4316 The Other Side 285

"He told you then that she was your big sister, so you believed him?'

"Yeah. Later, though, I began to doubt what he said."

"Why?"

"Back then, people treated me like a sick person. I hated getting those looks, but gradually, I realized I was really sick. Sometimes, I'd sleep for a long, long time. When I was asleep, there'd be entries made in my diary. When I woke up, the calendar would have been turned to the next page. Sometimes, I couldn't even tell if I was in a dream or reality. I'd feel as if my body was occupied by another person, and that person was Natalisa."

Natalia was a child, after all. Her ability to organize her words was not superb, but it was also clear from what she said that she had many questions about the state of her being.

"I actually sensed that something was wrong with me a long time ago. I even realized that the professor used me as an experimental subject."

"An experimental subject?"

"Uh huh. He seemed to be experimenting on me." Natalia added, "So, when Alice wanted to take me with her, I resisted for a while because I thought the both of them belonged to the same camp! I thought she must have wanted to take me with her so that she could use me for experiments too."

The actor had gleaned many crucial clues from her words. "Wait. You said you suspected the professor was experimenting on you. How did you come to that conclusion?"

Natalia turned to the actor, her eyes flashing. He could see that she was weighing her options, evaluating whether she should believe him. Trust did not come easily for her. She must be struggling within, whether to trust him. He started to get nervous. Just when he suspected Natalia would never trust him enough to tell her everything, she sighed.

"I trust you. So, I'll tell you what I know. I'll tell you all my secrets. You're not to tell them to anyone!"

"Uh huh!"

Natalia began to relate her story.

It turned out that Alice and Hua Jin weren't the only ones who had discovered the secret on the calendar. Even Natalia had.

She had the habit of keeping a diary. But, unlike the others, she didn't enjoy keeping a journal. She used her diary to record the times that she occupied the body. Sometimes, she would mark her bedside with a floral sticker. Other times, she would secretly write the day's events and dates on the floor under her bed. It was an extremely hidden corner that few people would notice.

Later, she concluded, she would sometimes fall asleep for three or four days in a row. And when she was asleep, the calendar was always marked with a circle.

Every day, Professor Romanka would come to her room to look through the calendar.

She couldn't help but suspect that this change in her body had something to do with Professor Romanka. At one point, Natalia tried a sneaky trick. She dug through the drawer and found an identical calendar. When she woke up, she secretly changed the calendar and circled the day's date with a marker.

She realized that perhaps there were two versions of herself in her body. One was her immediate self, and the other was perhaps beyond even her own control. So, pretending that it was Natalisa who had woken up, she checked the reaction of those around her.