Chapter 1: Prologue: The Pillar That Gates The Memories

Snow falls upon the forest, in an irregular, sporadic pattern. Deep within the area, sounds of harsh steps can be heard being pushed upon the frosty ground. The man’s heavy breathing creates a white cold trail of air as long as the fog could show.

Looking towards the direction of the sprinting man, a corpse lies within the cold, thick snow leaning upon a tree with strange marks.

A pinch of white frost slowly settles on the nose of the corpse, slowly his eyes start to lighten, as his vision starts to focus. Regaining his control, he moves his arms, trying to recollect his thoughts, he wasn't a corpse; but a living human being.

Soon before he could think of anything, the taller man, wearing a red scarf with a brown jacket, approaches the young man with shock and worry. His eyes seem to deepen more into darkness, staring at the young boy with an uneasy look.

“Wh- Who are you..?” said the young man in deep confusion, as he blocked his eyes from the bright white sky.

“Oh..? You don’t remember me?” the tall man responded, disgruntled by this new revolution. “Well, we crossed each other's path when we were next to this forest, but suddenly, you went in without warning.”

“I.. I don’t remember coming here.. Actually, I can’t remember anything at all.. Argh..” the young boy felt a painful tremor in his head. 

“Hey, are you okay?” exclaimed the tall man.

“Yeah, I think.. I think I have a headache,”

“Well, okay. My name is Michael by the way. Let’s take you to a doctor, and then I’ll see what I can do to help.” 

Michael holds up his arm toward the young man, who hesitantly holds his arm up as well. “Alright..” He grabs onto Michael’s hand and pulls himself up slowly, almost tripping onto the thick snow. “Thanks, Michael..”

“Don’t worry too much right now alright, here,” says Michael as he slides off his coat and puts it on the young boy. He then goes behind him and says he has to check if there's anything. Michael scavages through the snow, grabbing fistfuls worth of frost and throwing it away. Soon, he hits his finger with a dark blade hidden beneath the snow. He takes it out, examines it, and then puts it inside his shirt’s inner pocket.

“Um, Michael?” questioned the boy as he was trying to figure out what Michael was trying to look for. “Oh- I'm sorry, I found a sword of some sorts, I think it might be yours,” responded Michael in an eerily nervous voice. He then walked back towards the young man and they both went to Michael’s car.

While the two were walking, Michael was thinking about the circumstances of what had happened, as while he was trying to find the dark blade, he also saw the reddish snow from where the young man was found.

=== *Indicates POV change

September 13th, 2146, 7:12am

Today is an important day for me, as I’ll finally go back to high school after the incident. I'm half excited and half nervous. (To be honest, I'm mostly nervous haha..)

This is the first log of my journal. Michael recommended I write about what I'm doing, write about dreams I'd have, and other stuff in order to see if it helps me recollect my memories from before I lost them. He was actually kind enough to help me re-learn how to write properly and improve my grammar/spelling, although I knew some by instinct. Anyways I’m going off track so..

I’ve gotten ready and am currently waiting for Michael to come and drive to school. 

He also taught me some basic level knowledge so I’m not completely lost during lectures. Most importantly, I learned some of the main things about Skills. He basically told me that there are three different types of Skills. There are elemental skills, which are the most common and relate to elemental attributes, there are unique skills that are kind of the same but like more complicated, and then there are unknown skills which he didn't really tell me much about.

Actually, I think I'm feeling something within my head like something seems to fade in and out. Maybe it's my memory, or maybe it's just a dud.

Michael is ready now, so I’ll write in here after school.

…

September 13th, 2146, 5:47pm

Well.. Today was disappointing.

To start off, I lost my week’s allowance and I have a blast mark on the top right of my forehead. I feel like I should be mad but really I just feel sad and frustrated. Today was supposed to be a good day, but it ended up being one of the worst so far. (Although, that probably doesn’t really mean much since I can only remember back a few months).

So when I got inside the school, it seemed friendly and nice at first, and it honestly was for a while. But when I was heading to my 4th period class, I was interrupted by two guys. One had yellow hair, kind of blondish but a bit more saturated. The other had bright blue hair with some honestly weird looking bangs. Their names were Harold and Calisto.

At first, I thought they just interrupted me by accident, so I just tried to walk past them. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and they quickly grabbed onto my uniform’s jacket and yelled at me. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going, we were just about to introduce ourselves” said Harold..

They both started lecturing me about how society’s hierarchy works, and how they are superior to me. It was pretty annoying but I just tried to ignore them. Then they asked me about something I never really considered up to now.

“But hey, You seem interesting. Tell me, what is your skill?”

It was a question that stumped me. I didn’t have much time to really think about it at the time.

So, here's the thing. I don’t really know what my skill is. I don’t even know if I even have one. I asked Michael if I had a skill after learning about magic, but he immediately brushed it off and that was that.I didn’t really question it any further after that since I really didn’t care about magic. But it seems it's more important to people than I initially thought.

Anyways, I was unable to give a real answer to Harold, and it seemed to annoy him, as he then pushed me onto the wall and demanded an answer. Now that I think about it now, what I said next was probably the worst thing I could’ve responded with. I told Harold that I had no skill.

My response gave Harold a smile that felt very off to me. He slowly came toward me, and Calisto tagged along as well as he snickered.

“Damn, I can’t believe it. I finally found someone even more powerless than Ruben. This is hysterical,” laughed Harold. “Yeah man, this guy isn’t ready for what we’re about to do to him,” said Calisto as he stared at me viciously.

I was getting more scared about the situation, but quickly I tried to stand up and run out of there. But before I could manage to take cover within a hall intersection, Calisto shot me with a blue crystal and I collapsed onto the floor.

“You really thought you would get away? You’re an idiot,” bickered Calisto as he kicked my stomach, turning my body, making me lay with my back. My stomach ached so badly, that I felt as if I was about to throw up. I tried looking at the two, but the bright white lights on the roof blinded my vision, and I couldn’t make out their faces

“Powerless sh*ts like you deserve nothing, and I’ll make sure you get the idea,” exclaimed Harold as he grabbed onto the neck of my shirt, pulling my head closer to his face. As I struggled to move, I could see his hand raise up, shining brighter and brighter. I quickly realized what was about to happen and moved my face as much as i could so it could avoid being hit. 

At that moment, I felt something very different than anything else.

I think that feeling.. Was fear.

..I hate it.

BZZZ!

The next thing I know I woke up in the nursery room. Turns out that blast of light put me unconscious, and after that, they stole all the money in my wallet. Not only that, but because I was unconscious I missed the rest of my classes for today.

I hid my face from Michael when I came home because it really isn’t something to worry about, and I immediately went to my room.

I'm kind of in a bit of a foul mood writing this, so I’ll talk about something.. Better I guess.

So the high school I go to is called Emblem High School. It's a semi-prestigious school that Michael enrolled me in. Their uniforms are black and white, which I personally like. I enrolled a week late so I had to present myself to every class which was something I definitely didn’t like.

Oh, right I forgot to mention what my name was.

My name is Khalid Citrus.

It's getting late so I’ll end it off here.

===

You are reading story Parallel Project at novel35.com

Ring Ring Ring

6th Period was over and all the students started rushing to their next class, bumping with everyone else as if it was afternoon highway traffic. 

The door of classroom 21-B aggressively opens as students try to leave. After almost all of them managed to get out, Khalid was able to also walk out. As he walks across the hallway towards his next class, he notices something happening within the corner of an intersecting hall. A kid near an election stand is being beaten up by Harold.

“Please.. Stop!” screamed the injured boy with a stuffed voice, but was soon silenced and knocked down. Although the brown-haired boy was hurt, his face seemed to give off a feeling of determination and hatred.

Khalid was unable to keep watching, his eyes distressed, slowly filling with anxiety, and quickly left the scene As Khalid walked into the classroom, Harold was able to see a glimpse of him, and smiled.

Khalid sat at his desk still stressed, tapping on the wooden plane in a rhythmic pattern.

I feel bad for leaving, but what can I really do?

Ring Ring Ring

The 7th period has just started, and the teacher, who was doing her work on her laptop, got up and shut the door. She then wrote ‘Skill Types’ on the chalkboard.

“Today we’ll be continuing off from last week’s lesson about magic functionality. Skill types come in three different….”- Khalid started to daze off as the teacher was giving her lecture. He took his journal out of his backpack and opened it up on top of his desk. He swiftly flipped the pages until he found a blank slate.

Unfortunately for Khalid, before he was even able to finish his first sentence, the teacher called him out and asked what are the main types of skills. This startled Khalid and answered in a very shaky tone-

“Oh- um.. There's elemental, unique, and unknown!”

“Khalid, you're mostly right but there's no ‘Unknown’ type,” replied the teacher, who gave a questioning look towards him.

Khalid was deeply confused. He responded- “Huh, what do you mean? Unknown is the third type.”

“You probably just heard it from those damn rumors crazy people say. Look, don't believe them alright.”

“Oh.. Okay.”

Khalid keeps quiet after that, trying to process what he has heard, and starts to write in his notebook once more.

===

September 14th, 2146, 3:12pm

Remember when I said there were 3 types of skills. When my teacher, Elizabeth,  in my magic-engineering class says that “Unknown” types don't exist. This is confusing since Michael is the one who taught me this. Maybe he just believed in this supposed hoax?

Ah, it seems we’re going to do something important now so I'll update this log later.

===

“So class, for today's assignment, I’ll be having all of you get into groups of 4 and make anything you want with small mana orbs. The group with the best creation gets 10 points extra credit. You have 10 minutes, good luck.”

Khalid, who closed his journal, immediately got nervous. Khalid knew that inevitably, he had to actually try doing something with magic, and it was no surprise that it would be in a class all about magic either. His emotions strung as slowly, as he watched his classmates huddle up in groups. 

It has only been a minute, but everyone has already chosen groups. Everyone except Khalid. Elizabeth looks throughout the classroom and says-

“Seems like we’re ready. Well except one. Khalid since you’re not in a group yet, we’ll just have a group of 5. So where do you-”

Before Elizabeth could finish speaking, the classroom door suddenly opens, and a light-brown haired girl comes inside.

“S-Sorry, One of my friends got into a fight with someone and I had to stop it,” says the girl as she catches her breath.

“It’s quite alright, I’m guessing it was Ruben and Harold again?” the teacher responds in a tired manner.

“Er- yeah.”

The teacher then walks back to her chair and sits as if she wasn’t even at her job. “That damn Harold, not only does he think of this class as a joke but also messes with my students. When will that damn principal do something about it.”

As the teacher sighed, she then noticed Khalid, peering from the side of her computer.

“Oh- right. Khalid, you can partner up with Kukui here, It’s not necessary to have 4 group members for this assignment anyways.”

Kukui looks at Khalid with a friendly smile and quickly rushes to the desk next to him.

“I never seen ya before so I’m guessing you're new here?” she asks in an enlightening manner.

“Yeah, actually just enrolled here yesterday, and the first day wasn't that great if I have to be honest,” replies Khalid as he kept tapping on the desk, but more slowly.

“Sigh, let me guess, Harold? That guy is really just a menace, I'm surprised he hasn’t gotten expelled yet.”

Khalid then looked down onto his desk in a less than happy mood. Kukui quickly notices this and changes the subject of the conversation.

“Anyways let’s just do the assignment alright, I heard we’re gonna make a mana orb sculpture, seems fun!”

“It does sound interesting, but uh.. I kind of have a problem when it comes to magic,” Khalid says as he nervously chuckles.

“Oh yeah? What problem?”

“Well.. I can’t really use magic.”

Silence brewed for a few seconds before Kukui looked towards Khalid once more.

“Wait wha-”

…

…

End of Prologue

“Within the grasp of the distortion user, it becomes prevalent that the source of power will soon spread undesirably.” - Log 35

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