The front door became the latest victim of Darius' annoyance.
Remembering his house's front door hinges were jammed this morning, Darius kicked it open with enough force to send Jojo, one of his schoolmates, across a busy street. His paper-thin patience cannot even bother to see whether he broke the door handle (again), closing the door with his left foot with only slightly less force. He didn't even care to lock the door. After all, the front gate is more than secure to electrocute anyone who dared to enter his front yard without permission.
Darius took off his shoes, then went to his bedroom adjacent to the living room. Despite the name, he is the only living being in this house, so it has never been lively anyway.
The boy threw his bag carelessly to the bed, then lie down beside it, facing the ceiling. His facial expression looks like a permanent scowl, although he tried to convince people—unconvincingly—that he did not deliberately scowling. His dark brown eyes have maroon shade, staring coldly with blurred focus, as if his mind is racing at several directions at once.
Among the never-ending thoughts that constantly disturbs his focus, at least two of them emerged more clearly. Darius decided to grab the first memory; his conflict with Mr. Nandang.
He's completely at loss with whatever that Computer Science teacher was thinking. Out of the blue, Darius was shouted at right in the middle of everyone when he was queueing for lunch in the canteen. In the teacher's room, Mr. Nandang loudly accusing him of messing up the Computer Lab's electrical, short-circuiting half of the PCs. Exasperated with his teacher's denseness, Darius shouted back with twice as loud voice, that he cares nothing about the Computer Lab and knows nothing about electrical stuff, and Mr. Nandang's head was just completely waft. The shouting practice nearly became a physical confrontation if it's not because Mr. Nazrul dan Mr. Haidar separated them.
Mr. Nuruddin, the headmaster, question them after that near-brawl. Luckily, he believed Darius' words.
"I believe it's not the first time this man accuses me of something I never did, Headmaster," Darius said, back then, with icy tone that stunned even Mr. Nandang.
Mr. Nuruddin coughed, "I would think so, especially after... Ah, let's not discuss that, shall we? The matter is closed long ago, and I believe nobody should bring it up as an excuse to harass any student in this school."
Darius was asked to leave imminently, but when Mr. Nuruddin did bring that up, he finally realised the reason for Mr. Nandang's animosity.
"So he was the homeroom teacher of Class 10-2, eh?" Darius mumbled to himself, still staring at the ceiling. "What an irony."
An irony indeed, since Darius immediately knows who was the actual culprit. A student from then-Class 10-2. That particular student—Jojo, as everyone called him, and Darius never bother to learn his actual name—looked suspiciously disappointed when he saw Darius passed through his classroom (was it 11 Science 2?).
He'll think about how to get back to that Jojo student. Should be easy to figure out, if it's not for the second issue that is more bothersome.
He promised his deskmate, Angga, to attend the last thing he want to attend: a birthday party. Of a student from his class. Tonight.
Darius didn't know what kind of demon possessed him and said to Angga that he will attend the party. Probably he was just tired being continuously asked. Or tired with Mr. Nandang's unreasonable behaviour. Or probably the demon was sent by the birthday girl to make sure Darius will definitely attend. The point is, Darius regretted it two seconds after the words came out of his mouth.
To make matters worse, it's Vio's birthday. The ghostly pale, bulky, pimpled girl whose antics clearly showed a spoiled rich girl stuff with arrogance twice as high as Burj Khalifa. They became enemies the first time they met.
At this point, Darius has completely zero idea on why Vio forced her way to order Angga to bring him to attend her birthday party. On a perfectly normal day, Vio will be more than happy to get Darius out of her severely pimpled nose.
Too late. He promised.
Darius ruffled his wavy hair, then woke up, took off his black jacket, and changed his school uniform to a gray t-shirt and long sweatpants. Without the jacket, dozens of long, permanent scars in both of his arms are shown. He doesn't like people looking at the memento of old life, so he tends to cover it most of the times apart from the lesson hours, where he had to put off the jacket.
He went to the kitchen to brew some tea. Just when he opened the cupboard to look for what tea leaf brands are still available, a strange feeling suddenly tingled the back of his neck. Darius turned around in reflex.
Nothing.
Kitchen, probably the whole house, is silent.
Darius rubbed his scruff. This is unusual.
Whilst waiting for the water to boil, he started to feel like he's being watched. The boy looked arond, but nothing shows any sign of life. He was expecting that some kind of ghost or poltergeist or whatnot will haunt him at some point after he started living there. None of such luck.
Darius brood over for a while, and concluded that it might only be the wind. Maybe he's just tired. His head is not in the right state to think too much.
However, when he passed the living room to return to his bedroom, that feeling of being watched returned. He spontaneously looked to the window in the far-right side, but the curtain is closed. Stood still, all senses on alert, Darius scanned around to find any sign of abnormalities. Nothing. Still nothing after a minute standing like a tired statue.
Now Darius really think that something is definitely abnormal.
I've been living alone in this house for five years. Nothing strange have ever happened here. he mumbled inside his head. Why would today be any different?
Darius entered his bedroom, put the tea kettle and teacup on a small desk next to his bed, whilst he himself sat on the edge of the mattress, eyes locked onto the study desk in front of him. Study materials are scattered messily on its top, since he was too lazy to tidy it up. He already completed the homework until the next week's. Nothing more to do.
The empty teacup was refilled, and two lumps of block sugar were dropped inside. He sipped it lightly, letting the liquid warmed his mouth and throat. He stayed still for a little while, then repeated it twice. Afterwards, he decided to lay down again, expecting to rest for a few minutes before opening his laptop.
Less than a minute, he fell asleep.
***
That nightmare again.
For the umpteenth time, the same eerie dream came across Darius' sleep. A nightmare, because in these dreams, he had to face hundreds, probably thousands of monsters. Darius watches anime and fantasy films, yes, so he thought that might probably affect his dream somewhat. However, none of the monsters he encountered in his dream were as normal as anime monsters. It's as if characters from several different anime and serials were chopped up and reassembled together like a poorly-designed chimaera-like being. One, Darius saw Son Wukong riding Appa from Avatar series. On another corner, there was a unicorn with a whale for the rear-end and equipped with batlike wings. So far, the most ridiculous one was Zhu Bajie (or Chu Patkai, from what he remembered from Indonesian television series) with Donald Trump as the front face (complete with pig snout) and JD Vance face sprouted on the back of his head like a deformed Voldemort. A large golf club was his weapon.
The place on his dream was not really describable, except from the cloudy white sky which blocks any sign of the sky—if there was any—and the horizon was unclear. His feet stand on something resembles a crackless, slightly dusty, dry soil.
The bad news? All the monsters surrounded him within a radius of roughly 50 metres. Darius can sense thousands of pairs of eyes looking at him angrily and hungrily, ready to attack.. What they were waiting for, Darius had no idea.
Then, Darius looked upon himself. He wore a dark blue, high-collar long coat extending to his heel. Linings on his coat glow electric blue. He also wore a black khaki pants tucked inside a black military boot. Strapped on his back is a sheath. Instinctively, Darius drew the sword.
It's a double-edged sword with the blade on the tip slightly wider than the base. The blade is roughly a metre long, with dull-gray colour that faintly glowing blue. The sword feels so powerful.
No, wait. Not only from the sword. It also channels the power from within Darius himself. Electric power.
Normally, Darius forgot his dream five seconds after he woke up. But he swore that whatever he wear in this dream is exactly the same as the one from his previous dreams. More than that, these dreams feel really vivid, as if Darius is completely aware that he's inside a dream.
Before he's got more seconds to ponder about, he drew his sword is a signal for the monsters to attack. From this point, Darius' instinct went overdrive. He jumped—far higher than any normal human being can, somersaulted, then shot a electric charge from his sword to the crowd of monsters as if he's playing water balloon war. Some monsters evaporated into white smoke. Darius landed smoothly behind the monsters' crowd, who turned around and started attacking him again.
Darius was more than ready. His sword rattles from millions Volt of electron flow, then he stormed to the crowd. He slashes, rolls, stabs, fending attacks, all with the extreme agility as if he has been extensively trained. Half of it, Darius feels, is due to his instinct being excessively trained since he was six year-old.
In one chance, Donald Trump-Zhu Bajie chimaera tried to hit Darius with his gargantuan golf club. Darius evades the attack easily, then shot a thunderbolt to the monster's head, exploding it into a thick wisp of rotten egg-smelled gray smoke. Darius nearly threw up.
Once, enemy's attack landed on Darius, even slightly. A two-headed dragon gushed a spray of acid from where some drops got into his left hand. The pain was not much, but something in Darius' stomach explodes. He somersaulted back several times, standing upright, then thrusting his sword to the sky. The cloud suddenly turned dark gray, and the air smelled like copper. He swung his sword towards that unruly dragon, and a barrage of lightning strikes from the cloud, destroying the dragon and several hundreds of monsters around it.
When the lightning storm ended, only a handful of scaredy-looking monsters remain. But somehow, that attack left Darius somewhat tired. Probably too much energy used for that lightning storm, so he decided to use classical way of decapitation when hunting the monster.
However, after half of the remaining monster has been decapitated and he's hunting a humanoid lizard with a size of a rhino, something happened.
The white-again cloud suddenly turned dark and swirling, creating a black hole in the sky, right on the top of where Darius is standing. Then, that black hole sucked everything on the ground, including him. Darius did nothing to resist—he knows nothing he can do. But at least it'll be the end of his dream, right?
And that's exactly what's strange. This black hole did not exist on his previous dreams.
Then it talked.
"Prepare yourself, Mellten Swordsman! It's time for your return!"
***