Midnight. The sky was jet black, and the howl of the wind was gentle.
At a deserted section of a metropolis, in a small, empty household.
An elder lay on a confining bed, struggling to slow his rapid breathing. Various tubes dug into his midriff and lower left thigh, bandages enshrouding his whole body, exempting his nose. His nose was blood-red like an angry sunset. The eyes beneath the bandages were silver-grey like a blanket of snow. They glinted like a dead coal in the ashes.
Death was quietly seeping into the man's veins as his body grew colder. A frosty gleam, however, still shone in his sunken eyes as he searched the cracks and rifts in the archaic ceiling.
"Arlo...it seems that what you foresaw...is being implemented by the gods at last..." the man's voice escaped his thin lips, gravelly like a neglected desert road. There was no gloom in his tone. The dim light in his eyes smothered as he spoke to the tall, young man standing beside him. He had realized that his days of decadence were long past, but the young man beside him, his grandson, was only at the starting line.
The young man was tall with a lean and muscular body. Half of his face was concealed by a dark mask. His eyes were scarlet and eyelids were lowered slightly in grief.
Carlos remained mum, his lips pressed into a thin line behind the dark mask. What was he supposed to say? Of course, he knew this day would come—but never had he anticipated it to be so soon.
"Smile, Arlo," the man continued softly and warmly. His eyes relaxed, filling with fatherly affection. "I would hate to see you with a future lacking smile and humor. And do you still remember what I first told you when we met - those words I told you never to forget? Do they remain etched in memory?"
"Yes, grandfather. You told me to never stray from your path... 'our' path," the youngster spoke bitterly, his eyes avoiding the old man's last moments.
The old man wheezed suddenly, a blood-red color faintly appearing on his bandages. For moments, the room was filled with the sound of his perpetual coughing. The elder shifted unconsciously to lie on his side. On his face was the abnormal embittered expression as though the world itself was approaching its end. The man struggled with the words he wanted to speak, more blood appearing on his bandages. The young man flinched in a panic, not knowing what to do.
"C...Carlo, you are the only one who can take up my position now. But I do not want our clan to continue down the same path as our progenitors... You must change our fate...go out into the world...gain freedom..." He paused, his body shifting again to lie on his stiff back, eyes suddenly filling with a strange light. Profound wisdom shone from his last words like he was foreseeing the near or far future.
The young man's face blanched with consternation. Tears rimmed his eyes as he gasped in an attempt to respond. "Grandpa..." His words were choked back into his throat by tears swelling in his scarlet eyes.
"Carlo, I see a single boat sailing on the horizon...do not walk alone. Meet people. You will meet weird, funny and powerful people. Befriend them...learn from them. All of this is necessary for the future---" His bony hand that firmly clasped Carlo's warm palm, suddenly grew pale and cold, limply falling onto the bedside. It felt surreal to the youngster that he had died just like that.
The light that had once blazed in his sunken and spiritless irises darkened entirely, leaving behind an abyssal void. The youngster's eyes widened. His knees buckled as he fell onto the late elder's knees. Carlo dug his face into the thin linen, feeling the cold night air. Aching loneliness rose in his heart.
He remained in that position for long, tepid hours. The echo of the wall-clock's second hand faded into the background. It rang indefinitely beneath the full white moon.
At last, the young man's slanted figure moved. He stood up and strode over to the window. His dark eyes rested on the silent courtyard.
There was a pond of fish for decoration purposes and a narrow stream that encircled the villa. Three watchdogs lay behind the entrance, pink tongues extended in readiness.
Next to the dogs was an honest-looking young man in dark apparel. The youngster was known as Nathaniel. Like Carlos, Nathan was raised by the now-deceased geriatric man.
Carlos was in deep thought. The demise of his guardian was going to result in massive altercations in his daily life. The elder had been the president of their small-time yakuza group. Since their organization was already decaying, the leader's death could very well lead to the group's collapse.
Arlo (his full name is Carlos, Arlo/Carlo are his nicknames) barely had the capabilities to curtail that impact since he was too frail-hearted. If only his grandfather is still alive, he sulked.
Carlos's brows furrowed deeply at the gloomy thought, and he slapped his right cheek fiercely. "How can you say that, you wimp?! What if grandfather hears that while crossing the river Styx and he drowns as a result of the shock?!" Carlos shuddered, visualizing the old man's alarmed face before he lost balance and drowned. Ah! I'm so sorry, grandpa!
He needed to figure out a solution.
Then he recalled the old man's last words. Yes! That's it! Grandpa didn't want our clan to mimic our predecessors! Maybe he wanted to renew the group's ideologies?
"...?" Then...what other alternative did he have in mind? Carlos scratched his head of black hair, lost in a dilemma. He was just an ordinary young man with simple ideals and an even simpler life. It felt impossible for him to lead a bunch of gangsters. However, his guardian had still chosen him over the many other inherent successors. But why him?
Catching a glimpse of the deceased's corpse on the bed, he exhaled a sigh and decided to rearrange everything start tomorrow. Slipping into his bed, he hit the hay. But he could barely catch a wink of sleep. The moment his head hit the pillow, the ghosts of the night haunted him with depressing memories. The figure of his grandfather's cold body hovered over him, acidly shrieking accusations: "Why have you led our clan to oblivion? Did I not raise you properly? What would your mother think..."
Groaning lowly, the young man woke up and strode back to his grandfather's bedside. Staring at the deathly pale face wrapped in bandages, his hopes dropped. Carlos lay his head on the elder's knees and yawned tiredly. His eyelids grew heavy as the seconds dripped by. Before long, he sank into slumber.
The morning was hazy, and the sky was in a layer of dark grey clouds. Dew had washed over the green blades of grass and the stale-grey pavements of Jing City. Carlos woke up with a dull ache in his head. He was still on his grandfather's bed but, somehow, he had found himself lying sprawled on the bed.
A crooked smile creased his thin lips as he thought, "To have thought that I would one day sleep beside my grandfather's corpse..." His smile turned despondent. He could not find the energy to laugh.
Squinting his eyes, he noticed something very odd as he stared at the wide ceiling. The white ceiling fan was functioning normally and at a relatively fast pace; hadn't it been broken a few months ago?
His blurry vision cleared away, and it seemed as though a layer of mist was sliding from his view. His white hands felt the bed's smooth fabric, and he realized that the small bed seemed to have grown wider. His palms were also abnormally soft and tender.
Carlos didn't turn his head to the side since it was evident in his gut—he was no longer in the same room. The rhymic sound of the ceiling fan turning in an unbridled manner reminded him why it had been broken. It had been several bleak months earlier, and the ringing of the wind in his ears caused by the contraption had gotten on his grandpa's nerves.
Finally, the young man tilted his head to look beside him. To his horror, his grandfather's cold corpse wasn't there.
His head throbbed erratically, the dull ache intensifying. He felt as though a hot knife was piercing his skull and twisting the meat in his head. Memories inundated his psyche suddenly, rushing into his mind like a flood. It was excruciatingly painful and, although it only lasted for five seconds, it felt like a decade.
When the pain receded, his back was soaked in a cold sweat, making his thin shirt stick to his skin. He breathed heavily and attempted to calm his unsteady heartbeat. Foreign memories had somehow sunk into his mind; was that even possible? Unfortunately, he now only had the option to believe it.
He remembered a light novel he had once read. In the story, the protagonist had reincarnated in a new world with an odd entity that assisted them to become stronger. Was that what was happening to him now? Reincarnation...or, rather, transmigration? Brows furrowing, he brushed away his numberless questions and lifted his head.
The young man cautiously examined the room. Although it somewhat resembled his grandfather's old room, there were still quite a few differences. The room had a single, immense bed with exquisite sheets and fluffy black pillows. The walls were pitch-black with grey stripes near the ceiling and floor.
"Rather few ornaments..." Carlos muttered his gaze on an expensive-looking vase beside the bed. There were a few black roses that glinted with specks of cool water. From his new memories, the most recent was of himself buying the roses at a whim and languidly filling the vase with water.