Klein knelt beside Zanshin in the alley, his own panic receding just enough to let his natural compassion take over.
He didn't try to reason with him about leveling or survival; he just focused on the trembling figure beside him.
"Zanshin." Klein said.
"Look at me. Kirito's gone. That's his choice. But you can't stay here. The square is going to turn into a nightmare soon. We have to move, even if it's just to find a safe inn for the night."
Zanshin didn't respond, his golden eyes still wide, fixed on the dropped Glaive.
He saw the weapon not as a tool for survival, but as an inert, heavy object that represented his fundamental failure—a weapon of distance chosen by a body built for closeness.
Klein gently picked up the Glaive and nudged Zanshin's shoulder.
"I'm going back into the square to look for my friends. You don't have to help me, but you have to come with me. You can't survive paralyzed like this."
With a heavy grunt, Klein forced Zanshin to his feet.
Zanshin's limbs felt detached, moving only because Klein was pulling him.
He was a passenger in his own body, driven by the sheer physical urgency of his friend.
Klein led them slowly out of the narrow alley and back towards the main cobblestone street.
The red digital haze was beginning to fade, but the consequences of Kayaba's speech were brutally apparent.
The Town of Beginnings had ceased to be a place of fun and fantasy; it was now a psychological war zone.
The scene in the square was a study in mass human collapse.
Hundreds of players were weeping openly, their faces—now their real, unmasked faces—contorted in raw, uninhibited despair.
Groups of friends clung to each other, their initial bravado gone, replaced by the realization that their lives were being held hostage.
Other players were already turning predatory.
Zanshin saw one group surrounding a crying girl, demanding her meager supply of starter Crystalline Apples and arguing over her few hundred Col.
The atmosphere was thick with nascent brutality, fear curdling into selfishness.
One man, his face blotchy red, was punching a stone wall, screaming.
His HP bar, thankfully, remained static, proving that the environment was safe, but his rage was visceral and real.
Another stood on a fountain, delivering a paranoid monologue about how the government must be behind it.
This spectacle of collective, unrestrained human despair finally broke through Zanshin's panic.
The scale of the catastrophe was too immense to ignore, but instead of inspiring him to fight, it amplified his internal breakdown.
He felt the despair of the crowd as a mirror to his own.
The fear of death was overwhelming everyone, but for Zanshin, the terror was not just about his death; it was about the crushing knowledge that the world he was trapped.
Zanshin stopped moving entirely, planting his feet on the ground. Klein turned back, concerned.
"We're almost to the west gate, Zanshin. We just need to—"
"I don't know who I am," Zanshin whispered, his voice cracking with the strain of his emotions.
The anger hit him first, sharp and hot, focused entirely on the system that had trapped them and the monster who orchestrated it.
Kayaba.
That bastard.
He did this for a game.
He stole our lives.
But this anger immediately twisted back on himself: Anger at Himself. Why was he shaking? Why was he paralyzed? Why couldn't he be like Kirito, cold and decisive? Why was he so uselessly weak? The rage was a bitter, self-consuming fire.
Next came the overwhelming Frustration. He looked at his own hands, still trembling violently despite his efforts to control them.
He couldn't lift the Glaive without swaying. He couldn't focus on his menus.
Every single action he attempted was sabotaged by the ghost of the accident.
He was physically built for speed, but the moment speed translated to consequence, his mind slammed the brakes.
He didn't like his current situation, currently locked in a useless, shuddering state.
He was alive, he was in the game, and yet he was utterly unable to do anything that might save him or anyone else.
This frustration settled into a deep, hollow Sadness and Identity Crisis.
Who am i?
He had been the disciplined.
Now, he was just weak—the white-haired bastard, hateful eyes and the shaking hands.
He had abandoned everything, he had rejected his past, and now that past had returned to imprison him.
If he wasn't a strong person, if he wasn't capable of protecting, then what was he?
Just a burden, a walking liability waiting to make a mistake.
The truth of his existence in Aincrad was that he was an exposed fugitive, utterly unsuited for the challenge.
Zanshin slowly reached down and picked up the Glaive, not to wield it, but to hold it. He pressed the cold, digital metal against his cheek.
"I can't do this, Klein," he finally said, the words heavy with resignation.
"I can't. Every time I move, I see him. I see someone. If I make one mistake here, if I lose control of my movements, what if this time someone dies. And it will be my fault again."
He looked out at the weeping, fighting crowd.
"This despair… it's what I deserve. I tried to run away from consequence, and now I'm trapped in the ultimate consequence. The sadness was for my best friend, critically injured by the accident, a constant reminder of his mistake. I can't risk breaking another life."
Klein grabbed Zanshin's shoulder tightly, his voice low and intense.
"Listen to me, Zanshin! You are not the accident! You are here, and you are you. If you let yourself die in this game, it means everything you went through—the guilt, the fear, the pain you carried for him—it all becomes meaningless. You don't get to surrender to despair! We are stuck here, and we are going to fight this thing together."
Klein glanced around, his face hardening as he saw the opportunistic groups sizing them up.
He knew this argument had to end.
"Look, I have to find my friends. I won't make you go into the field. But you are going to come with me and stand guard while I find my crew in the plaza. You can lean on that wall and shake all you want."
He didn't wait for Zanshin to agree.
Klein pushed the Glaive back into Zanshin's shaking hand, making him grasp it, and then gripped Zanshin's arm, pulling him back toward the chaotic plaza.
Zanshin followed, not because he found strength, but because he was too broken to resist.
He was resigned to his fate, letting his friend drag him back into the very heart of the disaster.