I think someone is on a low cot next to me, but I can’t tell who it is from where I am. My left arm is in a cast, and the ends of my fingers stick out from the top. I try moving the fingers. All this is real. I’m not dreaming. I lift my right hand up to touch my head to see if it’s caved-in. No, it’s still round. I feel several bandages though. The light in the ceiling is dim. I’m glad of that. How about my legs? My left leg seems fine. My right leg is in a cast and is elevated. Even though all this seems to suggest I’m in serious condition, I feel indifferent. Everything probably turned out the way it ought to. I could’ve shattered, like an iconoclast against a sculpture of an idol, completely and irreparably. But here I am, I survived to continue being an inconvenience. I feel like King Kong at the arcade—I have to keep on fighting in order to eat the banana worth 500 points. I need to keep on fighting to level up and save the princess. Am I also programmed by someone to keep on going?

I don’t know. If only I could say, I didn’t mean things to turn out this way, none of this was intentional, there was no other way, so goodbye, and then die. That’d be all.

I can tell I’m at a hospital. I can tell by the smell. As I think this, I hear it in the monster’s voice. Is it that monster on the other cot? I consider using my biru to smash him to smithereens. I feel like it’s unfair to take my revenge while he is asleep, but still I want to smash his skull. What’s stopping me is not my ethics but my immovable body. Heh, I guess I’ll postpone things yet again. I haven’t even figured out my life, how dare I take another’s? Does anyone know the meaning of life? Does a fish know the meaning of water? Does an apple tree know the meaning of the sun? Did the monster get a taste of Monster World and come to understand it? Does the monster know what to do next? Why does my mind waver so much? With my body in this mess, my mind must’ve weakened. Why else would I be imagining the monster’s point of view? Am I feeling more sympathetic toward him because he brought me to the hospital?