Chapter Text
To get this out of the way, this statement is not about me. I’m not sick or ill or feeling unnatural by any means, so this isn’t for me. This is for, about someone I know — knew. I don’t have a good idea about his current state nor do I think you’ll ever find out, but they haven’t taken his bed out of our dorm. If I didn’t come here then after they dismantle the frame and carry out the mattress and sterilize the linens there’ll be no evidence of him.
Tabi — Tabi 382, wanted me to come here anyways. So here I am.
I don’t think anything could make me understand what happened. I don’t think anything you know will help you find him if you’re still even searching, the End’s bigger than what the simulations let us think. If you gave up on him then I wouldn’t blame you. You aren’t search and rescue teams after all. The glitch and abnormality branch, right? Hah. Well, it’s the best I could expect from this place, considering what happened wasn’t remotely related to speedrunning. I bet he didn’t remember any bit of our lectures before he went wherever he did; he didn’t even know how to beat the Ender Dragon.
But it’s not like that mattered in there. Maybe he chose that world on purpose. Knew somehow that it was hollow. Maybe he — oh, yeah, sorry, my bad, I’ll get back on track. I do remember the policy about full names, it’s just … hard, thinking about him and. Sorry.
Evbo was one of my roommates. He showed up with two other newbies, obviously not with us anymore; Jojo Solo and In-fume MC, they ranked up on the first day, and so it was just us in Coal rank. Me, Tabi, and him.
That lasted for a few months, maybe a year and a half, I didn’t keep track; you know how time is here. Neither of us knew his name at the end of the first month, and we still don’t because frankly, I don’t think any name he gave us was his. But I digress; after that first month, we and everyone around us all called him Evbo because that was the name he responded quickest to. No last name of course, and I don’t make a habit of memorizing ID numbers so I won’t be any help on that. When Tabi comes by, you could ask her.
She doesn’t know where he came from though. Not like I do or like anyone else does, that doesn’t make her special. Actually makes her apart of the norm; as far as I’m aware, nobody knew anything about his origins. A bit odd, stranger since he was a newbie, though we weren’t close to each-other then and he never acted homesick. He was fine back then. Kept being fine.
From what little I could gather he was parent-less too, another orphan, but he… he talked about it not like he lost something, but rather like he was unfamiliar with it. I don’t want to judge how he grieved. Maybe he lost his parents young. He certainly acted like it, like he never had any family at all.
He hallucinated. That’s unrelated to the previous thing, and — and it’s not like it mattered to me or like it’s important or exactly relevant, but maybe it could help you understand. He had compulsions, I think, I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist by any means, but he used to describe it as his ‘special sense’. Explained it as a sparkling white string he could follow wherever, some manifestation, one that could make him stop in an instant and turn one way or the other without another word. It never made sense regardless of how many times he tried explaining it. I doubt I’ll succeed where he failed.
The exact details don’t matter. You get the idea, he was just strange. Ask Tabi or In-fume or Jojo or hell, drag me in again and ask me to elaborate, I’m sure I’ll have more to tell when the time passes. He was —
Yes, this is important, this is context. I’m getting to my point. You just need to wait.
Why would I want to deny you anything? We have the same goals here. You want to know why he went missing. I do too.
Then where do you want me to start? The beginning? I literally was just at the — fine.
His first day. The simulation, it’s the earliest I recognized… when he came back from the run, he wasn’t … he wasn't —no, that can’t be right. That’s too early. It started to rise in the first winter he was with me anyways. The End was nothing but the origin. No one knew it then, and they still don’t know it now, and I am selfish. I want you to know. Show you what he showed me. I’m sorry.
Tabi wasn’t there. The Coal ranks is a small group, and it’s not your business on why there’s nowhere else I can go and as I established, Evbo had no place anywhere else but here. Two weeks. Maybe three. It could have been three. We were alone for three weeks.
The other ranks were there. Not all of them left, it’s statistically improbable, but Coal rank. We were alone.
I don’t remember that break. Evbo wasn’t there. Where he was I didn’t know and I don’t care. Out running, he told me once, brushing sweat off of his brow and smiling wider than necessary when I woke up to the door opening. I could have guessed without the explanation; he never smelled like anything but sweat and grass and what I thought of as brisk wind. And leather. Burnt leather.
He was sharper after that night. Iron, metallic, polished. A new cologne. It’s still there. I smell it whenever I go to his side of the dorm and sit on his unmade bed. It’s still so strong. I think it’s rubbing off on me.
That was halfway through winter. That was the first time. I remember it, I know it was, because — he had a rare eating disorder. His compulsions were a sign. A symptom. He was sick, ever since that first run, he was — it was a small cut. Not enough to get him a parasite. I watched him late at night. The kitchen was dark, darker than it should have been in there but even then I could see how much blood had seeped through the animal and onto the tile.
I don’t know what animal it was. His arms were soaked to the elbows. His teeth were normal. Normal, he looked the same, if he was eating anything else then he would have. Then he wouldn’t have been him. The kitchen was clean tomorrow. But he was never good at it; check the grooves.
It was for speed. A time save. In past runs I’ve thought about eating the raw meat too because eating it would be faster than cooking and being faster would mean being better. But it wasn’t efficient. Perhaps he actually had the nerve to act on that urge, and that was what I believed because if not, if I admitted the reality of this situation, then I would have to remember that night, and then I would need to talk to him about it, and there was nothing I wanted to do less than that.
He left more when winter began to melt away. I didn’t mind. Truthfully, I was glad for it. I was frankly sick of him at that point; his absence only made the thing grow slower.
The three of us shared a room. With Tabi gone, it left two occupied. Sometimes one, but that doesn’t matter. This closeness let me see his — I’m not a creep. I didn’t watch him every night. But when you’re unable to fall asleep and when you have a roommate who’s so strange... you would do the same.
Evbo had these dreams.
On the second to last day. The last morning. The distinction didn’t matter to me when I awoke to find Evbo staring down at me and touching my neck. I will not tell you what he dreamed; you have taken enough. His index and middle fingers were on my throat by the time I began to feel anything but my still blood. Elbow jabbed against collarbone. Feeling for my pulse I think. I never asked.
It started then. He always initiated it, checking for signs of life. Otherwise we never touched. But after winter, he began to grab my wrist so often, I learned to stop wrenching it out of his hand.
But that night. He did not need to say anything in order to pull me into the kitchen after him. The sky was bare against the window, dim moon outlining the table and the two plates of…
His hands were wet. I did not know it until then. Coating his fingers was something red. And slick. I could not look at it carefully as he would not let go of my hand, his grip strangling, choked, and I could not think to wrench my hand away when he would not stop talking. It took me time to realize it, dizzy from the sheer exhaustion, the table, and the dream.
And perhaps that was what Evbo was rambling about when he tugged my forearms and had me look at him fully, asking me in a voice I have never heard except in dreams and right after his runs, “Have you seen that too?”
I didn’t reply. I don’t think I could have. My throat was dry, my lungs choked, and I was — I was scared. Scared of my newbie dorm-mate who bumped into his bed-frame and tripped on his own shoelaces and was always later than I was to class. My hands were trembling. It was a very cold night. The raw meat did not help.
He would not stop talking. He had started, and it seemed to me that he was verging on desperation with his words, stumbling onto himself in that pleading, harried tone, breathing out the words “You do know it,” repeating them until the words lost their meaning, still pulling me, grip impossibly tighter around my wrists.
This close, I could see the sweat slipping down his face, mixing with his tears. In the dream, he did not cry over my corpse.
But we were not in that civilization yet. So instead I stumbled into the table with his guidance, the force used to push me into the chair making my exhale collide from my lungs, the plate rattling slightly as he peeled himself away and blocked the exit.
“Prove it to me,” he whispered. “Eat with me, and — and you’ll be my first, that memory, that diamond, you’ll see it and I’ll give you anything, anything —”
The blood had not begun to dry when he reached out and grabbed my face, his hands still moist as he tilted my head up and made me look towards the table again. By now, he was pressed against the side of my chair, his hoodie soft against my ear as he held me in place and made me answer his question.
Between the freezing night air and his slick warm hands, I could not save myself with a lie.
My gums were bleeding by the time I got the taste of it out of my mouth. He washed his hands right before I did so; the sink was already pinkish when I got there.
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Evbo wakes Seawatt up in the middle of the night and tells him that