I sat up and opened my eyes.
….No, actually, I wanted to open my eyes, but they were so swollen that they weren't opening properly. There were also a bunch of extremely large eye boogers in the way that blocked my sight. I rubbed my eyes and tried my best to get them open, but the sunlight streaming into my dorm room was too bright.
I scowled as I stretched my hand towards my desk, right next to the bed, and grabbed some orange juice and downed it quickly.
'Where'd this orange juice come from?'
I scratched my stomach and yawned, then grabbed one of the many sandwiches on my desk and started to chew on it.
"What's with these sandwiches?"
They were my favorite–anchovy sandwiches. I was eating it because they were on my desk, but I had no idea who left it there. There was also an assortment of snacks on my desk aside from the juice and the sandwiches.
I rustled around in my blankets and rolled around for a bit before I realized that there were three blankets on my bed. My blanket was on the bed, and the blanket that I stole on accident from Swan was above it, and there was another blanket that I didn't know the origins of. This blanket did smell a lot like Swan's soap...
I munched on the sandwich as I frowned before I looked at the mirror in front of me.
I could see myself, looking like an absolute mess. My hair was a tangled mess and the dress I had been wearing yesterday was horribly wrinkled.
My socks were neatly folded on my desk, and my shoes were neatly placed on the floor. It looked like my feet were the only part of my body that were ready for bed.
What had happened yesterday for me to not even change before I fell asleep? My head was lagging behind a bit. I wasn't completely awake just yet.
Instead, I just blinked and looked around me.
A pile of snacks on my desk, unchanged clothes. Neatly folded socks, and now three blankets on my bed.
At this point, I had a question that I couldn't answer in my mind.
"Why is this sandwich so tasty?"
Seriously, it was too good.
Once I finished eating the first sandwich, I grabbed another type of sandwich and bit into it. It was a tuna mayo sandwich this time.
"But I think I had a really explicit dream."
I could see fragments of some hazy memories appear in my mind from earlier. The entire memory felt hazy, so I just assumed they were just from my dreams.
What kind of dream was it again?
First, Swanhaden had appeared, and he looked incredibly pretty. My eyes grew wide as I remembered one scene. I instantly felt awake.
I grabbed a pillow from my bed and threw it onto the ground.
"I must be out of my mind."
A hazy memory, one that felt like it was from a dream, soon entered my mind.
I think I had hugged and kissed Swanhaden for a pretty long time.
"Why did I dream that kind of thing? What's going on with me?"
Moreover, it had felt great. I could still feel the anxious excitement I had felt throughout it all.
"Did I dream this after the entire debacle where dream Swan bit my lips off that time...?"
Anyway, thank goodness this was all a dream. First, I needed to go and thank Swanhaden. How would I go and face him if that had happened in real life? I didn't even want to imagine in. I shook my head to disperse the thought.
I was waiting for the opportunity to thank Swanhaden when I bumped into him.
But Swan didn't give me the opportunity to thank him.
Swan had two masks on his face, all day long. One was over his mouth as if it was guarding it, and another was covering his eyes. I had no idea what kind of fashion statement this was supposed to be.
I wondered if Swan wasn't feeling well, so I grabbed a random student from the blue class and asked.
"Is Swan sick or something?"
"He's always sick or something."
I nodded in understanding.
"Oh, Shuraina. Try to stay away from Swanhaden as much as you can. Especially now."
"Why?"
"I don't know, he just destroys everything he gets his hands on, be it furniture or people. He's super scary right now. His ears and face are all red, too. He must be pissed. I think he is."
"Maybe he's just sick?"
"Maybe."
I collected every piece of information about Swan that I could get from the blue class students. He would blank out, then blush all of a sudden. Then, he would start throwing anything he could get his hands on at others sitting nearby. He didn't seem to make an exception for people too–he would shake them senseless. He would destroy his surroundings and mutter 'Oh my god' to himself.
His expression was completely calm even as he went berserk. This terrified the other students even more.
I wondered if something had happened to Swanhaden in the meanwhile, so I made sure to wave my hands to him whenever I saw Swan.
Swanhaden always accepted my greetings whenever I saw him, even if he was turned away. But the strange part of it was that whenever I tried to approach him, he would run away.
I began to chase after him, yelling his name. When I looked at him from behind, his ears were dyed a dark red.
I was suspicious of why Swanhaden was avoiding me like the plague. It seemed like he was only avoiding me. He usually avoided me, but this was a lot worse.
I wondered about Swan's reaction as I laid down on my bed.
"Did he do something wrong to me or something? Or did I do something wrong to him?"
I sat on my bed and tried my hardest to think, arms crossed in front of me. Something had definitely changed after he had used his healing magic on me. Did he accidentally tamper with something in my head as he healed me? Even if he did, I wasn't having any problems in my daily life. I could forgive him for that.
When I looked at this situation with the lens that Swan had done something to me on accident, I could believe it. I wondered as I stroked my chin.
"...I'm curious. Should I check?"
If it was mental-type magic, black magic worked too.
Unlike white magic where mental magic was used for healing, black magic altered memories or controlled the target of the spell. If I could use mental-type magic too, I could look into my own mental state and check the circle to see what he had used.
Magic circles were drawn wherever magic was used, so there was always a trace. Magic circles weren't erasable, but they would become hazier with time. People usually let them grow fainter with time and didn't tamper with it.
I took out the book on black magic that I had borrowed from Cory and opened the book to the section where they explained mental magic. The book explained that every person had a large space located in their mind. If I could just get in there, I could check.
I memorized the magic circle drawn in the book and shifted my body to a more comfortable position. I closed my eyes. I remembered the pitch black darkness that the book mentioned and focused my magic towards my head. When I had a sufficient amount of magic, I imagined myself drawing the circle. When I thought about the circle in the dark area I had thought of earlier, the circle emitted a purple light and became absorbed into the space.
When the circle began to activate, an interesting phenomenon took place.
My body began to feel like it was floating off of the bed I was sitting on.
When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer looking at my dorm room.
My physical body would be lying on the dorm bed, but all of my senses were in the mental space that I had entered earlier.
As soon as I thought that the magic had worked, I cheered before looking around me.
I was in a wide, dark space. It was kind of chilly–the water was deep under my feet. I was floating in the air right now, but I would've fallen deep underwater in this unknown liquid if I wasn't.
It was very dark in here, but it wasn't pitch black. There were countless lights floating in the sky above me. You could almost mistake the lights as stars in the sky, but you could tell that they were lights as soon as you took a look at its reflections on the water.
The lights reflected onto the flowing water. They all had different colors. White, blue, sky blue, red, dark red or wine, light pink and more, there was an incredible assortment of colors in the sky and on the surface of the water.
I couldn't help myself as I touched one of the lights. As soon as my hand touched the surface of the light, I was able to see a few memories flashing through my mind.
"Are these lights holding my memories?"
Knowing that fact allowed me to read the lights without touching them. Seeing that they were my personal memories, they were easy to read. The contents of the lights seemed to flow into my mind just by looking at them.
I had a feeling that the colors had meanings behind them, so I checked. All of the lights took on a color based on the specific emotion I had behind the memory.
Green memories were memorable, happy memories.
Yellow memories were important everyday memories.
Blue memories were memorable sad memories.
Red memories were angry, emotional memories.
And the blood-like, wine-colored memories seemed to shine brightly.
The blood-colored lights were highest up in my mind, and they seemed to emit a strong, bright color. Moreover, I didn't even have to try and remember them to feel the feelings behind them.
Wine-colored lights held the most miserable, painful memories of my life.
All of the other lights gently floated on the surface of the water, dim and almost gone. Those lights emitted a gentle glow when I touched them to read what they were.
I wondered if the memories associated with these lights would disappear if I destroyed them. I grabbed one of the memories I felt I wouldn't need.
When I tried to destroy a light, I suddenly felt a strong sense of rejection towards my previous idea. No matter how insignificant they felt, all of my memories were linked together. This particular memory was even stretched towards one of my favorite dreams.
All of this felt incredibly interesting. I slowly looked around to take in my surroundings.
Then, I found something that looked like it didn't belong in this place that was made for me and by me. It was what I had been looking for.
Not too far away from where I was standing, Swanhaden's magic circle was clear as day. It looked like it was a recent circle–there was a bright stream of light coming from the circle.
I put one toe in the water and played around in the water for a bit before walking towards the circle. I liked the feeling of the cool water on my feet.
The magic circle that Swanhaden had drawn recently emitted a bright white light. The white magic looked like thread as it linked and tied all of the lights together.
I didn't have to check to know that those lights held my memories of my past life. The lights were all blue and red, but his magic was slowly turning them yellow.
My past memories were tied within the magic circle and floating quite a bit above me. It was probably because the memories of my past life were important to me.
I stretched my hand to the circle he had drawn. It was a complicated piece that didn't seem to require any fixing.
I tilted my head in confusion. He was avoiding me after doing such a perfect job with my treatment?
If he wasn't the one that had made a mistake, then maybe that meant that I was in the wrong. Even though I couldn't quite place it.
"…..what's that?"