Awaken – III
'Alice, uh...'
For me, it is already certain that Alice is another reincarnation. No matter how talented a child may be, there is no way she can keep up with an already mature person in terms of intelligence. Or does she? This is a magical world, it shouldn't be totally impossible, otherwise how would the native Chosen compete with the reincarnated in the early stages? Well, I don't know and I don't care to know.
But about Alice being reincarnated is a fact, since her little slips in emotions are too much to be coincidences. Always throwing a tantrum when I act all close and affectionate with mommy, and always looking all pleased and radiant when I spoil her. Maybe a brocon? Quite likely, but I have to disappoint you Alice, I prefer older sisters.
Older sisters who protect and pamper you a lot will always be better than younger sisters who run after you and are docile as a puppy. Another thing, the chances of an older sister coming into your room without knocking in the middle of some suggestive situations and breaking the whole mood are much smaller than a younger sister who doesn't respect your personal space.
But if you prefer younger sisters I have nothing against it, I will only find you an uneducated person... Ahem, back to the original subject.
As I said before, I no longer care about other reincarnated people, so Alice being one doesn't matter to me anymore, and taking into account how she acts, I doubt very much that she is a threat so I stopped my old paranoia of suspecting everything and everyone long ago.
If she has at least half a brain, she must have realized that I am also a reincarnate, and maybe she has already planned some things as well. But as I said before; I don't care.
(It may seem strange that the MC's lack of interest in everything, but it has an explanation that will come a little later - maybe later in this chapter - Author)
"I know you don't care about such matters, so once again I'll get straight to the point. Would you like to intertwine your soul with your sister's? This brings two benefits to you, such as telepathy without distance limits for better communication and reading each other's memories and feeling each other's emotions if you both consent, enabling a better exchange of information or the ability to better understand each other, and other uses if you can figure it out.
This is a very useful function for all the Chosen, and the sooner you unlock it, the better for both of you, and not all Chosen have this opportunity at awakening as it is necessary for the pair to be emotionally close. In fact, some Chosen Ones don't even know each other until a few years after awakening, further delaying this initial advantage.
As for your personal advantages, you will be able to find out what Alice thinks about you and satiate her curiosity. A good deal, no?"
As he said, this is something very useful, especially the last part...don't judge me, I've always been very curious about why she acts that way with me.
Reading memories can be a very uncomfortable thing for some people, but not for me, I've been together with Alice since I was born, there's nothing she doesn't know about me other than my thoughts. I guess it's a cheap price to pay for the advantage it brings.
"All right, I agree."
"Good. I'll start now. If she accepts, you two will appear somewhere else. It's a space that blends your souls, that you two will be able to enter whenever you want."
And he just closed his eyes and sat still for a while, until out of nowhere I appeared in another place. This shattered my expectations, how can I say... it was quite simple? I thought it would be something more interesting, like a phenomenon that would alert everyone, so I would be stopped from completing it and be almost killed by the reaction and I would appear somewhere random and get something super op and come back shaking the world, but I am imagining too much.
About the place where I showed up, it is a very spacious and cozy room. A large, comfortable-looking bed, a sofa for two and two armchairs around a coffee table with some decorations and magic candles on top, a sliding door in the wall where is perhaps a closet, an opaque glass door leading to the bathroom, and soft light coming from the ceiling, illuminating the room and giving it a nice, cozy atmosphere.
As for me, I am sitting on the bed with my legs hanging out. The bed is too high for me to reach the floor, but this is to be expected considering that I am only 3 years old.
Looking around once again, I notice that the room has no windows and not even an exit door. I thought it would be like a normal house, but this is not the case. But well, since I am inside a soul, it makes sense that I don't need a complete house, this room alone is all that is necessary.
Alice hasn't shown up so far either, I wonder why? If she had refused the request, I shouldn't even be in this place and the other me would have warned me. Whatever the reason, she didn't refuse, so that's good.
After a while of rambling on in my thoughts, I feel the bed sink due to a weight landing on top of it. Turning around, I see Alice, as expected.
But there was something different about her; instead of her usual satisfied expression, she now had an expression of expectation and happiness, as if something good was going to happen. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out why.
We stare at each other for a few seconds without saying anything, and the first to break this situation is Alice with her habit of clinging to me at every moment. Jumping up and hugging me, she looks at me with a beaming expression and then gets right to the point:
"Luke, let's cut to the chase, we've already delayed this conversation too long. We both know that we are reincarnated and we don't want to hurt each other, we love each other unconditionally and we are a family, we are destined to be together as a pair of Chosen ones and we will even be much more than that. I know you agree with what I've said and won't reject me, so let's make that connection soon!"
Very assertive as always, but what she said is right. We are destined to be together as a family or a couple, no matter if we want to or not, and fortunately we do. About us being much more than just that, I don't deny that I have developed a love that would be beyond acceptable for her, even though I have said I prefer older sisters. I have really come to love her company and presence, her qualities and faults, her likes and dislikes, the spoiled way she acts when she is with me or wants me to pay attention to her, her expressions whether of happiness or sadness, anger or calm, I love everything about her that you can imagine and I am sure she feels the same way about me.
With all these hidden feelings finally revealed by me, I feel an impulse driving me to slowly bring my forehead closer to her, afraid that I might hurt her if I go too fast.
As our faces come closer together, I can still see her expectant gaze waiting for my response.
An inch away, I stop briefly and stare deeply into her beautiful bright blue eyes, enjoying and storing in my mind this beautiful sight.
I can see her looking fixedly and deeply at me as well, with a wide and charming smile on her face.
With this vision, I closed the last centimeter of distance between us, touching our foreheads and noses, staring and contemplating each other's faces.
Then it finally happened. We can feel a connection forming between our souls, becoming something like a single entity. All our thoughts, emotions and memories have been transferred to each other, making us know the innermost part of our being.
This connection is not something as simple as just getting to know each other better, as we get to know the innermost and hidden part of each other, we can do the same with ourselves. To truly get along with someone, it is not only necessary to know the person deeply, it is necessary to know yourself deeply as well, only then would the truest of connections be born. This is what happened between Alice and I, we came to know each other so deeply that it would not be wrong to call us a single separate entity.
After some time, the connection was fully formed and we came out of the dazed state we were in.
Soon after this, I could see Alice's expression fill with emotions. Happiness, joy, satisfaction, affection, all these and more passed across her face and mine as well.
With the most genuine emotions I have ever felt, I moved my small arms, lovingly hugging her back and burying my face between her soft and gentle shoulder and neck, to which she did the same to me, giving us a relaxing and cozy feeling.
"I feel like I could stay like this forever and I would never get tired of these sensations" I say whispering in her ear, afraid that I might end these sensations.
"Me too. I want to be able to stay like this forever" I hear her whispering in my ear as well.
We continued like this for quite a while, but this unfortunately had to come to an end. We left our sitting position and snuggled up lying on the comfortable bed, wrapping our tails around each other as we hugged and covered each other with the soft blanket, bringing us more comfort and endless happiness.
In that position, feeling like we are in ninth heaven, we start talking about the things we have learned since we got here, and so we spend a good amount of time with the occasional appearance of some uselessly useful topics.
Alice is actually two years older than me if you count our previous life. I died when I was 17 and she was 18.
(I changed Alice's age from 16 to 18. Since I was 16 a few months ago when I wrote that chapter, I based the characters' ages on that, but now I'm almost 17, so I decided to change it
-Author)
As she and her condensation were talking, the subject came up and so she ended up finding this out, and with that cue she started asking more about me, and since our fates are intertwined, you can say that her condensation knows everything about what has happened and will happen to me; more precisely, she knows everything about my past, but only the "rough draft" of my future, the current general direction of it, since everything can change completely due to some unexpected event.
I asked myself if this was allowed, and she answered me the exact words that her condensation said "I can tell you everything that happened in the past, but not the future, because at one time or another everything will change anyway so there's no point in knowing what will happen." Well, that makes sense.
She also discovered some other rather useless things, like the best way to attract my attention, my preferences, how to use my apathetic personality to her advantage, the best way to control me, etc.
Although the last two are kind of... peculiar knowledge, perhaps?
My apathetic personality has made its silent appearance in these last three years of my life, with my indifference to anything other than Mom or Alice being a great example of this.
Something that I think is interesting to point out is that this apathetic part of me did not originate from the Element of Darkness but rather from my previous life, according to Alice.
If I must honestly say, apathy sucks with some advantages included, a double-edged sword by analogy.
It only seems cool until you start to realize that you are or have already lost your "humanity", your appreciation for your own and other lives, your relationships, your emotions, your interest in everything, the will to do something, even your own dreams become obsolete, and by the time you realize all this it is too late.
But the worst part is, without a doubt, the feeling of "whatever", of indifference, when you realize that you have lost things as important as these. The will to continue as you are, as if nothing is wrong.
Without interests, emotions, desires, dreams. What is the difference between this and being dead?
None, you become nothing more than a walking corpse while you do the "necessary" to maintain your non-existent "happiness", the "necessary" to maintain your "satisfaction" with the present, the "necessary" to maintain this illusory "comfort" you created yourself, the "necessary" to keep yourself in this bubble you call "life" that you stuck yourself in.
Wearing your mask of happiness more deceptive than equality, your laughter emptier than the vacuum in space, your "I'm fine" as true as sea water being sweet, used to fool yourself and everyone else that nothing is wrong.
And in the end...
Distancing yourself from everything and everyone, isolated in your own imaginary little world, which you consider to be "enough".
A being who considers himself "free" while only pretending not to see that he has "imprisoned" himself.
A being that lives only to look for ways to fight the hellish boredom and monotony resulting from its own actions.
Addicted to everything it can, extracting every last drop of it, only to discard it without remorse the moment it has lost its use.
Seeking any kind of stimulus, physical or mental, to feel "alive". But unfortunately, one day you get used to it, even with the dopamine.
In the end everything goes back to the way it was before, an emptiness that cannot be filled. To return to that feeling and the little words from the beginning... the ever present "whatever".
Until the moment you know and finally realize something that is supposed to be terrifying... the moment you realize that not even the emptiness bothers you anymore. The moment you realize that you have truly become nothing more than a puppet.
Caring little about everything and everyone.
Deaths? Losses? Problems? Emptiness? The answer is already very obvious.
At this point, you can already consider yourself dead.
An empty shell.
The remnant of what you once were.
Tell me, is this in any way, shape, form, definition or whatever, something you would find "cool"? Probably not.
I sincerely hope that you are not as broken as I am.
In case you are, I'm not going to say some flowery, empty words like "everyone has their purpose, so don't feel that way" or "life is too beautiful to be that way, so cheer up."
I know they won't work.
If they did, you wouldn't be like this, right?
I'm going to tell you the reality of our situation.
It is not words that will help, it is not people that will help, it is not our escape places that will help, it is not our shelter and comfort that will help us.
It is ourselves and nothing else.
As to how we will help ourselves, that already depends on how much we are willing to do for ourselves.