Aurora Over a Dead World

Chapter 43: Bleeding Roses

"..." I stare down at the hole in the ice. At least the ice layer, despite being very thick, doesn’t cover the whole room. I enter through the hole, forced to touch the ice, and the movements of my hands and legs have gotten much stiffer.

’Soon I won’t be able to walk anymore... or even move my hands...’ I have to be fast. I drag myself with difficulty across the ice, feeling a terrible cold. My prosthetics do have resistance against intense vector attacks since they’re made of a heavily reinforced material.

But Eirwen bypasses that defense easily because her cold isn’t an external attack. Instead, it makes everything within range lose heat, which causes even my prosthetics to lose their temperature at an alarming rate.

"...Dammit..." I look ahead and see that the opening I created has already formed a thin film of ice, showing that the cocoon she trapped herself in has already started to recover. I punch the film, feeling extremely weak.

CRACK

I go inside and see it’s like a sphere. I can spot Eirwen. She’s lying down, hugging several papers. I look around, trying to find something useful, but even the things in here have been frozen.

’My eyes sting...’ I avoid touching my face. It would be terrible if my skin stuck to the prosthetics and got torn off when I pulled them away, so I just take difficult steps toward her.

"Hey, ice cube. I don’t remember asking you to freeze an entire block when I gave you that stuff," I say to Eirwen, who doesn’t react. I approach the ice bed she’s on and grab her by her clothes.

’She’s so cold...’ I know she’s not dead. After all, if she were dead, the vectors she controls wouldn’t be this chaotic, and besides, the cold is increasing.

"Hey, wake up... tsk, forget it..." I look at the wall, searching for the window’s position, which will be where the ice is weakest. I then tear through space in that spot, warping space itself, which opens a hole.

I throw Eirwen onto my back, and my tail holds her by the waist, keeping her pressed against me. I try to move as fast as I can to the hole, jumping from the second floor to the ground.

"!!!" When I hit the ground, I hear a crack. My prosthetics are getting so cold they’re starting to become brittle. A little more and any impact could shatter them.

"...What a pain. I hate having problems. If you wanted to screw me over, you didn’t need to try to turn me into ice, popsicle girl," I say as I move away from her house, where the concentration of cold is.

Unfortunately, Eirwen’s body is the problem, emitting this cold constantly. As I move her away from the center of her house, the temperature becomes more bearable again, but I can’t leave this ice bomb near civilians.

So I start running as I recover a bit of my speed and mobility. I force my powers a little more, creating platforms by pulling the sky, and I run, searching for an empty area.

"You’d better wake up soon, popsicle girl. I don’t want to freeze to death, and if you take too long, I’ll have to leave you alone in the middle of nowhere."

...

...

...

Eirwen, feeling like she’s in a deep sleep, senses something warm, like a touch that’s not exactly gentle — more like being crushed by something heavy. The sensation is uncomfortable, making her tremble.

Although the movement reminds her of her father’s hugs, the uncomfortable weight feels more like it wants to smash her against the ground. This makes her open her eyes.

"...?" She looks up, seeing her teacher, someone she didn’t expect. She looks around, noticing the frozen scenery, an abandoned building.

"P-Professor Zenith?" she says with a voice hoarse from so much crying and shouting before she fell asleep, days without water or food taking their toll.

"I see you’re awake, popsicle girl. Could you stop using your powers now? At this rate, I’m going to catch some kind of illness. I’m freezing here," Zenith, without any empathy for Eirwen’s terrible expression, speaks with sarcasm, rolling her eyes.

"W-Why are you hugging me?!" Eirwen asks nervously as Zenith’s eyes half-close.

"Didn’t you hear me? It’s cold. Your body is the only thing here that hasn’t turned to ice. Now turn that crap off. I’m really freezing. Look at my fingers! I can’t move them." Zenith moves her hand, showing her metallic fingers trembling without moving forward.

"I-I’m sorry, I—"

"Don’t apologize. Just be quick about it."

"I-I don’t know... I-I’ve never had to defrost anything." Eirwen starts to tremble, imagining if she’s going to kill people again by accident.

"Wow, so popsicle girl doesn’t know what it’s like to sit in the sun and melt?"

"Why are you being so sarcastic with me?! I just—"

"I’m dying, you know? And I really hate it. So since I don’t want to die, I’m asking you to fix this. Your dead father wouldn’t want you to kill me." When Zenith mentions Eirwen’s father without any restraint, the cold in the environment intensifies.

"Come on, that’s the opposite of what I asked. I’m not to blame for you creating an imaginary villain and now crying because you can’t accept that your worldview was wrong."

"Don’t be childish, kid. Everyone has to grow up. You’re a child in an adult’s body. What was the point of growing up if you stayed trapped in the past? You think the dead like it when the living cling to the past?"

"If you knew how to defrost the things you froze, you would never have killed people! 10,000 civilians... isn’t that crazy?" Zenith’s cold, unfriendly tone makes Eirwen cry, tears of ice falling to the ground with a crystalline tinkling sound.

"Oh, now you’re gonna cry? Really? After I risked my life to get you out of an ice prison? This is why I hate childish people who forgot to grow up."

"W-Why are you like this?!" Eirwen pushes Zenith, who was hugging her, and stands up.

"I’m not to blame for any of this!!! I-I didn’t want to freeze those people! And I didn’t want my father to die!! I didn’t ask for any of this!!" The cold increases intensely, starting to affect the clouds in the sky, which makes snow begin to fall.

"Yes, yes, you’re not to blame at all..." Zenith draws a pistol as she stands up. Her movement to rise creates a terrible cracking sound, like machines being forced to their limit before breaking.

"W-What are you doing?" Zenith’s fingers move by force, creating cracks in her joints with every minimal movement as she aims the gun at Eirwen.

’S-She’s going to kill me...’ Eirwen stumbles backward, believing her selfish teacher is going to kill her to survive.

"...W-Wait!!? W-What the hell?!" Unlike what Eirwen expected, Zenith points the gun at her own head.

"Wow, crazy, right? You’re such a coward, Eirwen. I don’t want you to think you killed me and then decide to freeze the whole planet, hahaha." Zenith speaks with sarcasm. Her expression can only be described as that of a complete maniac.

"So bang! I’m gonna kill myself, you know. That way, you don’t carry one more death. It seems like killing is so hard for you."

"A-Are you insane?!"

"Maybe a little. But I’d rather be insane than someone cowardly who cries instead of learning. After I opened the doors for you to discover the past, what did you do? You isolated yourself in your house."

"What a pathetic attitude. You’re scum for not accepting the responsibilities for what you do."

"N-No! I-I’m not..."

"You are. You would bring shame to your father. You haven’t grown up at all!! You’ve become a child with powers. You’re 19 years old and you can’t even accept responsibility for what you do."

"I’m disgusted by people like you. So since you can’t even carry one death on your shoulders, what’s the problem with me killing myself here? If I kill myself, the blame won’t be yours. Isn’t that better?!"

"N-No, don’t do it!! P-Please... I-I will get better... I-I don’t want to see anyone die because of me."

"..." Zenith starts to move her finger. Eirwen watches, and when Zenith pulls the trigger, all the snow stops falling, suspended in the air. Tears of ice start to run from Eirwen’s open eyes.

Her pupils, shaped like ice roses, shift to an intense red color, becoming red roses for a moment, like blood staining the snow. Her tears create a sound that blankets the silent environment before her eyes return to their normal shade.

Until her expression turns to confusion, and Zenith starts laughing like a maniac at Eirwen’s face.

"Hahahahaha, this is hilarious! Girl thinks a common gun would work? Give me a break, huh? You’re so stupid. If my prosthetics have practically stopped working, there’s no way a pistol’s trigger would function... but look, it seems like someone managed to make the snow stop falling."

"Am I that important to you?" Eirwen, still crying, puts her hands to her face, a mix of shame, fear, pain, and a warm feeling rising up.

"It seems like you can do it when you try... it’s still too cold. How about defrosting this for me? You felt how to do it, didn’t you?"

"Life isn’t about freezing a moment in time and leaving it frozen forever. After all, even in winter, the sun still melts the ice that will one day go away," Zenith says, unable to move, looking at Eirwen, who bites her lips.

"...Y-You’re so cruel, monstrous..."

"...I just gave you what you needed. You need to accept that all 10,000 deaths you caused, despite being an accident, are still your fault. But you also need to accept that staying trapped in your father’s memories is simply foolish and harmful."

"If you want to make your old man proud, then become someone worthy of it, not someone who cries over photos, papers, and videos of someone who isn’t here."

"It’s long past time to cry. You’ve cried too much for a decade. Don’t you think those tears should have dried up by now? More than 10 years of sadness seems excessive, even for someone sensitive."

"It’s not like life is going to wait for you to decide to open the door and leave the house."

"..." A cracking sound blankets the silence. Ice crystals fall from the structures of the abandoned place, the ice starting to melt and fall while Eirwen’s tears, even in the midst of the cold, no longer turn to ice.

"I’d give you a hug, but hey, I can barely move. So if you want, you come hug me—" Before Zenith finishes, Eirwen runs to her, throwing herself onto her body and hugging her. Even if Zenith isn’t the best person in the world, or someone who comforts her, Eirwen, who just needs a hug, accepts it even coming from such a sarcastic and cruel person.