Sometime somewhere…
The Fourth Dimension was a wasteland stretching for kilometers and kilometers beyond sight. Purple clouds lazily drifted by, hiding behind them a white sun that never showed its face but only its extremely scorching rays.
To the left, rock formations decorated the vast rocky expanse, and to the right, more rock formations piled the area. The air was toxic and visible; purple and heavy. The spuds that grew from the cracks on the black rock resembled – while still not looking like – beetroots.
Countless bones of a long-dead army of orcs that had perished to the inhabitants of the Fourth Dimension paved the earth – or whatever it was the ground was made of.
"'Modest'? It needs a better name like 'Boneyard Dumps', or 'Hiroko's Death Bed'."
The thought of voluntarily jumping off the many cliffs to end his ongoing nightmare had already flitted across his mind several times. But it, eventually, like his hope to find someone, anyone, around, had withered and died.
The young man stopped to watch yet again another tarpit bubble and blow. There were hundreds of other pits like that one and they all looked the same. He was even questioning if he had not gone around in a circle to the same one he had first seen... the one that had killed him.
The light of the white sun had moved to the east and the shadows to the west. Not at all how the sun was supposed to work – but such a place was also not supposed to exist.
Ever since the visions abandoned him, Hiroko spent the whole day scouting out the lands and all he had learned was that this Modest place was an entirely deserted valley. He also learned that the purple spuds growing on the cracks were not beetroots. They were just some edible roots indigenous to the place.
"Argh!" he spat as he swallowed the purple flesh of the spud in his hands.
"What does a guy gotta do to get a decent spud around here?"
They were all he could salvage to eat – and they were the only plants growing there. They smelled of armpits and tasted of meat… well, to someone who had not been raised a vegetarian, they did – but how could Hiroko have known? He just thought they tasted odd, which was an understatement.
And truly speaking, they were the only interesting things – besides the tarpits and the fart geysers – in the land. They ranged from the size of his fist to as big as a Mini Cooper car: purple, spudded, and protruding out of the ground.
At first, he tried to go on a hunger strike, not knowing how his body was going to react to that foreign food. But in the end, the threat of starving to death led to him uprooting one of those atrocious vegetables.
And oh! Hiroko had learned another interesting thing during his never-ending trek.
When he investigated one tarpit as it inflated a bubble, and a geyser had sprayed his face with a pungent smell removing the hair off his face, he saw his reflection with glowing purple eyes.
"It's a mutation reaction to everything in this place, mate." He had calmly told himself and kept moving forward.
"Insanity will kill you before anything in here…"
And then the rock moved on its own.
The large pile of rocks that looked stacked naturally suddenly moved, shaking the ground violently underneath Hiroko's feet. And while he stared incredulously, the rocks rolled around, piling onto the biggest one of them all. In a moment they had formed a colossal rock statue with glowing purple eyes.
Hiroko started his eyes from its feet, up its stacked body, and up to its round bulky rock head.
Four meters tall…
"What… are you?"
The golem leveled its eyes with Hiroko. Its sight seemed to depend on infrared heat so besides the warm steam slowly wafting out of the geysers and the tarpits, he was radiating heat.
Of course, this was all Hiroko's assumption.
It stood there for a long time, staring motionlessly at him.
Realizing at last what had captivated it, Hiroko looked at the longsword in his left hand. It was literally on fire!
Cautiously, he raised his other hand to show it he was harmless, set the blade down, and left it, slowly backing away after that.
"I'm unarmed," he said.
A second later he realized what a grave mistake that was.
"Shimatta, buki ga nai!"
With the threat of the flaming sword aside, the golem – even though it was a load of boulders on top of each other – launched itself at the young man. One second, a single second, was all it took for Hiroko to avoid being flattened by the monster's humongous foot. He rolled away and came to hide behind a large boulder, trying very hard to control his breathing.
"Are wa hontō ni mazukatta. Sugoku, sugoku warui kangae datta! I'm screwed."
He peeked out behind the boulder.
There the sword lay in its unquenchable flames on the ground. But the golem?!
His hiding rock suddenly lifted, and when he followed its path with his eyes he met with the golem's. It had picked up the rock like it was a tennis ball. Now it was twice the size and height it was before.
"Hey! There you are…!" a sheepish type of laughter came out of his head. "I thought you were hiding under this rock, senpai."
It roared, forcing him to shield his ears with his palms, cringing and gritting his teeth. The purple-eyed rock monster then took the boulder it held up to its mouth, tossed it in, and ground it with its stone teeth.
Hiroko gawped at it.
"Wow, Rocky. Isn't that, like, cannibalism?"
Rocky Golem brought both its bulky arms onto the boy and smashed. A loud rumble ran across the ground before it moved its hulking arms to see the boy it had flattened – but there was nothing underneath. Swerving around, the creature saw the boy taking to his heels and running towards the flaming sword. Its glowing eyes widened, and it picked up a rock and threw it.
Noticing a rapidly growing shadow of a falling projectile above and behind him, Hiroko pierced the wind and snatched the longsword away right before the boulder fell and crumbled right on the spot it was at. He instinctively raised the blade – thanks to the five years of Kemosabe family martial arts he had aquired – and fell on a knee when Rocky Golem's boulder fist smashed down on him. Everything was silent for a minute, the golem looking frozen and mortified. In another minute it lumbered away from Hiroko, its hand starting to glow all purple. In a random minute, there was a deafening and thunderous explosion and Rocky Golem's left arm was gone. The creature howled in harrowed agony and staggered back.
Hiroko stared at the sword incredulously.
"Crap. Uh, that wasn't my doing, Rocky."
Too enraged to hear him out (or just too primitive to even know what words were) the rock monster lashed at Hiroko with its other hand and the boy was caught by the back of its hand.
He smashed against a rock wall and fell, the air knocked out of him.
Rocky Golem charged one more time. Hiroko glanced at his blade, clutching his belly, and in doing so, he was revealed to a chasm in the ground. What to do? There was nothing else to do. He spared no second and slid through the crevice, leaving Rocky to smash the opening and cause a cave-in.
Still clutching onto his sword, Hiroko rolled violently down deeper into the tunnel. When he finally stopped, his world was spinning. The flame of the sword slowly died…
* * * *
The flame of the sword slowly threatened to die but Hiroko seized its handle and it rekindled. Slowly.
Outside, he heard the Rocky Golem bellowing angrily. By the skin of his teeth… just by the skin of his teeth had he escaped the black rock monster and evaded a second death. Though, he more or less fell into a crevasse than escaped.
"I'm not a guy who ever ends up in these situations."
As he tried to get up, a sheering pain cut through his abdomen and brought him cringing back into a slouch. He looked and then realized that the pain was caused by a dagger-like rock in his side. In a minute, he spat out blood. Thick, black blood. And in another minute he was moaning in agony, cringing and gasping for air. His whole abdomen was on fire. All he could think about as he slowly slid against the rock wall was the world of pain he was in. The flaming longsword dropped next to him.
He had a tooth-like rock protruding through him…
He had to remove it. Without thinking, he hastily grabbed it and yanked.
"Oh crap!" he roared and yelled in pain, the sound coming out of his subconscious.
That was a terrible idea. Why the hell did he try to yank it out? There was no other way to remove it, though, unless he was planning on bleeding out.
"Get out of my meat or I will murder you and anyone you love!"
But when he grabbed the rock he felt a wave of pain that did not even allow him to pull it.
"I can't do it… I won't do it." He sobbed. "I won't. I'm gonna die."
And while he accepted the inevitable, he cried his eyes out. For some reason, this was not the first he had seen of this.
"I can't do it. I won't do it!" A painfully familiar voice cried.
It was his. At least, he remembered it as his when he was younger.
Hiroko forced himself to look, and it was another one of those visions, a holographic memory. A memory of the day he was afraid of finishing his rigorous martial arts training.
"So, you're just going to let the plank gain the upper hand on you?" His father had asked younger him in Japanese.
"Yeah! I won't! I'm just gonna die!" Memory Hiroko had answered, also in Japanese.
The real non-memory Hiroko frowned in confusion and also due to numbing pain. Why was he seeing this memory when he was already facing such pain? Was this Glance of a memory trying to add to his pain?
"Just because it's too painful, it doesn't mean you should give up."
How on Earth was his father able to say that to him? He was not the one in pain from helplessly trying to break ten stacks of planks with his hand, and what the hell was this memory supposed to prove?
"Father, it hurts! I'm bleeding out and the pain is too unbearable. When I try to flex my fist, it gets worse. There's no reason to live!"
And then his father's memory suddenly burst into laughter.
"Hiroko, wasn't the pain of circumcision painful?"
Hiroko's memory nodded.
Hiroko blinked. That's what he had said? He was glad he had forgotten that part.
"Are you dead because of it?"
"No…"
"Then why are you fretting over this one?"
"What do you expect me to do, father? The damn planks won't break!"
"I know it hurts. But I also know you're strong. Don't give up on your body just yet. This pain is only physical. The most painful pains are the ones that affect your mind… because you can't physically touch them. If you don't break these planks, it will forever be a symbol of your weakness…"
And with that, the memory faded, leaving Hiroko drenched in tears and feeling nostalgic. He could still feel the raging pain on his side.
That memory – however distant and nostalgic it was – made him realize four things. One: that memory was a prelude. It was only a month after that the terrible car accident killed the whole Kemosabe family and he became an orphan at ten years of age.
Two; his father Kyoto Kemosabe, was a man who regarded pain only as a fleeting thing, never quite acknowledging it. So how would he know what Hiroko went through after losing the whole family?
Three; he couldn't remember the last time he was afraid of getting hurt. Almost eight years ago? That was so long ago. That was a long time. That memory had nothing to do with him anymore. That Hiroko died in the car. He was history. Now he was just the guy who tried to save a girl from an anomaly but got taken as well.
And four: Kyoto Kemosabe was a sadist.
He lightly laughed at this thought, ignoring the pain on his side, and shook his head.
"Isn't life just swell?"
But his father was correct. Pain hurts more as long as you concentrate on it. If he had managed to coax him into breaking that stack of planks as a ten year old boy, using an already injured hand, what stood in his way of him yanking out that rock out of his flesh?
He gripped his fingers around the rock… and pulled it out with an indifferent face, the pain only flashing in his eyes.
The presence of Rocky Golem was no longer audible outside and the only threat to Hiroko now was the chance of his blade fire getting extinguished and the deep wound on his side. His face sweating in extrema and his heart pounding against his ribs, he carefully rolled up his purple pajama top and looked at his wound.
Ah… It was in awful condition. Red flesh showed out of the seven to ten centimeter opening and black blood oozed out of it. The wound was fatal at best.
"I will die like a cow."
At least it would be a peaceful death in a nice and cozy cave, not getting flattened by some random rock golem.
Taking in a last-minute breath for courage, he closed his eyes and surrendered to the cold embrace of death that slowly crept over him…
But then something changed. Something came and drove the cold away, filling the young man with a warm feeling that suddenly surged through his body like nothing he had ever felt before. He opened his eyes and found the lavender blade burning viciously and brightly. Then he realized:
"Holy hell. I don't want to die like a coward!"
A sensation on his side pulled his eyes to it and he met with a miracle. Black blood cleared itself out of the wound, the red flesh retreated into him, and the opening came together, sealing the wound altogether. In a second, not even a scar was left.
Hiroko dared himself to stand and it was as achievable as he had imagined.
He looked at the rock that had pierced his side in his hand. It was about thirty or so centimeters long.
He processed the information quickly and frowned, shadows trembling around him.
"I'll only die after scolding April!"
He watched with a scowl as a peculiar shadow swept across the cave floor and flirted with his shadow, cast down by the flame of the sword. He brought the tip of the sword down to the shadows and it convulsed. He raised an eyebrow. IT somehow had the stentch of fury. And an expression...
Shadows that had a pungent smell and an angry face…
He knelt down and took a deep sniff. The shadow slowly rose from the ground and went into his nose. It smelled like pure, rotten rage. His lashes fluttered closed. That was his own rage.
"Mmm… how sickeningly sweet."