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Kris sat in front of their house, late at night, the SOUL in its other home in the birdcage in their room. They longed for and dreaded this peace, wished for the freedom, despised the pain.
It hurt, digging their nails into their ribcage and tearing their SOUL from their chest, hurt like it would if they severed all their veins and arteries, hurt like the time Dess and Noelle and Asriel went swimming with them out in the lake and their head dipped underwater and the water started filling their lungs and no one noticed for half a minute. It was scary, and Noelle was more scared than they were, when Asriel set them down on the sandy ground and asked if they were breathing.
They nodded.
He asked if they were okay.
They didn't respond.
They didn't remember what happened after that.
The sky outside, on this night, wasn't clouded, wasn't clear, wasn't anything, really, until a raindrop fell on Kris's head and they finally looked up to see it was raining. When they looked back down, a little kid stood in their driveway.
"Good nighttime," they said. "My name's Frisk. You got one?"
Kris shook their head.
"Okay," said Frisk. "I'm gonna name you Onionsan."
They shook their head again.
"Okay," said Frisk. "Do you know where Aspen Road is? My mom's waiting for me over there."
Kris stared at the kid. As far as they knew, there wasn't a single street in Hometown by that name. Or any name, for that matter. Streets were kind of just referred to by what was on them, like the police station or the school or church.
They shook their head.
"Okay," said the kid. "Am I lost?" This wasn't asked with any particular emotion other than their constant energy.
Kris didn't know how to answer that question. They slowly nodded.
"Oh, okay," said the kid. "That makes sense."
They sat down next to Kris without asking. They were holding a little stick, which they drew shapes with in the dirt. Very intricate shapes, actually. Kris looked over at their drawings.
"See, that's my mom's house," they said, pointing to a cartoonish house. "And that's the tree in front of the park. See, I wrote 'PARK' above it so you could tell. Do you know where it is now?"
Kris shook their head again. They did want to help this kid-- whether for the kid's sake or for their own peace and quiet, it wasn't certain-- but they really couldn't.
"Okay," Frisk said, again.
"You don't talk a lot," they informed Kris, as if it wasn't obvious.
"Can," Kris said. "Don't like talking to most people." Whether this included Frisk or not, they didn't specify.
"That's fair," Frisk told them. "Did you know we have SOULS because we're human people? Mine used to have someone else living there, but now it's just mine. I didn't mind the someone else, though. See..."
Kris didn't listen to the rest of Frisk's ramblings. They were too busy thinking about their own "someone else living there." They hated it, hated it enough that they were willing to go through the infernal pain of removing their SOUL from their body just for an hour of peace or less.
"I have someone else living there, too," Kris said, the longest sentence they'd spoken of their own accord in a while. "Hate them."
"Oh," said Frisk, curiously. "Why?"
"Autonomy," they said.
Frisk nodded seriously as if they understood the word. They probably did, based on their response:
"It wasn't a big deal, for me. The someone else was nice. They did some stuff I probably would have been doing anyway. Then they leaved. I almost miss them, but I didn't really know them in the first place. You know?"
"It's different if you don't choose it," Kris said. "I like... making my own choices."
"Oh," said Frisk, as if they hadn't thought about it that way before.
"Well, I get to make my own choices, now, because the someone else is gone away," they said, as if this fixed everything.
At least maybe Kris's someone else would go away eventually, too.
The pair sat in front of Kris's house for a while, thinking, probably about the same thing but in different ways.
"Onion?"
They shook their head. "Kris," they told the child.
"Okay." Frisk drew something in the dirt. "Kris?"
They nodded.
"Look here."
In the dirt was a drawing of two practical stick figures, and one was taller and one was shorter, and the shorter one was smiling, and the taller one was not. They both had hearts drawn over their chests.
"It's us," Frisk explained, overjoyed.
For a moment, Kris almost smiled. Then, they shook their head and gestured for Frisk to let them have the stick. They handed it over. Kris began to draw in the dirt as Frisk watched intently.
They drew two stick figures, a taller and a shorter. They added a smile to each face, but a heart only over the shorter one's chest. Frisk examined the drawing carefully.
"Where’s your SOUL?" They reached to put a hand over Kris's chest, seemingly trying to feel out the empty void there. Kris grabbed Frisk's arm and shook their head.
"Oh, yeah, it's weird to grab people. Sorry." They looked around curiously. "Where’s your SOUL, though?"
Kris drew a heart in the dirt and a birdcage over it. Frisk studied it very intently.
"Why?"
"Freedom," was Kris's response.
"Right now?"
They nodded.
Frisk's eyes were as big as the full moon that would be hanging over the two, if not for the light rain falling on their heads. They stared out at nothing in particular, then jammed each of their hands fully into their sweater sleeves. They stood and ran in a circle.
"Onion-- I mean, Kris?"
They nodded.
"Is this what freedom is like? You can run in a circle by yourself?"
Kris slowly nodded.
Frisk stopped. "Then why aren't you doing it with me?"
Kris almost laughed. They stood up and ran in a circle as best as they could, ignoring the sharp, burning pain in their chest. Frisk laughed around them, going so fast that they tripped and fell into the wet grass. They rolled over and kept laughing.
"Kris?"
They nodded as best as they could.
"Is that the sound of you breathing?"
They hadn't noticed, but it was. They could hardly draw breath for their body's lack of a SOUL. They nodded again.
"Hmmm," Frisk said. "Are you okay?"
After a moment, they made up their mind and nodded. A bright smile lit up Frisk's face.
"That's good!" They sat up suddenly, overjoyed.
"I renembered where Aspen Road is! I can go home!"
They picked up their stick and left Kris there in the wet grass, dashing off into the rainy night.
"Bye, friend!"
They took only a stick with them, but somehow, Kris felt as though that tiny kid had lifted a giant weight from off them and dragged it away to do something good, like toss it into a fountain somewhere and make a wish. They felt less like they were drowning, and even what drowning they were still doing seemed managable.
Their someone else would leave someday, too. They hoped.
They knew it would happen.
When the SOUL dragged them outside the next morning, the drawings had been washed away by the rain.
They still remembered, though.
They were pretty sure that they could probably recreate them in the sand on the lake's shore after almost drowning.