waaaah. my laptop ran out of battery yesterday before i could post this! it was terrible! oh well...well, on with it!
Disclaimer: no…just no.
The Circumstances of Life
Chapter 3
I ran down the hall as fast as I could. I was missing something. Master Imai never did anything before first getting a ridiculously large sum of money. And what was that strange mark on that girl- Mikan's back? It looked like a painful scar. Something was going on.
I spotted my master just as she was leaving the study with the tray full of china in her hands. I called out to her, but she completely ignored me. I followed her to the kitchen.
"Master. Who were those people? What's going on? Please tell me!" I asked as she placed the trey into an invention of hers that that self washed the dishes.
She turned and stared at me for a moment before walking out of the room. I followed her down the hall. I was out of breath by then. The hall was so long I wondered how everything managed to fit into the house you saw on the outside. T was impossible! Besides…what could she possibly have needed all of this room for/? I'd probably never find out. I was allowed to carry the keys to only a few of the many hundreds of rooms.
Master stopped at a door with no number and took out her master key. I gasped. The room was the Master's personal library. I'd never been there before. When the door opened, it revealed stairs leading up into darkness. Imai held the door open for me and waited for me to walk up. I was surprised because I thought she had been ignoring me. I hesitated before taking a step into the dark stairwell. The door closed not long after I entered the stairwell and I heard a second pair of footsteps behind me. I was now pitch black. I clutched the wall and slowly felt my way up.
As I reached the top, I could see slivers of dim light through the tiny window across the room. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't surprised. It looked like an attic. The wood was old and dusty, giving off a very unfinished look. The walls were lined with bookshelves, like the study, only they were empty. Well, all but one, that is. Master Imai walked up to the single full shelf and pulled out a book with a faded green cover. The title on the bind was Secrets. She then slipped a hand into one of her many pockets on her dirty, worn apron that covered hershort petty coat and pulled out a key I'd never seen before. I was silver with a colorless diamond impregnated into the part of the key you hold. She took it and inserted her hand into the space where the book had previously been.
I heard a click and the bookshelf jolted backwards, then slid to the side. An entrance into another room was left in its place. I followed my master into that room. After we were both inside, she pulled a lever hanging from the ceiling. The bookshelf moved back to where it was before. She pulled the lever beside the previous one and blinding lights flashed on.
I gasped. Before my eyes was a huge, brightly lit room. The walls stretched so high that you could barely see the ceiling. The room was spacious and bookshelves that stretched as high as the ceiling were everywhere. There must have been millions of books. What could they have possibly all been about? And why were we even there?
I was pulled out of my awe as I noticed Master Imai climb up latter leaning against one of the bookshelves. She then stepped onto a ledge about a third of the way up and walked across it to a second ladder and walked up that one, too. She reached the second ledge and walked to the ladder again; but this time, she grabbed it and pulled it across to the other side of the shelf before climbing half way up and pulling out one of the old, faded books then made her way down again.
When Imai reached the floor again she made her way to a table that was, in reality, rather large but seemed small and out of place among the oversized shelves of books. Sitting down, she began flipping through the book with one hand and motioning me over with the other hand. I walked over and looked over her at the book. She stopped on a page toward the end of the book and turned it around toward me. She pointed at the book and told me to read it.
The Circumstances of Life
to be like god
to hold life in your hand
to create it
to save it
to lose it
to crush it
to hold the responsibility of life and death
to be able to save those you hold dear
to have the means and be unable
to lose your innocence is to lose the life
to lose the life is to lose your love
to keep your innocence is to lose your child
to love is to lose
to hate is to suffer
to have is to fear
to be like god is to wish you weren't
to hold the circumstances of life
is to be betrayed by the one you trust
to lose your love
to lose or to save
which will it be?
I don't know
Will there be life?
Or death?
I don't know
Let us all pray for the future and hope for the best
These are the circumstances of life
The curse of the holder
I flipped the book to the cover. It was called The Prophecies of the Phoenix. I looked back up at Master, "What are you showing me this for?"
Master sighed as she stood back up and walked over to another bookshelf. "Idiot apprentice," she whispered and climbed up the latter, took out another book, then climbed back down again. She dropped the book called Curses and Premonitions on the desk and flipped through it. Master told me to read yet another page.
I gasped when I saw the page. Geez. Was today National Gasping Day, or what? Anyway, it showed an illustration of what looked like the design on that Mikan girl's back. The mark that looked like someone had carved into her back with a knife. The jagged lines had made me sick to my stomach when I first saw it. What would someone have to go through to get a scar like that? I began to read the print beside the picture eagerly.
God Syndrome
As prophesized by the great Phoenix, this curse allows one to "play with life." In a sense, it allows the one with the "Circumstances of Life" within them to absorb life, change the call structure and NDA makeup of any living organism, and produce life from anything that was previously alive to a certain point. As a side effect of sorts, anyone with this syndrome will lose the ability to reproduce, as proven by the test and research done on this syndrome. No human, to date, has had the syndrome and lived past three days due to the inability to synchronize with this "curse."
Research on the God Syndrome has been banned due to the procedures that must be done on the subject in order for the subject to gain the syndrome. This procedure includes placing the symbol shown on your right on the body of the subject and injecting a nearly lethal dose of an artificial gene called the "Angle gene." This gene is more commonly used as a poison. It can warp the cell structure of any living creature it is injected into. The person doesn't first bleed to death from the wounds on their body created when placing the symbol on it, they will mutate into something unable to be considered human any longer and eventually die from either shock or a change in their body. An example of this is a person losing their longs after having the "Angle gene" inserted into their body and suffocating to death.
The passage went on, but before I could finish reading it, the book was shut in my face. I was slightly confused when I finished, but began to piece together everything in my mind, " You mean…."
"Yes. That girl holds the circumstances of life within her. I don't know how sutch a thing happened, or how it is even possible, but its true. I don't doubt she's being sought after, either. I plan on asking her more about her situation tomorrow," Master then got up and walked toward the two levers again, "We should get going now. There's another long day waiting for us tomorrow." Master then pulled the lever to open the door and turned out the lights. The door closed behind us and Master Imai locked it again before replacing Secrets.
We walked down the stairs I silence. After locking the numberless door, we continued down the hall toward our rooms. Mine came up first. I unlocked and opened the door before turning to Master, "The way The Master's library was hidden was amazing. You made it, right? To be able to hide such a huge room; Just what I'd expect from such an amazing master. I'm lucky to be your apprentice."
At first she semed surprised by the complement. She then simply smiled, "You just realized that now? Idiot aprentace," she tipped her head up and lightly kissed me on the cheek, "Good night, Ruka." She then turned and continued on to her room.
I touched my cheek. I was probably blushing. I shut my door and walked to my nightstand. Picking up my clock and set the alarm then fell onto my bed. This is when I noticed it had stopped raining.
I gave a light laugh, "Master Imai will probably work me to the bone again tomorrow. I wonder what she'll make me do…" then I drifted of into a comfortable sleep without even bothering to turn out the lights.
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for some reason, i really like this chapter. duno why tho. its a bit longer then the others, too, i think. well, hope you liked it!