A KINGDOM OF DEAD HEARTS [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER 1: THE END & THE BEGINNING

Tonight is the night.

Airin failed to concentrate on anything else that day. That was the only thought that filled her mind: Tonight is the night. I will see him again.

She had been at work again since last week after taking a month-long recuperative period. Recuperative period that was needed because she was gone for three months-just gone with no trace, no news.

Her apartment was tidy, her fridge was stocked, people she knew had said that she had showed no sign that she had planned to leave her apartment for months. So at least to other people, she was gone, and last month she was found by the edge of The Greens, the city forest. She was unconscious, dressed exactly like she did the night she disappeared.

Except she was not just gone.

She knew exactly where she had been and what she had done in those months that people here thought she was gone.

She had saved the universe. This universe.

All that had happened to her must remain a secret though. She had promised him she would keep her silence. And that was alright. It was for the good of the universe here.

She had said that she did not remember anything - to the doctors, the police, the psychiatrists, the psychologists, Dad, her workplace, her bestfriend Stella. It was a blatant lie, but she was fine with it. It was all for the better.

The thing was even if she did tell them what truly had happened to her, there was no way they would believe her anyway. They would think she was delusional, or had some sort of a massive psychotic breakdown.

What had happened to her was when the border between myths and reality blurred. She had seen with her own eyes, experienced with her whole senses, that myths, some of them at least, were true.

She glanced at her left wrist, at a scar of about 10cm that went lengthwise from the base of her hand. A physical proof engraved on her skin: A battle scar. It had become a reminder of her time, her battle there.

Nobody thought much about that scar though. They checked it, decided it was healed, then that was it. After some thorough medical checkups and lengthy psychological testing sessions they decided that she had some sort of dissociative amnesia moment-dissociative fugue triggered by the inability to process grieving trauma of losing a mother, that was the conclusion they reached-in other words, she had a sort of amnesia and wandered off because of the trauma of losing her mom.

She was fine with that diagnosis. People did look at her sometimes with a kind of sad, sympathetic glance, as if they were saying: That poor girl. She lost her mom and she went nuts. She must be so traumatized to just wander off like that ...

But enough about her diagnosis. She decided to focus on what mattered the most to her now. How wonderful it was to be at work again! She aced all kinds of tests they required her to take, got a clean bill of health from the doctor, the psychologist as well as the psychiatrist, and she stood in front of her classroom again. To teach her young students. It was just the best feeling in the world.

When she looked at their face, the drawings they made, the songs they sang, the imaginative story they invented, the dance they did, she knew that what she had done when other people thought she was gone was worth it.

But tonight. Tonight was the night. He would come to her, and she had missed him so much.

He had told her that he loved her.

He had asked her if she really had to go.

She said yes, she had to go because her world was here in her own universe, a world she could not bear to let go. Her students, her friends, her Dad even.