Kin awoke slowly, in stages, as his shattered body drifted between wakefulness and slumber.

“...up! Kin! Wake up! Please!”

Kin was aware of a vaguely familiar, annoying voice.

Mom?

No. Not Mom.

Mom is dead. Mom is lying in the water, far away, surrounded by metal and wires and rust.

Rust.

Why do I keep thinking of rust?

Kin’s mouth felt strangely metallic. He realised with sleepy apathy that he had bitten his tongue.

Blood tastes like rust.

He knew, because he had licked a rusty spoon by accident before. The flaky bits had come off on his tongue, the acidic coppery taste drying his mouth in an instant and causing him to gag and spit and cough.

I am filled up inside with rust. Nothing but rust. And one day it will all come coughing out.

But why do I keep thinking of rust?

“Kin! Please! We have to go!”

“Let me sleep...just a while more…”

“No! Up! Now!”

“Uuuuu…”

Kin slowly dragged himself into a sitting position, more to get Mion to keep quiet than anything else. He felt his entire body spasm in a chill as he slowly realised how cold he was.

“M-m-m-m--”

“Kin, we have to go. That thing isn’t dead yet.”

“What thing?”

“...remember? The thing that tried to eat you?”

“Oh…”

Kin was suddenly aware of a huge presence not far from him. Turning his head slowly, and wincing at the pain in his bruised body, he blinked once, twice, gasped in disbelief, and beheld.

The thing that smiled rested on the floor in a gigantic heap, shuddering as it took fitful breaths. Its tail lashed, but weakly, and its entire body was covered from top to bottom in wounds.

Not scratch wounds, or even impact ones. Large, savage gouges that look like someone--or something had taken a cleaver, an impossibly large one, and cut.

And cut, and cut, and cut, until huge chunks of the creature rested like so much detritus around its frame, foul bluish blood clouding the water like a screen, mixing with Kin’s own.

What did that?

“Mion. What happened.”

Silence.

“I-I don’t know.”

“...”

“It just started...thrashing around all of a sudden. And screaming. If something attacked it I don’t know, because...because…”

“...because I didn’t sense anything around other than you, and it.”

“So...something invisible attacked that thing and did--”

“No. It didn’t do that. After its frenzied movements it started doubling back upon itself. Clawing at its own body. Tearing gigantic chunks out. As if there was something on its skin causing intense distress.”

“As if it was--as if it was burning.”

Let the whole world burn.

Kin gripped his head. “What?”

“Hearing things again?”

“No...no. No no. I didn’t do this. I couldn’t have.”

If I did this to that, what could I do to people. Other people. People like Mom?

Like Mion?

Must have been something else.

Kin scratched at his head. The itch was building again. This time it surged stronger than before, itchy, itchy, made him want to claw his skull open and scrub the inside clean…

“Uuuu!”

“Kin, we need to go. Your suit is ruptured and you are suffering from the cold. We also need to disinfect your wound from whatever is floating around in the water. And you will develop a rash if you leave your body stained with blood and urine.”

“Urine…”

“When you suffered an inexplicable series of spasms, just now, you--”

Oh.

Kin hung his head.

“Kin…”

The thing that smiled snarled fitfully, its ruined throat flapping in the not-wind that flowed through the water.

“Oh. Yes. Yes.”

Kin drew himself up and reached out a shaky hand to stabilise himself.

“Kin.”

“Yes?” It took all of Kin’s strength to talk while concentrating on walking.

“I want you to know that no matter what, you’ve got to live. Even if it hurts. Even if it's scary. Because being alive is a gift, being able to breath and laugh and hurt is a gift, because if you aren’t hurting then healing has no meaning. And if you’re dead you can’t hurt, but you can’t eat and hope and love either, and something, no matter how small, is better than nothing.”

“You aren’t by any chance equipped with a philosophy core, are you, Mion?”

“My function demands that I possess advanced ethical reasoning.”

“Mmm.”

Kin stumbled onwards, his vision tunneling as he got colder and colder and weaker and weaker. But something Mion said, even though it sounded disgustingly grown-up, struck a cinder in his heart, reaffirming that all his past struggles were not for nothing.

Even if it all disappears one day.

Even if no one knows I lived, I do. And that’s enough.

Even if it hurts, that is good, because I feel the hurt and the hurt tells me that I am alive.