I would have liked to start by saying I've forgotten all the memories in which I was happy, if I were to write a letter. This letter would not be one written from the future to the past. Because then, I would have strangled the past, killing a fresh life. If I could go back to my childhood, to those moments where I was happy and played games, would I ruin it with a letter? Who in their right mind would do that? If something happened in a certain way and it was beautiful, wouldn't it be like a good deed written in this world? Perhaps what keeps you alive today was a faint kite appearing on the horizon, just before the last hallucination you experienced.
At that moment, I felt that I wasn't excited, that the feeling in my heart had weakened. My hands remained suspended in the air; the smell of the tunnel, the sweat on my neck, and the grip of my feet on the ground became even more palpable. While listening to the owner of the raspy voice, I saw that kite visible on the horizon rise to the heavens, drawing closer to the birds flying toward God. Who was coming? I didn't know. What were they doing there? I didn't question it. Just a fragment of a dream... Standing there, looking into my eyes. "I don't know you," I said in a voice as raspy as his, and I let my hands go slack. My heartbeat... It really wasn't that frequent, that excited anymore.
In front of the entrance that resembled a cave mouth, where the light hit less, a pile of bright light fell. It was fresher than the light illuminating this place, wider than the area it lit. It was as if that light were such that it could rescue a dead person from their dream, from their eternal nothingness. And it could tear us away from this world that we filled with terrible possibilities and realities, produced because we could not endure nothingness.
"A divine light..." I heard the same voice speak.
I understood nothing, but as much as my brain closed off to signals, my soul deepened. In the face of this divine light, I wanted to cry, to set my eyes free and hang my soul on the string of that kite. "Who are you?" My voice was cold; it couldn't be said to be full of fear because, strangely, I began to lose the taste of emotions.
"A human," said the voice, sounding as if it came from the depths of the throat. He immediately added in an excited tone: "Just a human."
While crossing the distance between us was equivalent to walking on a thin rope, "New people..." I said with a chilled facial expression. "New walls, new questions... I-I... I don't even know what I'm saying. What I know... The only thing... is that I am imprisoned here."
"I know," the man said without hesitation. One sleeve of his black overcoat swung into the void. At that moment, I realized he didn't have one arm. At that moment, there was a tiny flicker, a small tremor on my face again. Because I remembered the severed arm. I remembered the death of the group leader. I remembered the predator and the prey. My brain was expending as much power as hundreds of processors working simultaneously, struggling to digest information.
"You must have seen my arm," he spoke in a playful voice. But it was certainly far from being convincing. He was detached, foreign, as if speaking on a fake theory. "They must have shown it to you. Though they might not mention it to every newcomer anymore... What is your name?"
"My name is unimportant," I replied; "Extremely unimportant. Is your goal also to conflict or to cause harm?"
A wide silence covered the echo of my question.
At that moment when the sense of trust decayed, "How is it up there?" he asked. "Up there..." he said, pointing to the ceiling of the tunnel with his hand. Then, putting his hand in the pocket of his overcoat, he approached me with slow steps. Just when I thought he would walk further, he sat down on a log that had been tossed aside. As if the exhaustion of years were flowing off him, "I don't know that place anymore," he said. "Besides, not many people come here anymore. I thought for a moment I had forgotten how to speak because I hadn't spoken for a long time. Now the situation has changed."
"The group leader is dead," I said suddenly. "The balances have changed." I felt as if I could see the tip of the gun pointed at me, the glow of the letter that Sis took from my hand.
"Do you know the old balances?" he asked more calmly, turning his head.
I shook my head, but he wasn't looking here.
Without even needing to check me, "It's okay that you don't know," he said. "You'll get used to it anyway."
"I don't like that word at all," I said, as if disgusted. I continued without hiding even a single part of my feelings: "In fact, I hate it."
The person I needed to explode at wasn't this man whose face I couldn't see, who wouldn't turn his head. But at that moment, he was the only person I could talk to, the only one I could become aggressive toward.
"But it will be very useful to you," he said, maintaining his politeness. His words were equally cold and evoked a sense of being fake. "Why they show that arm..." I flinched when he seemed to turn his head slightly. "Do you want to know?"
His face was still not clear.
"The predator-prey game?" I said, wanting to laugh with anger, but my eyes filled with a sting coming from deep in my nose. "Death? The brutal slaughter of those who do not fulfill their duties?"
"You are very angry, but this anger will subside. All that will be left is your survival instinct..."
"That is called the passion for living. It's called the fear of death!" I said in amazement. Water gushed from all the sources of objection within me. "This is torture!"
"I didn't say otherwise," he said, turning his head back again.
He was insistent on not showing his face.
"Why did you come across me?" I said in despair.
"Rather, why did you enter my territory?" he asked simply.
This time, my tolerance level truly hit rock bottom. "Because I was imprisoned here."
"So the old leader is dead," he said, nodding his head.
"I told you that just a moment ago," I said in a low voice.
As I spoke, the confidence I felt in myself was decreasing.
Exhaling a deep breath through his nose, "Within twenty-four hours, the group leader sends an envoy here. When he arrives, you will need to say that you obey the group leader," he spoke. What was missing in his words was emotion, which I hadn't understood at first.
Clenching my lips and jaw, "I won't do that," I said.
"In that case, today will be your day of death."
The word death passed by me like an armored death commando.
I had seen deaths.
"Do they not interfere with you here?"
He looked, he looked, but not here. He looked at the opposite wall. He still wasn't showing his face. "I'm just a poor man who installs the lamps, that's all..." While his face continued to be washed by the dark shadow of the light, I believed I wouldn't see his face, when he suddenly turned his head. Stitch marks appeared on his dark cheek, covered by a deep, long scar.
Someone who installs lamps? Wasn't he sick?
"And your arm... Why then, your arm..."
"Why did they cut off my arm?" His cheeks, wrinkled with his smile, collapsed inward. "This is a small ransom to live safely around here."
"I-I don't understand..." Just when I said I wouldn't be surprised, many things had come out to surprise me.
"Simple," said the man, whom I understood was old, with patience; "The ransom I paid to the System (The Device)."
"What, you mean the people here didn't cut off your arm?" I said breathlessly.
He laughed: "Excuse me, but with what?"
Right, there was no cutting tool here.
But then, where had that gun, that bullet come from?
"What about a handgun," I said, hoping to learn something. I paused for a moment; the bloodstains on the ground came before my eyes. "Any handguns here—"
"Are you thinking of committing suicide?"
"I... It's just a question," I said; "Because the group leader was shot with a bullet."
The face of the old man, who until then had seemed quite normal, suddenly went rigid. His pupils dilated, his cheeks trembled, and his hand, surrounded by wrinkles resting on his knee, seemed to sway for a moment. He looked at me, examining me deeply. It was obvious in every way that he was surprised or did not expect what I had said. "With a bullet? With a gun?" He swallowed. He murmured as if swallowing dozens of feelings he couldn't explain: "A predator?"