I remember.
No.
We remember those days before I died.
{In a white room.}
*Cough*Cough*
{In a white bed.}
"Mother..."
{The voice of a child broke the stillness.}
"Oh, don't worry, sweetie, it's nothing really..." With her radiant blue eyes, the mother gazed at the small child beside her bed.
*Cough*Cough*
"Red..." Ever since he was born, the boy could see death before it arrived.
{His white world was tainted with life.}
"Huh?" Warmth emanated from the hand covering her mouth. She looked down. Her eyes widened, her pupils trembling.
"..." A gust of wind came from the open window, her long, light brown hair blown by it.
"Oh, it's nothing, really. I just had too many cherry drinks, don't worry." The mother's playful words contrasted with the child's serious blue eyes.
A small child showing such an expression was not normal. Even more so, as the thing reflected in his eyes wasn't the red being wiped from his mother's hand, but a transparent red veil over her.
"..." As the veil began to embrace her, his eyes turned darker.
{Such a world of white, being tainted by that red. It could only be reflected in his blue.}
He climbed onto the bed, his eyes reflecting the contrast created by the red veil and his mother's glowing blue eyes.
"Huh, what is it, sweetie?" His strong hug surprised her.
'I will...!' The child's stare, such hostile eyes directed at the red veil behind her.
"Don't worry..." She returned his hug, hand clenching a handkerchief still dripping red.
"I'll... I surely will make it vanish, wait for me..."
{The white world was embraced in the transparent yet empty bleeding of a heart.}
"I don't understand, sweetie, but I promise, however long it takes, I'll wait..." Her words were light, but her eyes had a pained look in them.
Really, how could she lie to us...
...
"Hahahaha... Catch me, but you can't."
"Just wait! I'll get you!"
"Hmh..." Hearing the children laugh, the blue-eyed boy returned from the memory.
'A waste of time...' The blue-eyed boy was across from the playing kids, on the other side of a big road.
"Uhm..." He frowned, the dappled sunlight cutting through tree leaves like shards of glass, piercing his dark eyes.
*Step...*step...* Such a heavy step reached his ears.
'Why is he here...?' It was a sound he knew very well.
A moment after the heavy sound stopped, a deep voice called to him. "Why not join them?"
'Ugh... ' He recognized the voice so much so that his body couldn't help but shake even as he was prepared.
His dark, empty eyes changed to show life before he answered.
"They are slow... and clumsy... and... I don't want to." The boy's words were unconcerned.
"Hmh, indeed they are slower than you..." A hum like he was thinking for just a moment.
"You can hold yourself back a little. Boy, you don't need to use everything always, did you forget why and what I started teaching you...?" Hearing his father's words, the boy's stern face broke a little.
He turned to his father, irritation flickering across his face.
"You wouldn't hold back either," he said sharply, though a flicker of emotion softened his glowing eyes.
"HM!?"
"Ahg..." Hearing the muscular man's husky hum, he shuddered and turned back to look at the playing kids.
*Step...*step*
'Ah... why me?' As the heavy sound of approaching steel-toed boots started again, he looked down and sighed in his mind.
At the same time that the footsteps stopped, he felt a touch on his shoulder.
"Ugh... Ahg..." A strong, painful grip.
He turned to look at his father, whose face he couldn't see in the dark shadows.
"You think your mother would like to hear that you're just sulking in the- ?"
Seeing his son shake his hand off and stand up without a word, the man stopped mid-sentence.
"Hmh..." As the boy walked towards the other children, for a moment, something appeared behind the short man's full beard.
"This is not fair, it's a blatant threat..." The words slipped out of his tongue as he reached the road.
A glance to one side, then the other "...!?" In that glance, something flew past him.
'This!?' Seeing the red flash in the corner of his eyes, he reflexively turned towards it.
A little girl on the road, running after a ball, the red veil above her. 'Unfortunate...'
Glaring at the veil embracing the girl, his fake childish expression twisted, hatred burning in his eyes. 'One day... one day for sure I'll make you disappear,'
The hatred was not directed at the girl but at the red veil. That wretched thing that wanted to take away the one thing he liked...
The one thing he felt...
The only one thing he could call his purpose in this horrible thing called life.
*Squeak...* Hearing the screeching of the car tires, he turned his head. His angry face disappeared, and a new fake expression emerged.
'She's going to die. It's too late, buddy...' But still, his thoughts were the same, indifferent.
Then...
"...!?" As he turned back to the girl, something happened that changed his face again, this time into a real one.
'Why? How!? How the hell did it vanish...!?'
He had seen it descend many times before.
It never warned.
It promised.
Once it lowered, no prayer, no medicine, no strength, not he or anyone he met ever made it rise again.
This was the first. It never once left before finishing what it came for, and yet now.
"Huh...?" A strong gust of wind pushed the boy, with something flashing in the corner of his eye again.
"Uh!?" As the car crossed in front of him, his blue eyes focused on the other side, not even concerned with his own safety.
'Why is...?' The boy's eyes were fixed on the man, the man who was holding the little girl in his arms. Someone who made his life goal seem so easy.
*Kya... Ahhhh...* "It's-it's The Man With The Bag!!"
"Run, he will take you away!!! RUN!!" As the children ran away screaming, the man put the little girl down.
"If you run out onto the road one more time..." The man had a deep and serious voice.
"Uh... Kya!!!" But while the man spoke, the little girl glimpsed his face, and she began to cry and scream as she also ran away.
"How did..." A low and dark voice.
'Huh? Someone was standing behind me...?' Hearing his son's voice behind, the father turned, but when he did...
He saw not his son's clear blue eyes looking up at him...
"...!" Fear... That man took a step back, an instinct to try to defend himself.
"...?" What the father saw that made even his instincts scream, empty and dark eyes... eyes that were not of a child... or even human...
Monster...
A monster...
"How did you...?" The monster's question sounded desperate.
"..." Making the father lose his voice as he looked at that thing wearing human skin...
"Help me! Help me... to do it, to make it vanish!" The monster's pleading made the father shudder.
"What are... Uh...!?" Horrified by his own question, he stifled his words.
"I-I want it! I want to be as strong as you!"
"..." The father still couldn't speak.
'No... My son, he is... My brothers...' He had seen those eyes before.
People he once called his comrades, men who had crawled home from battle with their souls left behind. The similarity made him settle down just enough to think.
"I'm sorry..." The father knelt down, metal pendants jingling around his neck as he grabbed both of the little monster's shoulders.
"..." The monster's gaze was empty even still.
"I'm sorry, son..." The father's words became soft.
"Help me...!" But the monster could not understand such a tone that he had never heard from that man before.
"Yes... Yes, I'll..." The old man's head fell down.
Motionless, he gazed at the ground. What he wanted to speak weighed so heavily... he could not bear it. No... who could? When he failed even his own blood.
After a time of silence, he glanced up. His face had changed.
"Boy..." The softness vanished from his voice once again. Rather, it was raised with a domineering and harsh tone, the only one he himself knew. A similar tone to the man he once was taught by.
"I'll tell you four-" But he suddenly stopped as he looked at his son's empty face. His grip intensified before he continued.
"Five! Five Commands...!" He could not make the same mistake as his father did, even if it was too late.
"The First..."
No.
"Look before... "
Those damned Commands holding us to this day...
"The Second..."
I said NO.
"The Third..."
I remember that one. I hate that one most.
No, we don't even want to remember them...
...
Finally...
"Do you understand!? You have to follow... You will follow them until there are lives to live! If you follow, you will be strong, stronger than you ever again need to be!"
At his father's words, the child wished to be a 'human'.
"I... I will follow!" He was weak, just a child, so he wanted the strength he saw in his father.
'I will make it vanish!' He wanted to use that strength to protect the one thing he could feel, and so he followed what he was told.
He was taught in this way, and it was this that made him 'human' again...
"Alright." The boy had no choice but to believe the man's words, even if the man himself wasn't sure of this path.
Sadly, as time went by and the years passed over us, we learned something...
...
{Below the clear sky.}
"Mother, you said you would wait..."
{On green and lush fields filled with people of the past.}
"No, it was I who was late, I'm sorry..."
{A young child stood alone.}
His mother had promised to wait.
So he promised to return with strength.
But the red veil reached her first.
...
{Beside the mother, a young lady rests.}
'Don't worry, sis, I'll protect you all!' That promise, now edged in stone, yet only the wind remained of it.
{The teenage boy stood alone still.}
His sister had believed him.
So he promised to become even stronger.
And he did.
He learned how to fight.
How to endure and bleed.
How to kill.
But when the time came, strength was not what was needed.
He had learned how to take lives.
Not how to save them.
And death was not lenient.
...
{Not far away, between the stones that carried names instead of voices.}
'My love, it doesn't matter what comes. I will protect you!' He knelt before the one promise he could have kept.
{A young woman glanced at him.}
"I wasn't there, I'm sorry... I... I wasn't... 'We' were too late..." He lost everything, how could he not run away... No, how could he not think of his promise?
{A young man knelt there. Now he will never be alone.}
His lover had smiled when he swore nothing would take her from him.
So he promised protection again.
But by then, protection no longer meant standing beside her.
Staying felt like inviting death closer.
So he ran, he ran so far away…
Far enough that whatever followed him would not reach her.
But when danger came, the distance he had created became the grave between them.
Promises.
Graves.
One after the other…
Times someone trusted him with their life.
Times he arrived too late, too weak, too dumb.
Choices, decisions, no matter what he did, in the end, he failed.
Slowly, it was not death he hated most.
In the end, the red veil not only took his people.
No, it just proved him useless.
He had learned... too late.
He was never the one meant to stop the red veil.
He was the one who brought it.
Once he understood that, the last things inside him finally began to break.
"Stand up, my son!"
Despite the years of struggle and nearly losing himself countless times.
That voice returned, and he obeyed.
He pressed the voice into himself like a mask, until its edges bit into skin.
It was the only thing keeping "him" together—but the day it shattered...
Well, that is not where we start...
...
Years later, the mask still held.
Not perfectly. Never perfectly.
But enough for him to run, laugh, smile, and live.
The monster, the shadows were only behind his eyes.
Until one night, under the full moon, five men came looking for his father.
By that sunrise, four Commands had already been broken, and the world was already drowning...