Project Devilgama

Fifteen

Curving overpasses of the city materialized in Mhaz's sight, remained its glorious look over the distance. Past the position where he stood, the Maglev train tracks of unimaginable span on a pair of flawlessly straight lines. Each track was two adjacent bars of steel laid upon a leveled-up pathway of Beton, bordered by two banks on its edge. Two power amplifiers on the sides of the tracks welcomed him - one looked like a bulge on the base and two extremities reached upward resembling a crescent. There were numerous of them along the rails, one to another spaced several dozen meters, creating half a tunnel if seen from the middle.

He could imagine the entire system being in commission, with all the zooming transportation on the line.

He was strolling on the solid surface between the tracks. He slightly staggered as he gazed toward the overpasses and an architectural complex that seemed to be the train depot underneath them.

The breeze blows hard on his face and he could see the clouds moving past the bright sun that had just completed half of its progress to the evening. He felt calmness and serenity. He could have walked as far as his visibility, searching for the 'Noble Man' somewhere in this place and he will not get tired. He was not clueless, though. Something had driven him to walk along the train tracks, and Mhaz could not even put a finger of awareness on it. And the same thing shall lead him to the Noble Man. Anything required was a couple of thoughts on the written piece of paper.

He stopped in between the power modules, groping the side pocket on his thigh for the paper. Then he held it before his eyes and began to read it again. Those are all the clues, nothing more. Nothing felt like changing, and that was a moment before Mhaz returned his sight to the front.

A woman was seen standing ahead.

Mhaz did not realize that piece of paper flew out of his loosened grip while he looks fixedly at her. He continued his strides, now towards her.

He increased the pace, not to a run but almost tripped upon the ridges in the process.

The woman did not budge, she stared at the impending man blankly. "Excuse me," Mhaz slowed his steps back down approaching her, "You know about Noble Man?"

"Who?" That woman replied.

"Noble Man, Southpearl Street – must be around here, right?"

She stepped closer before Mhaz even knew it. Approaching, and approaching. At first, a pile of suspicions deposited inside him. How could Mhaz trust her? She looked like a bare stranger to him. But as he could see her movements in slow motion, the same suspicions vanished at the moment.

He almost turned naïve, a contact between the two was established; the sudden meeting of lips ensued. Time dilated. Mhaz gave total acceptance.

The two looked at each other; one in wonder, another in presumable satisfaction. But what had gone wrong? It confused Mhaz to his inside, his feet trembling slightly, and goosebumps crawling upon his chest. But it was not the nervousness, after all. It was rather the strange sensation of reconciliation. She lowered his eyes, looking almost closed in Mhaz's perspective. He abruptly forgot what he asked a few minutes ago for a moment as if all the short-term emotions had flushed it down the void.

"Who's Noble Man, you asked?" She pulled his inquiry back to the surface, "Who do you think Noble Man is?"

"No knowledge of that."

"It's our home."

"Yeah?"

"You don't remember me?"

Those words had turned into a cliche to Mhaz, but it shot the same feeling of guilt through his mind, making him recall the moment he met May not realizing their past friendship. But it was not the physical change of growing up that scraped the once-known face of her away. Whatever, the only certain thing was a specific forgetfulness.