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Everyone knew Xisuma.
Of course they did - admin of Hermitcraft that sported a bee-themed Endsuit, an absolute neat freak with a daily colour-coded schedule who somehow still managed to be a friend to all in his “free time”, whatever that meant to him. Whenever anyone needed anything, they didn’t even need to ask. New archery game to test? Xisuma. A beacon trade for iron? Xisuma. Your life is crashing down before your eyes because you’re being hunted by your hitman organisation or one of your bunny-eared friends went insane and killed your best friend and tortured you consequently?
Xisuma.
But did everyone know Xisuma? They saw the Endling hard at work on his honey-block towers, or drafting designs for new farms. Sometimes he was spotted in the faraway Netherlands, or helmet under one arm and squinting at some redstone contraption in his sandy Industrial District. Or he was testing archery games for Cub or delivering slow-falling potions to Ren or helping Grian find his lost boots in the mob-farm pit of his Mansion. He was wherever the Hermits needed him to be.
And sometimes, the Hermits wondered. Xisuma himself rarely asked for help outside of borrowing a few tridents or occasional potion ingredients for his giant autobrewery. Was it pride? Was it fear? He seemed to have his life together at all times, lined up in colourful schedules detailed down to the minute, with all his tasks sorted into specific piles of shulkers of oak leaves, gravel, concrete, obsidian. “I wish I could be that self-sustaining,” some hermits said. “Never having to depend on anyone for anything. And being that calm and collected while at it.” Was it that he didn’t need their help, or that he didn’t have time for it? Did he need help with anything at all?
They never knew the answer to those questions.
Xisuma made sure of it.
He stood at his planning desk, a pen in one hand and a cold cup of tea in the other. He didn’t know what time it was, what day it was. Ghast farm designs and efficiency improvement ideas were pinned all over his bulletin board, violet scribbled-over sticky notes and whole yellow pages of redstone blueprints that he could barely process. One note about a future rabbit farm was covering a greyscale photo of him and Keralis outside their Season 2 “What Is Love” note-block contraption, next to their most recent photo of them outside their concrete shop. How long ago was that…
Keralis hadn’t been around recently. Xisuma didn’t blame him; he had his own problems to tend to, his own mental health to take care of. Take care of yourself. Your own health comes first, he’d told Keralis.
“Don’t worry ‘bout me, Shashwammy.” The last text, the last thing Keralis wrote to him before he went off the grid.
But Xisuma couldn’t just… not worry. It was ingrained in him; reaching out and comforting people had become an instinct after all these years. He had always prided himself in the fact that people felt like they could trust him, that they could ask him anything and ask him for anything. After all, everyone approached him with their worries, ranging from a simple “I need iron and I’ll trade beacons for them” to trauma from a bunny-eared high school sadist.
And to an extent, he truly enjoyed helping them - he found satisfaction in his ability to give solid or comforting advice, mediate difficult situations, and see every aspect of every disagreement, even the most morally grey ones. He was putting it to good use, and it let him know that even if all else failed, he was at least someone others could lean on.
Yet it was a double-edged sword. Not because he knew he couldn’t help everyone; he knew there were wounds that would never heal or could only be sewn back together with the stitches of time. He could guide people along those paths.
No, what bothered him was knowing that when he wasn’t flying around lending people a hand or a hug, he was truly alone, alone at the edge of the universe humming a tune that no one would hear. He was a friend to all, but not a close friend to anyone, not anyone’s irreplaceable other half or someone’s number-one friend of however many decades. He was Xisuma. He was their admin, their helping hand, their advice vending machine. Yeah, they all knew him. They knew he spoke Galactic. They knew his favourite beverage, his favourite colour, his favourite biome, his favourite musical genres.
But they didn’t know that his heavy-metal favourites helped drown out his doubts and overthinking. They didn’t know his tightly packed schedule was a distraction from having to be alone with his thoughts, an attempted grasp at full control over something in his life. They didn’t know that his disappearances weren’t just for automated brewery building or killing striders to increase ghast farm efficiency. They didn’t know how easily drained he was, how everyone’s needs often overwhelmed him, how he had days of sheer apathy (a result of spending too much energy on other people and big projects) where he wandered around the shopping district mindlessly, they didn’t know, they didn’t know Xisuma.
So he never asked for help. But God did he crave it at times, the feeling of having someone right next to you who understood every piece of your mind and soul. He knew that perfect half would never exist with anyone, but it appeared that way on the streets of the Shopping District as Tango took some totems from Impulse’s shop and Impulse took rockets from Tango’s, and as Beef chased Etho around Beefy Tunes while wearing a llama head. They didn’t even have to be his other half , just someone who would take care of him the way he took care of others.
Now Xisuma stood alone in his base, hours whizzing past in silence. Empty. It was on these days that he needed someone most - days of silence, apathy, a poisonous exhaustion that crept from the back of his mind through his limbs and weighed him down at his desk. He tried to think of someone who he could talk to, but no one came to mind. 23 other people living in his vicinity and not a single one who could give a damn about or understand his mental health condition. 23 other people who had found their place in other people’s lives as an important friend, someone that completed them.
A faint breeze blew a few dead Jungle leaves into the room, swishing around the Endling’s ankles. It was nighttime now; his street leading to Keralis’s city was lit up with blinking shroomlights. Cicadas were beginning to chirp near Etho’s base. A pair of cockatoos screamed in the distance. He wondered if anyone had noticed how long he’d been gone - no, he didn’t need to wonder. They didn’t know. Nobody knew.
Sometimes Xisuma wondered if he did this to himself. He never asked for help, but that was because there was no one to ask. And what could he do, but continue being his own other half? The stars had aligned for other pairs and trios and quartets in the universe, but at the edge, Xisuma stood in the darkness under the starless sky. And maybe one day he’d be okay with being his own starlight.
But today, he stood motionless at his desk, letting the mental exhaustion root him to his place, because part of him still believed that maybe someone will find me . Part of him still prayed someone would come swooping into his base check on him, as if telepathically linked to him like someone’s other half would be. It was crazy, logically - if he didn’t tell anyone that he wasn’t okay, how could he expect other people to just know? Not everyone was like him, observant emotionally and checking in with everyone every week. But he could hope. He would rather hope than accept his fated loneliness at the cold edge of the universe.