Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 222. Play

I smiled in self-mockery.

I hadn’t even looked at my leg since coming back, not to mention paying any attention to it.

She moved her game piece, and I followed, while the silence stretched comfortably. If she had asked me to envision myself cutting my leg off, I wouldn’t feel as relaxed anymore.

"We need the information you have," she said, earning herself a game piece.

"Parallel worlds." I stated dryly.

"Yes. How about their occupants?"

"Partly humans, partly monsters."

"Are the monsters dangerous to our world?"

I made a move on the game board.

"Is every animal dangerous to a human? No, but that doesn’t mean that every animal is safe to be around."

She nodded.

"Is your ability inborn or acquired?"

"Inborn."

"Can it be acquired?"

"No." Maybe through merging or leveling up, but I won’t say that.

"What can we do to make you trust us? We want data on your ability."

I didn’t answer, so she continued.

"We need more information; don’t you understand? If you stay silent to avoid anything happening to you, then you could deny us the chance to stop all of this from happening."

I took two of her game pieces from the board.

"Someone I met, someone who is dead now, could open and close portals between the worlds. He could do so without any violence and without any apparent consequences."

"How?"

"When he was a child, he fell. This fall caused an unnoticed tumor inside his head to swell and press against his pineal gland. From that moment on, he was able to see more than others could."

She leaned back and fumbled on her lower lip for some time, thinking.

"Pineal gland?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"It is a small part of the human brain. Spiritually speaking, it is said to be connected to the ’third eye.’ It is said that every human has this ’third eye’, but as long as it isn’t opened, there will be nothing out of the ordinary."

"And if it is opened?" I asked, leaning back as well.

"Maybe your dead friend was the first person who had found out." She smiled lightly.

Not a friend, a part of me.

"Thank you for giving me this information."

"No problem," I said, before we continued to play in silence.

Needless to say, I won the game, yet she won information that nobody but me could provide her with.

The lesson was soon over, and the psychologist was happy with what she had acquired. They would now surely test what I had told them, maybe even with success, but surely at the cost of human lives, of failed experiments that nobody would care about.

I really tried to feel any compassion or guilt, but there was just so damn much to feel guilty about that this small thing didn’t seem to matter anymore.

I am just fucking clueless about how much I can disclose.

How much can I tell them?

I don’t know; what I do know, however, is that these weren’t worries that a seventeen-year-old should have.

However, maybe it was exactly the torment that each of my decisions would bring me as a consequence of my counterpart’s wrongdoings.

Nothing is more taxing than navigating blindly, knowing full well that each of your steps could result in the deaths of others or in your own.

I slid to the floor beside the door Henry had disappeared into, waiting for him to finish his counseling or whatever.

Placing my head on my knees, I touched my left leg.

’What are you doing hurting, buddy? Calm down; you are fine.’

I patted it like I would a broken car that was acting up and didn’t move from the spot before rolling my eyes at my own behavior.

Eventually, Henry’s door opened.

"How did it go?" He asked me, pulling me up by my wrist.

"The walls are still intact, and on your side?" I glanced inside the room he came out from, where a scrawny man with glasses dabbed sweat from his forehead.

"Pffft, did you behave?" I looked back at Henry, who laughed and was checking his smartwatch to see where we had to go next before hugging my neck and leading me to the elevator.

"I always behave." He answered cheekily.

"Sure you do."

"I just didn’t want to talk, so I kept silent." Henry pressed the button for the fourth floor.

"Nice. I won against the lady in checkers."

"Oh? You can play?"

"Checkers is easy enough; everyone can play it."

"I want to play with you." His eyes sparkled unsettlingly. Was there a childhood memory he didn’t get to make and wanted to replicate now?

"Sure, I’ll ask her for the game next time." I chuckled.

"Now that we are in the same room, have a schedule and lessons to attend, and plan to play games—isn’t this like a real college?"

"Mhm, it starts to feel a bit like it." Henry grinned happily down at me.

The elevator door opened, and we walked to another room where chairs were again screwed to the floor in a circle.

I exchanged a glance with Henry, contemplating if it was a situation that warranted a timely stomachache because I didn’t want to participate in group therapy so soon again. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

When the room filled, an older man entered. Seeing that it was not the crazy psychologist from yesterday, I relaxed and discovered that he was the breathing teacher.

Because Henry and I were new, he introduced the whole topic to us, saying that there was a reason pregnant women were taught different breathing techniques, and so were soldiers, special forces, etc. This reason was that you could influence your thoughts, your mind, and your brain and body with the way you took and let go of air.

That got me interested, so I really liked his lesson.

The next one was something similar to what they do in offices, team building-like. Each of us even chose a partner, mine was naturally Henry, to let themselves fall.

With Henry standing behind me, there was not a second of hesitation as I leaned back and waited for his strong arms to catch my body.

When we switched places, Henry leaned back to free-fall even before the doctor had finished counting down, as if he was looking forward to being caught by me.

I hugged him from behind and lifted him up, watching his delighted expression.

"You wanna to do that again?" I asked with a laugh.

"Yeah." He straightened up, and without warning, nearly toppled over me.

"Dumb dog..." I caught him and ruffled his hair.

Such lessons, amusing me and my dog, weren’t so bad.

Most of all, these moments where I laughed and played really did wonders in making me look forward to death a little less.