I opened my eyes, a bit heavier than usual.

My head hurt like it came back from a hangover. There was this hard feeling on my forehead, but I was presently aware of nothing that was physically pressing on my body.

As opposed to the top, the rest of my body felt like it went through a sauna. I felt revitalized, brimming with a strange energy that was indescribable. The little muscles in my body told me clearly of their limitations, yet I had this urge to run around like those passionate soccer enthusiasts. Even though I didn’t remember ever playing the sport, I felt like I would be decent at it. At least, the me now would be able to make a beeline for the goal and outrun all the defenders.

Which reminded me, was there even anything similar to sports in this magic and sword-fighting world? It couldn’t be the people’s lives all revolved about fighting monsters for survival. If that was the case, my father would have been at the forefront with his swift chantless magic, instead of doing plain old paperwork.

The ceiling in Miss Clara’s office looked ornate with all its curves and intricate carvings. On closer inspection, it was a picture of men and women wearing white Greece-like clothes that seemed like picturesque clouds even if there were no patterns on them. They all had wings that looked different from each other but were all drawn with the same style. Upon looking very closely, there were eight pairs of wings, and each of the man/woman was holding something that looked disturbingly similar to a...pizza slice. With no toppings.

May be I was just hungry. I had been eating/drinking nothing but tasteless milk for the last one year plus or so. But I digressed.

I remembered a certain disaster that happened vividly in my memories as if it happened yesterday, or just right now. But I was left lying where I usually slept, it looked like afternoon outside, and there was no one in the room. If it had not been for that strangely vivid dream, the marble exploding so abruptly in my little hand that it would sure to leave a scar, I would be thinking it was just another workless day.

It would be nice if someone, a caretaker lady perhaps, could come and bring me around so I could observe and infer what had happened. There was a questionable gap in my memories, and I could not help feeling that something was off about my surroundings.

Maybe if I could get into a half-crawl position...uuup!

..It was easier than I thought. Just as I thought, this energy that was bubbling underneath my thin toddler skin was acting like some doping power. I felt like I could move my body like a normal kid now. As I was thinking this, I felt something that I was not supposed to feel. Not at this stage anyway.

It was...hair.

Short hair was brushing across my ears. No wonder the pillow had felt strangely stiffer than usual. I was lying on my hair...which I was not supposed to have. Not since I last remembered.

Putting aside the inexplicability of the situation, I felt like had to touch my hair. It was short, but I could see that it was brown in colour...

I tugged on it, maybe a bit harder than how I should treat my newborn hair.

As i realized the hair, I also saw my palms: they seemed slightly more well-defined, instead of the lump of squishiness that could hold onto naught but my own clothes. I could see more of my legs (I actually had legs now) and the soles of my feet looked like they could actually support my body.

For some reason, I had a growth spurt. An over-day growth spurt.

I touched my face. My skin had also slightly, slightly hardened. It now felt like tomato skin as opposed to the likes of boiled tofu.

And right where my forehead was feeling funny...was a hard object.

It was a foreign, physically hard object, at the middle of my forehead. Embedded in my skin like some electronic chip.

It had four smooth sides, and sharp at the middle. It felt a gem of some sort...but why was it in the middle of the skin of my forehead like the most natural thing?

..Did I get sent to another world due to that magical disaster? One where having physical objects embedded in your skin was the norm?

I looked around, almost frantically. The ceiling, it was the first time I took notice of such a thing in Miss Clara’s room, so it was not proof for my location. I heaved a mental sigh of relief when I saw the colourful row of potions lined up on the polished wooden table. I had never been so happy to see them in their toxic glory.

Miss Clara’s bookshelf of colourful parchments and scrolls was at the corner. Her medical box laid drenched in dust at the top of the bookshelf. Everything was where it used to be. This was unmistakably Miss Clara’s office.

The only difference, a remarkable one, was the huge beige-coloured curtain that covered one whole section of the room from sight. It was the secluded area where the disaster had taken place. The door was also behind the curtain. I felt a feeling similar to being in a secret chamber that had no way out from inside.

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Curiosity, anxiety being a large part of it, welled up in me. I did not know what had happened that caused the harmless marble to suddenly become little crumbles. I did not know why I had suddenly become physically 2 years older. I did not know what happened to the people that I knew – or used to know – that were no doubt alive in the missing pieces of my memories.

The energy was telling me to use it. The gem at my forehead was slightly throbbing at my increased heartbeats. The muscles in my body were itching to move, despite having grown at a rate impossible for normal human beings.

As easy as it was, I hopped down from the bed. The height seemed much less intimidating now.

The rug underneath my feet seemed to swallow me whole. But I was grateful for its soft fur against my bare feet that had yet to be used to walking vertically. I walked, at first totteringly, then vehemently, ashamed of my own baby-like incompetence at something like walking. Tired by my own emotional outbursts, I settled for a light gait, my steps muffled by the carpet.

The curtain, my barricade from the outside world, was right in front of me. I looked for a gap, but there was not any. The curtain extended all the way to the ceiling. It looked much like a fortress from the vantage of a young child.

I went to the end of the curtain that met the wall. I made a gap and wanted to peek through...but the curtain was so heavy that it pushed back against my arm and hit the wall like a real barricade.

I tried again and again, but the curtain was unrelenting. My sore arms lay flattened against my petite, miniscule body of a child.

In the deafening silence that seemed to swallow the whole of my consciousness, something surged up within me. An emotion that was overwhelmingly familiar to me, yet it felt foreign in this world that was not my own – I was painfully aware of it.

Isolation.

The gem in my forehead throbbed even as my heartbeats slowed down into a lull in my ears. It felt hard and cold, abnormal under my skin. I was breathing, slowly and surely, but my own breaths were nonexistent in my ears. I could feel a numbness spreading from my fingers that were wrapped by air, from my feet that were eaten up by the rug. Slowly, but surely, I could feel my existence, my sense of self fading from the clarity of the world around me.

The gem was prickling at my skin, grinding against the soft flesh of my forehead, like a jarring reminder of my own wretched and inexplicable existence.

The curtain suddenly sprang open like a storm had forced its way through. A breeze hit my face. My heart suddenly resumed its thumping, hammering against my bewildered mind, and I was made further aware of the foreign object that was pressing against my forehead.

Even more so when standing on the other side of the barricade, was the white child.

The sight of grey was staggeringly breathtaking, as opposed to the colourful room I was in. He closed his eyes for some reasons, but I found myself unconsciously yearning for his gaze which had always been pure and kind.

There was a silence that hung between us, like long lost friends, but unlike before, I could hear my own vivid breathing, and feel the life of another person next to my own.

Then I realized it.

As opposed to my own calming heartbeats, his was a mess. I could feel how shaken up he was, his small little shoulders seemed as fragile as glass, unlike the usual sense of comfort they gave. He stood still, but it seemed to take everything out of him in order to remain poised and unperturbed.

He could sense my appearance beyond the opened curtain, but his eyes remained closed, his feet rooted to the hard ground. His grey hair seemed to lose its initial brilliance, clinging to the side of his face which had begun to grow edges that should not be seen in a child.

There was a disturbing sound of something tearing open. Then a single, thin line appeared on his face, cutting across his almond-shaped left eye. The cut was perfectly straight and elegant, as if it was just a misplaced strand of hair. But no self-denial could hide its true nature: blood rimmed along the cut, into a thin flow of blood, dripping down his ashen face.

He winced in realization and in pain. The childlike features of his face seemed to contort into something unrecognizable on his face that was always noble and composed, as opposed to his age.

My numb legs were already moving before I told them to. The energy in my body was boiling up my skin, the gem was still stuck uncomfortably in my forehead...but I could pay that no heed. There was an urgency, a compelling force, a soundless chant that seemed to reverberate in my mind. I couldn’t name it at that time.

I stumbled over myself with my sudden actions. The shame that had subsided seemed to lurk at the corner of my mind, but it happened too quickly, like the sudden burst of my emotions, that I could do nothing in response.

I was caught in a pair of thin-looking arms, but they were hard and tough befitting of a regular sword practitioner. Putting aside my own sense of comfort at the proximity, I took the chance to look closer at his, injury.

I could not accept it. I could not bear the thought that a flaw could exist in this world that seemed perfect with wonder up until now. I could not utter a single world.

Wrapped in this silence that was almost comfortable, we stood still. He seemed at peace, sleeping with his eyes closed, if I could just delete from my mind his short and raspy breathing, his thumping heartbeats that passed from the contact, and the stream of blood that was out of place on his ashen skin. Then, slowly, he tried to open his eyes. His eyelids shuddered with what seemed like pain and shock at the blood that clung on his eye. But it was a relief, a silver lining in this incident, that he could open his left eye fully and it was not touched by the cut. Just milimetres away from the cut.

I did not know how to heal. I only knew how to create disasters. I wanted to touch that wound, to knead the two sides of the cut and try to push them together again, like dough. Something hot seemed to flow at my chest, and spill at the cave of my eyes. I could see his face clearly; his serene expression, giving off a sense of resignation, was burnt into my eyes. I wanted to pull at his cheeks, to somehow change the way he was gazing at me. It was a look of hurt, of sadness, of pain, and all of that pushed into a corner of his eyes, where the amber light seemed to flicker only slightly, like a tattered soldier.

He raised one of his hands, and put it gently atop my head.

I did not know what to think. Time flew by my ears. I did not know how to rationalize this feeling, this burning anger. The hand felt comforting to me, as he smoothed out my hair and lightly touched the gem on my head. I did not know why I was the one being comforted.

Maybe it was all just a dream.