Even If No One Wants You, I Do

Chapter 69 - I'm taking you back!

Normal text
Thinking
Onomatopoeia

Ahri's POV
"KEIRA!"

My eyes flew open. I was panting, sweat dripping from my forehead. Warm tears were trailing down my cheeks, my heart in so much pain. I was lying down on a soft bed, staring up at a strange yet somehow familiar-looking ceiling. I immediately sat up, panicking when I didn't see my baby beside me.

Keira. My Keira. Where is she???

The last thing I remembered was crying when Keira's arm dropped from my face. When her shallow breathing stopped. When her life essence completely extinguished. When her eyes finally closed. I remembered desperately calling her, trying to shake her awake. I was begging my kind baby to open her eyes. But she stubbornly refused to let me see her beautiful violet eyes. Those eyes that were always so kind but oftentimes, also very silly. I remembered tightly hugging her cold motionless body, trying to keep her warm. Then a glaring white light engulfed us. And now I'm here. In this strange place. Without my little deer.

I looked around. There's only me here. The bedroom was large, its interior walls painted with different shades of white. I was lying on a king-sized bed, covered with a navy-blue blanket. A crystal chandelier hung on the ceiling, illuminating the place with even more white light. There's also a strange rectangular black box hanging on the wall in front of me. I slowly stood up and walked towards it cautiously. Suddenly, the thing lit up and started blaring out voices. There were strangers talking in the black box. I immediately jumped back 10 feet, my right hand drew back, about to blast this sorcery to bits. But even after waiting for a few seconds, nothing came out from my palm. In fact, I couldn't feel the familiar warm sensation of mana flowing in my body at all. This was when I noticed my back. There were no tails in sight. I panicked and started groping my back, trying to find them. I clearly knew that bastard God didn't cut away everything. I would know since the whole ordeal was like hell. So where were my tails???

I scanned around the room, searching for a mirror. The moment I saw one, I sprinted over and stared at it intently. But what I saw was myself, minus the whisker marks, tails and pointy ears. In fact, my ears were normal human ones.

What...

I gingerly touched them. They weren't soft like my original ones, but they were still undoubtedly mine.

Human... I'm actually a human...

I didn't know how to feel about this. I've always wanted to be a human for a very long time. I wanted to be someone who was worthy of standing beside Kaizer. Beside Keira. But now that I'm one, I suddenly didn't really like it. This wasn't me. I missed my soft ears. My fluffy tails. All the things that Keira found cute. They were the one special way I had to show my affection for her. And now, they're gone.

I didn't even have the chance to wallow in self-pity before my head was suddenly hammered with an inexplicable wave of pain. It's like having someone hack away at it with an axe. The pain was so unbearable I ended up squatting down, my hands squeezing the side of my head, groaning away in agony. Foreign strips of memory flowed into my mind. I remembered being part of a K-pop group with Eve, Bokkie and Akali. K/DA was the name of it. I remembered after releasing our very first single, POP/STARS, our group went dark for a while. Because we didn't really have an inspiration for our next song. I remembered going back to Papa and Mama's mansion for a little holiday retreat. I remembered living in this foreign yet familiar world. Everything.

Thankfully, after a few minutes, the pain subsided and I could finally breathe without feeling like my head was being split open. My mind was racing, trying to process all the new and old memories together. I was utterly confused. I recalled my entire life here. All the way back from childhood. But I also clearly remembered my life in the other world. The original one. Everything I experienced there felt so real. Too real to be nothing more than just a dream. But the one thing I thought of a lot was Keira. She told me of her world. One that's filled with only humans and run by codes, not magic. And this place didn't have a single hint of mana in it. Was it this world then? If I'm here being completely fine, I'm sure she was too! She must be somewhere in this world, right? Somewhere safe and sound.