The endless pursuit of happiness only brings dissatisfaction.

Cherish fleeting moments instead of wishing for more.

Sen found himself floating in a vast expanse of darkness. No light was detected, nor was any life palpable. His body occasionally swayed and rocked in the black void, his head growing dizzy as if he were seasick. He wasn’t sure where he was, but it didn’t feel real. He… didn’t feel real.

It was terrifying not being able to think clearly. After all, his mind always tended to run a marathon, not stopping for a single rest or water break. Having this moment of hazy solitude was alien to Sen, and it was petrifying. He couldn’t bundle it up in words as to why it felt this way, and his brain wasn’t capable of doing so either, but a deep voice within him told him he should be afraid… that it was normal to be afraid.

But what did it mean to fear something? Was what he felt truly fear? Or was it merely a figment of what it was supposed to feel like? What if it was all just an elaborate lie? For longer than he could remember, he had no concept of what it meant to truly feel something. His hands would grasp mundane items to feel their texture, but how was it possible to grasp something that lay inside of him? Something beyond the materialistic world that people were trapped in. Something that even scientists had no thesis on.

"Scared..." Sen’s voice reverberated through the dark expanse of nothing. "I’m scared."

The awareness of helplessness stirred him. He opened his eyes, only to find nothing to perceive, and flailed his arms, finding nothing to embrace. Sen was alone in the darkness... or perhaps it wasn’t even darkness to begin with. For darkness to exist, light must have been present.

But this… this felt different—this was simply nothingness.

"Somebody help… somebody, please help!" Sen screamed, but his voice only echoed in a place where nothing existed. He refused to give up. His voice needed to be heard, no matter how long it took to reach someone. He shouted again and again until his vocal cords started to bleed, making him choke on his own desperate pleas for help.

But once more… nobody heard him.

Blood leaked from his mouth, though he couldn’t see where it had landed—if it had landed anywhere at all. He was left only with excruciating pain in his throat, and even more within his soul. Had nobody heard him? Or were they simply ignoring him? Perhaps they didn’t care about him. Who would?

After all, he was a monster.

"I don’t want to be…" he murmured, "a monster anymore…" Sen’s throat burned as he muttered to himself. His words echoed in the void, forcing him to hear his voice repeatedly, as if his own self were mocking him.

"Please free me… from this cage," his voice was as quiet and defeated as a mouse’s. This time, the echo didn’t mock him; it stayed silent, as if listening to his words of hopelessness.

Then Sen felt it… water. Where was the water coming from? He turned around, trying to find it, only to be left empty-handed and senseless once more.

"Oh…" Sen almost laughed when he realized where it was coming from. He reached for his eyes.

"It’s just me."

#

Sen didn’t wake up in a pleasant way. He awoke with a searing pain shooting through his forehead, his entire body aching and numb. Not ideal, to say the least. Instead of feeling rejuvenated, his muscles were tense and worn out, as if he had just done an intense workout. He swallowed hard, feeling the pain of a sore throat.

I… I need some medication. It's in the kitchen cabinet. I’ll ask Hana to fetch it for me.

With his eyes still closed, Sen groaned as he propped himself up in the bed, only to realize it didn’t feel like the usual soft bedding he slept on. His blanket felt elastic and rubbery to the touch, almost like a raincoat. Frowning groggily, Sen finally opened his eyes.

It took him a few moments to adjust to the darkness, but eventually, he made out the cramped, triangle-shaped structure in which he lay. The tent whirled nauseously around him, making it difficult to keep his eyes open and properly take in his surroundings. With a painful exhale, he lay back down, knowing that if he kept his eyes open for too long, he’d likely end up vomiting on the sheets.

"Sen?" Kaiyo’s concerned voice abruptly entered the tent, startling him. "Are you… okay?"

He groaned in response, "Barely."

Kaiyo quickly knelt beside him, ringing out a hand towel from a pot of ice-cold water and placing it on his feverish forehead. He winced from the sudden cold, but as the heat from his forehead started to drop, he relished the soothing feeling.

"You were out cold for a few hours," Kaiyo said, patiently kneeling on the tent floor.

"A few hours?" he weakly echoed her words. The more awake Sen became, the more he remembered how he had passed out in Hyo’s arms. Everything after that was a blur.

"You don’t have to worry too much. You didn’t miss anything major, just a few low-ranked monsters."

"Monsters?" Sen choked in surprise, trying to sit up. But Kaiyo firmly pressed her hand against his forehead, keeping him from moving. Given how weak he was, he couldn’t put up much of a fight against her strength.

"Shush, will you…" she grimaced. "It’s fine. Just a few low-ranked monsters, that’s all. Hana and Baru handled them so quickly, it wasn’t even a fight."

"What monsters were they?" he asked.

"A Hinder, and an Urna."

Sen recalled reading about those monsters, but as Kaiyo had said, they weren’t anything noteworthy.

A Hinder was a silver-ranked minus monster, similar to a common deer but with an absurdly long jaw and fangs. It usually had a thick, long white pelt of fur, accompanied by a deer’s typical slim body structure. The most dangerous aspect of a Hinder was its poisonous antlers, which could kill if not treated quickly. It was safe to assume they didn’t mind eating a few humans if given the opportunity.

An Urna, on the other hand, was a spider that could grow up to ten feet long and usually lived in freshwater lakes or ponds. Thankfully, it wasn’t venomous, but its sheer size and fangs were enough to pose a threat and scare any ordinary person. It was classified as a bronze-ranked plus monster.

"How many points did they get from that?"

Kaiyo held up her wrist and checked her techno watch, which displayed the points. "Oh. It was ten for the Urna, which Hana killed, and seven for the Hinder that Baru took down."

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The stats confused him. From an objective standpoint, a Hinder was the more dangerous monster, yet Baru had received fewer points. Then Sen remembered what Asashi had said before the challenge.

"To keep things fair, the points are calculated based on your Sense and overall skill."

That meant that although Baru had killed the stronger monster, the gap in strength between him and his sister was factored into the point system. If that didn’t reflect Baru’s true power, Sen wasn’t sure what else could.

"Sorry for making you guys worry," Sen told Kaiyo. His sudden apology made her blink, furrowing her brow in confusion. He wasn’t the type to apologize privately to anyone. Not only because he rarely did anything worth apologizing for, but also because he didn’t show guilt very often. Kaiyo, who had known him for most of her life, quickly picked up on his strange behavior.

"That’s not like you. What are you apologizing for?"

Her simple question made him pause. That’s right… why am I apologizing?

Perhaps it wasn’t just because he felt guilty for making them look after him. That wasn’t the reason at all. Beneath his short apology lay a hidden reason—something he hadn’t acknowledged at the time. But now, like hot bile stuck in the back of his throat, it grew ever more noticeable to him. Thinking about this odd sensation, Sen recalled a book he had read years ago on human psychology. He hadn’t truly understood it then, but he had picked up a few key points for future reference. The book said:

"Humans are expressive creatures, but they are also just as cunning. This combination leads to a multitude of ways to hide what they’re feeling. Nobody simply expresses their emotions to another—because those same emotions are what stops them from communicating. Embarrassment, guilt, anger, sadness. Each one has its reasons for closing itself off from others. Even happiness has its reasons. A person might be so happy and content with their life that they fear anything that could spoil or jeopardize their mood, leading them to shut themselves away. So, people often end up communicating in roundabout ways—doing something unusual or apologizing for something small in the hope that the other person will recognize the underlying implication. Often, this stems from guilt."

"I see…" Sen murmured, finally understanding, years after reading that sentence. It was almost funny.

"What?" Kaiyo asked, growing a bit annoyed that he wasn’t sharing. "Stop talking in riddles—"

"I’m sorry to you, personally then," he muttered.

Kaiyo stared, dumbfounded, at Sen’s face, half-covered by the ice-cold towel. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, or even feeling, in that moment. A long silence filled the tent, until Kaiyo finally spoke again.

"Huh? For what, Sen? You didn’t do anything wrong to me."

He didn’t respond. He simply didn’t want to. Maybe Kaiyo was oblivious to what he had done before the challenge, but he certainly wasn’t. And he didn’t want to explain it to her. That would only make things worse. All he wanted was to get rid of the hot bile in the back of his throat—the newfound guilt gnawing at him.

"Sen?" Kaiyo asked again, prodding him gently to see if he had fallen back asleep. But Sen hadn’t; answering her question was just too difficult, so he remained silent.

"Well... I guess you're forgiven, whatever it is you did." Kaiyo let out a soft laugh, deciding not to push the subject further. She removed the towel from his forehead, dunked it back into the cold water, and placed it on him again, creating another wave of coolness that washed over him.

"I had an odd dream when I slept," he said as Kaiyo began to prepare his medication from the aid kit.

"Oh, now you’re talking, huh?" she sighed, amused. "Fine, what was it about?"

"I..." Sen began, then quickly trailed off, unsure himself. "I don’t remember."

Kaiyo frowned. "Well, you never talk about your dreams, so it must have been important."

She was right. He never shared his dreams because he always thought they were irrelevant and not worth mentioning. What’s gotten into me? Why am I starting to talk about such trivial things?

Yet…

When Sen tried recalling the dream, he couldn’t shake the feeling of deep uneasiness. It was as if he could hear the indistinguishable remains of a quiet, defeated voice calling out to him from somewhere. Was that from my dream? Sen wasn’t sure, and he doubted he would ever know.

"It’s okay, you don’t need to remember it," Kaiyo said gently. Although Sen couldn’t see her face, he could tell from her tone that she was giving him a comforting smile. "Sometimes it’s alright to forget things, you know?"

Sen didn’t quite understand. "How so? Remembering things is important."

"True, but sometimes it has its downsides," she said, popping a tablet out of its plastic case. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to remember everything. I think how helpful it might be, but in the end, I’m kind of glad I don’t."

"Why?"

"Because then I’d be forced to remember the painful things. I think you, out of all people, would understand that."

Sen stayed quiet, unsure of how to respond. But as soon as his mind began recalling memories uncontrollably, a painful ache thumped in his chest. The memories of when his mother broke down into tears, saying that Yami was dead, came rushing back too clearly. Hana’s crying voice as she tried to comfort their mother echoed in his head. The despair in his mother’s eyes as she slumped against the front door—it all felt as fresh and raw as if Sen were living through it again, but in just a fraction of a second.

But most of all—the memory he couldn’t shake—was the moment his mother looked at him with pure contempt.

"You don’t acknowledge it much," Kaiyo started again, "but I think remembering everything is more of a curse than a gift. I feel sorry for you."

"Don’t feel sorry for me," he replied quickly. "Because even I don’t know whether I should feel sorry for myself or not."

Kaiyo gave him a sympathetic frown and lightly nudged him to sit up so he could take his medication.

"I know it’s hard, but try to sit up a little so you can take the pills with some water."

Sen dismissed her hand, which tried to help prop him up, telling her he could do it himself. His hand towel fell, but he kept his eyes closed, not wanting to deal with the vertigo. Kaiyo placed a cup of water in one of his hands and the pills in the other so he could easily take them.

"Thanks," Sen said after he finished. "I think it’ll help me get some rest."

Kaiyo smiled and stood up. "I’ll leave you to rest, then. Call me if you need anything. Oh, and Baru and Hyo are going to switch places to keep watch, just in case any monsters come close to the area."

Sen was both thankful and surprised that they’d volunteered for that. He had begun to think he had to be the one calling all the shots for everyone’s survival, but he was wrong. And it was actually a nice thing to be wrong about, he had to admit. Sen laid back down and took a deep breath.

I wonder, he thought, if I’ll have that dream again.

#

Sen’s next dream was far more realistic than he expected. Before he even opened his eyes, the chilly wind bristled his face, and the crispy crunch of leaves echoed with every step he took. He wasn’t sure why he was walking, but dreams rarely made sense, so he didn’t think too much about it. His mind was foggy, muddled, almost as if he was in the process of waking up but had decided to stay in bed for a few extra minutes. It was a comforting feeling.

Even the sounds felt so clear and lifelike—the rustling branches, the wind howling in the distance, and the distinct melody of crickets.

But as more time passed, the more peculiar it felt. Dreams didn’t usually feel this long or realistic, and as the wind grew colder, he began to shiver. He had never shivered in a dream before.

Soon enough, though, the false reality broke apart when a branch scraped his hand, making him flinch. With his eyes slightly burning, he opened them, confused. The area he found himself in was visibly dark, but a familiar white light cast shadows above, illuminating what had been impossible to see before.

"I’m in the forest?" Sen murmured groggily, noticing his surroundings. The familiar expanse of bare trees extended around him, while dark shadows prevented him from knowing what lay beyond in the forest.

He quickly noticed that his Sense Sword was sheathed in the scabbard on his waist—something he had no recollection of bringing with him. Or, to be more precise, he had no recollection of going for a walk to begin with.

He yawned. When did I even… did I sleepwalk? That was one possible explanation, but if that were the case, how come neither Baru nor Hyo had spotted him? Had he unconsciously sneaked past them? Was that even possible while half-conscious?

His questions about how he got there nearly made him overlook something else entirely.

My headache… He raised a hand to his forehead to feel the temperature. It’s gone. Not only that, but any remnants of dizziness or nausea had also vanished. Not that he was complaining, but the current situation didn’t allow him to feel relieved. He then reached up to his ear, finding that the ear device—which kept everyone in contact—was gone.

And right when I need it the most, too. At this point, his life must have been a dream with how little sense it made.

"I’m tired. I want to go back to sleep," he sighed. Unfortunately, no matter how exhausted he was, it didn’t change the fact that he was in the worst possible position—lost in the middle of a forest, with no communication with his team. Things couldn’t get worse.

But they did.

A threatening croaking hiss came from the undergrowth of the forest. And Sen knew that it wasn’t just a cricket or the wind. Out of all the times he could have been wrong, he truly wished this was one of those moments.

Unfortunately, he was completely right.

Out of the forest’s shadows, a hairy lizard-like monster appeared, illuminated by the moonlight. Its long snout raised threateningly, and its distinct straight horns protruded from the sides of its mouth. The eyes of the monster were just like any other. Red and hungry…

"A Crydan."

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