✦ At Arin's House ✦
The night was still.
A light breeze danced through the leaves in Arin's backyard, while he sat on a stone bench, arms outstretched, head tilted back, and eyes fixed on the glowing moon.
The silver light reflected in his eyes, shimmering like two trapped tears that had yet to fall.
Suddenly… the doorbell rang.
He blinked twice.
He slowly turned toward the source of the sound, his brows furrowing slightly.
"Who would visit at this hour?" he whispered to himself.
He rose heavily, his steps on the stone floor slow and hesitant, as if time itself were weighing down his ankles.
He opened the door slowly…
And there stood his father.
"Father?" Arin asked, stunned. "Please, come in. Is everything alright?"
The father's eyes were glassy, and a small, mournful smile played shyly on his lips.
"Father?! What are you doing here?" Arin said, breathless. "It's so late… Did you travel all the way to Ezora?"
The father nodded slightly, looking at the ground as if it were more merciful than his son's eyes.
"Yes… son, you know… I wanted to ask you about..."
He stopped.
His fingers trembled, and he clenched his fists tightly. It seemed as if the words were betraying him, as if the name were too heavy for his lips.
Arin lifted his head slowly, then said with steady voice, charged with an unforgivable blame:
"Aiden."
The father looked up at him in confusion.
He sat on a nearby chair, his leg shaking with obvious tension, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a carefully folded paper, its edges worn and frayed.
He handed it to Arin, his voice raspy:
"This... this is Aiden's psychological report... from when he was in that orphanage."
Arin froze.
His pupils dilated as if a spark had ignited within him.
Then, with a terrifying slowness, he raised his head, looked directly at his father, and his voice came out calm but sharp as a blade:
"You?
Do you mean you knew?
You knew where my brother was all this time… before he was moved from the orphanage to Ezora?
And you… said nothing?
Mother used to stand for hours by the Ferris wheels in the squares, holding his picture… asking everyone who passed about him… and you… kept silent?!"
The father stood up from the chair, his hand trembling, his voice rising in disjointed tension:
"I thought… I thought it was him… who did that to you in the past!
But I wasn't sure…
And when I went to the orphanage… I saw him.
He saw me, but he didn't know me… he didn't recognize my face."
He continued, whispering like one confessing a buried sin:
"His eyes… those black eyes that once held the blue of the sky… were empty… lifeless.
I learned from the supervisor there… that he remembers nothing… not his name, not anything about his past.
He was undergoing intensive psychiatric sessions…
They told me he suffered from PTSD…
Severe phobia… and total amnesia."
Silence fell again, but this time it was heavy, cruel, like a slab of lead on their chests.
Arin stood still, the paper still in his hand, his eyes glistening… not just with anger, but with something deeper… the pain of a brother slaughtered by the betrayal of silence.
Tears streamed down Arin's eyes without permission.
His green eyes no longer just sparkled from the moonlight, but from a silent ache that had been imprisoned for years.
The tears slipped down lightly, burning, as if punishing him for every moment of silence, every moment of abandonment.
His cheeks flushed from crying, the redness mixing with a faint glow caused by a sense of shame, of sin.
The night breeze brushed through his tangled brown hair, making his single earring shimmer softly under the moonlight—the lone witness to that cursed night that changed everything.
He clutched his chest with a trembling hand, as if trying to contain an invisible internal tear...
His breath became ragged, as if thousands of knives were shredding his heart from the inside without mercy.
He finally spoke, his voice broken, as if his heart itself were talking:
"I...
I am the reason..."
His voice dropped even lower, echoing tragically through the silence of the night:
"Curse that day...
If only I hadn't wanted that box of chocolates...
If only I hadn't slipped...
If only I hadn't lost consciousness…
If only I hadn't fallen into that coma... my brother wouldn't have suffered all of this."
He raised his head, tears still flowing, but his eyes were no longer broken… they burned with a searing look of blame and fury.
He turned his gaze toward his father, and in a low voice, venomous as a poisoned sword, he said:
"You are not my parents...
You are monsters."
His eyes widened in agony as he screamed from the depths of his heart:
"How could you throw him away like that?
How could you burden him with a crime he didn't commit?
A child…!
A child who didn't even understand the meaning of guilt, and you...!
If Mother hadn't recognized him at that cursed conference… if she hadn't seen his face on the television screen… we would have never known…"
Then he took a step back, as if the ground had become suffocating, as if everything around him were collapsing.
He whispered in a broken voice, barely escaping his trembling lips:
"How…
How do I fix this mistake?
How… do I bring my brother back?"