CHAPTER 11: THE BOY IN RED
***
In the sterile, suffocating hallways of a hospital that existed only in the fractured architecture of her own mind, a little girl with long blonde hair that spilled over her back like a sheet of silk ran with a desperation that bordered on madness.
It was no other than Trizha.
But…
…younger.
Nine years… younger.
Trizha's breathing was heavy, a series of jagged, rhythmic gasps that burned in her lungs.
She passed through row after row of closed doors—heavy, wooden barriers that remained silent and unresponsive to her frantic calls.
Each door she passed seemed to pull the air from the hallway, making her chest tighten, her steps thundering against the linoleum floor with a volume that felt loud enough to be heard for miles.
Cold sweat traced lines down her face, falling away like droplets from a waterfall.
Every room was a tomb, offering no response, no sanctuary, until she rounded a corner and saw it: a single door standing ajar.
It was an invitation to enter and attempt to mend a reality that had already shattered beyond repair.
Inside that room sat a dying remnant of a life she used to know.
It was another girl, though her head was bare, stripped of the hair that should have been there.
She was a prisoner of her own body, her freedom of speech stolen by the plastic rebreather mask strapped across her face.
Her skin was a shade of pale so translucent it seemed to herald the arrival of death itself.
Slowly, the girl in the bed turned her hollow gaze toward the one who had just burst into the room.
"Wyne!" Trizha screamed.
The name tore from her throat, loud and clear, echoing not through a hospital ward, but through the shimmering, confusing corridors of the Mirror Maze.
Sometimes, what happens in the past could happen again in the future.
Becoming the present.
Trizha gasped for air, her eyes wide and searching, expecting to see her childhood friend standing before her in the crystalline path.
But the maze offered no comfort.
There was no one there to stare back into her purple eyes. Instead, she was met with an infinite army of herself—thousands of Trizhas reflected in walls of glass, each one looking just as terrified and lost as she was.
Realizing she was alone, Trizha reached up and brushed the cold sweat from her forehead with a trembling hand.
She leaned against a mirrored wall, her shoulders slumped in near exhaustion.
She looked left, then right, her gaze darting through the reflections to double-check the empty halls.
"Geez, I could've sworn Wyne was right there," Trizha whispered to her own reflection, her voice sounding thin and hollow. "It... it must have been my imagination. This place is really starting to get to me."
She took one last lingering look at the empty path before forcing her legs to move again.
She had to find them.
She had to find someone.
Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the empty corridor, a tall figure emerged from the shadows of a sharp turn.
Nomoro stood still for a moment, his cat-like eyes narrowing as he caught the fading echo of Trizha's shout.
He hadn't seen her directly just yet, but the sound of her voice had acted as a beacon in the disorienting labyrinth.
If his sense of direction served him, she had ducked into the left-hand passage just beyond the next junction.
He began to move, his pace quick and purposeful.
He had two goals in mind: to lead her back to the safety of her friends, and to finally confront the tension that had defined their relationship since the day they met.
He intended to finish their conflict once and for all. That was what he had promised to Wyne.
On the far west side of the festival grounds, far removed from the glittering trap of the Mirror Maze, stood a small, utilitarian structure labeled as the waiting center for lost individuals.
It was a quiet, lonely place meant for reuniting separated individuals to their relatives.
Inside, Wyne was a blur of nervous motion.
She paced in tight circles, the floorboards creaking under her weight.
Her index finger was caught between her teeth, and she bit down hard on the knuckle, the sharp pain being the only thing keeping her grounded.
It had been fifteen agonizing minutes since Margaret had left her to go find the Demon of Nine Years Ago, Nomoro.
Eventually, after Wyne had finished her tense crossing of paths with the so-called demon, she felt it—a sharp, phantom sensation that pierced through her chest like a cold blade.
It was a stabbing sensation, localized and sudden.
She knew, with a terrifying certainty, that someone had been hurt.
It wasn't a physical wound on her own body, but the spiritual echo of a blow dealt to someone she knew intimately.
It wasn't Trizha.
It was Margaret.
It had to be.
By some raw thread of intuition, Wyne felt the danger radiating from her friend.
Her first instinct was to run, to hunt down the source of that pain and tear it apart, but she was paralyzed by a lack of direction.
Margaret had vanished into the festival's crowd without leaving a single trace of her destination.
She had left Wyne all alone.
Margaret's earlier words lingered in the air, haunting Wyne's thoughts as the minutes began to stretch.
Those minutes felt like hours; the hours felt like a lifetime; and that lifetime felt like a hollow eternity spent waiting for a ghost to return.
Fifteen minutes.
That was the total duration of Wyne's vigil, spent pacing in frantic, nervous circles within the small waiting center.
Fifteen minutes of a silence so loud it made her ears ring.
Then, the air was punctured by a soft, rhythmic knock against the wooden door.
Wyne jumped, a sharp gasp escaping her throat as she nearly tripped over her own feet.
She didn't hesitate for a heartbeat; she lunged toward the door, her face a mask of desperate, wild expectation.
She yanked the handle open so hard the door slammed against the interior wall, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She was praying, pleading with the universe for a familiar face.
"Margaret!" Wyne cried out, her eyes scanning the threshold.
But the world was cruel.
The person standing there was a total stranger—a lost tourist looking for directions, their face blank and confused.
Wyne's shoulders slumped as a heavy, crushing wave of disappointment washed over her.
She offered a curt, breathless apology to the stranger, her hope withering into ash.
However, that disappointment was to be short-lived.
As the stranger stepped aside and the light from the hallway spilled further into the room, another figure emerged from the gloom.
Wyne failed to realize, for one blissful second, that her silent prayers were being answered in real-time.
It was Margaret.
She looked as if she had walked through the center of a hurricane—or perhaps, as if she had looked into the eyes of a god and found them empty.
She looked like a girl who had seen a ghost, or one who had tried with all her might to become one.
"Margaret...?" Wyne's voice cracked, softening from a shout to a fragile whisper.
The relief was so sudden it felt like a physical weight being lifted off her chest.
She looked at her friend and saw the invisible scars of a war no one else could see—a silent, psychological battle that had left Margaret frayed at the edges.
"Hey... Wyne," Margaret said. Her voice was weak, a jagged rasp that spoke of a bone-deep exhaustion.
Wyne didn't wait for another word.
Before Margaret could even lift a hand in greeting, Wyne threw herself forward, her body colliding with Margaret's in a desperate, bone-crushing hug.
She clung to her friend as if the very foundations of the world were crumbling around them.
It was a grip tighter and more primal than any subconscious comfort she had ever sought before.
Then, the dam finally broke.
Hot tears spilled from Wyne's eyes, soaking into Margaret's clothes.
She couldn't hold it back anymore—the pressure of the wait, the tension of the "Empty zone," and the sheer terror of that phantom stabbing sensation.
She had been living through a private hell, imagining a thousand different ways of reasons why Margaret might never come back.
"I'm glad... I'm so, so glad!" Wyne sobbed, her head buried against Margaret's shoulder as she huddled into her friend's space.
Margaret stood still for a moment, her own body trembling slightly, before a soft, weary smile touched her lips.
She slowly raised her arms, wrapping them around Wyne and pulling her close.
"Don't cry so much... you'll end up drowning in your own tears at this rate," Margaret teased, though her voice lacked its usual sharp edge.
She felt a profound sense of relief washing over her.
She had known Wyne would be waiting, but seeing the depth of her friend's distress made the weight of her own ordeal seem lighter.
But a sharp pang of regret pierced through Margaret's heart.
She regretted the secrecy.
She regretted ever telling Wyne about her lethal intentions at that knife stall, knowing now how much that burden had cost her friend.
"...I'm sorry. For leaving you alone with all that," Margaret whispered into Wyne's hair.
"No, it's fine. It doesn't matter now," Wyne replied.
Wyne pulled back just enough to look up, sniffing softly as she wiped her eyes. Despite the tear-streaked mess of her face, she managed a genuine, radiant smile.
"I'm just glad—really, truly glad—that you're still here with me."
"Well, you know me," Margaret responded, her gaze softening. "I'll always be there. Always."
They stood there in the quiet of the waiting center, holding onto one another with a fierce, protective loyalty.
They were far beyond the simple definitions of friends or classmates; they were two souls who understood the cost of survival, and for now, that was enough.
Suddenly, Wyne's eyes widened as she had a thought, "Wait... where's Trizha? Didn't you see her on the way?"
"Trizha isn't here with you?" Margaret asked, her voice sounding distant, almost as if she were speaking from underwater.
"No, I've been waiting here like you told me," Wyne replied, her anxiety ramping up again.
"So, is Zack with you then? Did you find him?"
"He is right behind me... I think," Margaret murmured, gesturing vaguely toward the open door.
Wyne leaned out into the hallway, looking past Margaret's shoulder, but the corridor was empty. There were no footsteps, no tall redhead lurking in the shadows.
There was absolutely no one following her.
Wyne turned back to Margaret, ready to point out the obvious, but she stopped when she saw the sheer exhaustion in Margaret's eyes.
"Margaret?" Wyne asked, stepping closer.
"What happened to you? You look... terrible."
"It's nothing," Margaret whispered, her gaze fixed on the floor. "I'm just... I'm just a bit tired. It was a long walk to get back here."
"I see," Wyne said, not believing her for a second but sensing that Margaret wasn't ready to talk.
After all, she already knew that it wasn't really a long walk.
"Go sit down. You look like you're about to collapse. I'll go out and find Trizha by myself. She can't have gone far."
Margaret offered a small, silent nod, walking past Wyne into the room. She found a plastic chair in the corner and sank into it, her entire body seeming to deflate.
She wasn't physically tired—the walk hadn't been that long—but she was spiritually spent, her mind still reeling from the cold reality Zackier had forced her to face.
Wyne didn't waste another second.
She stormed out of the waiting center, her jaw set in a line of grim determination.
She set off toward the center of the park, calling Trizha's name, completely unaware that her friend had already been swallowed by the glass walls of the Mirror Maze.
The distance between the three friends had never been greater, and as the sun began to dip lower in the sky, the shadows in the park began to stretch and grow.