When Yurian and Sylvester returned to their dormitory, Sylvester realised that Yurian was in a bit of a daze.
'Should I make conversation?' he thought.
"Are you waiting for a letter, by the way?" Sylvester asked abruptly.
"Oh, what do you mean?" Yurian asked suspiciously, recollecting himself.
"I noticed that you were disappointed when there was no letter for you today…do you have a girl I don't know about?"
"NO, of course not," Yurian laughed as he rolled his eyes. "I am waiting for a letter from a friend I met on a mission, go kid yourself."
"You know I will tell you if I have a girl right? You need to be honest with your best friend!"
"I don't have one, go away!"
They returned to their room in jest before Sylvester paused.
"Hey, Yurian…you feeling alright?" He asked the boy who had already returned to his blankets.
"Yeah? I'm fine… Just, the conversation just now reminded me of someone."
"Ah…" Sylvester nodded in understanding. "Well…It's been all these years. Do you still think of her?"
Yurian laid on the bed quietly. Finally, he gave Sylvester a wistful smirk.
"Nah, not anymore."
Sylvester looked at him carefully before patting him on the back. "Sure."
…
Yurian watched Sylvester enter the bathroom before hugging his stuffed squirrel heavily.
'What a pitiful look.'
He turned into his blankets and shut his eyes. It's been two and a half years, a time neither too short not too long. He could still remember the sea of fire and the crowns of the monstrous plants as the four of them struggled to exit that battlefield alive.
Consecutive, continuous punches smashed into the vicious man-eating plants. He lost count.
Dodging stray attacks. Screaming for his team mates to run and to keep fighting. He lost time.
Keeping the pain under control, until the last second.
When he laid on the cold, wet grass after they escaped from the labyrinths of Enzak, only the pure relief and gratitude for survival washed through his soul as he celebrated the survival of his closest friends. Surely, he thought, saving a hundred people from the town was a peak accomplishment. He should be happy.
But he was too naïve, because from that day onwards, the marks and memories erased from those involved in Enzak was instead imprinted on the survivors.
Often, Yurian would suddenly find himself thinking of a familiar face when he was most unaware. "What if Libby was still inside? Is she still laying around somewhere on the broken cobbled stones of Enzak?" These thoughts would run around in his mind in the few months after the incident. He wasn't the only one plagued with such thoughts; he knew Marianne had countless sleepless nights too, although she had someone to lean on.
The self-made hell of what-ifs left him with mixed feelings of confusion, despair, hope, happiness, all there but the crucial emotion of tranquillity.
For him, Libitina was a memory that got truncated, cut off prematurely. That string of memory was cut short and left hanging off the table with no knot to spell an end. He never found the answer to what he felt for her, would never find an answer. Death is a finality, even for an Omkaran.
Still, the years passed, and they had all grown up. Although they were scarred, Marianne, Alistair, Sylvester, and he were clear that as knights, witnessing deaths and experiencing sorrow was just part of knighthood. Enzak was just a very bad first experience, but also one of many that they would have to endure.
"One day," Yurian muttered to the empty room, his face pressed into the blanket, "I will definitely succeed in forgetting you."