As the duration of living in this new world got longer, I have been thinking a lot about my future. Where will I end up? Will I remain a runaway for the rest of my life, or will I get citizen authority? I’ve adjusted well with the help of these elderlies, but I cannot depend on them all the time, nor should I abandon them after spreading my wings and becoming independent. I still need to know everything about this world.

The fact elves and humans are living together boggles me for some reason, like, I have no memory of the past of this world or the other life I possibly lived. There are no cracks in knowing I lived in another world because everything in this world is not familiar at all. A lot of things seem out of place. A forest that stretches miles and conquered towns doesn’t sit well.

I have been digging and found out the country I am residing in is in a civil war that is on its eight hundredth war. It began in 2022 with protests turned riots turned into war. Great Britain hasn’t been called the British Isles in centuries. The isles have become divided into peninsulas; the English Peninsula has seven countries, the Welsh Peninsula has three countries, the Scottish Peninsula has four, and the Irish Peninsula has five.

And where I am currently living is the Forest of Essex, a county that used to be an independent country but lost land to England two hundred years ago. Most people are treated like monsters here, and most people living in Essex give up their lives to serve families. It is just a massive deprived area abandoned by the government. They only know how to become a servant to families to make money. I’ve watched a documentary of just families living in Essex towns training to be servants.

It’s just a shithole. The people’s fighting spirit doesn’t exist after being raided numerous times and going through the Essex Massacre, where ninety per cent of their population got murdered due to artillery raids and sky raids. It has a population of ten thousand, and most live in Chelmsford. Essex became a territory of villagers, tribesmen, bandits, runaways, and servants.

“Looking at our shitty history, huh? I thought it would end in the 21st century because of climate change,” Edylra cackled, passing me a black uniform that looked like a school uniform. A week after getting my identification cards, Edylra moved on to making a school uniform for me to enter the Royal Academy to get closer to the king, so she called me up to her house for that specific reason.

“Yeah, I need to learn much as I can, I suppose, before I die anyway,” I asked, staring at a laptop screen with news explaining current battles in the civil war, squirming around on an uncomfortable wooden chair.

“You will live for hundreds of years. Learn the future as you live, not the dirty past,” Edylra sighed, sipping her coffee in a royal blue mug as she sat snug.

“Nah, I prefer decades of lives, not centuries of lives. I don’t want to break the age barrier of an elf and become millennium years old,” I opposed, rolling at the sight of Edylra blatantly flaunting her soft, fur-coated wheeled chair as she gracefully crosses one leg over the other.

“You know, an elf almost became a thousand years old?” Edylra slapped her lips, placing the mug on the coffee table.

“No.”

“A male elf was born in the year 1022. The man lived through all the events that could have wiped earth clean, eventually dying at 906 in 2022.”

“How did he not want to kill himself during the black death?”

“I know, right?! I would have killed myself from there on. But no, this guy was the happiest being alive. And what makes it sad that for the last hundred years, he was suffering critically,”

“The bastard still fought on? Wow, that is some mentality right there,” I snorted. Still, I will not live longer than one hundred years old. That is too much shit to carry on my back.

“Anyway, your stuff for the school has been completed. You will be in Year 13 with Level 6 education, edging into Level 7 education,”

I held onto my uniform and headed to Elijah’s house to eat the breakfast Glenda had prepared. They both eventually found out that I had explored the city by myself one time and scolded me like real parents. It didn’t bother me, but it bothered Elijah when he came into my room one night, personally apologising for lashing out at me. I understood his reasons. I just felt like our ‘family’ was growing stronger.

“With you heading to school in three days, how do you feel?” Glenda sat across me smiling, asked with her fingers locked between each other as a support to rest her chin.

“I guess I’m overreacting a little bit? I feel like someone can just recognise me if they focused enough,” I answered truthfully, clenching my hands.

“Darling, there is nothing that should make you worry. Trust me, a tiny adjustment to a person can change their whole appearance,” Glenda clarified as she caressed my hands to console me. She then scooped her hands under my chin to straighten my darting eyes to let me see an optimistic future as the fenders of the velvety chromatic sky daunted a beaming affable welcome.

“If you say so, Glenda-”

“Call me by mother. You are family.”

“No, I can’t. It'll feel like I will be stealing your real son’s position.”

“And that’s what our son wants, a little brother he can teach.”

Why are they always pulling my heartstrings, man?

–

A box neatly wrapped in bubble wrap sat on the desk next to the bed. I rolled over and saw a slit of paper dangling from the top of the box like it was cuddling the walls of the cardboard box. The letter said it was those GPDDs sent by Raghav, and I left it at that and left the box alone because I didn’t want to encounter that moment again.

I scrolled away on social media, catching up on recent celebrities and controversies. With VPN, I peeked at the warring factions in the English Peninsulas websites since they had banned the country I live in from viewing their stuff. I hopped onto the Republic of Kent’s services and checked out their news website.

It was very patriotic, filled with propaganda and threads of the Kentish Defence Forces strengthening their alliances with the Cornish Defence Forces and the Lancashire Defence Forces in a well-organised, smooth format. It was called ‘The Free English Army Alliance’, an alliance created in 2030 after they were a de-facto of the actual Free English Army that lost their fight with England. KDF and CDF were a regiment in the Free English Army before commanding their self-governed army.

They continued the Free English Army’s legacy for hundreds of years and remained a threat to England and their fight to take back its splintered land.

“Huh? The princess is trending?” I muttered, then groaned when seeing it was just a trend wishing that bitch well for being a raped victim, “Carina is a victim, my ass,” I moaned the words on the screen, chucking my phone away, rubbing my forehead as I felt a thud near my feet.

I thrust myself upwards, twisting my body to the right as I lunged my arm over to the box. As I grabbed the box, I pulled it towards my lap to unwrap the bubble wrap intensely sellotaped, making it a problem getting all of it off. At long last, I pushed off the lid and peered my eyes into the box, seeing those two dimmed GPDDs looking back at me.

Revisioning Raghav stationing these annoying things on me, I watched myself in the mirror, seeing the horrible, scrunched-up face I was making while focusing, so a mistake isn’t made. This part where I placed them under my right eye was easy peasy. Nothing was an issue with that. It’s just getting them in the correct position and going through that torture that felt like a horde of devils escaping satan’s control.

Readying myself as I drafted my eyes shut, expecting the worse as I hustled the right GPDD straight in slow progress, my heart wavered like a hummingbird as I took a deep breath, awaiting the pain like suspense in a horror chase.

“For fucks sake,” I whispered. I hated everything I was doing, so I could explore the city again and get closer to Carina’s mansion.

A prolonged sigh left my mouth as I locked the GPDD into place, blowing out a sharp whistle as my shoulders strained.

Silence.

Nothing.

The backlash of pain didn’t happen. This time, I sensed a weird kick like water splashing down my skull around my eye socket. Energy drained itself as it did a week ago, bathing around the two GPDDs without pain. I opened my eyes to make sure I placed them correctly.

I didn’t look at myself directly in the mirror, but when I did, it was like looking at an entirely different person. As I curved my eyes onto my reflection, it warped me into a dilemma. My irises sparkled like smoke strangled in red as the smoke mutilated into a sharp angle above my forehead, appearing as undefined, prickled horns. The blazing light eluding from my irises was brighter than the sun through the window, shining down my face like a flashlight.

Amazement turned into nullity. The more I stared at my eyes, the more I felt a gate opening from inside me. A gate that dispersed hunger to unleash turmoil upon the world, the thirst to quench everyone by the throat and turn the world into nonexistence. The greed to act like a monster. As if I wasn’t going crazy enough, my eyes that remained cemented followed my head as I slowly tipped my head sideways, acting like I was revolting against a person that didn’t exist.

Was it strange? I watched myself like a witness, a victim tied into the corner as I felt like I had lost control of myself, yet I felt every vibration in my body. I felt my heart thump calmly like a walk on the ridge in Antarctica. Flickers of pixelated images kept coming and leaving, and the more that showed up, the more I saw the emotions inside me lessen its grip.

Like a king operating in its two colonies, the personalities arose from the sea like the last remains of powerful sirens, scratching wounds into each other to have the last chance of choosing my destiny.

I knew this would be one of the issues, that there was another personality in me. So, which one is my personality? Do I even have an identity? Is the universe just trying to place an identity inside me to fix the crack it created?

The world got small, the surroundings distorted, the sounds muted. I was only living in a place where I saw myself as a mirage, the mirror vanished, and now I saw a version of me fuming above blackness. I was staring at my other perception, a mirage with meandering edges, a torn-down version of me, paler than a ghost. My eyes were distant with no hope in them. They were dull with no animation. One dark colour remained, which was the blood red colour.

“Alvin? You’ve gone quiet in there. Are you ok?” Edylra’s voice duplicated in the darkness. I looked at where the door would be and saw her. But, she looked odd. Something like an aura surrounded her, a creamy white one. Smooth and delicate. No hint of evil.

“Oh, God!” Edylra whimpered, decaying onto the floor like the dominos effect. Edylra’s hands hesitated over her mouth as her dilated, stretched eyes showed an intense fear.

Fear of me.

“What’s wrong?” I heard myself ask robotically. Her reaction didn’t provoke me. Edylra’s facial expressions were a blur as I walked over, lending my hand to help her up. She flinched, not as in shock. She winced as if I was threatening her life, and she didn’t dare budge like a victim in flight mode.

Again, I didn’t react. I didn’t care. I latched my right hand down Edylra’s forearm, firmly holding as I forced Edylra onto her feet, not asking for consent.

“Ow! Alvin! That hurts!” Edylra whinged, punching her arm back to get out of my grip, but nothing was happening. I still held her arm, which made Edylra start panicking as she began desperately pulling her arm back,

“Alvin, stop it! Take them DPPDs off you! They are affecting you more than they are supposed to do!” Edylra whined.

So, it was the DPPDs that were making me change? They weren’t just devices to detect who I am, but devices that pull out the real version of whoever wears them.

“I don’t want to take them off.”

“W-What?!” Edylra stammered, concerned.

“I feel natural with them on me.”