Suiming

  Precise date unknown, a fraction of his memory that he couldn’t remember the context

  For many years, he looked at the sky.

  He had a talent for it, a pair of good eyes, a bright head, and a dedicated heart. The man seemed to have every opportunity to learn, to study the world around him and beyond. His eyes were full of light and hope, hope to change the world before him.

  “What we need is the bravery to challenge the established ideas, like how we used to see burning as an expression of Realm-art and caused by atmospheric Realm-art flows…which now proves to be false,” he said with confidence before his peers.

  They said he would open the path.

  They said he would change the future of Realm-art.

  But he was heard no more from the day of the eclipse.

  …

  This is a horrible idea… but there isn’t enough time left

  He sat on the ground, biting his teeth as he knocked the container of the solution; thankfully, it didn’t fall. Suiming shoved the shard Ferr helped to chip off into his wound as he heard a terrible grinding sound from his teeth.

  Suiming wanted to know about the key. Its obscure nature fascinated him. Looking at it, he couldn’t help but feel the pain and horror in that encounter. As if the pain still lingered when his keyhole-shaped pupil was unlocked.

  It was never a good idea to plant an alien body into the already existing node of the Realm-art implant. That was a lesson every implanter learned in their first lecture. Suiming, as he was somewhat of an unlicensed expert on Realm-art implant, knew this rule by heart.

  Casting would be obstructed, flux of Realm-art could be interrupted, infection and inflammation, the list went on. Even if he was an abnormality, having another abnormality stuck to his flesh wouldn’t be pleasant.

  Suiming knew that there wasn’t much time left, whether it was to help Acryl or to stop Kaspar from his plan. He’d need to talk to Seren to come up with a plan.

  You don’t have to take this on alone, a voice said in his mind, it was not you who couldn’t save them.

  That me has died…But I can’t let that happen again; I must be ready, Suiming thought.

  But that was what he needed; he needed to see if implanting the key would do anything, even if he didn’t have an implant. It could end badly, but he didn’t have enough time to figure it out risk-free.

  As he secured the place of the shard while his face tensed and he bit hard into his teeth, he quickly poured the solution onto the wound.

  It was a special solution he made, inspired by the drug Kaspar used. He felt bubbling from his wound and an unpleasant smell similar to rotten eggs and disinfectant. It spilled over his arm while some of them splashed onto his face. The additional pain from the solution was minuscule against the pain from rapid healing. As his pain seeped, he saw the world as the yellow bubbles he had seen. Despite the correlation, he knew the shard did not cause the hallucination; it was something he had to deal with every now and then after seeing this beyond his comprehension.

  Even if I don’t remember their faces, even if I don’t remember his voice, I can’t change the past, but I can change the future.

  He needed to wait for his body to reject the shard, but that wouldn’t be enough; he would still need some other alien bodies to be inserted into the implant nodes. The pain would be unbearable, but all in the name of curiosity.

  He felt like Kaspar, doing anything to fulfil the yearning for knowledge; Suiming could understand that radical man; there was something universal and profound between the scholars.

  As he saw the tiny blood vessels and tissues surrounding the white mass, he felt something.

  Pulsing, pulsing, and beating like a star twinkling.

  Then it became resonant with his heartbeat. The blood vessels penetrated the shard; it was a weird feeling, but Suiming could feel the shard, feel his blood flowing through it. The rest of his body felt numb and superficial compared to the part of the shard. He tried to sense the scent of something, but he got nothing. The hallucinations eased, even if he was frightened to see those amber marbles again.

  This isn’t conclusive…it could’ve been made of some kind of universal material, that’s big news for the doctors though.

  As he felt the shard become a part of him and his Realm-art could flow through it, he felt a great sore coming from the bottom of his body and finding its home in his head. The living room before him turned into strange shapes, those that could be mistaken for clouds. As his body collapsed, he saw the things merge together and form into something tall. Something that reached beyond the skies.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  A great obelisk stood before him. The looming presence of a being so great that it preceded even infinity and eternity themselves haunted this place.

  Suiming realized that the obelisk had things written on it, with some kind of benevolent chisel or brushes. The carvings and shapes of the things written on them were rough, jagged like the great valleys and mountains. Only it did not form as the masterpiece of erosion and time, but a violent deity smashing their rage into a stone-made canvas.

  Wild wind blew as a gray mist surrounded the great obelisk. It was the same obelisk he saw in his vision in Euth, only this time he realized he could not see the sky. His body shivered as Suiming held onto his wounded arm.

  As he grabbed it, he didn’t feel pain. Instead, a sense of tranquility that he only felt when gazing at the sunrise shrouded him. Suiming looked at his arm. The white shard had become a part of him, filling the wound perfectly as he could feel the uncaring cold on the white, marble tissue.

  While Suiming looked around, trying to spot anything that could tell where he was, a warm burn from his chest. Light leaked out of him as he sensed a change in his Realm-art.

  His heart thumped in excitement as he realized he was one step closer to gaining his power back. He waited for his Realm-art’s blade to turn back to its original glory. His heart burned like a bright star, but there was no pain.

  No.

  A voice thundered from the obelisk. It was a choir of countless voices and creatures. Young, old, gentle, harsh. Every type of voice he could imagine was in the choir.

  The heat cooled down. His Realm-art changed back to what it was, though Suiming could feel that he did not lose all his powers. As he complained to himself, he saw the carvings of the obelisk turn as the scene before him shifted to Silvia’s apartment.

  Suiming heard the door turn open.

  …

  Silvia

  “So… Professor Suiming, you want me to implant a sample of abnormalities into your nodes?” Silvia said. Seren and her helped Suiming get back onto his feet. As of right now, Suiming looked as carefree as before while he leaned onto the half-messy counter of their kitchen. Despite the horrible wounds, he looked fine, even if his eyes told Silvia otherwise.

  The stove was on while Suiming had just checked the noodles. He held a bowl as he prepared the seasonings.

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have to implant it, you just need to get me the sample.”

  Silvia thought to herself. The process of getting a sample of an abnormality would be quite difficult, as it would require her university to consent; she could try and buy one from the arcane item vendors, though that would raise some suspicion.

  “…Um, if Miss Seren consents, does her tissue sample work?”

  Suiming shook his head as his hand twitched.

  “Seren is…special…therefore, it is not the best idea,” he explained, bringing the bowl closer to him and grabbing the cumin from the cupboard.

  “Why do you always think of new ways to torture yourself?” Seren said, walking past the kitchen.

  “Well, I don’t know, maybe it’s some kind of secret third type of fun? Getting into trouble and then out.”

  Seren looked at Suiming. Silvia could feel that she was going to say something Suiming wouldn’t like to hear, starting an argument, even. She did not wish for the two to get mad at each other, as she would have no instrument or approach to mediate them.

  “No, I mean, you could’ve asked me to be the subject.”

  Suiming’s face froze. Silvia hadn’t seen that kind of look on him. The bubbling of the water in the pot continued as the kitchen fell into silence.

  “Well…I, I can’t let you risk it,” Suiming said as his face stayed pale.

  “What happens to you will happen; you can’t just rewind.”

  “Yeah, but if that’s the case, I will be able to rewind. I would face the consequence after turning back the clock!”

  “No! Seren! Don’t you get it? You could die,” Suiming yelled as he turned off the stove. His other hand turned on the other stove and heated the pan.

  “Yeah, I know, I could die,” she answered, smiling.

  “Are you going to use olive oil or seed oil?”

  “Seed oil, Silvia, where’s the peppers?” Suiming said.

  Silvia grabbed the pepper from the cupboard.

  “…Seren, out of any consequences, this is one of the hardest to recover.”

  “How are you sure that it won’t block your casting? I can risk it on myself because I don’t have all those fancy powers.”

  “Suiming, just trust me on this one. The worst is I get hurt really bad.”

  Suiming didn’t answer while he strained the noodles. He poured them into four bowls as he poured the seasonings into them. The aroma of the spices filled the room as if the argument hadn’t occurred at all, and it was just a regular dinner. He chopped some garlic and onion and threw them on the noodles alongside the ground peppers.

  “Dinner’s served, learned this from a Siyuenese calligrapher.”

  Silvia tasted the noodles, they were rich and layered in flavors, the sauce Suiming blended gave it a sweet and spicy taste, while the pepper gave it a satisfying numbing feeling. The noodles themselves were chewy and had a smooth texture.

  “So, Sil, what did Professor Tavia say?” Ferr asked while he took off his glasses and set them aside. Without them, his eyes looked slightly bigger.

  “She said that I don’t need to worry that the data is incorrect…that I need to think in another way of interpreting them.”

  “Anything else?” Ferr continued.

  “And she said that I will graduate with ease.”

  “What were the data, anyway?” Seren interrupted.

  “After I did the calculations and statistics, the data showed two things,” Silvia swallowed. She tried not to think about what the data implied, but she couldn’t help. This was the discovery she dreamed and thought to be impossible, yet this was also revealing to her something she perhaps should’ve stayed ignorant of.

  “All potent scents share a component, but the strange thing is that it registered far more casting than theoretically possible…and the waves had overlap with the scents.”

  “…If my hypothesis is correct…then all Existences share something in common.”

  “Though my study still needs to be reviewed, which Professor Tavia is doing right now.”