Chapter 73: ~Volume 2 Prologue~

"Where the hell is he?!" Bellowed the voice waking me from my dreams of stellar marvels.

It took me some time to reorient myself. I was still in the familiar not-new not-dark not-room. I tried to turn towards the source of the voice, but then I remembered I had no head to turn. Or body. Instead, the pitch-black space around me twisted around so that the incensed speaker was right in front of me.

It was The Man. It was a gruff, middle-aged man with a thick mustache. It was a dark, barren moon circling a purple gas giant around a pale blue star. It was both, but neither. It was weird.

Then he/it opened his/its mouth again and The Man came into focus, his features rapidly sharpening like I was looking at him through binoculars while adjusting the magnification.

"We need to find him! We are running out of time!"

"Calm down," the strangely familiar ocean of ruby chided him before it took the form of a businesslike young woman. "If we rush things, he will just hide even deeper and then jump out to ruin everything when we least expect it. You know how he operates."

"I... I’m not sure..." whispered The Boy, his image only faintly overlapping with alien skies endlessly raining molten glass.

"What are you not sure about?" growled The Man.

"I mean..." The Boy began, then hesitated for a moment. "I mean, he really isn’t acting like himself."

"He has a point," The Girl chimed in with a tinkling voice.

"True," The Woman quickly relented . „But then what do you propose?"

There was a long moment of silence before The Boy let out a strained cough.

"M-Maybe we shouldn’t do anything? I mean, just watch for now?"

"And how is that going to keep him from ruining our hard work?" The Man grumbled as he crossed his arms. I tried to do the same, but I didn’t have any. Being disembodied sucks.

"It worked out this far," The Girl chirped with a grin. "Didn’t we all agree that this was one of the better scenarios we put together in a while?"

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"Yeah, but..." The Woman paused and relented in the same breath. "I suppose you are right. Maybe he is trying to turn a new leaf?"

"... Are you serious?" The Man spoke with an incredulous tone. "I thought we made this scenario specifically to teach him a lesson. You know, because he is a prick and refused to change?"

"Maybe it worked?" The Woman stated with unusual uncertainty. "I mean, he got hit by the last layer of defenses, didn’t he? Maybe he reflected on his actions because of it."

"Hehe, someone is unusually wishful today," The Girl giggled, earning a scowl in return from The Woman, but before she could answer, The Man spoke up again.

"I will believe it when ******* turns his ******* inside out," After saying that, he turned around. Or maybe the not-room turned around him? Either way, he left.

"W-Wait! I’ll help to look for him!" The Boy exclaimed, and they both evaporated, for the lack of better words.

"Should we go too?" The Girl asked, but The Woman only shook her head.

"No, we have better things to do."

Saying so, the two of them also sublimated away in short order, leaving me all alone. Speaking of which, I had a feeling I have something better to do other than listening to the vague discussions between... whatever these people were. After some thinking, I finally remembered. I was still sleeping, wasn’t I?

Not right now, but yet still. It was hard to explain, but I was somehow still aware, and when I tried to remember where I left my body, the dark not-room around me was subsequently replaced with an actual dark room. My room.

I was still lying on my bed, covered to my neck with blankets. According to the clock on the nightstand, it was just a little after seven in the morning. It was usually around this time I took a shower before heading out. Not this time, of course, since as far as I could tell, I was currently not inside my body, and thus it had no one to drive it through its morning routine.

It was about time I returned, I surmised. I rested long enough, though I couldn’t tell exactly how long that was. Time was working weird in the not-dark not-rooms. However, I soon realized there was a minor problem: I had no idea how I should do that.

After a little thinking, I decided I would attempt the tried and tested ’spooky ghost’ method. I floated above my unconscious body (though again, it felt more like the room was moving under me instead) and then I slowly lowered myself until I overlapped with it. For the first couple of seconds absolutely nothing happened, but then I noticed a strange, white glow coming from my head. My body’s head, I mean, as ‘I’ still didn’t have one at the moment.

I tried to reach out towards it by reflex, and I could feel ’something’ reaching out, though it wasn’t really a hand or a leg. It was weird, but since everything was weird, I figured it was probably normal. Anyways, once I ’touched’ that glow, I suddenly felt a strong suction drawing me in, and then abruptly (and quite unceremoniously) the world around me went black again.

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