Jasmine wrinkled her nose. The howling wind was making a mess out of her hair, and her umbrella proved to be quite useless as it bent upwards. Needless to say, she was having a bad day, but her determination didn't waver. She could have asked for a ride back home, yes, but Alison's parents had yet to come back. Thank God she lived nearby, otherwise it would have been a nightmare threading through such weather. After heaving a much-needed breath to soothe her worries, she marched on.
The text message from her mother was still visible in the background of her phone.
—"Are you busy?" it read.
No, she wasn't. Not anymore.
She considered giving Jane a call, but she must have been still working.
—"Noope, I'm going back home right now :)" Jasmine typed back.
Even using a hand only, her skilled fingers were quick on working out a reply. It was not something to be proud of, but she liked to gloat that little fact to her brother who was a slow-typer. Normally, she'd put her phone back in the bag and dilly-dally as she plodded through the gale. It was not like her mother would have answered right away, not when she was so busy. However, contrary to her expectations, her phone chirped seconds after her message was delivered.
—"Really? That's good, I'm taking the rest of the day and tomorrow off... I was thinking of spending the time together, just the two of us. We could watch a movie and gossip a bit, or make fun of Jered LOL"
Jasmine couldn't help the giggle that bubbled out of her. It used to be such a common sight that of them pestering Jered on a daily basis. Their father would hide a smirk behind a newspaper, and her brother would roll his eyes and mutter something about 'annoying sisters', but he'd play along. He always did. Then they grew up, their father passed away, and he didn't anymore. She missed those days. She missed drawing smiley faces—and some more inappropriate doodles—on Jered's arm, and hold her sides in laughter as she watched him try to scrub the ink away. She missed sharing a seat with him on the couch, criticizing movies and celebrities as if they were above them. She missed the familiar sound of his footsteps at night as he walked past her room.
Time healed some of the wounds, fortunately, but the scars stayed. Jane would always say that everything was fine, that even with the financial problems, they'd pull through; it was all in their blood. The Jacobs were determined, and there was no obstacle that they couldn't overcome. It was their family's dogma, and their father was so proud of his bloodline. She didn't care much, and neither did Jane, but it rubbed off on Jered. Her brother became uncharacteristically narcissistic and confident, a shadow of their father.
God knew how close those two were.
Then their family's savings started dwindling, and Jane became more and more absent... and she and Jered closer. It was becoming something unhealthy the dependency she had on him, like a chain reaction that couldn't be stopped. They grew up unsheltered from their mother's supervision, and she had only her brother as her truest and only friend—someone she knew would have always been there, watching over her antics, smiles, fantasies, and all of her dreams, as if he were some goddamn hero from her cartoons. It was then that she drew her boundaries, because she knew that if left unchecked, she'd cross them.
She was but a child back then.
Jasmine never thanked Alison enough for moving to their neighborhood when she did. Her best friend's presence, and high school, whisked her away from teetering on the edge of a bottomless pit. She never knew how hard the fall would have been, and she was grateful for her nights at Alison's house. It managed to cool her down, especially when puberty started being cruel on her.
She was seventeen now, still a child in many's eyes, but old enough to be responsible for her love life.
And she was ready to go back home.
—"That sounds fun! :D when r u coming back?"
—"Right now, you need me to pick you up?"
—"Naw, it's fine..."
—"Are you sure sweetie?"
She didn't mind the rain, and she wanted to get back as soon as possible. Of course, had she been somewhere far from home, there was no way her mother would have acquiesced so easily.
—"Uh-huh don't forget to bring some popcorn for later..."
—"Will do <3"
—"<3"
Although their conversation was pretty short, it was enough to put a pep in her step and make her smile like an idiot throughout the journey back home.
--
Jered facepalmed.
"Told you..."
He leveled a glare at Rainey, who was leaning against the main entrance wiggling her eyebrows at him. "Oh come on, it's your fault for not bringing an umbrella with you, and unfortunately I don't have any to lend." she shrugged half-heartedly, a smirk dressing her features. The bitch was enjoying herself at his misfortune, he knew it.
"Can't you, I don't know, wave your hands and create one out of thin air?"
"Yes, I can, but it's not a permanent solution." Rainey toyed with a chock of her hair as she explained, "The umbrella would vanish as soon as the connection between it and me breaks, which can happen if you're too far away from me. Any item you conjure must be fed with mana to keep it alive."
"Nevermind then..."
"Don't you have anyone to come and pick you up?"
Of course he had. "It's complicated..." but he was not keen on inconveniencing his mother for such an insignificant problem. However, the rain took it upon itself to blur the world behind a thick wall of water. Now he couldn't go anywhere, not if he didn't want to get drenched. A blinding flicker of light raged out, and Rainey whistled as the rumble that followed jittered the windows. The last thing he needed was for the weather to get worse.
"I will tell you again, you should stay here for the meanwhile. I don't understand what's bothering you, it's not like I'll eat you or something..."
"Says the wolf in sheep's clothing."
"Ohh for fuck's sake..."
Jered allowed himself a small smile as he checked his phone for any upcoming texts or calls. He was not disgusted by the idea of spending the entirety of his day in Gravewall, but he was hard-pressed to read the books he was given by Rainey. Her explanation was short and to the point. Magic did indeed exist. Few were capable of it, and even less ever managed to achieve anything in the field of witchcraft. That statement, nonetheless, was true only for normal people; she had also mentioned a fantasy-like reality that mirrored theirs—where magic was the yardstick behind everyone's lives—breathing right beneath their feet.
She was very vague about it, omitting a lot of details, but the cold glint of repressed anger was being sharpened right behind her kind smile. As for the pills, they were stimulants. Mana was a dormant energy, almost non-existent; you couldn't just awaken it through rigorous study. A Mana Circuit was required, which was an array of pathways inside the veins where the magic energy would travel from. However, a Mana Circuit was only an understructure for mana, it did not provide mana itself. Those stimulants were a prototype made up of an incomplete formula Rainey had personally stolen from someone on the other world—she was so proud of her theft too. Its purpose was to increase a magician's mana pool by super-charging it, crossing your fingers, and hope for the best.
Each patient in Gravewall was hand-picked for their Mana Circuit, going through a selection that defeated the purpose of the asylum itself, and admitted people only based on their latent-talent instead of their mental problems. And if someone they wanted was not mentally-challenged enough to be placed under their watchful eyes, Jerry, the institute's trusty psychiatrist, would find an excuse to stigmatize them and therefore jail them inside as experiment rats. It was a strategy that involved bribery, a few well-delivered threats, and some pretty faces.
'You shouldn't even be alive.' she had said.
Jered just let out an 'ooh' and pouted. He was not suicidal by any means, but the staggering amount of pills he swallowed was enough to kill him, and make him skip his next couple of reincarnations as compensation, yet he survived. Rainey had tried to overfeed her patients in the last ditch-effort of producing superpowered mentally-screwed teenage girls en masse, however, after the third pill, all she wound up with was a severe headache, and a handful of corpses to get rid of.
It was one of the hush-hush discoveries she had made. Being diagnosed with a severe mental illness was a free seat among society's unwanted garbage, yes, but it was also an opportunity to carve your own path to the top in the ghastly underbelly of a magical civilization no one was aware of. Apparently, seeing things that weren't there, mood swings, highly anti-social behaviors, psychopathy, and whatnot were just a side effect of a huge attunement for sorcery. It was ridiculous, but Rainey explained that it was not so far-fetched since those people's brains functioned differently from a normal person's.
The problem was the lack of mana, though. Normal people couldn't possibly have it without inheriting it from a relative, or external patronage.
With nothing better to do, he sat down on the porch. "Meh... I guess it won't hurt to wait a bit."
"Fiiiiinally..." Rainey chuckled, "You might as well start reading those books, and practice. I'll supply you with anything you might need. Remember that you work for me now."
Jered nodded thoughtfully as he took out the first book from the pouch she had given him. It was made of black leather, and was as thick as the bible. There were no words on the cover, not even a title or the author's name. It was so bare of embellishments that he almost doubted that the book in his hands could possibly have anything occult to it. However...
[Do you want to absorb the contents of this tome? Y/N]
... his brain hologram dutifully answered him.
"Anyway... I'm going to check on Arya." Rainey said with a wave of her hand.
"Hmm... she failed her awakening, what are you going to do with her?"
She heaved a deep sigh, her forehead furrowing like folded blankets. "I don't know. Going by the rules of our institute, she must either be brainwashed and transferred to some dilapidated asylum in the middle of nowhere, or in the worst case, become a soulless doll obediently working for us. That's what all the other nurses want anyway. But I don't want to get rid of our manpower like this... there are more avenues to explore. A demonic contract, for example. However, that is a risky and expensive move... hmm... and if it does not work well, it could backfire into something we can't handle."
He had no idea what that was. At his vacant look, Rainey grinned.
"It's not something you have to be worried about. If you read all of the books I give you, you'll eventually know what it is."
Jered nodded emotionlessly as he kept his eyes fixed on the screen in front of him. "It's going to take me a while." Rainey just snorted uncaringly, and after dropping him a last smile, she sashayed back inside the building.
He didn't like her, still... it was a marvelous windfall that may just help him break free from the bindings of a humdrum life. For now, he'd play the obedient kid part. There was no way he was going to skip on the extraordinary world beguiling him behind the pages of her books, books he had yet to get his hands on.
Ignoring the screen floating quietly at his side, he opened the cover and dove in. First-hand information was better than anything Paranoia! could ever chew and spit down in his brain. He'd use that function once he was done reading it.