1 The Flickering Flames

An ordinary looking young man is currently making his way down 3rd street.

Coming from his university lecture, he had taken a late train before finally arriving on his current path back home to his rented apartment.

*step*

*step*

Each step taken in a slow and fatigued manner. Lyon had been starving himself to make ends meet; and even worse he had just come off a three night sleepless night due to assignments.

As Lyon was walking through a crowd of pedestrians, he utters under his breadth, "So boring, wish something interesting would happen."

Even as he says that, others continue passing by him, ignoring his existence.

'hah, well rather boring than too exciting' he thinks in contradiction.

As he right at the centre of the wave of human bodies filling the street.

*Flash*

Suddenly...

The darkened sky lits up in a bright orange

Lyon suprised, looks up. To his amazment, a giant ball of flames was currently descending towards his location.

Seeing this, he looked around with extreme vigour trying to assess other people's reaction to this scene.

But instead of panicking or screams of terror, Lyon merely witnessed the crowd of people walking about as usual. Many carefree, while looking at their phone screens.

Lyon's face crushed up in disbelief

'Impossible! How can anybody not notice that ball of flames, it's nearly hundred meters in diameter'

Holding his head with both arms, his breathing quickens, he forced himself to look at the sky once more.

*tilt*

As Lyon tilts his head skyward, a different image reflects in eyes than before.

'impossible! Wait...was it my imagination'

'No. That shouldn't be the case, that was way too real looking and I hadn't done drugs nor am I crazy'

'is it because I'm tired? No, this is not as simple as that.'

Trying to calm his accelerated heartbeat, Lyon walks out of the dense crowd. His mind and body still shaken. As a rationalist, his mind was trying to come to terms with what he had just witnessed.

His gaze moved about the crowd, looking for people in a similar situation as him.

After several seconds of scouring eyes over the crowd, he vigiliantly scanned over the passing by pedestrians like a hawk.

Seeing the effect of his stare, Lyon retreats his piercing gaze and moves to relatively quiet corner and pulls his phone out.

'If someone saw what I did, what would they think? They would probably think they were mistaken about it. But even so, they would probably wabtbto know if others saw it as well.'

'As long as they have no history of similar hallucinations or on drugs, they'll probably ask about it online'

With this thought, Lyon typed 'giant flame ball sighting' in his web browser. Then moved his finger over the search button.

*Tap*

A second later

*Drop*

A cell phone, a collection of clothes and other things on his person dropped to the ground.

As soon as Lyon entered this phrase in his browser, his naked body vanished, like it was teleported away.

The clothes and personal possessions lay there in the dark alley.

Numerous passerbyers move pass this location, walking pass it as though it was invisible.

As a young college student walks by, The pile of items vanish as well.

End

....