BIA Ch. 46

It was just that I was a little annoyed at his uncharacteristically smiling face, but it wasn’t like I wanted to see him crying. After all, Isaiah Cole doesn’t cry. Of course, neither does Lee.

But unexpectedly, this process seemed to have stimulated something, and he remembered that he had heard the name Lanius before.

“It was an old slide phone. There was a text message that said something like Lanius, but I didn’t think it was my phone, so I just left it there.”

“By ‘there,’ do you mean your apartment?”

“Yeah, in the apartment… I left it on the bed. It’s probably still there.”

“I see.”

After ending the conversation with a plan to go to the apartment together tomorrow, I sent him up to the third floor.

Even after Isaiah went to bed, I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. I was in a bad mood. I kept thinking about the way he was sobbing and crying. When I closed my eyes to stop thinking about it, I was reminded of young Lee’s face, biting his lip and holding back tears.

Then, inevitably, other things came to mind. A small back crouching under a tree, eyes like black pebbles staring up at me, a pale face relieved to see the bug I had trapped in my eye. All the moments we shared from that time flashed through my mind like afterimages. Intense afterimages, as if etched on the inside of my eyelids.

But the insomnia was all mine. The next morning, he came down to the first floor with a nonchalant face. There was no trace of him having cried. It was as if he had resolved to act composed all night, but no. He spat out the coffee I gave him as soon as he took a sip. He couldn’t hide anything, that guy. He was the complete opposite of Isaiah Cole, who never revealed anything.

Still, thanks to the practice I had given him beforehand, he was pretty good at controlling his expressions in front of my men. He ignored whoever was talking next to him and just ate his meal, which was quite like Isaiah Cole. However, I don’t know what Gilman said when I wasn’t around, but he looked particularly dejected after he left. Gilman doesn’t seem like it, but he has a foul mouth. I thought I might need to warn him later.

After breakfast, I took him to Charlie’s hospital. I pushed him into the hypnosis examination room, despite his reluctance, and sat on the bench right in front of the room. After a while, I saw a nurse peeking her head out of the window, looking for me.

I carefully entered the hypnosis examination room, trying not to make any noise. The hypnosis counselor, who had been briefed beforehand, signaled me to stand there with a nod. The middle-aged hypnosis counselor, who was always complaining about how he was going broke sending his twins to private school, often took extra money to hypnotize the people I brought. Mostly, they were gang members who couldn’t remember where they hid drugs. The results were better than expected. They were so effective that half of the guys who succeeded would just spill everything as soon as they sat in the chair, even before being hypnotized.

I stood by the door as the counselor instructed. Isaiah, sitting in the relaxing chair specifically for hypnosis sessions, was slumped over as if he was already in a hypnotic state.

“Isaiah, how are you feeling?”

The counselor asked in a quiet voice. Isaiah seemed to flinch a little, then answered in a small voice.

“I’m scared…”

“Why?”

“Hypnosis… I’m afraid I’ll say weird things…”

“Oh, really? Is it just scary?”

After thinking for a moment at the counselor’s gentle voice, Isaiah mumbled.

“No… it’s a little nice too.”

“Oh, really? Why is it nice? What’s nice about it?”

“He called me Mr. Wiseman…”

“Do you like being called Mr. Wiseman?”

“Yes… it feels like we’re married…”

A shy smile spread across his face at the end of his sentence. I could see the hypnosis counselor desperately trying not to laugh.

The hypnosis counselor asked Isaiah a few minor questions related to me—if he was happy to come here with me, if I took good care of him, etc.—and then asked.

“Is there anything you want to say to Bran?”

Before the hypnosis counselor could even finish his question, Isaiah started to cry. And,

“Bran. I’m sorry for killing Irina.”

Words I never expected came out of his mouth.

“But, but if a similar situation happens, I’ll make the same choice again.”

He said, sobbing.

The sobs quickly turned into violent crying, and Isaiah soon began to cry like a child, apologizing profusely.

“I’m sorry. I was wrong… I’ll take my punishment.”

The hypnosis counselor comforted him while still asking questions in a calm voice.

“Why do you need to be punished, Isaiah?”

“Because I killed someone…”

“Do you have to be punished for killing someone?”

Isaiah nodded, panting.

“That’s, that’s a bad thing to do. Something you shouldn’t do… It, it goes against the Ten Commandments.”

“The Ten Commandments?”

“Yes. The Ten Commandments, something you have to keep… The Lord proclaimed that covenant to you and commanded you to keep it, the 6th commandment, you shall not murder.”

Even while panting heavily, he recited the words as they came out of his mouth.

“But, but I broke it. I broke it. So I have to be punished.”

“I see.”

The hypnosis counselor remained calm and composed until the end. And to calm Isaiah down, he tried to send him further back into the past. But Isaiah refused, crying.

“No, no. I don’t want to go.”

At his firm refusal, the hypnosis counselor gave me a nod. It meant that it would be best to stop here for today. After telling him which parts to delete from the counseling record, I left the hypnosis counseling room.

I was in a bad mood. It felt like something heavy was stuck in my throat. I thought about when I had felt this way before, and it was just last night. I had suffered from a similar unpleasant feeling all night after seeing him cry.

It wasn’t because I saw him crying again. People show all sorts of things when they’re in a hypnotic state. Especially those who have unspeakable pasts or dark childhood memories. It was only natural that he would cry.

I came here because there were things I wanted to know, even if it meant that. But instead of getting what I wanted, I felt like I had heard something completely unexpected. And it was something I didn’t really want to know. Or rather, something I shouldn’t know.

“Bran.”

Just as I was about to get a coffee because my mouth felt so bitter, Isaiah came out.

“Good job.”

I got up from the bench and approached him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Just okay. A little tired.”

“Is it because you talked a lot?”

“Maybe…”

Of course, Isaiah didn’t remember anything he had said during hypnosis. He didn’t even seem to know that he had cried. He said that this situation, where he had lost his memory again while already having amnesia, was ridiculous. He probably wanted to talk about frame narratives, but a strange word popped into my head.

“Mise en abyme, maybe.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s French. In our language, it’s something like a placement in the abyss. If you put two mirrors facing each other, an endless space appears inside.”

Abyss.

That’s right. What I had faced in the hypnosis counseling room was an abyss. The abyss of Isaiah Cole, of Lee. But what was reflected in that abyss…

“Isaiah.”

I stopped walking. It was because Isaiah had suddenly stopped in the middle of the hallway and started crying.

“I’m sorry.”

He apologized, crying. I was about to ask why, but I stopped. Looking at his expression, he didn’t seem to know why he was crying either. We decided to think that it was because his emotions had been heightened during the hypnosis examination. Even if it wasn’t, it was better to believe that. For his sake, and for mine.

After completing the brainwave test, Isaiah had a final consultation with Charlie. The consultation was longer than I expected. Still, when he came out of the consultation, Isaiah looked much more relieved.

On the other hand, Charlie had a very complicated expression. After sending Isaiah out and calling me into the consultation room instead, Charlie asked me if I had any ideas, and I told her about the Latino boy who lived next door to me.

“The kid who lived next door to you? Isaiah Diaz?”

“Not Diaz, Diez.”

“It seems like he’s imitating him.”

“A fugue isn’t about stealing someone else’s identity.”

“So it’s imitation.”

If it was a proper identity theft, his name would have to be the same, and above all, the story about the older brother who lived next door would have to come first, but since that was missing, it was just imitation.

“And you know, right? The purpose of a fugue is to escape from extreme stress, so even if you take on a new identity, you don’t remember anything about the source of the stress. It’s like your brain just cuts out that part of your memory.”

Charlie clicked her tongue, asking how I could have made him do something so dangerous. She seemed to believe that Isaiah had gone into a fugue because of the pressure of the huge task he had been given. So, she thought that he had designated me, his boss, as the main source of stress and cut me out of his memory. It was a plausible suspicion.