Ritsuka remained still, deathly so. Still and pale, the blood that ought to be coloring her features instead pooled on the floor around her.

And yet.

As Keke leaned in the lick at her owner's face again, clearly trying to wake her in her own way, did some of her fur move ever so slightly as it passed in front of Ritsuka's mouth and nose? It was almost imperceptible, so weak and small and slow that there wasn't even a noticeable rise and fall to her chest, yeah somehow, impossibly, she was breathing.

And a closer look, if Yasuho could stomach it, at her ruined and torn apart chest, would reveal an equal faint twitching. The torn muscles of her heart still weakly attempting to beat.