image [https://i.postimg.cc/nzmB7BPZ/ch-82-vol-3.jpg]

Finally, after two days straight, along with the combined effort of my friends, we finished delivering the large packages. My body was so sore and tired, but it was done. If ever there was a time I felt like molten jello, it was right now.

“Good work out there, kid.” The manager patted me on the shoulder and gestured for me to go behind the counter.

As I did, there was a big box sitting there addressed to me. I gave the manager a few looks of confusion until he nudged me closer toward it.

“I’m delivering this one,” he said.

This must have been my reward. In other words, the talents I had to bring back to my supposed Master.

As I gazed at the cardboard box, I couldn’t help the little bit of trauma that spawned within, especially after the last two days of dealing with these awful things. But as a primal recovery method, and retaliation for ruining my pink manicured nails, I shredded that sucker into ribbons. Cardboard flew all over as all my frustration drained.

Finally, a treasure chest was revealed to have been inside.

I flipped open the lid. A blue beam of light gracefully lifted up into the air, meaning something very rare was in this box.

-Take All Item(s)?-

-YES-

There was only one thing in there, so I collected it and discovered it was a Pier token, but not just a normal one… It was a unique silver instead of gold.

I’ve been told that Pier tokens are completely worthless, but for some reason, this one had a different feel to it. Its literal only difference from a normal token was the colour, but something else caught my notice, almost like it had an aura of its own. It was a Blue rarity item, which was the second best type of loot, so it had to be very special.

That was interesting… It wouldn't let me put it into my inventory. Apparently it was a Key item, so it didn't go into my normal storage. A new tab opened up, showing a storage space for important items.

“Is this my pay?” I looked up to see the manager was all smiles.

“It sure is.” He gave my shoulder another pat, then walked off. “I gotta’ admit, you did a pretty good job for one person.”

“One person?” I turned around, but my friends were gone, nowhere to be seen.

“Yeah. You practically ran the place by yourself. You talk to yourself a lot though.” Before leaving, he flashed a smile and gave a thumbs up. “We'll see you tomorrow!”

Just as he was about to step out the front door, I could have sworn…his face…was that…dad?

And then he vanished.

The whole post office became quiet and lonely. I didn’t have a friend or co-worker to share it with, as if they'd never even existed.

“As if I’ll see you tomorrow, you big doo doo head,” I mumbled, whipping tears from my eyes.

I was just tired and alone. Crouching into an upwards fetal position in the corner made the isolation moderately more tolerable.

“Hello?” I called out. “I'm scared.”

Did anyone hear my words? It sure didn't feel like it. Each utterance was bait cast to the dark void of luminal discomfort.

Silence… Nothing but silence…

It was so quiet that I could just close my eyes and fall asleep.

“Daddy…” a new voice echoed… It was familiar… “Daddy? Where are you?”

A little girl was wandering the void. She wore a white dress that blended perfectly with her hair. Her quick glances and sheepish steps communicated that she was lost.

“Daddy, where did you go?”

In all her cautious twists and turns, she never looked my way. It wasn't until she laid down on the floor of the void that I decided to stand up and find out what she was doing here.

Gently I reached out my hand and nudged her tiny shoulder.

She gasped and rolled to her opposite side to see me. Then she curled up again, closing her eyes to pretend I didn't exist.

She was so tiny, maybe even a toddler. Clearly she was an Exceed as well.

“Who are you?” I asked her in a kind voice.

Her lids slowly opened, revealing innocent blue eyes. She looked at me and curled up just a little bit more.

“I'm Yalda,” She said. “Yalda Amomo. And I'm only three years old.”

She was me. I remember at her age I couldn’t say my own last name properly, so I said Amomo.

“Why are you lying here?” I asked my four year younger self.

“I'm going to sleep until daddy comes back.”

If she was three, that means it was around the time daddy left. To say I was heartbroken would be an understatement. Even to this day, I haven't really accepted the pain it brought me, waiting for him to come back.

Was I not good enough for him to stay around?

Was a job more important than his own daughter?

Did he ever really love me?

As the questions descended further, eventually they touched a nerve I was dreading in the back of my mind…

Why did I love him?

Dad was only around for three years of my life. It’s just been Uncle, Samael and me for the rest of it. I owed my father a debt of unconditional love and loyalty for bringing me into this world, broken as it may be. But would that hold when put to the test of his absence for four years? I’ve lived longer without him than with.

When it was a fresh wound, I didn’t have time to process my pain. I thought that him leaving was the end of the world, because I needed him. But clearly, I’ve made it just fine without him around.

“Does daddy not love me anymore?” she asked me. “We haven’t played in a while.”

I wanted to say she was wrong, but I wasn’t sure about that myself. Then I remembered something…

When I was very little, younger then she was now, dad made me a mobile of ducks to hang over my bassinet. They would go round and round, quacking and making silly noises, I loved it.

For some reason, Indena had given me one of those little ducks to prove that he sent her. I’d been carrying it in my dress pocket this whole time.

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I pulled it out and took a good look at it. Little me took interest as well and pointed to a seam that went around the whole thing.

“Broken,” she said. “Ducky broken.”

She was wrong, but had good eyes. The duck wasn’t broken, but that seam definitely stood out. I assumed it was just a manufacturing line, but then I pulled both ends of the toy duck apart and revealed a USB flash drive had been constructed on the inside.

“Woah…” we both cood out.

At the center of my torso I had a USB port installed. I plugged the flash drive in and started scanning its contents.

There was one message and a picture on the drive. The message wouldn’t open up, but the picture did. It was of a torn picture of daddy holding a baby, presumably me, captioned with the words Счастье мое (my happiness.)

Even though he was away, this proved that he was thinking about me. I didn’t know where he was, or what he was doing, but I must have been something that brought him joy, even to this day.

“Yalda, can I share an image with you?” I requested my younger self.

“Okay,” she nodded.

I sent the image to her through a wireless connection. When she got it, her eyes literally brightened and she got all jumpy. “That’s daddy!” she shouted.

“That’s you in the picture too,” I said. “He wanted me to give you this picture, so you wouldn't be scared.”

“You know daddy?” she leaned forward. “Are you my sister?”

“Something like that.” I brushed her hair, then pulled her in close for a hug.

It was really warm hugging myself. I never thought I’d get the chance to do something like this, especially to such a cute version of me.

“I don’t want bad dreams anymore,” she said. “I’m scared. Daddy keeps dying in them.”

I knew exactly which dream she was talking about. It was the one where we were standing on the edge of a cliff, looking into a sea of never ending darkness. That dream still haunts me to this day.

“It probably won’t go away for a while. But you’ll need to be strong, and remember that daddy does love you.”

She weakly pushed away from me, then pulled up a tiny little Samael from her dress pocket.

“Does he love Samael too?” she asked me, reminding me how tiny he was back then as well.

I snickered, feeling my own version of Samael slither up into my hair and give me a ponytail off the side of my head.

“Daddy loves him too.” I confidently beamed. “You know, he’s a magic snake.”

“Really?” Her childlike curiosity exploded at that moment.

“Yeah!” I nodded. “If you keep him in your hair like me, he’ll help you get over the bad dreams.”

Man, where did I pull that lie out of? It made me laugh, and little me apparently bought it.

“Samael, you know what to do!” she ordered.

Her Samael slithered up into her hair and mirrored my pony tail.

Suddenly everything around us began to brighten up. The void was no longer pitch black. Now we were back in that fantastic place with the petals of land on the horizon.

The change in location signaled that the trial was over, and I could finally leave this exhausting place.

But before I could go, my little self began to sparkle like a shiny star. The little sparkles started to lift her, gracefully taking her up into the air. The higher she went, the less corporeal she became.

“I think it's time to wake up,” she said, looking up to the sky. “Oh well. Bye bye.” She waved, prompting me to wave back.

Knowing that one day she'd be me was comforting. Although, was she really my past self, or a vision just made for this trial? I couldn’t tell.

“Wait!” she said, just barely a visible twinkle in the air. “What’s your name?”

“My name is Yalda!” I shouted to her.

“Gasp! Are you future me?! Cool!” And with that, she was gone.

Gosh, if only I thought I was that cool. I mean, I guess I kinda do…since she did, and she's me…

Rather than let myself waste away on that paradox, I made my way back to the structure, giving Samael a little snoot boop.

“Where have you been?” I asked him.

“Sss…sss” he hissed.

Apparently, he’d just been sleeping in my pocket this whole time.

“Likely story…”

~☆☆☆~

When I got back to the structure, Mr. Angel was there, sleeping like I expected of him.

“Wake up,” I grumbled. “I have that talent. It only took me two days.”

He wasn't surprised that I retrieved it, instead seemingly pleased.

“A silver token? How rare.” He congratulated me with some hand clapping. “If you really believe this will appease your Master, then offer the token to the water.”

It was going to be nice to get out of here. Mr. Not-so-angel would also be free of his curse too, so he'd be able to look in a mirror without scaring himself.

As I went to dip my hand into the water to finally place the token where it belonged, I stopped at a sudden disapproving noise made by Mr. Not-so-angel.

“Hmmm…” hummed his voice.

“What?” I twisted my head toward him.

“Now that the talent is yours, is it fair to give it away? You worked hard to get it, and won't even get any of the glory to show off.”

What was he getting at? I curiously turned completely around, pulling the token away from the water.

“You’re Master reaps where he did not sow. It was by your hand that the coin came to be. So I ask, why shouldn’t you receive its glory?”

This Master he kept referring to, who was it? I could only assume he was talking about God. If that was the case, I knew it wouldn't be right to deny handing this coin over. But this guy seemed to want to plant a different idea in my head.

“Go forth, bury the token, and I shall reward you greater than your Master.”

“What would you give me that He couldn’t?” I asked, clinching the coin tightly in my grip.

“I can give you rest,” he claimed. “Do you think two days of labor is enough for a lifetime? For all men, life is a never ending cycle of work, all the way up until they die.”

He had a point. I just had to do two days of going around and delivering packages. But for a lot of humans, that's how they make a living. Once the day starts, it's back to the grind. All for what, a passable living?

“I know your future, Eighth Star of Heaven. You will be but a beast of burden to them, yoked into eternal servitude as humanity's protector. Your fight against the darkness will never end” He stretched out his hand to me. “But I will break that cycle, and bring an end to all of man's toil, including yours. You'll never need to work again.”

“Never work again…”

With such a bite-sized experience of how harsh reality could be for those with a job, I couldn’t possibly pretend like I understood or wanted the horrible monotony of cycling through a human career. Two days was more than enough for me.

It was that inexperience and fear that led me to consider taking his offer. I might have had a different purpose from mankind, but the toil of labor would be all the same. We’d live by the sweat of our brow. If all it took to release us from that cursed existence was me handing over this token to the dirt, it seemed like a pretty good deal.

One coin right now would make it so that nobody ever had to work for another coin later.

This deal was too good to be true. What freedom was I giving up to have this guy take up my burden? Why would I trust someone so lazy that he couldn’t even take his own trial? I was the one who had to do it for him!

Perseverance was a big word I could think of that he was missing. He almost fooled me with his tricky words and hopeful ideals, trying to get me to think the way he did. He seeded the idea of how horrible a job was in so many ways, not accounting for any other aspect of life that could make the work more manageable.

Whether my friends were with me or not, the ideas and aid they’ve brought to my life helped me get through a lot of tough times. I wasn’t alone in my struggle.

We all had a calling. Parts of life were going to suck, and we’d need to slog through them. But other parts were going to be awesome, giving us a reason to push through the grind.

Even if my fight for humanity would never end, it was worth keeping them safe. They made this world a little bit more bearable with things like books, video games, and companionship. I’d fight through Heck to keep them around.

That was when it was finally revealed to me. Gone were any remnants of healthy angelic features from the man. The reflection was the true self. The gray skin, red eyes, scary horns… Worst of all, his suffocating dark aura.

He was the demon lord I’d come to defeat.

“No!” I shouted, denying him, bolting for the water, not giving his words a chance to eat away at my sanity any more. “You’re the demon lord! You’ve been trying to trick me!”

I plunged my whole body into the mana water to escape. The upwards flowing river carried me along with it, high into the sky. Bubbles around my body brightened significantly.

“Then the first seal is broken,” the demon lord uttered in a menacing tone, watching me float away up the river. “Very well. I accept your challenge, Yalda. But the next time we meet, we’ll be playing my game.”

The first seal?

light surrounded me as I was carried further up the water, shining brighter than the sun. Suddenly I awoke from that dreamlike place and back into reality.

Oh dear…too bad I was falling from the sky…

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