With a delicate knock on the door to Hurat’s room, Quet opened the door partway and leaned through. She glanced at Omet lying face-down on Hurat’s bed. “You good?”

“No.”

“Checks out.” Quet entered the nearly pitch-black room fully and shut the door behind her. “Sorry for the delay in getting here, by the way. The whole family was passively-aggressively coerced into staying downstairs to ‘keep the party moving’, and I only got a pass because I was deemed a ‘mood-ruiner’. In their defense, the noise and crowds were making me start to freak out. Can’t be all bad news, I guess.”

“How’d you know I was in here?”

“I did try both your and Horan’s room first,” said Quet. “Both are empty, by the way, so jot that down. Don’t worry, Waia said she saw him heading for the portal room.”

“I mean, how…” Omet lifted their face out of the otherwise immaculate blanket. “I thought nobody knew I came in here.”

“Everyone knows, Omet. We just don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

Omet groaned and sat up on the bed. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Quet plopped herself down in the hammock in the corner and started swaying herself back and forth in it. “Well, I’ve got quite a few talking points to go over with you, but for pretty much all of them, I either don’t need to say them, or don’t want to say them. Quite the predicament.”

Omet shrugged. “Well, it’s just ‘pretty much all’, right? Start with the easy ones.”

“…Okay, no, I lied, all of them are in one of those two camps.” Quet switched on the wall-mounted reading lamp next to her head, filling the room with colors besides green, yellow and purple. When she saw Omet grimace in the light, she promptly turned the lamp off again, reducing their face to two floating orbs of mismatched color. “Okay, so, in the ‘don’t need to say it’ camp, we can start with the whole situation downstairs. It’s the nightmare scenario, like you predicted.”

“And I thought I was just being a knee-jerk doomsayer when I started drawing up plans,” said Omet. “Being right sucks, I should try to avoid it.”

“Nothing to do about your foresight now,” said Quet. “At least we’re prepared for it.”

“Que…” Omet sighed and leaned against the wall. “Operation Netherworld was, like, four-fifths not serious. It was mostly just supposed to be a bonding thing. ‘Ha ha, hey guys, remember how I made this whole plan in case the Indians in case they made things hard for us? Pretty wild, huh?’. That kind of thing.”

“Wasn’t exactly designed with the intention of actually seeing use, huh?”

“Maybe after the fact or something,” said Omet. “As a show of trust for… I dunno, someone. Again, it was a very spur-of-the-moment move.”

“Explains why you just took the foundations from one of our performances.” Quet shrugged. “Not really surprised that you pulled a move like that. Again, short notice. Plus, it let you include the props that we haven’t cleared out yet.”

“It sucks. We’re keeping it in the ‘just kidding’ zone.”

“It does not suck, and we’re putting it in the ‘I had no idea we were cool enough to actually do this’ camp.”

Omet shut their eyes, leaving Quet’s eyes as the only visible things in the room.

Quet grinned. “Omet. C’mon, Omet, it’s gonna rule.” She sat up and began to chant. “Do it! Do it! Do it!”

“This is stupid. I’m stupid.” Omet curled up into a fetal position. “Those guys weren’t really wrong about me, I’ve been relying on Horan to do pretty much anything that I’m supposed to do. And, well, look at how that turned out for him. He’s not even in this dimension anymore…”

“Mm-hm, sure, keep going.”

“Apparently, I got picked to be the new one in charge because of consensus opinion that I’m the best candidate in the Domain? That’s what Kuravaan said, and I definitely don’t disagree that I have absolutely zero qualifications.”

“Right, so let me quickly recap.” Quet clapped. “Everything that the Indians said in their overall takedown was wrong and fake and stupid, with the exception of everything that they said about you specifically, which was actually unequivocally true? Am I getting the right gist of things?”

“…Wow, I do sound like an idiot.”

“Thank you!” Quet tossed her head backwards into the hammock’s pillows. “Finally, someone in this mess of a building who understands the concept of common sense. And I would like to clarify that that only makes one, I am stupid and should not be listened to and you should do as I suggest-slash-demand and do the thing.”

Quet awaited some kind of response, but found only darkness and silence for a good few seconds. “…Did you die?”

“…He said that we aren’t his friends, and he meant it.”

Quet rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Omet, don’t fall back into the idiot habits. He didn’t mean it.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“He had to have.”

Quet shrugged. “You know how he is around crowds. Better than me, even. He says what they want to hear.”

“This is what happens when we act like people strictly better than us practically have any chance of being civil. Their leader is better at leadership than me, their musician is better than all of ours combined, they’ve got someone who can just magically teleport everyone here with no Down Below needed, they–”

“They have a–?” Quet furiously shook her head. “No, that’s–that’s not even possible… Nor is it relevant, please change the subject.

“Point is, it’s literally impossible for him to say something completely serious and not mean it.”

“Well, there you have it,” said Quet. “He wasn’t completely serious. He’s gonna pop out of the portal any minute now, head downstairs and yell ‘Psych’. Easy.”

“…What are you doing?”

Quet shrugged. “Enforcing my rule: No bummers. That hasn’t gone away, by the way. If you’re going to be a world-class negative nelly in your dead brother’s void-room, I need to keep offsetting you by being a naïvely optimistic clown.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re accomplishing absolutely nothing by lying there and whining,” said Quet. “Whatever you’re trying to do over there, you’re not gonna succeed without a tub of ice cream or two. Do you want some? Do you want me to go downstairs and pull some ice cream out of the freezer for you? Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“Then stop being a bummer. I banned those for a reason.” Quet sat back up. “But I can protest all I want, right? You’re gonna be lying there until you decide not to of your own free will. What’s it gonna take to get you up and running?”

“Talent.”

Quet sucked in her lips. “…Preferably something that I can go do-slash-bring. Talent is a bit too abstract.”

“People who don’t count on me.”

“…Less abstract,” admitted Quet, “also less attainable short-term. Take three, what do you got?”

“A hug.”

“I was hoping you would pick that one.” Quet climbed out of the hammock. If, uh, if you could open your eyes, it’s a little hard to find you.”

Omet opened their eyes and was swiftly enveloped around the shoulders by Quet’s arms. They felt her squeeze them briefly. “Yeah, this… isn’t helping.”

Quet released Omet and pushed away from them, sitting next to them on the bed. “Seriously? We went through this whole thing with negotiating something for me to give you, and you can’t even go the distance to feel a little assured and supported by my presence? I just wanna point out that I was way easier to manage back during our trip to the afterlife, you gotta start helping me help you.”

Omet scooted slightly so that they were facing Quet directly instead of having to turn their head to see her eyes in the darkness. “Well, I’ll point out right back that you were just feeling somewhat bummed out about the situation at large. This situation is way different.”

“Wh– A–?” Quet stared incredulously at Omet. “D– If you aren’t bummed out, what are you? Succumbing to the malefic grasp of the Night Tiger? You can’t start spiraling; it’s been a day!”

Omet shrugged. “I–I’m not spiraling, if that helps. Just kind of feeling my failings as someone who’s had thirty-odd loved ones put their trust in me.”

“You printed out a scheme a few hours ago that conclusively proves to every one of us, individually, that putting our trust in you was a good idea.”

Omet groaned. “Did we spend all this time just to circle back to that? We’re not doing that, it’s stupid and lame.”

Quet gasped in shock and placed a hand over her chest. “How dare you! You shall not disrespect the performance arts in such a manner in this household!”

Omet squinted at Quet. “I mean, it is kind of always lame, on a baseline level.”

“C’mon, man, nothing that we’ve all invested this much time and passion into can be lame. It’s impossible. Physically.” Quet placed an arm around Omet’s shoulder. “For one, just think of all the skills development we’ve gotten out of it! I don’t care if I started taking voice training lessons for completely unrelated reasons, I am not letting these pipes I ended up with go to waste.”

“I think we might be arguing about different things,” said Omet.

“Great,” said Quet, “that means we don’t disagree on anything. Doing something fun and cool with your family isn’t lame and we all need an emotional pick-me-up. If only there was some kind of operation that we’ve all prepared for that just so happens to be cool enough to pick up literally everyone nearby and save the day. If only…”

“We’re not doing it,” muttered Omet. “We failed today, and nothing that we do is going to un-fail this. There’s not even any point to this.”

Quet groaned and leaned against the wall. “I would like to quickly make the observation that at no point have you commented on your thoughts on the efficacy of the hypothetical operation.”

Omet covered their eyes. “…Sorry, I’m stupid today.”

“You think it would work, don’t you?”

Omet shrugged. “Maybe. Might make things better. Pretty equivalent chance of making them worse.”

“Ugh.” Quet got up from the bed. “You know what your problem is?” She switched the lamp on the wall back on, making Omet shield their eyes. “You’ve realized that the success of this last Hail Mary depends entirely on your own confidence in its success. And it’s good that you’ve realized that, because it’s true.”

Omet slowly lowered their hand from their eyes, blinking in the light. “Okay, sure, and it’s pretty clear by now that I don’t have the confidence you need from me, so unless you have anywhere to go from there, can w–”

“I do have places to go, actually. And you don’t. Just place. Singular.”

“You won’t–”

“Consider, first, the consequences of inaction.” Quet leaned against the wall opposite Omet, looking judgmentally at them. “You stay here in the dark, the Indians continue to trashify the party downstairs, Horan exists sans ice cream and friendship for three to four hours, and every inhabitant of the house suffers eternal dishonor. Now, could you kindly list off the actual concrete consequences, guaranteed or possible, of the alternative?”

Omet looked at the floor in silence, brow furrowed.

“Exactly. The worst has happened. You can’t be any more humiliated than you already have been. We can’t un-fail, nor can we fail any harder than we already have been. We’ve hit rock bottom, and that’s the third best thing it’s possible to hit! Success is glorious and failure is inconsequential. Nothing left to do but at least try to take the leap, and follow through if you feel like it. There’s a small chance that you’ll even look good doing it, and that small chance becomes big if, and only if, you treat it like it’s guaranteed.”

Omet sighed slowly. After a long time, they stood up, jaw clenched. “Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

“There they are.”