Feo stared at the man with a blank expression. "Is—Is this the exam?"
The old man's brows furrowed at that. "You passed the exam a month ago, boy," he replied. Staring at Feo with a sceptical expression. "Did you do something to your hair? You seem... different."
Just then, a little girl came trotting into the room. "Gege, time to wakey," she shouted in a cute, slurred voice. She jumped up onto Feo's bed, landing right on his chest and knocking all the air out of him.
He wheezed as the girl played with his hair. "Mommy says you're being lazy again."
Feo stared at her, stunned. He didn't know who she was, yet his body was reacting oddly to her. He hadn't felt this sensation in years—love.
'Does the exam use some sort of illusory magic?' he thought, still staring at the little girl. She had big brown eyes, red hair and chubby, rosy cheeks. She was the cutest creature he had ever seen.
"Gege, why you looking at me like that?" she asked, giggling. "You look funny."
The old man cleared his throat. Feo had almost forgotten he was still in the room.
"Becka, let's let your big brother get dressed," he said, picking the girl off Feo's chest. "He's already late, ain't he?" he added, staring daggers at Feo.
"No. I can help him," Becka screamed as the old man carried her out of the room.
Feo was left staring silently at the door.
"What's going on here?" he whispered, searching his memories for the last thing he remembered.
"That bastard pushed me into the rune... and then I woke up here." Pain stabbed through his mind before he could dwell on the thought. It was like someone pouring a thousand lives into a vessel that was already full. It was one of him getting into bed and closing his eyes... only it wasn't him. It was a boy named Gian.
A floodgate of even more memories invaded his mind, and he fell to the ground, trying not to throw up.
Gian, a 16-year-old boy. Father died a year ago; he lived with his mother, maternal grandfather and his little sister, Becka.
He remembered receiving an acceptance letter from Hargreeves Academy; he also remembered feeling like he didn't deserve to go there.
Feo fought back against these memories. They threatened to erase his own... erase his past self.
Even though his memories harboured nothing but suffering, pain and regrets, he held onto them tightly. They were the foundations of the person he was right now, fuel for his love for magic, an experience that had disillusioned him with complacency.
'This is the exam. It has to be. I pass, or I lose everything—my power, my purpose... and now even my life. I can't— won't let that happen..'
The memories continued to embed themselves within him; however, with his tight hold on his identity, large fragments of it were lost to the void of forgettance.
And so, when the pain of assimilation left him. He was not completely Gian. However, he was also not just Feo.
Trying to catch his breath, he walked to the mirror in his room.
He had brown hair and brown eyes. He no longer looked like a pale corpse, though he had to say his old face was a little more handsome than this.
'This world... it's different from my own,' he thought. Noting that most of the new memories seemed to contain obsolete technology, perhaps 100 years behind his original world.
He felt his face, running his fingers down to his lips. 'For some reason, I doubt that this is just illusion magic.'
After all, he and the boy-in-black had walked through a door that traversed space... perhaps even time itself. And with the boy in black claiming to be him, it was not too far-fetched for this 'grand exam' to have them transported to another world... or even time.
"None of that matters anyway," he whispered with a smile. "I begged for a second chance, and now here I am," he whispered, balling his hand into a fist.
"The only thing standing between me and an infinite bounty of magic is this stupid exam."
Just then, footsteps approached from outside his door.
"Gian, can you hurry up and stop talking to yourself?" A woman's voice called from behind the door. "The train will leave in an hour."
Feo... no Gian, cleared his throat, wondering how the real Gian would respond. "S—Sorry, Mom," he said in a frail tone. "I'll be right down."
His mother sighed at that. "Seriously, sometimes I don't know what to do with you," she whispered before retreating back downstairs.
Gian looked at himself in the mirror, fixed his posture as the real Gian would, and got dressed.
'It'll be annoying acting as this boy,' he thought, silently packing his academy suitcase. 'But if I suddenly start acting like a new person, it might make clearing the exam harder than it should be.'
Once he was done, he walked downstairs. His family was waiting around the breakfast table.
He froze for a moment, taking in the scene. He had spent so many years alone, and now he had a family. He felt happy... or at least he was supposed to. But he knew this wasn't his family. No. He had just taken over this body like a parasite, and now he was about to take over the boy's life.
He didn't deserve this life, but Feo didn't care.
In his original life, he'd learned that life was never about fairness. It was about taking what was needed — no matter the cost.
'Nothing is worth more than winning,' he thought to himself as Gian's mother kissed him good morning on the cheek.
"Mom, stop it. I'm not a little boy anymore," he groaned in Gian's tone.
"Eat up, we'll have to be quick if we want to beat traffic to the train station."
He took a seat beside his grandfather and began munching down on some toast and eggs. The first decent meal he'd had in almost a decade.
"You sure you ain't done a thing to your hair, boy? Somethin' about you's different," his grandfather commented.
Gian wiped his mouth and smiled. "No, gramps, I'm still the same old Gian."