Things are getting strange…

Jin was peering at the hovering translucent screen before him. His face had contorted, and his eyebrows knotted.

"Healed, huh?"

He already knew it was practically impossible to heal any wounds completely within ten hours alone. Especially the permanent ones. For instance, his spinal cord injury.

Just to confirm that it actually healed his wounds, he touched the area on his back, where the cop had burnt him. Upon pressing force in the area, he realized that there was no pain whatsoever. Nothing.

Furthermore, he touched his nose, which had gotten damaged because of the Hobgoblin. The area, upon which he placed his index and thumb fingers, showed no signs of pain either.

This, for him, had quickly become an anomaly to heed. Though, he wasn't complaining at all.

He stood, and started walking towards his bathroom. He couldn't shake the feeling of how weird it felt. He had been crippled for years.

His gait was a bit goofy, and unstable. He looked as if he was going to fall every now and then.

But he didn't care. All that mattered to him was that he could now walk…somehow. He collapsed while walking towards the bathroom, but quickly got back up again.

He gradually walked into the bathroom, and started looking at himself in the mirror. What he had immediately noticed was a strange mark below his right eye.

In an instant, he felt his heart skip a beat. His pupils dilated as he stared into the mirror, with his back hunched over.

What in the world was he looking at?

His intense reaction was only stemmed by the fact that there was a tattoo below his right eye. One he had certainly not gotten himself.

It was a black tattoo of the number, '619'.

Upon taking the number into account, Jin recalled seeing the troll woman, who had shaken his hand, with the same tattoo.

Except that hers was the number, '618', and it was on the lower, as opposed to the upper, part of her face.

"Six one nine…"

Quickly, Jin then turned on the pipe, and water came gushing out of it accordingly. He swiftly brought his face down to the pipe, and started to wash it.

After rubbing his face to absolute pinkness, he looked in the mirror again, only to see the tattoo still there.

He then started washing his face constantly and quickly again like a bat out of hell—all to no avail. The only thing he got from washing his face like this was red, numb skin.

He frowned, "A mark that won't come off for nothing."

"A tattoo perhaps?"

"God, Grandma's gonna kill me…"

***

Jin went outside on his wheelchair to get the breakfast his Grandmother was prodding him about all morning, after overhearing the commotion he made in his room.

To ensure that his Grandmother didn't see the mark below his eye, he wore a hoodie, and kept his hood over his head. He also made sure not to make his face meet hers at all costs.

On top of this, he didn't tell her about his ability to walk yet. Not yet.

"Why are you wearing that?" She asked him as he began to roll away with his breakfast at hand.

Stopping with his back turned on her, he replied, "I'm going for a little morning fresh air soon—so I figured I'd wear it now."

She then sat on the chair, and watched as he went back into his room again.

"Why's he acting so strange today?"

Jin went back into his room, shutting the door. While sitting in his wheelchair, he took a bite from the sandwich his Grandmother had prepared for him.

The cheese paste had far too much mayonnaise in it, but this time her cooking passed for edible. And so, Jin decided to eat it given that he was incredibly hungry and had only just realized this.

He knew he couldn't conceal his face from her forever. He deduced that she would inevitably get weary, and his cover will be blown when she looks at him in the face.

With that thought in mind, he decided to leave the house to pick up something that would, by a cross of fingers, keep him in the clear a little while longer.

He left his bedroom in the wheelchair. As he walked into the living room, he noticed his Grandmother wasn't there. Quickly, he rolled the wheelchair towards the front door.

He then opened the door, and hurried out of the house before his Grandmother could realize he left. He began to roll his wheelchair on the grey concrete pavement.

At the side of the pavement and on his side of the road, there was a wall about three meters away from him.

The wall was built to separate a house's property. Within the brick walls there was a house. On the contrary, there were obviously no houses outside the walls.

Looking at the white brick flat house, Jin knew exactly who was living there. It was yet another old woman; living all by herself. She was his Grandmother's good old friend.

Jin looked around, turning his head left and right. Then he stood up from his wheelchair, and started pushing it towards the back of the brick wall.

Simply, he leaned the wheelchair against the wall, and walked away.

"Hopefully some goblin or dwarf kid doesn't steal it."

"But then again, who would want a wheelchair?" he asked, consoling himself.

He then continued walking, without the wheelchair. And of course, his gait was perceptibly goofy to all the people he had walked past.

Walking past the people, he could hear constant giggling and mummering coming from their mouths.

Nevertheless, he did his very best to ignore them all. He ridiculously fell a couple of times while walking. And boy was he an attention grabber.

He was still wearing his black hoodie, and his hood was over his head. He walked past bakeries, restaurants, malls, and many more, only to walk into a store with 'Beauty Cosmetics' written in bold all over it.

As soon as Jin had opened the glass door, and entered the store, he could see women of different races all looking at him in the face.

He paused, and they continued staring at him like dead bodies would. They stared listlessly, like those who walk in sleep.

Jin pulled his hood completely over his head, put his head down, and walked further into the store, with both his hands in his hoodie's kangaroo pockets.

When out of nowhere, a woman walked up to him. She had her blonde hair in a bun, and her ears were sharp and pointy. Her lips were covered in blood red, and her eyes were blue. She wore white tights, and a white shirt.

Genuinely, Jin found her a bit alluring, so he thought being amidst a store like this one made him appear as a freak to her.

"Can I help you sir?" she asked him.

"Uhm. Yeah?"

She drawled, "You do know you're in a women's beauty store, right?"

Jin put his hand behind his neck, not looking her in the eyes. Shying away in front of her, he bashfully looked around to make sure others weren't looking at him.

However, all of them—each and every one of the women—had their eyes drawn to him like magnets.

His heart quickly skipped a beat, as he swallowed the air in his mouth.

"I…want makeup," he whispered, looking down at the ground.

"I didn't hear you…"

"I want makeup," he said it louder.

"Because?"

He shifted on his feet, "Uhm. I'm…I'm uh…"

"Gay?" The woman asked, raising a brow.

Her words scared the bejesus out of him.

Timorous, Jin froze for a while. He didn't say anything.

But then he discovered a way to rid himself of his current predicament. He slowly raised his head, looking at her in the face now. And he responded, "Yeah. You're right…I'm gay."

A woman from the group of women to his right, then uttered, "Gays…that's all teens nowadays become…"

"I mean, I don't have a problem with it."

"Isn't that kid there a girl?"

"No, Sasha! You can clearly see he's a boy!"

"Hell no—that's a girl. Look at his eyelashes…"

"He's not! Take a look at his hairstyle."

"That's a girl, bitch! Can a girl not cut her hair?"

"Sasha," said a dwarf woman, "Stacy's right. He's just probably gay that's all. He did say it himself just now, didn't he?"

Another woman walked up to him. She was a bit old to be drenching herself in makeup. She was a troll woman, with one of her eyes tending to stay closed.

She touched Jin on his face and said, "Gay, huh? I knew it from the time you walked in. Still, you're so cute—I wish you were my son."

Another woman then added, "Trianna, your son slipped and fell off a rooftop."

"No!" The troll woman snarled, "He slipped on a banana peel and fell off the rooftop, asshole!"

Becoming rubescent, Jin looked at the elf woman, whom he had accounted as an assistant helping out the customers.

He looked up at her, and said, "You got anything that'll look like my skin color?"

"Yeah, I do," said the woman walking off.

Jin put his hand behind his neck, while the other was in his kangaroo pocket, and he pursued the elf woman's path.

***

Jin was walking home, with makeup hiding the number below his right eye. He totally forgot that he was broke, and so the woman gave him the makeup for free. He walked on the pavements with his hands in his kangaroo pockets.

"Me? Gay? I can't believe they actually bought that one," Jin said, grinning while walking.

He was minding his own business, reminiscing and chuckling upon remembering what had happened in the Beauty Cosmetics store today.

He had a soft smile on his face.

When quickly, something suppressed this smile of his. It took this smile away from him right then.

It was a strange screen that had appeared before his eyes. His facial expression immediately swung to seriousness.

[A Successor has fallen]

"A successor has—what?"

Suddenly, in the far distance, a blue glowing beam that looked like a beacon erupted and shot into the sky at the speed of sound.

There was a shockwave that caused Jin to put his hands in front of his face, when clearly he should be blocking his ears.

People in the streets all gathered, gazing at the beacon-like projection of light in the distance. Some of these people had taken out their phones on an impulse. They started recording the beacon.

Perplexed yet curious they all were.

In the crowd of people, Jin stood there, squinting up at it in bewilderment. The air. It felt ominous. They all knew nothing about what was about to unveil.