The black ice stretches on. Further and further. I move slowly, robotically, across the endless expanse.

Hell Difficulty Thirty-Second Floor:

Cocytus, step two: Antenora.>

<[Clear Condition]

Move on.>

Now, the people in the ice are frozen up to their chins. They can’t move, but they still follow me with their eyes. It’s still mostly goblins. But, as I walk…

There’s a human here. Perplexed, I crouch down next to him. He stares at me with wild, black eyes. “Who are you?”

“Y—y—you k—killed me,” he stutters through chattering teeth, barely able to open his mouth. “On th—the boat. I was i—innocent. B—but you… Killed… m—me. Ate my… heart.”

Which one was…?

“Oh, wait, yeah, I remember. Um…” Why did I kill that guy again…? I guess it was more convenient to get rid of him. Easier for all of us.

…What a shitty reason to kill someone.

“Sorry about that,” I say, standing up.

His eyes burn fiercely. “I—I—I hate… y—you…!”

I move on from him. As I walk, face downcast, I spot a few others I recognize. Some by name, others only by a vague recognition.

…These are all people I killed, aren’t they?

I look out over the black ice. Endless ice, endless silhouettes encased into it.

There’s a lot of them. Thousands. This must be the distance I have to walk.

Nothing else to do but keep walking.

After some time, I encounter my old friends. Scar, Al, Cal, Cir, Nazzo, Coco, Dragon, Cane, Farello, Cante, Barbariccia… I go down on my knee next to them. “Where’s Coda?”

“M—murderer,” Nazzo hisses. “K—k—killer.”

“He’s… haah… f—further in…” Cir mutters.

“I see,” I say. Looking down at them, I feel a sense of vertigo overtake me. Why did I kill them? Why? I stumble to the right, only to slip and fall on my ass. Only some of them are turned towards me. Their eyes burn with black fire. For the rest, I can only see the backs of their heads, and their bodies, stretching endlessly into the dark ice. I draw my legs closer to me. “I don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense.”

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A pair of footsteps approach me, alongside the rustle of feathers. I don’t look up. I don’t need to. His smell is unique, as far as goblins go. I don’t need to move at all. He sits down to me, crossing his legs beneath the simple, hand-sewn tunic. Leaning into my field of vision, Goss smiles. “What doesn’t make sense, Kitty?”

I glance at him.

I look back at my friends. “Where are we, right now?”

“We’ll, it’s…” He glances around. “I’m pretty sure we’re in my room? Why—is everything okay? You look a bit out of it… Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m… fine. Basically.”

“That’s good,” Goss says. “At least, I guess so…”

“I wonder why I never hurt you,” I mumble to myself. “Not like I did everybody else.”

“Why you never…?” He chuckles nervously. “That’s… Um, I guess I just never gave you reason to? I mean… Why would you hurt me to begin with? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“I would like to think so,” I say. “But it just doesn’t make any sense. Nothing about you is any different from the rest of them. Nazzo was as childish as you are.”

“Hey,” Goss says.

“Cir was as stubborn…”

“Hey!”

“And the rest were just as silly and airheaded.”

“Oh, come on, now! That was mean, Kitty. Besides…” He turns away, his one wing folded back meekly. “It’s not like you didn’t hurt me at all.”

“...I did?”

He laughs weakly. “Well, yeah, I mean… A little. You kind of pushed me to do some stuff I didn’t want to do, but it all turned out well in the end, so…”

“So that makes it okay that I hurt you?” I say accusingly. “That means I didn’t hurt you?”

“No!” Goss says. He shakes his head lightly. “Gee, Kitty, what’s gotten into you?”

“I—I’m sorry, I just…”

“Besides,” he continues, “it’s not like I didn’t hurt you either.”

I frown at him. “That’s not true.”

“It is. When we first met, I literally tried to kill you! I mangled you halfway to Ret-inn and you never despised me for it.”

“But that was different. I healed from it. I was fine in the end.”

“It still hurt though, didn't it?”

I jerk back as though struck. “Th—that… That doesn’t…”

“You just said it did. The fact that you were alright in the end doesn’t absolve me of my sin of hurting you. I’m unforgivable. That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?”

“No! That’s not it at all!”

He smirks. “So, that line of thinking only applies to you, huh?”

“That… That isn’t it either.”

“Then, what is it?”

I flounder for words. “I don’t know. I have no idea. The point is… I genuinely don’t know. Maybe it really is just me.”

“It’s not,” Goss said warmly, sighing out at the endless black ice. “You know, Kitty… Friends fight sometimes. They hurt each other sometimes. I hurt you, and you hurt me. But, in the end… We were able to move past it. Because… We were able to accept one another. Faults and all. You accepted me, despite my downfalls and mistakes. Even though I didn’t become what you thought I would. Even though I was me. And I… I did the same for you.” Reaching out, Goss touches a hand to my shoulder. “You’re my friend, Kitty. What you’ve done for me… No amount of hurting will ever make me forget it. You could burn down my home, and deep in my heart, I’d still be grateful to who you once were. Maybe I can’t love you like this forever… Maybe one day you’ll change so badly your own mother can’t recognize you…”

He chuckled. “But that’s in the future, isn’t it? I can’t know if you’ll change for the better or worse. What I can know, however, is that unless I have hope that you can change for the better… Unless I have faith that you’ll try to change for the better… Unless I love you, through the ups and downs… I can’t call myself your friend once you bloom, like you were always supposed to.”

His wing wraps around me, like a warm blanket.

“I trust you,” I hear myself say. “I know you believe in me. But… but…”

The dark gazes of my friends stare up at me. In them, I see a conviction of strength that equals Goss’ own. An unshakable faith. A belief that can’t be broken, that says that I am a bad person, and I can’t change.

I feel myself smile.

“So that’s why,” I mutter.

Goss smiles, right next to me, always right next to me. A friend. Someone who trusts me. Someone I can trust. Someone… who was not lessened by my presence. Someone who’s grateful for my existence.

Someone who would miss me.

“Kitty,” Goss says, so close to me, his feathers covering my shoulders like a warm blanket.

“Yeah?”

His smile widens. “Can you let me go now?”

I match his smile, nod, and hug him close to me.

He turns to feathers in my grasp, fluttering away out of my hands, and into the dark, dark sky.

“Goodbye, Goss.”