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1Filled with fungi, spewing toxic spores in the air, a forest presents a suffocating atmosphere, making the place smell putrid. The heat of the summer makes the green cool forest a scorching chamber that presents all lost visitors with a slow inferno death. His eyes searches around, trying to find a way out, or for someone. He calls out, “Hey! Is anyone there!?” 
2He is answered with the wind blowing through the trees, his voice drowned in the silence of the forest. He wanders around, coughing furiously, covering his face with his hands. “Hey! I’m going to die here! Can someone help me!? HELP ME! IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE!?” he shouts frantically. He decides to give up trying to contact someone, as it seems pointless. He decides to run in a straight line, thinking he’ll get out of this maze of trees that seem to extend outwards infinitely. The grass and plants move with the beat of his footsteps. He’s tripped by a root of a large moving green root, coming from a plant nearby. He looks at the source of the root, a man-eating plant, ready to strike. He tries to back away quickly, but is quickly tied by a bunch of vines, hanged upside down by his feet, his hands restricted and chained by fast moving vines. His body is being squished like a bug slowly, as if this slow torment was intentional. He feels his bones resisting the squeeze. It cracks and pops. It hurts, his body feels numb, his head feels heavy with blood. He screams desperately for help, as he can do nothing. His eyes are burning, his lungs are sore, and the pain is making his consciousness slowly wither away. His vision is going blurry and bright white. He can barely see something, blue and white. It looks like it has wings, shaped like icicles. The plant is engulfed in ice, and the ice reaches the vines, then the plant and vines shatter, and he falls to the ground. Everything is pitch black, and he is knocked out cold. 
3A blond girl is walking through the forest, immune to the toxic air, carrying a book and a doll that accompanies her, hovering near her shoulder, and the two talk to each other. The girl and doll discover the body of the boy, unconscious in a scene filled with ice covering the floor of the forest, the trunk of a few trees, but not the boy. The male looks to be a teenager, black hair, and light colored skin. The girl doesn’t know why there is ice in the forest in summer, but dismissing the abnormal scene, the boy has deep cuts and other minor injuries caused by the man-eating plant. She decides to bring him back to her home somewhere else in the forest, where she can take care of his wounds. 
4During this time, the boy begins to dream. A little girl, wearing blue and white, with bright soft skin and cold icicle wings. The girl is a fairy, but not the ones that can fit in your hand. The ice fairy looks and is the size of a human child. The boy tries to get closer, and sees a pond, filled with frogs, and a man, watching from a distance behind a tree. The boy hears a little girl crying from the direction of the fairy, but the fairy’s mouth doesn’t move. He is engulfed in ice, stopping his progress forward. He is unable to break free, and the ice suffocates him. 
5Before he could do anything, before he could figure out how to get free, he dies from suffocation, and wakes up from his dream in a warm bed and the sounds of a book, book pages turning, and breathing from a separate room. 
6He keeps his eyes shut and tries to go back to sleep. He changes position and covers his head with the blanket covering him. He continues changing position to find a comfortable one until he finally decides to get up. Once he gets up, he begins to think that everything that happened in the forest was just another nightmare and he was at home, dreaming, until he realized that this wasn’t his bed. Also, a doll in a dress is staring at him. It moves by itself. Its head turns to the side, to the blond girl from before. She’s reading a book, facing away from the bed. There are also so many dolls everywhere in the house. Despite the abnormal amount of dolls covering the house and the self-moving doll that was looking at him, he just covers his face and sighs. 
7This isn’t a nightmare or a dream. He just went to sleep a few moments ago, then woke up in a forest, covered in a layer of toxic fumes. He was almost munched up by some plant and wakes up in some house filled with dolls, wakes up in a bed that isn’t his, and the fact that everything wasn’t a dream. He decides to get out of bed, and get some information. He’s getting out of here, and that’s his only goal here for the moment. His reaction isn’t slightly concerned about how he ended up here, it was how to get out. 
8He walks towards the girl, hoping he could get information about where he was. “Hey, what’s your name?” he says casually, trying to be friendly and not get on anyone’s bad side the moment he wakes up. “Alice,” she replies in a flat voice. He asks, “Alice, I have no clue where I am and I want to get out of this place and back home to my family. Where is this place?” 
9Alice replies, “This place is Gensokyo. You must’ve been spirited away, and I doubt you have the ability to leave this place.” 
10He says in a slightly concerned way, “Wait, what? Spirited away? I’m not dead, am I?” Alice explains, “Unless a certain youkai brought you here, you did die, in a way.” 
11He says confusingly, “Wha- youkai? Eh? Wait, what? Huh?” He can’t think properly. It’s true that he isn’t dreaming, but some monster from old tales exists here? That’s preposterous. Also, since he’s probably dead, it means he can’t go back home, can he? Alice says, “You’re a human from the outside world, right?” He awkwardly replies, “Uh, I guess. I, uh, don’t honestly know what you mean by ‘outside world’.” 
12She replies, “I don’t know much out the outside world, but some things get ‘spirited away’ here, and you seem to be one of those things. I would recommend avoiding places where you aren’t with another person.” 
13“Why? Is this place dangerous?” he responds, then murmurs, “Er, ignoring the man-eating plant that almost gobbled me up the moment I got here.” 
14She says, “It wasn’t as dangerous as it is now 6 months ago.” 
15He questions, “How come?” 
16She replies, “It’s a long story.” 
17He looks away, not wanting to listen to a long story after being notified that he’s apparently dead and he probably can’t return back home. He spots a book about magic. He approaches it, but stops a ruler’s length away from it. He turns back to Alice and asks, “So, does magic exist in this world, and this book here isn’t talking about a magic trick?” 
18She replies flatly, “Magic does exist in this world.” He quickly and excitedly replies, “Hey, where can I learn to use it? This could come in handy! I could, uh, what can you do with magic? I was thinking of flying. Can I fly using magic? What about fireballs! Oh man, I would spam those like there was no tomorrow!” 
19“Magic isn’t something you can just learn and use instantly.” she replies. 
20“Probably not. But I’m willing to try and learn it. Don’t tell me this will take years of learning, will it?” he says. Alice stares at him, as if the answer was obvious. 
21“Wait, really? It really will take years of training and learning?” he says. 
22She replies, “The amount of time and effort you need to put in just to learn any spell is huge.” 
23He replies, “How huge? Give me a simple spell, like flying or something. Fire manipulation?” 
24She points to a section about flying and says, “Read all of that.” She doesn’t expect any results from him. 
25He grabs all the books, heads towards the bed, sits comfortably and starts reading. He understands the content, but he has no clue how to use it. He knows how a person can fly, but exactly how does he begin flying and toggling it off? Before he knew it, he was done with the first book. He picks up the next book, hoping to find the answer in one of them, but doesn’t ask for help because he believes it would be a bother to her. He understands what the contents are saying because it’s really similar to science. He finishes the second book and begins the next one. He gains more insight on magic and more knowledge on flying, but still cannot find how to use it himself. This repeats until he’s done with all of them. He now knows everything the books contained on how flying can be used and how to improve or adjust it and has gained an understanding about magic, but is unable to figure out how to fly himself. Is he supposed to imagine himself fly and he will automatically fly? Does he need to channel some sort of energy in him in order to fly, and even if that were the case, how would he channel and control that energy? Magic is similar to science in this world, but it isn’t something that he could understand. It was a completely different branch of everything to him. A completely different view of the universe. He understood that it’s a different view, but couldn’t understand that view. Sure. he read a few books about it and understands it, but not enough to know how to use it. He picks up another book, but not on flying, but on magic in general. It’s more complex. What he is reading is way above his level. 
26It’s like trying to understand the mathematical proof of how 1 plus 1 really does equal 2 without knowing everything you need to know to understand it, and only so little compared to what you need to know in order to understand it. He closes the book and moves to the next book on flying. Another way to say it is give someone a textbook on quantum physics without prerequisite knowledge and expecting them to learn something from it and being able to apply it into their lives and reality. 
27Before he knew it, it was nighttime. He was given a couch to sleep on because there weren’t any spare rooms. He fell asleep quickly. Once again, he dreams about a little ice fairy. He is back where he started. The crying sounds familiar and a sound can be heard from the distance. Faint, but audible. It sounds like his parents’ voices. He decides to try and get close, but not around the area he was previously frozen at. The chanting is still faint, but it becomes more clear. It sounds like his parents are trying to teach him how to speak for the first time. But, it sounds strange. Although it’s the same language, although he already can speak and understand it, it’s just as if it was a completely different thing to him. He knows what they’re saying, but can’t understand it. It’s similar to his problem learning magic. Ice approaches him at lightning speed. But, before the ice reaches him, he jumps and flies as if he knew how to do it from the very beginning. But the ice moves up and engulfs him again, but not completely. Heat comes from inside his heart, and he feels a surging scorching flame in him. A small breeze hits him from the distance. He feels hesitance again, and the ice slowly engulfs him completely. His mind feels overloaded. His decisions never result in a good ending. Not before. Never before. What makes this place different? He is completely engulfed and suffocates to death once more. But before he died, the fairy was reaching out towards him. His body is dead but his mind stays. He watches as everything got hotter and hotter, and then the ice melts, dropping his virtual body onto the ground, and everything just compacted together, then the end of the world happened. The world just exploded. The ground turned into lava, the world is the size of everything, a new world was made. As the world cools, his vision turns darker and darker, until everything is void. He wakes up in the middle of the night, hovering above the couch. As soon as he realizes this, he immediately fell to the ground. The impact woke Alice. However, he went back to sleep on the ground. Alice goes back to bed, slightly ticked off. 
28… 
29Tick-tocks from a clock in a dim laboratory, a clear container containing a little ice fairy, and a man at a table staring blankly into space deep in thought. He got knocked out of it when noise comes from above the lab. Outside, on the surface, there is yet another conflict. Humans, now more organized and more powerful than any youkai that exists. Youkai, after an attack out of fear against the humans, resulted in the growth of rage and anger in each and every heart. They suspected a human did it. They blamed it on the entire village. Well, more of a city now. No technology though, just advanced structures for their insignificant intelligences. Large buildings that can contain masses of future human generations, for the future of humanity, were built. Armories and Health centers are present in many places in, between, near, and outside front gates of the city. A huge wall erected from the ground to protect the children and to keep a place for humans in the future. The previous home, their village, was destroyed months ago out of illogical reasoning and bias against humans. One human certainly did it. The only listening in on the battle. Thing is, he isn’t from this place; he wasn’t from Gensokyo. He wasn’t from the village they attacked. He was like an invader, but Gensokyo brought him here. They attacked the innocent. They couldn’t find the person in the village who did it. Because he wasn’t there. He was hidden; worked as a clandestine force. He didn’t work with anyone. He was the cause for the murder of a fairy and suspected prevention of revival of one. Fairies revive as long as nature exists. Nothing is known to stop it. But somehow, she disappeared. The ice fairy individual named “Cirno” has disappeared and is suspected to be permanently dead. Other humans were unfairly judged by Youkai and were killed. Humans then started to fear and hate them more, until another unrelated individual popped up from the ground and brought humanity back up. Because of the very existence of youkai was a threat to humanity, one individual started a foundation. Humanity was living in peace with the youkai. They are forcing us to live in fear, and hide in fear. The individual stated, “We must not go back hiding in a cave. If no one else is there to stop them, then humanity will stay as it is: In a pitiful worthless state. We will not go back hiding in fear. We will fight back.” 
30The individual appealed the the fear and anger of every human. They firmly believed in their statements. They believes that they can bring it back up. The individual was successful at forming this foundation. Humans no longer were afraid, but only angered. That was enough motivation to incite murder and the justification that it was right. It was war afterwards. Blood painted the landscapes, cleaned up months later by the plants, fungi, and insects feeding on the leftover nutrients. Humans and Youkai are still at war, but the battling isn’t as heavy as it was before. This is the history of what has happened from 6 months ago up to the present. The battle finally ends and the man seizes remembering the past. He could already tell that the youkai fleeted. No casualties this time. Because it was simply a test to see how far they’ve grown. The youkai instigated every event so far because of their poor judgement and decision-making skills. They’re illogical and resorts to aggression when they’re losing a battle of wits. This time, they seem to be more organized. This mini-battle justified this man’s reasonings for his plans. He believes this world must be wiped clean and reset. Today is the hottest summer day in all of human history. Then the next day and so on, until an orchestrated global death occurs. The population in Gensokyo don’t care about the heat at all because of the battle. As for the people outside, it’s as expected from humanity. A world war has already begun during the time the man was in Gensokyo. Around a few months before this world war started. The man was there to witness it. It’s still ongoing. In the end, it wouldn’t matter. The end of the world is beginning, and he will make a name for himself by announcing the news that he will become the god of the new rebirthed world. His genius would be wasted on this planet. He would have to build a new one in order for his talents to not be used as some super weapon against humanity by humanity. Besides, hate will never parish. People will continue to suffer. His genius has literally managed to keep every single theory he made in his head. From crops producing a huge surplus of food that is enough to end world hunger, to near hyper-speed space vehicles for space exploration. Experiments conducted to test each of them out were all successful. He never announced his theories, nor will he ever. He was a god among men. He could end world hunger, but would the food go to the peoples starving, or the fat lumps of shit roaming around the planet? Would his space exploration vehicle be used as intended, or changed into some weapon that North Korea intends to use to nuke the US? Probably the exact thing expected from a bunch of greedy sacks of shit who can only think of themselves and only care for others when they’re beneficial to them. His reasons are justified. He will stand by them for as long as he will ever live. He is confident in his abilities and skill to create a utopia. He can. To end the limitless and endless suffering, to create a true utopia only he can bring. Nothingness. That is what every living being goes to after death. That is what he believes. There is nothing wrong with not existing. This is for the future of Earth, not for humanity. Humanity had no hope to improve anyways. He predicts a nuclear war will inevitably happen and kill all humans before anything celestial could. This was the result of a man being pushed too far. This is a man who is now bent on destroying this world. Innocent children murdered, no one would help then, and no one is as empathetic as what everyone imagines themselves to be. He lacked the ability to save them. He was rejected when he asked for help, searching and searching for so many people, begging for help. All effort was null and void: worthless. Even celebrities suffer. Even the most successful people suffer. The only things we do in life is to preoccupy ourselves to try and avoid this feeling, and looking away as the reaper inches closer and closer. We fight it but are only left with death. Immortality doesn’t exist. He may have used magic to become biologically immortal, but in the end, the universe will die. Everything everyone does will be worth nothing because it is nothing. The man laughs like a mad man. He talks to himself, the only person who is capable of having an intelligent conversation with himself, besides a certain best friend that was also killed. Many innocent people were killed because they were rejected from the moment they were born by the very people they were rejected from. The people who worked hard and made a name for themselves live their happy little life above all else. The people who try to help others don’t know how and make their problems worse. This is sad to watch. This is depressing to watch. This is depressing just to know about. Just end it. 
31… 
32It’s morning. Alice is awake, cooking something, and our protagonist is still sleeping on the floor. Another scorching sunny day that just keeps getting hotter. He wakes up on the wood-hard ground with morning wood. He decides to occupy his mind with something else to kill it. He decides to reflect back on the stuff he learned. “Gensokyo used to be peaceful 6 months in the past. It went downhill, and apparently, if my deduction is correct, this place is filled with killed plants,” he reviews and deducts in his mind, “magic exists in this world, and I think I can use it, but I don’t know how to use it. It’s alien to me. I really hope I don’t have to spend years learning flying. Is this even a beginner level spell? I’ll ask Alice later. Actually, I think those were the major points, I guess. Guess I’ll ask her now.” 
33He gets up, but is pulled onto the sofa by gravity. He was still lethargic. He likes long peaceful naps. However, before he could get comfy, the hot summer air burns and stings him wide awake. “ARGH!” he screams, “IT’S SO HOT! FUCKING SHIT! SOMEONE TURN ON THE AIR CONDITIONER!” He jumps up and down, fanning his body with his hands, the heat stinging him like a wasp everywhere multiple times. He continually screams the word “ow” as he jumps up and down. Alice continues cooking, ignoring his deafening screeching. Once she is done cooking, she puts the boiled mixture in a glass container. She picks up a notebook and pen, observing the mixture. As she begins to write down today’s date, the pen is in the process of melting, the ink won’t come out, and it hurts to hold onto. She lets out a yelp of pain and drops the pen on the ground. The mixture continues to boil like oil in the scorching summer atmosphere. She rubs her crisp burnt fingers, trying to ease the pain. He stops screaming and heads over to Alice briskly, concerned about what happened. 
34“What happened?” he asks to make sure everything is alright. 
35Alice replied flatly, as usual, “My fingers got burned by that,” pointing at the plastic pen. He looks around for some kind of bandage and some sort of cold object to try and deal with the burnt fingers, but he couldn’t find anything wherever he looked. He asks, “Uh, do you have a bandage and some sort of cold object?” 
36She replies, “No, but don’t worry.” She then casts a ice spell, tweaked so it wouldn’t give her frostbite. He becomes starstruck when seeing how versatile magic can be. 
37Suddenly, loud thumping noises are coming from the door. It’s sounds like they’re trying to break it down. It could possibly be someone who’s trying to get out of the toxic air. “I’ll go-” he says, trying to say that he’ll get the door, but was stopped by Alice very quickly. “Stay here, I’ll go check,” she says while rubbing her burnt fingers, concerned. She goes to the door to open it, and he stays in the room, peeking from the corner. There was no reason for her to stop him. He thinks he might be able to get more information about where he is. At the moment, his only goal is to figure out exactly what is going on here. He hasn’t learned much. 
38As soon as Alice opens the door, it flies open, and a little girl wearing all black with white under-clothing and a red tie around her neck flies in and immediately heads towards our protagonist, despite the fact she shouldn’t know where he is. Alice gets knocked over by the sudden break-in and tries to stop the girl in black by casting a spell at her. It missed her and she impacts our protagonist with lots of force. The air in his lungs were knocked out the moment the flying girl impacts him. He gets pushed onto the ground, and is about to become a meal for a malnourished human-eating youkai. She opens her mouth, revealing sharp teeth that looks like it could cut through flesh like butter. Time feels like it just slowed down to a crawl, everyone’s movements are in slow motion. He immediately puts his hands on her mouth, trying to push it away and prevent it from biting. The teeth pierce through the skin of his finger while he’s holding it open. It stings like crazy and the saliva making the small wound burn and melt. 
39Alice gets up and rushes over to him. The youkai’s bite is too strong. His fingers get closer and closer together, desperately trying to keep her mouth open, but the youkai attempts to choke him, which he returned with repetitive kicks to the groin. His fingers are about to be bitten off, he is unable to get oxygen into his lungs due to the grip strength of this youkai, and his kicks aren’t doing anything. “How come Alice isn’t doing anything?” he thinks, “and why does time feel like it’s moving so slowly?” as time moves forward at a slow pace, inching closer to his death if he can’t figure out how to get away. 
40However, he realized that this girl is starving, as if she has never eaten for a long time. She seems to be extremely weak at the moment and has caught a second wind to get food and survive. He was simply conveniently there when it happened. 
41Her strength comes from the fact that she isn’t human. Her body, although the quick impact didn’t make him carefully examine her, looks somewhat like a child from Africa, starving with no food to consume and is literally on the verge of death by malnourishment. She needs food, and apparently, he’s the only thing around that’s food. His fingers are being crushed, crunching bones are heard from her mouth, and massive amounts of knives slice and dice his fingers slowly and painfully. He screams loudly, crying for help. It isn’t like getting your guts ripped out, but it’s still damn painful. He begins to scream loud expletives and more incoherent screaming while in pain. 
42Alice manages to get in his field of vision in the door, and he is now concerned on getting the youkai off of him right now or he will become roasted meat. Alice managed to enter his field of vision outside the room, right in the center of the door frame. She moves slowly, which would explain his feeling of time moving slowly, and she has her hand out, apparently about to cast a fire spell at the youkai along with himself. He has no time to think and he can only act. Who cares if this girl is starving? He’s going to have to prioritize his life first in order to survive. His life is not worth more or less than hers. The only thing he should be concerned about is his own life, not being food. 
43He screams, “GET OFF!” as he feels heat flowing towards his arms and the rest of his body become ice-cold. He unintentionally and unknowingly cast a small fire-like explosion in her mouth, frying her and sending her a little bit upwards into the air and fell right on him, the impact hurting a bit more, and rendering the youkai unconscious. 
44His body is freezing, even though it’s so hot. The temperature today and the warmth of the youkai girl that impacted him two times today helped him become a bit warmer, but he was still ice. He decides to thank Alice for casting that spell, Alice puts down her arm and is confused, and the youkai is unconscious. He gets up, shivering, holding onto the little youkai as he stands up, and heads towards Alice. “I thought you were going to burn me with this girl,” he says jokingly, “Anyways, thanks for the save with that mini-explosion.” 
45“That wasn’t me,” she responded, curious about what happened. He just stares at her. He doubts the youkai would’ve done it to herself. Who else was around besides her that could’ve casted that spell? He has no ability to cast magic. He yawns and is hit with a huge feeling of lethargy. He feels like tipping over and falling flat on the ground, but stays standing up. He decides to use the youkai as a third leg to keep him up but that resulted in him falling flat on his face on the ground, crushing her accidentally. He’s too exhausted to get back up and he has no idea why he got hit with a sudden feeling to drowsiness. Alice has a clue, though. Alice gets him and the youkai into the bed. “This little thing is hungry, so go get some food,” he says, relieved the current issue was dealt with. She goes to another room to grab food. 
46He squeezes the youkai that’s still in his arms, trying to absorb some heat. He tries waking her up by shaking erratically with lots of force, wanting to get information out of her. She wakes up quickly, hurting all over, shouting “STOP!” as the shaking makes her pain even worse. 
47He stops and asks as if he was familiar with her, “You mind telling me your name, and why did you try to eat my fingers?” 
48“I’m hungry…” She replies weakly. He sarcastically replies, “Hi hungry, I’m Riku. Nice to ‘meat’ you. Seriously though, if you’re so hungry, go eat a cooked animal and not me!” 
49“They taste awful,” she replies weakly. 
50“My bad,” Riku says as he pets the youkai’s head like a puppy, “I confused you with a civilized person! You’re a cute whittle rabid… thing.” He continues petting the youkai, baby talking it, and mocking it as if it were an animal. He does it jokingly and everything he says doesn’t mean anything serious. She bites his hand as he pets her and treats her like an idiot. He screams incoherently from the pain. 
51…
52A little orphanage, daycare center, and school all in one building is talking about what is right or wrong. 
53“There isn’t an absolute right or wrong in this world. There is no such thing as an absolute one justice, belief, or ideology. Everyone sees what is right or wrong differently. If you wanted to get technical about it, there is no good or bad, right or wrong, or anything like that,” the man says. 
54“But, wouldn’t that mean murder isn’t bad?” A child questions. “That’s correct. It’s not good either, if you were to try and justify it,” he responds, “now, I’m not just talking about murder is good or bad, right or wrong, but I’m wanting to talk about other perspectives and the spectrum of different ideologies that everyone has. I also want to discuss that there is no normal in this world, and is more or less a concept made by society to bully people who are different than themselves.” 
55A child shouts, “That’s terrible! Who would do such a thing!?” 
56“Well, anyone and everyone,” the man responds, “and it isn’t made by one person. At least, that’s what I think. I have no idea where it originated from, if you were trying to ask who would make this kind of thing. Normal doesn’t exist, and you shouldn’t assume everyone is all the same. No one is the same.”
57“But what if there is?” a child questions. 
58“That would make my statement false, but that’s assuming that there are at least 2 people who are exactly the same, normal, same sense of justice, exact replica of an intuitive feeling of what’s right or wrong in this world, literally everything from the ground up,” the man answers, “some people may like eating insects for example, while the majority don’t. It’s normal to hate consuming insects in this case. However, that doesn’t mean that everyone has to follow this standard of hating consuming insects. It doesn’t give anyone the right to mock anyone who eats insects. That doesn’t mean the inverse statement is correct: that you have to like consuming insects or you have the right to mock anyone who doesn’t eat insects. Though, the things they put in your food, pretty much no one hasn’t eaten an insect in this world!” He gently laughs, while the children are disgusted at the fact they’ve eaten some nasty bugs unknowingly. “What?” he says jokingly, “insects contain some nutritional benefits! Eat up!” 
59He pulls out a box full of roasted grasshoppers and eats them with his mouth open on purpose in front of everyone. “I’m going to digress for a moment, but you can eat bugs as an alternative source of food if there aren’t any other sources of food available to you. But don’t assume that all of them are edible,” he says while his mouth are filled with dead grasshoppers, insect legs sticking out of his mouth, the eyes popping out of their heads as his teeth crush their heads open, breaking them down into some insect goo that every single kid can see. He watches as the children cringe at the disgusting appearance of him eating tiny dead critters, keeping his mouth open as he chews. He swallows them down and says, “Just to let you know, eating bugs is no more different than eating some other dead thing from the market. Well, I guess it’s different how I’m eating it in its entirety instead of cutting it up into strips of critter-bacon.” He laughs as the children are still cringing after that. 
60A child Riku sits with the crowd of children, cringing along with the crowd. But, he decides to laugh along with the teacher, eventually changing the awkward atmosphere into a more positive one as the rest of the children join in on the laughter, finding this situation funny. 
61All of these children were abandoned by their families, Riku being the odd one out. He still has his family, but they’re always too busy at work, helping others. He understands that, and he doesn’t mind. It’s enjoyable here. 
62The teacher is a kind person. He understands everyone. He says he doesn’t understand everyone, but he seems like he does. He also believes the world as it is right now is a terrible place to exist, and wants to create a group that will lead the world into a bright future. The children are the future, and these children will be the ones who will lead this world into something worth living in. He’s willing to put his life on the line to keep them safe until they are ready. 
63“Hey, I have a question,” Riku asks. “What is it?” the man responds. 
64He says, “Well, what do you do if someone bullies you?” 
65“Well, you’d have to go to the teachers and/or counselors and ask for help dealing with the person bullying you,” he answers, “but, there are many problems with that. You might not know their name, for start. You might not have friends as witnesses to the bullying, verbal or physical. You might not have evidence, you might be talking to a person who won’t do anything, the school may not do anything about the bullying. Of course, those are probabilities and it doesn’t mean they will happen.” 
66A kid questions, “But what happens if all of those are exactly what happens or is my exact situation?” 
67“Then you might have to get a little rough,” he says in a slightly raised tone, “because if they don’t do anything, you’re going to have to take matters into your own hand. If you can get your parents to do something, then do it. But if you can’t, well, looks like you’re going to have to get your hands dirty. I don’t recommend fighting or resorting to some revenge-like action, as it will only create a never ending cycle of hatred. You’re goal would be to aim for the bullying to stop, but if you want revenge, go ahead, but you better expect to be dealing with this for some time. By the way, revenge also counts as reporting the bully to the school. They’ll punish the kid, and they’ll probably want revenge for something they believed was justified, otherwise they wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
68Riku asks, “Then isn’t there a way to make them stop on their own?”
69The man replies, “If you want them to stop on their own accord, one way would be to ignore them, but that could be counterproductive and encourage the bully to continue their stunts until they get a reaction, not stopping until they get what they want. In the end, you can only sit by and do what they want to settle things peacefully. But, that’s not how things get changed for the better. Throughout history, violence always lead to change, but it’s always uncertain with just being peaceful. In fact, it’s more or less impossible to change by being peaceful. You might have heard about peaceful protests, but the people who do that usually do something that the other party hates or don’t do something that the party likes in order to persuade them. It’s peaceful, but it’s not really the kind that everyone would be happy about. So, you’re going to have to do something like beating them up until they submit, sort of like every leader in the past, or make them social outcasts through your social connections, which is debatably worse.” 
70Riku says, “This world really is messed up, huh? We have to resort to force in order to change things.” 
71“That’s why I’m inculcating everything I know into you all and preparing all of you to lead the world into a bright future, because the world right now is killing itself slowly, and it needs heroes,” the man says, “I’m making you all the heroes. I want you to be the heroes I’m molding, but you don’t have to. It’s your own life. Even if you don’t become the hero I want, I hope the things I’ve taught you all will make you into great and caring individuals that all will like and strive to become. Whether or not you chose to lead the world or create a path of your own, I hope you all will be at least shining examples for the next generation after yours.”
72He smiles gently. Everyone knew what he wanted us to become. He told us before. But, we already knew the weight of it. We could feel how important we all are to him. We would all be competing with each other to become the best hero. He’s spending his time, instead of being a one-man army trying to fix the world, he would try to create a better future: a better generation. It would lead to us, like a domino chain, knocking down the old world and reaching a better one. 
73Too bad that half his teachings were only dark distorted views of the world, which served nothing that was useful other than making every child there feel despair. His view is linear and can’t see things from another perspective. At least not all of it was useless: they were all child prodigies in one way or another. 
74Sadly, they aren’t alive to use their talents. 
75… 
76Alice carries a basket containing a few fruits and vegetables. It’s not enough to keep someone eating three meals a day and to maintain good health. She opens the door to see the youkai drink blood from Riku’s arm, still attached. He says, “Welcome back Alice! Don’t mind her. By the way, what’s for lunch?” She drops the basket on a nearby table, the contents visible from where he is. Both the youkai and Riku scan the contents of the basket, and both stomachs growl. Riku doesn’t eat unless he wants to, and he rarely eats because of that. He has gone a week without food. The youkai, however, has had around 2 months without food. They both turn their heads and stare at each other. This is a declaration of war. 
77Riku has size advantage, covering more area and having more reach than her and is easily adaptable in situations. The youkai has size advantage, covering less area and can slip into tiny areas easily and can use magic. The youkai is also at a position advantage, as she’s on top of Riku and can jump off him, pushing him back and pushing her forward to the basket. Riku is also at a position advantage, as he can use his arms to restrain her, allowing him to take the basket. Riku has experience in physical combat and can easily overpower anyone in a brawl, The youkai has experience in magic combat and can easily overpower anyone in a match. The clock on the wall ticks, the tension increases. The clock hits 2:00 AM, and all hell breaks loose. 
78They both, in unison, jump at the basket. They push each other away from the basket and from them, Riku having the size advantage puts him closer. A second has passed. The youkai grabs the arm pushing her and uses it as leverage to pull her forward, but Riku notices this and pulls his arm back, planning to do a simple jab. She quickly flows like water, dodging the jab and then grabbing the handle of the basket. 2 seconds have ticked by. Riku grabs her legs and spin her around, hoping to use the inertia to throw the basket away, playing with luck to try and get the basket into a different and hopefully better location. Rumia grabs a single fruit from the basket and puts it in her mouth, not fully consuming it just yet. 3 seconds went away. The basket flies out of her hands, she fully consumes the fruit, and Riku lets go, quickly lunging at the basket with his hands, hoping to get it before it lands. 4 seconds. The youkai turns around and flies towards the basket and is almost out of magic. 5 seconds. Riku grabbed a vegetable, pulling his arm back and throws his other arm towards the basket handle, eating the one he has at the moment at the same time. 6 seconds. Riku is done eating the vegetable. Both of them are equidistant from the basket, and both boost ahead: Riku jumps at the basket and the youkai uses the last of her energy to get a speed boost. But before they could reach the basket, someone hits them both on the head and they both fall to the ground. Alice grabs the basket before it lands and scolds the two. It was quite a long time since they felt some amount of joy in their lives. This small little incident almost made them forget about the terrible stuff they went through in the 6 months past. Almost. 
79The three eat the food left in the basket, but Riku only eats one more item after he ate the vegie. He doesn’t eat much and is easily satisfied with what he is given. Rumia consumes as quickly as she can, despite hating food that isn’t meat. Alice eats normally. There wasn’t a lot of food in the basket to begin with, so it was all consumed in no time. 
80“Man, I’m stuffed,” Riku jokes. The other two stay silent, keeping the awkward silence around and not breaking the cold ice between them. There’s nothing really to do at the moment. Riku says, “Uh… you never told me your name yet,” as he looks at the youkai. “So… what’s your-” he says right before he’s interrupted by the youkai. “Rumia,” she says emotionlessly. “That’s a nice name,” he replies. The awkward silence returns and covers the room. “Oh right,” he says as he remembers something he wanted to ask, “Alice, is flying a beginner level skill? I mean, it’s a bit difficult and I don’t fully know what it is and I’m absolutely oblivious on how to do it.” Alice doesn’t reply and continues eating. The only reply was a facial expression that just says it’s easy.  
81He replies with a depressing smile, “Oh.” He takes that as he has no talent in magic at all. He can’t do cool spells and moves like in the cartoons he watched when he was young, even though others can. 
82“Well,” Alice says, “you have a talent for magic, I guess.” He casted that fire spell, no doubt. She didn’t and it’s obvious Rumia didn’t. She also felt magical energy being used from him. It takes a long time to learn any spell, but he could use magic without having huge knowledge and experience with it. 
83Riku takes that as he’s a special in-a-good-way person or, the most obvious one, it’s just for encouraging him to try harder. He almost got munched up the moment he got here and has zero talent in magic. He hasn’t lived a special life and lived a normal life from the beginning all the way until he got here. Well, it felt normal to him at least. He isn’t a master of combat and he still gets picked on at school. How could he, of all people, instead of the more successful people on this world, be anyone special or important to human history? 
84“Hey, Rumia. How did you find him in this forest?” Alice asks. The forest is filled with spores, blending in all smells with its own rancid atmosphere. No way she could’ve sniffed him out just by wandering around the forest. “I was lucky. I was being killed by other youkai, and I fled into this forest to escape them,” she answered, “and I managed to enter the forest close to your house, close enough to let me sniff him out.” 
85“Uh,” Riku disrupts, “why exactly were there a flock of youkai coming to kill you? Aren’t you one? Why would they kill their own?” 
86She nervously laughs. She responds, “I tried to steal some food, I got away with it, I ate it all, and they noticed that there wasn’t as many rations as before, I made a little mistake when I stole them, and before I knew it, I was being chased down to be converted into rations.” 
87He realized that he probably shouldn’t have assumed everyone gets along, even if they are the same species, as humans kill each other for stupid reasons too. 
88“I’m still hungry!” Rumia whines. “Then eat some roasted bugs,” he says as he scoots a little bit away from Rumia, “I’ve heard some of them tastes like bacon.” 
89She retorts, “How about you eat some bugs then?” He replies with a smirk on his face, “Sure, but you must eat the bugs I give you after I’ve eaten one.” He looks around and grabs a centipede. “Alice, do you mind cooking this with fire?” he requests, “Bugs usually have parasites in them.” Both look at him and shudder from the idea of eating a bug that is infected with parasites. Rumia desperately and repeatedly saying, “No no no no I meant that as a JOKE! I am NOT going to eat a bug!” Riku stares into her eyes and says, “Too late.” He snaps the centipede in half, its body still moving a little even after being split in two. He grins widely at Rumia, “Eat up~” as he moves his hand carrying the two parts of the centipede closer to her mouth. 
90Rumia moves her head backwards, but he moves the centipede to other parts of her body, forcing her off the seat and making her fall on the floor. Alice sighs and keeps her composure, Riku laughs, and Rumia lays on the floor with crossed arms being crossed at Riku. 
91It’s nighttime before anyone noticed. Rumia and Alice are outside, flying above the forest looking at the shining jewels that decorate the night sky, some of them forming beautiful patterns. It’s still dreadfully hot even at night. Riku is jumping up and down, clawing upwards, trying to fly, wanting to stargaze as well. 
92“Wow, those patterns look amazing!” Rumia taunts. “Yeah,” Alice joins in on the taunting. 
93“COME ON! Let me see that too! I can’t see anything on the ground here with all the tall trees around me!” Riku pleads, “Carry me up! I can’t fly! Come on! I wanna see too!” 
94Despite the fact that he is a teenager, he behaves just like a curious child. He gives up and stays on the ground. He thinks of a way to fly. Instead of understanding what the book says, understand how the universe works and what happens as you use magic. He plans to try and just do it instinctively. He picks out a tree near her house, and prepares a running position. He smirks and runs at the tree, then jumping on the side of it, and jumping off of it toward her house. 
95The distance between the tree and the side of the house can’t be reached with a normal jump, as he would fall way before he could reach it. He falls flat on his face on the dirty ground. He gets up, and tries it again. He jumps straight at the tree where he is and he shouldn’t be able make it where he was, but he does, as some force kept him up long enough for him to contact the tree. He jumps off of the tree toward the house, attempting a small-scale experiment, testing his ability to fly in a small area, using it to try and wall-jump from long distances. A force keeps him up, allowing him to contact a side of the house, and he launches himself up toward where Alice and Rumia are. 
96He flails around in the air as he experiences a little bit of flight. Before he could reach the top of the forest, he falls at the acceleration of 9.8 m/s². The only thing he saw was a glimpse of their panties and the stars that circle his head after the impact of his fall.