The Last Conjura

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

RYUU

I could feel it

The warm wind slowly whooshing around me.

I could hear it

The rustling figs of barley and wheat gently smacking against themselves in the steady wind. 

Was I bare-foot? It’s almost like the sand between my toes completed the ethereal feel of wherever I was right now. When my eyelids lifted open, I could see it too.

My surrounding had this sort of western touch to it. Like the type of place a Wild Wild West Movie would be—

*THWATTTTTTT*

My eyelids had barely batted open when a powerful force smacked me so hard across the face, I travelled a couple meters through the freshly trimmed barely.

“The hell?”

“Mind waking up a little quicker? We haven’t got all day” an unfamiliar voice piped up.

The blurry figure of an old-looking man appeared to be the only reasonable threat around me. 

Great. 

“Do I get no rest?” I muttered, picking myself up. “And who are you supposed to be?”

No response.

“Hello? Am I speaking to myse—”

*POWWWWWW*

“Argh”

A thunderous blow smacked the nonchalance off my lips, forcing me to my knees and nursing myself back to my feet. I guess this old looking man really did have some nasty tricks up his sleeve. Enough underestimating him. Does he really think he—

“Help.”

“Help me please”

Before I’d lifted my head, two very different voices caught my attention.

On one side was a young boy. A three, maybe four-year-old on his knees. He’d been hit multiple times. I could tell from the swollen areas on his face, and the bruises on his hands. On the other side was an aging man. Way older than the character I’d seen before. He was probably in his seventies, and though he wasn’t on his knees, his crouching posture looked a little discomforting. 

I thought he looked way better compared to the little kid, until I saw the blood trickling down his head.

“Tell me, Ryuu… how do you judge the value of one’s life?” the old man in the middle of the two dying figures echoed up.

“The hell do you think you’re doing.”

“The old man with most of his life behind him? Or the young child with so much to grow into? How do you weigh the life of—”

“Oi! Do you think this is a game, you old prick? Since when is the survival of others a question of who 'deserves' to live and who doesn’t?”

*CRACKLE*

Heh? Was that… fire?

“Since now.”

“Wait!"

"Choose Ryuu. The kid, or Grandpa."

"How do you expect to—"

"Time is of the essence."

I was stalling. I had no idea where I was, or what the hell this load of bull was all about. But if I knew one thing, it was that I could save them both. I was fast enough. All I needed to do was drag this conversation for as long as I—

"Time's up."

*BLAZEEEEEEE*

AH!

Right in front of me, he set both of them ablaze. Their cries slowly died into the background. 

“Life won’t wait for you to make—”

*POWWWWW*

I sprinted to him in the middle of his annoying little remark, and sent a right hook so powerful, he understood how annoying it felt, to travel through a field of barely.

“I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what this is. But I’m really starting to get pissed now.”

The fire he’d set had somehow encircled us, burning the barley around us in perfect circular fashion.

“Perhaps if you’d done that five seconds earlier, they’d still be alive.”

I glanced down to my sides, where the char of the supposed dead bodies should’ve been, but I saw nothing.

Wait a second. Was this some sort of mirage? Is… is that Ittetsu?

I looked back to the old man and he just kept staring at me. Laser-focused, he crouched a little.

“I’m guessing you’ve figured it out?” he smiled.

*GRRRRR*

The ground beneath me began feeling a lot less sturdy. Almost like it was quicksand, and in an effort to look at what was really going on, I took my eyes off the old hag for a split second. 

*FLICK*

“How exactly do you judge the worth a life, Ryuu Kurja” echoed through a room engulfed by darkness.

This was definitely some sort of mirage. 

*FLICK*

“I know him. Yes, I do.” 

This time, I knew that voice. Old, shaky, very familiar.

*FLICK*

The second a bright enough light lit the room up, I saw her.

“Miss Wong?”

She was seated across a table, on the opposite side of a character backing me. 

“And where would you say you know him from?”

“He used to work for me” she answered.

Were they talking about me?

“How long?”

“A couple weeks”

“Miss W—”

*SMACK*

I tried walking closer, but smacked against something before I could get to her. The hell was this? Some transparent wall or something?

“During the time he worked for you, would you say there was anything that didn’t add up about him? Anything fishy?”

“Not exactly. There really wasn’t much I knew about the boy’s life. Ryuu was pretty dense.”

Ouch.

At least now I knew they were talking about me.

“Try thinking a little harder miss” the character said, a little less lightly. 

“There really is nothing else left to think about if I'm being—”

*THUD*

He smacked his fists against the wooden table, and it startled Miss Wong a little.

“You’re not thinking hard enough” he muttered in-between his teeth. “Here, maybe this will jog your memory.”

*TWATT*

From the opposite side of the table, he grabbed her by the hair, and smacked her, face first unto the wooden counter.

The fuck was that?

“Hey! Open up!” I banged the transparent wall, but neither of them payed me attention.

“Argh. I told you, I don’t –”

*BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG*

He kept smashing her head across the table, worsening her state with every impact.

“Hey! Miss Wong!”

“You’re only making this harder on yourself, Miss. Try to remember.”

“I can’t—”

*BANG*

“Try harder”

She raised her head and locked eyes with… with me. She was seeing me?

Blood trickled down her head but she didn’t wipe it off. Just kept staring straight at me.

“Who are you, Ryuu Kurja?” she said with zero emotion, and the second her head plopped down to the table for the last time, the interrogator turned to lock eyes with me. It was the same old man.

My breathing intensified.

“How would you judge the value of one’s life, Ryuu Kur—”

"Enough!"

*SMASH*

*SWOOP*

The aim was to smash a whole straight through that transparent glass? Blank space? Whatever the hell it was…

But I couldn’t.

The second my hand went through, my setting changed.

The sky got a lot closer, and the tense breeze became a lot harder to inhale. The altitude… it had increased.

I glanced down and noticed it. I was atop a building, if I’d stepped any further I’d fall off. 

This wasn’t a mirage.

It wasn’t Ittetsu either.

“How would you judge the value of one’s life” the aged voice echoed once more as the wind softly blew against me.

That’s when I realized what this actually was. 

I was in “The Simulation.”

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

FLASHBACK

TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO

“Ughhhhhhh. It’s two in the morning. What sort of training do you call for by two in the—”

*SWATT*

Adachi smacked me over the head, and my eyelids immediately lifted open.

There was no way I wouldn’t hit him back.

*GRAB*

He held my hand up before it could travel anywhere near his face.

“Ever heard of what happens when you fight fire with fire?”

“Keep your little tales for someone that cares about them, you—”

“You can’t win every fight” he lifted me like I weighted nothing. “Has that never occurred to you?”

After a couple seconds of futile struggle, I stopped. Not because what he was saying made sense to me, not yet at least, but I was beginning to get increasingly tired of these bouts of training that I felt weren’t leading me anywhere. 

He let me go, and I dropped to the mat. 

“The Simulation” he began. “It’s one of the toughest, if not the toughest challenge I’ve ever faced as a protector. Ironically though, it’s the easiest challenge in existence” he said, quitting the little doodle he’d started on the board across him. “The simulation is a challenge that tests the threat level of its subject, which is most often a protector. Let’s say, you’re not exactly the most level-headed person on the Plainfield. Or you’re not the best when it comes to quick thinking. The simulation uses three vivid scenarios to judge whether or not your indecisiveness or relative weakness, as the case may be, could potentially  become a maximal threat."

“And let me guess, you aced it?” I emotionlessly asked.

“Seventeen percent. It was good enough to allow me scale through. Acing the simulation would mean you possess colossal threat potential."

"Is this the part where I ask you how you did it? How you beat the simu—”

“You can’t beat the simulation Ryuu” he said with a straight face. “That’s the whole point. It wants to fool you into thinking that something can be done, by presenting two mutually exclusive options. But you lose either way” he said, and I was silent.

“There’s no way to win.”

“You don’t have to win” he whispered.

“It’ll present you with choices that make it look like it’s virtually impossible to make the right decision . But that’s because there is no right decision. To scale through, you don’t think outside the box. As a matter of fact, if you want to pass, you gotta use the box instead.”

“That makes no sense.”

“And that’s the only way you win, Ryuu. You do something that makes absolutely no sense. Something that breaks the simulation from the inside-out. It’s your only hope.”

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

“How do you judge the value of ones life, Ryuu Kurja?”

That voice dragged me back to the present. 

Even before I lifted my eyelids, my ears perfectly described my situation. 

I was atop a tall building.

The voices in the background were of two different natures.

On one side, was a baby. Her cry was relatively easy to identify. It was unsteady, full of fear and uncertainty.

One the other side, was a middle-aged man. His cheery voice gave me the impression that he wasn’t scared to jump, or rather, be booted off. 

This last test was relatively easier to pass.

All I had to do was swing over to the toddler in time. After all, in this situation, her life was of more value, right?

No!

That’s what they wanted me to think. But it wasn’t that straight forward. It couldn’t be.

How would I judge the value of one’s life?

How would I judge the value… of my life?

I jumped.