Irium

"Hah!" I sigh and lean on the wall.

This place we have been told to wait in is the entrance chamber of the castle right in the middle of the city. Being that I have only ever seen entrance chambers in hotels, I automatically start comparing it to them. Let"s just say it"s about thrice the size of an average entrance chamber in a good hotel. Anyway, walls and floors seem to be made of hard bricks and mud and give the feel of an ancient civilization. Beautiful, obviously!

"Well, your father sure has cla.s.sy taste, doesn"t he?" Danny says as he leans on a pillar. "Though, I guess that is obvious from your house"s design anyway."

My house … is pretty cla.s.sy actually. He"s definitely right about that.

"So, tell me," he asks, "was it really necessary to say all that to his face?"

"I didn"t say it to his face. He was showing his back to me at the time." I try to joke my way out with that but,

"Not the point."

"Hah!" And so I sigh, and answer, "Well, it wasn"t necessary per se. But it just disgusted me enough to not care about anything like that."

"I get you." Danny says with a slight smile, "I do get you. But, you could have been a little more discreet about it, you know."

"Wait!" Roswaisa says, "Please stop!"

With her expression downcast and her gaze wavering, she asks, "I don"t get what you mean by all that."

"I never expected you to."

"So explain." She yells at me with a slightly angry face. Well, I guess, for an Angel, it would be kind of annoying to hear something like that, despite it being the truth.

"…" I find it a ha.s.sle to try to explain it all so I don"t really think I"ll comply to her request though.

"Explain!" She yells again, her face becoming angrier and kinda scarier even.

"You might wanna listen to her, you know? Wives have all the power in the house these days." Danny says with a teasing smile.

"W-wife!?" Roswaisa looks stunned on hearing that.

And I, being the cool bada.s.s that I am, casually hide my blush and put up a stoic façade (no, what the h.e.l.l … I wasn"t blushing and it wasn"t a façade … d.a.m.n you, author) as I say, "Oh, don"t mind him. He has … mental issues."

"Oh, do I now?" Danny says, clearly mocking me.

"Anyway, you want to know what I meant by all that. Fine!" I pull the best distraction I can on Roswaisa – the answer to the question she asked. "Why don"t we take an example then?"

"Alright!" She says while nodding.

"Let"s say, a lot of things happen, and you end up being bound to someone for marriage. That person is your future spouse and you can"t change that."

"Okay?"

"Now, someone attacks you and your future spouse, trying to kill both of them. What would you do?"

"I … will defend myself and my future husband."

"Of course you will. Let"s say then, you come up with a strategy that everyone is convinced will take out the person attacking you and you implement it. But, it doesn"t work. You end up failing."

"That … would be quite sad."

"Yes, what would be ever sadder is if the attacker, who has survived your strategy, kills your future spouse and leaves you for the time-being."

"…"

"You had a person who was bound to you for life and then you lost him. What would you do? How would you cope up with the situation? What is the best thing to do?"

"I … probably … would be very depressed and sad and wouldn"t want to do anything."

"But if you do nothing, that attacker will come back and kill you two. Are you saying that would be for the best?"

"N-no. But, I may gain a lot of motivation to go after that attacker and take revenge. As negative of a notion revenge is, it is definitely something I may feel at that point."

"And someone who was powerful enough that you had to resort to making strategies instead of fighting them head-on, you think a mind shrouded by revenge can help you defeat that attacker."

"It … probably can"t."

"Then, what would you do?"

"Maybe, escaping that attacker would be the best way."

"Probably. So, let"s say you escaped him or her. Then what? Wouldn"t your mind still be enshrouded by the feeling of loss and desperate to get back at the attacker?"

"It would, yes. But, if I think nice things, distract myself somehow and …"

"It might go away?"

"… Yes."

"Does the loss disappear? Does the sadness disappear? Does anything change?"

"… It doesn"t."

"Yes, you are right. It doesn"t. The only thing that happens is you deceiving yourself and not facing the reality."

"…"

"Losing to despair and letting yourself stay vulnerable to be attacked, or trying to take revenge telling yourself that your opponent deserves – they are both wrong obviously? Are they not?"

"Yes."

"But, you know, the worst of all is trying to escape reality by distracting yourself – this is the thing that people here would do. They would try to forget the loss, forget the death of the person they are supposed to close with to make themselves feel better."

"…"

"That, as I contemplated earlier, is the thinking of either a coward who watches too much anime, or the thinking of a sociopath who never really cared for that person in the first place."

"…"

"…"

The silence comes, and stays for a few seconds – silence that I find gratifying, but I am sure she would be suffocated with.

"If that is indeed true," she asks, "then what should a person do at that point?"

"Well, (unless there"s a way to turn back time,) a person should accept the loss and move on."

"Huh!?"

"And don"t mistake my words. While it may sound somewhat similar to deceiving yourself with distractions, it"s not. What I mean to say – is that they should accept that the person died, and so this world will have to move without them. They need to realize that there"s no longer a need for that person in this world."

It sounds cruel, doesn"t it? Well, it"s the G.o.dd.a.m.n truth.

*****