Shoes were kicked off the moment the Daetaer sister and brother stepped inside their home. Forti fell face-first on her bed with a gentle bounce, unbothered to change clothes or tuck herself under the duvet. Exhaustion could normally never hinder her committed bedtime habits, but this time was an exception.

Vasi was rushed to the hospital after Forti’s revelation. 

Although her autonomic nervous system was fine, Vasi’s neuroimaging scan and unresponsiveness to extensive stimuli resulted in a diagnosis of a coma. Her parents spent the hours away signing paperwork, consulting with doctors, and assuring quality care to their youngest daughter for the unknown future. When Wyver and Forti exited, accompanied by one of their cousins, the night burned under artificial daylight, fuelled by street lamps and city life. Their mother and father wanted at least one guardian to remain in the hospital and the other at home. Wyver and Forti insisted on being with them, but the parents were adamant on having their children rest, so the siblings changed their entreaty to letting both parents stay beside Vasi. Forti and Wyver were old enough to be on their own. 

Since Vasi’s “death”, Forti had been dreamless. 

Tonight, her steps crunched upon thick snow as she headed towards dark blue mountains. An overcast twilight sky saturated the tundra in deep indigo like ink spilled on paper, soaked in every pore. Where she was going, Forti had no clue, but she dreamed of this desolate place before, of emptiness and longing, and she was unafraid of the familiar. She walked forward, preprogrammed by her own mind, a self-inflicted destiny. Then without reason, she looked behind her, seeing a desert of snow that stretched far into the haze of the horizon. All it took was a blink for the scene to change.

She recognized the subway station as the one near her secondary school. Blurred faces ghosted by. No one stood still to wait for a train that would not arrive, pedestrians crawling all over the platforms. Hence why her sights trained instantly on a person at the other side, across the maglev tracks at the only unmoving being. A fluffy, shimmering gold head of hair, like rolling wheat fields, peeked through the nebulous masses, curls that have tempted Forti countless times to run her fingers through it, and their owner always relented, bowing his head. 

He glanced around, searching but not lost. Finally, he saw her, and it was like he found who painted the skies and dappled spring in summer dew. Forti looked at him like a ship realizing it had at last emerged from a storm, sailing to her beacon to be brought home.

“Riel!”

“Forti!”

They called each other’s names in unison and ran towards each other. The glass barriers that protected people from falling vanished like a magic trick. From the caverns of the subway tunnel, sounds of crashing waves and rushing rapids echoed out. They rode on winds split apart by the incoming train, but neither Forti nor Riel slowed. They threaded impatiently through the phantom passengers, and when the kids reached their platform ledges, the train bolted out the corridor. They sprinted off opposite edges, and the train lunged like a metal python.

In a space of nothingness, akin to the darkness that closed eyes see, Forti and Riel hugged. Their hearts fell in sync, and the two long-awaited friends held each other until their warmth was shared so evenly, neither could tell where who began and who ended.

Though they pulled away, they held their hands together. 

“How’ve you been?” Riel asked tenderly, and Forti melted. Soft voice, soft hair, soft hands. Everything about him was gentle and velvet. He reminded her of rabbits and the dawn.

“Alright.” Riel quirked a brow. It had been eight nights since they last dreamed together. They regularly dreamed every night, unless Forti had substantial homework or Riel had to scurry off for an assignment. The longest they usually went without each other was three days.

Forti sighed. “Not really alright. A lot better than the past couple of days, though.”

They walked mindlessly through their dreamscape into a blank white space, too focused on their conversation to change the environment drastically. Forti talked about the past week like a child frustrated by a jigsaw puzzle, on the brink of tears. Yet once her friend arrived, all her sorrows floated off her small shoulders and she was determined to fit the pieces again. All he had to do was watch, listen, and he learned all she had been through, the picture complete. 

Riel gave her another hug. 

“You’ve been through so much,” he finally said. She nodded in his shoulder, then looked at him with wet eyes.

“How about you? What have you been up to?” 

There had been a breakthrough in Riel’s world: the end of infinity. The dumbfounded shock on Forti’s face made him beam.

“Isn’t that impossible?”

“Nothing is, but that includes impossibility, and that paradox is the solution. I’m oversimplifying it, unfortunately. I don’t understand it all that much myself.”

Forti was ecstatic for Riel, as she always was whenever he let her have a glimpse into his universe. However, he had only moderate enthusiasm about the news.

“The discoverer was a young scholar recently assigned to Muisyle,” he said with a mirthless smile. “Everyone treats him like he did all the hard work and research when all he discovered was the mathematician who actually solved the hypothesis. But luck is a skill, too, right? He was allocated to a quality world and found the right person to leech off of, how lucky.”

From years of gathering whatever pieces Riel dropped, Forti understood his world could watch other worlds, and because of that power, his world strived to be perfect. Learning from its neighbors, they had precautions for disasters, extinctions, even apocalypses, and relentlessly consumed innovations, theories, and ideas. 

Riel was embittered by it all.

“We copy other worlds. We have no originality. We don’t put in our own efforts and struggles. We take and take, but we can’t give back. We’re like useless parasites.”

This wasn’t the first time Riel wallowed over his world’s exploitative nature, and she rubbed his back. She knew nothing she could say would offer any meaningful consolation. It was enough to sit side by side and hear each other’s complaints

“It’s cool that your world found the end of infinity,” she mused. “If my world was as advanced in mathematics as yours or Muisyle, I wonder how many problems we could have already solved.”

“I don’t know if your world would be ready for it.”

Forti felt a pang in her chest, and shot Riel a fiery look, to which he immediately hung his head in regret at his blunder, realizing once the remark flew out his mouth.    

When they were younger, she shared in that mutual bitterness over the state of their respective worlds. She’d agree that her’s was the lesser of the two, although neither said it outloud. Instead, it was admitted when she would accept Riel’s prescriptions over what her world was capable of, and what it was not, though it felt like slamming her elbow wrong and striking the funny bone. How could their worlds even compare? 

Now, Forti punched back with an exaggerated, almost comedic, expression of disappointment. Brows deeply furrowed. Mouth pinched into a thin line. To complete it, arms crossed, and Riel was remorseful as a sinner prostrating to a saint.

Ever since she realized how much that unintentional hubris of his hurt her and told him, he had been making steady effort to uproot it, filtering how he talked, learning to be humble. Yet, it still occasionally sprouted out like a slap to the face. 

“I’m sorry, that was rude of me.”

Forti’s frown flipped into a smile.

“I’ve been hearing from my mentor that I might earn my apprenticeship soon,” he said. “It’s probably because I kept asking about your world, and since I know so much already because you taught me, he thinks I’m exceptionally insightful. He’s been hinting that I’ll get scouted by the head scholar that oversees your world. If I continue on this track, I might get to find out what the answers for your next math test will be!” 

“Hey!” Forti blushed furiously.

In the early stages of their meeting, Forti inquired if he could truly see everywhere and everything, including the answer sheet for her secondary school math test. She didn’t need it; She was excellent at studying, saying she threw the challenge as a light jest. 

He caught it and never let go, because it ended up being the first math test she didn’t do well on. She missed an entire question, panicked, and told the teacher, who was gracious enough to let her try it in a timed setting with some points shaved off.

Riel couldn’t see everywhere and everything. He was not authorized to do so, but on that day when he asked, he received permission to watch with his general constraints. He immediately searched and honed in on Forti, and enjoyed the sheer hysteria she displayed for such a trivial incident, covering his mad grin from his peers.

“Maybe I should’ve found the answers for you,” he laughed at her annoyed expression that night. “Your face was priceless!” From spending every dream with Forti, he quickly grasped her world’s vernacular, and if it were any other time, she would have flushed with affection.

“That’s great to hear,” she grumbled, happy to help her friend succeed as they stopped reminiscing. “Once you’re an apprentice, you better share with me all the secrets and shady deals my world has so I can profit off them all.”

“Of course!” The loud honesty in his voice had Forti forgiving him for his transgression.

The timing was right. The light banter and course of their conversation eclipsed at a perfect point for Forti to finally ask the burning question she had since she laid her head down. Released like an archer’s arrow, she asked if his world had anything to wake someone from a coma.

Riel was silent. Then, he gave a soft “no,” with the lilt of someone hiding something, as he always spoke when it came to anything about his world. He was ashamed of it. Especially now, knowing the reason behind his friend’s question. The guilt soaked him to his bones. 

“It’s fine, Riel. Don’t worry too much about it, okay? I understand.”

He nodded repentantly, then his eyes widened, struck with a realization, and he excitedly turned to her.

“Forti! World 2 has something that might help! You know they’re renowned for their psychotechnology. I remember they have a device that can communicate through brain waves and it works even at an unconscious level.”

She gave him a sad smile.