I wake up. I’m in… a hospital, of some sort.

Not dead. Alive.

But I died.

And before that…

Cheering explodes across my skull and I press my hands against my head, hoping to silence it, if only a little. Wait. Hands? Yeah, now that I look at it, I’ve got hands. Everything else is healed, too. Except my clothes. Actually, if I look under the thin WHITE blanket I’m covered with, exactly nothing of that sort has regenerated. I’m in the nude.

Approaching footsteps in the hall outside makes me quickly cover myself again. A shadow approaches the doorway to my lone room. M—Moleman?

…Ah, no, it’s just Cathy. Or Patty. No, wait, if I’m reading the patch correctly, this one is named Mary. The only difference between her and the others is that her hair is a light RED, and she’s wearing a doctor’s outfit.

She enters the room without speaking a word, barely sparing me a single glance. In the silence between us, I crane my neck to look down the hallway, checking for…

“If you’re looking for SuperMoleman,” Mary says, “he’s currently fighting in the floor sixty-six V.S floor sixty-four group tournament match.” She doesn’t say it, but I can tell by her tone that she’s thinking, ‘and even if he wasn’t, why would he be here?’

I can’t help but agree.

I sit up in bed, sliding my feet off of the side, letting them touch the cold floor below. Standing up, I pull a leopard hide from my inventory, tying it around my waist. It feels more natural than the soft fabrics. More… me.

Mary speaks as I stand up, “Your body is fully healed, recreated from the template submitted before battle. It isn’t strictly necessary, but I will inform you, as I tell the other fighters, that although your soul and body have healed, the mental effects of the battle may remain, and that there is help to be had if you feel any ill effects moving forward.”

Ignoring her words, I step out of the room.

There’s a person in the hallway. The swordswoman from the fight, from before. Our eyes meet and I can see the slot game of ‘fight-flight-freeze’ roll in her head, eventually falling on ‘fight.’ She charges at me, fist raised. I’m not in the mood. She’s full of openings. The second she’s in range, I’ll stretch out my hand, and she’ll decapitate herself on it. It’ll be so simple. It won’t even be funny.

Less than one meter from me, fist still raised, before I even have time to raise a finger, she suddenly freezes. Her chest falls up and down, eyes widening to show her whites, and her forehead starts gleaming with sweat. She must have seen it in my eyes. Because now, I can see her life flashing before her eyes. “Ah—ah…!”

Turning around, she runs away in such a frantic scramble that she slips and falls to the floor trying to turn a corner, crawling the final bit out of my view on all fours.

That was… something.

Since the exit is the other way according to my nose, I turn away from where she went, ignoring the sounds of her hyperventilations coming down the hall.

A few minutes later and I’m at the colosseum again. The cheering is still there, loud and booming, resonating with the grating sounds inside my head. But it isn’t bloodthirsty. It isn’t like the cheering of those watching the execution of a hated criminal. It’s just a sports game, and they’re excited to see the outcome.

I enter. There aren’t as many people, but it’s still a good crowd. I remain standing, watching the fight down below ending. I was too late to see it at its peak, but I do see the results and aftermath.

There’s no ash in the arena.

Five of the nine total fighters stand upright in the moat, happily cheering on the remaining four, standing side by side with no care for the fact that they’re supposed to be enemies. The four still in the arena are shaking hands, laughing and smiling, all to the backdrop of the audience cheering.

“What a match!” the God of Pain comments. “It was a close one, but it seems that team Jormungand has decided to surrender the victory to team Mole And The Mice! Give a big hand to the proud fighters and the final winners of the semi-finals!”

Standing ovation as the final members of the losing team wave to Moleman and his group, willingly leaving the arena and jumping into the out-of-bounds pool of healing elixir, the few small scratches and burns they’ve incurred easily mending themselves. Then, Moleman and his remaining allies walk over to the edge of the arena, pull the losing party and losing members out of the moat, and bask in the clapping and cheering together, as one.

Stolen story; please report.

Next to me, I feel someone looking at me, and turn to see a person I’ve never met, never learned the name of, never done anything to, looking at me like that. How else would they look at me? I don’t know. Their hands freeze mid-clap, making it look like they’re about to pray.

Turning around, I leave the colosseum. I walk down the stairs, and then I begin to jog, and then sprint and now I’m running, running, trying to get the cheering and clapping out of my head, trying to replace it with the howling of the wind, trying and failing oh-so miserably. People who see me freeze up or run or try futilely to stand their ground before capitulating, throwing themselves out of my way in terror. Afraid, angry, disgusted eyes are all that I see. Darkness all around me. Hatred, hatred, hatred, eyes like Simel’s, bearing down on me, righteous, justified—they know what I did and they hate me for it, and they’re right.

It’s dizzying and my head reels and spins in circles orbiting itself like a pair of stars going supernova together, imploding to form darkness, sheer darkness, all-consuming darkness, one that feeds and feeds and never stops even when the universe is eaten, only stopping once its gluttony eats itself, only then will I finally receive the sweet release of—

I crash into someone—something and fly to the ground, eyes moving erratically, teeth clacking together like that of a wind-up toy, claws ready, always ready, but—I look up. There’s a sprint drake in front of me, clad in a leather saddle. And above that…

My eyes meet that of Rice. She smiles down at me, her eyes bright. “Howdy!”

Haah, haah, haah, haah. My feet hurt. They’re bleeding, running barefoot on gravel and rocks, but I pull myself to my bloody feet, staggering, swaying, before finally being able to stand upright. She doesn’t seem to mind it. She doesn’t mind anything. Not what I’m wearing, not the way I look, not the way others are looking at me.

She leaps off her steed with an acrobat’s grace, her spurred boots touching the ground with a melodic jingle. “What a match!” she says. “I could tell by the look of you that you weren’t exactly any normal fighter, but—wow! In the preliminaries, with the way you spooked them silly, and then herded them all to their deaths? Expertly! Were you a herding dog in your past life or something? Ah, though, with how you sliced through them all, I’d probably put my bet on a bobcat instead!”

I breathe heavily. My eyes dart about her form, unwillingly looking for places I could fit my claws into, places I could bite off arteries, ways I could kill her. Openings.

She has few.

“It was a shame your teammates turned on you—very weird, considering you won them the match. But don’t be sad, Prince! In the solo tournament, you won’t be dragged down by those kinds of weights. You’ll be free to fight in whatever way you want!” Her eyes gleam dangerously. “For people like us, there’s no alternative to winning other than death, right?”

Something clenches in my chest and I start running again, barrelling past her, ignoring her confused cries, running, running, running down the street again, clambering up the walls of the city like a headless cockroach, across the top of it, plummeting down to the arid wasteland outside, ignoring my broken legs to keep running. I don’t know where I’m running until it’s dark and I reach my little hole in the ground and I crawl inside, dragging my broken and aching and heaving body inside the coldest, dampest part. There, I curl up, pulling my legs to my chest, hoping that maybe, just like a dying star, I’ll collapse in on myself, and no one will ever see me again.

Darkness around me, darkness abundant, inside me and outside me.

Sleep comes to me like an old, beloved enemy, and I let Her take me.

I drift endlessly, my curled-up body knocking against other planetoids, comets drifting around my head, space dust in the shape of rings hula-hooping across my midsection, stars dancing in the distance, all going round and round and round together in a big galaxy dance, dancing around the maypole together, all holding hands. But I’m not with them, I’m far away, in the cold and the darkness.

Alone.

“No, no, he isn’t in here,” someone in my dream says. “If Granny can’t smell him, he isn’t there.”

“Thank you for getting me this far, Rice. I’ll take it from here.”

“No—no. Not. Here. Granny’s nose…” Huff of annoyance. “Okay. Yes, no problem. I’ll return in an hour or so. One hour. Yes?”

“Yes, one moment. One moment.”

“Good, good…” The sound of padding, animal footprints leaves, alongside the sound of jingling spurs and heavy leather. Alone remains the gentle steps of someone outside my hole.

Someone approaches in my dream, leaning down, briefly blocking the entrance to my hole. Then they carefully slide down, no doubt dirtying all of their fancy expensive equipment in the process. The hole is low, so they have to crawl forward, hands groping about the dirty ground blindly. Eventually, they touch my foot in the dream. “Hey, there you are.”

My eye rolls to look at Moleman. He sits down next to where I lie, still crawled up. I don’t move.

“What did Rice say out there? I couldn’t understand her at all, but… It was something about one. Something like that.”

“...One,” I mumble. “One hour.”

“One hour, huh? Yeah, that’s a good amount of time. Plenty enough to talk.” While he’s talking, he keeps one hand on my leg, as though he’s afraid I’ll vanish into thin air. “Rice brought me here on her sprint-drake. You told me which way this place was so I kind of knew, but it was easy to follow your footprints. I mean, you must have left five buckets’ worth of blood out there!” A little laugh. I don’t share it. “...Yeah.”

We’re both in the darkness now. I can’t really see him, but I can feel his hand, warm, on top of my leg.

He takes a deep breath and I catch a glimpse of his eye, looking towards the entrance to the hole, to the stars shining outside. I don’t know what the time is. When did it get so late?

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up.” I don’t answer him. “I knew you needed me, and I wasn’t there.”

It’s okay. The sun had fallen a lot when I woke up. It must have been hours. And your party needed you. It’s fine. You’re here now, aren’t you?

His hand squeezes my leg. “The next time you feel horrible,” he says, “so horrible you just want to crawl up inside a hole and never come out again, I’ll be there.” He turns to me. Even in the darkness, I can see his eyes shining like diamonds. “No matter what.”

But I’m fine.

It’s okay.

You didn’t—

I just…

My shoulders begin to tremble and I feel a heat rise to my cheeks. Burning hot tears well up and out of my eyes and my chest hurts horribly, terribly, worse than ever. I sit up, and find his arms already spread wide. I fall into them. My thoughts are all jumbled together, like unwound yarn put together erratically, nothing making any sense, emotions and reasoning knotted together limb-over-limb. “I’m sorry,” are the only comprehensible words that escape my heaving throat unscathed.

“It’s alright, you’re okay,” are the only words I can hear properly. Warm hands pressing against my back.

Hiccuping breaths, too overwhelmed to even consider trying to make it stop. Speaking without thinking. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die,” pleading, trembling, said so quickly the words merge together into one singular expression of everything I didn’t want to say.

“It’s okay,” he says, “you’ll be okay. I won’t let them.”

I’m a coward. I always have been. Why can’t I just accept my fate? I’m pathetic.

While I’m still slobbering and sniffling, Moleman takes me by the hand, telling me to hold on, to come along for just a second. And I let him lead me out of the hole, crawling after him, up into the open air, my neck craning to look up at the stars, the endless blanket of stars, a field of shining flowers in the sky, a million billion suns, beautiful and ever-present, there before me, there after me. There always. Beauty everlasting.

He sits me down on the ground, on top of a little blanket he brought. We watch the stars.

I decide, beneath the light of the endless stars, beside the only friend I’ve ever truly had, that no matter what happens tomorrow, it will be alright. I’ll let it happen. This night is beautiful, and I don’t mind if it’s the last one I’ll ever have.

I just hope Moleman won’t take it too badly.