Chapter 1632: Tima’s Echo
“So you can’t help me?” the captain asked, the look of sadness on his face getting grimmer as he realized that his one hope to talk to his daughter wouldn’t be complete.
Ning nodded. “You will have to talk to a Channeler when you find the chance to,” he said. “I can only tell you what your daughter wants.”
“I see,” the Captain said. “So you can’t do anything else?”
“No,” Ning replied but paused for a second. “Actually…”
“What?” the man asked, seeing that Ning was trying to say something.
“There is something I should be able to do,” he said. “Something I am supposed to be able to do, but haven’t tried it yet. That won’t help communicate with your daughter, but… maybe it can help you understand her better.
The captain looked at him with a serious look on his face. “What is it that you can do?” he asked.
“Let me just do it,” he said and reached for the man’s shoulders.
The Captain grabbed Ning’s hands right before they touched him and gave a glare in return. “What are you trying to do?” he asked.
“Ah! Pardon me, but I must touch your daughter to do this next thing,” Ning said.
“Do what exactly?” the captain asked, practically demanding an answer.
“To take a peek into your daughter’s memories,” he said.
The captain remained stunned for a moment. “What?” he asked.
“To look into your daughter’s memories,” Ning repeated. “If I touch her, I can gain some insight into her situation, and see why she is still around.”
The Captain’s hands waved and he slowly let go of Ning’s wrist. Ning waited for a moment and continued, reaching the spirit of the little girl who hugged her daddy’s neck.
There were two skills available for each of the 5 paths of a Spirit Awakener. For Spirit Detectives, the first of the two skills was Spectral Communication.
It allowed one to talk to and gain insight from the Spirit.
Ning’s hands reached into her body and he activated the second of the two skills.
The skill to look into the memories of a Spirit.
Spectral Echo.
* * * * * * *
Tima was a young girl who didn’t like the sea. She liked flowers and soft grass. She liked hard ground with soil on it and not the swaying wooden deck of a ship.
“Daddy, can you not stay with me? Please, I don’t want you to go.”
She would beg her father to be around at home, always.
“Do you want to come with Daddy then? You can see the open sea,” her daddy said.
“No, I hate the ship!”
Her father laughed. “Then stay with your grandpa, okay? I’ll come back tonight and bring you lots of sweets from the other town.”
“Really?” the girl asked excitedly. “Bring me the red kind, okay? I hate the green ones. They taste like throwup.”
The captain laughed, gave a kiss on both of her cheeks, and walked away while Tima frantically waved goodbye from the window of their house.
Ning watched the memory from the perspective of Tima. He was Tima at that moment, seeing what she sensed, feeling what she felt.
It was an odd sensation as everything he saw and felt was clearly not his own senses. He could make enough distinction between his own thoughts and Tima’s thoughts to know who was who.
And still, feeling everything someone else felt, especially a child no older than 6 was quite a strange feeling.
The memories were fragmented, perhaps even a little false. The next memory he saw was of the staircase in their house where her grandpa carried her down.
Halfway down the staircase, Tima’s grandpa suddenly clutched his chest and fell forward.
Tima, who was being carried by him at that time, had no way of getting away. So when her grandpa fell, she fell with him.
“No!” Ning shouted, but the words never came out. This was a memory. There was nothing he could do.
The memory faded and he saw Tima’s father sitting next to her with her hand in his hand. He was crying.
“Daddy?” Tima’s voice was meek and soft.
“Tima?” the man looked up, surprised. “Tima, can you hear me? Can you talk?”
“Daddy…” she said. “It hurts. It hurts, Daddy.”
The memory faded.
The next memory was of Tima, leaning against the side of the bed, being fed soft grains. Tima opened her mouth and ate the food.
“Daddy…” she said once she swallowed the spoon full of food. “Where’s Grandpa.”
Her Daddy, who had been on the verge of feeding her another bite, paused. He looked at her, his eyes a look of horror.
Ning could tell by the man’s face that Tima’s grandfather was dead. Ning wasn’t sure if the old man was his father or father-in-law, but whoever he was, he was dead, and the pain of that was visible on the man’s face.
The memory faded again.
“Captain, you have to return to the ship soon,” someone said outside of the window. Tima wanted to see who it was, but she couldn’t reach to the window. She couldn’t leave the bed and was tied to it forever.
“My daughter is bedridden and half paralyzed. Do you think I give a damn about my job right now?” the man shouted outside.
Tima wondered why her daddy was shouting. She didn’t want him to shout. Why were they making her daddy angry?
She couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but a few minutes later, her father came into the room and sat beside her for a long time.
“Tima, I… I need to go somewhere tomorrow. Can you be a good girl and wait for me?” he asked.
“You’re leaving me, Daddy?” she asked, panicking.
“No, no. Not leaving. I need to go on a ship. Tima loves those red sweets, right? So Daddy needs to go get them. Can you wait for me while I bring those sweets, Tima?”
Tima didn’t want her daddy to leave, but she knew her daddy loved the sea and his boat.
“Okay,” Tima said. “But you have to bring lots and lots of sweets.”
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