Joy’s Memoir

"What… What happened to you before you died…?"

There were no answers coming from the boy within the first five seconds, but he was finally able to utter an answer.

"I…"

The boy seemed to have more to say, but that was the only word that he could muster even after staying silent for so long.

"If you don't mind, can I see your story?" Farrel held out his hand forward with an open palm, beckoning the boy to put his own hand on top of his.

The boy didn't know what Farrel meant by saying he wanted to see his story, but he understood what Farrel wanted him to do.

Without caring how ghastly the boy's hand looked with all the cuts, blood, dirt, and grime adoring it, Farrel let the boy place his hand on top of his own before then gripping it tightly.

The second their hands linked with each other, Farrel muttered another spell in his mouth and started channeling his energy onto the boy's body.

Closing his eyes, what Farrel saw wasn't complete darkness.

Instead, he found himself sitting on the side of a dirt street, leaning onto a wooden wall that seemed to have belonged to a wooden house behind him.

The sight was definitely not a familiar one.

He had lived in villages before, he even lived in a lot of them on his journey.

But the primitive building and the dirt street that he was currently seeing just felt much much older and primitive than even the most primitive village that Farrel knew.

It made him wonder where he actually is, but he couldn't figure out much just from what he was currently seeing.

He wasn't able to control what he saw, it just felt like he was watching a movie from a first-person point of view.

He looked at his own body, his hands and feet were as small as a child's.

No meat was visible between his skin and bone, the tiny fragile limbs looking as feeble as a tiny branch that fell from a small tree.

Despite the bustle of the street in front of him, with many people walking along left and right, Farrel couldn't hear a single sound in his ears.

However, a feeling, a strong one, draped all over his body.

A feeling of hunger, so worse that the prior hunger he felt before eating the berries felt like a blessing instead.

Forget walking, with the current hunger that he felt, even lifting his own head felt like a chore.

But despite how hard it was to do, Farrel's point of view kept looking upward.

Seeing the passersby walk in front of him, Farrel found out that the body he was currently in kept looking at them.

He looked at their clothes, which were nothing too good compared to the cloth that he wore in his new body, but still, a thousand times better than the rag cloth that covered the body he was currently in.

There were several cuts found on the rag cloth that the body wore, but it was barely negligible compared to the color of the rag that had assimilated with the dirt that he was sitting on.

Making him look even more repulsive with his unkempt hair and grime-filled skin.

The body kept on looking at those people. Trying to get their attention by looking straight into their eyes, hoping that one of them would take a glance at him and take pity on himself.

Several of them actually looked at him, but none of the passersby cared to give him any food or even attention.

Those people only looked at his eyes for a split second before giving him a scowl and instantly turned their heads away as if he was trash, a shit, a plague that you need to get away from.

As more time passes, Farrel became more and more numb to the feeling of hunger, and the feeling of envy, anger, and acceptance entered his heart.

After the night fell, and still, not even a single crumb of stale bread entered his throat, Farrel finally felt the body move for the first time.

The body crawled all around the wooden houses, finding anything he could eat in their trash.

Be it scraps of meat still left on a piece of bone or a thrown-out vegetable stem that was as bitter as the dirt and as hard as a rock, the body scavenged them all, putting them in his mouth after blowing them out.

The body had traveled all over the place, finding as much trash as he could.

But even after doing all that, the intense hunger that he felt didn't get better, instead, it got worse.

The seeds of envy and anger that had been planted in his body grew even more as they got more fuel from his heart, scraping the acceptance that he felt continuously until there was none of it left in his being.

And finally, still in the cover of the night, the boy decided.

Dragging his body away from all the wooden houses, buildings, and other people, the boy decided to go inside the unknown forest that was said to be able to grant death to whoever entered it.

But death was not what the boy sought.

He already felt dead living his current life, why should he fear it anymore? There was nothing he could lose other than his insignificant life.

With conviction in his eyes, the boy pushed away all the pain and weakness that he felt as he stepped into the forest of death.

It was already morning when he finally found something that he could eat, something that the boy rejoiced after his body had been assaulted by the cold of the night with a barely filled stomach.

The boy looked forward, saliva dripping down the edges of his mouth as he saw the bright, colorful berries, tens of them, hanging on the branches of a bush.

There were more berries beside the bush, but they were dark-colored, even ominous-looking considering the name of the forest he was currently in.

So it didn't take him long before hurrying his body to reach out towards the plump and colorful-looking berries, shoving many of them at once into his mouth.

The berries tasted sweet and refreshing, something that the boy had never felt before when he scraped for food in the human village.

Knowing that, the boy grabbed even more berries, even when he still wasn't done chewing the ones in his mouth, he started shoving more.

The boy was just cherishing the feeling of the sweet, tasty berries, thinking about why he hadn't gone to the forest sooner so that he could eat these berries compared to the trash he was eating every day when suddenly his hand abruptly stopped moving.

Out of nowhere, an itchy feeling, one that couldn't be ignored assaulted his whole body.

Starting from his stomach, the itchy feeling spread all over from the top of his head to the tip of his toe.

The boy scratched around everywhere, using the tree trunks and the huge roots to scratch his back because his hands couldn't reach it. And the feeling haunted him for a solid hour before he could finally calm down.

Skipping a few days, the boy had learned that the colorful berries were a no-go and the ominous-looking ones were the ones that he should eat as they tasted just as sweet as the colorful ones, but they didn't cause his whole body to itch.

He had also learned about which kind of fruits he could eat from watching the monkeys climb the trees and going after the sweet red apple that grew high above the tree branches.

He wouldn't have the strength to climb any trees if it was his body when he first arrived in the forest.

But after the daily consumption of the berries, the boy started gaining strength and it wasn't a chore anymore to move his body around.

He climbed the trees with ease using his small and light body and grabbed the fruits that he spotted before the monkeys did.

The boy finally felt alive with his stomach full every single day with no hunger eating away at his body. Albeit there was no bread or meat to fill him up, the fruits and berries were more than enough for him.

He was just starting to enjoy his new life, scavenging for berries and climbing trees to grab fruit and sleep until the sun rose.

But then one day, he found something in the deeper parts of the forest.

Farrel still couldn't hear anything from his POV, but the boy seemed to have heard something as he cautiously moved in a certain direction.

He moved very carefully, going from bush to bush before finally stopping behind a large tree trunk that stood on the edge of a clearing.

Inside the clearing, tens of people were present, walking and chatting around with each other.

They wore nice clothes that couldn't be compared to the cloth that he or even the ones that Farrel had when he first woke up.

Their shoulders, chest, and kneecaps were layered with steel, and on their waist hung swords that were as expensive-looking as the ones that the hunters in the village had.

But most importantly, in the middle of the clearing, those people were cooking what seems to be a boar's carcass.

The boy had seen those boars being brought into the village.

He even remembered how fragrant they smelled and how it made his mouth water when people in the village cooked them.

He had been content with his current diet of fruits and berries, but something about the smell of cooked meat entranced him.

The boy began peeking his head out more from the back of the tree trunk, drawn by the smell of the meat.

With how sensitive those people who had been living in the forest for a long time were to their surroundings, it didn't take them long to notice the boy that had been peeking out from the edge of the clearing.

The group of people quickly shouted something, some of them pointing straight in the boy's direction, which was enough for the boy to wake up from his trance and quickly start running.

He ran as fast as he could, knowing those people were most likely the rumored bandits that the people of the village talked about.

His body was filled with energy now that he wasn't constantly starved anymore, but it was just still a tiny, frail body.

The bandits, on the other hand, had lived in the forest for years, with meat to fuel them, their bodies were filled with trained muscles.

The boy couldn't do anything as he suddenly felt a stinging pain on the back of his thigh, taking away the strength in his leg as he fell over with a precisely shot arrow stuck to his thigh.

But the bandits weren't done.

Seeing the boy still trying to get up, they brandished their sword once more and cut both the tendon on the boy's ankles and stabbed deep into his calf, completely taking away the boy's feet from him.

There was no chance of him running away, so the boy just accepted his fate as he was dragged back into the camp.

He didn't know what would happen to him, but he was put inside a tent, and both his hands were tied onto a wooden pole that was stabbed deep into the ground, making it impossible for the boy to escape with his unusable limbs.

He was just left there and they did nothing to him.

At least until the night falls.

When the night fell, one man came inside the tent with a knife in his right hand and a whip in his left.

Without saying anything, the man took his pants off as he walked closer to the boy.

Farrel then felt more pain in his thigh as the cloth that covered the boy's lower body was completely cut off.

And as more time passes, Farrel finally learns where all the wounds, cuts, and bruises found on the boy's body came from.

Without waiting for the boy's last moment, Farrel opened his eyes, cutting off his spell and coming back to the real world.