Uncanny Valley | Rimuru x Arifureta

「 ✦ Shizuku Yaegashi ✦ 」

I dreamed of golden eyes tonight.

Not the warm amber of autumn leaves or the gentle glow of candlelight—but the cold, distant gold of stars burning alone in an endless void.

Eyes that held too much knowledge, too much responsibility, too much resignation for someone who looked barely older than me.

In my dream, Rimuru sat on a throne made of crystal, perfectly still, perfectly alone. Daisy wasn't there. No one was there. Just him and the crushing silence of absolute power with nowhere to go, no one to share it with, nothing left to protect.

"The funny thing about being strong," he said without looking at me, his voice echoing in the vast emptiness. "is that everyone assumes it means you can fix everything. That strength equals the ability to make things right. But I never really wanted strength to begin with. Not like this."

I tried to move closer, but the distance between us never seemed to shrink.

"And I'd be damned sure they're wrong," he continued, and now I could see the exhaustion carved into every line of his face. "Strength just means you get to watch everything fall apart in high definition. You get to see exactly how your failures ripple outward, how your mistakes compound, how your very existence becomes a catalyst for the suffering of everyone you care about."

In the dream-logic way of visions, I suddenly knew things I shouldn't know. Parts of a life lived between worlds, between identities, between the crushing pressure of expectations, of unwanted gifts, and the emptiness of isolation.

I saw him as he once was—ordinary, human, forgettable. Working late nights and living in a cramped apartment, trusting a junior colleague who smiled to his face and slid a knife between his ribs the moment it became convenient. Dying alone on a street corner, his last thoughts not of regret but of pity for the friend who'd killed him, the friend who'd never even know what he'd lost.

(A/N: In this story, I very cruelly decided that Rimuru's entire life has been a sequence of losses and betrayal and crushed expectations and shattered hopes. Of course that means Satoru Mikami was killed by Tamura, his trusted colleague and friend. I'm just evil like that.)

"I thought things would be different when I got stronger," the dream-Rimuru whispered. "I thought if I just had enough power, I could finally protect the things that mattered. Build something worth preserving. Make connections that couldn't be severed by betrayal or circumstance."

Now I saw flashes of another world—a nation built from nothing, populated by monsters who'd found family in each other. Citizens who laughed and worked and loved under the protection of their seemingly invincible leader. A place where strength served something greater than itself.

"It's Tempest," he said, and the word carried such longing it made my chest ache. "I had everything I'd ever wanted. A home. People who accepted me. A purpose beyond just existing."

The dream changed again. Now we're in a different place entirely—a cathedral with stained glass windows that show scenes of battles I didn't recognize. At the altar stood a woman with short black hair and cold blue eyes, her sword already drawn and gleaming with holy light.

"Then Hinata happened," Rimuru muttered, and his voice broke slightly on the name. "I promised someone very dear to me that I'd help her if said ever met. Shizue... she was everything I wanted to become. Kind, selfless, someone who used her strength to protect the innocent. She asked me to save her student from the same fate that had consumed her own life."

The woman at the altar turned toward us, and I could see the hatred in her eyes. Not the hot, passionate hatred of someone wronged, but the cold hatred of someone who believed absolutely in their own righteousness.

"Instead, Hinata tried to kill me based on nothing but prejudice. The very person I'd come to help decided I was a threat that needed to be killed. Another failure. Another reminder that good intentions mean nothing when faced with fear and misunderstanding."

The dream-throne cracked beneath him, fractures spreading like a spider web.

"Do you know what it's like," he asked, finally turning those devastating eyes toward me, "to have the power to destroy the world—and still be helpless to save the things you love?"

I wanted to tell him he wasn't helpless, that he'd saved us, that his strength had meaning. But in the strange honesty of dreams, I couldn't lie. I could only watch as the weight of his existence pressed down on him like the crushing depths of an ocean.

"I don't even know if they're alive," he whispered, and now I could see the true horror of his situation. "My people. I've been wandering this world while they could be fighting a war I dragged them into. While they could be dying because someone I trusted decided I was too dangerous to live."

The crystal throne began to crumble entirely, but he made no move to stand. He just sat there as his seat of power collapsed beneath him, accepting the fall with the same resigned grace he brought to everything else.

"This is what it means to be the strongest," he says, his voice growing fainter as his form continues to fade. "You become responsible for everything. Every death becomes your failure. Every tragedy becomes proof that you're not strong enough, not good enough, not worthy of the power you've been given."

I watched him fall, and in that moment I understood that Rimuru's greatest enemy wasn't anything else other than hope itself—the stubborn, relentless hope that kept driving him to try, to trust, to care, even knowing it would end in loss.

"The strongest person in the room," he said as the darkness swallowed him, "is always the loneliest. Don't become like me, Shizuku."

The dream dissolved, but his voice lingered, carrying one final truth that felt like a blade between my ribs.

"Because no one can stand beside you when you're standing on a mountain you never wanted to climb."

I woke up screaming his name and with tears on my cheeks.

Outside my window, dawn was breaking over the capital, painting the sky in shades of gold that reminded me too much of eyes that had seen too much, hoped too much, lost too much.

And somewhere out there, Rimuru was walking alone through a world that would never deserve him, carrying the burden of a strength that had become its own prison.

I pressed my palm against the window and whispered an apology to the morning light, knowing he'd never hear it, knowing it wouldn't matter if he did.

Some wounds run too deep for words.

Some solitude is too complete for company.

And some people are too strong for the world to hold them without breaking both.

In my dream, I'd seen the truth that everyone else missed.

Rimuru Tempest wasn't a monster wearing human skin.

He was a human drowning in monster-deep waters, still trying to save everyone else even as he forgot how to swim.

And that, perhaps, was the most heartbreaking thing of all.

Because there's nothing I can do to help him.

Nothing at all.

I pull my knees to my chest and cry until dawn breaks over the capital, wondering if strength is really worth having when it costs you everything else that makes life meaningful.

The tragic prince of power, forever alone at the summit of his own making.

Just as the dream showed me.

Just as it will always be.

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"The strongest person in the room is always the loneliest.

Because power is just another word for distance,

and distance is just another word for goodbye."

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