Before she could realize it, Mrs. Aiko had already lost a lot of blood, there was one hand in her abdomen, and one other in her chest. The hands were not human at all; they were large and gray, unlike human hands, they weren't smooth.

Mrs. Aiko’s eyes were locked onto Jaden's, there was in them reluctance and concern. Reluctance because she didn't want to die, concern because she was dying in front of a young teenager, which would likely leave a lasting mark on this poor young man.

Jaden could see these emotions and understand them, which only intensified his sorrow.

‘Why? What did she do? Why her? She didn't ask for this...’ Jaden thought, frightened and concerned. And then, as if something had clicked in his mind, he wondered:

‘HOUMs?’

"Damn HOUMs!" he exclaimed with a mix of sorrow and anger.

It was true that this woman wasn't his family, but she was a friend, a good friend. He felt sorrow because he had witnessed the death of a friend and anger because he was confused and didn't know what to do. Another strange thing he noticed was that he was crying.

‘Am I crying?’ Jaden wondered before placing his hands on his face, then in front of his eyes. They were wet.

‘Tears?’ This time, there was more confusion than any other feeling in his face, because he knew he was in pain, but it was not physical.

‘But why?’

‘It hurt, really hurt.’

‘Why her?’ Jaden ask in his mind, but there was no one to answer, all the questions he was asking to himself just gave him more question instead of answers.

‘Mrs. Aiko, she was so kind to me, so lovely. Did she decide to die?’ they use to say that live is a choice, did Mrs. Aiko chose this? There was more and more confusion in Jaden’s face, because he really couldn’t understand anything, anymore right now.

Everything he knew about life seems false, what about this, about that? There was to many things that just didn’t were what it had to be.

During all this time, he was frozen, his hands still in front of his face, and in front of him lay Mrs. Aiko's lifeless body, the poor woman.

"Huh?" At that moment, he noticed something. The air seemed to have become denser, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. Worse yet, he could feel it – a sensation telling him that his turn was coming.

‘Don't look at me like that, Hey!’ Jaden cried out in panic after realizing that everything he felt was linked to the empty stare of the monster whose hand was still inside the poor lady's body.

‘And it's truly frightening to face a HOUM.’

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Huh?"

‘Another weird thing.’

‘Why am I running?’

Unknowingly, he had covered quite a distance, and during this time, and there was growing confusion within him. Why was he running?

‘Am I… scared? Why? What am I afraid of?’ Jaden couldn’t make of that situation, he didn’t feel like he wanted to run, was that intuition?

"Death?" He arrived at a perfectly logical conclusion: death. But why do humans fear death, which seems to be part of the cycle of life?

As children, we want to grow up, have our own children, our own family, which is the second cycle of life after birth – growing up. We know we will grow up, so humans are educated to take care of themselves and their surroundings when they grow up.

Humans believe they know, but most of the time they are mistaken about small things. Humans believe they must grow old before dying, so they find it wrong to die before growing old.

But right now Jaden wanted to know something else.

‘Why am I afraid of death?’ Jaden wondered before adding ‘What tells me that life isn't more beautiful in death?’

Another controversy, or perhaps an enigma – an enigma that humans may never solve.

‘Shouldn't I die today?’ he questioned.

Did he have no reason to live, or was he just too stubborn? Was he not old enough to understand the importance of life, or was he too young to fear death?

‘Plus, they're just low-class HOUMS, there are only three of them, I think I can take them on.’ After realizing that he might die, he had time to analyze the HOUMS that were behind him.

‘At least, I think so. They say I’m a genius.’ He affirmed to himself, though he wasn’t entirely sure if he could defeat them.

‘Low class or not, they’re still monsters.’

The monsters also decided to stop, as if to see what he was about to do.

The lack of horns on their heads and the uniform color of their bodies were evidence that these monsters were of low class.

Nonetheless they were still very frightening, and there were three of them.

The first one had the morphology of a human but looked much more like a gorilla, especially his face. He had all-red and very aggressive eyes, no hair on his head, none at all. No eyelashes or eyebrows; no hair! He was about 2m (about 78 inches) tall, had gray skin, wore no clothes, and had no visible genitalia.

His hands had some sort of large acne-like bumps on them, not the disgusting kind, but rather the terrifying kind. The second one looked like...

‘The second one looks like the first!’ Jaden exclaimed. ‘Maybe they're twins. Let's see what the third one looks like.’

So he decided to turn his head to the third one. The HOUMS were positioned in a triangle, with the first one slightly ahead and the second and third behind, to the left and right.

When his gaze fell on the third one.

‘Wow!’ Jaden shouted in his mind, full of amazement. ‘Triplets! Three sons of the same mother to kill me!’ At least there was something to be proud of.

And at that moment, a fresh, cold breeze passed by, carrying with it the scent of Madame Aiko's blood.

‘Madame Aiko.’ Jaden said in a low, deep voice, bringing back all the emotions he had just felt, but this time, one more: courage.

‘I need to get her to safety.’

From that moment on, he turned and ran straight toward the HOUMS, determined that death wasn't as scary as it seemed.

There was a surge of adrenaline within him, and his expression... as if he weren't facing death. His expression showed a man ready to do anything to achieve his goal.

‘Haha, I think I'm a little crazy.’ he smiled in his mind and noticed that the smile didn't stop there.

"Huh?"

‘Why am I smiling?’ why would he be smiling right now? that is the true question, it is not bad to smile – it’s even a really good thing to smile, but right now, smiling surely doesn’t have a place.

Something extremely bizarre had happened again.

‘Are they moving aside, or is fear making me delusional?’

Yes, the HOUMS that had been chasing him just moments ago didn't engage in battle but instead moved aside, as if saying, "Go ahead, pass."

‘Either they're wary or they're thinking, “Let's see what this madman is up to.”’ Jaden thought. ‘If they're moving aside, all the better. I won't have to fight.’