My phone vibrated violently against my desk. It moved several inches before I caught up to it and snapped it open.

“Hello?”

“Gemka!”

“Hi Reima,” I answered as I pressed the side button to decrease the volume. “What’s up?”

“Have you seen Ahiga?”

“No, have you tried his girlfriend’s place?”

“She said they broke up so to delete her number. I’m really worried, my parents will be home tomorrow and if he’s still missing...”

“Have you checked his room?”

“It’s locked and there is no answer when I knock.”

“This may be a good time to use the key.”

“But he says it is only for emergencies!”

“How long has he been missing?”

“I haven’t seen him since the night before last.”

“Then consider this an emergency, and if he gets upset later, blame it on me.”

There was a relieved sigh at the other end. I knew that’s what she wanted to hear. “Alright, I’ll get the key. Don’t hang up.” I heard her drop the phone on the desk as she fetched the key from behind her bookcase. “Okay I’m back.” I heard her shuffle to her brother’s door and slip in the key.

“Ahiga?” The door swung open and hit the wall behind it. “Ahiga!” The phone doomed as she dropped it.

“Reima!” I shouted into the phone. “What’s going on?” I was sure she couldn’t hear me above her own screams.

“Ahiga, wake up! Ahiga!” I heard her scrambling back to the phone. “Gemka, he isn’t moving. He isn’t breathing. Gemka!”

“Don’t do anything, I’ll be right there.”

I kept the phone on the entire time it took me to run to their apartment, three blocks away. When I burst through the door, Reima collided into me. “Gemka, help him!” She pulled me into his room. Ahiga was on the floor beside his bed, his legs crossed under him. I recognized the stance.

“Reima, get outside. Don’t come in until I come out.”

She looked at me shocked, with tears frozen halfway down her cheeks. “What are you going to do?”

I gave her a steady gaze, making her remember what both of us knew: Ahiga’s secret, the reason why he couldn’t deal with electronics in his room, the reason he always had one answer wrong on standardized exams, the reason why he was slumped over, not breathing, and could still be brought back.

Reima nodded and left the room. She glanced at me one last time with her bloodshot eyes before closing the door. I stared down at Ahiga and began to work. I dropped to my knees beside him and began to search him. His hands were empty and he wore no jewelry. I laid him down flat against the floor to check his pockets and feet.

I sat back, frustrated. Then I noticed the slight protrusion of his upper lip. He didn’t have an overbite or braces. I lifted his lip, almost hoping that I wouldn’t find anything there. I did. It was a piece of onyx, the size and shape of a poker chip. I didn’t slide it out fully, knowing the consequences. I could see the delicate etching against the stone. In the center was the rune for transportation, Ehwaz. I placed it back into his mouth and considered my choices.

“Damn you,” I cursed as I reclined beside him. I slipped the stone halfway out of his mouth and wiped it repeatedly with my fingers, even though it was dry. I slid forward and took the stone between my lips. I thought of the old chant we invented when we were children, the chant that he would later use as his way to relax and enter his own world to escape this reality.

I could have sworn I felt him smile when I had recited the chant for the seventh time in my head. I opened my eyes and found myself standing on the middle of a giant tree stump, surrounded by arid, barren earth.

I touched my fingertips to my mouth to check if the stone was still there. It wasn’t. I then felt confident in screaming, “Ahiga!” The image shimmered, then very silently shattered. The tree stump dropped out of existence and was replaced by a moss covered tree branch. I stared into the greenness of the new area, a jungle.

“Gemka!”

I turned to the source of the sound, and found an emerald lizard licking his eye. I grabbed it by the tail before it could escape. “Time to go home.”

The lizard shook itself and dropped onto the branch beside me, minus its tail. “Ow!” Ahiga whined as soon as he was no longer a lizard.

“You don’t need a tail. Let’s go.” I took his hand, after checking it no longer had suction cup fingers.

“I’m not going home.” Ahiga said with a wide grin. “I stayed here for more than twenty-four hours.”

“No one makes up the rules for your fantasy world but you! Just change the rules and let’s get home before Reima peeps into your room and finds me mouth-to-mouth with her brother.”

“Ah, there goes my ‘Are you really Gemka?’ test.” He sheepishly stared at the ground that was a hundred feet below us. “I don’t want to change the rules. I want to stay here.”

“You can’t stay here. It’s against the law of—it’s not possible. You can’t stay in your fantasy world if you die and no longer exist.”

“I have to stay,” Ahiga placed my hand onto his abdomen. “Notice anything?”

“This is not the time to show off your abs, especially when they are under the control of your mind.”

Ahiga didn’t flinch. “What don’t you notice then?”

I stared at my hand, gasped. “Your line, the attachment to the real world,” I looked down at my own abdomen and found a thick silver cord sticking out of it and leading out into the horizon. “You really have left.” My hand dropped away from him.

Ahiga nodded with a satisfied grin.

“But couldn’t you imagine a new cord to take you back?”

“Probably not— but I won’t try.”

“Is this only because that girl—what is her name?—broke up with you?”

“This isn’t about petty things anymore.” He pointed to the world before us, his world. “The world—not just girls, or anything else—but everything combined, that world—I can’t take it anymore. This is where I want to be.”

“But if later on, you run out of ideas, you can’t come back.”

“I won’t run out of ideas.”

“Yes you will! You’re working in a vacuum, building upon what you know right now. Eventually, you’ll run out of material.”

Ahiga shrugged. “Then when I do, I’ll die off just like I will die off back in reality.” He looked over at me and gasped. “You better go.”

I started down at my abdomen. What once was a cord as thick as my wrist was now a thread of silver.

“Did yours go this fast?”

“No, my world, my cord, so it stayed around much longer.” He sighed deeply and shifted away from me. “Bye Gemka.”

I looked up at him abruptly, staring hotly into his eyes. “How dare you deny us your life! You could have bettered the real world so that no one else would need to create their own fantasy worlds for their spirits. How dare you deny the world the happiness it could have gained with your life!”

Ahiga smiled very slowly. “The world took my happiness. It deserves nothing else from me.” With that, he pushed me off the branch. I fell back into reality.

I awoke beside him. I pulled myself up, taking the onyx stone with me. Spitting it out, I tucked it into my pocket. I stood and walked to the door, gathering the courage to tell Reima that her brother was gone.