Capítulo 49: [XLVIII] - Faded Hue
Bit by bit, his blue, bloodless face regained its colors.
I observed him coming back to his senses in pain, red marks glowing around his pale neck.
The violet eyes of his were piercing through me, like through a long-lost hope. Opened in shock widely, their scleras red from irritation. He blinked so fast, as if expecting my sight to disappear at any moment.
I was scared to say anything. Afraid to do anything else. Harming him with any of my actions…
My sole being here, all could bring only mischief. Everywhere I went, there was always someone pursuing me. And the last thing I would want is to someone take away the last person I could trust…
I wanted to ask so many questions.
Why? Just why? Is all of this happening?
Yet looking at him now… I couldn't bring myself to ask any of it…
Only the tears dropped down on the floor.
"Icto… I'm so… Sorry…!"
His person squirmed with pain like a worm below me. The sight of his shiny hair, it brought a sense of comfort and ease I haven't felt for days.
Yet, his pale face and unsettling gaze filled with a long-lost emotion, it all felt so unfamiliar. Something I never expected to see, someone I hoped to see again.
"You're… alive… Icto you're alive!!" — I was kneeling by his side, desperately shaking his body with my hands.
I didn't understand why I did that. As if I was expecting him to stay still and play dead before me. Like if I wanted to bring back to life a person who just died. Maybe I wanted to keep him conscious, make him more energized and realize that he is not a projection of my mind, but a warm being. Real one. All of that was mixing in my head, as I watched his long face be filled with sadness.
He started crying too. The violet eyes of his changed into a reddish hue, and I could finally hear a noise coming from his mouth. A quiet wail.
"Where… Have you been… I… I was so worried… That I might never see you again… See no one…" — I couldn't speak the words I wanted through the throat-grasping feeling of anxiety.
I stopped pulling his clothes, and just felt as if all the strength left my body in one second.
I inertly fell on his chest, with my hands firmly gripping the texture of his coat. The warmth coming from below, the sweet smell I rarely sensed. I didn't want to let it go.
An unexpected touch embraced my head. His long, warm fingers swirled through my short hair, and flowed down to the neck.
In the silence that grew between us, only his heartbeat was interrupting it. My sighs and tears were melting in his body, making the clothes wet. I want this moment to last forever.
"…I'm glad you're okay." — His weak voice rose after a while.
I raised my head slightly, to look at his face from under my hanging bangs. Glaring at the ceiling, his gaze felt empty.
"I'm… Not okay. I…" — My voice broke, coming from the shivering body. The sudden surge of pain sucked my insides.
"Right now, you're with me. You're okay, understand?" — His eyes flashed with hope for a second, but then it all changed.
The light disappeared, and his face was filled with gloom and torment.
There were so many things I wanted to know. So many questions arising in my head. But is it okay to just let it all out, after we reconciled so desperately?
"Wh-"
"Where… Have you been?" — My sentence was stronger than his. I didn't stop it, even after hearing he wanted to ask the same thing. I just…
His eyes were once again glaring into the low gray ceiling.
"Thing have become… A little more difficult." — The tone of his voice dropped from the usual one. A cold chill flew through my body.
The hand he was embracing my head with, it suddenly grasped my shoulder, and pushed me away.
He lifted his upper body and was now sitting on the floor, staring at me with a sharp glare.
I looked at his arm which was pushing me back even more further… The distance he put between us… Why?
"Icto…"
His expression was a difficult puzzle.
It was the face of a man I witnessed a few years back, when all of it has happened…
"Do you blame me… For everything?" — A shallow question directed at him came out of my mouth.
I couldn't look him in the face. The agony in my heart… It's growing with every second.
If he was the Icto I was friends with, he would ask: "Blame you for what? What has happened, cannot be changed. There will be only consequences which we have to endure."
But he didn't speak any of that. Quite the contrary…
"I've been trying to tell myself… That… You're not responsible. But… I'm… Getting a little tired." — His words were soft, as if not trying to hurt me. However, they did the opposite.
"I know… I know all… Of it… Is there something I can do with it?! No! You repeated to me! I can't change the past! I can only endure… The consequences…" — I couldn't speak as I wanted.
I felt the pressure crushing my body, the realization that it all may have indeed fallen apart because of my sole existence.
It all came together after years.
"But the consequences. They grew significantly. More than you can imagine."
The stinging liquid in my eyes, it was filling me with contempt towards myself. Why do I have to repeat mistakes? Why do I never learn? Should I just… End it all with myself?
I sighed down, glaring at his miserable face. This sight is all so similar to the one… A few years back.
…
A few years ago, my life was filled with contemplation. I asked myself every day: "Why?"
Why is the world the way it is?
Why some of the people live happily, having enough money and time for everything they desire, while the other must perish and fight for their survival?
"That's how it is, and what can you do in the state you are in right now? No shit. That's why you won't achieve anything unless you disobey some rules." — A black-haired kid lying on the top of the lockers said nonchalantly.
"It's you again… Can you leave me alone?" — I answered to his uncalled-for comment.
"Don't you hate being lonely? Why don't you appreciate someone talking to you?"
"Not you."
"What's wrong with me?" — His head was hanging upside down, with his hair swaying before the door of my locker.
"No one talks to you."
"Does anyone talk to you either?"
"…Sometimes…"
"No shit. You literally run away from the bullies every day through the maze of lockers to fill your spare time, you don't talk shit to anyone, liar."
The frequency of this kid using the word "shit" was quite amusing. It sounded funny in his still childish voice.
"I did that until you appeared. Now it's you being circled by them. They can't beat you apparently, but that doesn't seem to scare them off… Maybe they want you to become a new gang leader?" — I joked at the end, to make his feel displeased.
"Leading a bunch of empty-heads… That doesn't interest me…"
"You're too short to be a gang leader anyways." — I tried not to burst with laughter at that one.
"What?!"
The teenager got so agitated by that comment, that he leaned too much above the lockers edge. If not me pinning his thighs to the cold metal locker, he would seriously damage his head, hitting the floor with a falling impact.
He was surprisingly light, there was no problem in keeping him in a position like that.
"Hey! Let me go, bully!!" — He yelled, trying to catch my arms holding him.
"You're light as a feather. Don't they feed you at home?"
"Very funny, fat ass." — He gripped my knees tightly, making my instinctively release him.
A tumbled body of a dark-haired teenager was now glaring at me from the floor. His bright blue eyes could make one's heart beat faster. At the beginning, they did make mine, but then I turned around and proceeded to walk towards the class.
"Why are you always running away?" — He asked, after getting up from the floor, and fixing his clothes.
"An instinct, I guess."
"Then try to be the one running after someone else for once! You're it!" — He patted me on my back, and started sprinting into the darkness of the corridor, turning his head towards me. A wide smile with white teeth was shining.
"What a freak." — I threw quietly, my words being distorted by the barrier of air I flew through, to catch my prey.
The world before my eyes shifted like if the space was being proceeded fast forwards.
He was quite an eccentric person, but we really got well on. It seemed as if the conversations with him could never end.
Always so mysterious, he was following me at one time, and disappearing into nowhere at the other. It was always amusing me, his way of living. His behavior against rules and how it seemed the laws didn't apply to him that much.
It felt good, for once, having a person you could freely talk to and spend time with. I didn't even notice when my first disdain against him turned into something else.
Yet, there were many things that worried me about his person. The blank stare getting out of his dazzling eyes, the lack of sadness and a sort of humanity. And the fact that all of a sudden, people around us started to send us scared glares, yet I didn't do anything other than hang out with him. Or it being the opposite, he always stuck to me mercilessly. I wondered why. I wasn't so interesting of a person, or that's what I thought. Yet, the mutual feeling of this society being wrong, it brought us together.
Now it was only me and him, in the back alley leading behind our school.
It was one of those days when the governors decided there is enough water for the weather simulation to make it rain.
Pouring peach droplets from the sky were melting on my skin. I loved the rain. It was so real, physical, earthly. I felt as if I was outside.
My reflection in the puddle was distorted by a small pebble.
In the noise of the rain, I couldn't hear his yelling voice.
"You dumbass! They're just behind you!" — The teenager standing on the top of a tall concrete wall screamed at me, trying to make me realize.
From the end of the backstreet, a group of adults in navy blue were running towards us. The basic low-grade order officers. Every second closer.
"Shithead! Get up here!!" — Another pebble landed in my shoulder. I woke up.
I rushed at the wall, grabbing his reached out hand. Jumping at the top, he quickly pulled me down to another side.
"Paul, is it right…"
"Shut up, they will catch us if you don't keep the pace up! So fun!" — He didn't let go of my hand, and instead pulled me towards an unknown street.
Hearing only the screams of the officers behind us, and the rain melting with them, the two of us ran away.
With my other hand, I was eagerly grasping my recording device. Since my aunt got me it, I found it quite interesting to record all kinds of things around me.
Right now, it had in its memory something of a great value.
I always thought that physical violence is a displeasure to exist among humans, beings thought to be higher in hierarchy above all other ones.
But the thing is, all of the animals ceased to exist. Maybe that's the reason people tend to forget who they are as a living being. They just degrade themselves into a position of an emotionless animal. When they get to know the feeling of power, the morality descends into void.
Today at school, a student was punished for speaking out his opinion.
There was a question being asked by the teacher: "Why do people want to become an order officer?"
The answer that came out of that child's mouth was different from expected.
His face was bruised, black eyes were beaming with melancholy. His messy hair and dirty outfit seemed to be untouched for days.
"People want to become officers to feel superior. They want to degrade and let their grief off on innocent people, to make up for the times they were mistreated."
He stood up and spoke unasked. The restless glare of his was piercing the teacher, which eyes seemed to fall out of her eye sockets in seconds.
"Huh? …How dare you speak like this?!" — Her hand flew through the air, landing on his face with an impact. — "You insolent brat!"
The adult proceeded to grab him by his collar and pulled the kid to the middle of the class.
"This is an example of what you shouldn't be. A loser." — She pushed him on the wall, and repeated it in a loop.
Again and again. I didn't even think of when my recording device got turned on. It was an instinct.
Things like there shouldn't be brought to school, and even worse, unauthorized can't even have this in their possession.
I don't know where aunt got this from, yet it was a present once in a lifetime. The idea of preserving what's so daily or not, it struck my heart with warmth.
But for moments like this, I couldn't realize which side was better.
The kid being beaten up didn't speak a word. The whole class remained silent, with the propaganda hitting their heads hard. The teacher was known to be especially harsh and into praising the government. But today it seemed her mood was off.
Was the kid even… Conscious anymore?
His head has inertly hanging down to the floor.
Stop it… He… Doesn't seem to… Breathe…
…
Could I watch a person being murdered right in front of my eyes? Another kid like me being abused, while everyone else is watching it… Thing like this… Being registered in their memories…
A hand seemed to try to keep me in my place, but my desperation was stronger than this.
"Stop if! Can't you see he is unconscious? How much more do you have to harm him? Is this the way you tell us the world works?!" — I shouted angrily at the teacher.
I did an unforgettable thing. I broke from the apathy of the things they try to teach us. The unconsciousness of the world.
"Another one? You want to end up like this one?! Get back to your place, you rat." — The teacher greeted me with a stone glare.
I didn't move an inch. Staring at the child hanging loosely from the hand of the teacher, I tried to observe if he was still breathing.
Trails of blood were dripping on the gray floor. This kid I didn't even know the name of was now looking not like a human.
Are we even humans?
The body was now flying towards me in the air. The blood droplets swaying in the air like the pristine rain which started to pour in the morning.
His body… is going to knock me off with an immeasurable force…
I closed my eyes.
Yet didn't feel it hit me at all.
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder