What Hosen didn't know was that Inase had done everything in his power to keep him alive.
His nonchalant exterior—the sharp words, the teasing jabs, the angry glares—only masked the caring nature that this man had deemed a weakness.
And now, that mask cracked…
When Hosen tipped with his limbs slack, Inase lunged, arms catching his buddy before he could hit the forest floor.
"Stay with me! Fuck!"
Inase's voice rang out, sharp and raw, but to Hosen's ears, it was distant.
He dropped to his knees, pulling the other closer.
It doesn't look good.
Hosen's veins were blooming black, like a spider web crawling beneath the skin, venom etching its slow death.
He had no time.
Inase yanked the belt from his waist in one motion, looping it tight above the bite. His fingers were trembling, but they worked fast—ripping off Hosen's coat, gloves, shirt, whatever was in the way.
When the white-hair's skin met open air, it was death-pale.
His wound pulsed, but Inase didn't hesitate. He bit down in disgust, pressed his lips to the wound, and drew out what he could, spitting blackened blood to the moss beside them.
He vaguely remembered whatever books he had skimmed through.
Herbs, yes. He needed those.
Looking around, there were a few similar to those described to fight the venom and infection.
His thoughts screamed, but his hands didn't stop.
He ripped a few leaves from the neighboring plants, chewed them, then spat on the wound, pressing them tightly against it.
"If you're going to die a stupid death like this, I'm gonna kill you myself!"
He gritted his teeth, complaining under his nose, even if his complaints didn't make much sense.
"It better be an epic one, against a mind-bending creature instead…!"
Then came the voices. The whispers.
Incoherent at first, sending chills down Inase's spine, but soon their vagueness started forming into words.
"Leave him."
"You've done enough."
"He's dead weight. You could be free."
Distant, seductive giggles followed.
"We will show you the way out of here if you leave him behind~"
The offer was very tempting. Difficult to decline.
"Don't you want to get out?"
"It's much easier when you are alone-"
The forest mocked him, warping around the edges. The shadows felt too long—they stretched and crept towards Inase, surrounding him, overwhelming—
"SILENCE!"
He suddenly snarled, spitting the coated with venom saliva into the dirt—he wasn't going to be deceived by such cheap tricks!
"One more whisper from you and you're all going to burn!"
His breath came in ragged bursts, but his grip stayed firm on Hosen's wrist, counting the pulse. Weak—but there.
1… 2… 3… 4… 5…
He did everything he could. He'd never say it out loud, though. Not to Hosen. Not to anyone.
In that frantic stretch of forest floor, with time running like blood from a wound, he showed what he never would otherwise—how much he cared for a fellow time-diver's life.
***
"Let's abandon your method."
Inase's voice broke the silence of dawn, spoken low over the last flickering spark in the ash pile. The bright morning sun had already pierced their eyes with its light.
Hosen, now sitting upright and visibly steadier, glanced sideways with a raised brow.
They had a long path ahead of them if they were to find the way to get to the weird tree before dusk, so he waited for an alternative.
"Then what are you proposing?"
"Analytics and logistics can't help us so… Tuning in to intuition is our best shot."
Inase stood, stretching his arms overhead as if shaking off the night.
"We're following my gut now."
Such a ridiculous idea made Hosen snort, almost laugh.
"And how's that going to help? We've gone in circles. You saw it yourself—this forest moves on its own."
But his complaints were met with the blonde's dismissal.
"It seems you've regained enough energy to be snarky again. Good."
Inase didn't listen anymore, closing his eyes and relying only on his other senses.
He stood still for a beat, then slowly raised a hand, index finger pointed out like a human compass. He rotated, the silence stretching, until—
"There."
His movement stopped, eyes opened when he pointed in the direction toward a part of the forest they'd deliberately avoided before—opposite to every step they had taken thus far.
"The forest doesn't follow rules. So why should we?"
With a smirk, he followed the self-imposed path.
"We're doing it my way."
Feeling significantly better than the previous night, Hosen followed closely behind while faintly shrugging at the other man's idea.
***
Surprisingly enough, Inase's crazy suggestion worked in their favor.
The two followed the inverse. This counterintuitive logic allowed them to slip free from looping much more easily than they had yesterday.
Every time the red mist rolled in, curling low around their boots, they turned away. When logic said go left, they veered right. Intuition, instinct, feeling—it became their prime compass.
As they passed by, the forest elongated and twisted into a more bizarre environment. The trees in that direction rose—taller, darker, leafless as if dead, and… watching. The bark glistened faintly, not with sap, but covered by numerous eyes.
Yes. Real, human-like eyes.
Such imagery would give anyone the creeps if they were in the two's place.
The trees blinked in unison as Inase and Hosen passed beneath, like silent guardians of something deeper—observing and following their every move with their turning eyeballs.
Inase could barely keep his hand off his sheathed knife.
"So creepy… Makes me want to poke them one by one."
A big eyeball moved at the upper part of the tree trunk, like a flower on a tough bark, blinking, staring straight at them.
The creepy shivers of thrill surged again as Inase prepared the knife—he was ready to stab it, but-
"Don't. You'll alarm the great Rootmind."
Was this Hosen's idea of a joke? Inase didn't take him for a guy who liked puns…
Either way, after hearing his words, Inase was sure that the man was still the same old scientist who was overly cautious.
"Tsk. I know, I know…"
He groaned, and he didn't stop walking. He wasn't curious enough to find out what would happen if he did poke any of them out.
But... His thoughts still lingered.
Would the trees bleed out and shrivel like a slug that got thrown into a pile of salt? Or would they dry out and turn into kindling for a proper fire camp tonight? They could also turn into a pile of ash like the snake from yesterday...
Do they even have consciousness to feel pain? Or are they just mechanisms meant to scare intruders away?
They were the creations of that big tree, after all... Or, maybe, they were real?
The human mind had endless possibilities when it came to imagination, huh.
Their path seemed to have no end, but they felt it deep in their bones—they were getting closer.
A few more acres past, the branches parted to reveal a different scenery.
Between the trees hid stairs. Many of them. Manmade. And leading to nowhere, as they had no destination.
An eerie sight.
An unnatural wonder which shouldn't have existed in a natural forest to begin with. It didn't add up.
"Stairs in the woods, that's a new one."
Inase hadn't experienced these on his missions yet.
Abandoned. Carved of old stone, cracked and moss-covered, they rose endlessly upward, vanishing into the canopy, no top in sight. That, or they either curved or ended after just ten steps, unfinished.
It would be an alarming sight to any trespassers, but Inase and Hosen knew, as chilling as they were, these were only illusions created by the culprit hiding in the depths of the forest.
The weirder it became, the closer they were. They were sure of it.
One of the abandoned staircases appeared right in front of them, as if inviting them to take a step up.
Inase bumped Hosen's shoulder before he approached the oddity that are the stairs in the nowhere.
"What if I climbed to the top and saw the area from an eagle's view?"
"It's a trap."
Hosen stopped dead in his tracks, knowing it would be the case.
But Inase didn't hesitate. He placed a foot on the first step instead.
"Don't be an idiot."
The scientist warned him, but it brought no results.
"According to you, I already am," Inase muttered and began to climb.
Hosen groaned. Then, noted in his head that no matter how much of a bad idea something was, Inase would try it out nevertheless.
One step after another, the sound of his soles pressing onto the stone surface echoed between the tree tops. Halfway, he paused and stared into the red mist ahead.
He's got great eyesight, that of a hawk. He could see things from afar, and now he saw the origin of this mess rise high above any other tree.
Far taller, and far greater. In full bloom.
It hovered over the forest like a beast—massive, ancient, and far too still. Its twisted branches shaped like open jaws, swaying with the wind, and curling and creaking as they swayed with the wind, ready to snap shut on anything foolish enough to get too close.
The red mist from its flowers bled into the air, seeping out in a slow, suffocating wave. The moment it touched the ground, life wilted, leaves blackened, and animals dropped where they stood.
Even the air seemed to rot. One breath was all it took—for lungs to burn, eyes to melt, and the world to spin into the state of death.
It wasn't just a tree. It was a living curse.
"I see it," he called to his partner. Soon, his voice changed—hollow, distant. "The Tree. It's—"
He grew silent.
How are we supposed to kill this thing?
For a moment, Inase thought their eyes had met, but such a thought was ridiculous since the tree didn't have any (unlike the illusions it created).
But his instincts were right.
It sensed him.
He could feel it in his mind.
Danger.
The tree noticed him looking straight at it, approaching a bit too close—it didn't like that.
The next step never came. With a sound like stone collapsing inward, the stairs vanished, crumbling beneath his feet. It dropped him painfully to the ground.
Inase started falling.
What appeared to be a second felt like an eternity.
On the way down, he bruised against the branches along his path until he crashed to the forest floor with a sharp thud, coughing, groaning.
"Ugh… That hurt-!"
That was a hard fall; Inase already had a feeling Hosen would say something like that. He could recall his unapologetic, sarcastic tone with a deadpan look on his face, even if he hadn't turned around yet.
"Shut up. Don't you dare to say I told you so!"
He looked up—but there was no staircase anymore. No Tree. Nothing.
Silence spread, broken only by the whisper of leaves and the low blink of a dozen watching trees. And then, they were gone.
"What…?"
He looked around.
Once he realized what had just happened, he found himself back where they started in the blink of an eye.
The snake's skeleton under his feet, its bones had turned to ashes.
"Dammit. We were so close—!"
The Tree… didn't let them near. It sent them away again, knowing it couldn't let the intruders pass this easily.
Inase was frustrated, with a surge of feeling so overwhelming—rejection, exile—that their actions turned against their will.
"Seems like the Tree put up its defences. It protects itself by hiding and keeping at bay those who try to reach it."
"..."
But no one answered.
"Huh?"
***
"I told you so."
Hosen brushed through loose streaks of his hair to let out his silent fury.
"F*ck. I don't know if the tree will allow us to use the same tactics again."
Hosen's intellect seemed useless in this place, where logic didn't work.
What were they even supposed to do now? They were out of options because of Inase's dumb idea to take on the obvious trap head-first.
"Where even are we?" He didn't recognize this place.
All the other times, they'd found themselves back at the charred remnants of the campfire where Inase had killed that snake—but this place bore no trace of the animal's carcass, nor the carved markings once etched into the surrounding trees.
It was somewhere else entirely.
"Since you created this situation, you get us out of it."
Hosen looked back at his buddy.
"...?"
Inase was nowhere to be found. He stood there alone.
"Inase?"
At the same time, "Doc?", Inase called, but the other wasn't there.
Hosen had realized...
…they separated.