"πππππππ ππ πππππππππ πππππππππππ"
Yohan whispered the strange words carefully and deliberately as he approached the first glass, eyes opening and closing in a slow, measured rhythm.
Then he leaned in and breathed a soft, controlled breath across the surface of the water.
He moved to the next glass in the same manner and whispered againβ
"ππππ πππππππππ ππ ππππππ"
βand breathed across the water once more. Then the next, moving clockwise without pause.
"πππππππππ πππ πππππ ππ ππππ"
And finally the last glass, up on the shelf.
"πππππ ππ ππππ"
Without breaking stride he moved to the centre of the room and lowered himself into the triangle, sitting cross-legged, the hand gesture held steady between his chest. He whispered certain phrases again, with a strange deliberate calm across his face.
Then serenity engulfed the room.
Several minutes passed without movement, without sound. When he finally opened his eyes he held the stillness a moment longer before letting his posture go, sinking back and lying flat on the floor.
'As expected, nothing happened," with anticipated disappointment over his face, he sighed and sat up. 'Did I make any mistake?' And looked at the text around him he wrote.
Maybe...
He grabbed his phone from the desk and read through the text again.
Shi... how did I miss this? I need to chant those names not only in a specific order but a specific number of times too.
He set the phone down and moved back to the centre.
Damn, gotta do again.
TAP! TAP!
Yohan flinched, his eyes snapping toward the door.
"Yohan, what are you doing in there with the door locked? Open it."
His mother's voice hit him like cold water and his own got stuck somewhere in his throat. Before any reply could form he was already scrubbing the triangle off the floor with his foot, cursing under his breath.
"Open the door! Yohan!"
"Yeahβw-wait!"
Within seconds, he reached the door and pulled it open, forcing himself into a lazy, half-awake posture.
CREAKβ
His mother looked at him with a grim expression and frowned.
"What were you doing in here with the door locked and the room completely dark?"
'Killing myself...'
"Ugh, nothing," Yohan said, rubbing the back of his neck, squeezing his eyes. "I was⦠sleeping. Just decided to take a short nap after studying when you came."
"In complete darkness?"
He let out an irritated breath. "You expect me to sleep with the lights on? Whatever, just tell me what you need."
She looked at him for a moment, clearly wanting to ask more, but the clear frustration on his face made her stop. With a questionable look she said:
"Come down, And go bring milk from the dairy."
" 'kay, coming, anything else with that?"
"I'll tell when you come down."
As she turned away, Yohan shut the door behind him and muttered to himself.
She could've just called my name from downstairs. Why bother coming all the way up? She seriously has this incurable habit of investigating everything⦠and that never-ending OCD.
He followed her downstairs and went out to buy the things she asked for.
By the time he came back, the chance to attempt the ritual properly was gone. Even then, he couldn't stop feeling anxious that his mother might interrupt him again if he tried.
Later that night, because of a strange and uneasy feeling crawling at the back of his heart, he decided not to perform the ritual at all.
Instead, after practicing katas for a while with his improvised weapon, he tried to study whole night β who knew what subject had become more important than sleeping for him tonight.
***
"Awhh... sh!t..."
Yohan stared at the sheet in his hands, sitting at his desk in the classroom as the noise of other students blurred around him.
It's tomorrow. The day has... come. It feels too soon for some reason...uh...I knew they'd conduct the exam anytime soon but why give the exact date only one day prior.
He tapped the sheet against the desk and began filling in his personal information, which needed to be submitted to the school by all participating students before tomorrow's first phase. He had only a tentative sense of the exam's date but the confirmed date arriving a single day before caught him off guard.
Now Yohan was uneasy for reasons he couldn't quite pin down β unsure how well he had prepared and how well he would perform. He wasn't even certain whether all his self-reliant training would hold up, as there had been no reference point to measure his progress against this entire time. Without a real opponent, without someone stronger to measure himself against, improvement became difficult to judge. The true measure of one's skill could only be gauged through an actual spar, with someone serving as a concrete benchmark to compare against. His training in isolation had felt like an eternity, yet the three months as a whole felt rushed.
Nothing particularly memorable had happened during it except certain uncanny dreamsβthrilling in hindsight, but never while he was inside them. While living through them, anyone sane would have wanted nothing more than to wake up and return to reality.
Yohan submitted his application and the nervousness gnawed at him steadily for the rest of the day. He was in a restless hurry to get through his classes and reach home. When he finally did, an unusual, impulsive feeling had begun flickering somewhere inside him, his face blank and zoned out.
As he entered, a familiar yet subtly different sense of tranquility settled around the house.
Before heading upstairs, Yohan wandered through the vestibule, glancing into the two rooms and the kitchen ahead.
"You're back?" His sister spoke indifferently, giving him a curt glance from the chair in the kitchen, watching some peculiar rom-com drama on her phone while something went down her throat from the bowl with an audible gulp.
"Yeah..." Yohan opened fridge taking out a bottle of water. "Aren't you coming earlier than me lately?"
"...Because I'm no longer doing after-class duties."
"Oh...and where's mom?" He asked pouring water into the glass on the table.
"She's gone to attend a funeral in the neighborhood...will be back by evening."
Yohan's eyes widened subtly and turned around taking a sip from the glass.
"What? Whose?"
"Our neighbour across the street, died last night."
His sister seemed too absorbed to elaborate much, and Yohan showed no particular curiosity about the cause either. Yet he asked anyway.
"For real? He didn't seem like someone who'd go so soon."
"Life is unpredictable. According to his wife he was perfectly fine until evening β had his usual argument with her, went to sleep, and by morning when she checked on him he was motionless."
"Oh!" Yohan gave an indifferent response and headed to his room, slinging his backpack onto the desk.
Something flickered in his head again like some strange, distorted feeling, glitching and hovering, as he sat on the cot with wide eyes and a blank face, palm pressed over his mouth.
Again. He died too. Again. What's... no β why does this keep happening? Or is it just a coincidence again.
His vision blurred for a fleeting moment and restored. As he sank deeper into his thoughts the flickering persisted, as though something in him was distorting along with it β like a glitching error in reality surfacing sporadically. A familiar feeling. Peculiar. He had felt it before, most sharply in the aftermath of his suicide attempt, but this was more insidious β a subtle, recurring sense of detachment from the world around him, coming and going as his thoughts began drifting back toward certain memories he only occasionally allowed himself to revisit.
It was a sensation so strange that he himself couldn't clearly put into words, even if he tried.
Is it true then? What if it's not a coincidence or what if it's...? Those dreams...and those...
Yohan gulped, a shudder running through him, his eyes going involuntarily watery.
Once again, a person died. the same person I saw in my dream months ago, in a shape I couldn't explain. This has happened before once...no twice or maybe more thatβ I've lost count. Whenever I saw someone in a dream and their face was something beyond comprehension, something disorienting, something nightmarish to even look at... they died.
Yohan lay back on the cot and covered his face with his hands.
Sooner or later... they died.
Within a year...always within a year. But the ones I've actually watched die in the dreams β they're still alive. Even after years.
FWHAM...
Then he suddenly sprang up from the cot, landing on the floor in one quick motion.
Whatever, thinking about it won't make me some seer-sherlock out of a fantasy...There won't be a better window than this to reattempt the ritual. Πom won't be back until evening at least.
...And his sister wouldn't bother checking in on him unless she needed him for one of her personal errands and even then she was too lazy to walk all the way to his room to ask directly.
She was that kind of person whose entire disposition ran on mood. When she was feeling good she could handle every chore in the house on her own, including cooking, which she had a rare natural gift for despite never formally learning it.
Those rare days, she moved through the kitchen like she owned it, usually because she suddenly craved something only she trusted herself to make. But if something put her in the wrong mood, even something as small as a disagreement, no one could get her to lift so much as a cup from beside her. She came across as selfishly kind, but she was careless with her words in a way that left marks.
Her habit of not giving a f*ck about how someone might feel because of what she says without thinking for once, scares me sometimes.
He scratched the back of his head and looked down at the floor for a moment before reaching to his desk and grabbing a piece of chalk.
He drew the same triangle at the centre of the room as the day before, and wrote the same indifferent answers:
Nothing
Something
Dunno
However, something fidgeted in his head for a brief moment β that insidious flickering feeling hadn't gone. If anything it had grown more erratic, harder to hold steady against, like some buried anxiety or strange urge pressing toward the surface.
Maybe... I guess... I should be more honest about these three questions.
He lowered the chalk to the floor and halted.
What I truly was... a cause, a possibility, a part of some chain reaction, a soul, a kid, or something born from nothing and moving toward nothing again? What would be the most truest answer about myself? Why the hell am I not sure of anything when it comes to me?!
His thoughts moved back and forth in a tangled, complicated way, contradictions folding over one another.
I need to be honest about what I write. I dunno why that 'consequences' part in the text is nagging me, like urging me to write sincerely the truest answer I can possibly. But... I'm not sure.
He exhaled slowly.
I need to be honest.
But honest about what?
I... was a weirdo, I guess, no maybe I still am, so...uh... in the past I didn't have dreams but I was ambitious.
I was a dreamer but nothing was a dream for me, everything felt real to me, or close enough to real. I just knew everything was possible, yet I was a dreamer who saw dreams but didn't have dreams.
I didn't have insinuance of reality beyond dreams, that I never accepted them to be dreams but as my future. I was dreamer human with no dreams in truth. Am I right?
After a moment of reluctance and quiet deliberation, he erased what he had written before and pressed the chalk to the floor.
Dreamless Dreamer
What am I now? Nothing has changed, except maybe my ability to see and understand things. I'm still a misfit in this world. Still just a human β a misfit human, or maybe a disguised one, a pitiful one... no, what am I? What am I exactly? Just a human? A weirdo? Socially awkward human...?
His head commenced convulsing at a frantic pace making him feel more distorted in his head along with his vision.
I'm just me. But is this enough to say? Do I really need to know... I don't like humans but I'm one of them right? So... I'm either a misfit or...
Disguised Human
He wrote his second answer and moved to the third β but this one sent a throbbing pain through his skull that lasted several seconds. He pressed both hands firmly over his head, trying to hold back the abhorrent chaos churning inside it.
What I wanted? What I want to be? I... I'm sure i wanted to be something? What was that again? I definitely promised several things? What were they again? Why can't I recall a single one? Why?why?...
There must be something I want to be right? There's no way I'm living like this! Yeah, maybe I wanna be rich? Noβ I just wanna live peacefully? So I wanna be a peasant in the mountains? But what does peace actually mean? Or is freedom the true peace, and If so... what it means to be free?
Maybe I wanted to be free? No, I wanted to be free because I started hating humans at some point. Why was that...ugh... IβI can't remember.
Yeah I wanna be free... I wanna be anything, anything, anything better than what humans are.
And to be better... I need to be... Free. Free From Fate, free from any human masquerade. Maybe a true human...
Fateless Unmasked