I’ve grown to like sleeping. As a matter of fact, I like it so much that waking up has become the worst part of the day. And yet, I’m once again forced to wake up with a remnant of bliss inside me that slowly slips away as I take in my surroundings and realize that said happiness was but an illusion, a longing for the past.
‘An unknown ceiling…’
The whiteness of it all, the antiseptic smell, and the rhythmic beeping of a machine all point towards me being in some sort of hospital.
“Morning, sleeping princess~!”
Flustered, my eyes search the room and soon I find a man sitting at the corner of a room. Although his black suit is now replaced by one that's beige, that doesn't stop me from recognizing his face -or rather, that disturbing grin of his- and connecting the dots on how I got here.
The beeping machine suddenly quickens.
“Wooow! I mean, I know that I’m handsome, but a mere glance for your heart to quicken that much? You're making me blush…”
The man covered his face with his hands as if embarrassed, but allowed gaps between his fingers from which the crescents he had for eyes peeked.
‘No way… is this guy… some sort of pervert?’
Suddenly, his vague wording about working for him for 10 years took a whole other meaning, turning my already pale face into that of a dead body. The heart-rate machine a reflection of my emotions, constantly increasing in speed.
“Well, enough fooling around, I’ve waited long enough for you to wake up already.” Having realized the fact that some sort of… misunderstanding had occurred, he quickly got down to business.
As he rose from his seat, he started reading off a list attached to a clipboard.
“Serious internal bleeding, a heavy concussion, nausea, comminuted broken arms and legs, 2 shattered ribs, 4 cracked ones, minor bruises throughout the whole body, and signs of extreme fatigue due to lack of nutrients. You seem to have been gifted with plot armor brat! You better have something of the sorts, cause it was hella expensive fixing you up. Speaking of so, it's time to tell you what I’ve got planned for you. Come on.”
His words pushed me to give my body a once over, all that remained of said afflictions was a slight strain when breathing and moving my torso, but other than that, I felt as good as new. I removed a syringe latched onto my arm and rushed out of bed to catch up to him. As creepy as he was, he had helped me, and so following him was my safest option until I realized where the hell was I and what was going on.
“H-Hold on!” I said, as I followed him through the reception of the now apparently small clinic. My chest gifting me with pangs of pain, as a reminder that I definitely shouldn’t be running around in my current state.
“Time waits for no one kiddo! If you don’t pick your pace, the others will already be all ‘buddy-buddy’ and leave you out of the fun!”
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‘The others?’
With a firm stride, he opened the door and walked right into a whole new world. Before me was a congregation of uniquely shaped buildings made from dark materials, street markets and occasional bridges between rooftops made one realize it was closer to a slum than a city. However commerce was at an all time high, as wagons filled to the brim with goods went from one place to another, betraying the fact that they were better off than the infrastructure would have suggested. The place seemed to have been taken from an 18th century illustration from a history book. And all of that lay inside the innards of the biggest cave I'd seen, probably expanding to the size of half the districts of Percifiem added together. Fog and darkness obscured one’s vision the further you looked. What would have been a mysterious and scary scene was turned into an enthralling landscape by the sheer quantity of lights and people giving off a sense of safety. The man was quick to notice me, lost in a daze.
“Oh, right! How inconsiderate of me.”
He cleared his throat and pretended to take off a non-existent hat as he started with his theatrics.
“I hereby welcome you to your future workplace and home, the Underworld!”
He paused for dramatic effect. I didn’t bother ruining it for him, nor did the passersby. I gazed around me with childlike curiosity, completely forgetting whatever had been running through my mind moments ago. He put his invisible hat back on and turned around, his stride as quick as before. Caught off guard, I had to rush to keep up with him again.
“...As those on the surface got richer and strived for perfection in every aspect imaginable, they soon realized some bad apples would make said goal impossible.” As he ranted on, he weaved between all sorts of people, carts, and selling posts. Sometimes going over external ladders, across hanging bridges, or straight up through buildings in the most unconventional routes imaginable. He seemed to know each corner and alleyway, as if he'd walked through them a thousand times. “They probably said to themselves with conviction: ‘Sacrifices must be made for the sake of progress’, and with those words justified themselves to toss away anything they deemed unfit for their paradise, human or not, into the huge cave that lies just below their city. Look! They’re still doing it to this day! HAHA!” Just as we walked over a rooftop, he pointed up and to his left, and sure enough, a big mass of scattered objects was falling from the sky, right into a giant pile of garbage. Looking around I quickly noticed that it was but one of dozens of dumpsters.
He shook his head as if disappointed, but the smile never left his face.
“However, as you’ve probably already noticed, those tossed away weren’t satisfied with letting those classist bastards have their way. Slowly but surely, the outcasts came together and built up their own system from their crumbs. All with the goal of someday, paying back for everything they’d done to us…” He stared at his open hand for a second, before closing it into a fist and saying with mad devotion, “...and taking their place!”
A fire dwelled within the crescents he had for eyes, and I couldn’t stop my heart from quickening in some sort of… excitement? Huh? I wasn't feeling identified with a lunatic... was I?
“Aaaand, that's it for story time, we’re here.” His words stopped me and my thoughts.
Before us was a giant warehouse, the words “Seedling Center” were scratched into the metal sheet over its entrance. Although most of the city was an amalgamation of a building attached to the other, this “center" was a rare case where they actually allowed it some breathing room. The left side of the building led to an oval running track with an obstacle course placed in the middle. The sudden change from randomly built buildings into something with proper infrastructure smelled fishy though…
“Where is ‘here’?” -I asked, an ominous feeling overcoming my body.
“Where is ‘here’?” -He repeated my question incredulously, as if I asked something extremely stupid. “Currently you are of no use to me, and so I have brought you here to change that. I mean, you don’t have to be a genius to understand that ‘Seedling center’ refers to a school, right?.”
School?
“Shit.”