In retrospect

A week later, Karaza found herself staring at the coffered wood ceiling of the hospital room, something cozy about the curvatures of the design and the aged wood, like it kept company with recumbent patients. She found the smell of sanitization weirdly calming.

Was a hospital supposed to feel like this? She didn’t know.

Her leg was wrapped in thick bandages. Immersed in complete silence she let out a small, silent sigh. Everything was too calm, too comfortable, and too unfamiliar. She doubted whether coming to this place was the correct decision. It was the easiest one. That at least she was sure of.

'I want to smoke.'

She sat down and stretched her arms, looking at two chatting patients next to her. They were talking for a while, but she only heard them when the silence melted and her eardrums decided to work again.

"Will you need another surgery for your internal deformities?" The older woman asked her friend.

"No, the doctor said I am all good, just need some time for recovery. What about you?"

"Oh, I just needed to fix my pancreas, it was a quick ten-hour surgery."

The soft, sun-soaked sheets sucked Karaza back, so she lay down, looking at the ceiling again.

'No matter how many times I visit this land, I don't think I will get used to how they talk about surgeries...guess it makes sense for them, this is the land of the unwanted after all. Almost everyone has a disease or internal deformities from birth…Man I want to smoke.' She rubbed the bridge of her nose, a headache settled in. She recalled when her last smoke was, before her last mission.

She looked at her leg, an attempt to distract the craving. 'But they fixed me good, even the duke and kings' doctors aren't this good. It's probably because of the magnet knowledge they developed... '

The attempt to distract herself didn’t last long. 'That's it, I am getting my pipe.' She sat straight, ready to pursue the craving, only for her surgeon came to check on her, halting any chance of acting on her desire.

"How are we feeling today?" He asked with a casual smile as he put a dark gray patch on her arm and another on her wounded leg. His movements around her limb had the familiarity of someone who had repeated the same job many times before, they were light and precise with a quick cheerfulness to them.

He was chatty with chatty patients and quiet with the quiet ones. A part of her couldn’t fathom the quantity of humans people in that line of work talk and deal with.

But something about him felt unusual. Maybe it was his silver hair, the long braid, or maybe it was the leftover anesthesia in her system merging with the fact that not many men had long hair back in the dukedom.

“I feel better. When will I get to walk?” She asked, her pipe waited to be lit. Not the time for irrelevant thoughts.

"No inflammation or infection signs," He hummed to himself, reading from the hexagonal device in his hand. "Do you feel dizziness or do you feel like objects are changing colors?"

"No, it's not my first time here. I am used to the magnetic field."

"Great. Make sure to report any weird feeling. Let me get you some crutches."

Behind the hospital she leaned her weight on the crutch, shaded by the tall wall she exhaled smoke in satisfaction, looking at the seemingly peaceful sky.

'It's really coming in this direction. Ah, whatever. It’s beyond me how I am still alive anyway. Whatever happens, happens. I’ll just enjoy this smoke for now.'

"Excuse me, gonna take this back to your locker~" The same silver haired surgeon said, his own extended pipe in his mouth.

She looked at him exhaling smoke with the expression of a hungry man seeing others feed. Part of her was afraid of getting in trouble, the other part wanted to snatch her pipe back.

She eyed him impatiently while he curiously inspected her pink pipe in his hands.

"Good old Tobacco?” He added with the admiring tone of a fellow smoker before his eyes landed on a teenager with a cast arm trying to dash from the hospital's back gate.

"Hey! I can’t even smoke in peace on my break!" He said while chasing the kid.

She looked like a betrayed child while he ran with her pipe. Catching the kid and handing him to his nurse as she traced his steps with her eyes, hoping he would come back. A glance at his pipe on the ground told her he would.

“Man, I just wanna smoke.” He said while picking his kiseru up. She hit him with an empathizing look.

He expected her to give him some sad eyes to get her pipe back but she just stood there undemanding.

“I would smoke before the break ends if I were you.”

“…You won’t hit me with the “you smoke and you’re in medicine and you’re telling me not to?” speak?”

“Wouldn’t do that to a fellow smoker. And I am not a lost cause.”

He leaned on the wall, lighting up his pipe after cleaning it.

“I am a lost cause.” She said when the first molecule of smoke hit her nose.

“Hang in there, you will be discharged soon.” He chuckled.

Some medics passed by quickly, carrying a stretcher.

“It’s a tough job.” She couldn’t help but comment.

"It is. Teenagers like to run, families never leave you alone, and patients throw up on us consistently." She found him smiling while faux complaining.

'Kinda jealous, must feel good... to have something to do, and liking it. Although me and all the people he stitched up gonna disappear...'

“What if the world was coming to an end, would you still do what you do?” She was surprised at herself, asking that out loud to a stranger. She reasoned that the world was actually ending and her stupid questions wouldn't matter anyway. And he seemed used to his patients being nuts.

“Hmmm, I mean if today was the last day I would just go to work.”

“I see.”

At that moment she realized that a pipe wasn’t the only thing he had and she didn’t.

After some silence, they second glanced each other. Both had silver hair and gray eyes.

‘I never thought I would meet a half albino like me one day.’ They thought.

‘I never thought I would see two half albinos standing next to each other.’ Roxy and Ryu thought as they were standing before them, staring.

Karaza’s eyes jumped on them. Her heart almost stopped the moment she glanced Roxy. Flashbacks from their one sided fight flooding her mind. She swallowed, anticipating what the parasite was about to say, or do.

"You...You are not a natural pink head?!" Roxy asked her, with a dramatically betrayed voice.

"It was fake." She hid her fear behind the uncaring expression.

"So...The curls?!”

"It’s all fake. Thank you for the ride though."

"No prob!" She perked up, recovering rather quickly from the dramatic shock while the human was not sure how to react to the boy's big, pitch black eyes staring at her soul.

'…This is… an apex predator right? What is he doing here? Is he plotting to eat me?'

"This is Ryu. He's super nice but he has a staring problem. He's not plotting to eat you or anything." Roxy introduced them to each other. They just nodded stiffly at one another. She wasn’t sure why the parasite would have an apex predator as a companion. While he felt like the human was dragged into Roxy’s shenanigans unwillingly, but it wasn't exactly his business so he turned to his brother before the latter would have to leave.

"President told me to tell you not to have smoke as a meal today." Ryu gave his brother a paper bag of food.

"She dragged you here for this? Thanks, big forehead." He dodged a kick to the shin as soon as the tease left his mouth.

“Also bringing a classmate some notes. Burdens of being popular, you wouldn’t know.”

The petty jabs would have continued but the surgeon’s break ended. Karaza waited until he was far enough to give Roxy some money, asking politely.

"Perhaps you could buy me a cigarette?"

"I can hear you." He shouted from afar.

"Come on!"

She eventually had to come back to her fluffy bed that was changed while she was out. She felt some strange guilt over someone having to do her bed. She sat with that and other thoughts while lying down. The soft covers elevated her restlessness, until a shockwave came and showed her what real restlessness would look like. Staying composed in front of nurses deemed futile, and she wasn’t sure how long the headache excuse would last before they attach a hexagon shaped device to her head.

She sat there like someone holding their fourth cough in a room full of people. Even adjusting her position felt too loud among the sleeping patients. The stars were shining brightly in the dark night, the wires between the minty Saturn shaped objects seemed like they had some faint sparkle in them.

In a moment between the engulfing shockwaves a thought rose to the surface of her mind.

‘Was the sky always this beautiful?’

‘Maybe it’s because of these mint green things in the sky. Aren’t those responsible for creating the magnetic field of this land? It’s beyond me why one would care to make them this pretty.’

Another shockwave almost knocked her off the bed. She channeled all the hissing she wanted to let out onto her fist around the blanket.

Suddenly yet softly she found her eyelids getting heavier by the passing second. It wasn’t her usual rocky drift to sleep, that’s for sure. It felt like she was floating on the thin river between slumber and wakefulness, not fully aware yet not getting closer to sleep either.

“Ah…” She soon realized what was happening, the shockwave knocked her into another realm.

Opening her heavy eyes. It looked like it felt. Everything was in the shape of a wiggly haze. Ripples of water. She wasn’t in the hospital anymore, more like on the top of a high building.

Looking up the sky looked like wiggles of water. The beige ground beneath her feet though stable, seemed like it was made of sand. She turned around to see other tall beige buildings with numerous pitch black windows and the shape of wiggly seaweed. Whole architecture purely out of curved lines.

She blinked a couple of times, understood the situation, and let out a tired sigh. Only the nearing chatter made her look back at the building she was on.

“Well you know comrade. Huge phenomenon like this tornado cause all sorts of weird things. Mainly to us who made a wish or went to the wild.” Roxy told Ryu as they walked on the roof, getting closer to where Karaza was.

“My head hurts.” He rubbed his forehead while she explained, overwhelmed by the previous shockwaves.

“You’ll get used to it.” She chuckled.

“I won’t.” He deadpanned while Roxy’s attention switched to scanning the vicinity.

“Hope we don’t bump into anyone. Otherwise our cover is goooone~” She said, head almost turned like an owl while she walked.

“Uhh, I hate to break it to you…” He said while looking at Karaza.

“Y’all good,” Karaza clarified. “Not making enemies out of you two.”

“Hi! Second meeting for today!” Roxy greeted.

“So how do we get out of here?” Ryu asked.

“We just wait a little. I think.”

‘Well, we’re getting pulled into another realm. The tornado is truly coming I guess…’ And speaking of the devil, another shockwave came, knocking the human and the boy while Roxy looked like some small acorn fell on her head.

Ryu turned into his blob form, the stabbing pain stood the same.

"Can we annihilate it somehow? The mental shocks are getting annoying." Ryu folded on himself like dough, the human equivalent of rubbing his temples.

"If only there were a selfless hero to wish for it to disappear!" A strange voice said.

The three of them looked around for the source of the voice. Roxy looked at a rock with a mouth on the floor.

"Oh hi, it's been a while!" Roxy greeted.

"This frequency? Is that you, walking plant?" The rock recognized.

"Yup!"

"Company? That's rare." The rock murmured. "Hello apex predator, hello human who I see a lot around here." It greeted anyway.

“If you’re in this realm you must be close to us geographically…Did you smuggle yourself into the human zone?” Roxy connected the dots with an excited expression.

"Apathetic as usual, walking plant. I am trying to run from the demise with those tiny legs, but all should be alright since you're here."

She blinked at his statement.

"You gonna burn the tornado with the box of normal matches, right?" Karaza stopped playing with her hair, paying attention to the conversation.

"Oh right! The pack of matches can do that." Roxy remembered.

"You didn't get rid of all of them right?" The rock asked with a shaking voice.

Roxy giggled politely, the rock didn’t wait for more words and moved its small legs, running.

"Well, that was awkward." Karaza commented.

"What are those matches it talks about?" Ryu asked while morphing back to his human form.

"It's a long story." Roxy stretched her limbs, dodging the topic."

A weapon from an ancient civilization. A pack has one match, you light it up, then you order it to burn something, it burns some of your points with it, but they're rare, only two of them exist now." Karaza explained, making the two look at her.

"Back when I was a youngster they were abundant, I had to destroy them because they kept being used to burn the forest." Roxy admitted nonchalantly.

"It can burn radioactivity?" Ryu doubted, not intentionally dismissing the backstory. Inhuman conversations worked like that sometimes.

“It can burn anything as long as the one ordering the burning truly wants it. Feelings, memories, sky is the limit. It can burn others' wishes even.”

“Oooo.”

"Actually even though it looks like it's burning the target. The function of the weapon is to cause atoms decay. I almost turned into dust once." Roxy recalled the memory in a jolly tone.

“So if we find one we can prevent the doom? She said two are left.” Ryu turned to Roxy.

“Uhhh, yeah! Sure…” Ryu stared Roxy, his face almost glued to hers while she whistled and played dumb.

“One I know nothing about. The other inside a volcano, in the orange zone." Under the intense staring Roxy murmured, avoiding eye contact.

Both of them gave a look that said "seriously?"

"A little unorthodox but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do." The silly parasite told.

“Well, time to write the last days' bucket list…” Ryu shrugged his shoulders.

“Last months according to my calculations.” That earned her another glare.

“Actually…” Karaza said while fiddling with her pocket.

She took her hand out of the pocket, raising her arm, holding a pack of matches, chrome blue.

“Phew!” Ryu sighed.

“Why didn’t you pull it out when I was being questioned?” Roxy gave her the teary eyes.

“It was entertaining.”

“Okay please! Please a shockwave hit us again.” Ryu urged.

She opened the pack. One match with a sapphire blue tip and writing on the inside of the pack.

‘Keep inflammables and points away before lighting.’

With the fingers of a smoker she grabbed the match and lit it.

“Throw it away the moment you say your order.” Roxy advised.

“‘T’s okay. My points are zero.” She said, chrome blue flames dancing on air, slightly eating the hospital gown.

‘How can I help you?’ A voice crept into the realm, flat yet somehow whimsical.

“Burn the tornado.”

‘Hmmm…I wanna try. But that’s not what you want the most. Can’t do. Sorry.’

The flames evaporated with the voice. Leaving her with a judgmental look from the inhuman creatures.

“…I tried.”

“N-No biggie.” They avoided eye contact reluctantly.

“Well, can’t wait all day here. I gotta finish my auction prep. How do I get out?" Ryu asked, pinching Roxy’s cheek.

“Ow ow…”

“Spit it out.”

“Just jump to another building. But don’t blame me if you get nasty motion sickness afterward!”

“Thanks.” He morphed into one tendril. Long and light like a ribbon, letting the breeze carry him to the root of another wiggly building. He soon vanished into thin air.

“Well…I shall take my leave too.” Karaza said, not wanting to stay alone with the parasite. Then she proceeded to jump off the building, grabbing a windowsill and breaking into the building.

“…I guess that works too.” Roxy said, summoning a treasure chest and taking embroidery work in progress. She sat crisscross and went to work.

“I am a fragile girl. I can't do motion sickness today.”

Inside the building the broken glass melted and vanished. New glass appeared on the window. She walked in relative darkness. Empty everything was, except for the creaks of the floor.

She started feeling the heaviness of sleep in her eyelids.

‘Yup, if I continue walking I will go back.’ ‘It’s kinda funny, how they let me off the hook. I guess they’re not concerned with the doom either.’

‘Me too in some convoluted way. Even though I can’t stop thinking about it.’

‘Yet I didn’t want to prevent it enough.’

‘It’s whatever. Doom or not, I don’t have anything going for me anyway.’

‘In retrospect, I never did.’