Bonus

"… And so ends the story of how Mario and friends saved the world once again."

It was late in the night, probably near midnight. Igami was sluggishly reading a book his children brought him. Having used his life force to rebuild the world impacted a lot on some of his personal capabilities and he had to relearn them. Fortunately, with Ori and Gami, he was able to learn again how to read in a few months but still had difficulties to read at a consistent pace. He was reading a story to his children to practise reading and, as expected, read the story of Mario's adventure in the Rainbow Continent. His children were lying down on the vast red carpet with golden trims as they listened to their father, sat on an armchair.

"Wow! That was an incredible story, father!" Ori cheered.

Following the adventure, the swan regained her happiness and no longer felt sorrow for her father. The disgust that invaded her mind left long ago now that she finally had her father back like he was before whatever that Substance was took over him.

"Ori, we were there when it happened. Remember?" Gami pointed out.

"I know but I never took the time to pay attention to everything. Then, this story reminded me how so much can go around us." Ori brought up.

Gami was about to agree with her but Igami raised a finger to his mouth and made a shhh to ask the royal origamis to keep it down. The two origamis looked at him.

"What's wrong, father? This room is far away from the guards. I doubt our voice will reach them." The swan asked.

This was not Igami's concern. He then used his finger to point to the other side of the room where a fireplace burned wood and provided some lighting to the obscured room. Near the fireplace, Mario and friends, all in pajama, were sleeping all over a couch. Mario was sleeping in the middle of the couch sat down, Birdo was to his left leaned on Larry who had his head resting on the arm of the couch. On the other side, Daisy was lying down on her back with her head on the other arm and was holding Tatanga in her arms. Petey was sleeping behind the couch since he would take too much space on it. The two young origamis approached their friends carefully. They did not want to wake them up.

"How rude it is to sleep on a story." Gami quietly commented.

"I wouldn't call it rude. People tell their children stories to make them sleep. That's why we call those bedtime stories." Ori whispered.

Igami, still sitting in the armchair, let out a quiet grunt that the two royal origamis heard. They looked back at their father who was staring at them with a look about to scold them.

"We should leave them alone." The paper plane concluded.

"Yeah… Let's get some sleep." Ori added.

The two origamis put out the fireplace and joined their father into the corridor. They were escorted to their room where the dragon kissed them goodnight. Afterwards, Igami left his children and closed the door behind. The room went pitch black but Ori and Gami's eyes glew in the dark. Neither went to sleep yet. They still felt concerned about one last thing before turning the page for good. Gami's eyes positioned themselves without moving too far away from its initial spot to look at Ori's eyes.

"Do you think it'll happen again?" Gami's eyes asked, concerned.

Ori's eyes rotated to look at Gami's.

"It will again happen if we don't understand it. Though, at least, we now know how to deal with it but we should do better than react to events. We must be able to foresee and prevent to not have another destruction of our world. I doubt we'll be able to pull that out again." Ori whispered.

Gami was unsure of what she said but closed his eyes. Ori looked back at the ceiling. She had a theory of what happened to his father and how it happened. Though, it was only a word she had in mind…

Envy…

THE END