Upstairs, the drained of tears Mai leaned on the back wall of her bed, shaking from the frigid cold of the house. Her shoulder to cry on, Kaze, had gotten up, noticing the disturbingly low temperature that the air conditioning was set to.
"Why is the AC set so low?" He asked calmly, as to not seem too pushy.
Mai curled up in a ball. "I think... maybe someone sat on the remote during the party? I don't know." She shook a bit more, "I wanted to change the temperature too, but couldn't find the remote."
"Well, then why didn't you do it manually? You could easily reach it with a stool." Kaze furrowed his brows not in anger, but confusion.
"I..." The girl stared into the far space of a corner, "I'm scared."
"You're scared of the AC?" He inquired to clarify.
"Mm." Mai nodded.
No matter how silly it may have initially seemed to Kaze, he tried his best to not judge her. "... Alright. Then would it be okay if I changed it?"
Once again, she agreed in silence.
Thus, he brought the one chair up from downstairs. With a small step, he reached up and started tapping the 'up' button of the air conditioner. Kaze made sure to keep an eye on the one on the bed. With each beep of the AC, her fingers flinched around her ankles, as if expecting a rush of pain that never came.
So it's the sound, Kaze concluded.
Setting the temperature to a gentle warmth, not quite as extreme as the hellish atmosphere of his prison of a house, he walked up beside Mai.
"May I?" He softly gestured to the side of the bed.
Kaze sighed at the lack of response, sitting beside her on the bed. He didn't utter a word.
Eventually, warmth enveloped the room. The boy subtly inspected the space until then. A diary lay on the little stand next to the bed, clearly recently disturbed. Though his interest was piqued, he couldn't bring himself to ask about it. His gaze shifted to the top of a wardrobe, in the depth of which a stowed away headgear revealed itself. It was familiar, too much so. Just like the one in his house. Whereas Kaze would keep his Brand ancestor in plain view, to always remember the scourge of the past, hers was hidden, obscured. Left to dust.
"They tortured us." Mai spontaneously spoke. Perhaps, she'd been gathering her strength all this time. "Even if we didn't do anything wrong. Every week or so, they'd take us out of the world at different times. The methods varied. Electricity, heat, cold, threats, but never brute force. Y'know," She stared into the space just over her knees, still crawled up in a bundle. "They once starved us for a week. It wasn't so bad, though. They didn't touch us for a while after that. We were hungry, but happy. As long as we were together, we were sure we could get through anything. That was three weeks before the end. Then there was a battle. You probably don't know, but the captors would allow us to choose, which squad went to which dungeon to fight for survival. My group would always go to the deadliest ones. It was our responsibility. We could have all survived until the end. But I was cocky. See, while the other groups suffered losses every other week and we mourned each death... the Golden Ones had never lost one of their own. At that point I was second-in-command, and in my eyes we were invincible. Just another trial week, that's all, I thought. Then we got to the final boss of the challenge. 'The First Colossus.' I assumed too much, it was nothing like the other enemies.
"I should have died there. I should have paid for my mistakes. Instead, half of my best friends did, right in front of me. Cadens was so charitable. He'd always give half of his food to Ashe. Ashe would always get flustered, calling him demeaning terms I'd never heard before. She'd somehow always manage to return the favor in-game with rare items. Baku... he used to supply tens of squads with potions, lifesavers in the middle of a trial with nowhere to rest to restore health passively. Princess, our leader... taught me everything I know; she was like the elder sister I never had. Perhaps, she was closer to me than even my own brother. I already owed those four everything. And I let them die. Yet the rest appointed me as the next guild leader... Shortly after, the police found us. My friends never saw the day we were freed thanks to their efforts."
YOU ARE READING
Ordinary
General Fiction2024 was a year of innovation. One of the greatest things to come out of it was the technology of full-dive VR, as well as AR. It was also the year of a great disaster. Almost three hundred teenagers from all over Japan were captured, tortured, forc...
