TMIAP Chapter 28

Multiple personality disorder.

Some say it's possession by ghosts; others claim it's the devil's mischief.

A person whose appearance remains the same, but whose personality changes as if they've become someone completely different.

Enrique Solivén confessed that he suffered from exactly that. Monica felt confused.

She too had wished to be someone else as a child. Every night lying on the hard, worn bed in the orphanage, she'd imagined she might actually be the lost princess from a neighboring kingdom.

The fantasy went roughly like this: One day, a magnificently grand carriage would stop in front of the orphanage, and a crowned middle-aged man would step out. Upon seeing her, his eyes would glisten with tears as he cried out.

'Charlotte Cordelier! My daughter!'

...Charlotte Cordelier was a name Monica had invented by combining princess names from fairy tales she'd read around that time.

Anyway, that was how it went. The fantasy became so elaborate that she sometimes practiced acting like a princess. Especially after learning that the name given by the orphanage director had actually been taken from that lost princess of a neighboring kingdom.

But fantasies remained only fantasies.

No matter how wonderful the imagination, Monica could never forget she was merely one orphan among many.

But Enrique Solivén was different.

"Luis Berfeil, Garcia. All names I know, but not names I remember. Sometimes my memory cuts out. I go to sleep and wake to find a day has passed, sometimes even three days. And there are objects in my room I don't remember acquiring."

The man had become aware of his symptoms after the war ended and he returned to House Solivén.

Lady Solivén had forced his return from the war. Natural enough—her firstborn had died and only one son remained.

Unfortunately, there had been massive bombardment just before his return, and the man completely lost his memory of the period immediately before and after coming home.

But Lady Solivén found it difficult to care tenderly for her son. The enormous war reparations bill issued by the Crown saw to that.

Upon seeing that bill, Lady Solivén fainted briefly, then came to. After which she began selling off everything in the household, as everyone knew. It was only a matter of time before even her son—memory lost and left in doctors' care—became another asset to liquidate.

"Go to La Spezia's social season. All the young ladies with substantial dowries will be gathered there."

Lady Solivén said this, bracing herself for her son's mockery. Unlike her firstborn who'd always been affectionate toward her, Enrique, the second son, was rigid and principled.

Calculating dowries and conditions for marriage was natural for society matrons, but Enrique was the sort of man who'd cheerfully sneer at such things.

Lady Solivén knew her son's character all too well, having raised him herself.

Moreover, the situation looked terrible. Upon receiving intelligence that the war's defeat was imminent, Lady Solivén had swiftly recalled her remaining second son. Most people would have wasted their remaining time wailing over their deceased husband and firstborn son who'd contributed to the defeat.

But to others it must have looked as if she'd acted faster than anyone to sell off her son.

What about the son himself? Enrique hadn't properly recovered from his war wounds. The rift between them had widened as he condemned Lady Solivén's cowardly act of pulling only him out of the battlefield.

Yet when told to go to La Spezia, Enrique Solivén smiled faintly. It certainly wasn't mockery of Lady Solivén.

"I'll do as you say, Mother."

He didn't stop there—he embraced her shoulders and offered quiet comfort.

"You must be heartbroken over Pablo. I understand. I've always caused you pain, but this time I won't add to your troubles."

Lady Solivén was horrified.

"Are you ill?"

Enrique Solivén tilted his head, then smiled brightly.

"Just consider it me growing up."

Lady Solivén now looked ready to cry. Her proud son had, according to the doctor, lost only a month's worth of memory from around the time of his return.

But judging by his current behavior, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think his entire memory had vanished.

She touched her hand to his forehead, but Enrique was perfectly fine. He only muttered quietly in a dissatisfied tone, "That's not it..."

Lady Solivén spent approximately two full days dining with her second son and having deep conversations, soon coming to feel that her son loved her quite deeply—if not as much as the deceased Pablo.

Now it was certain.

Her son was deeply wounded by what he'd experienced in the war, but thanks to that, his affection for family had also deepened considerably.

Then the letter arrived from that vulgar arms dealer.

A letter proposing they become in-laws, offering an enormous dowry. In the past, Lady Solivén might have seriously considered that proposal.

But how could she send this clever and devoted son as a son-in-law to that base household?

No need to think twice. Lady Solivén immediately took up her pen and refused the offer.

On the day her reformed son departed for La Spezia, the lady grasped his hand and said with deep emotion:

"Even so, my son, if you don't wish it, I would never force you into marriage."

Her proud son Enrique Solivén wrinkled his brow severely and replied:

"Of course not, you old hag."

Lady Solivén fainted.

The servants of House Solivén watching from a distance didn't hear the detailed conversation, and merely thought Lady Solivén had succumbed to grief at sending her second son—barely saved from the war—far away to the south again.

But the young man hired around that time as Enrique's secretary, Andrei, heard distinctly what his young master had said.

Andrei was a model and ordinary semi-noble youth with ambitions of advancing his career by serving a distinguished colonel as his superior. So Andrei thought:

'I've ended up serving an unfilial master. But looking at history, unfilial sons are more likely to approach power.'

A truly bizarre and utterly shameless thought.

Enrique Solivén woke in the first-class carriage of the train to La Spezia. The hangover was brutal.

Enrique was bewildered. He had no memory of boarding the train.

He didn't even particularly enjoy drinking to excess. His new secretary Andrei happened to be sleeping beside him, and Enrique woke him.

Andrei recounted his employer's exploits of ordering and guzzling every expensive liquor available the moment they'd boarded the train.

'My unfilial master drank so much he can't remember,' Andrei was thinking, when he realized something was wrong. Enrique's face had gone too pale.

"I don't remember."

Andrei's face paled as well. He was well aware his employer had lost a month's worth of memory from around the time of his return. That was precisely why Lady Solivén had placed him at Enrique's side.

But if his employer suffered not from war wounds but merely from premature dementia, his ambitions were doomed from the start.

The two men compared what they knew.

Enrique Solivén realized that the days he'd thought he'd merely slept too long after returning from the war and dismissed as unimportant coincided with the days Andrei remembered thinking 'the young master seemed odd, but I assumed he just had a peculiar personality.'

Andrei covered his face as he recounted those days: "I thought spending two years on the battlefield might make someone rough, or perhaps more devoted to family..."

The conclusion was singular. Enrique must be suffering from madness.

There was no other explanation for this situation. His personality changed wildly, and in the process he lost memories?

Andrei insisted they get off the train immediately and return. What use was a master suffering from madness to his splendid and beautiful future?

Right now his employer shouldn't be meeting young ladies in La Spezia to arrange marriage—he needed treatment.

Yet after hearing what had happened during his memory loss, Enrique said he'd go to La Spezia anyway.

The secretary fretted that Enrique was clearly insane, but Enrique shook his head.

"I can't cause Mother more worry."

"You already caused her plenty of worry the day you called Lady Solivén an old hag, sir..."

Andrei's gloomy words made Enrique's face go paler still, but in any case his mind was made up.

Lady Solivén truly was in a position where she had to sell off everything in the household, chamber pots included, as someone had said.

If her only remaining son suffered from madness on top of that, how would she feel? Enrique patted Andrei's shoulder.

"Let's find a good doctor in La Spezia."

But thinking about it, marrying a well-bred young lady meant he needed to be a flawless bridegroom candidate himself.

At the very least, he couldn't let it be discovered that he suffered from madness by summoning doctors indiscriminately.

Andrei began frequently absenting himself to search for good doctors outside La Spezia.

Meanwhile, Enrique calmly organized his symptoms. It started with a small slip of paper.

< Listen here, friend. I think we need to discuss you calling my mother an 'old hag.' >

The man had written this note and left it on his bedside table before sleeping. Two days later, when Enrique Solivén woke, he could see writing added to that note.

< That wasn't me. >

Enrique left the note by the bedside table again. About a week later, different handwriting was added.

< She's not my mom, so what else am I supposed to call her? >

The writing was insolent and rough. This time, Enrique Solivén calmly wrote a long message on a large sheet of letter paper.

That extremely polite and cold letter was lengthy, but the summary was simple.

'Get out of me.'

The answer came quickly. Waking from a nap, Enrique saw the simple, vulgar, and childish response appended below that letter.

< Eat shit. >

...No wonder Mother fainted.

Enrique Solivén thought this as he moved to tear up the letter, then left it alone out of irritation.

The moment he tore it up felt like admitting he suffered from madness.

It was the most dizzying moment since that long war when he'd nearly lost his eye. For the first time in his life, Enrique Solivén deliberately drank to excess.

Then he lost consciousness and woke in a strange woman's house.

Clearly a tavern prostitute, she laughed at the bewildered Enrique claiming not to remember. "I see noble young masters use that excuse every day." Then she immediately threw Enrique out.

In that moment, Enrique felt true rage. The first doctor Andrei brought stammered:

"It might be a ghost from your distinguished family's history."

Enrique threw the doctor out the moment he heard those words. Then he snarled at his secretary.

"You said he was a doctor."

"All the proper doctors died in the war."

It sounded brazen but was true. Andrei sighed, then ran after the doctor to silence him. After which he left the city again to find another doctor.

Enrique Solivén was left alone.

But he had no intention of giving up and lying about losing and regaining memories until a doctor arrived.

He was the second son of House Solivén. Meaning that unlike his brother Pablo who'd always been surrounded by people, Enrique was accustomed to solving problems alone.

Two months remained before La Spezia's social season returned in spring, so time was sufficient.

All the servants in the townhouse House Solivén had temporarily rented were dismissed.

He fought insomnia with alcohol in the empty townhouse while waiting for Andrei's return. And he conversed through notes with the beings parasitizing his lost memories.

Thus Enrique learned their names were Luis and Garcia.

Strangely familiar names. Though that didn't mean he intended to leave them be.