The Extraordinary Accounts of One Lost Girl

-9-

My client arrived at night when the moon was high in the sky. As if the world was trying to be mysterious and ominous, the sea was calm. Too calm. It was Aanya who woke me up in the dead of the night. And only then did I feel my heart thumping so loud, it was as if it was trying to slowly suffocate me by trying to squeeze out of my throat. Aanya shoved a set of clothing to me hands and left the room.

'Change quickly,' she said before she left.

I looked down at the clothes. It was a thick long dirty green skirt and a white blouse with an under vest. She gave me a change of clothing the on the night I first woke up in the ship. I was quick grateful that she bought clothes that I usually would have worn. I don't think I was ever ready to wear her type of attire. But her giving me clothes told me something about the so called client's requests.

They wanted me in a presentable fashion. I could not wrap my head around why they would want their hostage presentable. I didn't hesitate and changed. Once I was done I waited. Aanay stormed in and looked at me from head to toe. From one of her trouser pockets, she pulled out a comb and quickly combed through my head before tying it into a pony tail.

I didn't ask anything as she did so. She seemed to be in a hurry and rather panicked. Then she actually pulled me out of the cabin room and dragged me through the corridor towards a staircase that led to the deck of the ship. Aanya was usually gentle when it came to me. Seeing her freaked out made me nervous.

Who here the clients?

I found out the moment I stepped onto the deck.

The second I did, I felt my legs tremble and loose its strength.

All these days, I didn't actually believe Aanya's claim that I was from "another world." The claim seemed absurd as it was. But when I saw the levitating contraption that floated about three feet above the deck of the ship in the dead of the night, I realized that what Aanya said might have some truth.

I stared at the levitating bronze contraption. Was it some weapon an esper was levitating with his mind? I thought. But it looked so otherworldly. The bright lights of the ship faced towards the strange object, lighting up its bronze and black exterior. It didn't have any sharp corners. The object was rounded and had a shape I could hardly try to describe. But what I noticed first and far most what the metallic plank that was resting on the deck that led up to the darkness. It looked like a toothless fish that had its mouth open with its tongue rolling out and had two smaller fish conjoined like Siamese twins on either side. That is the only way I cauls describe the object. There were people standing at the opening of the mouth a dark skinned man with golden eyes and silvery white hair standing in front of the plank. He was dressed in a long trench coat as he held to a very big... gun? The shape resembled a gun but it was a gun I had never seen before. Around him, Eastern Empire soldiers with their dark blue uniforms stood at attention, guns at their side as they surrounded the man in a semicircle.

Was the floating thing some sort of vehicle? Well, it was the biggest vehicle I had seen. It occupied almost the whole deck of the cargo ship. Fortunately, there were no containers to occupy the space of the deck.

I had a feeling the man with the strange gun was the client. He stood next to a large box while Ahikito stood in front of him, his hands on his swords. Aanya pulled me towards the strange metal contraption. I stood my ground.

'Please,' I said.

I felt Aanya's fingers tighten around my arm.

Ahikito looked back at Aanya and gave a nod.

'Please, Aanya,' I pleaded.

'Your parents want you back,' Aanya said. She didn't look at my face. 'Maybe there is better than this war riddled world.'

'They search for me after sixteen years,' I said, pulling back. 'I doubt their actions are die to sentiment.'

But Aanya was a lot stronger than me. She pulled me towards the strange dark skinned man. He looked at me, his eyes widening in what I think is surprise.

'There is nothing to examine about her identity,' the man said in English. His accent was off, as he rolled his 'r's and missed most of this 't's. 'It's plain obvious.'

The man then opened the box, which turned out to be a very large suitcase and pulled out a black sleek strangely shaped gun out of the box. He touched somewhere in it and its edges lighted up in a blue.

'Watch,' the man said as he pointed the gun towards the sea and shot. It didn't shoot out bullets. It shot out a beam of light; light that touched the surface of the sea and vaporizing a good deal of water from the surface.

'We have fifty of these,' said the man. He then signaled his comrades who stood on the plank. Men drew more boxes out until there was a stack of them on the deck. He then held out his hand. Aanya shoved me forward.

There was nowhere I could run. I was surrounded. I couldn't jump to the sea even if I knew how to swim. I could only look at Ahikito and Aanya with pleading eyes. Aanya was already walking away. Ahikito nodded at the strange man. The man looked at me. He didn't say anything.

I didn't want to go. I really didn't want to go. Who knows what awaited me. I could only do one thing.

'Where are you taking me?'

The man looked at me, his eyebrows raised.

'To your birth world.'

'Why?'

'Your mother wants you back.'

I looked at that man, trying to figure out if he was telling a lie or not. I wasn't good at telling whether a person was lying or not.

'You are the splitting image of her,' the man said. 'I am not lying.'

He stood behind me, motioning me to walk along the plank first. I obliged. The man followed. When I reached the end of the plank, the plank retreated light a tongue pulling itself back into its tongue. The opening closed like a mouth. I felt the floor underneath me vibrate. I did not know how, but I could just feel myself lift up vertically as I felt my brain sort of try to squeeze itself to the bottom of my skull.

I almost fell down. But a pair of hands caught me and led me to a bench at the corner of what seemed like another cabin which had a porous black rubber carpet of sort as the floor.

'It's your first trip; your head will feel bad.'

The only source of light was from rectangles on the roof. What type of light it was, I had no idea. There were narrow benches on either side of the cabin where other men sat quite a distance away from me, whispering to each other. At the other end of the cabin was a door. The dark skinned an opened the door and entered. I could only catch a glimpse of what seemed like the night sky from a large glass window.

I was alone in a room with only a handful of men in a flying contraption going who knows where. I wish it were a dream, and if it were, I wish I could wake up as soon as possible.

I think I simply sat like that for hours. Trying my best to listen to what was going around me, only to find that no one spoke a language that I could understand. I tried to find the dark skinned man with the golden eyes, but once he disappeared through the door, he never came back. I could feel the occasional glances from the men at the other end of the room as they laughed, some with their arms over each other's shoulders. I wished that I could squeeze into myself and disappear into thin air, but that was just a fantasy of my terrified mind.

As I waited, I replayed all what happened in my head, trying to figure out what I did wrong along the process. Maybe I should have fought a bit more? Maybe I should have tried my best to escape their grasp when they first kidnapped me? Yet eventually, I realized that crying over spilled milk was not going to work. So I straightened my hunched back and tried to at least maintain the figure of a dignified lady, even if I knew that really would not be of much help as well.