I tried to ignore the new feelings of excitement and got ready for school. I made myself breakfast, packed a lunch for later, all of the usual things. My mom was still asleep, so I needed to stay quiet while doing it. While I was eating, a large strand of hair fell down and annoyed my eyes, so I stopped to try to fix it.

No matter how much I pushed it up, it just fell right back down. Push, fall, push, fall. Eventually, I got so frustrated that I went off to the bathroom to try and fix it with the proper tools.

I used the comb and pulled back the tuft of hair blocking my vision, and I was shocked to see my left eye had changed color overnight. Instead of the blue I had always known, it was now a dark, earthy brown. While it was subtle enough to go unnoticed by the random passerby, it was also drastic enough to raise some questions. I stared in the mirror for so long that I almost ended up being late for school. I thought it might have been Mike, but I didn't really know. There was already a lot for me to think about, so the color change seemed more like a piece of the puzzle rather than a big event.

The entire day, I was worried that someone would notice my eye colors, but luckily, no one did; not even my mom. It made me feel a bit calmer when that dawned on me, that not a single person noticed it, before I went to sleep.

That night, I woke up back in that white void again. There was absolutely nothing around, except for one door in front of me. Once I walked through it, I was in a replica of my room, and it was much more brightly lit than usual. Strangely enough, there was only basic geometry, and all of the items that would be on my shelves or dresser were missing. In fact, so much detail was missing that my entire closet was gone, and in its place was a regular wooden door. That door led directly to my house's kitchen, and then I was led to my bathroom, then my classroom, and after a few more doors, I realized that this was just every room that I had been in that day, in the order that I was in them. Once I finally looped back around to my bedroom where I had started, Mike was standing there, inspecting a peculiar object. He noticed me and walked over.

"Do you know what this is?" he handed something to me. I looked at it and saw that the object was a shapeless mass about the size of an apple, with no distinguishable features or contours. It looked like an amorphous, undefined blob. Like a splotch of ink if it was made to have a holdable form. The only defining characteristic of it that I could give was its brown color. Even then, it was an ever-shifting shade that only barely gave the appearance of a single, solid entity. I stared at it for a few moments, trying to decipher what it was supposed to be.

Mike then pointed to a spot on my dresser, "It was sitting right here," he said. I looked and where he was pointing and realized what it was that I had put down there.

"It's a glove," I said, holding it up to compare it to my paw.

Immediately, the color stabilized to a dark cracked brown, and it didn't take much longer before it took the shape of a glove; but it was certainly not the glove I had, as it looked like it would only fit Mike's strange paw. I showed him the glove, and even though it took a moment to notice, the glove did shift to the shape of my paw.

I looked around and noticed that the room was full of these fuzzy and undefined colorful objects. Using my memory, I corrected more of these objects, and when there was trash, I just deleted it. Once I was done, my room looked the best it ever had, to the point where it was impossibly good-looking. I didn't get to relish in it for long however, as Mike gave me an offering.

"How about I show you a place I know?" Mike interrupted my curiosity, and I agreed to his request. As soon as I did, the floor opened up beneath us, in a unique way of moving to the next room, and we landed in a kitchen just a short few meters later. I didn't pay it much mind, but Mike absolutely did. I heard a yelp of pain and turned around and saw him lying down on the ground, groaning.

"You're fine," I said, and he just grunted back. "You, are, Fine," I spoke with an air of demand in my voice, and he finally seemed to get the memo. With the mind magic he had just demonstrated to me with the glove, I could just erase the bruises. Even at the time, I understood the implications of what altering someone, positively or negatively could be used for. It meant that we both had the power to put the other into excruciating pain if we wanted to.

I looked around and saw that his kitchen was a lot better kept than mine, the walls were clean and smooth. I didn't quite get most of the weird metallic things that he had in there, but using things I did understand like pots sitting on a counter, I could deduce that it was indeed a kitchen.

It seemed that he had an affinity for paintings, as everywhere I looked there was at least one. However, my attention was grabbed when he appeared to be staring at one in particular.

The painting depicted him as a much younger man with sleek golden hair standing in place of the gray hair he had now. He was dressed in a long, stainless black robe, standing confidently. There was also another human like him in the painting. They looked similar, with long golden hair, but it was much longer, reaching to their shoulders, and tied up into a ponytail. They were standing close together, gazing upon the eyes of each other. When I looked closer, I noticed that the eyes Mike had in the painting were the exact shade of brown I saw in the bathroom mirror.

"That was my wife, her name was Leela." Mike spoke up, "It's a very old painting, probably older than you."

"I'm 10!" I interjected.

"Yep. Definitely older than you." he laughed at me and turned back to the painting.

"Where is she now?" I asked, failing to connect the dots but genuinely curious.

"I'll tell you later." He looked pained, but before he could continue, I woke up in my bed the next morning.

At first, I thought it was weird to be sharing a body.

Eventually, however, I did get used to it. I suspected that he could take over any time he wanted, even though he never did. Every so often, something would happen, like my legs would start shaking uncontrollably. I would blame Mike but he always said that he didn't do anything.

Mike was always there, in the back of my mind, always talking. I didn't mind how chatty he was, because I knew that I was now his only company. He could speak all day long, but he never said anything about his wife with the exception of the occasional passing comment. He told me many other things, about his children, about his childhood, and the answers to some of the questions I would ask, like his birthday. When I heard about his birthday, I knew I couldn't let it go uncelebrated.

Celebrating his birthday in any meaningful way was next to impossible, as he could already do almost anything in my head anyways. We still pulled through, with silly hats and the stupid cakes that I would make and let him eat.

None of it really mattered though, as he never aged a single day since I first saw him. I kept on growing, developing, and learning, and he got to witness it all, while he just had the exact same look the entire time. When I noticed, it opened up a lot of questions about the future that I wasn't sure if I could answer. Would Mike live to his 130th birthday? What would that even be like for him, to be alive that long?

As the years went by, the random shakes and fits grew to be more common, to the point of concern. A few days after my 16th birthday, he spoke to me about his wife for the first time.