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The last thing Ferdinand needed at the moment was having hallucinations. Maybe it was the college student life that, after a year and half, was finally starting to make him go insane. Maybe if he slept more he wouldn't have these visions, or maybe it would be even worse, since, in most cases, they came to him exactly when he was dreaming.
If only he had not listened to his friend's advice...
Everything began three weeks before, right after the winter holidays. The month of January and February had always been critical for him, because every time he saw his father his obsession with body, hair and skin care became even worse than usual. That year, he got particularly annoyed at the only flaw of his perfect face: a little but evident scar just above his left eyebrow.
He remembered getting it when he was five or six; he remembered that while they were playing, one of his friends had pushed him off a tree. Now, Ferdinand wasn't one to hold a grudge, but that didn't mean that he didn't want to know who to blame.
He just knew that it had been Dorothea anyway, but he needed evidence. He needed to remember.
And was there something better than meditation to remember long-forgotten memories? No, according to Linhardt there wasn't. But Ferdinand had realised too late that he had just been played by his so-called friend, who just wanted another excuse to nap. His idiot past-self believed him though and followed his advice, signing up for a class in his college.
He should have never done that. He wasn't one of those people who believed in ghosts or other stupid paranormal stuff like birthmarks actually indicating a deadly wound of his past life. He had a big one right below his navel, and so what? Did that mean that his past self had died after being shot, stabbed or whatever right there?
That was just stupid.
However, even though he did not believe in that stuff, he somehow decided to go to this meditation class, just to remember who had ruined his perfect face 15 years before. Yes, he was petty like that.
The first lessons were kind of useless, even if he had to admit that he had been more relaxed in the last few days. However, after two weeks, something happened: he started to see something.
It was confusing at first. He could only hope that it was something related to the accident. However, that was not the case.
As the fog that was clouding his mind was slowly being blown away, he started to see colors and shapes, and then, the face of a man had finally appeared. He had never seen him before, he was sure of that, he would remember a face like his. As the days passed, he managed to grasp more and more details, like the light-green color of his eyes, his unusually high cheekbones, the little blood stain on his chin, or his sad expression.
And yes, what he saw in these dreams, or visions, was creepy and unsettling, but it was nothing compared to the physical pain he felt and the whirl of emotions that never failed to build up in the pit of his stomach.
Emotions that he had yet to understand. Emotions that, maybe, he didn't even want to understand.
And it was all Linhardt's fault. Why did his friends have to be such assholes?
"Linhardt I can't sleep anymore!" He told his friend as soon as he saw him come out of his dorm room.
They were used to walking together to the main body of the school, as they attended more or less the same classes and they both needed to grab a coffee before lessons started.
Linhardt yawned. He had clearly just woken up. Ferdinand was fuming. How dared he?
"Well, that sounds like your problem," the other said as he walked outside.
Ferdinand ran after him. "What?? It's your fault, you know????" He shouted, stopping right in front of him, preventing him from entering the park that they crossed every morning.
"Why? Did something happen at meditation? Did you remember that someone cursed you with the bald when you were little?".
Oh.
That was it.
Ferdinand was about to kill a bitch.
However, before he could do anything, something else caught his attention, or better, someone else, as, on the other side of the street, he saw the man of his visions. Suddenly, he was unable to tear his eyes off him. He would have liked to, but he simply couldn't, there simply was some greater force that prevented him from doing it.
He looked at the man as he noticed him, looking back at him with an unreadable expression on his face.
He watched the man crossing the road.
He stared at the man as he walked right up to where he was, stopped in front of him and grabbed his left shoulder to take a better look at him.
"I...finally...found you," he heard him whisper as one of his hands tentatively reached for his abdomen to rest on that spot right below his navel. Exactly where his birthmark was.