"You don’t know!" He abruptly interrupted her, "Those memories can never be replaced." His eyes inadvertently closed, his face pale, resisting the scenes flashing again in his mind, "Do you think a child, constantly whipped by his own mother; with his head forced into cold water, water surging in through his ears and nostrils, those memories of suffocating death, how could they ever be replaced?"
Mabel Quinn felt all the hair on her body stand on end. Is this... Kyle’s memory? Is that... the memory of Kyle Kinston’s childhood birthday?
"Mother would hysterically scream, why were you born, why are you alive, why don’t you just die..." His voice continued in a low murmur, but each word was like a sharp blade, piercing her eardrums.
Her nose felt a sting, and her eyes were already shrouded in a layer of mist. She didn’t know... she didn’t know his memories were so painful, yet earlier, she had spoken so lightly, thinking it was easy to replace those so-called ’bad’ memories of his.
"Mabel, tell me, can these memories be replaced?" Those pitch-black phoenix eyes stared steadily at her.
Tears rolled in her eyes. She sobbed, and the tears fell drop by drop, yet she didn’t know how to answer him.
She had never experienced such things, but she understood, just how profound such memories could be, especially when the person who did those things was his biological mother.
He suddenly gave a self-mocking smile, looking down at their interlocked hands, "Do you know when my mother would laugh heartily?"
She was stunned, not understanding why, but she saw him slowly loosen his fingers, stepping back, one step... two steps...
His expression suddenly turned pained, veins popped up on his forehead, his body convulsed, his hands clawed at himself, even the tendons on the back of his hand and neck stood out, his throat bobbed violently, and the phoenix eyes were ferocious enough to frighten.
At that moment, for no reason, he seemed like a tortured humanoid beast, making her feel that if she got close, she would be torn to pieces by him.
"K-Kyle..." she stammered. She had seen him in this painful state before. What exactly was going on? Why did he suddenly become ? Was his old ailment acting up again?
"It’s... this appearance... Seeing me ... It’s what made my mother smile," he struggled to say, speaking with the last bit of reason he had left.
The pain in his body spread so quickly, sweeping over him like a storm, driving him to madness. This was the Kinston Family’s Blood Curse, passed down from generation to generation.
Whenever the full moon appeared, his pain would flare up, and his mother would laugh and say, "Good, you’ve inherited this Blood Curse too, so you will suffer like your father did each time on this day! But you won’t find your life’s anchor; you are destined to live a lonely life!"
A lonely life... just like a curse his mother placed on him.
Suddenly, another pair of hands embraced him, and the pain in his body receded like the tide. A voice choked with emotion whispered by his ear, "I will help replace those memories for you, no matter how many years it takes, ten years, twenty years? Or thirty, forty years... Someday, they will be replaced! Kyle, you were born, you are alive... to meet me, to make me fall in love with you! So, you didn’t die!"