Shuren's sudden declaration plunged the room into silence. Although strikingly akin to a sword, her words held some level of significance behind them.
While those comments confused Assad, Mo Ming demonstrated more indifference to them since they were much like the kinds of things he'd heard before. After Shuren left, the atmosphere seemed to become distinctly somber and unnergetic for the two boys left behind.
She slammed the door to the room behind her. Mo Ming and Assad exchanged glances with each other.
"What was that?" Assad asked.
Mo Ming used his hands to indicate that he had no intentions of providing answers to his various questions at the time. From Assad's perspective, it was interesting how he would wonder about Shuren's comments, whether it was him or the newly-uncovered ability that was cause for concern.
Assad pushed those additional thoughts aside and moved on to the second question on many in his mind. He looked at Mo Ming, with a direct look indicating to Mo Ming that he was indeed preparing to provide at least some answers.
"I've got one more question for now - do you think it is possible the Founding Emperor was a Sionel himself?"
Mo Ming hesitated a few seconds to think and then placed his right hand on his chin as he attempted to recollect various facts.
"Well you could say that, regarding on what his ability was but I'm not sure."
"Is that so, okay no need to have anymore questions. Thanks."
"That's okay, I think we can finish with that. Now you need to go and relax because the Reisu is still inward in you but you will have to wait until later before you can move your body."
Assad nodded when he turned toward the door to leave but Mo Ming had stopped him from going out.
"Before you leave could you send this to Zoren for me please?".
He handed a file to Assad that had his signature on it. When he thought about it he was horribly afraid about going to Zoren's room since he was a corpse collector, wondering to himself how many bodies he might find in there.
"Yeah sure, I can do that."
....
Assad was alone again in the same room from before. He met up with Shuren in the hallway and was told that the room he had just woken up in belonged to him.
There was an annoyance to Shuren's voice that only made Assad wonder about her reasons for feeling that way.
'Right now I shouldn't be worrying about Shuren, I need to be concentrating on getting home.'
He sat back up and put his fist on his chin. Right now he believed that the chances were still slim for him to be able to return home, but he has now acquired new powers to help him realize a way to return home. It was established by Mo Ming that he could create all things if he first visualizes them, that is a pretty farfetched idea, but considering everything that had transpired thus far, and being in an alternate universe, to him it seemed possible.
In an alternate universe, there is no such thing as that on Earth, therefore the whole concept of there being another universe seems straight out of a novel series.
He glanced out of the window at Kurayamiya's many inhabitants going about their daily routines and couldn't help but smile. These people are all living beautiful lives, however, I am only an observer from another world.
"Given that Mo Ming recommended that I lay low for a while, I think the most prudent course of action would be to put my goal of getting home on hold."
That was a good thought, maybe when Reisu has finally streamed into his whole body, taking a simple walk about the inner district won't be such a bad idea. Atleast he should know the place that the original owner of the body that he currently possess looks like,well not quite since the original lived in the outer and poorest district of Kurayamiya.
As he turned back to lay his head on the bed, he became more drowsy. Assad was finally getting tired. It was understandable, after everything that happened until now. He needed a deserved rest for just a couple of hours or more.
His eyes closed and just like that he was out like a light.
The sun came up and through the window shone light over the entire room. Assad woke up slowly and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before realizing the reality.
He rested his hands both against his forehead and rubbed his eyes closed.
He sat halfway up.
"I'm so stupid. I cannot believe that I fell asleep with a whole bunch of other people who I do not know."
He exhaled loudly.
"Arjen you idiot Wait a second, that's me."
Then slowly he sat the rest of the way up and again stared at the ceiling.
Assad had a completely insane and life-altering day yesterday. I had joined an agency run by a lunatic who smoked like a chimney the whole time, died (a little) when a drugged syringe was injected into the front of his skull, developed extraordinary and inexplicable skills, discovered the existence Sionels and now somehow and still had decided that sleeping in this crazy and unfamiliar room was a good idea.
"What is wrong with me?"
He finally got up. His feet hit the floor and when he looked down at them there was something about a door on the far wall that he hadn't seen before.
"Please be a bathroom."
After all that went down the previous day, he wasn't so sure opening up random doors was going to be a great thing anymore; there could also be another corpse collector waiting for him in there again, you know?
But his curiosity beat out his hesitation. He cautiously approached the door and put his hand on the doorknob.
When he poked his head in, relief flooded through him. There was no glitzy or glamorous subway-style bathroom, but it was a nice basic room with a shower tucked in one corner, a toilet on the opposite end and a small double sink under a wall-mounted mirror.
It was basic, but simply basic, and extremely luxurious after all that had recently occurred.
"This is all I need."
He slowly began focusing on the mirror. He held his breath as he approached. The face looking back at him was still strange, even though he had seen it previously. He really hadn't studied it closely until now.
The guy in the mirror was definitely a good-looking dude. He had a perfect face with a defined jaw line and perfect skin and his eyes were way more beautiful than they had ever been back on Earth.
Even Assad knew he was a looker.
"Man, he is one heck of a good-looking dude."
His experiences in this world had been completely different than they would have been on Earth, if this version of him existed on Earth, he likely would have had way less issues, he would not have experienced his eyes roaming down and back up to his hair.
"Wait a minute."
Assad ran his fingers through his hair and noticed the color was wrong.
When he had first arrived in this world, the original Assad had had all black hair. Assad remembered it so clearly, yet the reflection now was completely different from what he had seen when he had first arrived in this world. His hair at the top was shiny bright white, then as you went down the strands, they progressed through dark ash gray and black tones, and the contrast was obviously striking. He couldn't stop staring at the way he looked.
"What the hell happened to my hair?"
He turned left and then right and the new color of hair had not gone away nor was there any way he could find out if it was there or not. He suddenly had a thought. He felt he may have an idea of what could've caused this new color.
"Maybe it was caused by all the agony I went through while dying."
This thought triggered memories of the pain he had gone through after receiving the Reisu injection. The pain was equivalent to having his skull cracked from the inside out. He was in so much pain that it was the most painful experience he would ever encounter in his entire life.
Then he had another memory from his time on Earth.
He remembered a particular book series he used to read, where the mains characters hair changed colour due to extreme mental anguish and huge amounts of tourte, and thought how silly they were.
But now, having experienced a difficult time in his life and been subjected to tremendous mental stress, he could understand the concept behind the changing colour of hair due to the stress endured.
Assad sighed.
"I got magical powers and anime hair. Great"
Assad kept gazing at his reflection; he didn’t recognize the face looking back at him at all.
“... Still looks weird."
He pinched his cheek and the reflection pinched its cheek. He frowned, and the reflection frowned—each time he looked at it, he continued to think this looked like someone else’s face. After a little while, he took down the reflection of himself from the mirror.
“I guess I’ll have to check out the rest."
Walking away from the mirror. The original Assad had lived on the streets for years. Also, so there was no reason his body looked any different than when he was on Earth.
He was interested in seeing what the sleeve of his shirt had looked like. When he pulled up the sleeve, he saw the first difference his forearm was extremely lean, but very muscular…not from working out but from all the fighting he had done.
He saw there were not that many scars, but there were still scars from knives or blunt impact scars.
“How many fights have you been in?"
He continued to glance all around his body until there was something that really caught his eye.
".... What the hell?"
On his left hand, there was a tattoo. An initial assessment of it led you to believe it may be a dragon.
When he looked even more closely, however, he was able to see that not only was this dragon visible, but the long bodies and long eastern-style dragons had their scales going all the way around his arm, almost like a snake.
When you looked at the bottom portion of the dragon, you could see how it was in the process of changing into pieces; the bottom portion of the dragon turned into the segments of a scorpion's body and the tail was wrapped around his forearm and going up toward his bicep.
The further up the arm you looked, the more detail you could see inside the tattoo. Eventually, the sting on the tattoo went beneath the collar of his shirt but still went up his neck.
Assad immediately pulled the collar of his shirt away from his neck to look.
Sure enough.
The tail continued up the left side of his neck, and you were only able to see the tip.
"That's one hell of a tattoo you got there."
He started to rotate his arm left and right and saw the dragon's head was located on the back of his left hand. Asaad then traced the dragon's head with one finger.
"What are you supposed to be?"
Assad stared at the tattoo for a few seconds before shaking his head.
"Crazy how you got so much ink at such a young age, " He said to himself.
After some time, he decided it wasn't worth wasting time thinking about. If there was any deep meaning behind the tattoo, he wasn't going to find it by standing in front of a mirror and talking to himself.
He turned toward the shower and was in it for five minutes. The hot water helped relieve the tension in his body.
He finished drying off and looked around the bathroom.
"Oh yeah."
He didn't have any extra clothes, so he was wearing the same clothes he wore the day before.
"It's still acceptable."
With that, he got dressed and walked out of the bathroom to go back to his room. Five minutes later, he arrived at the door to the hallway.
He reached for the doorknob, then stopped.
"Wait."
Yesterday was half the day he had passed out being homeless and not knowing anybody. Only two people knew who he was — Shuren and Mo Ming.
Everyone other than him had left. He imagined himself walking through the agency, but every time he wanted to continue, he would have had to answer numerous questions.
'Who are you? What do you want? How did you join the agency? Why are you leaving one of the agency’s rooms?'
He pictured himself standing at the door of the agency with his hand on the handle; for a brief instant, he wondered if he should remain in that office, but his insatiable curiosity again caused him to open the door and leave his room.
As soon as he stepped into the hallway, he froze.
"Where is everyone?" he questioned.
The hallway was void of people. Assad looked left and right; he couldn’t tell whether to laugh or weep.
"Did everyone die overnight?"
Was longingly thought of before returning to the present. With nothing to keep him occupied for more than a few moments, he shrugged. Only one person could bring him some comfort.
He decided that he would go see Shuren.
As he made his way through the agency's hallways, he was pleasantly reminded of the creak of the wooden floors beneath his feet.
The route to Shuren's office was relatively easy to follow, and soon he reached the door. He knocked on the door.
Knock. Knock.
There was no response for a moment, but after frowning, Assad gave it another go; perhaps she was not at home. He used greater force on the second knock, followed by a third to get as loud as he could without losing control.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
"Yep, in here," came a soft voice from behind the door.
Immediately, Assad recognized the voice of Shuren, his boss at the construction company, and opened the door to the office he'd seen yesterday.
Shuren sat at her desk dressed in the same attire as she had the day previous, but this time, she had a cigarette in the same spot as before and papers were everywhere across the surface of the desk.
"What can I help you with," she quipped.
"Hi," Assad said and then hesitated before continuing. "Good morning."
"It's too early in the day for a good morning!"
"It's actually morning."
"Yes, yes, it is."
For several seconds, Assad stared at Shuren until he started to think that she was going to be someone who was always in a bad mood, no matter what time of day it was.
Assad walked over to Shuren's desk and sat on a chair.
"Looks like no one else showed up for work today. Does that mean I'm the only one here?"
"Why do you care?"
"You need to remember that I'm one of the Sweepers," replied Assad with a grin.
Shuren continued to smoke a cigarette and totally disregarded Assad. An irritating sort of awkwardness began to fill the room; even Assad could feel it. Why wasn’t there one question that he could ask?
"Hey, since I’m new here, don’t you think it would be nice to at least introduce me to some of the people you work with?"
"Yeah, you're right. So far there are only two people who actually know you."
"Two?" Assad responded.
"Yeah, if you exclude me, that only leaves Mo Ming and Pixia."
This caused confusion for Assad because he did not have a clue as to who this Pixia person was. Then it hit him that there had been another woman standing next to Shuren with him when he was being tested with an illusion.
Someone knocked on the door behind him; slowly turning his head towards the knock.
"Yeah, come in," Shuren had said.
The door slowly opened and standing in front of him, he recognized the same woman whose face he hadn’t seen prior, only heard her speak.
This woman has smooth, even-toned, deep brown skin, large dark brown almond-shaped eyes, and a cream white pixie/hi-top hair cut.
"Mornin' Shuren. I have just arrived here but if there's anything you need, I'm right at the receptionist okay."
"Sure no problem."
As she was leaving, Pixia saw Assad and was pleasantly surprised.
"Look what we've got here," she said. "You must be the little treasure Shuren found. It's a pleasure to meet ya. My name is Pixia Naya; I'm the receptionist at the Kurayamiya Sweepers Agency."
"Yeah, my name is Assad... Amore," he said.
Pixia tilted her head to the side with confusion. Then she looked over at Shuren.
"You gave him that last name, didn't you Shuren?" she asked.
"Yeah, and what's the problem with that?" Shuren replied.
"Oh nothing, just simply askin', nothing else, she said. "But like I said, Assad, it's a pleasure meeting ya and even though it is the first time we have met and all I can say is, you are definitely a diamond."
Assad nodded his head and nervously smiled. Pixia left the room.
Assad turned to Shuren's direction with pure confusion written on his face. Shuren saw this
"Why the hell are you looking at me?"