F-Rank Soul Eater-Chapter 73: Cynthia’s Fear Of Death

Chapter 73: Cynthia’s Fear Of Death
Soren screamed as he fell into the hole.
A slide, leading to a cave.
This cave. It had bioluminescent plants scattered all around, brightening up the space. They swayed lightly—left and right on their own, without wind.
Their colors varied. Red, blue, and green. They looked like little flowers with wings.
Every beat of their petals was attractive, pulling.
Soren found his fingers reaching out in an attempt to touch them.
"Yeah, don’t touch that if you don’t want a horde of eldritch monsters swarming you." Vinegar’s voice cautioned from behind.
He pulled back, looking away.
The spell broke.
"Thank you," he muttered as he turned to her.
She stood to her feet and dusted her clothes. "Come, we are almost there."
The cave was just wide and high enough for three people to walk side by side.
A little deeper into the cave, and he could hear voices.
"Are they others..." The words froze in his throat as he got his answer.
What sight like no other.
Ahead of them, a much larger cave was a huge wall.
It was at least twenty feet high and thirty feet long.
The wall itself was broken evenly into little square boxes—cubes—about six inches on all sides.
Amazingly, each box played a video on repeat with sound and all.
"How can... wow."
"Cool, right?" She giggled.
While the entire scene was breathtaking, Soren focused on each square.
Each had their own unique videos playing in them. Just about five seconds long and in constant repeat.
Soren stretched a hand to touch but then stopped. He turned to her, as if seeking permission.
Vinegar nodded, explaining how they worked. It was not technology they familiar with. Rather, the wall occurred naturally—a magnificence of the Glass.
The cube he took had the recording of Vinegar playing a game of tag.
She was smaller in the video.
But what really caught his attention was the person she was playing with.
Cynthia.
She was similarly smaller here. But still at least six feet tall.
Soren turned to Vinegar, obviously surprised.
She smiled seeing the video. "Yeah, we used to hide out here whenever they brought us into the mines."
She leaned in—more into him than to look closer at the cube.
Her gaze was like it had climbed memory lane.
"Since we were not strong enough to fight the antibodies, we would go around, looking for materials the science and research team would consider valuable. Then we exchange them for points.
It was small, but it ensured we did not go hungry."
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Yeah," she nodded, realizing Soren was still fresh in this place. "It’s just your first day, so you don’t know."
First day?
Soren wanted to laugh at those words but held back.
"We fight off antibodies while harvesting ore stones that give points we accumulate in order to leave the prison. But we also need them for other amenities, like clothing and food."
The first part Soren knew about, but not the second.
As if knowing what was on his mind, she replied.
"The first day’s meal is free. You’ll have to work your ass off if you want to eat."
This... This was news to him. But considering the kind of healthy meals he saw the prisoners enjoy, it kind of made sense.
She walked towards the wall, watching the different scenes.
"Those were really... fun, but painful times." She pointed to a square.
Soren was shocked to see that there were more kids—six of them in total.
"We were all brought to prison. Just because we bonded with Souls before we were 16. Empire’s rules, they said." Her voice got lower, dropping into a sob she desperately tried to hold back.
"Like it was our fault the Glass broke in our village," she reached out to touch a particular cube of two boys making silly faces to each other.
"Mani and Victor died in the first year." Fingers gliding over the cube like she wanted to reach in and touch them again.
"We had not eaten anything for days because we had no points. We were so... So hungry. Mani and Victor set out to find edible plants deep within the glass.
We watched as its seedlings tore through them..." Her frown got tighter. "They died in... so much
pain
."
Her shoulders trembled with the weight of the memories.
Soren stepped closer, wondering if it was okay to touch her or not.
But she also could not hold it in any longer, diving into his chest.
Instantly, the dam she had held back for many years—broke.
Her tears fell a little while longer, soaking his jumpsuit. But he did not mind.
Soren remembered when he lost Machos. A hug would have been good then too.
But life. It did not wait for him to mourn before slapping him with the next obstacle.
Just a wounded soldier forced to continue the battle called life.
They sat there for a while, as Soren patted her head against his shoulder.
It was quiet, except for the little chipping sounds from the videos on the wall and her deep sobs.
Getting herself together, Vinegar continued. "Fena, she died while learning Blackfield and Zaki—the wild one. He got lost somewhere in the Glass. He could not make it off the Whales in time, before they returned into the fractures. We never heard from him again."
Soren patted some more. "All that’s left is I and Cynthia, and even then... She too... I had no choice; I had to leave her. I couldn’t bear to see someone I love die again."
Soren paused.
"What do you mean?"
"It’s... it’s nothing." Vinegar looked away. "I shouldn’t have said anything."
She wiped her tears. But Soren did not let it go.
He wanted to know. No. With the attack on Cynthia’s life, he had to know.
He pushed a bit.
Considering the fact that Cynthia was his cellmate, Vinegar finally spilled.
However, the answer he got was not what he was expecting.
"Cynthia has parasitic twin syndrome. Fetus in fetu." Vinegar replied.
Soren did not know what that was, but then she explained.
Fetus in fetu was a situation where one twin consumed the other in the womb before development.
However, in Cynthia’s case, she had not consumed her twin totally.
While this was never a problem when she was little, things changed after she touched the glass.
Because of her twin, when she touched the glass, Cynthia bonded not with one but two souls.
The science and research team said that this was a very rare case.
While it made Cynthia an unstoppable force, it was also killing her on the inside.
Basically, it was a double edged sword.
The only way to save her life was to get a particular resin, known to have been gotten from one kind of eldritch.
Yes. Big mama.
Soren paused, letting the weight of the news sink in.
He remembered what happened in that loop. When he was wiping her body, he asked her why she wanted to get the Crown Jewel so bad.
Cynthia had broken down in tears.
Now that he knew the reasons, he felt like a real jerk.
It must have really hurt her. After all, she was staring at her mortality right in the face.
While he could die and loop back, Soren remembered how frozen he had been in the face of death the very first time.
That feeling of overwhelming dread.
While his had been for a moment.
Cynthia had to live with her own for a long time, knowing that one day, she might never wake up again.
"How long does she have?" He asked.