I guess I jinxed myself because right when I was bringing a person's food to their mouth, the doctor that I'm a subordinate to knocked on the door with a small smile on his wrinkled face.
"Little Ignis, can you come out here for a second?" He asked. Nodding my head, I gave the rest of the food to the other volunteer in the room, which made the patient I was helping grumble under his breath. After signing a goodbye and to take care of themselves towards the patient, I exited the room with the doctor closing the door behind him.
He led the way as we walked down the hallways, gradually making it to a door where a lot of noise was coming from. I looked at the door, already feeling tired from something he hadn't even said yet.
"Little Ignis, I have a request that is something you can reject." He spoke gently, but I already felt my eye twitch because I knew, and he knew, I most likely wouldn't reject. When I take on things, I do them to the best of my abilities. This old weasel. Sighing, I already accepted it's going to be one of those tiring days as I waved for him to continue.
He smiled wide, almost flattening some of his wrinkle lines, as he got straight to the point: "We have a patient who has been having a rough time since her stay. She doesn't react well to adults and is somewhat tolerable to young people, but she hasn't relaxed once, which causes problems when giving her medicine. Since you're our youngest volunteer, I figured..." He led off.
I felt my eye twitching the more he spoke. When he looked down at me with a hopeful smile, I wanted to just laugh in his face and turn away. However, I didn't do that but agreed, like the try hard I was. I mentally kicked myself as the doctor quickly opened the door, probably fearing the toddler he tricked into doing something tiresome would change his mind.
When we got inside, I sucked a breath in as a group of adults huddled around, talking to a girl who huddled in the corner of the individual patient room. Her hands were covering her ears while her eyes are screw shut as she was crying. She would scream loudly at anyone who got close to her and her body shook hard.
The door shut behind me, probably feeling my regret for accepting by my body language. I looked up at the doctor, who looked down at me with his soft smile, but I flipped him off, which caused his smile to twitch. Yeah, you deserve it, scammer.
Feeling the tenth sigh of the day coming up my throat, I walked towards the group of talking people. I maneuvered around their legs before walking towards the huddled girl, who didn't notice me until I took my seat in front of her.
She was about to scream but when she opened her eyes; the scream got stuck in her throat, causing her to cough a bit before looking at me. Her brows furrowed as her eyes, with a minor curiosity, looked over at me like most people in the hospital already had. They call me a little doll behind my back when they don't think I can hear them.
When she was looking at me, I was looking at her. The girl was albino. Her white hair is cut close to the top of her ears, and her iris had a reddish pink outer ring with a lighter purplish pink inner ring. She has the palest skin I had ever seen, making the bruises that covered her from head to toe stand out.
She has chapped lips with bloody blotches on them. When she was coughing, they reopened, and blood slipped down from her lips, which I immediately took out my clean handkerchief to give to her.
She stalled for a bit, her eyes flickering between it and me, before hesitantly taking it from my hands and using it to clean herself up. She tried giving it back to me, but I immediately signed that she could have it. Her eyes widened and before she could do anything, the doctor came over. Not too close to us that the girl would start screaming, but close enough that she grew tense.
"White, this is Ignis; he is a volunteer in the hospital. Ignis, this is White." He introduced us, but I couldn't help but furrow my brows at the sudden English in his words.
"White? Her name is White? What a sucky naming sense," I thought while the doctor looked between both of us.
"I figured you two could be friends. Would you like that?" The doctor continued before waiting for the girl's response.
She looked at him before looking at me, then stalled for around five minutes. No one made any sound when she thought—the doctors because they had the patience, and me because I'm thinking about what Chen Liang is making for dinner tonight.
I hope she makes dumplings again.
Thinking about the smell and chewiness made my stomach quietly grumble. I mentally sighed at the long day ahead of me before going back to the Zhou household.
Finally, the girl nodded, and the doctor immediately smiled. He said a couple more things to her than to me before he and the other doctors made their way out of the room and finally closed the door.
"Wow, so you leave me by myself with this person? How professional." I thought, rolling my eyes, before focusing on the girl who was already looking at me. We sat looking at each other for a bit before she broke it first.
"Hi," she whispered with a small smile. Resigning to my fate, I signed a hi back before asking if she wanted to play anything.
The small smile on her face disappeared instantly as she cast a terrified look in my direction. I saw the scream coming miles away, thus acting quickly, I instantly changed the subject. "Okay, maybe we don't have to play games. How do you know sign language?"
She looked at me with wary eyes before slowly closing her mouth. We sat in silence for a bit before she once again relaxed and said, "My older sister taught me. She couldn't hear well." Her eyes were full of sorrow as tears went down her face.
"You are very considerate, then." I signed, causing her tears to stop as she looked at me, confused.
"I mean, some people don't take their time to learn or understand sign language, even though their family members need it. I once met a person who was deaf for many years and their parents never took their time to learn it." I clarified, while a memory appeared in my head.
The blonde girl with the bluest eyes I ever saw will look at anything with a blank stare after the accident. No longer did she have her perky smile and now regard everything around her like a show.
A show that did not have her in it.
"Doctor Ignis?" White asked hesitantly, bringing me back from the past. I waved my hands to tell her I'm okay, which made her give me a little smile before it slowly went away as she said, "I don't think I'm considerate. I don't know if my sister is alive or not."
I felt my eye twitching as I wondered if I was a magnet for people with sad back stories or something. Thinking for a bit, I decided to just bite the bullet as I asked, "Where is your sister?"
She hummed before whispering, "She's back there. I escaped but I don't know if I truly escaped or if they were having me look..." She didn't say the rest as she coughed, causing me to get up and get her a glass of water.
Thoughts of mafia or gang activity crossed my mind until I remembered they weren't present in this world. Then my thoughts went to something similar. A demonic cultivator sect*.
"Did this girl escape a demonic sect? How did she escape?" Keeping my theory in mind so I could tell the doctors, I brought the glass to her, asking questions as I handed it to her. "Where is there? Who are they? What do they have you looking for?"
Ignoring me, she gulped down the glass before asking a question of her own. "Do you know who Black is?" she asked with a raspy voice, despite drinking water. I wanted to say yes playfully, but I knew she didn't mean it like that, so I shook my head while getting up to fetch her some more water from the pail they had in here.
She murmured softly behind me as she mindlessly talked. "My sister said I shouldn't look for Black. She described them like a person who..." Once again, she trailed off. I turned back to her; her eyes were mindlessly looking at me with blankness.
The stare made my heart beat skyrocket, and a gut feeling was spreading in my stomach. "You're... you're Black." She spoke with a waver in her voice. The joke appeared in my head again, but this time it took on a different meaning. However, feeling like I was overreacting, I pushed it down as I paid attention to not spilling the water.
Giving the newly filled glass of water to her, she reached out and instead of grabbing the glass, a hand grabbed my wrist. Except it wasn't her very pale hand.
A pitched, black, skinny clawed hand wrapped around my wrist and tightened its grip. A feeling of dizziness made me shake my head as I inhaled and quickly let go of the glass and brought my hand to my chest. Blinking my eyes in horror, all I saw looking up was White, who was drinking her water.
Panting, I looked swiftly around the room but saw nowhere there. "Did I really see that? Or am I just tired from working all day?" I reflected.
I looked at the pale girl in front of me as if it would figure out what the hell I just saw and felt. However White just drunk her water silently. When she finished, she reached out the empty bottle to me, which caused me to stall a bit.
"Ignis?" she asked confusedly, as I didn't get the glass yet. I looked at her before looking around and slowly I went to grab it, but suddenly a sharp stung came from my wrist, causing me to hiss. Looking down at my covered wrist, I slowly tugged away a bit of my arm cuffs and rolled up my gloves a bit. I experienced a sinking feeling in my chest as a purple bruise began to emerge where I had been grabbed.
"If you don't run, you will soon be Black."
I whipped my head up to see White looking at me with eyes full of pity. The comment was so sudden that it instantly activated my fight-or-flight mode, but I didn't move as I signed, "What do you mean?"
Her brows furrowed as she looked up at me with a sad expression. "The Circus. The Circus needs new pets. I ran, but he would get me again. You look interesting. You will be his new pet." My heart skipped a beat as I stood up and backed away. Getting close to the door, I didn't immediately move to leave, as I needed more information. I knew better than to doubt people.
"Can you explain what the Circus is?" I signed. She looked at me before sighing while she shook her head. Her mouth wobbled as she repeated what she had previously said. Thus, I asked a different question: "Why did they let you escape?"
She looked at me hesitantly with sorrowful eyes, but what she uttered was like a weight for the heart. "Distraction. I'm sorry; I didn't know I'd been a distraction till now. They didn't let me escape. They wanted me to find a Black. You... you fit the description of what they're looking for. I'm sorry, I didn't remember!"
Lots of thoughts went through my head but pressing on the stone that is next to the door that will let a doctor come over to take care of the now panicky and sobbing girl, I immediately left the grim room.
With quick steps, I made my way out of the room and down the hallway to find the other two children quickly. Millions of thoughts were going through my head, trying to decipher the information I just learned.
I felt an episode coming and I couldn't help but internally curse at the worst timing that it could happen. I wobbled and held onto a wall, breathing in and out, as I tried to calm down. The area became woozy, and it spun rapidly in a vortex.
Slowly, I continued walking. Taking rhythmic breaths, which eventually calms the episode into leaving me.
When I crossed the hallway in the corner of my eye, a tall, skinny figure stood there in the middle. I felt my heart in my throat as I turned my head, but there was nothing that matched what I had seen. Instead, there were patients and doctors moving around, making their way to where they wanted to go.
I watched too many scary movies to second-guess what the hell I just saw and what I saw earlier. I wrapped my hand around my bruised wrist and moved quickly to latch myself to a wondering doctor, telling them I needed help to find my cousins.
Laughing at my so-called cuteness, the doctor grabbed my hand, and we walked down the hall. My back started tingling from a powerful sight, but I didn't dare look behind me to meet it.
Jiang Wu and Zhou Mei were together with the attendee Lou, who was with them during her alternation between the three groups. I need to ask to get two more attendees if what I saw and felt wasn't a mental stress game.
The attendee was the one who noticed me first, but Zhou Mei was the one who physically greeted me. "Ignis! Are you ready to go?" I nodded my head and Lou came to grab my bruised hand, causing me to flinch back. Lou suddenly looked serious and paid attention not to touch my wrist as she picked me up instead. I was startled but calmed down as best as I could when she whispered in my ear.
"What is wrong? You're shaking." I blinked before taking into perspective that she was right. I was shivering. It turns out I was more affected than I initially thought.
"I think I'm being hunted down, as is the patient in room 2A105. I saw someone watching me in the hallways, but when I looked, they weren't there." I signed to her in the middle of our bodies, where only we could see. I wanted to get us out to safety before fully telling her what had just happened. Lou's brows furrowed and her face clenched.
"Young Miss Zhou, Young Master Jiang, we should get going." She said this while rubbing my back. The two children didn't think much of it as they made their way out first. On our way out, Lou spoke to the head receptionist, saying something in the woman's ear, which made her smile quickly turn into a frown.
"I see. I will talk to the head to have things arranged." The receptionist said this while trying to regain her former relaxed smile. Lou hummed before we officially made our way out. I felt the woman's body tension when we were surrounded by groups of people. She stood close to the two children in front of her while I looked from behind her.
When we were about to exit the building, my eyes traveled around quickly before it stopped and my heart dropped to my stomach. It was like no one else saw him besides me as he looked at me through the crowd.
I saw how abnormally tall he was, how pale he was, and how deathlike he appeared. He wore a long trench coat and dress pants that didn't fit with the Chinese aesthetics around him. His hair was long and white as it flowed behind him and on top of the hair was a matching top hat that would've looked comical with how pronounced it was if not for the face the man had.
His smile was stretched out wide in an open smile, but there was nothing there besides a black void. His nose looked to be blended into his face, and his eyes... His eyes looked like they were about to fall from his head. There were no irises in the compass of white besides the black dots of his pupils.
This time I felt myself start shaking, and the more I shook, the more his smile expanded and in my ear I heard. "So perfect. You are exactly what I've been looking for."
"Young Master Ignis, what's wrong?" Lou asked worriedly, but I couldn't reply as my eyes seemed to be locked with his. I blinked, and he came closer. Subconsciously, I blinked again because of the sudden movement and he came closer twice as much as he did the first.
Oh, hell no.
I rapidly started signing towards her, basically saying the same thing repeatedly. "The man is there; no one seems to see him! Whenever I blink, he comes closer to me!" Her face hardened, and reached into her robe while asking how far he was. Signing his estimated distance, she took a deep breath before telling me to blink again.
If I could, I would have looked at her like she had lost her mind. "Young Master Ignis, trust me, you will be fine, I promise. Blink." She said it in a soft murmur. I really wanted to say hell no, get someone else to do it, but I followed her instructions and blinked.
When I opened my eyes, I damn near lost my soul when his face was a foot from mine as he bent down to my height. In quick motion, Lou turned around to face the direction he was in and raised a talisman while blurting something. The talisman burned quicker than she pronounced and in a beam of light; it hit the man right in the center of his body and a loud hiss scream sounded out, making everyone seem to pause.
The sound of glass breaking sounded, and I felt Lou's body tense and saw her eyes widen as she stepped back to protect Zhou Mei and Jiang Wu, who looked scared out of their wits. Slowly, we all watched as the man's body started forming cracks before breaking apart like a mirror. The pieces fell to the ground before turning into black liquid as they gradually sizzled away until nothing was left.
Everyone stared at the scene with wide eyes and halted breaths until someone finally screamed, and all hell broke loose. The scene was déjà vu, as everyone was running and screaming. I felt an episode coming while Lou quickly bent down to pick up a crying Zhou Mei and a trembling Jiang Wu.
With the three of us in her arms, she quickly made her way out of the crazy scene. Her feet were as light as the wind, as she basically flew above people's heads as they ran. I was trying to breathe through the pain as a voice once more whispered in my ears.
"No worries, pet. You will soon be mine."