The Sixth Stage of Grief

“...Aunty?”

When I opened my eyes, that was who I saw.

We were standing opposite each other in a meadow filled with carnations—elegant, pure, pristine—their scent carried around by the soothing lull of a spring breeze.

I’d never seen Aunt Sumire so beautiful before.

Her red hair was full of vitality, spilling down in silky cascades—a stark contrast to her thinning grey hair held together by monthly dye jobs that were getting progressively more and more impossible to afford. Instead of a beige cardigan or a melancholic gaze, she was clad in gleaming plate armour, her expression fiercer, livelier than I’d ever seen, matched only by the adamance she used to display whenever she’d argue with my mother over my studies… back when she was still alive.

…Beautiful.

Seeing her made me feel like everything was going to be okay.

I couldn’t understand why I felt anxious, but I was. The carnations were undeniably beautiful, and the backdrop of a sky blue vista should have calmed me instantaneously—it was like I’d found myself transported to the fields surrounding a rural sanatorium, the ones you read about in those books about people trying to heal their souls. But my chest was tight, and my throat was dry, even if everything was serene. Every muscle in my body was tense, like I was on the verge of forgetting something important and the cells in my body were fighting back against the incompetence of my brain. But once I saw her, I knew everything would be fine.

Aunty is here.

Aunty always helps me whenever I need it.

Whatever I was trying to remember… it’s not important.

“There, there… everything’s going to be fine, child,” she says, smiling.

Carefully, she approaches me, making sure not to trample over the carnations.

That’s strange. Aunt Sumire’s gait is uneven.

It’s been uneven since she had that accident pulling me out of the ball pit.

“You’ve worked hard, haven’t you?”

She’s right in front of me now, her skin the tone of porcelain, her amber eyes stabbing through me.

“You’re alright, Daisuke. You’re going to be alright.”

She reaches out to touch my head.

No.

Something in my brain snaps.

That voice doesn’t belong to Aunt Sumire.

Memories come rushing back to me.

Seat 11A.

The headrest of someone I loved.

Coroner’s report.

My midterm results.

My computer.

A girl reading a breakup letter.

An ill woman standing at the door.

Finding her.

Eating beef stew.

Lying under the tarp.

Taking a bath together.

Promising I will be better.

The samurai with the mask.

Annabelle.

It’s enough to bring me to my knees. Tears fill my eyes without warning.

“No… no… where am I? Where the fuck am I…? Take me back… take me…”

I start sobbing uncontrollably.

This woman strokes my hair—gently, lovingly. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. But all I can think about is Annabelle and how I failed her.

“Take you back where?”

“...To that world. I need to avenge her.”

“Is that so?”

“...”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit dramatic to have this reaction, Daisuke?”

She snaps her fingers, and the world starts accelerating. Rays of light refract, and colours splay out in all directions. It’s enough to blind me, and so I blink—

Pssh.

—the next moment, we’re back to where we started, standing off in a field of flowers.

This time, she has a warstaff of light in her hands.

“Saint…. Alicia? No… please, I don’t want to go back yet… I don’t…”

She frowns.

She slams her warstaff into the earth, and all the carnations are reduced into cinders.

The horizon turns red and black.

“Seeing you like this fills me with regret, Quantum.”

There is no burning smell, no hint of reality.

We’re standing on a field of ash—just me and this woman—against a blood moon.

“I need to go back… I need to avenge her…. It’s not fair… I never asked… I never…”

“Never asked for what?”

“...”

“You’re going to deny everything till your last moment, aren’t you? That man in the mask… you really don’t recognise him?”

Before I can yell at her, something clicks—and everything ceases to be.

The smell of flowers—gone. The feeling of a breeze—gone. The horizon is just an infinite expanse of black, and the earth I’m standing on is no more. No sounds, no taste, no feeling, not even stars or planets.

Just me and her, floating in outer space.

“The person who killed her… is you.”

Her words don’t make any sense to me.

Did I crash the plane?

Did I ask to be put on that flight?

Did I ask to be given a second chance by you?

How could any of this be my fault…?

She spins her warstaff.

“Let me tell you a secret, Daisuke. In this world… I can read your mind. So if there was ever a time to be completely honest, it would be now.”

“…”

“Because honestly, you sound pathetic. Expand.”

Her weapon explodes into a million shards of light, scattering across the galaxy of void like tiny stars. She gestures after one, and it flies into her hand, as if reeling in a string—then it warps and morphs, the colours of a rainbow spilling out violently from its core as it transforms into a prism so gigantic she has to let go and allow it to float away.

If I squint hard enough, if I imagine hard enough—then the blurred image before me looks like a planet against a sea of stars.

“This cycle… it needs to stop.”

The prism warps and bends some more, and it eventually settles on becoming something unpleasant… a memory.

A plane taking off the tarp of Haneda Airport.

The smell of something unpleasant assaults me. It’s vaguely sour, and saturated with overtones of sulfur and ammonia.

“‘This is where it all went wrong.’ Right?”

“...”

I close my eyes.

But even when I’m trying to blind myself, memories still pierce through, like my eyelids are transparent membranes.

The sound of an explosion.

I’d never seen this angle of the accident before, but it’s just as I remember. The heat, the screaming, the smell of barbequed pork… and there it is, there I am, waddling out of that ball of smoke and orange like nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

I don’t want to see this…. I don’t.

The image flickers to Seat 11B.

My heart constricts. I can’t breathe.

“Nobody can blame you for this. But did you truly carry on your mother’s legacy as you said you would during her funeral?”

“...”

“When she was alive—she was everything to you. Now that she’s gone and things are difficult… she was abusive and the source of your trauma. Is that right? Even though you swore to her shrine you’d finish college?”

She claps her hands, and abruptly, the galaxy explodes to life.

A million stars are born, their light piercing the void like silver needles through velvet. Nebulas unfurl in swirling breaths of colour, and planets spin into being, molten and glistening. I can hear the crack of existence as reality carves itself into the infinite mass of spacetime.

It’s cold.

As the scene dances before me, it slowly morphs into something more surreal. Every planet, every galaxy, every star that I see—they all become pockets into other dimensions. And even though they’re nothing more than blurry images right now… I understand.

I understand, Alicia. So please, spare—

“Move.”

The entire galaxy rotates. The image of pink and red splattered over a blue headrest orbits away, and taking its place is another planet, hosting another vignette of my past.

A girl with auburn hair, on her knees, begging me not to drop out and leave her.

“You pushed Yui away for months. Then when she finally snapped and left… you coped with your mistake by telling yourself it was bound to happen with your trauma. But you’ll never admit to your online friends it was your idea, will you? It’s all her fault for being unempathetic?”

Another revolution. This time, it’s Aunt Sumire, cancer-stricken, standing by the door as I storm my way out of her apartment.

The night I died.

“You lied to Sumire for years. But once you found out her illness was terminal, you retroactively claimed you did it all so that she wouldn’t worry herself to death taking care of you. Get real.”

The world spins again.

Annabelle, split open.

“No… no…”

“How many times are you going to play this game, Daisuke?”

This is unfair. This is…

“Wake up and embrace reality. That man in the mask is your fault.”

The universe blinks, and everything is swallowed whole.

***

“...”

When I open my eyes, I see Saint Alicia in a field of flowers.

The sight of her is enough to bring me to my knees.

“Why…?”

She frowns.

Conjuring a warstaff into her hand, she approaches me, leaving trampled carnations in her wake.

“Why… do I have to be like this?”

“Come on. You know the answer”

I remain silent as she approaches, waiting for my judgment to come. This must be limbo, and Alicia the gatekeeper, because never in my life have I felt so exposed and worthless.

Only one thought fills my mind.

“Please… why…? Why do I have to make everyone else suffer?”

“You’re still trying to act like you don’t know?”

…

With her spare hand, she reaches out and grabs me by my hair, forcing me to meet her gaze. The other holds her warstaff against my abdomen.

“Answer truthfully. If you don’t, I’ll return you to your room.”

“...”

“Do you hear me? Stop pretending.”

“Y-yes,” I say weakly.

“Did you or did you not want to be summoned here?”

“...”

She pulls on my hair.

“Answer me, Daisuke.”

“...”

She lifts me up from the ground. My tendons scream, pain assaulting them, the weight of my body begging to snap.

“Gah!”

“Answer me.”

It’s too painful to bear.

This is too unfair.

This is dehumanising.

I don’t want to answer this question. I would rather die than admit anything to her. This is a false confession. She wants me to say that I’m a failure incapable of feeling normal human emotion, that I’m a sociopath who deserved to be locked up in an asylum well before my mother died. But that isn’t true.

I refuse to state things that aren’t true.

Even if it means I’ll give up this entire world, even if it means I’ll go back to my room and suffer… I’ll never stoop to lying just to get what I want… I’ll never submit to her, not in a million…

Who am I kidding?

This isn’t what I want at all.

“Answer me or—”

“Yes,” I say. “I did want to be summoned here.”

Saint Alicia pauses.

“Were you excited when you realised you were here?”

“Yes.”

“Is this the world you wished for?”

“Yes.”

She lets go of me. I fall onto the carnations, my knees scraping miserably against them. I’m kneeling on the floor, like I’m praying to a god for forgiveness.

“Are you scared of the masked man?”

“Yes.”

“Did you love Annabelle from the very beginning?”

“Yes.”

“Do you actually want to die?”

“No.”

“Are you just putting on a show right now, like you always are?”

“No.”

I stare at Saint Alicia in all of her beauty.

I know she’s going to ask me another question, but it’s pointless. I already have all the answers I need.

I know who I am.

I’ve known this since I could breathe.

I’ve laced so many excuses into my skin, worn them for so long, they’ve melded and become a part of me.

I’m afraid of trying. I only put in effort whenever it’s convenient. If I ever failed, it was something else’s fault. If somebody disagreed with me, then their opinion was pointless. I’m genuine when it makes me look heroic, and when I’m at the risk of showing weakness, I never actually cared in the first place. Being a traumatised genius is cool. Irony shows that I understand more than what’s going on, even if I don’t. Effort is for the stupid. I know everything, and the things I don’t are unrealistic to expect. I would never want to be whisked away to another world and be its hero, obviously. If I say I’ll change for someone, it’s just to get something I want temporarily, but deep down, I don’t mean it.

This is the mindset I’ve lived with my entire life. It’s been that way since before my mother died, since before I came here, since I self-sabotaged my dreams of pro soccer because I wasn’t good enough and pretended my family forced me to focus on academics. I’ve always thought of myself as a tortured artist, even though I’ve been spoonfed everything. No trauma could possibly explain how narcissistic I am, and I’m actually lucky that I’ve had hardships in my life—because I’ve been pointing to them and using them as cover ever since I learned how to lie.

And now, I’m saying that I never wanted to be a hero.

What a pathetic way to exist.

Maelle, Soren, Kenshi, Alicia, even Annabelle—they’re all right.

I might have been dealt a terrible hand in life, but heroes aren’t heroes because they’re blessed with the strongest weapon. They become experts at whatever they’re given, molding their gifts to serve their needs. I might claim I ended up a shut-in because I was traumatised, but the truth was that I used my trauma as an excuse to sit in my room all day, playing video games and masturbating, something I would have gravitated towards even if nothing happened.

And I reject that version of myself.

I don’t want to be this way anymore.

“Please, Saint… give me the strength to change,” I say. “Forever.”

She smiles.

“Even if it means you can never hide behind an excuse again?”

“Even that.”

“Even if it means you’ll get exposed?”

“Even so.”

“Even if it means you’ll forsake your aunt?”

“...Yeah, even that.”

I want to stay in this new world for as long as I can.

I want to save Annabelle.

Even if it means I have to struggle and suffer.

So please, Alicia… I’ll do anything you say. I will give up everything so that you may cut my soul into pieces, and rearrange it into a version that’s worthy of being a hero.

I can’t trust myself to do it.

You‘ll have to force me.

“Good boy.”

She strokes my forehead, and then…

Pain.

Her fingers jam into my eyes.

My screams are loud, so very loud.

As her fingers work their way through my sockets, I hear the crunch of cartilage and wet pops of fluid. My vision is first black, then a sea of crimson, then black again with a gush, and I can hear every squelch, feel every slight bit of pressure the Saint is putting on my eyes as she excises a piece of my soul out.

“Your pride blinded you once, Quantum. I will liberate you from it so that you may be genuine again.”

***

Abruptly, all the pain stops.

I blink again.

This time, my mother is in front of me. Her eyes… what used to be her eyes are crying crimson tears, and she’s smiling—much like how Annabelle looked when she was on the floor of that clearing.

Blood is dripping off her chin, staining the flowers red.

Something calm washes me, and it beckons me to look at where my gauntlet should be. There is no armour, but my hand is there—covered in a full suite of markings, like magical veins, running up from the back of my hand all the way to my elbow.

I feel grateful.

“I’m glad, Daisuke… I’m glad that in this timeline, I found the only version of you capable of defying the cycle of hatred. And it’s all thanks to that girl…”

”…Yeah.”

“Out of curiosity… who do you see?”

“I still see you, Saint Alicia. Don’t worry.”

Mother smiles.

“I’m glad that this version of me… found this version of you. Save Calice… Save her, and clean up the mess you made as the Original Sin for good.”

“I will.”

She falls to the ground, and an infinitesimal amount of blood pours out from the crevices on her face. It stains the entire field red, and all of the carnations bloom into roses as they soak her up.

I kneel over my mother and place my hand on the back of her head.

Thank you for everything.

Not just you—but Aunt Sumire and Yui too. Thank you for always believing in me, and I’m sorry I spat on your sacrifices. There was nothing any of you could have done better.

That flight was no one’s fault.

And neither should that flight determine my life.

So.

If that’s all, I’ll be making my peace now.

My veins flare into life.

Dimensional Drift
5 Aether Quanta
Spell
Slow Speed

After this turn, take another one.

“This time, for real."