WAH-uh-a WAAAAAA!
The scream of a newborn child rang out in a birthing suite in an upscale Seoul birthing centre.
The mother was gorgeous, flushed as she was with her wavy black hair and dazzling honey brown phoenix eyes. If it were not for being in a delivery room you wouldn't have thought that she had been pregnant. She looked like you would imagine an Immortal to look from legend.
Currently she mostly had a fierce and pained look on her face, but also looked like she could cope with this kind of pain without much effort and had experienced things much more frightening and painful than what she had just gone through. Along with her pained expression was one of immense relief.
Not that long ago she had been told by her obstetrician that her child would most likely be still born, so for her hearing the wailing of her child was the most pleasant of sounds to her ears, to the point she finally cried. She'd been trying her best to hold it all together for her daughter and her business for the past few months, only just pulling it off.
"Mrs. Si, congratulations! It's a healthy and beautiful baby boy!" said the nurse holding the child and smiling from under her surgical mask. It was in fact the most striking and beautiful baby she had ever delivered in her nearly 20 years of practice.
The mother had just held her son when her only other child, her daughter, was first to make it to her bedside. She became enamoured instantly by the bundle her mother was holding. "He's adorable! I thought all newborns looked squishy and kind of ugly?" she asked, confused.
The child instinctively held out his arm and touched his sister's arm garnering even more happy giggles from her, further capturing her heart.
Her name is Hyejung and she just had her 18th birthday last weekend.
"Oh, he really is cute! My Dae-ho was horrible just after birth. I'm exaggerating but being completely truthful. Absolutely an ugly baby he was~!" came the voice of the second woman soon after, standing behind Hyejung, placing her chin on her shoulder and staring contently at the little boy with a longing gaze.
"Chansol, I'm sorry" came the new mothers weak reply.
"Hasun, I'm fine." she said to her sister with a smile. "Really. It's been 200 years and I'm okay most of the time, it's just the little one you've had is so adorable and he just so happens to be born on the same date my Dae-ho died." she smiled and sighed. "Alright let's stop this. I don't want to cry like this, I want to cry because you had such a beautiful son!"
Hasun also sighed when she realised her son was indeed born on the same date as her sister's son's death all those years ago. She cradled her son's head as she gazed at him lovingly, but there was uncertainty deep within that gaze in regards to his birth.
She hadn't been with a man since her husband died almost 12 years ago, so she had some unsettling feelings mixed in with her love for her son. Some ten months ago she was having the same symptoms as when she carried her daughter so she went to her doctor and discovered she was pregnant to her shock and horror.
After being examined and having a few certain blood tests done her OB/GYN had told her that what she was experiencing was becoming somewhat of a regular occurrence since the world changed a few hundred years ago. Many women had also immaculately conceived children through the years and for the most part their children were born healthy, with most cases having slight deviations from what you would class as a normal human.
Thus she was gingerly holding her son and looking for abnormalities he might have in accordance with what she had been told and seen online; from tails and horns to pointed ears and third eyes, many different types of these children had been born over the two centuries of change.
But to her relief her son seemed perfectly normal to the naked eye, apart from his sparkling and iridescent blood red irises which no matter what you call it was kind of abnormal.
"Sis, what's wrong?" asked Chansol, becoming nervous from her sister's unusual quietness.
"Yeah mum, what's up? I think he's perfect, right"
"I was just checking for a tail or horns, maybe wings? But he doesn't have anything like that, thankfully. Just, his eye colour is a bit strange, don't you think?" she said as she held out her son for further inspection from the other two women in his life.
"What's wrong with his eye colour? They're as blue as Hyejung's, right niece?" Chansol refuted.
"Right Aunt Ahn, just like mine. So cool!" Hyejung enthusiastically replied.
Hasun looked at her son's eyes and then back at her family wonder if they were colour blind or something, but no sooner had she thought of grabbing a nurse to confirm what she saw her son's eye colour shifted into an ocean of blue!
◆
Shortly before the child's family began commenting on his eye colour he discovered a new toy floating in front of his face. He seemed determined to play with the toy, these pesky floating screens.
He reached out his tiny fists as he was cooing and actually inadvertently interacted with one of those screens. All other screens disappeared to the disappointment of the child and he was only left with one, which began displaying the following:
[Subjection System Initialisation Started….… 100% Complete….… Error detected….…]
[Host still in Infancy, Entering Hibernation….… Halting Operation, System has been observed]
[Applying a temporary illusion….… Successful]
[Altering Hosts eye colour to that of closest sibling….… Found subject, alter colour to 'Ocean Blue' in 3….2….1…. Complete]
[Restarting Hibernation sequence….… Successful]
[Beginning host extended conditioning sequence….… Successful, running concurrent with Hibernation.... Sequence active for 105,120 hours until Hibernation is deactivated]
Once the last sentence was display the screen disappeared. The baby boy was startled. He thought that screen was so fascinating and wanted to keep it, but it vanished. He was very upset about this and decided to express his dissatisfaction with an impromptu Avantgarde live dance exhibition, i.e: he chucked a right fit. Balling his eyes out and screening his mother, aunt, and sister were all caught off guard and panicked.
◆
〘Director's Office of Birthing Center〙
"You mean the child was born alive?" came the authoritative and confused voice of the woman sitting in the directors chair.
"Correct. He's so healthy and beautiful," the nurse who had just helped deliver Hasun's son replied, whilst mumbling under her breath "just like his mother. And to be honest his Aunt and sister, they're all quite stunning."
"Any abnormalities you could find?"
The nurse simply shook her head in response before simply stating, "He is perfect."
A man standing behind and off to the side of the director pricked his ears up at this while he was listening to their conversation and was soon deep in contemplation. He was one of many stationed around Korea looking for a child that had long been told should be born close to this day.
The Seer had only told the higher ups three things 100 years ago:
1) In this three week period the child will be born, even though it never should have been conceived,
2) It will be dead until it is given life,
3) It will be the most perfect child in this world.
And it just so happened that the child the two of them were talking about fit this description to a 'T', almost as if it was made for him and him alone. Thus he quickly moved and started to look up the information on this mother and son on the secretaries computer just outside the director's office. What he found made him despair. He understood that there would be major problems soon.
He found out who that child's mother was, as well as who his aunt was and they were monsters, plain and simple. They were both over 200 years old and looked as young as they did when they were in their 20's, seeming to have gotten younger the older they got. They were very powerful women in this new world and they were part of a very, very small group of people referred to as 'Immortals' who came to the world's attention 20 years ago, mainly due to Hasun and Chansol, the mother and aunt of this prophesied child.
Slowly walking back into the office of the director he dejectedly stopped in front of the director, between her and the nurse and sighed audibly before stating with no joy and trying to not sound too reluctant to say it, "I need to talk to the mother you were just discussing. I believe that she is who we have been looking for and why I was dispatched here."