Komugi wakes. And, after a few wheezy breathes, starts to panic, mostly at the small space she can sense binding her. It's as though she's been locked inside a tree, the walls of which feel thin and stifling. She kicks out with her feet and scrambles with her hands, fingers primarily reserved for gungi pieces now meeting the slim steel of nails, their cool points feeling like flattened thorns against her skin. She presses down on them hard, unintentionally warming them with her frightened breath.

Am I in a coffin, she wonders. Have I been placed inside as a punishment?

She aims a feeble punch above her chest and is rewarded with a few splinters that dig harshly into her knuckles. Letting out a large wail, she mentally chastises herself. Her hands have only ever been good for one thing, after all, and it is hardly surprising that they have been wounded in a task almost anyone else could probably succeed at.

'Ah,' she says, knowing she is a fool to waste whatever oxygen her captors have allowed to seep in through the boards above. 'I'm sorry, Supreme Leader. I may not be able to make it to our next game. I hope you will not take it as an insult that my life was offered to a box, instead of to you.'

But then, almost as if the box has been insulted by her words, the world, or what little Komugi can feel of it, tilts alarmingly to the side and she gasps, grabbing hold of the blanket that has somehow been wrestled down to her stomach.

'E-e-earthquake!' she panics, all of her flailing as she, and the box she is in, is carefully dumped on the floor.

There is a brief pause as she struggles to realise that the wood around her has not cracked, has not bent sideways or inwards, not even to pierce her through. And then she hears chuckling. The sound is light, but hearty, as though the owner has made no move to place their palm against their mouth, not even to stifle the noise. It is also, to her great relief, familiar.

'S-supreme Leader?' she questions anxiously.

There is a sudden 'whoosh' and cold air touches her face, air that smells slightly stuffy, as though it has been nestled underground for far too long. Komugi feels the space open up above her body and breathes in deeply, her hands fisting into the blanket slightly before abruptly pushing it down, her legs feebly kicking up from underneath. Almost despairingly she feel the material stretch out between her thighs like a rope bridge, becoming taunt and tight.

'Uwah,' she complains, even though she really doesn't want to be a bother. It's unseemly, after all, for the Supreme Leader to be helping a blind fool such as her from out of a mess of her own making.

But then she starts, suddenly, as she feels a large hand gracefully separate her head from the pillow that has been carefully supplied beneath it, the thick fingers tangling against the unruly spikes that her mother could never quite tame, even after losing the spokes of countless combs within its hungry depths. She grimances inwardly as she feels the fingers pass over the slight bumps she knows other people could indentify as knots, ones she has never, throughout her life, tried too hard to untangle herself. It is strange; such things have never mattered before. But now, for some reason, she finds herself shying away from the Supreme Leader's hand, wishing him not to discover what other imperfections her hair might hide, ones that a mirror, if she had the eyes to view it with, would surely reveal.

'Aa-h,' she mumbles as she feels his other hand stroke carefully down her leg, almost as though he were inspecting glass for cracks. And then, with one, abrupt move, his fingers twist into the weighed-down space between her ankles and the blanket come flying off with one vast flap of movement.

'You should no longer treat your life so lightly, Komugi,' he says. 'It does not deserve to be flung away as though it were a speck of dirt; but if it would make things easier for you, I could give a command. Do not offer it to anything or anyone. Not even to me.' Then he pauses.

'And definitely not,' he says, with a hint of amusement, 'to a box.'

Komugi stumbles over her words, feeling mortified as he pulls her to her feet gingerly, as though he has every intention of stepping in to serve as a replacement for her walking stick. The thought fills her with an overwhelming mixture of both horror and gratitude.

'H-how embarrassing! To think that you would hear the last words of a fool as she rambles on inside a box that she was about to be rescued from...ah, I think even a baby, could beat down those walls with its wails, given enough time.'

'Have you spent much time with babies then, that you can make such a judgement?' the Supreme Leader asks, and Komugi shivers as her shoulders dip down into his shadow, the slight plunge in temperature causing the hairs down her back to abruptly stiffen.

The next moment a hand slides round to the curve of her back and pushes forward gently. Komugi feels herself straighten in response, her back gradually un-curving as she takes a deep breath, like a butterfly waiting for its drying wings to unfurl. And, surprisingly, as her lungs fill, it is as though gravity flows away from her, her skirts lifting and feeling lighter than they have done in years as her bones rise up beneath her skin, almost as though under guidance from the gods themselves. And it is all because she feels it there, each joint, each wedge of inwardly curving skin as the Supreme Leader's hand rests upon a knob of bone in her back, holding her spine steady with its warmth.

But of course, deep down, she has never really needed such a thing anyway. Not when soon, once again, he will rest on the other side of the board from her, all of his burning intensity reaching out to try and snare her with moves that, once upon a time, it took her years to come with. Now, with him urging her on, his ambition galloping towards her untested throne, such brilliance darts through her mind like a dragonfly, alighting on one new glorious move after another. It is as though he has risen up specially to make her grow.

'Ah,' she hears, through the haze of her mind, 'of course. You mentioned being from a large family. For humans, at least. Perhaps you are not the youngest?'

'No,' she manages. 'But I was, most days, as you can imagine, a disappointment.'

There is a heady silence. And she pretends to herself that his hand does not tighten at her back, that it does not twitch with the wish to crush something.

'Then here is a gift for you,' he says finally. 'One that will not result in disappointment from either of us. You wished to know my name, correct? It is Meruem. Take care that you call me by it. It has a more pleasing ring than a title.'

Komugi feels her heart sing, perhaps in wonderment.

'Meruem-sama.' She lets the name roll of her tongue and tries not to flinch when he expresses his disappointment in her automatically making a title out of it.

'A-ah!' she stutters, b-but I-I cannot, I mu-must not! You must not ask for the impossible Meruem-sama!'

She does not win the argument, of course. It is not even an argument, really. Meruem –sama declares, with all the finality of a god, that she will drop the suffix from his name, even if he has to win a game of gungi against her in order to do so.

'But for now,' he says softly, 'that can wait.'

Pouf mourns, out in the darkness and the biting wind, surrounded on all sides by crowds of people that the king, apparently, has no concern for. He cannot even be bothered to root out the spies that no doubt crawl among their midst and the very thought is enough to make tears stream down the side of Pouf's face.

'Stay here,' he remembers the king commanding. 'I still have one last task for you.'

Last? Last!

Pouf should take to the skies in his grief, should tear through the people around him like the carnivore he is. But loyalty, still such a sordid, heavy weight, anchors his feet to the ground. He waits, still as much a slave to his own biology now as he was back then, the day Meruem first tore his way into his life.

Komugi feels herself start as she is lifted out of darkness, the chill falling away from her skin as her hands reach out to gingerly touch the chest of the being holding her. It is a daring thing to do, but she dares nonetheless, despite the wretched thump of her heart as it shivers within her chest. In some ways, it is not that much different from playing a risky move on the gungi board.

'Supreme Leader...' she finds herself saying softly, the timbre of her voice an obvious contrast to the way his chest feels beneath her hands; smooth but hard, like the ridged surface of a shell. 'Forgive my stupidity, but you are not really a man...are you? O-or at l-least, not a human one...'

He hesitates, though his arms do not crush her for her insolence. But still, there is an odd fragility to this brief silence, and Komugi is suddenly aware of stupid things, like the swing of her skirt as it trails through the air, and the way she can hear him breathe, so much more loudly than when the gungi board imposes distance between them.

'No,' he says suddenly, 'I am not. I suppose this might feel like new information to you. Does it bother you?'

There is no uncertainty in his voice, at least none that Komugi can hear. But she smiles reassuringly, just in case.

'I have only ever heard the voices of my opponents in a match. For all I know, Meruem-sama, their appearance could be even less human than yours.'

He doesn't reply and for a moment Komugi worries that she has offended him somehow. But he merely twists his head and calls out for one of his servants.

'Pouf!'

Komugi hears someone step up behind them before a sound tears through the air; it sounds like the fabric of a tent being stretched from its poles as the wind blows through. But there is a sharpness to the sound too, and Komugi feels the air beat against her face as something bursts out behind them both, coating them with the coolness of its threadbare shadow. She wails, stilling abruptly as they rise from the ground before she clamps a hand over her mouth, the fear firmly catching hold of her tongue. For she has never seen birds take flight or felt the thrum of energy as an aeroplane lifts into the air. She has never even been close enough to a flying object to understand the gust of motion it sometimes produces. But she understands, instinctively, that she is being rushed away from one of the few things she has always been sure of, even if she has to, at times, beat a stick reassuringly along the line of it.

She swallows and summons all of her courage. 'Meruem-sama,' she whispers. 'A-are you, o-or is your companion...an angel?'

He starts at that, his fingers pressing a little deeper into her skin and Komugi is bewildered to hear, from behind them both, a low, plaintive moan.

'Quiet, Pouf,' says the king, a little crossly. 'No,' he continues, and Komugi feels it, the moment he turns his attention to her. 'I am far from that. Though I think, by some human standards, that I am no longer a devil or monster either. And I was always outrageously far from being a god, though I did not realise that soon enough.'

'O-oh.'

'Do you fear I will drop you, Komugi?'

'Eh? No, I w-would never presume such a thing!'

But even so, she feels her hands drift up to gently place themselves against his neck. They shift and half–scrabble against his skin, but even so, she cannot feel the reassuring bulge of a tendon there, no steady pulse point or shake of breath. Not even the obvious roll of an adam's apple; Meruem is uncluttered of all the normal, human things.

'What are you searching for, Komugi?'

For the familiar, she thinks.

'I am searching for...you.'

Meruem is silent for a beat. And then he says: 'I understand. You do not have the 'eyes' to know me the way other humans might.'

'I don't need them,' she says resolutely. 'I know your voice, your mind, the way you feel for gungi. It is more than enough.'

'No, Komugi. I have had the privilege of knowing your face. It is unfair that you should not be given the chance to know mine.'

She feels her toes curl at how firm he sounds. As though the idea of inequality between them is a disgrace. Almost daringly her hand reaches out, quivering slightly as it falls against his cheek.

'Later,' he admonishes slightly and she draws her hand back instantly, the fear of her presumption causing a shiver to run through her bones. 'I will give you all the time you require to map my face. But not now.'

There is another wretched moan from behind them both.

'Quiet, Pouf,' the kings says once again, though it is not without a little pity.