Chapter 3: The Scholar

The Bound Man then led me to a small room. After both of us had entered the room, he closed the door and said, “Welcome to the 30th of February Club!”

He started clapping. I stopped him and asked, “Time out, bro. There are only two of us here. Where are the other members?”

The Bound Man then dropped his head and kept that position for a few seconds. When he raised his head again and looked at me, he spoke in a more high-pitched voice, “Welcome to our club, my name is Jessica. I vouched for you when we discussed whether to let you in.”

It was not just a change in voice. His posture shifted, becoming more feminine. His shoulders relaxed, with a strange smile on his face.

Then he dropped his head again. This time, without raising his head, the Bound Man started to speak. But differently from a while ago, he now spoke in a deep voice.

“Welcome, young man. My name is... irrelevant. People just call me the Scholar. And I was in fact a real scientist before the...incident. I will --“

I needed to interrupt.

“So you’re schizophrenic. How many personalities do you have?”

“We look schizophrenic, but we aren’t. And we’re not just personalities. We’re real humans. As for our number, there are so far 5 known humans living in this body, including the Bound Man. But there may be more hiding somewhere inside,” the Scholar said in his trademark deep voice.

And then the Scholar, or the Bound Man, whoever, spoke like an adult pretending to be a child, “Yes! It’s the best place to play hide and seek here. If I don’t show, people won’t even know I’m here.”

Then the deep voice reprimanded, “Sophia, stop fooling around.”

A female voice immediately came from his mouth, with his head still down, “I’m so sorry. My daughter Sophia is only six years old. She didn’t mean to cause any troubles. And by the way, my name is Erica, or you may call me by my nickname - the Housewife.”

I actually found it very interesting talking to him. His voice acting performance was in fact top-notch.

“So you said you would explain what happened. I’m all ears.”

The deep voice cleared his throat and said, “Remember the 2012 Mayan Prophecy?”

“Sure. Some people believed our world would come to an end in December 2012. And it turned out to be all bullshit.”

“Our world did come to an end on December 21st, 2012. But it resurrected on the same day. The transition was so quick that most people did not even notice.”

“How is it even possible?” I asked.

“I know it’s difficult to believe. But when our world was destroyed, it didn’t just disappear. It was actually combined with another destroyed world from the parallel universe. Think of it like a video game. A squad of 10 soldiers gets ambushed. Five survive. Five die. Then the player merges the survivors with another incomplete squad to form a new team of 10.”

“Do you have any proof for this idea?” I asked.

“Of course, when two incomplete worlds merge, the biggest evidence is that the last day of the month in which the merging process completes will disappear. In our case, the merging began in December 2012 and finished in February 2013. So the 30th day of February just disappeared as if it had never existed.”

“Do you mean I’m right that February should have 30 days? Can you imagine how scared I was when I discovered the world had been supernaturally changed?”

The deep voice continued, “Of course we can understand. Except for the Bound Man, as he’s the host, we all four people living inside him, that is, Jessica, Sophia, the Housewife and me the Scholar, were all born on Feb 30th. The merging made Feb 30th disappear, along with every physical thing that took place historically on that day. The trick was that intangible things like memory and spirit remained unchanged. So unlucky people like us don’t have a body to harbor our souls in the newly merged world and need to live inside a host like this.”

It took me almost a minute to digest his explanation. The words spun in my head like a bad dream. And then I asked, “So is there a higher power managing the merging? Or do different worlds just combine by themselves?”

“I believe, though without any proof, that someone was behind all these merges. Let’s just call him the Player,” said the Scholar, with his head bowed all the time during this conversation.

Before the Scholar “personality” could continue, the man in front of me raised his head and resumed his usual the Bound Man’s voice, “Please stop it here today. I always feel very tired letting the Scholar speak. It’s like his intellectual messages have used up my limited brain resources. So please call it a day and continue next time.”