As he walked through the unfamiliar streets, Arjen attempted to recall Shuren's directions, but the problem was she never gave him the directions, only told him to meet her at the other side of town.
However, this area of the city was largely unknown to him and filled with numerous different people, including merchants advertising their wares, children playing, and workers pushing large carts loaded with various products. This town was buzzing with all kinds of noise and commotion; however, Arjen could not find himself fitting in.
"How will I find her?" he muttered to himself.
He surveyed every street and alleyway he passed through, hoping that he would see her white-haired figure, each time he searched, he would not find her at all, which made him start to think.
'What if she forgot about me?'
He frowned.
That could happen. He had no way of communicating with her, he didn't know at all where she lived and he had no idea how vast this city was. It might be possible that Shuren was on another side of the city and wondering why he had not arrived; or, very possibly, she didn't care enough to wait for him.
"Well that'd be my luck," he clicked his tongue.
Arjen slowed down for a moment and thought about Shiko's smile once again, which brought him to a realization.
'Are they following me?'
Something seemed odd about how the fight ended between Arjen and Shiko. He had left the scene without even being chased after, however, that did not imply that Shiko had given up searching for him.
Arjen tried to avoid feeling anxious, and looked back one more time to see if anyone was behind him. There was no one behind him, just neutral pedestrians walking past him. Arjen exhaled, realizing he had been holding his breath.
"Okay..."
After a moment of exhalation, Arjen experienced relief by thinking to himself that he might be just paranoid. Then as Arjen continued on his walk to wherever he was going, he repeatedly thought to himself the following:
Since Assad was originally from this city, he must have some kind of valuable information stored in his memory regarding using the streets in the city, as well as possible friends, family and/or possibly a house.
The issue with finding the information regarding Assad is the fact that his memory of the events which occurred in this city are extremely disorganized and in no coherent order. When Arjen tries to reread Assad's memories, he is only met with half finished pictures, blurry images, scattered parts of relevant information, and poorly put together pieces of the same story like a giant puzzle with most of the pieces missing.
He needed time to sort through all these memories putting them together in a way that made sense. Arjen sighed and kept putting one foot in front of the other. He looked up and saw nothing but a huge expanse of dark sky with millions of stars scattered about, and felt the same icy wind passing through the town, through the cracks between the buildings and penetrating into his bones.
He rubbed his arms.
It was only now that he realized how underdressed Assad had been.
He had a shirt, that was all.
With the most recent gust of cold wind hitting him, there was no mistaking that he was getting cold from more than just the fight he was also getting cold from all of the wind. He was still injured from the fight, his nose hurt and now he could no longer ignore how cold he was getting.
Arjen needed to find Shuren; if he couldn't find her then he needed to find a place to sleep for the night because wandering around an unfamiliar city until morning was probably the worst thing he could do right now.
Arjen quickened his pace to locate her and searched everywhere; however, after some time and without success, he continued with Plan B.
He was going to find shelter and, hopefully, some heat before he froze to death. The winds blew terribly cold as his tired body made each step painful because of the beating he received from Shiko.
He searched the alleyways as he walked through the town. He would hope that he could find a spot where homeless people would be sitting or laying around a fire.
Several of the alleyways were empty, while others had drunks and sleeping homeless people.
Finally, Arjen spotted a small glimmer of orange, and upon reaching it, his eyes brightened. He saw an old man sitting next to the fire with several old blankets wrapped around him. His beard was long and grey; it reached down to his belly.
Without hesitation, Arjen ran up to him.
"Can I sit down?" Arjen asked.
The old man looked up at him, and after a moment, he nodded his head.
"Yes, you can sit down," the old man replied.
Arjen sat immediately down next to the fire, and the warmth felt like a miracle on his body. He relaxed as all of the tension left his body. The old man continued to watch Arjen for a few moments before he spoke.
"Kid, you don't look so good, with the blood and the bruises." the old man said. He used his finger to show Arjen all the dry blood on the boy's clothing.
Arjen instinctively turned away from him.
"Oh, this?” he said, letting out a nervous chuckle. “It happened when I got into trouble when looking for food."
The old man stared at Arjen for a moment before looking at the fire again.
"Is that so?"
Arjen noticed the old man's eyes narrowing just a little.
"Hmph, so nightmares have voices?"
Arjen blinked.
"What’d you say?"
He opened his eyes and saw that he was in an unfamiliar location, shivering as he looked around and found nothing about his current location.
"What the hell happened?"
Arjen looked around the room that was now his bedroom, no longer sitting next to the fire.
"Where am I?"
This was not the room he had fallen asleep in. There was a bed against one wall and a desk made of wood was tucked behind him in the corner. Arjen walked closer to the desk where he saw a notebook lying on it. At first, Arjen thought nothing of it, but then he saw what was drawn in the notebook.
The page was covered in a drawing of a person that was covered in fire, melting, the flesh dripping off the body like melted wax as the person was consumed from the inside out by fire.
"What the..."
Without thinking, Arjen backed away and tipped over the chair he was sitting in.
CRASH!
He hit the floor.
"What the hell is this?!" He yelled.
Just then, he felt something on his shoulder. It felt like a hand.
"Arjen, you little fraud."
Arjen spun around.
"Who's there ?!"
There was no one there, but as Arjen turned back toward the desk, he saw something in the window that caught his attention, a red glow. As he slowly turned his head, he saw the moon in the night sky above him.
The crimson moon bathed the world below in an eerie scarlet glow.
Arjen's gaze was locked on the blood-red moon, then he felt a hand on his shoulder and rather than the previous hand, this one covered his mouth.
He tried to pull away, yelled out but could not, and slowly his eyelids closed. Arjen's eyes opened and after a few seconds of confusion, he had a cold, hard stone pressed against one side of his face. He was lying across the street, with no cars and no people in sight.
"What happened? Where am I?" was all he could think as he scanned the area frantically.
Then he heard a sultry voice, female, confident, real.
"You found yourself a real gem, Shuren; it was no wonder you wanted me to take a look."
Arjen jumped out of his skin and spun around toward the voice, a woman, standing ten meters away, looking at him curiously.
Shuren shrugged.
"Whatever."
For a moment, Arjen just stared at her as though all of his worries just disappeared. He found her, but the fears concerning everything that just happened had not left him yet. As Shuren approached, she maintained a calm expression.
"You did good, you passed; congratulations."
Arjen blinked repeatedly.
"Wait... What?"
Finally, his exhausted body surrendered, the last thing he saw was Shuren peering over him. Arjen laid unconscious on the ground and Shuren was crouched beside him with a confused look on his face.
"Wow, that knocked him out. Pixia, how much of did you use for those illusions?"
Pixia took off her spectacles and painstakingly cleaned them. Her golden eyes reflected the low light of the room as she looked toward Shuren.
"I'm not exactly sure myself. It was enough to kill him had that been what I had wanted."
Pixia put her spectacles back on. With an eyebrow raised Shuren looked at her.
"But, his mind realm is so twisted."
"Twisted?" Shuren asked.
"I cannot explain it, you will just have to see it for yourself."
Shuren let out a tired sigh.
"Great."
With no further comment, Shuren picked Arjen up and threw him over her shoulder.
"Are you takin’ him with you?"
"What other options do I have?" Shuren asked.
Pixia laughed softly.
"Fair enough."
The two females left where Arjen had collapsed and walked down an empty street. As she walked through the streets of darkness, Shuren felt Assad shift on her shoulder after she had picked him up unconscious.
"You haven't yet told me what you saw," Shuren said.
"I'm not gonna tell you," Pixia responded.
"Were you that disturbed by it?" Shuren asked.
Pixia did not answer the question posed to her. Shuren took a deep breath.
"Tell me this then, is he connected to that?" she asked, motioning to the unconscious boy balanced along Shuren's shoulders.
"I couldn't find anything useful in his memories. All of it is completely scrambled but... If we give the little gem some time, then eventually, he'll be able to remember and we'll be able to ask him properly," Pixia informed her.
"Seriously, that's all nothing else?"
Pixia nodded her head in agreement.
The two remained silent for a few seconds.
"Okay," responded Shuren.
As she adjusted the boy in order to relieve some of the weight on her shoulders.
"I just want to go home."
"You feelin' a little worn out?" Pixia raised her eyebrow at Shuren.
"I hate being out at this hour." Shuren said.
She looked to the sky, it was dark and late. Together, they continued along the empty road towards their destination and into the unknown of night and darkness. Arjen's eyes slowly open, he feels that his head is something soft but doesn't have a clue on what it is. He gently looks around and sees that he is in some sort of bedroom.
This immediately terrifies him and he wakes up in a shock. How could he suffer the same dream again? His eyes drifted to the window to see if the moon was blood-red again but it was enclosed with a curtain.
He had doubts on opening it but he had to check.
Arjen slightly moved the curtain to the left, his eyes shut but his right was open for a tiny bit. Instead of a crimson moon the morning sun flashed him and he went back covering his right eye as it hurt.
While his hands were on his eye, there was a knock on the door. Arjen turned to its direction. He didn't want to say anything because he wasn't in full understanding of the current events that were occurring at the moment.
The door opened by itself, Arjen stood ready for what was about to happen. Shuren entered the door and saw the battle ready Arjen , she was confused.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
Arjen let down his guard for a bit and saw Shuren's figure gazing at him, embarrassed he shifted his body the other way.
"Nothin', just you know, being normal I guess."
"Yea sure." Shuren said.
Shuren took out another cigarette from a box, lit it up, looked up and puffed a solid 'O' before looking back at Assad again. Arjen was deeply impressed, even though people back on earth could have done the same trick for some reason, the one Shuren just did was unique.
"So how was it being homeless for a while, fun maybe?" Shuren asked.
"What do you mean?" Arjen asked.
Shuren did not utter a single word after that and waited for Arjen to remember.
"Oh, yeah now I get it. It was horrible as you can tell I mean stealing food from you and for some reason getting executed was....um never mind."
"What's wrong, continue with your story." Shuren said.
Arjen shook his head in denial. He almost exposed himself, if he went further and talked about him being burned it would have raised a lot of questions that he could not answer since it's not his body. So it's best that he redirects the conversation.
"So where am I right now?" Arjen asked.
"You're in a room can't you see that or are you dumb?"
"No, I mean where am I? I'm not talking about the room. Obviously I can see I'm in a room. I'm talking about where the room is." he asked.
Shuren let out a long sigh and took another drag from her cigarette.
"The window."
Arjen blinked.
"What about it?"
"Just look outside."
Confused, Arjen walked over to the window. Sunlight flooded into the room as he slid the curtain aside again.
Arjen squinted before looking outside.
His eyes widened below him stretched an entire district unlike anything he had seen before. The streets were crowded with people moving from one place to another. Merchants stood outside colorful storefronts, advertising their goods to passing customers.
The scent of food drifted through the air from dozens of street vendors. Lanterns hung between buildings while signs covered in unfamiliar characters decorated the streets. Compared to the poor sector he had wandered through the previous night, this place looked far wealthier and far more organized.
Arjen pressed closer to the window and the difference was unbelievable. Children ran through the streets laughing. Customers crowded around food stalls. Behind him, Shuren looked on as he took in this new environment.
"A lot different than where you were yesterday," she commented.
Arjen nodded slowly.
"Yeah, it looks like a completely different world."
"That's what I said. It's actually almost like a different world," Shuren replied.
He looked back at her.
"What do you mean?"
Shuren blew out a huge plume of smoke toward the ceiling.
"This is Kurayamiya's Inner District."
"The Inner District of Kurayamiya?" Arjen asked.
Shuren stared for a few seconds.
"Are you deaf or something?"
"What?"
"I just said that."
"Seriously, is it that hard for someone to acknowledge what they heard or is that now an issue?"
Shuren quickly looked back toward the door and opened it. Arjen just continued to watch. Shuren glanced back.
"What are you waiting on?" she said.
"Uh, okay."
Arjen stood still for a couple of moments while Shuren stepped through the door before he followed her into the hallway. He was not sure what had happened to him; perhaps it was because everything had happened so quickly one moment he was freezing in an alley; the next he was waking up in the bedroom of a stranger.
He shook his head and followed her into the hallway.
When he entered the hallway, he looked around out of curiosity and thought that the building's architecture resembled the area around the restaurant. The wooden walls, polished floors and red beams supporting the ceiling all had some eastern influence like the city below; only not as ornate.
As they walked through the hall, he noticed Shuren was looking around.
"Is it really that interesting to you?" she asked him.
Assad continued to look away from the walls and ceiling toward the floor.
"Yeah, I guess so."
Shuren shrugged her shoulders and continued to walk, holding the cigarette loosely in her fingers.
Both of them walked through the hall in almost complete silence.
Assad could not get over how clean and neat everything was while still not seeming to have been made of wealth. Before long, they arrived at a wooden door. Shuren opened the wooden door and walked into the room with Assad right behind her.
Inside the door was a very plain office compared to the rest of the building. An enormous desk was located in the room's middle, with several bookshelves lining one wall and filled with many well-organized books and folders.
Next to the desk, a small painting was hung on the wall that added a little beauty to the otherwise boring room. There were also very few decorations throughout the office, not many to speak of.
Assad looked around the office.
"This is your office?" He asked.
Shuren walked behind her desk and sat down in her chair.
"Who else would it belong to?" Shuren asked.
Assad stopped and looked at Shuren.
"...You?" Assad asked in surprise.
"Yes, that is correct," Shuren responded.