Chapter 5: Solitude.
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An echo within the void that is solitude.
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Upon arriving at school, the students were heading directly to their classrooms.
Liu and Yumi had been friends since they were very young, and they had been lucky enough to be in the same class for their three years at school, so they headed straight to their classroom.
The school was rather large, made up of five buildings: one building where theoretical classes were held, composed only of classrooms; one building containing a library and rooms available for teachers and staff; one building used as a restaurant exclusively for the school; and two warehouses, one for sports and one for practical work.
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Start of the second hour of the day.
02.00/10.00
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Liu and Yumi were walking through the third corridor on the ground floor of the theoretical classes building.
"We ended up arriving pretty early, there aren't many people in the hallways." said Yumi.
"Did we walk faster than usual?" asked Liu.
"No, no, you passed by my house earlier than usual, so I hurried to catch up with you."
Liu nodded, they had arrived at their classroom, the fourth one, the one at the very end of the corridor.
The village of Luttren had around a thousand inhabitants, including between three and four hundred students. With a maximum of eighty students per year, the theoretical classes building was divided into two floors and three rows of classrooms per floor, each row composed of four rooms to accommodate all the students of each year.
"Look, no one's here yet." Yumi remarked as she entered.
Liu let out a sigh of relief.
"That's good, at least I might have a chance to avoid questions until the meal hour."
Yumi sat at her seat. "You really don't want to explain yourself, huh?" Liu followed her and sat next to her.
The classrooms were arranged like a rectangular arena. The teacher's desk was in the middle, surrounded in front, to the right, and to the left by long tables used as desks for the students, with a board on the only empty wall, allowing the teacher to write if needed...
Liu and Yumi were seated facing the entrance door, at the end of the table right next to the board.
The ideal spot so that the fewest people possible would notice the absence of Liu's right arm, according to her.
"I don't see why I'd have to explain myself about my arm when I'm not close to anyone except you. But either way, everyone's going to want to ask me what happened. It's annoying!"
They continued talking for a short while before the classroom started to fill up, greeting their classmates until the teacher entered.
"Good morning, teacher." all the students said as they stood up.
"Sit down."
"So we have language today." Liu remarked upon seeing that it was the most boring teacher who had entered the room.
"Didn't you check the schedule?"
"Too busy. Let's say." she answered vaguely.
The teacher placed his things on the desk in the middle of the room, then walked toward Liu.
Arriving in front of her, "If you have any problem during the lesson, you can come directly to me." he said, in a low voice that even Yumi had trouble hearing.
Liu nodded. 'That's why he's boring, he talks way too quietly.' feeling an insistent gaze, she turned her head to the right and saw Yumi looking at her even more suspiciously than before.
"So it's more serious than I thought, huh?" Yumi whispered.
'Ah damn, the teacher just made Yumi even more curious. Good thing we're in class, I still have until the meal hour if I skip breaks. I just have to say that since I missed yesterday, I don't want to miss anything today. Even if that makes Yumi even more suspicious, it's better than anything else.'
While Liu was thinking, the lesson had started.
"Today we are going to discuss how language has evolved over generations, and more specifically duri—"
Liu let out a big yawn and immediately stopped listening to what the teacher was saying.
'Boring. I don't have time for this, I need to think about what I'm going to do from now on. My future?'
Liu turned her head to look at Yumi.
'What is she doing? Why is she staring at the ceiling?'
Yumi was also lost in her thoughts. But unlike Liu, she was thinking about what could have happened to her and how to make Liu tell her everything.
'Hhaa, alright, what should I do. I need to sort out my options. First, I'll give myself a two-week delay before actually making a final decision.'
She felt like she was going to get a serious headache from thinking so much, but she had to do it.
'First, Mimie and papi Mo. I need to become strong enough to check if they are alive and to be able to control the Form. That's the first objective I have to achieve before doing anything else. The options I have for that are; just me, I have to become stronger by myself and handle this by myself. I could try explaining it again to the steward to ask for help from security. But he didn't believe me the first time and they are all normal humans, they don't stand a chance against the Form when it absorbed papi Mo and Mimie.'
She was convinced that she could only rely on herself.
'Pasha probably believes me now. But that's even more reason not to involve her in this, I must not lose anyone else. Now the issue is to know how strong I need to become to be able to control the Form. Last time I couldn't use energy vision. So I don't know the energy condensation of the Form.'
Liu had decided to remove the word "black" each time she talked about the Form, she found it simpler and more practical for thinking.
'Also, I wonder if the reason why papi Mo and Mimie couldn't resist wasn't because of the vortex that absorbed everything, and not because of the Form itself. Maybe the Form was in a special state at that moment and now it isn't as strong anymore. Even if it's just a hypothesis, it's not illogical. Maybe it would be enough if I become as strong as papi Mo.'
While Liu was thinking, the lesson continued.
She took a short break from her thoughts and listened to the lesson for a few seconds.
"…in our time, formal and informal languages are completely different from just three generations ago. Would anyone know what their characte—"
This didn't interest Liu. 'If only I could find solutions with someone, that would be so good. Having help from someone who could understand my situation.'
The situation was starting to become desperately unpleasant for Liu. "…not a single one who wou—" she glanced at the classroom, observing the people around her.
"Alone." she murmured.
'I am surrounded by so many people, and yet I am so alone.'
"Alone?" Yumi whispered beside Liu.
"I'm here, you're not alone." Liu looked at her.
"That's true." she whispered back with a slight smile.
This smile wasn't very joyful and seemed rather sad and bitter. But Yumi didn't have the experience to notice something like that, so it reassured her a little.
"Do you want us to take a break together now?" she asked.
"No, it's fine. I'm okay." Liu replied on the surface.
'I'm not ready to explain anything to her yet.'
"Okay."
Yumi had finished staring at the ceiling before Liu murmured the word alone, so her thoughts had likely reached a conclusion.
'Hhaa, even with Yumi I can't say anything. I understand what Pasha meant. What I want the most right now is completely out of reach, and it makes me feel so alone.'
Thinking back to her conversation that morning, Liu remembered that she hadn't slept at all for a long time.
She hadn't had the opportunity to condense endurance energy since she had released everything during her long run two days ago.
This realization made her yawn.
'The worst part is that what I want isn't really unreachable. I could talk about it to Yumi or the teacher or even other classmates, but they wouldn't believe me anyway. And I can't selfishly involve them in my problems when it's clearly dangerous. Damn, it's even worse than last time, this feeling of complete loneliness. I feel cut off from the world even though I can still touch it, I feel like I can reach something without having the right to actually grasp it.'
Without realizing it, Liu was becoming more and more tired from thinking. She yawned again.
'Why do I have to feel this again, isn't it unfair? When is it going to stop? If only I could find a button to stop feeling this. It's exhausting.'
She yawned again, interrupting her thoughts. She was so tired that she started falling asleep without meaning to.
Before falling asleep, she heard the teacher speaking, "… solitude is…" that was the only thing she understood before drifting off.
Yumi noticed that Liu had fallen asleep, but she didn't wake her up. She wasn't that inconsiderate. The teacher also noticed, but left her alone.
Liu sank into the depths of the ocean that is sleep.
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When Liu reached the bottom of that ocean, she heard a sound that echoed alone and infinitely, in the depths of her ocean of sleep.
The sound came from nowhere, as if it came from the void, as if the void itself had produced it.
Liu woke up instantly.
'W..where am I?!'
Liu was in a completely black and empty space.
She was floating, as if she were at the bottom of the ocean.
She was completely lost.
'What is happening again?' she struggled, searching for an anchor point to hold onto and reassure herself.
The sound kept resonating at the same frequency since the beginning, and did not seem ready to stop.
But in this unknown place, her sense of direction was completely disoriented.
'Am I upside down or not? Am I lying with my back toward the ground? Is there even a ground here?'
'And what is that sound?'
Liu began to panic, the unknown nature of her situation raised her anxiety to a level she did not want to experience again.
'Why does it sound like a word?'
To Liu, the sound conveyed meaning.
To Liu, the sound was expressing something.
A word, 'But what word?'
Liu thought back to the last word she heard before falling asleep.
"Solitude?"
She spoke out loud without meaning to, perhaps by reflex, or perhaps for another reason.
As soon as Liu pronounced the word Solitude.
The sound stopped completely and a total silence instantly settled.
At that moment, the completely black void changed. Numerous points of light, more or less visible, appeared everywhere around Liu.
'Fireflies?'
These points of light were very small like fireflies. They seemed within reach in this void, but an unimaginable distance separated them from each other and from Liu.
Liu tried to move toward one of these points.
'Am I really moving forward?'
But they were so far away that she did not feel like she was moving at all.
She turned her head to the right and to the left to see if there had been any change.
'What is that?' it was at that moment that she noticed not far from her, on her right, a shape that stood out from the void and the points of light.
She moved forward to see more closely, this time she noticed that she was actually moving, even if she did not understand how.
The more she moved forward, the more the shape changed, and eventually she noticed that this shape seemed human.
This human shape hid behind it some of the points of light. Making it quite dark but distinguishable from where Liu was.
She stopped, not knowing what to do anymore.
She tried to speak.
"Uh... hel.."
But before she could finish, the human shape that had not moved until now changed.
It distorted, dematerialized,... Liu remained speechless in front of this spectacle.
'What is happening again?'
The human shape transformed into a sphere the size of a human head? Maybe.
This sphere was transparent, the light from the points of light passed through it.
But even though it was transparent, it was still distinguishable and visible.
'Is this what jellyfish look like?' Liu wondered.
'But what is happening?'
She remained still, her eyes fixed on the sphere.
A few seconds later, other changes appeared. The inside of the sphere suddenly filled with two distinct colors.
Black and white.
These two colors appeared from nowhere.
They were each on their own side, splitting the sphere into equal parts. Until, a few seconds later, the two colors began to move.
They started rotating in the same direction in perfect harmony.
In just a few seconds, black and white had rotated an incalculable number of times, at such a speed that the sphere itself looked like a:
'Yin Yang?'
Liu did not understand anything that was happening, but her eyes could not detach from the scene before her.
A few seconds later, the rotation speed of black and white was such that the Yin Yang seemed motionless and... immutable.
'What is going to happen now?'
Liu had completely forgotten her situation.
Her curiosity had overtaken her anxiety.
'Something new is going to happen, right?'
And as if to answer her question, her curiosity.
A change occurred; the Yin Yang, whose rotation could no longer be distinguished, escaped? came out? while expanding? the right word to define what happened was rather difficult to determine.
What came closest to the situation could be expressed by the verb to expand, yes.
The Yin Yang inside the sphere expanded enormously in an instant.
It expanded so much that Liu, who was the closest existence to the sphere, could not see how far the Yin Yang now extended.
'What is this? Where am I?'
Liu looked around her.
She could feel it, she was still in the void.
But this void was different from before.
This void felt less solitary.
This void was... black and white.
Liu was inside the Yin Yang.
'I don't really understand.'
She turned her head in all directions, down, up, right, left.
Suddenly she stopped and looked straight ahead.
'The sphere hasn't moved? It hasn't moved since the beginning. It wasn't even rotating with the black and white. I wonder what it could be?'
Liu's curiosity turned toward the sphere rather than her surroundings.
She wanted to move forward, but suddenly, the sound reappeared, this time she heard it as a word, or rather, she was able to translate the sound into a word.
The word:
"Solitude!"
It began to resonate, surprising Liu.
'Why is it reappearing?'
At the same moment, the place where she was changed.
She was no longer in an unknown void.
No, this time she was in a place she knew.
She was sitting in a carriage, in front of her was a chevarbre, one of the rarest species of Arbority.
She looked around and recognized the road she was on.
'This is the main road to go to Luschen, the merchant village. What am I doing here?'
"Hhouuaah!"
Suddenly, she heard a yawn coming from right next to her.
She jumped and turned toward the source of the noise.
'Who is that?! Why is he sitting next to me?! Or rather why am I sitting next to him? I've been dreaming this whole time, right? Then why am I not waking up? Normally when you realize you're dreaming you wake up immediately, right? All of this feels so real.'
She had gotten so used to only reacting in her head and talking only to herself that it took her a good twenty seconds before thinking of doing anything else.
"Who are you?" she asked in an aggressive voice while taking a self-defense stance she had learned in sports.
But the old man next to her did not react at all, he acted as if Liu did not exist.
"Huh? What is happening?"
'Is it because I'm in a dream?' she wondered when the place changed once again.
"Solitude!"
'Again??'
This time the place was even more familiar to her.
'Huh? What is this mess?!'
This time she saw herself sleeping on her desk in the classroom where she was supposed to be.
'Why do I see myself? Why am I so close to myself? No, rather why am I not myself?'
She tried to move, to speak, or to do anything else, but she could do nothing.
'Am I in Yumi's body? I'm seeing through her eyes. But then why is she looking at my face like that? And why does my face look so weird and embarrassing when I sleep?'
Liu could only complain about her situation.
"Eh..ehehe."
Yumi giggled softly while looking at Liu's face, she had her head resting on her arm and was looking directly at Liu.
"Too cute." she whispered in a voice only she could hear, but of course Liu heard it too.
'How am I too cute?! Why are you looking at me like that when I drool while sleeping?'
At that moment the sound resonated for the fourth time.
"Solitude!"
And this time the place did not change but Liu herself woke up.
She opened her eyes and fixed them on Yumi. The word Solitude still resonating in her ears.
'Why did she say I was too cute? It's too embarrassing to look at her now.'
Liu blushed as she thought back to what had just happened.
Yumi smiled and teased Liu.
"Why are you blushing?" she whispered with a smile.
"I'm not too cute. Okay!" Liu whispered back insistently.
The word Solitude continued to resonate until it became nothing more than background noise for Liu.
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An echo within the void that is solitude.
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