I was thrilled to discover I should not have to live cooped up in that cramped place. Yet, despite everything, I was not as happy as I had expected.
There was not much joy inside me but a deep calmness. Even without a body, I felt my soul floating in the clouds for a few instants.
Like a cold, soft wind that relieved all the tension crushing my mind. Incredibly comfortable and hard to resist.
However, now that I was out, I couldn’t afford to stand still wasting time, so after enjoying myself enough, I set to work on exploring the place where I am.
Even without checking it out, I can be sure that this place will be countless times bigger than the uterus where I was before, so it will take me a while to understand it completely.
‘…’
Right, what happened to the baby? I don’t know, but I hope the guy is okay. After all, it’s partly thanks to him that I managed to escape.
Okay… let’s see how this goes…
. . . . .
‘This place is a f****** shithole’
This is bad, very bad, and although I generally avoid using such vulgar words… well, that last one was a lie, but in any case, I don’t think there’s a better way to describe my current location.
This may make me look like a whiner, but in all honesty, I can say that it was difficult.
Exploring every corner of this site was really much more difficult than I expected. After all, my exploration method was no different from spreading a part of my being, as thick as a baby’s finger, all over the place. Then, after doing that, I had to combine all my memories to create a mental map.
It was terribly tedious to do, plus the fact that it was only possible thanks to my graceful memory, but in the end, my efforts were worth it, and I understood very well the appearance of the place where we were both born.
‘…’
That’s right. The baby is still by my side, but that’s not what’s important for now.
Everything I have discovered thus far indicates that I came out of the horse’s mouth to enter the tiger’s jaws.
Firstly, I am almost certain now that I was not born into the same world I lived in before, or at least not in the 21st century. After all, I doubt that very much at that time, there were caves with dozens of babies inside… actually, maybe there were, but I prefer to think not.
Although the world and the time are still an unconfirmed hypothesis, being inside a cave is a certainty, as after feeling the irregularities in the ceiling, floor, and walls, I cannot imagine any other place but that.
And while that on its own was worrying enough, there was something else that set off even more alarm bells in my mind.
Obviously, the babies had not been abandoned in this place, or else they would have died long ago, so it was only a matter of time before I met the people who cared for them,
My first one-sided encounter with them occurred when I was touching strange fissures in the surrounding walls. While I was doing that, they passed through the extension of my spiritual sense, severing my connection to the walls and causing me to focus on their appearances.
Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to sense something moving than a stationary object, so the only thing I know about them so far is that they wear a garment that covers them from head to toe.
Okay, maybe that on its own doesn’t seem so bad, but when combined with the location in which it happens… I can’t imagine a good place that would force caregivers to dress like that to deal with mere babies. I can think of a few bad ones, though.
Maybe this could be a clandestine laboratory where babies are experimented on, perhaps this world is an apocalyptic one where an epidemic covers all the people, and these babies are the only salvation, or it could be that these children are just not as ordinary as I thought… I know it sounds crazy, but what else can I do but imagine this type of thing?
I thought of many scenarios worthy of being captured in movies or anime, but it took me a long time to determine which one was correct.
. . . . .
Even if the motivation is there, it is possible to get tired of the repetitive actions, which is what happened to me.
It was tiring. Extremely exhausting to extend my sense in such a delicate way. Every time I did it, it must be slow, concentrating every fiber of my being on feeling and imagining that it was everything I touched.
Worst of all is that I had reached the limit. No matter how hard I tried, it was almost impossible for me to pick up anything new. Sure, there were still things I could try, like studying the strange markings on the walls, but doing so would be like learning a new language just by reading a book.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I definitely couldn’t do it.
For this reason, I decided to take a break to think about something that had me intrigued.
Has anything changed in me since the last time I fainted?
I knew that sleeping for me was synonymous with growing up, so something should have changed, but in all that time that I had been awake, moving carefully so as not to lose consciousness again, I had not felt any difference between before and after that event.
Anyway, it was worth checking, so after a few moments of thought, I proceeded with the experiment.
There is no need to go into details about what I experienced, as this was nothing more than a repetition of what I once did. However, I can say that the results obtained were satisfactory.
The improvement focused on two aspects. As expected, there was no change in my personality or anything like that. It was my spiritual sense that underwent an evolution. Besides being able to extend it longer without getting dizzy, my control over it increased a lot.
I no longer needed to extend it as if it were a tentacle. Now I could make it longer by making it as thick as a strand of hair but with the tip of the extension as wide as a baby’s head.
‘…’
Yes, yes, yes, I checked with them before, but that was no big deal. After all, it’s not like it affected them at all.
It was excellent to improve. It is almost always good to be better than before. However, maybe this one would have been better not to have done it.
. . . . .
Elders are wise. That’s something my parents always told me, and one of the pieces of advice I received from such elders was that ignorance is sometimes bliss.
At that time, I did not agree with those words at all, since thanks to college, I learned to doubt many things I was taught as a child. But although I still disagree with them, a part of me has begun to believe that maybe they were right.
After all, when I found out where the little boy and I were born, I kept thinking about the positive aspect of things. Even the worlds I imagined, I tried to think of as pleasant as possible for the little one. Of course, I also imagined other things, but I quickly dismissed such thoughts to avoid stressing myself.
However, now my improved capabilities allow me to understand my environment better, and among the things I discovered is the gender of the people who care for the babies. They are women. But this is not unexpected since it is common to group the existence of both beings in the same residence.
The problem arose when I realized the appearance they hide under their clothes.
It’s strange. Until then, I had always thought of my sense as touch, that is, I imagined myself caressing objects with my fingers or hands, but when I touched them, their naked skin full of burn scars, cuts, or mutilated parts, I felt as if I did it with my non-existent tongue.
That was uncomfortable, ugly, disgusting, and gross, but worst of all, I felt dirty afterward for thinking that way.
I really felt terrible for having treated them that way, but even though it was something I did not want to repeat, out of a deep concern that was born in me, I made an effort to verify the status of each one of them.
As the babies were being nursed, I took advantage of the occasion, the only time they took off their upper garments, to feel them.
In the end, I was able to verify what I feared. They were all equally damaged.
‘…’
Why was I afraid of that? Well, I previously believed that the life or death of the little one didn’t affect me in any way, but is that true?
I hope it is because, otherwise, if he dies, I might die too, and in a place like this… he worries me a lot.
This is truly terrible. F***, I always get out of a bad situation into a worse one. Actually, maybe I have died, and now I’m in hell paying for the sins of my past life.
. . . . .
I must correct what I thought before. I have been wrong again. I am not dead, and even if I died in my past life, at this moment, I am still alive, yet it will not be long before this is over…
