The Way to Love in the Place of Dead Chapter 5

A white hand easily lifted his body and held him in its embrace, and he didn’t clearly remember what he himself was like after that.

He thought he might have cried, might have screamed, might have even torn at that shining hair, but regrettably, it wasn’t precise. What he vividly remembered, after struggling with a hazy mind and collapsing into sleep from sheer exhaustion, was only this. That the hand that had held him was large, the embrace warm, and the voice exceedingly tender.

—It’s all right now. Come with me.

Just as a newly hatched duckling imprints on the first being it sees for a lifetime.

That being soon became his god.

—Call me El.

How to speak, how to read and write, how to run.

Greetings with people, conversations, and even embraces—all of it.

Every way of living in this world that existed within him came from her, and that very thing became the ‘proof that El had existed.’

—Kay. Will you promise me just one thing?

She stroked Kay’s cheek and then was dragged away by someone unidentifiable, and Kay soon lost consciousness. When he opened his eyes again, not a single trace of our time together remained in this world. So he went over her final moments again and again.

—If someday I suddenly disappear. When that time comes.

Stop. El. I don’t want to hear it.

—No matter how hard, how painful, how agonizing it is.

If only I could have covered her mouth then.

—Remember me.

Living wouldn’t have been this unbearably painful.

If only I could have died.

It wouldn’t have come to this.

∞ ∞ ∞

Air so clear it could never be felt in Willamere woke him.

A moderate weight lay over his body. Thanks to it, feeling coziness and constraint at once, he slowly moved. Turning his head little by little toward the thread-like texture slipping over his faintly twitching fingers… he saw a person’s head.

“…”

Faintly, a single ray of light seeping through the curtains illuminated Aran’s face as if it were anointing him. Kay gazed at the sleeping man, his cheek pressed flat, even as he bathed in that light which felt sacred.

‘He looks like her.’

He had thought for certain it was El.

Because otherwise, there was no way he could be this identical.

‘What the hell are you?’

Harboring the question, he lightly touched the strands of hair caught on his fingers. Even the smooth texture, like a soft thread, was the same as the El in his memories.

“I am rather good-looking, I admit.”

Since when had he been awake? He slowly lifted his eyelids. Eyes mixed with blue, green, and gray sparkled like jewels. Even stretching languidly over someone else’s body, he asked.

“So. How’s your body?”

“That doesn’t really seem like the right thing to ask a person you’ve tied up.”

On Kay’s body, a dozen or so restraints were bound along with the bed.

“You can undo them if you put your mind to it.”

“As if that’s as easy as you make it sound…”

Lifting his arm, Kay paused and looked down at his wrist. The restraints he had thought were tightly fastened were already all undone.

“I went to the trouble of guiding you. I’d rather not see you go berserk again.”

“…If you’d already undone them, it would’ve been nicer to take them off entirely.”

“I’m enjoying the view.”

“Of what?”

“Secret.”

Aran watched Kay discard the rattling restraints onto the floor. Kay, who couldn’t possibly not feel the lingering gaze, frowned and stared back at him.

“What are you looking at.”

At the frank hostility, Aran burst into laughter.

“Just.”

“…”

“Looking doesn’t wear anything away.”

“It’s wearing my patience away.”

“Then before it runs out, just one thing.”

Watching Kay, who only kept his mouth firmly shut, Aran had to hold back the laughter spilling out. Even on that half-shadowed face, it was plainly evident—an expression that said he didn’t like it but would hear him out for now.

“The reason you refuse to join. Just tell me that.”

“…”

“Generally, refusing to join means you don’t want to go to war. And refusing to go to war is because you don’t want to die… but you’re far too strong to simply die on the battlefield. So I don’t get it. What’s the real reason you refuse to join, even though you have someone you want to protect?”

Listening, Kay lowered his feet from the bed. Bare soles touched the floor, and the one-piece hospital gown followed, flowing down. The body revealed through the single-layered garment was even more emaciated than expected, making Aran furrow his brow unconsciously. It was a frame he would have wanted to drag straight to the mess hall, if Kay hadn’t continued speaking.

“‘All living humanity desires victory. Because defeat means annihilation.'”

Kay retraced the clear causal relationship, then let out a sigh.

“It’s not wrong. But to me, there’s something more important than humanity’s extinction. That’s all.”

Having finished speaking, Kay stood before the door of the hospital room, and Aran, looking into those unclouded eyes, knew he couldn’t stop him.

Regrettable for the twenty ability users mobilized to bring him here and those who nearly died, but this wasn’t a problem that could be solved by force.

It was a fact made obvious just by the remnants of torture that remained even after mobilizing healing-type espers, and the scars that must have been made long before that.

“You answered my question, so I have one request.”

Kay, his hand on the doorknob, spoke to Aran.

“I hope you won’t try to stop me on my way back. Then no one will get hurt.”

He didn’t want to hurt anyone. But his attitude was that he would have no choice if they blocked him.

Aran also rose to his feet and approached Kay.

“You have something more important than humanity’s extinction, so I’m sure you’ll manage somehow.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“I’m curious. What that something is.”

Pressing his hand against the closed door just past his shoulder, Aran asked again, and he saw Kay lower his eyes and bite his lip. Hesitation and conflict held his tongue captive.

“Is it something you can’t even speak of?”

“It’s not that. Just…”

“Just?”

Close enough that Aran’s shadow, cast against the window behind him, completely covered Kay’s body.

Kay, who had been hesitating, lifted his head, and as their gazes overlapped, a prickling displeasure brushed Aran’s cheek again. Was there something he wanted to say, or was he debating whether it was all right to say it or not?

Aran restrained the urge to press him to spit out whatever it was that had formed in his mouth.

“Because nothing will change even if I say it.”

“You don’t know that until you say it.”

Aran savored a faint restlessness at this puzzle he hadn’t faced in a long while.

“…”

The reason he, whose patience was not long, could endure this restlessness was because the person before him was wavering too. There was a pleasure in reading the minute shifts of facial muscles and the expressions that changed moment by moment because of them.

Whether it was seconds or minutes, an unknowable conflict ended, and it seemed he had made up his mind.

Kay bit down firmly on his lip, then released it like a sigh.

“I’m looking for someone.”

The words he spat out after a long struggle were completely unexpected.

“Someone?”

The moment it left his mouth, as if the reality of the loss pained him, Kay held his breath for a second.

Aran, who had been observing the pain Kay felt, was caught off guard by the words that followed.

“Someone who looks exactly like you.”

∞ ∞ ∞

Before the war broke out, part of the center had functioned as a military academy. But as the war dragged on, instructors and leaders alike had no choice but to stand on the battlefield without exception, and so the new recruits who came in through the initiation ceremony were to be educated by ability users from the academy who remained at the center.

‘Exhausting.’

Iris had just finished a class in place of her mentor, who had become a corps commander and could not leave the front lines, and had returned to Living Quarters 5101.

‘Huh?’

The light at the shoe rack by the entrance automatically turned on, and what she discovered were military boots that weren’t hers. As she took off her shoes and lifted her head, Aran was sitting in the dark living room of the house.

“…”

Even though he must have noticed she had arrived, Aran was simply staring out the window at something far away. His profile, lost in thought, was quite a picturesque man.

Iris put water in the pot to boil, brewed the tea herself, and brought the cups over, sitting down across from him.

“You really look like someone who’s been jilted.”

At Iris’s words, Aran turned his gaze and smiled.

“Do I seem that way?”

“It is a shame. I thought he would be a real asset.”