Chapter Text
The darkness held a strange beauty when Jax’s eyes began moving within it.
Flashes crossed the glass and broke into impossible colors across the basement walls. Reds, greens, blues far too vivid for a place built to contain pain. Pomni watched as that light brushed over her hands, her knees, and the edge of the bench where she was sitting, and it comforted her to think that he still retained colors.
Jax floated on the other side with an almost hypnotic slowness. He approached, drifted back, disappeared for an instant among the shadows, and emerged again like a broken constellation. There was something terrible and delicate in that way of existing, something Pomni found painfully beautiful, like watching a whale from the depths. Except she knew who he was.
To the others, the abstracted looked alike: dark figures, glowing eyes, and bodies deformed by a pain the circus always translated with the same cruelty. But Pomni could distinguish him. She could be surrounded by all of them and still find Jax, even there, even like that.
Pomni swung her feet over the bench, letting her heels lightly tap the wood as she tried to find her usual tone. “Now that Caine is no longer the host, he participates in the adventures. We discovered that he is terrible at using his legs. Zooble took away his powers during a bet.”
She smiled at the memory and tapped herself on the forehead before continuing. “Oh, right. I skipped that part. How clumsy of me. Caine said he could make better cocktails than Zooble using his ‘extensive artificial intelligence knowledge.’ They tasted like fish. I’m still trying to understand how a strawberry drink ends up tasting like fish, but he managed it. I’m sure I would have done better.”
She waited only a second. Silence filled the place where Jax’s sarcasm would once have been, and Pomni swallowed before looking at her hands. Habit should have made that easier by now.
“Well,” she continued, a little more quietly, smoothing an nonexistent wrinkle in her skirt. “He was terrible on uneven ground. He spent more time on the floor than walking. I thought he would give up, but he made it to the end.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. Maybe coming that day had been a bad idea. Or perhaps that was exactly why she needed to be there. When she looked back at the glass, Jax seemed closer.
“You left a year ago,” she said, and the words came out slowly, almost without strength.
Jax did not respond. Pomni left the idea that he had moved closer undisturbed in a corner of her mind, because if she touched it too much, it could turn into hope.
She looked at her hands, intertwined over her lap, and continued speaking before she could regret it. “No one new has arrived at the circus. Caine said that if someone else used the headset, he would prevent them from being brought here. According to him, he lost control over that. But I think he simply stopped wanting to do it.”
She made quotation marks in the air and looked up with rehearsed mischief. “So the vacancy for ‘the funny one’ is still open. You can come back whenever you want, sweetheart.”
She said it in that challenging tone that once would have been enough to make him smirk, come too close, and reply with something that made her regret opening her mouth. But Jax continued floating.
Pomni let out a brief laugh, almost a scoff. “You still give me the same amount of attention as before the…”
She did not finish the sentence. The word abstraction remained suspended between them while Pomni forced herself to look at the tips of her shoes.
Guilt was always close to him, clinging to the glass and hiding in every visit. Pomni repeated to herself that the weight belonged to the circus, to time, or to tragedy, but never to Jax. Sometimes she managed to believe it.
Pomni looked up again with a smile more fragile than the previous one. “How about, when you come back, you adopt a new archetype? To update the format of this declining series. You could be the redeemed villain.”
Jax turned slowly while Pomni rested her chin on her knees. “One-dimensional characters are beneath you now, trust me. Everyone loves the villain who understands his mistakes and returns to be better than the protagonist. I’m sure you would enjoy stealing the spotlight from me.”
The silence answered for him. Pomni lowered her gaze, and this time she did not try to disguise it with a joke. “I miss you, Jax.”
The sentence remained small between them, simple and horribly true.
Everyone knew. Everyone respected her visits the way one respects something sacred, although no one dared to call them that. They knew she went down there to tell him the news of the circus and hold on to the possibility that some part of him could still hear her. Perhaps also to punish herself.
She had felt it that last time, when she entered his mind and brushed against something she should never have been able to reach. Jax was still there, lost, broken, and frightened in a way he would have hidden even at the edge of the end. And she had failed to hold on to him.
Pomni lifted her gaze and found him directly in front of her.
He was so close that the air seemed to become still. Jax’s eyes glowed on the other side of the glass, enormous, unreal, and beautiful in a way that almost made her angry. How could something so monstrous retain so much of him? How could he look at her like that, as if everything they still owed each other could live for one more second in that silence?
Pomni stood up without realizing it. Suddenly, she was beside the glass, separated from him only by that transparent sheet that protected and punished at the same time.
Jax leaned his body toward her. Pomni raised a hand and hesitated. She remembered the pain from the last time, the contact, the glitch, the feeling of breaking apart from within. But her eyes met his again, and the fear retreated enough to allow her to touch the glass.
The glass was cold, and Pomni hated it.
She hated that her hand found only that indifferent surface. That the warmth, the fur, the brush of long fingers closing around hers were missing. That the world could offer her such a perfect barrier precisely when she needed a crack.
Jax closed his eyes, and Pomni stopped breathing. For one absurd instant, he seemed to rest against her hand, as if he could feel her.
Pomni brought her face closer to the glass with almost reverent caution. She pressed her forehead against the cold surface and closed her eyes too. She could imagine him on the other side: his voice close to her ear, mocking her for becoming sentimental; his hand brushing a lock of hair aside only to ruin the moment with some unbearable comment.
She could imagine so many things, but none of them were enough. She even missed the pain, because the pain, at least, would have meant contact.
A crash echoed from above, and Pomni opened her eyes abruptly. Jax moved away, swallowed once again by the darkness and the scattered colors of his gaze.
The visit was over.
Pomni swallowed the knot in her throat and raised a hand. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Or as soon as the adventure is over.”
She took a few steps toward the stairs, but looked back one more time. Jax moved in the distance, almost invisible, and Pomni tried to give him a small smile. “Don’t go crazy without me.”
As she climbed, she already wished it were tomorrow.
When she reached the top, she crossed through the improvised fort around the entrance. It was a clumsy structure, full of fabric, little lights, and objects each of them had left there, as if all of that could soften the descent. A doorway through which to visit those who had gone and perhaps would never return. Pomni knew it, and she still kept hoping.
When she left the fort, she found Caine floating around an enormous table covered with blueprints almost six feet long, set squares, sketches, and small projections of impossible buildings. Every so often, he snapped his fingers, added a line to the blueprint, and then erased it, as if that line had disappointed him on a personal level.
Pomni remained at the entrance for a moment. She could still feel the glass against her forehead, and even though she was upstairs, part of her remained below. She raised one hand halfway as she approached. “Hi. You’re certainly working.”
Caine took a second to respond. He was adjusting the scale of a building that had an impossible spiral staircase on the outside. The staircase bent inward, emerged through a window, and entered again through the roof. “Of course! Gangle requested a futuristic isekai adventure with advanced science, built-in social inequality, and a prior school day to establish the emotional tone. I only partially understand why someone would want to begin an escapist fantasy by attending classes, but I admire the commitment.”
Pomni placed one hand on the edge of the table. Looking at the blueprint was easier than turning her head toward the fort. “So… something like cyberpunk?”
“With neon lights, moral dilemmas, and a moderate amount of suffering,” Caine replied, enlarging one area of the blueprint with a theatrical gesture. “Do not worry, it is programmed to last a maximum of three days.”
Pomni wrinkled her nose slightly. “That still sounds long.”
“Reducing the suffering to two and a half days affected the thematic structure,” Caine said.
“Of course. Unforgivable,” she murmured.
Caine snapped his fingers, and the prototype of an NPC appeared over the table: a pink chameleon with one robotic leg and one robotic hand. The chameleon tried to wave, moved the wrong hand, and left the robotic one hanging at its side.
Pomni let out a small laugh. “I thought you did this in your office, to preserve the mystery.”
“Gangle owns this adventure. If she wishes to correct something, it is most appropriate for the design to remain somewhere accessible.”
Pomni looked at the sketches, some drawn with Gangle’s soft and theatrical style. “And her roo…?”
“Not an option,” Caine interrupted. He returned to the blueprint with a stiffness too sudden to seem casual and moved a ruler two inches to the left, although he was not measuring anything. “Zooble and she are in a stage that, according to my data, is usually called the honeymoon phase. I prefer to work far away from sounds I never requested to hear.”
Pomni shuddered. “Yes. I think most of us have heard them at least once. Can you mute that?”
Caine looked at her, and it took Pomni a second to realize how it had sounded. She raised both hands before he could respond. “The walls, Caine. I mean the walls. Make them soundproof or something.”
“Pomni, you are free. You can create them yourselves or ask me to do it.”
“I’m asking you.”
Caine raised one finger, held it there for a moment, and lowered it. “Then yes.”
Pomni looked at him. “We all shouted, ‘Please, do something about that!’ at least three times.”
“No one phrased it as a technical request,” Caine replied. “That was a collective emotional outburst.”
Pomni took a deep breath. The pink chameleon raised the wrong hand again and hit itself in the face this time. She turned to look at it, and after a moment, Caine did the same.
Caine adjusted some controls over the blueprint, although nothing changed. “Did he appear today?” he finally asked, without looking directly toward the basement entrance.
Pomni continued watching the chameleon. “Yes. He came alone this time,” she replied, shrugging with too much care. “He seemed calmer.”
Caine moved aside a piece of the blueprint that did not need to be moved. “That’s good,” he said too quickly, and Pomni looked at him with one eyebrow slightly raised.
“You don’t know if that’s good.”
“No,” he admitted, “but it sounded like something that needed to be said.”
Pomni breathed out through her nose, almost laughing. “You’re improving.”
Caine tilted his head solemnly, as though he had received professional criticism. “That was mockery.”
“A little,” she replied, and for a moment the blueprint became only a blueprint again.
Pomni placed one finger over a tiny street. “I told him about your powers. About Zooble.”
Caine went still. “It was all part of the performance.”
Pomni continued pointing at the blueprint as if listing his physical misfortunes were part of the technical review. “You fell three times trying to climb a hill.”
“An artistic choice,” Caine replied.
“You got stuck in a fence,” she continued.
“Physical improvisation.”
“Gangle had to help you down from a tree.”
Caine raised one finger with dignity. “And I created a memorable story. If I had used my powers correctly, what would you have talked about today with our favorite rabbit?”
Pomni’s smile appeared out of habit and disappeared almost immediately. Caine noticed too late and carefully lowered his hand. “I’m sorry.”
Pomni looked toward the fort before finishing her response. “You didn’t do anything.”
Caine allowed the blueprint to continue rotating on its own. Pomni followed the small lights around the entrance with her gaze, unable to bring herself to look directly below. “It’s been a year today.”
Caine’s hand stopped over the table. “I know.”
Pomni nodded, unsure who the gesture was meant for. She ran her thumb along the edge of the blueprint and followed a blue line until it disappeared between two impossible buildings. “Sometimes it feels longer. Other times it doesn’t.”
Caine lowered himself slightly, without moving too close. “I could do something,” he began, but stopped when he looked at his own gloves. “I don’t know what.”
Pomni pointed at the chameleon. “You should fix it.”
“It is in the testing phase,” Caine replied.
“It just hit itself.”
“Precisely.”
Pomni smiled a little more this time, although the smile faded again, and she placed both hands on the edge of the table. “I still think I could have done more.”
Caine also placed one hand on the blueprint. For a second, Pomni could see the technical response forming within him: system limitations, completed abstraction, irreversible damage. Then Caine closed his mouth, and that gesture made her continue before she could regret it.
“The last time I spoke to Jax, I asked him to stay,” she said.
Caine lifted his gaze. “I thought you hadn’t managed to speak to him before.”
Pomni slowly shook her head. “Not before.”
Caine’s hand closed slightly around the edge of the table. “Pomni…”
“I saw him, Caine,” she said, and this time she looked at him. “Him.”
Caine held her gaze with too much care. Pomni did not need anything more to frown. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asked, although he lowered his gaze to the blueprint before she could answer.
“Like you’re checking whether what I’m saying fits somewhere.”
Caine kept his hands still. “I’m trying not to do it out loud.”
Pomni wanted to become angry, but the answer was too clumsy to seem cruel. “I told him to stay. I begged him. And he heard me.”
Caine did not respond, and Pomni pressed her fingers against the edge of the blueprint. “He heard me.”
“I believe you,” he said carefully.
Pomni watched him for a moment. “Do you believe me, or do you believe that I believe it?”
Caine took too long. “I’m trying to be precise.”
“You could try being kind,” Pomni said, and Caine lowered himself until he touched the floor.
“I believe that is what you experienced,” he said. “And I do not have a sufficient explanation to dismiss it.”
Pomni lowered her gaze. “That’s almost kind.”
“I accept partial progress,” Caine replied.
Pomni rubbed her eyes, exhausted as if she had been crying for hours. “It was the kindest thing he ever did for me: listening to me, even though he couldn’t come back.”
Caine said nothing. Pomni saw how his hands moved by instinct and how he forced them to stop. That time, the attempt was enough. “I’m going to look into a few things.”
Pomni lifted her gaze too quickly, and Caine noticed it too. “I’m not promising anything,” he added.
“But you’re going to look.”
“I’m going to look.”
Pomni nodded. She did not smile, but the tension in her face eased slightly. “Thank you.”
Caine snapped his fingers, and a small music player appeared in the air, with headphones wrapped around it. Pomni took it before asking. “It has enough volume to block any indecent displays of affection occurring in nearby rooms,” he explained.
Pomni looked at the device and then at Caine. “That was kind.”
“It was also a technical solution,” he replied.
“Don’t ruin it,” Pomni said, and Caine solemnly closed his mouth.
Pomni walked away down the hallway with the music player in her hands.
— ✦ —
Caine waited until she disappeared before looking toward the basement entrance. Pomni was not lying. That did not mean she was right, but she had spoken with too much detail, too much conviction, and too much Jax to leave it in a corner of the system.
The blueprints disappeared with a snap. The pink chameleon remained floating for one more second, confused, before disappearing as well.
First, he would investigate. Then he would decide what to do with the truth.