novelraw Chapter 197: Memory
Chapter 197: Memory
Stanley felt a weird sense of dissociation between what he saw and what he felt. The memories he was being shown were from when he was an infant, but seeing it from the eyes of an adult was definitely one of the weirder experiences he was having.
"Mother!" he spoke, but no words came out. He looked at the face of the young Yelena, barely any older than 20.
’So young,’ he thought, feeling a sense of melancholy at seeing his own mother. He had never realized how young his mother had been when she had given birth to him. He had only ever seen her as someone strong that he could rely on.
To think she was once such a frail young woman that had to take care of him, it was certainly a weird feeling.
He heard the sound of a child crying. They were his own.
"Aw, you took a dump. Haha, wait a second," he heard his mother say. "Bradley, look after your brother. I’ll go get some fresh towels"
"Oki!" a young voice spoke as a head barely peered through the top of the cradle, his tiny hands struggling to reach Stanley.
Stanley reached out with his own hands, not because he wanted to touch his brother’s hands, but simply because the infant wanted to grab the thing that moved.
"Tantan!" Bradley called out to him. "Wan zu pray?"
Stanley continued crying. He could remember the feeling of discomfort around his head from the lumpy pillow, the feeling of heat and wetness in his pants, and the general feeling of hunger he felt.
Bradley moved around his arm, saying something, but Stanley couldn’t make out much of it. From what he could see, Bradley was around 3 or so years old and still hadn’t managed to properly speak out his words.
"Yes, yes, I’m back," Yelena spoke, coming back. She picked Stanley up, giving him a better view of the house before laying him on a sheet where she changed his diapers.
Stanley could feel what the young him felt, but his adult mind was focused on the rest of the things.
His house looked new, which he could see in the evening light. Newer than it had been from how he remembered it. He looked at his mother’s young face and his brother’s face as well.
After replacing his diaper, his mother held him in her embrace and moved around. "Hmm~ Hmm~" she hummed in a small tone to calm him down.
Stanley looked at the many other things in the house. He could only see how empty it was. The wooden house had barely anything other than a cradle, a small chair, a place to keep their clothes, and a few sleeping mats on the ground.
"Hmm~ Hmm~" she hummed, but Stanley’s cries didn’t lower at all. It was unlikely that it would lower anytime soon, and Stanley himself knew it.
After all, he was hungry.
He couldn’t ask for milk, so all he could do was cry. However, his mother knew why he was crying so she quickly started feeding him.
’This is my memory?’ Stanley thought. ’I had something like this in my mind all this time?’
He couldn’t help but feel a bit happy about it, and also a little sad. He was sad, not because he had forgotten this memory, but rather because he was going to lose it.
With how young he was currently, being at most 2 years old, there was absolutely no chance that he was ever going to remember any of this on his own. So, while it was sad that he was going to lose it, he was only a little sad.
He smiled, in his heart, as the memory of who he had been in the past, how his mother had treated him, and how his brother had been playful, all played slowly, reminding him of the past that he no longer had.
Still, for what little time he had, he enjoyed this blissful memory.
Yelena fed Bradley too, who started telling her he was hungry too. After a while, she let down Stanley, who stood on his own legs and reached out for her.
"Go play with your brother, Stanley," Yelena said. "I need to prepare dinner."
"Mama!" Stanley heard his own voice call out to Yelena.
Yelena simply smiled and waved before turning around. Bradley grabbed Stanley’s hands and pulled him toward the corner where there were large blocks of rounded wood pieces made to be played by the children.
Stanley soon found himself lost there and only looked away when a large sound startled the two brothers.
They quickly looked around to see Yelena rush into the room and stand in front of them with her back faced against them.
In front of them was a middle-aged man in his mid-30s, who looked drunk and was tipsy enough that he could barely see anything.
"Go away!" Yelena cried out. But the man showed no signs of listening to her at all.
’What’s going on?’ Stanley wondered. He panicked even, wanting to run in front of her mother to help her, but he couldn’t move his body at all. This was a memory and the things that were going to happen here had already happened in the past.
Stanley calmed himself a bit and looked at the man for a few moments before understanding a few things about him. Aside from being in his late 30s, the man had short black hair and wore clothes that could not belong to any Dull.
It was unwrinkled and expensive looking with no patchwork that was common for a Dull to wear.
’What was a man from the upper quadrants doing here?’ Stanley wondered.
"How could you have not told me?" the man shouted. "How... could you... have kept him from me?"
Stanley was even more confused now.
"You’re not taking him away!" Yelena said with tears in her eyes.
"Hah! Do you think you can stop me from taking my own son?" he shouted.
’Son?’ Stanley’s eyes widened. Was this... their father?