I have to close the book shortly after opening.
The kid who owned this diary…
Few pages were ripped, some words were scribbled down with force, leaving holes in paper.
The owner of this diary talks about various topics - magic, their family, their plans for the future. Their schemes and plots.
I got to know some interesting information about them - the kid was pretty skilled at magic. Maybe even some kind of a magical prodigy of this world.
The kid could look into people's hearts, they had some kind of magical power to do so. To twist them to their own will. And they planned on doing so to everyone they knew. They wanted to rule the world, to bend it to their whims.
I put the book back under the pillow.
I don't want to read anymore of that. It makes me feel sick.
My head hurts, so I lie down on the bed again. If this is a dream (please, be just a dream) then if I fall asleep and wake up, I'll find myself back in my human world, right? I feel tired so going to sleep, even if dinner is going to be ready soon, sounds like a good plan. I'll just take a small nap, that's all.
I don't need much time to fall asleep. Today was a total rollercoaster (and not in a fun way) and both my body and my mind are tired.
The dreams I have are dreams of nothing, the dreams that have no substance, no imagination in them. Absolute blackness, void.
I thought that maybe, hopefully, I could see bits and pieces of my past in my sleep. At least remember my name. In the end there was nothing.
I suddenly get pulled out of dreamless sleep. Someone is gently shaking my shoulder.
Something stands near my bed but it's too dark to figure out exact shapes (Is it night already?). All I see is that it's tall and it's… wearing some kind of white gown?
"Zofis, wake up" The unknown person says in a gentle but firm voice. I rub my eyes to get rid of the sleepiness. Zofis? Huh, familiar name. Who is-
"I heard what you did in school" Oh. . . I freeze. No way. This. This can't be happening.
"Don't worry, I am not mad at you anymore" They continue while I have a silent mental breakdown. Why didn't it worked? Going to sleep was my last trump card! Why am I still here?!
Something touches my head and I look up. It's a hand. The person who talks to me slowly pats my head. It helps to calm down my anxiety.
"Zofis. You're such a big boy now. You've become so smart and wise, are you not?"
I nod a bit. Why do they talk to me like that?
"You understand that you need to become the next Mamodo King, right?" They say as my eyes finally adjust to the darkness and I can see their face. Their face is long but somewhat elegant, they have markings on it similar to mine and their eyes are red with yellow in the middle.
Sister.
I hardly process the question she asked. Her expression is unbearable but I can feel it that she's sad.
"Zofis… If you don't become the next king you'll die. You'll die for sure" Die? But why?
She sits on HIS bed next to me.
"Zofis. Listen closely. No matter what you have to do," Her voice lacks previous firmness ''cheat, lie, betray, walk on the heads of both your enemies and friends, You must become stronger, you must live and become the next King."
She gives me a hug. It is supposed to be reassuring but I feel trapped. What kind of talk is that? Why is she telling me all of this? And again, with all this "next Mamodo King"? I don't even know what it is! This is not my life, not my story, not my problems… and yet.
"The tournament to decide the next Mamodo King is close. In a few months you'll have to fight your way through one hundred mamodo." She releases me from the hug so she could look into my face again. "You'll be stuck in the human world, forced to work alongside some puny, pitiful thing." Wait, human world? Could it be…
"I'm sorry if I wake you up to seemingly talk about your future. I know you hate it." She gets up from his bed. "I… I can't bear losing you, you know?"
She cares, she truly loves her little brat douchebag brother. I feel guilty just by being here. What would she do if she found out I wasn't him?
"I'll leave for now. Good night." And with that she leave the room. Good night, huh? Like anyone can get sleep after that… Although, her words gave me new hope.
I hardly understand what she meant by "become the Next Mamodo King" thing but… Human world. I'll be sent into the human world. Is this my chance to go back home?
Next morning I am a bit tired, a little bit cranky from half of the night wasted on worrying and anxious thinking.
I quickly brush my teeth (Sharp like shark's!), change clothes (oh no I slept in my dress all night?), have a quiet breakfast with my sister (totally not avoiding eye contact at all cost!) and then Precious (I finally know spider's name!) brought me to school.
Huh, the sky turtle is still there. I wonder what they eat up there. I stop gazing up in the sky and venture inside. There's not many students but I see familiar face and wave a short hello at them. They seem very confused but wave back at me. I'm still tired so I give only half-a-mind to why they might be confused by me.
I walk closer to my classmate, trying to remember their name. Spiky white hair, looks like a total hooligan… Oh right!
"Morning Danny. Don't even think I forgot about what you did yesterday" I yawn into my hand (I still remember basic etiquette… even if it's human etiquette).
"Hey, In my defense - I didn't mean to hit you!" He exclaims "At least not that hard." He adds quietly. I raise a brow at that. Eh, I'll think about how to repay you later.
"What classes do we have today?" Yep, casually asking about classes a guy who is probably gonna skip all of them!
"Er… Ancient Language… Then Physie. The rest I don't care to even remember"
"Danny, you need to pull your education together or you'll be left in this class for three years in a row." Yep, a lot of students like to gossip about it. Gossips! Maybe a bit dirty, but still an efficient way of gaining information!
"Tsk… Why do YOU care?"
"Huh, care? I don't care. I'm just stating the obvious!" I pull a face of pure innocence. Alright, teasing Danny is fun but I probably should stop before he starts throwing hands at me.
"Alright, alright, sorry Danny. I'm just friendly teasing you!"
"Woah, Zofis is that you?" I turn around at the familiar voice. Baransha. Walking to us on all fours like a wild predator.
"Uh, yeah?" Did she forget my face since yesterday?
"Didn't know you had such frizzy hair under that silly hat of yours!"
I freeze. Hair? I reach my hand to my head and touch my hair. Then my hand slowly slides down to my face forming a facepalm. I groan. I was so sleepy I totally forgot my hat! (At least it still was gathered in a ponytail since night… Oh god I must be looking horrible right now!)
Baransha laughs while Danny looks slightly confused by both of our reactions.
"Did- Did you forgot your hat?!" She tries to speak while laughing her paws out. "Danny, Danny you totally ruined poor guy! I told you!"
"What do you mean 'ruined'?" I untie my hair and gather it back into a more accurate space-bun-like ponytail. Gosh, this is so embarrassing, why is this so embarrassing?! There's nothing wrong with my hair, damnit!
"Well, after Danny hit you, you became all nice and soft and you're all buddy-buddy with people! Totally not like your 'before desk accident' self!" This cat looks so smug. Oh, if only I had a water sprinkler to chase her away!
Well, at least Danny doesn't look better than me right now. I can see his cheeks turning red but I am not sure if it's embarrassment or anger. Probably both.
Damn, she is right though. Judging by "old" Zofis diary he wasn't that nice of a guy… If I act too out of place I might-
"Move" I hear someone say as Baransha suddenly stops laughing and Danny becomes pale like a list of paper. I want to turn around to look at what scared them both but all my instincts scream at me to not do that. I move out of the way of the stranger while my knees tremble violently. What the hell was that?!
I caught a glimpse of black clothes. Ah! That's… That must be the guy from the nurse's office, from yesterday!
Only after the guy turns around the corner can all of us breathe properly.
"Crap, Brago really not in the mood today-" Baransha exclaims, still pretty quiet as if the guy will return and beat her to death if he hears her talking about him.
Wait, Brago? The guy who's Danny had a fight earlier?
"Danny? Didn't you and Brago had an argument yesterday?" I ask carefully, trying to read Danny's expression.
"Keep it down!" Baransha hushes me out "Brago totally beat the crap out of Danny that time! Guy can't even look him in the eyes anymore!"
"That's not true-" Danny places his word but Baransha hushes him too.
"You're alive only because your healing spells and teacher saved you!"
Danny shuts up to that. He looks irritated and I can almost see boiling frustration inside of him but, surprisingly, he no longer argues.
"Brago is scary. I heard his aura and presence give goosebumps even to adult mamodo…" Pantera flicked her three tails with a thoughtful expression after her talk.
Aura and Presence? Is that what I feel wherever he's nearby? I don't even need to look at him to feel terrified… The guy is no joke.
"Alright! Enough of sour faces! You all look like you just ate a rotten pandarin! (a what now), the classes are starting soon! Let's go before the bell rings."
The Ancient Language class, eh?
Our teacher here is a half-snake, half-man. They wear funny big round glasses that hide their eyes. The subject is, well, study of Ancient Language. Ancient Mamodo Language, to be exact.
The language everyone uses today (including me… Although I do it without even thinking about it) called Modern Mamodo Language, and this class basically studies how it came to be, what's the roots and stuff. This class is something in between History and English for me.
Overall it's pretty interesting but I hardly understand anything the teacher is saying. Not because they are talking in different language but because they talk so fast and so quiet. (Almost like they're talking to themselves)
I also found out an interesting thing in this class. From what I've gathered - people of this world can understand any language they please. They hear not words but emotions and meanings, therefore, if I theoretically, ended up in Russia or India in Human World, I'd still be able to communicate with locals without any trouble.
Reading through… Reading is a brand new animal. Words, written down, have no emotions or meaning for us. We can't read a language we don't know how to read.
If someone else reads the words but won't understand the meaning behind them - we won't too.
Eh, being able to understand all languages on ear is also good, I guess. Who cares if I won't be able to read foreigh books if I can understand French?
Overall, Ancient Language class was pretty fun, if you ignore Brago who suddenly decided to not skip classes. I felt his gaze on my back this whole time!.. Alright, maybe he didn't glared at me the entire time but it sure felt like it.
Next class was an actual hell, disguised as "Physical Culture". I was absolutely broken in just ten minutes. No wonder my sister worries about me so much - I am a total weakling. A loser, who can't run even a mile, does less than 5 push-ups and who nearly died, doing simple stretching training!
I'm sorry to tell you that, old owner of the body (if you even hear me), but your physic SUCKS. What, if you have a big brain you don't need muscle mass? Is that what you thought back then?! I look so pathetic right now, even the teacher gave me a break till the end of the class.
I can't look at other students without envy. Why does everyone here have to be so athletic while I can hardly walk after a mere run? Ha… I'm sure my own body wasn't THAT weak. I can't remember much of my previous life, but I do know I didn't struggle that much with Physie.
This sucks. All of this. And more salt on the wound comes from Brago, who, instead of skipping classes like yesterday, is showing up on every single one today! The only good thing about him being here is that I am not the only one struggling - all his sparring partners (a.k.a. everyone! Ha! That's what you get for being athletic bastards!) suffer almost as much as me.
After the bell rang, announcing the end of current classes, it was breakfast time. This time the cafeteria was more populated as people were more willing to eat already cooked dishes rather than catch their own food. I had an actual struggle finding a free table until I spotted Danny and happily invited myself to sit with him.
Today's star of the menu was a potato mash (it's potato, right?) with meatballs (tastes like fish… huh), but, for some reasons a lot of kids picked fish. And they were eating it raw. I have to remind myself that this is not my average human world everytime weird thing happens.
"You're eating like a girl" Danny says out-of-the-blue, between bites of his own breakfast… Jeez dude don't talk with a mouthful.
"What do you mean?" Well, Danny, you eat like a total brute, but I'm not saying anything about that.
"You eat with a fork and you take small bites."
"Having basic table manners is unisexual, Danny."
"What's 'unisexual' means?" Oh… Oh Danny, you're such a poor silly goose.
"It means that girls, boys and enbies can eat their food using basic cutlery and taking small bites. It's universal."
It seems to satisfy his interest for now, as he hums in understanding. Hah, guess he didn't mean to offend me - he's just a silly but curious guy.
After that semi-awkward breakfast I find that I still have some time left until next class. It's gonna be math (I wonder if we're gonna have some kind of important math test because they just keep throwing mathematics classes at us like it's a big deal…) and, fortunately, I know where the classroom for it is. So, I decided to take a small stroll to the library.
I need to start gathering information about that tournament to decide the next Mamodo King everyone keeps bringing up. I need to know more about the Human World. I'm full of hope, ambitions and hunger for knowledge!
I locate the corpus with the library relatively quickly. It's big, with giant bookshelves that reach the ceiling. Alright, I have less than 20 minutes to locate needed books. I search for a librarian (who I can easily tell is a librarian because they're a snail who got a book instead of a shell) and ask for a book about the Human World. Yep, straight to the important stuff!
"A human world, huh?" The snail asks slowly. "Hmm… Not much is known about them because not a lot of mamodo care about it." They give me a thin, magazine-like book. Whuh… Seriously?
"I'm glad more students reach for knowledge, even if it's for uninteresting and useless topic such as humans or their world"
Woah… Rude. I thank him, find a place to sit and take a look inside the book labeled 'Biggest Human World Encyclopedia'.
This whole book… Is worthless.
There's little to no real information about humans. Some details are straight up not true! Pictures inside it look like they were drawn by a bunch of preschoolers (Even worse because at least preschoolers know what they're doing!).
There's more legends and fairytales than facts. And even those are lazy!
For example - There's a legend about a tree that can send demons into the Human World, but it works only once every one thousand years. On the second page, exactly the same text but instead of Tree it's a Lake.
I come back to the librarian and ask them if this book is really an actual 'Human World Encyclopedia'. They take a closer look at it, examine cover from both sides and drop it into the pile behind them.
"Yes," I nearly fell down. Yes? YES?! This parody of a book is an actual, official, biggest Human World Encyclopedia?! Ha… Why do I have to suffer like this?
"I see… Uh… Can I ask for another book then? This time about uh… the Tournament that Decides the Next Mamodo King."
They nod and give me a first book from the pile.
"You're not the first one to come asking for it. There's not much information about it but it is because King himself censored a lot of information to keep one mamodo participant from having unfair advantages over others."
I thank the snail. This one is also thin but this time it's cover is hard. An actual effort was put into that one.
I hear a bell ring. Aw shoot! I don't have time to read the book!
"Ah, can I ask you to hold this book until the end of the day, please?"
"Don't worry about it, I have more than one exemplar. The book and knowledge in it will gladly wait for you until your classes are done." Woah, this snail librarian is pretty understanding! I wave goodbye and tush to the math class.
It's sad that I didn't find out how to enter the Human World on my own… But, maybe, that 'next king tournament' will give me oh-so-needed answers?