Hawking was about to do his homework when his mom knocked on his door. "I'm not hungry", Hawking said dismissively and took a pen from the pen cup and began writing.
Then, he heard his mum walk into his room. "I said I wasn't hungry mum", he said with ire. However, he didn't hear her leave. "This is the third time this week you've skipped dinner", Julie said.
"I know that you are going through a lot, but please honey, talk to me. I cannot help you if you don't just talk to me", Julie said with emotion.
Hawking stopped writing and dropped his pen on his notebook, before looking at his mum. "What should I talk about, huh? Is it the teacher that always pick on me? Or is it the fact that I cannot make any friends because of my amnesia?" Hawking forced himself not to cry, but his glistening eyes betrayed his emotions.
"Oh honey—", his mum was approaching him, but he made a stop gesture. "No, don't come closer. I don't want you, or anyone to be treating me like a baby, which I'm not", Hawking said, failing to control his wavering voice.
Julie stared at him with a heavy-hearted expression, before turning back to exit his room. Suddenly, Hawking felt bad for snapping at her like that.
He sighed and resumed writing. Great, he has forgotten what he was just doing.
He slammed the pen on the notebook and rubbed his forehead. He knew better than forcing them to come back to him.
According to his therapist, short naps sometimes help to remember the things he used to forget. And so far, it was working.
It was almost seven, which meant that if he slept for thirty minutes, hopefully, everything would come back to him. He set his phone's timer to thirty minutes.
Then, he lay on his bed and closed his eye.
Thoughts about his school began to return to him, but he shook them away. Nothing about that damn school is what thinking about.
Except for that one girl, Sophie. She wasn't in his class. She was a seventh-grader, who once came to his class to return the bag he forgot in gym class.
It wasn't her features that attracted him, although she was exceptionally beautiful. Her long blonde hair, her blue eyes, her smooth, white skin—
Hawking could keep naming more. It wasn't all that. She was the only one in the whole school who approached him without ill intentions. The way she smiled at him, advising him to always take deep breaths so that he recalls more frequently.
Hawking found himself smiling for no reason. Of course, he had no chance with her. No one would date a nerd with a memory disorder. He had to face that bitter truth every day.
Sighing, he shoved her face out of his mind and focused deeply. He took two deep breaths and whoosh.
"And the formula, which is E=mc2".
What? Hawking opened his eye and looked around. What was that? That thought just came out of his head. For all he knew, he had absolutely no interest in physics. How that sentence popped into his head was what intrigued him.
Suddenly, there was a flash, and his body stiffened. "Arrgh!" Hawking yelped in pain and held his head.
Damn this headache. Hawking gritted his teeth and stood from his bed and reached out for the painkillers.
Then, another flash, and another one again. "Arrh!" He screamed in pain and dropped the medicine on the floor. This is not normal.
Usually, the headaches plagued him at least once a week, but this one was plaguing him concurrently.
Holding his head in pain, he grabbed the dropped medication and swallowed it without drinking any water.
But the headaches didn't stop. It was developing from a thumping headache to a migraine.
Hawking kept seeing flashes of memories of people he hadn't met before. They were speaking German, but somehow, he was able to understand them. But the pain wasn't letting him focus.
He held his head tightly and endured the stabbing pain. What the hell?!
Then, he blacked out.
* * * * * * * * * *
A white-haired man climbed down from a ladder that rested on a big, blackboard, and grabbed chalk. Then, turning around, he faced the five-hundred students looking intently at him.
"Now, take a look at this on the board. It's very simple actually. Reality", the white-haired man said, then he smiled. "What makes reality, reality? What makes you believe that what you see in fact, is real and not just a dream?"
No one raised up a hand. The white-haired man raised his eyebrow and turned his gaze to another section of the class. "I guess we cannot know, because we are all born in this 'reality' that we know of.
"As you all know, our solar system is made up of nine planets, and somehow, the earth is placed in a place that was just right for life to form. Not only that…", the white-haired man raised a finger and continued.
"The sun is a big ball of fire, but unlike the solar systems we've observed, solar flares do not attack this blue ball, so tell me, what made all this happen? Could it be by chance, as many scientists claimed?"
Again, no one answered. However, most began jotting down words on their books. Then, the bell rang, and the students took their bags and left the hall. "Think about this, that would be your assignment", the professor said and packed his books.
He left the hall and headed for his office. Sitting down on the study table, he adjusted the paraffin-powered lamp until he was bright enough for the words on the books scattered across the table to be legible.
Then, his face became complicated. He took out a notebook from the piles and looked at it intently. "It cannot be", he said with an ominous tone. He looked around warily, before closing the book.
Without thinking further, he isolated the book and placed it in his briefcase, then put the briefcase under the study table. "No one should ever know about this", he finally said, before walking out of the office, leaving the bag, under the table.