?She told to say it if I'm bothering you, but... I don't feel like saying it.
I an... my purpose in coming here was to watch the sky for half an hour, alone, in silence. Yes, I'm in a very quiet environnt now... But I'm not alone.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced to my side. But no matter how many tis I repeated the sa thing, Alice was lying not far away from , looking up at the sky. It didn't look like she had any intention of getting up anyti soon.
So... what if I try talking to her?
"Are you okay with being half-elf?"
Ah, why did I ask such a thing? It was obvious from her actions what the answer was...
"Since it makes no difference to my life what your race is..."
She paused for a mont, her eyes squinting at the stars. She sighed as if she had said sothing she didn't an and continued.
"No, I don't have a problem."
Was that a yes or a no...? I don't know why, but it felt like being a half-elf had actually changed sothing in her life...
So, once again, silence descended on us. Seconds passed, then minutes. Minutes I spent without saying anything, without even moving.
I had aid for silence and solitude, yes... But now, when I wasn't alone, this 'silence' I was looking for started to feel bad instead of good for so reason.
I wanted to talk, actually. Being silent when soone was next to left with a nagging desire to remain silent. But... strangely enough, it wasn't who broke the silence. On the contrary, it was Alice.
"You said you grew up on the streets, right?"
Oh, she's starting the conversation? That... certainly doesn't feel like sothing she would do. But I'm also feeling like I had to answer her question.
"Sort of... at least after I was eight. Before that, I was living with my parents."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice's eyebrows twitch, but without any further reaction, she asked another question.
"Do you... rember your parents?"
Why is she asking such questions? And it feels like her usual calm deanor has changed a bit...
Has sothing happened to her? Has sothing changed in her life so that she can't act like herself?
"More or less. Sotis I feel like I'm going to forget their faces, their voices... But whenever I feel like that, I force myself to rember them. And when I force myself too much, they appear in my dreams. I can refresh my mory with them."
I paused for a mont, squinting and focusing on one of the stars in the sky for no reason.
"Though... sotis they are more nightmares than dreams."
Alice didn't say anything. However, after a short while, as if she did not want to end our short conversation, she asked a question again.
"Do you think your family... was a good one? Your father, for example?"
My lips curled upward slightly as I began to play back in my mind everything I rembered about my father.
"My father... was generally an expressionless man. He didn't like to show his emotions, he didn't smile much. Any change in his facial expression usually felt... fake. Like he had forgotten how to smile sincerely and was trying to imitate sothing from mory. But I knew he wasn't really like that, so I didn't care much."
A mory ca back to . I was playing with so of the chickens in our garden when one of them ran off into the forest... and because I was chasing it, I got lost. Maybe I spent hours looking for my house and couldn't find it. Finally, when I leaned against a tree and started crying... it was my father who found .
He didn't get angry or mad at . He didn't even give a lecture. When he took in his arms, I felt the sweat on his clothes, the beating of his heart. He was just... happy to have found . He didn't say it, I couldn't see his expression, but... he was happy.
But then, right after this mory, I rembered the dream I had recently. I rembered the 'story' he told , and that he was probably the hero of this story.
"He was a good person, I think. He had probably been through sothing in his past. That was probably the reason for his lack of expression and difficulty in showing his emotions. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't good. But... he was a good father."
After a few short seconds where I didn't know what more to say, I finally decided to finish my own words by ntioning the similarities between us.
"Also... I told you that sotis I forget how they look, but I guess that's not so true for my father. Because... we're like carbon copies of each other. The closer I get to his age, the more I look like him."
Alice did nothing but stay where she was, not moving a muscle. But... these seconds she spent like a statue didn't last long either. Eventually, she slowly turned her dark eyes, which she could not tear away from the sky, toward .
She began to study my face. It was as if... she was trying to picture in her mind what my father was like after I told her he looked like .
"And your family?"
She didn't answer, she just kept studying my face.
"Alice...?"
Only when I said her na once more did she pause. Her eyes focused on mine, then she sighed deeply. Her brow furrowed as if she was angry with herself, then she turned her face back to the sky.
"I... don't have... a family."
When I felt the space between her words, the difficulty... I couldn't help sighing slightly.
No, this person in front of is nothing like the old Alice.
She looks the sa, her expression is the sa, but... she acts like a different person. She asks questions she wouldn't normally ask, she makes feel like she's lost under her emotions for the first ti.
Like... like she has a problem.
"Do you have a problem?"
When I think of the old Alice, she was the kind of person who would answer such a question as none of your business. She would have even gotten angry at for asking a question about her. But, for so reason... this ti she didn't give any of these reactions to my question. She just... moved her lips without changing her expression even slightly.
"Sothing like that."
Sothing like that, huh...
Even though she gives such an answer, she doesn't continue, she doesn't even try to explain her problem.
Is she waiting for to ask, or does she want to keep it to herself? Maybe she is angry with herself for giving such an answer. I... simply can't understand anything from her facial expression.
The only thing I feel when I look at her... is that she's lonely. No more, no less, that's exactly it. Not once have I seen her hanging out with a 'friend', not even once have I seen her talking to anyone properly. That's the only thing I really know about her, that she's lonely.
And now... this loneliness is much more pronounced. It makes want to help her sohow.
But I don't want to give in to that feeling and act without thinking. If she really has a problem, if she really wants to co here for help... I don't want to force her to explain herself.
If she wants help, then she can ask for it. She is a rational, intelligent person. I don't think she would be embarrassed just because of sothing like that. I an, if she's not telling her problem herself... I don't think it's a good thing to try to dig it up, at least for now.
I'm just gonna ask her to take a step, that's all.
"You helped . Not once, but twice. You had no reason to do it. And now... you're the one in a difficult situation, I guess. You're smarter than , you think more than . So I don't know if it's right for to say anything... But so things, at least sotis, are impossible to get through alone."
I took a deep breath as my lips curled upward for no reason.
"If this ti it's you who needs help rather than others... and you realize that it's not possible to handle it on your own... then don't hesitate to seek a helping hand from others, I think."
I didn't say anything else, nor did I intend to. From that point on, everything was in her hands. Instead of interfering in her affairs in a way she didn't like, I had given her a choice, which, at least for , was the right one.
Minutes passed without either of us saying anything again. Watching the countless stars in the sky, the arm of the galaxy that looked like a rift in space... I felt peaceful for so reason.
Maybe solitude and silence were what I was looking for... But strangely, having soone lying next to like this, sharing this 'silence' with , felt better than I thought it would.
*******
Alice got up after almost half an hour without saying a word. Only after walking to the edge of the big rock, before leaving in the sa silence, did she turn to .
With her dark eyes on her expressionless face, which felt indistinguishable from the darkness of the night just behind her, she uttered a simple sentence.
"See you later, Adrian."
But... that sentence felt contrary to everything I thought I knew about her until now.
See you later? I never thought I would hear such a thing from her. But... that wasn't what made stare blankly after her back.
Adrian, she said. Is this the first ti? I don't rember if she said it before, but it's definitely the first ti I've heard her say my na in that kind of tone...
Alice... is she really starting to change? Or is it just that she's acting weird because of so problem or problems she's been having lately?
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