(#BBBXCOVID1920) The Final Sadist

21 || BONUS EPILOGUE

Soft laughter echoes in the tunnel when they remember that eventful day in the misty forest. Then, the giggling dies down. "Don't worry. You all are coming with us, okay? You too, BoBoiBoy-"

"BoBoiBoy?"

Back to the sight of him, he's leaning against the cave wall, tense and panting, although his stance looked like it was more reassured than ever. At the sound of his name, his head whips to their call. His hand trembles, showing what he's been holding.

He's breathing hard. He has taken the collar out of his neck. Between his fingers, it seems charred and damaged.

Heaving another breath, he forcefully tosses it into the burning trees. With that, it'll be gone forever.

That was a lot of force taken. He takes his head back and drops the weight of his body to sit down.

No one bothers to call him again. They just rush to his side. "You okay?"

"Yeah...yeah, I think I am," he finally murmurs.

For a while, Yaya couldn't even recognize the fatigued face lined with ash in front of her. Minor burns blotch at portions of his body and she can't even hurry to scan them all. What began as a fiesty abduction, what began as an image of a man clad in white within her presence...suddenly looked like it diminished.

His eyes had that strange bloodlust and yearning before. In his pool of bronze eyes once lay mystery, a sense of sadness, and a pang of emptiness. Like a dim, starless sky.

Now, something else takes over. For an eye that used to be stripped of shine, it's currently filled with stars.

Yaya can't tell if she can take this the good way. Because for a boy blinded of emotions for the longest time, for a person that has never seen the light of the sun, he's blinded by its rays.

"I-" It's like BoBoiBoy's trying to utter something. But nothing wrings out. "It's-"

"Yes...?"

"My dad could be dead now...My mom's gone too..."

So what, if The Man was his father? They still know how much that statement would hurt them all.

"We didn't say he was dead-"

Yaya looks at it again. His eyes of an overwhelming number of stars. They've seen all and nothing at the same time.

"You said to assume he's gone. Do I have nothing left? No- wait- I shouldn't feel that way, now should I...?" he stammers.

He's dead. You're free.

But what does being free mean?

You don't know the answer to that.

He did.

No! You are free! You don't need him.

What if you did? What if you still do?

Do I need him to be free?

"Is there an emotion like...this...?"

Pursing her lips, Yaya and the others watch BoBoiBoy with concern. Suddenly, they had forgotten how this is all still unfurling in his head for the first time. As they stare, they think, In this winter, do you think he's feeling the warmth for the first time? Is he still frozen, is he heating...or is he burning and scorching up?

The way he said it all felt numb to the tongue. This time, it's a new emptiness. Nothing in everything.

"I don't know an emotion like that, but..."