Chapter 1: The Golden Journal

A DIFFERENT WOMAN opens the steel door.

She has been banging it for minutes like a captive being chased by her perpetrator. The unresponsiveness of the person inside extremely upsets her. Every solid blow of her fist against the silver metal trumps on the wild cries and shrill screams of the deranged patients cared for by the hospital. 

Although it irks to think that Kagan wouldn’t even let her in, she puts the crazy thought aside. Even if she knocks down this steel barrier, he wouldn’t care about it, rather he'd only curl up in fright.

When she sets foot into the office, his broad back welcomes her as she finds Kagan standing before the window. The wrinkles in his asylum gown are visible as if he had been pressed. 

When he turns back on whoever has entered, his charcoal eyes enlarge like he has seen his ghost.

The woman approaches him but, terrified as he is in her presence, he steps back, shoving her away. Her jaw drops at his impulse actions. 

Strangeness is a no-face visitor stepping in uninvited. The sole window in the room has been left open, making her sharp brows furrow. She walks towards it, suspiciously scanning the lime green meadows outside. But all she can pick out is the tall gate and the golden leaves falling on the red asphalt pavement. She looks up to Kagan, bewilderment painting her.

"Babe… What’s the matter?" She asks him, reaching out for his arm. “Why are you… looking at me like that?”

His hair was a wild vine crawling down his face when she came in. Now as she charges closer to Kagan, his sweat becomes more limpid, forming tiny seeds of crystal on his forehead. Strange. The room temperature is low and the old trees dancing at the wind's choreography adds up to the iciness.

“Kagan, tell me... What's going on?” 

She attempts hard to convince him. But she's a professional who's only unsuccessful to him. He passes by her, ignoring her questions and accidentally hitting her right shoulder. 

"B-baby, what's the matter with you?" She repeats impatiently.

"She was just here a while ago…” Kagan whispers to himself, moving back and forth. “She was here! She… came for me.”

"I don’t understand, Kage! What do you mean?" 

"I was still kissing her. I can still feel her wholeness," he goes on with his illusions and caresses his cheeks. "She touched me here. I felt her. She’s real!”

"What?" Her jaw kisses the ground.

Kagan approaches her and rests his heavy hands on her thin shoulders.

"Have you seen her leave?” He eyes on the confused woman. “Have you seen Shanta? Didn't she pass by you?" He bombards her with gibberish questions.

"Shanta?" She repeats in perplexity.

"Right!" He surely traces hope in a wet paper. "Shanta… was here. She's breathing. She visited me."

‘How in the world can a punished soul visit him?’ She wants to ask, but restrains herself.

Rather the woman brushes his right cheek and admires his allure. Pity him. Searching for the dead was like spotting a sunken ship in the shallowest seabed, in which to dive deeper in discovery of darkness is damnation. And there was a trace of pleasure, a halted gratification, in the way his eyes flicker. She frowns as she gently strokes his cheek.

“I’m sorry…” she apologizes, but is truly not sorry.

"What?" Kagan asks fretfully. "Do you know her? Where is Shanta? Take me to her, please..." Then his face lights up, begging her, almost kissing her feet. 

He grins at her, imagining puffy white clouds with a silver lining. Her shoulders sink like anchors underwater; and, her teeth scrape like metals against each other. The mere mention of Shanta’s name awakens the devil inside her. 

Screw him! If it wasn’t her that he’s looking for, then she’d better cut off all strings of hopes. False hopes that, for years, he has been clinging on.

"Kagan, she's gone,” she triumphs in her answer. “Shanta is... long gone.”

"No…" he says, losing his breath.

He blinks his eyes twice, unable to process the hurtful truth. Serves him right. Yes, it is painful… but he has to accept that the woman he's looking for, the one who deceived him, has already passed away three years ago.

"Dalshanta is gone, Kagan," she repeats, intentionally adding salt to the wound. "So, please…" She touches his arm. "Forget her because she's dead-"

"You're crazy..." He shakes his head, stepping back a bit. "She was just here a while ago, Kachina! She's breathing and alive! Why do you keep lying to me? She talked to me! How come she's gone?!" He screams hysterically.

"Because her body got wrecked, Kagan. She was cremated years ago."

"Stop fooling me! That's not true!" He lifts a hand and pushes her away with great force. She backs away and gradually recovers.

"You're sick that is why you're here," Kachina, the other woman, reminds him. "That might be one of your hallucinations that got mixed up with your reality, so wake up!"

"No, Kachina! We were still on the island the other day. Her body wasn't wrecked! I saw her with my own two eyes, so don't you tell me I'm sick. I'm not sick, you are!" 

"Calm down, Kagan. Please…" She shuts her eyes, trying to be civil in front of a patient, and attempts to approach him. 

"Don't touch me!" He puts his arm behind him. "You're a liar!"

"Kagan..." She moves closer again.

"I said, don't touch me! Don't you get it? Perhaps, you're the one who's crazy! Get off me," he warns through gritted teeth and forces her to back away.

Her heart shatters like broken glasses. Dazed and faltered, she steps back. He's ill, so she has to calm herself. Another step back. But he's her boyfriend, and not acting like one. A final step back until she reaches the door. Kachina slides her back down and sits on the tiles like the world has put so much burden on her shoulders. She's a hopeless case.

"Kagan, I am a psychiatrist ..." she utters in a cracked voice. "And I'm here to treat you. You need to recover!"

"Recover?" He hollers. "I said I'm not sick. I don't need treatment!"

She looks up to the figure who possesses her heart. As her lover, he must be staring at her with love and admiration. But that didn't display in his beautiful eyes. He sees her a wrecker, a deceiver, and a lunatic.

"Why, Kagan?!" She wails in despair. "Why don't you want to get treated? I can pull you out of misery like I did years ago! Trust me, please! You need to recover… for us."

But how? Even if he came back to his senses, will he still choose her?

Kagan forwards. "Who are you, by the way, to act as if you know me very well?" He challenges her.

"W-What?"

"As far as I know, there's nothing going on between us. So tell me… what makes you, a stranger to me, think she has a place in my heart?"

If this was a nightmare and just one of the curses of a bad spirit, wake her up and splash holy water on her face. Then a teardrop falls from her eyes down a painful path.

"It's me, Kagan..." She places a palm on her chest. "I'm your girlfriend, but why do you keep looking for your ex? Dalshanta is long gone, or maybe… decomposed!" 

He gets stunned for a moment with his mouth suspended in the air. Whenever a strong emotion in him comes rushing through like a storm surge in his system, his ear would turn red. And that is what she exactly witnesses.

"Have you seen my journal?" He asks her something out of the planet.

"Y-your journal?"

"Yes, my journal," he confirms. "The one with a gold cover, have you seen it?"

Her mind goes blank and she answers, "No… I've never seen it."

But, maybe… she did see it. She just doesn't want to let him know.

Kachina walks past him and approaches the window. Before untangling the curtains, she peeps out again to see nothing but meadows glistening like emerald crystals.

"You've been missing for two weeks now, Kagan..." she narrates after sliding the curtains to cover the room cream-yellow. She laments, "We've been looking for you in the sea for two weeks. I was so devastated that I thought I would lose you again, but I think I just lost you again!"

She drums her chest several times, creating beats of her sufferings.

"We searched for you, Kagan... until we finally found you in a hut," she tells him. "But when you woke up, you could hardly recognize me or your mother!"

When the ship exploded, she never saw him again. Their last moments were him, kissing the back of her palms, at a ship deck under the starlights. And when he came back...

"All you were saying was Shanta, Shanta, Shanta!" She bellows wilder than an angered tigress. "How many times should I tell you that she's dead! She's... dead!"

"She's alive, Kachina!" He insists and clenches his fist in utter conviction. "I will hold on to this thought that she's alive. It would be the death of me if it was true that she's gone."

"Oh, yes! She's gone! She's been buried for almost three years, so stop digging bones. Dalshanta is gone, she's gone!"

"You are a big liar!" He points a finger at her.

"Oh, Kagan…" she cries in desperation. "Get well soon, so you can finally remember how she hurt you!"

"She was here earlier, Kachina!" He fires back. "She can hurt me all she wants, it doesn't matter to me anymore, for as long as she's here and… alive!" 

Looks like Kachina has no choice. His emotions are getting worse and it's not good, especially with his condition. She feels terrible considering herself a doctor when all she has done is make his condition worse.

Kachina fishes out a syringe from her lab coat pocket. She pulls his arm and situates the needle on his vein.

"Stop," he orders in fear. "Take that away from me, now!" 

"Calm down, Kagan," she hushes. "This is for your sake, your own good!"

"Stay away!" He shoves the syringe and it slips off her hand.

"No, Kagan!" She is about to pick it up when he grabs her arm. 

"K-Kage, it hurts ..." she grunts.

"If you won't believe me, then I'll find her to make you believe she's not dead," he stresses, each word burning like metal markers.

"Shanta is just an illusion, Kage, so please get back to your senses!"

He squeezes her arm tighter and curses, "I'd rather stay in my imaginations with her… than go back to reality and be with you."

His declaration is a big slap to her cheek. Sobbing rejection, she can no longer control herself. Endless tears of grief flood her drowning thoughts. Kagan opens the steel door.

"W-where will you go?" She wipes away all sorrow. But too late, he runs outside, leaving her distraught. "Come back here! Kagan, come back!"

She chases her down the hall and screams for help. Immediately, a male nurse attends to her needs.

"Chase, Kagan! Let the others know, too!" She yells. "Leave now, hurry up!"

HER KNEES are shaking. In a snap, she realizes that she already reached her office. She can feel her body heating up. There has been a peculiar kind of rage lurking inside her and she can’t stop it. 

Kachina inserts a key to a secret tunnel that is located in her office. But before she could enter, she made sure her office door was locked. 

The door to secrecy is concealed by a huge bookshelf. As it reveals a golden doorknob, she picks up a lamp at the entrance. 

The yellow light shimmers and reveals thick cobwebs, mud on broken stone paths, and sea-weed colored mosses on walls. The tunnel stinks of methane as she walks through imperceivable darkness.  

"Argh!" She jumps in fear when a rodent touches her foot.

"Haha!" 

A devilish laugh bounces back on the four corners of the tunnel and Kachina lifts a lamp to a crazy woman, chortling beside a bunk bed. 

She points at her, grinning on crooked teeth, like an animal in a zoo and says, "Scaredy-cat Kachina! Shanta is way better than you! She's fearless!"

"Shut up!" She shouts and grabs hold of her frizzy hair. 

"Hey! I'm reporting you to Shanta, my dear, Devil Kachina!"

"You, crazy woman, where is the diary?" Her grip tightens. "I need his diary now!"

"No way! You're the devil's sister!" She screams and spits pungent liquid at her.

"Argh! The hell with you!"

KACHINA GOES BACK to her office after locking the gate and the door to the tunnel. She puts the lamp aside and lets herself fall on the swivel chair. After forcing the woman to give back Kagan's journal, she was triumphant. She lifts the golden book higher to figure out the words engraved on it.

MY FAVORITE POEM, SHANTA.

"Our story in a fantasy, covered by another fantasy..."

She doesn't understand! How mawkish can Kagan be? But how dare he create a journal when she's not the subject of all his novels. 

The contents of the journal are surely bothering her. The uneasy feeling of opening the first page of a book that contains secrets to one's life is nerve-wracking. Like unfolding the mysteries of an ancient civilization.

'To the stranger who saved me from drowning in love, Shanta.' 

Kachina winces at the acknowledgement section. She turns to the next page and finally comes across a chapter where she sees a familiar name that made her jump in joy and curl in sadness. 

'Kachina... Kachina left me.'

She covers her mouth in shock. Here she is, pondering for a moment and realizing that Kagan’s story had already begun in the year 2020, together with the mischievous girl, Shanta, which had sprouted eleven years ago.