The Pâtissier

PART THREE: A LEGEND TO DESPISE

Almost at the end :)
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In the too threading, too thickening cotton-webbed morass that has become his mind, time seemed to pull itself apart and stand still all at the same time.

    The seconds that ticked by felt like centuries in a torture of his own making — he became a victim of his own thoughts transuding in and out of his subconscious and straining out all that was rational and sane like a leach growing fat on fear rich blood.

    It was almost too painful to endure, everything that collapsed and unwound in his mind about his life...

    He'd always been a paranoid man. Detailing all the components of his life and planning a future for his offspring and those after him, like Angelika said. The only piece of truth she had said. You see, everything had to be secured for his family, for his life. And perhaps, as Angelika always told him, he took it, just like his work, too deep beyond the tides...

    But surely, it was better than a father who could not ensure that his children's bellies weren't sunken every night because of the sure difficulty of everyone's tragic reality.

    Surely, that wasn't an excuse.

    Surely, the evil of this world wasn't reason enough reason to reject the fragility and the sacredness that was this life. To leave his love, to abandon his muse.

    Because he'd come too close to fulfilling the purpose, he believed, of his life. He'd overcome every truest evil from unjustified hate, to death, to hunger, and to betrayal — and he'd emerged from the other side a man of honour and preserved goodness. A man in sure control of his fate.

    Surely that was of greater valor than any man who abandoned his own family.

    At least, that was what he told himself to sleep at night, a thought that drew him away from the inward torture that was suicidal scepticism and cold misanthropy.

    So after what felt like a lifetime of waiting, a slave to his own mind and the peace that slowly slipped away from it, he heard the soft disturbance of the curtains as the movement of air made their edges quiver.

    It was time.

    These mysterious creatures, les talents esclaves, had arrived.

    He felt The Pâtissier's hand on his shoulder again, a touch that unlike the first time, he welcomed as something comforting and reassuring rather than to recoil from.

    The air was stolen from his lungs as fluidly as a cloth swiped from beneath the plates on a table when the curtains began to separate, splitting open slowly to reveal Angelika leaning weakly against the body of a masked figure who caught every slip and stumble she made in her stead.

    Eiichi couldn't hold himself back.

    "Angelika!" He exclaimed, and leapt from his seat, beginning an eager gallop towards her—

    Before the masked figure, almost too effortlessly, brandished a sword from the back of their coat and pointed its tip at Eiichi's chest.

    He reeled backwards, the blade just skinning the flesh below his neck.

    "What is—?"

    "Another step forward, monsieur Sato, and you, old friend, will die on this blade."

    The blade had cut cleanly through the fabric of his shirt, driblets of blood percolating through it and trickling down the white skin of his chest.

    But Eiichi's didn't care about that.

    For the sparks of rage had begun to crackle in the crevasses that rimmed his pupils.