Why am i hurt?

I see something spill out of his face. I turn my gaze away. The moment is awkwardly slow. The world around me seems to slow down. My hair stiffens slightly, and the short fur on my ears and tail rises in anxiety as I keep looking at this gruesome scene, almost totally unable to tear my gaze away. I don’t want to see that.

I was seven years old when Cali arrived in my life. I still remember how perfect she was. She looked like an older sister to me. She walked around with me almost everywhere, always smiling—a comforting and safe smile. I was still unaware of the origin of my ears and tail at that time. I used to sleep curled up, hugging my tail softly in my arms. I was also unaware of why Cali was with me. My parents told me they had been waiting for her for almost six years, since I was born, but they never told me why she was assigned to me.

“Cali, why do you follow me all day? Aren’t you a little too big to come to school with me every day?”

I asked her while we walked toward my school, the uniform fitting my body perfectly. My tail swiveled freely and happily behind me as I asked, smiling and giggling. I quickened my pace, turned around, and said to her,

“Let’s go to school, Ms. Cali. I want to play with my friends. Jaya is probably already waiting.”

At that time, I still couldn’t recognize the gaze she gave me—her eyes full of pity despite the big smile on her face. She followed right behind me without answering my question. I still remember that day clearly—the day I was playing with my best friend, a human classmate named Jaya. She had brown hair and beautiful green eyes and was just a little less close to me than Cali. We were playing hopscotch. Cali only watched us play from the corner of the room.

After a brief moment of playing, Jaya got distracted when the teacher called her name, and she stepped on my tail. I instinctively moved my hand toward her, my claws piercingly sharp, as I was about to strike her face directly. But then I was stopped with just one of my claws touching Jaya’s cheek, as Cali held my wrist firmly enough to stop me but not enough to hurt me. Right after, Jaya just looked at me, thinking it was just a soft nudge to her face since it hadn’t hurt her. She smiled at me and stepped off my tail, apologizing.

“Wha… Why… Why are you apologizing to me?”

I asked, confused. I had been just inches from striking her. If it hadn’t been for Cali, she would have been badly injured. A few tears ran down my face as I pulled my arm from Cali and ran toward the exit, crying. Cali walked right behind me as I walked back home, brushing tears from my eyes as I asked Cali,

“Is this why you follow me around? Are you here to protect others from me?”

I asked, my voice a mix of hurt and what seemed like anger. I held my tail in front of me, hugging it protectively. After a bit more, we arrived home. I went directly to my room, still holding tightly to my tail, and jumped onto my bed, crying some more.

Cali then came to sit at the edge of the bed as she said in a soft tone, petting my head,

“It’s okay. Cry as much as you need. I’m here to help you, okay? And you don’t need to worry about Jaya. She wasn’t hurt.”

As she said this, I didn’t stop crying. I turned my gaze away and asked softly, sobbing,

“I almost hit her, but she just smiled and even apologized to me for stepping on my tail. I don’t want her to worry about me, so I’ve decided I’m not leaving the room anymore.”

I was still a child then. It was the only thing I could think of at that moment. She could get hurt. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Jaya was my best friend. I wasn’t able to look her in the eyes anymore. Even then, Cali stayed by my side, petting my head. After a moment of me saying that, she just stood up and left the room. She might have thought I needed time.

Even a week later, I still hadn’t left the room. Cali came to me every single day with food, meds, and daily checkups. For what I think was a month or two, I just stayed in my room, surrounded by my things and Cali’s presence. I still had my classes virtually, even though I couldn’t look at my classmates. It was a good period of my life—not much drama or other people, just me and Cali. She would ask me to lie on the bed and talk with her sometimes while she just listened. I had no idea why she was doing it, but it was nice to talk to her that way.

“No way, I’m not going back outside, never. Please don’t make me go. I have everything right here. Why would I want to leave?”

Cali was trying to convince me to go back to school. It was strange. I thought we were having fun together. That was when she showed me that screen—the screen that showed me every step I took from Cali’s vision. I watched a bit of it as she was getting closer to the moment I was about to hit Jaya.

“Why are you showing me that? I don’t want to see it. Stop.”

But somehow, it looked different. I was crying when she apologized to me. There, I just nodded and continued everything? Why was this so different?

“That’s not what happened. I came home right after that. I remember. Are you trying to make me think I’m crazy?”

I asked Cali curiously as I got closer to the screen. My tail just kept swinging around nonstop. I was clearly interested because it was somehow fun to see me and Jaya playing together a few days later, but it wasn’t real.

“This is your public profile. This screen you’re looking at is the predictions area. It shows you how things could have happened if you had chosen to do other things.”

I was surprised as she moved the scene on the screen again. She showed me what could happen if I decided to leave the room or if I decided to stay there. In that moment and forward, I understood what Cali wanted from me. In both decisions, I was happy. Nothing bad happened, but in one, I was just in my home, and in the other, I was going out with my friends during high school. Jaya was there in that first projection.

“Here, take it. You can watch other possibilities too. Make sure to make the decision you like more. I’ll be here to help you with any of them, okay? Just don’t get too attached to those possibilities. Most of them aren’t exactly what’s going to happen.”

She left the room. I was still a bit confused by the meaning of that. I watched some possibilities on that screen for a while. She hadn’t told me exactly how it worked, but I was able to see some unpleasant possibilities too, where Cali hadn’t stopped me from hurting Jaya.

“Hey, Layla, Earth to Layla Bio3, hello!!”

Cali said in front of me. Lucil was sitting against the train wall, covering his right eye. There was still a bit of blood on his clothes, and he still looked a bit in pain.

“Cali, what happened? Is he okay?”

She looks at me with her hands on her hips as she says in an almost playful tone. Her expression is strangely awkward as she says,

“It was a bee… just a bee… Now let’s go. You don’t look good.”