4 years later...
Inside a rundown apartment, Alex looked at the empty syringe next to his laptop, full of confusion.
The room was a chaotic mess, filled with empty boxes and wrappers. A dustbin filled way beyond its capacity—old, worn-out clothes scattered all over the room.
The only clean place in this mess was the wooden table with his laptop, a syringe, and a handwritten note that read, 'Operation Nano is successful!'
"What's going on here?" He scratched his head when suddenly a sharp pain hit his eyes.
He fell on the floor, writhing in intense pain while screaming, "Ahh."
Desperately, he rubbed his eyes and rolled all over the garbage, but it was no help. No matter how much he struggled, instead of decreasing, the pain intensified.
It felt like someone was poking hundreds of hot needles into his eyes. Soon, he lost his reasoning and started thrashing around. At that moment, his head hit the table leg, and he blacked out.
…
The next morning, the loud alarm sound coming from his phone woke Alex. He opened his eyes, and the events of last night flashed through his head.
He rubbed his eyes in panic, but then he realized he could see again. This made him relieved. He jumped to his feet and swiftly rushed toward the bathroom.
He stood before a big, cracked mirror, examining his reflection. A skinny, brown-skinned dude with black hair and a pale complexion stared back at him. He lifted his hair and noticed a blue spot with a scratch at the corner of his forehead. This must be because of the hit last night.
Even though he was still not sure what happened, he remembered the pain in his head before he passed out.
Along with the blood mark, there was also a bit of red and orange sauce smeared on the left side of his face. His clothes were in the same condition.
Alex turned on the tap and started splashing water on his face. He rubbed off all the dirt and then looked back at the mirror. Now, with a clean face, he noticed the strange shine in his eyes.
"What the hell?" He moved closer to the mirror to get a better look at his eyes.
His once dull black eyes now had this otherworldly metallic shine to them. He noticed a thin silver-white lining around the edge of his pupils. The white line gave an otherworldly feeling to his otherwise normal black eyes.
As he focused on his eyes, the content of the note flashed through his mind.
'Operation Nano is successful. What the hell is that note? Is it talking about the Nano capsule, but then why is that successful? Didn't I have today's appointment?' This caused a slight headache.
"Shit, not again." He plopped down on the bathroom floor. Even with the headache, Alex tried to recall last night's incident. As far as he remembered, nothing special happened yesterday.
He did his usual work on the laptop, then went to the new construction site for labor. But then what? It hit him that no matter how much he tried, he remembered nothing after he came back to his room.
The more he tried to think about it, the more his headache increased. It reached a point where Alex sensed he had to stop it somehow.
Alex stopped thinking about the incident and dragged himself on the bathroom floor towards the shower side. He turned on the shower and positioned his head below the water flow while trying to take deep breaths to calm himself.
To his luck, it worked, and soon his headache subsided. Alex closed the shower knob and thought again about last night, but once again, his headache started coming back. He stopped himself from thinking much about the forgotten memory.
One thing was obvious: something had happened last night, but the anomaly was the total blankness about the incident. For now, his only clue was that note... and also that empty syringe.
"In what mess did I get myself into? Is this also related to those guys? Ah, but I don't think anyone finds out about me here."
Alex wiped the water off his face and decided to take it easy. It was an important day for him, and he did not want to mess up because of some unknown hiccups.
Now that he was already wet, Alex removed his clothes and started taking a proper bath.
…
After the bath, Alex looked at the garbage around his room. He even spotted a few metal forks lying around the floor that made him sweat. "Fck, if I rolled over those, I might have died last night."
He decided not to take the risk and clean up this shithouse today. He looked at the clock hanging on the left wall. "Oh, I wake up that early." It was still early, 8 a.m., and there were still 4 hours before his appointment.
He wasted no time, folded the cuff of his shit to his elbows, and started cleaning his room. For the next few hours, he turned the whole shithouse into a place where a normal human could live.
It took him 3 hours just to clean his single-room-size house. A few of the neighbors saw him moving 10 bags out of his room and gave them that familiar, disgusting look.
He was sure some of these bastards would even complain about this to that fatty landlord. He could sense the headache coming.
Not caring much, Alex plopped down next to the table, staring at three things on it. From the condition of his room, he knew that someone had deliberately removed all the trash near this table.
To get some clues, he even went through all the trash but found nothing about this nano operation. The only clue about last night was in the laptop, syringe, and note.
Alex also realized after closer observation that it was his handwriting present on the note.
For now, he just wrapped the syringe with the note and placed it on the wooden shelf next to his bed.
He tried to turn on the laptop, but it was dead, so he left it to charge. It was already past 11 and there was less than an hour left for the appointment, so he decided to think about it later at night.
He just grabbed his mobile phone and walked out of his room with his shoes on.