“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Sophia queried, looking around, trying to find any signs of their schoolmates.

“I’m sure we came this way, this ain’t my first rodeo in the woods,” Gen replied, a bit offended that she didn’t trust his skills.

Gen and Sophia had been walking for a while, but they seemingly had lost track of the rest of the class.

The pine forest seemed to stretch endlessly, as if it encompassed the whole world.

“This is weird, we should’ve found ’em already,” Gen commented as he scanned the surroundings, looking for any signs of civilization.

“I never get lost, much less in the woods,” he continued as he paced around, doing a cursory examination of the area.

“Don’t you have a compass or something in your backpack or something?” Sophia pleaded with Gen, her voice echoing across the empty forest.

That made Gen worry, his brow furrowing as he let out a small shout, listening to the echo.

“This is all fuckin’ wrong…” he whispered to himself as he took a deep whiff of the air. “This looks like the woods, but we ain’t in the same fuckin’ woods as before.”

“Wait here, Imma gonna climb up a tree to get us situated,” Gen explained as he latched on to some low branches and did a chin-up to climb up.

“I don’t like this,” Sophia said from the floor. “I don’t want to die alone in the wilderness, I want to die at 90 years old in a mansion with five cats who will inherit my fortune.”

“Sophia, ya’re goin’ off the rails,” Gen snapped mid-climb. “Ya tend to do that when ya can’t control shit ’round ya.”

“Did I ask for a therapy appointment, Dr. Gen?” Sophia snapped back, hitting Gen where it hurt.

“Don’t ya ever say that to me.” He turned around, one hand pointing at her. “Ya fuckin’ know I don’t fuckin’ like that.” He was angry, not because of the memories it brought, but because he had confided in Sophia about this and she weaponized it.

“Sorry,” she whispered, looking down in shame.

But Gen didn’t listen to her. He was already climbing higher, but his mind was in another place, or better put, in another time.
The pine tree branches around him blurred into the background as he felt he was back in his mother’s home, the Matsumoto Estate, the mansion of his stepfather.

His mother remarried into wealth after his father died. Gen and his older sister became less than they were.
They became puppets, controlled by the whims of their mother, who wanted to make them fit her new life, trying to mold them into her perfect children.

Rin, Gen’s sister, managed to blossom against all odds, while he was so stifled by the oppressive atmosphere at home, even worse after Rin left for college, that he had to escape.

That’s how he ended up in Pine Hill with Renji. He remembered some of the last good memories he had before the mansion, going to his grandfather’s home for the holidays.

That guided him here, and he vowed to himself that he would never let himself be trapped, not by walls or by words.

And words were what took him out of this fugue state of remembrance, as Sophia shouted from ground level.

“DO YOU SEE SOMETHING!?” she asked, with her hands around her mouth to direct the shout.

Gen stood at the top of a long pine tree, and the sight around him drew a cold sweat. Everything he saw around him were pine trees.
No town, no mountains, nothing. Just an endless expanse of conifers.

Gen took a deep breath and let out a powerful,

“FUUUUUUUUUCK!”