CHAPTER 2 EXECUTION - KAZUNORI AKIKAZE, SHSL TOURIST
sketches by ysther - lineart + colours by moa writing by ysther
>>> CRUISING ALTITUDE |『 巡航高度 』<<<
Kazu is thrown, carelessly so, through a threshold and onto the floor. He’s so furious and indignant that he doesn’t register where he is until he’s levering himself back into a standing position by gripping an armrest.
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Ah?
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Kazu whirls around in time to see the exit to the plane slam shut and lock itself.
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“No—” he scrambles forward, teeth bared, “no—!”
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He’s thrown off his feet with a scream as the plane lurches forward, accelerating to high speeds without warning in the blink of an eye. The force sends him flying all the way into the back of the plane, and he crashes almost comically into the steel trolleys in the back that normally carry beverages and snacks.
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Kazu groans and tries to get up. His stomach drops as the plane tilts its nose at a sharp upward angle, parting from the ground too abruptly, too dangerously, too suddenly, and climbing straight into the clouds. His heartbeat grows very loud in his ears, and his throat feels tight. He’s hyperventilating. Shit. Kazu rolls over and starts to stand once more, but stumbles, the swiftly decreasing air pressure making his skull ache. The plane hits a patch of turbulence on its rapid ascent, and Kazu, along with every other thing not bolted down in the plane, gets tossed into the ceiling before crashing back down. He spits out blood from biting his tongue and whimpers, fear settling into his joints and making it hard to stand.
So he starts to half-crawl, half-stumble towards the front of the plane — the door to the cockpit is open and while Kazu can’t fly a plane, there was that one time, right, three years ago, where he was in a helicopter by Niagara Falls, and—
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Another bout of turbulence hits the plane and this time it pitches sharply to the left. Kazu gasps in terror, weightless for a moment, before banging his head on a seat’s headrest. As he crumples to the ground again, ears ringing, the luggage stored in the overhead bins tumble out. They must be filled with deadweights because one of them falls on Kazu’s ankle, and he feels a snap all the way up to his knee. He can’t even cry out — the air is so thin now that he can only gape down at his leg and try to get air. His face screws up in pain as the airplane rocks abruptly to the right, and he falls forward across the aisle and hits his nose on the aisle seat.
A weighted luggage pitches into his back and pins him against the seat. Kazu coughs, struggling to take a breath. The plane cabin isn’t pressurized. Bruising is starting to appear under his skin, and the burst vessels in his sclera are slowly turning his eyes a crushed crimson.
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“God— goddammit, help,” Kazu wheezes, scrabbling for purchase against the seat to pull himself free. “P-please, help, I’m—”
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A pathetic, helpless whine of fear escapes him as the plane literally rolls onto its side, sending him and all the heavy luggage piled upon the wall, right over one of the windows. Kazu hears the crack of glass beneath him loud and clear. He can’t breathe. The weight of all the luggage atop him is slowly squeezing away any air left in his lungs. He can’t move either, trapped, but he has a great view of that window beneath his shoulder and the endless ocean stretching beyond it, the hairline thin fractures spiderwebbing their way across the surface, the glass unable to support the combined weight of himself and the luggage.
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He watches the crack in the window spread, and it’s the slowest two seconds of his whole life. > The glass shatters and the whole plane cabin turns into a vacuum. If Kazu had screamed, there was no way anyone could have heard it before the change in pressure yanks him forcefully through the window and broken glass, into the open sky.
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In the cabin, the luggage burst open, filled to the brim with photographs. Every photo he had ever taken. They all get sucked out of the plane too, and flutter in a frenzy around the clouds.
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Hundreds upon thousands of glossy images, of all sorts of places, all kinds of food, and so many different adventures, occasionally featuring the same recurring person. Eventually, the photographs float down to sea level, fanning out on the ocean’s surface in a crude collage before sinking, just like the remains of the one who had taken them.
KAZUNORI AKIKAZE, THE SUPER HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL TOURIST, HAS BEEN EXECUTED
