Immediately I step inside, my heart, which I thought had been quelled, begins to stir once more.
And a palpable feeling of dread shoots through my chest, traveling around my body with lightning speed, causing goosebumps to flood my skin.
"What the hell is this?" I mutter in between heavy breaths, my hands clutching the chest of my shirt tightly. "What is this damn feeling?"
It's like Ralyn's body is rejecting this place. His own house. A place he grew up in.
A place "He?" grew up in?
The beautifully designed living room warps in my blurring vision. But still, I manage to walk, albeit slowly.
My knees tremble like they don't have the strength to carry me. My breath grows heavier, and my heart still doesn't stop pounding.
Then the flood of sweat comes, dripping around my body, dampening my shirt, flooding my already blurring vision as they pour down my face.
Badump~! Badump~!
The sound of my heartbeat echoes through my skull. And it's the only thing I hear as I find my way to my room.
The closer I get to my room, the more this body protests. Rejecting this place, fearing it, hating it, cursing it.
This body.. No, Ralyn despises this place. A place he had lived in all his life.
I still walk until the sight of a wooden door visible enough for me to identify through the blur shows up in my vision. It's open. Like Ralyn left in a hurry.
It's ironic.
The body keeps protesting against my entering this room. But the fragmented memories in my mind, the memories of the one who owns this body, they tell me that this is his room.
I walk in, sparing no time.
And as I step into the room, just like magic, the tense feeling vanishes.
Not completely, though. Just the blurriness melts away, my breathing stabilizes, and the goosebumps disappear. But my heart still thrums with that same dangerous rhythm.
"This place is really... messy." I voice out, in between gasps and exhales.
A bed lies in the middle of the room. The bed sheets are rumpled, pillows scattered in different directions on the bed and an odd, old-looking book in the middle of the bed.
The walls of the room are milky in color, and the window at the edge of the room is shut.
I turn my neck, looking around the scattered room filled with paper, clothes on the ground and countless rubbish.
But something catches my attention in the room. It's the mirror hung on the wall, a few inches away from the portable wooden table and chair. A study desk.
Now that I think of it, I haven't even seen what Ralyn looks like.
So I walk toward the mirror, my leather boots shielding my legs from the pile of rubbish in this room, but it's still annoying the way I have to walk cautiously.
"Tch." I click my tongue as I tiptoe. "Not only is he a coward, he's a dirty coward too," I mutter as I head toward the mirror. I'm just a few inches away from it now.
But even with all the rubbish in this room, it doesn't smell bad. Not at all.
Instead, it smells like jasmine here.
My lips curve into a bitter smile.
He's better than me. My house used to smell like garbage.
I arrive at the mirror. But I don't stare at it first. I look down, my eyes focused on the weirdly designed candle on top of the wooden desk by my right-hand side.
That's a strange candle. The body of the candle is made of brass, and there are hieroglyphic-like drawings on it.
Something like this isn't even in the fragmented memories floating in my mind.
Well, it's not like there's much to these memories anyway. They're incomplete.
So I look up at the mirror, deciding to worry about the candle another time.
My reflection stares back at me.
"Ralyn. So this is what you look like." I whisper, touching my face.
My eyes never depart from those crystal blue eyes that stare right back at me, as if they're gazing into my soul.
My silver hair, I see it now. It's short, middle-parted and smooth.
I take off my brown shirt, and I throw it on the ground.
"Hmm," I hum, studying this body with precision.
He's lean for a supposed young master. Too lean. But still, he looks far better than how I looked back on Earth.
His body carries a youthful flair. The way his face looks like he has never seen any hardship, the way his eyes..
"Hm? His eyes are.. dull. That's odd. Why.." I stutter, holding my cheeks with my hands. "Why do his eyes look like mine? Why are they devoid of depth?" I ask.. no one. Because I'm the only one present in this room. But still, I feel like if I voice my questions out, then maybe the answer will present itself.
"Ha.." I hold my forehead. My bitter smile never lost from my lips. " A child who's lost his light?"
I was twenty-seven when I died. But this body in front of me belongs to a child no less than fifteen.
"This actually explains a lot of things," I say as I put my brown shirt back on and walk toward the bed. "It explains why his heart, even though his soul is absent, never forgets his fear."
I plop back on the bed. "It's not just fear. It's hatred. A deep-seated hatred for life. Just.." I rub my right hand on my face as I let out a soft sigh. "Just like me." Then I take my right hand off my face and relax it on the book on the bed.
Book?
I sit up immediately, grabbing the book with me.
"What is this book?"
The cover is made from fine leather, and the texture of the book is thick.
I open the book. And on the first page I see:
"Diary of Ralyn Steelheart."