Aqueo and his Water Spirit

Chapter 3 - To The Townsquare

Aqueo followed Hermina quietly just as she had requested right after they came out from the kitchen.

She walked rather fast for a girl, occasionally halting when passing an intersection of corridors to cautiously peek before turning or going straight. Aqueo couldn't exactly tell if she was walking or running because of her long black-and-white maid uniform that was almost touching the floor when she was just standing still. He had to jog a bit to catch up to her.

They had been walking and jogging for a while and as they did, Aqueo had also been feeling a sense of deja vu as if he had already walked these corridors before. He curiously looked at Aquifer that had been beside him the whole time. It might be because the spirit had already wandered this mansion before, but he couldn't exactly recall just like some of the memories with the herbs.

And just when he was trying to remember, a woman wearing a white dress came out from the corridor to the right in front of them. Hermina immediately stopped track and pushed Aqueo in the open room next to them.

Aqueo only saw the woman briefly but her appearance came with a vague recollection of memory at the back of his mind-the spirit following her in a similar corridor while she was holding a crystal orb on her right hand that was radiating with strong magical energy. Someone was following her, but the memory was too vague so he couldn't exactly tell the appearance of that person and the huge thing that person was carrying.

Aqueo heard Hermina greet the woman outside. He waited until she came back and continued their discreet walk to the guest room.

They climbed a few stairs and passed several corridors and hid a few more times to evade other servants before finally reaching the guest room.

"I'm sorry about the push a while ago. Azbert instructed me to make sure no one else will see you," Hermina bowed her head.

"Ah, it's okay, it's okay. I experienced something much worse," Aqueo said as he recalled the truck incident.

"Also, this room is rarely used and hasn't been used for ages, so there's a lot of dust everywhere. There are clean clothes for men in that wardrobe over there. And the bathroom is behind that door. I'll stand guard outside. I'll make sure nobody will find you here," Hermina said in a soft voice.

Aqueo nodded, "Hmm, thank you for bringing me here."

Hermina made a curtsy before closing the door.

Aqueo inhaled deeply as he observed the room. It smelled like flowers here even though this room hadn't been cleaned for ages. There was a bed, a table and a chair on his left, two wardrobes and a full body mirror on his right, a painting of the sunset at the side of the large window opposite to the door, and the bathroom door at the far right side of the room.

His attention suddenly turned to the design of the wallpaper. It was different from the wallpaper used for the corridors they passed through. But this wallpaper, it was the same with the wallpaper of the corridor in the memory with the woman a while ago. 'Maybe the other corridors had the same wallpaper,' Aqueo thought and just simply ignored it.

He opened the wardrobe Hermina pointed to and took the clothes out one by one to examine how they looked. They all had the same style differing only in color and size. He took the blue one his size and went inside the bathroom.

Just like seeing the familiar herbs in the lake chamber, the design of this bathroom felt like something he had already seen before. The cloud-like curves of the edge of the mirror, the flower markings on the bathtub and sink, including the smooth white stone floor and walls. The memories started to vaguely come at the back of his mind.

"This-," Aqueo said while his eyes were tightly closed. "These are memories of people taking a bath. But-" He tightened his eyes even more, including his eyebrows in the effort of trying to remember.