Blurry Fragments

  Stop it. Just stop it.

  His words for the Earth Mother and her schemes were biting as he craned his neck to look back at Faris. Not because he was shocked, not because Faris was the last person he wanted to see, but because he had underestimated the hostility of his opponent.

  The sword flew to the side. Two icy hands seized his neck, forcing him forward into the face of Lord Faluntide.

  I’m dead. I’m actually going to die here.

  Struggling and clawing at the large hands on his neck, kicking his legs and unable to utter a single word as he suffocated, he helplessly absorbed the scathing words that were spat out at him.

  “Everything that bitch said while cowering over that pathetic excuse for a son was a joke, just like what your life will be once I kill you.”

  But instead of processing the words, the answer he had tried to seek from the jaws of a monster he should not have faced alone, Theo kept trying to fight for air.

  Crack.

  Death’s hands loosened.

  His barrier—he had forgotten he had one. A spell must have hit him.

  Letting out a choked sob, Theo’s vision blurred as the Faluntide patriarch's head snapped upwards.

  “Go on! Do it again! Hit him, I know you want to!” he yelled as his grip tightened, voice becoming progressively muffled. “That precious magic you love—maybe killing someone will finally make you understand how much of a pestilence it is!”

  He was seeing stars. The blurry figure in the corner of his eye with something shiny floating around them—it was turning dark. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He was going to black out.

  “Come on!” commanded Lord Faluntide in a booming voice, briefly sending Theo back to reality. “Do it or I’ll break his neck myself!”

  With what last few seconds he had been granted, he did his best to twist his neck as far as he could to look Faris in the eye. Unable to think about anything other than dying, tears in his eyes, struggling for air as if he still had a chance.

  Do it, he wished he could tell him. Kill me.

  And then, within the second, he could see a beam of light piercing through his stomach. Feel the hands relinquish his neck as he was knocked into the air and onto the hard ground.

  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  Lying on the ground with a mixture of relief and lingering panic, inhaling pins and needles, coughing despite the searing, spreading pain in his abdomen, Theo repeated a single thought in his mind.

  I’m not dead.

  Unfortunately for him, that did nothing to stymie the hole in his stomach.

  Not dead yet.

  All that was in front of him was a foggy, blurred haze. Nausea and fire flooded his senses, along with yelling voices and the clatter of a carriage layered several times upon the high-pitched ringing in his head.

  But he could speak. He was wearing Ty’s tactician’s ring. It didn’t matter what spell it was; he could use a spell from one of his tomes, he could use any spell under the sun for a price. Any healing or physician’s spell could stifle the pain long enough for him to seek help from someone because Faris hadn’t learned healing script. All his years of studying, all the praise he heaped onto himself for having a good memory—it all came down to this.

  Yet…yet why could he think of nothing but that one spell? The one he always used when he was on the brink of death, in unbearable pain, because it didn’t matter to him whether he lived or died, but if he could stop himself from disappointing others. If he could survive, like he had said he was going to do long ago, before he understood the repercussions that came with the deceptively simple act of surviving.

  Does it still hurt? whispered the first person he had failed.

  It hurts so much, I can’t take it. I feel like I’m going to die, cried the second person he had failed.

  Tears fell from his eyes as his hands instinctively covered his face, his body curling up into a ball.

  I’m disappointed in you, scolded the third person he would undoubtedly fail.

  No, he wanted to respond to them as the spell left his lips, the ache nothing to the pain already there. No, it doesn’t hurt. I’m okay. Don’t worry about me. Everything’s fine. I’m sorry I can’t do anything. I’m sorry I’m worthless. I’m a fool. I should have died years ago. My parents should have killed me so I wouldn’t have had to suffer. I should never have been saved. Ty should never have loved a failure like me. I’m okay. Don’t worry about me. Everything’s fine. Please leave. I want to be alone.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  * * *

  That’s it, you’re doing a good job. You’re halfway through the spell. How do you feel?

  I-I’m okay.

  Good boy, Theodore. Let’s keep going with the sixth and seventh. Like we practiced. Mhm. Right. Very good. I’m glad you studied. It’s paying off.

  Em…I…I’m scared.

  No, no. You’re almost there. See? Only three lines left. Here, let me hold your hand. Does that help? Good, good. I believe in you. I know you can do this. And you trust me, right? You can say it slowly, if it helps. Eight…nine…

  E—

  One more, Theodore. Only one more. It’s okay, I’m here. Just one more line to go. I’m so proud of you. You’ve come so far. The pain will be gone once you finish reciting the entire spell—you trust me, right?

  * * *

  He opened his eyes. Brought his hands away from his face only to touch his cheeks with his fingertips.

  The pain…it was gone.

  So why…why was he still crying?

  “Do I want to know what you came here for?”

  He let his hands fall to the ground. “I don’t know,” he whispered to the empty path back toward the city, only a backdrop to the gray sky heralding the rain after the storm. “What’s the point? What’s my goal? Why am I trying to hold on to what I can of her, the remnants she left behind? In the room that’s no longer hers, in our booth in the dining hall. In the reports hall, in the courtyard. At my desk where she used to sit, at her favorite stool at the kitchen counter. In our classes, in our classmates. Why is it that every time I see your face, all I can see is her? Why can’t I help but think to myself that I need to complete every piece of her that’ll one day be lost, because if everyone ultimately forgets, at least I’ll remember her? Her memory will live on in me, every piece of her I never got to complete, every piece of her that the world took away from me.

  “I want to know what she said to you, what she left with you, what I know I have no right to know. But I want to. I can’t let go of it. I want to make sure I remember every little piece of her, every fragment of this disappearing dream in my mind. This image of her. Every day, I feel it getting blurrier and blurrier; she’s slipping away, and I can’t do anything about it but let it happen. Let time take its course when I can just turn everything around if I go back to Em, if I just forsake what she entrusted me with before leaving. But I can’t. I know I can’t. As much as I want to, I can’t. I can’t choose to forsake the world for one person.

  “You say that you’ve accepted that it’s enough for you to be happy because you know that’d make your sister happy, that it’d make Ty happy not to see you suffer. But what if I can’t imagine myself happy? What if I keep finding myself stuck on the first step—which is to accept that she’s gone—despite the few blissful moments we’ve shared, almost convinced that maybe this is all I need, the surface-level happiness we keep trying to grasp onto like our lives depended on it, knowing that, like time, it too will pass?”

  He focused on his twitching hands in front of him. “And when it finally passes, like it always does, I’m alone again. I realize I can’t get over her. I can’t move on. I don’t know how to move on.”

  The voice of the person who had been sitting beside him all this time, so close he could feel their robe touching him, was soft, almost drowned out by rustling leaves.

  “She told me she loved me.”

  Silence.

  “And she asked me to promise her that I’d take care of you.”

  How long ago was it that he had last felt the heavy, meaningful silence that accompanied her existence?

  “Is that what this is?” Theo whispered.

  “No.”

  After another long period of silence, interrupted by the whispers of rainfall, Faris slowly got up.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I heard you at my door.”

  It was a new day. So why was he watching Faris leave with his back to him again? Tall and dark, the only color in his existence unable to be seen. Long hair up in a ponytail, swaying, softened by the rain. Walking down the forest path Theo had taken to obtain an answer that had been granted. At what cost, however, he only knew that he would no doubt have to work on repaying it throughout his current lifetime, if not the next.

  Theo gradually got up off the ground after the figure of his classmate disappeared, and the rain intensified. He checked his timepiece, made a mental note of when the Araise would incapacitate him, and whispered a spell to protect his books from the downpour. Then, he looked up to see another shadow in the middle of the path. Shorter, almost the size of the Earth Mother’s shadow.

  His heart skipped a beat.

  “Here you are,” they called.

  The tactician steadily advanced toward the shadow, knowing what was going to happen and not bothering to brace himself for the pain. He would fail again.

  “I got you your new pen.”

  Theo stared at the empty tactician’s pen in Moriya’s hand. “Oh…thank you.”

  But before even attempting to take it, he met the professor’s eyes and gave him the time to say the words he expected. The words he dreaded, the words that would reaffirm his failures.

  Moriya lowered his hand.

  Theo flinched.

  The professor froze for what felt like an eternal second before he spoke again. “What was that?”

  “N-nothing,” stuttered Theo.

  “You thought I was going to hit you.”

  “You…you hit me the last time I almost did it.”

  It took half an eternity compared to earlier for Moriya to find a suitable answer. “I didn’t realize it hurt that much. Chelsi usually does that to me. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”

  Theo blinked, staring at the cold professor in disbelief.

  “What? Was that not what you wanted to hear? Want me to beg for your forgiveness?”

  “N-no, I—I just didn’t expect that from you.”

  Moriya narrowed his eyes. “What did you expect?”

  “I…I don’t know. A rebuke of some sort? Say you’re disappointed? Call me a fool?”

  “Well, then.” The professor continued to regard the student suspiciously. “Kneel.”

  Theo took a step back as if he hadn’t asked for this. “W-what? Wait.”

  Moriya pointed to the ground at his feet. “Kneel.”

  Meekly lowering himself into a crouch and setting his knees down onto the cold, wet ground, Theo was reminded of how tiny Moriya actually was when the professor extended his hand out toward him.

  He flicked him on the forehead.

  “You piece of shit. I can’t believe you cast an Araise again,” he admonished without raising his voice above the volume of a casual conversation, even the slightest hint of malice absent from his tone. “I didn’t defend you from Em all these years to see you treat yourself like this. Value yourself more, you fool.”

  And then he threw the pen at the speechless child, who, with wide eyes, caught it.

  Moriya turned away and began walking. “Time to get going. We’ve got a mission.”