If You Forget | ✓

Chapter 2

"Elainne!"

The voice echoes around me as I enter the dark room. As long as I can escape.

"Elainne!"

A short woman appears in front of me. She grabs my arms with an iron grip, and I'm too stunned to say anything. All I can do is look at her teary face.

"What have you done to my son?" My vision gets blurry as she shakes me furiously.

"I-I haven't done anything!" I hear myself reply, but my voice feels hoarse and hollow, as if it's not mine at all.

"Liar!" she screams back at me. "Give me back my son!"

I blink, and a man appears by her side. The sight of their desperate expressions makes my heart clench. I step back slowly, but they're quick to close the distance between us. Their faces melt and distort until some monstrous creatures are facing me. Their clawed hands reach for me.

"P-Please... I don't know where he is," I cry out.

"Who are you, Elainne?" a twisted voice asks. Who am I? That is a good question.

"I don-I don't know." My back hits the wall, and I crouch down, covering my face with my hands until I cannot see them anymore. Why can't they just go away? "Please, let me go."

The figures melt and shift once again, and instead of the short woman, I'm facing a much more familiar one. My mother. Next to her is my father; their shadows tower over me viciously.

My heart races even quicker, and I seem to shrink even more, until I see a boy's figure in the distance.

He's illuminated, washed in a warm light like a beacon, but his face is full of tears. "Elainne," he calls after me. His voice is quiet, but I still hear him clearly, as if he's standing right next to me.

"Give me back my child!" my mother screams at me in the woman's voice, laced with a slight accent. A clawed hand reaches for me, and I scream.

I jolt in my bed, my lungs fighting for air. It was just a nightmare.

My eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, and I see the now-familiar surrounding. I'm in my bedroom. There's no dark room waiting to swallow me. It's alright.

But despite that, my mind goes back to the family from my dream, stopping on the boy's face. Christian Young. The friend who's been kidnapped with me.

And the only person whose face I recognized, even for a split second.

Being the only one who got away from our kidnappers, I was a crucial clue in the investigation, but I didn't even know my name, let alone what happened to us. However, his parents insisted on visiting me regardless, and as soon as I saw them enter my room, I understood why. I'm not sure how I recognized that right away, but there was one thing visibly written all over their faces—despair.

"Elainne," the woman had said after slowly approaching my hospital bed with her husband. "My name is Jia Zhou, and this—" she said, pointing to the man on her right, "—is my husband, Logan. We... we heard what happened to you. I know you might not remember us, but we've met before. We're the parents of Christian—Chris."

Both of them were nice to me, unlike their distorted versions in my nightmare, but it wasn't of much help to my broken memory.

Until she showed me the photo.

The boy—Chris, as they called him—was standing with his hands tucked in his pockets, a wide smile on his face. The photo differed greatly from the one police had. That one was probably from the school's yearbook, because it only showed his face, any emotions hidden behind a neutral expression. But here, the photo showed a different glimpse of him. It wasn't really a memory as much as it was a gut feeling, but when I saw the picture, I somehow knew that I knew this boy very well.

"Do you know anything—anything? Please?" His mother's teary eyes were begging me for any information I could provide, which wasn't a lot. The boy's father stepped to her side, gently putting a hand on her shoulder. My heart was breaking as I watched the couple fight back their tears while waiting for my answer.

I looked away, only mustering enough strength to shake my head. "Sorry," I told them. Intuition couldn't help anyone, so I decided to keep my gut feeling to myself. Whatever I felt couldn't magically bring their son back, and that's the only thing they wanted.

But as distressing as it was, that short encounter did more than the constant interrogation from the police did. At the mere thought of that, I feel the familiar lump of dread in my stomach again.

Soon after I regained my consciousness in the hospital, I was swarmed with the questions: do I remember what happened the night I was kidnapped, do I recognize the boy from the picture, do I remember any person—known or unknown—approaching us or following us. One officer was especially persistent, but in the end, they were all disappointed to find out I had no idea what they were talking about. Their most important clue turned out to be worthless.

But Chris's parents weren't the only ones who paid me a visit; that's something I can remember. Some of my classmates stopped by a few times—my friends. The new faces were overwhelming at the time, but I was still grateful to have their support.

The first one who visited was a girl called Jane. I struggle to remember her last name. Is it Kingston? I think it's Kingston. She was one of many who visited me and wished me a quick recovery, but she was also my most frequent visitor.

The most valuable thing from those visits weren't the flowers or the numerous "Get well soon" cards, but the stories she told me of my high school life before the kidnapping. As it turns out, she was also one of my closest friends, which explained her frequent visits.

"I mean, I can't say you were exactly popular—you definitely are now, though—but the people liked you," she told me one day as she was arranging the fresh flowers in the vase next to my bed. "Why else would they be sending you gifts all the time and insisting on visiting you, right?"

Her words made perfect sense to me—after all, my parents and nurses told me about all the people who wanted to pay me a visit, but those were limited for me, especially in the first few days. Despite that, Jane brought a few classmates with her at times, but their faces were just a blur in my memory, nothing I could point a finger at; it's still no different.

Why is Chris the only one I remembered, even so slightly? Was it the guilt haunting my mind because I didn't have any useful information for the police and his parents?

The mystery of Chris and his disappearance taints the perfect image I've created so far, making my mind run in circles because I just can't figure it out no matter how hard I try. I still think about it later, when I try to fall back asleep, with the nightmare from before lingering in the back of my mind.