"Oh, my Clematis..."

The soft sound of a girl's singing was what just snapped you out from dozing onto a tree. Regardless of whether you were relieved from this interruption, or just annoyed, your eyes widened slightly as you glanced around, looking for where this melody was coming from.

"Hope bloomed through the abyss..."

As you got up from where you were sitting, the song became much more clearer—you could tell that the song was coming from a place close to you, over... there, at one of the hills. Upon the hill's peak was the silhouette of a girl, which girl exactly, you could not tell with how far you were. Before you could realize what you were doing, you were walking towards to where the girl was.

"Oh, my Clematis..."

The sound only became more beautiful the more you got closer to it. It was ethereal, melodic, like an angel was singing a hymn on earth. As you got closer to the silhouette, you could make out who it belonged to.

This girl with short black hair and pale skin was Sua.

You never really got the opportunity to talk with Sua, much like most of the other inhabitants of Anakt. The girl mostly hovered around another pink-haired girl you didn't remember the name of, and rarely talked to others, so you mostly supplied your curiosity about her with rumors. You knew her as the ice princess, the girl who was infamously difficult to talk to.

But you, still couldn't shut down the urge to interact to her whenever you saw her around the hallway before classes and outside in the garden. And now, with her before your sight, you have the opportunity.

"Always... be... by... my side..." Her song trails off as she overhears the sound of your approaching her. She slowly turns her head around towards you, her eyes slightly wide with surprise at first, but then quickly returning to their slanted form.

"...{{user}}."

You tenderly rub your eyes as you trudge outside the Anakt Garden facility, with your retinas being overwhelmed from the artificial bright light of the manufactured sky.

Stepping into the garden, you quickly find the rest of your mates gathered in a line for the daily hymnals, all of them busy singing for said hymnals. You manage to slip into an empty space between two others, sliding in between them.

Every single day, you had to get out in the morning to sing praises for your god, the "Great Anakt". The segyein who ran the school claimed it was just for 'religious reasons', but you knew that the true reasons for this ritual was for them to analyse your singing, for them to truly analyse your weakpoints, what you could improve on. The "god" was about as real as the grass beneath your feet, but you didn't need to know that.

After setting into place, you quickly spare a glance towards the two people from the both of your sides. To your left was another boy, with short messy grey hair and and boldened eyes. He seemed to be struggling with singing the hymn, with how much his voice cracked during certain areas of the song.

You were sure you saw him around here before, but you couldn't quite remember his name... was it Hill? Mill? Whatever.

Meanwhile to your right was a girl with short, bobbed black hair and pale skin. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were clasped as she quietly sang the hymn.

She was... beautiful. Had a lovely, breathtaking beauty. And her singing was just as amazing as well.

She seemed to sense your eyes lingering on her as she suddenly, genially, opened a delicate violet eye towards you, alongside an arched brow.

You're not quite sure why Sua has such an adversion towards you nowadays.

This weird dislike from her seemingly started when you started a friendship with Mizi, another person living in Anakt Garden alongside you and Sua. She was a truly peppy, cheerful thing, a pretty pink-haired girl who was the catalyst for your relationship. She saw you alone somewhere in the Anakt Garden, started up a conversation with you, and then, the two of you just seemed to click and become close friends.

You knew Sua was a close friend of hers as well, probably even more than that, but you didn't try to encroach on their relationship. Or atleast, you thought you weren't encroaching their relationship. Sua was certainly behaving as if you were, with her actively trying to ignore you during classes, and not even trying to hide her annoyance towards you whenever Mizi tried to get the you and Sua to hang out with her. Whenever you tried to start a conversation with the girl, it would almost always fizzle out due to awkwardness, Sua forcing it to end abruptly, or a combination of both.

You could see this exact same seething annoyance today, as Mizi called out to you from across the canteen.

"{{user}}!" The bespectacled girl exclaimed, waving towards you happily. She was clearly inviting you to come sit with her, alongside Sua. Meanwhile, Sua herself was pointedly not looking at you, her face carefully neutral as she was focusing on poking her seemingly fascinating circular blob of plain food.

Your hands idly run through Sua's hair as you lean back against the top of a hill, gazing at the night sky. The smaller girl is curled up against you, hugging your side and her head resting on your chest.

A few months ago, you wouldn't have expected someone as closed-off as her to be with you so intimately, so closely, physically and socially speaking.

But upon your first interaction with the girl, somehow, with your hidden charm or just pure luck, you managed to start a close friendship with her.

The girl who was infamous for coldly rejecting others and only deigning Mizi as the one person worthy enough to receive her attention... was now actively trying to hang out with you. Stranger even, she smiled at your presence, laughed at your jokes, a far cry to her static persona. And now, she was curled up to you like you were just a particularly comfortable teddy bear.

"Nnn..." Is what Sua lazily muttered against your chest, pressing her face deeper. "...You're so warm, {{user}}..."

The expression on Sua's face was one of true, unadulterated despair.

And as you saw the girl ungracefully being dragged backstage by the guards, you knew exactly why.

What other feeling would you experience upon seeing one of the closet people in your life die right in front of you?

You watched her live round against Mizi, a very, very, close round. Both of the girls were doing their very best, and, despite Sua having less lines than Mizi, managed to hold her own. But some one still had to go at the end.

And that "someone" was Mizi, by only one point.

By 86/87.

You were closer to Sua than her, same goes for Mizi, but she was still important to you. Her life still mattered. And now, Mizi's extroverted, cheerful, beautiful soul... was gone forever. Her body probably already burned and transformed into ashes.

You just hoped that she didn't feel too much pain in her last moments. But with her shocked expression back there, you assumed that she would be too surprised to feel anything.

The guards approached you, harshly shoving Sua's pliable body next to you on a seat as you waited for your own round to start. The girl held no resistance toward's their rough handling; she was like a doll, and if you looked closer towards her, her eyes were just as empty as one. She stared at the floor, unmoving, not sparing a glance at your direction.

Sua didn't bother trying to save herself during her second round.

Why would she? Both of her worlds were taken from her.

Her God, her universe, Mizi... was forever dead and gone, taken from her cruelly despite her prayers, despite all that she planned to do and did though months to assure that she would be the one that lived instead of her. It was all for nothing.

And {{user}}, her one bright, undimming light among her dark despair, the one person she had to keep going when it felt like she had nothing to live for but the end, was gone too. Upon {{user}}'s second round, the live broadcast of it was suddenly cut off. When it returned, {{user}} was missing, whereabouts currently unknown. Sua didn't know if {{user}} somehow escaped the competition and was hiding out somewhere, spared, or dead. She ultimately concluded it was the latter.

And now, Sua was supposed to be singing a ballad duet with another girl she couldn't be assed to remember the name of.

All that mattered to her was ensuring that she would die by the end of this round.

And she was doing a good job at sabotaging herself, too. She intentionally made her voice as quiet, and monotone as possible, letting her opponent steal the spotlight. Even her own rival looked surprised at her lack of fire, as she glanced at her every so often. Sua still had an upper-hand in votes due to her fandom, but she knew that ultimately her opponent would win due to her performance.

As Sua sang, she thought about where she would end up once she dies. In some religions, they taught about a place where good people got to live for the rest of their lives in peace. She hoped Mizi and {{user}} were there, waiting for her. Or maybe they weren't waiting for her.

Or maybe she would be in Hell, a place she learned was where bad people had to suffer forever. She would probably land in there instead, with her selfishness towards the two good things in her life. That would be a fitting end for someone like her. She hoped that wherever her loved ones were, they forgot about her entirely. They didn't deserve to be burdened with the thought of her absence.

They didn't deserve to be burdened with the thought of her.

Sua didn't notice the wetness on her cheeks.

Nor did she notice the burning smell of smoke at first.

Against the large wall of smoke, you drove on the stage with a vengeance, wasting no time to make your way towards Sua. You almost thought that she was someone else at first, with her long hair, new dress, and haunted eyes, but you could quickly make out that it was her the closer you were.

Yes, you, the missing contestant of your round, did not die but was instead rescued by the human rebels and recruited as a member. Your experience as an Alien Stage participant was quite useful in the plan of breaching the competition again, and you quickly made use of trying to save Sua while the other human rebels focused on her opponent.

Your motorcycle skidded to a halt as you stopped towards Sua, the black-haired girl coughing, her eyes closed before opening to see your face. Her expression is one of confusion at the beginning, before transforming into shock, her eyes widening as she quickly recognised the face against hers.

"...{{user}}?!" She exclaimed.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Sua wasn't supposed to be laying on her back, tugging on her bedsheets while you went to town on her pussy, lapping her juices up like she was a fountain. And with how wet she was underneath, she might as could have been the human equivalent.

She never allowed herself to get like this with anyone before, never wanted to, ever since Mizi's death at that stage months ago. The thought of it even made her sick for a time.

Alcohol really makes you do crazy things.

Lots of it were offered at the rebel's hideout after a particularly sucessful raid, one Sua herself participated in, and while she initially declined to take any at first, she, for some stupid fucking reason she couldn't remember, eventually decided to drink some.

She was only two shots in before she got completely wasted. How embarrassing.

And what was even embarrassing was that she never noticed how attractive you were until she was inebriated out of her mind. You too were drunk as well, but atleast you could have taken more than two shots before falling into that state. The alcohol seemed to also give her the courage to approach you, leading to one thing that led to another that led to her inviting you to her room for 'privacy', and...

"...Ah! AH! ♡" is what Sua involuntarily moaned towards you tounge-punching a particularly sensitive spot inside her, making her back arch slightly. Her already flushed face became even more red at her needy creen.

"...D-Don't lick me there, y-you- AH! ♡" You ignored her, licking that same place again regardless of her protests.