Tap, tap, tap—their footsteps beat through a tunnel narrowing like a snake curling into stone.

As they walked, the matter of the Skeleton, Sans, lay behind them like footprints fading in dust.

Alicia’s questions fluttered like moths to a lantern; the one about his origin, he swatted away again and again.

He wasn’t exactly unwilling; the first time, his lips parted like thawing ice, then memory blew cold, and he clamped his mouth shut.

After that, whenever she circled back, his answers froze over like a pond at dusk.

Knowing Sans would yield no more, Alicia turned her net to Undead intel, casting for shadows in murky water.

About the “too few Undead here,” Sans said they’d been herded to one place like bones to a charnel pit.

The herder, he said, wore black robes and blew a flute carved from human bones. That wind made Skeletons drift like dry leaves.

As for that figure’s strength or rank, Sans dodged with, “I’m really not Undead, so I don’t know,” like a fish slipping the hook.

When that line ran dry, Alicia had only one inference, that the black robe held some status, thin as smoke at dawn.

So she let Sans go, releasing a thread she couldn’t reel in, like letting a kite vanish into cloud.

He only spread his hands, helpless as a scarecrow in still fields, then dipped into a four-dimensional pocket sewn inside his coat.

He raised a bottle of ketchup like vodka, glugged it with a red shine, then turned away like a shadow leaving firelight.

He refused Ling’s invite to team up, kept his own road like a lone track in snow, and wouldn’t be her “number two.”

—End of flashback—

Haaah—she yawned, breath fogging the stale air like steam off a kettle at dusk.

Anyone staring at the same scene on loop gets sand in their eyes; Ling was no different under this grinding millstone.

This underground layout repeated like a rubber stamp: semicircular sewer-like halls and corners promising a meet-cute, delivering only déjà vu.

Shape, material, and lighting all cloned, like a lazy dev’s copy-paste map, the stink of cheapness rising like damp off old bricks.

If not for their straight path and Alicia’s chalk marks like white thorns, Ling would suspect a ghost-wall loop snaring them.

At last, after exactly 486 rounds of sameness, the copy-paste corridor ended like a tape running out of hiss.

No sudden anime shaft of light; just a plain sealed door sitting there like a shut eyelid in stone.

A skull handle stared back, purple flames in its eye sockets flickering like foxfire, a chill crawling the scalp like ants.

Even so, as a Yokai, Ling felt no real weight, just a prickly itch like wind under fur.

With a curl of disgust, she grabbed the handle lodged in the skull’s open mouth like bait on a hook.

Crack.

The jaw snapped shut like a bear trap; four of her fingers went rigid, gooseflesh popping like rice in hot oil up her arm.

It stung like nettles under skin, but she locked her grip and tried to wrench the door like prying ice from rock.

Slither-slither—

Her fingertips brushed something slick, a fat, cold worm of a thing, skin like wet rubber in a winter ditch.

Realization struck like lightning; her face drained white, goosebumps surged like a field of reeds in sudden wind, hairs bristling to attention.

She yanked back without a thought, but the skull clamped tight like iron on bone, unyielding as a traproot.

Disgust boiled over—rip it off now—and she tore, snapping the embedded skull so only a nasal ridge clung to the door.

The lower half still gnawed her hand like a feral dog, and from its hollow three overfed maggots nosed out, bloated as thumbs.

Too fat to wriggle, their bodies tore free of the skull’s lining like rotten fruit, fell, and burst into milky pulp on stone.

Nausea surged like a tide; she could only retch air, a dry heave scraping her throat like sand.

She eyed the jaw still locked on her hand, a sudden fear blooming like mold that more lived inside; she crushed it to grit.

“Ling? You alright?” Alicia’s voice came soft as a handkerchief, laughter held back like a kite tugging its string.

“N-not a big deal,” Ling said, face stiff as lacquer, words dropping like stones to kill the moment.

She looked up at the door, untouched by her yank, and weighed it like a boulder: kick it open, or punch it open?