With an anxious heart, I head toward where my scan tells me that Gong is.

She seems to be sleeping in her room. I do, however, see that a string is tied to one of her pedipalps. Seeing where that leads to in my area, I pluck one of the networks of strings that connect to her.

Near instantly, I can see her eyes pop open.

It’s honestly a bit scary how alert she is, even while sleeping.

Now that I think of it, I’m in the minority in this world, being hard to wake up easily.

A lifetime of peace and comfort is hard to wake-up from.

… Which is why I desperately need to keep working at this awareness skill. Otherwise, I feel the worst may happen.

She sits up and faces the door. Strangely, it seems she is able to know that wasn’t an accident. Which is kind of obvious, on second thought.

Walking in the room, I give a quick knock on the wall. I can still see the patched-up portion of the wall from the last time I knocked on it.

Gong seems to give a smirk, noticing the same thing.

Actually, why is she hanging out in this area? Doesn’t she have an extra room in the other main section, with the demi-humans?

For some reason, these women seem to be able to read my mind easily, as she answers my question for me.

“I had a feeling that you had something else up your sleeve, after the reveal today. I wanted to be close by when it inevitably came up.”

She waves her hand around in a general motion.

“So, what’s on your mind?”

I take a breath.

Get straight to the point.

“I may have caught a lead on the local iridescent worm nests.”

Her eyes widen a bit. It doesn’t seem she was expecting something like this.

She gives an audible gulp before speaking.

“Okay, where is… wait. Nests?”

I nod. “And you aren’t going to like where they are either.”

Now I’m the one gulping before speaking.

“There at least 13 of them around the city, mostly located in the poorer areas of the city. However, there are three locations of concern. One each at the yellow sashes location, the blue bands, and…”

“Waitwaitwaitwait…”

She holds out a hand. She seems to be getting ahold of her thoughts.

“… Where did you get this information?”

“The kno…”

“… Right, right… the knowing ability. And you are sure that it’s, correct?”

I nod. She’s obviously disturbed by this, but in a way seems oddly unsurprised.

“For a long time now, there’s been movement of people around. Seemingly disappearing, without cause. The strange thing is these would be semi powerful people, suddenly disappearing from the map. If what you say is true, then it’s likely they’ve been doing this for a long time.”

Since she’s clearly on the same page as I am, I fill her in with all the data that I’ve collected.

Ultimately, we now come to the crux of the issue. I find myself speaking almost unconsciously.

“So, what do we do from here?”

“Well, we could save them still. I actually like your idea of still grabbing them but holding them in our area. It sounds like you saw a little bit of what was going on in those caves.”

Her voice and face turn grave, imparting the seriousness of her words to me.

“I assure you, seeing and hearing it in person is a completely different experience.”

A hint of doubt creeps into my heart, on whether I actually want to go through with doing this. I’ve never been good with scary things. Or willingly walking into locations that I know will be scarring or frightening.

I only walked into Gong’s area, because I somewhat trusted her and I was able to get a general idea of what was ahead of me. Though honestly, I could have been totally wrong and had a bad time.

Gong interrupts my thoughts, continuing on our previous words.

“You are correct in assuming that we would need to keep ahold of these people if we did decide to heal them. Honestly, I wonder if it would even be worth it to actually even heal them. Will have to keep a watch on them constantly, as you noted, but we also need to keep them somewhat happy and satisfied. Or at least busy. Which if they’re not cultivating, will be much harder to do and keep them happy.”

She thinks out loud to herself.

“Should I talk to big sis again? No, it’s too much risk doing that. Any further and it’ll start to strain our relationship.”

I speak up at her words.

“Maybe I should go and talk to her?”

A blank look goes across her face before a look of horror slowly overtakes it. Her head begins to shake slowly and more and more vigorously. She says nothing.

“OK, OK. Message received. I won’t talk to her.”

She seems to relax a little at my words, but is peeking at me slightly to see if willing to keep my word.

She pushes a little further, just in case.

“Seriously though, don’t talk to her.”

I just nod in response, almost to hurry her up.

She finally seems to relax and move on.

“Since that disaster in the making has been averted, let’s get back to the issue at hand.”

Now I’m just curious.

And a little scared.

Her face turns a little morose and sorrowful, as it’s clear she’s now moved on in her thoughts.

“… I believe, that we should wait until you guys have the cultivation methods for both yourselves and everyone else ready, before we move on this.

“The women down there… will not die anytime soon. If there’s anything those worms are good at, it’s keeping their victims alive.”

She goes silent, before adding, “And, if the groups have been managing this for this long, and it’s unlikely that the numbers of them will grow out of control. We’ll have plenty of time.”

She practically spits out the last sentence.

I can’t help but to ask once more.

“… Are you sure you don’t want to save the ones closest to us first? The ones that won’t cause issues with the groups?”

“It’ll be fine for a bit. If we move on some of them, there’s a chance the rest could get alerted and everything could tumble down in ways we couldn’t imagine. It’ll also give me time to build up the spiders to the right levels. I’ll have to let you know what the general counts are through our connection.”

She really looks frustrated at herself. And who wouldn’t, in her position? Watching her best friend go through that and finding out all this… causing you to have to wait even longer to save others from the same fate? I’d be raging against the world.

Huh… I guess this is a good opportunity to do the same thing she did for me.

“Hey Gong, could you lean down for a moment?”

She nods her head and leans down, almost subconsciously. Her mind is clearly still on this and the hair ripping situation.

As her body reaches my height, I step forward to her. She finally seems to recognize that I’m doing something, looking me in the eyes.

And I give her a hug.

She freezes for a moment. Shocked at the action.

“It’s okay Gong. We got this. I hate that we have to do this, but we’re going to make it through this wait. Together.”

There’s simply silence as she remains unmoving in my arms. I don’t let that bother me and continue to hold her.

After some time, I can feel her breath get more laborious as we stand there. Without me moving, she slowly wraps her arms around my back.

I can begin to feel my back getting slightly wet. Finally soaking through my clothes.

Out of habit, I begin rubbing her back.

It reminds me of the time that my sister and I were comforting each other, in the wake of Dad’s death. When we were truly alone, as a family. There were many times, both her and I broke down… unable to stand the pain and loneliness. The anger of not being able to bring them back. From being unable to stop Dad from giving up.

I find myself repeating, “It’s okay… we got this. We got this.”

This goes on for enough time that I lose track. After a while, Gong pulls back, her hands traveling along my arms, down to my hands. She loosely holds onto them, her eyes still wet with tears. Red and puffy.

Meeting my eyes, she gives a sad smile. Almost to show me that she’s okay. And hugs me quickly again.

I squeeze her hands, giving her a nod that feels so damn automatic to do. I’ve done it too many times by now.

Either way, the moment passes and we part, saying our goodbyes. Each heading to our respective beds, with brief words… but solid hearts.

It’s time to face the new day.

And to prepare.