After saying those words. Once the fifteen-year-old young man had put an end to his story because he needed to rest, Samael stood up to leave.
He took a sip of his water—the crystalline liquid sliding down his throat in a final gesture of calm—grabbed two small grapes from the plate, popped them into his mouth with one hand while the other sank into the pocket of his trench coat, and left.
His steps were unhurried, measured. There was no rush in his walk, but no hesitation either. It was the gait of someone who knows exactly where he's going and, more importantly, of someone who knows he owes nothing to anyone.
He was already a good distance away—had taken several steps, enough for the separation between him and Ed's table to begin to feel real—when the sound of the world around him seemed to fade away for the drunken man.
The silence he felt.
That special silence that only existed when he could simply listen to Samael's voice telling him about his childhood, about his grandfather, about that story that had gripped him like nothing had in months. Even though he didn't know—because he had no way of knowing—that the place had been isolated by a bubble of silence. Even though he didn't know that dome had been dispelled when Samael stood up.
For Mr. Ed Tonor, it wasn't like that. No, it wasn't.
The tavern's bustle became a distant hum, annoying but irrelevant. The clinking of glasses, meaningless echoes. Laughter from other tables, empty noise. All that existed was the young man's back walking away, the brown trench coat moving with each step, the black hair with that low bun and the loose strands framing his nape.
And the crushing certainty that if he let him go, tonight—perhaps the rest of his nights—would sink back into the silent void of his own misery.
Don't go. Don't go, he began to repeat in his mind, the words pounding against the walls of his skull like frenzied birds. Please, don't leave me here. Continue the story. You can't leave me like this, I won't be able to bear it. Come back. Don't do this to me. Don't do it, please.
But he couldn't open his mouth.
Something… something was holding him back. As if a giant, invisible hand were squeezing his throat. As if a knot, made of years of loneliness and alcohol and failures, had settled in his neck and wouldn't let him speak.
He could think what he wanted to say. The words were there, formed, ready. But he couldn't release them. They just wouldn't come out, no matter how much he wanted them to. No matter how much his entire soul demanded it.
And the distance between that man in his mid-twenties and the fifteen-year-old young man grew larger and larger.
Each step Samael took was a world of separation. Each second, an abyss.
"I… I have to stop him," he murmured to himself, his voice barely a whisper that no one but him could hear.
Alcohol fought against a deeper, more desperate instinct. Alcohol wanted to sleep, to forget, to sink into nothingness. But that instinct—that something that had been dormant in him for months—wanted to live. Wanted to cling to something.
"I can't let him leave. No, I won't let him go."
He could finally speak. But his voice didn't have the strength to even shout. It was a murmur, a whisper, something lost in the noise before traveling even a meter.
Samael kept walking.
You have to stop him, Ed, he told himself, fighting against his own being, against that coward who was letting the young man leave without doing anything to stop him. How can you let him go like that? You can't allow it. You can't.
He took a long, burning swig of what remained in his glass. Not for courage, but out of inertia. Because it was the only thing he knew how to do when fear paralyzed him: drink.
But this time was different.
The alcohol burned his throat, yes. But instead of numbing him, it ignited something. A tiny but real spark. An "enough is enough" that had been waiting for its moment for years.
Then, with an effort that tensed his whole body—the muscles of his neck, his shoulders, his chest—the voice came out.
Not as an angry shout. Not as an order.
But as the pitiful howl of a wounded animal, the kind you find by the side of the road and know that if you don't help them, they will die alone.
"Sa… Samael, wait!"
He finally shouted.
At last he could say and do what he truly wanted in the depths of his heart.
The effect was immediate.
The people at the other tables, disturbed in their conversations, in the relative silence they had created, all turned toward the source of the sound. Necks craned, brows furrowed, curious or annoyed looks.
But seeing it was the same drunkard as before—the same one who had already caused a scene with the thugs, the same one who had been drinking alone in his corner—most lost interest. They just waved their hands, universal gestures of "keep it down, idiot," and returned to their business.
The young man stopped.
It wasn't an abrupt halt, no. There was no startle, no stumble. It was a total, absolute pause, as if time itself had obeyed his will. One foot in the air, suspended, and then lowered with the same calm as always.
He slowly turned his head.
Only the profile of his face was visible to Ed. The line of his jaw, the lobe of his ear, the strand of hair falling over his forehead. Nothing more.
He said nothing.
It wasn't necessary.
His gaze, in semi-profile, was enough.
A cold, clear look. One that not only pierced through Ed's drunkenness and shame. Not only pierced the facade of a defeated man he had built. That look seemed to penetrate deeper layers, layers Ed didn't even know he had. The spiritual. The very core of his being.
Ed felt that look strip him bare.
Assess him.
And find him insignificant.
All in an instant.
He felt the vertigo of falling into a bottomless abyss. That emptiness in your stomach that grabs you when you're high on a mountain and look down. That certainty that one wrong step and you disappear.
It's the same feeling I felt before, Ed thought, and the memory came back sharp, cruel. When those scoundrels beat me. When I was on the floor, bleeding, feeling their laughter. I felt that penetrating look. That weight.
He swallowed. The sound was dry, loud in his own throat. A pathetic gulp that echoed in his ears like a confession of weakness.
He opened his mouth.
I have to speak, he roared in his mind. I have to say something. Anything.
But the words shrank. They crumpled. They died before even being born, like flames without oxygen.
It was also because he realized, in that same instant, that all the people around him had stopped what they were doing. Some with mocking curiosity, others with obvious annoyance, were watching the noisy drunkard who had interrupted their evening.
A young woman, sitting with a group of friends, whispered something to her companion and laughed softly. An older man, with an unfriendly face, shook his head and went back to his newspaper. The bartender, from the counter, shot a warning look that promised expulsion if the scandal continued.
Ed felt the weight of all those gazes. The heat of shame rose up his neck, tinting his cheeks.
Samael, seeing the scene—seeing Ed cornered by his own act, seeing the looks of the others, seeing the discomfort of the man who had been listening to his story so attentively—sighed.
A soft sound. Almost imperceptible.
But it cut through the air like a sigh of divine disappointment.
He turned completely now. His back to the exit, facing Ed. The brown trench coat opened slightly with the movement, revealing for an instant the black sweater and the outline of the locket beneath the fabric.
"Tell me, Mr. Ed," he said.
And the honorific title, "mister," pronounced with that calm and dangerous voice, sounded like the finest of sarcasms. Like a dagger wrapped in velvet.
"What is it you desire?"