"You woke up inside a coffin?" Johan asked, leaning in slightly with a cutting smirk. "Lies like that are hard to swallow."
Hillel flinched and rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous habit he hadn't realized he had until now. The event felt like a fever dream—utterly incomprehensible.
How did I come back to life? The question haunted the vast emptiness where his memories should have been. He recognized concepts and words but nothing personal, nothing that anchored him. His entire identity hung on fading letters carved into splintered wood.
Was I even alive before? Did I exist? He squeezed his eyes shut to push away the dizzying thoughts. No, Hillel. Stop. You don't know.
"Are you going to answer?" Johan pressed, his unsettling proximity making Hillel uncomfortable. Beneath the skepticism in the man's dark eyes was an unnerving intensity that seemed to stab deep into Hillel's soul. Strangely, that flicker of interest, however harsh, made Hillel feel momentarily seen, even valued.
"Sorry," Hillel mumbled, rubbing his tired eyes. "Got lost in thought. But I'm telling you the truth." He took a breath to steady his voice. "The last thing I remember is waking up to darkness. I was trapped in some kind of box." He shuddered as the phantom sensation of suffocation tightened around his throat. "I nearly suffocated and I really should've if it weren't for this heat—my spark, I guess—that just blew the lid right off. That's when I realized it was a coffin."
A heavy silence fell inside the rocking wagon, making the air feel thick. Hillel looked up to find every eye fixed on him. Even Ezra, the energetic leader of this group, seemed momentarily stunned.
Well, yeah, Hillel thought numbly. Someone rising from the dead isn't exactly normal, is it?
He braced for more questions and disbelief but wasn't prepared for Caladeus's next words.
"Hillel..." Caladeus began, genuinely confused, "Nobody uses coffins anymore. Not for a very long time. Bodies are cremated. Always."
What? Then why was I in a...?
Hillel's gaze darted around the wagon, searching for someone who disagreed, but found none. Gaja's expression was grimly serious; Lafayette sat motionless beneath his hat; even Johan's smirk had vanished, replaced by focused suspicion. Panic fluttered in Hillel's chest.
"B-but I swear! It's the only reason I know my name! It was carved right there on the wood!"
"Know your name?" Gaja leaned forward, her amethyst eyes sharp. The semicircle they'd formed now felt less like curiosity and more like an interrogation. "Are you saying you have no memory? Amnesia?"
"Yeah," Hillel admitted in barely a whisper. Sudden, sharp shame extinguished his brief feeling of being valued. He stared at his trembling hands resting on his knees, unable to meet their scrutiny.
"Hey Hillel," Lafayette's voice softened, losing its earlier mocking edge. "Do you know why nobody uses coffins?"
Hillel looked up, meeting only the shadow beneath the blond teen's hat brim. He shook his head, feeling small and ignorant.
Lafayette leaned forward conspiratorially. "It's simple. They're dangerous. If a body isn't thoroughly dealt with, it turns into a monster. A rinshu monster."
"Rinshu?" Hillel echoed, the unfamiliar word awkward on his tongue. "What's that?"
"You know sparks, right? That power you showed us?" When Hillel nodded hesitantly, Lafayette continued, "rinshu is the raw stuff behind sparks. The fuel. Problem is, a dead body is just an empty container. If it's left intact, rinshu seeps in and gathers over time. Like rainwater filling a bucket. Eventually, there's enough to animate the body, but with no mind or soul driving it? It's just pure, uncontrolled power. Instinct. A monster that's damn hard to put down. That's why nobody risks burial anymore."
"I see..." Hillel muttered, the explanation only making him feel more like a freak, an anomaly that shouldn't exist.
"And that's why I think you're lying, you bastard." Johan stated flatly, his earlier intensity returning tenfold. "If your story was true, you wouldn't be sitting here. You'd be a mindless beast."
"Whoa, easy there, Johan!" Lafayette quickly jumped in, trying to diffuse the tension with a forced grin. "He's just telling us a wild story! Good entertainment for the road, yeah? Right, boss?"
"I object. He's a terrible liar," Johan muttered bitterly. "Stories like these are painfully dull once you see through them."
With that, Lafayette burst out into a fit of forced laughter. Caladeus awkwardly joined in as well. It seemed as if they wanted to improve the atmosphere for some reason. Gaja didn't join in, she had a concerned expression on her face.
"Quiet," Ezra commanded, his voice low but cutting through the wagon like a whip crack. The playful energy he'd arrived with had vanished, replaced by something calculating and cold.
Silence fell instantly. Hillel flinched as if struck. Lafayette shrunk back to his side of the wagon. For some reason, the carmine-haired leader seemed disturbed. But Hillel didn't care.
He finally got a word in with these people, but he felt mocked and dismissed. Hot anger coiled in his gut, mixing with the lingering trauma from the farm, the facility, and the violence of his awakening. He turned sharply away, pulling his knees tight against his chest and staring hard at the rough canvas wall. These guys suck. Let them think I'm lying. I can't wait to get off this damn wagon.
This anger was a blessing in disguise. Instead of drowning in rage or spiraling into the terrifying void of his missing past that he began to hate thinking about, Hillel could focus on the tangible future. Gaja had said they would drop him off in Scissia, a city he could only imagine. Once there, survival came down to two desperate needs: food and shelter.
Alright, food first, he thought, as the emptiness in his stomach twisted into a sharp ache now that the adrenaline and Caladeus's agonizing healing had faded. How do people get food in a city? Buy it? The concept felt foreign, unreal. He ran his hands over his empty pockets. No money. Of course.
A bitter laugh nearly escaped him. Could he work? He glanced at his thin, weak arms, remembering how badly he'd struggled just carrying bundled canvas. What skills did he have besides a destructive energy he barely understood and couldn't control? A power more likely to get him killed than earn him a meal.
Maybe simple labor? Hauling or cleaning?
Could he even lift a heavy bucket without collapsing? The alternative turned his stomach—picking through trash and fighting for scraps with other lowlifes. The memory of the grinder on the farm, reeking of rot and human remains, made him gag. Although it wasn't quite the same as his idea of living in a slum, he did not want to end up in a situation like that again.
Then shelter. Where could a nameless boy sleep in an unfamiliar city? He imagined looming buildings, endless streets, countless indifferent faces. An alleyway? Under a bridge?
The vulnerability sent shivers down his spine, echoing the brief helplessness he'd felt cornered by giants or trapped in his cell. Would there be guards? Would they beat him, arrest him, drag him somewhere worse? Could he find an abandoned building? But the thought of dark, empty spaces, potentially claimed by others far more dangerous than himself, offered little comfort. He was prey, freshly escaped from one nightmare only to stumble into another.
And information—he needed it as badly as food or shelter. He was adrift in a world whose basic rules were alien to him. Sparkers, rinshu, a murderous organization named Axel Road, the organ farm—all these were pieces of a puzzle he couldn't begin to assemble. He'd have to act like a phantom, listening to conversations in crowded places, trying to understand this world without revealing his profound ignorance. He didn't want to attract suspicion after all.
Ah, whatever. I'll just figure everything out when I get there.