CHAPTER 56: I KILLED HER

Few meters away from the Bion city walls, the black clouds floating high above the trees began shifting slowly, changing from their natural color to a reddish color as heavy wind swelled up from the center of the tall trees, covering and hiding the ground from heavenly view.

Tornado-like winds struck, jolting some of the trees that weren’t easy to uproot and sending them spiraling and joining the clouds. After two minutes of the tornado being in action, the clouds began turning red and began releasing rain that smelled of iron and tasted like blood as some fell on the long tongues of the frogs singing beneath the trees.

Leaves on which the rain fell began plucking on their own and fell one after another, drifting and landing on the grass. After a short while, the trees, which seemed to have leaves encapsulating the ground, all became dead like trees that hadn’t seen water or sunlight for thousands of years.

And at that instant, inside the walls of the city of Bion, and inside the barracks, sweat beaded Kai’s face, wetting the bed he laid on and dripping on the ground like a waterfall. Beside the bed was the nurse, who now was dreaming sweet dreams and giggling in her sleep.

Kai’s body twitched, slamming his hands and legs on the bed and moving hastily on it. Though the shadows that had been moving with him wherever he went were roaming around him, that wasn’t the reason he was twitching; where he found himself in the dream was.

In his dream, he ran through a narrow lane, following the path of the black bird now leading him in the far distance and humming in the air just to notify him of where it was. At his right side in the dream were tall pillars with carvings that had the taste and preference of an ancient civilization, yet he moved.

...

"What place is this?" he said, stopping and walking toward one of the stone pillars that had a face carved on its surface, but when he neared it and brushed his hands on the face, streams of memories began plugging themselves in him.

For someone like Kai, this was the very first time he’d had visions bulging into him, and with that, even his dream body fell on the ground and rolled like a possessed person until the last image of a person with two distinct eyes like his own came to view.

Even as he helped himself from the floor, the face stayed with him as if the person was standing right in front of him. The moment the image flashed and vanished, a name popped up in his mind so hard it made him jolt up from sleep, panting and sweating heavily.

He tilted his gaze slightly toward the lady whose head was resting calmly and snoring, then tilted his gaze back to his hands, scanned himself, then finally turned toward the open window.

He stood up, walked toward it, and placed his small hand that had lots and lots of scratches on his palm on the stool of the window and inhaled deeply.

’Kai Fenlore,’ he mentioned the name slightly in his mind, but it echoed on his lips and sent out a cold breeze that flew from his window and joined with the wind swelling upward toward the clouds.

...

Kinji happened to still be awake and moving toward the city’s wall gate, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes and yawning heavily. The yawn came in so forcefully that when he tried covering his mouth, the breeze still managed to slip out from the space inside his fingers.

When he reached the wall, moved a round wooden plank, and peeked his right eye through it, he saw the heavy wind swelling in the far distance, moving toward the city wall. But when he blinked once and gazed at it again, it was gone.

"What is drowsiness doing to me?" he said, slapping himself and placing the same eye back to the hole, yet he found the sky to be normal. He turned back, moved the round wood back, letting it cover the hole, and moved back in the barracks’ direction, still yawning.

A few moments after he left the gate, the red clouds and swelling winds began again, as if they were waiting for him to go before they continued. And within the tornado, a man dressed in a black hood seemed to be appearing whenever a red lightning struck through the tornado.

As Kinji entered the barracks walls and into the dormitory, dogs began appearing in the streets, staring and barking at the sky. And after two hours, they stopped when countless lights began turning on in buildings. One after another, the doors of those buildings began opening, and from them, women of different statures, heights, and colors began walking out, holding baskets and scarves wrapped around their heads and waists.

...

After an hour, the soldiers tasked to keep watch at the city’s entrance began walking out of the barracks gate and rushing toward the city’s entrance when a loud car horn sounded and filled the early morning atmosphere.

At the third time the horn sounded, the nurse sleeping calmly and snoring’s right eye opened, followed by the left. To her surprise, she saw Kai standing at the window with his eyes closed and doing a breathing exercise like an adult.

The nurse remembered all the breathing sequences her brother Gray normally did when he was in his youth, smiled, and shoveled the sleep from her eyes, stood up from the chair she sat in, and walked and stood beside Kai, who still didn’t open his eyes after hearing footsteps.

"How are you doing today, Kai?" the nurse said, slowly stretching her right arm and placing it on Kai’s palm, but the instant her skin touched Kai’s, he cracked his eyes open and stared at the nurse with wild eyes.

He didn’t speak for a moment, but the nurse felt great heat evaporating out of Kai’s eyes and skin, causing her to quickly pull her arm away from his, place it on the stool, and move a bit farther away from him, preventing herself from getting any unforeseen action from the kid.

But the moment she moved back, Kai closed in and hugged her, crying. The way the boy cried evoked sympathy in the nurse and made her wrap her arms around him, calming him.

"I... I... I killed her," Kai said, his voice breaking and shaking with sobs.

The nurse’s eyes raised slightly, yet she never let go of him; all she could do was still calm him with sweet words and pretend not to hear what Kai kept saying.

...

As the morning sun finally shone brightly at the barracks, giving the still ground and atmosphere light and life, soldiers walked out of their dormitories, marching and later patrolling the walls, both within the barracks and the city itself.

At that moment, the same four chubby market women who always used the walls of the barracks as their meeting point walked around it, gossiping and pointing fingers at the hospital with emergency tapes still wrapped around it. But the moment they noticed some of the soldiers walking toward them, looking at them, they pretended to scratch their long hair and smile.