"Number 1337."
The old grey-haired woman who sat behind a tall desk called out the name of a young man who was mixed in the crowd of valetudinarians people.
But the young man himself couldn't blame them for the long queue as he was just like them since he wasn't even injured physically or mentally.
Cariel, the handsome young man with pitch black hair and purple eyes stood up from his blue hard plastic seat and made his way toward the desk that filled with piles of printed papers.
"Uhm, hello oba-chan, I am Cariel-."
"Just take your form and go to the available clinic room."
The old worker wasn't interested in his introduction as she returned his paper before telling him to scram with a hand motion.
Cariel swallowed his words and made his way toward one of the many doors in the long walls that stretched out until the other end of the hospital.
While the old woman was busy with her piles of papers, she felt something moving on the edge of her glasses that took her attention off the table onto the back of the young man.
"I must be seeing things..."
The old woman lifted her pair of glasses and massaged her closed eyelids before resuming her task and what she didn't notice was the black aura that was released from the young man like a fume of smoke that could be seen through her glasses before vanishing shortly after.
'Ugh...That uncomfortable feeling again...'
Although it came in intervals and the duration of the feeling was short, Cariel couldn't help but worry about his health, and after talking about it with his classmates who were in the same company as him, he decided that it was best to see a professional as no one knew what he was going through.
Arrived at the wooden door, Cariel knocked gently on the door before slightly pushing it.
"Excuse me."
The middle-aged man rotated his seat with a yellow folder in his hand and examined his next patient.
"Welcome, thank you for waiting and please have a seat."
The doctor pointed his hand at the chair across his desk before putting the folder on the surface of the office.
"Let's see...Mister Cariel... Seiryu?-"
The doctor sounded surprised by the fact that I had an odd first name before my old man family name.
"Yes, my mom is a Canadian you see..."
I told the man in white about my dad getting transfer to a lab in a city of the capital, and that is where he met my mom who was also multiracial.
"Hahaha, he must be fortunate and... I see you are experiencing some heavy feeling and sleep paralysis?"
"Yes, actually I would always experience that if I fall asleep after 10 pm and that is hard for me since I get off work at 9:30..."
After the young man explained his circumstances to the doctor for hours, the doctor couldn't pinpoint his primary concern and told him to come back for some test after giving him some prescribed sleeping pills.
"I need to schedule the examination room so... Take these, for now, it should at least help you fall asleep before 10 and fix your paralysis."
Cariel thanked the doctor with a bow and closed the door behind him after leaving the small clinic.
"Ahhh...I had to book off for this and now..."
Feeling dejected, the young man slowly made his way to the nearest train station under the peak temperature during the summer in Tokyo.
Sitting quietly in the train, Cariel was thinking to himself on how he could make it back a week later for his examination as he was still in his internship for the company that he wanted to work for with his friends.
'Maybe I should just excuse myself halfway through the day.'
While in his thought, the troubled young man noticed a group of high school kids in uniform looking at him.
"Look at him...Is it me or he has red eyes?"
"Shhh... Don't say that, it's rude."
"But it's true...His eyes-..."
Although he was slightly older than them, Cariel considered anyone wearing a school uniform as kids and just ignored them.
The high school students lost interest in the young man shortly after and minded their own business until their next stop.
After leaving the station, Cariel made his way back to a tall condominium that was bought and given by one of his aunts and realized that his fridge was empty.
'Darn it... I forgot to buy some groceries.'
Cariel went to his bedroom and came out with a new set of clothes before going into the bathroom to freshen up.
"Should I get a hair c-"
The young man almost slipped toward the mirror as the heavy sensation surrounded him, pushing him from every side.
'It's worst than before!'
He felt like he was stepped on by an elephant on each part of his body as he kneeled on the bathroom tiles.
Ten minutes after, the invisible cloud of smoke disappeared, and the uncomfortable feeling vanished.
*Woosh*
An egg-shaped stone started to crack from the center and stretched out all around until the lines met on the other side.
With crumbles and dust on the wooden shelf, the upper half of the stone started to, and suddenly, a gust of wind terrorized the room, knocking down the lamps and books before getting sucked into the tiny black dot in the hollow egg-shaped stone.
After feasting on the black clouds, the upper stone landed back on its lower half, and the crack lines disappeared completely, leaving only a pile of sand around it.
"What was that?!"
Cariel shouted before standing up and ran out of the bathroom naked.
He took the katana that was displayed in the living room before making his way toward the bedroom.
'A thief?...No it's impossible...'
Cariel lived on the 10th floor, and it was unlikely that a thief randomly chose his bedroom window and came all the way up here.
Still, it did not change the fact that he was panicking as his hands trembled.
Cariel gently twisted on the doorknob, and after a deep breath, he slammed the door with his shoulder and rushed into his room with the sword tightly gripped in his hand.
Confused by the scene, Cariel could only see his bed sheets and papers all around the floor with no one in the room.
The room was a mess, and after checking every crook and crannies, he was sure that no one was in his room and felt his hair on his back stand up as he thought it was a paranormal activity.
'It can't be haunted right...'
Cariel shook his head and sheathed the blade before throwing it onto the bed.
'No, no, my aunt loves me so much, and she would never do this to me, mhmm!'
After reassuring himself, Cariel decided to clean up the mess before giving his aunt a phone call.
"Silly dear, what are you saying? We lived there for 8 years!"
His aunt was worried at first and started to make fun of the young man before he had enough and hung up on her.
"Phew...It was just the wind."
Cariel wasn't sure if he had the window open or not, but it didn't matter as he was hungry and left in a hurry after remembering that the supermarket would be extremely busy in a couple of minutes by all the scary moms that fought over all of the good stuff for their family.
Cariel came out of the market a couple of hours later and judged by his clothes, it looked like he was heavily molested after making through the tsunami wave of angry moms.
"At least...I got you..."
The young man patted on his bag that was filled with cans of spicy sardines and mackerels.
.
..
...
"Bzzzz...So...Cold."
A young girl dressed in a dinosaur sleepwear with a soft pointy hood struggled her way out of the comfortable and warm blanket to turn off the air conditioner.
The warm summer made her sleepy, and she accidentally left the air conditioner on highest settings before falling asleep, but the cold wind ended up freezing the young girl and caused her to wake up from her sweet dreams.
"...Cold....!!!!"
The girl made a fist and aimed at the red button before slamming it.
It wasn't the first times that it happened, so the young girl's fist skillfully landed on the off button and caused the air conditioner to fall off from the window as a result from pushing it every day during the summer.
"Oh no!"
Cariel heard a shout and lifted his chin up.
"Wh-Ah!!!"
The paramedic was all over the narrow road in the quiet neighborhood, and a young girl could be seen crying beside a man that was laid in a pool of blood.
"Onii-chan wake up! Wahh!"
As the paramedics rushed with a stretcher and a crowd started to gather, the soul of the unfortunate young man was already making it's way up toward the heavens.
Although it had no conscious, it still maintained the shape of Cariel as it stared with an empty pair of eyes at the young girl who kept apologizing.
"Oni-chan!!!"
The words echoed in the ears of the white transparent spirit and caused a bright light that came into existent within the empty sockets as the soul felt a warm sensation.
"Finally...After 800 million years..."
The egg-shaped stone that was on top of his bed shelf began to crack once again, but this times more intensely, the cracks went all over the rock and not around the center only.
As the fragment of the stone crumbled down, it revealed a black egg that glowed with a breathing purple light.
The purple lights perfectly decorated the black egg, making it seem like an ancient object.
The black egg doubled in size and became almost as big as an ostrich egg before trembling violently.
The black egg cracked in half once again and revealed a visible black dot that was surrounded by countless of tiny light.
The black gust of wind once again traveled across the room before breaking the window glass open and flew toward the direction of Cariel.
"Hmm...?"
The half-conscious spirit that belonged to the unfortunate young man felt something calling out for him as he stared at the black shadow that was flying toward him.
"To home...? Okay..."
The ghost lifted his hand toward the dark cloud on the horizon, and suddenly, he heard a loud shout.
"What?! How are you still aliv-."
Cariel heard an immature girly voice as soon his spirit touched) with the dark cloud.
The shadow and Cariel began to spiral around an invisible force and fused together before getting pulled back by the black dot at the center of the black egg.
As the black spirit of Cariel flew back forcibly toward the egg, the young girl who was crying beside his corpse suddenly quieted down and stood up.
"Dear?! What happened, tell mommy everything!"
The young girl didn't reply to her mom and stared at the sky in a trance as her mother carried her away.
Within the brown eyes of the young girl, a purple triangular crystal could be seen in her small pupil before it vanished and the little girl looked confused as she realized that she was in her mother's arms.
"I found her but lost her again..."
.
..
...
'Wh...where am I? Why is it so dark?!'
As the times goes by, Cariel felt the empty space that he was floating about getting tighter and tighter, making it harder to move around.
'What is happening?!'
The young man already came into a self-conclusion that he was already dead and that he was traveling to an unknown destination within these black darkness voided of light.
'Is my soul arriving to hea-?!'
He was suddenly blinded by a bright light that blinded his vision before hearing a female voice.
"Congratulation, it's a boy!"
'Whaaat?!'
The shout of the baby resounded in the entire room.
Hoooooray birthday feast for me!
Enjoy the new book!!
And please let me know if you spot any mistake ^^