It was our second time meeting eye to eye with the tunnel. I was cold; I couldn't think clearly. Vague memories were crashing and spilling into my mind. "Here again," I was saying, as that suffocating feeling gripped my collar. Wrapping my weakened arms around myself, afraid even to sit on the ground, I waited under that faint yellow light. I had been tossed here just like that. Like an item whose time had expired. And here, no one cared about anyone else. The manhole cover had been bolted shut over me. As if the destructive cold of the walls wasn't enough, the damp air of the tunnel was also leaving me powerless. But what I was really thinking was this: I hadn't resisted at all. I had let them just throw me in here.
Was I no longer believing in myself, or in people?
I thought of that wooden box. The box in which I found the letter, right here. Why had Sis taken it from me? Why were those incomprehensible words scribbled in that letter?
I grew tired of standing, I wanted to curl up in a corner, but the sound of dripping water, drip-drip, bothered me. I was afraid of rats and insects. But still, I didn't resist. Damn it, I was much more afraid of people.
I stood torn between walking towards the other end of the tunnel and staying still. At that moment, a striking question hit me. How far did this tunnel stretch? Thinking that it was too long to ever end felt like having a hallucination.
With slow and small steps, I tried to walk without touching the walls covered in spider webs. The sound of dripping water intensified here.
Suddenly, the spider webs in front of me were washed in blue light.
It was a holo-screen.
I never thought I'd be this happy to see a holo-screen.
"Please follow the task updates!" I heard the announcement. The effect of that robotic, cold, and alien voice on me was no different from the force that makes a leaf flutter in the wind.
I checked the holo-screen with my eyes. Although the pixels were blurry at first, the image was gradually becoming clear. I closed my eyes for a moment. My name... How could I dare to leave him there again, in such brutality?
I quickly skipped the lines where other names were written.
Holding my breath, I looked at the very bottom line. I was completely concentrated.
"Aysal: Obey the new group leader!"
My stomach began to churn.
Placing my hand on my stomach, I waited for a few seconds. My back was drenched in sweat. I could see no exit. All I saw were shadows, and I could not move past them.
The Mechanism... Why had it allowed someone to be killed? Who was this man named Sis, and why wasn't the Mechanism punishing him?
I thought about the weapon he said he found in the tunnel.
This weapon must have been placed by the Mechanism. What was this? Was the system openly playing a predator-prey game?
It was the time he saved me from my countless suicide attempts.
"If one day, I realize that I am inside a hallucination," I said, pressing my lips together. The fire of hell had manifested on my parched lips, its pure wind held captive. Our eyes were completely locked onto each other. "That is when I will remember that I am inside a dream..."
When the searing captivity in his gaze imprisoned me, the darkness of the evening fell over us like a trap. As thin raindrops fell upon the earth like heartbeats, the bond between our left hands looked into our eyes. While the cold air entering from under my thin shawl wandered through his body with the same reticence, we were burning aflame.
As if struck through the heart, we fell toward each other for a moment; we were just embracing. But this was a kind of falling.
A being torn from oneself.
The crushing of a fresh fruit underfoot.
Yet, neither nature nor anyone else opposed this.
"Then," he said sincerely, releasing part of the breath held in his chest. I didn't want to lose myself, yet his words were intoxicating me. "Then you will realize that I am your reality," he whispered.
His body heat enveloped me as well. "When?"
"Then," he said; "One day when you look into my eyes as if wanting to live. Not as if wanting to die."
I took courage from his words. "Perhaps the smile of some shines with the death of another."
Behind the sense of trust radiating from his chest, I heard his heartbeats racing with anxiety.
"This is not true," he said; "This is a plain illusion. A smile... it passes through a person's face so many times. Is it necessary or unnecessary? There is no such question... Smiling is always necessary. Always a light. But let a person's smile lean upon the death of another. That is only a death, not the smile." Taking me by both arms, he pulled me back, looked straight into my eyes, and sliding his fingers up, he placed his thumbs on my lips and pulled them upwards from both sides. "This, Aysal... This is what I see in you. Always this, and this smile is always genuine."
I never wanted to throw myself into the water again.
That day, the water droplets falling from my wet hair never drowned me in my dreams again.
But I didn't swallow a box of pills either.
For the first time, I wanted to save myself.
And... for him, I wanted to live.
When I emerged from the staggering dreams I saw between sleep and wakefulness, I wanted to take a single breath. That breath pierced my heart like a bullet. It was a recollection as pure, genuine, and terrifying as the whizzing of a bullet. I had collapsed in a corner of the tunnel, wounded by the sharpest side of sleep. I thought the stones above me would crumble, the walls would collapse, the lights would flicker and die. But nothing happened. All that happened was the fear of it happening.
As the faint silhouette of my husband passed before my eyes through a mist of tears, I wound time backward. Obeying the new group leader, Sis! After all that happened to me, was there a reason to think about my pride? No, I said to myself then. No. What I feared was not having my pride crushed. My real fear was death coming unjustly from such a simple weapon to end the existence of a body.
Sometimes a weapon becomes the end of a life decided to be lived for the last time. But wasn't that life a miracle, even if left to chance one last time? Wouldn't it be worth living with the same happiness, the same genuine feelings and love? Even if we repeated the same mistakes, wasn't it agonizing for them to take away the hope of repeating those mistakes? At that moment I thought, what was life? How could a bullet end it as if it were nothing?
Finally releasing the breath trapped inside me, I listened to the robot's speech like a corpse.
"Fulfill your tasks!"
They were non-human elements.
"The group mass game will be announced to you at the appropriate hour!"
It was a simulation of the predator-prey game.
"Touching Mechanism items is forbidden and a crime!"
There were no laws here...
I listened to the sentences read with a dull facial expression, then closed my eyes a little more. I wasn't curious about the outside, just as I wasn't curious about the inside. But the only thing here that affected me... the only thing that had managed to warn me since I came here was that letter. Who was it written by? If it was written to me, what had Sis done with that letter? Why had I witnessed his fingers trembling as he read it after taking it from me? I couldn't piece the parts together. All of this was as difficult as solving a giant jigsaw puzzle consisting of dozens of pieces.
Moving forward a little, I looked at my remaining time on the screen behind me. It was counting down from twenty-four hours. I was asked to fulfill the task, but perhaps... Death. Was it easier than struggling here?
Honor was perhaps more valuable than life.
I focused to better remember the sentences written in the letter.
"If you found this, know that it means I am dead," the letter began. Someone had started this letter as if their death could have a bond with my life. And it continued: "How painful it is to mention this, but I have added years upon years. Through how many autumns have I waited for the umpteenth spring..."
I felt my heart ache as I put the words side by side. Moreover, not just a spiritual pain, but a physical ache had also settled upon me thinly.
It said not every spring brings flowers, not every rain brings a storm. I remembered this sentence too.
Whatever the person who wrote the letter had experienced, they said, "Sometimes waiting is a lifelong ordeal. Does this seem unfair to you? It is not. Nothing you have today belongs to you. The things that will be taken from you never belonged to you anyway."
There was no message in this letter. No notice, warning, or threat... None. It just looked like the thoughts filtering through a person's mind in a state of desperation. Meaningless in places, fabricated in others, but clearly written by a woman's hand in every way... Only a poetic tone created a beautiful, aesthetic taste in the ear here and there. So the owner of the text was already dead.
Where the word death was mentioned, the reign of humanity ended.
"Death," I said; "Death..." I wasn't even aware that I was saying these things out loud involuntarily. Only when my voice hit the walls, a shrill sound came out. That was when I realized for a few seconds that I existed. However, before much time passed, I was drifted back into thoughts. Who was the one who sent the text and that box? Who had delivered this text?
I looked at the walls of the tunnel, resembling a corridor, into the darkness. It was as if they were the wings of a bird, and if the bird took flight, I could fly with it. As I looked into the darkness, like Nietzsche said, I too began to look into the darkness. "Come on..." The light flickered, as if spending its last strength, continuing to illuminate the narrow grave with all its might. "Come on... God, please show me a way out!" My eyes filled with tears, I grew emotional looking at the light, and a faint shadow forming on the face of the walls provoked me. I realized I was about to see something. The shadow grew and darkened as it approached. I did not dare to open my eyes, to look there.
"Welcome to the tunnel!" a deep voice echoed in the darkness.