Two years ago, he had drunk too much. Simply because he drank out of such sheer grief, he was kicked out of his home and began living in the junkyard. He saw how the night darkened and the morning brightened more often than he ever cared to. While in the junkyard, he saved a bureaucrat and won a reward of 20,000 yev. After that, as if money attracts money, he bought a lottery ticket and won 40,000 vey. Then he gambled one more time. With a girl.
Emma Tyle.
After that difficult night, Emma's kisses were still on his cheeks. Her warm breath was in his bosom. He thought they belonged entirely to him. Until the night he introduced his best friend to her for a private evening. That was the night he was angriest at himself for drinking so much and leaving the two of them alone. It wasn't his fault. Betrayal was an act that took place in the heart, sometimes even in a single glance. Sometimes it was an action even before it was put into motion. Just as there was no difference between thinking about wearing obsidian glasses and actually wearing them.
The crystals in Steve Meyer's obsidian glasses had turned into a disco ball illuminating the twilight of the night. If only the girl who gifted him these lovely glasses wasn't that girl. He had stuffed a few obsidian knives into his shoulder bag and, after taking a few steps, tied his slippery shoelaces—also made of obsidian. The ground was warming him with a roar. Like some strange underfloor heating device. The smooth glass vest he wore couldn't withstand it and began to melt; now, everywhere smelled like plastic.
With every step he took, he felt the obsidian knives in his bag clashing against each other. Phrases he would say to his ex-girlfriend were swirling in his head. If he ever met her one day, he wanted to do more than just spit in her face. That shrill sound the blades made as they touched cut through his thoughts like a knife. Meyer, whose veins tingled with this sizzle, reached for the back of his neck and scratched it.
Since Bruno's cocktail invitation felt boring to him, he was glad he'd decided to slip away in the blink of an eye. The music coming from the party's foul-smelling speakers wasn't so much playing as it was reeking.
A Huyger made of basalt suddenly appeared before him and asked, "Where did you get the obsidians?" Then he leaned into Meyer's ear and whispered: "They look very cool."
Damn it, people took such strange pleasure in saying that, as if there were nothing else cool to be found in Meyer. Including Emma. Their first meeting and the bed that witnessed it... Damn it! Meyer said, "Hmm, yeah. They hurt a lot." Perhaps that meant I am hurting.
"So where are you going now?" Huyger asked, placing his hands on his hips. He had bent his dark bronze arms at a forty-five-degree angle. Though, Meyer calculated it as 30 degrees.
"While the world is burning, I mean..." Huyger chuckled at his own joke and zipped his lip. Immediately after, he rubbed his greasy belly, reached inside his clothes, and pulled out a beer.
"Don't tell me you stole that from the cocktail party," Meyer said, rolling his eyes. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say he rolled his glasses. Even if he didn't admit it, he was burning up inside. The voices of the women at the party danced incessantly in his ears. One was touching his rear, saying, "Baby."
"Are you there?" Huyger said, opening his mouth wide and baring his teeth like a dog. He waved his massive hand in front of Meyer's glasses.
"Right on the ice-cold surface of our planet," Meyer didn't miss the chance to mock him. It was just one of Huyger's classic, unfunny jokes. It was also ill-timed.
If the heat lasted a moment longer, it would have gripped Meyer insolently like hell itself. A drop of sweat fell onto the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses.
"How are things with your lady?" asked Meyer, snatching Huyger's beer. He couldn't find any other topic to talk about, and none of the mundane, absurd, yet lingering news he'd seen on the Crystal 7 channel was in his memory right now. He brought the beer to his mouth. The ice-cold beer of Huyger—whom he had just insulted for theft—refreshed his throat, and he didn't hesitate to drink it.
Huyger said, "My wife has been cranky ever since she gave birth. I thought this process only happened during pregnancy."
"It'll pass after a while," Huyger said, waving his hand. His braces were frozen. There were exactly twenty-four wires, and Huyger was already twenty-four years old. He had always wanted to have twice as many teeth as his age. Meaning 48. But on his birthday next year, he could reach 50 teeth, the year after that 52, and so on into dangerous numbers. If I live to be 100, I'd have 200 teeth, they wouldn't even fit in my mouth, he kept thinking at night. If God heard his prayer and granted it instantly, it would be Meyer's nightmare. He would likely turn into a carnivorous being.
"Fine, it really will pass," he said, turning to Huyger. His mind was wandering through teeth. The multiplication table... And if I were forty-five, how many teeth would I have? Ninety.
He didn't care about the subject in the slightest. He tossed the beer bottle into a trash can made of glowing, orange-flame-emitting, hot-roasted manga. By "trash," he meant the depths of the earth. A waste boiler that would vaporize you instantly. Like a black box, sort of. Like a well.
Huyger sighed, "My wife will never get better. Actually, when I say 'since pregnancy,' I mean the pregnancy with our first child. Right now, my first child is seventeen years old."
Meyer raised his eyebrows. "Unbelievable, man! How old are you, anyway?"
"It would be a lie if I said eighty-nine."
"Forty-five?" Meyer said with a wink. To pull off this cool move, his glasses should have come off, but if he took them off, he wouldn't be cool. It was like a Grandfather Paradox.
"46," Huyger said, emphasizing the four and the six.
"Okay, how nice. Girl or boy?"
"A girl, of course, but if you look at her sideways, I'll strain your beers through your intestines."
"Whoa, what's that, man?" Meyer shouted, focusing on a spot behind Huyger. He immediately unlocked his bag and reached for one of his knives. He imagined the sharp tip gliding through his opponent's skin.
"What is it?" Huyger roared.
A giant spider was walking toward them from behind.
Huyger went "Hmph!" and crossed his arms. He took a spray out of his pocket and, with the air of someone with experience, sprayed the many-legged animal. "Since these things evolved, they've even surpassed my wife!" he shouted grumpily.
"And if your wife evolves, who will she surpass?" Meyer said. He looked at the handle and the sharp edge of the knife.
The opportunity to take his anger out on a spider had now slipped away.
"Logical question, damn!" Huyger said. "Seriously, who will she surpass? Anyway, I don't know, see ya."
As soon as Meyer waved and started walking, those damn laces came undone again. His legs knelt on the ground next to the piled-up blue spider. The animal's corpse smelled foul. Its red eyes made one think it was the son of the devil. Lavas ignited his pants. It was a good thing he had rested one knee on the ground. He muttered to himself: "It's hilarious how people used to run away when a volcano erupted. Wait a minute, damn, is a volcano erupting right now?"
A deafening, absurdly terrifying sound was heard. He reflexively opened his mouth to avoid being affected by the noise. In the back, he saw Huyger swimming in the sea of lava and started running without looking back. "Damn it!" The lava flow followed him with a thundering roar.
He jumped two meters over the spider. "Damn it, man!"
The lava flow following him was spreading everywhere, roaring as it emitted gray smoke and heat. It wasn't gentle at all. The smell of molten basalt filled the air.
Meyer saw Huyger, whose eyes were closing as he drifted in the current. "Huyger, are you dead?" he shouted, holding his hands to his mouth like an announcer while running. He felt a pang of pain. "Answer me, the lava is already after me!"
Huyger was floating in the peach-colored flow with his eyes closed.
Meyer had no choice but to run. He was caught unluckily. The moment he turned back or stayed still, he would die.
Then he would have to give up on his high purpose—stabbing an obsidian into the heart of the old friend who had stabbed him in the back.
And not by choice, but by dying.
That would mean not being able to take revenge on Magmus.
"I will never give up. Even if I die!" he screamed, but only internally. Only on the inside.
Meyer was trying to run with all his might from the sea of lava, which resembled foamy coffee overflowing from a cup. The volcano continued to erupt and snarl. He felt the tips of his shoes sticking slightly. The glass was melting, even the laces. Unexpectedly, as he ran breathlessly, a purple giant spider appeared in front of him. He had sliced it so reflexively that he tore the animal in half and kept running. It was a total miracle that he had taken the obsidian knives in both hands from his bag in those few short seconds. He felt like he was running in Temple Run.
Having a body that never tired and lungs that didn't struggle for breath had always made things easier for Meyer. A pink spider emerged from the left again. This one resembled an acidic igneous rock in light tones. Whatever... Why were they going toward the volcano? Was the habitat of these animals the depths of the earth or something?
He didn't have time to think. His heart was pounding like crazy. His glasses were bobbing up and down. If he pushed a little harder, he would be tossed left and right.
As the spider approached the current, Meyer wanted to split the animal in two right at the head with his knife. With a smile on his face, he raised the knife and swung.
Clang. A metallic sound.
"Damn," he said and laughed.
One more time!
The metallic ringing continued.
What he had just seen—no, what was standing right in front of him now—was it an armored spider?
"T-this is really not good, man!" he said and backed away.
His surroundings were beginning to fill with clumsy spiders. They all had legs like spaghetti strands. They had that armor-like silvery substance on their heads and bodies. The knives in his hand were not a logical choice.
"My choices are never logical," Meyer said, grinning. With an air of victory, he swung the obsidian knife's bolt in the air to open it, then jumped into the air by stepping on it with his right hand. After rising two meters in the air, he threw himself toward the spider's armored torso.
Slap! His hip was now on top of this strange rear torso ball.
The spider was no different from a woman who looked about one-seventy from behind but turned out to be one-fifty up close. Its legs were touching the ground.
He looked at the other spiders in surprise and, swinging the chain around his neck over the animal's neck, steered it like a horse.
"Giddy up!"
The spider began to walk.
"Man, why are you walking? Wait a minute!"
He stopped.
"Actually, it's better that you walk," he muttered and shouted excitedly:
"Do you understand me? Then, hi-yah!"
Bouncing from the leash, he walked toward the other spiders. Now he could easily cut those hairy legs with the sharp edges of the blades. The spiders followed wherever he went. Meyer attacked with fury from the left and right wings. These "wings" consisted only of Meyer's muscular arms. The spider beneath him was good.
As Meyer leaned left, the animal went right. Thus, Meyer was both escaping and balancing.
The worst part was that the spider knew physics better than Meyer.
Meyer had failed physics in his school years. Actually, he had failed all his classes. Always. Anyway...
The blood coming from the leg of the bright white spider splashed on the ground after drawing a parabola in the air. The black blood spurting from the hind leg splashed into the air and then onto Meyer's face. Clutching his throat, Meyer, gagging from the effect of the smell, vomited to the left. He was no longer affected by the thin flow remaining from the lava sea.
At that moment, someone grabbed his leg.
"Must be a spider," Meyer said and looked down uneasily.
Yet, it was a five-fingered human hand.
"It's me," Huyger said. "It's me, take me."
Meyer said, "With pleasure," and pulled Huyger up with animal strength, grabbing him by the arm.
Huyger couldn't make any sense of his eighty-kilogram body being pulled up by a small, mischievous youth who was only twenty-four years old and had a muscular body in certain areas. He sat down and wrapped his arms around Meyer's waist.
Meyer noticed the swarm of spiders closing in from behind.
"These things never end, man! Take a knife!" he said.
Huyger looked around in bewilderment at the knife thrust into his hand.
"Hmph, my spray fell into the sea," he said dejectedly. There was a sticky liquid on his bronze arms. A mixture of spider blood and the lava sea. The lava version of Peligom.
"I'm turning," Meyer said, steering the spider up to the right.
Both were tossed simultaneously, and Huyger's head hit the back of Meyer's neck.
The spider suddenly got fired up and hissed; as it rose on its front legs, it bucked off those on top. Then it looked at the two humans it had tossed into the air like snot.
With that violent impact, Meyer and Huyger rose four meters and fell with a splat.
"Aaa!"
"Aaa!" This time Huyger screamed. "We're falling!"
"You're noticing way too late!" Meyer said and fell splat into the sea of lava.
There was a foaming in the air. As if someone were sending flying balloons over them, bubbles were floating in the air. These were shaped water balls coming from the tunnel with the breeze of the wind.
"Huyger, where are you? Where are my knives?"
Meyer had lost his knives—the ones that gave him strength and screamed that they were him.
"Damn it! Fuck this shit!"
He noticed the spider approaching him. Its legs were of the kind that would match the steps of a clumsy cat.
This spider was as inquisitive as a prosecutor, as mocking as a teacher. Lava-colored fires were shooting from its eyes.
When Meyer looked at the spider, the eyes looked familiar to him. "Look, humans have people they recognize. I can't have a past connection with a spider, okay?" he shouted to himself.
While struggling in a corner, Huyger shouted, "Okay."
"I wasn't talking to you," Meyer snapped. Where he was didn't matter in the least right now. He knew these eyes. And yes... he knew them. The point where he was mistaken was that this time he wasn't just calling out to himself, but to someone who looked at him as if they understood.
When the spider suddenly raised its huge torso on its feet, a massive shadow fell on Meyer's forehead. It covered his entire body like a spreading virus. His hands and feet froze. Even in that terrible heat. This familiarity was growing beyond control. He didn't care about the spiders. Only that feeling of being devastated, created by those eyes looking at him, made his wounds bleed.
In a moment, the spider's left and right legs rose and went to its head.
"Y-you..." Meyer said; as the spider's head came off. No, it wasn't the head coming off. It was a helmet. It shone under the light coming from both the depths of the earth and the pale full moon. He didn't dare look at this brightness any longer. This... this... "E-Emma?"
As the helmet separated from the head, a woman appeared, her dull blonde hair surrounded by pink eyes.
Meyer then realized that the spider was a robot. Were the others like that too? He didn't know. All he knew was that girl looking at him from a vastness he couldn't see. His heart was split in two by a familiar wound.
At that moment, a spider coming from right behind him took the knife on the ground between its front legs and swung it at Meyer. Meyer was frozen. The eye muscles looking at Emma relaxed. The blood spurting from Meyer's body poured into the sparse current. His vivid, pristine blood was emptying along with this flowing magma. His eyes... his eyes stayed on Emma Tyle. It felt like he needed to say something. He opened his mouth; as soon as his lips parted, he vomited blood. A pain covering his body spread everywhere. All he could see was Emma running toward him and that unique voice of hers. Feminine, soft, worried. "Steve!"
The voice echoed muffled in the atmosphere.
He was dying, it seemed.