The website eventually came back online, and customers started coming in. I returned to drawing houses and everything slowly fell into place.
"Why didn't you do anything?" I said with a chuckle.
Margaret put the two cups of her own special coffee on the table, brewed with herbs, beans and egg yolk. I winced.
Josh picked up the cup, "I didn't feel like it." He took a sip. "I wanted to see you suffer."
This was the first time I ever saw him in a suit outside the office.
"I hope you liked what you saw." I chuckled again. "I deserved it, no doubt."
Josh was going to put the cup on the table, but halfway through pulled it back for another sip.
"How are your parents?" he asked.
"They're doing all right."
Margaret was already leaving for the kitchen.
After a while, he said, "There was no way to get her out of the house."
"Who?" I asked him.
"The girl. We tried using thermal vision and a different model."
"A different model?"
"Bullets. These ones can go through walls since not once had she ever gotten anywhere close to the windows."
"You tried to kill her?"
"I wasn't doing it for you, don't get too worked up." Josh pushed his back against the one-seater sofa with both hands flopping against the handles, while bringing up his tilted head to stare at me.
He continued, "These are more durable, capable of getting through up to 15 centimeters of concrete. Of course, obstruction also takes a toll on the velocity once the bullet gets to the other side."
"Did you shoot?"
"Twice."
"I didn't hear anything."
"The first shot was from 1.4 km away, that evening when you two were at the dinner table. You saw her catch it."
My eyes widened as I remembered. Some black dust had fallen out of her hand.
He said, "The bullet was too slow, so for the second shot—same distance, but from a different spot, when she was sleeping in her room."
She knew we were there from the beginning, he added. He said he was prepared for moment she would come for them, but she never left the house.
"We had to stop because we were losing men," he said.
"What happened?"
Josh looked at me with a cold face.
"We don't know. Some time later during the day, our shooter—his heart just stopped."
I felt a jolt in my stomach.
"There were no signs of hemorrhage, no congestion in the blood vessels." His volume started to trail off. "A spontaneous cardiac arrest."
"Did he work for you?" I asked.
Josh didn't say anything for a while.
"He was a friend."
I knew it was partly my fault, in a way. And the fact that he chose to stay even after that, until the very end.
"Thank you, Josh. Thanks for looking after me."
"Heh, I just wanted to see how painfully you'd die so I could report back to her."
"Josh!" Margaret yelled as she came into the room. "He's your family! You know he didn't mean it." She looked at me, worried.
I was expecting a comeback from him, but all he did was smiled.
"Well, you boys have fun talking. I think I'm going to head out and treat myself to a nice massage."
"Uh-huh," I said.
"Balthazar and Konstantinidis have such amazing hands~."
...
… Balthazar...
"And those shoulders." She closed her eyes and covered her face. "Aah~! They glow in the dark. Those big, manly shoulders~."
Before I could rub my finger against my temple, I noticed Josh was also putting a hand over his face.
This time I was not going to say anything.
Margaret looked at me, her eyes brimming with mischief, as she placed the second set of coffees from the tray onto the table before leaving.
I hadn't even touched the first cup.
A corner of his lips curved up painfully as he reached for his second drink.
I so badly wanted to ask him what his real job was, and how he got his hands on all of the military equipment and personnel, but I knew would never get an answer from him.
Look at you, Josh. You've come a long way.
Sitting before me was a young man with an amazing mind.
He was lean, tall and well-dressed.
I'd be proud to be able to call him my brother-in-law.
It would be an honor for me to have him as family.
But I'd come to accept the reality that, in many ways, I was living in a household of strangers.
I suddenly remembered what I'd wanted to ask him.
"Last time you mentioned something about a legend. What's that about? Did it have something to do with her?"
Josh furrowed his brows, seeming confused by the question, but then he remembered. "Oh, that. I was talking about Japanese folklore, accounts of malevolent fox spirits that delight in the misfortune of man. From what I've heard, in terms of appearance, there's no general consensus as to what a Kitsune entity should look like. They were said to have a life span of hundreds of years. However, there was one particular version of this folklore that caught my attention."
He said he didn't know when it originated, or whether or not the myth even came from Japan, as he had found similar stories from the Middle Eastern region with some minor variations in them. One of them was a piece of writing from a small town in Syria, which dated back to the 1500s. Some of the other examples were from Israel and Palestine, and they were written between 350 and 550.
He also added that the tale also contained elements borrowed from other Abrahamic religions, such as Christianity, which was why he didn't want to take it too seriously.
When I asked him what the myth was about, Josh slowly leaned back into the chair and looked up the ceiling as if to remind himself of it. He then proceeded to tell the story.
In the beginning, before God created the Earth, He fashioned another world, a different Earth. And just as He created Man to dwell in this new realm, so did He breathe life into that world, so that its inhabitants might celebrate His glory.
And God named this creation His Child. The Child of God was a perfect spirit, and He loved it dearly.
Yet, despite His affection, God perceived a discontent within Himself concerning His creation. Thus, God resolved to form another world and departed from His Child, promising to one day return.
The Child, left alone, waited on Earth for an eternity. Bitterness grew within the Child, and jealousy of its siblings took root.
The Child believed that if it could devour all of God's other creations, then God would be alone and would return to it.
So the Child buried itself six cubits deep in the Earth. After ten days, it awoke in a heavier body, in a different place. The Child went forth and consumed His two other Children. And God was alone once more.
However, even after the Child devoured all His creations, God did not return to it. The Child learned that God was too far away.
The Child realized that it needed to devour the world in order to close the gap between itself and God, so that it may reach Him.
For another eternity, the Child consumed the world. Each day, it drew nearer to God.
That was the story.
I didn't know what to say afterward because I couldn't understand what I was hearing. It was also very impressive that he recounted the story so eloquently, as if he'd memorized it word for word.
"There was no mention of a fox entity so we couldn't with confidence refer to it as a Kitsune. It's some kind of parable, and it's not to be taken literally. But the essence of it is that it is about a spirit that possesses humans, jumping from body to body, who then eats other humans. There was also the idea that this entity came before the existence of humanity. Margaret told me about what the smaller one said to you. About how it might have been around since before the Big Bang."
"Yeah, I told her that," I said. He was talking about the white-haired child, and what it'd said to me on the day of our first encounter at the supermarket. Although there was no way to confirm whether it was telling the truth.
"These records weren't intended as Scriptures," Josh continued. "It was among a collection of other short stories passed down by word of mouth—they're myths, essentially. But even as fictions, parts of them could still be inspired by events from real life, although we've no idea to which extent."
Josh leaned forward to get another sip from the cup before he continued, "The immortal spirits that possess and cannibalize humans. I wouldn't have bought any of it if I hadn't witnessed it for myself. A real nasty piece of work—although I was surprised to see that throughout the entire week, the girl never laid her hands on you. I thought she hungered for human flesh."
Those words shot a bolt through my chest. I instinctively looked down at my leg. All the wounds of the past had evaporated long ago as if they never existed.
"We were watching the whole time," he said. "Maybe she was waiting for something."
My heart tightened upon hearing those words.
Then Josh said, "I mean I wouldn't be against the idea. It was the reason we were there in the first place, to see how you'd go out."
I just can't see what Margaret saw in you, he said. He was shaking his head from side to side.
I couldn't see it, either. He was right.
I tried to keep silent.
"She's in love with a psychopath," he continued bitterly. "Just sick in the head."
"Just let it out, man," I said. "Why do you have it in for me?"
"Who wouldn't?"
"Listen. I only want the three of us to get along."
"That's not possible. There are some things that just can't be fixed."
"Just let it out, I'm here to listen."
"It's not possible." He shook his head again and chuckled. "And the fact that she'd willingly play along. You are not part of the family."
"Why not? I've been trying my best! Why won't you give me a chance?"
Then he chuckled, his shoulders shaking up and down.
"How are your parents doing?" He asked me.
"They're fine."
"When's the last time you saw them?"
"Last week. We had dinner. You know, you should've joined us."
Then he said, "You know, I like the houses you built. You clearly have a knack for it."
I forced a laugh. "What are you getting at?"
"You love putting down that extra room in your designs," he said. "Going the extra mile, drawing in spaces that even the clients don't realize are there."
I couldn't laugh anymore. What was he talking about?
"How did you do it?" He said with a smirk, squinting his eyes.
"How did I do what? What are you even saying right now?"
"It must have been bloody."
"What are you implying? I didn't do anything."
"There's always a price." He shook his head. "Always. She was right when she said you're a lost cause. I just can't leave her alone with you."
Josh was about to head out but then he looked at his coffee, cursed under his breath before picking up each of his cups and finishing them in succession.
He told me I should be grateful for the remaining years ahead of me, because eventually that day would come.
Feelings fade, he said. Eventually, Margaret would decide that she didn't love me anymore.
It wasn't like I hadn't expected him to say this. He was only telling the truth.
I nodded in acceptance.
Then he left.
I didn't doubt what he said. It didn't sound so much like a threat. It was a promise.
Maybe it had never been about personal feelings in the first place. He was only trying to do the right thing, what needed to be done.
But I'd always thought that we had much more in common than he'd like to believe.
He probably could also see that.
Deep down inside, we all hated ourselves.
He was right, regardless.
There were some things you couldn't fix.
I'd come to accept that part of life. In a way, I deserved what was coming for me.
Once a year, on the first of July I would visit her grave.
Margaret went with me in the first two years as I drove her to the country. She never said anything about Liz, other than that she thought that the girl seemed "nice" when I showed her a photo of the girl one time.
Every now and again, Josh would come by for a visit—only to check on how his sister was doing. One year after the day I got back home, the company he'd worked for dissolved and he later started a small business. Margaret told me it had something to do with foam bullets for toy guns.
***
"Thank you come again," the cashier girl said quickly in a tired, monotone, mechanical voice as I picked up my drink and left the tip on the counter.
This place had great lattes. I walked here from home once every two weeks to get my coffee and also to stretch my legs.
It was crowded as usual.
I stood on the sidewalk in front of the antique coffee shop and sipped on my paper cup.
Why did I keep coming back here?
Even though it had been almost a decade, I could still remember how it happened.
My head was now peppered with gray, but my memories were intact.
This exact spot right here.
Was it a tragedy?
Probably.
It was tragic enough that for many nights I'd wished that I could just wake up in the morning and forget everything.
And yet I was here, to remind myself of it again.
Was it a tragedy?
If I'd told her that, she would've agreed with me without the slightest hesitation.
One day I would no longer be able to recall it. The body would break down so much that I would stand here, remembering nothing.
Wouldn't that be better?
To see nothing, to know nothing.
The world was a small and safe place.
The world was beautiful.
I should be heading back soon.
As I turned, I bumped into a young girl I had never seen before. The book she held slipped from her hands and landed on the concrete.
"Ah, sorry about that." I bent down and picked up the red book. Feeling its leather-bound cover in my grip, I handed it to her.
That was the moment when I saw the most beautiful eyes in the world—big, round curves arcing around pitch-black marbles.
Though the expression they wore was something I could not understand.
I let out a long sigh.
I stood by my word.
Construction would begin right away.
Was it a tragedy?
Even if she agreed with me, she'd be wrong.
Because it was a blessing.