You're My Treasure

Chapter 6

There was nothing but darkness.

He was accompanied by no one in the vast room, except voices that sounded familiar. The voices rang a ton of bells, but Jim could never come up with the owner of the voice. Infuriated with his vain effort, he gave up. Instead, he sat down, and listened.

He listened to every sentence, every word, every syllable, to study it. The urge to learn the owner of the voice was still there, but for now, recording it mentally was the only thing he could do.

"Well, I am from the ... , if that even answers your question."

"I want to go out there, see what's here and there."

"Oh really? Silver did that? I suppose he still had a soft side."

"Jim... that was the best story I've heard in my entire life! It beats my old bedtime stories!"

"Ah... So I'll have a picture of myself in there!"

In the middle of his session, something urged him to leave the realm he's currently in. Something almost physical was bringing him back, something that made he end up peeling his eyes open.

That's the moment where he realized that he was back in his bedroom. The round window on his left was a path for the sunlight to reach his face. In an instance, he bolted right up.

"Those voices..." he muttered to himself.

And of course, he remembered none of them. He did remember memorizing every sentence, but his brain remembered nothing. The result immediately irritated him, but in the same time, emptiness 'filled' him.

When he was about to turn his head to see the window, a stinging pain prevented him from doing so. He tried to endure it by gritting his teeth and rubbing his head on his temple, but neither worked. The pain kept stinging, until it went away completely after a few seconds. Its sudden departure left the male confused.

"What was that all about—"

"JIM—BUDDY, THANK GOD!" Ben barged in from the door, but a hand pulled him away, and Sarah showed up.

"Jim! Oh my goodness..." she immediately joined him on his bed. She placed both of her hands on her son's face, cupping his cheeks. "Are you alright? What happened to you?"

"Mom, I'm alright, please just..." he tried to take off her hands while looking down, but Sarah shook him to lock her eyes onto his.

"NO! What happened in the beach? Did something terrible happen?"

"The beach? I..." The boy was certainly confused.

"Jim, I found you lying on the beach, unconscious! Your head was steaming hot when I laid my hand on it!" Ben briefly explained, sitting down on the bed. "I suspect it might be a really hard concussion, but you producing steam from your head is... well, what can I say? If a lightning had hit you on the head, then that might be the reason. But there hasn't been any rain in the past weeks!"

"My... head?" Jim ran his fingers through his hair. "I'm... not sure if I remember."

"You're telling me that you don't remember a thing?" Sarah tried to meet his son's eyes again, which were rolling from one direction to another in confusion.

"I don't think I do, mom."

"Were you meeting up with Ariel?" Ben placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Ariel?" Jim looked up to the robot. "Who's... Ariel?"

Ben and Sarah exchanged a look, both expressing shock.

"Don't joke around, Jim!" The navigator robot pushed him in a friendly way. "Your crush! Your friend who's a mermaid!"