Chapter 14 - Chapter 13

@International_Pen

((( ZHIO )))

"It was fine," I mumbled.

"You're not from this place, are you?" She stood up when I nodded and said her farewell.

"It's getting late. I have to go."

"Surely is. Take care," I replied.

I wanted to give her a ride home but it would look too shady an offer. After all, we're strangers who doesn't even know each other's name. How, in such a place, I was still unknown to somebody.

She waved goodbye and disappeared as quickly as I met her.  

I remained seated, amazed at how fast my little wish has been fulfilled. For a brief moment, somebody did make me forget.  I turned my gaze at the altar and saw the white flowers once more. Soon, I'll be seeing a bunch of those at my father's funeral.

How funny it is that it will remind me of her and remind me most of him. Those flowers were really his and it suited him perfectly. He's already been carrying them the moment he was born…

…the flower of sorrow…

I stood close to the altar and took one flower from its stem. The flower she intended to give me. I slid it in my pocket, went out the chapel, and breathed in the fresh air for the last time.  

Deo's car looked like a hearse waiting to take me back to my grave. I was slowly dying as I am being eaten alive by dread when I came near the Villa. Every weight that I though got discarded at the chapel suddenly sprung back. When the gates opened, the lonesome aura of the Mansion greeted me. I wanted peace but the silence inside that cage did the reverse of healing me.

It killed me more instead.

The maids stood in array as they welcomed my arrival.

"I was told you left the hospital alone," Sya asked like a concerned mother who's about to beat her kid for getting home late. She must be worried, apparently because she might have known what I did to dad. The news must have spilled it all.  

"Yes. I just wanted be alone for some time," Ironically, it was the least I wanted when I was a kid. I wanted playmates but now all I wanted was some isolation.

"Did they get home?"

"Dr. Eriez and Atty. Wenziel?" she asked back as we ascended the stairs.

I nodded.  

"I doubt they'd be coming home today. They must be busy with your father's passing."

She looked me in the eye when we reached my room,

"All of us here like to express our sympathy for Master James."

I nodded again.  

"Just wake me up once Wenziel and Eriez arrive."

@International_Pen