The Heroes We Weren't

Chapter 7 - Bunny Blue

The scar on my throat was insignificant. The pain from my wrist had since long numbed. So much more on my mind, so much to consider, to process and to be found guilty of. I walked back and forth in my living room, fingernail gnawed down from stressful days as a consequence from unmoral nights.

A week had gone by. A week since the train station, seven days since I had changed the mind of the fortune teller's husband, 168 hours since I had naively believed that I had found a way around my questionable missions.

Pinned. I had pinned them, the articles. Ten above my sofa; 'Politician steps down' read one of them - along with all the gossip-filled headlines that had followed. He had been this week's first mission. It hadn't really bothered me personally, but the town had been in awe of his sudden leave. His standpoints changed by forces his followers knew nothing about; his future altered by me.

Two. There were two pinned by my bookcase; 'Doctor robs bank' and 'Dr. Robber's excuses'. Second mission of the week, all I had ever told him was to do what he so long had desired. Morals so easily wiped out. And so he did it, you see.

There were more of those, whether it be politics, money or power; sudden changes in well-known figures had taken up most of this week's seven missions.

Except one. Except the last one. Cloud 1002 still lingered in my mind. Didn't need an article to pin just yet, the TV behind me was spurting out all about the man.

The man who drove off the bridge.

I pulled my hair back, fingers tangled in it, bottom lip full of small marks from my relentless and obsessive biting. The pinned articles weren't even the focus of my newly drowned living room, the table was. The floor was too.

The many articles that laid across the table spoke of three lost souls. Printed papers showed of google-researches for their identities. Three dead - one murder, one accident and one by disease. None of them were the work of my missions, but all of them were as much a déjà vu as the man at the station - and just as much as I had failed to save his life, I had failed to save theirs as well. These three.

What was the point of leading others to commit crimes if I could not even comfort myself by doing something good on the side of my horrible missions? None, nada. There was no point and so I clenched my hand around my pathetic little tin soldier once again.

Cut it off.

Hand, leg, arm, head. Do you really need them if they only exist for the sole purpose of causing bad? Cut them off. Which one? Cut it off.

I threw the soldier across the room. Huffed. Cloud 1002, cloud 1002, cloud 1002. TV muted.

The floor. The papers on the floor were his - the man from New Years, the one who had handed me a soldier similar to my own. Any New Year's parties, any photos from that night, any Facebook profiles of people resembling my vague memory of his face (and what his internet obsessed grandchildren would have looked like); all printed, all mixed together, all pointless.

I huffed, slipped over the papers and made my way to the hallway. Who dared to call the doorbell at this hour? Yet what the hour was, I barely knew - for the days had begun to blend together.

Opened it, stopped, glared. Him.

Forgot about him.

"Had a party last night?" Hyun-Soo held forth a pizza and scoffed at my not-so-did-hair and my haven't-slept-well eye bags.

"I didn't order it."

"It's from," he read the note on the carton, "an Adam?"

Ah, Adam. Forgot about him as well. Missed calls, I had them. Just a few weeks ago I used to daydream about Adam even bothering to call me, but this week had been so busy that I hadn't quite found the energy to deal with his sudden interest in checking up on me and my (what he still believed) unfortunate unemployment.