When Bright Moon Encounter the Dark Clouds

————Tan Jiao————

I laid in bed like a lazy pig while feeling pleased with my ability to control my emotions, as I could still sleep around midnight after Wu Yu dropped a bombshell on me last night. When I woke up this morning, the fear I felt had lessened; perhaps, I felt that the fear was distant because of the vacantness in my mind.

What should I do?

Wu Yu’s words proved to be true. I realized that the fallacious world I believed in when I looked at the calendar, my records, or even the previous cruise ticket.

I suspected whether I was experiencing amnesia because when I tried to think back, the clearest memory I had was when I woke up on my sofa a few days ago. It was as If I had experienced a long dream. It felt similar to the movies, where some people have the memory of a fish—only possessing short-term memory.

However, I could remember clearly everything that had happened to me before that cruise.

Scratching my head, I felt a sense of chaos in my mind similar to my messy hair, like a bird’s nest. I had no intentions of visiting a doctor because the symptoms I had were too outrageous, and I disliked the prospects of being treated like an alien for research.

I decided to give Zhuang Yu a call first because she was like me—a woman that could keep calm under stress.

After spending some time explaining my symptoms to her, she remained mute briefly before saying, “I get it now. In my opinion, this thing must have something to do with the cruise you took and the place you went. Didn’t the two of you lose your memories after boarding the ship?”

“What connections could it have?”

At that moment, Zhuang Yu fleshed out her calm sci-fi writer demeanor while explaining nonchalantly, “It's hard to pinpoint the exact reason. But, the simplest example would be the earth’s magnetic field. Perhaps the two of you had gone to a place with an unusual magnetic field, causing an anomaly in your brain. While the manifestation in Wu Yu is memory loss of a few days, you appear to have lost a year’s worth of memory.”

“Why is this?”

“I’m just giving you an example. How would I know the reason behind it? But, I do think the two of you must have encountered some sort of supernatural event, or perhaps something sci-fi.” After saying that, she could not repress the exhilaration that was stirring inside her anymore. “Damn, I may finally have the opportunity to witness the occurrence of something supernatural in my lifetime. Not only that, but it’s even happening to my best friend! This is so awesome!”

“... Zhuang Yu!”

“I’m sorry, my bad. It’s a habit of mine, you know. I feel for you girl… actually, I don’t. In fact, I admire what you have!”

I let out an audible grunt of annoyance but thought of another important question and asked, “What happened between us throughout this entire year? Do you remember?”

Thinking nothing of it, Zhuang Yu replied casually, “Sure, what else could happen between us other than going out for meals like we always do.”

“Oh.”

“It’s unlikely you’ll get treatment going to a hospital, how about… I introduce you to my senior Da Na, who is in the field of quantum mechanics? You could have a chat with him.”

“No thank you,” I replied after feeling a headache when I heard quantum mechanics and whatnot.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Well, whether the two of us have encountered something supernatural, sci-fi, or fantasy, facts are facts. As an inferential novelist, I firmly believe there is only one truth. Besides, it’s not like I’m without clues. The breakthrough will be those supernatural birds and that strange person who left me a letter asking me if I wanted to find out what I’ve lost. To find this person, I think I’ll have to help the police solve the serial abduction cases.”