Chapter 13

Future time.

Third Person's POV

Allisha woke up under an enormous tree. She stood up and looked around in so much confusion.

"Where am I? What happened?" She said she was terrified, trying so hard to calm herself down.

"Ah, maybe I'm dreaming. Yeah! I'm just dreaming! OH MY GOSH! It feels so real," she screamed after slapping her face.

She tried to slap her face again, and again, but she just got hurt even more.

"This cannot be happening. In dreams, there's no pain," she convinced herself. "Wait, am I dead?"

She walked back and forth, trying to recall what had happened before all this. She tried so many things to wake up.

"No! This cannot be happening!" She finally gave up. "I'm in so much pain. Come on, God, please; I'm too young to die."

She wailed helplessly while scanning her surroundings.

Everything was unfamiliar, but the place looked so much better than her old neighborhood.

She noticed a fountain and decided to go there. Water was in fact greatly used in waking people up.

She stared at the water for quite some time and laughed.

"Oh my! I look so---pretty! I'm so freaking beautiful! This white dress is freaking awesome. I've got white curly hair too! My eyes, are these really mine? I can see clearly with it even without eyeglasses. I'm fabulously fantastic!" Allisha rejoiced as if she had never cried about hating her situation.

She danced and played at the fountain. She decided to enjoy it since having a good dream was a blessing.

Everywhere she looked was fascinating. Then her attention was caught by an old tree, which looked magical to her.

Without hesitation, she climbed up the tree. She was so excited upon reaching the top of the tree. She shouted as if she had just been freed from a million-year imprisonment.

"This is LIFE!" she screamed happily while raising her hands up above her head and enjoying the good feeling she thought she really needed after some time.

Caught up with all the emotions rushing through her, she slipped and fell down.

While falling, she smiled with the thought that the dream would be over, but she landed over somebody. Someone who was a boy.

"Thank you! You saved me." Allisha said sarcastically.

She immediately stood up and walked away, but to her surprise, the boy stopped her by grabbing a portion of her hair.

"Forgive me!" the boy muttered after letting go of her hair. "You were so fast. I happened to have many questions for you." The boy said which shocked Allisha more.

"You can see me?" Allisha barely asked.

The boy nodded.

She turned around to leave, but the boy spoke again.

"Wait, you! The water thing from your eyes, what was that? And when you danced around the fountain, the sound you made that seemed to be coming inside you, what was it? I wondered because I thought I heard it before, in one of my dreams." The boy asked innocently.

Allisha's face turned pale, and she ran away in horror. She panicked so much.

"No! He is talking to me. I can hear him." Allisha mumbled on her way.

Allisha looked around after running for some minutes and was relieved to see that the boy didn't follow her.

A man was about to pass by, so she decided to say hi, but the man didn't even look at her. She tried to stand in front to block the path of an incoming old lady, but the old lady just passed through her.

"I'm invincible! So why is that boy able to hear me? To see me—to touch me? Woah! Better to tire myself out, so that maybe I'd fall asleep and I could wake up."

The weather was great for a walk. It was a bit gloomy, with a cold wind blowing gently that gave a soothing and relaxing feeling every time it touched Allisha's skin. Her kind of weather.

Meanwhile, Rojum found Allisha, a bit weird. But not so weird that he'd go and report her as one of the Worthless.

He looked up at the sky and shook his head in disbelief. He thought that everything about this day was unusual. It was unusual, like, ever since he started asking about things, the skies never turned gray.

Rojum made his way to his school, but he got annoyed again. He saw that old man he kept on seeing outside their 23rd company alongside the Nehiam Road, the road named after their family. His great-grandfather's legacy would always be remembered, as people would say.

"Hey, old man, what do you have today?" He looked down at his things and rudely scattered everything.

This treatment for Mevalian people wouldn't cost so many worth of digits.

Mevalian were those who were about to be Worthless in a short amount of time.

He didn't mind wasting some worth of digits he got from saving the odd girl.

Something caught his eye—a stone!

Blue-green stone that seemed to be gleaming, strangely enticing him to acquire it.

"I'm taking these." He grabbed the stone and started walking away.

He did it to the old man many times, but the old man never responded, which made him hate the whole thing. Though Rojum wasn't particularly familiar with such emotions, he had been feeling them for a long time. He had to suppress or oppress the feeling of fear of being Worthless.

He hated the fact that the man had to work despite being so old and incapable. And no one, except him, found it wrong. Why suffer to keep his worth digits when the old man should be resting already?

Not from very far away, Allisha stood watching Rojum of his filthy ways. She felt disgusted.

"Oh, no, you don't. You horrible creature! As long as I'm here, this dream will be a good one." Allisha blurted out while removing her white shoe from her left foot and throwing it directly to the boy she just met.

"Ouch!" Rojum screamed when something hard hit his head.

He turned back and saw the odd girl looking so odd. He couldn't explain the look the girl was making on her face.

"You! Come back and apologize to the old man," Allisha demanded.