A Bad Ending.

Frank landed on the edge of Death Lake with a cloud of soft dust rising around his feet. A pair of arms wrapped around his neck the moment he had secured his balance.

"There you are!!! Goodness! You don't know how bored I get during the day when you aren't here!" Sylvia said rubbing her cheeks against Frank's hair and tightening the embrace further.

"Let go," Frank said pushing her away and displaying an indifferent look stating that it wasn't an unusual occurrence.

"You know what, you remind me very much of my second child. He used to brush me away exactly the same way whenever I went to visit him. He only visited me twice in my entire life on his own accord, once was to tell me that he was going to war and the second was at my funeral," Sylvia said leading the way to the giant tree in the forest.

"I fully sympathize with him now that I know how you get when you are comfortable with someone," Frank said listening to the manikin that had flown to his shoulder and was now whispering in his ear.

"As I said, you're both very alike, so, of course, you would," Sylvia said as she glanced at the manikin. "Really! You're supposed to be my manikin! You don't even show me your face these days during the day because you're going around doing this brat's bidding."

The manikin snickered a little, then flew over to Sylvia and gave a little tap on her forehead with his head, and then disappeared into the night sky.

"Well, if you weren't that cute I wouldn't have let it go," Sylvia said moving forward.

Frank looked at her smiling and giggling as she walked out of the woods towards that giant tree. He followed her and stood there.

"You confuse me, Sylvia," he said at length looking up at the moon with a blank expression.

"How so?" Sylvia asked gathering some stones from the grass near the roots of the tree.

"You say our kind is devoid of emotions," Frank said sitting down. "Yet you show such expressions on your face as if you feel them like a normal person."

Sylvia stared at Frank with a cold smile and walked slowly towards Frank with the stones in her hands.

"When you have spent fifty long years just trying to imitate emotions like others show them, it becomes somewhat a habit," she said smiling brightly. "Old habits die hard. It would soon be the case for you too. You will show different expressions not by emotions but out of habit."

Frank looked at her face and stared for a while. Sylvia stood up and looked up at the moon.

"And besides, you're still too weak to see a bi-core being with its normal face," Sylvia said as she looked down at Frank with an expressionless face.

A chill went up Frank's spine. Her eyes seemed as if they were staring into his soul. He had a memory of his previous self that he found very pathetic (much more pathetic than the rest of it). It was that day when he went to change the curtains in Lia's room and confronted the Marquis. He felt so much fear that day that the present Frank believed it to be simply foolish. Yet, right now, he felt a hundred times more amplified fear from Sylvia.

Sylvia smiled back and grabbed a stone and said," How about we get started? The night just feels like a second whenever you're over. I wouldn't want to waste time on something useless."

She said that and the stone in her hand went afloat above her hand.

Frank snapped back to reality and stood up and looked at the stone.

"What is this?" he asked.

"The first phase of Absolute control- Levitation. You see the one sand granule wide distance I'm maintaining between the rock and the palm of my hand. That's exactly just what you need to do.," Sylvia said. "A million times a day."

Frank looked up at her and then at the stone.

"Just for confirmation, is this humanely possible?" Frank said tilting his head to see the distance between the hand and the stone.

Sylvia laughed and said," Oh my you... Of course, it's humanely impossible. Ain't no way a human can do that in a single day. It would take a year at the very least."

"Then how can I...," Frank was interrupted by Sylvia as she pressed her finger on his lips.

"I said HUMANS, boy," Sylvia smiled. "We ain't no humans. A monster is a monster even if it looks like a human. Accept what you are. With acceptance comes the ability to comprehend yourself better."

Frank kept looking at the stone with no response. Before his seals were undone, he would have most likely lashed out at Sylvia for calling herself and him as monsters. But now it seemed to be stranger to be called a human. Humans as he had observed after releasing his seals were so weak and insignificant, that it almost seemed like disrespect towards himself to be seen as one of them.

"It is actually harder to deny it than to accept," Frank said. " And I was saying 'Then how can I do it better than a bi-core would?'. You interrupted me before I could finish what I was saying."

Frank took another stone and looked at it. His deep blue eyes sparked a little and the stone went afloat hovering over his palm. He lowered and lowered it towards his palm to reduce the distance.

At some point, he stopped.

He looked at Sylvia and said," Your distance was one and a half sand granule to be exact. This is exactly half of the width of a sand granule."

"Which sand granule are you talking about? They all have different widths," Sylvia chuckled.

"The one that the manikin put on your forehead," Frank said tossing the stone away as Sylvia stared at him, both bewildered and amazed.

"You saw that?!" Sylvia scoffed as she threw the stone in her hand as well. "Unlike me, actually you deserve to be called a monster."

"I am honored," Frank said coldly as he looked up at the moon which was now behind the tree.

"Two years, you will master absolute control in two years at this speed," Sylvia said. "But you should take remember one thing."

"What?"

"Never use it near your precious one for the first time," Sylvia said as she started walking toward the lake.

Frank looked at her back as she disappeared into the forest.

"Freak," he mumbled and closed his eyes as he lay on his back on the grass.

The moon shone in the night sky as the hooded figure walked through the dark alley. A woman and a man sat crouched at the dead end of this dark passage. Hugging each other desperately as the woman scooched away from the hooded figure approaching them.

The figure squatted in front of them and leaned over at the women. Her belly was peeking out of the clothes she was wearing and she clutched her womb with both her hands as a look of fright and disdain took over her soft features.

"A child about to be born is a very beautiful existence," the hooded figure said as a slim beautiful hand emerged out of the hood and touched the woman's face, the slender fingers slowly tucking away the locks of hair covering the woman's face behind her ears.

"It has a beautiful mother. So of course it will be a beautiful existence itself," the hooded figure withdrew its hand back under the pitch-black hood.

"P... Please, let us go," the woman pleaded holding the edge of the hood. "Please."

"Have you ever read a story?" The hooded figure said.

"Y... Yes," the woman said.

"Doesn't it hurt when a story you have finally connected to has a bad ending?"

"Y... Yes. I... It does."

The hooded figure again revealed its slender hand which this time cupped the woman's face in its palm. "Poor child, you must've been so hurt when your story had such a bad ending."

The woman burst into tears as she leaned into the warm hand.

"Y... Yes...," the woman cried.

"When stories end in such a cruel way, it hurts my heart so much," the hooded figure continued. "Your husband, the love of your life, died protecting you from the street robber. Such a brave man. But it's just sad that his wife and child would have to live without him."

The woman sobbed as she looked at the knife stuck in her husband's back and his lifeless body in her embrace.

"Isn't it painful?" the hooded figure patted the woman's head. "When stories end this way, it makes you wish that such a story should never have existed in the first place if they were to bring so much pain."

As the figure stood back up and turned around. The woman behind and her husband vanished as if they were never there.

"So they should just stop existing," the figure said before it itself disappeared into the darkness.