Epilogue

My mind has a fleeting intuitive feeling of something being cut off, right after my eyes open. As if some category of images has disappeared to trade places for some present category. City, concrete, poles, asphalt, high bridges, cars, houses. I try to stand up regardless of my state of dehydration, since no matter how my being feels like staying in one single place for indefinitely, my survival still has to be placed at the top of priority. Like humans shall always have to be a being of living first and foremost, and that living essence shall have to seep through the environment surrounding it just so it can survive. To live is to survive is the dictum of so many people of my parents’ generations. If I told them about this earthquake, they would have shrugged and told me to keep clearing the tiles. Just like when I was really young when the aircrafts were flying above our heads. I asked my mom what they were and my mom screamed at me instead. Back then the building collapsed and splattered around much harder and farther. And people were more frantic than now. The rescue team notices me as my thoughts keep wandering toward the past and they ask me if I’m still okay. I know regardless of the answer, they would still take me to the hospital so I didn’t say much and let them carry me away. I find it humiliating how dishonest I am for possessing some thoughts about how much I appreciate having them around more than because they are carrying me to the hospital.

There’s no TV channel that doesn’t broadcast about the earthquakes. I keep guessing the hour based on the illuminating light outside the windows and the shadows and the TV noises. Light changes intensity until it becomes repetitive enough to lead me to ask if I can leave the hospital yet. “Please take care of yourself.” I go back to my house to see my wife cooking, “Why are you so late?” “I was in the hospital.” “How has your work been?” “I couldn’t go to the office since I was in the hospital. Where have you been?” “I was in my aunt’s house with her sisters and brothers. Some of the family members died during the earthquake. They thought they were moving to the next city for better commuting.” “Where’s that city?” My lack of knowledge for that city’s commuting is met with annoyance from my wife for being a good-for-nothing husband. Even at night when I almost fall asleep, I can still see the flashing red lights passing through. A lot of the tiles haven’t been cleared, one I just passed through recently, I saw a familiar face of the person being buried beneath it but still exposes the head. It belongs to the young man I saw in the library many years ago. He has aged but I can still detect the native and off-putting facial features. As I reach my company’s office, I use the telephone to contact the rescue team for the young man in the given address. “The company's telephone isn’t for your personal business.” “Yes sir.” I nod. My call finished before my boss passed by. After work I gave a visit to the library which seems to still handle the earthquake well enough.

After the earthquake, I just no longer feel like reading a single thing, including the documents in the company. That almost led to issues with the boss but every time he pestered I always apologized. I just don’t think much about anything after the earthquake, other than doing my daily job and coming home. My wife doesn’t even notice my lack of reading when I’m home, and it’s hard to gauge if her silence toward me was deliberate out of annoyance or if my existence is truly something that could seep through the windows. I ask her about children which leads to an uncomfortable silence, as if she doesn’t even want to make an annoyed comment toward me due to some internal feelings. I wonder how many days do I have left, a question of very few values given my confined existence to the city and the inability to get a higher wage. Materials in my house stay mostly the same as years pass, and the company stays the same. We are definitely no longer young enough for children, so whatever the remaining obligations we have are very few. We do pay some visits to some distant families, as the kids talk about the first satellite being sent into space several years ago. I ask them if they want to move abroad and their moms say no on behalf of them.

It's getting harder and harder to retain the memories of my daily life, and sometimes the company even tells me to go home, some even bring me home. I insist to them that it's my company and I have to go there to do my job. Sometimes they say the company is closed. Sometimes they say the company has been closed for a long time and I should really stay home, unless I want my wife worried. I find their remarks weird because I haven’t found her saying anything about me in the recent years let alone… I see distant relatives coming to my house more and more, sometimes to give money to my wife, sometimes they even stay so I tell them to go home, to which they reject and keep staying. My vision doesn’t seem to get less blurry as years pass. I can’t even read anything now. Then my eyes hit a certain book being held by some distant children of mine and I ask them if they can tell me what’s the story in the book. Their words make me gradually feel a newfound feeling which I haven’t felt for years, and as I sink deeper into my own dream it seems like my essence trying to imitate the things being described. The sense of familiarity only gets stronger and stronger. The dream I sink in deeper and deeper. I remember some people say life is a dream but if people are supposed to end it by waking up, then people like myself would never sleep deeper and deeper. I feel some warm hands holding me, sometimes fresh and smiley faces, sometimes sorrowful faces. I haven’t heard of my wife’s voice for a long while. I ask people how she is but they barely respond, my hand reaches toward her who seems to be sleeping just right before me but I can’t reach over. As my hand manages to reach her, I just wonder if she still finds me annoying, because if she doesn’t I would definitely miss it a lot… I’m too old to cry right now, but I do not want to know who is sleeping. At least we didn’t have children so they didn’t have to see the sights of us lying here.

…

…

…

My eyes feel drowsy. Even though it was certainly a smooth dream.

I see a lot of people around me.

I hear a question.

‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’

I answer: yes.

Don’t we all come from some other entities?

Some of us used to be birds, flowers, and plants. They all formed our essence.

…

But this is not the time to talk about that.

I just woke up from another dream, yet again.

“I thought you said I was ending my dream.”

“Yeah,” the bald man nods, “but why do you think the world over there isn’t some sort of dream as well?”

“So… was the past world I just returned to a real world at all?”

“Why not? You just happened to finish your life there. So well, how about you continue your life over here?”

Right before I turn my head, a pair of lips smother my own. Passionately, unforgivingly. Regina’s. Eos gives us an embarrassed look. Alina widens eyes a bit, but body reacts like it’s something she can’t help me with. Rick gives the girl who’s kissing me a look of disgust. Paul… doesn’t seem to want to intrude the scene yet, face still peeking from outside the building.

“You are never going away from me again…” Regina whispers.

“Yeah,” I pat her head.

Then, a figure stands up from the ground.

“Seems like… somebody has woken up from her own dream as well.”

My face turns to her, tears suddenly fall down my cheeks.

“Hmm?” she giggles teasingly, “In the kingdom of Mist, we do have men who love to cry as well. Do you perhaps… want to become a citizen of my kingdom?”

I hug her tightly.

What she said wasn’t even wrong.

There are just way too many things I want to do with her right now, in the future.

I think I will tell her a lot about myself. About the dreams I have had. About every single thing I have experienced.

Whether it is repetitive or not, she still has to hear them.

I don’t care if she finds them repetitive, even though I don’t like repetitiveness.

And so maybe I will tell her about my own feelings, something she may have known, or haven’t known yet.

That’s a wasteful way of living life, but I have never been the type who knows how to appreciate life anyway. Perhaps I have some learning to do now.

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[Author's Note: if it wasn't due to rush, I would have written a scene of Ryle pulling out the ring Regina gave him back in Advanced school, and wearing it on Caterina's finger - that's sort of how she should have escaped her fate, although I also had in mind another way she almost got killed. The ring was technically some sort of legendary charm that protected your life - how so I haven't determined the effects.]