Cermin was still so happily picking flowers in a field with Ronin, when a dark cloud loomed overhead.

“Oh, it’s going to rain?” He said with a frown. “But we just started picking up daffodils right now.”

“We can pick them later. For now, we need to keep shade, Your Highness.” Ronin told him, and they went under the tree for shade.

Cermin followed after him, still clutching daffodils tightly to his chest as he went to sit there.

He thought this was supposed to be his perfect life with perfect Ronin. But why would it rain? Shouldn’t it stay sunny all the time if everything had to be perfect?

“Oh, look. This is the tree where we etched out names under an umbrella.” Ronin said.

“Our names? I don’t remember doing that—”

His body immediately stiffened when he saw the words etched on the tree.

They were not in the Latin alphabet at all, spelled with ‘Cermin and Ronin’.

They were Chinese characters. Written under a drawing of an umbrella.

Ronin smiled. “I remember we etched this together on the last day of our pre-school. At the Little Stars school that I hated so much because of our classmates.

“And you loved it because of the garden.” He said turning to him.

His face was blurry, like there was another face being pasted on top of it. Or perhaps, it was the other way around.

The rain was washing away Ronin’s face, slowly showing who he really wanted to see.

“How….. How did you know that?” Cermin panicked, trying to go away.

But the man with a blurry face, much like a foggy car window splattered with rain water, grasped his hand so he wouldn’t go away.

Then, with the other, he took out an umbrella and opened it.

Forcing the both of them to be under that space.

“It was under this tree that we made that promise. No matter what, we will be in the same school. We will always be together.” He said, tilting his head to the side.

“Ronin…. Let me go.”

He shook his head. “Can’t you let your gege reminisce a bit? It’s been a long while since we last visited this tree.”

The Castle Calegana at the distance was then replaced by a school. A small one with marble statues of saints in the garden.

There were those statues watching every corner except the forest where they were hiding now from the rain, under that umbrella.

“I remember that I would often be the one to let you borrow my umbrella because you forgot yours. Or that you broke it.”

Ronin’s face continues to become blurrier and blurrier, like paint being washed away.

“I would lead us here, because I don’t like the people and statues watching us while we share an umbrella under the rain.” He admitted. “Like I’m doing something wrong.”

“Judging me for befriending you, being a ‘bad influence’. Dirtying you like the mud dirtying your shoes and shocks.”

Cermin shook his head. “They’re all wrong! You’re not a bad influence, you’re not a bad person at all!”

“But I live in a shabby house near a train station. My mother has dark skin, and so do I. Like a demon, a shadow, a black dog.”

He chipped at the name etched on the tree, his own.

“I was as scary as an alien creature that arrived at their simple, pure white world.”

Cermin cried. “But that would never make me hate you, gege! I never hated you for who you are or what you looked like.”

“Yes. I know that.” He turned, his face barely there. “But you easily became swayed by their words about what I do, weren’t you?”

“I’m not!” Cermin denied. “I have tried again and again not to believe them! In the end, I still believed in you, didn’t I?”

Despite the umbrella, water still managed to trickle down on Cermin’s head and all the way to his face. Mixing with his tears.

“So why can’t you let me go already? Why can’t you just leave my head? Your death wasn’t my fault, you and I know that!”

“But it is.” The blurry man clutched him tighter. “You killed me, Ah-Cheng. And I can never let you go.”

He laughed, but he barely had a mouth at this point. “You and I made a promise! Under one umbrella, brothers forever and ever!”

“I can’t let you break that promise again.” He said grimly, as he took out a knife…

Cermin shook his head. “No! Gege…. Please just go away! Leave me alone already!”

“I don’t want to.” The man had almost no face now, and even his body was melting and being washed away. “I will take you with me one day, once and for all.”

“Then just do it!” Cermin yelled. “Just kill me already instead of fooling me with happiness that will never last!”

The man went to raise his knife…

And went to slash off his name instead.

Only leaving Cermin’s name alone in the tree bark.

“Are you satisfied, then?” The man said, as he slowly faded away. His colors dripping down into nothing but puddle on the floor.

Cermin’s eye’s widened, and collected the dripping paint in his hands. The umbrella had long toppled down because no one was holding it, getting drifted off by the wind.

“No! Gege, don’t leave me! Please!”

Only a disembodied voice replied to him, like an invisible ghost taunting him.

“You said you wanted me to leave. And yet you couldn’t let me go either. Which is it, Ah-Cheng?”

“I don’t know!” Cermin cried. “I just want to be happy and content for once! And I don’t know if I’ll have that if I let you go or if I make you stay!”

“I don’t want you to leave…..” He cried, his hands holding just sticky paint mixing with rainwater. “I want us to stay together, gege…. But we didn’t… It hurts…”

There was no response.

He was so fucking tired of crying and crying, but it never ends. The suffering never ends, as long as his gege still has this hold in his heart.

That’s why he wanted him to leave. Yet he also felt pained at the thought of his memories of him, his happy memories with his friend…

Would melt away like this too. Washed up into nothing.

He took the knife with shaking hands. He went back to look at the tree where the name was scratched.

‘N–e O—n. Min Cheng.’

He tried to write the name again. This time just the initials under the umbrella. ‘N.O. M.C.’

He touched the bark, and wept, The daffodils had drowned in a puddle of the rain and his tears. And as he felt even more in pain…..

He just wished someone would take his heart away so he would not be able to feel things. To be weak and feel emotions so strongly as this.

And looking at the knife…

He knew that there’s only really one action to be taken in this ruined dream.

—————————-

“Gasp!”

Cermin woke up, catching his breath. He was laying in bed, at some place he had never been before.

He was wearing better clothes too, and was no longer wearing the disguise of a girl.

Then he realized that he was on a ship. The rocking of the ship was what gave it away.

“Good. You finally woke up before we reach Scirocco, Your Highness.”

Ronin was beside him, busily wrapping his old scars from his fight with Lovushka and the fresh ones on his knuckles from Pavone.

“We’re going to Scirocco now?” He said, unable to believe it.

“Yes. The Kingdom of Azurra have docks at the Ouranochrous Sea.” Ronin explained.

“After saving their town, the people have rewarded us a hefty sum so I managed to buy us three a ticket to this ship.”

“Where is Zeriav?” He asked.

“Upstairs. Maybe praying.” Ronin said. “It’s raining and he usually prays when it rains.”

The truth was that Zeuxis simply wanted to stare off to space again and reflect, as he said. And he didn’t care that it was raining.

What he was thinking about, Ronin had no idea since like Duke Taevas…

He had that thing blocked out on his mind. The soup metaphor of drowning certain memories and thoughts.

Cermin himself has this. Even now, Ronin could feel that blockage and only sense chaos in his mind.

“The Crow Baron….. Did I defeat him?” Cermin asked. “No… I couldn’t have. I was stuck in this dream.”

“I know. A perfect world.” Ronin said. “He managed to get me stuck in there too.”

“How did you escape?” Cermin asked. “I was stuck even after you killed if not for—”

“If not for?” Ronin raised an eyebrow.

(If not for killing myself, and succumbing to the weakness.) Cermin thought, but didn’t want to admit.

But Ronin had heard.

He simply cleared his throat, and lied.

“The Lord of Darkness killed him for me while I was stuck.”

Cermin nodded. “The Lord of Darkness… His intentions are still not clear to me. But he should be stopped before he brings more destruction and gets stronger than the gods themselves.”

“I want him to leave your body too.” Cermin said. “He may have helped us, but I don’t like that he’s using you.”

Ronin simply sneered. “Then…..”

“How about we seek presence in the Banquet of the Gods, and have them defeat the Lord of Darkness within me?”