Caecus woke up under a warm sheet, and the sterile smell of antiseptic greeted him immediately.
The memories from what happened before he lost consciousness rushed into his head, causing his pupils to dilate and making him retch.
His breath quickened more and more, and he started to hyperventilate.
Voices started blurring around him as the nurses ran to his side.
He was only able to make out things like, "He's having a panic attack!" and a paper bag was put over his mouth.
"Breathe slowly, three seconds in, six seconds out."
Inhaling his own breath helped his oxygen levels regulate again, and slowly his breathing returned to normal.
Caecus felt a hand on his shoulder. A nurse. She was asking him if everything was alright now, but her voice was simply too loud for him, so he flinched.
"D-don't talk… c-can you guys leave me alone for a few minutes?" the blind boy said, trying to make sense of his overstimulation.
The nurse just nodded in response and left with her colleagues.
Now in silence, Caecus was able to think about everything quietly.
'I'll never remove reverse assimilation again, I could have worked around it by just enhancing my facial skin! But… in the end it did kind of save my future, since it allowed me to assimilate enough soul essence to withstand that strike…'
'Ah right, I need to reverse assimilate again.'
Caecus sat down in a meditative position and used breathing exercises to boost his concentration.
He followed the instructions that Amelia had given him back then, and reverse assimilated his sense of hearing along with his sense of touch, specifically focusing on the pain-recepting nerves.
After he was done, he felt his soul essence draining, but the overstimulation faded away.
'Much better. I need to find a way to only affect my pain receptors, not my whole sense of touch… I think that's for when my soul essence control is better. I need to practice assimilation more though.'
'I wonder what the stage after reverse assimilation is.'
Now that he had regained a clear mind, he noticed that the wound he had suffered during his fight was completely healed, as if it had never been there.
'I don't feel any pain in the area where I got stabbed, or was it cut? I mean a mix of both… anyways, weirdly it doesn't hurt, it just feels normal.'
Probing, Caecus touched his stomach, and indeed he only felt smooth skin and his abdominals.
'The healing went well, as it seems…'
The blind boy propped himself up and walked towards the door where the nurses were waiting.
When the door opened, all of their gazes shifted towards Caecus' small frame.
"E-ehem. I'm sorry for all the commotion I caused, I think I'm fine now." Caecus said, rubbing the back of his head.
Most of the nurses just nodded and left, and one nurse followed him back inside.
"You don't need to apologize, it was a grave wound after all. Everything healed properly, due to the vice principal being present and healing everyone in the academy clinic."
"Oh, okay… that makes me relieved. So is there nothing I need to take care of?"
"Well, you are just as healthy as before, so don't worry about anything. We noticed that you were blind, and you hadn't informed any of the academy staff before taking the entrance exams, so we added it to your profile."
"Profile?"
"Yes, the instructors and professors can look at the profiles of every student to get basic information about you."
Caecus understood and just nodded.
"Alright, I think that's it. You can leave anytime you wish, all of your stuff is in your dorm room. Oh…" The nurse pondered for a few seconds, looked through a few drawers, and then took something out.
"Here you go, your soul phone and clothes. They were lying in your locker."
"Thank you. I'll be taking my leave."
The nurse nodded and left.
'I'll look at my messages when I'm back in my room.'
Caecus left the clinic and noticed he was not that far from the cafeteria.
'Should I go eat now? Eh… no… better not. I'll put my stuff in my room first.'
Walking for a while, Caecus noticed that no one was outside.
'Is it nighttime?'
He didn't unlock his soul phone, but just checked the time.
"It's 3 AM?!" he couldn't help but exclaim out loud.
One of the negatives of being blind is being unable to tell the time by something like the sky.
Of course, he could feel the sunlight on his skin, but that didn't make much of a difference when he didn't know where exactly the sun was.
Also, in Anima the sun was only out for a few hours, so even if he could look at the sky, anything past 17:00 would be difficult to estimate.
After a few minutes of walking, Caecus reached his dorm and went to his room.
He opened the door, and everything was in its place, clothes in the closet and his keepsakes there.
The blind boy let out a sigh of relief, stored his used clothes away, changed into sleeping garments, and lay down in his bed.
'Time to check my phone now.'
When he unlocked it, a rush of notifications popped up.
'Wow.'
In his private messages, it was only two people though, the only two who had his number.
Titus and Amelia.
He opened Titus' messages first and saw a string of messages.
'Clips?'
A lightbulb lit up in Caecus' mind.
'Oh no… all the tournament fights got uploaded!'
Quickly, he opened Soul Gram and checked his notifications.
'Zero notifications… oh, they probably don't know I'm on this account. Phew… that's fortunate.'
Caecus decided to watch the clips that were uploaded, but noticed one thing.
'All of the big publishers only upload the fights that are interesting, and they get all the attention. As for my fight… oh, it doesn't seem to be uploaded here.'
'My fights weren't interesting enough for them?! I literally almost died twice!'
The first clip that showed up had two girls fighting against each other.
On the caption there was text that said, "Rank 1, Aurelia Caelum vs Rank 2 Nyx Noctis."
Sensing the views, Caecus became amazed.
'What?! One hundred million views?! That's… a lot.'
He pressed play and could sense the two girls circling around each other.
They were about the same height, Nyx being a little taller, and she also had long hair—
'Wait! That's the same girl who I met in the library!'
Caecus' pupils contracted as he realized that the person he had been talking to was actually the rank two of this year.
'Rank one… Aurelia?!'
He hadn't really cared about the first and other rankings so far. Even when he looked at them with Titus, he didn't know any rankings other than his own or Titus'.
Sensing his sister there, he was a little amazed, but not surprised.
'It makes sense considering her soul density… but wait, Nyx was rank three when I met her, and for Aurelia to be placed above her, she has to be rank one too! Wow… she's doing well, it seems.'
A weird feeling arose in Caecus.
He was happy for her, proud even, as though they had been separated she was still his twin, his other half.
But at the same time, he felt the shadow looming over him grow bigger and bigger.
'She has way more talent than me, of course the distance between us will grow more and more as we get older.'
Knowing her upbringing, as he was raised by the same parents, they probably taught her that weakness is a disgrace and made her think that he wasn't worth anything due to being blind.
'She probably hates me, if I take her upbringing into consideration.'
'The only way that I can step out of her shadow… or at least get close to her seems to be getting stronger.'
Due to the increased comprehension of his mind, even though his memories were extremely hazy, he could remember her better than before and still missed her.
He knew he shouldn't feel like this, since it would do him no good in the end, but until he was five they had spent all of their time together and were inseparable.
The longing he felt… was illogical and stupid to say, but that's what love is.
In the end, the only love he had ever experienced in his life stemmed from her, so naturally he yearned for it.
Caecus knew, he definitely knew that it wouldn't happen, since she surely wasn't the same person she was back then, but he still yearned for any kind of love, and in this case it was familial.
Because humans always longed for what they didn't have, doing their best to get it.
And he had to grow stronger for his longing.
…
The next morning, he went to shower and went through his morning routine.
For the next few days, the students would have a small break, where they could do whatever they wanted, and then the introductory classes would start.
During that time, they had to choose their branches and classes.
With his soul phone in hand and one earplug in, out of which music was playing, he left his room.
Caecus walked over to Titus' door and knocked three times.
His soul phone showed that it was currently eight in the morning, but he knew Titus well enough.
That boy woke up at six in the morning every day, due to how he was raised as the heir of a corpus.
'I wonder what he's doing in his room during that time… after all, whenever I knock when I wake up he's usually inside.'
The doorknob twisted and opened, exposing a boy that was way too big for his age.
Before the blind boy could register anything, he suddenly felt a strong grip on his shoulder, and he was pulled inside the room.
"I was so worried! Tell me what happened!"
Titus' brows were furrowed and his eyes widened, and Caecus' soul sense registered the inside of Titus' room.
It was the same size as Caecus', and had the same layout, but there was a huge set of plushies on Titus' bed, which was way bigger than Caecus' bed.
There was a stuffed bear taller and bigger than Caecus sitting in a corner of the room, and everything was decorated cutely.
'What.'
After realizing what had just been exposed, Titus froze up.
"…I can explain."
Taking a few seconds to process what he had witnessed, Caecus stood still and tried to ignore the meowing that came from the cat videos playing on the computer on Titus' desk.
There was a rug on the floor shaped like a cat's face, stretching across most of the room.
"I… I just really like cats."
"I can see that," Caecus replied monotonically.
Then Titus saw the blind boy cracking up, as if this was the most hilarious joke ever.
'No way! I could've guessed by his soft and nice personality, but he really is the total opposite of what he looks like!'
"What's so funny?! I just like small and cute things, that's all!"
"N-nothing is wrong with that, I-I respect anyone's interests as long as they don't harm— puhahaha!"
Trying to keep himself from laughing, Caecus stuttered, but in the end his efforts were futile.
"Keep laughing, but if I were you I'd wonder why we are friends."
"What?" Caecus was extremely confused.
Until it registered, and like any other short person, the blind boy hated comments about his height.
"You! You dare! Just because I'm short doesn't mean you can… argh! Fuck you!"
Now it was Titus who was laughing.
The both of them left for the cafeteria and sat down, facing each other at a table.
"It was super weird! I won all of my fights but the last one, but in two of them someone tried to cripple me!"
"Hmmm… well, in the rulebook it clearly states that any crippling, or attempted crippling, will result in punishment, so they must've done it for a reason."
"What reason? That I pissed them off? I mean, it just doesn't add up… wait, one thing does. They were both Caelums."
"Both from your own corpus, huh? Well, why would they try to kill someone from their own corpus? Caecus, I think this goes deeper."
"Yeah, I do too… someone from Caelum must've told them to do that, now I just need to find out who…"
'Well, thinking about it, it must be someone from the main family, as I'm not known by any of the side or junior families. But who? I mean, it does make sense that Father is mad at me for defying him… so it's probably him.'
'Other than him, we just have Mother, Grandparents, two great aunts and one great uncle, my great-grandfather, and my two uncles. My cousins aren't part of the main family anymore though.'
'They are all not interested in me. The last time I saw my mother in real life was when I was six. All of my grand-family and above don't care about me either. Aurelia… why would Aurelia want to cripple me? Well, I don't know her well, so there is a chance. But Father seems to be the most probable.'
Titus looked at him worriedly and chewed on his food.
"So you're completely fine now?"
"Yes, completely fine, all healed up and no permanent injuries."
"Alright, that's a relief. Now coming back to what you told me before the tournament. What's with your genius?"
"Eh… this is gonna be a lot."
"Just tell me now! You made me even more curious."
"Alright, I'm blind."
The huge boy stared at him, expression deadpan. "That was an unfunny joke. Now please tell me what's actually the case."
"I'm not joking."
"How do you navigate if you're blind then?"
"Oh… ah, that's why you didn't believe me. Well, look, I can echolocate using sounds, not only ones that I make now, but also from outside sources."
"Echolocation? So like with your ears?"
"Yes, with my ears. Look, if I cover them up, I won't be able to tell anything about my surroundings."
Caecus grabbed a napkin, ripped out a tiny piece, rolled it up, stuffed it into his ear, and covered the ear with his hands.
"Now I'm not able to feel my surroundings well. I have sensitive ears though, so I will still be able to hear a little."
Titus waved his hand in front of Caecus' face, but the blind boy just said, "You know I'm still able to feel the air moving," and took the napkin out of his ear.
"So you're serious?"
"Yes, I am. Well, right now I'm like a normal human, just that I'm unable to read signs without touching them, or process anything that needs light, like colors. The only colors I can perceive are aura colors."
"Wow… and you still managed to get Rank 300! That's so cool…"
"Haha, thank you… as for how that ties into my genius, let me explain it to you. So, you know how your senses get stronger with every soul rank increase?"
"Yes, I think it was the main senses and comprehension speed, but at rank three and four also bone structure and muscle get better to prepare you for metamorphosis at rank five."
"Well, basically most of the enhancements go to your eyesight, but what happens when your eyes don't connect to your nervous system? For me, my visual nerve isn't there, causing my brain to receive no input. Naturally, like any blind person, my brain reused my visual cortex for other senses like touch and hearing. What happened when I ranked up was that all the enhancements that should've gone to my eyes went to my other senses, like touch and hearing that I just mentioned, but the thing that increased the most to accommodate all of this is my comprehension speed." Caecus inhaled after his lengthy explanation.
"Comprehension speed? So your body compensated for not being able to see and redistributed all the benefits from ranking up to everything else?"
"Yes, exactly."
"I have never heard of this. Are there any negatives that come with it?" Titus was very curious now.
"Well, first of all, due to my stronger sense of touch, my pain receptors are way more sensitive, something that usually doesn't happen to anyone while ranking up. I don't know why I have it, but it's horrid. I had to reverse assimilate my hearing and sense of touch just so I wouldn't have to suffer through torture every day…"
"Oof… wait, in that clip your reverse assimilation got broken, does that mean…"
"Yes. When that bitch sliced me open with his blade still inside me, I felt the pain ten times more than a usual person would."
"I wondered why you vomited. Was… was it because of the pain?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
"Anyways, let's talk about something else… that isn't pleasant to think about." Caecus could feel his nausea returning just thinking back to that moment.
"Have you looked at the classes yet?" Titus asked, shifting the topic.
"No, actually I haven't. Let's decide together! You know what branch you're going for?"
"Combat, obviously. What about you?"
"To be honest… I'm not sure."