Chapter 76

After walking a few blocks from the cemetery, the man finally stopped at a bungalow type house and entered inside it.

The transparent glass window allowed Uriel to observe the man from afar without needing to trespass in the house.

The blind man carefully set up the table and got himself some food from the refrigerator.

Uriel thought it must've been quite a pain and hassle to memorize the places of his furniture. He wondered, though, how much time it took him before getting used to all those seemingly troubling work by himself.

As if the town heard his questions from the head, they answered by passing by the blind man's house and asking if he's fine.

Uriel stayed for a while and figured out how the residents and neighborhood respect him a lot.

He's kind and generous.

They seem to be quite fond of his presence and would even sometimes help him out.

Despite all these kind actions, it seems like the people had also drawn a line between him and them – like they were careful around him, not treating him like a fragile glass, instead more like a ticking bomb. Uriel wondered what history lies within those intricate and painstakingly delicate gestures that the neighborhood is showing towards him.

They are clearly helping him out from sheer kindness, but that's all there is to it.

There was a silent voice saying from the same atmosphere, "We should help him out, but we can't recklessly cross the line too much." Something had caused it, not 'causing' it.

The questions trailed deeper until he arrived into nothingness.

He then observed the interior of the man's house.

Everything was casual and ordinary – beige wallpapers, textile floors, tawny carpets, woody furniture, and cozy sofas.

There were also a variety of flowers scattered all over his place and it was clear that he was living just fine.

Selling those flowers at the cemetery seemed to be just a mere side job for him that he does for fun or for whatever reason that Uriel doesn't know anything about.

He noticed, though, the picture frame sitting on top of a shelf that felt like it was distant and unreachable from any point.

It was as if that picture was placed there purposely at the intent of allowing no one to touch it, even the man himself.

All the flowers that were scattered around, each single flower among the variety places around the picture.

Uriel couldn't see clearly what was in the picture, but from the peripheral point, it seems like a portrait of the blind man together with a child who's probably his son or daughter.

The blind man put another one of the flowers near that place and prayed the same exact way Uriel did in front of his parents' grave.

But it probably wasn't to pay homage to a deceased person and offer an expression of some kind of gratitude. It was something else.

Somehow, Uriel had always been bothered with the past.

Whether it was the blind man's history that he wanted to know or his own history that he forgot.

They were always missing and yet, they could pull with so much power whatever it is in the present.

They linger forever even until death, Uriel thought.

He knew that because he knew a ghost's history.

The past lingers, striving and struggling for the concept of future that will never come until they remain in their present. It was frustrating and sad at the same time.

Uriel couldn't understand the thrill and excitement in all of these, but he was sure that deep scars remain etched in hearts. He saw the ghost in that way.

He saw the blind man in that way.

And he saw himself in that way too.

It was hard to return to the reality he's living in, but he had to.

When he came back to Olia Isema, he felt something strange.

It was the familiarity he had been carrying all along with him and that the old woman turned out to have those same deep scars and could be seen in that way too, just like everybody else.