{Honoka}
Immediately, as soon as they realized Suzume hadn't followed them out, the panicking began.
"OH MY GOD MY GUILDMASTER'S DEAD!" Takeo exclaimed, pacing from side to side.
"OH NO NO NO NO WHERE DID SHE GO!?" Honoka yelled just as loud, not faring much better.
Between the two of them, they paced side to side for a few seconds before finally, Honoka stopped.
"STOPPU!" Honoka yelled in English. Takeo froze. "Maybe... Maybe she's just taking some... some rocks out of her boots or something."
"Y-Yeah, maybe."
Honoka crept back toward the portal, her heart hammering against her ribs.
[She's fine. She's totally fine. She probably just tripped or something. Any second now she's gonna walk out and laugh at us for freaking out.]
She poked her head through the shimmering barrier, just enough to see the other side.
Murky water. Fog. Gnarled trees.
No Suzume.
What she did see was a wall of bloatflies, at least a dozen of them, hovering right in front of the portal entrance. Their wings buzzed furiously, their compound eyes fixed on the barrier like they were waiting for something stupid enough to come back through.
One of them lunged.
Honoka yanked her head back just as a stinger the size of her hand sliced through the air where her face had been a millisecond earlier. She stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet, and landed hard on her butt.
"SHE'S NOT THERE!" Honoka shrieked. "AND THERE'S SO MANY OF THEM!"
The panicking resumed.
"WHAT DO WE DO!?" Takeo was pulling at his hair now, his earlier composure completely gone. "WE CAN'T JUST LEAVE HER IN THERE!"
"I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T KNOW!"
"SHOULD WE GO BACK IN!?"
"THERE'S LIKE A MILLION BUGS!"
"MAYBE WE CAN FIGHT THEM!?"
"TAKEO THERE'S A MILLION BUGS!"
They paced in circles around each other, panic feeding panic, until Takeo suddenly stopped.
"Wait. Wait wait wait." He held up his hands. "Let's... Let's call the others."
Honoka blinked at him.
"The others."
"Yeah! Kasumi-san, Hikari-san, someone! They'll know what to do!"
It was such an obvious solution that Honoka wanted to smack herself for not thinking of it sooner. She fumbled for her phone, nearly dropping it twice before managing to pull up her contacts.
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"I'll call Kasumi-san!"
She hit dial. The phone rang once. Twice. Three times.
Voicemail.
"She's not picking up!"
"Try Hikari-san!"
Honoka's fingers flew across the screen. Dial. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Voicemail.
"Nothing!"
Takeo grabbed his own phone.
"Okay, okay, I'll try Rina-san."
He dialed. The phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
Honoka was about two seconds away from a full mental breakdown when the line clicked.
"What."
Rina's voice, flat and annoyed, like she'd just been woken up from a nap.
"RINA-SAN!" Takeo practically screamed into the phone. "SUZUME IS STUCK IN A DUNGEON AND THERE'S BLOATFLIES EVERYWHERE AND WE DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!"
A pause.
"...What?"
---
{Suzume}
Suzume's back hit the ground hard.
As soon as it did, and she realized she wasn't falling anymore, Suzume got into a crouching position and pulled her knife out, ready to defend herself. One, two, three seconds passed with nothing in the darkness around her attacking, and thus, Suzume sighed, deciding she must have been safe.
She reached into her Toolkit and pulled out a glowstick, cracking it and letting the pale green light spill across her surroundings.
A cave.
Rough stone walls, slick with moisture, stretching out in both directions. The ceiling was high enough that she couldn't see it, lost somewhere in the darkness above. Water dripped steadily from somewhere, the sound echoing in the silence.
Better than being dead, she supposed.
Suzume pushed herself to her feet, wincing at the ache in her back from the fall. Nothing felt broken, which was a minor miracle.
[Okay. Okay. I've been here before. Different dungeon, same situation. I can do this.]
She started walking, glowstick held out in front of her, knife still gripped tight in her other hand.
And then, because there was no one around to hear it, she let herself be angry.
"Stupid," she muttered under her breath. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
She kicked a loose rock and watched it skitter across the cave floor.
"You cut the rope. You told them to run ahead. You didn't check where you were stepping." Each sentence came out sharper than the last. "Six months of training and you still fall into a pit like some kind of idiot."
The words bounced off the walls and came back to her, mocking.
She kept walking.
The problem was, she knew exactly why she'd been so careless. It wasn't the dungeon. It wasn't the bloatflies. It wasn't even the late hour or the lack of sleep.
It was the conversation with Yumi.
[Maybe I should ask differently... Which kiss did you like better?]
Suzume's face heated up even now, alone in the dark, just thinking about it.
[You're touch-starved.]
Was she? Maybe. Probably. Definitely, if she was being honest with herself.
And if she was being really honest, the reason she'd thrown herself into this rescue mission in the first place was because she didn't want to think about any of it. Kasumi's confession, Yumi's breakup, the fact that apparently multiple women were interested in her and she had no idea what to do with that information.
She'd wanted a distraction. Something simple. Save one guy, feel good about herself, go home.
Instead, she'd gotten herself trapped in another cave because her brain was too busy short-circuiting over girls to watch where she was stepping.
[Yumi had a point,] Suzume admitted reluctantly. [If I'm this unfocused, maybe I do need to... deal with this. Somehow.]
The thought made her want to crawl into a hole and never come out. Which, technically, she was already in a hole. So mission accomplished there.
[I mean... Would I kiss Yumi again?]
The question surfaced unbidden, and Suzume almost tripped over her own feet.
[I mean...]
She remembered the party. The way she'd grabbed Yumi's collar without thinking, the taste of whiskey on her lips, the way Yumi had kissed her back like it was the most natural thing in the world.
[...I mean, yeah. Probably. If she wanted to.]
She blinked.
[God, what is wrong with me?]
A sound ahead made her freeze.
Suzume raised her glowstick higher, the green light stretching further into the darkness, and her breath caught in her throat.
Something was moving.
It crawled out of the shadows slowly, deliberately, like it knew she couldn't run. A massive centipede-like creature, easily three meters long, its segmented body covered in chitinous armor that gleamed wetly in the light. Dozens of legs clicked against the stone as it advanced, and its mandibles opened and closed with a sound like scissors snapping shut.
The level appeared above its head.
Level 30 - Cavern Crawler
Twice her level. Twice as strong, probably more.
But she wasn't level 5 anymore. She wasn't the girl who'd barely survived her first solo dungeon by the skin of her teeth.
Suzume shifted her grip on her knife and let out a slow breath.
[Bring it.]
