𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 15 - 𝒟𝑒𝓁𝓊𝓈𝒾𝑜𝓃

Tip-tip-tip!

It was pouring that day, heavily, unendingly, almost as if the heavens were crying, filling the city with puddles and with the invigorating earthly scent of wet mud.

On this day, a girl, with her arms wrapped around her knees, sitting under a shed, joined the heavens in their misery.

That is when a boy, a stranger with his face covered in bruises and wet mud, ambled to her side and lazily whispered, "Hmm... Isn't the rain beautiful?"

First, the girl looked surprised, as if she hadn't expected anyone to be there. Then her expression morphed into one of disgust, glaring at him as if he were an insect.

She analyzed his white shirt with brown spots before she muttered, "Gross... tch..."

Then she looked ahead.

To these words, the boy chuckled, slicking his rain-daubed hair backwards, and said, "A bitch... I see."

"Pardon?"

With these words, their tale started.

Ugh… my head.

In a place full of absolute darkness, Noir opened his heavy eyes. He looked around, first left, then right, trying to find the faintest of glow. But illumination was the only thing that didn’t exist.

His mind came to a reasonable conclusion: A nightmare…?

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Then he realized that he was sitting on a chair, its backrest pressed against his neck, and the fact that something covered his face.

He tried to move forward, but it proved futile. A rough rope wound around his stomach and wrist, like an anaconda that coiled tighter the more one struggled.

“Anhiwhon? Sumbwhon? Hebbbd. Hebbbd.”

His breath hastened, but even air eluded him. What was left instead was the scent of something old—dust and jute.

“Hebbbd, Hebbbd,” he cried again, but no one answered.

A sense of dread rose as his feet flailed below. Death through suffocation was never considered a possible solution, and perhaps—

It truly wasn’t.

Suddenly, the jute brushed past his face, tingling him with its crudeness. As his stomach pushed against the rope below, there was finally a glow. His vision was distorted, like a foggy camera lens, and in it stood the vague figure of a man whose elbows rested on a table as he leaned forward, with his chin resting on the bridge created by his fingers.

“Who. Are. You?” Noir mumbled between uneven breaths.

The man didn’t answer; instead, Noir's vision cleared, revealing the broad, chocolate-coated man with a salesman-like smile on his face. He was well-dressed with a plain black suit tailored perfectly to his body, matched with a similarly colored silver-striped tie that completed his look. Beneath the wooden table, his shoes surely would have matched the rest of his fit. A thick beard covered the better half of the man's face, somehow complementing the wrinkles beneath his dull eyes and his combed mid-length gray hair.

Noir's observations were complete, and along with them, the dizziness he had felt all along vanished. The pain in his head, both inside and at the back of his head, was visceral, but what pained him more were the memories that returned.

With a scowl on his face, like a rabid dog, he growled, “Where is she?”

He looked around, stretching his neck, but all his eyes met were the thin tin walls of the tiny room, along with a pudgy man behind, whom he hadn't given a second look.

A raspy, dry voice resounded in his ears: “A perfect academic record. The respect of your peers. A part-time job at a cuddly cafe whose owner treats you like her very own son.” With the bored look in his eyes, the man continued, “The world knows of a perfect Noir—one who is too good to be true.” He exhaled a dry chuckle. “A broken family… or perhaps one that never was. How would they love to know that you are a product of—”

Noir cut him with a calmer voice. “Where. Is. Claire?”

In response to this question, the man sighed as he got up from his wooden seat. Removing his coat, he hung it on the chair and then removed a cigarette box from his waistcoat. From it, he removed a black-colored cigarette, the one Kevin often smoked.

As he lit it with a lighter that came from the inside of his pants, he looked beyond the unnervingly calm Noir and said, “Untie him.”

Shuffle-shuffle!

The rope slipped, hanging loosely on Noir's pants, while the man had rolled up his sleeves as the cigarette had loosely dangled from his mouth.

“Mister Noir, time lost never returns. Why waste time on answers you already have?” said the man after a puff.

As smoke, like a curtain, drifted between them, the man looked straight into his eyes through the smoke.

He then uttered with certainty, “You were abandoned.”

A brief silence passed in the room as Noir's mouth opened and then closed. He finally stuttered, that too with great difficulty, “W-What—”

The man stated, “Miss Claire has been engaged for the last… three years.” He paused, took another puff, then plainly added, “They ought to be married this December…”

Noir's voice trembled as his mind wandered all over the place. “Impossible? Three?”

His mind took hold of an unlikely yet heart-pounding situation: Could it be possible? A gangster-style welcome?

With a distinct hope in his voice, he muttered, “Is that man me? ...By any chance?”

“Pffft…,” he heard from behind, accompanied by the sound of a hand slapping fat.

And ahead, “This truly isn't the job for me...” the man sighed, then he exhaled his next words: “Miss Claire and her fiancé had a fallout back then—a rather verbose one. In their... naivety, they made a childish agreement to provoke each other's jealousy.” His eyes grew distant for a second, after which he mumbled, “What do you youngsters call it? Open dating? Anyway...”

The man passed by Noir, throwing the half-finished cigarette on the floor.

“You were a product of this agreement.”

As soon as these words entered Noir's ears, his laughter echoed off the tin walls as he gripped the rope. With a certain confidence, he said, “Hahaha… You expect me to believe all of this?” His jaw clenched, and his eyes narrowed. “Claire would tell you all of this?”

The man said, “Everybody in the… family knows…”

“Oh, is that so?” Noir smirked, with a provocative glint in his eyes. “Whichever bastard hit me before must surely have seen the deed. The kiss we shared has told me everything. You fucking goons, you think —"

“Are you certain?”

“I—” Noir's voice wavered. He remembered the kiss. But then, he remembered the strange glint in her eyes.

The man continued, “I have known her since the day she was born.” His voice turned into a whisper, “Perhaps I have cared for her more than my own child." For the very first time, he gazed intensely into Noir's eyes. "That is why I know…” A subtle bitterness lingered in his breath. “She never... truly loved you. Before you speak, you might want to check your phone.”

As instructed, Noir's hands rushed to his right pant pocket, immediately pulling out his phone. He opened the messaging app as he gulped and then touched the topmost message with a profile picture... that had now disappeared.

Huh?

Their chat opened.

Clay (Heart): {I am sorry.}

This message was sent half an hour ago, and below it was another—a voice recording sent twenty minutes ago. Tapping the play button against the unwillingness of his heart, Noir slowed his breath as his left toe curled upward.

A voice as beautiful as a rose rang, echoing in the silence.

“Noir, I…am sorry. I truly am. I believe Uncle Robert has explained everything. You…” A gulp sounded in the background, the kind that refused to go down the throat. "...looked..." She took a deep breath and made guttural sounds, “…similar to him…”

And then came her cruel last words: “I-I cannot... Sorry... please forgive me..."

The recording ended, and so did the thud in Noir's chest.

He chuckled. He laughed. His mouth opened and closed continuously, as if he were having a seizure. A desperation took hold, as he imagined every single future path that he desired collapsing. A warm house. A stable family. Everything with her.

“A-A-Ai. A de—deepfake. I have known her for—No..." He laughed, "Impossible.”

Someone behind him laughed too, accompanying him and mocking his existence. The laughter rang in his ears over and over again, as a particular moment rang in his head.

“Honey, how do I look?” she said as her eyes peered into his.

Her silver dress was blurry, but her gorgeous smile was vivid.

Mesmerized, he said, “Nothing too great. But enough…” his eyes softened as he leaned forward, “…to risk a heart attack.”

Indeed, a heart attack. No! Something worse.

The memories continued, like a recording tape at 2x speed, but so did the obnoxious laughter.

Was it all a lie? It cannot be—

But then he heard a plain voice, “Let go!”

How dare he?

Noir jumped up from his seat, dropping the chair backwards. With a grip so tight that the edge of the table hurt his palm, he screamed, “WHAT DO YOU FUCKING KNOW? YOU KNOW NOTHING!” Biting his lower lip, hard enough for it to bleed, he gazed at Robert with a certain insanity. “IT IS EASY FOR YOU TO SAY! FOR YOU TO SPEAK!”

His words were heard, yet Robert said nothing, nor did he react. He just stared at the wild animal with a gaze that said, "Get this over."

That look irked Noir.

He lunged at the man as the edge of the table scraped his knee. He stumbled for a step or two, yet without a change in expression, he continued both in actions and words.

“TAKE ME TO HER! SHE WOULDN'T—"

Robert, on the other hand, muttered, with a colder gaze sprinkled with something sad, “My intuition never fails me.” He cracked his knuckles, then his neck, and then finally his hands moved towards Noir's falling head. Pulling it closer to himself, he dug his aged knee into his worthless face.

With a bloodied nose, Noir slipped a few steps backwards, but as if the pain were a mental concoction, he balanced himself and swung at the man with his rough technique. His right fist was caught by Robert's left, while the man's other tightened fist moved towards Noir's gut.

Instinctively, Noir braced as he observed every second. Move. And his free hand shot downwards. His steely grip met the man's broad, hairy, and wrinkled wrist.

“Not bad,” he heard.

Asshole...

The man's grip clenched Noir's fist tighter and jerked it backward with such force that in the next second, the man's forehead covered Noir's vision. The skull was the hardest bone in the body, and Noir in the next second personally experienced why.

“Arghh...” he grunted as he saw three blurred figures of the same man standing before him.

Unknowingly, his grip weakened—a grave mistake. Before he could come to his senses, three giant fists covered his entire vision.

Left, right, below—he wasn’t sure. But instinctively, his face moved an inch in some direction, but alas, an inch was a bit too little. The fist connected to his jaw, and his vision darkened. As he fell backwards, he saw her illusory face. Her voice was sweet, too sweet, yet... too distant as well.

This distance he had to close, he had to... no matter the cost!

Before his head touched the ground, mid-air, he shifted, falling on his shoulder. Then he rolled onto his stomach and leaped forward like a raging bull. A second passed by, and just like before, at the top of his vision, he saw those outstretched hands. Oh, those bloody hands.

But this time Noir was prepared.

With the same insane smile he had all along, his center of mass lowered as he positioned his head towards the man's right shin.

The polished gangster tried to move his feet backwards, but he had grown old. A harsh "thuck" resounded in the air as the man's grunts reached his ears.

Noir's head hurt, but so did the man's shin—a fact that brought him an empty satisfaction.

“Enough,” uttered the man, exhaling exhaustion.

And enough it was.

With the agility he had hidden before, Robert grabbed the back of Noir's neck. Gripping it with spine-crunching strength, he lifted it upwards, and then down he thrust.

Bang-bang-bang!

The sounds continued for a moment until there were none. The grip loosened, and Noir fell, his torn face sliding across the coarse wood of the table that had turned red with his stains—maroon mixed with dark brown. With a thud, it met the ground, the smell of dust permeating into his nose. As the warm blood drizzled down the table towards the floor, a few droplets fell towards the back of its original owner's head.

In his dizziness, this owner heard words that struck deep: “When all is lost, the mind deludes.” A pause, then, “But delusion must not cost one's precious to suffer.”

A few footsteps rang closely in his dull hearing, and then the sound of something slapping wood.

“Nonetheless, for the hospital fees, the ride back home, and… perhaps some mental damages, the cash is on the table.” After a brief pause, he heard, “Don't throw your life away, kid. It won't affect anyone, other than your... mother.”

Then Robert's footsteps turned distant, one step at a time.

“Let's go," he said. "Your laughter is getting on my nerves.”

Creak.....!

With that, they left, along with the unstopping laughter, leaving alone Noir, totally beaten and broken.

Thud!