As soon as the rain lets up, Yongguk is eager to leave the shelter of the wolf den. You follow reluctantly, stretching out your stiff limbs after being crouched down for so long, and you notice that the forest isn’t nearly as dense as you remember it being. A paved road now runs through an open clearing to your left, and this is exactly where Yongguk is headed.

    The first couple of miles down this featureless road are walked in silence. You consider asking Yongguk where the road leads, but you quickly realize that he probably doesn’t know, either. It makes you feel helpless, travelling such a long distance without knowing where, if anywhere at all, you will end up. With your bag still slung over your shoulder - the only thing to remind you of home - you fidget with its strap, adjusting the bag’s position against your hip.

    “What if this is just a waste of time?” you finally ask as the two of you trudge your way up the side of a hill, “There’s no telling how much farther this road travels. What if it doesn’t even go anywhere?”

    “Time isn’t something you should be too worried about right now,” he advises, “And if the system made a road appear like this, we might as well follow it.”

    “That sounds an awful lot like a trap to me.”

    He suddenly looks amused, but shakes his head to dismiss your concerns. “There are times to be paranoid, and there are times to move forward. Being able to navigate the system and differentiate between the two is something that might take you a while to get used to.”

    “How is it that you know so much about this place, yet at the same time you can’t give me any solid answers? What the hell is the ‘system’ anyways?” you ask, as the question has been burning in your mind for a while now.

    "This world, this game, whatever this place is, it must be controlled by something. The system is intelligent. It learns, it adapts, and it strategizes to defeat you," he tries to explain, but then looks you over for a moment, "It's gotten bored of me by now and has found its new player one, so I no longer have the strongest influence over the challenges in this place... You do.”

    You’re dumbfounded by his statement. “So if I don’t want to keep walking down this road...?”

    “I’d say it already knows.” Yongguk stops walking as you reach the crest of the hill, and you follow his gaze towards a quaint looking town hidden on the other side.

    In the streets below, you find yourself unsettled by how normal everything seems. Being surrounded by civilization again should have been a comforting experience, but instead you are left with the feeling that there is something intrinsically wrong with all of it, something that you can’t quite identify. You are also immediately aware of how empty it is.

    Interlocked bricks weave a pathway through the heart of the ghost town, past cracked wooden benches and rusty sign posts upon which flakes of paint hint at street names that have long since worn away and become illegible. You hear the trickling sound of running water and round the corner of a building to find a circular fountain in working order. Someone stands across the road from it and, startled by her presence, you stop and look at the peculiar woman. She wears a long flowing dress, but is blindfolded by a scarf of red fabric covering her eyes.

    “Why is...” you begin to speak, but Yongguk cuts you off.

    “I know what you’re thinking, but that isn’t a person. It’s a sprite - a character created by the game, to use your own analogy. All just part of the system,” he explains, “That’s Fortune, a blind goddess that controls the wheel of fate and distributes favours at random. You could try talking to her, but be careful. One should never tempt fate...”

    You glance at him warily, then decide you might as well give it a shot. Crossing the cobblestones, you stop a few feet from Fortune’s outstretched hand.

    “That’s a beautiful necklace you have,” you say politely, noticing the piece of jewelry that is webbed with silver spokes.

    The breeze catches the material of Fortune’s dress in such a way that the fabric seems to ripple like liquid, and in an equally fluid motion she runs her finger along the edge of the round pendant hanging from her neck, sending the wheel spinning. The motion is inexplicably captivating, and you don’t notice yourself staring into the wheel until Fortune reaches out to you, a small silk pouch held within her grasp. The wheel hasn’t stopped spinning yet, but you take the pouch in your palm and thank her for it cautiously.

    Unsure of whether you should open it, you turn with a start as Yongguk taps on your elbow, and he gestures for you to leave.

    “That’s interesting, that she would give you something,” he comments as you make your way further into town, “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. There’s no telling whether it will even be something helpful.”

    “Should I open it?” you ask, holding the drawstrings of the pouch between your fingers.

    Yongguk shakes his head. “If it’s a gift from Fortune, you’ll know when to open it.”

    You chew your lip and slip the silk pouch into your bag for safekeeping, curiosity burning away at the back of your mind. It would be tough to get your mind off of the mysterious bag, if it weren’t for your grumbling stomach reminding you that you haven’t eaten all day. Should have made those eggs, you think to yourself.

    Yongguk either hears your stomach and politely pretends not to, or he too is hungry, for he leads you to the door of a brightly coloured diner. The rainbow of pastel colours found upon its inner decor is reminiscent of an era many decades past, and there’s something homey feeling about the restaurant. There is a jukebox in the corner, and Yongguk lazily presses a button as you walk by it. A doo-woppy tune fills the storefront as you each take a seat at a leather booth, and you are startled when a waitress appears, holding out a menu.

    “Welcome,” she says. Her face seems frozen in an almost pleasant smile - almost, if it weren’t so strangely stuck that way. Her name tag reads ‘Sunny’.

    Yongguk takes the menu for a moment before handing it right back, and the waitress disappears momentarily to the kitchen only to return holding a tray with two burgers, each with fries and a milkshake on the side, and she sets them on the table in front of you. As she walks away, you give Yongguk a confused look.

    “We didn’t order anything...”

    Yongguk grins as he pops a french fry into his mouth. “The thing about sprites,” he explains as he unscrews the lid of a glass ketchup bottle, “Is that they follow a set order of actions. They’re essentially programs after all, following the commands they are built upon. Boring ones like “Sunny” here will repeat these actions in a continuous loop. More interesting sprites, like Fortune, have more complex cycles. There are variables involved in their actions, things that make them harder to predict. Might even give you the false impression that they are capable of making decisions.”

    Yongguk finally wins his battle with the ketchup bottle, and a pool of the red goop lands next to his burger.

    “Eat up,” he gestures at your plate, “Food isn’t always this easy to come by.”

    You sip on the chocolate milkshake in front of you with newfound appreciation, and the two of you finish your meal in silence, save for the blaring brass accompaniment to the voice coming from the jukebox.

    “Welcome,” the waitress reappears a short while later with a menu in her outstretched hand, and Yongguk checks his watch. 

    “Twelve minutes,” he says in amusement, and you’re not sure what he means. “This sprite’s loop,” he clarifies, ”It’s only twelve minutes long. Pretty unimpressive; probably a very minimal set of commands.”

    When neither of you take the menu, the waitress turns on her heel and walks away. Yongguk tosses his napkin onto his plate and stands to leave, but before following him you are distracted by the jukebox that is still lit up and playing music. You pause in front of it on your way out, pressing the buttons to flip through the pages listing all the songs in its repertoire. But behind the trumpets and glamorous vocals of the woman on the track, you hear what almost sounds like maracas, except faster, and coming from behind the jukebox rather than from the speakers. When you peer over the side of the music machine to find the source of the noise, it’s already too late.

    Yongguk runs back inside at the sound of your voice as you cry out in pain. The fang marks in your left arm travel deep, and the snake now perched atop the jukebox looks far from happy. Yongguk’s eyes widen, and he carefully edges closer.

    “Just slowly walk towards me; don’t turn your back to it,” he says, and you shoot him a petrified look.

    “I can’t feel my arm,” you say, and your panic-stricken voice only depends his frown.

    “It’s all in your head, you know it’s not real,” he reasons as he takes a step closer to you, reaching out with one hand. “Just come a bit more this way, that’s it just-“

    You scream as the snake strikes out a second time, but Yongguk rushes forward to shield you. Its fangs sink into his right shoulder blade, and the snake flails violently before dropping to the ground and slithering off to the back of the diner. You watch in horror as Yongguk’s face pales, and his grip on you loosens as the muscles in his bitten arm already begin to lose function.

    “Come on now, don’t do this,” he smiles at you ruefully through the pain, “Don’t believe.”

    You know exactly what you just saw, however, and the snake that just bit you both was as clear as day. The searing pain in your arm is plenty enough to make you believe your own eyes and if that snake had succeeded in delivering even one more dose of venom into your system you doubt your heart would still be beating. You’re sure that Yongguk has just saved your life, or at least prolonged it by a few minutes until you can figure out what to do. But the more you settle upon this resolve, the more you see the strain in Yongguk’s expression, and you wonder if his pain is really just a product of your own mind.

    Yongguk sinks down to the floor, and your back slides down the wall following his descent. He clutches his wounded arm, maintaining a stony expression though his breathing is shallow, and you take note of how much closer to his heart his bite is compared to yours.

    You’ll know when to open it, Yongguk’s voice echoes in your memory, and you frantically claw through your bag with your one good arm until you feel the silky pouch Fortune gave you. Dumping its contents onto the ground, you find two small plastic packages, and although you are left confused as to what they are, Yongguk’s breath catches in surprise. Within each package is a small syringe.

    “There’s no way,” he says, though there is a hint of excitement in his voice, and you know suddenly what he’s thinking. He could very well be wrong about what is contained within the syringes, but even if he is you know it can’t leave you any worse off than you already are.

    He grabs one of the packages and rips the plastic open with his teeth, pulling off the protective cover from the needle within. Setting it into the palm of his bad arm for a moment, he flicks the needle a few times to ensure that there was no air inside, then passes it to you.

    “Find a good vein on your arm, take the needle, and inject the anti—venom,” he orders as he proceeds to rip one open for himself.

    “What?! I can’t do that!” you reply, your hand shaking as you hold the syringe above your lap.

    “You have to!” he shouts, “You’ll die if you don’t get the vaccination!”

    “I thought you said this wasn’t real!” Your grip around the needle tightens, and you glance between its sharp tip and your bare arm frantically.

    “You’re too scared; your mind has made it real,” he tries to explain, “The toxins will take effect on your body until your nervous system goes into complete paralysis, and you’ll go into respiratory failure.”

    Angry purple lines seep outwards from the bite wound as the poison spreads into your circulatory system. Time is ticking. All it would take was one quick poke, you try to convince yourself. But even as you eye the drop of liquid clinging to the bevel of the needle, you can’t bring yourself to do it. You watch as he stabs an identical needle into a vein near the surface of his inner elbow, wincing slightly as the fluid enters his bloodstream.

    “You do it!” you cry desperately, hands shaking as you try to hold the needle steady against your vein.

    “You have to do it yourself!”

    “I can’t!”

    “Yes you can!”

    “No!”

    He grabs your hand and forces the shaft into your arm.

    “Now push!”

    You push your thumb down on the plunger until the barrel is empty, and you can’t tear your eyes away from the needle currently imbedded into your arm. All your extremities have gone ice cold with adrenaline, and your heart hammers away at an alarming rate against your ribcage. Yongguk quickly pulls your wrist so the needle comes out, and it drops from your shaking hand.

    You wait as a numbing sensation spreads throughout your arm. The discolouration around the bite begins to disappear, and you are left with a drowsy feeling. Your limbs feel as heavy as lead and you can hardly even lift a finger. 

    His heavy panting matches rhythm with your own as he sits beside you, equally paralyzed - half from the toxins, half from the shock. You glance at each other as your breath gradually begins to slow down, and the side effects of the vaccine start to wear off.

    “See?” he pants, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

____
>ophidiophobia [ōˌfidēōˈfōbēə] the fear of snakes
>trypanophobia [trɪˌpænəˈfōbēə] the fear of needles/injections