Plesure Pain and Sugarblast! (English)

Chapter eleven - Hashtag learnings.

"Mandy?"

"Ouch...what's...hey! Chester, cut it out!"

"Now don't argue and just swallow it! If we're out of the game now, it should be able to heal you."

"Pf, I can see for myself that this isn't the mysterious mine anymore!"

In fact, the two were no longer on the map, but several miles below. After falling into the gorge, they apparently entered an ancient labyrinth of tunnels and slid hundreds of meters deeper. Luckily Chester had the healing candies wit him and thanks to them they were no longer in danger of bleeding to death.

"Hashtag learnings. Next, we will probably have to invent glowing candy. You can't even see your hand in front of your face." Chester stated.

While he was still thinking about how to orientate himself in the darkness, it was replaced by dim light. Mandy had her superpower activated but not fired, leaving her wand glowing faintly.

"Wow, good idea Mandy," said Chester, eyeing the crumbling walls of the tunnel they appeared to be in before turning to face her - and then froze.

Mandy crouched on the floor, clutching her knees, trembling. Fear was sparkling in her eyes.

The prank master immediately remembered the night in the snow-covered shop. So, Mandy hadn't been cold, and her wasn't cold now either: she was afraid of the dark. Chester felt guilty, he had known Mandy forever, but he hadn't known that. He even wanted to scare her with his new skin back then.

How could he!

***

The light from her weapon was barely bright enough for her to see two meters ahead. Then everything was swallowed.

Swallowed by the darkness.

It was so ridiculous, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had always been afraid of the dark, since she was a little girl and now Chester was coming towards her.

Great!

Why did he have to be the one who saw her so scared and weak? Why did it have to be him, of all brawlers, with whom they had put her in a team. Surely, he would laugh at her at any moment and then...

But Chester made no sound. He just smiled, but it wasn't a spiteful smile or one of his cheeky grins.

He carefully pulled her to her feet, took the staff from her and crossed her fingers with his.

"There are rails here on the ground," he said, shining her staff on them. "If we follow them, I'm sure they'll bring us back to the surface." And with that he moved, pulling her with him.

Hand in hand, in the dim light of Mandy's wand,the two walked, guided by the rails through the old, abandoned tunnels deep,deep beneath the surface of the earth.