[https://i.postimg.cc/cCxYHKmN/The-Girl-who-could-taste-time.gif]

Let me guess. You are confused. Yeah, I know the feeling. It takes anyone quite a bit to understand what the fuck is going on. And believe me, I'm trying to make your life easy, but it is not that type of story. But then again, we're just making it up as we go along.

Now, for me to explain to you what or how Pi became a reality, I have to tell you another story besides the story of the girl who could taste time. Come on, don't do the rolling eyes. It is a good story. It is my wife's and daughter's favourite story. For me, not that much. It still hurts, like any other trauma, I guess.

The story of the boy who could hear numbers. My story. The guy sitten on the floor of the bathroom crying with a key and a pee stick in his hand. Hi, I'm Eske Otto Schrodinger, born in 1929 at Echternach. I am trying to remember the day or the month, but I can't. Marie Sue insists I should be a Scorpio, so I'll let you do the math.

I had a happy childhood living with my parents in my grand-fathers house. A big house, with a big family, life was good. Really good. My most fond memory was of my grandpa and me talking about the art collection that he had all around our house's wall on display.

Expensive pieces of art that, in most timelines, would be found in museums. And I can tell you for sure that some of those pieces don't exist anywhen else besides that specific timeline.

There was a huge one in my grandfather's study room that I was obsessed with as a child. It was called The Wheel of Time by Sandro Boticelli. I couldn't comprehend, at the time, the title because the painting was about three women embracing each other. There was no clock or any reference to time. But if you looked better, two sisters were protecting the middle one as if their life depended on it.

[https://i.postimg.cc/9F5bGXZs/WTL-Unknwon.png]

The smile of the middle sister with flowers in her grey hair had me haunted. It was a genuine smile with a hefty weight of pain. And as a child, I couldn't understand. My grandpa Otto explained to me they represented the Parcae sisters and controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal and immortal from birth to death. Even the gods feared them, his words.

Decima measured the thread of life. Morta, who cut the rope of life and chose the manner of a person's death, and finally, Nona, who spun the thread of life. With a strange, painful smile, the girl in the middle stood there between her two sisters, pregnant. And I will never forget what he told me that day. 'At the end of the story, life doesn't start at one or zero. Life starts when it thinks it is about to end.'

The number nine, from all other numbers, was an orchestra of the best sounds a human being could listen to. A baby's coo, the many sounds of water, the swish sound of a ball hitting a net, a child's very first words, the sound of rain hitting the window and finally, the words 'I do'. Number nine sounded like a crowd made of pure human life. And from all numbers, nine was my favourite.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

I am the boy who can hear numbers. Nobody, at the time, made much of it. What good could it be to listen to random sounds to numbers? Rambling things that even I couldn't understand until the day it did. My name was Eske Otto Schrodinger. I was the firstborn of Esther and Joshua Schrodinger, and I was supposed to die in 1944 at the age of 18. With a striped listed grey pyjama, my head was shaved and deprived of my name to be replaced by the number 159265359. Yeah, I didn't choose this tattoo. I didn't choose any of these. But here we are, so buckle up. It will soon make all sense, I promise.

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'Mum, stop it stings!'

'Eske, stop! Please, behave. Otherwise, I will need to cut your hair.'; Esther was barely holding her tears while dropping bleach on her boy's head. Long black locks, a beautiful feature too dangerous to be seen by the National Socialist German Workers' Party eyes.

'Mum, it is burning my scalp. Please stop.'; Eske was on his knee with his head over the bathtub. He turned his yellow-golden eyes to her: 'Please, mother, stop. I don't want to look like them.'

'We have to cut it then.'; his mother cleaned her tears. 'You look too much like a...'; she couldn't even say it.

'A jew? '; Eske held his mother's hand. It was bizarre and surreal that such a tiny word had such weight. A word for him meant nothing but was inherited by his mother. Eske, twelve years, didn't believe in god or practice any religious rituals whatsoever, and neither did his parents. But their names were enough to be pointed out as threats to the new nation.

It has been two months since his grandparent contacted the Portuguese embassy. Although they were coated by fascism, some politics were turning a blind eye to the Jewish people entering the country and leaving for other safer destinations. Documentation that would save their life at a high price. Most of his grandfather's art pieces were sold at the lowest price possible before the Nazis could confiscate them.

She looked into his face and saw how he tried to smile as if this wasn't painful. As if this weren't something terrible. She wanted to make him feel better, but it seemed impossible.

And so she said: 'I am sorry.' And left the bathroom.

All his family was on edge, rumours of people being forced to take the train to an unknown destination. That is what happens when you are marked as an enemy. The Gestapo would come to collect their passports and label them accordingly. Then they will be sent away without knowing where. If one did not pay attention, there was no way to avoid it. More rumours arrived in the past days about special camps built up north, where Jews from all around Europe were taken. Rumours that Eske heard in passing through his father's words at dinner.

The Schrodinger's were advised to stay in their properties, but they knew it was a matter of time. Eske took the scissors and cut his hair as short as he could, and it took him a while to recognise the boy in the mirror. The boy barely could breathe, as if his chest was trapped in wire. Suddenly, his father opened the bathroom door, and with no explication, he ordered: 'Hide!'

'What?'

'The attics now!'

But it was too late. The sound of heavy boots invaded the downstairs floor, screams and shouts mixed with commands. There was no real place to hide. Leaving the bathroom to go to the attic would be made Eske step on the wooden floor and be seen from downstairs. The window of the bathroom was too small for him to leave. There was no place he could hide. And as he realised it, heavy steps were climbing the stairs.

Eske was supposed to die in 1944 in Neuengamme Camp.

But as you guessed, I didn’t.

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