13.
The following morning started out relatively normal. Except, things were no longer quite so normal. Sometime during the night, I had regained parts of my memories. I now remembered some of what happened the previous evening. From the monster that attacked me, to the old man and the spirit sword. I remembered quite a bit of it.
"Good morning." I almost jumped out of bed as a cheerful Teenyma Suddenly showed up at my doorstep, wearing her chef's hat and apron over her usual hoodie and shorts. "Hope you slept well." she said, smiling, a gesture which I returned in kind. There was no way I was telling her about any of what had transpired shortly before I had passed out the previous evening, So I gave her a thumbs up and a nervous smile. I decided it was best I kept her out of the loop, up until I fully understood everything that was going on.
As we left my room for breakfast, I began getting a strong whiff of something sweet coming from the direction of the kitchen. Milk, sugar, flower, blueberries. "Pancakes. “I said underneath my breath.
"Wow." Teenyma responded. "Good guess. That's quite the nose you've got there this morning." she said, looking over her shoulder and smiling at me. I really didn't think there was more to my observation than the surface level, so I just simply ignored it and smiled back.
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At the breakfast table, I was gobbling down my 4th plate of blueberry pancakes when I asked Teenyma if I could have more. "Whoa, someone's hungry this morning." she said playfully, and I immediately stopped eating.
"Hey, I was just joking alright? Of course I will get you more silly." Teenyma said as she went to help get me more pancakes, but her joke comment was not why I stopped eating. I was hungry. Like, extremely hungry. I didn't realize it before, but now that I was eating, it felt like I had been starving for days. Why was I so hungry?
On my way to school, the train of unusual behavior continued. First was that the sun was out, but suddenly doing something as simple as glancing at my surroundings became extremely painful. I almost had to squint the entire time while walking, with my hand held up over my face to shield my eyes from the sun.
Next was the noise. Outside was becoming too loud, with the horns from cars, the beeps from bikes, dogs barking, and people talking. It was almost as if someone picked up the universal remote and was now cranking up the volume in my surroundings to 11. Everyone and everything were becoming deafeningly loud to the point of hurting. And as soon as I couldn't take it anymore, I side stepped into an alleyway with my hands over my ears and waited for the noise to stop.
It took a minute but eventually my hearing was back to normal. My eyes had also stopped hurting, and the smell of exhaust fumes and smoke had also started to relax a bit. I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know why any of it was happening. I briefly considered returning to the apartment and ditching school entirely for the day, but Teenyma was heading into work a bit late and I wasn't really looking forward to explaining to her why I was back so early. And since I left the keys to the main house back in her apartment, I couldn't go back home either.
So, not really having any other choice, and since I was already kind of feeling better, I got out of the alleyway and headed in the direction of school.