Promise of a Liar

Standing at about 4 meters tall and 6 meters wide before me was a large monument constructed in front of the mass grave of the people who didn’t make it on time.

She was a liar.

I hated myself for thinking that. She had always told the truth to us our whole time together, but the one time she lies, she’s branded as a liar.

Not for a single second did she consider not trying to save everyone… I thought as I pulled out a picture of Iris standing in front of the half-frozen river where the ice-breaking competition was supposed to be held earlier that day.

As the memories flooded into my mind, I half expected it to hurt, but instead I was just filled with sadness and regret that I hadn't stopped her earlier. Still, it was a much better reaction than what I would’ve had a few weeks back, and it was a sign that I was healing.

I looked back at the monument, reading the names of the dead people off one by one. I sighed. It sickened me knowing that beneath all the rubble was not only the hundreds of corpses of those who couldn’t make it out, but a beautiful city full of life and culture.

She saved a lot and yet, there were still this many deaths… I wonder how she would react to seeing the people she saved act like this today…

As I continued reading the names, one of them suddenly catches my eye. There, on the third column near the second to last row was the name ‘Isabelle Torres’ chiseled onto the monument.

Isabelle? I wondered, but that’s Iris’ real name… why is her name written on here?

Iris had lived her whole life on the mountain knowing that the horns won’t blow for her when she dies. She sacrificed herself for the village thinking that none of them would honor her by writing her name down on a mountain grave… and yet here it was, chiseled and neatly written along with all the other victims.

But if her name is written on here and she’s buried in the mountains then that means…

As long as the horn was blown during the Equinox Festival, Iris would be honored after death in the way she always wanted. However, given the state that the current village was in, the chances that they would celebrate the Equinox Festival again were slim.

I reached into my bag, pulling out a flower capsule containing a blue iris, and gently placed it in front of the monument. In my original plan, I had only wanted to simply just place the capsule there and be on my way to the Wisteria Forest where Hyacinth had died, but now knowing that Iris had the chance to be honored by the horns of the mountains, a new goal had been set in my mind.

I have to get them to celebrate again, I decided, it would be wrong to leave here otherwise… but the problem is getting the villagers to get along with each other enough to celebrate again…

I suddenly hear a pair of footsteps behind me as I turn around to see the little boy from before walking up behind me.

"What are you doing here?" I ask, "I thought Mr. Ramos took you back home."

"...It's lonely in there," he murmured, "and a little a scary. If it's alright with you Mrs. Esper, I want to stay close."

Right, I remembered, children can feel lonely.

"Sure," I said, turning back to the monument, and offering a silent prayer for the dead.

“So even you came over here too, huh Mrs. Esper?” he suddenly asks.

I turn to him.

“What do you mean?”

“A lot of people come here sometimes. I think I see everyone come here at least once.”

“Together?” I ask in a hopeful tone.

The boy shook his head.

“Not together. One by one, always alone, but they always come here. Daddy used to come here too. He came here a lot even before people here started going crazy… says someone important to him died, but I don’t know them… and when Mommy died while fighting to get us food, he wrote her name on here too…”

His voice trails off as I realize he had started crying.

Shit! He’s crying. What do I do? I panic, as I realize my inexperience in dealing with children as I think to myself, what would Iris do?

As I recall some of the stories that Iris had told us about her students, I decided to squat down to the kid’s level and pat his head.

“Hey kid,” I said, “I can’t seem to remember, but what was your name again?”

“...Marco,” he quietly murmured.

“Marco… hmm, okay, that’s a nice name,” I said, “well, Marco, how do you feel about starting another Equinox Festival again? Would you like that?”

He looked at me with hope in his eyes and firmly nodded his head.

Good, that’s one down.

It was as Iris said; there wasn’t a single kid on the mountain who didn’t know the importance of the Equinox Festival, or at the very least it was as rare as a kid from the forests who didn’t know about the Festival of Lanterns held every summer.

“But…” Marco suddenly murmured.

“What is it?” I asked.

“My dad’s name isn’t written on the monument… I don’t know how to carve names into rocks so when he died, there was no one there to write his name.”

I looked over at the monument.

Rock carving… it’s been a while but I’ve done it a few times back when I traveled the world.

“I can write it down for you,” I offered, standing up and picking up a nearby chisel and hammer beside the monument, “what’s his name?”

“Umm…” he murmured, “Mateo Rosales I think”

                                                                             -ˋˏ ༻❁✿❀༺ ˎˊ-

And to think that Mateo kept his promise to Iris after all, I wondered as I sliced some apples for Marco to eat, and his child is right here in front of me which kind of complicates things.

I couldn’t just leave him behind in the village with its current state, and bringing him along would not only slow me down, but also be really dangerous for him.

Not that it matters that much since everyone is dying in a year anyway but indirectly causing his death doesn’t sit right with me.

I took the plate of apples to where Marco was sitting, creating signs and posters to promote the Equinox Festival.

The stunt I pulled off earlier was only a temporary solution to the problem. Resolving things by threatening violence wasn’t my style anyway, and the problem would only resume once I leave the village.

Instead, I decided to task Marco with making promotions for the Equinox Festival. I refused to believe that no one in the village wanted to celebrate it—they were just too wary of each other to admit it. After the amount of deaths and the interruption of the festival last year, there had to be at least someone who wanted the opportunity to honor their dead ones.

“Sometimes people want the same thing, but their inability to voice it causes problems,” I remember Iris saying to us.

Having worked as a counselor for 17 years, she had learned a lot about how people interacted with each other, and was an excellent mediator even without the use of her Esper powers. She was the one I was relying on the most to guide me to resolving this situation.

“How’s the poster going?” I ask, placing down the plate of apples on the table as Marco continues coloring.

From what I could make out, it was a simple drawing of the sun over the mountains, with flowers at the bottom and the word “Equinox Festival” written between the valleys. Although the drawing itself was bad, the composition was good, and it made me wonder that if the world wasn’t ending, if he would’ve become an amazing artist one day.

“It’s not that great,” he said, “my handwriting is pretty bad and I haven’t gone to school in almost a year.”

“That’s okay,” I reassured him, “how old are you anyway?”

“Ten.”

“Well this is pretty good for a ten-year-old.”

“Really?”

“Yup! Good enough to hang outside if you’re ready for it.”

At first, he looks a little nervous, but then his face fills with resolve as he takes a piece of tape and his poster and runs outside.

I had tasked Marco with creating the posters and putting them up, because I worried that if I was the one who did it, it would decrease the willingness of the villagers to participate in the event. After all, I had just barged in randomly one day and started threatening them with a gun, so if I was the one putting up the posters, it might look like I was forcing them to celebrate.

If it was one of them who expressed their desire to celebrate the Equinox Festival first however, then it would be a lot easier to convince them to pile onto that desire, especially if it was a child who wanted it.

From what I gathered from the situation so far, none of the villagers should hold a grudge against Marco. His mother died in the initial chaos, and his father died a few weeks after while trying to fight for the food supply, so if anything, the villagers might feel a sense of remorse or pity for the boy instead of anger and resentment.

I peered outside the window and watch as Marco runs to the middle of the village, where a large noticeboard was. It was constructed after the attack on the city and was used to display the village news, but according to Marco it had been empty and abandoned after the mayor died.

As unfortunate as it is, this works out in our favor though, I thought as Marco tapes the poster onto the board and quickly runs his way back to the house, if they see that a new notice has been posted after so long, they should be curious enough to check.

When Marco makes it back we both continue to look peer outside the house, waiting for someone to take the bait. It didn’t take long before a lady quietly opened the door to her house, making sure that no one was outside before walking towards the noticeboard and looking at the poster.

Upon reading it, she gasps, and for a moment, she stands there contemplating the idea.

Perfect, I thought as I looked around the village, noticing other people peeking out from between their blinds and watching the woman’s reaction, now more and more people should be curious about what’s posted…

Now, all we had to do was wait for the next food delivery to see their decision.