Chapter 8 : I still carry that Lighter

Hannah, who had been chewing on the rim of the can, suppressed the urge but couldn’t help but ask.

“Besides Kieran Jaxx, what else do you listen to?”

“Orion Caine, Celeste.”

“And Thalia Amber and the Faceless Poets?”

He seemed to have noticed what she was confirming.
With a short, boyish laugh, Zakar surprisingly looked delighted as he flipped through the album’s liner notes.

“Who listens to such old, stuffy singers these days, unless you’re an old man?”

“Thanks for the self-introduction.”

I really wondered if it was possible for two people in this day and age, who not only listen to CDs but also share a taste for unpopular singers, to exist.
Then, Ian’s voice, telling me that the songs I had recommended were his alarms, faintly crossed my mind.
But I didn’t know it was to this extent.
Zakar, with a rare look of interest, looked around at her few belongings—the albums and postcards that held her dense taste.

“If we had met before we were twenty, we could have stayed up all night just talking, without doing it.”

“That’s…”

I was about to say that it was the same now, but I stopped myself.
We weren’t like that.
The reason we never had these conversations before was because Zakar and I were not friends.
Whatever interpretation he had of the suicidal singer’s last song, however he had come across those songs, I was no longer at an age where I could be childishly curious even if I wanted to know.
As I habitually suppressed the churning in my stomach, Zakar, who had somehow found the old audio player from the cupboard, put in Kieran Jaxx’s early album.

“Don’t play it. Unless you’re going to pay my lawyer’s fees when the woman next door sues me.”

“I can pay the lawyer’s fees. The problem is when you get kicked out.”

“I’ll get kicked out. It’s not my house.”

“Ah, so even…”

“……”

He trailed off, but it was obvious he was deliberately teasing me.
With the determination to ignore his provocation, I just finished my beer.
Zakar, who had put in the CD and pressed play, tapped the audio player a few times and smiled roguishly.

“How much is a place like this?”

“I’m genuinely curious, is there no one around you who wants to kill you?”

I know what he wants.
As I shot him a sharp glare, Zakar, finally satisfied as if he had gotten what he wanted, laughed out loud and turned the volume down.
It seemed he had a shred of conscience after all.
I was about to turn it off immediately, but the piano intro I hadn’t heard in a long time was so good that my fingers lingered against my will.
It was a strange thing.
Standing in front of this tiny countertop with Zakar Kairos.
Listening to the songs that helped me survive my childhood.
Even though he must have had a completely different childhood from me, he was listening to the same songs.
As I looked at the window where raindrops had started to fall, I glanced to the side and saw that Zakar had already taken out the only book I owned, Whiskey and Cigarettes, and was looking through it.
As he turned the green cover, the author’s handwritten signature was visible above the small print indicating it was a first edition.

“It was a gift Ian went to great lengths to get for me. On my twenty-third birthday.”

It was a bit impulsive.
Today, Zakar was less annoying than usual, and he even knew Kieran Jaxx.
So I thought it would be okay to mention Ian’s name.

“Ah.”

But his response was nonchalant.
His gaze casually skimmed the page.
Until I threw the empty can into the trash and the gentle rain turned into a downpour with thunder and lightning.
I thought I could see the part where women get swept away by the atmosphere that quickly settles in with concentration.
The sound of rain hitting the window filled the small room.
He spoke the moment I pushed myself away from the countertop.

“‘I’ve been having the same dream every day lately.’”

My heart sank at the familiar sentence.
I whipped my head to the side and saw a white piece of paper tucked in the middle of the page.

“‘In a terrible nightmare that makes me not even want to close my eyes.’”

It was something I had scribbled in the middle of the night after a counselor suggested I talk about my feelings.

“‘I’m holding a dying Ian. I’m killing him over and over again.’”

My fingertips went cold as I strode towards him.
I tried to snatch it away immediately, but Zakar raised a hand to avoid it.
Before I could get angry at the unpleasant height difference, he lowered his head with a blank expression and asked.

“Did you have the same dream that day too?”

“Mind your own business.”

“I don’t even have enough interest to mind it.”

His low voice was dry, as if to prove that his laughter just now had meant nothing.
As our gazes locked, Zakar continued in a voice devoid of any warmth.

“But you keep getting involved in things that I have to mind, don’t you?”

Deep in his eyes, I caught a glimpse of a cold, thick annoyance that was almost freezing.
‘We’re the same. The same kind.’
He, too, was angry at being dragged into something that should have ended with one night.
For a moment, I thought we might be a good match, but that magical moment was over.
Without a word, Hannah grabbed his shoulder and snatched the book away.
The piano melody soared to a melancholic climax.
As he slowly lowered his arm, she fumbled in the pocket of her shorts and held out a lighter.
His calm gaze fell to it.

“Take it and leave. I was wrong. No matter how things got twisted, I should have handled it alone.”

The truth is, I had taken the lighter.
I had it the whole time.
In the pub, on the riverbank, in the bathroom.
And I hadn’t returned it.

“Are you that scared?”

“……”

“What kind of dream is it?”

If Zakar had sneered, it would have been better.
If he had just laughed at me.

“…Don’t you know how Ian died?”

“Have you ever heard how Liam O’Connor died?”

Hannah’s eyes wavered for a moment at the familiar name.
He was one of the cadets from the academy who had gone down into the Abyss and never returned.
The pale, neat face of the man who quietly did his work without a word remained in her memory.
He was surprisingly shy for his large build.

“He died because a grenade went off and blew his body to pieces from the neck down. My job was to collect the mutilated body.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. O’Connor made a mistake like that?”

“That cautious bastard wasn’t the type, but a private who thought something had gotten inside him had a different opinion. He started shooting all around and threw a grenade.”

She let out a short sigh.
It was a terrible thing, but he wasn’t the only soldier who had died that way.
There were 600,000 buried in the Allied Forces Memorial Cemetery alone.
So many had died.
Facing a sea of white tombstones under a cloudy autumn sky with dark clouds floating by, none of us asked how each of them had died.
The Silent Legion.
She had given them that name as she saluted them.
The comrades in their graves were the ones who walked the quietest and heaviest steps.
I never wanted to disturb their rest.

“Ian,”

Hannah, glaring at him, moved her lips quietly, filled with an inexplicable anger.

“Died because of me. Because I wasn’t strong enough to support the weight of Ian being dragged away… I didn’t let go, I never let go of his hand, but when I pulled him up, only half of him was left.”

“……”

“If you had been on the same ship, could you have saved him?”

“……”

“I’ve thought about it hundreds, thousands of times, but I can’t be sure that you wouldn’t have. So.”

It was the first time I didn’t know what my own expression looked like.
So, as if using it as a mirror, I just looked at Zakar’s black eyes and spat out.

“I hate you. Just looking at your face makes me feel sick.”

The counselor was wrong.
As I spoke the words that had been welling up in my chest, I felt like they were choking me.
Things that were manageable when they were inside were now out of control.
Zakar, who had been staring at me intently for a long time, reached out his hand.
He grabbed the wrist holding the lighter and said, as he touched the fingers that were white with tension.

“Then let go.”

“……”

“Unless you plan on carrying it for the rest of your life.”

It should have been about the lighter.
I could feel the pulse in my wrist growing louder, thumping.
Zakar didn’t offer any rash comfort like, ‘It’s not your fault.’
Because that would hurt my pride too much.
Whosever pride it was.
The strength slowly drained from her pale hand.
Hannah closed and opened her eyes, then lowered her head.
On the smooth surface of the lighter, a sand dune symbolizing the desert was beautifully engraved.
As I watched my hand, which had opened up like a flower petal, tremble, I suddenly blurted out.

“You left the lighter on purpose, didn’t you?”

When I looked up, his unchangingly expressionless face was briefly illuminated by the thunderstorm outside, then darkened again.
In the midst of it, Zakar asked back like a real villain.

“You just figured that out now?”

The sound of thunder came belatedly.
A large hand came up and cupped the back of my ear, and with the strong grip, I felt my hair being pressed down and a drop of water seeping into my clothes.
It was cool and ticklish.
The moment the man who had lowered his head pressed his lips to the other side of my neck, I suddenly thought.
If you choke someone, they can’t scream.
That contradiction was us.