THE SHOCK OF BEING UNABLE to speak only lasts for a second before I get an even bigger shock.
"Hero, you should not say the words."
It's the System. She sounds low, like a cold whisper of winter trees. Her callous voice infiltrates my brain, a focused serpent striking out.
I recoil from the horror of hearing her again. My fingers tighten around my comforter. It feels warm, solid proof that I'm still in my room. Shin Woo is below me but when I try to call out, my tongue fails me, becoming a mass of unmovable muscle.
"Don't try it," she continues. "He isn't here anyways."
At her words, a swell of white hot anger washes over, clouding every last fibre of me. Messing with me is one thing but Shin Woo? Not on my watch.
"What do you mean? Where is he?!" I bellow at her, out loud unlike how I talked to her in my mind previously. The System remains as impassive as ever as she talks in that maddeningly calm way. "We are in the Neutral Space. We're the only ones here."
I don't reply as I hurriedly jump from my upper bunk bed. I climb the ladder down to see a petrified Shin Woo. His head is resting on his pillows softly while his face is a myriad of worry and something I can't put a finger on. His eyes are wide open, staring at the top of our bunk bed unblinking. Probably at me.
I slowly walk to him. His bed still dips when I sit on it like back at our actual room but Shin Woo is unmoving. An intense hate boils in me, bubbling up till I feel like throwing up. I can't figure out who I'm angry at. Definitely the System, but I think I'm angry at myself too. Gullible and stupid. Involving Shin Woo like this.
"Is he okay?" The words sound defiant but at the raw, they are just a weak whisper.
At least the System is perceptive. She sounds drained, like she was asked to work overtime when she replies. "The Neutral Space is harmless. It is a cleave of frozen time and matter, and Kang Shin Woo should be safe in the exoteric realm."
Except for pushing me into an unknown world and giving me quests, I hold nothing against the System. Yet I cannot stop the aggression from seeping out. Even with her saying this foreign space was safe, I don't take my eyes off of Shin Woo in fear he'd be harmed in some way while I do. Worse, in fear he'd disappear.
"How are you here?"
"Continue quest: Reach the city gates of Brumdn Cove."
She has reverted back to her emotionless robotic speech and I scowl. "No." It is because of some reason that I got to return to my world after mindless hours there. No way in my right mind will I be going back to that place and Foras on my own.
"Continue quest: Reach the city gates of Brumdn Cove."
"I heard you just right the first time," I tell her. "And I don't want to."
The System pauses, like it never occurred to her that I might simply disagree with her. The cold that constantly accompanies her slowly evolves, tendrils of glacial fire teasing and nipping at my consciousness. I feel her try to understand it but with each passing second, the cold gets colder, biting me like a restless animal. I shudder.
"Continue quest: Reach the city gates of Brumdn Cove."
"Are you deaf?" I growl. The cold intensifies, swiftly magnifying like a balloon on the verge of blasting. I hug myself. My fingers stiffen and when I raise them, they look an unhealthy purple. I am freezing.
Anxiously, I look down at Shin Woo. He is still snuggled under his comforter, still staring at the top of the bunk bed but his lips are starting to turn blue. Quickly, I pull his comforter all the way around him but when I try to pry his hands that are above his comforter, they don't move. It is mere seconds but I'm helpless as I watch his fingers turn blue. His nails go an ugly shade of yellow.
The cold was getting to him too.
"Didn't you tell this was a neutral space and Shin Woo was safe?" I'm accusing. I'm scared. I'm pleading. I'm all of the things I cannot put into words as I hold on to a freezing Shin Woo with my equally freezing hands.
The System finally breaks out of her monotonous repetition. "The Neutral Space should be safe." Weirdly enough, her normally uncaring voice isn't so uncaring anymore, and a trace of distress leaks out of her otherwise guardedly constructed aloofness. "This cold isn't mine."
Amazing, that just adds to my anxiety level by a hundred.
"It is but a realm bygone." The distress is real now. "It should be safe."
She is out of character now and along with her, I get hit by an alarming sense of fear. I'm positively mad at her. She might argue this unnatural sub zero temperature isn't her fault but it is her fault that we're here in the first place. "Do something!" I scream at her.
I clutch onto Shin Woo, blindly looking everywhere. It doesn't help that the System is a mere consciousness with a voice and not a physical being. I feel utterly alone and hopeless as I frantically try to find a way. That's how I notice the window.
Getting out of the room would be better than freezing to death here.
Without wasting a second, I jump out of Shin Woo's bed and run to the window. I throw the locks open and yank it but the shutter barely budges. This time, I do feel the System separately. She feels weaker than the ever growing cold. Just a mist in my mind. "Don't do it, hero. Don't change anything in the Neutral Space." Her voice comes out urgent, dully echoing like she was down a well.
"Well, if you have a brilliant idea other than talking cryptically, now would be an excellent time to grace me with it!"
I move to our room's door and I feel the System pull back at me, as feeble as she is. The cold is horrible now, to the point my teeth clatter and I can't unbend my fingers. Each step to the door feels like a walk in an arctic blizzard.
"Hero, no."
I turn back to Shin Woo. He is pale white now, lips the colour of a corpse. Yes, anything would be better than freezing here.
"I said no."
Clenching my fists, I make my last steps to the door when suddenly, the System hollers. It is a volatile sound, synthetic and ephemeral, and nothing like I've ever heard before. A blast of chill bursts inside me, a cataclysm of a million shards breaking. It is simply inside my head, but an intolerable pain overwhelms me and I stumble to the ground.
The last thing I see is a flaring white. And then, nothing.