The date is 20th May 2007, 2:30 pm.
15 minutes after Chengyu has passed by the MRT entrance in the basement and went up to the mall on the ground level, two girls came out of the same entrance having boarded a train to this MRT Station.
“The mall upstairs should be a good place to start collecting donations again, maybe we should try to aim for the eateries on the first level, don't you think?”
“Umm... okay.”
Lina and Reika went up the escalator and started collecting donations on the first level while not knowing that the person that Lina hates so much is actually in the same mall as them! And it is quite obvious that Chengyu himself isn't aware of the existence of those two despite having heightened senses while heading for the third level of the mall.
The game of hide-and-seek lasted for more than 30 minutes before there are traces that both sides start to notice.
“Please wait here while I go to the ladies, okay?”
“Okay.”
Lina walked towards the female toilet at the ground level and was passing by the entrance when she backtracks herself back to the entrance of the mall to find that Chengyu is actually waiting for people to donate into his can right outside the mall where the entrance to the underpass is! Her usually calm mood that she regained after the incident at Yishun suddenly reverts back to anger once again.
“Why is that stupid jerk here of all places......!! How on earth did he know we'll be coming here after that incident!?”
Lina cancelled her trip to the female toilet and ran back to Reika, who is surprised at her sudden return.
“Lina-san, what's wrong?”
“We have to hurry and get out of here! That stupid jerk is already here in this mall!!”
“What?? What jerk?”
“You should know! That jerk who stalked us back in Yishun!!”
Reika then is reminded about Chengyu.
“Uh? Kind person-san??”
“I must've been lucky! I've been meeting such a kind person twice in a day! Thank goodness!” Reika thought as she said those words.
Lina tries to grab Reika's elbow.
“Come on! Let's go already!”
But Reika shakes her head.
“Actually, I've been wanting to talk to him ever since he helped me back in Ang Mo Kio, but didn't have the chance to, he just doesn't seem to want to talk whenever he wishes to...... maybe that's why he opened his mouth to talk only once in several occasions, something must've been preventing him from talking whenever he wanted to. Remember that time you almost tried to attack him?”
Lina remembered the time she tries to attack Chengyu for stalking them, instead of retaliating he just dodged by jumping further back.
“When I try to attack him he doesn't seem to want to retaliate at all...”
“It's pretty obvious that he would rather dodge away rather than hurt you. A normal person who is very angry would retaliate at that kind of attack but he didn't do that at all.”
Lina also remembered that when Reika grabs her to stop her from attacking Chengyu, Chengyu just simply stayed there without moving an inch, remaining in his defensive stance until they are out of his sight.
“Hmph! I think he is too scared to face me for what I did to him!”
“He is scared all right, but most likely not against you, Lina-san.”
“What??” What Reika deduced from his actions surprised her best friend.
“I think he is really scared...... about hurting anyone in that kind of place...”
Lina's hard-line stance starts to soften a little.
“Reika... you really have a kind heart, you know. And that has made a lot of people being kind to you as well. But I don't really want people to take advantage of that kindness of yours and harm you in return. I don't want to see you get hurt.”
But Reika holds Lina's hand to assure her best friend.
“It's okay, Lina-san. You are very nice to me already. But please trust me on this one, okay?”
Lina finally gave in to Reika's request.
“Okay, Reika. Getting him to drop his guard against us won't be easy, so be very careful and let me know if he ever starts attacking you, get it?”
Reika nodded her head, knowing that Lina won't try to attack him without any provocation. So they went together to try and look for Chengyu.
Chengyu was also looking around for donations around the area at this time.
“Hmm... It's not easy as compared to earlier locations that I've been to before......”
But suddenly, a white shadow passed him by without warning, which forced Chengyu to turn around.
“What's that white shadow......”
Chengyu tries to look around, but couldn't see anything resembling it, instead he found Reika and Lina walking towards him!
“No!! How can they follow me all the way here!! I must get out of their sight before they catch onto me!!”
Chengyu quickly ran without thinking, looking for a place he can hide. As for his pursuers, they hasten their steps as soon as he starts running.
“Hey wait up!”
“Kind person-san! Please wait!”
But as soon as they reach the place Chengyu once stood a few moments ago, he was already nowhere in sight as he has already went to hide behind a standalone sandwich bar 15 metres away.
“Let's split up to look for him.”
“Okay.”
The girls went in two separate routes to look for Chengyu.
And Chengyu, who is hiding behind the sandwich bar, heightens his ears' hearing ability to try and hear out the locations of those two girls.
“Hey moron! Come out, come out, wherever you are......”
“Kind person-san! Please come out and see us. We don't want to hurt you anymore, so please don't run away from us, okay?”
“Darn it! They're too persistent already! I know I can no longer get any information from them regarding what happened at the hospital 2 years ago anymore, but why are they now looking for me instead? I may have to wait until I find a way to be able to open my mouth and speak whenever I need to before I can even talk to them, otherwise I'll end up being treated like an enemy by those girls!”
Just at this moment, he hears the voices starting to get louder by the second, signalling their presence is near. Chengyu immediately dashed around the rears of the standalone stores set up around the east side of the shopping mall to try and dodge the girls looking for him.
“Where is he......??”
Lina rushes to where Reika is.
“Any luck?”
Reika shakes her head worryingly.
“I'm afraid if he gets desperate in trying to run away from us, he may try something silly and gets injured somehow...”
“You still have time to worry about that?? We have to get to him before he tries another great escape again!”
Then Reika suddenly sees Chengyu trying to run towards the pillar not far away from them.
“Look! Kind person-san's there!”
“Where!? Where is he!?”
Reika points to that pillar where Chengyu is hiding at and the girls walk towards it. Chengyu, who was hiding there, was seemingly angry at himself.
“That girl that I helped must've spotted me!! Had I decided not to place the coin in her donation can back in that place and just leave her alone, I wouldn't have ended up in this very ridiculous mess!! Looks like I have to utilise my special time-slowdown ability one more time just to get out of here and escape to the bus stop right in front of the mall. I hope this time won't cause the sharp pain I always have when I overuse this power. I have only one last shot at this, and if I make it I should be able to get out of this place!”
Chengyu tries to concentrate his energy on that one burst of his abilities that slows down time and utilises it all at once, successfully slowing down time very drastically and takes that short time space to turn across the pillar he is hiding and run full-speed before the girls even came close enough to it.
“Alright... just one more burst of speed and a straight-line route to the bus stop to go!! I have to make it! Now!!” Chengyu thinks as he pushes hard way past his limit, but the result of this came almost immediately in the form of a very sharp and serious burst of intense pain in his heart.
“Aaarrgggghhhh! What the......! Don't come at this time now......!!”
Chengyu realizes that time has slowly resuming its normal speed, meaning that the ability that he used is gradually losing power. But he was unable to reverse that and the most serious shot of pain seared through his heart, and he lets out a loud scream before losing consciousness and falls to the ground, the place where he fell only less than 10 metres from the bus stop outside the mall.
“NO!! If I fall here means it's all over......!!”
The date is 20th May 2007, 3:40 pm.
Chengyu starts to regain some of his consciousness but his eyes remain closed.
“Am I dead already? But what I'm feeling right now seems to suggest otherwise...... It's completely different from the place I fell, or is it......!?”
He tries hard to regain control of his five senses, and as he regains control of his hearing, he starts to hear a voice that he believes may have heard it before somewhere.
“......-san! …...-san! …...person-san!”
“What...... is...... that...... voice......?”
“......person-san! Kind person-san! Kind person-san!”
“Huh......? Kind person-san......?? Who...... exactly is that??”
Then he regains control of his sense of feel, and realises that his shoulders are being shaken gently.
“It looks like someone is shaking me, and I can somewhat sense...... some kind of a fragrance...... something like...... strawberries......”
As the voices continued, he feels the shaking starts to increase in speed and strength, although the increase is very little, and by this time he starts to regain control of his eyes again.
“Okay, I need to know what's going on, now!!”
He uses all his focus to try and open his eyes, which shows a blurred image when he starts to open them.
“Kind person-san! Kind person-san! Are you awake?”
The blurred image slowly starts to sharpen after a few seconds, which slowly showed a large patch of black and a spot of red above it.
“What exactly am I seeing here......!!”
He tries to focus on sharpening the image he sees with his eyes, and the patch slowly sharpens to see a picture of a girl with black hair and a red ribbon.
“Kind person-san! You're finally awake! Thank goodness......”
The girl seems very happy in his perspective. However, due to his inability to speak whenever he needs it, he was unable to utter a single word out of his mouth.
“Are you okay? How do you feel?”
Chengyu looks around and realizes that the two girls that he is desperately trying to hide from are now by his side, but he does not feel injury in any way except for the heart attack when he fell. He also realizes that he is now in a different place than the one that he fell on. He is now on a bed that looks like those in a hospital, but doesn't have any medical facilities other than the bed itself. The environment is completely different this time. Furthermore, Reika is sitting right next to him looking at him while Lina is sitting a short distance away looking in another direction.
“Where is this place......!?”
He starts to feel his chest as he suffered from a heart attack before he fell, and the pain is felt immediately, although it is now of a reduced intensity as compared to before he fell. As he feels his chest, Reika places both hands on his shoulders.
“Are you okay, kind person-san? Are you hurt anywhere?”
Chengyu shook his head hard.
“Thank goodness...... Luckily this mall has its own infirmary room that can allow people to come in in case of emergencies, you fell just outside the mall in front of the bus stop and some passers-by brought you here and we've been tending to you ever since, well...... at least for the last half-an-hour though......”
Hearing this, Chengyu quickly reached for his watch and the time is displayed as 3:45 pm.
“You were unconsciousness for more than half an hour before waking up. And it seems that you don't have any heart problems as far as we know, so it should be okay.”
“So I was brought here while I was unconscious, huh...... but why did she try and save me, instead of simply leaving me alone as I am......”
Thinking that, Chengyu tries very hard to get up and starts getting down from the bed. Reika tries to help him out of genuine concern.
“It's okay, take your time.” she said as she guides him out of bed.
Lina who is watching from a short distance, feels a little disgusted at what she saw.
“Reika at this time really looks like a nurse helping patients out of their beds......”
Thinking of that causes her to have a hallucination of Reika really wearing a nurse uniform, helping Chengyu off his bed in a hospital, which alarms her.
“Nonononono! This can't be happening!” Lina repeatedly shakes her head to get rid of that hallucination.
Meanwhile, Chengyu looks around for his belongings as he realizes that he is not carrying his bags or donation can when he woke up from the bed. Reika immediately knew what he wanted and guided him to a corner where his belongings are sitting nicely, including his donation can. While he reached for his things, he took out his paper notebook and wrote something with the attached pen on it. This made Reika curious.
“Does that mean kind person-san can communicate through writing when he is unable to talk using his mouth?”
After Chengyu wrote something on the page of the paper notebook, he showed it to Reika the words written on it which wrote: “Thank you. You're a good help in that situation. But earning my trust is another thing altogether, so you have been warned.”
“Ahahaha... It's still...... a pleasure though.” Reika could only laugh weakly after she understood what he has written.
Meanwhile, Lina finally looks at him with stern eyes and opens her mouth.
“Listen, jerk! You'd better pick all your things and get out of here as far as you can, don't ever stalk us up again!!”
An emotionless Chengyu simply wrote something on a new page and walked towards the entrance of the infirmary room where she is and showed her his answer: “You need to seriously do something about that attitude of yours. No man will want you if you keep this attitude of yours with you all the time.”
This really infuriated Lina and started scolding him.
“You'd better watch your mouth, moron!”
Reika could only giggle at her friend's reaction.
“Well, I guess he can be right about that......”
But then she realizes that she almost forgot her motive of looking for him in the first place.
“Oh, kind person-san! Please wait!” Reika tugged onto his T-shirt sleeve. “Is it okay... that I can talk to you for a little while? It won't take long, promise.”
“???” Chengyu was surprised by her request. “I knew she would try this one out...... I give up......!”
Minutes later, Reika was sitting beside Chengyu at the public seating area outside the underpass entrance. Chengyu has his paper notebook open and holding the attached pen.
“Kind person-san.”
“So that's what she refers me by......”
“Sorry to ask this, but......” Reika seems sheepish about her question. “Do you have a name......?”
“Is it safe for me to let my identity be known to this person......?” Chengyu thought about her question for a moment.
Deciding it to be so, he turned to a new page in his paper notebook and wrote his full name in English and Chinese on it. Reika took a look at what he wrote there, but wasn't able to properly read out his name. So he had no choice but to write the readings of his name in Katakana characters[1] right on top of his English name and tore it out for her.
“Oh, Li Chengyu-san, am I correct?”
Chengyu nodded his head, even though the reading is slightly incorrect.
“Thank you. Chengyu-san! I will cherish this all my life!” Reika keeps the sheet of paper on her chest happily. “But
I still don't understand why did you are so interested in us though...?”
“I need answers.” Chengyu wrote his answer without thinking, which made Reika curious.
“Answers? What answers are you looking for, Chengyu-san?”
His written answer: “Regarding your conversation with Lina.”
“No way... you actually overheard our conversation back in Yishun where Lina-san and I met?”
Chengyu nodded his head and wrote his next line of words: “You told your friend that you came here to Singapore 2 years ago for a transplant operation and received kindness from two people, is that right?”
Reika sheepishly nodded her head and explain what she knew at that time.
“I was warded at that time because my own bone marrow failed to function properly back in Japan. What my parents told me was that at that time, there was no matching bone marrow transplant in the country itself that can save me. My childhood friend also had his bone marrow tested, but did not match due to the difference in our blood types. I was warded in a Intensive Care Unit back in Japan for two months prior to this, and was informed only of a perfect match when my condition worsened all of a sudden. If a transplant does not take place immediately I could have been hit with acute leukaemia as a result. However, the matching donor is located only in Singapore so my doctor there had to make a painful decision to ask for an Air Ambulance to send me and my family to Singapore to receive the donation. That was around the end of May 2005 when the transplant took place.”
“Wait a minute! That was around the time I was sent to hospital because I was assaulted by those bloody morons. My mum told me then that I had successfully donated my own bone marrow to a foreigner from Japan that required the donation to live, otherwise she'll die in 48 hours! Then came the revelation about her bone marrow failing, which is so coincidental with what happened to me then. Is she the one that accepted my bone marrow donation?? I do not know for sure but the chances of that are seemingly very low......”
“After my successful transplant operation, I went out of the ward in a motorised wheelchair and lost my keychain somehow, but another kind person picked it up for me and returned it to me personally, but I don't understand what he was saying back then. I couldn't make it in time to thank the two Samaritans for that before my whole family have to go back to Japan within a week due to my dad's work-related matters.”
Chengyu was shocked at what she just said, especially with that Reika said may have tallied with what his own mum has told him about the beneficiary of his donation, but thinks that since there are no concrete evidence that she had any detailed knowledge about what exactly happened back then or even if this Reika here is actually the girl on the wheelchair two years ago, he decided to find out more about this from her by writing:
“Are you planning to locate the Samaritans who helped you in the short time you're in Singapore by coming here to study?” he worded this carefully so as not to sound her out too easily or arouse any of her suspicion on him.
Reika nodded her head sheepishly in reply, thinking about the kindness of those people back then.
Suddenly, Lina came back and called out to her.
“Reika! We need to go back to campus now if we want to be able to return our cans back by 5 pm today.”
“Okay, Lina-san! I'm on my way!”
Reika turned to Chengyu, took his writing pen and wrote something in his paper notebook before returning the pen to him.
“If you need to talk to me, please send a request in my campus chat-room and I'll try to connect to talk to you, okay?” Reika said to
him before standing up to leave the place to join up with Lina.
Chengyu looked into the text she wrote and saw a e-mail address written there as well as some kind of numerical code below it.
“The first one obviously is the e-mail address she uses in the campus. But I don't know about the code written below it...... what purpose does it serve anyway? Anyway, I have a feeling this might be useful so I'll keep this for the time being......”
Chengyu decided to keep the paper notebook inside his bag and boarded the bus outside the bus stop while the girls went back to the MRT Station to board the MRT back to Clementi Station en route to New Hope Polytechnic.
During the bus ride which should take him to Bedok Bus Interchange in about an hour's time. He thought deeply on what Reika said about her previous visit to Singapore for the transplant.
“If what that Reika said was true, then there is a remote possibly that the bone marrow I have unwittingly donated while I was hospitalised... might have ended up in Reika's body. Although I don't have concrete medical evidence that proves this theory, I cannot rule this out until I can find medical evidence to prove otherwise!”
Author's Notes:
| [1] | Katakana characters are core character sets used in the Japanese Language which utilises rigid strokes as compared to the regular Hiragana character sets used in the language. Katakana character sets are mainly used to describe objects or names that are used in foreign contexts or countries to differentiate items or names that are mainly native to Japan. In this case since Chengyu's name is considered a foreign name, Katakana characters are used to allow Japanese to be able to read the name properly, but using this has a drawback: If certain readings that exists in the foreign language are out of the readings permissible in the Katakana character set, it will be a challenge for Japanese to be able to read names properly without the required learning of that language beforehand. |
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