Christmas

His voice was so lovely. He was like the gentle moon seen from afar in the night sky. His speaking lips were like early spring berries, and his eyes were like Crystal Lake on a winter morning, veiled in a thin mist.

Jason had prepared gifts too. This was his favorite holiday, but only a few elements of Christmas remained in his memory: a Christmas tree, turkey or roast meat in its place, and his mother's apple pie. Presents at night counted as another.

He offered them to his mother first, laying them out like sacrifices over several trips: a cheap plastic bracelet, a damaged pair of windproof sunglasses, a headband with dried blood stuck to it... I knew these things belonged to the people who had entered Crystal Lake. These were less gifts than a declaration and a report. He had wiped them spotless and arranged them like offerings, using this silent, obsessive method to tell his mother, "Mom, I've made it quiet here."

My gift was a seashell, a yellowed seashell covered in mottled wear, a seashell its owner had treasured dearly. A cord tied around its tip had turned it into a crude necklace.

"Thank you. I really like this gift," I said softly, as though speaking to a timid child.

Winter soon passed, and spring arrived on quiet footsteps.

Life? Nothing had changed, but it was much better than before. I began contacting the outside world by phone to handle some work, while Jason's life followed an incredibly regular routine.

I also got a basic sign language book and began trying to teach Jason sign language and a few words. He learned slowly and hated studying, but he had no choice.

But a month before summer arrived, something seemed to change about Jason. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Until-

One day, Jason went out after dinner. It was his first time going out after dinner, and I didn't think it was a good sign. My first guess was: had someone come to Crystal Lake? To prevent this, I had bought Crystal Lake and most of the surrounding land that could be purchased, enclosed most of it with wire fencing a full three meters high, and installed surveillance cameras at the only two entrances. Clearly, nothing unusual had appeared on the cameras.

But I wasn't worried that he had left without saying goodbye for good, either. I glanced over. After all, Mrs. Pamela was still resting in her room.

As for the tracking system, it showed him steadily heading southeast at an absurd speed. Only half an apple pie per hundred kilometers, I thought in amusement.

I flipped through the files until I stopped on a particular page. I thought I knew where Jason was going. Miss Alice, who had killed Jason's mother, Mrs. Pamela, five years ago, lived in that direction. Mm-hmm, Jason would probably be home before breakfast.

Not far away, northeast of Crystal Lake, poor Ms. Alice, who had already been jolted awake by a nightmare in the middle of the night, was finding something to eat for a kitten that had "wandered into" her house...

The next day, my people handled the matter in an orderly fashion. The disappearance of a young woman living alone caused little stir in the United States in the early twentieth century. A sufficiently generous insurance payout got his parents to move away from this place of sorrow, quickly and far away.

Five years hurried by, quiet and peaceful-five years without any accidental deaths at Crystal Lake, at least. Summer had come again, and for two people with low body temperatures, we were fairly comfortable. Jason sat perfectly straight on the sofa, watching cartoons on the screen like an elementary school student with a teacher beside him.

Occasionally, I glanced up at the pink panther performing pantomime on the screen, then at Jason, a little amused. He watched these things so intently that he wasn't even eating the sweet biscuits on the table.

I looked at the newspaper in my hands. Oil prices had soared recently, and I had made quite a lot, but I couldn't focus only on energy. There would probably be a steep drop later, and I had heard the government seemed to have some policy in the works? Then I would take a look at the current trends: technology, finance, and real estate...

Suddenly, I felt something icy press against my thigh. I tilted my head slightly. It was Jason. Ever since Christmas, he had been hooked on these sneaky bits of physical contact. Now his thigh was barely brushing mine.

I simply turned sideways and leaned against his shoulder. With his build and height of over two meters, his shoulders were absurdly broad and solid. As for etiquette and all that, there was no one else around. If I was happy and he was happy, wasn't that enough?

Jason stiffened, then slowly relaxed, but he kept his body straight and didn't dare move for a long time.

It was three o'clock. I got up. At this time, I usually spent an hour on the phone before getting dinner ready.

I rose and headed for the stairs. The sound of the television switching off came from downstairs. Right, he had been very clingy lately.

While I faced the study window and talked on the phone, he stood right behind me, his toes nearly touching my heels. He had absolutely no idea what personal boundaries were.

I finished my calls at 4:12 and went to the kitchen. The kitchen faced the living room, and Jason switched the television on again. It was showing Tom and Jerry now, something I was quite familiar with.

Today's salad was Caesar salad, the only salad Jason would eat a few extra bites of, possibly because he liked the croutons toasted in butter. The main course was beef Wellington, a fillet steak wrapped in puff pastry and foie gras pâté and baked, with a crisp crust and tender, juicy steak-a classic French feast. Of course, mine was a simplified version. The starch was lasagna Bolognese, with extra tomato and meat sauce. Jason loved it. I wrapped the creamed spinach in foil and placed sweet potatoes dressed with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper around it. There were some peas left over, so I put those in too.

I hadn't invested in a supermarket in town. More people would inevitably mean more ideas. Jason wasn't particularly willing to let me go out, either, so we mainly ordered all our daily necessities by fax, then had a truck drop off a shipping container within a range Jason could accept, and finally had Jason drag it back.

He was absurdly strong. With over twenty kilometers of mountain roads and a shipping container that must have weighed several tons, he could drag the whole thing back in under half an hour.

He hadn't been this inhuman from the start. It had to do with that annoying black mist. In those six years, the black mist appeared only once, while Jason and I were still adjusting to each other. That afternoon, Jason went on patrol, and I was planning to prepare dinner. Then that familiar feeling came calling again.

I would never forget that feeling for as long as I lived: despair and sorrow, yet as though I had sunk into a deep mire from which I could never escape.

Jason must have sensed something, because he came back very quickly. But this thing seemed much weaker than before. I thought it probably had something to do with the two times Jason had dispersed it. With my body recovering well, too, I could just barely stay conscious.

I saw a scene I would never forget in my life. First, Jason kicked the door open in fury, then grabbed the black mist. But this time, he seemed to grasp something solid. He seemed to drag something out of it, something that looked as though it didn't belong to this world.

Then he stuffed that mass into his mouth. Yes, he lifted his burlap mask, opened his mouth, and stuffed it inside, as though eating cotton candy.

After that, I came to my senses. I broke out in a cold sweat, gasping for breath, then passed out. When I woke again, there was my bed and my home in utter disarray.

Jason had done it, but he hadn't meant to. After that, his strength became immense, and he grew faster too. I felt that, apart from not having laser eyes or being able to fly, he was no different from Superman.

I had also asked him about that black mist and received three answers: one was that he wanted to eat it, one was that he didn't know, and the last was no.

I reached only one conclusion: that thing didn't harm Jason. Instead, it was something like... a tonic, the kind that took effect immediately. It had just been a little too potent. It took me a long time to teach Jason how to control his strength.

I should have left this place. I had returned to a normal life. I had thought about this countless times, but if you asked me now, I no longer cared. Living like this was pretty good. At least Jason wouldn't look down on me for my bad leg, right?

The evening treats were chocolate lava cake and fruit tarts. Fruit tarts were a little different from egg tarts. I had baked the fruit tarts a little too long, which made the fruit on top taste odd, but Jason didn't mind and ate every last bit.

It was time for his evening bath. Apart from the first time, when I had helped him, Jason had always washed himself. I set out his pajamas in advance, along with the clothes he would wear outside the next day.

Jason didn't wear shorts or short sleeves. If necessary, he wore a coat. He didn't wear ordinary shoes either; they had to be boots, and he was particularly fond of thick, stiff ones. I ought to have been grateful that he didn't sweat much. Otherwise...

He bathed quickly, possibly because he didn't need to wash his hair. (No, just kidding.) I took the clothes he had changed out of to the laundry room. Jason couldn't figure out all those buttons, so I was still responsible for doing the laundry.

After Jason finished hanging the laundry on the balcony, an unanswered good night and a hug brought the day to an end.

The next day's breakfast was pan-fried French toast with maple-macerated berries, along with American-style bacon-wrapped asparagus and baked mushrooms. I had a glass of raspberry sparkling water, while Jason had raspberry milk.

It was the season for these things to flourish in the forest, and everything we were using now had been picked by Jason yesterday. Yes, Jason picked berries and mushrooms. I guessed it had something to do with his previous life.

Speaking of which, I noticed something had been a little off about Jason lately. He had been clingy before, but not to this extent. As I stood in the kitchen, what had originally been a fairly spacious place felt cramped with a two-meter-tall figure squeezed in. There was still room to move around, but occasionally, when I turned, our shoulders brushed, and when I chopped vegetables or carried pots, my elbows kept bumping his chest and abdomen.

But that alone wasn't enough to draw my serious attention, so I chose to let it be for the time being and keep observing.