There were no mornings, no nights. Only the slow drip of jam from the ceiling, the faint bioluminescent shimmer of jelly veins, and the sound of his own breathing — soft, steady, alien.
At first, James thought he would die again.
The hunger had gnawed at him endlessly. Not the sharp, painful hunger of a human stomach, but a hollow ache that came from somewhere deeper — a craving that wasn't just for food, but for substance. He didn't have organs anymore, not in the way he used to. No stomach, no lungs, no blood. Just layers of dough, cracks filled with sticky sweetness, and an ever-present pulse of energy that hummed beneath his skin.
The jam around him — his birthplace — had become his sustenance.
He'd scoop it from the walls, the floor, the rippling surface of the pool. The first few days, he gagged every time. The taste was overwhelming: sugar and something metallic, like licking iron. But then he stopped noticing. It became… normal. The taste of life here.
He learned quickly that certain patches of jam had different flavors — the pale red was soft and sweet, the dark crimson bitter and heavy, and the almost-black portions, the ones that pulsed faintly, made him feel stronger. More solid.
He told himself it was just survival. That he wasn't hurting anyone.
But he knew what this jam was made of.
It was made of cookies.
He'd found them in pieces — arms, legs, faces half-submerged, still whispering faintly before dissolving. He'd heard one murmur in the night once, weakly calling out for "Sugar Gnome… help…" before its voice faded into nothing but bubbles.
He tried to stop eating after that.
But the hunger didn't let him.
So, he ate in silence. Always at the edge of guilt, but never enough to stop. The jam gave him energy. His cracked arms healed. His broken knee stiffened less. His vision grew sharper — faint outlines of the cavern became clearer, glowing veins of sugar in the walls, the way light shimmered through the jelly pool like a fractured dream.
And through it all, the cube stayed by his side.
It was his only company — floating, wobbling, glowing faintly blue in the dark.
He'd started calling it "Cube" because naming it made the loneliness easier.
"Hey, Cube," he said one day, sitting against the wall, his hand resting on his knee. His voice echoed softly through the chamber. "You ever get tired of jam?"
Cube pulsed once, emitting a wet gloop that could've meant "no" or "you're weird."
James laughed weakly. "Yeah. Thought so."
The sound startled him — laughter felt strange, foreign, fragile. Like something he wasn't supposed to have anymore. But Cube seemed to like it. It floated closer, circling him once, leaving faint trails of light behind.
Over the weeks, he learned small things about Cube.
It slept — or something like it — once every few hours, dimming until it looked like a solid block of jelly. When it woke, it always pulsed once, slowly, as if saying "I'm still here."
It ate differently than he did — dissolving raw jam into itself, but never touching the darker patches, the ones that pulsed. Maybe it knew what they were made of. Maybe it just didn't care.
Sometimes, when James couldn't sleep, he'd talk to it. Tell it about his world — his mother, his tiny apartment, the old cracked phone he'd used to play Cookie Run: Kingdom every night until dawn. How he used to stay up building kingdoms, feeding cookies, trying to max out their levels.
He chuckled softly once, staring into the faint red shimmer of the pool.
"Guess I finally got max level, huh? Jam Cookie. The ultimate… loser achievement."
Cube blinked twice, uncertain.
James reached over and tapped it gently. "Don't worry, bud. Not your fault."
That became their rhythm.
Eat. Sleep. Talk. Wait.
Days — maybe weeks — passed that way. James had stopped counting after the first dozen times he dozed off and woke up to the same dim glow. His perception of time was syrup-slow, stretched thin.
His reflection had changed, too.
The cracks in his dough had sealed, smoothed. His color darkened slightly — from pale shortbread to a warm, jam-speckled hue. His "eyes" glowed faintly, small orbs of light flickering behind glassy sugar. His voice had a faint echo, like he spoke through a hollow shell.
But what unnerved him most was the rest of him.
Cookies, apparently, had bodies.
"Oh god…" James muttered one day, looking down at himself. He'd been trying to clean his jam-slick torso in the shallow edge of the pool when realization struck.
He wasn't just dough shaped vaguely like a man. No — he had a waist, hips, even slight muscle-like structure under his cookie skin. He could bend, stretch, move like he used to — only stiffer.
"Cookies have… human anatomy?" he whispered. "Why the hell would anyone bake that?"
He groaned, half in disgust, half in disbelief, rubbing the bridge of his nose. It flaked slightly at the touch.
"Great. I'm naked and edible."
Cube tilted nearby, letting out a questioning chirp.
James pointed at it, exasperated. "Don't look at me like that! I need clothes, okay? I can't just—"
He gestured to himself — his cracked waist, sugar dust falling like snow. "—walk around like a gingerbread nudist."
Cube blinked twice, then pulsed a faint pinkish hue, which James could've sworn looked like it was blushing.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, jelly-brain."
He tore strips of hardened sugar bark from the cave walls later, weaving them crudely with sticky jam to form something like a loincloth. It wasn't comfortable, but it worked. Mostly. Every time he moved too fast, the thing cracked and stuck to him.
Still, he felt… a little more human again.
That night, if it could be called night, he sat by the pool, watching Cube float lazily near the ceiling. Its glow had dimmed to a faint shimmer. James had started to notice something about it.
It was… changing.
Subtle at first — corners rounding slightly, its glow shifting from pure blue to soft lavender. Then, slowly, the cube began forming faint indentations — shapes that looked like limbs. They didn't hold their form for long; whenever it tried to extend one, the jelly trembled and collapsed back into itself.
James watched, fascinated. "You're… evolving?"
Cube paused midair, tilting toward him as if embarrassed. It pulsed faintly, softer this time.
James smiled faintly. "You're trying to look like me, aren't you?"
It made a low gloop and floated closer, bumping gently into his hand. He could feel it — a hum, like a heartbeat under jelly. Warm, comforting.
"…You don't have to, y'know," he said quietly. "I kinda like you just as you are."
Cube didn't respond, but it stayed there — pressed against his palm — until his body grew heavy and his vision blurred.
Sleep came differently now. Slow, syrupy. Sometimes he dreamed of sugar plains, of cookie cities, of laughter echoing far above. Sometimes he dreamed of the jam pool, and the faces within — whispering, reaching, dissolving.
Tonight, though, he dreamed of warmth. Of a faint melody — like someone humming through jelly. It sounded almost human.
He drifted deeper, and for the first time since he'd woken here, he didn't feel alone.
---
When he woke, something was different.
The air was thicker. The faint hum of the cavern was sharper, clearer. The jam pool glowed brighter, as if responding to something. He blinked groggily, sitting up, and looked around.
"Cube?" he murmured, rubbing his eyes. "Where are you, bud?"
Then he saw it.
Not floating anymore.
Standing.
Cube — or what was Cube — stood near the pool, faintly hunched, its body trembling. The once-perfect cube was now half-formed — a rough, humanoid shape, jelly limbs shimmering under the faint light. Its "head" still cube-like, but edges softened. A faint smile — or what looked like one — rippled across its surface.
James froze.
"…You…?"
The figure turned toward him, its glow pulsing slow, steady, deliberate.
It wasn't Cube anymore.
Not fully.
Something else was waking inside it.
He didn't know the name yet.
Didn't know the stories or the war raging far above.
But the being that had once been a jelly cube tilted its head and took a shaky step toward him.
And James, still sticky with jam and exhaustion, smiled weakly. "Guess you really are trying to be like me, huh?"
The jelly-being pulsed softly, almost shyly, before kneeling beside him. Its hand — translucent and trembling — brushed his arm, leaving faint traces of cool light where it touched.
He felt calm. Peaceful.
Sleep tugged at him again.
"Alright, alright," he murmured, laying back against the warm stone. "Let's… figure this out tomorrow, okay?"
The jelly-shape hummed faintly — low and melodic — as he closed his eyes.
The sound wrapped around him like a lullaby, soft and echoing through the cavern walls.
James didn't know it yet.
But the being beside him — the one learning to take shape, to become — wasn't just a companion. It was the first of its kind. The first cookie who wasn't born from dough or baked in an oven.
A being who faked being a cookie to exist among them.
Agar Agar Cookie.
But for now, she was still just Cube — watching quietly as Jam Cookie, the boy made from the remnants of others, drifted to sleep under the sugary glow of their shared well.