It had only been a week since their last meeting, but they once again sat opposite each other with only a table separated the two men.
“So, I guessed it right, didn’t I? You come to see me again just a week after our last consultation,” Damien opened the conversation as he grinned naughtily.
René, who was sitting in front of him, scoffed in annoyance before he replied, “It’s your fault, Dam. You shouldn’t have jinxed it. I’ve warned you before.”
The doctor laughed at his friend’s statement. “I don’t have the power to see the future, Ren,” he denied the accusation. He then erased his playful grin and plastered a serious expression when he said, “So, you painted someone you’ve never met in your sleep?”
Before he came to see the doctor, René had told the doctor the general issue he had been experiencing. He called the doctor and told him about the mysterious girl in his painting. He thought the phone consultation was not enough, so he decided to see the doctor today.
“Yes, and I’ve painted that person’s face twice. Last night was the second one.”
The young painter was panicked the moment he opened his eyes this morning. His body trembled as he stared at the painting in front of him in horror. He was in his studio again, and he painted the mysterious girl again in his sleep.
That's why he rushed to the hospital after calling the doctor. He needed a solution from his best friend now.
It had been several years that Damien became a professional in the field of psychiatry, but he did not expect that René would be one of the people who suffered from mental disorders and needed his help―even though what his friend experienced was relatively mild.
“Are you sure you don’t recognize her, Ren? You could have met her while you were drunk and you ended up spending one hot night with her. In the morning, you probably just forget all about it.”
René put on a straight face before replying, “I’ve never been so drunk in my entire life that I’ve done such a thing, Dam. You can ask anyone who knows me.”
The doctor chuckled at his best friend’s reaction. “Okay, no need to put on that scary face. I’m just trying to analyze,” he said as he raised his hands in surrender.
The two of them fell silent. They both analyzed the situation, trying to formulate presumptions that could be drawn into a reasonable conclusion.
“You can just live with me and my wife, Ren,” Damien suddenly spoke again.
The younger man frowned at the suggestion. “Why should I do that?” He asked in confusion.
“We can help you to prevent your actions in your sleep. I’m a light sleeper. If I hear your movement in your room at night, I can help you to go back to your sleep. It can prevent you from painting unknown people again.”
René didn’t immediately agree or reject the suggestion. He was contemplating the idea.
The doctor once told him that the easiest way to prevent him from doing his weird sleeping habit was to help him go back to sleep. To be able to do that, he needed other people in his house who could help him go back to sleep. He had no one in his apartment, so he dismissed the advice.
But, the doctor suddenly suggested he just live with him and his wife. That was a bizarre idea.
“I can't do that, Dam,” the painter finally replied. “I don’t want to be a burden, and I also don’t want to disturb you with your wife.”
The doctor sighed, but he didn’t look surprised. It seemed that he had expected the rejection, so he remained calm.
“Moreover, I have an assumption that the girl has something to do with me. I painted her twice in my dream, and that's not normal. I can’t just let this matter go. I want to investigate the girl.”
Now, Damien frowned at his best friend. “I remember that you also said that one of your students has a very similar face to that girl, right?” He asked again, and René nodded to answer the question. The doctor then continued, “Why don’t you try asking him? Who knows he knows the girl.”
René sighed. He had thought about it too. He thought that the boy named Alain Kim, who had the same face as the girl, was the only available clue for now. Even so, the painter was not sure of the solution. He had a reason for his uncertainty.
“Dam, you once asked about the possibility of me experiencing stress, depression, anxiety, or something like that, right?” Now, it was the doctor’s turn to nod to answer the patient’s question. “I didn’t experience it before, but after I painted the girl’s face for the first time, for some reason I became restless. I felt uncertain like something was stuck in my chest. My chest felt tight and hurt. I even felt it when I saw my student’s face for the first time.”
It seemed that Doctor Lau was in a state of confusion now. The young doctor remained silent. His right hand unconsciously started to rest on his chin, gently rubbing the chin free of fine hair.
“If that’s the case, it means you have no other choice but to ask your student,” Damien finally spoke up. “Besides, didn’t you say earlier that your second painting also contained a name that could be the girl’s name?”
René nodded, confirming Damien’s question. There was a difference between his first and second paintings. The first painting only contained the girl’s portrait, but the second painting contained a handwritten name in the bottom left corner of the painting.
René noticed that it was his handwriting, and he assumed that the name probably was the girl’s name.
“Ren.” The sound of the doctor’s call made the owner of the name turn. “If I may ask, what is the girl’s name?”
“That’s all for today. See you again next week,” René ended his lecture today.The students showed a happy expression before they started leaving the classroom.The lecture went smoothly. He explained some drawing theory and the technique, and the students seemed to be interested in what he was explaining. He was slightly in doubt about that, though. He wasn’t sure whether the students were interested in the course of his handsome face.No one could deny that his handsome face was like a magnet that attracted the people's attention. He didn't know whether he should be happy about that or not.He was about to pack his things up, but then his sharp eyes caught a glimpse of someone walking toward the door. Subconsciously, he left his bag and rushed to catch up with the person.He then stopped right in front of the person, making the said person halted his steps as well and looked up at him confusedly.“What&
As soon as he arrived at his flat, Brielle Park had been waiting for him at the door. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her eyes stabbed into Alain’s eyes; demanding an explanation. Zhou Yongliang could only sigh at the sight. He had expected it, so he wasn't surprised by the girl's appearance. “At least, let me go in first. There’s no way we can talk outside like this, right?” The girl still glared dangerously at Alain even after the man had voiced his request. Alain knew that his best friend was so stubborn, so he patiently waited for the girl to relent. After contemplating it for a moment, Brielle finally shifted her body from the door, letting the owner of the flat open the door before leading the way to the residence. The owner of the residence entered the room, took off his shoes, and put them on the shelf. Brielle followed closely behind him. It wasn't the first time the pretty girl visited the flat, so she felt like s
René didn’t have a teaching schedule on campus today, but the Head of Department asked him to come to talk about something. The painter, despite being lazy, didn't have any other choice than to comply with the request. The famous painter predicted something bad would be happening, and it turned out his prediction was accurate. The Head of the Department asked him to revise the plan of lecture activities that he had made and submitted to the department’s administration. The Head of the Department said that several activities were not relevant to the current conditions, and there was also a change in the student assessment system on their campus, which the painter missed in the document. As a result, René was required to revise the lecture plan he had made. There was no prior notification about the revision, so René did not bring his laptop to campus today. Fortunately, the campus staff let him use the computer belonging to the department administration, which
His car was parked perfectly in the basement of a downtown skyscraper. Without saying anything, he opened his car door, ran around to the passenger seat, then forcibly removed Alain’s body from the car.The one who was forced was struggling as he tried to escape, but René’s strength was apparently greater so that his arm didn't manage to escape the painter’s grip.They then headed to the elevator. As soon as the elevator door opened, René immediately dragged Alain inside. He pressed the button with the number 17, and as the elevator started moving upward, no one made a sound.The elevator was very luxurious. The four sides were made of shiny material, even able to reflect their reflection like a mirror. It was from the reflected image that René could see the frightened expression of Alain, who was standing beside him. Did he look like a kidnapper now?One heavy breath, and René spoke up, “I don’t m
Alain immediately ran towards the elevator after successfully escaping René’s residence. He repeatedly pressed the button to go to the ground floor, and then he slumped weakly onto the cold elevator floor. His right hand held his left chest. Now and then, his left hand also wiped the tears that for some reason, fell by themselves. “How can I be like this? Why does it suddenly hurt so much that I want to cry?” The feeling struck a moment after his eyes made contact with the mysterious painting shown by René earlier. At first, it was just a little tightness in his chest, but as the painter went further to tell the story, the feeling got worse. He even cried for a moment before he ran away from his lecturer’s residence. He hoped that René wouldn’t have the chance to see his tears. His body felt weak. He couldn’t even move his legs to get up even after the elevator had arrived on the ground floor, and the door started to open. He was just about to
“You scared the poor boy, dude.”That was the first response he got from Damien Lau after he finished telling the whole story.The doctor visited him today, and he served some mineral waters to him. He was just a bachelor who didn’t really care about food at home and only had mineral waters with him.Despite being a bad host, the painter still dared to pour his heart out by telling the story that bothered him since yesterday. Yeah, he had told his friend about his ‘experience’ with his student yesterday.“He was so weird yesterday, Dam. He didn’t believe in what I said and just left me like that.”He could hear his best friend sigh heavily. “You are the one who’s being weird,” the doctor commented. “How could you forcefully grab your student to your house like that? You look like a pedophile by doing that. No wonder he was scared and left you.”René scowled
He never needed an alarm to wake up in the morning. His eyes always opened automatically when morning came, and the same habit happened this morning too.His eyelids began to open slowly, revealing the beautiful emeralds that had previously been hidden in the thin flesh blanket. His hands felt around, and the soft texture was immediately felt by his sense of touch. He woke up in his bed today, not on the work chair in his studio.The painter sighed. Perhaps his mental disorder had completely healed, and he didn’t need to expect the existence of mysterious paintings anymore. It was also possible that the mysterious paintings actually mean nothing at all.Perhaps it was just a figment of his imagination, an imaginary dimension that seemed to have its own power to create works that he didn’t recognize. Yes, perhaps he should learn to forget everything. Everything was meaningless. The girl named Park Ah Reum was not real, and his student named Alain Kim
A man in formal attire was walking down an alley. He was not alone because beside him was walking a beautiful lady with shoulder-length hair. The lady’s delicate hand was perched on the man’s right arm as if to show a right of ownership.The link was only released when the man pressed a bell near a door. No need to press the bell repeatedly and also wait for a long time because the door opened from the inside immediately.“Oh, you have come?” That was the greeting they got from a man who just opened the door for them. The man, who just opened the door, turned his gaze to the lady and asked lazily, “You came too, Elloise? I thought you had forgotten about me after marrying my best friend.”Damien snorted loudly at those words. “Be polite to my wife, or I’ll go home doing nothing here, René Huang?”René immediately smiled sulkily at the older man. “I was just kidding, Dam,” he s