Chapter Text
Rock waved off his parents’ departure with his usual carefree attitude. They would return tomorrow after visiting with some friends whose travels brought them to the city. Rock was not interested in tagging along to follow older adults as they spoke about events before his birth. It wasn’t like Lou and Tei couldn’t trust him to remain alone at the Lei Over Inn. Nami was a responsible young woman and could handle everything for the one day they would be away. She seemed uncomfortable being left in charge of the inn. As Tei and Lou vanished from sight on their path to the mountain pass, the young blonde eagerly turned to Nami.
“Nami, listen! I know something really fun we can do tonight! I heard about it from a friend in the city. Everyone there is playing it,” he babbled to the frowning young woman. Since he had Nami’s attention, he quickly explained the game to her. The details of the ritualistic game quickly deepened her frown. Rock could tell he was losing her but couldn’t play alone.
“C’mon, Nami, please,” he pleaded, doing his best impression of a kicked puppy.
“It just doesn’t sound like a good idea,” Nami mumbled, running a hand through her short locks.
“Pfft, it’s just a stupid game. The worst that could happen is I fall asleep with a candle. And that won’t even happen with you around! Please, Nami! It’s our only chance to play with Lou and Tei out. The Pumpkin Jamboree is the perfect time, too!”
“Fine,” her exasperated sigh swallowed by his cheers.
Rock had already pinpointed most of the items he needed from around the inn over the past days. He had a candle, matches, an electric box fan, two large mirrors, a bucket, a mug, and an old alarm clock he never used. The chairs were what stumped the young man. The chair meant for him didn’t need to have a back on it, but how would the mirrors stand without support?
The thought of asking Lumina for the manor’s expensive plush chairs had crossed his mind. But then he saw the farmer had some brought in to expand their house. The farm was way closer than the manor in lugging chairs around, and the less work, the better. While Nami went to fetch the chairs, Rock prepared his room for the evening. He collected every blanket he could hang from the windows until no light from outside leaked into the room. Upon Nami’s return, Rock explained the ritual’s rules as he arranged the chairs. One chair for him was placed in the center between the other two, holding the mirrors in their seats.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Pfft, yeah! Are you a scaredy-cat like Lumina? It’s just like playing Bloody Mary as a kid. There’s nothing to it,” he laughed. Her frown told Rock she wasn’t entirely buying his words. If it was such a pointless game, why would he be going through so much work to do it? Not working was his entire lifestyle. His lackadaisal smile slipped into place as he added, “C’mon, you know how much I love courage games. This one is really popular right now.”
Her blue eyes rolled at him before Nami headed downstairs. Rock followed behind her, eager to eat the food Lou left them for dinner. After dinner, Nami and Rock settled in her room to read scary stories. Somewhere around midnight, the redhead had fallen asleep. Rock spent the last few hours before he played the game fighting against his conscience. Part of him wanted to come clean to Nami and tell her everything. But it would be so much easier to play this game and let no one know he had worries. He had a reputation to uphold in Forgotten Valley, after all. Rock shook Nami awake before lighting the candle right at 3:30 a.m. He almost hoped the failsafes failed, and he had to cancel everything as he opened Nami’s door.
The door to his room stood open, the inside pitch black beyond the reach of the hall light. Rock stepped inside, turning the box fan on its lowest setting. As the electric fan hummed to life, Rock flashed Nami a smile before closing the door between them. He cautiously walked to his seat. Keeping the flame shielded from the fan’s breeze took more maneuvering than he thought it would. Rock heaved a short sigh of relief once seated, and the candle’s wick still burned. Golden eyes squinted at the floor ahead of him. The alarm clock stood next to the bucket of water where the mug floated. It looked like he had entered his seat within three minutes.
Rock sat in silence for a moment; his gaze focused on the candle's flickering flame in his hands. He had been able to play everything off to Nami as if this was one huge Pumpkin Jamboree game. She was probably still expecting him to pull some prank. Movement in his peripherals told Rock the Queen and Fool had arrived in their seats. His golden eyes lifted from the flame to stare straight ahead, fighting the impulse to look at the mirrors to his sides and confirm their presence. Rock swallowed, struggling to ignore the chill down his spine. The blonde slowly took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He took extra care to make sure his exhale didn’t extinguish the candle. It was time to play.
“What is my name?”
“Is it Rock Lei?” both sides' voices imperfectly overlapped. Rock fought to keep from grimacing. Their answer had already pinpointed his concerns.
“Are Tei and Lou my parents?” he hated the quiver in his voice. To everyone else in the valley, Rock could appear confident and claim them as his own. But, he wondered. Even before he began to bleach his hair blonde, Rock never felt he looked much like the boy pictured in Tei and Lou’s room. They never asked him to call them mom or dad, and Rock could not recall calling them anything other than their names. His memories of childhood, in general, were a murky mess.
“You don’t look much alike,” a voice to his right sneered.
“In some cases, the apple does fall far from the tree,” whispered the seat to his left.
Rock bit into his cheek. They were only repeating things he had heard or said for years.
“Did he fall from this family tree?”
“What makes parents? Is it blood or bonds?”
“Are they not meeting expectations?”
“He is the one failing expectations.”
“Matthew would make a better son.”
He caught his head mid-turn and focused his attention back to stare in front of him. Rock’s blood boiled at the taunt. None of his friends in the city who spoke about the game shared anything like this. From their stories, people merely sat in the dark and had their questions answered. Sure, it was with other questions in some tellings, but these weren’t questions. The beings to either side were doing much more than that. From the corner of his vision, Rock was certain the entity to his right had a grin.
The young man struggled to fight down his anger at their antics and reword his question. The Queen and Fool’s constant whispering made it hard for him to focus. Their words were said just low enough that Rock couldn’t make them out. And when he thought he recognized a word, the following became an unknown language. Rock only had an hour; he needed to focus. His gaze slipped down to focus on the tall candle in his hands. White wax dribbled down the sides, pooling against his clasped hands. How long had he been sitting here? He hadn’t noticed the wax pooling and trailing rivulets across the back of his hands. Rock felt a cold sweat bead on his forehead at the thought of lost time.
“Did Lou give birth to me?” he croaked, trying to keep his hands from shaking.
“Why do you doubt?” asked the voice to his left as the one on the right snickered.
“Could you please just answer with a yes or no? Was I born to Tei and Lou?”
“Yes,” Rock’s eyes shifted to stare into the mirror on his left at the response. Relief flooded him at the confirmation before he realized his mistake. The grinning face staring back at him from the mirror’s polished surface was not his own. In place of his image sat a form with clothes hanging loosely from its frame. A bleached white skull stretched the meager straps of sinew, holding its jaw in place to speak. “We can always answer questions with only yes or no.”
“But where’s the fun in that?” a voice from behind questioned, cupping Rock’s chin in a firm grasp. The smell of something metallic stung his nose. Rock strained against the grip, attempting to turn his head from the skeleton’s image as it stood and stretched through the frame toward him. In desperation, his golden eyes flickered to the candle’s flame. If he could put it out, then maybe they would disappear. Before he could act, his head was tilted back against the shoulder of the creature behind him. Her face blocked Rock’s view of the candle. She would be as ethereal as depictions of the Harvest Goddess if it weren’t for her smile. Two rows of sharp teeth stained crimson covered the lower half of her face.
“Let’s play for longer,” she crooned into his ear.
“Rock!”
“Nami?” he questioned the faint voice.
“Too late,” the Queen and Fool’s voices hissed, drowning out her calls and knocking on the door.
“Rock!” Nami called again, her temper sparking with the blonde. She angrily opened the door to enter the darkened room. Forget-Me-Not Valley was already dark compared to the city’s lights, but she was surprised at how dimly lit the room was. The heavy blankets Rock used to block the windows allowed no light to filter in from the outside. She could barely see his silhouette framed by the candle’s flickering flame and the hall light. The redhead scowled and flipped on the light switch before storming forward to face him. Rock’s eyes were closed, and the candle held loosely in his grip had dripping wax down his hands. How he could sleep in such a position was beyond her.
“Get up and in bed,” Nami demanded, shoving his shoulder.
The blonde could sleep anywhere and anytime, but Nami had never known him to be a heavy sleeper. Her hand shaking his shoulder should have roused him. Even if it were a joke to scare her, a smile would have been pulling at the corners of his mouth by this time. Rock wasn’t a lot of things by choice, but acting was one of the things he lacked most. Panic rushed through her every nerve like a tidal wave pulling her into its depths.
Nami frantically tapped against Rock’s face, trying to elicit a response. His face felt clammy and cool despite the fan behind him having gone off. In desperation, her blue eyes caught sight of the water bucket with a mug floating in it. She grabbed the cup to fling water on the young man. Water dripped down his face from the few locks of blonde hair that were drenched as well, yet Rock was still unresponsive. Nami fought the shaking in her hands to lean forward and place her head on his chest. Weak thuds accompanied by a slight rise and fall of his chest told her he was alive for now. She needed help.
It couldn’t have been a week. Time couldn’t just go on as if nothing had happened.
Nami could still feel the recoil of Rock’s chest beneath her hands as she administered CPR when his breathing stopped. Her arms still ached days after watching Dr. Baddoch take over. The anguished faces of Tei and Lou returning home to see their only son being prepared for immediate travel to the city were etched into her mind.
She had done her best to explain what happened to Officer Harris, Tei, and Lou. She knew the vague details of the game Rock played but not what occurred in the room to leave him in such a state. His parents didn’t blame Nami despite her wishes for them to. She should have never agreed to help him. Their anger would make Rock’s continued coma so much easier to bear. Instead, Tei and Lou continuously thanked her for being there for Rock and fueled her self-loathing.
“I understand. Everything is fine here; take as long as you need,” Nami absently responded before hanging up the phone.
“How is he?” the farmer anxiously asked. They had spent every free second hanging around the inn and Nami since Rock was taken to the hospital.
“Still unresponsive, his brain activity decreased further. The doctors don’t think he’ll wake up.”
She could feel her throat closing as tears filled her eyes. Nami fought against her feelings to focus on the task at hand. She grabbed the set of clean blankets and stomped upstairs with the farmer on her heels.
“Nami, are you sure-”
“I need to find out what happened and how to fix it. This is the only way,” Nami firmly stated, covering her windows in preparation. Behind her, three chairs stood ready for 3:33 a.m.