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Through the door, Dahlia walks through. She holds her jacket closed, fingers grasping at each flap of fabric as if the world depended on it. The wind howls around them, pulling tenor notes from trees thinning at their tips.[break][break]

Despite the darkness, the vague suggestion of Dahlia's face flits about as she speaks.[break][break]

"I'm fine. I'm fine." She says. "Is your report okay? Saved?"[break][break]

Dahlia swears she sees a shadow shift in a dark corner's recess. Gasping, she fishes her phone from her pocket. Frantic fingers fumble for the Flashlight tool. After a few crisp taps, the white light blares out from the tiniest lens.[break][break]

"Sorry, thought I saw something." Dahlia says. "Is it embarrassing to admit that I'm still afraid of the dark?"

Yujin nodded at the first query; the blue back-glow of her laptop suffused her with a vespertine halo.[break][break]

“No, but will you forgive me if I laugh anyway?”[break][break]

The body knows the primal danger of darkness, even if all the lights of the civilized world threaten to extinguish it.[break][break]

The engineer rose from her seat with a poorly-suppressed smile, gathering her own jacket and lit phone. Unbidden, she reached for the tool backpack by her foot, scraping a few loose gadgets into the pockets and hoisting it upon her shoulders.[break][break]

Yujin was halfway to the door when she glanced back at Dahlia. “Shall we go on a little adventure? You can stay here too, I don’t mind. Alone. In the dark.” The grin threatened to crack her face sideways.

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"oh, you're just goading me on now!" The Commissioner expels a performative huff and stomps her way over to Yujin.[break][break]

Beneath her shoes, the old planks groan as she commits to her jestful march.[break][break]

"but maybe you're scared too?" She says, linking arms with Yujin. "and this is a way of ensuring my company."[break][break]

With a flutter of laughter, the Commissioner guides them to the exit. Winds whistle through the tiniest cracks, through the hole in the door's corner made by blunted, smoothed over wood.

How pleasantly warm the commissioner’s arm was, how goldspun her hair. To some, Dahlia was a distressing figure of authority. To Yujin, who knew of her only as a travel companion, she felt familiar… like an old Alolan friend.[break][break]

As they stepped out into the foreboding night, the phone lights led the way.[break][break]

“Nonsense. I assure you, as an experienced officer, I am afraid of no—”[break][break]

Lightning flashed through the trees. Thunder boomed only half a second later with the reveal.[break][break]

For sitting right in there in the middle of the path down to the generators flopped a demented 'pikachu', its head bent at an sickening angle.[break][break]

“KYAA—!”[break][break]

Her breath caught in her chest; she jumped near a foot in the air. And unfortunately, as they had interlocked arms, that meant Dahlia was not spared.

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Yujin's scream adopts the lightning's form, the sound fraying off into several branches: a sonic lichtenberg figure that travels through Dahlia's ear into her breast.[break][break]

Her hand launches there as Yujin jolts. Though she may jump, Dahlia remains on the ground, anchoring them in place.[break][break]

Under the moonlight, the Commissioner's skin has paled. She sucks in air in between disjointed syllables: "oh gosh, yujin. are you alright?"[break][break]

She looks toward her, a fragile, well-meaning smile to her face.[break][break]

"and i thought the zoroark out here were terrifying."

The first words fluttered like monarch butterflies through an empty garden.[break][break]

Yujin, staring at the mimikyu with some inexplicable emotion somewhere between disbelief and anger, could only watch as it scampered away into the roiling darkness. Redemption squirreled away with it.[break][break]

Her head swiveled to face Dahlia, their noses awfully close.[break][break]

“Oh. I’m… fine.”[break][break]

After a pause, Yujin would nudge the commissioner into resuming their walk. Mercifully, the grip on the phone-flashlight had been iron. [break][break]

“...Ah, that was embarrassing. You can do your best to grow up, but there's always something that makes you feel four feet tall again.”[break][break]

The backpack of tools clanked with redoubled purpose.

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Their noses almost kiss. The cold air bites the skin pink, while the adrenaline trickles away.[break][break]

"you are so right." Dahlia says, her own embarrassment still cradled in her modest grin. "leave it up to the dark and our primeape brains to make us kids again."[break][break]

As they tread through the darkness, hidden stones and dried twigs crunch and crack beneath their shoes. Though the moon is bright, it almost feels as if the light can barely breach the charcoal wood before them.[break][break]

Yujin's phone light is their only guide.[break][break]

"do you ever think about wanting to be a kid again?" She asks. "i miss going to school, frankly."[break][break]

She laughs to herself and does not notice the discrepancies between the forest they walk through now and the forest they walked through before.

Whatever courage is gained from the commissioner’s words, is only borrowed from the other side.[break][break]

Feeling young and alone is not a pleasant experience for Yujin. Two decades is a long time for the mind, but the body remembers an imprint.[break][break]

“I do think about going back, but not because I miss anything.” By the time Yujin entered modern schooling, she had been years behind and with a debilitating language barrier. “I wish I could change things. But then I think, what if this is already the best possible outcome?”[break][break]

The forest had taken an ethereal quality. Yujin hurried the last few steps towards the small timber structure and the plain-steel box seated like a sore thumb against it, glittering in the gloom.[break][break]

“But I think I knew similar people at the universities. Career students? They would have loved to keep learning all their lives if they could.”

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The best possible outcome. The phrase itches at Dahlia's brain with its overgrown nail. It suggests that the life path has already past the point of no return, that her fate has already been determined. Is her life right now, the best possible outcome?[break][break]

What kind of a life did other Dahlias lead beyond the veil of this world?[break][break]

"ha, i should've known." The Commissioner laughs—though it flutters inward—as they come across the timber building. "then your life must be so exciting, right? traveling the world as interpol. getting to use your own wits and ability to solve any problem in your way."[break][break]

She takes a step onto wooden boards embedded within the earth for footing. However, it shifts like cud beneath her sole. In the dark of the night, she surmises it to be a muddied, loose plank. She does not check—and with a nervous breath, focuses on her companion.

“It’s a good life, I think. But how can I know? It’s the only one I’ve ever lived.”[break][break]

She sets up her tools and the phone light, disconnects the power generator, and puts on some safety glasses—usually being a large proponent of the safety squint, but perhaps not keen to flaunt work hazards in front of the commissioner.[break][break]

The task of examining the breaker switches and checking the fuel lines is certainly interesting, but not enough to forget pleasant company.[break][break]

“I’ve missed a lot of milestones. Ones I’ll never get back. Will I ever settle down? Ah, wouldn’t even know how. [break][break]

But when you’re good at something, you think you should keep doing it. Especially if it’s important. Especially if you’re one of the few that can.”

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so many milestones missed. so many milestones yet to pass.[break][break]

"and if you stop, what sense of purpose is left?"[break][break]

the cold claw of night wind sneaks past dahlia's shoulders. traces her neck. she casts her hand toward her haunted skin as if to catch stray spinarak web, the soft glow of yujin's light a comfort.[break][break]

"and can you trust who will take your place?"[break][break]

she leans in, fingers restless.[break][break]

"ah, anything i can do to help?"

She mulls the words over, chews them up and spits them out raw and bleeding.[break][break]

“There’s no purpose. I just do what I’m told. That’s okay too, right?”[break][break]

Validation for a pawn when the kings and queens have the power to turn the whole world off.[break][break]

Yujin notices not the darkness on the earth’s curvature: something different, something rich and strange.[break][break]

Trust? “No.” Her other half died a long time ago but her eyes are a reminder. They shine like gunmetal—cold and unsure.[break][break]

A loud groan punctuates the surroundings as the generator sputters to life. Almost done. “Oh, please don’t help. If anything happens to you, my descendants will still be paying off the debt...”

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dahlia shares the same answer. the same cold cut no. distrust of her successor—whoever that may be. carrying the thought is a thorny burden. it digs into her, like nervous fingers grasping a stone throne's arms. is she a tyrant for thinking this way?[break][break]

"oh please, yujin." she laughs, voice melding into the gravelly hum of the generator. "i'm not royalty. besides, it'd be my fault for sticking my nose where it doesn't belong." [break][break]

as yujin's work nears completion, dahlia hears an off-key whistle of wind. around them, fires erupt behind evergreens, casting their shapes in furious reds.[break][break]

a zoroark illusion. but they do not know that yet. humanoid figures slither among the trees.[break][break]

"yujin?"[break][break]

her mind can not disperse the magic trick—for she has seen this scene many times before. in her nightmares, in her war.