Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 221. Session

I put my plate down and grabbed cutlery from the little basket on the table.

"How was your first night?" Anti-Guy asked me the same question.

"Fine," I answered again and watched Henry beside me digging in, his eyes always flicking to me.

"I know her lessons seem strange, but it really helps." Anti Guy spoke, apparently, of the psychologist from yesterday.

"What helped you?"

"Imagining myself killing my weaker self."

I chuckled.

"Wasn’t the old premise to embrace yourself with all your faults and insecurities?"

I stabbed the roasted chicken with my fork. I hadn’t thought they would serve stuff like this for breakfast.

"Yes, maybe what she told us is helping because it is not the same old thing you see in self-help books." Chelsea smiled, eating her salad like a bird after sweeping a plate of roasted chicken into it.

"You spoke about perks and prizes yesterday?" I pointed with my fork at Anti-Guy.

"Oh yeah! There are contests where the best one can win something. Last time, it was a brand-new phone."

"What was the contest like?" I asked while chewing, when Henry flicked my temple.

"Don’t speak while chewing." He chuckled, and I felt awfully reminded of some old dragon.

"The last time, it was weightlifting," Chelsea answered.

I swallowed my food.

"Not bad." I nodded while continuing,

"If you do it like this, you’ll see how the participants respond to rewards and simultaneously test and increase the boundaries of their abilities without fearing that they are holding back."

Anti-Guy, Glasses Guy, Red-Hair, and Chelsea all turned to look at me.

"Do what you want, just be careful," I said, concentrating on eating again.

Though, what did it matter? If the apocalypse happened, this center and a possible career as a soldier could be the best and safest path for every one of them.

"What are the rest of the lessons like?" Henry asked all of a sudden.

Chelsea looked at Anti-Guy and Glasses Guy for a moment before telling us,

"Sports, psychological counseling in private sessions and group sessions, art, spiritual guiding, experimenting..." She paused, apparently noticing how sketchy that sounded, especially the last part.

"Concentration improvement, attention directing, breathing techniques, how to overcome physical and mental pain..." Glasses Guy continued for her, pushing his plate away as if he had lost his appetite.

"Mhm, got it." Henry glanced at me before he turned back to eating.

The table fell silent for the rest of the meal before we all stood up and put our plates at the station for the used ones.

Henry stared at his smartwatch unhappily.

"Room 113, and you?"

I tapped my watch.

"Room 114."

"The psychological counseling," Chelsea said uncomfortably.

"It helped me cope..."

"I didn’t say this place won’t help you; just don’t follow every one of their words blindly." I searched for her gaze.

I don’t even know enough to accurately judge this center in the first place.

"Just be careful. If you feel like they say or do something that is wrong, then don’t feel forced to accept it."

She smiled worriedly, and Henry put his arm around my neck, steering me out of the dining room.

"Should we come up with something so that they won’t separate us?" He asked, bending down to me.

"No. Something like this will happen sooner rather than later. You are in the room next door, so if a doctor flies through the wall, it’s your sign that I am unhappy."

He chuckled. "Roger. Then we’ll leave immediately."

"Are we too paranoid?" I looked up at him.

"There is no ’too paranoid’ in the apocalypse." He spoke so convincingly that I stopped thinking about it.

"Mhm." I looked at the door numbers that spread left and right in the large corridor outside of the dining room, and when we got closer, I would have preferred to turn and go back to sleep.

"See ya," I said to Henry standing at my side, not loosening his hold on me.

"Mhm." He still didn’t move when I knocked on the door.

It soon opened, a young blonde woman in a white coat standing in the doorway.

"Mr. Howard?" she asked, and I nodded.

Henry still didn’t let go, eyeing the woman with what seemed to be annoyance until I elbowed him.

The doctor made space, motioning for me to enter, which I did.

There was one prominent seat inside the room, her seat, and three others placed around it. A leather seat, a lounge a bit away, and a rocking chair at the end of the room.

I suppressed a laugh and went for the leather chair.

This situation reminded me of the giant’s psychological counseling when he was still a kid—the similarly looking blonde psychologist, the room, and her words that matched perfectly.

About this being a safe place and I could talk about what I wanted to discuss.

"What do you want to play?" She pointed at the little shelf beside our seats, where common games, chess among them, were.

Yeah. Even I know that if you are concentrating on something else, you will probably answer more truthfully because your attention is diverted.

I pointed at the checkers game. I loved to play this as a kid; it was easy, and I was good at it.

She set the game on the table between our two seats and told me to start first, simultaneously asking me questions.

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen." On the paper, at least.

She moved her game piece. "Do you have any strange abilities?"

"Mhm." No point in denying it, as The Four Hundred had served as witnesses like they had in the laboratory back inside the other world.

"Are you willing to talk about your ability?" She earned herself one of my game pieces and put it away.

But if you play checkers, it doesn’t matter how many little stones you win or lose at the beginning; the trick is to never give them access to your rearmost row, because then the little stones would evolve.

Never move your game pieces away from the last row; the rearmost row was your life, and this life had to be protected at all costs.

"No." I answered.

"Are you willing to provide information about your knowledge of the parallel worlds?"

"Yes." I earned myself one of her game pieces and saw her watching my hand as I took it away.

"You are fighting against yourself." She stated, while I didn’t even look up at her.

"Aren’t we all constantly doing nothing else?" This little coffeehouse psychology won’t get her anywhere.

"Do you have physical pain?" She switched topics quickly.

"No." My leg was hurting, the one that had gotten caught in between the giant’s teeth, but I suspected that it was just my psyche still telling me I was injured—it would be nice to have a psychologist at hand to tell her, right?

But I am too paranoid to tell her.

"Your leg. You don’t put as much weight on it as you should. Did you injure it?"

I finally looked up at her.

A cute face like a little bunny, yet her eyes were sharp like those of a hawk.

"What if I am in pain, though there is no injury? What would your advice be?"

"Pain always appears when our body seeks our attention. A sign, a warning: There is something not right, like: the fire burns my skin, so move; the food was poisoned, help me get rid of it."

I stared at her, waiting for her to come to the point.

"Did you pay attention to the place that is causing you pain?"