The pompous man instantly vanished into thin air. There were no special effects, no dramatic scenery.
One second he was right there, the other, he was gone.
The crowd was stunned in shock for the first few seconds, like a pack of deer in front of headlights.
However, they quickly mixed their shock with excitement and cheered for Tear.
Even the judges were amazed.
"This is... the most flawless magic trick I have ever seen."
"How in the world did he do it?"
"Never have I been this puzzled!"
They were all awestruck.
Even Tear himself couldn't believe it. He exhaled out loudly in shock, almost wheezing as he began to slightly laugh to himself.
"I-it... worked." He then passed his hand over where the man should have been.
However, that's when his heart sunk down into his stomach.
'What?' He said to himself, feeling nothing but the air in front of him.
"He's not here." He said out loud accidentally, surprised by this news himself.
He began to turn pale with confusion and bewilderment, "He's gone." He verified to himself.
However, the crowd obviously heard this as well.
Their amusement quickly turned to concern and panic as Tear continued to wail his hands in the air like an idiot.
"It's just a disappearing spell, right? I mean... what could go wrong!?" At that moment, Tear remembered that this spell was the only one written in pencil.
"The page was torn... I imagined Grandpa rewrote it or something. Could it have been a completely different spell?" This horrible thought crept into his mind, along with several others.
Did he just kill the judge? Make him disappear forever? Could he undo it? No... there was no such thing as that in the book.
His mind began to race in panic as the crowd and judges became increasingly worried.
It even got to the point where medics and safety personnel had to enter the stage.
Mics fell, sending loud siren-like screeches through the building.
Whispers turned into screams and shouts of worry and confusion.
The judges also joined the stage, as they and several other people such as the medics began screaming at Tear for an answer.
"What did you do!?"
"Where is he!?"
However, Tear couldn't hear any of this right now.
Tears eyes darted everywhere, looking for an answer... and then, he found one.
"I-I'll go." He said out of nowhere.
Everyone who was screaming at him took a step back, squinting their eyes.
"You'll go? Go where?"
Tear gripped his magic book, "I'll go and get him back. I'll make this right!"
'That's what you would have wanted, right Grandpa? To do what's right...' Tear closed his eyes shut.
Voices and hands began to pull on him: "Don't do it! What if you can't come back either!"
"Are you stupid! Just wait and see how things turn out!"
People pulled and pushed him around, but he had already made up his mind.
"Disappear." He said again with total conviction.
In the second moment when he opened his eyes, a much darker scene graced him.
He seemed to be under a pitch-black night sky. Suddenly, an extremely cool wave passed by him, and for some reason, he could feel the wave in every crevice of his body.
Even his private parts...
He looked down in confusion and found that he was totally naked.
"W-what the hell!?" He exclaimed in confusion, covering his private parts.
He was extremely scared, but what scared him even more was a cold thing touching his shoulder.
A sound came from behind him: "Hey, quiet down--" But Tear was far too busy being terrified out of his mind to understand:
"AHHHHH!!!!" He screamed at the top of his lungs, nearly breaking the canopy off of the forest he was in.
He heard a thud behind him and quickly turned around.
On the floor was the pompous man, completely butt-naked with a shocked expression on his face.
It seemed the scream made the man fall onto his rear.
"What the hell!?" The pompous man yelled while still whispering. "I told you to be quiet, why did you scream!"
"What the fuck do you mean why did I scream? I'm naked in this random place and something cold randomly touched my back. What would you do in that situation!?" Tear retorted, also whispering while shouting.
The pompous man paused for a few seconds before replying: "Well... look. The point is, this is fucked up. I've been hearing random sounds ever since you teleported me here. I don't know what you did but know this. Even if it takes me my entire life, I will never stop until you regret ever being born--"
Tear interrupted the fatty's dialogue: "You might as well stop now because I already regret that. Anyways... why do you look so old?"
The fatty raised an eyebrow, "W-what!? Now you're insulting me? How dare you!"
"No! I'm being serious. You looked 60 before, but now you look 80 years old."
It was true. The pompous man had much more wrinkly skin now, and his overall look made him seem shorter and more frail than before.
The fatty paused for a moment, noticing that Tear also looked around 20 years older: "Now that I think about it, you look like you are in your forties." He said.
At that moment, Tear looked up at the thin forest canopy above their heads.
"Two moons..." He said, noticing two discolored moons in the sky fairly far away from each other.
"We didn't just get teleported to some random forest. It looks like we are on another planet entirely." Tear's eyebrows furrowed as he looked at the ground and tried to figure out what was going on.
Hearing Tear's words, the fatty was perplexed: "What the hell did you just say!? Please don't tell me you've gone mad!"
"No!" Tear retorted: "I'm sane, but that's the only thing that makes sense. If we traveled this far away, that also explains our rapid aging. I imagine it's our body's way of adapting to the cycle of years on another planet. Then again... that still doesn't explain how we teleported here. One key thing is missing. A reason why our age miraculously expanded without any side effects and how the hell the spell work in the first place."
The pompous old man had something to say: "Perhaps it's... magic."
Tear immediately stared at the fatty with an unimpressed look. He was just stating the blatantly obvious fact.
But then, Tear realized that the fatty was possibly on to something.
"Wait a minute..." Tear said, "A factor that could affect our bodies like this and teleport us. A form of power that wasn't on Earth, but on this planet. It must be that sort of magical power that allowed all this to take place. A power that goes beyond the laws of physics."
Tear looked at the fatty: "Thats what you were talking about right?"
The fatty looked back at him with low eyelids: "No... I was just saying stupid crap to make you mad." He said while picking his nose.
Tear threw a stone at the fatty's head out of anger, knocking him out cold as he began to think.
"Hmm... looking at our bodies, it seems that no physical object could transfer with us. That means the magic book also--" The thought stopped, as Tear felt an odd feeling in his chest as soon as he thought of the magic book.
It was weird, as though an intuitive feeling calling for him.
Like knowing how to smell, see, and hear naturally, this feeling gave the same vibe.
Tear focused in on his chest, suddenly revealing a glowing transparent magic book in the air in front of him.
It illuminated the area with its mystical blue glow and it flipped dozens of pages at once nonstop.
Tear's eyes lit up with intrigue as information began to fill his mind out of nowhere.
"I see... so because this book couldn't travel with me physically, it turned spiritual and imbued into my soul." Tear said out loud, having learned this information randomly.
***
The pompous fatty felt a few light slaps to the face. He woke up halfway:
"No Mommy! Let me sleep more!"
He got a much harder slap across the face this time, sobering him up from his sleepiness real quick.
"Wake up fatass!" Tear blurted.
"W-what? What do you want!" The fatty sat up.
"First of all, can you see what's in front of me in the air?" Tear asked, confusing the fatty as he couldn't see anything.
Just from his puzzled expression, Tear understood that the book seemed to appear only to him.
'That makes sense since it's only imbued to my soul...' Tear mused.
"Anyways. Let's go back... home." Tear said this, but in reality, Earth didn't feel like home whatsoever. More like a damn torture chamber of endless suffering.
He knew that if he were to go back, he would have to continue living his old pathetic life and most likely be imprisoned on top of that.
A small part of him wanted to stay in this more magical world with two moons... but he also wanted to make up for his mistakes.
"Let's go then! What are you waiting for!" The pompous fatty exclaimed.
Raising his hand in the air, Tear said: "Disappear." As both him and the judge erased into thin air.
Before opening his eyes again, Tear thought to himself: 'Please be Earth. Please be the stage we were just on--'
However, a completely different setting met his gaze on opening his eyes.