There was a logical explanation to everything.
That was how Yujie had been raised at the institution. "How?", "why?" and "what?" were questions she was used to answer with a rational and logical mind. 1 + 1 = 2, Hydrogen and two Oxygen molecules made water, neurons and electrons made us think and feel.
Yet, brilliant and intelligent as Yujie was, there was one problem she could not solve.
How did she end up like this?
Large almond shaped eyes stared back at Yujie as she once again touched the reflection cast in the window of the car.
The cityscape changed the further they drove, skyscrapers and busy intersections turned to houses that then turned to private villa roads and estates.
It had been two weeks since Yujie awoke again. She could still recall that crushing feeling of gravity, like heavy weights forcing her down. The second thing she felt, was the cold air forced down her lungs by the tubes inserted through her mouth and down her airpipes.
Her ears were ringing as her heartbeat sped up and adrenaline spread through her body. Yujie had always been a rational person, her rational mind told her this was life-support. A machine made to keep you alive, fake lungs to pump air into one's lungs and oxygen through the blood.
She understood the function of it, yet her sudden awakening still made her body react involuntarily.
Yujie's body reacted by instinct, even if her brain knew it was the wrong thing to do, she couldn't help but gasp for air yet as she tried to breathe the machine forced air out. She felt like she was suffocating, coughing and gasping as air once again was forced into her only to be taken out a short while after.
Her vision had turned blurry from the tears welling up from pain and fear, her arms were weak. She could barely lift her hand from the mattress, her body felt like it weighed a ton.
The warm dampened light stood contrast to the struggle happening in the hospital bed. Green lights at her side flashed and an insistent beeping followed soon after.
It hadn't taken long before a swarm of people had rushed to her. Doctors and nurses working quick and meticulously to take the tubes out and check her from head to toe.
Yujie, or rather, Li-Mei as the people around her called her now, had somehow turned into a different person. Impossible, she knew that. One did not just turn into someone else, not without plastic surgery or mind control and she knew both of those were not the case. And yet, the face in her reflection wasn't that of a woman in her 30's, it was a young girl, petite and weak.
A young girl whose name and features she recognised from a book she had been reading lately. Zhou Li-Mei, one of the antagonists of the book Soaring skies, a girl from the rich and prominent family of Chian, a large country in the book, that was the equivalent of the China Yujie knew.
"Read something, Yujie. And I don't mean dissertations or scientific papers. Go out, find some commercial crap catered towards women, and read it." The therapist was tapping at the papers in front of her with a long and lacquered fingernail.
"Read, and try to understand their behaviour, their emotions, and see what emotions you recognise from yourself. This will be the project we will work on from now on, understand?"
Yujie grew up in a research institution. Her mother had died alone during childbirth, and with no kin to take the child in, the hospital had transferred Yujie to an orphanage. As Yujie grew older, the orphanage quickly realised that she was different from the other kids, she learnt to speak and read faster and at a far advanced level than kids at her age should, it didn't take them long to find an institution that could take her in as the orphanage simply wasn't equipped or experienced enough to provide for Yujie's fast growing intelligence.
The institute provided for her well, other than being a gifted child they could mould as they wanted, it also gave them a chance to use her as a study case. Yujie had several degrees and doctorates before she even turned twenty. A perfect scientist – that was their aspiration, and they almost accomplished it had Yujie not decided to leave.
"Li-Mei? Honey?" A hand touched Yujie's arm ever so gently.
Yujie flinched and pressed herself against the door, as she turned and looked to her left.
A woman in her early 40's stared back at her. The woman retracted her hand to her chest, her eyes reddening for the third time.
Yujie knew this woman from memories she never experienced, in the memories the woman looked healthier and happier, not this skinny and fragile.
Zhou Mingli, the mother of Li-Mei, tried to compose herself. "We're home." The words were almost stuck in Mingli's throat. For six months she prayed for the moment to happen, waiting for the moment her daughter would open her eyes again, yet the look of fear in her daughter's eyes hurt more than anything else.
Still, she forced a smile back on her lips and pretended she didn't mind the changes, that her daughter's reaction didn't surprise her.