In the bus, time started to stretch again. The city slid past the window in smears of light and shadow, but I wasn't seeing any of it. My heart was still pounding from the run, from the playing, from whatever the heck that had been back in the classroom. It refused to settle and sat right there in my chest like a caged animal, throwing itself against my ribs again and again, almost bursting out.
I gripped the metal pole beside me and tried to breathe. I was out of form and the running clearly was more than just straining on me.
The bus lurched forward, stopped, lurched again. People got on and off — ordinary people going ordinary places, carrying ordinary things in their ordinary hands.
They sat everywhere. In pairs near the back, chatting quietly. Alone by the windows, staring at their phones. An old woman with a shopping bag. A teenager with headphones loud enough for me to hear the tinny beat. They filled the seats one by one, spreading through the bus like water finding its level.
Every seat but the one next to me.
That stayed empty.
I told myself it was coincidence. The bus wasn't full. Why would anyone choose to sit next to a stranger when there were other spots? Reasonable. Logical. Made perfect sense.
And yet. I had the feeling they avoided me on purpose.
A young man glanced in my direction as he boarded, then slid into a seat three rows ahead. A woman with tired eyes hesitated briefly in the aisle before settling across from the old woman instead. Nothing cruel. The way people's eyes slide past something they don't want to see. Simply indifferent.
I looked like nothing at all to them. Just another tired man on a late bus, going wherever tired men go.
Maybe that's all I was. All I'd ever been.
The kind of man people don't sit next to. Not because they mean any harm. Simply because they see him, and something makes them look away. Some instinct. As if some voice whispered them: "no, not that one". Some reason they probably couldn't even name if you asked.
I understood it. I really did.
I wouldn't have sat next to me either. Some guy breathing heavy, sweat all over his face, looking like he hadn't washed in days and owned nothing but clothes that screamed "I hate life" to anyone who glanced his way. A man so pitiful a chicken could outrun him. That was me. The kind of existence that makes you wonder why the universe bothered.
Yet all of that didn't matter at this bus ride. My heart was pounding, and the thought vanished as soon as it came. For it has been quite some time since I have felt like this. Electric. As though a man like me could conquer his, to a degree, impressively low self esteem. Almost hopeful.
After a couple of minutes I changed buses. Twice in total. Walked through streets that grew narrower, older, more forgotten. The buildings here had witnessed things, you could tell. They leaned toward each other, their windows dark and you simply couldn't shake of the feeling that someone was watching you through them . My footsteps echoed off stone that had been there long before I was born and would remain long after I was gone.
Then I saw it.
The hall rose before me like something from another century — a great dome curving against the night sky, elegant and severe, demanding to be taken seriously. Only a name like Kikuchi deserved a place like this. Only a legacy that heavy could fill such a space. I stood there for a moment, taking it in, feeling very much like a trespasser.
The main entrance loomed ahead, tall doors that looked like they hadn't been opened in years. I approached anyway, pulled out the key Louis had given me, and tried.
Nothing.
I tried again, twisting harder, angling it differently. Still nothing. The key sat there in the lock like a stranger refusing to introduce itself, and for a long, terrible moment I wondered if this had been a joke after all.
No. I wouldn't let myself finish that thought. Not yet.
I circled around to the back, following a narrow alley that smelled of damp stone and things better left unidentified. A smaller door waited there, humbler than the front, barely noticeable unless you were looking for it. I inserted the key.
The door blasted open with a huge swing before I could pull it myself.
A woman crashed into me—no, slammed into me really—and before I could even process the fact that I was falling, I was already on the ground, tangled in red hair, limbs, and a pair of striking green eyes staring straight down into mine. For a brief, almost suspended second, we just looked at each other. Well, she did more than I did. I was still trying to figure out what exactly had just happened.
As I was about to make a nosy remark as to how her elbow was ramming int omy ribs, it simply struck me. The beauty in front of me, that is.
Her hair was the colour of autumn leaves and glowing embers caught in a soft light. Her eyes were a deep green, almost black in the dimness, and there was something in them. Determination, maybe. Or something closer to fear.
It was the type of beauty that made everyone on the street walking past her pause for a second to admire what they just saw. Where you'd think an actor wouldn't be quite as pretty in real life, but every argument about that is instantly shut down the moment you see them, and you simply stare in awe, speechless. That kind of beauty.
Then she was up and running, leaving me sprawled on the cold ground with the feeling of her weight crashing into me still pressed against my chest.
I tried to reach for her hand as she left into the narrow streets behind me. My hand grasped nothing but air.
A figure emerged from the door she came through — a man in dark clothing, his face hidden behind a stranger's mask, blank and expressionless and utterly terrifying. He didn't even glance at me. He simply ran after her, boots pounding against stone, and disappeared around a corner.
For some strange reason I stood up. And for some even stranger reason I couldn't shake off the feeling that I needed to go after her.
I don't know what made me follow. Instinct, perhaps. Or that same something that had pulled me toward the piano this night, perhaps.
I ran.
Up stairs, across walkways, my lungs burning, my legs screaming. The railing stretched before me in endless loops, as I chased them — chased her — chased the red of her hair that kept appearing and disappearing between shadows. But I was too slow. Too tired.
And as such it was too late for me to do anything, after I had finally caught up.
I found her kneed on the ground, a gun pressed to her head, the masked man arching from above like something from a nightmare.
"…leste," he said, his word had no meaning to me.
The voice was soft—almost tender. It sent a chill through my blood.
Strengthening my resolve, my fist clenched and damp with sweat, this frightened man—who had only meant to take a look at a piano—stepped forward anyway. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, something that might stop what was about to unfold.
Yet it was too late.
The sound of the shot echoed beneath the dome, against the walls, through everything, almost as if it refused to fade. She crumpled almost immediately, her body giving way without resistance. For a brief second she fell backward, but the bend in her knees carried her to the side, and she collapsed onto the stone like a lifeless puppet with its strings cut. The red of her hair spread across the ground like spilled paint, slowly blending with the blood seeping from the back of her head. Her green eyes remained open, unmoving, fixed on the empty night sky above Paris—as if it were claiming her soul, piece by piece.
The masked man turned to me. I froze in place. I tried to get away, every cell in my body screaming at me to stand, but my legs wouldn't move. They felt glued to the stone ocean beneath me.
For a moment he simply looked, his head tilted slightly behind that blank, expressionless mask. Then he spoke, and his voice was nothing like I expected. Soft. Almost kind. The voice of someone offering comfort rather than delivering death.
"I am sorry." he said.
He raised the gun. Staring back at me was a white wooden mask, catching the dim glow of the street lamps behind me. Its surface was smooth, almost polished, and completely expressionless. Two small horns rose from the top. The cheeks were subtly carved, giving the face a calm, hollow shape, with only the narrow slits of darkness where the eyes should be revealing the cold stare behind it.
I felt the impact before I heard the shot — a punch to the chest, then heat, then a strange and spreading cold. I was falling. The dome spun above me. The woman lay a few feet away, her red hair tangled beneath her, her green eyes finally still, completely devoid of light.
So this was it. After all those years of wondering what I was for, after that one brief moment at the piano when I had almost, almost felt something, this was where I ended.
The dome grew dimmer. The cold reached my heart.
Death.
So…that's what it feels like.
Just a slow, quiet unraveling into soundless peace.
The freedom I had craved for.
Simply…
The End.
This was how I, René Martin, met his end at 25.
Where this story took its final bow. Its demise.
Or at least should have…