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Day 3
The third day… Henry had been here for three days. Three days had passed since a stranger had found him and brought him here. Henry now looked healthier. They hadn’t done anything wrong yet, but I still didn’t trust the stranger. I only knew their names: the one who brought him here was called Jayden, the one with the white light was called Zane, and the masked one was Luke—the one I hated the most—and I felt like a being whose patience was running out. I didn’t want him to be hurt again.
As I was thinking this, Zane crouched at Henry’s neck, showing him a badge and telling him something. I didn’t bother listening. To me, it was just a stupid childhood memory, not even interesting, but even though Henry looked blank, he was listening and curious—I could feel it. Jayden was behind Zane, his back turned, trying to patch a piece of an old, worn black cloak. From time to time he glanced at Zane, then returned to his work. This lasted for about five or six minutes. When Zane finished talking, he pulled back and stood up.
“This will be something etched in my memory,” he said, or something like that.
Then he extended his badge to Henry. Of course, Henry just blinked a few times. Zane chuckled and placed the badge in Henry’s hand.
“Keep it,” he said.
Then, just as he was about to turn back to Jayden:
“Wait for me.”
The voice belonged to Luke. He was still limping as he spoke—stubborn, proud, as if he was making some kind of declaration. He walked outside limping, and it was impossible not to notice how much more pain he was in because of it. I wasn’t the only one thinking he shouldn’t be moving his leg.
“No, Luke. You’re resting today. Look, it’s getting worse every day.”
It was Zane who said this, and his tone carried both worry and determination.
Well, they argued for a while. In the end, Zane managed to convince him. He waved at Henry and Luke and left. PERFECT. A day alone with this man...
Luke stayed in the room for a while. Meanwhile, Henry sat in those old, worn armchairs, carefully examining the badge in his hand. He kept turning it over, touching the characters softly as if pressing too hard would break it. I listened to the sound of the rain outside.
After a while of silence and stillness, Luke came out of his room. His hair was messy and disheveled, mostly untidy, but he still wore the mask. He limped toward the couch, wrapping a cloth bandage around his left hand. The bandage didn’t look very clean, but he didn’t care. Without looking at Henry, he lay down on the couch, tightened the bandage one last time, then leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. That was when I could see his face.
But it wasn’t a face I could have imagined...
His left eye was gone. Left. Eye. Gone. Parts of both the upper and lower eyelids were missing. The mouth area was even more horrifying. His mouth had been stitched shut with thick, black, wire-like thread stretching from ear to ear.
The scar on his face reminded me of the marks of slavery. Four years ago, when my mother took me to the House of Faith, there was a thin, tall, dark-skinned man next to a woman, and he had similar stitches on his face. I remember feeling terrified of that man. My mother told me he was a slave, and that these marks were punishments inflicted on slaves, which would heal once they had paid for their sins.
Even though four years had passed, I could recall the memory vividly. Back then, I remember believing my mother...
But my thoughts were interrupted by Luke’s voice, and I noticed Henry looking at his scars. He was staring at Luke’s face. Luke sighed.
“Damn it, I forgot you were here...”
He tried to stand but couldn’t. His shoulders slumped and he sat back on the couch. After covering his face with his hands for a few seconds, he sighed again and looked at Henry. He grabbed his hair once more and, unexpectedly, spoke.
“Stop looking at me like that, brat.”
At that moment, my powers screamed to attack, but when Henry briefly looked at me, I held myself back—I had to hide. Luke looked at Henry’s expression, then back at himself, and rubbed at his stitches.
“Look, don’t stare at me like that. It’s not nice, brat.”
After a few deep breaths, he clenched his fists, stood up quickly, and took a step toward Henry. At that moment, Henry dropped the badge he was holding, his pupils shrank, and he froze. I felt myself trembling too, but Luke only paused, his shoulders sagging again. He picked up the badge and returned it to Henry.
Henry took the badge with trembling hands. For a long time, nothing was said—he only looked at Luke. It wasn’t the look of someone terrified, but rather the gaze of someone studying, analyzing. Luke looked away.
“So... what do you think?” Luke asked, his voice starting softly, then hardening. “Does my story look pathetic to you? Do you think I’m going to present you with some tragic tale?”
In response, Henry only squeezed the badge tightly in his palm. Meanwhile, I kept listening to the rhythm of the rain, drowning in my own thoughts. Luke’s words—or what he didn’t say—echoed in my mind. Very little was known about him. And now that I had seen this, it was clear his past was far darker than I had imagined.
He turned his back and struggled to limp away.
“Sometimes... people look without understanding what they’re seeing,” he said. This time his voice wasn’t hard; it was more tired, as if he was swallowing pieces of himself. “But many people look at you the way you do... You’re too young to understand.”
The only sound in the room was the rain. Drops breaking, cold wind seeping through the cracks of the old wooden boards.
I couldn’t move from my spot. I was stuck on Henry’s gaze—his wide eyes filled not with fear, but something else.
The only thought that came to me in that moment was realizing that Luke’s earlier step hadn’t been a threat at all. It was more like the warning of a wounded animal showing its teeth; not to harm, but to keep from being harmed. Maybe that moment slightly changed the way I looked at him...
ns216.73.217.110da2
and then Add to home screen.