“Youyou, you can tell Mommy what your dream was about. Mommy will keep it a secret and not tell anyone…”
After her repeated coaxing, the boy finally looked up with terribly bloodshot eyes.
He was crying! Youyou had always been like a little adult, mature, sensible and responsible. It was rare to see him shed a tear.
Seeing him cry made Yun Shishi’s heart ache even more. She held him tightly and said in helpless frustration, “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. Mommy’s just so worried about you…”
“He tried to kill me…”
“What?” Yun Shishi was inwardly alarmed, but kept her composure.
“Gong Fan… I dreamed that he was holding a dagger and coming after me. Then, he pinned me against the wall and stabbed me in the heart.” The boy narrated in a shaky voice. Though he did not go into too much detail, one would inevitably shudder to imagine such a scene.
Yun Shishi found that hard to believe, but as they said, it was only a dream. “It was a dream, just as you said,” she reassured him. “A dream is a dream. Don’t take it seriously!”
“That was what I thought all the while.” The boy sniffed, and his voice was still broken. “But I was terrified nevertheless. I kept feeling that even though it was a dream, it was so real… I’m so tired, but I don’t dare to sleep. I’m afraid that if I fall asleep, I’ll have that dream again. Mommy, do you think that person who stabbed me with a knife was really Gong Fan?”
“Like you say, it was a dream. A dream is a dream. Reality is reality. You have to keep the two separate. Since it was a dream, and you’re now awake, forget everything that had happened in the dream!”
“But… Mommy, my sixth sense tells me that that person is Gong Fan. He really did try to kill me in my dream.”
Yun Shishi held him tighter at that. “How can a person be killed in a dream? Even if a person dies a thousand times in a dream, they won’t die.”
“But…” The boy had mixed emotions. “It felt worse than dying… Mommy, that sort of dream… it really felt like it was happening. No matter how much I told myself it was a dream, I wasn’t convinced. But I feel so tired now after the dream. it’s exhausting even just to breathe…”
Those words cut the woman like a knife. They were so painful to hear that she found it difficult to breathe. She kissed the boy gently on the forehead and said to him, “You must stay well, Youyou. Mommy… I really don’t know what to do…”
She felt a deep sense of helplessness in his presence! She wanted to protect him, but she didn’t know how! His life had never been truly peaceful since the day he was born. He was born with poor health, and later on, he was found to have a split personality… Yun Shishi simply could not imagine how much pain there was in her son’s world.
And what truly hurt was the fact that the boy would rather carry the pain himself than let her know or worry about it…
Alice said the boy was reliant on her. She knew, however, that she was even more reliant on the boy. She wanted to walk into him. She wanted to understand the kind of life he really led as a split personality.
Because she shook with fear just hearing Youyou’s description of it!
“I’m sorry…” The woman choked on her tears. “Mommy didn’t take good care of you, didn’t protect you well…”
She felt powerless, no matter what she said…
