The Creature and the Spy

3: The booth

3: The Booth

I decided to survey the forest I once had special experiences with. The way to the forest is still the same. It's the same trees, the same pathway, and the same lake. The difference: they're not as mystical as before.

I'm walking in the middle of the afternoon, of course, the mystic effects of the night time is not here, but for some reasons, I can't feel a single ounce of enchanted. Maybe it's because my connection here has been dissolved by the antidote.

In front of the familiar balete tree, I waited for a portal to open for me. After a while, however, there are no mystical bunnies, no portals, no owls, no portals.

Great, now I'm out of ideas on how to enter the world.

Maybe Araki hates me, too, since I disagreed with going with him to Switzerland.

I sighed.

Coming here was futile. Trecking here isn't easy in the first place, so I just decided to sit beside the balete tree to rest.

The 4:00 pm sun isn't that high and hot. It's a warm, glowing orange that colors the trees and the ground.

The forest in itself is beautiful, with or without the enchanted. I remember when I first got here. It was around this time, too, when we were chasing criminals. I got shot in the stomach after rolling down a cliff, which made my ribs puncture my lungs. I really thought I was going to die, but a mysterious creature healed me, leaving no marks and scars. He explained that he had to tranquilize me using a sleeping potion, but as he explained, he accidentally gave me a love potion.

Ew. Right? He said there was no cure available at the moment.

He even erased my memory of him for a while, probably to deepen the effect of the spell, to stimulate it and make it more believable that he's helping me get rid of it. The bastard just toyed my feelings for his own gain. If that cleric didn't just randomly appear out of nowhere, I wouldn't have had snapped.

Come to think of it, where is that priest?

He's like Deux ex Machina of some sort, a convenient character I should be wary of.

I sat under the tree, trying to think how I can get inside the country. I'm failing, tho. Because no matter what kind of anger I induce to myself to hate Araki, the nostalgia filled my senses.

His cot, his teacup, his dusty little kitchen, and the rose I gave him.

Is he still keeping that?
Does it still glow magically?
Can he remember me whenever he stares at that rose?

Why does that bother me?
Actually, what bothers me is that for a brief moment, I sincerely had so much gay thoughts.

It was weird, okay? Falling in love with a man, a non-human man, no less.

Ew, right?

I am grossed out whenever I think about it. I'm so glad my rationality has come back to me.

But they were the best moments.
That one or two weeks of romance.
I'll never feel it ever again, especially when officer Luisa Fina can't be that much important to me. I think I really lost the ability to love nowadays.

They were the best moments.
For a brief time, I was happy.

But they were false.

My chest hurts a little. I do not accept it. Until now I'm still hurting because of that creature. He has no right to hurt me until now.

I inhaled the air. I can smell the ground, the garden soil, and the bark of this balete tree.

And even when I'm trying to stop it, a single tear fell down on my cheek.