"Wow," I said in awe while my eyeballs were trying to get out of my sockets because of the beautiful sight.

Another kind of forest suddenly appeared out of nowhere. We were walking through the usual forest, then suddenly, we entered this another forest that I'd never seen before.

What I was trying to say was that this new forest that we'd entered was really different from what I was used to.

Normal forest had normal trees (like oak trees), flowers, grass, and etc.

But this new forest had trees that I'd never seen before, flowers that were ten times more beautiful than an ordinary flower, other plants that looked as if they came from a different world, and majestic animals that looked as if they'd come straight out of a fairytale (like deer that had colorful fur, birds that had unique feathers, and reptiles that were glowing under the shadows of the leaves).

In other words, the sight was beautiful. The sight just made me feel as if those magical tales had come into reality.

"Finally," Ahri sighed. "We're in the normal side of Ionia!"

"Normal side?" I asked Ahri in a confused voice, because to me this wasn't a "normal" side. Since my birth, I thought that Ionia was just an ordinary place where only ordinary things lives, not a place where there are beautiful and magical wildlife inhabiting on the ground.

"Yes, little one," Ahri answered cheerfully, "you were missing out a lot."

I frowned. All this time, I thought that these kinds of places only existed in stories. But, they existed in reality all along!

I felt as if I was fooled all my life.

Wait, technically, I was fooled all my life!

This is depressing, I thought.

"Yes," I said and sighed. "I was missing out a lot . . ."

"Well, cheer up, Jeffric," Ahri said while patting me on my head gently. "You only wasted a small part of your life time."

"Yeah," I said sadly. "Near fifteen years . . ."

"What?" Ahri asked in a surprised voice. She stopped patting me on the head while staring down at me with a shocked look on her face.

"I'm fifteen years old," I said. "So, I guess I'd wasted near fifteen years of my lifetime."

Ahri kept staring at me. "You're a fifteen-year-old boy?" she asked incredulously.

I nodded.

She kept on staring at me. "But you look as if you're twelve years old," she said. "And even your height makes you look like a twelve-year-old."

By the way, Ahri was a head taller than me, which reminded me that I was on the short side (which was sad).

I bowed my head slightly. "My parents didn't give me food that much when I was young," I explained in a quiet voice.

She paused for a second. "I guess I shouldn't call you 'little one' because of your age," Ahri said. "But . . ."

"But what?"

She gave me a teasing smile. "You're a short human, so I guess you're technically a 'little one'."

I sighed. Ahri was making fun of my height, like the others in the village that I used to live in. And Ahri's teasing smile suddenly triggered many memories of kids my age sneering at me and making fun of me. Those painful memories started to stab at my soul with imaginative knives. Suddenly, my mind began to get out of control slowly, as if something inside my head was struggling to get out. And my emotion of pure hatred and unbearable rage that I'd hid deep inside my soul started to tear a hole in my soul to get out. To get out and destroy and harm everything.

I made my poker face, which was kind of hard, while pressing the dangerous emotion deep inside my soul again while getting back the control of my mind which tried to do what my dark emotion wanted to do.

I slowly gained back control while not looking strange to Ahri. From Ahri's prospective, I was just walking while saying nothing.

"Well, it's better than 'short-jerk-head', 'tiny-loser-face', or 'small-idiot', I guess." I said bitterly.

I have to say that this forest was amazing! I stopped consistently, my mouth opening in awe because of the wonderful sights of new plants, wildlife, and etc. that I'd never seen before in my life.

There were vines that grew around a white tree that grew colorful fruits, mushrooms that were big as my head, and bugs that changes its color really quickly.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Ahri said softly while standing next to me when I was crouching down and looking closely at a flower which was pink and purple.

I nodded while smelling its fragrance. The fragrance of the flower was so good that I can't even describe it.

"Careful, Jeffric," Ahri warned. "If you inhale too much of its fragrance, you'll feel dizzy."

Too late.

My head started spinning and my sight started to blur. I stood up, but I lost my balance and started to fall backwards.

But, somebody's arms grabbed me. I looked sideways and saw that Ahri had grabbed me by the back and the shoulder while laughing softly under her breath.

"It-it isn't funny," I said defensively while blushing furiously. Ahri gently put me down on the ground while trying to stifle her laughter.

"Thanks," I murmured while trying not to puke because of the dizziness. I gazed up to the branches of the trees, where the sunlight was gleaming through. I felt everything was moving up and down or sideways while my sight got blurry and unblurry at the same time.

Then I saw Ahri's face looking down at me while smiling as if she just heard a funny joke.

"If I had a mirror with me right now," she said, "I would've showed you your face right now."

"W-why?" I asked while ignoring my dizziness, which was pretty hard.

"Because you look as if you were knocked down with a hammer!"

"That's funny . . ." I grumbled with a little bit of sarcastic tone inside my voice.

I kept on feeling as if somebody was shaking me sideways and turning my body in a circle at a same time. But I felt that I started to feel less dizzy by the second.

That was when I noticed something at the corner of my eye.

"Ahri, look out!" I yelled.

Ahri quickly stepped sideways, dodging the arrow by an inch.

"Well," Ahri huffed. "That was close."

I quickly stood up while ignoring the dizziness. That was when six men jumped out from the tree branches above and landed on the ground few feet away from us.

"Well, well, well," a burly man said in a mean voice. "A vastayan and a scrawny-looking boy." Then he cracked his knuckles in a scary fashion. "Seize the vastayan," the man sneered while staring directly at Ahri. "And kill the boy."

(A/N)

Hi, I'm back. Most of the people in my school forgot that I was writing this fanfic. And thankfully the bullies found other targets to push around. Now, I can continue writing this fanfic again. But sadly, I think this fanfic will get kind of a slow update due to some issues in my life these days that I don't want to talk about.

Thank you for your support and I hope you enjoy this fanfic. See you later.

From: Kray98

P.S. please point out plot holes, grammar problems, vocabulary problems, and other things on this fanfic. I will be really thankful if you do these.