“Rayoha!”
I gasped, startled, and turned around.
Nyera was walking briskly toward me. “Rayoha, are you feeling okay?”
“A-ah…yes, yes!” I rubbed my neck sheepishly. “Sorry for worrying everyone.”
After Kano left, I’d checked outside my room. There was a food tray on the floor in front of my door. The hallway was empty and Nyera’s door was closed with the “Out” sign on it, meaning she wasn’t in her room. Seeing that, I decided to just go about my day as usual and explain to anyone who stopped me.
Right now, I had been on my way to my private library when Nyera caught me on the stairs.
How much does she know? Does she just think I was sick the whole time or did she check my room…?
She looked me over. “It is nothing for you to apologize about. …You don’t… seem to be tired anymore,” Relaxing a little, she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Since you didn’t awake from an entire day, it was quite worrying. Even if it has happened before, it doesn’t happen often.”
Phew, so she didn’t check inside my room. …She must have been very worried though. The loose strands and ever-so-slightly undone bun are things that only happened when she’s extremely worried. It made me feel a little guilty for what I’d done.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Rayoha, where are you headed?”
“Just the library to read something,” I smiled reassuringly. “I’m not leaving the private quarters.”
“In that case, I will be nearby,” she bowed. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Nyera,” I smiled broader, hoping it would help her relax. Then I walked off toward the library.
Wow, I feel really energetic right now. At least…compared to usual. I mused, scratching my chin. Maybe it’s true that loneliness makes it worse?
However, what Kano said about the light energy pendant was rattling around in my head. Could the thing I’d been using for so long to help me heal…actually have been hurting me?
Searching the library, I gathered up as much material I could find about light energy, dark energy, and anything else. By the time I was done, though I was a little out of breath, I still felt energetic enough to look through the resulting pile.
Not that it would have been difficult, because the resulting pile in the entire library was five measly books.
“Five books…five books!” I muttered. “No wonder they can’t cure my disorder…”
I was disappointed, but unfortunately, I couldn’t be entirely surprised. Over the past many years, the mass genocide of light mages and the targeting of light researchers had made it very risky to engage in such studies.
“Light mages” was the term for people with an unusually high natural production of light energy. It couldn’t be inherited, and no one knew when their child might turn out to be one. However, it wasn’t inherently bad. In fact, light mages rarely fell sick, were very energetic, and most importantly, were key in fields of medicine and healthcare because they can heal wounds, and are crucial in treating and curing certain disorders.
However, they are also the only ones capable of taking down what are known as Descendants. These are beings of dark energy. Dark energy is a corrupted version of light energy that no one knows the origin of anymore. Many parts of Urna were currently, and for many years now, ruled by Descendants. They had the power to poison most mortal to death instantly, or overtime if they weren’t as powerful. Therefore, to get rid of their only weakness, they began hunting down as many light mages as possible. Today, most light mages were in hiding.
Ugh…so tiresome, all of this. Leafing through the books, there didn’t seem to be any useful information. These were very old, after all, and half of these were aimed at teaching normal people to use their own light energy to its maximum capacity, and how to increase the usefulness of our own meager production. All this is useless right now. It feels like it’s only there to help me use my own minuscule reserves of energy the best I can.
Bored, I leaned back in my chair, thinking about Kano. There was urgency in his voice when he told me not to use it. It was an oddly sincere plea.
I took the pendant out of my pocket. It was always a little uncomfortable to hold at length directly with my bare hands, so I always kept it on a handkerchief. I pondered if it would be wise to ask my personal doctor about it. But he knew I had it and had never recommended I stop using it; in fact, this was the first time I had ever heard of a downside to external sources of light energy. Plus, if I asked anything, he would become suspicious and ask who or what planted doubts in my head.
Perhaps a test is in order.
Heading back to my room, I enclosed the pendant in a thick box and hid it in the corner of my closet. For at least a week, I would go without it. Though I didn’t expect it to make a difference, I wanted to check anyway.
As I made my way back out, I headed for the garden.
At the entrance, Nyera stopped me. “Are you going to be outdoors, Rayoha?”
“Just in my own garden. Why?”
She closed her eyes briefly, as though searching for words to express something. “It’s simply that… lately I’m feeling the presence of uninvited visitors somewhere.”
“Uninvited visitors?” Did she mean… Kano?
“Yes, just in the past few days. If we’re somehow being watched, I need you to be extra careful.”
Frowning, I scratched my head. “I haven’t felt any such thing.”
“…You haven’t?”
“Are you sure it’s not just you being paranoid again?”
“Me being…” Nyera’s eyes widened, before lowering. “I understand, Rayoha…I’m sorry, I will try to keep my imagination under control.”
“Wait no, I didn’t mean it like that!” I coughed awkwardly. A few months ago, Nyera had been sent to the doctor’s wards for her extreme anxiety and paranoia. Till date, she seemed to feel guilty about it. Me and my stupid big mouth…I just wanted to reassure her. “I’m glad you’ve got your eyes out. And I will be careful.”
“Thank you, Rayoha.”
“Shall we both go into the garden?” I smiled brightly at her.
“Yes, that suits me fine,” she followed me out.
I walked around, attempting to relax in the gentle sun. My energy levels were still high enough, and I was going to make the most of it even while staying at home.