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  “Yeah, there was a time when I was like you,” Yata said. “You see, my father was quite the murderer. He killed one of the elders of the village in an attempt to try and escape the barrier—just as you have. But he thought the only way to escape was to kill all of the elders since they’re the ones who created this barrier. My father was captured and hanged before my eyes. I was only five. At such a young age, I wasn’t really sure what to think about his dangling body. I cried. I don’t really know why, though. He had never been there for me and had always beaten me when I messed up. He wasn’t an ideal father. But my mother was the closest person I had. I loved her so much. And the government of the village … these elders….” His hands clenched into tightened fists as he suddenly let out a low, anger-filled growl. “They took my mother away because she was married to and therefore associated with my father. They hanged her as well.” Yata gulped, blinking a few times. “They would’ve hanged me as well if I hadn’t been so young. They hanged my mother, the one person I had. She died there right before my eyes as I watched the life choked from her body. And as I saw her corpse dangling there, her feet inches from the ground, I wondered … why? Why did my mother deserve to be punished for something my father had done?

  “It was at that moment that I finally realized the reality of it all. That these elders of ours aren’t the gods that we think them to be. They cower in their homes, hidden deep in the village with those damn armed guards. I swore I would finish what my father started and kill them all.” Yata sucked in a deep breath and exhaled deeply. “But I suppose I won’t need to, if we have found a way to get out of that hell-hole.”

  “So, is that why you always pick fights with everyone? Even against guys like Buu. Because you hate the elders and the village?” Keimaro asked, raising an eyebrow at him. He hadn’t expected for Yata to open up so easily, but he also saw that the two of them both wanted freedom from this village. He wanted to see the world while Yata wanted to escape the cruelty of the elders. It was about time that he had found someone who shared his ambitions.

  “And the fact that they piss me off,” Yata muttered, shrugging lightly. “Fighting has always been a way to express myself. If anyone messes with me, I don’t mind treating them like a punching bag. My father taught me to be tough, you know.”

  “So, why did your father … uh…?”

  “Kill the elder?” Yata finished Keimaro’s sentence without even a change in emotion. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t depressed. His expression was simply neutral as he looked up at the stars. “There was a rumor that if all the elders died, then the barrier would collapse. He killed one elder, betting everything on that rumor. Quite the brutal guy, huh? I never said that I liked my old man. He was a very violent person, and he ruined any chances that he had at getting out of Bakaara.

  “I’m sick of looking around and seeing the same stupid crap everywhere! I’m glad to have left the village. Even touching this tree … is enough to make me smile.” Yata leaned backward and reached out with his hand, gently running his index finger along the rough bark of the apple tree.

  Keimaro nodded his head gently at Yata’s words. He knew what he was feeling. He knew all about being trapped like an animal. “What’s the point in anything if we just waste time sitting there in those walls? The world out there is vast, Yata,” he said and swallowed lightly, concerned by the vehemence in Yata’s voice. “But there’s no rush to leave yet. We aren’t ready. We would probably die as soon as we entered the Forbidden Forest. We need to get stronger before we decide to go out there.”

  “The Forbidden Forest,” Yata scoffed, as he ran his hand through his hair and shook his head in disbelief. “To think that a freaking obstacle such as a forest could be keeping us from our freedom. The elders are afraid of some monsters in the trees, huh? That’s why they’re keeping up this force field.”

  Keimaro blinked when he suddenly heard shuffling and spun around to see a young girl with long brown hair and blue eyes, blinking at him. “W-What?” He was about to yelp when Yata clamped his hand over his mouth. “Mm!” His words were muffled, and his heart was pounding. Who the hell was this person?

  Yata kept his hand on Keimaro’s moving mouth for a moment and examined the young girl up and down before slowly lowering his hand and placing a finger to his lips. The girl was wearing a rather fancy blue dress made of a type of silk that he had never seen before. However, the seams of the dress looked as if they were slightly ripped, and the bottom rims looked as if they were splashed in mud. A red sash was wrapped tightly around her waist and tied perfectly in front. Her long brown hair reached down past her shoulders, something quite unusual amongst girls in their village. There were a few scratches on her knees, and she squinted her eyes against exhaustion as she fought to stay conscious. She was around Keimaro and Yata’s age, only fourteen.

  “Who are you?” Keimaro whispered to the girl, who stumbled toward them as if she were inebriated.

  Keimaro looked down at her feet, caked in mud, and saw that they were bloody from blisters and cuts from walking barefoot a reasonable distance. He saw the girl reaching up toward the branch of the apple tree for a gleaming, shiny apple. As she reached, she fell and Keimaro immediately sprang forward, catching her in his arms. He grunted, feeling her weight bearing upon him, and made sure to stabilize her in his arms before reaching up and plucking the fruit from the branch above and gently handing it to her. She held the apple tightly and took a deep bite into it, closing her eyes and savoring its sweet flavor. It was as if she were in some type of trance, lost in her own little world.

  “Kei, look,” Yata said in a serious tone, looking off into the distance at a rising smoke that was drifting off from the Forbidden Forest into the dark night sky. Something was on fire in the distance. “I’m assuming that other humans caused that fire. Someone is nearby, and this girl is one of them.”

  “Yeah,” Keimaro said, allowing the girl in his arms to continue munching on the apple. “Her clothes are much different than what we have. What do we do about her?”

  “I don’t know!” Yata exclaimed, scratching the back of his neck. “We could take her back to the village. She seems tired and beaten up from having walked so far. I’m assuming that the fire had something to do with her. Maybe she was in it herself! Either way, if we leave her out here, she is going to get killed by the beasts in the Forbidden Forest. They’ll smell her blood.”

  “Are you serious?” Keimaro said, incredulous. “Bring her back? We can’t do that! Where is she going to stay? Like I said, her clothes are too foreign! We don’t even know who she is. She could be a spy for all we know. If she knows the way into the village, everyone could be in danger!”

  “You seriously think a girl our age is going to be a freaking spy, Kei?” Yata snarled just as a roar split the night sky and shook the earth to its very foundation. Both of their eyes widened in shock and disbelief at the sheer amplitude of the sound. They stood rooted to the spot, staring at each other in fear. In all the fourteen years that they had lived within the force field, not once had they heard a single sound of a beast. The only evidence of monsters had been minor tremors in the earth. With the ground rumbling beneath their feet, they now knew what caused the tremors.

  Keimaro placed one arm on the girl’s back and his other underneath her knees and lifted her up into his arms, wincing at her weight. His eyes locked onto a beast that burst from the trees—a black, scaled tiger with a long slender tail that had a spiked circular mace-like shape at the end. The mace-tail dragged through the dirt with ease. The tiger-beast’s eyes were dark like the hue of the night, and it bore its sharp teeth at Keimaro, who stared at the pointy daggers in fright. Those things could probably rip through the hardest of armors.

  “What is that? What do we do?” he gasped, his heart beginning to pound furiously against his chest as panic struck him. He blinked when he felt the weight of the girl bearing down upon him more. She was unconscious. Perfect.

  “You’re fast at runn
ing, aren’t you?” Yata yelled, beginning to sprint down the lush green hill and back toward the force field. “We need to get the hell out of here! Let’s go!”

  Keimaro snapped back to reality and spun around, running as fast as he could while holding the girl. Ordinarily, he would’ve been much faster than Yata, but with the extra weight, he was lagging behind. He grunted as he heard the tiger growling behind him. He knew looking back would only cause more fear in his heart, slowing him down. Keimaro panted, accelerating as his breath began to grow heavier. The roar of the monster grew louder, and the pounding of its paws on the ground was coming closer. He turned his head slightly and in his peripheral vision caught sight of a pounce. He yelped and spun himself to the side. He gasped in shock as the tiger landed directly where he had been only moments before, smashing into the dirt. I could’ve died there, was the first and only thought that hit him. He continued running and saw that Yata had already slid underneath the force field and was waiting for him on the other side.

  Keimaro held the girl tighter and his eyes were locked onto the tiny slit in the force field as the tiger began to dash after him once more. Oh god, oh god, I don’t want to die, he thought. Death was an end to every single dream he’d ever had! He couldn’t die now. Not after meeting his first friend. Not after this new goal that he had set for himself. Not after everything!

  He pushed off of the ground and leapt high with the girl in his arms, his legs flailing clumsily through the air. The tiger swiped at the exact same moment and scraped the bottom of his legs, ripping his pants. However, Keimaro had jumped high enough to avoid getting his legs lacerated entirely. He landed heavily and got low, sliding underneath the force field as the tiger pounced up into the air and slammed into the force field at full speed. There was an electrical noise that buzzed before the tiger roared, being thrown backward by a massive amount of force. The creature slammed heavily into the dirt and rolled a few times before slowly raising its head. It locked its demonic red eyes onto Keimaro and snarled loudly, as if pledging vengeance, before turning from the force field and dashing back into the direction from which it came.

  Yata was at Keimaro’s side and was examining him to make sure that he wasn’t hurt. “Holy crap, Kei! You scared me!” he exclaimed, out of breath. “After a commotion like that, the guards are bound to come somewhere around here. We’d better get going. I’ll take the girl with me since I live alone. Hopefully when she wakes up, she can answer some questions. Come over first thing tomorrow morning, okay?”

  “Yeah, sounds good,” Keimaro said, still sitting on the ground.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “You seem like you’re still in one piece,” Yata said. He finally spotted the scrape from the tiger’s swipe and frowned. “That’s a nasty cut you’ve got there. We don’t know anything about that creature. I suggest you find out if that’s poison because…. I mean, you’ll need to get it treated if it is.”

  “If I was poisoned, how would I explain to the doctor how I was infected with such a poison?” Keimaro muttered, slowly pushing himself to his feet. His leg erupted in pain, and he almost toppled over. Luckily, he hopped a foot and steadied himself, shaking his head in disbelief. He turned to look over his shoulder at the area where the creature had been only minutes before. His heart was beating rapidly against his chest, and he gulped. “What the hell was that thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Yata muttered. “That’s one of the reasons why we aren’t ready to leave the village yet, I guess. We will be fine. We just need to train ourselves to be stronger in case we encounter one of those things whenever we do decide to leave the village.” He lifted the girl over his shoulder casually and nodded with a reassuring smile at Keimaro. “Go on; go home. The longer we stay out here, the higher the chance of someone finding us with the girl. I’ll take her to my house. Come over first thing tomorrow.”

  “Got it,” Keimaro said and turned from Yata, beginning to walk his normal way home. A part of him wanted to rush after his new friend so that he wouldn’t be alone anymore, but he knew that right now he had to get home. It was getting late. Turning back to look at the direction that the beast had run in, Keimaro exhaled. He was alive; that was good. And something else had happened. Something exciting. Every day had been the same within the small village of Bakaara, but tomorrow was going to be different. He rubbed the back of his neck in disbelief and sighed. Man, how were they going to keep this girl a secret? Everyone in the village already knew each other. They would need to make up a story—and even so, her clothes were unrecognizable. Someone would clearly find out that she is foreigner. He ran a hand through his hair as he walked through the village. Since night had fallen upon Bakaara, it seemed that hardly anyone was in the streets. It was common for families to spend time with each other at nighttime, except for a few of the guards who would switch shifts.

  The market square’s center was surrounded by many different wooden buildings that had been built—and rebuilt—from the original wood that had inhabited the land, since no one could leave for more resources. Keimaro walked on the tiled ground past merchants’ tents and caravans filled with fruits and vegetables from the farms. These were locked for the night and packed away to keep them safe from thieves. Though, not many people had the guts to steal. The village itself only had a population of around ten thousand. That might’ve seemed like a lot for a small village, but everyone was spread out over vast fields of farmland. Bakaara was mostly a farm-driven society, with the villagers surviving off of grown foods. There was only one area on the entirety of Bakaara’s grounds that somewhat resembled a city, and that was located in the center of all of Bakaara. The land, however, was nothing in comparison to how vast the empires were. Bakaara was nothing but a speck in comparison to a kingdom like Athens.

  Keimaro continued walking past the markets toward the long, stretching farmlands that filled the rest of Bakaara. Finally, he locked his eyes onto his house, a small cottage in the distance in the center of a reasonable amount of farmland. The crops had already begun to grow, filling their yard and towering over Keimaro.

  Keimaro walked up the path and opened the door slowly to find his mother, father, and younger sister sitting at the dinner table. He broke the silence with his footsteps and plopped in a chair silently, exchanging glares with his father. He looked down and saw beans, rice, and corn on his plate. There was never any meat because the amount of animals they bred was limited. Meat was considered a luxury that was eaten only on special occasions. But Keimaro knew that the elders probably had meat every single night.

  “Dinner is ready, Kei!” Mai, his four-year-old sister, exclaimed. She had shorter black hair like Keimaro with small, gleaming dark eyes. She sat upon her mother’s lap with a bright smile on her face, as if she were having the time of her life. She waved her spoon about cutely until their mother calmed her down by guiding her hand to the food.

  “Where have you been?” his father asked, his eyes on his food as he began to spoon some corn into his mouth. His black beard had been trimmed to stubble. His blue eyes flickered across the table at Keimaro’s mother, and he cleared his throat. “You’ve been coming home later than usual these past couple of weeks.”

  “I went out for a walk.”

  “Where to?”

  “Since when is it any of your business where I walk to?”

  “Since I became your father,” his father snapped loudly, turning his head abruptly to his son. “Now, when I ask you where you were, you’ll tell me. Were you doing something suspicious, Kei?”

  “Why would I have any reason to do something suspicious?” Keimaro muttered, running a hand through his hair as he sighed. “There’s nothing to do in this damned village anyway.”

  “Where did that come from?” his father said, raising an eyebrow.

  Keimaro shrugged and shoved some peas into his mouth, chewing slowly before finally swallowing hard. He began to speak without making eye contact with his father.
“Father, will you teach me how to fight with a sword?”

  Silence reigned at the table. The only sounds were the crackling and popping from the fireplace. When Keimaro peeked from the corner of his eye, he saw his father frowning at him. The older man put his fork down on the wooden table and scoffed. “I’ve already been teaching you how to defend yourself with your fists. Why would you need to learn with a sword?”

  “I was walking around the perimeter of the barrier today,” Keimaro said simply, “and I saw a beast outside of the barrier. I knew that he couldn’t get in, but I was still afraid. I couldn’t move. I simply watched as the beast bashed into the barrier over and over again….”

  “What the hell were you doing at the barrier?”

  Keimaro ignored his father’s words and continued with his fake story. “It made me think, what would I do if the barrier weren’t there? Would I run, only to be hunted down again? This barrier won’t be here forever, father! Don’t you understand that? If I don’t learn how to fight, then I will never be able to face the horrors of the world! Whether it be another mage that takes down this barrier himself or some psychotic fool that assassinates all of the elders of the village, the barrier will eventually come down!” He slammed his hand on the table and glared at his father with a look filled with confidence. “Do you simply expect for me to sit here and watch my family’s life be put in jeopardy when those monsters finally do break in? When it comes down to it, nothing is going to protect us except ourselves. You can’t place all your faith in the damn invisible shield that surrounds us! Everyone in this village looks around blindly and accepts life in this miserable, isolated, piece-of-crap land that we own. Hasn’t anyone else wanted to see the outside? The barrier will come down someday, father. When it does, wouldn’t you want me to be able to defend myself against the cruelty of the world?”

  “The barrier is here so that we can be isolated from the cruelty that is the world,” his father snapped, shaking his head in disbelief. “You have no idea what’s out there, Kei! If the barrier ever broke down … you would die no matter what. Even if I taught you how to fight—”