Chapter 60 - Absquatulate : Part 3

"Tell me why you are here, stranger."

The alleyway was too dark beneath the giant moon with embezzled cold light. A red-haired princess was cornering a criminal that did not belong in this world as they let the silence eat them.

The night sky was aglow with bright city lights. The evening sun cast long shadows on the ground. You could look up at the blanket of stars that stretched to infinity.

"I'm not him." The boy began, red-eye stared at the princess with reassurance and defence. "I'm not your Axel." The young Vergessene continued as he slowly put a right hand on the side of the sword, trying to lower it down.

Axel used his left hand to tug at the eyepatch that was covering his blue eye and let it fall down from his head. "Your Axel's family has been trying to turn me into him."

Rune slowly lowered the sword in her hand. She looked into Axel's eyes with twitching red eyes, widened with a slightly terrified tremble. Even though those emotions clearly reflected in her eyes, she managed to keep her facade well, hiding her real feeling.

They fell into a deep unnatural silence at the sudden reveal. The abrupt and potent quiet adorned their breaths as they faced each other.

"...that's ironic." Rune suddenly commented, startling Axel a little.

"His family used to hate him so much for going against them and even left him to die." She chuckled, a kind of chuckle that you could feel the sadness within. "It really is ironic."

She laughed again as if it was a funny movie and went to stare at Axel's mismatched eyes with a mocking sneer. "Maybe it's karma, even."

"My other self must be worried about you, then." She added, tilting her head in understatement before scathing her sword inside her hooded cloak again.

"Ah, I don't think so." Axel lowered his head down, letting the dark fluffy locks avalanched onto his mismatched eyes.

"She couldn't have been worried about me because she doesn't know what I am." He continued, tapping his feet nervously.

Rune showed a slight frown and wrinkled her eyebrows. "Are you an anarchist, then?"

"Well, no-"

"Oh," The princess cut him off and moved her head closer to him. "-what are you then?"

Axel looked away for a heavy second and bit his lips. "I'm a murderer." The word rang out of his mouth like a spreading fire after he admitted what he was

Axel frowned when Rune seemed like she did not care or hear what he said earlier. The girl raised both of her eyebrows at him and nodded.

"Mine is an anarchist." Rune shrugged her shoulders in understanding. "And maybe an assassin or a murderer too. He's really good at his job, though."

"Not that good because I kind of make him fail to be 'bad' for a couple of times." She let out a soft laugh, a genuine one as if it was a good memory for her.

"It's weird, isn't it?" She looked up again and the mismatched eyes boy. "-talking about my Axel in front of you. Hearing your name getting tales from this mouth yet it wasn't about you."

Axel's frown deepened. "You're not mad that he is an anarchist?"

Rune laughed again as if everything was funny for her. "How can I? He's been an anarchist long before I was even his friend."

In life, we always had to choose. The good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the right and the wrong.

For Axel, he was always stuck on the last words. The bad, the sad, and maybe the wrong. So he wished for the world to finally give him a choice.

And so it did.

The world became two, and they gave him a choice. The worlds were mocking him as they made him choose between the bad and the worse instead of the good and the bad.

Or maybe there was a way for him to create another choice, not only between those words.

Maybe.

"Rune," Axel mumbled, catching the said name's intention.

"My Rune doesn't know that I'm bad. And we've been friends since we were a kid. She hates criminals. If she ever finds out who I am, I think she'll hate me." The boy confessed, trembling as he might say anything bad about his best friend.

"Are you, though?" The girl asked, taunting him with a slightly annoying voice.

"What?"

"Are you actually bad?" She repeated the question again. "Or are you just stuck in a play where you have to be bad?"

She took the eyepatch from the ground and started to wrap it around his red eyes. "Try to find a way to end the play. To create your own play."

"Don't let your family do it for you. Be yourself." She looked at the blue eye with a lot of warmth after covering the red one.

"My Axel did, you know?" She singleheartedly asked, tilting her head in wonder. "I helped him create his own play."

"I don't like the ending, though," Rune confessed after a moment of silence, clenching her fists at the sudden memory that overrode her brain. "I really really despised the ending."

"I'd do anything just to change it." She added, still clenching her fists that to turned all the nails white.

She looked over at the boy with doe eyes full of sadness. "But we can't change the past, can we?"

"Maybe he was already happy when he met you." The boy tried to soothe her, only to make the tears that threatened to fall, fall.

"I hope so."

In life, we always had to choose. The good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the right and the wrong.

But he was given another choice here. A grey choice. A good choice. He could not tell the difference.

"You and Axel became friends when you already knew he was an anarchist, so you accepted him easily." Said the boy in a quiet voice. "My Rune doesn't know that I am a criminal, and we've been friends for too long." He continued with a voice full of heartbreak.

The princess's cloak swayed with the wind as she tried to take what Axel had been trying to say.

"Well, I mean- my Axel tried to kill me when we first met." Rune shrugged, blinking sheepishly at Axel.

The boy's eyes widened. "What?"

"His mission was to kill me." She stated easily that the memory did not terrify her or her trust in him. "But then we became friends."

"If I thought about it, I should've hated him." The princess kept going, trying to prove a point for the boy. "But I didn't."

Axel contemplated for a second, imagining the worst scenario to happen if Rune ever found out about him. But could he be lucky, and she would accept him either way?

"So I don't see why your Rune would hate you since you've been friends way longer than us." The girl stated the fact, trying to snap Axel out of his daze.

Axel clenched his fists. Maybe he could do this, telling his best friend the truth. He should take a risk. But he was too coward to actually call him over.

"Can I hug you before you leave?" The sudden request from Rune made Axel snap his head toward her so fast that it made a little cracking noise.

"I just kind of miss him." Rune tried to smile in between her wavering lips. "A lot, actually." Her voice cracked.

Then the girl threw herself at him, causing Axel to stumble back a little. "I wish he was alive. Then maybe, maybe I'll be hugging him right now." She tightened her hug and bit back the tears that threatened to fall.

"No matter how much I wish you were mine. You aren't." She pushed Axel away, turning her back at him as she might cry again.

"Go home, stranger." Said the princess as she lowered her hood and took a step forward.

"Oh, and try to think what you're going to do instead of thinking what your brother will do." She stopped for a moment before continuing to walk away from her best friend's replica.

"It's your own choice, anyway." The sentence ended just as she turned around the corner and vanished, leaving the boy alone in the dark alleyway within the pale crescent moon shone like a silvery claw in the night sky and The occasional barking of faraway dogs that echoed the silence of the night.

In life, we always had to choose. The good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the right and the wrong.

But the boy, for the first time, decided not to choose. His mismatched eyes twinkled under the stolen lights of the sun and the watching moon.

This time he would run away from the choice.

This time he would turn away from the two questions.

This time, he would try to create his own choice.

And so the boy ran the opposite side of where the princess went and blended with the crowd as he disappeared from the moon's watching lights.