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Somewhere along the lines of his adventure, Sora found himself in a deep slumber. And somewhere down that line he felt himself jerk awake out of nowhere—though something felt very different ever since he closed his eyes.
It was a simple, yet complex predicament; in one moment, Sora wasn’t able to remember a single thing about himself or what had happened, and the next moment every single memory that fragmented slipped out of his grasp was instantaneously pieced back together. He suffered from a modicum of headaches and a whiplash of sorrow, yet none of that stopped him from seeking the truth he so desperately craved.
He desperately wanted to find Kairi, and do all that he could to spend time with her again… but instead of searching for answers as he was wont to do, he instead found himself in a place that he would have never expected to be in.
What was that place? Simple. Namine.
Not in her dreams, nor her world, but literally inside of her. He woke up in her body. He wasn’t quite sure how he got here in the first place, but it suddenly made sense as to why everything he had experienced before seemed to reverse and put itself back together.
Out of all the situations he had found himself in, never would he have ever expected to experience life of a girl he was still learning about. He knew he said they would meet again, but this was not what the boy had in mind...
Sora did try to call out to her in his head, but she didn’t respond. He called her name in his head and called her name out of it, but all he got were the echoes of the hollow void-white room that the girl often found herself in whenever they spoke to one another. If he had to guess, she wasn’t anywhere to be found in a completely different entity. And, if he put the two theories that swirled in his head together, he wondered if his awakening caused her to fall asleep in his stead.
To add onto that, if she did take his place in slumber did that mean her memories were gone, too? How did that work? Was she supposed to take his original body as a result or consequence? Would they even be able to fix this, or was he stuck in the girl’s body until the day she died?
There was a lot to think about and a lot to uncover, and “Soranime” knew that he couldn’t do it without looking to his friends for help. He would need to call on them in some way and handle it from there, though there was one tiny problem that the boy had realized he had fallen into.
How… was he going to reach his friends?
Getting his friends to help was easier said and done, given the circumstances and all that he had been through up until now. When he had finally realized that the girl had manipulated his memories and inserted herself within them, he had made it his duty to get them back by traversing through Castle Oblivion and taking down Marluxia. He, Donald, and Goofy all needed their memories repaired, so they all fell into a deep slumber in crystal pods. There was Riku—well “Riku”—he promised to take care of Namine, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen…
Plus, if anyone that somehow made their way here did see him as Namine – how would they react? He sounded just like her, and not many people knew him well enough that he could ask for a code word or something to reveal that it was him.
The pod room’s seeping forlornness now weighed heavy on his conscience, and it made it harder for him to think. This entire area was so blank and lonely; it made Sora wonder just how long Namine had sat here, and how much time she had spent waiting for someone – no, anyone – to give her the attention and the answers she probably needed.
When he had found out that she was taking Kairi’s place in his memories, she had made a comment about deserving forgiveness or something. Said that she probably wouldn’t be forgiven, but she was. It was very hard for Sora to spite a person, and she had her reasons for doing it. They weren’t very good reasons, but it’s not like she was doing it out of her own volition.
So many strings were attached, and those strings could easily be weaved and tugged around when a manipulator used a person locked away in perpetual solitude as a vector for their plans.
It was all too depressing to think about, and psychoanalyzing everything that the girl did would get him nowhere. As much as he didn’t want to get up from the floor, he would inevitably have to in order to find any clues that could be lying around here. It was an empty void fogged in shades of white and grey, so it shouldn’t be that hard to find something right?
Besides, there was the issue of actually walking around as Namine. From what Sora’s friends said, he had this weird walk and stance to him—like Donald, if Donald had human bones. Namine was more petite in her figure, and the way that she had always approached him had a timid sashay to it. It’s like every step she took, she was awfully careful on where to go.
Whether it was because of her personality or because of who she made herself to be, he wasn’t sure. But the fact of the matter is that she was frail and had to take everything as slow as possible. Trying to shove a door open, for example, would probably leave him more fatigued than before.
And then the usage of a keyblade came to mind.. could he even do that? Was that still feasibly possible?
Well, one thing at a time. There were 13 floors to this castle she was trapped in, right? Now’s better than ever to get his bearings straight before he looked for anyone else.
Sora took one step forward, and wobbled—two made him lean forward a little more than he should have, and when a third step came into the picture he fell face first onto the floor.
He knew bodies were made differently, but this? This was a bit much…
He was quick to get back up though—which he chalked up to Namine’s reflexes; if someone like her is trapped in a castle like this all the time, it only made sense. The Organization probably made her shift from one room to the next, and being cooped up could inspire just about anyone to run around and take in the minor sights that the place had to offer.
And as Sora took small baby steps – from left to right – he had to wonder: had Namine ever tried to eavesdrop on the hooded clowns? It probably didn’t ever work considering their power and all, but being small and quick must meant that she could probably get away with learning information about the outside world.
As far as the boy knew, Namine in white barely knew anything about the world around herself; he remembered seeing her clutch onto this one sketchbook that she held the entire time, but it looks like the only piece of the outside that she experienced was through manipulating his memories in the first place. She probably only knew about the basic day and night cycles, but now how the water moved with the moon. She probably saw how the tides shifted in and out on the beach, but never how they could grow into something more…
He wasn’t quite sure why he was thinking about this now; the most his mind should be focusing on is acting like a baby and learning how to walk again for the first time.
Sora successfully made it down another set of stairs onto the tenth floor… but rather than running into a person that might still reside in the castle’s walls, he found a random set of assorted crayons atop of the very same sketchbook that he remembered her carrying around.
The question boiled down to this: could he peek in it? Could he use it? The boy was well aware of what privacy was, and didn’t really want to intrude in any way… she still hadn’t appeared in another way just yet, and the art book was something akin to a diary.
He’d break her trust if he peeked in it, and she wouldn’t even have to be around for him to realize that.
Still there was one little aspect about Namine that piqued his curiosity: could he draw? She always seemed like she was having fun and was very good at it in comparison, so was he able to do the same?
He took the moment to sit on one of the stair steps and flip for a clean page, though he did his best not to linger too long. As much as some of the art caught his eye – one even including him and his other friends, for example – he had to keep that mental promise he made to himself.
Sora did find a page, but the next problem involved figuring out what he should draw.
Trying to draw something from the castle would be too complex—even for Namine. Drawing something like mountains from his memory would be terrible, too, because they’d probably be all jagged or blocky. He needed something simple and easy to work with, but not something that the girl could easily ace with just a simple snap of her fingers.
So, after thinking long and hard on it, Sora came up with the perfect thing.
The pod. He could draw the pod he was in.
The pod’s shape was straightforward, but the structure of the room wasn’t. It was this big white void with an egg in the middle, and the flooring and top part of it looked robotic and man made. It kept the shape of a flower when it closed up, but it felt more like that one escape pod he, Donald, and Goofy remembered laughing about on the Gummi Ship. It was just enough to get Namine’s brain to wrack around, but also to see if the boy had the ability to fudge it when the plan was set in motion.
He took the gray-colored crayon and began to replicate it, at first wondering if the lines were even going to be straight because his entire hand and wrist felt like it was going to wobble a little bit. By making the lines early, he could easily color it in; that’s what artists did whenever they were on a roll, right?
When he finished drawing the oval dome, he expected it to be really messy and uneven; Sora drew the exact opposite as he intended to.
He wanted to scream out of pure shock, but all that happened instead was his jaw dropping.
He tried again, the art yielding the same exact results as before. He tried to draw the floor—a near perfect replica. He even etched out a poorly drawn keyblade, and yet the lines fixed itself as if nothing was off in the first place.
Everything did came out as a masterpiece… at least as beautiful as it could get. Sora could not help but wonder how long Namine had toyed around with this power, and even considered it to be the catalyst as to why his memories and head felt so warped a lot of the time...
Regardless, these were questions he would have to ask if he found her soon; they were all questions that could not be answered with a simple sentence, and Namine would just have to spit out whenever Sora found a way to get in touch with her again.
The boy played with the colors and pages for a little while longer before he shut the book and tucked it underneath his arm. He didn’t have any pockets – and that kind of sucked – but he would just have to keep it on him for safekeeping.
He found himself on floor nine after the entire drawing theory ended, and it was at that point in time that Sora suddenly felt all the energy from Namine just drain from her body.
It’s not that there was some spell being cast or that he was under attack, her body just… slumped over. She looked so exhausted and pale from what Sora could see in the nearby mirrors of the castle corridor, and it looked like she could use the rest after a seemingly long day.
In any other case Sora probably would have complained and kept on pressing, but he didn’t want to make this girl any frailer than she already was. The girl in white was so full of life, even if she wasn’t for the moment.
Why risk taking that away from her for the sake of sheer curiosity and pressure?
He soon settled on curling up against the castle rugs and using her sketchbook as a pillow. It wasn’t much, and she’d probably get cold, but it was the least he could do after unintentionally possessing her body…
When the time was right and her internal clock reset, Sora would do everything in his power to reach out again. She might be gone, or she might be tired. He just didn’t know.
And if there was anything his search for his friends have taught him, it’s that impulsively taking action without stopping to smell the roses would only put him into a little bit of trouble. Just a little.
The answers would come to him in due time. For now he should rest peacefully, and recharge himself so he could do his best to (literally) walk in Namine’s shoes for more time to come...