James turned off the screen of his smartphone and sighed deeply. He looked at the time, which was an hour after midnight. "Great, there goes my planned rest. Thanks a lot, Andy" James sighed as he laid his back and closed his eye.
After beastkiller@001 told him to wait till tomorrow to call a gamer he knew, James did not have any business on the game, so he promptly close it and wanted to turn off his smartphone, but a message lighten up the screen. James read it and saw it was from Andy. "Thank you very much for playing. I promise not to disturb you again. See you on Saturday."
James did not know what to say other than sending a like emoji and powering off his smartphone. He then rested his head on the pillow and rested.
Ten minutes later, James became bored of laying on the bed without doing anything. His brain was in a frenzy because it was idle. "Oh my god brain sleep please!" James pleaded silently. He had indeed missed sleep a lot. As much as his amnesia gave him the ability to do more things without fatigue, he was still a human after all, and he enjoyed the feeling of waking up after a good night rest.
James could not stand it anymore, so he climbed out of his bed and left his room with his laptop and a hard drive. He sat down on the small balcony and powered on his laptop. 'If I can't sleep, then I will force my brain to sleep.' James planned to study the components of the SSD non-stop throughout the night until his brain would be fatigued.
An hour passed, and James was still reading and watching embedded videos, but his mind showed no signs of fatigue, which made James disappointed. He focused harder, and even went ahead and enabled night mode.
Two hours passed, and James had gained a lot from his research. With his rapidly firing synapses, his brain absorbed all the information like a sponge until James finished the entire tutorial on SSD basics.
With his newly-gained knowledge, James can locate problems and fix any hard drive related problems, but that was not what James planned to do. He then proceeded to switch the lesson to intermediary lesson tutorial—the lesson that delve deeper into the internal functions and workings of a hard drive.
James was so engrossed with the lesson that he forgot that he wanted to stress his brain. 'Oh my god, this is awesome' James thought wildly. He appeared like a person who had won the lottery. Having this knowledge was a lottery though, although not many people view it as such.
While James was still studying, he felt all his emotions disappear, and his face went blank instantly. "What the hell?" James asked nonchalantly. James tried to be surprised, but it appeared that his emotions were shackled.
'Why did this happen now. It's been eleven months with no issues, why now?' James asked himself. As he pondered over it, he realized what happened. Anytime his emotions were intense, it caused him to lose them.
The last time that happened was when Martha said to his face that he hated him that this unusual event happened. Now it was because he was very happy that broke his emotion.
Although James was very slightly sad about it, he could not do anything about it, so he slowly and steadily continued his lesson without smiling. His mind then wandered to Martha. How was she?
For some reason, Maribel did not want him to visit the family. It was not that they died anyway, so why did they not want him to visit them for once.
Before James left them, John went rabid, and Martha was mentally broken. What if, John was sent to a psychiatric hospital or something. It was just a hypothesis, but it might be true, and that was the reason Maribel was preventing the visitation of the family, or on the other hand, why they had not visited him either.
James shook those thoughts away when it was not helping with his studying, and focused on what he was currently learning.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
James smartphone buzzed repeatedly, and he immediately touched the screen to silence it. It was morning already? James opened his blackout curtain, and the sunlight poured in, brightening the room instantly.
James immediately closed the lid of his laptop put on his socks wore his sleeping gown and loosed his eye. Just after he eye shut closed his door suddenly opened.
"Wake up James and prepare for school. Oh my, I forgot you can't sleep, so don't trick me, mister." Maribel said with a friendly smile. James opened his eyes and stared at her. However, he could not smile back, thanks to his dead emotions.
But he did not want to make things awkward, so he curled his lips and showed his teeth, albeit strangely. Maribel's face turned into confusion and she laughed. "What's wrong with you James? Come on stop joking around. Go take your bath" she said and walked out of the room with a smile plastered on her face. The gift worked, she thought in her mind.
James groggily removed the sleep gown he wore and wrapped a towel around his waist. He then went to the bathroom and cleaned himself. A few minutes later, he came out of the bathroom dripping wet and proceeded to dry himself.
Then a sound came out from his school bag, alerting James instantly. "What was that?" James voiced out. He dropped the towel he was using to clean himself and waited for whatever was in his bag to make another sound.
Again, a static sound came out of his bag. It sounded for two seconds, before stopping. James wanted to know what was making that sound, but he could not risk his life and check.
What was inside my bag? James had a question mark on his head. He tried to remember all of his bag's content. There were two books, one textbook and another a notebook. There was a pen and a pencil that he borrowed from Ana on Friday, and a calculator. That was all, so what the hell was making that static sound?
It could not be that someone intentionally planted a device that spied on him or worse, try to harm him, James thought of this possibility. James threw caution to the wind and approached the bag and opened it.
Suddenly he froze.