CHAPTER 978: CHAPTER 978 GOING MAD

"Leo, what’s wrong? Are you uncomfortable, or is something bothering you?" Hera asked after noticing how different he seemed. He looked unfocused, his gaze drifting into empty space, so unlike his usual self.

But how could Leo explain what was really weighing on him? He was still haunted by the dream from last night. It wasn’t just vivid, it had felt real. Yet he was certain it wasn’t a fragment of his own lost memories.

No, it seemed more like a collection of memories belonging to someone else... maybe even several people. The dream had been eerie, too lifelike, and it stirred emotions in him so intensely that he couldn’t stop his mind from circling back to it.

Still, how could he put that into words? It all sounded strange, even to him. He didn’t understand the meaning, only that it felt tragic, like a riddle wrapped in sorrow. All he knew for certain was the heavy weight pressing down on his chest.

As for his memory, Leo didn’t think he would recover anything anytime soon. In fact, he hadn’t even realized he’d lost a part of it, almost as if he didn’t know he had amnesia at all.

The only reason he found out was because of the people around him, like Hera, Zhane, Dave, Rafael, Xavier, and Luke, who told him they had known him and spent time with him before. Even the fact that he had forgotten his own fiancée would have gone unnoticed if they hadn’t pointed it out to him.

’Maybe I’ve been too idle lately, that’s why I’m starting to dream about strange things,’ Leo murmured to himself before turning to Hera. "I need to contact my assistant and check on my work. Staying here in the hospital, doing nothing, is messing with my head and making me feel suffocated..." he said.

Yet, as his gaze lingered on Hera’s beautiful face, a different thought struck him. Even if he couldn’t remember her, something deep inside told him he could trust her completely. Perhaps that was why she was the first person he looked to when making this demand.

Not because she was his fiancée, but simply because... it was her.

But more than that, another thought began to plague him, the memory of Hera’s intimacy with Zhane yesterday.

He couldn’t shake the image of it from his mind, nor the sound of her alluring voice as she was being pleasured, a sound that had struck him like music to his ears. The recollection alone stirred his body, his arousal rising with startling speed.

Yet what consumed him even more was the jealousy and possessiveness clawing at his chest. The thought of anyone touching her the way Zhane had was unbearable.

If he could, he wanted to pull her into his arms, erase every trace of Zhane’s touch, and rewrite those sensations with his own. He wanted her body to be marked only by him, drenched in his scent, belonging to no one else.

The sheer force of that desire drove him to the brink of madness, and before it could overwhelm him further, he tore his gaze away from her.

’I must really be going crazy from being too idle,’ Leo thought as he clenched his jaw and gripped the blanket tightly. The scene he had witnessed yesterday kept replaying in his mind like a broken record, testing every ounce of his self-control.

But when he forced himself to stop thinking about it, another distraction surfaced: his dreams. Flashes of them flickered in his mind, baffling him. He had never been this fixated on a dream before. Normally, his sleep was just endless darkness; he almost never dreamed at all.

"Sigh." Leo exhaled wearily, his shoulders slumping.

"I’ll ask your assistant. He just woke up and is confined in the room next door. He might not be able to move around much; his injuries were severe, too, but he should at least be able to contact someone to bring your things. As long as you don’t push yourself too hard, you could still work from here..." Zhane suggested, understanding that Leo was restless and desperate to ease his boredom.

But when Zhane stepped closer to stand beside Hera, he caught the scowl forming on Leo’s face. It only made him chuckle. After all, he knew exactly why he was acting this way; it was because Leo had seen them yesterday.

Yet Zhane felt no guilt; it wasn’t as though he’d gone further than touching. Besides, he had nothing to hide. Their relationship with Hera was open, something Leo himself had once acknowledged and accepted before losing his memory. If Leo now acted unsettled, it was only because he’d forgotten that arrangement and his agreement.

In Zhane’s mind, letting Leo witness such intimacy again wasn’t a mistake; it was actually a way to prepare his psyche. If gentle methods couldn’t restore his memories, perhaps a jolt of discomfort and little trauma might.

Still, Zhane kept this reasoning to himself. Bringing up Leo’s amnesia directly in front of Hera might only shake her emotionally and hinder her recovery. Better to test it first in silence, watch how Leo reacted, and decide later whether it was worth revealing.

So, being intimate with Hera in the hospital yesterday wasn’t only about indulging his own urges or greedily touching the woman he loved. Zhane had noticed something else: Leo had woken up partway through. He’d caught Leo’s gaze while kissing Hera, and though his first instinct was to stop and not push further, Hera’s alluring voice had already made it hard to stop.

It wasn’t until that moment of awareness that Zhane recalled something a psychologist had once told him: sometimes extreme trauma forces the mind to erase memories as a defense, shielding the body from collapse under unbearable strain. But those same memories could resurface if triggered by another intense trauma, whether physical, psychological, or emotional.

That thought had struck him like lightning. And so, instead of stopping, he let Leo watch. After all, it wasn’t the first time Leo had seen them being intimate. In fact, Zhane was gambling that the scene might even stir memories of the first time they had been intimate with Hera, ironically, it also happened in a hospital room under eerily similar circumstances.

So his mind whispered: ’Why not try it?’

But looking at Leo now, Zhane still couldn’t tell if his gamble had worked. From the way things seemed, maybe it hadn’t been effective at all. Perhaps they really just had to wait for the blood clot in his brain to clear on its own.

Zhane stepped out for a moment to relay Leo’s request to Terry in the room next door, while Rafael busied himself peeling fruits in the mini kitchen. That left Hera once again sitting quietly at Leo’s bedside.

But this time, Leo couldn’t even bring himself to meet her eyes. His ears burned, the heat slowly creeping down to his neck and across his face. He was flustered, though Hera remained completely unaware of the storm in his head.

To her, his treatment of her had simply shifted, from seeing her as a stranger to at least acknowledging her as an acquaintance. She believed that taking things slowly was best, that pushing him too hard while his memories were still gone would only backfire.

All she truly wanted was for Leo not to push her away, to give himself the chance to know her again. Luckily, Leo seemed to be on the same page, at least outwardly.

Fortunately, Hera had no idea that Leo was fully aware of what she and Zhane had done in the hospital ward while she thought he was asleep. If she did, she would have been just as flushed as him, and the two of them would look like a pair of tomatoes, sitting side by side without daring to meet each other’s eyes.

Sure enough, when Rafael finished peeling the pear and Fuji apple and carried the plate over, he found the room unusually quiet. Hera sat still, calm but slightly tense, while Leo squirmed in place like a restless child caught hiding something.

Rafael arched a brow, suspicion flickering in his gaze. "What on earth are you doing?" he asked, his tone half-curious, half-dry.

Leo didn’t bother answering Rafael and simply ignored him, focusing instead on regaining his composure. A few moments later, Zhane returned, and the tension slowly eased as they all began snacking on the fruit Rafael had prepared.

Once their appetites were stirred, breakfast followed, a simple but hearty seafood congee. The warm rice porridge was enriched with salted egg, shrimp, abalone, and clams, balanced with fresh greens and herbs chosen to aid both Hera’s and Leo’s recovery.

"Just wait a little," Zhane said as he set his bowl aside. "Your laptop and the urgent documents needing your signature are already on the way. Terry sent someone to fetch them." But before he could finish, a knock came at the door.

Zhane arched a brow. "That was fast," he murmured, then rose to open it. "Please, come in."