"Rayleigh, quick, tell me how do we combine ourselves into one. I don't want to die here in this miserable place because of someone else's selfishness. I want my death to be worth it, I want to die satisfied too, or I'd just become someone like you, a Yokai. So, promise me you'll bring me back to where I belong and protect me at all costs until I exist completely in one world."
Anon was touched by the tenderness he felt in Rayleigh when he said he wanted to meet his mother for the last time. The infinite void was a place where feelings didn't exist but Rayleigh's heart had the purest of intent, which changed Anon's mind and left a soft spot in his heart for Rayleigh. Anon decided to help Ray but only on one condition which was to return him back to existing only on the earth.
"To keep up my promise, we must first survive this, quickly grab the book from the closet and read the 12th page on the book. It is a spell which casts our soul to merge when you read it off your own will."
A panicked Anon rushed to the closet and grabbed the book, which looked suspicious from the very beginning; it was quite an old book. It seemed like the book had gone through hell itself. Pages were torn off. Other pages were cockled due to the book being submerged in water at some point in its existence.
"Ray, I don't seem to understand this language. How am I supposed to read this if it isn't written in English, it looks like English, but it isn't quite English???"
"It's because you're holding the book upside down instead of holding the book up straight. Could you calm your panicky self? From what I have seen, you looked like quite the intelligent kid in school, but it looks like that was a bluff that got me into believing it."
"You expect me to be calm when I'm on the verge of death? Easy for you to say you're already dead, besides. Why are you even talking to me like that? Weren't you the one who put me in this place?"
Anon bursts out of laughter all of a sudden when he reads the 12th page in his mind. "You call this nonsense a spell? I affirm that I allow the creator of this book Rayleigh to align our souls together just as love would do to one another on the earth."
Rayleigh quite embarrassed himself. He had forgotten entirely what his spell was, "I wasn't expecting a small boy to touch or read my book, I was expecting a female I lacked love in my time out, so I was hoping that a female would come across this book. There's no choice now. It's just a spell anyway, so read it aloud."
Anon read the spell as there was no other choice to merge their soul as one to reach the potential of infinite power, but it didn't seem to work at all... The yokai, which broke into Anon's house, indeed wasn't there to waste any time. Before Anon could even see him, he blew his first strike towards Anon, but Rayleigh read the yokai's intentions and countered him but in return took a heavy blow to his stomach himself.
"What the hell are you doing, stupid kid? Were you planning on betraying me when the yokai arrived here to make me regret getting excited by the fact you accepted to help me? In this world, you cannot joke around they arrive with only one intent to kill, aren't you a smart kid? Don't tell me you know how to read now..."
"I READ IT, EXACTLY AS IT'S WRITTEN YOUR SPELL SEEMS TO BE BROKEN!!!!!! YOU PUT ME HERE, AND NOW YOU BLAME ME?" Anon was furious with Ray's reaction. He felt angered by the fact that Ray didn't see that Anon honestly trusted in him.
"Did you read the whole page? Check again. I think you might not have read it completely. Make it quick before we end up dead."
Anon rereads the page and finds out in the corner of the page that he missed reading something. It made Anon angrier than he already was. "Are you kidding me? Here it says that I must eat a piece of paper from this book to accept another soul into my body. Now, this has to be a joke!"
Ray begins to laugh, "Ha-ha-ha, I completely forgot about this. It would help if you ate a piece of paper from this book. It opens the gates for our souls to merge. It is a soul's contract. Quickly eat it before this guy ends up eating us alive."
The other yokai overheard their conversation and he planned his next attack on Anon before he ate the piece of paper, he rushed into Anon without hesitation with pure intent to kill him with a single attack.
"What can a mere human do to a Yokai of my level? Rest easy kid, your soul is going to be very healthy. Thankfully you aren't matured or you'd be a threat even to a yokai of my level."
Anon felt the fear of death for the first time, as he saw the Yokai approaching at a rapid speed, Anon knew that he was going to end up dead. Humans and animals are such a species that they rely on their instintics, for animals, it's more of a 6th sense which helps them to sense danger. Anon felt the taste of death and his body automatically reacted to the situation.
His instincts were begging him to survive this and he quickly ended up eating the piece of paper. There was never a friend Anon had his entire life, he felt as though he was separate from most of the students at school, it was the first time Anon felt like he had a friend in his life.
Rayleigh and Anon were perfectly in synchronization as Rayleigh understood that Anon was relying on his instincts to survive at that moment, he immediately prepared himself to merge his soul into Anon and merged immediately when it was possible. There was no margin for error and there were absolutely no errors between them.
"What? Does my attack have no effect on you? It can't be you're just a human right? Who are you?"
"Yes, I am human but first time in my entire life I am not alone. Ray, please finish him and end his misery."
Anon's body now contained two souls one his and the other was Rayleigh's after eating the piece of paper a single human himself had an infinite potential to gain a greater amount of strength, imagine two souls inside one body was only going to make it reach to an unimaginable extent of strength.
"Rest in peace my fellow Yokai, I hope I can finally end your misery even if I fail to this is your end."
A Yokai's strength is restricted because it does not have a life form, a body was required for a yokai to reach an unimaginable state of strength. Rayleigh research was entirely based on this he realized the power one can obtain which is why he chose death over revealing all the secrets of his research as he was afraid of the greed human have for power and Rayleigh knew that if a man possesses this secret, he is bound to use it for his own selfish desire.
"Thank you, Anon, for believing in me we're alive right now because you took a leap of faith to believe in my words, although everything was not the way you wanted it to be you made a decision for me and that's why we're alive right now."
"Well, I thank you too, I never once felt like I had a friend my entire life but I think I have one now, I guess? I don't even know how you managed to understand what I was going to do in a split second even though we have never known each other at all."
"Anon, I too was a human once and I too have been through a death experience. I put myself in your shoes and tried to figure out what you would have done, it was a hunch but it paid off. Although humans seem less grateful with their life's humans are desperate to live, they don't want to die, in order to survive humans certainly surpass their limits."
It was quite the journey, a very long journey indeed to finally find someone worthy enough to call a friend. The situation has truly been in no favour to Anon, but he certainly has made the most of it. Who could have imagined someone as intelligent who stood out in all of the academic performance and was well known for his achievements in studies in his school was all alone?
How could one understand what he has been going through if one hasn't gone through what Anon has in his entire life? Clever, intelligent and for a loner quite outgoing Anon was yet he always questioned himself what he was missing to have someone he can call a friend in this life. You truly find the things you deserve at the right time and destiny answered to Anon.