[My Mind]
I was in the void again, darkness surrounding me.
"Hello? Where am I…?" I stepped forwards, beginning to walk through the darkness. The 'floor' beneath me felt both like a solid and liquid, similar to what I felt back in The Null.
"Jack? Cathy? Jasmine? Erika? A-Amelia…? Is anyone there?"
Ethereal glass shards suddenly flew by me. The ground beneath my feet started turning into asphalt, and before I knew it —
I found myself home.
[#Karawei Farm, Piasu, Darrilyn, Ryomania, 12:37 PM, Monday, January 5th, 2015#]
This was a good day.
A car drove by me as I walked alongside the right side of the road. I turned to look at it as it drove past the edge of the road, disappearing into ethereal glass shards. Wherever I was, it seemed to have a boundary.
"This must be my mind, but I don't feel dead… I feel alive."
I looked to my right and saw the sun shine on the beautiful wheat fields.
"There's that feeling of nostalgia again… Ah… I missed this!" A smile crept up on my face, and I continued walking down the quiet road. Birds chirped in the distance. Everything felt peaceful. Everything felt right.
I finally reached the house. There seemed to be nobody in the barn or anybody in the fields. Even houses in the distance weren't letting out smoke. It felt very, very quiet.
I went up to the front door and opened it. I heard a familiar voice.
"Come on in, my dear boy… I can feel your confusion from here!" The voice chuckled as I stepped through the doorway, shutting the front door behind me.
"What is this? Where are we? Who are you?"
I walked in through the main hallway and into the kitchen, where I saw him.
"Oh, come on, James, don't tell me you don't remember me!"
Keito Nakamura was sitting down at the dining table before me, right hand tapping on the table lightly, a big grin on his face. His eyes weren't red anymore. They were black. They looked kind. They looked real. He felt real.
"No… I don't believe it…"
Keito chuckled and pulled out a chair on his left.
"Oh, you better believe it, buddy! I'm as real as the weird barriers of this place… I'm sure you're already aware, but we're not really here, James. This is more akin to a memory."
I sat down on his left at the table, crossing my arms.
"Yeah, I saw a car drive down the road and vanish into glass… Similar to the kind I noticed comes from Flow…"
Keito smiled and leaned back in his chair, taking off his top hat and running a hand through his hair.
"An astute observation, although I can't say much about it. I never learned to use Flow. Whose fault is that, my dear boy?" He chuckled and gestured to me.
I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly and glanced around the room.
"Yeah, sorry about that… It was technically necessary…" Everything looked as I remembered it. "Why are we here? Why are you here? This is definitely not one of my memories. At least, I don't think so—"
He raised his right hand, cutting me off.
"We are currently inside of you. I don't think this is your mind per se. I've been here since yesterday. It's May the 7th up there, correct?"
"Oh… Uh, I think so."
"Then that means my theory is correct! We are inside The Divinity Of Infinity."
My eyes widened, and I dropped my arms onto the table.
"Infinity?! Really…? Why does it feel like a memory then? This is my house! And why are you here?!"
Keito chuckled and patted my shoulder.
"I'm here because you're here! — No, seriously though. Do you remember the gift I gave you? Check your pocket."
I glanced down at my pants.
"Go on! It's not like I put a bomb in there…"
"Geez, okay…" I reached in and pulled out a white, small, plastic rose. The same one he had on his suit blazer before he gave it to me.
"That's a little piece of me, something you took with you…" The rose in my hand suddenly transformed, turning a glowing rainbow, a small iridescent bubble popping up from it.
"Serene Garden…?"
"Magnificent! That's it! Ah, what a fitting name…" Suddenly, the same kind of rainbow roses started growing everywhere around us. From the sink, from a nearby vase, from the floorboards. The house became filled with rainbow roses.
"But… your ability is Savage Garden… So how come I have this?"
"Ah, that's the beauty of it, James… Your Infinity made my Holiness unique! It brought out its potential, taming the once Savage Garden and making it… Serene! It's beautiful, really."
"So this is a part of you but also me? Is that why you're here?"
"Precisely! At the moment of my death, you took my Holiness, and my Holiness had a part of my soul, and in turn your Divinity inherited it, and that means… Now I'm a part of you."
I gently put the rainbow rose down on the table. A bunch of other roses grew around it in a flowering pattern, forming the shape of a rosebud.
"I've seen this before… Wait, so what you're saying is… Serene Garden is just a piece of my true Divinity? Infinity? But it's also entirely unique from your Holiness, so is it its own Holiness or a part of Infinity?"
Keito rubbed his chin and mused.
"Hm… that I do not know. But I do know this: I'll be with you. For a long while, it seems. I've seen what you've been up to. You took out Normand and Raijin… Those boys were ferocious, even when I first met them. Oh, and I saw what you did — you managed to make a bubble without the use of a rose! That practically proves it. Serene Garden is separate from my ability."
"Wow, uh, I'm sorry about that—"
"Don't apologize to me, you did what you had to. Plus, Normand wasn't right… I was controlled by The Boss, but he wasn't. I didn't talk to the kid much, but from the times that I did, he seemed to almost believe the lie. He was tricked into believing it from the beginning. I didn't really have a choice."
"Yeah… So, um… If Serene Garden is separate, does that mean I can use Savage Garden?"
Keito chuckled and patted my shoulder again.
"No, my dear boy… You never got Savage Garden! The Holiness you currently have — at least I assume it's a Holiness — Serene Garden, is born from Infinity… When you saw all of my memories, it must've copied the information of the ability without copying it directly… Which is also probably why I'm here. It copied the other half of it, the one with a part of my soul."
"But doesn't that mean you're stuck here? In my… head? Heart? Divinity? Wherever we are."
"I wouldn't call it stuck… I know I made it to the good place. Besides, I like you, James. I want to see you succeed! I want to see The Boss taken out. I want to see Kingsley… defeated." He looked down, his grin fading into a bemused smirk. "—Oh, but what am I thinking?! Talking about such trivial matters… You have to run after Jack! Something happened back at The Daniels Mansion, didn't it? I know that ruthless boy Yoshio beat you up, but you have to keep going! You can't let that stop you."
I stood up from the table.
"You're right! But… I'm still injured, after all that, aren't I? He said something about Flow… Ugh, this Flow stuff sucks. Everyone seems to have figured it out so far except for me."
Keito also rose from the table, putting his hands in his pockets.
"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll figure it out. You're a strong boy with a good heart. You remind me of myself when I was younger… That's probably why I like you so much! Haha… And don't worry about your injuries, everything will work out if you just believe. Alright, now get going! The cops will be here any minute."
I smiled, shaking his hand.
"Thank you… Mr. Nakamura. I'll see you around, right? Somewhere?"
"Anywhere you like, James — and remember, you can do more than make roses. You can make them bloom."
His voice started echoing as everything around me started cracking and shattering into the same ethereal glass shards from earlier. I heard a voice from above call out to me.
"Hey… Hey! Wake up, kid!"
My eyes flew open.
[La Tazzina d'Oro, Havok, Piasu, Ryomania, 2:00 PM, May 7th, Tuesday 2025]
"Oh, thank goodness… You're okay. I would've freaked out if you died. What the hell happened here, kid?"
I woke up feeling a searing pain across my body. The barista was standing over me.
"I called the police. You better have an explanation for what—" I stood up suddenly, my legs feeling extremely light.
"Woah! No way… My body was healed? How's that even possible…?" I muttered as I looked down, inspecting my hands, my feet. Even my shirt was back to normal, as if nothing happened.
"Beats me — but hey! You have to make a statement when the police get here, and I'd like to know too — who was that blonde freak that… did this?!"
I shook my head gently. Police sirens could be heard in the distance.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't stay… I have to go. There's something bad happening elsewhere! I'll pay you back one day, when I'm not broke!"
With renewed strength and vigor, I ran past her, heading out of the kitchen. The copy of The Solar Branch that had been in my hand transformed and crawled up my face, turning back into a mask as I entered the main part of the cafe.
There was a large crowd of people gathered outside.
"Hey! Look, it's one of the criminals that did this!"
"Oh goodness... It's a young boy, that's horrible! How could he even do this?!"
The word 'criminal' sent a shiver down my spine, the memories of everything that happened flashing by me. But I shook my head and pushed them down.
"Agh… No! I've got to get to my friend… I have to help them! I want to help them!"
I ran over and hopped up onto the now burned carcass of the car, running out of the cafe.