Chapter 74. (Volume 2 Prologue)

Kkkhhh. 

Kkkhhhhh. 

Kkkkkhhhhhhh.

The world flickered strangely in my eyes. It appeared as if it were influenced by some sort of static interference. The peculiar effect created a glitchy black, grey, and white pixelated visual effect in the surrounding scenery. The world felt like a digital illusion that consisted of ones and zeros with random distortions that ate away at the world. It was reminiscent of an ethereal fictitious world that one could not physically touch.

What was I thinking about just now before this sequence of events?

Reality.

Why did that word come to mind?

I felt like there was something important I’d just realized moments before, but after that bizarre pixelated effect appeared, the memory felt vague and unclear.

It was on the tip of my tongue, yet it wouldn’t come to mind; no matter how hard I tried to recall it, my earlier train of thought before this never returned.

I knew I needed to remember what it was about. Deep down, I was certain it was surely something very important. What was I doing before I came to whatever that realization was? Perhaps my environment could shed some insight into what it was.

I glanced to my left and found tall grey pixelated blurs flying by rapidly one after another. Nothing to my side rang any bells so I focused my attention toward the front. There were two parallel, semi-transparent, pixelated blurry white lines. Three glitched out segmented boxes were at rest to the left and right, and one between the two lines. They were slightly misaligned distance-wise with respect to my position. Displayed on the dashboard directly in front of me was static similar to an old fashioned TV with no signal.

Still, nothing here jogged my memory.

I turned to my right and found an attractive woman with wavy white hair, with a mature appeal to her, sitting there indifferently with her right elbow leaning on the door beside her. She nonchalantly held her head in place, her chin resting atop the palm of her hand. She blankly stared out the window beside her, far into the distance, completely uninterested in the world that passed her by.

With her legs crossed, one over the other, she appeared to be in deep thought over something; I somehow felt like I shouldn’t disturb her.

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That was when I had a sudden question, “Who was she? Did I know her?”

I tried to recall the last person I was with, and the name Adele came to mind. Something inside me told me this mature looking woman wasn’t her though.

In the end, the only thing I understood after I examined my surroundings was that I was seated inside what appeared to be a car. I’d likely been driving somewhere with whoever the person named Adele was.

Where was I driving though? Why was I driving? What relationship did Adele and I have?

Without noticing, I drowned myself in a neverending spiral of questions. When I came to again, the world around me rippled like I was beneath a body of water, looking up from below towards the surface. The image of static depicted on the dashboard, similarly distorted in a strange manner. I found it was now much harder to breathe than it originally was and by the time I realized it, the car was completely full of water like a large storage tank.

As I was fully submerged in water, the outside scenery reflected through the windows of the car quivered in a wave-like fashion anytime I turned my head to look around. It was such a strange disorienting sight; when combined with the constant fluctuations and ever-changing visual effects in the environment, it left me feeling extremely nauseous.

The only thing that didn’t ripple and distort in this world was the woman who seemingly noticed nothing out of place. She was disinterested in everything, almost as if this world was her everyday normal, and I was the strange one for thinking otherwise. She just continued to stare out the window emotionlessly in complete silence without bothering to acknowledge me at all. Was she mad at me or something?

I closed my eyes to collect myself. While I held my breath, I focused more closely on what I could hear from the world around me.

“...”

At first, there was only silence. Complete silence like all the sound in the world had been completely drowned out into nothingness. 

“M er we r”

It was nearly inaudible and very distant, but I still heard it. Something was there. 

“M er? M er?”

It felt like I was moving towards the surface of the water where sound gradually became audible again.

“Ca y er m”

The voice slowly, but surely, penetrated the previously eerie silence until I could almost completely distinguish the words being spoken.

“Mister?”

“Mister! We’re here already! Are you ignoring me again?!”

That’s right... 

I remember now. The hospital... 

I was driving her there.

It wasn’t the woman beside me, but someone else.

When I reopened my eyes, my hands were on the steering wheel. The dashboard was back to normal, the pixelated world was gone and the beautiful mature looking woman with wavy hair was nowhere to be found.

Slam!

Instead, what greeted me was the familiar back view of a seemingly peeved beauty with long straight white hair outside the car. She’d just slammed the car door shut in my face on her way out.

Adele?