Chapter 8
Valera tries to figure out where she currently is, walking into an endless abyss. She also realized that she has gone out of the water and was completely dry.
She looked everywhere, yet she still can't see Spirit's flame. Hoping to find the portal, she kept on walking.
As she blindly strolls through the dark void, she can finally see a glimmer of light. Noticing the way out, she ran towards the light without looking back.
The place around her started to glow stronger due to the light, seeing a formation of rocks that resembles the innards of a cave.
She runs forward until the light overshadows the dark and has gone out of the cave.
There was no wind around but somehow this place makes her body feel chilly. She looks around to see the place she's currently in.
She's surrounded by a bunch of big pebbles that are at the size of a bowling ball, quite similar to the ripraps that she always sees when she's at the beach. All of them are filled with holes, possibly due to erosion, and is covered in moss.
There's also a body of water that is on a low tide, so low that the rocks are higher than the water itself.
The place glows as profound as the sun. The area around her is very visible, even though there is no sign of light source everywhere. But as she looked up...
...She can see the aquatic animals swimming above her. There are fishes that are as tiny as a tuna, and also are as big as a whale. They swam through the body of water elegantly whilst they move their fins to traverse around the seawater.
The wall that surrounds the whole place isn't made of gla.s.s or some sort of a transparent material.
Rather, the whole place itself resides in a giant bubble.
She can't help but to feel irrational at the place that dwells in the depths of the ocean, which the place also inhabited inside a st.u.r.dy, large bubble but correspondingly enticed at the scenery around her either way.
Valera looks around even more, to see another cave in the opposite direction.
She goes to the cave to closely inspect on what is inside of it.
As she walks through the eroded and mossy ripraps, Valera looks down at the pebbles to carefully put her foot in the next pebble, avoiding herself to trip unintentionally again.
Just before she knew it...
She tripped.
"..." Valera stayed still in her downed position as she then follows with a silent, but high pitched "owww...."
After a moment, Valera got up and said to herself:
"Why do I always trip every time I go in a different place...?"
She continued to move across the ripraps, irritated at her sudden bad luck.
...
As she finally got inside the cave, the area around her got dim once again. However, while she traverses through the cave, she saw the colorful lights emitting towards her.
She goes deep into the cave, seeing the source of the illumination around the cave.
There are numerous amounts of crystals emitting through the dark cave. Most of the crystals glows a singular color as for some crystals are a prism, emitting all the colors imaginable.
Valera walks slowly as she looks at the colorful aesthetics in the interior of the cave, thinking figuratively while she walks not on a simple cave;
But a cave of colorful rainbows.
Soon after, she goes even deeper. While she's getting further into the cave, she can hear people's voices resonating in her ears. She carefully makes out the sound they're making as she walks.
"Valera...!wake up...!" "Call the ambulance...!!"
"I'm sorry, Valera... If only I didn't hurt you in the first place..."
She can hear people screaming her name and weeping near her. She can also see some vivid images to the people and the area around her. Valera recalls the memories of the time she fell on the top of her balcony and concludes that this has happened after she hits the ground.
She can hear the sound of an ambulance getting louder as it gets close to her. Afterwards, she can hear the wheels from the gurney as the nurses' talks to each other to do immediate procedures on her.
Valera can hear and feel everything in her unconscious state, feeling numb as the doctors in the operating room injects her with anesthesia and proceeding in operating a dying patient.
Soon after, those sensations suddenly disappeared.
She is shocked at the memories dwelling in this cave, but nevertheless, she kept on moving.
The crystals' glow is getting brighter while she walks into the cave.
Later on, the voices came to her again. She can almost hear the doctor explaining to the people about her condition near her bed.
"Valera is currently on a comatose state. We don't know when she will wake up, but we'll try the best we can to sustain her health."
"Valera..." She can almost hear Phillip's agitated voice beside her.
"However..." Doctor Rogers continues the discussion.
"Even if she's unconscious, she can hear and perceive the people around her, although once she wakes up, she will think of it as one of her dreams.
Hearing your voice exercises the circuits in her brain, which can trigger the first glimpses of her awareness, so it would be advisable to talk to her every day."
"..." Everyone in the room went silent.
"... That's all what I'm going to discuss, so if you excuse me." Valera hears Rogers' footsteps as he goes into the door, closing it.
The silence continues to surround the room. She couldn't tell if they got out of the room or not due to the absence of their voices.
After a long time, someone spoke...
"...It's all my fault." She hears Chara's voice
"It's my entire fault that she turned out like this. I came into a wrong conclusion and stormed into her house... I actually think that I wanted to kill her.
If only I know better, I wouldn't hold that knife.
If only I understood sooner, she wouldn't have fallen.
If only..."
She stopped talking and fell on her knees, crying on her regrets.
She can also hear her friends comforting her in her woe. She can hear them leaving the room by their footsteps and the sound of the door opening and closing.
The room went silent once again.
Now, she can tell that they're gone and proceeded to walk forward through the cave.
"I guess that puts the two of us in this room, huh?"
Valera felt surprised, as she hears Phillip's voice after the silence.
She then feels the bed moving, believing that he sits beside her.
"Now that I see you laying in this bed unconscious, I can almost relate at the time your father died."
Valera walks slowly when she reacts at his choose of words.
"You were helpless back then, right? You don't know what you can do to help him, and all you can do is to talk to him until he wakes up."
Valera stopped progressing at the cave. She carefully listens at his words, reminding of the time she speaks to her father at the hospital.
"Right now, I have this painful feeling, fearing that as soon as the time pa.s.ses...
I have to make a choice."
Hearing that sentence alone makes her shoulders gain weight, making her legs weak; wanting herself to rest unto the ground.
"Sleep well, Daddy..." The words she said when she was a kid resonated in her head.
Remembering those words makes her regret crawling behind her back, forcing her to kneel out of fear.
Now that same choice she makes on her father will soon goes unto her.
"...But if possible, whether that time comes, I won't let you pa.s.s on."
As the time he said this to her, her mind became clearer and composed. She puts aside of her anxiety and slowly stand up while she hears his voice.
"I will come back tomorrow to talk to you even more, just to make you feel better.
So please... Don't die."
Valera stood up on her feet and focuses on the tunnel ahead. Instead of walking, she runs forward to quickly traverse through the cave. The crystals around her are glowing even stronger until she sees herself running in a ga.s.sy nebula, scurrying across the galaxies.
"Arghh!!" Valera's headache is getting fiercer. She's starting to run slowly until she stopped to sit on her knees again.
She can feel her body fidgeting on her hospital bed, making her body and injuries hurt even more. The headaches occurred three consecutive times, making her body hurt even more in separate times.
Soon after, she hears someone talking beside her again.
"...and if this continues, the possible injuries in her body could be fatal, making her feel major pain in her sleep.
Worst case scenario, she will die."
"no... Valera, no..." She hears Aunt Marie weeping on the sad news. She can feel her hand in her arms as the tears dropping on her sheets.
"Because of the occurrences, the billing required for her to stabilize will grow significantly higher. There was also the other option but..."
He hesitated the words he was about to say. He doesn't want to make them pull the plug because he said so but unfortunately, they already got the idea and have to pick a choice.
Marie can't handle the compensation the hospital offers. Even the current cost is making a hard time for her. She doesn't want to let her niece die either. With those two choices making her guilt grow, she didn't know what to do.
"Three days." Phillip said as he puts up three fingers in front of him. Valera also heard him from the cave.
"Give us three days, and we will decide our answer."
With that, she felt betrayed. After his promise he made back then, he only came back to her bad and said these words Valera didn't want to hear.
"..." Rogers gives him a pitiful expression.
"...Very well, then."
After that, the voices disappeared.
Valera stayed still, trying to progress what they said alongside her bed. From what Phillip has said before, her hope diminished.
'Am I dead?'
'Am I gonna die?"
Two of those sentences, each have completely different meaning, conjoined in her mind, not knowing if she's already dead or not. She also thinks that she will not see Phillip ever again.
She didn't even forgive Chara for her actions.
Having those regrets swirling across her unconscious mind, she can only kneel on the ground, wanting to live.
...
...
"...Phillip? Aren't you coming home?"
Valera hears Marie's voice as she calls Phillip, who is near her bed.
"It's already 9 in the evening. You should go and get some rest."
"..." He stared at Valera's motionless body whilst sitting on his chair.
Despite of what he said before, he himself hopes that, even in her condition, she will eventually wakes up. He only wanted to clarify if Valera will get up in less than three days, as he doesn't want her to suffer in her unconsciousness.
Nonetheless, Marie approaches him, holding his shoulders to rea.s.sure him.
"Phillip, I also hope that in these three days remaining, she'll open her eyes to wake up from her dreadful dream. She's not that kind of person who gives up early.
And I have high hopes for her from that.
So you should-"
"Valera's the only one I have."
Valera comes back on her senses, hearing Phillip to say those kind words.
"Since I was a kid, no one wanted to play with me.
They say those kinds of stuff like 'Weirdo' and 'Loner' because I always hang out in the forest by myself. Even so, I feel more comfortable when I'm inside that forest. But nevertheless, they got weirded out and left me. I didn't mind it, at first...
... Until I saw a girl crying on a rock."
Valera's eyes are widened, remembering the time when she ran away from home and goes into the forest.
"After that, we go around the forest, showing her the places that I liked the most. And she smiles at them like they were the best places on earth.
The day after, she came to my house, hoping to go to that forest once again.
We played,
Talk,
And played again...
She even introduces her friends to me, and we played in numerous numbers.
And that's where I realized...
That she's the only person I can rely on."
Valera's feelings towards Phillip came back in her heart yet again. She already forgotten that feeling since she saw him with Chara, and having that feeling residing to her again makes her at ease.
"So,
If you're hearing this, you're the only person who changed my life forever.
And I didn't have a chance to thank you after all these years.
So please,
Wake up."
He holds his hands in hers, putting a comforting warmth for the both of them.
Valera, still kneeling, can feel his hands in hers. The feelings she has in her heart now is increasing so much that she can't help but to smile.
In response, she holds her own hand to let the other hand feel the same warmth and puts both of those hands in her chest.
Marie is bewildered in this Phillip's side. Until now, she didn't know how he truly feels to her since he always treats her as a friend. But after seeing his eyes fully affixed to her, she thinks that his feelings towards her could be more than just friends.
After she finally got her answer from him, she goes to the door, leaving those two alone.
Filled with determination, she slowly puts her foot on the ground to stand while he says those words she hears before her journey began.
"And until then...
I will never leave by your side, Valera."
Valera started running. She started running through the cave, through the nebula, through the galaxies,
All to finally be reunited with her beloved.
While she runs, she wears a big smile on her face, for Phillip has said his true feelings towards her.
When Phillip is on her mind, her anxiety vanished, as well as her bad memories.
To be with him once again, she needs to keep on running.
Valera can see the exit from here. She can see the light uphill in the end of the tunnel. Seeing as an opportunity to finally be awake in this dream, she runs with antic.i.p.ation.
As she's finally at the end of the cave, she ran through the uphill and gone out of the cave.
Finally out, she looks down at the ground, panting from running. But as she looks at the familiar green gra.s.s below her, she looks what's in front of her to see the bigger picture.
She comes in realization as she sees this familiar place. Valera came back to the flatlands.
"...What...Happened here..."
Valera definitely came back to the flatlands, but everywhere she sees is a disaster.
The atmosphere is so shady because of the dark clouds covering the bright sun; the air around her is strong and cold rather than its usual calming and timid climate; and the skies that are supposedly blue in color turned into a mix of black, white and magenta.
As she looks further to the fields, she sees a powerful, yet inevitable disaster.
The strong, whirling cyclone so big that it covers an entire continent, destroying everything, even the earth below it, in its path. Inside that cyclone resides a violent thunderstorms that eradicates even a speck of atom.
Valera cannot comprehend this adversity, for she has witnessed the start of the end of this world.