Chapter 14 – Memory Fragments (a)
That night, Klaire had a very strange dream. In the dream, he saw his “other self” grow up quickly and become a slender young man. The young man looked very handsome, wearing a white tailored suit while standing in front of the mirror with a smile. He then sat in a strange car and went to a company. All people in the company greeted him politely as he arrived, calling him……
As soon as the name was blurted out, Klaire felt the whole world shook and he suddenly opened his eyes. Carlo’s serious face was magnified before him, shaking his shoulder with his hand: “Klaire, get up soon, don't be late.”
” ….." Klaire stayed frozen a long time after the escape from his dream.
That dream was too real. He lived in a completely different place from home. The white car he used to go out was not the same as the suspension car in the Empire. The silver-colored building of the company was a building he had never seen before. Definitely another completely different world.
But the horrible thing was, everything in that world is clearly printed in his mind. Even the faces of men and women who greeted him in the company were very clear to him. Even when he woke up from the dream, he always felt like he had experienced all of it himself.
Is my illness getting worse? What is the relationship between that person and me?
Sometimes he could not even tell whether he was the man in the dream or the present Klaire.
Carlo saw his roommate sat on the bed in a daze and frowned. He slapped Klaire forcefully on the shoulder: “You are awake, right? Go to class!”
“……” Klaire, who was thoroughly awakened after being slapped by the Class President, immediately got up to wash his face and brush his teeth.
The two rushed to the classroom and arrived at 7:59. The teacher was coming to the classroom soon, so the two boys quickly slipped in from the back door and sat down in their seats.
Seeing the gasping look of the two guys in the row in front of him, Xi Wei could tell that they had apparently ran all the way here. He reached out his foot and gently kicked Klaire’s butt, "Klaire.”
Klaire turned back and Xi Wei beckoned him closer, which he complied, leaning his head closer to Xi Wei, “Xi Wei, you called me?”
Xi Wei asked in his ear, “Coming so late, you overslept again?”
” Um… another nightmare," Klaire whispered. "I think my illness has become more serious.”
Xi Wei said, “Wait for me downstairs in the afternoon and we'll go to the infirmary.”
“Okay.”
While the couple was whispering privately, Carlo curiously straightened his ears, trying to to eavesdrop. He could not hear anything though, and had no choice but to turn back facing the podium seriously.
There are three consecutive periods of Imperial History in the morning. The teacher was a man with gray hair and very serious looking face and voice. The focus of this lesson was “The Battle of Issyville”. Xi Wei had checked the information about this a long time ago and knew that since the battle human race was divided into two major regimes, the Lacey Empire and the Strandian Federation. The year the battle ended was also the year the empire was founded. However, his classmates were obviously not aware of this historical knowledge. The teacher played a lot of precious video information on the big screen, and the children were watching it with relish, as if they were seeing a movie.
Klaire’s expression was a little ugly though. His dreams were often filled with exploding images, so looking at the war and flames scene on the big screen only gave him a headache. The nerves in his brain felt like they were burning with how uncomfortable he was feeling. Klaire simply closed his eyes and laid his head on the table.
Xi Wei saw the alpha sitting in front of him had fallen aleep again, and felt quite helpless in his heart. This class was actually very interesting for children; the old professor’s voice was like a movie narration, and the video on the big screen looked almost as spectacular as Star War, a lot of the children under the podium were very happy to see it.
Such an interesting history lesson, and Klaire still fell asleep, Xi Wei really admired his drowsiness.
***
After school in the afternoon, Xi Wei followed their agreement and brought Klaire to the infirmary at the northeast corner of the school.
Because St. Paul Academy adopted a fully enclosed education policy, the children lived together in the school and were unable to go home on weekends. Hence, St. Paul’s College had a very large infimary with an independent high-rise building, and employed many specialized doctors to solve the student's medical problems.
Xi Wei looked at the signs of the various departments on each door and continued walking until they arrived in front of a door signed as the “Psychological Counseling Room” on the third floor.
Klaire looked and took a few step backwards once he saw the words written there. Xi Wei grabbed his hand and pulled him firmly, “Don't be afraid, you have to find a doctor if you are sick, or you will only get worse.”
Remembering his perfectly clear dream last night, Klaire finally nodded with a pale face, and was dragged by Xi Wei into the psychological counseling room.
The female doctor sitting at the desk was very young and beautiful with thick blonde curly hair. When he saw two children coming through the door, she couldn't help asking, “Students, did you go the wrong place?”
Young children were less likely to have psychological problems, and it was the first time she saw such young children entering psychological counseling room since she worked in this school. Mia, the doctor, thought the two children in front of her were very lovely, and could not help but stand up and walked to them while asking, “Where do you feel uncomfortable? I'll take you to the right specialist, okay?”
Xi Wei at pulled Klaire’s arm and said, “Speak to the doctor."
Klaire talked softly, “Doctor, I often have nightmares.”
Mia smiled, “Having a nightmare is not a psychological problem. Many people also have nightmare.”
Klaire said, "But my nightmares are very strange, they happen every night and all of them are connected. There is someone in my dream, and he has been with me since I was young, together growing up with me. I am Klaire when I'm awake, but when I'm asleep he seems to become me…"
The more Mia heard, the more she felt something was wrong. If what the child said is true, then it was very serious; this was a typical precursor of schizophrenia. With this in mind, Mia finally smiled and gently touched Klaire’s head, asking, “What’s your name?”
“My name is Klaire.”
“Don't be afraid, you come in with me and tell me the details of the dream.”
The lady’s smile was very gentle and kind, Klaire shyly looked back at Xi Wei. Xi Wei shook his hand and comforted him, “Get in, talked with your doctor and I’ll be here waiting for you.”
Klaire nodded, turned to the doctor’s room and went into the treatment room.
It was dfferent from the closed and suppressed hospital space Klaire had imagined. On the contrary, the treatment room was very warmly decorated with colorful pictures on the wall. There were also many green plants in the room, and one of them was just blooming with delicate flowers, causing the room’s air to be very fresh. Mia designed the psychotherapy room layout like this on purpose to alleviate the pressure on patients, so that the patients can relax and talk more easily with the doctor.
Mia took Klaire to the couch and prompted him to lie down, saying, “Here, Claire, come and relax, close your eyes and listen carefully to me…”
She smoothly opened a music box, filling the room with a soothing melody. Klaire soon felt himself becoming more relaxed. His ears seemed to be caressed by the sound of waves on beach, and he gradually lost his consciousness.
It felt as if he had come to a strange world, everyone around him was saying strange words, but he was able to understand what those people meant.
“Where were you at very beginning of the dream?” Seeing the hypnosis was successful, Mia asked softly in Klaire’s ear.
Klaire frowned hard to remember, a long while later, he replied: “I live in a strange house, a woman would hold me every day to bask in the sun… Later, I seem to have grown up, and was sent to a school, meeting a lot of classmates… ”
Perhaps the psychic hypnosis had lowered the guard of Klaire's subconsciousness, making him able to slowly sort out the little fragments in his dream. Those memories, they began to gradually connect together, as the fragments of memory were stitched into a complete picture.
Listening to his slow talk, Mia was shocked to find that—this child’s dream was another completely different person’s life!
Is it double personality?
However, based on the medical knowledge she possessed, this could not be defined as a double personality. Because Klaire was only dreaming, he did not do anything else as another person. In real double personality cases, when someone became their “other self”, they would involuntarily do something to improve that personality. They'd create another identity and look for new friends to establish their own social circle, while the main personality often wasn't even aware of the second personality's activities. Connections between the different personalities were usually like strangers who didn't know each other.
Klaire's dreams, which projected a clear circle of another person's life, felt more like a serious brain damage case, with him receiving fragmental pieces of his lost memory.
But he was only five years old now, how could there be so many memory fragments appearing in his mind?
Mia was feeling more and more confused, and could not help but ask once again, “Tell me your name, what is your name?”
Klaire: “……”
“What do people around you call you?”
After she asked this, Mia found the brain waves image in her monitor began to fluctuate abnormally. Klaire’s fists were clenched tightly on his body, his forehead exuded a layer of cold sweat as his hands and feet began to struggle violently.
Mia was startled and immediately awakened Klaire, “Klaire, Klaire!”
The young boy lying down on the sofa suddenly opened his eyes, revealing a pair of clear, bright, as-blue-as-sky, misty eyes. However, when Mia looked into those eyes, she felt chills running down her spine—because at that moment, Klaire’s sharp eyes were completely unlike a five-year-old child.
Klaire looked at her, then looked back and stared at the white wall in front of him.
The suffocating silence lasted for a long time, and Mia deeply regretted her hasty decision of using hypnosis on this child. She actually only meant to use mild hypnosis to make Klaire relax, and help him to recall the dreams. Supposedly, this kind of mild hypnosis would not cause any negative impact, but then how could Klaire feel like an entirely different person after waking up?
Mia worriedly reached out to touch the child’s head, but to her surprise, Klaire stiffly turned his head away from her hand, and then said, “Doctor, my situation, can you not tell other students, the teachers, and parents about it?"
“This……”
Klaire said, “Psychiatrists should be obliged to keep the patient information confidential, right?”
Psychotherapy was originally confidential, but due to Klaire's young age, telling his parents should be the right thing to do. Mia hesitated, and saw the child in front of her showing a simple smile while looking at her with eyes full of trust, “I am very scared, and I told you these secrets because I have special trust in doctor jiejie, so don't tell others, okay?”
His soft little hands were holding onto Mia’s fingers as he said this.
Being held by the child softened Mia's heart instantly, and she couldn't help agreeing, “Fine, I promise not to tell others for now, but you have to come back to the school's hospital this weekend to meet me, I need to make a detailed assessment of your psychological situation. If the result is fine, we don't need to ask your parents to come. ”
Klairee nodded, "I got it. ”
He stepped down from the seat and Mia took him outside. Seeing them, Xi Wei worriedly stepped forward and asked, “How is it?”
Mia did not speak, Klaire answered him, "It's fine, not serious."
He turned to go as soon as he said this. Xi Wei immediately caught up with him and upon seeing his bad complexion, Xi Wei took initiative to hold his hand as comfort.
Klaire took his hand back, looked at Xi Wei and said, “Don't pull me, I can go by myself.”
“……” Is he feeling awkward? Xi Wei patted his head, "What's wrong with you?”
Klaire, who felt almost dizzy being touched at his head, glared at Xi Wei, “Don't pat my head!”
Xi Wei thought this little guy was pretending to be funny, so he messed up his hair and said, “Fine, I know your feeling uncomfortable, don't be moody. Even if you're sick, it can be cured slowly, it will always be cured."
“……” Klaire fumed; he ignored Xi Wei and turned away.
Xi Wei looked awkwardly at Klaire's back, suddenly he had very strange feeling - that's the idiot Klaire, right? How does he seem like a different person?
Proof-read by: Kleepart
T/N:
I’m so happy we reached in this chapter at last. Finally some progresssss! \0/