Chapter 4 Solutions And Remedy

WIDE AND FLUFFY bed wrapped around by a skinny white bedsheet, Kane rested her back, her blank eyes scintillating the ceiling. Arms extended to both corners of the furniture, a blanket half tugged on her body, plummeting with the superiority of the previous conversation, slinking her to the threshold of her verity.

Consumed. Kane is tired out, and she has got to rest. Maybe she'll pass dinner- she's not feeling well. This day is not analogous to the days she forked out in her class nor the times she lived for herself with a mug of coffee and a book.

There is a compression in her heart, eager to curious her. What did she really desire? Did she solely think of him the whole day? Why is she feeling odd and bizarre whenever he is the subject?

The chamber is air-conditioned, but it is not sufficient to deliver her to the unfriendliness of her surrounding for she is not going anywhere around her knickknack. Her head is half-emptied, clashing with the questions that can't be countered.

"He has written it."

She sighed in skepticism.

Of course, the utterance that Hazel is sure of is included with the queries of her. A dominant statement that mistook her soul nearly to resolving her queries. But she can't.

Shall she not excavate another problem.

"But," she hesitated, "who is he?"

The one who has written her entries, the one who is a mystery, and the one who is acquainted with Baron, her brother. Whoever he is, he still shan't have stolen her property. He didn't have a confirmation that he can write all of whatever is written there.

She sat on her bed, arms around her knees with fingers entwined. Kane bit her lower lip, staring into nothingness, her pumping organ stuttering its normal beats.

Mike, when will you come back? She asked silently in the air, her breathings slower, her feelings weighty. When will you consider my hopes as I wait for your return?

Her throat dried in a penchant of her quenching pain, her ears deafened in a tranquil of her mocking chaos, and her eyes glum in a haze of her watery eyes. Her shoulders elevate down as if the earth lived in there, inconveniencing her shabby existence.

Her eyes linger on her bedside table made of marbles and glass, and a frame beguiles her focus. Not the lilacs in her flower vase. Not even the alarm clock at the side of it.

Just the frame and the visuals it upholds.

It has a mono picture of nine heads in total: their cap has a weaved white of LHLS at their temple; their suit is sleeves, shaded dark; four girls vertically lined at the front while three boys are at their back, and their surrounding is a pewter image of calm trees. At the bottom left corner are words inked by a pen, cursive and bold:

With my gang.

The gang. Kane is recalling an event in the past, but she can't recollect it from her memories perfectly without a mistake as if she's continually forgetting it to the degree that it fades away. Thus, not.

She is deliberately merely erasing her remembrances, her journeys. It comprises that one specific subject: her party. There's something horrible, excruciating may be the term, that is haunting her, intimidating her sanity. Until-

"Your journal."

It's enough to haul her out of her bed, feet tapping the cold slate-tiled floor of her apartment, her fuchsia nightdress dancing in her every pace along with her shining ebony hair.

Does she thirst for water? The moment the very question crossed her mind, she knew she has to wash her face for it's not thirst, it's a habit of hers whenever she's falling ill. Her stomach unexpectedly swerved, unsettled.

She went to her mini living room where a single sofa and a mesa are placed at the center, then she pursued her struts toward the kitchen, at the left, where there are only a sink, a cupboard, a coffeemaker, and other necessities for her living. she turned to the opposite side, left track likewise, a toilet room, and kicked the door open.

Her reflection is recognized by her at the mirror atop the other sink: her brownish eyes with a glint of pain and disparity, lips pursed tight above her chin, and soft rosy skin in tender paleness.

"It has been completed."

She carelessly walked in the damp base, likewise slate-tiled, inward the section, not ten inches gap between the edge of the sink as her hand crawled onto the sides of it, soak and rough, as her gawk never left its mouth. Then the stability of hush engulfed her being, her gentle caress now grasping tight the corners and knees wiggling. She shall be dozing now.

Kane twirled the faucet, and a violent rush of transparent liquid comes out of its maw, startling her. She lets out a subtle sigh, palms fetching water. Leaning closer, she rinsed her face with its semi-cold condition, wanting to wash away the spectacle edifying inside her.

She could've simply done it once- but it is twice, thrice- until she yearned, whimpered, and sobbed. Supporting her stand, an arm on the wall, tears rolling down disguising as droplets of water on her face, and shoulders in rhythmic quivers of up and down.

"It's not merely about your lost journal that's been written, but there's someone else's."

But why is there someone else's journal? Why is another prospect involved? Why is he collecting somebody's misadventures, somebody's entries? Kane has plenty of drowning inquiries she can't understand and she can't analyze. Especially that, why is she involved, and of all the individuals, the writer seized her, thus, what is his motive? Will he earn from it? Will he publicize it?

Her anguish kept on as her misgivings retained their surge in her intellect. She felt cold, weeping drained her very system. At her utmost wail, she shuts her eyes close.

"The difference is that it's consented to the proprietor."

The world is perhaps brutal. She is tormented by its surprises, by its jinxes. They are jingling in Kane's mind, and one last tinkle, she'll be flaring with the planet in her ceasing to subsist.

With a rigorous facade, she stood in front of Hazel, concealing every bit of her dread, her genuineness. Her eyes may blaze with what she intends to express, but she knows none will dive into her to discover that the despair in her is upsetting. Nonetheless, she did her best, tightened the mask on her face, hard to acknowledge herself that she's doing it the right way.

"I can't do this forever," she murmured, attempting to stern her tone. "Heav- Heaven knows. It knows," her sobs began again, "it knows, certainly, it knows that."

She hasn't yet recovered from her nightmares. Sometimes, she's frightened to sleep. Her medicines. . .

Kane fixed her poise as she exits the toilet room, thudding footsteps. She has to drink her pills, it may help her take a nap. She scanned the kitchen, gets closer to the cabinet over the cupboard, and search for her remedy, her companion.

I'm desperate, she mumbled, tensed. Please, you can just show yourself.

Thus, deep inside her, she's conscious that it can't talk. She is but troubled and nervous. That she'll cry all night, memories appearing before her eyes, before her awareness.

Kane's anxiety is severe. With these traumas from her past, they cause inconvenience in her state. That's why she's escaping from it.

When she found the white bottle containing plenty of tablets inside, she grabbed it. Trembling, she dared to pull it with all of her remaining strength, but every time she tempted to, she ceased to function. Kane is failing herself.

Another try and it slipped on her hand onto the floor, and her swollen eyes, her wobbling knees, and her running tears did not conspire. Kane shakes her head, her walk turned topsy-turvy. She can't snatch it on the floor for all she comprehends.

One step forward and she'll topple, fragile and drowsy for a new set of trials. She may have to bring about her expense, and she doesn't wish to mourn there for a night. Consumed.

She remembered her phone call conversation with her brother.

"Have you tried to schedule a psychotherapy on a psychotherapist, Kane?" her Kuya Baron asked over the phone. "You always have nightmares when you slumber."

"I'm scared, brother," Kane retorted, almost a whisper, "in the result, and to what will I do after. Especially that you're not here."

She returned to reality.

"Brother, please. . . please, be here." Kane, a moment later, realized she has been cornered by the bottle of her medicine, the wall beside her sets her body like a corpse as she's unintentionally leaning on it, sustaining her composure.

It's her one year as a teacher, thus, one year of teaching. But even in the preference to her brother's advice in her first month or the previous months when she was in college as a senior, she has this sequence of terrors as she sleeps. Every time, she's scared to dream, and all her life, she only has to let go of them, but it is not simple.

A series of concerns crossed her mind. Her stares dimmed, and she's suffocated by her breathings, but could it also be her regrets? She has no idea.

Regrets. If she had fulfilled her brother's advice, would her miseries not sicken her this time? Would her episodes be left behind her? Can she live without anything to worry about?

A solution whacked up her mind, a potent that she craves to satisfy. That if she ever used this last resort, it could soothe her a bit. She would not be needing her pills.

SHE REMAINED being appalled.

She scurried from the kitchen to the living room and next is to the bedchamber. As soon as she's in there, she pulled her blanket on the bed and tossed it somewhere at the top corner of it as her knees kissed its perpendicular edge. She gasped for air, looking up, greeted by a blinding light from the fluorescent.

My phone. Kane rummaged everywhere, but she can't find it. It took, at most, three minutes, but still no avail. Where is my phone?

It's a good thing that she's diverted by her desperation to find a temporary cure. Her weeping discontinued, no tears left to cry, no sobs left to hear, no heart left to drench, and no what-ifs left to ask. But where is her freaking phone?

Her thinking has continued, Baron's voice can be listened to on her mind.

Baron puffed. "You've taken an English instructor. You've worked hard to learn the language that beguiled you. Now, look at you in your one month as a teacher. Similar to what you've oftentimes told me."

"But that's because I have an interest in the language. After all, in Nol Magno, Eli Bethsaida, or Sant Margaret, races are diverse with the language they preferably speak. Have I not learn this language, how can I communicate with my students who aren't eloquent in our dialect?" Kane reasoned out, sitting on her single sofa, clasping the mug of coffee in her hand. "I don't want to get farther on teaching especially in other localities. I'm thankful that I've been destined to teach here. And see what it has done to me, I'm now eloquent," she kidded, smiling with a tease even though her brother couldn't see her.

"Kane, you even did it because of your practicality," her brother paused for a while, "but be reminded that this very thing that you'll do will be for yourself." He sighed. "It is only us now that is living the life of our clan, and we're the only ones who are the resting place of each other. Do that for yourself if you certainly want your nightmares to flee. It is my advice as the older."

She went to the living room and realized it's at the top of the mesa, left at it when she went home, has bathed, and embarked on resting. So she took it, sat on the sofa, and called her brother. He can help her ease herself.

Setting aside Mike as her savior, her brother can be by her side, the only person she can lean on to. Though, she's curious and suspicious at the very least.

Her phone vibrated before ringing. Three rings but her brother didn't pick up. She stilled to try, frantic to talk to him over a call so that she can hear his words, the language of his heart. Thus, no response.

Her eyes moistened once again, ludicrously wanting for her to break down. She bit her lower lip, arms quivering, heart beating fast. It remained unpicked by her brother Baron and minutes later, she felt hopeless.

Running to her room, jumping on her bed, lunging on her blanket. . . She cried her feelings, her soul. What Kane did, it's a way she has at that hour when all she has is herself, when all she can opt for is isolation.

She is alone.

Invariably deserted by no one by her side.

That night, she didn't recognize her hunger, her breadbasket filled with bare grief, uncertain on distinct things she hasn't go after yet. She didn't take her medicine, exhausted enough to slumber. It's a stew of sensible frenzy and quandaries like a sentiment of value and rubbish, mimicking her strategy to fall asleep, luring her into the peak of her vanishing.

With the lights in the bedroom turned off, Kane slept with her thoughts, tides in her head, threads in her heart. She slept in her slumber, unqualified for what hereafter can give rise to. She slept unknowingly that another present has yet to uncover itself.

KANE OPENED HER eyes, no speck of morning lights peeking from the space of the curtains on the window near the foot of her bed, a bare of timidly light black. It has farewell like a twilight that's sweeping away, and it welcomed her to another day on her battlefield.

It's been two days.

The weekend has passed.

But she remains not to sleep well.

She eyed the bedside table, gone is the bliss on her eyes and in those pair of orbs, a reflection is the goblet of her soulless seas. Set on her alarm is ratio four and twenty-two. Her upper body lifts, a hand supporting her slouching, her back leaning on a wall behind her.

It's too early for work. Kane chose to have a daylight sidewalk jogging for it can aid her a little, her mind kept up with troublesome thoughts. It's a pursuit for her agony, something she has to pacify, the reason when the weekend came, Kane has started to do this routine before going to school.

When she's done washing her face and done changing her nightclothes with a blue-shaded shirt, trousers, and shoes, she began her exercise. Perhaps this is better than staring at nothing in particular. Kane must know how to cure herself when no one can do it but her in solitude.

She must redeem herself.

Kane has exited her apartment, departed the intersections, crosswalks, and sideways with feet sprinting as the sun uncloaked itself in the sky as a straw dress glistening amidst the blinded populace. There still are a few passersby and vehicles, most are bicycles, and they are in a perfect movement, a clip inside a film of reality.

Aloft is set forth in the morrow, promising and unscathed, flickers of fair beans dispersed in it like serene predestination, addressing the clueless ground with its majestic entrance. The moon has no position to hang around at all. Dusk above has no part for a broad daytime.

Or else she'll be entirely crazy. Kane puffed to put forth exhaust to such a tiring jog, her hand bracing the cold metallic piece of a balustrade as the other is on her chest, her top clothes soaked in sweat as it feels her skin heated by her weariness with her heart pumping quicker. Panting, she gulped, her throat still dry.

She must be there for herself.

She has to because no one else will. When all that's left is her without Mike or Baron, then she'll breathe for the betterment of her days to transpire. Someday, she'll be doing fine, laughing her ass out, not bothered by her problems, smiling like a reckless lady that has no mien of darkness to dwell.

Kane's eyes remained on her toes covered by her trousers. As her lips halfway disclosed, her hair intact in a bun style, the chill waft bumps her face. Another huff withdrew her mouth.

From her toes, her stare is averted to the lake under the bridge, calm and clean, then to the city lights across and hundred kilometers away from Eli Bethsaida, a capital, a part of the metropolitan area, filled with high-end buildings standing tall and proud. She once visited that and her astonishment until the present day didn't leave her. For that is everyone's actuality, a place for a crusade to be eager with one's dream.

The Ebbereth bridge is a perfect view to sightsee the entire Eli Bethsaida. She came here for that, however, not most of the time. For she would like to stroll downtown, in a bookstore or a cafe, expending her time independently.

She looked down the Ebbereth Lake for an additional interval, her imperfect image on the water like abstract. Her feet strut closer to the guardrail, the tummy of hers bussed by its cold silver and iron. Dumbfounded, Kane's head lifts down, and tiptoed, parting her lips, gasping for air.

Leap then plunge. She never imagined taking her life. Never did she think of ending her lifetime rarely to have a glimpse of demise's wrong pacts for she thus cherished herself, not someone who is pleased to entertain those thicket-to-heaven thoughts.

She knows those pills will only sustain her for the time being but not for long. Ever can't she be forever on its support. If she continues this habit, she may not be able to be normal for the rest of her living; contrariwise, she shall not tolerate herself in order to restore the calmness sealed in her entity.

Kane stared below the bridge, prolonged, that she never anticipated. Minute by minute, the sun in the sky is distributing its glow toward its broad.

"This is Kane!" Her voice echoed, dogs barking in the background, wind chiming in. "She's not going to lose!"

The lake responded with its typical rush, smooth and serene.

"She can get through it all!" she added, screaming, her voice at the prime of her lungs. "I'll be myself once again."

She stands her ground straightforward, hands beside her, chin held up. The city lights are one by one being turned off like the radiants of lights leaving the space of her earth, traces unblemished flawlessly.

Her phone, tugged in her arm holster, vibrated. With a furrow and a deep sigh, she answered the call.

Kane puts her elbows on the guardrails. "Kane Alejandra speaking."

"Hi, sister Kane!"

Kane's eyes widened, neck stiffened.

"Batch two. Nol Magno's Sanctuary." The boy chuckled. "This is Clarence."

She gulped, her eyes closed. "Clarence?" All she can utter is a single confirmation.

"Yes, Vice Leader!" Clarence assured. "The one and only Clarence Curtis."

"What," Kane hesitated, "do you need?"

"Well, Hazel called me."

"And?"

"I'm gonna tell you about it," the guy stated, pulling off a gust. "About what I know that day."

She didn't respond, tickled and confused.

"I'm gonna tell you everything," Clarence continued. "Including the man who has written it."

The man who has written it.

Clarence already said it. Now, Kane needs the truth, and Clarence must be liable for that event. She sheer needs an authentic answer about the man.

And the reason behind, undoubtedly, she'll figure it out.