A Life For A Life

The Being held out his thin arm and motioned toward the edge of the cliff we stood on.

“I’ll leave you to decide between the two of you.”

My heart began to thump like it never had before. Sweat surged from my head, coating my forehead and dripping heavily onto my armour. I could hear Ren gritting and clenching his teeth as he was thrown into a similar panic.

While I could hear Ren’s anger brewing, I began to weep again.

We couldn’t do anything.

We had been played.

To sour the blow, the Being didn’t just end his bargain there. He slyly spoke up again. “You have no obligation to accept this offer. If you so choose, you may reject it, and both of you will return to the human world. However…that is not all.”

I tried to look back at the Being, but the turmoil within me left me frozen.

“If you decide to reject my offer, you will lose all of your memories from this world. Everything you have done thus far…will have been pointless. It will be as though nothing ever happened.”

Nothing around me was visible. My vision blurred and the only thing I could think about was what the Being was saying. But not only did his present words haunt me, so did the words he had spoken to me back then.

“You will regret refusing this offer. You could have saved yourself…or your brother you call Ren,” replayed in my head.

So it wasn’t lying when he told me one of us was going to have to die.

I should’ve realised. But in the end, it didn’t matter. This end was unavoidable, and if we wanted to rescue Junpei, this was the only path we could take.

The decision the Being left to us began to strangle me.

Everything was my fault. Even after doing everything I could to stop being a burden to Ren, I realised I could never fully escape that horrible truth.

I clutched my face, feeling the warmth of both my red face and pouring tears.

There was only one option.

I had caused this. Without my ignorant thoughts, this end would not have been happening. Without it all, we could’ve achieved our dream of rescuing Junpei and taking him back to the real world together.

I had decided it was me who had to die. There wasn’t a more reasonable option.

I took my hand from my face, ready to inform Ren that I was going to make the decision for us.

But as I removed my hand from my face, I realised something.

Amidst my cowardly weeping, I had hesitated…

Ren didn’t.

Ren charged towards the edge of the cliff, leaping from it with purpose before I could even yell at him to stop and rethink his decision.

All I could do was watch and teeter off of the edge, wishing that my screams would bring him back or reverse the time I had just wasted crying.

Nothing worked.

After watching him be swallowed by the darkness below, I was left alone with the Being.

That was the last time I saw Ren alive.

At that moment, I couldn’t quite understand why he did it.

I wasn’t sure if he had considered that perhaps I was the better option. That I was undoubtedly the most deserving to die. After all that he had done, he didn’t have to save my arse again.

I wondered if he even considered refusing the offer and simply being transported back to the real world with just me.

But more importantly, several reasons for his sacrifice spurred into my head, forcing me to fight them along with the monumental grief I was simultaneously battling.

Perhaps Ren blamed himself for Junpei’s death, and this was his way of atoning. It made sense: his cries back in the Jungle suggested this was a likely option. But then again, I wasn’t going to take that as certain confirmation.

Perhaps he simply wanted to die. Maybe it was the case that I hadn’t realised his grief far exceeded mine and therefore his only escape from it was to sacrifice himself.

Perhaps it was because Ren’s heart was made of gold, and far purer than mine. He didn’t cower in the face of death and immediately took initiative — something I had taken too long to come to terms with.

Despite how close we had become, and how much more we spoke than ever before, that subject was one we never touched.

Regardless of which it was, there was one thing I was certain of.

Ren was far braver than me.

“So…are you ready to return to the other world?” The Being asked.

I looked back at it with a broken expression, eyes red and tears uncontrollably falling, unable to say anything.

I stood up, taking a fighting pose. Yet deep down, I knew there was no point in what I was doing.

An act to prove myself as a hero, too? I couldn’t tell you.

I simply had to accept what had happened was unchangeable.

The Being clearly hadn’t had enough fun, and so it taunted me further. “What would you do if I was lying this whole time? If I was making you suffer as you are now, and then I told you I was going to end your life here as well?”

I did my best to speak. Somehow, I found the strength to talk. “I–I don’t care. If that is the case, then so be it. At least, then, I’ll be reunited with my brothers.”

My words were ironic. They sounded like something a movie hero would say.

My beliefs still hadn’t changed. I didn’t believe in God or the afterlife, so what I said was nonsense; it was nothing more than a comforting farewell.

In fact, if God were real, this moment was making me hate HIS existence all the more.

The Being still hadn’t finished with his pointed questions. “And what if I had given you a different choice? What if I had given you and your brother the choice to resurrect your brother at the expense of the murderer’s life. Would you have taken the deal?”

I went to speak, but I stumbled on my thoughts, unable to answer the question affirmatively.

The Being grunted, sounding agitated for the first time. “Then you have learnt nothing.”

And with that, everything disappeared from around me. It was replaced with the strange place that I considered the bridge between the two worlds, again being bombarded with flickering and bright lights.

Then, suddenly, I was back where I had stood before the Being appeared for the first time.

Someone nudged me to my right, whispering my name with a commanding yet concerned tone.

I looked to my right, only to see that the Being had stuck to his promise.

There was Junpei, leaning over towards me with tears in his eyes, his suit’s sleeves hanging overly long on his arms. Still, he looked as handsome as ever.

“Taro. We have to move and let other people have their turn. Hurry and say your final goodbye to Ren.”

From the moment Junpei spoke those words, my head turned slowly to the open coffin, praying that what I had heard wasn’t true.

Unfortunately, the price for Junpei’s resurrection had been paid.

My eyes rested on none other than Ren’s deceased body that lay in the coffin.

He really had replaced Junpei.