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The first thing Kaidan notices upon waking up is the strange pressure in his head. It’s not pain, not exactly, but it certainly doesn’t feel normal.
He’s lying down in what appears to be a recovery room, although he doesn’t remember undergoing any operation. There’s a needle with IV fluid stuck in his arm and he hears the whirring and beeping of various machinery behind him. Slung over a chair in the corner of the room is his signature black coat, his wallet and keys sitting on the cushion.
Where…am I?
As if on cue, there’s a brief knock at the door and a Korean woman in a lab coat enters.
“Hello!” she says, smiling at him. “I have a few questions for you and then you should be free to go. Is that alright with you?”
“Sure?” Kaidan answers. “You’re…Seonjae, right?”
He vaguely remembers this woman guiding him to the OR, although he still can’t remember why. Every time he tries to think about it, the pressure in his head grows just a little bit worse, which is enough to deter him from wondering. For now.
“I am! We met just before the operation, I’m pleased to hear that you remember. Okay, first question: can you tell me your name?”
“Kaidan Sentaku.”
“What’s the current year?”
“2024.”
Seonjae continues with pretty standard questions that Kaidan assumes is meant to help him out of the post-anesthesia haze. She has him set up an appointment for the next day, but as she does so her eyes drift over to his shoulder. Strange. Kaidan is certain there’s nobody else in the room for her to be looking at.
“Okay, last question, and I need you to answer this seriously,” she continues, eyes still trained on a spot slightly above his shoulder. “Are you having take-away or leftovers for dinner tonight?”
Kaidan lets out a laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Take-away, 100%.”
As soon as Kaidan was out of the hospital, he took stock of what he knew. He just left the recovery room for an operation that he can’t remember having undergone. A woman came into his room to check on him and asked what he was having for dinner as if it was the most normal post-surgery question in the world.
But she wasn’t asking me, was she?
Seonjae had been focused on a spot just above his shoulder. It looked more like she was asking someone behind him, but that couldn’t be it. Was there something attached to him that he just couldn’t see?
Thankfully, his scooter was still attached to the bike rack, just where he’d left it. Even in the strange state he was in, walking was simply not an option. He could say that it was faster, which it was, but in truth Kaidan just found the confusion on pedestrian’s faces as he passed them in an electric scooter unnecessarily hilarious. The thought of some stuffy posh student being passed at top speed by a random guy in a chesterfield coat, riding a scooter, was simply too funny to not attempt to realize.
He couldn’t be home soon enough and the second he was through the door of his shitty apartment he ran to the bathroom to try to see whatever it was that Seonjae had been looking at.
Kaidan looks the same, he thinks. But…there’s something there. A presence.
“Hello?”
A voice whispers through his head. It’s not quite the same as his own internal monologue—it sounds more like a second person talking to him, but that’s not possible.
Probably not possible.
“Hello!” The voice calls again, more insistently.
“Hi?” Kaidan calls back, feeling kind of dumb for talking to his reflection. There’s nobody there, this is stupid, he thinks.
“There is absolutely someone here, idiot.”
Kaidan’s eyes widened at that. What the fuck. What the actual fuck.
“Stop freaking out, it’s boring to narrate and I have a job here.”
Unfortunately for the voice in his head—and Kaidan—, telling someone to calm down is absolutely not the best way to get that to actually happen.
Kaidan smacked his lips, thinking. Sooo, he started, care to explain who the fuck you are and why you’re in my head? Do I have superpowers now?
He started checking himself again in the mirror for anything unusual. Would he know if he had suddenly gained superpowers? Maybe Pembrooke’s weird trial was to create some sort of super team and he’d get to lead it.
“No, you’re not special. Sorry about that,” the voice interrupted. “Stop thinking for like two seconds so I can actually talk to you.”
Reluctantly, Kaidan tamped down his excitement to listen to the new mysterious entity in his head.
“Do you believe in parallel worlds? Multiverses? Whatever you want to call it?”
Shit, does that mean you’re from another universe?
If one can audibly eyeroll, the voice in his head absolutely just did that.
“Yes. I’m from a world called the Mirror, which is currently trying to colonize the Bright. You’re my in.”
In his reflection, Kaidan’s eyes widened.
In? he asked. Like, a spy?
“Sure, if that helps. To stop Apeiron—that’s the guy trying to do the evil colonizing shit—from taking over the Bright—your world—I need your help.” For now, that was all he needed to know.
All of Kaidan’s wildest dreams as a child could not have conjured up something like this. He was a spy, he was going to help save his world.
“Literally shut up.”
Could this entity hear all of his thoughts? Obviously yeah, they were in his head, but it felt…different, somehow.
What are you? he wondered, wanting some sort of answer.
“Human.”
Kaidan rolled his eyes. You know what I mean. You can hear my thoughts, but there’s something else there, right?
“Huh,” The voice sounded surprised at his observation. “You can hear that?”
Hear what?
“I’m Narrating right now. Everything you do is getting typed onto a little console so that I can maintain a connection to your world.”
That was pretty cool. Kaidan gave a little puff of laughter as he realized something.
If you’re Narrating everything I do, you can make me sound badass, right?
“Sure…” The voice sounded skeptical.
I could be a hero! You could make me sound like a badass hero! I could be Batman, I already have the cape! Kaidan’s mind was buzzing with all the possibilities. He was basically in a superhero novel now. Everything he did was getting translated by this voice into a readable format. That’s cool as fuck.
A long, drawn out sigh was heard echoing inside his head.
“I’m sure this sounds cool to you, but this is my fucking life, so maybe calm down for like two seconds. I don’t care about your hero fantasy.”
A thought came to his mind, suddenly.
“Oh congratulations, you had a single thought,” the voice said sarcastically as they Narrated.
Shut up, Kaidan replied. Let me think. I can’t keep calling you “the voice”.
“I mean, you could.”
I don’t want to keep calling you that, okay? Do they speak Japanese in your world?
The voice didn’t immediately reply, taking a moment to consider. “Probably? Why?”
What do you think of being called ‘katarite’? It’s the word for ‘narrator’ in Japanese. Sounds fancier in a different language, don’t you think?
Given their job, they really should have a name. But nothing ever felt…right. This one somehow did, though. But still a little off.
“What if I was ‘Rite for short?” The shortened version had just the right amount of bite to it, the sharp sound of the ‘r’ and ‘t’ feeling satisfying to say out loud.
Kaidan smiled at his reflection, gaze flicking to that little spot above his shoulder. He imagined ‘Rite behind him, also smiling.
Kaidan could feel his excitement growing as he relayed his next thought to 'Rite:
Sounds good. Now, let’s go save the world.