Scene 24:
Nothing hits as hard as life. Everything can change so fast.
You help carry the wounded to the infirmary. There they are attended to by your comrades, who with a temperance that even they didn't know they had, sew up cuts, pull out pieces of glass, and stop hemorrhages. There is no more anesthesia, a nocturnal sabotage of the youth destroyed their reserves. The injured had to bite the pillow or a palette, and endure.
A comrade tells that Sumire sent for you. You nod and walk briskly down the stairs to the university lobby. You find Sumire staring with haggard eyes over the barricades, beyond the gates, where a row of youths armed with machetes, pipes, and stones, wait for a signal to attack.
"Is it inevitable that this story will end in bloodshed?" she asks without looking at you. His voice is hoarse. She has never been the same since a mob assaulted her in the middle of the night with all her printed poems and forced her to swallow them. She was very happy when going to be published, but then that happened, and she stopped caring.
From the opposing side a white flag is raised, but none of your classmates celebrate.
"Parley" Sumire says, making it clear what everyone is thinking.
They gather everyone who can fight, and equip them with anything that can be used as weapons: Bats, chains, kitchen knives, shovels, broomsticks, and so on. They get a similar thickness of people as the youth. You offer to push Sumire, but she insists on fending for herself.
They reach the campus. The respective leaders of each side move forward, you accompany your friend. Isaac follows the youth leader without the slightest interest in you, as if they were strangers. Sumire and Gustavo stand face to face in the middle of the esplanade, five meters apart. Gustavo's metal arm glistens in the sun, you are still not sure what happened to him. The representatives speak loud enough for their fighters to hear.
"Are you ready to sign the peace and stop this barbarism?" Sumire says.
"Peace?" Gustavo gives a humorless smile and looks to the sides. "Let's be honest, does anyone even know what that is?"
Final 7: War.