She woke up to the sound of the waves of the sea. The weather was cool and she heard the sound of the wind brushing against the tops of the trees.
'Where am I?' she wondered.
Her head ached so much that she thought it was going to explode. She touched the ground, it was soft. Was she on a beach?
Yaima stood up and looked around her. Yes, she was in the middle of a beach. She looked at her clothes, or rather her maid uniform: a sapphire blue dress, with a lace skirt, with white leggings. That uniform made her look like a loli maid, and she was a bit dirty because of the sand. She brushed her skirt, her chest, and her arms and took the sand out.
What was the last thing she remembered?
She made an effort to remember. Confused images came to her. A butterfly? A giant butterfly that talked?
That memory was fuzzy, but she remembered that she was in a world filled with water. And a giant butterfly spoke to her.
"I will give you a power you can only dream of, human," the butterfly told her, its voice feminine and gentle, as it flapped its huge wings.
"What?" Yaima asked, confused.
"You will be assigned a mission," continued the butterfly, "if you fulfill it, your wish shall be granted."
'My wish?' thought Yaima.
She remembered that night… when her parents… in the middle of the fire… and she couldn't do anything. Her chest ached just remembering it.
"Your mission will be," the butterfly spoke, "to find the Shrines and free them."
Shrines? What was that creature talking about?
Then everything went black and she woke up on that beach. Had it been a dream? And what happened before that? She remembered being in the city. Working as a waitress in a maid cafe and then... a light, water, giant talking butterfly.
Her head suffered from stabbing pain. She shrieked and bent her knees.
'What's going on?'
She glanced up and gasped when she saw the sky. It wasn't exactly blue. It was as if it were a diaphanous layer of various colors, like a rainbow.
'Beautiful…'
Beyond the edge of the beach rose a forest. But the plants weren't green, they were… gray? What a strange thing. And Yaima could have sworn that some sort of… black mist moved through the trees?
What kind of place was that?
'Maybe I died and woke up in paradise. Or in hell.' She had heard terrifying stories about customers obsessing over and chasing maids who worked as waitresses.
There was one case that shook her when she heard it. A man in his thirties visited a maid cafe and ever since then, he became obsessed with one of the maids. A twenty-year-old girl. Law student. Beautiful, long black hair, silky and shiny. Snow white skin. No blemishes. No pimples, no spots, no wrinkles. She looked like a porcelain doll.
The man sent her love letters, which she ignored. Then he got her social media. He texted her every day. However, she ignored him.
Once he sent her a voice note, crying, begging her to meet him at the cafe. He told her between sobs that he loved her, and that no one was going to love her like he did.
She blocked him.
The man became so intense that he was banned from the cafe. However, that didn't stop him. Somehow, he followed the girl to her house. He watched her for days. He found out that she had a boyfriend. The man, in an act of jealousy, full of rage, chased the boy one night, after leaving the house of his girlfriend. He took advantage of the fact that it was late at night and beat the boyfriend to death in a dark alley.
He didn't have enough with that. One night, after the girl returned from her job at the maid cafe. The man came out of the darkness and forced her into her house with him. She lived alone.
No one heard her scream.
The man raped her, killed her, and ate her. Literally. He cooked the girl's meat and ate it.
"Now she lives inside me," he said when the police caught him.
Had that story really happened? Who knows. Maybe.
'Maybe someone killed me. And this is the afterlife.'
She walked through the sand.
"H-H-Hello?" She called stammering. But the only answer was the sea and the wind, "Is some… is some… I-is, is someone here?"
Nothing. Unanswered.
She was afraid. An icy terror went up to her spine.
"H-hello?" She called again, stammering.
It was lucky that she had gotten a job as a waitress. Her stuttering could be frustrating.
"We hired you because you are pretty," once said the cafe manager, "customers are going to see your face, not listen to what you say."
Well. She didn't care as long as she got paid. She had already gotten used to her stutter.
She heard movement in the woods. She stopped.
"H-hello?"
Out of the forest came many men in silver armor. They carried spears and their faces were covered with gas masks. There were so many that she couldn't count them, but they were enough to surround her.
"In the name of the Federation of Allied Cities, don't move!" one of the soldiers yelled.
The Federation of what?
"Raise your hands!" ordered the man, whose voice filtered through the gas mask.
Yaima raised her hands, trembling.
"You are under arrest for the crime of conspiracy against the Federation," the soldier announced.
What was that guy talking about?
"I…I…," Yaima stammered, "I don't…"
"Speak well," the man demanded.
"I… I…"
Words wouldn't come out of her mouth. They got stuck in her throat. She made an enormous effort to force them out.
"I do… don't…"
But they didn't come out.
Why? Why? Why was it SO hard to talk? She cried.
What the hell was going on? Where the heck was she? 'Please make it a nightmare,' she told herself. And she kept crying.
The soldiers looked at each other's faces.
"We will proceed to handcuff you," the soldier said, approaching her.
Fush! Something sliced through the air and hit the soldier's head. His helmet protected him.
"What was that?" He asked looking around.
A football-sized rock shot out of the darkness of the forest like a meteor and struck the soldier in the stomach. The man fell in a crash. Gasping, as if he was short of breath.
The other soldiers stood on guard.
Fush! Another rock, fush! And another. One by one, the soldiers fell. Others ran, breaking formation. Yaima froze, confused. Not knowing what to do.
A boy came out of the forest, he was the same age as Yaima, more or less. With dark skin and brown hair, short, like that of a military man. And he was wearing sportswear, a sweatshirt, and a brown and white jacket.
He gripped Yaima's hand tightly.
"Come with me!" he told her.
She nodded.
She didn't quite understand why, but something in his eyes…made her trust him.
"Don't let them get away!" A soldier yelled.
The boy guided Yaima through the trees, rocks, and bushes. They were approaching the black mist. Something in Yaima made her shiver. The boy must have noticed.
"Don't worry," he said, "the black mist doesn't affect the marked ones."
What?
Why was everyone talking so strange?
A couple of soldiers ran close to them. They were dangerously close.
"Don't run away!" One of them screamed.
The boy clicked his tongue, extended his arm and a couple of rocks floated into the air, then he pointed towards the soldiers and both rocks shot out, like bullets, and hit hard on the heads of both pursuers.
The two collapsed unconscious.
What had that boy just done? Did he have psychic powers or something?
They kept running. It already seemed that they were not being followed. He and she walked through the mist. Yaima didn't feel anything. Only her view was limited.
"Now they won't be able to follow us," the boy stated.
They ran and ran. Until they came out of the mist.
Yaima was tired, she was short of breath.
"Okay, rest," the boy told him, in a gentle voice, "I think we've already lost them."
She nodded, panting. She had never run so much in her life.
"My name is Nahuel, by the way," the boy introduced himself, with a wide smile.
"Yai… Yaima," she stammered.
"Nice to meet you, Yaima."
She smiled at him, she didn't quite know why.
He beckoned her with a wave of his hand.
"Come, follow me, I'll show you my house."
She felt confident and followed him.
The boy's house was…more like a shack. Rudimentarily built with pieces of wood and ropes. The roof was covered with tree branches. The hut had no doors, no windows, and two people could barely fit inside. It was more like the houses that children built to play, than a house to live in.
Yaima thought that rain would collapse that hut.
"I know it's not much," the boy said, "but it's what I could do with what I had in the woods. At least it will protect us from the rain."
Yaima wasn't so sure.
"Th…thank you," she said.
"Please make yourself comfortable," he gestured into the hut, "I'll go get something to eat and I promise to explain everything to you."