He got up.
No strength in his body, yet he moved. As if unseen strings were tugging him forward — a puppet in a play long since written. His joints stiff, his steps soundless. The world felt distant, muffled, wrapped in a dull ringing that stretched through his skull.
The room was hollow. The bed — empty. The faint impression of where she had lain still marked the sheets, already cooling, already fading.
He reached for the umbrella by the door. It hung there like a relic, untouched for months. The metal was cold against his fingers. He stepped outside.
The rain had begun again — not heavy, not soft — just enough to blur the edges of everything. The streetlights stretched into pale streaks across the puddles. Each drop fell like a ticking clock. A reminder. A whisper: move.
And so he did.
Down the narrow road, through the sleeping neighborhood, under that shapeless black sky that swallowed every sound. His reflection followed him in the rainwater — distorted, doubled — a shadow that walked half a step behind.
Every step forward felt rehearsed, as though he'd walked this path before, in a dream or a nightmare he'd forgotten to wake from. His umbrella trembled slightly in his grip, or maybe it was his hand that did.
Finally, he reached it.
A small clearing, soaked in silver from the moonlight breaking through the clouds. The earth was darker here, heavier. Flowers wilted quietly beside the stone.
He looked down.
Her name was carved there — clear, unwavering.
Cecilia Everain.
The rain slid down the letters, tracing every groove, every memory.
For a long moment, he didn't breathe.
Then, in a voice barely his own, he whispered,
"…I found you."
Time passed.
The rain had thinned to a whisper, yet the night carried a breath — faint, uneven.
At first Knives thought it was the wind.
But no… there it was again.
A murmur. A voice.
Somewhere behind the grave.
He froze, heart clawing at his ribs.
He wasn't careless — not tonight.
The soil beneath his boots gave way with each slow step, thick and heavy.
Six steps, maybe seven.
The sound grew clearer — low, uncertain words drowned between raindrops.
Knives turned on his phone's flashlight.
The beam cut through the mist.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
The man flinched at the sudden light, shielding his face with one hand.
Then, voice rough —
"First tell me— who the fuck are you?"
Knives studied him in silence — soaked jacket, mud-smeared shoes, trembling fingers that didn't look dangerous.
He spoke evenly.
"I'm Knives—"
"Knives?" another voice broke through the dark.
Softer. Curious.
"Cecilia's brother?"
Knives turned, startled.
A teen stood near the headstone, the light catching his pale face — barely eighteen, maybe less.
He wasn't afraid. Just… sad.
"And you are?" Knives asked.
"I'm Stanley," the boy said quietly. "Her student."
Her student.
The word hit like an echo from another lifetime.
Knives's eyes flicked back to the first man.
"Then you must be Paul?" he asked slowly.
The man blinked, taken aback. "What— fuck no."
He lowered his hand, squinting through the beam.
"I ain't that edgy bitch. I'm Brian. Her student too."
Silence.
For a moment, all three of them just stood there — the rain filling the distance between them, soft but relentless.
Three strangers, bound by one name carved into stone.
Cecilia Everain.
The grave didn't move, but it felt like it was listening.
The rain had finally stopped, but the city still dripped.
Neon light from the shop's flickering sign bled through the window — FRY KING, half the letters dead.
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of salt and fried batter.
A fan spun overhead, barely moving the humidity.
Three figures sat around a metal table — damp jackets, tired eyes, and a silence that pressed like fog.
The waitress dropped three plates of fries and soft drinks, and walked away without asking anything.
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Knives broke the quiet.
"I'm Knives," he said simply. "Cecilia's brother."
Across from him, the younger boy raised his head.
"I'm Stanley," he said. "Her student. She… used to be my tuition teacher."
The third man leaned back, rubbing his temples. "And I'm Brian. Her student too — from St. Anthony's."
Knives nodded once, as if noting a connection on paper.
Then, flatly —
"So you're the one who proposed to my sister."
Stanley blinked. "It's him?" he asked, pointing at Brian.
Brian froze mid-bite, the fry dangling in midair.
"What— wait, what the hell? You know about that?"
"She's my sister," Knives said. His tone made it sound like the simplest fact in the world.
Stanley smirked. "It was written on her face."
Brian looked between them, embarrassed — like the air itself was pressing him down.
"I feel you, man," Stanley said. "Getting rejected like that."
"What?" Brian set his drink down. "She didn't turn me down."
Stanley raised a brow. "Heh…?"
Knives' eyes narrowed slightly. "What did she say exactly?"
Brian smirked again, confidence flickering back. "She said, I can't, right now. Because she was busy with her own stuff and all. Not interested in those things. But—"
He paused, smirk deepening.
Stanley and Knives waited. "But?"
Brian leaned back. "She said, if I ever think I need someone, you'll be there."
He grinned. "Means I had a clear shot, right?"
Both Stanley and Knives dropped their shoulders at once.
"That so?" Stanley muttered.
"What?" Brian looked between them. "What'd I miss?"
Stanley sighed, turning to him. "She was just trying not to crush you, man. That's all. You do realize she was way out of your league, right?"
Knives exhaled softly. "That's so like her."
Brian's grin fell apart. He stared at the table. "Yeah… I knew that. From the start. Still— she could've…"
He trailed off, voice thinning out.
Stanley watched him, his gaze softening. Then he heard Knives' voice.
"What about you?"
"Me?" Stanley blinked. "She was my teacher."
"And?" Knives' tone didn't change.
"And what?" Stanley tried to sound casual, but his voice cracked a little.
"There's more than that, isn't there?" Knives said, eyes meeting his.
Even Brian, half-drained a moment ago, looked up.
For a long second, Stanley didn't answer. He wasn't used to being seen like this — not by strangers. Then he sighed and gave up.
"Yeah… maybe. I did — or maybe still do — have a thing for her."
He paused, trying to find words.
"But not like that. Not the way you're thinking. She was my friend, sort of. We didn't have those walls, you know? The usual teacher-student thing. I told her stuff I couldn't tell anyone else. She didn't fix me or anything dramatic — she just listened. Pointed out things so obvious I kept missing them.
And somehow… that was enough. That was everything."
He smiled faintly. "She was my teacher. That's how it started. And that's how it'll end."
Knives gave a small nod, lips barely curved. "That's her, alright."
Brian looked at Stanley like he was staring at a saint.
Now he got it — how far she really was from him. From everyone.
"I'm sorry," he muttered under his breath.
Stanley glanced over. "What for?"
Brian rubbed his eyes. "Nothing."
For a moment, silence settled again — the soft hum of the place filling in for words.
Then Brian looked up at Knives. "What about you, Mr. Brother?"
Knives raised an eyebrow, as if he didn't quite expect the question. "Me?"
"Yeah," Stanley chimed in. "She used to talk about you a lot. Said you were some kind of genius. Honestly—" he grinned "—she sounded obsessed."
Knives leaned back, expression unreadable. "You sure you want to hear this?"
"Yeah, man," Brian said. "She was your sister. We can't compete with that."
Stanley nodded. "I ain't jealous or anything, but… you probably knew her best."
Knives didn't answer right away.
The clinking of cutlery, a burst of laughter from another table — it all sounded far away.
He looked down at the drink between his hands, as if the answer were floating somewhere in the ice.
Then, quietly —
"You both said you liked her."
Neither of them spoke.
Knives' voice stayed low, but steady.
"I get it. People did. She was that kind of person. The kind you think you can reach if you just try hard enough."
He lifted his gaze, and both Stanley and Brian froze.
"But you couldn't."
He said it not like a challenge, but like a fact.
Not pride — truth.
"I wasn't her favorite," Knives continued. "I wasn't the one she laughed with the most or shared her stories with.
I was her story."
Stanley frowned slightly.
Brian didn't move.
Knives' words came slower now, every one of them deliberate.
"She wasn't 'my sister' in the way people mean it.
We didn't have boundaries. Or maybe we did — but we never noticed them. She didn't live without me, and I didn't exist without her. Everything she learned, she shared. Everything I broke, she fixed.
We weren't two people walking beside each other. We were the same line drawn twice."
He looked past them, through the fogged glass, to the rain outside.
"When people saw us, they saw siblings.
When I saw her, I saw… the half of me that could still feel."
Neither Brian nor Stanley said anything.
The fries were cold now. The hum of the place had faded into a dull hum of breath and silence.
Knives leaned back. "You both loved her, I can tell. In your ways.
But we weren't he and she. We were us. And even now…"
He exhaled slowly, eyes half-closed.
"…we still are."
For a while, no one spoke.
The rain outside filled the gaps between words — small, steady, unending.
Stanley's eyes dropped.
Brian stared at his reflection in the window.
Neither could compete with that.
They knew it.
And somehow, they both respected it.
The rain outside had softened to a whisper, the streetlights bleeding gold through the fogged glass. Their half-eaten plates sat between them, steam long gone.
"So… what's next?" Brian asked, his voice low, unsure if it was the right time to speak at all.
Knives looked down at his empty glass, then back at the two faces across the table — two people who, for a brief moment, had known a fraction of her.
"Nothing," he said finally. "I'm gonna leave this island — like we promised each other. Start our new life."
He pushed his chair back. The sound scraped sharp across the tiled floor.
Neither of them stopped him.
He pulled his hood up, dropped a few bills on the table — not enough to cover everything — and walked out into the faint drizzle.
The bell above the door gave a dull clink.
The world swallowed him.
Brian watched the door for a long time before sighing.
"So… who's gonna pay the rest of the bill?" he muttered, turning to Stanley.
Stanley leaned back, deadpan.
"You. You're the one who ordered the extra fries."
Brian groaned. "Unbelievable."
Outside, the rain started again.
Knives reached home just as the rain began again — thin, almost delicate, like the sky had run out of ways to cry.
He stopped at the doorstep.
A box sat there.
Unmarked, except for the name scrawled across the top in blue ink.
Cecilia.
His breath caught somewhere in his throat. For a moment, he just stood there — the world around him dissolving into the faint hum of rain and streetlights.
He picked it up. The cardboard was damp, soft at the corners.
Part of him didn't want to open it. Didn't want to know.
But his hands moved anyway, clumsy, automatic — like the body was acting on a script the mind refused to read.
Inside were fragments of her —
A purse.
Documents, folded and creased.
A cellphone.
Clothes, torn and dark, stiff with old blood.
He froze. His fingers trembled where they brushed the fabric — like touching it might wake something sleeping inside him.
Dragging his feet, he went inside.
The house greeted him in silence.
Her shoes by the door. The faint smell of soap she always used. The hum of the refrigerator in the other room — the same hum that filled every night she was alive.
He sat down in her chair. The box before him.
One by one, he laid the items out.
The documents — school papers, salary slips, bank notes.
The purse — half-empty, coins scattered like they were dropped mid-step.
Then the clothes. Torn wide open, threads hanging like veins. He had to look away.
Finally, the phone.
Cracked, screen half-dead, like a blind eye staring back at him.
He turned it in his hand, as if searching for something — anything — familiar.
Then his thumb brushed against the side.
A small, dented button — a modification he made for her. Voice recorder. Simple, hidden.
She always laughed about it. Said it made her feel like a spy.
He hesitated.
Then pressed it.
At first, static.
Then — her breath.
Heavy. Uneven. Panicked.
"...Knives... Knives... help me... Kni—"