Death

The viciousness in his eyes gradually faded, replaced by anxiety and worry. Looking at my body, covered in injuries, and the bruises on my neck that had turned almost dark purple, he helplessly tried to touch me but dared not lay a hand anywhere. His eyes reddened, and he cautiously asked a question.

"Does it hurt?"

Only then did the tension in my body ease little by little, as though the pain throughout my body had only just caught up with me. I held Freddy and stroked his back over and over. As for that extraordinary scene just now...

Though my head was a complete tangle, I understood one thing: no third person could ever know about this.

I carefully impressed this on him. Seeing the seriousness in my eyes, Freddy obediently nodded, his beautiful blue-green eyes full of trust and worry. It felt as though something had appeared in my heart, floating as lightly as a strand of spider silk.

"It's all right now, Freddy. I'm here. I'll protect you."

He nodded and buried his face in the crook of my neck, his small hands tightly clutching the hem of my clothes as though he had grasped the only piece of driftwood.

Where I failed to notice, Freddy stared fixedly out of the corners of his eyes at the two bodies on the floor. Warmth and promises had not soothed his anger; instead, they intensified the fury in his heart. Pain and helplessness swept through his entire body. There was nothing he could do, either before or now.

Faced with those who hurt him and those he cherished, what surged more fiercely than anything was hatred. That hatred gave rise to desire, a desire for strength and power. He wanted the power to make everyone afraid to cross them, the power to make everyone recoil in fear even at the thought of him.

The fire in the hearth still flickered, illuminating our figures as we clung to each other for survival and casting long silhouettes on the wall. It concealed the wreckage on the floor, along with the secrets and salvation of this night that no one knew.

Afterward, I called the police and an ambulance. The police arrived first, but there was no way to investigate or collect evidence at that point: a sixteen-year-old teenager covered in injuries, an eleven-year-old child, and two suspects, one dead and one injured. Yes, Roy was dead, but Martin was still alive.

The ambulance took me to the hospital, where a doctor examined me, cleaned my wounds, and bandaged them. Apart from a mild concussion, everything else was all right. The doctor told me I only needed to stay in the hospital for observation for a while.

As for Martin and Roy, Martin faced little punishment because he was mentally ill and could even receive free medical care. The only thing that could count as punishment was that he might have to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital after being discharged.

As for Roy, no one came to claim his body. He was now in the town morgue, where he would probably stay for quite a while. Then, once the deadline for claiming him passed, he would be put in an urn and buried in some cemetery.

Was I satisfied with this outcome? Of course not, but it was already the best possible solution. Learning that Roy was dead should have frightened me or stirred some other intense emotion, but it did not. Instead, I let out a long breath. At least there was no chance of that secret getting out anymore.

The hospital's disinfectant smell crept into my nostrils with a chill. I leaned against the headboard, watching the droplets slowly fall in the IV tube. The gauze on my wrists rubbed against my skin, and the bruises around my neck still throbbed faintly.

When the nurse came to change the IV bag, she brought a message: a little boy downstairs refused to leave. He was crouching beside a bench in the corridor, clutching a coat washed almost white. Whenever anyone asked, he said he was waiting for his older brother.

My throat tightened as I remembered Freddy clinging to the ambulance door before I was lifted inside. His small hands had gripped the doorframe, his blue-green eyes full of fear, yet he had stubbornly held back his tears. He had only pressed his lips together and nodded, remembering what I had told him: "Be good and wait at the police station. Don't say anything you shouldn't."

The grogginess from the concussion washed over me in waves. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the wreckage in front of the fireplace, Roy lying on the floor, Martin screaming hysterically, and that knife stabbing into Freddy's arm, only for it to seem as though nothing had happened.

The police came once, circling around with their questions, asking nothing more than what had caused the conflict. What other reason could there have been? I told them the truth in full, except for that one thing.

I spoke calmly, and the police looked at me with sympathy. They probably thought it was pitiful enough for two half-grown children to encounter something like this. No one suspected anything, and no one pressed further. The whole thing would pass just like that, without a ripple.

After they left, I propped myself up and got out of bed, supporting myself against the wall as I walked to the window at the end of the corridor. The streetlights below glowed a dim yellow. Freddy was indeed crouching beside the bench, holding my coat in his arms, his head buried against his knees. His small, huddled figure stood out in the empty corridor.

I called to him. He abruptly lifted his head, his eyes lighting up, and immediately stood and ran toward the stairs. His footsteps thudded, somehow a little endearing.

When he reached me, he was panting. His small hand touched my arm, then quickly drew back, as though he was afraid of hurting me. His blue-green eyes swept over my neck before meeting mine. He said nothing more; he had never been a talkative child. We nestled together on the hospital bed and slept through the night amid the smell of disinfectant.

I had also asked Freddy whether he knew those two men. After all, their reactions at the time had suggested they knew him. Freddy nodded, then shook his head, saying only that he could not remember. It was normal not to remember things from early childhood, and perhaps those two lunatics had simply been making things up. The matter ended there.

The next day, we went home. Wave after wave of neighbors came to visit, entirely disregarding the fact that only two children lived in this house, one of whom was an injured patient who needed rest. That patient even had to clean up the shattered glass, overturned furniture, and spattered blood with the other child.

Later, I simply stopped answering the door. By rights, I should not have been so cold; it was not good for Freddy and me, living in this community. But with all that noise that night, had no one really heard anything?

After much hesitation, I gave Freddy the brass dagger after all, warning him not to cut himself. I also thought about where that hooded person had come from, but reached no conclusion. There were too few clues.

This incident was like a knot twisted into the timeline, but the line kept growing longer. Life still had to go on.

Naturally, neither of us could attend school, and we took leave until the next semester.

Not long afterward, I noticed that Freddy slipped away every day after lunch and did not return until just before dinner. I asked him about it, and he told me he went to the thrift store to read.

That was a lie.

Every day after noon, he had to walk for a long time before finally reaching this remote, rarely visited gate bearing a "No unauthorized entry" sign.

The late-autumn wind swept dead leaves against the funeral home's sheet-metal door, making dull clanging sounds.

The door opened, and Isabel Martinez stepped out. She was the funeral home's only employee in this small town. Her black work trousers carried a faint, sharp smell of disinfectant, and she wore a mask. Even with her face hidden, her eyes showed not a trace of expression, like a stone steeped in ice. Seeing Freddy, she merely lowered her eyes and uttered a sentence.

"Coming in?"

She seemed very familiar with Freddy.

Freddy walked inside and went over to that body, Roy's. It was covered in densely packed stitches. Even if an autopsy had been performed, this seemed far too elaborate, but no one would look into the matter.

But after his initial curiosity, excitement, and venting, he had lost much of his interest in him.

It had started one afternoon a month earlier, when he traded all the pocket money he had saved for an opportunity, a chance to come into contact with death and learn where its threshold lay.

He felt little about it. At first, there might have been some disgust and hatred, but never fear. Once he realized this was merely a cold, silent corpse that could never feel anything again, all his emotions vanished, leaving only calm, a detached calm. In his eyes, this frightening corpse mattered even less than a fallen leaf landing on his bedroom window.

Of course, he had not forgotten what Roy had done to him: the beatings for no reason, and Martin's disgusting gaze. Even though it had happened when he was five, he remembered it perfectly.

But now there was not the slightest ripple in his eyes, neither the pleasure of revenge nor the curiosity of first encountering death, only a heavy indifference.

He put on the latex gloves Isabel handed him and merely glanced in Roy's direction. Without even reaching out to lift the white sheet covering the body he had once loathed, he turned and walked over to another corpse that had been wheeled beside the cremation area.

Because Freddy now had something he wanted more.

Isabel stood at a workbench nearby, holding cold forceps between her fingertips as she arranged the autopsy tools. From beginning to end, she calmly went about her own business, treating Freddy as though he were air.

For that modest bit of extra money, she allowed him to stay here, lent him sterilized scalpels, or found him experimental materials that would not cause trouble and were about to be cremated. Beyond that, however, she never said an extra word or asked an extra question. She was stingy even with her glances, as though the child handling corpses before her were nothing more than an ordinary shadow in the funeral home.

This corpse had been frozen for a long time, its face coated in a thin layer of white frost. The cause of death was plainly etched into its forehead-a hideous gunshot wound that passed straight through it.

Freddy reached out and picked up the sharpened scalpel, gripping its handle firmly enough for his knuckles to turn slightly white, yet without the slightest tremor.

His eyes lowered, his gaze resting on the corpse's neck. Without the slightest hesitation or a trace of emotion, he brought the blade down, making a clean incision from the neck to the lower abdomen. In the deathly silence of the morgue, the sound of flesh parting was almost too faint to hear, yet exceptionally clear.