The sun sank below the horizon, painting the barren sky with strokes of violet and gray. In the modest remains of an unnamed village, where silence often fought words to a draw, two figures sat across a rickety wooden table, a pair of gloves between them. They looked like the kind of gloves a magician might use—or perhaps a butcher.
“They’re not ordinary,” said Kai, his eyes reflecting the dim candlelight, a flicker of curiosity stabbing through the gloom of the room. His hair was the color of midnight, with streaks of silver echoing the moon’s glow.
“Nothing is,” replied Sora dryly, running a hand through her short, tangled locks. Her voice matched her demeanor—steady, unyielding, as if the crumbling world around them could never reach her resolve.
“You don’t care what they are?” Kai leaned forward, entangling his fingers, attempting to decipher the enigma seated in front of him.
“Do you care why the world ended?” Sora shrugged, gesturing to the desolate scene outside their window—a constant reminder of the apocalypse.
“No,” Kai admitted, resting his chin on his hands, a child in the body of a young man blinking at life’s contradictions. “But these gloves… they seem hostile.”
“All things are hostile now. But gloves?” Her voice carried a hint of amusement that did not touch her eyes.
“They’ve been here since I woke up,” Kai persisted, hoping for any spark of disbelief or interest. “They were waiting for us.”
Sora examined the gloves, their leather cracked like old memories, a strange symbol stitched on the palm. “Maybe they belong to the last person who tried to outwit the end,” she mused.
Kai’s interest was piqued, leaning closer as if Sora’s quiet words contained ancient secrets. “And?”
“And they lost,” Sora concluded, her tone caustically apathetic.
“Imagine,” Kai pondered, staring deeply at the gloves as if they would answer his silent questions, “a world where they were more than mere cloth and threads.”
“Imagine,” Sora echoed, her own eyes joining Kai’s on the enigmatic gloves, “a world where they spoke of change and power.”
“Change?” Kai grinned, revealing teeth that had seen too few smiles. “I think they symbolize hope, Sora.”
“Yet they rest here, avoiding notice,” Sora countered. “So your hope is… elusive.”
“Evaporated like the world?” Kai countered, a sharp edge creeping into his smile.
“Perhaps.” Sora arched her brow subtly. “Or simply not mine to hold.”
Silence fell—a silence filled with the weight of lost worlds and hopeful dreams. Outside, the wind howled against the silence, a reminder of the ever-lurking emptiness.
“So,” Kai broke the standstill, reaching for the gloves tentatively. “Do we try them on?”
Sora leaned back, letting a rare chuckle break through her stoic exterior. “If you’re willing to gamble with history wearing a pair of gloves.”
“And if they change nothing?” Kai asked, the question hanging precariously in the air.
“Then we learn to live without gloves, without magic. Without hope if we must.” Sora stood slowly, resolute as ever, facing the shadows beyond the horizon.
Kai stayed seated, the gloves now in his hands, and whispered to the air, “Just maybe, this time, we’ll win.”
He watched Sora walk away, her silhouette blending with the night, while the gloves sat quietly, their secrets sealed. Yet, they seemed to hum softly, laced with irony, as if whispering, “Victory lies not in what you wear, but in what you choose to believe.”
In their final play, the gloves had the last laugh.