Nar sat down next to Jul, once things quieted down and everyone had dispersed.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked her.

“I deserved that,” Jul said.

Nar chuckled. “Yeah, you did.”

Jul played with her hands and the silence stretched. Nar waited patiently. He wanted her to lead the conversation.

“Were you surprised?” she asked at last.

“Hmmm… Yes and No.”

“Oh?”

“No, because a non-fighting class never made sense to me,” he said.

“Yeah, I suppose not.”

“And also, why did you keep your pack all this time, you know?”

Jul sniffled. “You noticed, uh?”

“I did. It was strange to keep it. After we got the ring, it made no sense to keep carrying anything. But I wasn't really sure. It was just odd,” he paused, frowning. "Actually, that doesn't make sense either. Why didn't you just store them?"

Jul looked down at her ring.

“The System didn’t let me store my daggers. That’s why I had to keep the pack.”

“What?” Nar asked, surprised. “Why not?”

“It said that I was being untruthful, and running from my true self. It said that until I came clean, and accepted my class, that the daggers would never be accepted inside the inventory.”

“Damn…” Nar whispered, stunned. “I would’ve never have guessed that.”

“No,” she said, nodding. “But you said the no. What about the yes?”

Nar considered her face. “And yes because…”

“You can say it.”

He sighed.

“Because I didn’t know if you could… You know. If you were mentally prepared.”

He had decided to be honest and waited with suspended breath for her reply.

Eventually she looked away.

“I didn’t know either,” she whispered. “But you fought to keep me safe. You did everything for me! You even allowed me to run away! I… I had to come back for you. For everyone.”

Nar smiled. “I’m glad you did.”

“So you’re not… Mad?”

“That you lied to us?” Nar asked.

She flinched.

“I’m just kidding, Jul. No, I’m not mad. You saved my life. How could I be angry at that? But maybe, from now on, keep it honest? And that goes for the both of us, obviously. I also lied, after all.”

“Nar!”

It was his time to flinch. “Y-Yes?”

“I don’t care about that stuff, okay? You’re you. You’re my…”

She froze mid speaking, and a dark sheen colored her face. She looked away. “You’re a good person, Nar. Those people at the cubeplant are just fuckers.”

“Hey! Don’t start talking like Mul!” Nar said.

“Sorry!”

Nar grinned at her. “Thank you. Thank you for saving my life. And thank you for not caring about it.”

“I don’t, I swear I don’t!”

Nar nodded. He scratched his head and tried to gather his disjointed thoughts.

“I… Jul, there’s some stuff I want to say. To you.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not the best at this kind of stuff. Kur and Gad would do a much better job of it. And maybe, I’m even overstepping myself...”

“Oh, it’s about me? It’s okay, you can say it. I can be… Angry at you later.”

Nar snorted. “I hope you won’t. But I just feel like I need to say it. There was some stuff I should've said to someone before, and I didn’t, and they suffered a lot for it, you know? So, I just don’t want to let that happen again, okay?”

“Okay.”

She fidgeted and squirmed next to him, and Nar wanted nothing but to get up and clean his hands from that whole awkward situation. Was he even speaking properly? But he really didn’t want this to be another Tuk situation, nor did he want her to lapse back into the darkness she had just managed to pull herself out of.

“Alright, here it goes. Was it your mom, or your dad?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Jul froze.

For a moment, her whole body tensed, and regret filled Nar’s mind.

Damn it! Is she about to bolt? Did I screw up?

He waited in a tense silence, his pulse beating away, just as scared and worried as she was.

Then, Jul relaxed.

“Both,” she whispered. “They drank. And then apologized. Then they drank again.”

Nar nodded, barely risking any movement.

“It was worse when they couldn’t get any.”

So he had been right after all. He wished he hadn’t.

It was a common enough occurrence. Nar didn’t know exactly how it was done, but it was possible to turn crackers and jell-o into something called alcohol. He had never tried it, and his dad had promised him the beating of his life if he ever even smelled the stuff. Rumor was it, there was some aetherium mixed in with it, and the substance was highly addictive.

It made people lose themselves. See and hear things even. And the more you drank, the more you craved it. And when those who craved it could not get their hands on it, more often than not, they turned violent. And always towards those closest to them... And most vulnerable.

There had been a case in his neighborhood. Two young brothers, who had lost their whole family when the Clean had closed them all off.

Nar could hear the screams and shouting at night, coming through the open doors and windows. The boss at the time tried to get them to stop, but they were too far gone.

The eldest of them eventually died in a pileslide, and the youngest took the Climb as soon as he was able to. Nar wondered if he had done that in the hopes that joining with the System would cure him of his addiction.

Now, knowing that she had gone through what she had, set his blood to boiling.

He reached to her chin and gently made her look at him. He knew that it could spook her, but he risked it. He wanted her to look at him. He wanted her to listen to him. He wanted her to know the truth.

“Your parents are not here,” he said, staring deep into her green blue eyes. “They are in the cubeplant. They stayed way, way behind us. And they will never leave.”

Her eyes that so often reflected his own broken image back at him, were dark today. A deep void.

“You are here,” he continued. “You walked the dark. You have faced pain, injury and death. You could have left us to die, but you came back for us. You walked right in there, risking the worst pain, suffering and death that you could have met on this Climb.”

She tried to look away, but he gently pulled her back.

“You killed the cannibals that came in the night to hurt us. To hurt Kur, when he was injured, and defenseless without his HP or attributes. You set us free. You helped us escape by walking around us, in that base full of cannibals, and killing anyone that would have discovered us!”

“But I didn’t want to,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to go back. I was scared.”

“No one would, Jul. And I would be scared too! But you know what? You did come for us! You got us out! You fought with us! And you had never even fought before! I… What I’m trying to say, Jul, is that you are strong. You are not small, and you are not helpless. You are so strong and so brave. You are one of the bravest people that I know. And knowing where you come from, I just… I am so proud of you. I am so happy that you are here in the party with us. I trust my back to you. I trust you with my whole life. You are… You are amazing. You’re an example to me. Like Gad. Like Kur. Like they all are.”

He gently took his hand away, but Jul kept her eyes on him.

“You… Mean it?”

“I do. I really do. You’re incredible.”

“Hey, rogue!” Mul suddenly shouted. “It's time for training!”

Nar glanced at Mul. “He’s helping you?”

Jul nodded. “From the moment I woke up.”

“Now, four shits!”

Four… Wow!

“Mul is very nice,” Jul said. “Deep down. But he’s not very nice in how he shows it.”

Nar chuckled. That was probably the most apt description of the brawler he had ever heard.

Jul stood up and looked at Nar. “Thank you, Nar. Thank you so much.”

“No. Thank you. I didn’t do anything. It was all you.”

A tremor passed through her face and she rushed away.

“Finally! Now… Are you crying? Why are you crying?” Mul asked, shocked.

“Mul! What did you do now?” Cen screamed at him.

“I didn’t do anything! I’m sorry!”

“Why are you apologizing if you didn’t do anything?”

“I don’t know!”

“Mul, don’t pick on Jul, man!” Tuk said, piling in. “It’s not nice.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

Nar chuckled under his breath. Yeah, Mul was just a big softie underneath all that snark and attitude. Jul was in good hands. With all of them.

“That was nice.”

Nar tensed in fright.

Shit! I forgot she was here!

“That meant a lot to her,” Rel said. “You have no idea what you’ve done for her today.”

“I didn’t do anything. She did it all by herself,” Nar said.

“She did a lot by herself, but not everything,” Rel said. “She needed someone to show her. To tell her. She needed you to tell her.”

“Hmm…”

He watched Jul laugh with the others, and he could not deny how it made him feel. He felt light, relieved, and like something filled him almost to the point of bursting.

Maybe that guy was right. And maybe it goes both ways.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to be someone's brother again...

He shook his head. Too much. Too fast.

Thinking of that guy, though, it brought an unpleasant memory to his mind. Of a hand, blocked by a barrier of Pressure...

“Rel, did you see that guy?”

“What guy?” she asked.

“At the end, at the barrier, there was this guy…” Nar said, frowning. “He showed up out of nowhere. It was like I blinked, and he was there.”

Rel went pale. “Was… Was his face covered?”

“Yes. Was that him?”

Rel swallowed hard and exhaled a shaky breath. Her eyes went wide and unfocused and she stared at the floor.

“My Crystal. That was him. He was there…”

“So that was the boss of the cannibals.”

Rel nodded slowly. “If he had gotten there just a few seconds earlier…”

Rel got up and stormed towards the blaster.

Nar watched her go in, and the door shut behind her.

In her rush, she had scattered arrows everywhere, and Nar automatically reached over to gather them.

“Ouch!”

He stared at his finger in surprise. Three droplets of blood were forming at the tip of his finger, sharp and deep red.

What in the pile?

He brought the arrow closer to his face and squinted at it. The end of the arrow, where Rel would’ve picked it up when notching it on her bow, was lined with very fine cracks. Tiny splinters shot out from the cracks, here and there. It had been on those that he had pricked himself.

Wait, it's broken?

He scanned the other arrows on the floor. Some of them were broken, but most were not.

Did she get them like that? Wait. How can they even break? Are they not made from the same stuff as my sword?

He tensed the arrow in his hand, bending it carefully so as to not cut himself again. The arrow bent with some resistance, but he knew that if he wanted to, he could break it with ease. The tip of the arrow however, was made of a long, shiny metal of some kind, and that one Nar could tell it was hard and strong enough to do what needed to be done.

Uh… But they still shouldn't come out broken though.

He remembered Rel running out of arrows at the end of their mad run. She had fought alongside him, bashing cannibals with her bow as if it were a club.

These had to be new arrows.

Wait…

He grabbed the arrow by its middle and tapped it against the floor. He tapped it harder.

He had heard that sound. It had been in the background while he talked to Jul.

She’s breaking them herself? But then, every time she fires an arrow, she’s going to…

He stared at his finger. The bleeding had stopped, and he couldn’t even see the puncture mark anymore. For such a small wound, his HP had healed him almost immediately. It might take a bit longer for Rel, as a pure DPS, but it should heal her almost as fast.

HP would not take away the pain, though.

Nar stared at the occupied blaster.

He dropped the arrow back with the others, and left them undisturbed. He really did not know what to make of her.