Amidst the pitch-black darkness, Milo was not feeling any part of his body. He was just floating amidst the nothingness—no limbs, no body, just a mere essence.
But he knew he existed. The last thing he remembered was one of the house's supports collapsing on him due to a powerful earthquake, and then everything went out. He started to feel an increasing pain in his chest, a sensation similar to Angina Pectoris.
He tried to breathe, but his lung was stiff. Every breath was like breathing through a needle hole. He felt that with every breath, he was tearing his lung. After a while, every breath became easier than the previous one. Milo was not dying; rather, he was like someone returning to life from a stiff corpse. His senses began to work and perceive the nature of the place he was in. His sense of balance told him that he was on a somewhat turbulent surface; it seemed like he was inside a boat, and he heard people outside talking in a language he had never heard before in his thirty-year-long life. His limbs began to emerge from the state of numbness they were in, so he felt his body, which was thin and young, leaning on the side of the boat. But the strangeness was embodied in the form of an additional sense. He was able to feel the surfaces of nearby objects. He felt as if his body was enveloped in a halo. Anything that entered it would displace a part of it, and he would feel every point of it. He could increase its permeability to penetrate even solid objects and discover their internal structure. From the clarity of the sensation, he felt that the function of the eyes was only to see colors. This sense made him feel a realism he had never felt in his life. He felt as if he was dissolved in the world and that the world was a part of him.
He decided to examine his body from the inside with his new sense and discover the reason for his paralysis so far and his inability to open his eyes... His organs were strangely shaped, and there were even new organs, and familiar organs were not in their place, and even his bones and muscles looked strange.
< perhaps I am afflicted with a Deformity that prevents me from moving >
After a period, the paralysis finally disappeared. He opened his eyes. What he saw was shocking. He saw the colors more intense and clearer, and a huge feeling of happiness, the reason for which he did not know, overwhelmed him.
He saw people of different races and nationalities, more than the number visible with the additional sense. Indeed, some of them had strange colors, for example, one of the girls' skin color tended slightly towards pink, and others towards purple... And although the boat, according to his estimation, was only twenty or twenty-five meters long, it was filled with nearly one hundred people.
He looked at the blue ocean below, which was deeply dark and deep. He then looked at the sky and saw a massive dark grey, approaching black, Cumulus Cloud extending a hand-like shape to grasp the clouds and pull itself forward... But the strangest thing was what they were heading toward, a gigantic creature visible from afar.
The memories of the original body's owner flowed into his consciousness, although they were incomplete due to the death of some of his nerve cells. Only the deepest and essential memories remained, among which was the language, so he began to understand the speech of the people around him, but the problem was pronouncing it correctly...
< The full name of the body's owner is Brady Moralison. I am from Morvaska village in the Maldini mountain range on the continent of Vaska. My spiritual number is 4. I am in the Heavinora Archipelago and heading on an illegal journey to the continent of Lina, fleeing poverty and the tyranny of the rich >
He took out his dagger to look at its reflection... He was a young man who looked about eighteen, with thick, smooth black hair interspersed with a mess that gave him an attractive appearance. His body was somewhat thin, and his skin was pure white and soft, as if it had never known the warmth of the sun or the difficulty of life, despite his shabby clothes. From his point of view, his appearance looked slightly feminine. He put his hand in his trouser pocket and checked his important things as a man, and they were in their place; they were even larger than his own in his past life. He felt attracted to himself, but he resisted the feeling.
In his past life, Milo was ugly to look at: big teeth like a bulldozer protruding from his mouth, his skin color was a disgusting brown, and those things called features were shattered on his face. His short stature, his swollen body—all this on the one hand, and his shame of his appearance and his lack of interest in his cleanliness to the extent that his smell was his only good point, because the flies were disgusted by it and did not bother him—a self-feeding cycle that created a weak personality for him, making him a subject of ridicule. His impulsive, ill-considered emotional responses made the bullies revel in putting him in embarrassing situations in front of the girls to show themselves by humiliating him, so he developed a sensitivity to the opposite sex and avoided it as much as possible. Whenever a girl passed by him, his body shrunk and shriveled like a snail. He felt danger; any laugh he felt was directed at him.
As they approached the land, a person from the bow of the boat spoke loudly, saying:
"We are approaching the land... Prepare the rest of your money."
Milo began to hear people talking and discovered that the remaining price was five thousand Flix...
The boat stopped in the middle of the sea, and some people spread out to collect the money. They weighed the bags and compared them to the weight of a bag worth five thousand Flix and examined the money to avoid some of them putting rocks or things that would increase the weight of the bag.
Milo searched for his money, which Brady had probably hidden somewhere between the spare clothes and the tent...
Milo heard one of the passengers talking to one of the smugglers:
"I am sorry... My money bag fell from me when I was boarding the boat..."
"Your money fell out, but your less important bag is still here.."
"B-b-but..."
Suddenly, the dagger he had been hiding on the left side was in the smuggler's right hand, and it was now stained with blood. He slit the passenger's neck amidst his shock in a violent scene, and his head hung back, looking directly at Milo. Blood flowed from his arteries like a fountain. Milo did not even see the knife cutting him; the knife passed through his neck as if cutting butter. The poor victim tried to extend his trembling hands, trying to put his head back in place, only for the killer to push him out of the boat.
His still-trembling corpse floated backward, his face directed toward the passengers, and he stared at them with a look full of endless torment and pain, drowning in his blood. Everything was fast. People crowded and piled up in the stern of the ship, and some began to scream and cry from the shock and the sudden scene.
One of the passengers spoke:
"You never needed to kill him in such an extreme way. You should have given him time to hear his response."
The killer, who was a strong person with tattoos on his arms, a firm look, and clothes that showed a kind of quality that reflected his self-care from the smuggling money and the black market, spoke, trying to calm the situation:
"We are delivering you safely, risking our lives with you for three days in the open ocean, and in the end, when it's your turn, you forget the money or drop it... Are you mocking us?... Come on, go back to your places and prepare the money, or we will take more extreme measures; selling you as parts is also profitable."
The captain of the boat, who also had a thick white beard and expensive clothes, spoke:
"Come on, go back to your places. Nothing happened. If you gather there, some of you may fall because the boat has begun to tilt... Come on, distribute the weight."
The smuggler made his way back. He grabbed the corpse's leg and tied it with a rope to the boat and left it there to drain of blood, and perhaps even to attract fish to them. All of this was happening next to Milo, who was trying to look away. Milo found his money bag deep below his belongings and completed the price of his smuggling when the money collector reached him. Then the boat continued its course.
When the land became close, the captain of the boat declared with artificial kindness, saying:
"Gather your belongings and be careful not to forget anything, and clean up any trash and any food scraps you left behind... My friend here cannot approach the land any closer than this limit. We will stop for a moment until you get off the boat. I wish you a happy journey and apologies for any inconvenience."
Some began to pack their belongings, and others took off their pants and tied their legs and moved them to fill with air to use them for floating. Others put on wooden fins that they had brought with them, and then they jumped into the water. The land was still at a distance that seemed to be five hundred meters.
On the other hand, Milo was not a skilled swimmer; he had never swum in his life, so he seemed tense, especially since he had been hearing rumors about Rip Currents that cause many to drown, even skilled swimmers. But he had no trick to avoid the matter. If he stayed with these smugglers, who knows what they would do to him, especially since they killed a person in front of his eyes, and they would probably sell his corpse. And this was the first time he knew that killing a human could be this easy, cold, and violent. First, Milo lowered his tightly tied bundle into the water. Terrifyingly, nearly eighty percent of it sank. Then he descended onto it, with it under his chest, to help him float. When he did that, the bundle sank completely under his weight, and the water reached him almost up to his chin. It was a terrifying feeling, especially since people began to overtake him and move away from him. But the worst thing was that his feet did not touch the ground, which increased the feeling of terror in his heart. His breathing began to become disturbed because the water was close to his face. He tried to move his feet quickly to catch up with them, but his speed was not as he imagined; he was almost not moving and was still next to the boat, slapping the water, even though the ocean was calm. But those small waves that hit his face and hindered his breathing made him return to his place.
That killer looked at him and said loudly:
"Look at this boy, he cannot swim, ha ha ha"
The smugglers looked at him, and from the misery of his condition, he was about to shed tears and ask for mercy, but suddenly the killer continued and said:
"Boy, use your halo! Don't be foolish!"
Another smuggler spoke:
"Perhaps his halo is not dense?"
"In that case, try not to take your feet out of the water. Your appearance is ridiculous as you kick the water with your feet, and do not hug that bundle too tightly. Relax your grip on it so that your head does not drown. The water is salty and will lift your body. And most importantly, use your hands if you can, gather your fingers and do not let them be separated, and try not to slap the water with your hands; try to insert them into the water smoothly... And don't worry, they will wait for you."
Milo tried to implement those tips until he adjusted the appropriate movements and began to move away and slowly overtake the boat. He looked down and saw the shadow of a large fish; its shape looked closer to a blue whale, and he concluded that it was the reason why the boat did not approach the land enough. The small waves covered his view of the shore to the extent that doubt came to him, and he felt that he had changed his direction toward the ocean several times.
The minutes passed like hours, and he was still trying to survive. His hands got cramped, and fatigue took its toll on him, but the important thing was that he got closer. He was not good at estimating the distance because his face was close to the water, but he began to see people on the land...
Milo shouted at the top of his voice, waving his right hand:
"H-h-help m-m-me, p-p-please anK'thunny (save me)"
Some people turned to the source of the sound, and two friends among them looked at each other and then ran toward the water, leaving their belongings. Milo's heart was very relieved when he saw them coming.
"Leave your belongings, Kris will carry them."
One of the two friends grabbed him from his back and began swimming with him toward the shore.
Milo reached ecstasy when his feet touched the shore's ground, and his toes hugged the very soft white sand. He emerged from the water and fell to the ground, kissing it and rolling in its sand. Then he got up from his place and stared at the ocean one last look and saw the boat he came in standing there far away. That was strange.
Even though they kill in cold blood and his life is supposed not to matter to them because he completed all the money for the trip, they are good people... Milo waved his hand to them, and the boat turned back, returning. The scene returns to the boat:
"Hhh, I told you my advice was useful."
The smugglers began to give him the betting money. He turned to his rescuers and said:
"I w-w-won't forget th-th-this favor. Thank you for inKadi (saving me)."
"Brady... Why are you stuttering and talking with difficulty?"
He knew from Brady's fractured memory that if they knew he was the consciousness of another person, they would think he was an evil spirit that had taken over their companion's body, and they would kill him.
"I d-d-don't w-w-want to t-t-talk now."
"Brady... your actions are strange. You are a better swimmer than both of us and can breathe water, besides being a big chatterbox...
[staring]
... Why don't you tell me what my name is, and don't try to change the subject?"
Everyone directed their gaze toward him
ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
"The character pics are down in the comments."