Two figures sat in a place filled with darkness... one old lady and the other a beautiful young woman with otherworldly features.

The lady emitted a godly aura that caused the surrounding space to twist and turn, and the young woman casually sat beside her, looking as though the heavy atmosphere did not bother her at all.

Listening to someone. His brother.

***

Dark.

That was all there was. Darkness and the sound of machines and the smell of hospitals had never left.

I have been here for a long time.

Long enough that time itself had started to lose shape. Days came and went. There was no difference between morning and night in the dark behind my closed eyes. Who knew how many years had passed?All I could do was listen.

Ren came every day.

I recognized his footsteps long before the door opened.

Then he would sit beside me and talk about his day.

How the day went, what he did all day, small and ordinary things. The kind of things that meant nothing.

I listened.

I could not answer. My mouth would not open. My hands would not move. My body would not obey me.

I wanted to answer.

Every day he talked, and every day I tried to answer.

And every time my body refused. Then evening came, he left and came back the next day and talked again.

He never sounded tired of it.

That was the part I could not reconcile. I knew what I was costing him. The job he hated so he could pay for the room I was in. The hours he sat in that chair talking to someone who gave him nothing back. He never left before the evening got late.

I wanted to tell him to stop coming.

I wanted to tell him it was enough, that he had done enough, that he did not have to keep doing this.

I could not say it.. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

So I listened.

And I felt like the heaviest thing in the world, like something that had grown too large for the space it occupied and was pressing outward against everything around it.

***

But one day things changed when the place that was supposed to be empty had a visitor

I had questions. I had so many questions and none of them could leave my mouth.

She seemed to know that.

"Who are you? and why are you here?"

"I am not here to explain, I am here to offer."

"What if I told you that you could leave this place and not have to worry about anything else? A grin appeared on her face.

"There is a game, and we need a first subject."

I listened.

"You have to live a life somewhere else entirely. Another world. Another life. It would not be easy and I will not tell you otherwise."

"Then what? What should I do after leaving ?"

"Your only purpose is to entertain as by your action. And in return we reward you."

"But you would be able to move. Your hands would move. Your voice would work. You would not be in the dark. You can live a normal life with your brother. After you finish the game."

I thought about Ren in the chair. I thought about being a burden.

I suddenly reached my hands towards the dark sky and made a grasping motion.

"You are still too young to completely hide your desire from this ancient one, young manone!"

She suddenly stood up and waved her sleeves, and the dark sky that had not changed for years...

"Wait..."

"Oh, right... before I send you away, I’d like to thank you for being our first subject."

"Thank me...? What do you mean..."

Before I could ask the old lady why she was being thanked, a bright white light suddenly engulfed the darkness, taking away her vision.