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Chapter 1: Lights

"So little Daryl..." I spoke calmly to the five-year old boy, "What seems to be the matter?"

Daryl cast his eyes to the side, squeezing his fists as if he was holding something valuable, "Two... days ago... I start seeing lights on the walls."

"Lights Huh?" I try to be as gentle as possible, "Can you describe to me what they look like?"

"Describe?"

"Tell me what these lights look like?"

Daryl crosses his arms and squints his eyes, "They look like these... floaty, clearly stuff that... follows my eyes everywhere I see... one of them look like a small wormy, another look like a big donut."

I nod my head, finally understanding, "Oh... I understand Daryl, you aren't seeing lights. What you are seeing are called 'Floaters'. They are caused by small, tiiiny—" I pinched my fingers a bit in front of his face when I said tiny. Daryl laughed a bit, "—things in your eyes. But they are not too harmful to them, just try to ignore them and they're go away."

"Really? Mister Doctor?" Daryl tilted his head.

"Hundred percent."

"I..." Daryl was about to say something, when he suddenly froze, like he saw something he did not expect, "...Mister Doctor?"

"Hm? Yes Daryl?" I replied him.

"Why did you become all blurry?"

I blinked, "Huh?"

--

"Uh... Mrs Yuna? You may come in now." My voice sounded quite shaky and baffled. I didn't mean to, it's just, the results were...

"Yes? Doctor?" The door creaked open. In came in a lady in her late-thirties, dress in a black blouse filled with the pattern of pink orchids. She wore a light brown, silk pants that covered all the way to her ankles. Her face had a bright smile printed widely on it.

"Please. Take a seat." I reorganized the papers in my hands, wondering which one should I show her first. "Your son..."

"How is he?" She asked, "And his... condition that he complains to me about?"

"It's hard to explain..." I scratched my neck nervously, "I did a checkup on him earlier, and what I saw was... bewildering... to put it lightly. Please look at this."

I placed one the papers in my hands on the table in front of us.

The paper was a photograph taken and printed out. On it, was a zoomed in photo on the iris of an eyeball. There looked to be hundreds, thousands of little objects gently floating on the top of the surface. There were many different kinds, objects that look like long strands of noodles, misshapen, disfigured blobs that seemed to have appendages of their own, small, tadpole-like organisms that swim around. But most confusingly of all, there were these little circles that took up the majority of the surface, some of them looked like the had burst from the inside out.

When the mother saw this, she gasped and reeled back in shock, hand over the mouth and all.

"I've... never seen anything like it before. I have came up with a few theories, but I cannot confirm them until I do more checkups on the boy..."

"Yes Doctor. Please..." The mother looked up in concern, "Even I can tell, this isn't normal, it's unnatural! Can you do the checkups now?"

I bit my tongue and looked away from the mother, "I... unfortunately can't do my checkups on him right now. As of now, I don't have the right devices to do it safely and accurately. I can provide some eye drops and medication for him, but I doubt they would work against something like this... If he still complains about these, lights, as he called them, please bring him back here next week, I should have my apparatus delivered to me by then."

"I understand Doctor." The mother stood up and gave a slight bow to me, "Thank you very much."

She took her purse and made her way out the door.

Meanwhile, I stayed right where I was. Staring. Analyzing. Trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

As the mother said, this wasn't normal, this wasn't natural.

I don't know what I can do. If I could do anything at all.

I swiped up the photograph from the table and placed it back into the pile I was holding.

My head pounds with dizziness.