mr. and Mrs. Bennett staring at her with their mouths hanging open.
"Don't worry," Yumi assured them, "he's a nice guy."
The Bennetts focused their gazes on the rifle in her hands, but she ignored them.
"I know we're on break, but could you guys help me make some cheeseburgers? At least five would be good."
Both Bennetts remained frozen to the spot.
"Come on!" Yumi said happily, putting her hand on Mrs. Bennet's shoulder and giving her a little shake. "We can't keep our guests waiting!"
After setting the gun on a countertop, she got to work.
She threw ten patties on the griddle as quickly as she could, and, without the help of either Bennet, had five double cheeseburgers done within minutes. She thought the stranger might want fries on the side, but, for fear of him disappearing, she didn't dare dawdle.
Not bothering with a plate or utensils, she grabbed a tray and hurried back into the dining area.
With a sigh of relief upon spotting the gray hood, she set the tray down in front of the man and once again took her seat across from him.
Despite his apparent lifelessness, the man reacted to the food instantly.
He stuffed a burger into his face, and, when he started choking on his third bite, Yumi exclaimed, "Shit!" and sprinted into the kitchen.
When she dashed back to the table and slammed a glass of water onto it, the man gulped it down just as gratefully as he'd done with the food.
Yumi decided that she'd better bring a full pitcher to the table, and once she'd safely set the water next to the feasting man, she resumed her seat, finally able to relax.
After a few chaotic minutes and six refills of his glass, the man had finished all five burgers and finally raised his head, leaning back in his booth as he took in deep breaths of air.
Despite all the time it took him to recover from the meal, Yumi was happy to wait.
Finally, he regained control of his breathing and, for the first time since he'd finished eating, he looked at the girl seated across from him.
"I have no money," he confessed quietly.
From his appearance, Yumi had been expecting to hear a hoarse whisper, but instead, the man had a full, youthful voice.
She smiled. "We can figure out your payment later. First, who are you, and where are you from?"
He turned his eyes back to the tabletop and didn't say a word.
However, when Yumi's movements caught his eye and he returned his gaze to her, he found himself staring down the barrel of his own gun.
"Tell me," she ordered calmly.
His eyes were stuck on the weapon.
"I'm a rebel. I only came here because I was starving." His voice broke a little as he continued, "I couldn't take it any more. I'm not cut out for this."
Yumi's eyes gleamed and her smile turned into a wide grin. "Now I know how you can pay me."
The man looked past the gun and into her eyes. Yumi stared right back at him.
"Take me with you."
"What?" he muttered weakly.
Yumi lowered the gun. "When you leave here, I'm coming with you."
Despite being fatigued out of his mind, the man's eyes still fully displayed his disbelief.
"Why?"
"Because I want to."
With that, Yumi grabbed the man's backpack and stood up.
His head followed her as she walked away. "Where are you going?"
She never stopped, and never looked back. "I'm going to get my stuff ready."
The man stared after her in silence. As he sat in that booth, he scratched his beard, finally realizing that a random waitress had just taken both his gun and all his belongings.
No longer caring about anything, he somberly leaned back in his seat and wondered if he would get his things back.
A few minutes later, he heard a door push open and a girl's voice happily exclaim, "I'm ready!"
Yumi had changed back into her street clothes–a cropped white hoodie, tight blue cargo shorts, and pastel pink street shoes–and was wearing a blue backpack, which was bulging, stuffed to its breaking point. In her right hand was the man's backpack and gun, which she set gently on the floor next to him.
"Let's go!"
He looked at her with a pair of grave, blue eyes. "You can't come with me."
Yumi snatched up his backpack. "I have a gun, so you'll do what I say."
"You don't get it," he mumbled, dropping his eyes to the floor, "I can't even help myself, so we'd both be dead in days."
She leaned in close. "I'll support both of us."
He sighed a breath of misery, and his low-hanging head told Yumi that he didn't believe her.
She forcefully grabbed his collar, forcing him to meet her eyes. "I don't care if you think we'll die. We're going right now, because we don't want anyone to catch us, ok?"
He dropped his eyes. "...I don't want to be responsible for your life."
Yumi strengthened her grip on his jacket and fully lifted him to his feet. Their faces were no more than a few inches apart when she said, "Do you want me to take your stuff and go die alone?"
His tired eyes widened and she released him. Picking his backpack up off the floor, she turned around and walked out the door.
Like a statue, he stood there, watching through a window as the girl walked away alone. Even after she'd disappeared from sight, his eyes remained fixed on the other side of the clear glass pane.
His full stomach finally brought some sense back to him, and a horrifying conclusion appeared in his mind.
I don't have a choice.
He walked to the door and pushed it open, but as he looked down the sidewalk that led away from the restaurant's entrance, there was no sign of the girl who'd confronted him.
With a sickening anxiety in his stomach, he briskly walked out the door, peering through every gap between buildings that he passed. Still, he saw no one.
He broke into a desperate run.
"Hello? Hello??"
"BOO!"
He leapt around with a yell, throwing his hands out to shield his head. But standing in front of him, with a satisfied smile on her face, was the very girl he'd been searching for.
"Gotcha," she said, putting one hand on her hip and holding the other up in a peace sign.
He dropped his shaking arms, lungs aching as he gasped for air. He may have just had a full meal, but his body was still suffering from the starvation he'd experienced for weeks on end, and he was in no shape to be shocked so suddenly.
Yumi set her backpack on the ground and slung the one she'd been carrying–his backpack, with the gun attached–onto her back.
"Here, you can carry mine," she said, holding her blue backpack out in front of him. "I can't tell if you'll really take me with you," she explained, "so I need to have the gun."
He looked at her with pain and sorrow in his eyes, but he obeyed her requests by taking the backpack from her hand and putting it over his shoulders.
"...are you really serious about this?"
"Have you listened to anything I've said?" she retorted. "Yeah, I'm dead serious."
"Look at your clothes," he mumbled, examining her casual summer outfit.
She raised her eyebrows. "Have they caught your eye?"
He nodded uneasily. "You have all that skin exposed…"
"So what?" she demanded. "Come on, we have to go now."
"How are you going to survive like that?"
Yumi was losing her patience. "Why are you worried about me? You're the one who was about to die!"
He looked into her determined, dark-brown eyes and finally sighed in his defeat. "We should hide the gun under my jacket. We might be stopped if we get seen, right?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Are you trying to take it?"
He took a step towards her.
She opened her mouth to yell at him to get back, but she stopped short when he unzipped his jacket and held it out to her.
"You can put this on to cover the gun," he offered.
"Oh, thanks."
She grabbed the jacket and tossed it over both the backpack and the gun, making her look like a hunchback with some kind of pole sticking up on her right side.
"Finally!" she exhaled with relief, breaking into a sprint down the sidewalk.
"Wait!" the man yelled after her to no avail.
He jogged along hopelessly, unable to do anything but watch as she sprinted into the distance, turning sharply out of sight as soon as she reached the street.
Eventually, he also emerged onto the wide road, stumbling on the pavement and wheezing heavily as he squinted his eyes to see the girl's hazy figure running determinedly for the fence in the distance. Dropping his head, he ambled along after her.
By the time he reached the black metal barrier, Yumi had been out of sight for several minutes. He gripped the top bar of the fence as tightly as he possibly could and used every last ounce of his strength to haul himself over.
As he cleared the top, he slipped and toppled down, crashing hard onto the ground on the other side. He lay there in a heap, panting uncontrollably.
Did she run away? he wondered, his fuzzy mind barely able to process anything. Probably. At least I got one last meal.
"You're slow."
As if it weighed a hundred pounds, he lifted his head off the ground and looked up at the girl standing over him. "You waited?" he wheezed.
"Huh?? How evil do you think I am?"
He dropped his head back to the safe, solid earth and muttered, "I need… to rest for a bit… Ack!"
His beaten down body had felt so heavy, but he felt himself being scooped off the ground as if he weighed nothing.
Yumi slung him onto her back like a sack of potatoes.
"You're light as hell."
With that, she marched onward into the forest, the weight of a man and all his belongings on her shoulders.