Remember Me, Baby.
Chapters. 1: Prologue

Paris, June 2121.

Kinara Lee, I love you ....

Baby ....

Kinara, don't leave me. Please ....

I'll look for you in the next life. Wait me. Okay well?

“Akh!”

Andrew got up from his bed. His breathing was irregular, deep and stifled. The dreams and voices are back again. Everything is happening more and more and more clearly since last month. Almost every day the girl comes in her dreams. The little girl with round eyes was like a plain and innocent rabbit. However, this time he seemed to see the reflection of himself who was grieving for the girl. He is wrathful, roaring in pain and loss, also anger.

The young man sat on the edge of the bed and gruffly restored his hair. The pain feels real. It was as if he had just lost his soulmate. The pain that broke his heart.

“This is getting more and more absurd,” grumbled the young man while sighing deeply.

Andrew looked up, looking at the wall clock attached near the wardrobe. It's still 02:09, too early to do anything. However, he also knew he would not be able to continue his sleep again. Those voices and faces would haunt him all night if he tried to close his eyes again.

“Kinara Lee, you drive me crazy,” muttered Andrew while walking towards the mini bar next to the pantry. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a crystal glass, then walked back to his room.

Surrounded on the sofa next to the bed, Andrew Roux's face looked disheveled and confused. The face of the girl in his dream had appeared since .. somehow, he could not remember when the girl started to master the contents of his head. The girl was always present along with several other figures, mixed with some memories that felt clear as well as faint.

At first he thought it was his mother's face. However, as time went on, he realized their faces were much different. Photos of her late mother show the woman with reddish curls, while the girl in her dream has a shoulder-length black and straight hair.

Then, as he grew older, all of his other faces and memories faded from his memory. Only the rabbit-eyed girl remained. And, somehow his heart always pounded irregularly every time the girl approached him in a dream, as it is now ....

Andrew poured the whiskey into the glass and sipped it in one breath. A hot taste with a slightly bitter sensation burned his throat. He drank the liquid one more time before walking towards the cupboard and took out an iron suitcase from inside. It opened after Andrew hit a combination of numbers.

“Oh, has this much been?” he muttered slowly while taking out sheet by sheet painting from inside the suitcase.

The girl was laughing out loud against the background of the morning sunlight.

He was wearing an apron and making .. um, dumpling?

The girl smiled happily and stared at the sunset from the reanglala.

Unknowingly Andrew's lips curled when he saw one of the paintings as if he was grinning at him. Smile with great sincerity and love ....

Wait for. Love ...?

Andrew raised his hand and pressed against his left chest. It was like I had just finished a marathon. His heart was pounding, but it was comforting, soothing, and .. oh, he felt so loved. Isn't it weird and confusing? The young man really did not understand what was going on with him.

“Can I fall in love with someone I only met in a dream?” ask Andrew to himself. He very carefully put the paintings back in the suitcase and put them back in the closet.

Actually, he had once tried to talk about this with his father. As a result, instead of getting enlightenment, the man actually asked him to see a psychiatrist. When that doesn't work, he has to go through tens of “extremely boring evil spirit expulsion rituals”. Finally he just pretended already “healed” so as not to continue being forced to “purify himself”.

His father had no idea that the strange things that had happened to him had gotten worse lately. He therefore fled here, a small town about four hours drive from Paris. He had hoped that fresh air and a calm atmosphere could make him think clearly, but it made his vision clearer. Sometimes he can't even tell if what he remembers is only part of a dream or has actually been experienced.

The young man picked up a gray sweater and put it on before descending and walking towards the separate building he used as a gallery. It was already entering early summer, but the weather in Dinan city was still a little cold. The climate of the last few years has become more extreme.

Andrew's breath formed a wisp of white mist in the air. He turned the key and pushed the door open. The room instantly became bright when he pressed the switch button near the door.

“Yeah, I think I've gone crazy,” he said before taking canvas and acrylic paint from his storage cabinet.

Before long, the young man's fingers began to dance on a blank canvas, chalking out lines and colors like the image he had just seen in a dream.

Pine forest at the top of the hill. Silent and calm. The morning sun gleamed from the leaves, hitting a beautiful marble headstone. A man was fixated with a bouquet of flowers in hand, staring fixedly at the name on the gravestone: Kinara Lee.

Andrew's heart suddenly throbbed with pain as the loss ripped through his heart. His eye pellets were heating up and felt increasingly heavy, blurring his gaze. It was as if something extremely precious had just been uprooted from his soul.

I'll look for you in the next life. Wait me. Okay well?

The words spoken by the man who was very similar to him in the dream came back. Repetitively. It echoed in the eardrum and made his head throb violently. Until finally when an awareness hit his wits, he put all the equipment just like that and darted back to his room.

“This is all unlikely to happen, isn't it?” he muttered while turning on the laptop lying on the table.

The young man opened the internet and started typing in the search field: Is reincarnation real?

“Cannot really exist, ‘kan ..” he said again, look hesitant when pressing the enter button.

Andrew stared at the search results on the laptop screen and started clicking one by one the links that appeared. The young man read almost all related articles very carefully, tracing the statements of some people who stated they still remember their previous lives. Most are testimonies from parents and other family members of children about who they were in the past.

Suddenly everything made sense at once impossible. How could?

The young man cupped his hands to his head and pulled his hair. Totally confused. If the man in his dream was himself in the past, would he still remember the girl because of the promise he himself had made in his previous life?

“Kinara Lee, you are driving me absolutely crazy. Should I look for you ... Baby?”

Andrew took a deep breath and returned to pouring a glass of whiskey. He walked towards the balcony and leaned against the iron barrier. A golden orange glow appears on the eastern horizon. Suddenly it was like seeing herself and the girl near a lake, with a ring that glittered in the morning sunlight. However, when Andrew blinked, the shadow evaporated along with his breath in the air.

He looked up and swallowed all the alcohol in a glass to the toilet.

“In such a vast world, can I find you?” he muttered as he stared far away following the flow of the Rance river.

***