Gong Fan was silent for a while before suddenly asking curiously, “Have you… heard of the Land of the Dead?”
Natalia turned around, her eyes flashing. “You mean… the ‘Place of the Banished’?”
“Place of the Banished?”
“Yeah. I heard those patients at the hospital talking about it. People like us. It’s meant to be our way back.”
Natalia paused, her eyes darkening. “What’s the difference between not being needed and being banished?”
Gong Fan looked at her purple eyes and his heart suddenly palpitated. For some reason he couldn’t look her in the eye. Those purple eyes seemed to hold a magic beyond words. It was as if one would be bewitched if they looked at it for too long. He turned around and stopped looking at her.
Natalia smiled as she clasped her hands behind her back and walked to his side. Her speech suddenly slowed to a drawl. “Are you content to be exiled?”
“What?”
“Do you wish to go there?”
Gong Fan pursed his lips and said, “I won’t go there.”
“Why?” The girl seemed doubtful. “Are you so sure?”
“They won’t give up on me!”
“You must be the second personality!”
Her words jolted him awake. Gong Fan’s eyes regained focus as he said in surprise, “How did you know that I’m the second personality?”
“I sense a similar aura between us.”
Natalia let out a brittle laugh. “Uncomfortable, lost, a kind of loneliness that comes from the fear of being abandoned.”
“…”
“Don’t you feel that you’ve been given up on?” The girl continued, “Sometimes, do you sleep for a long time?”
Gong Fan was stunned.
Could it be… Was Natalia a second personality? And Natalisa the first personality?
He turned around in surprise. His gaze fell on Natalia, but she suddenly reached out and gently pressed her finger to her lips. “Shh!”
He watched as she raised a hand and held it out in front of him. She opened her fingertips slightly, and a pocket watch suddenly appeared and fell gently before his eyes.
It started to swing.
“Right now, empty your mind, don’t look at anything. You just have to close your eyes and listen to what you can hear.” Natalia’s words seemed to have a certain magic to them. She breathed like an orchid. Her cherry-blossom lips moved slightly as she uttered a few sounds made with a lazy drawl.
“Can you hear that?”
Click … click … click …
The sound of the watch hands moving drowned out all other noise for a moment. In an instant, all Gong Fan could hear was the sound of the watch hands moving.
Click!
Click!
Gong Fan suddenly felt his eyelids getting heavier and heavier. He tried to keep his eyes open, but they were growing heavy. Gradually, he could no longer keep them open. His eyelids gradually closed, and his world gradually fell into darkness…
…
“Daddy…”
Gong Jie and Hua Jin were sitting in the living room when they heard what sounded like a kitten.
The latter rose to his feet, he saw Natalia snuggling against the side of the door. “It’s Youyou again,” she said timidly, cautiously.
“What’s the matter?” Hua Jin had no idea when she’d strolled into the kitchen, and was curious.
He guessed that she had probably wandered into the kitchen and must have been frightened by Gong Fan’s “masterpiece”. He laughed and said, “You won’t have a series of desserts to eat today!”
