Alpha's spine wrapped around the boy's arm before twisting it off in a single movement.
Asher couldn't stand the sight.
He saw his arm showing veins and arteries, muscle and bits of sinew ripping and tearing past their limits.
His arm spun against his joint like the hand on a clock, six full revolutions before the last vesitges of flesh tore under the pressure.
Both his memory and Asher himself fell limp at the same time, their eyes glazed over.
One collapsed from physical pain, and one from traumatic, phantom pain. Asher's shoulder throbbed.
Mirinae let go of his head, supporting him with her arm.
"That's not something you see every day. But, I must say, having a few limbs ripped off is paramount for a successful Fixer."
Asher stared at her like she was crazy. 'Woman, how the hell do you have such high standards!' he thought.
"Cough... then how come you still have all your limbs, huh?" As he asked, he spat some bile onto the ground, resisting the urge to puke.
Mirinae shrugged, slightly lowering the collar of her coat to show her deathly pale neck. The outline of a singular ring of stitches could be seen beneath the skin of her neck. The stitches were so old that her skin had grown over them.
"I've been through more than you. I was sixteen when I got this." She shifted her coat back up, and the scar disappeared under the folds of fabric.
Asher gulped, turning back to the center of the warehouse where Beta was scanning his pupils. He promised to never complain to Mirinae again. What he went through so far was only a speck compared to a truly experienced Grade 2 Fixer.
And that meant that Mirinae was telling the truth when she slammed him to the ground.
Just what was life like back then?
They watched the boy heal. Asher winced he saw Alpha kicking clouds of caustic dust onto his partially healed arm.
The warehouse was silent other than the boy's moans as he writhed on the ground.
Mirinae looked back at Asher behind her.
The boy's eyes were closed, running what his own experiences through his mind. Soon, the trauma that stemmed from the Carnival faded away. His tolerance for gore reached an astonishing level in an instant, merely from visualizing his memories, repeating them in his mind over and over until he grew numb.
He opened his eyes, studying the veins pulsing in his arm with more curiosity than disgust. Again, his abnormal Temperance stat made him completely different from ordinary people. His determination and ability to withstand suffering were nearly ten times greater than a regular human.
Now there was only one last moment of this exam.
"Beta. Grab the kid's phone, the one he was texting with." Alpha wiggled inside its straightjacket with anticipation.
The spindly creature stopped chewing Asher's fingers and began to search his body. Soon enough, it pulled out a white phone, scanning it open.
Asher shuddered as Beta's gloved hands pried apart his past self's eyelids. He remembered Beta's cold, lifeless touch.
"The Messenger and this kid's relationship should be pretty close, hm? Beta, text for help to the Messenger on Line."
"N...No, please... Just kill me! Eat me! Torture me! Anything but that!"
Mirinae's eyes widened. The raw emotion in the boy's voice... something she had never seen before. Only the most determined, the people who have nothing else to lose could make such a guttural sound.
The girl from earlier was definitely Asher's 'light', as the Overseer commonly referred to them as.
The Overseer usually designated parents, siblings, lovers or friends as one's 'lights', the people that gave motivation and happiness to one's life. She glanced at Asher's pale face behind her with a sympathetic gaze.
Alpha stared at the boy, who was dragging himself toward it with his stump of a hand. Wordlessly, it dug its heel into his left arm, resulting in another sharp scream. The boy gasped raggedly, his throat raw from overexertion.
The text was sent. They could only wait in silence, though Asher knew that Yan would eventually come to save him. And that both of them would die in her attempt.
The doors burst open, kicked ajar by Yan. She screamed Asher's name.
"A-Asher! What happened to your arm?!" She looked at his arm, then up at Alpha's smug face. A growl rumbled in the back of her throat.
"Don't worry about me... Leave me here, it's fine..." His past self tried to comfort Yan, but his words clearly didn't work.
As the boy's vision slowly faded to black, the only thing he could hear was Yan's desperate snarl, her voice cracking with emotion.
"Fine? FINE?! Carnival... I'LL KILL YOU ALL!!"
...
"Yan, don't-!"
Asher gasped, straining the leather cords that bound him.
He tried to stand up, but he didn't notice the leather restraints in his confusion.
His skin began to bleed as he writhed against the straps like his life depended on it.
A crisp slap echoed in the still air.
Mirinae smacked him upside the head, removing his headset in the process.
"Stop struggling. People like you are the reason we put restraints on this."
Asher looked at her, crestfallen.
Right, this was his Fixer exam. Mirinae's way of putting it was rude, but true. He was making an embarrassment out of himself right now.
"So... It seems like I failed?"
Mirinae raised her hand to slap him again, only stopping herself with boundless effort. She didn't feel like wasting the energy to talk to him, so she gestured at him to explain himself.
"Well, you kinda saw my reaction... me and the Messenger, right?"
She cut him off with a swipe of the hand.
"No, that part was fine. Now, if she was a Candle from the Pinky, we would reject you outright. Though, you would have died ages ago if that was the case. The Index is like the Hana, and their Prescripts help with the social order. Just like the Thumb, the Hana tolerates their presence."
Social order this, social order that. Harold also said that phrase to him, back when he registered Sophie as a Fixer.
"Okay, I've heard of 'social order' from both you and-," he nearly said Harold, but stopped at the last moment, "another Fixer. What's this nebulous 'social order', and why does it involve people dying from Prescripts?"
Mirinae shrugged; she didn't know either.
"My grade isn't qualified to know that. The social order is a responsibility of the Head, whom even the Overseer has never seen in person."
"And you're fine with that? Just obeying a shadowy figure?"
At this point, Mirinae had unfastened all of his restraints. They sat on the chairs, conversing in hushed voices.
"All we know is the Head is our leader, the ruler of the City. Enough chit-chat, come with me to the receptionist to get you registered." Her tone didn't allow him to continue their blasphemous conversation.
She opened the door for him, ushering him into the hallway.
As they neared the receptionist on the first floor, they saw a man being held back by a tall oriental examiner with dark bags beneath her eyes.
Asher knew the man who was being held back. He was Joseph, the scarred man who tried to crush the egg on Wingbeat back in the waiting room.
"What the fuck do you mean I failed? Bitch, you even said my physical grade met the requirements! I'll go to the receptionist myself, see who stops me!" Joseph struggled against the oriental woman's arm, but she didn't budge.
The man did not see that he was being stopped right now by a comatosely exhausted woman.
The weakest minded individuals were often the most unreasonable, Asher noticed. The man must have failed his mental exam. Judging by Jospeh's physical ability from when Asher crushed his wrist, he might have only gotten a 9 or 10 on his physical exam score. To be so arrogant in a building filled with Grade 2's... The man must have gone insane.
Mirinae walked up to them.
"Yuki, why are you holding him back?"
Yuki looked at Mirinae, her eyes drooping from exhaustion.
"Miri-nee... If he goes up there like this, I'm afraid I'll be in charge of the cleanup... And I'm tired. My thought accelerators are low on Enkephalin." She yawned, holding the man back with a single, weary finger.
Mirinae walked up wordlessly, yanking Yuki's hand off of the man, much to her belated protests.
Joseph didn't seem to notice their stares, rushing up to the receptionist in front of them.
Before he could say a word-
"Hostile intent detected in reception area."
The receptionist raised her head from her computer, ignoring a soon-to-be Fixer Candidate registering in front of her to point at the man with a single finger.
The man froze, but his bluster quickly returned as he realized that nothing had happened to him. Believing the woman to be an ordinary civilian, he slammed on the desk, demanding to be registered.
At this point, everyone was staring at the standoff in the front.
The woman stood up, looking at the man with her finger still pointed at him.
"Hostile individual. Cease, or you shall be subject to punishment."
"Ha-AAAGH!"
The man barely opened his mouth before screaming in pain. The room devolved into chaos as everyone saw the man's arm, its flesh now peeled to the bone in a beautiful spiral pattern starting from the shoulder down to the wrist.
The receptionist held a spring-like coil of flesh in one hand. Then in the next moment, her other hand held the man's pulsing brain.
"..." The woman showed the tiniest bit of emotion as she sighed quietly. She sat down once again, flinging the bits of flesh carelessly onto the floor.
"Now, Kevin, was it? Thank you for participating in the Fixer examination-" She blinked as she noticed that most of the people in the area had cleared out, including the potential candidate she was about to register.
The floor was covered in crimson blood. Yuki sighed as she leaned down to wipe it clean. A lightning ringed portal opened in the ground, sucking the dead body into the void below, but the Overseer was nowhere to be seen.
"So," Mirinae turned back to him, "have a phone?"
Asher looked away from the gore. If he hadn't just finished his mental exam, this sight would have nearly incapacitated him from its brutality. But after witnessing his own arm being torn off and eaten from a third person perspective... he could barely tolerate this.
Barely. His stomach fluttered with agitation.
The three Fixers in the room (was the receptionist also a Fixer?) seemed to regard it as a normal thing, so he tried to match his expression with theirs, even though he was shaking a bit inside.
He took a deep, shuddering breath.
'Not as bad as the Carnival, not as bad as the Carnival...' He chanted reverentially, hoping to clear his mind.
Asher opened his eyes, a little calmer than before.
Now to answer Mirinae's question. It required some thought.
"S-Should I still get a phone if I have one already?"
"I recommend so. It can act as your ID, and it's convenient for many other things too. Receptionist, register Asher as a Grade 7," she said as she glanced behind her, "with the phone as well."
A quick blur of motion from the receptionist and a phone was placed into Asher's hands, regardless of whether he wanted it or not.
Though, when he thought about it further, it was a good idea to have a phone for each form. He couldn't talk as 'Sophie' and as 'Asher' on the same phone, after all.
His left pocket was assigned to Sophie's phone, while his right pocket was designated for Asher's.
Mirinae stepped away from the desk, talking to Asher as she walked toward the door. Yuki groaned with exasperation behind them, her hand soaked in cranial fluid as they left.
"I'm curious about something. That Messenger in your memories, what happened between you two from before and now? Why did you look at her with..." Mirinae grasped in her mind for a word that would fit.
"Eh, she blocked my contact after a huge misunderstanding. I don't really want to talk about it."
Mirinae glanced at him before nodding her head. They were outside now, standing in the middle of a grey, hazy afternoon.
"Cherish the people you have in your life. You are bound to meet that Messenger eventually and... I apologize for prying. But I suggest searching the walkways of apartment buildings if you have time. Messengers usually get Prescripts at noon." She couldn't stop herself from giving a bit of advice after her apology.
Asher thanked her quietly before stepping away. Mirinae's words echoed in his mind, giving him the bit of solace he needed to finally calm down.
Right, they would definitely cross paths someday. And he promised himself to work out her misunderstanding together when they did.
So they could go back to the way their relationship was before.
Asher flinched, a blush unknowingly forming on his face.
He wasn't shameful enough to say that he didn't have any feelings for her, but this was the first time he realized just how much he cared about Yan.
Maybe he was just as obsessed with her as she was with him. They were both outcasts. Asher, who was dropped thirteen years into the past, cold and confused. And Yan, who could never communicate to anyone how lonely she was, isolated to the brink of insanity by the Will of the Prescript.
*Ding!* He pulled out his phone from his pocket, the sudden notification startling him.
It was Mei again, and she took his advice from the morning.
"Hurry, Yan's here right now!"
His breathing became rapid as he read Mei's message. Over and over again, until he couldn't think of anything else.
Before he knew it, he was already sprinting down the street.