The air whipped past him as he fell. Twelve floors of empty smoke stood between him and the ground.
Gravitational acceleration, 9.81 meters per second squared.
Five seconds passed.
Halfway there.
The ground approached even faster.
Asher could see Stella's mangled body below him. He attempted to scream out, to warn the crowd circling around her body.
He couldn't muster a whisper's strength, let alone a shout.
Terminal velocity.
The smoky sky blurred as the ground approached even closer.
Someone pointed at the sky, shouting a shrill warning.
Asher was surprisingly calm about this situation. If he died here, he could rewind. He could have stopped all this violence. Just hold back next time.
The crowd reached their arms out, making a net of arms for him to fall on.
'No. Nononono...'
Please, don't do that. I'm going too fast. You'll die.
The crowd couldn't hear Asher's thoughts.
A bone broke as it attempted to slow him down. A limb snapped as it attempted to slow him down. A skull cracked open on the concrete as it attempted to slow him down.
Asher opened his eyes dully. He heard screams around him. He wasn't falling anymore.
That means I'm still alive.
Asher closed his eyes. For once, he hoped that he would just die.
His consciousness slowly faded into the darkness.
...
Everything was dark. Asher couldn't see a single thing around him. The stench of filth pressed into his flesh.
He waited for a while.
After some time, he tried to sit up. His voice was tinged with exasperation, muffled under a mountain of dark plastic.
"System, c'mon. What's the mission?"
But then he gasped. His mashed legs screamed in agony as he exerted pressure on them.
[You are still alive.]
'Ah. I can recognize where I am now.'
In front of him wasn't impenetrable darkness. It was a plastic trash bag. He was in a dumpster.
He let out a rattling sigh. His entire body felt cold. Should he just wait until he bled out?
[No.]
Asher grit his teeth, using the System's message as an external motivator. With boundless effort and a few feverish whispers of pain, he wormed past the garbage bags, emerging to the outside world.
He took a deep breath of the suffocating smog around him.
Asher didn't know how hurt he really was. Everything except the vestiges of his legs was filled with an icy frigidness. That couldn't be good.
'I should probably heal myself before I die for real.'
But first, he looked around for another body.
His eyes filled with a complicated sadness.
A mutilated body laid beside him as well. The once proud Capo had fallen from her position so quickly. Her coat had been cut from her body as a trophy, and her skin was a complex mural of red and deep purple shades. Bruises.
She really didn't try to land at all. In fact, she landed right on her chest.
He crawled over to her with his remaining hand.
'Stella was just trying to do her job. Then I came and forced her hand.'
He stared at her unrecognizable face in petulant observation.
*t-thu...mp-p*
"-!"
She was still alive. No breath, no life, no warmth.
But still alive.
After falling twelve floors onto her stomach, she was still alive.
It showed her true strength, one that Asher could only match with [Frenzy]. One that he could only exceed with the strength of the devil itself.
'[Nostalgic Room]!'
He rested his hand over her heart, pulling her into the land of dreams.
...
Stella opened her eyes. An assortment of different aromas stifled her nose.
She could smell again? Opened her eyes... She had eyes again?
Her fingers twitched.
A figure beside her coughed to grab her attention.
It was the voice she least wanted to hear. Memories she never wanted to remember again surfaced as her neck turned robotically to face the voice of her dreams.
"Stella? Are you alright?" It was a man she used to love. She growled, stabbing her fork into the table to cut off his words.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck... If I'm dead, why are you here with me!!" She stared into the table, the words more addressing her own soul than to him.
The man paused, processing those words carefully. In the end he could only stammer out a single phrase.
"What do you mean?"
Stella barked, a light of understanding flashing past her eyes. He wouldn't ask that question.
"I knew you couldn't be real. So this is my hell, for me and me alone... 'Course he wouldn't be here." Tears dripped down her face.
The man looked at her worriedly, but she didn't pay attention to him at all. She began to eat, beginning with a sip of champagne to wash her sorrows.
"Stella, why wouldn't I be real?"
The man flinched away as Stella flicked her arm sideways, nearly piercing his eye with her fork.
"Don't you dare put your bastardized words into his mouth, Satan."
The man fell silent.
The Nostalgic room only seemed to exacerbate Stella's sorrows. She couldn't even get two bites through her food before her eyes reddened with rage.
"FUCK! Torture me like a regular human being, won't y..." She tried to glare at the man, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. She weakly stabbed the roast goose in front of her.
Then she slammed her head into the table.
"Stella... What's going on?"
She moaned, attempting to block out the noise with her hands.
Her shoulders stiffened as a coat draped over them. Tears welled in her eyes as a nostalgic scent snuck into her nose.
Yeah. It was that time, so many years ago. It was this same jacket.
When dad died, it was this same jacket that comforted her through the night.
When they dated, it was this same jacket that he wore to her house every time.
And when she killed him, it was the same jacket that he wore. On that night.
And when Kalo congratulated her, it was that same damned jacket that kept her from hanging herself.
Every night. Every night. She slept with that jacket every night since then.
"I-It's that same damned jacket..."
The only sliver of innocence she had left.
The devil cracked into her heart.
She heaved a shuddering sob, pulling the jacket to her face to muffle her voice.
This smell...
This is my heaven, in this hell.
I've regretted it so much.
I would have never done it.
Even when you told me to do it.
For us...
'Kill me, for us.'
Why did you say it?
And why did I do it?
For validation?
I didn't want to disappoint you.
Even if that meant you wouldn't be there to watch me succeed.
The world shattered into fragmenting light.
...
Opened her eyes. Smoke in the air. Real life.
Dead here.
But not there.
So she grabbed her knife.
"Take me to my hell."
And slit her throat.
From ear to ear.
"Stella-!"
Asher crumpled to the ground as the life in Stella's eyes faded away in front of him.
Blood gushed from her neck like a grand marble fountain.
"DON'T DIE!"
None of that mattered. Even in her last moments, Stella's mind was reliving the past.
Asher leapt to her side, preparing to go back to the room once again.
But the smile on her face told Asher that she was content.
Asher allowed his hand to fall.
And let her die in front of him.