Willard dreamt of the time he and Mia had committed a theft.

It had been about three months before Mia left. One year-old Adrian had a huge fever, and it just wouldn’t die down. They had exhausted all the medicine stockpiles in their house, but none seemed to have worked. Their neighbors had nothing. Or they didn’t want to give them anything. Father was out. Krummlae was on a hunting trip. Mother, crippled as she was, could only cradle the tiny child in her arms.

Willard had tried to take him once and let mother have a rest. He nearly dropped him because he had been so hot. Before that, Addy had cried for two days straight until his throat gave out. Then his eyelids had been sealed shut, and the only indicators of life had been his shallow, rapid breathing and the burning hotness across his whole body.

Mia had gone to the Sorissian doctors and had scavenged a surprisingly huge batch of herbs. It had some effect on him, cooling him off for short periods, but they had also run out.

Somehow, Mia learned that a new batch of medicine had just been registered at the pharmacy in the commercial districts of the tourist settlement, Vaharach. She had heard that the medicine was made out of a highly refined bone-powder that was exported from Heaven Continent, one that would cure all diseases. It was too expensive for them. Even though father would send money regularly, it always came in ridiculously small amounts, just enough to keep the family going.

That said, father was scarcely ever home with them. It had been a rare sight to see him even once every two months. That had been fine. Willard had hated him anyway. He didn’t care about him. He didn’t care about mother. Hell, Willard hadn’t even seen him at the hospital after she was crippled. The only good thing he’d ever done for them was allow Mia into the household. Even then, his permission was a short, apathetic “I don’t mind.”

That said, they didn’t have enough for the medicine. The neighbors had also cashed in, but it still hadn’t been enough. In fact, even if all of them sold everything they owned, it probably still wouldn’t have been enough to buy that pill.

And thus, Mia had come up with a plan to steal it.

Willard had been surprised when he found himself actually executing one of her ludicrous plans. It was like a dream. They had waited until mother had finally relinquished herself to tiredness, then snuck out. They used the money they’d gathered to buy two Unionlev roundtrip tickets and arrived at Vaharach right before midnight. Willard might have thrown up a little from the anxiety, but Mia was ecstatic.

A fourteen-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl, on their way to steal the holy elixir to save their brother. What could be more exciting than that?

Mia’s plan had been simple. Willard would distract the guards while she snuck in to get it. Mr.Krummlae had taken her with him to the medical storage several times as a helper, so she had the entire floor plan memorized. Originally, Willard had opposed this plan. The Mia he knew was so clumsy she could trip on her own ankle. However, upon seeing the unusual confidence and seriousness in her eyes, he couldn’t help but go along with it.

And so Willard had stayed behind, using one of her noise-making creations to lure the guards away while she snuck into the building.

What happened after that was blurry. Several minutes after she had entered, the sirens started blaring. Willard had been sure she’d been caught. But he hadn’t been able to think too much about it, as he’d had two armed guards on his tail. Then, miraculously, he had seen her get out from the front gate, physically unscathed, just as the guards caught up to him. Before they had gotten him, the guards had suddenly collapsed, as if someone had shot a silent bullet through them. Maybe he remembered wrong. Maybe he was just fast. He couldn’t remember it very well. The sirens had abruptly stopped screeching soon after as if someone had muted the entire world altogether.

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They had taken the Unionlev back to the village, snuck into their house, and given the pill to Adrian.

The next day, Addy opened his eyes. The hotness had faded. His breathing returned to normal.

Willard had stood in their room with little Addy in his arms. The warm lights on the low ceiling had flickered slightly. It had been a miracle. The entire thing. A miracle. A stray shot that ended up saving a life.

He should have been happy.

He should have rejoiced.

So why was the ringing next to his ears getting louder? It sounded like crows screeching.

The ringing got louder. Unbearable. His ears started to bleed. Black ink seeped into the room like droplets into the water, slowly spreading out and making everything darker.

Wake up.

Scars started appearing on his body. He recognized them. Some were old, some were new, and some he didn’t even know he had. And with each appearance, he felt the pain of each.

Wake up.

He looked down, down at his baby brother nestled between his arms. He was stone cold. His face was cracking and crumbling apart. It was as if he was a smashed glass vase, slowly falling apart.

Wake up.

Willard watched on in horror. He wanted to scream. He wanted to drop him and run out.

“Will?”

He looked around and saw a girl he did not recognize standing there, slowly crumbling like his brother. She had outlandishly golden hair unlike anyone he had met before. A hand was on her shoulder. As Willard’s gaze drifted up, he realized the hand belonged to Mia, all grown up. Her lower lip was curled down, her upper lips raised slightly. A cold, emotionless look was in both her eyes, even the blind one. It was a look Willard knew only too well. He got that same look every time he saw his reflection in the train window.

Disappointment.

Mia’s grip sent cracks through the already disintegrating body as if she were trying to squeeze the girl to death.

She lies.

A sharp, icy sensation shot through Willard’s body. He jolted up from his futon, and a droplet rolled down his forehead. He tried to wipe it away but found his arms tightly fixed into a dark blue sleeping bag. Confused, Willard looked around. It was quite dark in the room, the only light being the flickering blue screen of a stationary interface. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he became slowly aware of his surroundings. It was a room that could be crossed with four strides. At the end were two sliding doors. The interface was next to the left one. There was a faint smell of fried meat seeping through the crevices under the door, and it made Willard’s mouth water. Three sleeping bags, two folded nicely on their futons and one just lying about across the floor.

It was the family bedroom. He wondered why it took so long for him to recognize it. Maybe it was because it was so different from the romanticized version he had created whilst in the mines.

How long has he been surviving on hard-packed rations now? The last time he held one of those miserably small, compressed airtight bags was in the broken elevator, thousands of meters underground.

I probably shouldn’t condemn them. They saved my life, after all.

The windows behind him rattled, sending a chilling shiver down his spine. With a lot of effort, pants, and grunts, he pulled his left arm from the sleeping bag and wiped his forehead. He noticed that his hair was wet. Another droplet fell down, this time onto his futon.

A leak?

Willard pulled his other arm out, unzipped the bag, and awkwardly stood up. All of his joints ached. He fumbled around in the dark, searching for a container. He felt the shelf, then the cupboards, then the left wall. Finally, his fingers wrapped around what appeared to be a crude bowl. As he felt more of its uneven surface, he realized that it was the mug he’d tossed out after finding it by mother’s bedside. Weirdly enough, the little misshapen thing had belonged to father, who had been annoyed by any imperfections he could find.

Willard chuckled.

Imperfections. Maybe that’s why he left.

He noticed the numbness across his thumb and realized that he had been gripping the mug too hard. It was an ugly little thing, but he supposed it still had its uses after putting it under the leak on the ceiling. He made a mental note to ask mother about it later. Both the leak and the bowl.