"Agh! My nose! It's broken!"
I stared at Valentino, who was writhing on the ground, lamenting his injured nose. It was a clear, straight punch to the face, but... Did I punch that hard? No. It wasn't broken, but...I did put more force than I had to.
"What... What happened?"
Dipper and the other crew members of the shack were rushing towards us. This wasn't good. Why did I lose my patience? After all I've been through, some stupid teenager broke my composure...
It wasn't good to show the kids that I fought with him. I didn't want trouble related to this. It was best to cover it up.
I quickly bent down towards Valentino, helping him up. As he looked confused, I whispered in his ear, "Listen up, Valentino. You came here, bombarded us with your terrible music, and even threatened a kid. We all saw it, and we can tell Wendy about the things you did. Pretty terrible for a just-starting couple, right? So let me get this straight. You 'accidentally' fell and hurt your nose. Do you understand?"
"You...!"
"Do you understand?"
Valentino looked down, swearing under his breath. Then, he nodded.
"Good."
"Hey! I know a fight when I see one! Stay right there!"
Suddenly, Stan appeared from the window, and Dipper, Mabel, and Soos all emerged from the door behind me. They glanced at me once, then turned their attention to Valentino.
"...We weren't fighting. Right, Valentino?"
"I... I fell. That's it."
"..."
And then, everyone started to stare at my hand. What's on my... Ah.
I quickly wiped the blood on my fist on my handkerchief, but the secret was already out.
"Man, that's so cool! You just punched him! And Robbie, he... he couldn't even do anything!"
"Dipper, don't. It's nothing to be proud of. I lost control, and I did something stupid. That's it."
I covered my ears as Dipper kept expressing how 'cool' it was that I punched him. This was what I feared – kids learning the wrong lesson. Okay, I know Valentino is a pathetic, rude person. But that doesn't mean one can punch him as much as one likes. That's not cool.
"So, Kid... you learned boxing or something?" Stan asked me with a smug smile on his face. "That bloody face won't come out from a blind attack."
"I learned... Muay Thai for a few years. And some Taekwondo. It's common in Korea to just send their kids to martial arts academies. I'm not an expert at it. Mr. Pines, can you please teach the kids that what I did was wrong?"
"Oh, yeah, sure... So when are you guys fighting again?"
It was already over. Stan certainly didn't have any attention to what his nephew was learning from this. I...Agh. Migraines. The stress of having to deal with this kind of event is just overwhelming, considering that Bill will be able to attack any moment now. I don't have time to give attention to Valentino...
"We're not going to fight. Valentino is going to stay shut, and I'm not going to deal with him."
"Aw, why not?! It's going to be so fun to give up like that!"
" , I don't think it's a good idea to make Ray fight that dude. Teenagers are dangerous. Those hormones turn them into like, killing machines!"
"He's also a teenager, so that matches out."
...Whatever it was, I ignored them and covered my head with my hand. I just fought a person...with brute force...and it was not a normal occasion. Am I affected by Bil right now? What am I under then?
Bill. Bill. Bill. BILL. BILL. BILL! Always giving me problems, and making me paranoid about everything...!
"..."
But seriously...
Can I actually pull this off?
What can I do against him and this whole situation?
WHAT CAN I DO?
I'm caught in this constant struggle between trying to save the world and holding onto some shreds of a normal life. It's like trying to juggle chainsaws while riding a unicycle. The stress is no joke, and it's pushing me to the absolute edge.
Responsibility and having a good time – these two things are supposed to go together, right? Well, they're colliding hard in my world. Stepping up to face Bill is a given, but dang, it feels like I'm being pulled in every direction. The pressure is mounting, and it's getting harder to keep it together.
Survival chances? Slim. Despair? Creeping in. Facing Bill, this supernatural powerhouse, feels like walking into a storm with an umbrella. Am I strong enough? Prepared enough? Honestly, I'm not so sure.
Staring down the barrel of uncertainty, I'm questioning everything. Can I handle this? The weight of the world is like a stack of anvils on my shoulders, and the fear of losing control is too real. It's a mess.
The survival odds are a punch to the gut, and despair is settling in like a stubborn fog. How do you face off against a dude like Bill Cipher? The dude's got more power than I've got brain cells.
...Damn you, Robbie. I mean Valentino. And you too, you abominable disease of common sense.
Sentiment is a posture. A certain posture that develops into stagnation, and soon disposes itself. Soon this mixed sentiment I'm feeling will be gone, turned to dust. But what will be left after it? Probably something meaningless.
Fighting teenagers... meant that I already lost some control over myself. I have a demon, and even possibly a town-sized cult after me. And this is probably exactly what they want. I need to be calm. I need to be smart. I need to be...
Mature.
I do know that I am mature. My maturity itself is probably over the normal teenager's of myself. I justify my old ways of thinking as that considering the lives from two worlds I'm 30, but it doesn't make sense. I only have the memories of two separate people who lived to the age of 15. My mind should be 15, since it's not like I had a continuing memory of 30 years.
My 'little prince' in my mind never... really aged. It just never existed. I was like this since I was a kid. An old kid, to be exact.
In retrospect with my extraordinary maturity, I regularized the world with my point of view.
And it's breaking down like glass.
I know that I'm... a genius. I am smart. Considering the things that I achieved intellectually, I am enough to be called a genius. I had pride, before I came to this world. I had... bravery.
But as someone said, bravery is knowing fear and overcoming it. That sort of bravery probably didn't exist for me. That's why I hid during the first three months.
Now I'm fighting because I have insurance that makes me survive. That's it. I'm not brave. And I'm still not going forward.
A stuffed genius. A genius that can't do anything. Ha, just like Yi-Sang. The only difference is that he's been restricted by the era and his identity. I'm being killed and suffocated by my existence itself.
Until now, I self-justified these actions to get away from cognitive dissonance. When I acted cowardly, I told myself this is just to survive. When I realized that there is no meaning in just surviving, and I had to act actively... I just ignored it and focused on getting rid of anomalies and being paranoid about the kids.
I need to find a real way to beat Bill but look at me. What am I doing here? Having a pathetic mental breakdown at the point of my life when I have to do everything.
"Things...are looking down."
...but even now, after this realization... I don't have confidence that I'll actually stop looking away from this real problem. I had to be stronger, but I'm not.
난 내가 너무 싫어. (I really hate myself.)
"..."
Mabel regarded Ray with a worried expression. The atmosphere in the shack was tense. Why? Because of him.
"...And so I... and this will... No. It won't work..."
It was probably after Ray landed a punch on Robbie Valentino's face. Most of them, of course, including Mabel, enjoyed the look on Robbie's face after what Ray had done to him... but it also left her with a feeling that something was off.
Ray felt like family to Mabel. Sure, the whole shack was a family to her, but they all had different roles.
Dipper was well... Dipper. Stan was her Grunkle, rough on the outside but extremely soft on the inside. Soos was like the second oldest, a funny brother in the shack. A comic relief, funny, yet competent and happy to be around. Wendy was like the eldest, cool sister. She knew everything about Mabel's problems and was just... so cool.
Ray was... well, Ray was like... well, of course, the eldest brother. Even though he was technically younger than Soos, he was mature, smart, and responsible, undeniably the best worker in the shack... and also something like the twins' caretaker. While everyone in the shack treated Mabel and Dipper as kids, but let them do dangerous things, Ray cared for them. A lot.
He cooked them snacks when they were hungry. He tried to find them when they were not around. He taught them and helped with their homework.
Maybe this should be the natural way that adults should treat them, considering the things Mabel faced during her little adventures in Gravity Falls. But no one, not even Grunkle Stan and Soos, tried to stop them from venturing into the woods and doing suspicious stuff. Only Ray tried to stop them.
Anyways, in many ways, Ray was special for her and Dipper. Dipper...seemed to have some conflicts about being treated like a kid by Ray, but Mabel thought they were kids anyway. It was fine. The important thing was he was the one that they relied on as an adult...though paradoxically, he wasn't even an adult.
But that Ray, who's always full of self-discipline...was now acting weirdly. His eyes were bloodshot, he was taking twice as much ibuprofen as usual, and he was scribbling things in his notebook.
His usual work ethic was a bit off too. Usually, he'd clean the shack around twice a day. Now he's doing it only once. Everybody could sense this difference happening to him and was being cautious not to trigger Ray, who was definitely stressed by something.
When Ray got busy working with customers, Mabel gathered an emergency shack meeting. Wendy was not back from the Camp, so she wasn't here...but these members were enough. Probably.
"So! I hope everybody knows why we gathered today..."
"Ray."
"Ray, I guess."
"Oh, I know. Tacos?...Oh, not tacos."
It was Dipper, Grunkle Stan, and Soos's answers in order. Soos slowly lowered his hand.
"...Anyways, this is serious. Guys, look at Ray. He's not okay. We need to do something," Mabel said.
Dipper nodded in agreement, but Grunkle Stan looked unfazed.
"Eh, he's a tough kid. Probably just some teenage drama. Leave him alone; that's the best."
"No, seriously, something's off. We can't just leave him like this," Dipper said with a concerned voice. Mabel knew that he has been worried if it was anything that he did that triggered Ray to be...like that.
"Yeah, dudes. I'm in. Ray's a friend, and friends help each other," Soos agreed.
"I'm with Dipper and Soos on this. We can't ignore that he's clearly stressed. We're the Mystery Shack crew, and we stick together."
Mabel made her statement. Stan shrugged and started to walk away.
"Then leave me off this. You kids do your usual stuff. I'm outta here."
Without Stan, the three started to discuss about Ray.
"Let's brainstorm ways to cheer him up! Maybe a party or a movie night?" Mabel suggested. Soos and Dipper nodded their heads in agreement.
" Yeah, distractions could work. We just need to figure out what's bothering him."
Dipper pointed that one out. Mabel also agreed...without solving the root of the problem, it cannot be solved.
But then again...The reason...
'Hmm...he got upset after...hitting Robbie in the face. And Robbie is...Wendy's boyfriend...Is he upset because of that? Oh...Maybe, it's love...! Maybe Ray loved Wendy first, but Robbie beat him to it! That's why he hit him in the first place!...it doesn't fit Ray's character, but...maybe!'
As a play of romance drama played in Mabel's mind, Ray kept dealing with the customers at the gift shop...not noticing that one of the twins was growing a a big misinterpretation.
"Okay, guys? Let's do this!"
And after their plan was made, they started to move it to action.
