Nauseous
Chapter 1 - Carcinogenic
“Happy birthday to you!”
Several voices chant.
“Happy birthday to you!”
“Happy birthday dear Maito. Happy birthday to you!”
Everyone cheers and claps loudly. Then, the room goes quiet as everyone stands around Maito; who lies listless in the bed before them. A woman gently plants a brownie in front of him with a lit candle in it.
“Now make a wish sweetheart!” Says the woman.
Maito doesn’t move. Instead, he looks out the large window to his left.
“My birthday is in June…” Maito attempted to whisper to himself, but everyone heard.
Discomfort throughout the room rises. The woman sits on the edge of the bed.
“Maito…” She stares at the floor.
The rest of the people in the room leave her and Maito after exchanging looks. Maito and the woman remain silent.
“Maito…” She repeated.
“Yes Mom?”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m not sure.”
They become quiet for a moment.
“We wanted to celebrate your birthday a little early so that we wouldn’t miss out.”
“You can just say I’m going to die Mom.”
His mother stands and rushes out the door with her hands to her face. Maito turns forward and looks down at the brownie. He grasps the paper plate it’s presented on. Shortly after, his hands begin to shake as he raises the plate. The candle leans, Maito gently straightens it. Maito closes his eyes for a slight moment then opens them. He blows out the candle. A beeping noise starts to arise and the rhythm quickens. Then, darkness.
“Hello?” Maito’s voice echoes.
“Hello?” Maito says again but its echo begins to drown everything out and a ringing ensues.
Suddenly it all blurs and what’s left is an imperceptible combination of black and the colors that made up his character. The ringing continues and for a short while a bright light engulfs everything. Then a wave of static crashes into him as he is awoken to a brush of warm water. He raises his upper body with struggle.
“Wha-?”
A voice can be heard but it's muffled to Maito.
“Hyu-.” Maito turns his body over and begins hurling a clear liquid.
His perception then becomes clearer but vomits once more. Maito takes in quick breaths and looks around with his eyes wide open.
A woman’s voice begins speaking, but Maito cannot understand.
Maito tries to speak, but his throat is too dry and only wheezes harshly.
The woman speaks once more, but still what she says sounds foreign to Maito.
“Who?” Maito whispers.
The woman gives a surprised look. She speaks back but nothing she says makes sense to Maito. Out of frustration Maito raises his voice.
“Where?!”
The woman jolts back and then leaves the room. She comes back shortly after with another cloth and starts to clean the floor of Maito’s mess.
Maito starts to look around. The place he’s in is very nice with many antique-esque furnishings, walls, floor, and ceiling. The doors were fairly large as well. Everything looked lavish in a peculiar fashion, but Maito couldn’t pin it down to one particular place. To him it was like a dream.
Maito looks back at the woman cleaning the floor and realizes that even her attire was strange. It was floral but not of any flower he knew of, and it was of many layers with intricate designs. Maito couldn’t make up his mind on whether it looked good or crazy. She was very short and gave off a mature aura. Now with this in mind Maito had a sudden surge of anxiety rush over him. Maito couldn’t understand what kind of situation he was in and so he began to panic internally. His heart started beating rapidly as he clenched his chest, he swallowed and with the other hand started pulling and brushing his hair.
The lady stood, walked away, and then came back with something in her hand.
She held it up to Maito and he looked at it confused.
“What is this?” Maito asked.
The woman replied with the language Maito couldn’t understand. So Maito held out his hand and she placed the strange object in his hand. Maito quietly looked down at this object in his hands. It looked like a sharp marble rock with engravings around it. After observing for a while the woman pointed to her mouth. Maito at first thought to himself that he should eat it but after some mental battling thought that the rock was too valuable looking to be consumed. After some time passed the woman gave Maito a strange look then retrieved another one. She took the object and put it in her mouth like a whistle and began gently sucking on it. Maito then followed through and to his surprise choked on a spurt of water like substance. He coughed a few times and tried it again, this time indulging in the substance that secreted infinitely from this rock. After satisfying his thirst he took a mental note out loud.
“Pointy rock makes water, got it.”
Maito places the rock to his side and pauses. Then for a moment his expression becomes worrisome.
“What the hell am I doing?!” Maito asks himself out loud.
Maito stands up and lays a hand on the woman’s shoulder. He then begins asking several questions forcefully.
“Where am I?!
“Did I die?!”
The woman is frightened and calls out.
“What’s with the rocks?!”
“What’s your na-.” Maito is jerked back by the collar.
“Huh?” Maito turns and is greeted to the sight of an old man.
The old man is fairly well built with a hood and drapes of cloth around his shoulders, he seems to be in his late 50s. His eyes are both differently colored, the left being light blue and right being orange.
And who the hell are you?” Maito asks, still held by the collar. The old man then looks at Maito with a puzzled expression. Maito gives the old man an equally puzzled face in return. The man speaks in a mysterious language, the same as the woman spoke.
“I don’t understand you.” Maito says.
The old man looks flabbergasted. Maito does a few signs such as pointing to his head and waving his finger in a way that says no. The old man and the woman seem to still not understand. Maito sighs deeply then sits back down on the bed looking toward them.
The old man moves over to the large door and nods his head whilst saying something in the language, he pauses and stands in the doorway staring at Maito. Maito freezes in place and thinks what the old man could be doing. Nervously Maito waits patiently in place, but then the old man rushes back over to him and drags him up by the arm and to the door. Maito now realizes the old man wanted him to follow.
“I got it, I got it.” Maito struggles and then releases himself from the old man’s grip.
The old man looks back and Maito rubs his arm out of a slight pain and keeps following. The two make their way through a hallway-like area that’s half open to a mystically beautiful garden or courtyard, Maito couldn’t tell since it was fairly large. They walked for a short while till arriving at another large door. The old man stops.
“Are we going in there?” Maito asked.
The old man doesn’t give mind to him, instead, he opens the door and enters. Maito follows him cautiously.
“I guess I should stop talking.” Maito tells himself, taking another mental note that everyone cannot understand him and neither can he understand them.
When the two enter, Maito observes the room, it’s a conservatory-like room with glass walls and ceiling. The old man kneels on the ground and takes out a necklace with another rock of some sort attached at the end. The old man pulls the necklace off over his head and out into his palm where he let it rest. Then he lets the rock droop from his hand while gripping the link so that the rock dangles in front of him. Shortly after he gently moves his hand in strange directions. Then, as the rock swings he flicks it, suddenly stopping at a strange orientation. As it stays there the old man unhands the necklace and it floats completely static. Maito is impressed by the old man’s trick, but Maito notices something strange out of his focus on the necklace. Maito took his eyes off the necklace and observed the room once more. To Maito’s surprise, a glass pane had gone missing and behind it was a wall of stone tablets. This made no sense to Maito because the glass panes were all see through and still are besides the one missing. The old man stands and walks over to the wall of tablets, he fingers out a tablet from the wall and holds it in front of himself, observes it for a few moments and then taps it as if he found what he was looking for. The old man then turns toward Maito and walks over to him. Maito clears his throat as the old man comes closer.
“What’s this got to do with me?” Maito asks himself.
The old man raises the tablet to Maito. Maito looks down at it in confusion. The old man then demonstrates gestures toward the tablet as if giving instructions on what to do with it. First the old man swipes across the tablet with his palm at a distance, then he raises it to his forehead. After demonstrating a strange act Maito doesn’t really understand, Maito shrugs as if to say whatever happens, happens. Maito copies what the old man does but this time touching the tablet with both his hand and forehead, during the process the tablet shined strangely and then turned to dust when it touched Maito’s forehead.
“No fucking way!?” Bursts Maito.
“Did it work?” The old man asks.
“I can understand you!” Maito says with his mouth agape.
“You’re speaking the wrong language…” Says the old man.
“Oh…” Maito takes a deep breath and looks into his own mind with amazement towards the fact he could now understand and speak a completely new language in an instant.
“This is crazy.” Was Maito’s first spoken words in this language.
“You sound ridiculous.” The old man chuckles.
“Why’s that?” Maito asks.
“The accent.”
“How bad is it?”
The old man laughs.
“Don’t worry too much about it. That was a very simple tablet of knowledge I was willing to sacrifice for this occasion.”
“Cool.”
“You’re speaking the wrong language again.”
“Sorry-sorry.”
“Strange manners too, must be from your native language.”
“I guess.”
“Wrong language!”
“Ugh!” Maito rubs his head.
“Now that you can understand me on a basic level, I’m going to ask you a few questions.”
“Yes.” Maito nods.
“What is your name?”
“Maito.”
The old man tries to hold in laughter.
“That is a very strange name.” Says the old man.
“Oh yea?! what’s yours?!”
“Garpiloff.”
“Gari-pi-l-gar-pill-gair-.”
“Gar-pea-lof.”
“Garpiloff!”
“Yes, stop butchering it!”
“Your name is even more strange!”
Garpiloff clears his throat.
“What is your native language?” Garpiloff asks.
“English.”
“Never heard of it but okay…”
“Are you gonna write this stuff down?”
“Write?” Garpiloff chuckles.
“Writing is long past its use.” Garpiloff holds out another strangely marked stone.
“This here is a listening stone.”
“So like a recorder.”
“Recorder?”
“Never mind that.”
“A listening sto-.”
“I get the gist, more questions.” Maito cuts him off.
“Ahem... How did you get here?”
"I’d like to know myself. I think I died and then woke to a warm rag on my face.”
Garpiloff is surprised.
“Died? You mean summoned.”
“I’m pretty sure I died.”
“If you died you wouldn’t be alive.”
“Then what do you mean summoned?”
“Well summoni-”
“I know what summoning is, I’m saying how?”
“I’m sure you know the world is made of many precious and dull minerals.”
“Yes.”
“And I believe you know these engravings on these minerals have effects.”
“To an extent.”
“Mining these minerals for use is a very dangerous task.”
“How so?”
“Any mark, no matter what, will do something.”
“Sounds absurd. How do you collect it then?”
“Experimenting with certain markings have shown us the safest way to extract these minerals with minimal repercussion.”
“Yea, so you summoned me with one of these markings?”
“Most likely, but here’s the problem.” Garpiloff scratches the back of his head.
“Go on.”
“You were kind of an accident…”
“Experiment gone wrong?”
“No, a mining expedition went wrong. One of the miners made a summoning rock by accident and you were the result.”
“And you can’t recreate it?”
“Yes, well... We wouldn’t want to anyways.” Garpiloff looks down in grief.
“Why is that?”
“The miner was in critical condition afterwards.”
“He was saved right? By some healing rock or something?”
“We do have such rocks that can heal wounds.”
“That’s great!”
“But none have been discovered to bring back the dead.”
“Oh…” Now Maito feels both awkward and remorseful.
“Well, to discover a cure to death requires the experimentation of life. I don’t think many people are willing to take on that endeavor.”
“Well I think bringing back the dead would be pretty damning, zombies you know.”
“Zom-bee?”
“It’s something from where I came from.”
“People were brought back to life where you’re from?” Garpiloff leans in.
“No, more of a uh… Myth?
“We have myths about what bringing back the dead would be like. Stories of dead partners living among us as if nothing had happened.”
“Sounds a lot better than being eaten.”
“Stories of eating the undead?”
“No, the undead eating us.”
“How ghastly!”
“Anyways… Back to the questions!” Garpiloff gets a little tired and rests by kneeling on the floor.
“Do we just sit on the ground?”
“Do people where you’re from not sit like this?”
“We usually have furniture for sitting where I’m from.” Maito sits on the ground across from Garpiloff.
“Designated furnishings for sitting? Sounds restraining to me, people just sit wherever they please in public and at home.”
“So can you describe where you’re from, before you got summoned here.”
“Well…” Maito scratches his chin.
“It’s basically like this world but without the rock marking stuff, and we called the place we lived on Earth.”
“Just like it? That’s very rare for many summons to come from a world almost exactly like this one.”
“Well I haven’t been outside to say for sure.”
“Ah yes! I’m fairly busy as of late. But how about I have one of my private security guards escort you about the area.” Garpiloff taps a ring with a marked rock on the ground with the back of his hand.
“You have requested my assistance?” A womanly voice from behind is heard.
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