Edited by: Kuro and Lille
And this is the last of the sponsored chapters! Thank you again for all the support :D
I have officially caught up with both CG and Tapas! Updates will now go at the same pace as those two sites. Thank you for your patience and I hope you will continue to enjoy this story :D
System 225 was the first to get out of his stupor. [*Chirp…* Host, there’s no indication that I must eject you, so you have to somehow get through this situation.]
‘Understood.’ The Host replied before giving a sigh out loud.
“Nora, Emery, we need to talk.” The Host said as though he was not in Emery’s body.
“Why… Who are you and why are you in my body?!” The original Emery finally shouted.
The Host, who heard him, looked over at Nora but she didn’t seem to hear anything the original said. He looked back at Emery and gave a sigh of relief. At least he was able to communicate with Emery with no problems.
“Emery, I know this situation is very confusing but let’s sit down and talk, okay? I will explain everything and what I know about this situation.”
The original Emery, who was still floating, was pacing back and forth in his room, biting on his nails, something he hadn’t done in a long time. He nodded, but he was still pacing. The Host could only calm Nora down and let her sit down on Emery’s bed. The Host grabbed the chair at his desk and tried to think about where he could start.
Nora, who was looking at the pacing Emery and then back at the person in Emery’s body, felt like she was hallucinating and needed to go back to sleep. If she slept and woke up, everything would go back to “normal” was how she felt.
“Emery, come here and hold my hand,” The Host said as he held out his hand. “Watching you pace around is making me anxious.”
Emery stopped pacing and looked over at his own hand that was calling out to him. He slowly floated over and held the Host’s hand. For the first time since waking up, he could finally hold on to something and felt warmth seeping into his palm. It made him relax a bit.
“I… I’m sorry.” Emery said as he looked dejected, but he was much calmer.
Nora went to grab Emery, the original’s hand, but her hand slipped right through. She didn’t mind that but she confirmed the Host’s theory. “I can hear you now, Emery. I can hear you!” She seemed excited but also relieved.
“Really?! Thank goodness, I was trying to talk to you this whole time but you couldn’t hear me!”
Emery and Nora began talking about all that they were trying to talk about when this whole situation first started, leaving the Host with nothing to do. The Host felt a little left out but he let them talk until they remembered his existence. He decided to talk with System 225 instead.
‘System, I think I understand the situation now.’
[I think I understand as well. I knew there would be more problems as we advanced worlds, but this took the cherry on top from what we have seen thus far.] System 225 was expressing his opinion but he seemed to have set up a flag without even realizing it.
After confirming Emery’s safety, Nora snapped back and remembered the real issue at hand.
“Ah, yes! To the person inside Emery’s body, you must explain what you know and what’s going on.”
When he was finally remembered, the Host zoned back in and felt Emery and Nora staring at him.
“I understand, so stop looking at me like I’m some sort of demon.” The Host rubbed his temples with his free hand. He already had a headache.
The two best friends stopped glaring at the Host, and waited for him to say something.
“You know how Nora and you help spirits move on,” He looked over at Emery as he said this, “I do something a little similar, but on a larger scale. I’m not from this world and I go from world to world helping poor souls heal so that they can reincarnate once more.”
[Wait, Host!] System 225, even though Nora and Emery couldn’t hear him, couldn’t help but interrupt his Host. He felt that that was already too much information.
‘Shhh, I got this, System. Hear me out.’
“You just happened to be one of the people I was told to go help. I didn’t think I would actually meet the original soul though…” He mumbled the last part but the two could still hear him.
“You were told to help me, why?” Emery was confused as he didn’t remember asking for help.
That’s when the Host knew that he didn’t have memories of when he had died.
Nora was quiet and didn’t say anything. She was trying to process everything that the Host just said.
“It seems you have no memories of asking for our help.” The Host spun some lies, but they were technically true to a certain extent. “That makes sense though. Your spirit shouldn’t have stayed behind when I accepted your request.”
Now System 225 was getting where the Host was coming from.
“My spirit should have disappeared?” Emery had a look of fear on his face as he wanted to back away from his physical body, but he knew Nora wouldn’t be able to hear him if he stepped away. It was the typical, “let me hear everything I want to hear and disregard everything else.”
“No, you should be waiting in a waiting room of some sort and waiting for my results. After I accomplish everything, your soul would be healed and you would wait to be reincarnated.”
He wasn’t lying though. The Host asked System 225 many years ago and he knew that there was a waiting room for souls. That waiting room was where they watched the Hosts complete missions. Once those missions were completed, the original soul would usually enter the Reincarnation Sea, now they waited to reincarnate in the world they were originally from. The Hosts and souls never meet though. He wanted to meet the original souls when he first started out, but after a while, the feeling disappeared. Things changed a little for the original souls and the Hosts after the Villain System attacked though.
Nora, who finally understood what was going on, asked an important question. “Why does his soul need to be healed?”
“Good question Nora, let me elaborate some more. Souls are fragile. Depending on how the world plays out, some souls naturally will get damaged so that the world can continue on its set course. Emery’s soul was damaged in this process, but not only that, he died a death that he was unwilling to die. His strong will and belief called out to us to change the course of his story. By changing his story, his unexpected death, and completing what he wanted to complete, his soul will be healed and he could finally move on to reincarnate.” This also got rid of the world plot and let the world naturally go through the flow until the natural death of the world.
There was silence after the Host explained that. Nora and Emery were trying to break down everything the Host had just said so that they could understand it to a certain degree.
“So I died and I don’t remember dying.” Emery finally spoke up after a long five minutes of silence.
The Host nodded. “That’s right. I don’t think I can tell you how you-”
“Please, you have to tell me... I have to know how I died because this makes sense but it doesn’t make any sense at the same damn time! Why can’t I remember anything?” Emery felt aggrieved. Suddenly he was dead even though he remembered waking up and going out on the “mission” the agency sent him on. From then on, he was back at his room with no idea how he got there. Nora even found him and saw that he was a spirit floating around the room.
‘System, am I allowed to tell him how he died?’ The Host asked, he honestly didn’t really know if he was allowed to tell the original this information because this was the first time this has ever happened to him.
[Yeah, I don’t see any harm in telling him. He’s in spirit form and there’s not much he can do now that you have complete control of his body. If you don’t say anything to him, the only thing he could do is try to remember on his own or accept that he may never remember. ]
After hearing System 225 giving him the okay, he began to tell Emery how he died.
“Sometime in the future, you will die protecting Nora. The two of you were walking across an intersection. That car was coming at Nora, and Emery, who saw this, protected Nora and took the brunt of the hit. The driver that hit you two fell asleep behind the wheel and had no recollection as to why he fell asleep. Emery ended up dying on the spot while Nora survived.”
It was Nora’s turn to feel as if her world was crumbling. She had indirectly killed her best friend and she did not know that. Her thoughts were coming at a mile a minute but the longer they continued, the more guilt and grief she felt.
The Host could see where Nora’s train of thought was going and he reached out and grabbed her hand with his free hand. “Nora, you didn’t kill him. It was your father.”
When the Host said this, Nora and Emery were astonished and looked up. No one else knew about Nora’s dad except Emery. There was no way she could not believe the Host now.
The two began to ask him questions. He answered what he could but kept his identity a secret. It was a long day for all of them.
*****
After interrogating the Host, Nora and Emery felt like their whole world was changing. Their world was already quite different from normal people because they could see spirits, but now it felt like they came straight out of a movie or a book.
They were sitting on Emery’s bed with the Host in the middle. They were all still holding hands as they, the original Emery and Nora, were contemplating on what to do next.
The Host felt like he gained two children and was waiting for them to recollect themselves and accept what had happened. He looked around Emery’s room that he could not take in because of the craziness of meeting the original’s soul.
The room was quite simple as he didn’t have many belongings.
There was a bookshelf that was half full and seemingly unorganized, a desk with a customized PC like the man had built it himself. He had textbooks on the desk and on the floor next to the chair. The bed was a full-sized bed but there wasn’t much on it so they could all fit.
He also had a closet where he barely had clothes. He seemed to have a chair that he just threw his laundry on.
All in all, it seemed like a typical room for high school or college students.
The Host looked over at Emery and Nora to see how they were feeling and also how they looked as he forgot to do that. Emery, who looked conflicted, had nice features even when frowning. He had light brown hair and green eyes. He was pretty tall but he was on the lanky side as he didn’t exercise much and did a lot of his investigating at the computer or in person.
On the other hand, Nora, who had a serious look on her face, had beautiful sun-kissed skin and curly hair. She was beautiful with plump lips and long lashes. She also had a well-defined figure as she was the sporty one out of the two. Though her arms didn’t seem like they had too much muscle, all the power was in her legs as her thick legs looked like she could break a watermelon with them.
The two didn’t look like they could get along but they were best friends despite a lot of their differences.
“This has been a long day.” The Host mumbled to himself. He wanted to lay down but he had a spirit and a person holding his hands, sitting next to him.
“Tell me about it…” Nora sighed as well before realizing she forgot something important. “Wait a moment, if that’s Emery, what are we supposed to call you?” She looked at the Host because the Host didn’t say what his name was.
“Ah… I forgot about that…” The Host just realized that he couldn’t go by Emery with these two now that the original Emery was floating nearby.
“Well, I don’t really have a name so you guys can name me.”
Emery was stunned. “You… you don’t have a name? So you were just going to go by my name if I wasn’t here?”
“Yeah… I say I don’t have a name because I forgot it. It has been several hundreds of thousands of years since someone called me by my name. So it’s only natural I will forget it. I’m used to going by the name of the person I am occupying anyway, so yeah, I would have been going by your name.”
The two were speechless. The soul within Emery was…
“That means you are really old,” Emery mumbled out.
“I… Yeah, that’s right. I guess I am old. I don’t feel that old though.”
“Why don’t we call you Grey?” Nora said after lots of thinking of cool names.
“Grey?” Emery and the Host questioned at the same time.
“You know how the color grey is like the middle ground between black and white? I feel you are also kind of like that. To Emery and I, you are the connection or the middle ground between the land of the living and the land of the dead. I think it suits you well.”
“I see… Then I will go by Grey from now on.” The Host felt a little warm when he got this name for himself.
It was perfect for him.
Mini theatre by kuro_kama:
God System: I am on standby for too long!!! Just when does the author plan to give me screen time? Hey! Are you listening?
System 225: God System, please calm down! You are breaking the fourth wall. Don’t ruin my image of yours any further.
~~~~~
Lille: Dang, this world is getting more complicated (>_>)
Grandpa Marky: It's a little complicated so if you have any questions about clarifying things, let me know. The stronger the worlds, the harder it will be. Even with how complicated the worlds get increases the difficulty. Anyway, this is all for this week. See you all whenever at this point. I'm so tired >.>
