Chapter 1 – Different lives (1)

Do you sometimes just mindlessly wander into places?

There is no light, but I could still see the world around me, similar, yet different than what I remember seeing before.

Indeed I have wandered into… places.

I feel my face heat up… as if it is getting tightly wrapped or bound or compressed. As a kid, I didn't have enough words to express it.

I try to…

Oh there is the word to this feeling, with this realisation. So this is how it must be, feeling breathless. Drowning usually causes this, I heard.

I hold my neck, as if it'll help me breath. I try to move, but I feel harder than usual, to do so.

Dad? Where are you? When I want to call you… I'm not able to. If I was… would you help me? Could you even?

I shake my head, feeling something dark in it. A feeling of losing a part of my head.

'Help!' I shut my eyes, screaming, and open them quickly, while jumping ahead. I reach the shelf by my bed's side, and hurt my head, as things from the shelf, fall and make falling sounds.

"Pratham!" my dad runs in, as I cry out loud. He holds my hand and scans my head asking, "are you ok?"

"I can't breath," I cry, still holding my neck.

My dad removes my hands from my neck, and rubs my chest, while supporting my head and my back.

"You are okay. It is just a bad dream," he says, while continuing to rub me.

With that warm feeling on my chest, and being able to breath again, I gasp and wake up, feeling myself dream again.

I faced that guy in Witch's dream… and he got a hold of me in his world. So unfair. I was just… helping. Yeah okay, reward for that, probably shouldn't have. Or I wouldn't be here.

A guy sits beside me, and looks at me wake. I struggle to move… unlike the struggle which I had felt in the dream, or felt way back when I was younger.

I look at where we are… and see rubble ahead of me. As if something had broken everything around. Plus… a weird board lies ahead, with a message on it.

"Who is Psyand… and Executive?" I ask the guy.

"You are basically unable to move now, and that is your question?"

"I requested you not to kill me. And seeing that you haven't… I'm guessing you were there to save O," I sigh. "I thought you were there to rob something out of a place with no value, except O."

I feel my body loosen up.

"I'm Wrap. That kid who defeated you is Psyand. And this Executive made this mess and took Psyand's mother away… so try not to have a rematch with her. Really not the time."

***

"Aagh!" I scream, as the doctors push and pull the stretcher I'm on, from the sides, and take me into the operation ward.

My first baby… a real pain in the ass. Surely he'd make a great son to my husband.

I scream more, as the doctors surround me, as a sign to get him out of me. He really seemed desperate to take his first breath manually.

I had read a lot about the biology of this, and was calming myself, knowing it'll be fine, up until this moment…

"We'll need to perform a C-section!" a doctor cries, and my husband shudders, while holding my hand. I hold his hand tightly with my other, and calm him.

With this silent affirmation and consent from us, the doctors continue, and I fall asleep, as the little dosage of anaesthesia enters me.

What a beautiful world this is. Just a woman one moment, and when I wake up… I'll be the mother of a son… or so I hoped.

"Ri, where is my son?" I ask, right as I wake up to find my husband.

He barely looks at me, and just stares at the floor.

"When will I be able to see him?"

His silence… all the readings I had read… comes back to me. 'While a C-section holds more risk than a vaginal delivery, at times…'

"Ri?" I tear.

A prank? Maybe… maybe I gave birth to twins and he wants to surprise me. Yes, twins require C-section, maybe that's why the doctors…

My husband bursts into tears and faces down to the edge of my bed, while grabbing one of my hand.

'He sometimes can go into deep acts for a prank,' I tell myself, but the tears continue running down both our faces.

We really had lost our son. But we couldn't blame the doctors. Every one of my ancestor… had such a case, more than once even. It was because… we were different.

Even when we all had given up the offer from the Crystal Cave, EVERY SINGLE TIME… we were still dragons. And dragons and humans… were never meant to have kids together.

But as any other person, we don't give up hopes. We had to recover from such a… curse, from me being a dragon. And try again. And my parents didn't try to persuade me.

My parents… the only ones who didn't have to face such an issue. They were happy with one kid. Who wouldn't be?

They wouldn't know the pain.

Pain… but no one around. My neighbour must've heard my groans, I see him trying to wake me, and I feel myself on a stretcher again.

The neighbour had moved in not too long ago. He always felt-

"Aagh!" I scream. Where was my husband? I wanted to ask for the doctors to call him.

"Mam, we'll have to perform caesarean," the nurse tells me.

"NO…!" I cry, while grabbing the sheets.

"Mam, there is no other way. Since it was performed the last time, it needs to be done," the doctor explains.

But the last time…

I just silently consent, but I didn't want it. I just wanted my baby to be safe.

Thinking that knowing the gender is what killed my first baby, we even didn't want to know the gender of this one.

I'd love the baby either way. I already do. Carrying the baby for nine months and then that just fading away, right after bearing with so much pain, all for nothing… that is what it feels like.

'I want you to live,' I tell the baby in my womb, while holding my stomach with one hand.

And I feel the baby kick for the first time.

The doctors all gather around and I see my baby.

But… wasn't this supposed to be a C-section? Was this my husband's prank? Really a bad timing for it. Where was he…?

"It's a girl," a doctor finally says, after a lot of silence.

The doctors take the baby away safely.

As I happily gasp, I see a kind of worry and tension in the doctors' face.

"You said it is a C-section..." I say. "Is this my husband's prank?"

"Didn't you push the baby out hard?" the doctor asks.

"I was trying to but couldn't…"

What was this…? The doctors say that the baby had come out by itself, before they could prepare the Caesarean. We only realised later, that she really did bring herself out, using her special powers.

My baby was born a dragon, a dragon without a gem.

My Psyand.

That is how she was born… on the same day her father passed away, unknown to us, at that time.

And that neighbour became an important part for our survival. Rather than a protecter, the demon we had to listen to.

Starting by convincing us, using people, that Psyand needs training… all the way to barging into this hotel room now and knocking Forcerer out, by taking him by surprise.

The Executive stares at me, while wearing a golden mask.

"If you hurt my Psyand…" I say, while shivering, and gritting my teeth.

That silent stare… the scariest thing about silence is the hidden agenda. But this person's agenda was clear… to serve Saturn Organisation, and make my Psyand do the same.

He takes out a little book from his pocket, and a pen, after signing me to wait.

'It is time. We need more Psyands', he writes down and shows me, before I black out.

***

Banging on the door, wakes me up. And I wake up, still in my fight-mode, and slash forward, causing a crack in the shelf ahead, with my force, while I could see the Golden-mask there even now, barely.

"Well, there goes your shelf," I hear a voice scoff, and jump to see who it is.

A guy, a kid-like man either bulky or fat - couldn't tell, sits at the edge of the bed, parallel to mine.

A bed? This wasn't the bed of the hotel… oh, that was broken down by that Golden-mask though.

"Don't fight! The room isn't the place for fighting," someone from outside says.

"We are not fighting," the guy inside says. "No wonder they put you here with me," he laughs.

I just stare at this guy, as I realise this room looks awfully familiar… just like the room I and Feather had, back in the apartments. One bedroom, with two beds at a side each.

"Get ready, we have classes in an hour and half."

The guy seems unlike me, and cool with this place. So such people were the last to ask about the place, without seeming suspicious about it.

But really, what was this?

I get ready in this hostel full of other… students.

And finally, we get to our class. I lose track of that guy from the room, as he goes elsewhere into the class. So I, being a good boy, sit in the first bench besides a tall brown guy with a calm look, pimples on his face, and a black bag with neon edges, separating us.

I had a bag for myself too, which was lying in the shelf I broke. And I keep it between us.

I just awkwardly sit at one corner of the bench, whereas the guy sits on the other. As if we were balancing at the edges of the bench, as if it were a see-saw.

Everyone gets up, as someone enters. So that must be the teacher… a teacher that looked awfully familiar too.

No, I knew her. That was Psyand's mother. One of the last two people I saw, before fainting back then.