>

Day or night, rain or shine, come hell or high water, never will you see that face of her waver. Could be the complete eradication of all humanity itself and still Arishia will flatter the unbecoming of mankind with some light jeering.

Yes, it seemed no matter what faced her way, you can be rest assured that any form of practicality and judgment would most undoubtedly be flung out the windowsill of a third-story balcony.

You wouldn’t find Sleeping Beauty dozing away to her heart’s content on a sticky pile of cobwebs, would you?

Arishia was no Sleeping Beauty.

Yet a little frolic with spider sap was no biggie to her, as opposed to the terrors and frights of someone like Ayako, who’d have dropped dead at the mere prospect of it.

Arishia sat herself upright, yawning away all her care to the world and blinked her misty eyes to the others that were present.

Turning to Tayuma brought about a sudden excited squealing that made us all jump. Bobbing up and down while pattering her hands together like a crazy fanatic.

“Ohhh - it’s the Loliman! Oh my God, I thought I’d never see you again! How’s the wife? Remind me, what was she... like 11, 12, maybe?”

“Close, but I’m single actually,” Tayuma answered flatly.

“Ah, ain’t no shame in that,” She said in a comforting sort of voice, softening her eyes in a show of support. “You’ll get her someday, I know it. Whether she ends up being 8, or 9, or maybe still in the process of counting her 1, 2, 3’s - you keep fighting the good fight, and love will find you in the end. Trust me."

Up against unsolicited wisdom being imparted, I really don’t blame Tayuma for looking as bewildered as he was right then.

“Uhh - thanks, I guess?”

As Arishia beamed at him, Jin decided it best to make his presence apparent, clearing away a cough in his throat that had never actually existed.

“I hate to interrupt you, but - ”

“Don't then,” she turned to him, smiling sweetly.

Jin blinked, wordless for a short while, before resuming what he had to say with a tone much firmer.

“- But I want to know how you ended up here even though the door was shut tight.”

Arishia rested her head on her arm, looking at Jin with eyes full of disinterest. “All work and no play makes Jin a dull boy. Straight to business, no fun, I always said you needed to unwind… but I suppose there’s no teaching an old dog new tricks, is there?”

Jin readjusted his gaze, staring at her with intense scrutiny. “I'm sorry, have we met?”

“We did more than just ‘meet’, Jin,” Arishia said, raising her head smugly. “But I suppose I’ll leave the exact details to your imagination.”

“Wha - when did we - where…” Jin was left stammering for words like a sputtering balloon, utterly flabbergasted in the wake of her reply.

“You’ll remember me soon enough,” Arishia simply said. “For now, humor me… it’s not every day I get to, anyway.”

He frantically shook his head, trying to reclaim composure. “Alright, whatever, just answer the question, then. How and why are you in here?”

“There’s a front door, Jin,” She answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I pushed it open.”

Her smartass-ness was much too hazardous for my delicate sensibilities so I turned my sight elsewhere and saw in the distance, Ayako pacing herself about, demeanor spiraling downwards into a fluster, ‘um’s and ‘ah’s of every kind jutting randomly in between sentences and increasing exponentially.

True to her word, Ayako’s bullshit meter was rapidly coming up empty. Not much time left.

To my dismay, another pair of eyes had followed along after me, the smirk manifesting beneath it ever infuriating to behold. I didn’t know what she was thinking, gazing away in amusement, but that delighted giggling afterward couldn’t have been any good if we’re going by past experiences here.

“A little much for a rescue party, don’t you think?”

A slight chuckle in a half-glance towards my direction. I could only glare back.

“Well my little damsel in distress, this might come off as a shock, but they aren’t here for you.”

“Oh?” She perked up her ears.

“Where’s the boss, Arishia?” I said, my patience already worn to the bone. “Serious answers, please… I’ll play along later.”

Silently, dubiously, she stared. “I’ll hold you to it.”

“Just start talking.”

There, we huddled together with gazes intense. Arishia turned one by one to us three, overbearingly aloof while she contemplated. Then she let out a sigh, and even then it bordered on being a snicker.

“I don’t know where the boss is,” she said, finally relenting an answer - a very disappointing answer.

I narrowed my eyes. “You were here before us, weren’t you? Just what the hell have you been doing all this time.”

“Fighting the boss,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Well, trying to at least. I figured maybe if the boss was gone, everything would just stop. I don’t know, seemed like common sense at the time.”

At least, she got the right idea, but the way she went about it baffled me, as did Tayuma, nervously chuckling, unsure of how to react. “You mean… alone?”

“Not alone, silly,” She said derisively, “I had someone else with me.”

Something Ayako had said before started to stir up some vague memories within me. “You took Background Character B with you to fight the boss?”

She smiled brightly. “Yup!”

“You’re insane.”

I stood up, darting my eyes across the room, scouring for any more clumps of web in the vicinity.

I could barely believe it. While I was out there assembling a guild in the form of a Livestream to take down the boss once and for all, here was Arishia with just one other person, clashing with the eight-legged monstrosity.

“You won’t find him here, Sora,” Arishia said, grinning at my actions. “Trust me, I searched. No clue what happened to him. The two of us confronted the boss before that stupid update happened. Probably would have killed it too if the update hadn’t put me to sleep.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jin scoffed, shaking his head. “You can’t solo a boss.”

That grin of hers only widened. “Can’t I?”

“It’s impossible, no one here is capable of that.”

“‘Impossible’ claims the ever clueless game developer,” she said sarcastically. “Still many, many things you just aren’t able to grasp yet it seems.”

“You’re trying to imply something, just say what you really mean.”

She tore her gaze off him, sighing. “Nothing. Forget I said anything.”

Rounding a circle of fruitless disputes is a surefire way to getting nowhere real quick, the discussion was quickly going astray so I brought it back to focus, crouching back down, leveling with their gaze.

“Fighting the boss, fine. You were here long before us, fine. What happened after that?”

Arishia stared at her feet, mulling over in thought. “I woke up, the door was shut, the boss was gone and my only partner has gone without a trace. Couldn’t open the door from my side so I was stuck. Figured might as well get some shut-eye, someone’s bound to do what I did eventually.”

She smiled at me. “And someone did - you.”

I did not share in her glee, in fact, there was nothing I could feel but a sense of frustration. Standing back up only reinforced the feeling. Ayako turned my way with gloom in her eyes, unable to suppress the crowd’s restlessness from growing any further.

“No boss, no fight…” I clicked my tongue. “We wasted our time.”

Nobody made to disagree. Nobody came to claim otherwise. Nobody - except for her.

“Not so fast, Sora.” She said, standing up after me. “Maybe you should take a second and give it a second thought.”

Already on my way to Ayako, having Arishia stop me in my tracks only served to raise my annoyance to a boiling point.

“Second, third… I already gave all my thoughts,” I ruffled my hair, meeting the piercing stares from the crowd staring at me from afar. “Look, I got people waiting for me to give an explanation and all I have are excuses. If you don’t have anything for me then just forget it, alright?

Stepping once brought me to another halt, this time impeded by her physically, obstructing my path with an expression that can only be described as mischievous.

“Move,” I said only once.

But since when has she ever taken an order from me?

She pointed a finger to the distance, past Ayako, past the impatient crowd, the archway wide open, she directed my eyes to.

“The boss only activates once the door opens. It’s the catalyst that starts the boss fight,” She explained, encircling me in a slow, monotonous walk. “I opened the door, I started the fight. Keeping up so far?”

“Get on with it.”

“When the update hit, the boss resets - full health again and deactivates, waiting for the door to be open once more. I couldn’t open it from inside, but you could from out there, and you did. Fast forward to present day, the door is wide open, the boss fight is activated and - “

“There’s no boss at all,” I finished for her.

“There’s no boss in the room,” She corrected, smiling at the furrowing of my brows. “Sometimes the simplest answers are usually the correct ones.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You triggered a boss fight in a room that doesn’t have its boss. Now, if the boss isn’t in the room itself, just where else do you think it could be?”

Despite myself, I let her question entertain my thoughts, contemplation in the silence that followed. Thinking… wondering… and that was when it struck me.

Horror-stricken, I glanced at the entrance.

“There we go… knew we’d get there, eventually,” Arishia muttered.

She was left ignored, passed by in a swift run to the exit, doubling my pace, leaving Jin and Tayuma calling and running right after me but they too I ignored. Ayako, I whizzed past before she could utter a word.

Onwards, brushing and bashing shoulders with the dozens that have amassed in the center, outcries going disregarded on my haste to the exit.

Heaving and puffing, never once breaking sight, I skidded to a halt just past the doorway. It was all clicking into a place… the web-coated corridors, the countless sacs littering the halls… what was it that Jin said... probably aesthetic, is all… they weren’t aesthetic at all, they weren’t even part of the patch.

To the left, I let my wide-open eyes wander, scouring through in its depths only to find nothing.

“Sora!” Jin called out, finally catching up to me. “What did you find out, huh? What’d she tell you?”

Tayuma joined immediately after. “Yeah, speak it out, man. What is it?”

“The boss...” I spoke breathlessly, glancing to the right. “It’s…”

That was when I saw it. Needle-like bristles protruding out of a long skeletal appendage, scurrying the web-coated ground in pairs of four, darting out of sight, rounding a corner far into the distance.

I gulped, turning to everyone who had suddenly gathered before me.

“It’s outside.”

It was only a moment’s glance, but that was all it took to usurp me of my strength. Huge, towering… absolutely gargantuan, there it went, yearning for us to give chase.

What was it did I asked Sukuinote? Somewhere along the lines of making us go on a wild goose chase, was it?

And what was his reply?

I gotta stop giving him ideas.