Exiting the building, Clark looked towards the park and started walking. Eyes still reddened, he threw out a used tissue to a trash can he passed on the side of the path. 'I know it's necessary. I needed to save my reaction until I was supposed to be hearing the news for the first time. I don't mind acting or lying to keep my secrets. But this time it felt... wrong somehow. Almost like I'm dirtying his death'

He barked out a sardonic laugh.

'Look at yourself, now I'm even making someone's death about myself. Be realistic. Keeping my secrets won't sully his death after it's already happened, and I respect him and his memory. ...Why do I feel guilty, then? I had no part in his death. Survivor's guilt?'

Brows furrowed, after walking and ruminating for a few minutes, he couldn't see the elderly home anymore, so he sat down on a bench he stumbled upon. He let out a deep breath as he looked up at the canopy. He felt the breeze on his face and arms, as well as the sun's rays heating his face through the branches, then he felt it cool down when the wind bent the branches to block the sunlight for a moment. Distant chirps echoed softly around him.

'...What am I doing? Should I continue volunteering? Can I?'

The canopy was swaying, almost as if it was weighing the decision with him.

'No. Not like I have been, at least. Spending this much time with someone, getting attached, then losing them. It's... painful. I can't keep repeating it. It'll just end up hurting me in the long term. Granted, Sam's initial prognosis had given him 2 months left to live when I volunteered for him, and he held on for a bit over 4 months. But I underestimated how long the initial 2 months were and how attached I'd get.’

‘I partially blame Sam for that. He was too likeable for my own good. If I could go back, I'd choose to do it all over again. But I can't keep repeating this with others. I can't keep getting attached.'

He forcefully squeezed his eyes shut, but a tear escaped and made its way down his cheek anyway. The wet trail it left behind felt colder in the breeze. 'I wish he had more time. I wish I could have given him more time.' He clenched his jaw as well as the fists on his sides. 'I can do things that should be impossible. Why do I still feel so fucking powerless?!'

Angrily, he opened his eyes and unzipped his backpack. He gripped the tome with both hands, forcefully enough so his knuckles turned white. practically throwing the tome onto his lap.

Jaw set, lips pressed into a thin line, and as he lifted his right fist, he channelled several stories’ specific aspects into himself.

One story of a man's retelling of his physical prowess in boot camp before being deployed to Vietnam in his youth. He claimed to have the second highest physical score in his company, but the tome records only the truth, and it recorded him in 11th place.

A second story of a fistfight over a misunderstanding in high school, where both participants earned themselves black eyes, plenty of bruises, and a week's suspension. Though the person who was recorded ended up knocking the other guy out in the end.

The third story is of a retired man's diligent workout routine he kept consistent for years to stay hale in his old age to ensure he wouldn’t be a burden on his family.

Finally, a fourth story of Samuel Hills bravely fending off a 30 kg dog from attacking his daughter, who was 5 years old at the time.

Clark felt a spiritual and mental pressure settling over him, reaching the limits of how much he could currently channel at once. Then he pushed the passive effects his stories bestowed upon him to their limits, temporarily enhancing them, while shutting down the passive effects irrelevant to what he was about to do.

Pressure mounting, causing him to feel dizzy, his sight going blurry, with an actual headache quickly going from a low drone to piercing, he brought his knuckles down onto the tome’s cover. Dull pain radiated from his thighs that the tome was rested on, and a burning sensation was dancing on his knuckles, along with a cold wave washing through his right wrist. Clark sucked air through his teeth with a hiss, bending over and supporting his right wrist and hand with his left hand, already having released control on the stories from the tome at the moment of impact.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow…” he whimpered. Wholly unprepared for the, in hindsight, obvious ramifications that enhanced strength would have when punching the tome he knew was indestructible, or at least invulnerable to the few things he had tried on a corner of its cover, then one of its pages. His very much scientific and well-thought-out tests included a lighter and a drill, to name two things he most assumed would have done something.

Within a few minutes, his headache was subsiding, and the non-physical pressure had alleviated to almost nothing. A large difference compared to his test to go as far as he could in his bed one time, where he passed out, only to wake up a whole 2 days later, dehydrated, groggy, and hungry. Along with what could have been a contender for the world’s worst migraine that almost put him right back to unconsciousness. Thankfully it subsided within half an hour after waking up, almost like it had waited for him to wake up before appearing in the first place.

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With the pressure and headache almost gone, Clark focused and activated all his positive passive effects again. Feeling relief and the pain fading away from a combination of pain-reducing effects and increased healing. Having turned off the ones that increased his resiliency before he punched his tome in misdirected anger had been, frankly, a stupid move. Especially when the only reason he allowed himself to lash out like that was because he knew it wouldn’t do anything to his tome.

Checking his knuckles and finding the skin ripped and that he had been bleeding over his left hand, he took a deep breath and focused on enhancing the passive healing effects as high as he could, before focusing on a story of a woman healing in almost miraculous speed from a very… difficult and bloody childbirth, according to her doctors. He chuckled. ‘Elderly sure do love talking about their children. She had told her story like it was the highest mark of honour for her. Several times. Knowing how proud she was of her children, that’s exactly what it was.’

After losing track of time for a while, he looked down at his knuckles, no longer burning or stinging, and the wrist felt normal again. ‘I agree with her doctors, the effect of this particular story is downright miraculous, though it was just broken skin and maybe a mild sprain. I wonder if it’s enhanced by how many times she told it?’

Clark took out some of his tissues, wiping his hands clean of the dried blood that had trickled from his knuckles. At least he tried, ending up having to forcefully rub the tissues over his hands for a good few minutes before he got it all.

He looked down on his tome, feeling a pang of guilt. Gently, he rubbed the cover, whispering, “I’m sorry. I only have things to thank you about, and instead, this is how I treat you… I’ll make it up to you.” He had taken to talking to it quite early, probably starting from when he accidentally dropped it, apologising to it after. Considering that it’s magical, who knows what it is or what it can do. Better stay on its good side. And he hadn’t been lying, the tome only deserved his gratitude.

Still caressing the cover, Clark fell in thought, ‘That was very much unlike me. I don’t lash out physically. The fights I got into in the past don’t count, they weren’t lashing out, they were self-defence or warranted by the situation, never started out of a need to vent my emotions physically around me.’ He craned his neck and looked around him, thankful that the park had been quiet. At least when it came to the area he had sat down in while he was there, so no one witnessed his uncharacteristic outburst.

‘Another point towards my decision to not continue volunteering the same way I did this time. I’ll at least need to put it on pause until I figure things out. Apparently, I don’t handle loss with “grace and elegance.”’ He thought as he was about to return the tissues into his backpack, his hand landing on the magazine instead.

Hesitantly, he picked it up. The blue magazine promising different word puzzles on its cover was marred with a few coffee stains, courtesy of Sam using it as a damn coaster. Small smile tugging at his lips, he flipped the magazine open and noted some of their banter around the word puzzles and crosswords.

A note in his own handwriting complained about Sam’s “illegible writing,” and another in Sam’s called his own “inhuman scribbles.” Clark’s handwriting was, notably and without bias, objectively superior, thank you very much. Clark nodded sagely with his eyes closed, a full-blown smile on his face now.

Turning a few pages, his eyes had landed on a… simplified anatomical reference to male reproductive organs. Clark’s eyes widened, as that had not been there the last time he bore witness to this page, and they had filled it at least two weeks ago. Clearly an exclusive Sam original. Never before seen. Clark first let out a small incredulous chuckle, then...

“Ha… ahahhahahahha!” Clark bent over laughing. The crude equivalent of middle schooler graffiti from the 78-year-old man, discovered posthumously, was so unexpected and absurd, it was like getting hit by a clown car in his own living room out of nowhere, then 78 clowns coming out one at a time to make sure he was okay. He laughed until his cheeks hurt, until his abs hurt, until he was crying from laughter, and just couldn’t stop.

“Ha… haaa…” He finally got it out of his system. Or so he thought, before he began chuckling to himself again. “Old bastard is making one last attempt on my life from beyond the grave!” He doubled over once more for another round of now painful laughter. This one was shorter than the last, made so by the pain accompanied with every laugh.

Gasping for air after he was finally done, he wiped the tears from his eyes, ones not purely out of joy anymore, punctuated by the throb of his ribs. He dragged himself to sit upright, taking deep breaths, somehow feeling much, much lighter than before.