Chapter 89

The next morning, the sunlight struck Coen's eyes like lasers peering through his lids. He got up and saw himself bathing into the sunrise above the roof of the En household.

He tried collecting back his memories and remembered what happened last night.

The talks about stars and beyond afterlife and the dusty smell of a room's corners.

How could he forget? It was such a long time since he had a meaningful conversation with his little brother underneath the skies.

It did not feel like they were staring at a mirror above, but the heavens watching down below – gazing at their moment.

The constellations were all witnesses of their somewhat pale and awkward reconciliation.

Coen went down and around to get back inside the house.

He prepared himself some breakfast and coffee, while whistling through his chores. After preparing his meal, he went to search for his brother in the room, but he was nowhere to be found there.

He went to the pantry and to the underground room, but he was not there.

Coen's heart began pounding nervously, an ominous feeling rushing through his head.

The possibilities and scenarios absurdly morphed into an overstretched fabrication. When he realized that Toren was gone, he remembered the nightmare he had before.

It was also the time when he disappeared during the great war.

It was a massive blow to his reality. And he would risk a lot to get out of such an experience if it would have to happen one more time.

He begged himself – his omniscience and whatever uncertain gift that was given to him, so he could miraculously use it now.

Use the damn thing according to this particular situation. And he saw images. He knew where to go, but his feet were hesitant about it. Fearing what he would see.

Fearing that it would scare away the sanity left in him. He returned to the household, slept underground, and drifted towards the otherworld.

Coen witnessed firsthand the two eloping – Airen and Toren, most likely through a different gateway, into a different space and time.

Coen was still inside the otherworld, the flower petals swaying had irked him and its glows blinding him.

His omniscience had paraded the haunting scene that was ever so familiar to him.

He did not realize the tears that were flowing out across his face.

His heart was getting ripped into pieces and a burning sensation crawled up his throat. He felt like throwing up, sick of the betrayal, so he went away.

Returning at the house with his consciousness wide awake and enduring the sickening flash of the scene. A mother beguiling his own son and an idiot brother that was too mentally fragile to resist. It was such a hilarious and revolting cycle of push and pull.

Coen grabbed a blade and the shotgun he had kept and locked himself inside a room.

He thrust the blade through his wrist, cutting his skin apart, hoping realities are dissolved through pain like how dreams and nightmares are. But there was no blood.

There was even no pain at all.

Just a strange sensation of something inserted in his flesh, cold and unimportant.

He could not believe such a concept because his heart was still throbbing painfully. Pulling out the blade, he stabbed himself through the chest and the bones let through the sharp knife.