The Way Back to You

Interlude (2)

Was it just a coincidence?

Or did Lance respond to that name because he really was… 

Xian gulped.

It was one thing if all of this was just his and Lance’s shared delusion. They wouldn’t be unique in being so drawn to something that it wasn’t enough to just play-act it once in a while, they had to live it as their reality. 

You see it all the time in various social media platforms—people who believe they have actual magical powers, or that they were real vampires and other such creatures of legend. 

There were even countless individuals who believe they have had many past lives. And what’s more, they claim that they could access their past memories through some vague esoteric processes like past life regression.

Before today, Xian thought that those people were a bunch of kooks that needed psychiatric help. Now, he had gladly and willingly become one of them.

But what if…? 

What if in his and Lance's case, it was no delusion?

If such an impossible thing had really taken place and the events in the script were really depictions of their past lives… 

In the here and now, what would it mean for them?

***

The hospital that Samuel brought Lance to was a stone’s throw away from the restaurant they were at, and thus, after Lance assured him that his episode had passed, they simply walked there.

On the way, Samuel was compelled to ask if this was a regular occurrence. 

On a personal level, he wouldn’t have wanted to pry on this private matter. But as the person in charge of this film’s production, he had to know at least enough about such things to be prepared in the future. It was already a mistake on his part that he hadn’t yet poured over and memorized all the info the film club had on their cast and crew.

Lance answered, “It used to happen a lot, years ago. It became less frequent as time went on, and I thought it had gone now, but…”

He trailed off, and Samuel guessed, “So this is the first time it happened in a while?”

Lance nodded.

“Do you know what could have triggered it again?”

As if in thought, the other guy was silent for a time. But in the end, he shook his head. “I don’t.”

Samuel left it at that, trusting that the medical staff in the hospital would figure it out. He handled all the proceedings when they got there and waited with Lance patiently for his turn to be seen to. 

Samuel wasn’t an inherently quiet person, but since he’s with someone like Lance, who seemed comfortable with silence, he decided not to try to make small talk. He just fiddled with his phone while Lance stared off absently.

In the confines of Lance’s thoughts was the truth that he hadn’t chosen to share with Samuel.

He knew what the trigger had been for his sudden loss of consciousness. Of course he did.

Just like in the countless previous times that this had happened to him, the trigger was the barrage of combined memories taking over his entire being.

When Lance was a child, the memories used to only come in dreams. They started out as pleasant snippets, no different from the usual dreams a child would have, except that these featured the same individuals over and over again.

He really liked those dreams. He like the feeling they left behind in his chest when he had just woken up, although, by the time he got up, he would have already forgotten both the feeling and the contents of the dream itself.

But each time, when he dreamed again, he would know that he’d had these dreams before, and he knew who the people in them were.

By the time he was six years old and had become more capable of independent thought, he had also become addicted to dreaming. It started out as him going to bed early, very eager to fall asleep, then it progressed to him taking seemingly random naps in the middle of the day.

Suspecting a condition like narcolepsy, Lance’s parents had had him checked multiple times by the best doctors at their family’s disposal. None of them found anything wrong with him.

It wasn’t until Lance’s older brother Lucian had asked him why he liked to sleep so much that his family got a clue as to what was going on.

He liked the dreams, the young Lance had said.

What dreams?

But Lance was awake then, and so he didn’t remember much.

All he could say in answer was: “Ruyi… I like seeing Ruyi in my dreams.”