Confusion is a fair mistress 2

Deep in the midnight Roxy allowed to rest the man on his back. Ryu's tendrils filled the ground like a disheveled ball of yarn.

He looked at his see through brother, chest raising up and down rhythmically, eyes no longer open like a dead fish.

"What do you think?" He asked.

"Will give him a breather and do that all over again, do you recall any other happy scents?"

"Smoke maybe? But he smoked way much in the past so maybe it's not a happy memory."

She looked at the sleeping sliver haired woman, about to pickpocket her.

Ryu eye's rarely left his brother. He felt some sort of flow, one he linked to the time he went down the memory lanes himself.

He loathed his helplessness.

Roxy played with the sliver braid, confused curiosity in her expression.

Tendrils picked the things back again, but Roxy suggested waiting.

"It started to kick in."

---

Twenty three years prior the bangs of guns made his way to him in the pitch dark basement.

His older cousin hugged him tighter, shaking hands covering his ears, but the sound waves of a gun was loud and piercing despite her efforts.

His other cousin was not shaking, but the baseball pat in his hands was, he stood in front of them ready for the worst.

It was a long day of screams and gunshots.

'Why they're doing all of this?' That thought controlled his undeveloped circuits. A question he couldn't find an answer for till this day.

No gunshots were heard after that day, but their echo ricocheted in his mind for years to come.

His mother funeral was a gap in his memory, a blurry sequence of events.

Shops opened as soon as some people who were involved disappeared, his cousins went back to school and adults went back to their obligations, everyone moved on, but the crocheted caterpillar collected the dust. The last gift from him mom.

"XXX doesn't seem to be doing well." In a midnight trio to the kitchen he heard his father's wife talk to his aunt.

"Nobody is, everything is still fresh. We are all just pretending."

'Why we pretend then?' A second thought plagued his mind, unanswered like its predecessor.

"Poor thing, only four." His father's wife chocked.

"Hey, I wanted to ask you...that guy's daughter...heard she'll live with y'all.." His aunt whispered.

"What can we do, she's a kid who done nothing." She swallowed.

"Yeah, even if her father took the gun and killed people on the street." The other woman commented bitterly.

"What can we do then? Torment an innocent child? Plus she's related and orphanages are stuffed right now.."

"Does my brother know if not for that guy his wife could've survived?" His aunt whispered even lower.

"No, family told me not to tell him. A relative shooting his wife is too much right now, not after he volunteered to house his daughter."

He predicted that said daughter will come soon to be in his face twenty four hours seven days a week.

He didn't predict that he would fall in love with her two decades and three years down the line.

-----

At the shabby apartment the man let a painful groan.

"Okay now, happy smell! Smash a book in his face!" Roxy ordered, occupied by the bowl of lemons and the snowman, shivering while protecting sleeping Karaza.

"I just want the pipe I'm not gonna hurt her.."

In the midst of that Ryu did as told with guilt in his eyes.

----

The street, the whole neighborhood got reconstructions. Until the present day no newcomers got send to live there. But his house stayed in that neighborhood.

'I never knew if people were pretending, they all talked and walked like they've moved on.'

The thirteen people next to him on the dinner table felt incredibly distant.

The four floors vast house had all sort of relatives living there. A side from his two brothers that were fifteen and seven years older than him everyone else fell under the cousin umbrella.

And couple of them were close relative to culprits of the slaughter.

But no one seemed angry anymore.

'I'm I the only one mad?'

'I'm confused.'

So he too started smiling like nothing was ever wrong.

Like the girl his age sitting next to him at dinner table wasn't the last person he wanted to interact with.

He looked at adults telling kids something among the lines of 'You'll understand when you're older.'

He got older. He didn't understand.

Nine years at thirteen he felt like a ghost. The house got suffocating as his father stayed oblivious to some facts, as other who knew said facts seemed to forget them.

When the scroll appeared before him the first time he treated it as a dairy book, a mere journal. He wrote directly in it several long paragraphs, the words spawned from his hands rather his mind.

Amalita was a good, kind girl. Sure she's nothing like her father.

But she was a healthy, fertile person. Just like her father.

Textbooks were a nice retreat from everything. Abstract, concrete and everything had a clear answer and an elaborated explanation. Complete escapism.

An escapism that made him skip three years in school, and when someone complained how their child barely had time for anything after joining medical school.

'That seems delightful.' He thought.

----

"Hey, I don't like this." Ryu almost shouted, eyeing the uneven fitful breaths.

"Happy smells...your smell! Hug him! I'll be back before you know it trust!" She put Natasha on broomy as she's started to wake up."

-----

After the human anatomy textbooks and late nights in the emergency room a true escape presented itself. Being sent to the furthest point in the land of the unwanted as a junior medic seemed like the ultimate retreat from everything.

But not from himself.

Even the towering mountain and vast fields weren't enough. Even the strict orphanage president's nagging. Even the starry night sky couldn't even out the imbalance, lonely between his own people and lonely when he's not.

But some sweet memories find their way in life.

A tiny boy with prosthetic legs and a heavy cardigan bigger than he is found his way to him in the forest's open bald spot, holding two small ice cream containers wit his small hands.

Little Ryu sat on a rock and put on his glasses to open the container before giving it to him.

"It's late, president will scold you." He warned.

"It's fine, I'll just blame you." Ryu said.

"You're such a brat." He laughed.

They sat on rocks, ice cream in the middle of the hot night, sneaking out.

'That was so long ago. He probably doesn't even remember that time.'

But a found memory is simply that.

----

Ryu's tendrils picked the crocheted caterpillar up. He didn't risk smacking it across his face, putting it near him gently.

'It really has the old comforting smell...'

Ryu looked for any relapse signs, not finding any he leaned his back on the wall.

The sun of a new day was almost up.

He watched over his brother until sleep crawled to his eyes.

Roxy entered from the window yawning.

"It's fine, I'll watch over him now. He's out of the wood probably." She told.

And relief was the best sleep aid.