Forty-five: Kiran

There was another long pause, before he spoke again.

"I'm Kiran," he said. "I've been following you around to protect you and keep you safe from all sorts of people, otherwise you'd probably already be dead."

"I'm Jean."

"Nice to meet you, Jean."

"Not so nice to meet you, Kiran, although… thank you for the protection. If I had never met you," I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice, "I wouldn't have people trying to kill me and the security guards in the Compound wouldn't have called me a traitor in the first place. Am I right?"

"I'm sorry," Kiran said, his low voice humble. "I'm so sorry."

"My government is looking for you now."

"I know."

"I don't know why I haven't called my security detail over yet."

I wasn't entirely sure I had one, but I guessed that I did. Putting up a bluff wouldn't do any harm.

"I've been wondering why as well."

Eh. So I did have people following me. I hadn't been wrong.

"You'd probably be able to kill me and disappear before they got here though, couldn't you?"

"I'd rather not," Kiran replied.

"You say that every time," I said into my knees. "Why not? Other people are. What would you rather do? Why are they trying to kill me, anyway?"

"At first, it was because they knew you could recognise me. They wanted to eliminate you as a threat. Now, they suspect that you're a government spy yourself, especially after you spotted every single one of them on your way home yesterday. That impressed us quite a lot. Now they know you recognised them, they're even more worried. They think you must be trying to use me and get information out of me."

"Great," I muttered to my knees, wiping away more tears. "It's their fault for being lazy and using the same disguises, and they want to blame me. So you're here to warn me? Is that why you're lying there?"

"Something like that and I'll let them know about the disguises."

"Won't you get in trouble with your friends?"

"Well, at the moment, they're busy watching the people watching you who are busy watching them, so I thought I'd take the chance to sneak in and have a chat before anyone notices anything."

"You've been protecting me from your own people? Why?" I took a deep, shuddering breath, "Why did you warn me the night of the invasion?"

"Because you're a civilian. It's the civilians that get hurt the most in wars."

"There were so many others there that night. Why not warn all of them as well? Why? Why protect me from your own people if they think I'm such a risk? Why warn me now? Why?"

I heard Kiran sigh and heard the ruffling of grass when he shifted.

"Because I care," he said at last. "I care about you."

That stunned and after another thought, angered me.

"You don't even know me."

"You asked what I would rather do. I would rather not have been involved in this war. Rather would've made you fall in love with me and gotten married with you. Lived a quiet, peaceful life where we could raise a few kids together. I know you better than you might think and I know you're not a spy. You're just a beautiful, innocent woman caught in a war."

"What?"

I had not been expecting an answer like that at all. He was confessing? To me? Mr Cooper had been right? He was in love with someone boring like me?

Beautiful? Innocent? Me? Ha!

"I fell in love with you years ago but you've never noticed me," he sighed.

I shook my head to change the topic. This wasn't as important as the real question I needed answers to. He couldn't be in love with me. What did he see in me?

"Why did your people invade, anyway? Why start a war in the first place?" I asked.

"Because this land was originally Bosky land and it was stolen from us in the first place. You people were originally our people. Those sea pirates came inland and stole our land, our women and just about everything we had."

"That was hundreds of years ago."

"My people were almost completely wiped out. One thing your people might not know, but us Boskies have a long memory. It's taken us this long to rebuild and regrow our population enough to do this. We're taking back our land and our people. That's all we're doing. If the floods hadn't interrupted our plans, we would have taken the entire city that night with minimal loss of life and you would be going about your daily life with little interruption. For all you know, you could be part Bosky. I could almost bet my life on it."