Harker paid attention to how Roland would react. Any sign of him trying to evade the question or attempting to lie would be dealt with responses that he already prepared in his head.
Harker had prepared for so many responses but he didn't expect this one.
"No."
That was all Roland said, and he went on his way to his limousine.
"No, what? To the first question or the second? Roland!"
But Roland had gone inside, and only said. "I'll see you tomorrow at Holmwood. Just call whenever you're ready, but don't be later than 4 pm because they're not accepting visitors at that time."
And then he rolled up the window and drove away.
Harker grumbled inwardly. He kicked at a pebble, and sat on the front steps of his small house.
He rubbed his forehead. "Which is it, Roland? You don't have feelings for Artea, right? Then that would mean you're only marrying her out of convenience, so you won't have to marry someone like Angela MacBheatha."
"But….. If it's 'no' to the second question…. That means you do have feelings for her."
Why does he prefer that first option over the second one? So what if Roland has feelings for Artea? That's a good thing! He won't be marrying someone just because he has too.
Shouldn't he just be happy for him to have an arrangement like this and get rid of that devil Angela?
He held his head in confusion that late afternoon. Dead leaves fall over to his feet, swept by the wind. Their colors reminded him too much of burning fire. It felt like that all the time ever since he had woken up. Like he was watching a burning fire.
Only that it wasn't like the same fire in a warm fireplace, where his family would sit and share stories together.
It wasn't even like the fire that kept away the cold back in the mountains, the only solace one can find among despair.
Instead, this fire felt like watching an entire forest be burned to the ground. Or the fire from a car explosion. A terrorist attack, or perhaps just watching his own home be engulfed in flames.
There was a sense of loss and destruction all around, and Harker knew the source. But he couldn't stop it.
He could only stand there and watch as the flames danced and turned everything that he cherished into ashes.
And he was alone.
"Yan. Yan, are you there?"
But the eyeball didn't respond. It seemed that even this thing had abandoned him.
Harker didn't like this desolate feeling. Because it felt like it was his fault. That all the bad things began with him, the spark that ignited the flame. If it weren't for him, things would have been better. Things should have been better.
He felt like he was cursed, and everything he touched just received his curse as well.
"I just want someone….. Someone to stay and tell me it'll be alright. That it's all just in my head, this feeling that everything is falling apart."
"Things are not falling apart."
He turned, and finally saw the flying eyeball. But it seemed to be keeping its distance a little to him.
"It is. And I know that I did it. That I am still doing it. But I can't stop." Harker said. "Everything I do is just—"
"Master, you are seeing shadows that aren't there. You're seeing phantoms of destruction that have not happened yet, and may not happen yet. Like I said, the future is not linear. You can always choose not to continue down this road."
Harker made a miserable sound, and took something from his pocket.
"It feels like everything is going off-balance, and there's no other way to bring it back. Even with Mina and Joan, I—"
"You could still fix it, right? With Mina and Joan. They just need to know what you have been up to. It hadn't been long since you had last seen them. It had only been a couple of days."
Harker scoffed. "Sure felt longer than that. I feel like…. I was swallowed somehow. I was just separated from everything else besides this tension, this anger, this... This despair. It won't go away. Everyone else's despair that I carried…. I don't mind that. But that doesn't mean that I'm okay."
Yan sighed. "Even most monsters never really have to carry the burden you carried. The burden of seeing other's experiences as your own, feeling them…. That's the price of your power."
"And the more power I gain from these 'Abilities' will just add to those burdens, right? That's the only way to balance it out." Harker said. "I can't even conceal it well. Whether it's on human victims or monsters I fight, everything I do to them, they will know. I scarred them, Yan."
He made a far away look. "Roland was scarred too. It may not fully be me…. But I am still to blame." fre(e)webnov(l).com
Yan looked down at the floor, as if choosing what to say carefully knowing how turbulent his Master's emotional state was.
"It may be, but... There are just things we could not change. So we could only focus on those we can."
Harker knew that, and was only further annoyed by that suggestion. He didn't want to be, but there's no changing it, he supposed.
He took a deep breath, and tried to do it. But it's easier said than done.
"I'll just call Mina or Joan. Thanks."
He stood up, and went inside with a slump. He looked at his father's sculptures for a while. Seeing his mother's face in them somehow helped him calm down.
But now, it only reminded him of the memory of that woman in red. A memory that was buried so deep and suddenly uncovered.
He instead paid attention to the spider ones. Harker knew his father had a client who was fond of this spider imagery. Ever since he got into woodworking as a side business after his amputation, he would see someone asking for wooden carvings and statues related to spiders and webs.
The patterns somehow helped him simmer down too. Not calm him completely, but just make him numb. Like he could simply DO, and not BE.
Do things without reason, entangled in webs that controlled his limbs like a puppet. He didn't need to think and feel, only allowing himself to move under the purpose of something else.
Has his father ever felt that way when looking at his own carvings on the web? Sometimes, Harker would think his hands moved without his intentions, without putting any thought to it. The patterns just come naturally... as if by fate.
Was he also just a worker of some force, and he had long forgotten after gaining a heart?
Sometimes he wished he could take out that stupid heart and throw it in the fire. This heart of his just kept on burning him out from the inside, and he wished he could just get rid of it too by fighting fire with fire.
And he wasn't alone in thinking this.
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