TWLPOD 6
by soapa“I’m looking for someone.”
The words he uttered after a long conflict were quite unexpected.
“Someone?”
As he said it out loud, Kay held his breath for a moment, as if it was painful to realize his loss.
Aran, who was observing the pain Kay felt, was caught off guard by his next words.
“Someone who looks a lot like you.”
*
Until the war broke out, part of the Center functioned as a military academy. However, as the war dragged on, instructors and leaders were no exception and had to stand on the battlefield, so the new recruits who came in through the induction ceremony were educated by the academy-graduate ability users remaining at the Center.
‘I’m tired.’
It was when Iris, who had finished teaching in place of her master, who had become a corps commander and could not leave the battlefield, returned to Dormitory Room 5101.
‘Huh?’
After the light in the shoe cabinet at the entrance automatically turned on, she discovered a pair of military boots that were not 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 been aware that she had come, Aran simply stared at a distant place outside the window. His pensive profile made him a man who was quite picturesque.
Iris put water in the pot, brewed some tea herself, and brought the cups over to sit across from him.
“You look like someone who just got their heart broken.”
At Iris’s words, Aran turned his gaze and smiled.
“Do I look like it?”
“It’s a shame. I thought he would be a great asset.”
“He will be.”
He drank the remaining tea in Iris’s cup. As Aran sipped and blew on it, huff, huff, Iris tilted her head.
“He will be? How can you be so sure?”
“Because I found out what he wants.”
“What is it?”
Aran lifted only his eyes while his lips were still on the cup. He was a handsome man you could never get used to, no matter how many times you saw him.
“Me?”
Especially when he was blatantly acting pretty.
“You’re crazy.”
“To be more precise, it would be my face, though.”
“Are you joking or are you serious?”
“I’m purely serious?”
His big, blinking eyes made him look so sincere just by staring that she was almost fooled. Purity, sincerity. Neither was a word that suited him.
“Explain it so I can understand. Did he fall in love with you or something?”
“If it were something like that, it would be easier.”
Aran put down the empty teacup and smiled brightly.
It was a smile that had seemed simply good-natured at the induction ceremony where she had first met him.
“Iris. Have you ever imagined?”
Aran stood up, stretching. He muttered as he looked out the window, which was packed with high-rise buildings.
“About a being that you can absolutely, only love.”
*
Kay, who had returned to Willamere, looked up at the black sky from atop a pole in the desert where the temperature had dropped below freezing. The land of Lympus that covered their heads was, to the people of Willamere, their sky.
“Kay!”
Kay, who was looking up at the giant artificial dome that had taken the place of the sky, turned his head at the sound of a voice calling him. A woman was approaching, holding a small lantern and a basket.
“Leah.”
Kay, who had jumped down from the pole, ignited his body to light up the surroundings. The puff of breath that had been coming from between Leah’s lips also melted away in the warmth and disappeared.
“Why did you come all this way?”
“After feeding the kids and putting them to bed, I thought of you. Have you eaten?”
“I won’t die from skipping a meal for a day.”
“I’m saying this because I don’t think you’ve only skipped one day.”
Leah held out the basket in her hand. Inside the basket, which was neatly wrapped in cloth, were bread and camel’s milk.
“Eat.”
“…Thank you.”
Kay took the basket more obediently than usual, and after quietly watching the lamp left in her hand, he reached out his hand. He put his finger into the center of the burning fire, and after making the fire shine even more brightly, he removed his hand.
“Because it’s dark.”
Leah was amazed as she lifted the lamp to eye level and looked at it.
“The word ‘flame,’ don’t you think it was named well?”
The flickering shape, which moved restlessly and scattered light, looked just like a living flower. But as if he was uncomfortable with Leah’s compliment, Kay turned his back without a second thought.
“Go back before it gets any later.”
As he leaped up and sat on the pole again, the sandstorm made the black cloth he had wrapped around his head flutter. Leah, watching his back, shouted.
“Make sure to eat! And get some sleep too!”
At his nodding back, Leah turned her body and headed towards the village that was faintly glowing amidst the sandstorm. If you walk without losing your direction, it takes fifteen minutes. But if you happen to get lost, it’s a village at an oasis at the end of a distance where you could be found as a corpse in the sand.
A village no different from any other slum, where prostitutes reach out their hands through iron bars on the roadside, and where vagrants fight amongst themselves as they rummage through the bodies of corpses sprawled in the alleys.
The scent of death that flows in with the fine sand with every breath fades by the time you pass the oasis. If you go to the furthest corner of the village, the safest place that the people born and raised here have protected is noisy even at this late hour.
She hung a bright lantern next to the main gate, and with long strides, she flung the door open.
“You guys! I told you not to be so loud at this hour!!!”
The children who were laughing and playing came to a halt.
Then they all turned their gazes to one place, and there was a man who was running with his waist bent to match the children’s eye level. He slowly straightened his body.
“Hello.”
A stranger and an intruder. Yet he was a beautiful person, so much so that one could not harbor any hostility towards him.
“Are you Leah?”
The handsome man in front of her was so creepy, it made her despise her mesmerized self.
“Who are you?”
At her voice, which was full of suspicion, the children who had been laughing happily looked back and forth between the two, and the oldest among them, Steven, took the children up the second-floor stairs. The intruder even waved at the children going up the stairs with a bright smile, as if to tell them not to worry. Only the young children, who didn’t know what it meant to be tactful, waved back at the man, disappointed that the game was over, and then disappeared from sight, leaving only the two of them in the living room.
“The children let me in, and I didn’t do anything.”
He spread his hands to prove his innocence and stated his business.
“I’ve just come to find someone.”
“There’s no one here worth you coming to find.”
“You don’t know that, do you?”
“You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying. This is Willamere, and there’s no one here that a neatly dressed Lympus human like you, who’s perfectly attired to die in the desert, would be looking for.”
At her words, which were shot full of hostility, Aran pouted his lips.
“It’s not good to judge people by their appearance.”
“Ha!”
“And I can assure you, you know the person I’m looking for.”
“Who…”
“He’s looking for Kay!”
Before she could even ask who, an answer popped out from a child who had poked his face through the gap in the stairs.
“Hey, shh!”
Steven covered the child’s mouth, but it was spilled water. Nevertheless, Leah replied nonchalantly.
“Who’s that?”
“Wow. You’re shameless.”
“You can’t survive if you’re not shameless. Here.”
“And sarcastic too.”
“This is pretty kind for an uninvited guest. I’d appreciate it if you would leave now that you’ve heard my answer. It’s time for the kids to sleep.”
“If I were the type to just say yes to that, I wouldn’t have come all this way.”
Haa. Aran let out a small sigh and looked at Leah.
“You know you can’t protect him with lies like that.”