VR WARS Volume II - Coalition Army

RED HAIR

Trying to avoid butting heads with Rui or anyone else for that matter, I changed my attention back to the lustrous table where a realization came to be. Apparently, each color inside the various drinks represented the percentage of alcohol in it, with lighter colors like green, blue, and yellow being on the softer side. In contrast, darker colors like purple, red, and black were closer to the alcohol level present in a regular beer. I wanted to drown myself in those colorful drinks when I noticed a large open door leading to a balcony outside. Intending on mesmerizing the view of the cliffs while sipping a tasty beverage, I grabbed onto lighter glasses of drinks – one yellow and another green – the missing two that I still had yet to taste, giving in to my curiosity.

Wondering what kind of panoramic scenery awaited me outside, I proceeded to the balcony.

Once outside, the exposed moonlight showed brightly, descending upon every living thing in that world and illuminating an entire valley that had been obscured to the naked eye. It surprised me at first, stretching far and wide into the horizon, but other than its vastness, there was nothing particularly remarkable about that, so I walked to the other side of the balcony where a familiar sound was barely hearable. I leaned on the rail and placed my drinks on top of the stone wall that made its corner. Looking down the cliffs made my heartbeat scream out of control due to my fear of heights, but I managed to calm down and maintain a steady pulse after breathing in for a while. The sound of the waves hitting on the rocks below brought nostalgia from my youth days when I used to fall asleep to this very sound.

The way the castle had been built assimilated the image of a ship preparing to set sail from the dry docks, except its sheer monstrosity made it look like an unsinkable Titanic. The warm breeze soaring through the sky made me feel at ease, almost as if it were inviting me to relax and breathe in the spectacle deprived to so many. Obliging to take it all in, I took a sip of the green drink, a lightly sweet drink that tasted somewhat similar to an apple-flavored cider that didn’t hold much alcohol. The amount of detailed information received by my PXF from everything in this ‘arena’ was so great it almost made me believe the tech had been redesigned from scratch instead of receiving an update. Never before had my senses been so keen on breathing aromas, feeling the air all around, and even the touch of someone else. They must’ve dedicated a lot of work to the fine-tuning of the five human senses. I was marveling at that beautiful view with so much joy and awe that I was oblivious to the fact that I wasn’t there alone.

Standing barely two meters from me was a woman in a black dress, and she too looked at the sea. Her hazelnut eyes and small freckles covering her cheeks were elegant, but it was her expression bursting with intense loneliness that caught me unaware.

She was the picture of solitude.

Ribbons dressed her arms like bandages, the same dark color as that of her dress. Without a doubt, she was the epitome of elegance, surpassing even Vera. The latter had opted for a dress that conveyed purity, which she lacked in nature, considering her personality. However, this girl’s outfit seemed to express her character unusually well. You can never associate darkness with happiness; her emotional state seemed to fit that very same idea in regard. Unlike Vera’s expression of inner peace, this girl’s mind appeared to be surrounded by fog. I could feel that she was worried, possibly even sad. There was no smile on her lips; it was as if she was lost in her own dark thoughts…How I empathized with her.

I moved a little closer to her.

Finding the right words was never my strongest suit. I lacked the necessary vocabulary and experience to engage in a conversation about feelings. So every chance I got in my life, I tried to avoid that. Instead, I kept whatever I felt deep inside of me; even if someone disappointed me or wronged me in some way, I just took those emotions and stuffed them all in. Hence the birth of the dreaded beast deep within. It wasn’t until after I started to engage in this competition that I left some of those emotions out. Anger, happiness, confidence, selfishness, all of those had come out one way or another, sometimes without warning and sometimes in the wrong moments. But as I searched desperately for an opening to start a conversation, she noticed my presence there, and from the looks of it, I wasn’t the only one who had been oblivious to the presence of someone else.

She looked at me, the breeze slowly pushing back the bangs sticking out from her ponytail.

“!”

Then, about the same time, our eyes met, and the moonlight unveiled the flaming red color that was her hair; something happened to me. A series of images flashed before my eyes, unlocking the memories I had unconsciously locked away. And her hair, her expression of seclusion, was the trigger for it all. A girl with red hair darker than a ripe strawberry. Black uniform. Hazelnut eyes. Could it be?

Almost trapped in a loop, I recalled my near-death experience at the gates of the UAT, playing the last moments over and over until I reached the part where I was beaten up and then left to die in a pool of my own blood. The hidden memory occurred mere seconds before I lost consciousness when my fading gaze looked up at a billboard that contained a picture of different women dressed in uniform as marketing piecing for the beginning of the competition. On that poster, a single one stood out from the rest—the girl standing next to me on that balcony.

Breathing whatever little courage remained in my exhausted supply, I inhaled and made up my mind to approach her. Always the poor gambler, I was staking my odds on the worst possible bet with the highest risk of it potentially backfiring on my face.

“Hello, So-sorry! E-excuse me…” Making an impressive start, I stumbled at every word, nearly forgetting what I wanted to say to her. “...I know we’ve never met before, and this will sound weird and impossible, but in my darkest hour when the night was cold, and my body felt frozen, the one who I turned to guide me to salvation was you.”

What in the hell am I saying?! You i***t, she’s going to think you are trying to hook up with her or something! What a cringy thing to say –No! Don’t offer her a drink after saying that bullshit! NO! Just walkway! STOP! But the alarming voice in my head couldn’t hold back my hand from handing her one of the drinks I had brought along. And while it did take her some time, she reluctantly accepted the yellow-colored glass.

She stood there for a while, no changes in her expression, turning her gaze to the night sky this time, following with her eyes a shooting star that made itself apparent in the atmosphere above. Then she smiled.

“You’ve had it too, haven't you?… A premonition about death.”

What? Death? “…I…I—”

“…Though I don’t know the circumstances of what happened or how it did…thank you for those kind words,” her soothing voice pierced my heart like a thousand needles being jabbed in me. How could someone who looked so sad possess such a cute and pleasant voice?

We watched the sea together without uttering a word; there was no need for any, at least until I realized that I didn’t know her name. Regardless of my urge to know her identity, the sincere smile in her expression that made all previous sadness a forgettable illusion beckoned me to hold fast; I didn’t want to see her in such darkness again. But after several minutes, my curiosity was starting to overwhelm me.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I haven’t really introduced myself, ha-ha-haaa,” embarrassed by her honest smile. I broke eye contact and scratched my head in gawkiness. “Nice to meet you. I’m Angelo.”

“...It’s a pleasure. My name is—”

“Erika,” someone at our backs spoke, revealing her name before she could even have the chance to do it herself. “There you are...I’ve been looking all over for you. We’re leaving.”

“Yes…brother.”

Brother? Erika? So that’s her name. A blonde guy in a dark suit of about the same age as I waited at the balcony’s door with his hand stretched towards the girl, which she accepted without thinking twice. In that manner, the girl from my dreams walked away, leaving me hanging dry on the balcony with the same lonely and sad expression she held before. Her sudden exit had left me so speechless; it nearly broke all the confidence I had gained that night. Seriously, not even a goodbye?! So much for some manners in…in…oh, I didn’t look at her pin. But as I contemplated my actions, the girl in black did stop her robotic march and finally turned around with the same beautiful smile that had yet to fade, “Thank you for talking to me, Angelo.”

All the memories containing pain from that merciless beating were suddenly swept away by her smile. It almost made me believe all of that torture outside the UAT grounds had been worth undertaking. That red hair. That beautiful red hair. Please, don’t go. Not after I finally found you. I screamed at myself. Stop her, dammit!