Forward...
Her limbs were puppets without strings, collapsing in a theater without an audience.
Forward...
She had smeared the marks so nonchalantly, thinking she was ahead, ha... how foolish.
F... orward...
...
...
...
Yet...
No lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo lipstick markNo—
There wasn't a mark anywhere in this smeared labyrinth; her memory was a half-burnt map with edges frayed, and paths erased.
The same cold, unforgiving stone, the same oppressive gloom, but not the same walls... Not everything was identical— scratches scarred the walls, teeth marks gnawed at the edges.
A hideous smile split her ruined face, jagged as broken glass; her bloodshot eye widened, trembling with the desperate triumph of a starving beast.
These walls felt familiar... Maybe she was getting close.
Yet this surge of solace was immediately drowned by a wave of sickening heat.
*BLEUGH*
Her body spasmed, collapsing directly on the floor of this endless corridor.
'Blood...? How long have I been bleeding?'
Fang Shan spoke, flat and unimpressed, "Just gastric acid and clotted blood, nothing interesting."
As she lay collapsed on the ground, swimming in static, her view turned blurry, her insides pulsed like exposed wires, sparking agony with every beat and clenching like a heart.
*Drop*
"What am I even scared of. A slow death?"
Rust and fear. Slow whimpers and irrational sentences. The body felt impossibly heavy; she was scared of this slow death.
H E M A T O P H O B I A
Wh y was she even doing this?
...
A humid blanket began to cradle her, sinking its skeletal claws, pulling her into a silence.
Her cracked, dry lips murmured, "I want to sleep... I want to see my bed... my cat... I want to rest and not care about anything... I want to be a dung beetle..."
A sarcastic voice echoed in her head, distant and detached, "Wishes rot quicker than corpses, yet here you are, clutching them still."
She had been searching for the faint trails she'd left, but it was too late. Her strength was long gone; she was only an empty carcass.
She sank onto the ground, not curled, not braced. Simply lying there, perfectly still and doll-like, as if she had been toppled from a second-story window.
Her sight blurred further, and the edges began smearing like ink on wet paper.
A tear-choked, 'Hia...' Escaped her lips.
'No one can blame you. You tried hard, and got far, you did your best shot... sometimes that's life.'
Relief spread like warm water.
This is it.
Her nerves loosened, her tendons untied, her muscles unknotted.
The strange warmth began to spread through her limbs, a warmth of utter surrender. The pain, once a screaming siren, began cradling her, washing her colors away into a gentle tide.
'Yes, let's just sleep.'
...
...
...
"To give up so easily in the face of what you have been looking for..." The sharp and cutting voice of Fang Shan sliced the encroaching darkness, as he wrote in a book, "Pathetic way to end, but nevertheless, concrete.
Absentia's semi-functional eye, crusted with hardened blood, faintly fluttered, opening wide to distorted colors. She saw it; she looked at it, the shimmering promise laid ahead.
'A... Arrow...?'
Her fingertips were blue, her gaze fogged white, limbs numb. A name. A call. A mask. No thoughts came to this blood-starved mind— just an echo older than memory, a whisper not made of reason that fought the very concept of surrender.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHH!"
Her scream split her throat, and blood foamed in her mouth, sounding like a dammed soul chewing fire from the underworld. The comfortable darkness was profanated in a violent riot.
With the pull of a thousand mountains, her arms rebelled against their own exhaustion, forcing themselves forward with a relentless resolve, not caring about the cries from every fiber of her being.
...
...
'Just... That... Crack... I HAVE TO GO PAST THAT CRACK!'
...
...
Just stone under flesh. Just iron in her mouth. Just fire in her lungs.
...
...
I...MUST...KEEP... GOING...
...
Minutes? Hours? Days?
Her lips were dry-cracked like old clay. Every inch she moved was violence; slowly her tendons tore, her veins snapped, and ligaments unraveled.
Each inch was a war.
Each drag, a rebellion.
Each breath, theft from death.
She pressed on.
SHE HAD TO!
So close. So close. So close—
Blood trailed behind Absentia, a crimson river drawing her desperate crawl on the cold stone floor.
Pieces of her once-flawless porcelain skin lay shattered, raw fragments from her chest, knees, and face stuck to the ground. Her broken, fancy nails clutched and drove her forward, like claws of a corpse dragging itself out of the grave.
But...
Even as she crawled with all her might for minutes that stretched into an eternity, the arrow didn't get any closer.
It stayed just ahead.
'Move. Move. Move. Why won't you move?'
Her mind swam in static buzz, her body bled dry, moving on borrowed rage.
"I WON'T LET MY LIFE..."
Fang Shan's projection appeared, seated with a book, narrating softly to himself as if to a vast, invisible audience.
"BE SQUEEZED INTO A SINGLE PARAGRAPH!"
"The sages tell us hope is delicate. As if it is this tiny, fragile fairy living inside our heart, accompanying us even when strength peels and intelligence wilts, when we are rotting and decaying, leaving only a hollow shell that merely appeals to the heavens—"
"IS IT A SIN TO WISH TO LIVE?!"
"No... Hope..." With pen in hand, Fang Shan's internal voice resonated with a sudden, fierce pride, a strange, almost amused inflection,"Hope is more like a feral girl. She has a bloodied, broken sword in her hand, gritted teeth, gone voice, a purple eye, her hair stained with dirt, and knees covered in scratches from sharp rocks.
"AM I GOING TO HELL FOR IT!?"
"Hope is the final, flickering joke told to death— and it's laughing too"
"HA! WELL, TOO BAD, BECAUSE I'M ALREADY THERE!"
And.
He turned another page from his book, as if recalling an old fable.
...
...
...
Long, long ago.
In the sterile confines of a laboratory, a rat found itself at the mercy of curious researchers. The rat was kept in a semi-realistic environment, and one day, without warning, it plunged into water, being left to drown.
It swam and swam, scrambling at slick walls, with its tiny paws cutting through the water as it desperately tried to escape this torture. But after two frantic minutes of slipping from the edges of the container, it understood the truth...
It was useless...
No matter how hard it struggled, no matter how hard it fought back, the world didn't care— only one ending awaited.
The rat flailed, gasping for air one last time, stopping his body all at once before surrendering to the inevitable grasp of death.
It sank.
Despite the rat's choice, the researchers pulled it from the brink of oblivion. They fed him again, cleaned him, cared for him, and gave him a few days to rest.
Just to throw him back in the water.
Once more, the rat continued to fiercely swim for its life.
The rat hadn't suddenly grown stronger, smarter, faster, or anything like evolution.
Yet, the rat that lasted two minutes, aimlessly swimming before giving up on life, that same rat had gained something new and unique.
...
Do you know how long the rat lasted in the second attempt?
...
...
...
...
...
Sixty. Hours.