When Coen had come back, he sat across the excited ghost and calmly sipped on his tea.
"How long have you been spectating?" Coen asked immediately.
"I am not sure," Toren replied honestly, pondering about his intermittent deaths. "I have lost track of time already. But if I were to estimate it a bit, maybe around 200 years or so."
Coen almost choked on his drink after hearing his statement.
He had expected a long, long time, but not so much with the stretch of almost 2 centuries. It must have felt eternal and painful.
"Was it difficult?"
Toren shook his head slowly. "I was with you."
"I am going to meet Airen. During this time, I want you to stay inside your secret hideout."
Toren glimpsed at the pantry's floor, thinking about the trapdoor that has always been there.
He felt a surge of a nostalgic danger – an imminent threat when things go downhill and downright a mess. "What are you going to do?"
Coen did not give an answer.
He just went to the pantry and opened the trapdoor, beckoning the little brother in.
Toren was unsure and hesitant, but he could not ignore the solace of being able to communicate with someone after a long time either. And so, he let the foolish side of him dominate as he silently went down the underground room.
He watched from above the closing trapdoor slowly locking him inside.
At Toren's first night inside down there, he reminisced the memories he had in the room.
Most of them are his interactions with his moving paintings getting more and more animated as he goes deeper from his hypnagogic state.
At the interludes of those magical series, there was his mother Airen and his brother Coen. Airen always brought comfort and food and tenderness.
Her appeal was so out of the world that he could not possibly fabricate it through mere brushstrokes and oil colors. Meanwhile, Coen always brought meaningful conversations and fun encounters back then. They would talk and play and laugh.
As children, then as teenagers, then as grown ups.
Soon, Toren opened up the cupboard and was surprised to see the paintings.
The last time he remembers, he had surrendered all these up to his butler to be presented to the colonist emperor. However, all his sheets turned out to be preserved and taken care of.
He thought, at first, that it must be the work of his butler.
But that did not seem quite plausible.
Toren concluded that the only person that could have done it must be Coen himself.
After a few more nights, Toren had heard nothing from outside, so he grew more and more weary and worried.
Soon, he decided to get out of the place as he could not wait any longer.
He tried opening up the trapdoor, but it had been locked.
Even as a ghost, he could not go through the solid walls and the floors. The materials, he thought, must have had a spiritual seal that Coen drilled to prevent him from going out.
And with such predicament, Toren was forced to stay in, locked and alone in that hideout.
Never being able to sleep or crave for anything without his flesh. He waited and waited until his patience ran out and his consciousness had finally felt drowsiness.
When he had drifted into the otherworld, he had managed to escape from the underground.
He had never seen the place so dark and dull.
Even the air was too stifled and dry.
Toren hid himself in the blocks behind the chrysanthemum flowerbeds and saw from the distance his mother Airen together with Coen.
They seemed to be having a serious conversation.
The mood felt as fragile as a sugar glass that a mere piercing noise would shatter everything. Toren remained silent, observing and listening to them.
"Please get his soul out of that place," Coen begged her. "I would do anything in exchange."
"You knew about your brother's sin and yet, you defended him?" Airen asked, sipping on a moon fluid. "Tell me, why are you so human?"
"Because I am neither like you nor him. Toren is still my brother."
"But he is really not."
"He became one."