POV: Sachi

Worry is like a constant weight on your back, sometimes it is light, so light you almost forget it is there, pressing into your spine. Sometimes it is so weighty that you feel that your whole body is going to collapse.

Sometimes it is so in-between that you cant tell which is which.

I am going back to help them. I step another 10 metres along with the four of my guild-mates. I am not going back to help them. I am going back to help. I am not.

It is like a tilting scale, tipping one way then the other, never quite fully on one side before swing straight over to the other. I am going to help. I am not going to help.

I take a deep breath.

Even if I go back, what could I possibly do compared to Kira? Would I even be brave enough to do anything? But it is my fault we are even parting because I am so weak. So pathetic. I couldn't stop my brother then, what makes me think that I could stop Kira from throwing her life away?

"Hey Sachi, are you okay?" Keita asks me warmly, a hint of worry in his soft voice.

"Yeah." I force a smile onto my face but it is like it doesn't quite fit.

The mood plummets suddenly into a cold silence. The kind that is like ice, freezing and uncomfortable to touch for too long. In a couple of months, the weather should be populated with snowflakes rather than these annoying petals.

I push one aside as it falls it onto of my face and crunch it into my fist. I am not standing by while people throw their lives away anymore, I cant. I cant abandon the boy we gave me mine back either.

"I need to go the toilet." I announce quickly, the best excuse I can think of.

Ducker visibly lowers his shoulders, complaining loudly "Can you wait until we get back?"

I shake my head urgently while I am cringe inside and I am suddenly thinking this is a bad idea before Keita sighs "Just be quick."

I dart just beyond the trees, making sure they cant see me before escaping to the beige path that twists up to the dungeon as swift as my body can take me.

There seems to more people around than before so I have to shove the mass of people to get to the front. I hear whispers about a challenge but I try to pay no attention to it.

My heart plunges to the bottom of my rib cage when I see the pink slab of jelly-like substance covering the entrance. No! No! No! My breath hitches as I reach out to it, hoping I can still get through.

Hope is such a cruel thing.

A cool touch hold be back, firmly but not suffocating. As I whirl, I think it maybe be Keita but I great a girl. I don't take much of her in, only her pretty golden hair, braided back into two plaits.

"Don't, it kills any player who isn't taking part in the Sakura Wolf Romance Challenge." She tilts her head to the door.

"Vice commander!" So one else comes up to the beauty, a warning in his voice but the commander brushes him aside.

But only a part of my brain takes that exchange in. My brain erupts into white noise. The possibility that Kyo and Kira taking part in "Romance" makes me even more eager to get in.

"We think that it works by the NerveGear sensing your heart rate and your brains impulses to only allows the two players who like each other in." The girl speculates, no, Asuna speculates if I heard her comrades correctly. "If you still want to go in, I won't stop you."

"My friends are stuck in there, I have to help them."

Asuna only nods before stepping back into the crowd. "Good luck."

I gaze up at the extending door that is carved into the rock face and at the restricting substance that keeps me from my friends. Whispers of speculation roll of tounges as I walk forward into the semi circle formed by the crowd.

I am putting my hope on the fact I love Kyo. If the NeverGear recognises those feelings, it should let me through. I am putting my life on this; just like Kira did for me.

Hope is such a cruel thing.

I reach my hand out, prodding it against the jelly. It conforms to hold my hand in it's cool hold. And I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the electric shock that is delivered to my brain.

A breath I didn't even realise I was holding realises and I wade through the jell like it is only water. It clings to my body until I force my way through.

I almost loose my balance after I tumble out, the pink jelly clinging like a second skin. the wall behind me casts a pink shade to the dungeon but after 15 steps forward the tint fades away.

I equip my sword, jittery in my grip and take a run forward. Don't worry, I am coming. Just hold on a little longer. I can save you. I promise.

I take careful steps, as to make sure that they don't echo too loudly. If Kira finds out I followed her, so isn't going to be very happy.

If I save her it might be a different story.

The dungeon is just a maze of dark corridors so I take the one in front which after a long time in the dark, widens out into a circular room.

Five pillars hold up the expansive carved ceiling. Strangely, one of the five is placed in the centre with Kyo bound in the same substance that blocked my way in.

I slink behind one of the columns, meerly a shadow sticking itself to marble.

Kira stands in front of Kyo, using her body to protect him even though she is unarmed. Barely, I can make out a sword hanging limply in the binds, as useless as cardboard when wet.

I recognize the leaping wolf that bounds towards them, faster and faster with each stride.

I should help. I should help. I should help. I should be doing something.

But it is always frozen fear that pulls me back. I am so scared of what might happen that I let the things that should happen scuttle away.

Kira was right, I am a coward.

I should have thrown myself of the bridge that day. Then none of this ever would have happened. Because of me my brother is dead, buried in the ground where I can't reach him.

Kyo, the boy I have loved, even from a distance, whilst he fell in love with someone else is going to die because of me.

Kira, the girl who seems uncaring and cold, but also the one I owe my life to; who didn't think a second before throwing her life away. That girl is going to die.

The blood is going to be on my hands, coating my flesh. I can't scrub it off, even peel off my own skin, it is still going to be there.

So why can't I help?

Why can't I move my body?

You promised yourself you would become better. Stronger. Faster. Smarter. Ruthless.

Are you going to let your promised down just like you do people?

Kira lets out a scream of frustration and uses her nails to injure the vicious animal, equally as vicious herself.

But something happens then and the wolves go down and convulse in what looks like pain.

I breath a shaky inahle of air. Now, hopefully, they are going to be alright, if trapped in a dungeon with no away out is alright but we can figure out the details.

I move to blend into the shadows to walk away, as insivable as before but the red haired player keeps murmuring under her breath, pacing. At one point, she even dares to stroke one of the wolves next to her thoughtfully.

Suddenly, she snaps her fingers before crossing the room back over to the chained boy.

I don't hear what she says over the noise that errupts in my brain after what she does.

Kira is kissing Kyo.

Kira is kissing Kyo.

Kira is kissing Kyo.

I try to accept it, try and back it a part of my life now, attempt to turn away and walk out like a coward.

I keep repeating the phrase in my head. Like if I can say it enough times, I can engrave it in my mind enough that I convince myself it is happening.

This is real.

But it isn't. The contact between the two lips is nothing but virtual code that we perseve to be real.

But what is real and what is not in this world?

Everything feels real, tastes real. This ebbing dealing in my heart that pulumets is real.

This is real.

What happens after that kiss, I don't register it. It is like my body is on stand by, ready for when I can accept this as my life now.

Not even when the congratulations splays across my visor nor I reach the 27th level can I bring myself to move.

I feel slightly sick when the two lean on each other. How I wish I was the one in Kira's place.

I don't even realise the tears are building until they overflow onto my cheeks and throw themselves of my face. How brave tears are to fall.

Why can't I fall too?

"Kayoko?" Kyo's voice is a hammer, shattering and destroying the last of my composure.

I am shaking so hard, trembling like ice is touching my skin. Tears fall faster than before, rain dripping wet over the floor and my clothes.

How dare she? How dare Kayoko steal every bit of me. Kyo. My enjoyment of school. The first female friend I ever opened up to in this game.

There is no Kira anymore. I can't see her face when I look at her; the face I see is golden brown at every turn, a rich colour that I could never have compared to. Kira is no one.

All I see is a monster.

Someone who's uncle trapped me in a game where there is no escape, only the suffering release of death. Where my family is, my friends who j hold most dearly.

They have probably all moved on by now. With 10,000 people gone, the world will still turn maybe some will be scared but scars heal...

The jagged wound Kayoko dragged across my chest when she and I first met is never healing, not fully. It still aches in my chest when the my I love says those 3 words.

But not to me.

At first, I think the echoing sound is that of my heart physically shattering in my chest, the pieces scattering on the floor, too damaged to be repaired.

I check my chest and sure enough my virtual heart still beats in my body. Maybe it is the scream wound so tight around my lungs that it resonates in this large space.

No, it isn't that either, I am sure of it, almost as sure as I know my own name that it wasn't me who made that noise.

It is my sword that I held so tightly before but when my brain unraveled in front of me, so did the grip on my sword.

When it skitters across the floor, up and down then stilled, my veins flood with ice cold.

The reason why I still can't move might be because the cold isn't in my veins; it is crawling up my skin, a frost that chills me frozen still.

I can see Kira from were she storms towards me, a living flame dancing and flickering to cross the room. Here to burn me alive.

For being a coward. A Coward. A Coward. A Coward.

A little of her flame does wonders for the cold covering my skin, melting quickly. But not quick enough.

Her red blade is up against my throat in an instant. A better colour than any other to kill someone in. If this was the real world, the blood stains I would leave behind wouldn't even show.

I don't scream. I don't beg for my life. My life is useless anyway. She can take it, it is not like Kayoko has taken everything else I held close to my heart.

I expect her to neatly draw a line a cross my throat and end it, rage fueling her eyes to a bright blue.

Instead she looks tired. More exhausted then I have ever seen someone, not just physically tired but mentally too.

I have seen it mirrored on my face often enough to recognise it at first glance.

The lines around her face make her look older than 14, like the 6 months she has spent here have been more like 6 years.

But there is more in her eyes than just tiredness. Rage, yes like I though but dimmed to an ember. There is a lingering of worry too but what is mostly inhabiting her eyes is something I don't need.

Pity.

If it weren't for the blade pointed at me, I would gauge her eyes out so that I don't ever have to have that reminder about her ever again.

Better to think of enemy as a monster rather than a human. It is easier to hate them that way.

I turn my face away. I can't look at this person I should hate.

Silence goes round and round, a ride that never stops turning. Until it does.

"You mention this to anyone and I don't care how far I have to go, or how long I have to search or how well you hide. You tell anyone, you're a dead women walking." The voice is cold, back to the Kayoko I know how to hate. This is easier to swallow than that kiss.

"Even if I have to walk through the gates of death herself to find you, I'll kill you."

I don't doubt it. Not an inch. Not even for a moment. It is in the way she says the words, final and full.

Then she leans into me,close, too close, her long hair acting as a certain for the chilling words she hisses into my ear.

"Or Kyozo's life is in danger too, Saki."