Most of our supplies had been lost in the dungeon adventure, so hunger was rapidly becoming an issue as I soaked in the blue pool with Amelia. The growling of her stomach alerted me to the fact, which she tried to hide coyly.

“As much as I hate the thought of us finding another dead end, I feel we have to go search ahead a bit.” I finally spoke up after the silence had persisted for long enough.

“F-fair enough…” The paladin mumbled a tad awkwardly as we got up.

Since the way back into the dungeon was basically impossible to traverse without proper climbing gear, Amelia and I decided to instead march ahead deeper into the tunnels. It was effectively the only direction for us to go.

The sounds of our footsteps echoed in the cave. I didn’t see a single living creature along the way either. Maybe the dungeon was something animals were instinctively afraid of?

“May I point out something I noticed before we entered the dungeon?” Amelia began a conversation with a strange hint of nervousness in her voice.

“What’s up?” I replied as we slowly walked along. I tried offering Amelia my wolf coat, but she politely declined. Maybe she didn’t like the smell.

“Those people who chased after us…” My knightly companion was lost in thought for a moment, as if she wasn’t sure if she should speak in the first place. “I did not recognize their armor…”

“H-huh? You mean it was a different group from the Rachasian search party?” I stopped walking for a moment, and so did Amelia.

“I’m not certain. We had to leave in such a rush, that I couldn’t get a proper look at them… It was simply something that unnerved me slightly.”

“So… there might have been more people after us for some reason?” I pondered for a moment. “The people who brought me to the swamp both died in an attack by one of those wolf monsters. Maybe they got reported as missing?” I crossed my arms… Only to realize I was lacking one. I will say, crossing your arms with just one is pretty ineffective.

“That could make sense.” Amelia mused, and we began walking again. “Perhaps it was some private mercenary group sent after them. It would explain the different armor.”

“Yeah… Let’s hope that was it.” I wrapped the wolf coat around myself a bit more closely.

We kept walking in silence for a while longer, until Amelia pointed at a nearby cave wall.

“Yverna. Do you think this could be writing of some kind?”

There was some sort of symbol on the wall. It looked a bit like a butterfly with sharp wings.

“Hmmm… It kinda looks like a little road sign or…” I looked at the figure on the wall more closely. There was a noticeable glimmer of mana to the symbol. I gestured for Amelia to step back, which she did. “I think there is some kind of magical property to it…”

Amelia and I tossed some rocks at it to make sure it wouldn’t blow up or something if we got closer. As we figured it was most likely dormant, we simply passed the symbol and continued onward. Not far ahead, I suddenly heard Amelia shout.

“Light!” Amelia began running towards the shimmering of what looked like blue light at the end of the tunnel. I followed her, although a bit more slowly.

A bunch of sturdy wooden planks covered the exit. It seemed we were stuck behind a shoddily sealed mining shaft entrance. Despite its seemingly hasty make, it was still too much for Amelia to brute force in her weakened state.

“Amelia. Can you come here for a bit?” I instructed the paladin, whose interest got piqued.

“What are you planning? Magic?”

“Something like that.”

In the dungeon, I had managed to use magic without making physical contact with the item I cast the spell on, and I wanted to try it again.

I tried to remember the feeling… It was like pushing water around. Admittedly, it was probably a bad analogy, considering I didn’t really swim a whole lot in my past life. But I at least IMAGINED it felt something like that. Something along the lines of pushing around an invisible matter.

“HHhhaa!!” I pointed my hand at the wood and the sparkles began to amass!!... And nothing happened. While my fire spell failed, my cheeks sure as hell felt like they were on fire. I probably looked like a skinny chili pepper standing there acting all cool.

“… Um…” Amelia glanced at me, while I was still locked in my cool action pose. “Aren’t you supposed to draw the sigil on the thing you want to cast a spell on first?”

I collapsed on the floor dramatically.

“I… forgot…” I lamented, while my ears burned with embarrassment.

Amelia finally burst out laughing. Her giggling was honestly quite healing, but I still felt like daggers of shame were jabbed onto my back with each hearty sound of laughter coming from her direction.

“S-some witch you are…!” She laughed. Ironically, her words actually made me remember, I hadn’t told Amelia I didn’t actually know squat about magic.

The thought of admitting it was scary because while we did survive through a rather harrowing experience, I’m sure if I was a better witch, we’d have had no issue whatsoever.

But… giving Amelia the wrong impression of my skills was also a bad idea because she might overestimate me and rely on me too much…

“A-Amelia…” I began speaking quietly as I got up, slowly walking over to the wooden planks and carving sigils on them with a sharp piece of rock I spotted on the floor.

“Yes?” The paladin followed me, most likely to hear me better.

“I um… I have a confession to make.” I sighed, squeezing onto the stone in my hand a bit to calm my nerves.

“Go on then.” Amelia smiled peacefully as she made her way to my side. I couldn’t match her expression, but it did calm me down a bit.

“Remember when I mentioned losing my memories?”

“I do recall something along those lines, yes.”

“W-well… I actually… forgot all about magic too. I only know incredibly basic magic…”

A nervous silence filled the room. Amelia seemed taken aback. The blue light shining through the planks made her expression seem a bit colder than usual, but then it rapidly changed into a more quizzical one… Then her eyes went wide, as if she realized something.

“If you truly are that bad with magic… then… the reason you must have wanted to form that contract with me… Wasn’t to gain control of me… but to simply have me there to protect you?”

“M-mmmh…” I couldn’t look her in the eyes. “I’m sorry for giving a false impression of myself…”

Amelia took a deep breath, pacing around a bit. She seemed to be lost in thought, and her expression seemed almost conflicted.

“I… I see. This is a bit… unexpected. To an extent.” She mumbled. I wasn’t quite certain of what exactly she was referring to.

“Please don’t hate me… I didn’t mean to drag you into danger like this…” I spoke quietly.

“Ah! N-no! That’s not your fault. We mutually agreed to this, and to be honest, the fact that you’re not an almighty monster does make me feel a bit more at ease over myself.”

“W-what do you mean?” While I was maybe good at reading people’s faces, I still had very little experience with proper social encounters. Thanks to this, it was quite hard for me to gauge what Amelia was talking about.

“When I got hit by that dark swarm in the dungeon, and you were totally fine, I felt like I was nothing but a burden to you. You were clearly stronger… so what was my value in tagging along? I didn’t quite understand…” Amelia began speaking as she knocked around the wooden blockage in front of us.

“Wha?!”

“Indeed!” Amelia chuckled and turned to look at me. “I didn’t realize you were actually… frail.” She gently poked at my arm. “So, it makes me feel like I bring a bit more value to the team like this.”

“Y-YOU DO!! YOU REALLY DO!! I’d… definitely be dead if not for you!! I owe you so much!! You’re not a burden at all…” I flailed around and words just spilled out of my mouth, almost like in a panic.

“Yeah… I understand that now. So, please don’t think too poorly of the situation. Let’s just say… you owe me a dinner!” She winked, and with a gentle smile, she guided me back a bit further from the planks.

“Deal…” I sighed softly, feeling like my nerves were finally calming down.

“Now! You’re not useless at all, either. While… burning things is limited in use, we have already been saved by it multiple times! Don’t sell yourself short. How about you burn the planks instead of embarrassing yourself like last time, huh?” The paladin teased.

“HEY! I WAS KINDA LOST IN THOUGHT, OKAY!?” I protested, but then couldn’t help but laugh.

With that, I managed to cast the long-ranged spell again. Okay… well. LONG might have been an exaggeration because my control range was about three meters. Not a whole lot, but still better than nothing.

The planks slowly turned to ash as their mana ran out. The amount of fire they created was genuinely quite pathetic, so even calling it fire was a gross overstatement. It was simply little singes at best. Whatever wood they were made of seemed to be extremely low on magic.

Either way, we were finally out… or… in? We were still underground, so it was a bit uncertain what was the correct way of describing our situation.

“What in the world…” Amelia began staring at something wide-eyed as soon as she made it out of the cave. I followed her and rapidly understood why.

image [https://i.imgur.com/lLV217Z.png]

A vast cavern spanning easily tens if not hundreds of kilometers spread ahead of us. There was a vast blue ‘sky’ up above, which consisted of the cavern ceiling and some sort of strange cloud-like things floating around.

“It’s those things from the pond!!” I shouted as I realized.

The ceiling was covered in the hand-like protrusions, shining their faint blue light down upon the vast green fields below. There was no wind… Giving the wide green fields a slightly haunting feel when accompanied by the blue hue of the light.

As I mentioned before, the sky had clouds of mist gathering near the top. I couldn’t quite understand how clouds like that could form underground, but I decided against pondering on it too much.

There was something much more fantastical in sight, after all.

It wasn’t the plains or the trees or the river… or the bizarre blue sky enveloping the area in its melancholic light.

No, it was the gigantic mountain range of enormous stalagmites with some kind of structures built within them.

The sight was immense. There was a beautiful, elaborate city resting at the base of the stalagmite range. Lights and little windows adorned on all sides of the stalagmites, and a single one of them connected all the way to the ceiling of the cave.

At the very ceiling above the city, there were stalactites hanging down with similar windows and lights decorating them. It was the first sight of an open area in this world, that truly screamed the word ‘fantasy’ at me, and I was all for it.

“What… is that…?!” Amelia’s eyes were wide open.

“I was hoping you’d know…!” I shook my head as I stared about as wide-eyed as my knightly companion.

Our amazement was interrupted by the sound of something approaching. As it got a bit closer, it was easier to figure out the source of the noise. I’m quite confident it was a horse carriage. As I began to run towards it to call for help, Amelia suddenly lunged at me. I wanted to squeal, but she covered my mouth, hiding us in the nearby tall grass. I was confused, and for whatever reason, Amelia’s expression was very stern.

A horse carriage did indeed arrive, and out of it stepped a very short man.

“D-dwarves?!” I gasped in a whisper.

Amelia simply hushed me as three more armed dwarven men exited the carriage. The first man seemed to be an aristocrat, judging by his extravagant outfit, and the three others following him were incredibly muscular and had rather immense beards. They wore light leather armor which did nothing to hide dark tattoos adorning their arms. All three carried unnecessarily large battle-axes.

They spoke something, but the group was too far off for us to hear anything. They seemed to be assessing the damage we did to the planks. How did they know the planks had been broken through like this? Wasn’t the response way too quick?

The group seemed to be scanning the area a bit after checking the ashen remains of the wood, as if to find something.

The aristocratic man shrugged, and then three dwarven strongmen rushed off into the distance for a moment.

“W-why are we hiding?” I was still whispering, even though only the noble dwarf remained.

Meanwhile, the other three returned with a bunch of similarly worn-out pieces of lumber. They began nailing them to cover the opening again, and after the job was done, the group spoke something and gave one last glance around before they finally left.

Amelia surveyed into all directions, before finally sighing deep as the carriage began racing away.

“Dwarves are not… known for being the friendliest bunch when it comes down to meeting people of other races.”

“O-oh…!” I felt my heart drop a bit.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have been mad at all if dwarves turned out to be actually conveniently kind and friendly. IN FACT! I would have welcomed the overly comfortable parallel world archetype more than gladly!! Why was my world of reincarnation full of hate and violence?! I lost my arm!! I was hungry and miserable! We just survived a damn dungeon full of nothing but death! AND WHAT IS OUR REWARD!? A CITY FULL OF RACIST DWARVES!! GREAT!!!

… Luckily, my inner thoughts didn’t quite spill over. I really didn’t feel like explaining what the hell a parallel world is to Amelia…

“We’ll worry about it later. Currently, we need…” The paladin interrupted my inner spite.

“Food.” I finished her sentence.

We shared a knowing glance. I really needed something to get my mind off of this miserable chain of pain.

The option of stealing food from the dwarven kingdom built under the giant stalagmite was obviously out of the question. If the dwarves were even remotely as hateful as Amelia made them out to be, surely it was like walking straight into a hornet nest… and we had had our fair share of that already.

We began wandering down the grassy plains, heading towards a nearby forest.

“Do you really think there will be edible things in there? We’re underground, you know.” My pessimism was leaking out, most likely due to the chain reaction of events.

“I’m confident there is.” Amelia’s answer was strong enough to get me curious. I jogged to catch up with her a bit.

“What makes you so sure?” I panted a bit. Amelia’s walking pace was rather brisk. She seemed to notice my exhaustion and slowed down slightly.

“Judging by how massive the dwarven kingdom is, there has to be an internal source of food here. Importing everything from outside would be much too expensive even for dwarves.” She spoke as she grabbed my remaining arm and helped me walk a bit better.

I was a bit slower to keep up with her to begin with because running around while missing an arm was hard. Something about the weight distribution in your body being off makes it easy to stumble and fall.

Amelia was her usual overly gentlewomanly self and helped me stagger along patiently. At the moment, I remember wishing I could one day get princess-carried by her.

As we finally made our way to the forest, I got caught off-guard by how incredibly vast it was. Looking at it from the distance away made it seem rather tiny, but it was a proper forest. There was a thin layer of mist all over the plains and the woods, which might have concealed a part of it to make it seem smaller than it was, to be fair.

There were ruins of some kind overtaken by nature all around. The entire forest floor was covered in a thick and soft layer of vividly green moss. The moss overgrowth reached all the way to the bases of the trees, giving the surroundings a somehow ancient feel, as if we had entered a sanctuary mankind hadn’t taken foot in for eons.

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“A-are you sure it’s okay for us to be here? I feel like we might get cursed for desecrating the sanctity of this place…?” I frowned a bit as I looked around carefully.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine for as long as we only take what we need and nothing more.” Amelia reassured… but I still felt a bit nervous about even sitting down on the moss.

“Um… I can’t say I’m really good at hunting or stuff… But I could go foraging for dry twigs and maybe things I can find on the ground, if that would help.” I offered while looking around.

The tranquility of the forest filled me with a quiet sense of peace. For a moment, I almost forgot, that we were in the middle of extremely hostile territory.

“Sounds good. I think I shall go try my luck with hunting. It’s been a while, so I might be a bit out of practice, but I’ll try my best.” With that, Amelia was off, leaving me by my lonesome.

My butt was wet from sitting on the moss. It was a bit gross, so I decided to get up and begin wandering around.

The forest felt very alive in comparison with the dead silence of the dungeon cave. Here and there were little animals making noise. Birds, lizards, mushrooms…

… Mushrooms?

There were bizarre, noisy mushrooms all over the roots of some nearby trees. They were quite thick and bulbous with vividly purple caps. A notable hissing emanated from the colony of mushrooms every time I went close to it.

“F-fine! Fine! I’ll go away!” I muttered and sighed. Honestly, I really didn’t feel like eating hissing mushrooms anyway.

Wandering around, I was able to pick up a few twigs. There was a nice dry clearing a few hundred meters away from the spot where Amelia and I went our separate ways. I figured it’d probably work as a camp.

To my surprise, there was even a little river crossing through the forest. On the plains, I was able to spot a bigger river traveling across the outer perimeter of the cave. This might have been an offshoot of it, or maybe there was a spring somewhere within the forest.

Either way, we had a source of water. Somehow, I felt a bit afraid of drinking from the little stream, despite how clear the water was.

We had just escaped a cave full of horrible tiny insects, so I was a bit paranoid about microscopic evil lurking everywhere at this point.

Sitting by the crystal-clear water left my mind wandering. I wondered if I actually even needed to eat and drink in the first place? Witches are monsters. Do they eat normally? I wondered if my hunger was simply due to remembering how to be hungry in my past life…

My stomach hadn’t growled at all since I arrived in this world. In fact, no matter how I listened, I couldn’t really hear anything from inside myself. I could tell I was hungry… Or at least I thought so. I remembered being pretty hungry when I made my way to the hut Amelia was in originally… Or… did I just imagine it all? You know, like a placebo effect of some kind?

How do witches’ bodies work? It’d be really convenient to find some books on the subject, and maybe the subject of magic alongside it.

Could be the dwarven kingdom had a library?

“Yverna…? Are you alright?” Amelia’s voice broke me out of my daze.

“Oh! Amelia!” I wobbled a bit as I shakily got up. The knight was carrying a few creatures of some kind she had hunted. They looked a bit like rabbits, but they were a tad flatter in profile. “Sorry! I got a bit carried away thinking about stuff…!”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you’re not feeling sick or anything. Have you found anything edible?” She asked, peeking into the stream. “Oh! Fresh water?!” And with that, she sunk her face in the stream to drink.

She ended up squealing with a brain freeze on the mossy ground due to the water temperature. I consoled her while chuckling a bit as she slowly managed to gather her wits.

“Phuaaaa…! Refreshing…!” She sighed. Clearly, there was no worry over parasites or the formerly mentioned microscopic evil in her mind.

“There was a clearing a way back that way.” I pointed toward the grassy area I saw a moment ago. “In terms of food… I really just found the stream and mushrooms that kept hissing at me.”

“Mushrooms? Where?” Amelia was unnecessarily okay with the fact, that the mushrooms were making noise. Was this supposedly normal in this world?!

After guiding the gallant adventurer to the hissing mushroom colony, she began mercilessly plucking the mushrooms. The squealing the miserable fungi made was horrid.

I never wanted to hear it again.

Amelia sat us down by the clearing I found. She had found a helmet somewhere as she was wandering around. It hadn’t rusted… so it must have been quite fresh. It was made of metal and had a nice round shape to it.

The piece of headgear was granted the honor of being our cooking pot. Amelia began to pour water into it, then gutting and preparing the animals for stew.

Surprisingly enough, I didn’t find the process particularly disgusting or unpleasant to look at. Somehow, the sight of blood and guts wasn’t making me uncomfortable. This made me remember my previous musings.

“Amelia. Do you happen to know… anything outside of rumors and stories about witches?” I pried awkwardly.

“I thought I did… But a certain someone has proven my beliefs to be nothing but bedtime stories.” She chuckled as she began making a fire under the helmet. I helped her with magic.

“I see… I’ve just been wondering… I don’t seem to understand what it really means to be a witch… I guess.”

“Is that a problem?” Amelia smiled as she began adding mushrooms to the water as it started boiling. The mushrooms were screaming, and it was all around awful.

“Well! Isn’t it a bit weird for a witch to not know how to be a witch?!” I lamented in place a bit.

“I think I like you this way better… than as whatever you think a witch should be.” Amelia commented, without breaking her focus away from stirring the pot.

“But…”

“It’s not like humans try to think about how to be humans, either.” She commented. “I think instead of being a witch, you should just be yourself.”

“I… I see your point.” I mumbled. “I’ve just… been feeling a bit out of place. I don’t know how to explain it, but I guess a simple way to put it, is that I don’t feel like… this body is mine.” I stammered.

“Hmmm…” Amelia mused to herself.

She kept stirring the pot in silence. She made a makeshift ladle out of wood with a sharp looking piece of rock she picked up near the little river. While it was crude and making the cooking utensil seemed to be a lot of work, it got the work done.

“Well. In my opinion… You might be worrying too much about stuff like that.” She spoke as she taste-tested the soup. “I don’t really know your background… and from how it seems, you don’t either.” She continued. “All I can genuinely comment on is the YOU, who I’ve spent the most recent moments of my life with.”

“Mmm…”

“I don’t know what you feel like ‘your place’ is, but I find you a reliable companion, even if you’re a bit odd and frail.” She offered me a taste of the stew.

Hunger is truly a wondrous spice. Not to downplay Amelia’s cooking, but that stew tasted like what biting into angels must taste like. I felt almost sad when I swallowed it down because I didn’t want the taste to go away.

“Whatever my perception of a witch is, it is something I hope you’ll never turn into, so, if possible, I’d love it if you’d just stay the way you are.”

While I think witches can’t cry, they sure as hell can blush. I could feel the heat all the way up to my ears. Amelia was such a villainess. Even without a heart, I could still feel my heart skipping a beat because this paladin was such a ladykiller.

“… I’m… Um…” I began mumbling, ears red.

“Yes?” The knight seemed to find some mean amusement in my embarrassment.

“I… I hate to break the sweet moment, but I meant more in terms of like… how my body works and stuff… I do appreciate the fact, that you think so highly of me, though…”

Now Amelia got red too! She deserved some sweet revenge. She thought I was having issues of self-worth, even though I was mostly just wondering whether I have a stomach or not! Hah! Take that!

… I’m honestly happy she misunderstood, though…

“T-THEN SAY IT FROM THE START!!” She slapped her thighs, cheeks red, until both of us burst out laughing.

Soon enough, the misunderstandings got cleared. Amelia did scold me for it a bit, which I did respectfully accept. I do understand I might have been a bit misleading after all. Afterwards, we decided to focus on eating… and we did indeed eat.

Surely, if anyone not privy to our situation came across the scene, it would look like two lunatics worshiping a pot of soup like they had just come to discover irrefutable proof of the existence of God.

One of said maniacs looking like a tangled mess of dark hair adorned with burnt bug corpses and sticks wearing a filthy wolf pelt, and the other had a bunch of burnt holes on the backside of her clothes covered in soot and ash.

All in all, we looked like a nightmare.

But, in that moment, it felt pretty good. It was the first warm meal we shared since we met.

I always thought any caves and underground areas would be cold, but surprisingly enough, wearing a coat or even a sweater would have been excessive here.

I’m not sure if it was some kind of magic or something else, but the enormous cave the city was built in was warm like an early summer day.

The blue light shining from the ceiling gave a ghastly, cold feel to the cave, so the fact that it was quite warm made for a slight of a sensory conflict. My common sense kept nagging at me about how it should have been chilly, and yet, here I was, feeling warm enough to fall asleep without a worry on the mossy forest floor.

But I didn’t.

Surprisingly enough, the lights on the ceiling got a bit dim as time went on. I’m assuming it was to give a feeling of nighttime, and so as the darkness fell, so did Amelia.

As much as she seemed to want to discuss various topics with me, she was out like a lamp as soon as we managed to confirm the area was safe enough.

Looking at Amelia sleeping next to me, and breathing calmly to get rid of some of the exhaustion, filled me with a twinge of jealousy.

I don’t think I mentioned this before, but I’ve come to realize I cannot sleep, at least in a traditional sense.

I can faint from exhaustion, but I don’t grow sleepy at all. I also don’t remember feeling particularly well-rested after fainting a couple of times in the dungeon.

Sleep is important, not only for physical, but mental rest as well. Having to stay up constantly fills my mind with worries. The silence of nighttime becomes somewhat oppressive when you have only yourself to spend it with.

We had just survived a dungeon. Just barely. In games and novels, the heroes often get a reward for overcoming a challenge of some kind.

Maybe a legendary item or an overpowered companion. Anything to give them the upper hand in their next hostile encounter they come across.

But Amelia and I had nothing. We lost much more than we gained in the dungeon.

There were no riches awaiting at the end, and there was no sealed cursed sword to give us the power to comfortably overcome any obstacle in the future.

No.

If this was purgatory, I shouldn’t expect the world to be so convenient anyway. If this world existed to judge the worth of my soul, then surely it wouldn’t simply give me the easy out and become a sickeningly sweet power fantasy.

This place isn’t about me. I’m not the main character who is destined to win.

I am… the enemy.

At best, my fate is to stand in the way of the chosen ones… only to be struck down in the name of justice.

Even an exciting fantasy world like this can feel like a nightmarish hellscape when all the right answers aren’t brought to you.

Plenty of novels were about heroes becoming exceptionally loved and powerful, simply by existing. It’s a very common desire in people, I suppose. To get everything they want without putting any effort into it.

The doctor’s words echoed in my head.

“What is the difference between a dream and a fantasy.”

I feel dreams are more realistic. That’s why a lot of people fear having big dreams. You have to take responsibility for your own dreams coming true.

If all you do is wait, then the likelihood of your dreams coming true becomes extremely low. Due to the fear of having to blame yourself for your own failures, numerous people fear dreaming.

Dreams carry a sense of responsibility because they require effort to come true.

Fantasies don’t. Getting everything, you could ever want without putting any effort into it is much more appealing to a large number of people.

There was this nurse in the hospital.

She was a somewhat younger woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, and she loved to talk. It honestly wasn’t all bad to have her taking care of me. Saying she sucked at her job was an understatement because all she did was come into my room, sit down, whip her phone out and talk to her boyfriend.

But it was entertaining to watch. I never got to watch people outside of internet videos and brief visits, so observing her was… incredibly interesting. I felt like an outsider watching someone’s life unfold without the glass screen in the middle.

She was living in a fantasy, and she loved the fantasy so much she was willing to sacrifice everything for it.

One day, I heard the nurses gossiping.

Yeah.

Nurses LOVE to gossip about patients. They said the newest nurse was acting weird. Apparently, there were reports of her trying to claim she had diagnosed a patient with something.

A bit odd. Nurses don’t diagnose, but I didn’t think much of it until she came into the room.

She was completely dolled up in make-up, as usual. She had an air of one of those people, who you will have an incredibly hard time relating to, no matter what. Countless folks have probably encountered these types, only to feel like you’re a wholly different species from them.

She introduced herself as my nurse and doctor.

Weird, but okay.

From the very beginning, my new nurse-doctor began her… medical procedures. There was something about them… They were all similar to what a person might see doctors doing on hospital dramas.

You know, taking the little wooden stick thing and pressing it against your tongue, listening to your heartbeat through a stethoscope, bonking your knee with the little hammer. She had all of these little tools in her fancy bag, and they were all sparkly-clean to the point of looking like they had never been used before.

Now, obviously the whole listening to my heart was correct… but a broken clock is correct twice a day too. Most of her tests were completely improper.

Not to mention the white coat, she pulled out of her bag of medical wonders. It was all so bizarre, and oh, so clear she had no idea what she was doing.

She was like a ridiculous mixture of caricatured depictions of doctors. Sometimes she’d sit next to me with a memo pad, writing down something while asking me about my life, as if she was a psychiatrist or a therapist.

Then she’d begin doing the generic tests I mentioned before. When I was younger, she’d give me a sticker for being a good girl.

By ‘younger’ I mean I was sixteen. I was sixteen when she still gave me the damn stickers. Sure, I was a bit small in stature due to being so sickly, but still! She was in a world of her own.

The interesting part of it all started, when she got a call on her personal cell phone in the middle of one of her ‘examinations’. As soon as she saw the caller ID, her expression changed. With a strange, shaky smirk, across her face, she picked up the call.

“Yes. This is Doctor Belville speaking.”

She answered to her personal phone with this and her smile was from ear to ear. It was like… she was proud of herself… Like she was waiting for this call.

“I’m sorry, mom. I’m with a patient right now. You know how it is. A doctor’s life is busy.” Then she turned on the camera of her phone in order to video call, and posed with me in the background to a woman grinning from ear to ear on the other end of the phone.

After exchanging some pointless pleasantries, she finally stopped the call. It was all too clear now. With the way she was smirking, the way her mother spoke and how unprofessional she was.

Her fantasy began unfolding further the more I saw her. She was on the phone almost every time she visited me. Almost like she was showing me off to all of her relatives one by one. Somehow, every time she was with me, she got a ‘random call’ from a relative who wanted to talk, and even though she was ‘with a patient’, she always had the time to turn on the video feed… and show me off.

At first, this obviously bothered me. I was being shown off like a damn circus animal to the morally bankrupt family of this moron.

I figured this was simply how unimportant I was. I was going to die soon no matter what, so no point in sending actual professionals to me, right?

Then one day, I remember being on the verge of reporting her when something fascinating happened.

This woman, who was living in a fantasy… finally had the veil of her illusion shift.

Her boyfriend called. Or… something of the like. Lover maybe? I couldn’t really tell.

The expressions she made… They were all somehow so satisfying to look at. Might be it was due to how I had been forced to accept my reality a long time ago… Maybe it was a catharsis of sorts, seeing this naïve world beginning to crumble.

It was so… incredibly entertaining to watch.

“W-what do you mean the car was rented?! N-no… I am a doctor! I make easy six figures a year! How dare you call me a liar!?”

I had never seen expressions like that on a person. Maybe I had made similar ones those nights I cried to myself, while wallowing in self-pity over the fact, that I was going to die.

A face of absolute denial. What an ugly… disgusting expression. It was like her boyfriend had just become her mortal enemy instantly, and suddenly, her often dumb smirk was distorted into a face of eerie hatred. This person on the other end of the phone was now, in an instant, her least favorite thing to talk to.

And why? It’s quite simple.

He was doubting her fantasy.

Anyone who doubts the fantasy is an enemy, because they remind her of the fact, that EVERYTHING her life is built upon is a lie.

From the conversations I caught with her lies slowly shattering, the real story was more along these lines.

She failed med school, so she couldn’t become a doctor. No wonder honestly! She was about as stupid as she was shallow. She didn’t want to put any effort into anything and simply wanted the rewards.

It’s an awfully common thing to see, to be fair. I saw it online a lot too. One of my online friends who was interested in art and comics always said they’ll make the next ‘One Beach’.

They couldn’t even finish a single page of comic in a week, and it was always because ‘They were such perfectionists that the page never looked right.’

Some of my friends who played video games were no different. ‘I’m going to get this huge achievement only a microscopic number of players have’, and as soon as they figured out why such a few players had said achievement, they called the game bullshit. The game was at fault.

Obviously, they never got the achievements. The artists never became anything more than easily forgettable social media artists with little to no engagement with anything they ever made.

Dreams are heavy and they carry a terrifying weight. That’s why fantasies are easier, but fantasies will never become anything but fantasies, unless you accept the responsibility of them becoming dreams.

Honestly, with how much effort this woman had put into her lies, I think she might have been able to get some sort of results in life, had she directed that effort into something else. But all she knew was how to lie, so that’s all she did.

Her first response to the man calling her out was to lie as much as she could, obviously, but the man wouldn’t believe her. The more she spoke, the more he questioned her.

The more she got questioned, the more her face distorted. She even began crying at him for not trusting her even though she was his lover.

She cried, but there were no tears at all.

I hear fake crying is pretty hard, or something about dishonest crying producing tears less often.

She wasn’t crying because she was ‘distrusted’ by her boyfriend.

She was crying because she knew that’s what victims do.

It was also a lie, just like everything else she did. As soon as she ended the call, her crying instantly calmed down, and she acted like nothing had happened.

A few weeks later, her crying no longer worked because the man now saw through it too. It was clear at this point; the man wasn’t interested in being with this lunatic anymore.

And yet, he persisted to exposing her lies. Maybe he felt wronged, and was frustrated over the woman never admitting to lying to him.

When the man was clearly no longer buying the lies, the woman angrily ‘cut ties’ with him, acting like she was the victim here.

With the ugliest expression of fury, she called a lot of people, telling them all at once about the evil doings of the man. She came up with numerous accusations on the spot, so they were mostly completely unbelievable, but she was like a cornered rat. She tried biting at everything she could, while trying to paint the man to be as evil as she possibly could.

Even though some of her friends were doubtful about how extreme some of her claims were, the fact that they were ‘friends’, seemed enough reason to trust her.

For the next couple of visits, she was really smug. She was proud of herself. I’m guessing her claims were enough to get the man in trouble one way or another.

And then, the men wearing suits came in.

They asked me questions about her and what she would always do in the room with me.

My weak, dried-up heart beat with jubilation as I told the men about everything… Everything she did in the room.

I remember almost fainting from excitement when they hid in the bathroom in my hospital room, only to observe her doing all of her usual antics with me.

The way she screamed when she was dragged out…

Oh, those screams…

It was the howling of an animal dying. She knew at that moment; her fantasies were over. That scream was the final realization… A scream of acceptance, maybe?

I still remember it so well…

Apparently, the man she accused of a bunch of evil doings ended up being questioned by police, who turned out to be truly interested in his side of the story.

Once they found out, that she was acting as a doctor without a license, her game was over.

His claims were obviously considerably more substantial than hers, since all she had was her fantasy.

It was her fantasy, and nobody else’s. Even if she truly believed in all of her lies, to everyone else, she simply came off as a maniac dreamer, and a dangerous one at that.

Maybe she had gotten the habit from social media. I don’t know. When I finally gained an interest in her, I followed her on some social media platforms under an alias.

She loved sending her followers to attack anyone whoever called her out on her lies. Posting sexually charged images of herself on social media got her quite a following, and a lot of the people following her were dead set on ‘supporting’ her due to probably fantasizing of one day getting into her pants.

Basically, it was other people living in pathetic fantasies feeding the fantasies of this woman.

She thought she was powerful, she thought, since her lies were never exposed to social media, she could use the same methods in real life.

The court case was televised and posted online.

It was hilarious.

It was my favorite thing to watch for a good while. People made so much fun of the woman online, and obviously all of her followers jumped ship to hate on her too.

That’s what fantasy-ridden people generally do. Whenever their fantasy is put in jeopardy, they blame someone else.

I learned to never trust people like this with anything very fast. They’d always betray their ‘stars’ as soon as the smallest blemish appeared on the ever-present shine.

As a person, who didn’t even have the luxury to dream, I found her downfall exciting.

Seeing this hollow shell of a human crumbling, and her having to face her reality in such a bombastic manner, left me feeling incredibly satisfied.

Fantasies are like sugar. They’re sweet and delicious to eat, but if you eat too much, you get fat and your teeth rot away.

If you dedicate yourself to living in fantasies, you’ll gain a momentary joy, which will ultimately lead to a crushing, miserable end.

So, maybe the real answer to the doctor’s question was…

“The difference between dreams and fantasies, is that dreams start heavy and painful and don’t always come true even if you try your hardest, but they can end happy with effort and luck. Fantasies start sweet and wonderful, and bring you more misery and sadness the more you try to live in them.”

My life right now isn’t a fantasy. I had a tired, wounded friend sleeping next to me, and I had lost an arm. I was exiled from a kingdom, and I was hunted by flesh eating insects.

And yet… to a strange extent, I wasn’t sad about it. Even though I had been through some harrowing experiences, it was nothing in comparison to the despair of knowing an inevitable demise awaits.

I still could make my own choices. I had never felt more in control of my life, so I no longer needed fantasies because I had the power to look at my reality in the face and have an effect on the course it was taking.

That was something I could only fantasize of in the past.