There had never been a time where Sage wished he owned a vehicle of his own; the transit system in his city was more than enough to get him from where he was to where he needed to go efficiently, until now. 

With each stop the bus made, Sage checked the time on his phone and cursed the morning commuters for their reliance on the public vehicle. Seven missed calls from the hospital brought him from his apartment to the bus stop within five minutes of his return to this world. He hadn’t even changed or dropped his sack off. If it were one call, he wouldn’t have panicked; they may have just been calling about the payments. But it was seven. The fear he felt facing down the Boar King couldn’t match the one he felt now. 

It must have just been Jessica having them call because she was upset he didn’t come, what else could it be? She’s stubborn enough to have them call seven times. He shook his head. It was pointless; he knew they wouldn’t call that many times for just that. Something had happened. The bus stopped again and he checked his phone.

After fifteen agonizing minutes, he finally reached the hospital. Flying off the bus, Sage rushed towards the hospital while keeping a mental note to not perform any inhuman acts. 

The receptionist’s eyes lit up when she saw him, perhaps because he donned torn clothing, and he was ushered over towards her. Whether her demeanor was excited or worried, he did not know; his mind processed too much already. 

“Mr. Hunter, you’re finally here. Did you listen to our voicemails?” she said. 

He did not. One of two things would’ve happened if he did: the news could’ve been good, relieving him and lightening his mood, or the news could’ve been as bad, or worse, than he prepared for, pushing him further into the pits than he already was. He opted to play Schrodinger’s cat. 

“I didn’t, what’s the matter? What happened?” he said, trying to keep his tone calm. 

“You’ll have to talk to her doctor or nurse about it; you should know how to reach them.”

Did she not know, or was she not the one to tell him about it? Either way, he wanted to yell at her for wasting his time; he could’ve just gone straight to the doctor instead of coming here. 

Everything seemed to be taking longer than usual. The elevator stopped at more floors than Sage ever remembered it stopping before; it felt as if the world was punishing him for not being there yesterday.

Charging through the halls on his sister’s floor, Sage was stopped by one of the nurses who looked after Jessica. 

“Mr. Hunter!” she beckoned. His eyes were crazed like a rabid animal, but he took deep breaths as he approached her. 

“You finally showed up. We were trying to contact you all da—”

“What happened to her?” Sage interrupted. 

She flinched and almost took a step back, but smiled faintly at him. 

“Jessica is okay, Mr. Hunter. There was an incident yesterday, hemorrhaging in her lower abdomen, and we needed to operate on her. If we didn’t...well, that would’ve been an issue. The only problem was that we couldn’t operate without her guardian’s consent,” the nurse said. 

Sage clenched his jaw and held back his shaking. 

“Why couldn’t you perform it without her guardian’s consent? What if the time you took to contact me led to her death?” His voice was coarse. 

She seemed aghast. “Are you not the one who signed her papers requesting guardian consent before any operations?”

What? There wasn’t a chance in hell that he signed that. But that explains why he always received calls asking for him to sign something before another one of her operations. He wouldn’t have been of age back then to sign her initial papers anyway. 

“No, I didn’t sign those,” he said. “But if you couldn’t reach me, then who ok’d the procedure?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew. He shut his eyes and tried not to curse aloud. To think he still had that person on her contact information. 

“There was only one other person we had on her files, Diane Hunter. She’s your aunt, right? You don’t have to worry about anything; when she received the call, she came right away and everything was settled. Actually,” she paused and looked down and around the four, intersected halls, “I believe she’s still here.” 

He felt his heart drop. If she had any decency, she would’ve left immediately after singing those papers— but of course, she did not. 

Tense were his stomping legs; they pushed off the hospital floor towards Jessica’s room with determination. That woman wouldn’t be there; he kept telling himself that. She had no interest in them before, so what would be different now?

He turned the corner and entered the hall that had Jessica’s room at the far end, right before the window that peered out into the streets. The usual guilt he felt when he came here, albeit not a pleasant feeling, was greatly missed now that rage occupied him instead. 

There she sat on the benches right out front Jessica’s room with her arms crossed and medium brown hair swept over her shoulder. Sage’s eyes were hot, but he rubbed them, attempting to cool them and himself. He needed to be calm. 

“Aunt Diane.” The words stung as they came out, “Why are you still here? I would’ve expected you to have gone home already.” 

When she saw him, her face stiffened even more than it already had been. 

“You don’t think I want to leave? Better yet, did you think I wanted to be here?” She rose from her seat, arms still crossed, and stalked over to him. 

“You were supposed to be here, this is your job, not mine.” 

Sage gripped his fists hidden inside his jacket pockets, directing his emotions from his face to them. 

“You’re still her guardian, you know. Legally, this is your job. If something happens to her because of your negligence, that’s on you.” He wanted to punch himself for saying that. Those weren’t the words he wanted to say. 

“Then take guardianship of her yourself, you’re nineteen now, you can legally take custody of her. This isn’t my business anymore.”

“Are you saying it was your business before? You passed us off to a friend of my mom and yours two months after you took custody. You stopped sending us money four months after abandoning us. When I couldn’t deal with the stress and called you for help, you ignored me, telling me to deal with it; when has this ever been your business? And I’m eighteen, not nineteen, I can’t take custody,” Sage said. 

There was a tightness in his throat as if his ire seeped from his words and began constricting him. He feared he would choke. 

Diane simply huffed. 

Sage put his palms to his face and ran them up through his messy, loosely-curled hair. 

“Let’s take you off the contact form. They won’t call you again, and I won’t have to see your face for as long as I live. I never needed your help in the first place; it was foolish of me to put you down as a guardian.” 

Diane nodded. 

“Take better care of her next time. If something happens to her because of your mistakes, I’ll be drawn into it for negligent care. How old is she again? She needs to hurry and grow up already,” Diane said. 

As she passed Sage’s side, part of him envisioned choking her. They were simply dark thoughts from his disarrayed mind, but his desire felt so real. He didn’t need her telling him that he messed up.

Sage sighed and entered Jessica’s room. It took longer than usual, but all his other thoughts and emotions left him. A faint smile appeared on his face. He couldn’t show her he was struggling. But when he laid eyes on her, he realized she wouldn’t have noticed anyway. 

She lay in her bed with an O2 mask strapped to her face and an IV in her arm. How weak was she becoming? Everything was fine not too long ago. She was healthy and going to school while living at home with him. Why did all this have to start happening? 

The weak rise of her chest and the beeping of the monitor acted like a barrier; he couldn’t get close to her. Aside from her first couple of surgeries two years ago, she hadn’t been in this state before. Sage felt something creeping from the back of his mind. It brought a cold sweat to his body and made him feel nauseous. How much would she have to go through because of him? His legs felt weak. 

The door to her room opened and Sage heard a male and female voice from behind him. 

“Oh, Mr. Hunter, you’re here,” the male said. He turned to the other doctor and asked her to step out of the room for a moment. 

The shut of the door signalled the start of their conversation. 

“I’m sure you heard of what happened?” he said. 

Sage nodded. 

“I assure you she wasn’t in pain for long. She was sedated soon after the hemorrhage was found,” the doctor said. 

But,” he sounded distressed, “there’s no reason she should’ve experienced any hemorrhaging. And if she was going to, it certainly shouldn’t have been in her lower abdomen. I apologize for what she has to go through,” the doctor said. He then sighed, patting Sage on the shoulder and coming to walk in front of him. 

“There is some bad news, but I need to ask you something first. Did any of your parents suffer from problems with their kidneys? Or perhaps your grandparents?”

With weak eyes, he gazed at the doctor. She couldn’t...this couldn’t be happening to her. He resigned himself to it.

“No, no one in our family had any kidney problems.” 

“I figured. I’m afraid that Jessica may be showing signs of acute kidney failure; we need to run more tests to be sure, but it’s highly likely that it is. We can reverse it, but she will have to go through intensive treatment. As she isn’t in the best health condition to begin with, there could be complications, but leaving it alone will result in possible fatal outcomes so we must act as soon as possible.”

The sounds around Sage slowly muffled, and he stared off past the doctor to where Jessica lay. This was simply too much; what was he supposed to do? There was nothing he could do but shelve out money he didn’t even have. Whatever debt he put himself into, it didn’t matter. Saving her came first. It was duty after what he caused. 

For what seemed like an hour, Sage sat at her bedside after the doctor had left. He simply watched as she inhaled and exhaled; his mind was empty and his eyes were distant. 

He played the scene over and over again in his head— a scene he hadn’t witnessed, but had imagined enough times that it felt like he had. 

The snow had just melted and the air was filled with fog so common on a spring morning as a car swerved the mountainside road. Inside was a family; usually, a family of four, but they were missing one, their eldest child, their son who had decided to stay home from the trip. The mother and father sat in the front seats while their daughter, thirteen at the time, was fast asleep in the back. The car and mountains were all but silent, only the sound of worn tires on wet roads echoed through the air. 

This near-silence was not of the pleasant kind, however. The family’s trip was cut short on account of their missing member. The nearly sixteen-year-old boy had caused trouble for his parents once again; hanging around the wrong crowd was an issue he had been unable to free himself of. As he was in custody, the eldest child required the supervision of his guardian to leave, hence the return trip the family needed to make. 

The fog was thick, not even high-beams could pierce through its coverage. The father’s attention wandered for but a second, but on the slippery roads, that one second was all it took. Approaching too closely to the side railing, the father spun the steering wheel, swerving clear of the cliff; the car, however, sat on the border of the two-way street. It could not be repositioned quickly enough, and a collision took place. A head-on crash with an oncoming SUV spun the family’s car through the side railing and off the cliff. 

Regardless of the news-channel one flipped to, they all covered the same story of how a family trip took a dark turn; of how the two parents both lost their lives, and how their daughter appeared to be paralyzed. 

Sage clenched his knees and bit his lip so hard he threatened to draw blood from it. 

“I’m sorry,” he said through a tight throat. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, you must’ve been so scared all alone.”

He fought back the welling tears in his eyes. 

What possessed him to think he could go off and enjoy himself, abandoning both his sister and his duty? A tear fell from his eye. 

If only there were something he could do for her, something more than signing papers and paying bills— he’d be unable to do even that now.  

“I’m sorry,” he said again. It was all he could say.

If only he could take her to that world, if only she had the ability he did. Would she be able to heal herself there? 

He was then struck with an idea. Wiping his eyes, Sage sprung out of his seat and ran to the door, opening it to check if anyone was near. There was no one. 

“Open menu,” he said while closing the door. 

Tapping through the submenus, he came onto what he was looking for. 

 

---

{Healing Potion} x2 | Consumable 

Restore 50 hp. 

[Home]

---

 

They healed his broken bones and shattered ribs, perhaps they’d do something similar for her— if they worked in this world. Sage reached into his menu and took a potion out. 

It was a red, hand-sized bottle that curved out at the base like it had hips. When Sage popped the cork on the top off, he saw the green, medicinal smelling liquid inside. He gripped it tightly, transferring his hopes into the bottle. 

Standing at her side, he upended the liquid onto her chest. When it reached her body, it dissipated into a green mist and coated her like fairy dust before seeping into her skin. Sage marveled as color slightly returned to her pale skin. Her breathing seemed to steady, and some of the noise coming from the monitor changed. It wasn’t clear what the potion did, but something happened. 

Sage wanted to cry out when he saw her arm move. She didn’t wake, though. His mind didn’t even need to process his next actions; Sage reached into his inventory and pulled out the second potion. Pouring it over her again, he watched as the green dust entered her skin and, once again, brought more color than what was previously there. 

Jessica took a deep breath and tears nearly streamed down his face. Her eyelids fluttered like his heart and then slowly came open, allowing her to move her gaze across the ceiling and onto his face. 

“Sage?” she mumbled. 

He took hold of her hand and smiled genuinely, “Yes, I’m here,” he said. 

Her eyes faltered and rolled off to the side, falling back under her eyelids as she said, “Sage,” weakly. Was she not ok? Did they not work as they did on him? No, they clearly affected her; her breathing was now steady, and her skin looked healthy, not the haggard, gaunt look she had before. 

There is something to the potions and Hp that he didn’t know, but what was clear to him was that they aided her. If he got more, could they forgo her being hospitalized all together? He didn’t know enough about potions to decide that, but it was a possibility. 

It was like a realization that should’ve come before finally hit him. The menu and every part of it can be opened and accessed from this world, allowing him to pull out whatever he obtained from the other one; all the money he acquired could be used here. It was like being struck by lighting. Bronze may be negligible, but silver would most definitely fetch a fair price if he were to pawn it off. 

Whipping out his phone, he searched for the nearest pawn shop. He rested his free hand on Jessica’s head and said, “Don’t worry. Your big brother will get you all the help that you need.” 

The navigation on his phone finished routing where he needed to go. Dashing out of Jessica’s room, he nearly ran into a nurse. She let out a yelp.  

“Sorry!” he said. “Make sure to give me a call when she wakes up.”

He didn’t even give the nurse time to reply. 

The elevator moved much faster than when he arrived, and he was out the front doors of the hospital in seconds. Two bus rides and a short walk away was all it would take to get there. Sage couldn’t help but smile. 

‘Inner-City Pawning’ was plastered on a sign above the brick shop. On the bus ride, Sage had, discreetly, retrieved his coins from his menu. Thirteen silver and forty-five bronze coins sat in two separate bags when he opened the door to the shop. The inside smelt of old things; the smell of the objects taken from the attic during spring cleaning filled the shop. The appliances responsible for such a smell filled the wooden shelves and wall-mounted platforms that lined the walls and the center of the room in spades. At the front counter, where the old man who would’ve suited a monocle stood, there were glass-enclosed casings filled with jewelry and other forms of precious belongings. 

“Welcome, what can I do for you?” the man said. 

Looking around the store warily, for reasons he didn’t know, Sage walked up to the counter and placed the bag of silver coins on it. 

“I found these in our attic and decided we might as well pawn them off, they have no semblance to us,” he said. 

The clerk opened the bag and prodded through the dozen and one silver coins. 

“Silver,” he muttered. He reached under his counter and retrieved an iron ball. Placing five of the coins on a wooden board, he sat the ball close to them and watched. The ball didn’t budge an inch. 

“What’s that for?” Sage asked. 

Nodding, the clerk scooped the ball of the table and placed it back underneath the counter. 

“Silver isn’t magnetic. It’s impossible to make a hard substance using pure silver, so it’s often diluted. We can tell how diluted it is,” he held up one of the large coins, “by checking how magnetic it is.”

He slid the coin back towards the piles before scooping them all up and placing them back into the bag. 

“These seem to be mainly silver. You’re looking to sell, right?”

Sage nodded his head. With no clue about what the clerk was talking about, he simply nodded along. 

“I can’t tell how much is silver, but I can go off a guess and say they’re at least sterling. 92.5%. I can offer you eighty-five apiece, how does that sound?”

Sage crunched the numbers in his head. He still needed some coins for new equipment, which would surely lead to greater influxes of money, so he opted to only sell five. Netting him 425 dollars; a negligible amount in face of the extortionate hospital bills, but it was a start. 

The deal was settled and Sage walked out of the store with determination plastered on his face. There were sure to be gems and artifacts of all kinds of expenses hidden in the dungeons and cataclysms and treasure chests; it was only a matter of time before he was taking home more money than the pawn shops had to offer him. 

The bus ride home was a pensive one. Meeting Felix seemed to have been fate; the expedition teams would bring him wealth, information, and strength, taking him closer to saving his sister and finding that woman. Perhaps he could find a way to bring Jessica into that world— if she got her hands on a card, could it heal her? That was a wish to grandiose for him at the moment. 

Entering his building, he planned to speed up to his apartment and get ready to leave. What he didn’t expect was to be stopped in the lobby by an old friend. 

“Audry,” he said to the silver-haired girl who exited the lobby. She seemed slightly less surprised to see him. She smiled, causing his heart to skip just as it did when he was a child. 

“We finally cross each other’s paths, you’ve been living here for an entire two years and not once did you realize I lived right below you,” Audry said. 

She lived here? He was taken aback. Despite the fact his childhood crush stood right in front of him, Sage had no time to be caught in a boyish trance. 

“We’ll have to catch up some other time, Audry. I’m quite busy,” he said as he went to walk past her. 

“I heard what happened to your sister. I’m sure she’s strong enough to come back from kidney failure though.”

Sage sighed and nodded. Everyone who knew them as kids was probably aware of what happened to her. Would he have to deal with the same conversation every time he me—

“Did you say kidney failure, not paralysis?” Sage asked.

How did she know? He himself had just learned about it. He cast wary eyes onto her but reprimanded himself for the nonsensical suspicion. 

Audrey nodded and her features grew soft, “My mother is at the same hospital as Jessica, I was there last night and was near when the commotion broke out.” 

Sage wanted to apologize. 

“I didn’t know your mom was sick, I hope it’s nothing serious and that she recovers quickly,” he said as was obligatory. 

Audrey smiled and played with the strap to the bag that stretched across her torso. 

“Don’t get so tense and worried, she’s fine. Let’s make sure to catch up now that we’ve crossed paths. Don’t be a stranger, okay?” 

She left after saying that and Sage was free to continue with what he had initially planned to do. She looked good with silver hair; she was a brunette before, right? 

Entering his apartment, Sage immediately prepared to leave. He changed into a different track suit and put his gloves and boots back on. 

This time, he made sure his phone was in his pocket; if the system and menu could work in his world, perhaps his phone could work in the other. But what made him bring it was the clear fact that the two worlds' times weren’t as synced as he assumed. At least this way, he would at least be able to keep track of the passing days. 

He wouldn’t have even been gone for a day, perhaps he could do some exploring in the islands? The Boar King flashed in his mind and he quickly banished the thought. 

There was much to do; Sage was prepared to be in that world for as long as he possibly could be. 

“Open menu,” Sage said. 

He would save his sister. There must be a potion that could heal her back to her old self. It wasn’t even an option, he needed to find one that did just that. 

“Enter world.” 

[Entering World]