Nethersky - Chapter 4

Death felt comforting to him; the endless void of darkness was peaceful. He knew he was in the afterlife that his life had ended, but he wasn’t as sad as he should have been about it.

Instead, the only thing he felt was peace. It was as if when he separated from his mortal coil, it also separated him from any worries he once had.

A smile appeared on his ghostly visage as he explored the darkness; it was as if his memories were dulled to the point where he could only feel echoes of their refrain. He didn’t feel anger, sadness, or any negative emotion. He only felt calmness, safety, and peacefulness in a way he had never felt before.

‘Is this what death is like?’ He wondered as his body began to float in a sea of nothingness. As he drifted, his spirit started to feel as if it was being cleansed, and more and more of his memories, both good and bad, were fading away.

He doesn’t know how long since he started floating on that dark sea, it could have been days, weeks, months, years, even decades, but what he did know was that if he could, he wanted to stay forever. This serenity that he felt was truly blissful.

It was that state of bliss that made him realize that this couldn’t last forever, and he was correct. A sudden force pulled him from the peaceful darkness and dragged him to the harshness of the light. He could finally understand the words he heard in a fleeting memory of an older man talking to him: ‘Death isn’t painful, but life is, to live is to experience pain.’

The white place was equally as empty as the darkness, but the difference was that he didn’t feel that peacefulness as he felt before. What he felt was sadness. Memories that he long had forgotten in the darkness started to assault his mind with the forcefulness of a hammer.

Thoughts and feelings that were long buried deep within himself started pouring towards the surface. One by one, different emotions began to assault his senses; happiness, gratefulness, hurt, disappointment, regret, all came back to him as if they never left.

The memories that were suppressed started to project themselves outward, and it felt as if he were reliving them all over again. Memories of his kidnapping became more prominent; observing these memories, he remembered his parent’s actions towards his captivity and the dormant bitterness that resided in him resurfaced.

He watched his memories with his therapist, who he always thought of as an older brother. Yuning felt regretful that he would never be able to express his thanks for all the man done for him.

Other memories of his parents came back to him, and as he watched them with new eyes, he realized that they were more loving to him than he thought at the time. He always thought it was guilt that made them act that way but seeing it now, he understood that it was just pure love radiating from their eyes.

Sadness came upon him, for he knew that he would never be able to see his parents again. Death was final, and there was no way to return to the living; Yuning began to weep silently at the realization.

Regret kept building up in him more and more until he didn’t know how to control it, he wanted to live, but Yuning knew that it was too late for that now. Just as he was about to scream out in sadness, a desperate voice that sounded like his own ranged in his head.

‘I shouldn’t have done it!! Why did I do it I don’t want her to die as well!’

As quickly as the voice appeared, it was gone, and new memories that were not his own started to flow into his brain. They held strange things that he couldn’t even begin to imagine existing, but because of these new memories pouring into his brain, he wasn’t frightened.

These wondrous things began to distract him until he saw the main point of the memories.

In these memories, there was a boy who looked similar to him down to the tiny black mole that was above his lip. Oddly enough, the boy also had the exact same name as him.

The other Yuning grew up with extremely loving parents that doted on him and his younger sister from what he could see. His parents were also a loving couple; his father was a factory worker, who was in charge of the machinery’s upkeep, while his mother worked from home as a virtual assistant.

At the age of ten, the other Yuning got really sick and had to be rushed to the hospital; it was there that his parents learned their son had throat cancer. Although, it was curable since the cure for cancer had already been found during the time period that the other Yuning lived in.

The only problem was that the income the other Yuning parents received from their jobs wasn’t nearly enough to pay for their son’s cure. When they learned this, they were devastated, but they discovered a treatment called YerBa that they could afford.

YerBa was a drug that could slow down cancer’s harmful effects on the body. Their plan was to use these treatments until they had saved enough to pay for the real cure.

Although the treatments worked in slowing down the other Yuning’s throat cancer, it had already affected his voice. At first, the other Yuning was still able to speak with some difficulty, but he became completely mute at the age of eleven.

As the memories kept going, Yuning saw that the parents of the other Yuning became distraught over their son’s muteness, but they still tried their best to help him cope with it. Together as a family, they learned sign language by taking virtual classes together, and when their youngest child Mei-yin was old enough, they taught it to her as well.

The memories jumped seven years, and Yuning could see how the other Yuning’s family supported him in every way they could. After seeing how hard his parents were working to cure him, the other Yuning became determined to help out in any way he could.

He studied really hard and became the top student in his class; he also helped out around the house by learning to cook so his parents could have a nice hearty meal ready for them when they were done with work.

He even tried to get a part-time job, but his parents forbade him to do so. They knew because of the cancer he had, he was prone to tiring easily, and they were aware that there would be no way he would be able to handle having a part-time job while also going to school.

It was a few weeks after the other Yuning eighteenth birthday when there was finally good news. His parents had almost saved up enough money to pay for his cure, they only needed $500 more, and they would be able to take him to the hospital to get it.

This came right on time because they were hiding something from their son. They didn’t think the boy knew, but one day the other Yuning overheard the doctor speaking to his parents about how over time, the treatment he was getting would become less effective, and soon it would stop working altogether.