Chapter 316 Volume V - Chapter 34: Silent and Alone
She told me to say it if I'm bothering you, but... I don't feel like saying it.
I mean... my purpose in coming here was to watch the sky for half an hour, alone, in silence. Yes, I'm in a very quiet environment now... But I'm not alone.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced to my side. But no matter how many times I repeated the same thing, Alice was lying not far away from me, looking up at the sky. It didn't look like she had any intention of getting up anytime soon.
So... what if I try talking to her?
"Are you okay with me being half-elf?"
Ah, why did I ask such a thing? It was obvious from her actions what the answer was...
"Since it makes no difference to my life what your race is..."
She paused for a moment, her eyes squinting at the stars. She sighed as if she had said something she didn't mean and continued.
"No, I don't have a problem."
Was that a yes or a no...? I don't know why, but it felt like me being a half-elf had actually changed something in her life...
So, once again, silence descended on us. Seconds passed, then minutes. Minutes I spent without saying anything, without even moving.
I had aimed for silence and solitude, yes... But now, when I wasn't alone, this 'silence' I was looking for started to feel bad instead of good for some reason.
I wanted to talk, actually. Being silent when someone was next to me left me with a nagging desire to remain silent. But... strangely enough, it wasn't me who broke the silence. On the contrary, it was Alice.
"You said you grew up on the streets, right?"
Oh, she's starting the conversation? That... certainly doesn't feel like something she would do. But I'm also feeling like I had to answer her question.
"Sort of... at least after I was eight. Before that, I was living with my parents."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice's eyebrows twitch, but without any further reaction, she asked another question.
"Do you... remember your parents?"
Why is she asking such questions? And it feels like her usual calm demeanor has changed a bit...
Has something happened to her? Has something changed in her life so that she can't act like herself?
"More or less. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to forget their faces, their voices... But whenever I feel like that, I force myself to remember them. And when I force myself too much, they appear in my dreams. I can refresh my memory with them."
I paused for a moment, squinting and focusing on one of the stars in the sky for no reason.
"Though... sometimes they are more nightmares than dreams."
Alice didn't say anything. However, after a short while, as if she did not want to end our short conversation, she asked me a question again.
"Do you think your family... was a good one? Your father, for example?"
My lips curled upward slightly as I began to play back in my mind everything I remembered about my father.
"My father... was generally an expressionless man. He didn't like to show his emotions, he didn't smile much. Any change in his facial expression usually felt... fake. Like he had forgotten how to smile sincerely and was trying to imitate something from memory. But I knew he wasn't really like that, so I didn't care much."
A memory came back to me. I was playing with some of the chickens in our garden when one of them ran off into the forest... and because I was chasing it, I got lost. Maybe I spent hours looking for my house and couldn't find it. Finally, when I leaned against a tree and started crying... it was my father who found me.
He didn't get angry or mad at me. He didn't even give me a lecture. When he took me in his arms, I felt the sweat on his clothes, the beating of his heart. He was just... happy to have found me. He didn't say it, I couldn't see his expression, but... he was happy.
But then, right after this memory, I remembered the dream I had recently. I remembered the 'story' he told me, and that he was probably the hero of this story.
"He was a good person, I think. He had probably been through something in his past. That was probably the reason for his lack of expression and difficulty in showing his emotions. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't good. But... he was a good father."
After a few short seconds where I didn't know what more to say, I finally decided to finish my own words by mentioning the similarities between us.
"Also... I told you that sometimes I forget how they look, but I guess that's not so true for my father. Because... we're like carbon copies of each other. The closer I get to his age, the more I look like him."
Alice did nothing but stay where she was, not moving a muscle. But... these seconds she spent like a statue didn't last long either. Eventually, she slowly turned her dark eyes, which she could not tear away from the sky, toward me.
She began to study my face. It was as if... she was trying to picture in her mind what my father was like after I told her he looked like me.
"And your family?"
She didn't answer, she just kept studying my face.
"Alice...?"
Only when I said her name once more did she pause. Her eyes focused on mine, then she sighed deeply. Her brow furrowed as if she was angry with herself, then she turned her face back to the sky.
"I... don't have... a family."
When I felt the space between her words, the difficulty... I couldn't help sighing slightly.
No, this person in front of me is nothing like the old Alice.
She looks the same, her expression is the same, but... she acts like a different person. She asks questions she wouldn't normally ask, she makes me feel like she's lost under her emotions for the first time.
Like... like she has a problem.
"Do you have a problem?"
When I think of the old Alice, she was the kind of person who would answer such a question as none of your business. She would have even gotten angry at me for asking a question about her. But, for some reason... this time she didn't give any of these reactions to my question. She just... moved her lips without changing her expression even slightly.
"Something like that."
Something like that, huh...
Even though she gives such an answer, she doesn't continue, she doesn't even try to explain her problem.
Is she waiting for me to ask, or does she want to keep it to herself? Maybe she is angry with herself for giving such an answer. I... simply can't understand anything from her facial expression.
The only thing I feel when I look at her... is that she's lonely. No more, no less, that's exactly it. Not once have I seen her hanging out with a 'friend', not even once have I seen her talking to anyone properly. That's the only thing I really know about her, that she's lonely.
And now... this loneliness is much more pronounced. It makes me want to help her somehow.
But I don't want to give in to that feeling and act without thinking. If she really has a problem, if she really wants to come here for help... I don't want to force her to explain herself.
If she wants help, then she can ask for it. She is a rational, intelligent person. I don't think she would be embarrassed just because of something like that. I mean, if she's not telling her problem herself... I don't think it's a good thing to try to dig it up, at least for now.
I'm just gonna ask her to take a step, that's all.
"You helped me. Not once, but twice. You had no reason to do it. And now... you're the one in a difficult situation, I guess. You're smarter than me, you think more than me. So I don't know if it's right for me to say anything... But some things, at least sometimes, are impossible to get through alone."
I took a deep breath as my lips curled upward for no reason.
"If this time it's you who needs help rather than others... and you realize that it's not possible to handle it on your own... then don't hesitate to seek a helping hand from others, I think."
I didn't say anything else, nor did I intend to. From that point on, everything was in her hands. Instead of interfering in her affairs in a way she didn't like, I had given her a choice, which, at least for me, was the right one.
Minutes passed without either of us saying anything again. Watching the countless stars in the sky, the arm of the galaxy that looked like a rift in space... I felt peaceful for some reason.
Maybe solitude and silence were what I was looking for... But strangely, having someone lying next to me like this, sharing this 'silence' with me, felt better than I thought it would.
*******
Alice got up after almost half an hour without saying a word. Only after walking to the edge of the big rock, before leaving in the same silence, did she turn to me.
With her dark eyes on her expressionless face, which felt indistinguishable from the darkness of the night just behind her, she uttered a simple sentence.
"See you later, Adrian."
But... that sentence felt contrary to everything I thought I knew about her until now.
See you later? I never thought I would hear such a thing from her. But... that wasn't what made me stare blankly after her back.
Adrian, she said. Is this the first time? I don't remember if she said it before, but it's definitely the first time I've heard her say my name in that kind of tone...
Alice... is she really starting to change? Or is it just that she's acting weird because of some problem or problems she's been having lately?
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