“A what?” asked Jesse.

  Han Sung-hyuk instantly shook his arm free with the expression of someone discovering their bed was full of cold wet noodles.

  Lee Wai Meng brayed with laughter. “Oh my god, that makes so much sense!”

  “What’s a netkama?” Jesse asked again, quirking her eyebrows in a mixture of amusement and confusion. She grabbed hold of Wen Yong, flicking a rope that easily wrapped itself around him, binding him tight.

  “What’s your problem?” Angry_Birb demanded. Her… no, his voice was lower now. Still female – the avatar he had chosen was a woman, after all, but his tone became gruffer, masculine, angry. “Girls get carried all the fucking time! I want to survive, alright?”

  “That’s -!” I dropped my face in my hands. “Do you not see the problem…? Ugh… We don’t have time. Someone cover Wen Yong’s – Striking Red Crane’s ears, quickly.”

  Jesse clapped her hands over Wen Yong’s ears, a little harder than necessarily.

  “Are you going to sing, Mik Tsaam?” Lee Wai Meng asked, a little too eagerly.

  “SHUT UP!” Peach shouted.

  I didn’t want to start, but there was so little time left. My palms were damp. I wanted to tell everyone to stop staring at me.

  My wings evaporated into sparkling golden motes.

  “In the impression of this lamplight…” My throat tightened, dried, and my voice cracked. I coughed.

  Don’t cry, you fucking idiot.

  I felt two hands take mine. Small and pale, the nails painted peach pink.

  “What we see isn’t the truth… Turn off the lights so you can hear your heart clearly…”

  A faint golden glow began to envelop the listeners.

  “Let’s find each other’s missing pieces in the dark.”

  Peach began to laugh, and then cry. Or perhaps she was still laughing. Or maybe she had never even begun laughing in the first place.

  “Peach? What’s wrong?” I tried to reach out to her but she practically recoiled, and I reeled back in in return as if physically pushed.

  Jesse removed her hands from Wen Yong’s ears. “Are you guys okay?”

  “It’s just… so funny…” Peach’s breath hitched. “Mik Tsaam… came in so dra-dramatically. And then… she starts yelling about ne-ne-netkama…” She dissolved into hysterical tears.

  “One minute!” Lee Wai Meng wailed, tearing at his blue hair. “This stupid, shitty game! If I ever get out of here, I’m quitting the company!”

  I wanted to grab each and every one of my friends and hug them, but there was no time for all of them. And if I went to one, what about the others? I caught sight of Han Sung-hyuk standing alone, staring at Angry_Birb. What about him, too? I was frozen, stunlocked by indecision.

  “I’ll look after them,” said Jesse, meeting my eyes.

  I couldn’t form a coherent sentence. I looked to the sobbing Peach, and I was a teenager again, standing indecisively outside a classroom where Tommy sobbed alone and secret. I didn’t know why he was crying.

  I still didn’t know.

  What kind of friend was I?

  Useless. Undeserving.

  “Peach, I –”

  In an explosion of black feathers, seven ravens took to the air.

  The rope that had bound Wen Yong lay limp on the grass of the churchyard.

  The steeply of the church loomed above me. I felt dizzy, as though it were falling towards me in slow motion, but nothing moved except the small grey clouds drifting across the face of the moon. Just below the copper spire, teal with verdegris, stood a painted statue in an alcove.

  The pale face of Mary’s statue peered down at me with pity, or perhaps contempt. She clutched something to her red-clothed chest.

  Don’t look at me.

  The sky was lightening to grey.

  You can’t speak. You can’t laugh.

  Three and a half years.

  That was nothing. Hadn’t I been silent all through my childhood?

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I walked in silence through the waking countryside. Grey became blue, became pink, became gold above me. Birds I didn’t know the names of sang sweet and eager – “We made it through the night! We’re alive!” – and I couldn’t join them.

  I had to find somewhere away from everyone. Somewhere I wouldn’t be accidentally surprised into speaking.

  There were deep forests in these stories, right? I couldn’t see one right now, but if I kept walking, I might. I could even fly a little, maybe, once my skill cooldown had ended. If people saw me, perhaps they might think they’d seen an angel.

  An angel? Me?

  That’s funny, Maria.

  Mik Tsaam.

  What’s with that, calling yourself Maria like you’re some kind of saint?

  Farmland rolled slowly past, field of ripening barley stirring as the sun rose and the clouds scattered. Occasionally, a cart would trundle by, laden with hay or produce, pulled by a large horse in some shade of brown, and the cart driver (always a man) would nod a good morning to me with either a curious or speculative look in his eyes.

  After the fourth time, I left the road and walked through the fields.

  It was slow going, but I had years ahead of me.

  As I walked, my thoughts darted about like birds. Were the others safe? How was Jesse dealing with Wen Yong? Why had Peach cried like that? Where was Calvin?

  I opened the Kill Feed.

  For the first time, there were no updates.

  The last set of deaths I had seen –

  - were still the last set. Was this another damned bug?

  Wait. KuraiChuuGeemu?

  Oh. Han Sung-hyuk’s little sister…

  Don't think about it.

  I scrolled through the list. Around twenty names back, I stopped.

  How many names were there, exactly?

  I began again, counting the names silently in my head, trying not to dwell on those I recognised.

  Ninety-two.

  I counted again to make sure.

  That was a lot of names.

  With the eight of us in this scenario, that made a total of one hundred players all together.

  My steps slowed.

  One hundred was a nice, round number.

  The Kill Feed hadn’t updated recently.

  There were women playing supposedly male characters.

  Were we… the only ones left in the game?

  It can’t be. That’s just speculation.

  So why did my chest hurt? Why did my whole body begin to shake? I could barely control my limbs, stumbling and almost falling on the uneven ground of the field I was crossing.

  No no no no

  It can’t be.

  We’re only just past halfway through this whole thing. We can’t be the only ones left.

  Even if we are, they’re not really dead.

  They’re not –

  I can’t breathe.

  Pul yourself together.

  I’m going to die.

  Stop being pathetic.

  I’m scared.

  You’re useless.

  I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t –

  You can’t do anything.

  I can’t make a sound. Does that mean I’m not allowed to cry? You won’t even let me cry?

  Don’t you dare cry. It’s annoying.

  My throat spasmed.

  I was four, terrified of the dark but even more terrified of my mother. I crawled silently into her bedroom, curled up on the hard tiles under her clothing dresser, and slept folded up n my knees, forehead pressed to the cold white ceramic.

  I was seven, bundled in my bed, hearing her footsteps stalk closer and closer. Under the bedcovers, the demons can’t get you. But she can. In a moment, the fabric will rip as she tears the covers off me, and I’ll be –

  I’m eleven and my mother is telling everyone that I’m nothing special, I’m not pretty, I smell bad, I’m careless, I’m selfish.

  I’m fourteen and she’s screaming at me for questioning her. I’m sixteen and she slaps me for dressing like a ‘golden chicken’, a sex worker. I’m eighteen and she’s telling me I would never survive on my own, that I should never think to leave. I’m twenty-one and she’s watching me like a snake as I pack my bags. I’m –

  I heard a muffled caw.

  A raven landed on the ground before me. I hadn’t realised I was on my knees with my head pressed to the dirt; soil crumbled from my face as I lifted it.

  The shiny black bird before me held some thin strands in its beak, and I took them. Two short, one fine and blue, one coarse and black, and two long, a straight and peachy strand and a wavy, dark red one.

  I clutched them like a lifeline.

  The raven cawed again, swaggered over to me, pressed its head against my knee.

  Leave me alone. Don’t leave me.

  I forced my wrist into my mouth, the hairs of my friends clutched in my other hand.

  Don’t make a sound.

  I forced my sobs back down my throat, into my stomach, until I was sick.

  Two years passed.

  I think.

  I tried to keep track of the time. I scratched tally marks into the bark of the enormous oak I had chosen as my isolation spot. The urge to make a sound – to laugh madly, to scream – was sometimes almost unbearable.

  I was mad. Would I even still be a human being by the end of this?

  I bit my tongue when the snow piled up and the oak tree shed its leaves and I lay huddled in the hollow formed by its roots, under Camael’s Cloak. I covered my mouth when bears and wolves came sniffing round the base of the tree in early spring, while I sat as high as I could, barely hidden by the new leaves.

  I had been silent before, when it was safer to do so, when I needed to hide from my mother. Why was it so hard to be silent now?

  I wanted to sing with the birds. I wanted to laugh weirdly with the owl that sometimes roosted within earshot. I wanted to scream with the deer that scared me at night until I realised what it was making that terrible noise.

  Sometimes I imagined that my friends would appear amongst the trees, in human form, calling out to me, saying the three and a half years were over, or that they had worked out some other way of breaking the curse.

  I wanted to see Jesse. I didn’t want to see Jesse.

  Catching myself opening my mouth to talk to my oak tree one day, I slapped my face until it was raw and red. It didn’t stop me from almost talking again a month later.

  Sleeping passed the time. The days and weeks blurred as I slept until I was no longer sure of when I was. I woke with a start one morning at the sound of approaching hooves, too loud to be deer.

  And too late for me to do anything but hide in my tree.

  I crouched tensely as the procession of horses drew closer. It was a hunting party of some rich noble, it seemed, dressed in bright and rich fabrics. Excited dogs yapped and scampered about the horses’ feet, sniffing.

  One raced to my tree, and began to bark.

  It wasn’t long before the whole pack was there, baying.

  “Your Majesty! There’s a woman in this oak!”

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  If I pretended they weren’t there, would they go away?

  “What do you wish to do, Your Majesty? She’s beautiful, is she not?”

  What bullshit was this? Please just leave me alone!

  “He’s right, Your Majesty! You should take her with you! Hey, lady! Lady! Won’t you come down?”

  Would you come down if you were me, idiot?

  I glared at them.

  The band of men had parted to let a man dismount and walk forward, the most well-dressed of them all. But he looked entirely ill-at-ease in his finery, with his short, coarse black hair, his skin with its golden undertones, the monolids.

  Calvin stared up at me with sickened horror.