Chapter 52

After the session, Toren slept uneasily that night and dreamt of that same sandcastle.

He was in the middle of that unending desert with the night sky above him like a mirror and the towering castle made out of sands stood tall.

The black dahlia flower had disappeared.

Even the moon and stars were gone.

It was only him, the landscape, and the sandcastle.

They were bound to each other like entangled destinies. Inescapable and inevitable.

Soon, the sandcastle started collapsing grain by grain into the tawny land as if the whole world began dissolving right in front of his eyes.

Toren could not do anything but stand and stare like an idiot. Just gawking at the dissolution with his deadpan, bloodshot eyes almost sinking onto his sockets, his heart felt numb.

The beating flesh that was once wild and unsteady vanished somewhere.

Maybe into the deep wounds, underneath the desert of the frozen ground, above the angel halos – it could be anywhere aside from inside Toren's ribcage. His heart that grew wings had eluded him forever.

He woke up at around 5 in the morning when the colonist soldiers were starting to wake the villagers up for the morning routine.

His circadian clock had adjusted along with his nightmare. Feeling icky and disgusted with his own cold sweat, the morning breeze made his body hair stand up, so he politely asked for his personal maid to prepare him a warm bath.

The maid immediately complied and soon, he had been relishing his steaming bath.

When he was stuck in the orphanage as a kid and when he got locked under the En family's house and even had to stay in a dim basement, he never thought about having such a comfortable and pleasurable experience as now.

It was far beyond his perception to discern what pleasure and comfort meant.

All his life, he had been living miserably alone, frequently enjoying his mother and brother's company.

Afterwards, he dressed in a smooth and beautiful robe and went out with his butler to observe the world and paint natural phenomena.

And whenever he would only see the maltreatment and cruelty occurring village by village, the hungry men and overworked people made him want to stay inside the headquarters.

Toren would happen to glimpse secret killings as some women and children are getting beheaded for the slightest and insignificant reasons.

It was always dangerous outside and the luxury to walk across the isles unscathed were only given to fortunate ones.

There were even illegal gambling, opium distribution, and unreported anonymous sexual violators among the colonist soldiers.

Every time he would see the bloody torso and necks hacked off, he would only wince and look away. Every time he sees the money passed on different dirty hands, hear the mocking laughter, and sense a looming harm, he would only bite his lip and feign blindness.

Every time he could hear a woman's scream, crying for help in a hopeless situation as a soldier crawled up above her, he would only walk the other way.

Every single time, he would justify himself with a few raking questions, "What could I do? I am powerless. What could a person like me do to people like them? What could I even do for them?"

He would just take a breath, hold his tongue, strengthen his guts, look away, and close his doors.

But even in his most selfish ego self-centered conscience, he didn't want to admit... but he knew that turning a blind eye like this meant betrayal.

He would clench his fist, "I guess Madam Lumen's prophecy... was right all along. I guess I deserved all the punishments I received from my father..."

When they returned to the headquarters, he isolated himself in his private room and sat at the corner, waiting for the shift of sun to moon.

When darkness comes around, so would his demons.

All the crimes he had committed when he looked away, turned around, and walked out, he imagined all of those scenes maneuvered by his own hands.

Toren cried and cried until it was too overwhelming, he had to do something with his shaky soul.

He took a canvas sheet and aggressively painted and painted.

Everything he had witnessed and heard, he drew alive in a white, blank sheet.

The greed, the abuse, the cruelty, the hidden agendas, the world collapsing, the lust, the sandcastle's demise, every single thing.

He would not even spare a second to take a nap.

He exhausted himself to paint and paint, hearing his mother's words, "Then paint to death."

And so, Toren had died a million times with every brushstroke, but somehow, his flesh had remained.

He was only a lump of meat attached with invisible strings, suffering with burns and guilt.