On the next page, Mami had rendered Kenji in stark charcoal, standing at the center of an inferno he'd created. His legs were braced wide, his stance unmovable—a god planted in the middle of his own apocalypse.
In his hands, he gripped Totoro.
She'd drawn the flamethrower with obsessive precision—the sleek black barrel, the custom grip molded to his fingers, the fuel line snaking back toward the tank mounted against his hip.
The weapon looked like an extension of him.
Like it had grown from his bones.
And from its mouth—fire.
A twenty-five-foot river of flame roared across the page, rendered in layers of white and gray charcoal against the black.
She'd somehow captured the way firemoves—liquid and alive, hungry and reaching. The flames licked outward in violent tendrils, consuming everything in their path.
Men burned before him.
She'd drawn them mid-scream, their bodies twisting as the fire devoured them. Some were still standing—arms thrown up in useless defense, mouths wrenched open in silent agony. Others had already fallen, their forms reduced to charred silhouettes against the blazing ground.
One man crawled toward the edge of the page, flames still clinging to his back. His fingers clawed at nothing.
He wasn't going to make it.
None of them were.
And Kenji?
He wasn't even looking at them.
His face was tilted slightly upward, eyes half-lidded, expression almost serene.
Peaceful.
Like the screams were music.
Like the smell of burning flesh was incense.
Like this was meditation.
The flames reflected in his dark eyes—twin points of white that Mami had left unpigmented, letting the paper glow through. It made him look inhuman. Elemental.
Erased.
I stared at the image. “Has Kenji done this before?”
Hiro didn’t even look up. “You know the answer to that question.”
“Has Mami seen him do it?”
“I doubt it, but surely she’d have imagined it.”
Mami had imagined it so vividly. She'd turned his deadly violence into somethingbeautiful.
Something sacred.
“She loves him the most like this.” I swallowed. “Not gentle. Not sleeping, but destroying. Killing.”
With my fingers slightly unsteady, I flipped to the next page, and then froze. “Oh shit.”
