Chapter 69

Uriel turned around at the very last sentence that Sinclair said from his apology and had this mixture of blank and confused expression.

Sinclair, just like any other time, couldn't read what was on his mind and it particularly made him desperate only then.

The child went on to ask questions slowly about whether that whole friendship thing was actually real or was a mere disguise to relieve his pent up guilt towards his dead son who happened to look a lot like him.

Uriel asked several questions too about the mask and the festival and all the things that the ghost showed him.

In the end, Sinclair was never able to answer any of those questions.

He was rattled with something inside him that he couldn't comprehend – whether it's confusion or fear or century-long stagnation.

Looking back, it didn't even seem that Uriel was actually angry and that he was simply asking some questions that somehow managed to blur them for him.

Even up to this day, Sinclair wished he answered some of it and snapped back to that moment quickly.

Before anything more stupid could happen, Uriel seemed so disappointed and lost that he just walked out of the forest right before the dawn.

And ever since that day, Uriel never returned – at least, in the state and personality when he first walked out that day.

Sinclair sheltered himself inside the dark cave as if it could somehow heal what had been broken to him.

He had this feeling that after that day, something bad would happen and things have really come to a turning point.

He already garnered the feeling of losing their friendship and all that was accumulated until then into nothingness.

Sinclair felt despair and frustration that for the first time, he took it out to his precious deep blue roses. He tore up the flowers and threw them as if the centuries he spent making up that apology had gone into waste.

It was all for naught.

He even lashed out so much as to destroy the mask that he spent so much courage to buy from the thrifty shop in the deep forest.

All those efforts and sacrifices were useless because he thought he's a piece of shit. The blame was all into him and not to those flowers or the cost of the mask.

He rested and rested for a few days until he finally got out of his cave exactly on the first full moon of a certain month that he already lost count.

He collected some of his precious deep blue roses once more and embellished it all over the edges of his cave.

He made them glow and deepened their colors.

He threw out the fragments of the broken mask and buried it deep carefully and with respect just as he did with his wife before.

The little hopes he had made him return at the borderline, waiting for the kid to show up again as if nothing happened, but nothing really happened that night.

And so, he returned the next night, but waited in vain.

And each night made his light of hope shine weaker than the last one until it got drained into hopelessness.

Sinclair thought he wanted to settle things and just die peacefully.