Trust yourself

Chapter 12

Li Chi came out of the therapist's office, absent-minded and upset. He wandered around the city until he came across a gym, so he went in and signed up for it, and then he worked out on sports equipment until he was exhausted, then he left.

He went home, prepared his meal, and sat down to eat while still thinking about what the therapist said. He needs to interact with regular people, enrol in college, and learn something new to distract himself from his bothersome thoughts.

After he finished his meal, he went to the laptop to watch the camera recording to see what was happening inside Mandolin's apartment. He hoped that Mandolin had passed in front of the window or peeked through it, but he saw a man who appeared in front of the window, He was moving comfortably in the room, so he thought that Mandolin now had a boyfriend, and he had come to live with her. Li Chi got angry, closed the laptop, and threw himself on the bed to go to sleep. But he got up again and paced the room back and forth before opening the laptop again and starting a game on it to keep himself occupied, but he was irritated and could not continue, so he left the device and threw himself back on the bed; this time he fell asleep and dreamed that he had gone to Mandolin's apartment. He broke down the apartment door and entered to find the man sleeping next to her on the bed. They both awoke, terrified from their sleep, and jumped on either side of the bed. Mandolin turned to the light switch and lit the lamp beside the bed, while the man stood staring at Li Chi, who pointed his knife and turned towards him. So the man jumped from the floor to the bed to cross to the other side, pulling his trousers off the edge of the bed as he ran, and then quickly ran out of the apartment. While Mandolin did not move from her place, when Li Chi reached in front of her, he threw the knife from his grasp and pulled her by the waist with one arm while supporting her head with the other, saying,

"You are mine." "No one will ever take you from me."

Then he kissed her violently on the lips while she was resisting his attempts and tried to push him away from her. So he carried her to the bed, then laid on her and fixed her arms with his hands while he kissed her neck and cheek. She completely surrendered and stopped resisting or reacting to his touches. She became cold. He shouted,

"Don't do that."

Then he grabbed her chin to look into her eyes, but she closed them, so he strangled her neck, shouting, "Stop that!"

Another version of Li Chi appeared in the corner, imprisoned behind bars and yelling at the Li Chi who was strangling Mandolin's neck,

"Leave her, stop it, what are you doing?"

while shaking the bars with his hands but being unable to break free, while the other Li Chi tightens his grip around the mandolin's neck and doesn't hear his clone's words and doesn't realise that he was killing her, And when he realised himself and let go of her neck, he realised that he had killed her, so he and his clone cried out at the same moment: "No," and he woke up in his bed covered in sweat with his hands convulsed in a stranglehold position, so he took a bottle of water and drank from it, and went to the camera and looked through it at mandolin's window. Then he went back to his bed to sleep.

But he dreamed again that he could feel the touch of Mandolin's cheek on his cheek, smell the scent of her hair, move his cheek softly on her cheek, kiss her forehead, her eyes, and her nose until he reached her lips and touched them lightly but passionately while Mandolin, who appeared to be sleeping, accepted his touches in a dreamy interaction until he put his hand around her waist, she opened her eyes, and she began to push him away from her. But he clung to her, so she pulled her face away. He surrounded her head tightly with his arm, placed his mouth over her ear, and whispered to her,