Imitai

Chapter Eight

I retired to my big-ass royal sleeping quarters on the ninety-eighth floor right after that first encounter with Emperor Fujia.

White walls with golden leafy designs, a small chandelier for a light, a black and white marble floor with a plain purple rug in the middle, and a king-size bed at the side opposite the white Victorian-style double doors. Those were the elements that made up my bedroom. Like that of a Victorian-era princess who probably lived life to the fullest back then.

Along the same wall to my left stood a door which went into an all-glass bathroom. At the side opposite stood the door to an already filled walk-in closet. But most importantly, I had my own bathroom! Most homes on Earth had master bedrooms which connected to a bathroom, but this bedroom had it's own bathroom!

Not that I need that extra bathroom time most teenage girls require. Okay. Maybe a few more minutes.

Curtains hung at my left as the wall to my right featured a dark brown personal desk where my flarephone lay. Although I could not use the device, I remembered it still had a full battery in the event I would have talked to Lisa for hours on that fateful Christmas night. Now it sat there as I had no idea what became of her let alone Earth as a whole.

"One day I'm Nerida Stanwell," I told myself, "and the next I'm considered a hybrid-human princess by the name of Yumi Minamoto. I have a room the size of the Stanwell family room and my bathroom and closet are even bigger than the floor of a small house!"

I was dead tired by the time Sousuke and Yusuke brought me up here, so I took a long nap. Some hours had to have passed, and as I opened the curtains I could tell it was still daylight outside over the bustling Ashan City. All the tube-like highway tunnels around the futuristic buildings.

All of them were lower than the top tower of this strange palace. It irked me to believe how I probably had one of the best views on this planet while almost everyone else lived below. Sadly enough, I had to be separated from the world.

Total isolation was not something I ever wanted. Even if I were to call this place "Grandma's house."

The Ashanian Palace was a monstrosity. For a building so high and so wide, whoever did the construction had to have spent more than one generation of workers trying to build it. Several large rooms on each floor was unheard of on Earth. Not to also mention that this place was super wide.

This place must have cost trillions of whatever currency the Ashanians used.

I rolled my eyes at the thought and hopped out of bed. Without a word, I briefly walked into my closet and skimmed the endless racks of clothes for an outfit to wear. When I found out what I was looking for, I ran into the bathroom. It felt good to finally freshen up, especially after spending the past couple of days without bathing.

Once finished, I emerged from the bathroom and smiled admirably down at my clothes. I now wore a purplish tunic, tight gray spandex pants, and a pair of black boots reaching midway between my knees and ankles. Everything fit perfectly, so I left my room.

"I need something productive to do," I said. "Now, where's the elevator again?"

Walking down the dimly lit hallway, I passed various paintings of what were probably my ancestors. All of them were mounted along the beige walls between torch wall lights, and in the pictures they also wore tunics. Torches illuminated both the ornate arched cement ceiling above and the indigo carpet below. I then noticed the elevator was dead ahead.

The doors quickly opened as soon as I reached them. I quickly halted, waiting to see if yet another one of my relatives would surface. Who knows how many of them I had.