Chapter 13

Before him sat 12 students around an long, oval table. They were talking about something, but Arek couldn't make out what. Beside him stood Juni, who he remembered had dragged him into this. In her hand was...was...what exactly was she holding in her hand? Arek sat up so quickly, he rolled forward and off the bed, hitting his head on the hardwood floor.

As he rubbed his head, he felt the floor with his other hand. It felt a bit too smooth and polished for it to be his house, and he didn't get any splinters stuck in his forhead either. He was sure that this floor was not the same floor as the one in his two-generation-old house, which could not afford any fancy upgrades like this because most of their income is going into Arek's schooling. Unless his father had gotten a promotion lately, which was unlikely.

Arek patted the sheets on the bed. They were way too soft and luxurious to actually be his own.

He slid his hand along the silky sheets, soaking up the luxury bit by bit. The first thought that came to his mind was not about his whereabouts or why he was here, but regret that he was sleeping in such luxury without even knowing of it.

Arek's hand brushed against a bump in the sheets, and he poked at it, not thinking straight in his half-awoken state. What could this be? The possibilities that came into his head were either a pillow or a hug toy, two of the only things that he believed belonged on fancy beds. He tried to pull on the object, but it didn't budge. Arek was about to stick his arm under the sheets to figure out what it was when it stirred and moved away from him.

That sent enough of a jolt to Arek's head that he realized something else belonged on a fancy bed: The fancy person who owns that bed, whose leg he had just poked at. He jumped away from the bed and stuck against the far wall, hoping to not be noticed in the dim lighting.

Of all the questions rushing through his head, Arek was surprised that what he wanted to know most was not where this was or why he was here, but who the person currently sitting on the bed was. He inched to the right against the wall, trying to catch a glimpse of the person's face in the moonlight coming through the window.

He was answered sooner than expected, as the room suddenly became engulfed in a bright light, as if the walls themselves had started glowing. The light reflected off of the light blue hair of the girl sitting on the bed, who had only the sheets covering her body. Arek realized too late that he, too, had not a single article of clothing covering himself. The stark lighting seeked to highlight every inch of his skinny, borderline malnourished frame, illuminating every imperfection on his skin, and somehow making him aware of the fact that he was below average height for his age. Rather than just the light, it seemed that the entire room radiated perfection, demanding the same from Arek.

"J-Juni...?" Arek looked at the half-asleep face of the girl sitting atop the bed. If that was Juni, should he feel relieved or even more terrified?

"hmm?" The voice was certainly that of Juni's. Arek's eyes dashed from one side of the room to another, searching for something to cover himself with. For how fancy the bed was, the room was surprisingly empty, with only a full-length mirror on one wall, and a dresser on the other. There wasn't even a desk or a chair anywhere in sight.

Too late. Juni was already looking straight at him, much less surprised than the frantic and more-or-less panicking Arek.

Not a single word was exchanged. Arek swore he could feel his mind slamming against the back of his head, trying to get as far away from this awkward situation as possible.

Just what the hell had happened to get him there?

---

Zeik's good luck had, as J would say, "officially run out."

On the second half of his trip, he had been forced to jump into a strong current to escape some wolves, almost got crushed by a falling tree, and had a bear rip a massive chunk out of his bag, which now held nothing. His week-long trip had now been running for close to a month, and there wasn't even a clue as to which direction he should be walking in. Living off of berries, mushrooms, the occasional rabbit or small animal, Zeik wandered around aimlessly, hoping to spot some trace of intelligence. The woods that he had exited into from Horiad were long gone, and so were the rolling hills of the grasslands that were past that. Any hint of a trail had disappeared, and to Zeik, rather than a test of survival skill, it felt like he had been placed in solitary confinement, in the world's largest mental asylum which took the shape of a...

Forest? Jungle? Whatever this place was did not matter to Zeik. What he saw of it was simply just Hell.

"Ah, maybe I died somehow, and this is my punishment." Zeik sighed, crunching the only patch of crunchy leaves in sight beneath his worn boots. "If only someone'd come save me, preferably a cute girl-!"

Zeik bit his own tongue, and then immediately felt the regret of doing so. No wishing for that, he had the cutest of all girlfriends waiting for him back... wherever that was.

Had he ever thought of giving up and just lying down to die, he probably would have. But for some reason, he'd been stopping himself from having any thoughts of the sort.

Sometimes, boredom can be more painful than a blunt-force impact to the skull, aimed intentionally to not kill or knock out, but just to cause pain. And that boredom had its full hold on Zeik, whose purpose he himself even started to question.

For his surroundings to go from woods to hills to a straight-up jungle in the span of less than a month, Zeik wanted to throw his bag into the trunk of a tree and scream how inconsistent, unfair, and just unrealistic this whole thing was. It was like the setting for some kind of badly-made action show, one that focused singularly on the action, and completely forgot what basic geography says.

There wasn't even a clean rock for him to sit on nearby, everything was covered in a layer of mud, moss, and soft, non-crunchy leaves. Zeik considered pulling himself up to the branches of a tree and hoping he can sleep there without falling off and snapping half the bones in his body. Actually, why were there trees the size of redwoods sitting in the jungle-like setting? Nothing even made sense anymore.

Water dripped onto Zeik's hair. The build-up in the leaves above was so immense that the space beneath the trees was in a state of constant drizzle. Zeik's clothes had been soaked, rolled in mud, and then soaked again so many times, they would probably permanently retain the color of mud even if he ran them through the wash and dry cycle over and over again for an entire week. At some point he felt annoyed of how the poorly-woven shirt seemingly scratched at his chest, but now he wished for something as comfortable as that compared to having his clothes permanently stuck to his skin.

"At this point, I'd even settle for one of those crappy lab showers." Zeik sighed, tugging at his collar. "An abandoned wooden hut or something with a roof would be a damn dream."

Though for him, that point had come and gone a long time ago.

Zeik looked up between the leaves, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun, a bird, any hint that he was still in the same world that he was in before he entered this place.

Then, for the first time in who knows how long, Zeik heard a footstep.

He jerked his head to the left, right, up, and even down. If there was someone else there with him, maybe he'd be safe from going completely crazy.

Zeik heard rustling in the bushes to his left, then the snapping of a twig. There was a sound like someone was panicking to crawl, and then a splash as they landed in a puddle.

"Is there someone there?" For the first time, Zeik heard his own, deranged-sounding voice. He almost wanted to laugh to himself. Of course they'd be panicking to get away, nobody would approach Zeik if they even had a shred of sanity left.

Parting the branches of the overgrown bushes, Zeik stuck his head into what seemed surprisingly like a clearing, with no constant drizzle and actual light from the sun.

And in the center of it sat a single girl dressed in what Zeik wanted to describe as "rags", but didn't want to admit that they looked better than what he had on. She looked very scared indeed, her hair and clothing wet from the little puddle she had just fell into. Atop her head sat two flattened, soaked...

"Cat ears?!" Zeik involuntarily yelled, his excitement running through his body and chasing the dead-ness out. The girl let out a shriek and fell back into the puddle as Zeik emerged into the clearing. He didn't blame her. He must have looked about as sane as a rat put on steroids, crack, and seventeen shots of vodka.

Oh, and soaked in coal tar.

Zeik actually felt pretty bad for the girl, somewhere in the back of his head. But at the time, his own excitement stood above all reason.

"uhm..." The girl scooted backwards, away from Zeik. "Please, I'll go back, so..."

Zeik stopped in his tracks. "Wha-"

"p-PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!"

"Huh?!"