Chapter 3

Three words.

Splendiferousness.

Magnificence.

Resplendence.

These factors affected me for a very long time in my oblivious days.  How can I state something beyond description?  When I wasn't a stranger to the light, I let myself be bewildered by its safest whistles.

Now that it treats me like a monster, I let myself be an instrument of darkness.  A different kind of it I never thought that would be my fate.

That's when I avoided them.  I wasn't in my real being anymore.  Gradually I was eaten up by fantasy into the world of mania to do something I would later regret.

Because when darkness beguiled me, its intention would always be in the wrongest ways of living, and that obscurity scarred my bruised heart.  It made me in anxiety.  Now that I'm tired, this is how I'll end up.

Forest Survival, the words engraved on a wide and relatively long tree staring at me in front of me now.  It's too old.  Obviously, it's put there years ago.

I am not sure what it meant but, somehow, it told me to move forward.  It gives me faith to live.  So I didn’t waste a few more seconds.

I stood up and continued walking even though the injured knee of mine was becoming a bit of an obstacle. The wound tickles in a painful way. But still, go straight because my body does not object even though my state is not good now. What else must I do? I've been here already.

I just have to find the guy.

My heart beats faster.  My knees are shaking.  Even so, it still commands me to continue despite my condition.  It seemed to remind me to have hope and belief even when it is impossible.

Lots of cricket to hear.  More mists.  There are taller trees now that I am in the middle of the forest.  They seemed to have grown healthier, but their breadth terrified me at this hour — they lined up as they stood tall and straight, and their silhouettes seem to have faces. 

Some hoots surrounded me.

There are a lot of scattered leaves too.  The cool breeze also caresses every branch as well as the leaves of that falls. I heard my own rustles.

I kept going straight even though I knew I was completely lost.  Until little by little my stomach growled with a complaint.

My body is also weakening and getting cold.  I no longer like the destination of my fate.  Am I going to die inside here?

The air has a mix of nature's fragrance and smoke.  I can hardly breathe to its unaccustomed familiarity yet its freshness still abides on my nostrils and muttering I exist.

"Hel. . . He—Hello?"  I said, looking around every route and corner as I walked forward.

I clenched my fist.

It's in a blurry motion, and my vision, it's spinning around.  I felt nauseated.  My head hurts and my stares have gone dark. Gradually my stomach turned upside down.  I think I'm going to vomit.  

Then it growled again. Perhaps, I'm merely hungry. This is the second time I have felt hungry.

As a matter of fact, I spent a few hours maneuvering the car.  It was still dusk.  Meanwhile touring in it for about an hour, if added, it unlikely won’t bother me.  And for the record, I wasn't eating three times a day.  Maybe once, twice, and sometimes I didn't.

Dad wasn't aware of that or maybe he was.  Maybe he just liked what I was doing to make it easier for me to be erased from his life and he wouldn't have any more problems.  That he would no longer have to return me to my real parents like a thing that, after being nurtured, cared for, and loved, would just be thrown away or given away.

I lose my appetite every time I remember Mom and my flashbacks to the memory of my past when she was with me.

Apart from her and the stranger I wanted to forget, they did not increase because I was afraid my entire life to have someone barged in again to disturb my peace then leave me afterward. No one even tried to, of course. They do not want to have dirt smeared on their palms who have not yet experienced the urge to suffer.

My vision became blurred so I closed my eyes to bring back the tears trying to come out of my eyes.  Stop.  I'm tired of crying.  I could no longer afford to breakdown at the time I knew it would be my end.

I took a deep breath before having the courage to speak.  "Is anyone . . . here . . . ."

But I stopped uttering words when I saw the place where that guy who wears a cloak went.  

Maybe.

An unfamiliar spot.  Odd houses.  Peculiar infrastructures.  Inside what these weird people called Forest Survival, there is strangeness in the air.  It didn't suffocate me.  It shook me.

It was quieter as I stepped into the area.  There are cabins like treehouses among the branches of monstrous alike trees from both sides: four from the left;  four from the right.  The lights inside them are on except for the two on the left.  There is still a bonfire.  I saw a glimpse of the huge wood tower a few meters away from here.  Between both sides where the cabins are, there's a house.  The same space between them has space to pass to the back.

I repeated what I said before.  "I-Is anyone here?"  I muttered with doubts and hesitation knowing that there are living humans here like me.  Tho I still isn't seeing one of them.  I’m also just not sure if they’re dangerous or not.

I heard footsteps from some of where they are.  Some doors, opening.  And there I saw, from those six, as if floating cabins, there is one person each: three girls and three boys, alternately placed.  Emotions weren't the same.  Confused, shocked, surprised, glad, happy, and unpleased.  Almost at once they came out and went in front of me.

I feel like I am facing the judge to criticize me for the sin I have committed.  They have this scrutinizing look that makes me want to be immersed in the ground I am treading on.

"Welcome to the Forest Survival, what can we do for you?"  said a girl, between fair and tan, have blue highlighted hair, a pair of green eye, and red pouty lips.  He also has dignity.  "As you can see, we are survivors of... Reality so we escape to breathe and to exist out of its toxicity until we woke up."

"Are you here to sign up and be one of us? Because probably there isn't even a single slot left for someone like you," said the girl with blonde hair, which is in a bun, and pink thin lips.  She has as white as snow skin and deep black eyes.

I blinked.  Um, what are they talking about?  "I'm here— I am lost. I don't seem to find where I am right now."

"What?" said a frowning man with thick eyebrows, brownish eyes, a sharp nose that matched the shape of his face, thin and red lips.  His skin is tan while he is just the right height.  He looked young and cute.  His black hair is in a mess.

"So you are lost, and you also have no intention of staying here and be with us," the man said coldly with a serious face.  Emotion screamed in his dark eyes.  He was calm but his aura was strong.  His lips also are red.  Just like the woman with blue highlights and black hair, she is also between fair and tan.

"I was also looking for this guy. He went here, definitely. He had this black thin cloak. He ran and I followed him but I lost track. I was in the midst of—"

"We didn't want your reasons, lady," the blonde-haired woman said angrily.  "Just leave."

"Oh, shut up, Freyja! I've already heard you shoo the same words to someone before," rebuked the man who had just spoken.  He had fair skin, jolly dark eyes, pink lips, tall, and a well-made body.  His long and straight black hair is a hair bun.

There is another girl that is just staring at me as if diving into my whole being, her hair is black and it is up to her shoulders, and her eyes are blue.  She is simple despite her features but she has a strong charisma and aura.  That’s what I’m sure of.

Each boy has superbly carved jaws that girls would fall for.  Each lady has unique charms that men would appreciate and others would envy and love.  It is like a zone for imperfectly gorgeous creations of God Almighty that have joined together to exist out of the Earth's toxicity.

"What? That's the truth, isn't it?"  Frejya rolled her eyes and glared at me.  "She's missing, eh."  She even stared at me awfully.

I didn't know they have a big role in my life that could let me be who I am again.  They are these weird and strange persons who would make me perceive death differently.  While the exposure of the truth in my tale would be told from someone in their group.

It's a place like a chest, incandescently pure as gold inside a treasure perked up by angels.  It might be that never-ending reality in which I'm trailing.  For this can make my courage open its eyes or let my nightmare play its role in me.

I must let myself grab the trial in an unheard-of circumstance or the havoc destroys what goodness desires for me.