Papyrus awoke from his slumber. Looking at his alarm clock, he noted that he slept 5 hours again. His sleep schedule was getting fixed, he guessed. It still wasn't as good as Sans' or Undyne's schedules, but for a skeleton with insomnia, 5 hours was pretty good.

Unlike his depression, it was only 3 months or so when Papyrus started fearing sleep. When he realized what really happened during that time and he thought about what it was like, he came to a conclusion: Sleep was like death. A death where you're still able to breathe, where your mind can either shut off or go completely wild, thinking things that don't make sense... or just thinking nothing at all.

He had never really talked to anyone about this because he didn't feel it was as important as his other issue.

Papyrus started reflecting on the day before. It had been pretty good, actually. He was expecting it to be terrible. Maybe, just maybe, today would be good too.

In a few minutes he felt ready to get out of bed. He walked over to his dresser. He didn't feel exactly happy, but perhaps he could become that way throughout the day. For this reason, and the fact that Sans and Undyne already knew, Papyrus decided to wear his battle body.

He put it on and started down the stairs. Just like yesterday, Sans commented on Papyrus' outfit. "You're back to that?"

And once again, Papyrus said "Yep." But this time, Papyrus sounded slightly better.

"Great." As Papyrus neared the bottom of the stairs, Sans started talking again. "Oh yeah, and Undyne stayed the night, which you can probably tell."

Papyrus could tell, because sitting next to him was Undyne. Papyrus sighed.

"Come on, Undyne. You didn't have to do that."

"Well, I wanna help you feel better."

"I'm serious," Papyrus started going to the kitchen close by. "You can come over if you'd like, but you don't need to sleep here to check on me. I go to sleep at night too. If you keep staying, then we'll be in separate rooms, meaning there's no point of you being here."

Undyne wasn't saying anything, just staring for a bit. Finally she stopped. "What? Oh! Sorry, I spaced out halfway through that. I realized you're wearing your battle body. Anyways, I can tell you were talking about why I don't have to stay here at night, which is great considering how uncomfortable the couch is. Man, there's a lot of money under there... Yeah, I'll just visit every day or something."

"Got it." Papyrus was microwaving a sandwich again. Oh no, not this boring thing again!

1 minute. 59 seconds. 58. 57.

Was he really doing this again?

55. 54. 53. 52.

Apparently. Must have been because he had nothing else to do. Or because it felt too difficult to do almost anything.

46. 45. 44. 43. 42. 41.

"What's that?!" Undyne shouted.

"That's the microwave," Sans informed calmly.

"The microwave?! Why does it sound like a dying fly?!"

"That's the way it's always sounded."

Those two were funny.

33. 32. 31.

"It's always sounded that terrible?!"

"Yep."

30. 29.

Papyrus decided to join the conversation. "Yeah," he called, "even though it's the most annoying thing ever, you get used to it eventually."

22. 21. 20. 19. 18. 17. 16.

"Hey, Papyrus, why are you wearing the battle body anyway? Didn't like the T-Shirt thing?" Undyne asked curiously.

Papyrus smiled a little. "No. It's because today's going to be a good day." Although he couldn't see Undyne, he knew she was smiling too.

6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

Beep, beep, beep.

When Sans heard his brother open and close the microwave, then walk to the table, he got a little confused. "Wait, doesn't it need to cool? How long did you cook it?"

"I cooked it for a minute," he was still walking to the table. "I'm not going to wait for it to cool,"

"Won't it be too hot though?" he fired back.

"Yep."

"Then why are you-"

Before Sans could finish his question, Papyrus had already bit into his food. He tried not to mind how incredibly hot it was. He ended up having to blow on it a little.

As this was going on, Sans was remembering something from yesterday.

"Wait a minute, you didn't wait for it to cool yesterday either!"

Papyrus swallowed, then confirmed his bro's sentence with a "Yep."

Sans tried to figure out why his brother couldn't just wait a few minutes. As he did that, Undyne also noticed something about him.

"Wait a minute, that one time we were talking with Frisk, you said you never sleep."

"I was saying that to make things simple. Technically I do sleep, just not very much."

"How much do you sleep?"

Oh. "I already told you not very much." Ouch! He shouldn't have took that big of a bite.

"I know, but how much is not very much?"

If he didn't say, Undyne could have gotten suspicious and make him say, so he chose to just say it himself. "Like a couple hours at most."

"At most?! That's not good!"

"Yeah, but at least I'm actually falling asleep. I used to stay up all night."

Undyne was appalled. "All night?!"

Papyrus didn't like where this was going. "Yeah."

"Why?!"

He didn't want to answer, so he just said "Eh."

But of course, that didn't work. This time it was Sans asking the questions. "Wait, why haven't you told me about this?" His face displayed both surprise, confusion, and a bit of worry.

Great, they were actually having this conversation. They were actually doing this. "Well, I don't think it's that important. It's not, compared to the depression thing, and you know about that so that's all you need to know." Papyrus hoped that would change the subject.

Sans sighed. "Bro, I've always found it weird how much sleep you get, but silly me kept forgetting to talk about it. Now seems like a good time to talk about it. Sleeping is important."

Looking at his relative, Sans could tell he didn't agree with his last statement, so he asked this: "What, you don't think it's important?"

"I-I do, it's just," Papyrus closed his eyes and looked down, looking embarrased. "I..." he sighed. "...It scares me," he muttered.

4 seconds of silence. "It scares you?"

Papyrus didn't say anything. He just stood there, ashamed.

Not wanting to hear them laugh, he started talking again. "If you don't have any dreams, then sleeping is like death. It's just nothing the whole time. And if you do have dreams, well, dreams aren't real, but somehow you imagine them. They don't make sense, and yet your mind makes you have them. It's hard to explain but I don't want my mind to have me lay there and do nothing for 8 hours. I... I don't want to die." Considering Papyrus' dream from the night before yesterday, he didn't think he was afraid of death, but apparently he was.

Undyne was trying to make sense of Papyrus' words. "I'm sorry, what?" That wasn't as bad of a reaction as Papyrus was expecting, but it was still pretty bad. It meant that now everyone understood him even less. "What does not wanting to die have to do with sleeping?"

"I already told you, sleeping can be like nothing, meaning sleeping is like death." Papyrus frowned. "Kill me. Kill me, please."