There were threads. So many of them, floating around. Red, orange, yellow, vivid and glowing, yet none tangled or wrapped around people. In fact, people were walking through them. He glanced around, and even the sky was covered with those things. It was beautiful to an extent to remind himself of the New Year festival, where every street was lit up with colorful lights.
Only that these weren't lights. Xal was witnessing countless colorful threads that had not existed in his entire life, let alone a few seconds ago, and something was thrumming continuously behind the eye sockets.
"What the actual fuck?"
A drop of sweat rolled down the spine as if to remind him he is not dreaming.
Maybe he had pressed on his eyes too hard earlier. This time, he rubbed gently and opened them again, but the threads were still there, even more vibrant.
The more he looked, the clearer he saw that some of the threads were attached to some people and some were stretched away into distances he could not see. A couple passed by, a reddish thread connecting their wrists.
A man a few feet off yelled into his phone; a blue thread decorated his wrist but wasn't linked to anyone. The group a few feet away, too busy laughing their heads off, had none.
His eyes started to throb as the scintillating colors bled into his vision, and the ground tilted slightly.
What on earth is going on?
Xal stumbled a bit as he turned, and then his eyes caught something even more strange.
A shadow? No, a figure that resembled a person.
Unlike the threads, all of the other colors had drained from that figure, leaving only a glowing yellow outline of the human features, and it was clinging to another person.
Wait. Is that thing floating?
As Xal began to feel more disoriented, he heard Kian talk to himself meekly, "Okay… this may not be the brightest idea I have had." His voice snapped him out of the inner turmoil of trying to absorb what he was seeing.
Within seconds, confusion turned into fury when Xal realized what was happening. He spun unsteadily on his feet and yelled, "You fucking spiked my drink!?"
He clutched his temple as the thrumming flared behind his eyes, forcing him to squeeze them shut.
It hurt, and he was starting to feel queasy.
Either he wanted his belongings, or this is a bold kidnapping attempt. Xal concluded.
This is not good, he thought as he assessed his physical situation and options to rid himself of whatever this fucker was planning.
"What? NO!! Why would I-" Kian began, then paused and sighed as if understanding dawned.
"Listen, I didn't drug you, and you are not high. What you are seeing right now is the spirit dimension where wandering souls reside, the dimension they occupy before they move on. And," Kian nodded toward himself, angling his head, letting strands of hair fall across his eyes, "I am one of the very few who can see it with bare eyes. People who know, call my kind, Vyl."
He tilted his head back, letting the wind fix the unruly strands.
"Vyl?" Xal echoed. Kian nodded.
He has heard that word before. Why was everything surrounding this random dude so familiar to him? Feeling more disoriented by the second, his gaze dropped to a thread attached to Kian's wrist.
A white one.
He followed its length and realized it was linked to his own wrist. Bringing the wrist up to his eye level, turning it left to right as if it were a foreign matter, he took his sweet time to acknowledge that the thread was actually connected to him.
"What the heck is this? Take it off!" Xal tried to grab it to pull it off, but his hand just slipped through the air, lurching him forward.
"You can't take it off like that," Kian said, tying his hair into a small ponytail. Still, a few strands escaped.
Huffing, "I didn't have one before. It appeared on my wrist when you stepped out of that building and connected to you."
Xal wondered if that was why Kian had kept glancing at his wrist earlier.
As soon as it appeared, he chased the thought away, because there was no way anything he was seeing was real. He was drugged and hallucinating.
"According to the books, threads represent different forms of bonds people have. Not everyone has them. My father says either you end up with the people destined for you or you deserve to be with, and the thread is an indicator to identify what sort of a bond it will be, whether family, lovers, friends, or whatever. The strongest bonds will serve a purpose bigger than yourself," Kian continued.
He raised his hand. "The one we have is white. It is rare, very rare. As far as I remember, it means we can trust each other with life. It hasn't happened in decades, maybe more. I don't even know much about it."
What nonsense was this lunatic blabbering, and why the fuck was he still listening? Xal needed to get out of here, flush out whatever drugs he had ingested. First, he needed the ground to stop swirling. Then remove the cotton stuffed in his mouth.
"In case you are wondering, threads have nothing to do with my line of work. As I said, I mostly deal with people who are ill and with spirit illness."
Xal wanted to say that he doesn't give a flying fuck and walk away, which he found himself unable to do.
Sweat rolled down from his temple. Everything was blurring and being contrasted simultaneously. A small gag escaped his mouth.
Kian kept on ranting, oblivious to Xal's worsening condition because he had somehow forced himself to stand straight.