In the darkness of the tunnel, I loosely tied the red string I held in my hand around my wrist. Amidst the tears escaping my eyes, I had left myself behind closed doors in that moment. Crying fits that had been hurting me for who knows how many minutes were surfacing. But in the end, I had managed to turn back and wipe my tears. Turning your back on that silhouette was like giving a knife to a killer. In that case, would you be the guilty one, or the killer?
I wanted neither to stay nor to go.
The raspy voice of the old man, which left the rustle of the plastic bag in my hand beneath my ears, crashed against the dark walls of the tunnel and hit me. While his reclining silhouette remained to my back-left, he shouted, "Hey! Wait! The food! You must give it to me."
My time, at that moment, had stopped.
My feet stopped along with the ground.
I pulled a tin can out of the rustling bag and threw it toward that direction.
As my steps grew faster and faster, I went up.
I climbed up the stairs of the tunnel with the bag. My shoulders had grown stiff from the weight. As soon as I reached the last step, I threw the bag down, breathless. In the face of the "clack" sound it made, I moved one step further away from myself. Using my arms for support, I pulled up my body, which had lost a lot of weight in who knows how many days.
The smell of dampness dissipated slightly.
As soon as I got out, I saw him right in front of me. Sis, looking at me with smoke practically coming out of his eyes. Did he know about the letter, just like back then? I averted my eyes. Even in my husband's moment of eternal death. If this letter was written to someone named Alem, why was Sis keeping these notes as if they were his own, or why did he want to find them?
It seemed as if he had planned this rather than seeing me there by chance.
I leaned down, picked up the bag I had set aside, and let the grating close. I was in mourning. A person in mourning could not think logically. The only logic would be the silent race of the body and soul against death. He looked into my eyes as if he wanted something. His facial expressions were frozen, devoid of emotion.
As I was about to head toward the crowd where the voices were, he took a step toward me.
I didn't know when the scars on his face would heal, because nothing was guaranteed here.
Did I care?
Perhaps to solve the mystery of those letters, yes.
Trying not to show anything, just as I was about to pass him, he took another step, significantly reducing the distance between us. Did he want to say something? He fixed his eyes on the red string on my arm. His gaze practically riddled the string with holes. While the ground beneath my feet wandered like a ghost, the photograph containing the images of my husband's accident fell upon my pupils. I buried my tears, which resurfaced like flaming straw, into the deepest parts of my soul.
"A red string?" he asked absently. He seemed not to care about the food in the bag in my hand.
I wanted to walk away without answering, but he shifted one step to the right and blocked me again.
"Can you give me that letter again?"
Was he talking about the previous letter or the current one?
Averting my eyes, I said, "No." What could he do to me?
While saying this, I had instinctively looked at Hülya, who was approaching.
Sis, exhaling a breath like cigarette smoke, murmured; "It doesn't belong to you."
Then who did it belong to?
Hülya intervened sharply and shouted: "Why are you looking for that letter?"
The wave of excitement trembling in her voice had died out for a moment.
"It's none of your business," Sis said coldly. "None at all!"
What Hülya knew was the letter I had read before their eyes. In other words, there was a high probability she didn't know about the latest letter. I hadn't told her... But here, it was unclear who was who. I remembered the words, "Back then you were a human, but now you are a killer." The words in the letter were being etched into my skin like a tattoo.
While I could feel the layer of sweat under my chin, I gave the bag to Hülya to disperse the atmosphere. "I think this is enough for all of us!"
Hülya took the bag in front of his eyes and said, "Thank you. How did you find this much food?"
She was pleased.
The man in the tunnel came to my mind. He knew where this was.
Who was that man?
There were so many questions bugging my mind right now that I said, "I searched," forcing myself to smile slightly.
Those who saw the bag began to approach step by step.
Hülya handed me one of the cans.
My hunger had become an insignificant, minor occurrence compared to the news of my husband's death.
Sis withdrew with the crowd, but I saw a "see you later" expression in his eyes.
Then I looked at the crowd.
He would have to get closer to them. Or should I say have a reckoning? Because he was now an outcast, a prey.
As everyone opened the lids of the cans and attacked the contents, I felt how slippery the images were.
He was standing near me again.
There was a thoughtful expression in his eyes.
His gaze deepened, clinging to me again. At a moment I never expected, he slid his back down the wall and slumped to the ground.
His posture seemed to want to reveal his desperation.
As I looked at him, I tried to understand how a killer becomes a killer.
But this was a different subject.
Are people born killers, are they made killers, or does it stem from that deep malevolent pleasure in human nature?
My main curiosity was whether Sis would really be a killer under all circumstances, or had he just pushed away the opportunity to be a good person with the back of his hand?
No one cared what I believed or what I thought.
In that moment, I realized I occupied a tiny space in this world.
As the finished cans piled up like bones on the side, my loyalty to myself was wavering.
Why was I still standing next to him? Why?
Was it for a single sentence of his, or to learn what I would lean on if that sentence changed my life radically?
"I used to believe in ghosts when I was a kid," he murmured, his tone of voice was halting.
I felt my breath tightening.
No matter where I looked, my heart was constricted.
"Did you believe too?" Sis asked, his eyes entirely focused on his fingers, which he had locked together.
When he moved his hands, I held my breath.
I saw something on his thumb that I hadn't noticed before.
It resembled a tattoo, but I couldn't see it clearly.
I moved a little closer toward him just to see that writing clearly.
"I used to wonder if ghosts got cold," he continued; while I, with my jaw completely locked, focused on his finger. I didn't even care what he was telling. I just wanted to find out what was written on his finger.
"My father was a drug addict."
His voice was layered with a pain from the depths of his throat.
I swallowed. I could hardly stand. As soon as he closed his hand over his finger, the image disappeared. But I waited for his finger to move again.
"He would come home and beat my mother and me a lot. One day, I ran away from home."
The slight twitch in his fingers caught my eye.
"And then?" I said soulessly. "Are you trying to confess your sins?"
Turning to me with a voice of unexpected sharpness, he said, "What sin?"
"The sin of a child?"
"Even if you want to clear your current state, the pain you suffered in your childhood doesn't change the fact that you are a terrible person," I replied.
Strangely, he fell silent upon my words.
"These stories seem like nonsense, don't they," he said when I heard the sound of a tin can hitting the wall.
The breath between his words was shaky.
"Distant to a human, like a few lines stolen from books. Hıh... Strange indeed."
"What are you going to say?" I said wearily, but encouraging him to continue the conversation just to see his hand.
Hadi, kaldır şu parmağını! (Come on, lift that finger!)
"When I ran away from home, I met someone in the park."
I remained silent to brush him off.
He also fell silent, as if struggling.
"I told him what happened. He took pity on me. He gave me an envelope full of money to save my mother and myself. But he had one condition."
He paused.
At that moment, his finger suddenly lifted.
On his thumb, I saw four intertwined mask faces.
Biting my lips, I watched him continue to tell.
He didn't care whether what he was saying interested me or not. But I... I could now clearly see the four faces there.
"To keep this tattoo permanently on my body..." He raised his hand. He looked at my face as if he understood everything. "You noticed it, didn't you? That's why you're interested in this conversation..." When he turned his head, his gaze hurt like needle marks. "He said that one day I would find the four faces." He was speaking while looking right into my eyes. "He told me to kill it."
I was speechless; I crossed my arms in curiosity. My hands and feet had turned ice cold.
My stomach cramped. "To kill?" I murmured. "Four fac—"
He cut me off quickly. "That's you."
Ha, I knew that too?
But—Wait a minute! Was that why he wanted to shoot me with a gun that day? If so, why had he shot the group leader?
"But you didn't shoot me," I spoke with an icy voice.
"Why?"
He pulled up his knees and let one arm hang over his kneecap.
We were at the point where words were knotted like the string on my wrist.
"Because..."
I looked at him as if to say, "What?"
"At that moment, taking your life seemed illogical."
I clenched my teeth. Was I ready for what I was about to hear?
I waited without question.
He continued. "Do you know why?"
He turned in a way that made me his complete focus. "I had to make a choice, and I chose to send someone who was likely to be worse than you to the othe— to the other world!"
That gun! Was that gun intentionally placed there by the system then?
For a plan made years ago.
For the sake of killing me.
Who would want such a thing?
Who would make such an unfair plan to kill an innocent person?
"How do you know which of us was worse? More-over... Why did you accept that envelope?"
"I was a child," he murmured in a low voice.
"What if you hadn't? What would have happened if you hadn't done it years later?"
In his gaze, those terrifying eyes, as sharp as a predator's, appeared again.
"When I entered the system..." He took a deep breath. "They said they would communicate with me through letters."
Then why did the woman write "my son Alem" at the bottom of the envelope?
Suddenly, it slipped out of my mouth: "Alem."
At that moment, I froze as if ice had been struck against my face.
Sis's eyebrows shot up in a frown. "Y-you... That name. How do you know it?"
I had already burned my bridges.
I wanted to learn everything.
I pulled the letter paper out from inside me.
Sis froze in the face of the envelope I was holding.
"Another envelope?"
The moment he reached out his hand, I pulled the envelope back. "Who is Alem?"
The community was on my side right now because I was the one who found food. They had excluded Sis from among them for a more important reason than that. Therefore, he could no longer take this envelope from me against my will. My heart pounded as if to pierce my ribs. He knew he had to tell. He seemed bored and overwhelmed.
"My younger brother..."
So... Wait a second! In that case, was the woman who wrote the letter Sis's mother?