The salt in Akusha's mouth curdled into a bitter, rancid rot. He retched into his palms, only to find a squirming heap of maggots. Even crushed and mangled, they crawled, their tiny legs scratching against his skin in a rhythmic, sickening dance.
He looked at the living room wall, searching for a way out. But there was no door, only a window—a hollow, mocking eye. Outside, the world was a thick, suffocating clot of blood-red dark, so blinding it burned. And there, standing in that red void, was a shape.
He couldn't see her face, but his eardrums throbbed with every slow, wet breath. He could hear Koromachi. She was screaming—a silent, jagged scream that drowned in the absolute weight of the silence.
Hopeless. Akusha turned away, letting go.
SKREEEEEEE...
A sound like bone scraping glass tore through his head. He spun around. On the window, the words "Behind you" had been hacked deep, weeping like a festering sore. Before he could breathe, the heavy, rhythmic thuds of a hunt erupted from the dark.
The Greedrabbits were here.
Death was panting against his heels. His calves tightened until they felt like they would explode, and cold sweat poured down his spine as his body forced him to run. The Greedrabbits hadn't taken this yet... his legs. A sickly, dying spark flared up. His lungs felt like they were being shredded with every frantic, gasping stride.
Akusha burst through the living room. The second-floor hallway ripped itself open, doors bleeding out a shadow the color of lilies—and then the lilies themselves erupted, blooming in a violent flood. Everywhere his feet slammed down, the wood was eaten by a blinding light, scorched and blackened like skin under a torch.
Outside, the world was a broken toy:
Birds shrieked in shattered, mangled notes.
Sunflowers grew from jagged towers behind a bleeding pink moon.
The sky split open, and a massive, pulsating Eye stared down, unblinking.
It stares.
Stares.
Stares.
Stares.
Stares.
Stares at him.
.
Every door exploded into a million splinters, melting into a red, gritty sand that crunched under his soles. The floor buckled, warping upward into a jagged, vertical cliff of floorboards hanging in the void. Akusha climbed and bolted, his chest burning with hot coals. He was sprinting up a gargantuan slope, clawing his way from the second floor to the first.
At the end of the hall, emerald eyes huddled together to hiss the word "Right." To his right, a framed photo of a mother and child. Akusha's soul screamed—he didn't want to trample that warmth, but his legs were machines now, ready to crush anything for an exit.
CRASH!
He slammed through the portrait. His mother's smile shattered into glass shards. The path spat him out into the kitchen, where a long table sat. Long. Long. Long. An endless, splintered plank of wood cutting through the sky.
Akusha lunged onto it.
SHATTER!
Porcelain snapped under his frantic feet. On the walls, torn canvases showed his truth: Akusha, alone in a white void, while his mother's back vanished into the nothingness.
"La la la~ Everyone are happy" – Akusha hummed, the words hollow and dead. Fear blurred into the screaming white noise of the world.
"GRAAAAAAWR!" – A roar of pure, agonizing rage tore from the pack. It was the wretch with three clocks. But the clocks were gone. From his neck, a raw, slimy windpipe bulged and hissed: "I'm... almost... there..."
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
The clocks rolled under Akusha's feet and detonated. The blast threw him, but amidst the metal shrapnel and dust, his body and soul remained whole—untouched, a silent insult to the hunter.
The creature charged, the sound of splintering bone and gnashed teeth echoing. Every time its weight hit the table, the wood screamed under the pressure.
BOOM!
The clocks turned on him. The creature's legs were pulverized into a mist of white smoke, but it didn't stop. Its grey, skeletal hands clawed forward, dragging its torso. It left a long, stinking smear of black blood and rotting meat—the remains of its legs—across the table.
"GIVE ME THE LEGS. THE LEGS. THE LEGS!" it shrieked, its throat splitting open with black bile. Green eyes boiled up on the table's surface, spelling out: "Table is not happy."
Akusha whispered: "Sorry, Table."
He tripped on a plate and slammed onto the floor. Grey claws stayed mere millimeters from his flesh. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting to be torn apart.
Closer.
Closer.
Closer.
Closer.
Even closer.
CRACK!
The sound of bones turning to gravel. But Akusha was still whole.
THUD!
He opened his eyes. The Table had flown up, crushing the creature and the Greedrabbits into a pulp. "Thank you, Table," he bowed. The Table hovered against the ceiling, pinned there with its dead, mangled trophies.
For the first time, Akusha walked in a quiet, crystalline peace on the chessboard floor. He opened a pot. Braised pork. He wasn't hungry, but he took a bite. It was tough, stringy. The fat was a sickly pale yellow, reeking of scorched animal grease. It tasted sweet, ending in a heavy, metallic tang of blood. Veal, he told himself.
He dropped the chopsticks and walked into the white mist. Behind him and in front of him, the world was eaten by fog. There were only a few tiles left under his feet.
"Everyone are happy. Nobody are sad and i am always..."
The song snapped. He'd forgotten the rest.