Early December in a tropical country. Where one will never find whether it’s snow or the sun’s burning heat in front of everyone’s door. No weather forecasts, as to how bright or rainy day will not stop any of The living from doing whatever they really want to.

They have nothing to be afraid of, nothing to lose by the change of seasons. No challenge, no urge to improve…

Maybe that’s why we are always left behind by any other countries.

That’s why we are the weakest among the others.

Try to dodge this fact, but these people… Care of nothing, just walk through by themself with their highest hope for things will never be going worse than any days before.

Nothing much more than just a normal and simple mind of cowardly mortal creatures… Where the rotting things will always be left behind as well as no one will ever have the guts to realize... Don’t get me wrong, but it’s actually the good thing to comply.

Since with that thought, there will be no problem for society. For the children to grow up and even for the old men to die in peace…

This is all what you wanted, right?

Now that everything has changed, you guys are even willing to lick people's spit just for the sake of refusing suffering… For rejecting what you should have experienced as a human being who deserves to suffer because of your own actions.

If it wasn't because of you...

Then the world should have not ended like this…

~~~~~

I wake up from the past with a scattered mind that still gives me a headache, like the ticking of the clock banging my skull for every second. Kinda confused about what I was actually doing, then I started to remember every scene of it in stages.

Yes, this isn't the first time I've lost my memory… But before this one, I've been doing it on purpose. While for now it’s strangely different...

I completely lost my memory due to my own physical condition!

“Wew… Cool…”

Okay… I did say something in my mind before I woke up …

I talked… Complained about…

My own country?

Wait... What?

I don't think I was talking about the country as literally though… My previous words were more about the attitude of the people around me.

But, eh? Hold on…

What the heck am I just saying?!

Was I drunk at that time?

Even until now, I still can’t remember my name and the first thing that I just did, was suddenly talk shit about my own people? Daniel, have you lost your mind?

Oh, wait…

Now I remember my name.

Daniel… Yes, my name’s Daniel.

Okay… Now, what's the second most important thing to know, when we can’t remember anything after our own name? Correct! Where am I at?

Twinkling my eyes until it’s wide open while repeating my own name in case I will forget it again, then I see this little thingy. This scenery… That I’ve never seen before, but I always wanted to…

“Snow?” I said that with a bit of happiness.

But we never have winter here…

Or even snowfall… After all, this is not a sub-tropical area, In… Indonesia… Ah yes! Of course I'm Indonesian.

Now I remember that one.

But then, why is there snow falling?

Just want to make sure, I look up in order to feel how far the cold could refreshingly melt right on top of my face. But it’s not cold at all…

“Ouch!”

It bite! Scathe like a burning needle!

“It’s not snowing. No snow… So it can be confirmed if this place is really Indonesia.”

I was talking in my mind, asking myself, how can such a trivial thing convince me that this place is really in Indonesia.

But still… “I need to know where exactly this place is.”

So I try to straighten this back, intending to look around.

Hmmm…

As presumed...

I tried, but I couldn't move even an inch. I can only sit here kneeling in silence...

I gave up on moving, but then I’m even more annoyed with the pain every time this small and soft snow-like object landed on my head and the skin of my shoulders. One final option to find out, my vision then spreads out looking around, wondering if I might finally understand what these stingy things actually are.

And yes…

Now I get it...

Maybe that time before, I just couldn’t see clearly of how these things are not snowflakes…

Or in the first place, It’s ashes… And not just a simple ash, but the cursed one.

No, I’m not even joking…

I can tell all of this thing is real because I’ve seen so many others that are even worse than just the cursed ashes… And that’s why I’m crying right now.

Because finally, I remember…

About everything...

~~~~~

A dark place with not even a single sound vibrating to make it feels more alive.

A day without a sun, or the ashes is just too thick to give its light a try to reach my own palms. And even if the sun could glint on me, it wouldn't know where these fingers were. Hence everything is covered by the gnawing gray ashes.

Along with my trembling hands as to how a girl’s body made out of nothing but the same as what covers the surface of the ground, is now slowly cracking and crumbling above it.

That girl who just had a nap in my lap… Now, her face just won’t even help themselves to stay the same as the one’s I used to know so well.

Like a burnt fragile mannequin that thawed to the ground full of dust and ash as one, I cried even louder knowing she had gone already.

Lonely in the middle of the physical impact of my own power, where the Ferris wheel wreck and the rusty benches were half-buried under the dust…

The dust from a hundred dead human bodies.

That I've been rained on by the bodies of the people I've killed by my own hand...

“Let those all who have a life shall regret to have their own. As how the imperious body fell, begging for clemency. So as the clemency itself cries unceasingly asking for its own death.”

The chanting of the curse of the goddess of suffering, painfully inhaled by the living. Both fleshy and fibrous, everything is now back to being one.

But then why am I still here?

Why am I the only one who can’t die by my own curse?

Answer me, Elis…

~~~~~

Now I think it is the time…

There are too many wounds that somehow I can endure only for knowing something that is already obvious what the answer is…

As how my eyes finally reach their own limit, a soft yet painful touch of sound echoes in these ears. Not allowing me to rest myself, it’s filling me up with remorse instead.

“You dumb liar…” she said.

Daniel…

That was just your own imagination. She would never say that.

So… Please just stop thinking about it.

“Yeah… She did not say that… She will never have a chance to say that. And that’s the worst thing that I can get.” Slowly falling deeper into the puddle of dust, everything just got darker from then.

I don’t care anymore…

I give up…

~~~~~