'I feel like crap.'
I'm sick. I've had a fever the past few days, and the way my nose has been clogged has been doing nothing but making me feel pissed and miserable.
"Ugh…"
I stand up on my feet with a groan and walk outside my room, gently closing the door behind me as I do so.
Walking through the hallway the other doors have small snores or whispers behind them. The other kids that live in the tavern with me are asleep.
Trying my best to be quiet, I tip-toe downstairs and into the tavern's main dining hall. The dining room in the tavern is usually rowdy and loud with Chasers or other people in town having a drink, but it's a lot more peaceful when it's quiet like this.
The wooden walls align up the side, the soft creak of the floor underneath me with each step. The tables are clean and ready for tomorrow's customers.
I head into the kitchen at the back of the dining hall. It's just as quiet as the dining room, except…
"Fault?"
My head turns to the left, where I heard the whisper.
It's Hale, his blue eyes blinking at me. I lean back a bit, surprised he's awake. He's holding his own cup and leaning against the side of the counter.
"Hale? What're you doing up…?"
He smiles, "I could ask you the same." He glances at the cup I was reaching for next to the sink.
"Thirsty?"
"Uh… yeah."
I nod at him and grab the cup, I take a labored breath and sigh, holding under the faucet and giving it a gentle tap, a little blue circle forming and pouring out cool water from it.
"Still sick." I mutter while looking down into the cup.
"Hm?" Hale looks back at me, seemingly spaced out, distracted with his drink.
I speak up a bit, "I'm still sick, so… that's why I'm up. Can't sleep."
"Ah…"
I finish filling the cup with water and take a few gulps of it, half the cup already gone in just a moment. I turn around and look at Hale.
He's a year younger than me, but still taller than I am. He has golden-colored hair that's seemingly always perfect, most of the girls in the tavern fawn over him. He smiles at me.
"What about you?" I ask.
He only shrugs, "I just… I couldn't sleep too, I guess."
I nod back, "Fair enough."
So we sit in silence, across the main counter of the kitchen. I lean against the waist-level cupboards next to the sink and sigh.
Pinching the bridge of my nose and closing my eyes, I try to ease my headache.
"Need help with anything?" I hear across from me.
The question surprised me, Hale doesn't really interact with me too much, but he's the closest I have to a friend in the tavern, or in town, really.
"Uhm… nah, no, not really." I shake my head and finish the cup of water, setting it down.
I pat down my clothes, they're still somewhat damp from how much I've been sweating during my fever.
"Being sick is a pain in the ass, I swear…" I mutter under my breath, tugging at the collar of my shirt. A feeble attempt to cool off.
"But you know what it means, right?" Hale responds to me talking to myself.
"Hm…? What?"
"Being sick, especially around our age." He points at me and a smile starts to creep on his face.
"Mana being introduced and focused on your blood flow… finding a place to settle…"
My eyes widen as I realize what he's describing, and I begin to lean in.
"You don't mean…?"
He nods.
"Don't you remember it from class…? We're in the same one, aren't we?"
I blink.
'Are we?'
"U-uh huh… yeah." I laugh quietly, a bit nervous that I never realized that.
"Infusion Preparation? The class that twelve to fifteen year olds take to… well, prepare for their Infusion."
I nod at him, my own smile forming as well.
"Y-yeah, true… so that means I'm getting my Infusion…?"
He shrugs, "Hell if I know, you could be just sick."
I stare at him, my smile fading.
'Dick.'
I only snicker and palm my face, "Way to hype me up."
Hale smiles and shakes his head too.
We sat in silence for a few more moments. I idly stare into my cup and take a few more sips of it before refilling it again.
I turn back to him with a pause and take another breath, "Say, Hale…"
"Hm?"
"What… what do you think your Infusion's gonna be?"
He raises his eyebrow at me, "Uhm… not sure…?"
"'Not sure'?"
He nods, "Yeah, I'm not sure. After all, they reflect some image of you, right?"
I tilt my head as he continues, "I don't think I know myself that well, so I couldn't guess."
He looks at me, "You?"
I smile, "I guess I'm not sure either, but I hope it's… something."
…
Time passes as I chat with Hale, moving onto random things about school, our town, Tenna, and the tavern. It had been a while since I talked with someone so much.
It was nice.
Back in my room, I sigh as I feel the same fever crash down on me again, my head back to pounding even after I drank some more water.
'Fuck… I hope this actually is my Infusion… or else it might actually be some illness that's going to kill me.'
Kain had already helped me go see a doctor for some medicine, but that drunkard just blew me off and said it was allergies…
I groan and change into looser clothes. To help cool off the heat from my fevers.
Flopping back on my bed and sprawling on the sheets, I stretch and yawn.
I think I could actually go to sleep or something now.
I smile, thinking about some different possibilities of what my Infusion's gonna be.
'Maybe I get a rare color, like a gold or silver… or purple, I hear those are really nice too.'
I close my eyes and drift to sleep.
*****
Fault wakes up, his eyes still hazy and groggy from his sleep. The area around him isn't his room, no, not at all.
A grey landscape, empty. Plains of grass in the gray world whisk in wind that isn't there.
"...? Huh?"
He immediately leans up, ignoring the weird feeling along the left side of his face. Glancing around and taking in his surroundings, he sees it's just flat land, perhaps a few hills in the distance.
But that was all.
For as far as he can see, it's nothing but a light grey coloring, the world even seems to lack shadows.
'…? Oh, it's this…'
His thoughts are cut off as he hears a static sound. An amalgamation of harrowing sounds and voices that seems distant, not quite in his ear just yet. It seems… nearly soothing.
■■■■■■
It's faint, but it's there.
…
Fault had seen this world plenty of times before.
Leaning up, he looks down at his hand and flexes it, closing his fingers in and out of a fist. He sighs and fully stands up, looking around one more time, his hand slowly touching the side of his face that feels off.
Warmer, and at other times, colder than the rest of his body. That's what the left side of his face felt like. A focused point of a feeling he couldn't understand.
He looked up and saw what resembled stars in the sky. Except, not quite the same white dots that appeared in the regular night sky. In this grey world, the stars that flickered above seemed to be shining… black, a radiant darkness.
Hundreds of them fill the sky in specks, perhaps even thousands– tens of thousands. A seemingly endless amount that stretches beyond his field of view. Just like actual stars.
Fault blinks, and suddenly…
…he's back in his bedroom, staring at the ceiling.
His clothes are drenched in sweat, his eyes bloodshot red as he jolts up. His fever is hitting a worse pitch.
"Haah… haah…" Panting, he stands up and stumbles out of his sheets, his clothes sticking to him as he labors himself out of his room.
'W-water…'
Staggering through the hall, he uses the walls to support himself, heading into the bathroom.
He enters the bathroom and taps the faucet, the blue Mana highlighting itself as he dives his head down to the flowing water to drink it.
He takes a few big gulps of the water, the coldness of it seeping into his body and cooling him down. With a sigh of relief, he uses the water and splashes some on his face as well.
He grips the sides of the sink while panting softly, the left side of his face feels like it's burning. His pants turn into gasps as he brings his hand to the burning side of his face, looking up…
…he finds it.
A pitch black flame-like shape moving and flickering up his face. It starts from the bottom of his jawline, slowly expanding up. Further to his cheekbone, further to his eye, and stopping just above the line of his eyebrow.
His fever plummets almost as soon as he takes in the dark color moving up the side of his face. A wave of relief passes through him like the water he just splashed, immediately soothing his body of the migraine, the fever, and his sickness.
It was his mark.
His Infusion.
It had formed.