He'd first awoken with a start, he was drenched in cold sweat. When he woke up the first thing he noticed was that this wasn't his room, that everything smelled disgusting and mildew, and that he didn't have his phone, or his clothes. His head hurt and his body felt heavy. As he'd forced himself to get up and walk around to familiarize himself with the room he was in, he spotted a mirror, a mirror with cracks and oil caked on it, but a mirror nonetheless. He looked inside the mirror, he didn't look too bad, but you could definitely tell he was poor. He had straight hair down to his neck with a lot of split ends, his hair looked very oily.
He had a very pale face, as if he'd seen a ghost. He was pale, but not pretty pale. The pale of an already dead body, a pasty pale that drove others away. He had an aqualine nose and long eyelashes, with lips in desperate need of a chapstick, cracked and bleeding a scarlet red colour. If he wasn't moving or had a beating heart, someone could have mistaken him for a corpse. He wasn't ugly though, he just looked strange. His eyes were black, not a very deep black, but black nonetheless, perhaps not black, but a deep gray. After he looked in the mirror he was even more shocked, this was definitely not his face! This caused him even more panic, not that he minded not being ugly for a day...but his real concern was where he was, who he was, and why he was here. He wanted to scream and run around like a chicken with its head cut off! But he knew panic wouldn't help, despite knowing that panic solved nothing, his heart still dropped into his stomach, beating at least 130 bpm, which wasn't that abnormally high, but high enough to make someone dizzy. He wanted to scream so badly but couldn't find the words to.
After he somewhat calmed down he went over the things he remembered about his life before he woke up here, he remembered: he practiced medicine and almost everything he learned in med school, albeit there was still spots in his memories, until the end of the fourth year (when he died). His name was, or used to be, Sunni, he had six siblings, both his mother and father were still alive, he had one good friend, Rain, a friend who moved away, back to hong kong, though they were still in contact, or used to be. He was just about to go to residency. After that he remembered his death, he was on a date with a guy who was supposed to be his boyfriend whose face he couldn't remember, they went back to his house to hang out, the guy liked cooking so Sunni let him cook, when he was drinking the wine the guy served he noticed the faint scent of cinnamon, he drank it, assuming he put cinnamon in the wine to slice it up or something, strange but not enough to be suspicious. He started to feel dizzy and that was when he threw up, he suddenly lost all the strength in his body and was crawling towards his phone to call 911 for an ambulance. Unfortunately he was too slow and the guy got up and delivered a strong kick to him in his side, he was sent flying across the room and the last thing he remembered was the sadistic and somewhat...loving..? Smile on the guys face. What a terrible thing to remember before death.
Death was strange, he was tired but energetic at the same time, he was weightless yet weighed a million pounds. After that he went over the memories of this guy whose body he was in. He didn't really remember anything from him, he had a miniscule understanding of this strange language, that he knew enough of to get around, that looked somewhat like German and hieroglyphs with how complicated it looked. What puzzled him the most was reincarnation, he was kind of a nihilist and didn't believe in reincarnation or heaven or hell. Well, he shouldn't say reincarnation, it leaned more towards possession, as he was "reincarnated" as a fully grown man, he couldn't resist cracking a joke "it was obvious he was malnourished, so maybe a half grown man would be right..." he slapped himself in the face, it burned enough to scare him out of his messed up jokes, now wasn't the time to make jokes!
Now was the time to try and find out what was happening!
In order to recollect himself Sunni looked up outside of his window, there were two moons, one the size of a super moon phenomenon on Earth, it was blue as well. The other was a tinier moon, about half the size of the super moon, so basically a normal moon as well. There was nothing really strange about the second moon, it looked just like the moon on Earth. "Wait a minute...second moon..? I must be hallucinating..." He was so confused right now, but he'd figure that out later. He glanced down onto the floor by his bed, there was a notebook that was open, the owner must have obviously fallen asleep while writing and, well, died, the words trailed off on the end and the paper was crumpled from falling off the bed, it was in a strange language, he could partially understand it because of the memory fragments that he had received from this guy, he found it weird that he didn't even know this guys name despite having some of his memories, the memories being of this language, some of his childhood, and getting screamed at by his boss in the place he worked at. The words looked strange, he didn't know how but he could understand...
"may the circle remain unbroken when chaos ensnares all, the chaos will be great, through blind eyes all shall fall."
he vaguely understood it, by vaguely he understood the words and not the meaning, however it had the starting of a new sentence that the owner didn't get to write, the only word he got to write after that strange sentence was "anarchist" maybe everything was just the ramblings of a dead man that was delirious and had no rhyme or reason, "rest in pieces..well technically not pieces because you didn't get dismembered, though that would've been fun to wake up to..." Sunni had a pretty dark sense of humor, but he cared..when it had benefits to him..Well, no matter, he wanted to explore, so he opened his drawers hoping to find some clothes to wear. There was nothing, nothing but dust and the cold feeling of disappointment. He sighed and almost started crying tears of anger, "goddamn it, I'll have to go out looking like a bum..." He opened the door to his room, he noticed he also didn't have anything other than shoes that were falling apart at the seams, so he threw those on and walked outside.
Despite it being night the streets were bustling, though he quickly noticed the trend of clothing that looked almost like the seventeenth century. Though it appeared to be quite steampunk, some men had steam powered guns holstered near their armpits, the women had giant skirts that seemed a pain to walk around in, as he passed by the stalls, he heard people yelling in that strange but alluring language, yelling things like "20% discount for anyone who comes now!" And arguing with customers over the prices of what they sold. As he walked past a stall selling pastries an old woman called to him, "Orion!" He kept walking, he wasn't sure if she was talking to him. "Orion!" She yelled again. He stopped and looked back for a second. She looked back at him and gestured for him to come to the stall. "Hm...so his name was Orion..." He thought, he realized that he knew this lady somehow, not her name, but a faint recognition of her face. He walked up to her, "Hello ma'am" he bowed slightly. He wasn't sure where he got that habit, as in America they didn't usually bow.. maybe it was from his friends? Or maybe his travels to Asian countries. He found he liked Europe more though, even though they all treated him like some baby who knew nothing of the world and blatantly talked about him in their language as if he couldn't understand, it was pretty nice there, but back to the language issue, yeah, a lot of tourists couldn't, but he wasn't dumb enough to travel to a country and not speak the language, this time aside.
That aside, this lady was really nice, she stuffed his mouth full of the pastries she cooked, constantly saying "Orion this" and "Orion that", gosh, she was annoyingly sweet, but that wasn't what he was focused on, Orion..that name sounded strangely familiar...oh well, he'd figure it out later. Everything else aside, Sunni noticed that her voice sounded strangely congested and..wet? Like the sort of wetness in her voice like when you're sick and you have mucus build up in your lungs..hm.. whatever, this wasn't the time to try and diagnose someone, as he hadn't gone through residency and was not qualified yet, plus, in this life, he hadn't even gone to med school, she'd probably call him crazy. She noticed that he wasn't paying attention and gave him a light smack on the shoulder, startling but not hurting him. "Tsk, tsk, tsk you do this every time someone is talking to you!" She continued to scold him for at least 20 more minutes.
Finally she concluded by yelling at him to get to work. He attempted to go behind the stall for work but she quickly yelled at him again "ay ai ai, no! You ruin everything every time you come back here!" Apparently he didn't work here...so he asked "where do I work?" She looked at him like he was crazy, well, in this situation he appeared crazy, but she replied in a sarcastic voice, assuming this was a test of some sort to see how well she knew him or something that he worked in a factory. He asked, how old he was, she told him he was 23, she was increasingly getting irritated by this "test." He asked what her name was, her name was Belle. He asked and he asked and he asked until she shouted at him to go to work again. He found it strange that he worked at night, but "oh well" he thought, "gotta have a graveyard shift in every profession i guess" during that conversation he asked for the address, the address was 6080 saint heralds Street. He walked down the street and was met with a large factory, large and imposing, scary, almost, he saw people working outside, loading carriages. Strange that they had steam powered guns but didn't have cars.. whatever, guns are easier to design than cars, not that he knew anything because he was a medical student and not an engineering student, but come on, you could clearly see how complicated cars were! He satirized himself realizing that the roads were built for carriages and not cars, so even if they had cars, they wouldn't work well.