The Bearer (2)

He grins at you.

Not the professor.
The thing behind him.
The shadow. The non-shape. The toothy concept of menace, smiling where its mouth shouldn't be.

It doesn’t move. Not after you noticed.
No flinch. No hiss. Just… stillness. Like it wanted you to see it.

The grin widens. You don’t know how that’s possible—it has no face. But it happens.
You feel it.

No one else sees it.
You scan the room.

Students tapping pens, flipping pages, whispering quietly about assignments or lovers or sandwiches. Normal things. Beautiful, oblivious, normal things.
They don’t see it.

They can’t.

This is your hallucination.
Your parasite.
Your backstage pass to the hidden layer of reality no one wants to admit exists.

Or maybe this is what happens when you die in one world and wake up in another.

You rub your eyes. Still there.
You blink. Still grinning.
You look away. It doesn’t help.

The professor begins to speak—words like iron dipped in wine. 

Your ears are busy with the silence between his syllables.
That’s where the shadow speaks.
Not in words—but in weight. Pressure. A hum in your bones that says:

"We see you too."

Your body wants to run. Your legs don’t.

Wait, Is this...
Perhaps, because of the potion?
F*ck, that boy was too careless...

The thought stumbles through your mind like a drunk in the rain—slurred, soggy, half-true.

Yes. No. Maybe.
You remember he was drinking it. Warm. Metallic. Sweet on the tongue like syrup and sin.

Now, that thing is staring at you from behind a professor’s back, breathing through dimensions, threading itself through time like a needle through skin.
Too vivid.
Too precise to be just a hallucination.

But also, too wrong to be real.

Let’s pretend I don’t know.
Let’s pretend I didn’t just see that thing smiling at me like a nightmare trying on a mask.
From the way it moves—or doesn’t—it’s not going to lunge at me.
Not yet.
We’ll call that a mercy.

Anyway, his name is Professor Howart Areldine.
Teaches Microcosm and Macrocosm—a class about the big outside and the small inside.
The boy whose skin you wear?
He used to like this class.
Came here often. Asked too many questions. Tried to fit the universe into his pocket.

“Forget your pens,” he says.

The words land gently, like silver bells rolling down a velvet hill. His voice doesn't raise—it doesn’t need to. It hums straight into the bone.

“Today, we don’t write.
Today, we remember.
And we remember not with the mind—but with the soul.”

Some students glance around.
Confused. Curious. Slightly amused.
Lune—the silver-haired girl who always smiles like she’s hiding a better joke—tilts her head. Her pencil stills.

“There are two worlds,” the professor continues, circling slowly.
“One you live in. One you don’t see.”
“The Macrocosm—vast, ancient, endless. Planets crash. Stars scream. Time flows like an open wound.”
“The Microcosm—you. Blood. Flesh. Memory. Dream. Silence.”

He stops pacing. The room exhales together.
Stillness hangs like dust.

“What happens up there,” he says, pointing skyward,
“echoes down here. We are reflections. Tiny, trembling reflections of the night.”

A hand rises.
Evyn. Thin kid. Nervous. Looks like he’s allergic to sunlight.

“Professor… does that mean our lives are controlled by the stars?”

Areldine smiles—but it’s not the kind that comforts.

“No. Stars don’t write your fate,”
“They just hum a song. You choose the dance.
The rhythm’s still there—but the steps are yours.”

He taps his chest with his cane. Once.

“Your heart beats. And so does the constellation's, Taurus rising over the eastern ridge this morning.
Coincidence?
Or… resonance?”

Lune raises her hand. Grinning now, like she’s trying to catch him slipping.

“And if I was born during a thunderstorm—with no stars in sight—does that mean I missed the entire blueprint?”

Laughter. The kind that loosens shoulders.

Areldine lets it ride. Then, softly:

“The sky is never empty,
Clouds are just curtains. The stars still sing behind them.”
“You just have to learn how to listen.”

He walks into the center of the room. His cane taps once against the floor—quiet, final.

And then:

“When you feel rage—Mars stirs.”
“When you fall in love—Venus glows.”
“And when you are quiet—truly quiet—
maybe, just maybe...
you’ll hear something that isn’t your own voice.
Something old.
Something watching.
A star, whispering your name.”

A pause. Short. Soft. But heavy, like an unspoken truth pressed into the walls.

Then—his tone lifts. Like the wind changing direction:

“Your task this week is simple,” he says.
“Go outside. Stand beneath the sky. Look up. Then in.”
“And ask yourself—if I am a tiny universe…
then the sun inside me…
does it shine for me? Or for someone else?”

No one answers. Not really.
Some stare at their desks.
Others look out the window, already wondering. Already wandering.

You sit still. Trying to comprehend.
You used to be a detective.
Now you’re in a lecture hall, listening to cosmic philosophy like a freshman with a hangover.

And so the lecture dragged on—fragments of data, drifting constellations, forgotten names of stars that died before language was born. Minds wandered. Someone yawned into their sleeve.

But then—

The professor halted. Like a clock that suddenly remembered it was alive.

His voice dropped. No longer instructing. Now confessing.

“Remember this, before you return to the world that demands your constant doing:
The universe never shouts.
It only whispers.”

A pause. A silence dressed in velvet.

“And your task... is not to listen for the loudest thing in the room.
But to hear the quietest.”

He turned to face them once more. Slowly. Deliberately. His eyes—deep green, moss after rain. Old eyes. Patient eyes.

“You may never find answers in the numbers or the etched lines of the firmament. But you’ll find something else.”

A faint smile. Not warm, not cold. Just... real.

“A reflection. Of yourself.
And for a true learner…
That is already more than enough.”

He touched his chest—two fingers, a quiet salute.

“That’s all for today.”

“Ah… Ar,”
The voice reached you. A gentle knock on the mind’s door—measured, but unmistakable.

It was the Professor.
Just as he turned to leave. Just before the moment could dissolve completely.

And then you notice—

The figure.
The one behind him.
Gone.

No rustle. No footfall. Just absence.
Like waking up from a dream you weren’t ready to leave.
Like a mirage politely excusing itself from your perception.

Was it ever really there?

No one around you flinched. No heads turned.
Just you. Your eyes. Your brain.

Was it really because of that potion?
The one you took. The one that still itches behind your bones.
A chemical crack in the mirror of your mind?

You’re not sure.
You’ve stopped being sure of many things lately.

But you nod—slowly, carefully.
Because maybe the Professor knows something.

And if he doesn’t…
Well, maybe that’s the point.

Your footsteps echo down the corridor.
Not loud. Just present. Like they’re being remembered, not made.

The hallway is empty.
Too empty. Like sound itself is holding its breath.

You reach the door.
Dark wood. Brass nameplate dulled by age:
Professor Howart Areldine

You pause.
Not out of fear—no. Something quieter.
Like your nerves are squinting at the shape of the moment.

The thing—whatever it was—is gone.
Not dismissed. Not banished. Just…
absent.
As if it slipped out through the seams of the world.

You’re alone now.
Which somehow feels worse.

Your hand hovers over the handle.

A knock would be polite.
But something about this doesn’t want politeness.

You exhale.
And enter.

The Professor looks up from the open book on his desk.
His gaze finds you—calm, but far from indifferent.

“Good,” he says, voice even, almost relieved.
“It seems everything is... progressing.”
Then he tilts his head, ever so slightly.
“You saw it too, didn’t you?”

You hesitate. The silence closes in.
Then—

A sharp throb behind your eyes.
Pain. Not yours. Not entirely.

Another memory slams into you—like a book thrown open by unseen hands.
Not something you lived.
But something remembered through you.

The Professor, handing you the very same book.
His voice, guiding your hands as they prepared a concoction.
A strange ink-smudged note tucked between the pages…
A recipe?
No—more than that. An initiation.

It wasn’t just a lesson.
It was the threshold.

And now, standing here, the taste of something old still lingering on your breath—

You know.
Or rather, the one who came before you knew.
And now you do.

You are a Bearer.

No ceremony. No revelation.
Just the quiet realization that you already crossed the line.