Confessing the Pain
I lacked the strength to properly lift my bound hands.
The handcuffs were heavier than I'd expected, and looser too. Leaving them still meant the metal kept chafing my skin; trying to adjust them only reminded me that my body, only just beginning to move again, had little energy left to spare.
"Thea, my wrists hurt a lot..."
I was never one for putting on airs. As someone who had always earnestly tried to help those in need, illness was an unwelcome guest that visited from time to time. Only when my body truly could not endure would I give notice, find a replacement, and finally allow myself a brief rest for my exhaustion-riddled frame.
But right now I wanted—even if it meant feigning it—to get these heavy chains off my wrists.
Simply wearing the cuffs left me with an unpleasant feeling. Being dragged along by her hand like this, and her excessively extreme attitude as well—every bit of it stabbed at my chest.
I understood that she had suffered. I had heard with my own ears, and engraved deep in my heart, every confession she had mustered the courage to make about how much pain she had endured after losing me. That was why I had resolved to make her happy no matter what—yet these iron lumps felt as though they had locked that very resolve away.
I staggered. Unlike her light, buoyant steps, I was in no condition to exert much strength. Only when my body began tipping further and further forward did she finally support me with her hands.
"...Yeah, you're right. I thought it would still be too much for you."
Letting out a shallow groan, I rested my chains atop her hands. The heavy, sinking sensation was anything but welcome.
"Please take them off. Even without these, I won't leave you behind and die again. Never."
I already knew how much it had hurt—from the nights and from every word she had spoken. After witnessing that kind of suffering, how could I ever go against her wishes?
She said she dreamed every single night of the person she loved dying right before her eyes. That was why she could not sleep, and why she watched the sun rise each day while checking again and again that I was truly alive.
Because I had not been there, she had nearly had her purity taken by force four times, and because of that she had been forced to kill three people.
It all felt like my fault. Even if it was not, that was why she feared losing me. And this was the result of that fear. That much, at least, I could understand.
But what was wrong remained wrong, and what was uncomfortable remained uncomfortable.
"How am I supposed to believe that, Evan?"
"Thea, I—"
"I know. That you love and cherish me more than anyone else in the world. That you willingly bent every one of your convictions and beliefs for me alone, and raised our canopy in that forest. That moment that belonged only to you and me—when not even a god could interfere—was truly... beautiful."
"I still think of it sometimes. The petals of gold and pure white falling, that space for just the two of us that we painted inside an illusion. What came after was wretched, though."
With a bitter smile, the handcuffs came undone. But they were hers, and they fell carelessly into a corner of the floor.
"Once your body is a little better, I'll think about trying again. I was too hasty. I'm sorry."
With her plain apology, the cuff on one of my wrists came free—yet the hand holding the key never reached the other side.
"...Huh."
I had only a moment to feel puzzled before a soft click sounded and the cuffs locked again. The one that had sealed my left hand now clasped her left hand instead.
She quietly stepped closer to my side, linked her arm through mine, rested her head lightly on my shoulder, and smiled.
"I should have done it this way from the start—I could stay so much closer to you. All because I wasted time looking at that manual in the underground prison."
Death had severed the bond between us once. That was why she seemed to need something—something that would firmly connect her to me.
"I can't take them off. I'm truly sorry, but... I'll find a way, okay? I'll try so you can be bound at my side more comfortably. Just bear with it a little for now."
"...You can understand, right? Evan?"
That hand squeezing mine tightly, those eyes trembling slightly as they sought an answer—I could not bring myself to look away.
The strength in her grip grew, as if urging a reply. Her right hand rose to my chest, and the shadow cast across her face deepened further.
At the same time her lips began to move, slowly.
If only they had simply been parting... If only they had been dry and she was merely moistening them to ease the tension... then I might have been able to tell myself her condition was not so bad after all, that anxiety had merely clouded her judgment for a while.
"Please, please say yes, please..."
The tiny sounds spilling from her mouth, those words whispered as if the wind itself were leaking out, began to press down on me little by little.
At first those faded lips had left a small gap; now they only moved faster. The amount of breath escaping only increased, never once thinking of diminishing.
She gasped for air and forced the words out. Was she clinging to me like this because she believed I could not hear her? Or because she wanted me to understand her, deepening the darkness in her eyes, putting strength into her hands as if she would fling me to the floor the moment I refused?
...I did not want to hurt her. She had already suffered so much; I did not want to keep giving her more trials.
So for now—at least until her condition improved—I needed to accommodate Thea's desire to bind me.
With a slight nod I placed a small comma into the rough sounds scraping from her throat against my ear.
"Hah... hah... huu..."
She rested her chin lightly on my shoulder with a soft thud, drew me into her arms with her right hand, and slowly took in the air she had not been able to breathe properly. Her left hand still held me tightly—together with the handcuffs that gripped both our wrists.
The moment we stepped out the front door, a carriage awaited us.
And a rather antique one at that. Something about its splendor—fit for nobility—and the iron plates bolted on left me with a faint sense of unease. They had been nailed on roughly yet securely, and the thing pulling it... a horse?
Calling it a horse felt somehow wrong. It stood on four legs, yet its face was covered by a cloth of white and black ornamentation. Of course—the patterns etched on her body were inscribed there as well. I had no choice but to force my eyes away again, toward the carriage that boasted the dignity of a fortress.
"Here. Your hand."
She climbed the steps first and gently extended her hand so the chain would not yank my wrist too hard. The instant I took it lightly, my body was pulled in a flash and settled into her embrace, wrapped once more in that soft, warm sensation.
"Hold me. Quickly."
Sitting on the carriage floor, I wondered what on earth this was. There were clearly seats, yet she had drawn me into that narrow space and spoken those first words without moving an inch.
But an embrace was hardly something that would cause problems, so I quietly released the tension I had held in my body and entrusted myself further to her.
With my free left hand I stroked her, exhaling for a moment. Before I knew it I was running my fingers through her fluffy hair. In the sensation of my hand sinking into it I found a little ease.
Still gripping my hand tightly, she was regulating her breathing. For her sake I deliberately hummed a tune by her ear, letting slip bits of the lyrics my younger self and my comrades had once hummed with relative cheer among the solemn, quiet, boring hymns—hoping it would help her calm down.
"...Don't sing that song."
Her rough reaction came reflexively.
"Didn't you used to like it?"
"Not anymore."
...I should have noticed after hearing she had come to serve an Outer God. Now something was becoming fairly clear.
The god she and I had once served—the being that had brought light to this world and given us the mission to drive out evil—she was rejecting with fierce intensity.
"It reminded me of when they buried you however they pleased after you died so suddenly. Without even asking what I thought—I who still couldn't let you go—they smeared holy oil all over your body and wrapped the bandages in a complete mess. So I was trying to catch my breath... nestled in your arms. Hearing that song on top of it made me a little angry."
My chin was seized, and my lips were yanked toward her face in an instant. Right in front of my nose, at a distance where lowering my captured chin even a little would let me feel that soft fullness again, she whispered.
"You know, I lived so diligently. If the price for that is the horrific death of the one I love—and if it happened at the hands of my own kin who wanted to defile me—how am I supposed to accept that, Evan?"
"They killed you, left your corpse so it wouldn't rot, then sent my kin to bruise that leftover body while priests prattled about blessings and miracles. They even brought those people I couldn't call parents—who had been ashamed of me—right before my eyes and told me to give thanks to that god. How am I supposed to accept that, Evan?"
Even the golden eyes I had once found beautiful, even the platinum hair that had sparkled the first time I saw it—I could tell all too well that their light had now faded completely.
So many wounds remained. She was buried under suffocating, terrible memories. Lost and wandering in her endless despair, the pain and anguish seemed to flow into me through my heart until I was gasping for breath—until her brief kiss returned once more and stopped it.
Her expressions of love, which had once left me dazed, were somehow becoming a salvation that woke me from drowning in pain.
"...That's why I want to keep you by my side like this. Because I can't forget the times I desperately clung to your body in the carriage while oil soaked into me. Because the moments keep rising up when I couldn't even get out of the carriage, couldn't even lay your body down comfortably, and had to listen to my kin call me a freak for loving a short-lived race 'like that.'"
I wanted to be angry. I wished I had been there in her place. It had been rude. It had been horrific. Actions I could scarcely believe came from people who followed the same faith.
But she seated me properly and met my eyes straight on.
"Still, it's all right, Evan. As long as you're by my side, I can be happy. I can smile. Maybe I'll even be able to sleep. If we keep living happily together, those memories might gradually fade away too. Right?"
It was a lie. She and I both knew that best of all.
Terrible memories become nightmares. They become hallucinations. They become auditory illusions. Even without sleep they become living terror that eats away at a person's mind.
The patients I had treated had been like that. The comrades who had treated them had been like that.
So to her words, I had no choice but to force myself to nod.
To comfort her. To hold her close. And to give her ease.