Prince Of Mind Hallucinations

Chapter 18

The lights of the Sky-Light rooftop cafe glowed dimly, reflecting off the cold glass table surface. Raditya sat with his black shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing arm muscles that were now veiny and solid. Ever since that bolt of lightning, his body no longer belonged to the frail nerd he once was. Across from him, Siska—a girl with shoulder-length hair and a shy smile—kept fidgeting with the end of her straw.

"You... you’ve really changed, Rad," Siska murmured, her face flushing under the orange glow of the lights. "Back then, I only ever dared to watch you from a distance in the library. Sitting across from you like this feels like a dream."

Raditya gave a thin smile, a prince-like grin capable of paralyzing logic. However, behind that smile, his brain was screaming. The "mind-radio" inside his head was tuning into Siska's inner frequency at maximum volume.

"Oh my god, he is so hot! Look at that jawline, I just want to bite it. Does he use skin whitener? But how does he smell so much like musk? It makes my insides melt. Ugh, I have to look elegant. I can’t let him know I spent three hours getting ready just for this!"

Siska's inner voice, a mix of anxiety and admiration, sounded like a buzzing bee in Raditya’s ear. He tried to focus on a normal conversation. "I didn't expect you’d actually want to hang out, Sis. You're usually with the student council crowd."

"They're boring," Siska answered bluntly. Physically, Siska was the image of an exemplary student. But the moment their eyes met, her inner passion exploded, sending a 4K visual transmission that immediately invaded Raditya’s frontal lobe.

In an instant, the reality of the cafe evaporated for Raditya. He was dragged into a "Hallucinatory Cinema" triggered by Siska’s peaking hormones.

In this brutal and explicit mental projection, Raditya no longer saw the elegant Siska at the cafe table. He was forced to "watch" Siska’s imagination, where they were inside a cramped, dimly lit cafe restroom. Raditya saw himself—an uncontrollable, feral version—dragging Siska into a stall, locking the door roughly while his muscular hands pinned her against the cold tiled wall.

The scent of raw lust from Siska’s jasmine perfume clashed with the smell of heated skin in Raditya’s mind. He saw his mental self tear the floral dress she was wearing with one violent jerk, letting the buttons scatter across the floor. Raditya watched his own powerful hands cup Siska’s plump breasts, kneading them greedily until her pink nipples hardened like coffee beans.

"Come on, Raditya... do something that makes me forget I’m a good girl..." Siska’s inner voice moaned, her voice raspy and demanding.

In that mental hallucination, Raditya lifted Siska’s legs, wrapping her smooth thighs around his powerful waist. He saw the image of his naked self thrusting into Siska without any lubricant, driven only by the overflowing natural fluids of her desire.

The sound of skin meeting skin—smack, smack, smack!—the rhythmic, savage sex under the sound of a running faucet filled Raditya’s neural space. The Siska in her mind groaned wildly, her freshly manicured fingernails scratching Raditya’s shoulders until they bled, while he hammered into her with primitive speed and strength.

Raditya felt as if a fictitious heat was seeping through his entire nervous system. His own member beneath his school trousers suddenly went rigid and stiff, hardening to its maximum size and providing a sensation that was both deliciously painful and humiliating. The Siska in the fantasy tilted her head back, screaming in a climax that flooded Raditya’s entire mental circuit with a fictitious fluid of pleasure that felt incredibly sticky and hot.

"Ugh!" Raditya flinched physically in his cafe chair, clutching his head as a sudden dizziness hit him. His breath came in quick, heavy gasps, and cold sweat broke out on his temples.

"Raditya? Are you okay? Your face is so red," Siska reached out, touching Raditya’s wrist gently.

The touch felt like an electric shock. Raditya immediately pulled his hand away as if he had just touched barbed wire. Siska’s physical touch triggered another fragment of thought—a ridiculous comparison she was making.

"Gosh, his hand is so hot. So incredibly masculine. If only Do Ha-jun in that K-drama last night had shoulders like Radit’s, the bed scene wouldn't have been so soft. I want him to pull me into his car and let him mess up my hair..."

Raditya closed his eyes, trying to dampen the mental erosion. Guilt began to gnaw at his chest. Siska seemed sincere, but his ability to "hear" every detail of her dirty fantasies and shallow judgments made this date feel like one giant lie. Raditya felt like he wasn't talking to a girl, but rather dissecting a machine of lust wrapped neatly in social pretense.

"I... I don't think I should be here, Sis," Raditya said suddenly, his voice heavy and hoarse because his libido was still pulsing from the remnants of Siska’s mental broadcast.

Siska frowned, her mind beginning to churn with anxiety: Huh? Did I say something wrong? Is my floral slip showing through? Ugh, I’m such an idiot! Or did he see a booger in my nose earlier?!

"Why, Rad? Is the food not good? We can move to another place if you want," Siska tried to fix the mood, her face showing a look of pure sadness.

Raditya looked at Siska. This girl deserved a normal date with a man who didn't know her deepest secrets. The longer he stayed here, the more of Siska’s mental trash would enter his head. He had just heard her thinking about his underwear size and imagining an oral scene in the cafe parking lot later tonight. It was too noisy. Too dirty. And it made him feel lonely in the middle of a crowd.

"Sorry, Sis. I just got a text from my Dad," Raditya began his fake confession. "My Mom... she collapsed in the kitchen. I have to get back right now."

BOOM! Siska’s eyes widened. Mentally, she wailed: OH MY GOD! Right during the most epic date of my life, his mom has to go and faint?! Is this some kind of trial from my Libra horoscope this month?! Well, there goes my chance for a parking lot hug...

"Oh my god, Rad! Okay, go home now! Do you want me to come with you?" Siska stood up with a feigned panic that hid a deep disappointment underneath.

"No need. I’ll just take a bike taxi so it’s faster. I’m heading out, I’m so sorry—the food is on me," Raditya grabbed his jacket and immediately turned away from the table without looking back.

With every step Raditya took away from Siska, the noise in his head began to fade. He passed a group of guys at the cafe bar thinking about how to cheat on their girlfriends, passed a waiter whose mind was cursing a stingy customer, and kept walking until he reached the lower parking area.

The world is too noisy for a telepath.

Reaching the main road, Raditya leaned his back against a utility pole, taking a deep breath as if his lungs had just been scrubbed clean of exhaust fumes. He wiped the sweat from his handsome face, lamenting the fact that his new good looks had trapped him in the sickening web of other people’s mental hallucinations.

"Trash date," Raditya sighed.

Even though he had just lied about his mother, he felt it was the most honest thing he could do to preserve what was left of his sanity. Inside his brain, the image of Siska moaning in the cafe toilet began to vanish, replaced by the cold silence of the night.

Suddenly, he felt a "blank signal" again from the distance. A familiar silence. Raditya sharpened his senses. Bianca.

For some reason, he was certain Bianca was somewhere nearby, or at least she was the only logical destination after all the psychic filth he had absorbed tonight.

The first date with Siska had officially ended in a total disaster, leaving Raditya in the city’s dim light with a million of other people’s secrets clinging to his skin like leeches. He realized one bitter truth that night: to be able to love someone, he might have to find someone whose thoughts he could never hear, or someone who possessed a silence as absolute as death. And as far as he knew, there was only one such person. Bianca.

Raditya quickened his pace toward home, ignoring the vibration of notifications from his phone—countless apologetic texts from Siska that he knew were fueled by nothing more than her resentment over failing to "taste" Raditya's new body.

The night grew deeper, and this prince of mental hallucinations began to understand that in a world where every mind is laid bare, lies are the blanket one needs most to keep from freezing to death in the cold of reality.