(note: I used the word "Gehenna" because it was the word child!Fai used in the translation of TRC I read)
----------------------------
Gehenna probably isn’t full of plastic.
He’s learned the way plastic feels from some of the worlds they’ve been in, and what’s under his hands is very definitely a hard, smooth, artificial curve with a strange hint of warmth. Plastic.
So not Gehenna.
And that quite definitely means he is not dead. Because when he dies, there is only one destination for him and he knows that. Although he rather feels Paradise would not have plastic either.
He opens his eyes and sees himself sitting in front of a bank of controls in a capsule, and he blows out his breath. His real breath. He’d had his suspicions that something was wrong with Outo all along— his magical sensitivity was screaming at him from the moment they’d arrived, those girls with the soulless eyes that welcomed them to the city doing nothing to help. But because he couldn’t pinpoint the problem, he’d assumed it was the demons. He’d never encountered their like before, and he’d chalked up the intense alarm his magic had raised to the constancy of the threat the demons posed.
He’d never dreamed it would be something like this.
He lifts his eyes away from the controls, still trying to make sense of this. He’s alive. There is someone coming toward him, dressed in an outfit that just says “uniform” all over it. This person is an employee of the facility that Fai is clearly being held in.
“You lost your life, huh?” he says sympathetically. “Well, you can always start a new game.”
Game? This was . . . A game?
(Hasn’t every moment of this journey been nothing but?)
Fai leans back in his seat, smiling cheerfully at the employee of this game room or whatever it is. “Now where would be the fun in that? A game like this isn’t fun if you can come back to it as many times as you want, after all.”
It’s his usual sing-song. The employee looks at him doubtfully. Most people would probably like to jump straight back into the game, wouldn’t they? Fai himself would love to, he supposed, if he’d known it was a game to begin with. You could pick a different job or location each time. That had some appeal.
He hadn’t known. He’d thrown himself at an enemy thinking he was protecting someone. Thinking he was dying for a reason.
Thinking he was dying. Thinking it was over. No more of this endless game he was always playing, in Outo or out of it. No more smiling until his face felt cracked in half, surreptitiously touching his fingertip to the corner of his lips to see if he was bleeding. No more laughing as the ninja chased him, a bright spot in his heart that dared too much, and that he always carefully and thoroughly pulled out of his chest and smashed into pieces at the end of each day. (He didn’t apply words to the bright spot. No, defining it was worse thing imaginable.) No more waiting and no more plotting. He’d get the torment that was coming to him after he died, and there would be no more princesses with belief in their eyes.
For that one moment, short but full of strange clarity, he’d been looking forward to Gehenna.
“Your friends are probably wondering why you’re not back already,” the employee says cautiously. It's more than likely his duty to make Fai spend more money here.
His friends.
They must think he's dead.
Something is wrong with their game, and Fai knows it. His senses are still screaming at him about danger, even though he is unmistakably in the real world now and not locked inside a game. Something big is still coming, and his friends are still in danger. They are right here in their little capsules, unmoving in reality but in their heads they are still dreaming and talking and planning— (Are they crying for him? Does he want them to?)
“Is it okay if I stay here while I wait for my friends to finish their game?” he asks with a smile, stretching his arms above his head. It feels wonderful. For all that he thought he’d been leaping around, cooking meals, fighting demons, getting injured (pause for a strange jolt in his chest when thinking about that night) he hasn’t actually moved in probably hours.
Something is definitely wrong, and he’d better try to fix it. They still have work to do, and since he is alive, he has no excuse for not doing it.
no subject
(note: I used the word "Gehenna" because it was the word child!Fai used in the translation of TRC I read)
----------------------------
Gehenna probably isn’t full of plastic.
He’s learned the way plastic feels from some of the worlds they’ve been in, and what’s under his hands is very definitely a hard, smooth, artificial curve with a strange hint of warmth. Plastic.
So not Gehenna.
And that quite definitely means he is not dead. Because when he dies, there is only one destination for him and he knows that. Although he rather feels Paradise would not have plastic either.
He opens his eyes and sees himself sitting in front of a bank of controls in a capsule, and he blows out his breath. His real breath. He’d had his suspicions that something was wrong with Outo all along— his magical sensitivity was screaming at him from the moment they’d arrived, those girls with the soulless eyes that welcomed them to the city doing nothing to help. But because he couldn’t pinpoint the problem, he’d assumed it was the demons. He’d never encountered their like before, and he’d chalked up the intense alarm his magic had raised to the constancy of the threat the demons posed.
He’d never dreamed it would be something like this.
He lifts his eyes away from the controls, still trying to make sense of this. He’s alive. There is someone coming toward him, dressed in an outfit that just says “uniform” all over it. This person is an employee of the facility that Fai is clearly being held in.
“You lost your life, huh?” he says sympathetically. “Well, you can always start a new game.”
Game? This was . . . A game?
(Hasn’t every moment of this journey been nothing but?)
Fai leans back in his seat, smiling cheerfully at the employee of this game room or whatever it is. “Now where would be the fun in that? A game like this isn’t fun if you can come back to it as many times as you want, after all.”
It’s his usual sing-song. The employee looks at him doubtfully. Most people would probably like to jump straight back into the game, wouldn’t they? Fai himself would love to, he supposed, if he’d known it was a game to begin with. You could pick a different job or location each time. That had some appeal.
He hadn’t known. He’d thrown himself at an enemy thinking he was protecting someone. Thinking he was dying for a reason.
Thinking he was dying. Thinking it was over. No more of this endless game he was always playing, in Outo or out of it. No more smiling until his face felt cracked in half, surreptitiously touching his fingertip to the corner of his lips to see if he was bleeding. No more laughing as the ninja chased him, a bright spot in his heart that dared too much, and that he always carefully and thoroughly pulled out of his chest and smashed into pieces at the end of each day. (He didn’t apply words to the bright spot. No, defining it was worse thing imaginable.) No more waiting and no more plotting. He’d get the torment that was coming to him after he died, and there would be no more princesses with belief in their eyes.
For that one moment, short but full of strange clarity, he’d been looking forward to Gehenna.
“Your friends are probably wondering why you’re not back already,” the employee says cautiously. It's more than likely his duty to make Fai spend more money here.
His friends.
They must think he's dead.
Something is wrong with their game, and Fai knows it. His senses are still screaming at him about danger, even though he is unmistakably in the real world now and not locked inside a game. Something big is still coming, and his friends are still in danger. They are right here in their little capsules, unmoving in reality but in their heads they are still dreaming and talking and planning— (Are they crying for him? Does he want them to?)
“Is it okay if I stay here while I wait for my friends to finish their game?” he asks with a smile, stretching his arms above his head. It feels wonderful. For all that he thought he’d been leaping around, cooking meals, fighting demons, getting injured (pause for a strange jolt in his chest when thinking about that night) he hasn’t actually moved in probably hours.
Something is definitely wrong, and he’d better try to fix it. They still have work to do, and since he is alive, he has no excuse for not doing it.