Chapter 17

Toriel could not believe what Frisk had just said. She did not want to believe that there would be a possibility that the figure that Frisk saw was the one that Alphys was talking about. It was clearly killed by Sans. That was the only fact that Toriel held on to. She did not want to believe the possibility that the creature was alive.

"I-I… I know what I saw. It clearly didn't look human. It didn't look like a monster either!" Frisk said in an annoyed tone. He was finally back to his senses.

"That's… Impossible… There are only two races in the world." Toriel lied, knowing that the creature that Sans had supposedly killed was neither human nor monster.

"I don't believe you..." Frisk said, fully knowing that Toriel was lying, because he heard the conversation between her and Alphys earlier.

"Frisk… Please.. Trust me..." Toriel tried her best to convince Frisk to believe her lie.

"It's kind of hard to trust you, since you keep lying to me. Do you think I didn't overhear what you talked about with Alphys?" Frisk blurted out the words out of his mouth.

"F-Frisk.. Pl-"

"Are you gonna tell me another lie? Don't! I don't know how many other lies you've told me!" Frisk interrupted Toriel.

"I-I am… I am sorry, Frisk... I-I didn't mean.. it like that. I really am sorry." Toriel said sincerely.

"I'm not buying it. If you didn't know that I overheard your conversation, you would have pretended like nothing ever happened. Sorry can't fix everything." Frisk's voice was shaking as he spoke.

Toriel knew that Frisk's voice was not shaking from fear anymore. Frisk's voice was shaking due to his fury. Toriel felt his fury, and knew that she needed to choose her next words carefully.

"I… I was wrong to hide it from you.. I just… I just didn't want you to be scared. It could have caused you unnecessary fear..." Toriel said as calmly as she could.

"I don't care… Do you realize how hard it is for me to trust you?.. You keep lying and hiding things from me." Frisk said, with his voice still shaking.

"Frisk… Please.. Understand.."

"Oh, I do understand… I understand the fact that you want to keep me locked up in here forever, without telling me anything."

Toriel was hurt, because Frisk had the wrong idea about her 'kindness'. This was not the first time she had experienced such an attitude towards her by a human. Toriel sighed as she could not think of a response to give to Frisk. She knew that he would not believe her no matter what she said. Toriel bit her lips in frustration.

"I'm okay now. So can you please leave my room? I need to sleep too… I'm tired..." Frisk broke the silence that filled the room for a few minutes.

"Oh… Okay…. I'll leave now.. Goodnight, Frisk." Toriel said as she made her way to exit the room.

Toriel knew that nothing she said would convince Frisk. She wanted Frisk to be able to trust her fully one day. It was then that she started feeling guilty of forcing Frisk to stay with her. "Maybe… He's right about me treating him like a prisoner.." Toriel thought as she made her way downstairs.

Frisk helped himself up. He thought about looking outside again, but changed his mind because he was too scared to see the creature again. He did not want to go through it again. He stared into space for a few minutes, before snapping himself back to reality. He went back to his bed. He lay on his bed, with his thoughts filling his head.

He felt like his head was about to get crushed. He still felt fear, anger and frustration all at once. He was stressed because he had very little hope of reaching the Surface. He also had Toriel to worry about. There was no way for him to fully trust Toriel because of her blatant effort to hide things from him.

Frisk felt very tired and slowly fell asleep. It was a quiet night. Frisk forgot to turn the lights off before he went to sleep. A few minutes later, the door of his room slowly opened. A worried Toriel peeked at Frisk, who was fast asleep on his bed. She let out a sigh of relief and gently closed the door of the room, and then went downstairs.

"Frisk! Frisk! Wake up! Hurry!" An unknown voice called out to Frisk.

It was the middle of the night. There was no one in Frisk's room. Frisk was shaking uncontrollably. Frisk did not know if the strange voice that he heard was real or not. He tried his best to convince himself that the voice was just his imagination. He closed his eyes and tried his best to sleep. He was not able to fall asleep. Something was happening to him. He did not know what it was. He desperately wanted an explanation for everything he has been experiencing. But he knew that he could not trust anyone to tell him the truth about anything that was going on. He felt like he was losing his mind. He got up from his bed and walked towards the door. He placed his hand on the door knob to open the door but then changed his mind and went back to bed.

It was a quiet night. Frisk did not hear anything except for the sound of the ceiling fan in his room. He wondered how monsters were able to generate power for their homes. He had always wondered about that. Throughout his time at the ruins, he had not seen a single generator nor heard the sound of one. He was shocked that monsters had such similar lifestyles as humans. This was very different from what he had been taught.

There was still too much that he did not know about monsters. He was surprised that the monsters were not as savage as they were said to be in history books. He still was skeptical about fully trusting monsters. He could not simply write them off as innocent since he still needed to learn a lot about them.

Frisk was worried for himself. He only had a few dreams of this before. But now, it was getting out of hand. He could not distinguish between reality and his dreams anymore. He ended up writing off the creature that he had seen earlier as simply a hallucination. He did not believe that any living creature would be able to move that fast, because a large portion of the garden can be viewed through the window in his room. It could not have disappeared that fast as Toriel only took a few seconds to look through the window. "Weird things have been happening to me lately ever since I got here. I get too many bad dreams and now I even have hallucinations." Frisk thought as he straightened up his bed. He could see that he was struggling in his sleep because the sheets were a mess.

It was an extremely frightening situation. Frisk wondered if he was going mad. He questioned his own sanity. He had a strong feeling in his chest, but was unable to figure out what it was. Now that he thought about it, it was a feeling that he had ever since he fell down to the Underground. He was uncomfortable with that feeling. He felt as if something was squeezing his chest slightly. He lay down on his bed as soon as he finished straightening it up. He closed his eyes and tried his best to sleep. About an hour later, he finally fell asleep.

Frisk woke up when he heard a loud knock on his door. He slowly opened his eyes. He looked at the window, where he saw the sunlight. There was a ray of sunlight in his room and he realized that it was morning. He did not feel like he slept at all. He was still feeling very tired. He wanted to stay in bed just a little longer. The loud, annoying sound of someone knocking on his door did not let him sleep in peace.

"Frisk! Frisk! Wake up!" Toriel said calmly as she knocked on Frisk's door. "Come to the dining room. Your food is ready!"

"Yeah, yeah! Give me a minute!" Frisk said with a tired tone in his voice. "I'm coming!"

Frisk did not like how Toriel was still treating him like a child. He found it very strange that she treats him like a child even though she was not his real mother. He felt like a child because of how Toriel treated him.

He went into the bathroom and washed his face and brushed his teeth using the magical device that he had used before. And then, he left his room and went downstairs. He entered the dining room. He saw that his meal was on a plate that was on the table. Toriel, who was eating her food, looked at Frisk and signaled him to sit down on the chair that was on the other side of the dining table.

"Did you sleep well last night, Frisk?" Toriel asked as soon as Frisk sat down on his chair.

"Oh… Uh… Yeah I slept well last night." Frisk lied as he tried his best to hide his tiredness.

"Oh, I see… That's good. I'm glad to hear that"

Frisk focused on eating the cinnamon rolls on his plate. He devoured them as fast as he could. Toriel, who was staring at Frisk, looked very worried to see this sight.

Toriel wondered if Frisk was really okay. He seemed like he was trying his best to escape.

"Frisk? What's the matter? Why are you in such a hurry?" Toriel politely asked him.

"Oh, nothing… It's really nothing.." Frisk answered.

Frisk was not aware of the fact that he was eating in a hurry. Perhaps it was because he wanted to go back to his room and sleep. But it was not that. Frisk felt like he forgot something important that he had to do. But he could not remember what it was. He paused eating and tried his best to recall what he had forgotten.

Argus! He finally remembered that he had training with Argus. He forgot that he wanted to ask Toriel about Argus.

"Toriel, can I ask you something?" Frisk asked.

"Sure, you can ask me anything." Toriel answered in a kind tone.

"Who's Argus?" Frisk asked.

"Oh right… I forgot to tell you that he'd be the one who'll teach you how to protect yourself. He should be coming here today. I trust you, Frisk.. But please… Don't hurt anyone… You should only protect yourself, that's all." Toriel answered.

"Okay I'll try not to harm anyone."

"That doesn't seem very genuine."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I won't hurt anyone. I promise."

"Good. That's what you should do. Don't forget that I'll be watching over you. If you do anything to monsters, your training will be cancelled and you'll be punished by me." Toriel said in a serious tone.

"Okay okay I got it already…" Frisk was a little scared when he saw the serious look on Toriel's face.

Frisk finally finished eating his meal and left the dining room. And then, he went to the living room. He was waiting for Argus to come to the house. He could not wait to get started on his training. If it went well, he would not have to fear getting attacked by any monsters at all. He was pacing in the living room, wondering how he was going to be trained. He did not know any soul magic. He did not know how to create objects. He had flashbacks of kids at school bullying him for not having basic soul magic. Even though he had the physical power, it was still useless against soul magic. "If only I had soul magic, I would've been able to beat Flowey." Frisk thought as he stopped his pacing and sat down on one of the chairs.

Frisk wanted to learn about soul magic more than anything. He had hopes that maybe Argus would be able to find out what was wrong with him and fix it. Frisk was hopeful for once. He was hopeful because even though monsters were not the same as humans, they might know about what was affecting him, since they had more experience with magic. Frisk was eagerly waiting for Argus to come and knock on the door. After a few minutes, Frisk heard someone knocking on the front door. He hurried towards the door and opened it.