Nethersky - Chapter 7

As the light from the morning sun flickered through the window and into the room, it beamed down onto Yuning, causing the sleeping youth’s eyes to flutter open.

Blinking his eyes rapidly, Yuning shielded his eyes tiredly, rolling over on his side trying to get away from the sunlight. Only to come face to face with a picture in a thin black frame of a little girl doing cute poses at him.

Bewildered by the strange object in front of him, Yuning jumped up completely awake. Sitting upright, he carefully grabbed the moving image from the bedside table and examined it.

Although he knew they had digital frames back in his time that could do this, this was different since the movement wasn’t the frame’s doing.

In his opinion, this appeared to be some Harry Potter, moving pictures shit.

That’s when he started to realize that what he went through wasn’t a delusion or some kind of crazy dream. But a part of him still couldn’t believe it, even though he knew he should.

The onset of shock had barely begun when this new realization suddenly became more apparent.

And the reason why it became evident was a little girl, the same girl he saved last night and the one from the moving picture. She came bursting into the room, overflowing with life; this somewhat stopped his freak out in its tracks.

“Gege! Why didn’t you wake me? I almost missed my bus to school!” the black-haired girl pouted. Seeing that her brother was just staring at her blankly, she rolled her eyes and headed over to the large mirror on the other side of the room.

Suddenly, with the girl’s presence, everything seemed more real, and the memories that he was unconsciously blocking came slamming back into his mind.

Disjointly, Yuning watched as the little girl patted down her hair and adjusted her backpack’s straps before going over towards the large double-pane window.

Even though the child was only a close stranger to him, concern for her safety was still prevalent in his mind. He had once again unwittingly gotten out of bed and began walking over to her because of this.

With confusion written across his face, he watched as the girl unlocked the window and opened it before asking the question that was weighing on his mind after he had her attention.

‘If you need to catch your bus, why are you in my room?’

“You didn’t get the message?” Meiyin asked, a little puzzled. “Did you forget to check the school chat room last night?”

Looking into the girl’s big doe eyes, Yuning gave a slightly embarrassed nod all the while thinking, ‘With what your brother planned, I don’t think it mattered if he read it or not.’

“Oh, that’s odd; you never forget. Well, it’s nothing really important anyway; it’s just that there is some construction happening on Tunxi Street, so instead, the bus will be coming from Hefang Street.”

Even though his question was answered, Yuning was still confused because he still didn’t know what that had to do with her being in his room.

Just as he was about to search through his second set of memories to find an answer, he was stopped by an engine roaring, and the sound was getting louder by the second.

As he looked for the source of the sound, he was startled to see a large yellow bus hovering next to the window, beeping its horn.

As he stared unblinkingly at the flying bus, he didn’t notice that he was pulled back a couple of steps by a small hand, and once they were about a foot away from the window, the same hand gave a thumbs up to the bus driver.

Yuning could only watch in wonder as the bus driver gave an incline of his head before pulling back a blue lever.

Beep!

Beep!

Beep!

The bus’s door opened, and something that looked like an enclosed walkway emerged and connected securely to their window. If Yuning had to liken it to something, he would dare say that it was similar to an air bridge.

It was exactly like those movable enclosed walkways that connect a passenger terminal to an airplane.

Still feeling slightly amazed at the sight before him, Yuning didn’t even notice when Meiyin gave him a wave goodbye before walking onto the bus.

It was only when the enclosed walkway had disconnected from the window, and the bus lowered itself back down to the ground, did he snap out of his daze.

In a state of wonder and disbelief, Yuning walked back over to the window and closed it. At that moment, he 100 percent believed that this wasn’t just a bizarre delusion he was having, and he really did die and was reborn 500 years into the future.

Like a zombie, he shuffled over towards the bed and sat down on it with a thump. Burying his head in his hands, the shock that he had thought disappeared came back with a fury.

‘I can’t believe it. I really came back to life.’ Yuning thought while laughing, almost hysterically to himself.

He knew all about reincarnation and transmigration, who haven’t read those types of novels before. But that was the problem; this type of thing could only happen in stories; how could it happen in real life.

At least that was what he had thought until now.

Until he realized that it had happened to him.

Suddenly he felt as though he couldn’t breathe, the sound disappeared from the room, and the only thing he was aware of was his heart pounding hard in his chest.

He knew what was happening; he was having a panic attack. As someone who had many before, he was used to this feeling.

Quickly thinking back to the techniques he learned from his therapist, he began to use them to calm himself down.

It was only after twenty minutes of deep breathing that he felt like he was calm and back in control. He could finally accept that this was reality.

‘It’s real. I’m alive in a new body and time.’

Dealing with two sets of memories, trying to understand everything that was going on, and accepting the reality of it, overwhelmed him, making him feel more exhausted than he did last night.

But somehow, he felt that it should be that way because, like being born, rebirth should be just as tiring.

Letting out a silent sigh, as much as Yuning wanted to freak out, he knew that he didn’t have the luxury to do so. He needed to assess his situation and figure out what he should do after that.

He also needed to understand everything about this time. Although Yuning had memories of this world, these memories were like pictures on a screen, he could see them and understand what they meant, but they weren’t real to him.

He needed to investigate these wondrous things for himself; only then would he understand this strange new world that he arrived in.