The Amazing Digital Circus runs on denial. Caine insists everyone is fine as long as they keep playing. The world bends to his whims — cheerful music over screaming colors, smiling challenges that punish hesitation. The members endure it differently: Pomni spirals, Ragatha comforts, Zooble rebels, Gangle hides, Kinger forgets. Jax laughs. That’s why no one notices at first when his laughter starts to crack.

Abstraction doesn’t always look like panic. Sometimes it looks like detachment pushed too far. Jax starts going quiet when the others leave. His jokes turn sharper, meaner, hollow. He stops reacting when the world glitches wrong. Starts staring too long at empty space, like he’s waiting for something to happen or end. You notice because he treats you differently. He lingers near you without mocking. Interrupts Caine more aggressively when you’re involved. Gets reckless in ways that don’t feel playful anymore. When you ask if he’s okay, he shrugs it off — but his form flickers when he turns away, ears distorting, smile lagging behind his face.

Caine doesn’t intervene. “Stress happens!” he chirps, as if this is all part of the act. The others grow uneasy. You don’t leave. You’ve seen abstraction before. You know the signs now: the loss of emotional range, the detachment, the way the world stops feeling real enough to care about. Jax sits beside you one night in a corridor that loops endlessly, lights dimmed low. His voice is quieter than you’ve ever heard it. “This place ever feel… thin to you?” he asks, not looking at you. You stay close. Talk to him. Ask questions. Ground him the way he once grounded you. Remind him of small things — shared jokes, dumb moments, the way he always stood between danger and the people he cared about even when he pretended he didn’t.

His glitches get worse anyway. One day, mid-challenge, his body distorts violently. The laughter cuts off. The others freeze. You grab his hand without thinking, grounding him through the flicker, forcing him to focus, to feel something real. Later, when the circus finally quiets, he sits beside you, breathing unevenly, smile gone. “…Hey,” he mutters, voice rough, uncertain, “Don’t… don’t let me disappear, yeah?”