The young lady almost immediately returned a smile, "Thanks aunty. You don't know how much I have tried finding this game. But even after looking it in almost every game shop, I couldn't find it. I remembered my grandfather talking about an old game shop in this place, he had said that the shop might have closed down. As I was walking by I saw the shop. I tried my luck here. I finally found it."
"I am sure you couldn't find it. The game looks old, but Miguel keeps these games. There were many puzzle games from the same company in the storage room. He insists on keeping these types of games. So that they won't get forgotten." Flaura was proud of her son, but immediately she had to hide away the gloom that came after that. Where was he?
The young lady's eyes lit up immediately. "Did you say, Miguel?"
Flaura looked surprised looking at the young lady. She asked, her voice trembling "Do you know him?"
"Aunty, is his name Miguel Ohara?" The young lady asked again with expectation.
"Y-yes." Flaura looked on the verge of tears. She asked the young lady. "Have you seen him recently?"
The young lady looked perplexed by the emotions. She shook her head as she replied, "No aunty, I haven't seen him recently. In fact it has been several years since I had seen him."
"How do you know him?" Flaura was losing her steadiness. Sharla immediately helped her mom looking at her condition.
"Mom, you should take a seat." Sharla helped her mom to sit on the chair. Her mom wasn't listening to her, she wanted to know more. But her mom had to sit calmly under Sharla's insistence.
"What happened to him?" The young lady asked, looking at how she had been behaving.
Sharla told her about how her brother had gone missing for 2 weeks. How they had tried everywhere, tried to contact each of his friends, but still they hadn't been able to find him. Sharla asked how she knew him, when Sharla couldn't find her contact on Miguel's phone.
"We were classmates in middle school. But I had to transfer out during the mid-term. We used to be friends, but we lost touch. I haven't seen him in many years." The young lady talked about herself.
"If you find any clues about him. Can you please tell me?" Sharla asked the young lady. The young lady replied affirmatively. Both of them exchanged numbers. Sharla asked about her name to which the young lady replied, "It's Natasha Tino."
Her mom had calmed down by then. Natasha or as she called herself Nat, said that she would call her if she found anything about him. Her mom asked her to wait, so they could all have some snacks to which Nat declined politely, saying that she was in a hurry and would come by the next time. Nat wanted to pay for the puzzle, but her mom was persistent on giving away the puzzle for free as she was Miguel's friend. After a few rounds of back and forth where Nat wanted to pay and her mom wanted to give it away. Her mom won. Nat bid farewell to Sharla and her mom. After Nat was gone Sharla looked at her mom who looked somewhat happier.
After going some distance after coming out from the shop. Natasha called something in the air.
"You must have heard it? In the Shop."
"Yes miss." A deep voice came out from the air.
"I want you to find him."
"As per your wish. Miss." The man said. Natasha started walking after that.
She stopped again after a long distance. This time in a secluded place, there was no one near her to see and to hear anything. And even if someone was there, she didn't care. She took out a coin out of nowhere. It looked crimson gold in color. If Miguel was here to see it. He would have been shocked by the coin. Because it had the same inscriptions as the one on the metallic wristband.
She tossed the coin in the air, the coin rotated several times before landing on her palm. The instant it landed, she closed it with the palm of her other hand. And then she was no more. The place where she had been standing now looked empty. She had disappeared completely.
In a little corner of the other world. Petals of flower red, blood red, sang with the waves of the wind. Its beauty undoubtedly reflected in the field akin a garden. But there was no creature with intelligence to appreciate it. Its presence, lonely, ethereal and undefined.
That was broken when a man had crashed there, battered and broken. The impact of the crash was such that that man couldn't remain conscious and had fallen into deep sleep.
The only comfort was that those beautiful red petals that seemed to go larger and larger in his vision had saved him from certain death.
It had been many days since he had landed here. He had instantly lost consciousness after crashing. It was a miracle that he had survived the falling. The instant he had lost his touch from the bus, he had found himself falling, farther and farther down.
Miguel couldn't believe that the bus hadn't been running on the ground, the fogginess was present there in the sky. He didn't have an estimate, but he could guess that it had taken him nearly half an hour, where he dreaded each moment, to finally see something other than the fog.
A red field, covered in vast redness. But it wasn't the eeriness of it that had grabbed Miguel's attention. No, it was something more at that moment. The redness of the field was reflected under the moonlight, which made it look more beautiful than anything he had seen before.
That was the last thing he could remember, because just in a few seconds he was under that redness, when he was so sure of his death. Somehow, he survived.
Miguel was looking at a rabbit. It kind of looked like a rabbit, other than the fact that it had eyes around its ear rather than the face and its hind legs seemed to be made to jump higher than usual, like that of a frog. But even under the growling of his stomach, he wasn't nearing it. In fact he wasn't here to observe the rabbit. It was to observe something else.
He had to hide behind the long stalks of the plants. The plants were even bigger than him, and were capable enough to hide him from any predator that could see him out. These plants were the same red flowers that he had seen when he had first opened his eyes. When he had first opened his eyes and seen it, he could see the size of those flowers. It was unheard of in the real world.
He had to be careful though as he watched the rabbit, because even after so many days that had passed, he wasn't fully healed yet. And if the predator he feared the most, somehow sees him, he would die without being able to get far.
But he could breathe in relief for now, because he hadn't seen those predator enter the field of flowers a single time. It was as if they feared the flowers somehow. How could they with those terrifying teeths fear the field, he couldn't understand them, for Miguel these plants were the best thing to happen after arriving in this world.
When he had first opened his eyes after crashing here, he wasn't able to move a single bit. His whole body ached, the pain was excruciating to him that tears couldn't stop flowing from his eyes. The moment he had opened the strange screen, he could see it labeling every part of his body, with some kind of mishappening.
Broken bones, bruises and several degrees of trauma to his internal organs, he had difficulty maintaining his lucidity after watching his condition.
Somehow though, the strange screen still lit up to give him hope even as he was suffering. It prompted with the text, that the self healing was activated. And to accelerate his recovery he was given a mission.
The mission was to eat. The mission told him that the creatures of this world were filled with much more nutrients that could help him accelerate his healing. Miguel had smiled in despair when he had seen that. For hours, he had laid in the same position, because his body and even the pain didn't allow him to move a bit.
His hunger had reached to the extreme, and when he was forced to act, he had no choice but to eat the single thing that looked edible, the same flower he was resting on. It was tasteless, even unhygienic to eat. They were leathery in texture, soft too, but there was a sense of repulsion as he ate them. Each time he took a bite, his stomach protested to throw them out. Faced with everything that was going against him, he had no choice but to eat it in silence.