Graphic content ahead! Heavy mature themes involve. Proceed at your own risk! You have been warned.

Chapter 19: Everything In These Hands

Reimuz walked down the sloping terrain, under the midnight clouds and trees that offered him nothing other than additional blackness. He continued down the treacherous slope, and by the time he reached the man made clearing, the sky cleared and the moon had risen.

“Hey, you smoke?” asked the young man leaning on a tree on his right.

Reimuz watched the vapor drifting from his mouth, and following its trail, he saw the smoldering cigarette interlocked between his fingers. At that moment, he knew instantly—that he was one of them.

But Reimuz did not mention a single syllable about it. He waited for him to speak as he studied the varying expressions on the young man’s face. A moment of silence persisted between them two. Reimuz had no intention of speaking first, and he made that clear to his friend by prolonging the stillness.

Wein stood on his feet and took a puff, the smoke streaming down his nose as he spoke. “I’m guessing that’s a no?”

“I’ll pass,” he shrugged and denied him. “Celes probably won’t like it if I do.”

“Celes? You mean the elf?” asked Wein.

“Effu,” he corrected.

“Effu? What’s the difference?”

“Beats me. So, what did you call me out here for?” he stared at the young man with new interest.

Reimuz already had an idea forming in his head after seeing the cigarette in his hand, but he still wondered about many things. For one thing, how did he realized he was the same as him? Was it a coincidence, or did he have a method for knowing?

“You’re surprisingly calm,” said Wein. “I imagined you’d be showering me with questions by now.”

He was right, but for Reimuz, there was no need to rush. Reimuz sat on a nearby tree trunk and a grabbed a single pebble on the ground. Staring at the stone as if it held some great importance, he fiddled with it for a few seconds, and looked back at Wein.

“Well, there’s just too many things weighing in my mind I guess,” he threw the pebble at the lake, rippling the water surface three times before it sank.

“That’s not good. You let stress in your head and it will take up tenancy and not leave.”

Reimuz slid his hands in his pockets and sighed. “Was that the reason you smoke?”

“It helps me clear my mind of unneeded thoughts. So I guess that’s a yes,” said Wein as he took another puff of his cancer stick.

The wind blew and played with their hairs, blowing Wein’s cigarette at the same time. He disregarded the old one and pulled out the small crimson pack from his trousers. The pack of cigarettes was labelled with a familiar name, something Reimuz had always seen when he visited the convenience store.

Reimuz fell silent for a moment, letting his gaze wander. “Damn, pass me a stick,” he said to Wein, who was lighting his cigarette with a match.

“Here,” he passed Reimuz the burning stick on his mouth after puffing it one more time.

“Dammit, don’t you have another one?” Reimuz frowned a little, but he still took it despite his complaints.

“Sorry, but that’s my last one,” Wein answered with a wry smile.

Puffing the orange butt of the stick he got from his friend, Reimuz choked a little. “Damn,” he coughed and cleared his throat then he shifted his gaze back to his friend while blowing a cloud.

“I feel like I’m talking with a different person. Was everything else I knew of you a facade?” Reimuz asked.

It wasn’t that long till he met the guy, and there was clearly no time to know him yet, in spite of those wariness, he felt like he had a grasp of his personality. He thought him a fool. An easy going guy with a sense of justice. But what happened in the mines and his action onwards completely changed his opinion of him.

Wein walked underneath the shade and leaned his back against a tree.

Folding his arms, he stared at a distance while giving Reimuz the answer he sought for. “Each one of us has a face that the public believes that we are. We hide our real core as an individual inside a mantle we aren’t adjusted to wearing because we wanted to be perceived differently. Am I not right?”

“Perhaps. But hide behind such a mantle for too long, and you could end up fooling yourself,” Reimuz’s voice was sharp, like the tip of a knife, and Wein quivered at the sound of it.

“You speak from experience?”

“I guess there’s no harm in telling you,” said Reimuz, his voice grew hoarser with every syllable. “It was three years ago. That time when fate forced me to choose between my five month pregnant mother and my childhood friend—the results were obvious.”

“What made you commit such a terrible decision?”

“I don’t know,” Reimuz shook his head, the light on his cigarette completely extinguished. “My vision turned dark and my mind went blank. The next thing I know, there were two corpses laying on the ground before me. All this time, I’ve convinced myself that it wasn’t me who pulled the trigger, but maybe it was me who shot and killed her after all. I killed her. I killed my childhood friend along with that damn burglar.”

Shaking his head with a sigh, Reimuz flicked the cigarette away. He stood up and grabbed another pebble. He took a pitching stance and threw the pebble he regarded as a baseball at the lake, the small stone traveling two hops further than the one from before. After the stone dipped and succumbed to the body of water, he returned his gaze back to his friend who did not say a word to judge him, and he was thankful for that.

Reimuz exhaled a long, heavy sigh. “Yet, despite my painstaking efforts to save my family, it never worked out the way I liked it in the end. I was blamed for the death of my childhood sweetheart and my Mom turned crazy; she aborted my soon to be little sister and broke our family.”

He continued his sad tale, but he did not showed any hints of lukewarm sympathy for himself. “And the expression my mother displayed before leaving me and my dad, I could never forget. She mistook me, her son, for a monster. To me who was raised to be a soldier, to me who was taught to kill most of his emotions at a tender age, that was the first time I felt fear. And just what my fears had told me, my mom left and never returned.”

Wein took a big gulp. “What happened afterwards?”

“Afterwards, eh? Well, I followed my Dad back to New York and there… I guess he wanted me to forget about everything.”

“Why New York?”

“My Dad’s an American.”

“You don’t look like one though.”

Reiuz chuckled, and returned the cool blue stare of his friend. “Most people say I took after my Mom. A Japanese. A beautiful wallflower—or so my Dad had always described her.”

“You’re not one of those expert in kung-fu, right? his friend asked with a mischievous smile.

“Wrong nationality, bro,” Reimuz replied, knitting his eyebrows.

It was in poor taste to crack a joke with such tense atmosphere, but he knew Wein said those words to cheer him up, so Reimuz ignored his friend’s misgivings and continued.

“Anyways, I went under heavy depression, and the next thing I know, I’m behind my computer playing games. It wasn’t my first time playing, but it felt different that time. In games, I was a different person. I never had to agonize about anything and I could do whatever I want without having to worry about a single shit.”

In the game, he was a hero. In the game, he was a leader. In the game, he found friends that accepted him despite his faults. In the game, he found a temporary love. In the game, he found someone to vent his troubles onto. In the game, he was everything he aspired to be. But in the end, it was just a game. The moment he removed himself from that fantasy, the dream was gone, and with him coming back to the cold reality.

While staring at the dark blue sky reflected on the lake’s surface, Reimuz muttered in a low tone:

“Ultimately, I took my game character’s name, Reimuz, and masqueraded myself with a different persona. And now I do not know which is one which. Which one is the real me?”

Wein stepped closer and picked up a stone, a rock at the size of his fist. “That’s one heck of a tale,” he arched back and violently smashed the rock at the lake with a wide swing, creating an explosion of water. Droplets of rain trickled on their faces, as if it drizzled for a moment.

“Was it? I feel like you have a much better one to tell,” said Reimuz, his hair dripping wet.

“Do I?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Winter typhoon, ever heard of it?”

“Sounds like a small terrorist group,” Reimuz said, partly as a joke. “I’m guessing you’re from the arctic circle?”

“How did you know?”

“Just look at you, you look like you’ve barely seen the light of the sun. And your hair color is definitely lacking the D-vitamins, or whatever it was.”

“I call it: the land of everlasting snow.”

“So you’re a terrorist?”

“We fancied to call ourselves revolutionist,” said Wein, emphasizing the last word of his sentence with a much firmer tone. “And… I’d like to continue, but I spotted someone eavesdropping over there,” he guided Reimuz’s eyes to a tree.

The figure would’ve completely hidden herself, but her long and pointed ears sticking out on both sides completely gave her away. It twitched after hearing Wein’s words, and it twitched again after Reimuz took his first step forward, as if the figure could see behind that tree trunk.

“Don’t tell me… Is that you, Celes?”