Story and Translation: Mitsuaki Seiji

Illustration: Ana Paula Peixoto

An inevitable misfortune falls on Lied!! And then...?!

"Answer!!"

Lied in despair…

"I told you… TO ANSWER!!!", Lied ordered for one last time until he ran towards the man, the two of them separated by a distance of ten meters.

A reckless action by Lied, who before reaching the seven-meter mark was already inexplicably immobilized. The boy found himself levitating in the air while strangled by something invisible. The pain was so stifling that, if it had continued for a few more seconds, the young man would have probably died.

While he had his movements arrested, Lied could see for a moment the insolence of the murderer.

Covered with smoke, only a smile and a singular tattoo with a triangle and an eye at its center, which enveloped the left eye, could be seen. A dark image that was dissipating as our protagonist lost consciousness due to asphyxiation.

Moments before he faints, Lied still hears the man utter something of an enigmatic nature:

"Have you been told... that you have the eyes of a snake?"

Was that... the end?

…

"What?"

Lied found himself fallen, his arms outstretched, in a dark and cold space.

Yes, the same place he confronted several times in his chilling dreams. An authentic "vacuum" with a poor and lost boy in its midst, completely alone, as he had always been in his life.

On top of the basket was the red apple, to where Lied was looking continuously. Unlike before it doesn’t look so glitzy, a bit like Lied.

"I see... and to think that the place I had visited so many times in my dreams is where I would have my last breath."

He tried to get up, but didn’t have the strength. It was like they were telling him to lie there and not try to get up.

"Will I really… die?"

"No."

A new, sudden voice denied but with a very low volume, which Lied, who was losing his sense of hearing, couldn’t hear.

"So this was my destiny…?"

Lied plunged even deeper into the emptiness of his soul.

"No."

The same voice denied, louder now, but still not enough for Lied to be able to hear.

"I… failed?"

"No."

The voice denied again, this time heard with success. That “no” made him awake in time, before Lied fell into a sleep he wouldn’t wake up from.

Apart from Lied, the space awoke too, leaving behind the dead and black climate to be filled with a golden and positive energy. The apple, with gold tint, shone.

He covered his eyes with the right hand so that the light that radiated from the apple and filled the whole dimension didn’t reach him. However, he eventually realized that this glow wasn’t hurting. On the contrary, it brought to his wounded heart a vigorous and radiant sensation.

In the midst of so much clarity, from the fruit came out a young woman, thinner and about 4 years older than Lied, with long and smooth turquoise-blue hair.

She walked to Lied, stopping just in front of him. The woman raised her right hand and extended it in a generous gesture, as if she was giving Lied the strength to rise again.

"Who… is it…?"

Who she was and what she was doing there, that didn’t matter.

Lied accepted the tender gesture of the girl, rising from the empty floor and embracing the intense light that consumed with him all the space.

He could feel the same happiness as before growing gradually as he was absorbed by the light waves. Before she disappeared, Lied was able to see. At a glance, a smile as beautiful as the stranger herself.

Lied smiled back. That gave the boy something he never had in his life - the will to live.

Yes. He was saved.

The lad who was lost... was found.

…

Lied regains consciousness, seeing himself lying on an ambulance stretcher and surrounded by busy paramedics.

He can still feel the glow of before impressing his eyes, a sensation emotionally touching his heart pleasantly.

Who could that woman really be, and why would she save him? Two questions that Lied would want, sooner or later, answered.

The house burns as a crowd of onlookers witness the fire and firefighters try at all costs to extinguish the fire. Lied leaves the stretcher and discreetly steps away from the place.

Naomi, who had also been drawn to the commotion while looking for the boy, finally noticed him, going immediately after the lad.

Lied, still somewhat stunned, rushes out of that turbulent place.

The melody of the flames slowly devouring his house, the whispers of the people who witnessed the scene... all that agglomeration of sounds disturbed psychologically Lied, who felt inside an infernal hum making him lose the reason.

He covered his ears in an attempt to separate himself from the outside, but in vain. It was a silent and agonizing sound deep inside Lied. The boy ran through the street that gave access to the Municipal Park.

Old memories invaded the boy's mind, “filling the head with black and white”.

Ganeden, 8 years ago.

Orphanage Regenbogen, the only one in the whole island.

Despite being the only orphanage in Ganeden, it has medium proportions and its structure is very well cared, having recently undergone a reformulation at internal and external levels.

Its exterior is vividly colored by the seven colors of the solar spectrum. The painting of a rainbow is seen crossing from one corner of the building to the other. The ten letters of the name of the orphanage are painted distributively with those colors.

Nevertheless, the interior of the hospice is of great simplicity, never getting away from the "rainbow standard" that is the great mark of the orphanage.

The entrance is one of the largest divisions of the establishment and can impress those who enter for the first time. Inside, in this hot summer afternoon, an eight-year-old orphan accompanied by an orphanage helper is about to be adopted by a relatively young couple in their 30s.

"Thank you so much for accepting to take care of him.", the helper thanked them.

"The truth is, I am barren so I always wanted to have a child.", the young woman replied, smiling with her husband.

She's now looking at the boy with her kind smile. The kid had noticed, but kept staring coldly at the ground.

"Ah, I see."

The woman then looks at the boy, expecting some reaction from him.

"Look, from now on they will be your parents. Greet them."

"He doesn’t speak much, huh?", the man said, looking at the little boy for a bit.

"Yes, I'm sorry. It turns out that this boy has no memory of before coming to the orphanage. The whereabouts of the biological parents is unknown and he himself doesn’t have any previous recollection that can help locate them. An authentic mystery, we could say that he 'completely fell from the sky'."

"Amnesia...?"

"The only thing he remembers is his name - 'Lied'. And that's all we know."

"Lied, huh..?", she said in a gentle tone, stooping down to match the boy named Lied.

"Nice to meet you."

Lied stared for a moment and then turned his dead, empty stare away.

…

Lied, more and more startled, ran to the park that could already be seen in the distance.

Little by little, while his memories came to the top, something seemed to want to come out of his eyes. Slowly this "something" took on a perceptible form, a symptom very natural and simpler than one might think.

6 months after Lied was adopted.

Lied prepares to leave yet again, alone and without saying anything, of his new house, which he hasn’t become accustomed to or refuses to get used to, staying most of the time except for school hours at the nearest park.

The parents, however, have already become accustomed to Lied's behavior, still hoping that he will take the right steps.

As he leaves the mother appears behind him, making the boy stop for a moment.

Lied was occasionally scolded by his father, but the mother curiously had never scolded him, always willingly to accept whatever her son decided to do on his own. In the end, she always said the same thing:

"Don’t forget to come back home, ok?"

…

Lied finally reaches his destination.

Unable to stand up, he fell into the grass of the park with the hands firmly on the ground, his eyes completely closed and the young dizzy, but mostly frustrated.

A thousand memories of the parents with him passed on slides in his mind, almost like a movie of life: the father going to get his son who didn’t return from the park; the mother closing the school bag zipper for him; the boy already 10 years old and his parents during the summer vacation of that year, the memory portrayed in the photograph that had, meanwhile, been extinguished by the fire.

Drops of water begin to fall not from the sky, but from his own eyes.

It was as if that encounter, that smile of the mysterious woman, managed to wake up the emotions asleep, or let's say contained, during all this time.

The boy lets tears flow down the face and towards the herbs.

For the first time in life… he cried.

…

Naomi, who chased Lied, finally catches up to him, immediately hiding behind a park bench as she noticed something odd was happening to the lad.

Hidden, the girl watches the boy tearing. An emotional facet she had never seen in him.

Suddenly, Naomi begins to see two blue dots spinning around Lied, the last one who was "too busy" at the moment to notice their presence. The most impressive thing in that scene was yet to come.

Out of the blue, and almost without noticing the change, the two blue spots take the form of two people, a woman and a man in their forties. Yes, it was Lied’s parents in a spiritual form, showing a beautiful and grateful while embracing his son.

That was when Naomi realized! That’s what Lied was referring to in their conversation, the blue dots taking the form of humans.

When Naomi noticed, they were already gone. Meanwhile, Lied was still crying, shedding the tears he had been holding back for all these years.

The girl understood this and decided to leave him alone, leaving discreetly the place. Coincidentally, it was when Naomi left that "a new face" was revealed on the site.

This time the boy noticed, calming down for a bit to glance at “him” - a young white hooded man in his twenties.

Dozens of blue dots appeared suddenly, reacting to the newcomer's presence and occupying the whole atmosphere of the park, something that made the whole scenario incredibly fascinating and beautiful.

Without blinking, the hooded man pointed his left index finger at Lied. Perhaps he had before questioned the man's appearance, but in his present state Lied could only remain silent and look directly at him.

"Are you going to let those tears blind you and run away again?"

Behind them the cries of people could still be heard, the sky ashy owing to the exhaled smoke lurking above their heads.

"Or... are you going to face it? Your own destiny?"

Before he could think twice about the stranger's question, Lied felt drowsy out of the blue.

That's when his instinct told him that such sensation is a doing of the male in front of him. It's like he's telling Lied to give the answer to himself. The sleep began to grow heavier and the tiredness of having been overwhelmed by his emotions was manifesting.

Curiously, the sunset is just rising. Lied conceded, letting himself rest on the lawn which now looked like a huge bed with several cushions to console him.

"I..."

He felt his conscience telling him... that it's time to sleep.

Seconds before falling into a deep sleep, the young remembered that long ago, in this life or in his past life, someone used to tell him something before bed. He didn’t remember who, only the complex yet soft phrase:

"Carpe Noctem."

Murmured, falling into his long and deep sleep.

Enjoy the night…

"Regenbogen" - german for “rainbow”.

"Carpe Noctem" - latin for “good night” or “enjoy the night”.