Her name was Megami.
Nobody had known of her presence, even after birth.
She had never known her parents. They had left her.
She never had a last name.
Megami never had a lot of privileges. Her life was, essentially, useless.
She couldn't afford school; she never went to any educational institutions, but she had learned her nations' language in less than a year after birth.
She had known… everything. And yet, like a pearl out of reach, she could never get what she truly wanted. It couldn't be replicated by anyone, even of the highest authority of her world, or any world.
Megami knew what her name meant. Goddess. It was a term used for superior deities in her world, a mere myth that laid unseen in the sight of a much weaker, pathetic, imbecile being.
Exactly 14 years after Megami's birth, she had made an excruciating discovery. The reason she matured more than twelve times a normal human wasn't because of a defect.
It was because she had learned to use her soul's essence.
People had an intangible object in them, called the soul. It was what formed memories. It was what formed the body's personality, or perhaps the whole human itself.
In it was the essence. It could be used to manipulate objects or such. Their life was made around the essence, what had caused the dividing barrier between different human beings. Without the essence, there would be no difference.
In other words, humans had the ability to harness the power of their essence, or a better term, magic.
Megami had reformed the world. Not as a scientist, but a deity. After measuring her essence in power, the world had revolved around the sun hundreds of times. Although, Megami had never cared about the passing of time.
Close to 250 years after her birth, Megami regressed.
...
Life is simple in a city like mine. Or maybe it's just my lifestyle.
I attend a private school, in which my parents had forced me to. A monotonous lifestyle without any change is what would describe me. No difference, just school and sleep.
I guess time flies when you live a life like mine.
The final bell chimed and, almost a moment after, students were piled up at the door ready to run home and rest. I decided to stay behind, and abandon the false heaven past the doors' passageway to home. I would meet with a friend of mine after school hours to work on a small study on the soul, which had proven true nearly a century ago.
Around 20 minutes went by. He still isn't here. He's ten minutes late.
The iridescent screen of my phone lights up as I open up the nearly magical Messages app to text him, although he doesn't use his phone often. And then I play video games, the universal form of entertainment in modern days.
Another ten minutes pass. I look outside the window to pass the time. I decided that, if he doesn't arrive in the next ten minutes, I would go home.
Aoki Takahashi's family are probably the lone definition of "spoiled." Although his parents are nearly swimming in the money they earn annually, he chooses his own path, regardless of whether he makes a lot or barely manages to pass through. It's a trait of a person I like and respect, which is why I have him as my best friend.
Ten minutes have passed yet again. I usually often worry, for I always forget something or leave an item behind. This time, instead of my heart feeling like it's on a race, I feel an unsurpassable tranquility, a dead calm. It never came to that something felt wrong.
I look outside the window yet again as a substitute for my phone.
Instead of an empty, vague field, however, there is a singular figure standing. It stares into my body.
Not as a body, however, as something else.
I stood there, not moving for the fear that has turned my body into an inanimate object. Gradually, I began to feel the sense of time being traversed forward, as if I were the only one that had felt that.
The world around me spun around as if I was being wrapped. My perspective in the eyes had changed, and it felt as if I would have had my body torn apart, limb by limb. Not even that would have described the mental pain, the agony of torture. It was as fast as a second, but felt like an eternity.
It felt as if I regressed.
"Oi, Kiroshi!"
The sound of multiple voices colliding with each other made a subconscious harmony of murmurs. I turn around and see a massive ball clock my head another 90 degrees.
The sun is beaming a bright yellow, blocked by nearly transparent clouds, preventing the heat to emerge.
I sit up. "Damn, Aoki. Your aim sucks."
Aoki Takahashi shrugs. "Maybe I'm not meant for sports, after all."
"Soccer just isn't your thing, man," I mutter, looking back at my phone.
Aoki sighs. The semi-windy weather had turned his coat to the direction of the ocean. "Aren't you excited about tomorrow?"
"What about tomorrow? Is it a field trip?"
"Nah," Aoki sits down on the bleachers next to me. "You know Megami? Like, the folk legend?"
The position of my legs had shifted into a half-laying-down style. I yawn. "Yeah. Who hasn't?"
Something feels off.
"There's this drug that's been popular all over the market. People say it's a scam, but look what I got!"
Aoki holds up two mysterious packets. He looked like a bootleg scientist.
"Mm," I replied hazily. "What does it do?"
There was no hesitation in his words. "It lets you control mana. You can imagine something in your head and release it as an energy source. Like a wizard. Boom!"
"'Kay. Have fun with that, man."
As I leave to go home, Aoki's hand catches my shoulder. "Not yet. You're taking it with me." It wasn't a joking, lazy tone that he always spoke in every day.
"Hell no. Don't put me through your dumbass decisions like that."
Something is really wrong, I think. The only way to find out was if I thought about that phrase more, but I ignored it. Perhaps, It's just an illusion.
Illusions…
"Oh, c'mon. You won't die."
"Of course I will. It's a random drug that my doctor didn't prescribe to me. I'm tryin'a live a normal life here." I start my journey home.
Despite much ranting and ignorance from me, Aoki takes a bottle of water and swallows the small but radiant pill. Although it may not sound like it, Aoki is my friend - a close one at that - but taking a pill that close you control "magic" is an impossible feat. The mere sound of it felt like the world had become a fairy tale I had heard about a few years ago.
Oh, right, years.
After a moment's wait, nothing happened. I shrug and get back into my "totally calm and not overreactive" state. "Maybe it's a slow poison," I jokingly mock him.
"Oh my god, just shut up."
"Idiot. As dumb as you are, I don't want you to be reckless and die off in the woods or something. Stop being a money-rich dumbass and actually be wise about purchasing fake drugs from whoever it is."
My head starts to hurt a bit. It never felt like this before.
The wind surrounding the vague school had turned into a slight fog, an illusion to the mind, a foreshadowing that a bad omen would happen.
As I look back at it, I wonder why I hadn't looked at any of the signs of an illness.
"No, it's that-" Aoki stops moving completely. The wind's bitter but deadly cold stops tracing around my body width and pauses completely.
My heart starts to race. It's the only sound I hear.
Soon, it would be the last phrase Aoki Takahashi had said before he died.
I could see a leaf in the air, motionless. Gravity had failed to do its sole job.
I couldn't move.
A singular crack forms in the wall that separates the bleachers from the school. It grows. It keeps expanding and expanding-until it explodes, and I see a creature - no, a human - escape the school. Its figure shifted, and I didn't see a human then, but a monster. An abomination of its kind, a deadly figure more dangerous than the strongest disease or animal known to mankind.
The debris from the wall hits me straight in the head and I see myself in darkness.
Before I close my eyes to what I thought would be death, the figure shifts.