A year passed and winter was there again. She had, Ruhi, at that moment completely recovered.
One evening, while she was coming home from shopping, she passed by the children's park which had only been open for a few weeks; the first time she had taken this route was to accompany a colleague of Salim who had come to see her. But since then, she's taken this path especially at this hour, for some reason.
She walks on the other side of the park, she looks out of the corner of her eye at the person installed in a small shelter. She sees him sitting still today, he is discreet, he seems to be sleeping...
She is intrigued by this gentleman for some reason. She arrives at the pedestrian crossing, and must continue straight, but she stops.
The pedestrian badge is first red then green, the other pedestrians cross, she always remains standing; before finally crossing.
Once on the other side, she walks to the storefront and enters it. She walks vigilantly around between the rides to the shelter.
During her advance, she still saw the man sleeping, and could see that he was younger than she thought, he must not have been more than 25 years old.
Now that she is in front of the shelter, she does not see him. He left. She is lowered in front of the entrance and when she tries to get up she feels a blade on her back; She stops.
"Raise your hands slowly and stand up," the young man told him.
She smiles. She turns to face him, she is absolutely not frightened but even amused.
" Who are you ? Why have you been spying on me for weeks?"
"Calm down my beautiful. I wanted to be sure of one thing."
He is on his guard, his gaze stern
" What thing ?"
Ruhi stares at him, smiling
"That you are a muzhara".
*
Ruhi stares him straight in the eyes waiting for an answer but he doesn't answer her. She then suspects that he must not be aware of being one. She is however certain that his muzhara is active, he must have activated it unconsciously. But she has something more urgent to do.
The blade still pointed at her
"You shouldn't play with that, you know?"
"Answer me, why are you spying on me?"
She thinks that he managed to feel her from so far, would it be thanks to his power or is he just gifted?
"How did you know that?"
He does not answer
" OK." She better answer it, she told herself. "I wasn't spying on you, not really. I saw that you had been hiding here for a while, it made me curious"
She smiled at him nervously, but he was still staring at her sternly.
"If you noticed my presence, you have good instincts, so you know I mean you no harm, right?"
After a few changed looks, he lowers the blade and puts it back in its case. He goes to sit down and sighs for her to go home. Ruhi watches him sit on the bench behind him without another word. He is sitting with his hands clasped on his forehead, his eyes closed.
Ruhi comes to sit next to him, she doesn't say anything at the moment, she lets a few seconds pass.
"Did you run away from home?"
"What can it do to you?"
" I'm asking you !"
"I told you to go home," he whispers irritably. He gets up and goes to the shelter where he was hiding. He remains standing, one foot kicking frantically as if in a hurry, but Ruhi mostly senses stress.
She then looks at the ground, her gaze more tender.
"I won't tell anyone that I saw you, no one will know you're there" but she realizes that's not what bothered him. He is still standing, his leg does not stop. She stares at him closer, her gaze focused on the entrance to the park, one hand on the lower part of her face while he clutches his sweater with the other.
He is afraid of something but what? The park is empty, no one would come at this time, especially in winter. He's probably chased, but if he's been around so long he knows how to get by, so why is he suddenly so stressed? He would have…
"He would be afraid for me?" she thinks. It makes her laugh. "He gotta be kidding me..." She wipes a tear from her tearful eye.
She leaves her shopping on the bench and gets up, the boy still looking at the entrance is there, turning towards Ruhi with clenched fists who is standing straight, eyes closed and after a moment and a long breath, she dances fists, a ball of surprisingly well-executed techniques.
He watches her demonstrate, he sees Ruhi's eyes burning. She performs it wonderfully, he sees Ruhi's body, her face, ignite: she is in full swing. He doesn't know what it does to him when he's completely absorbed.
She ends her performance with a dazzling right fist and lets her arm stretch out before holding herself straight and taking a big breath of air; his gaze immediately becomes serene again. She smiles as always, and comes back to sit down.
He watches her sit down without a word.
Now he has his fists opening and closing, his eyes shining as he gazes at her, he fills with a palpable longing, but eventually he just calms down.
Ruhi is sweating slightly, but she is calm and smiling. For a moment she is simply in the enjoyment of her effort and then she comes back to herself.
She takes her shopping and gets up. He always looks at her
"I won't bother you anymore, I just wanted to make sure of one thing, done. Take care of yourself!"
He watches her leave without another word. He sees her back silhouette receding, he sees long white hair, things he thinks he's never seen, hanging in a ponytail. Does he continue to feel what he feels when she is already gone, and when he turns back, he sees a plastic bag on the bench.
He takes it after staring at it for a moment, and find out fruits inside, persimmons, pasta on which he lingers. "How am I supposed to prepare this?" he thinks before picking up a persimmon and eating for the first time in two days.
*
Ruhi arrives at home, she goes inside, takes her shoes off and arrives at the kitchen where she finds Salim.
" Good evening "
"You take a long time, did you take a detour?" Salim peels an orange near the trash can
Ruhi approaches the kitchen table and drops the groceries "yes, let's say I met a new acquaintance" she starts to put them away
" Again? Be careful not to hang out with everyone you met"
" Yes again ! Don't worry, this one has the potential to become a really good friend."
Salim holds the orange ready for tasting and goes to rest against the work table while eating his orange.
Salim has more white hair, he has taken a few wrinkles which give him more charm, but which shows more that he is getting older.
"I bought you tomato juice"
" Thank you that's nice !"
"Seriously, how do you manage to drink that?"
"I don't know myself, let's say that... here it is"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know, the reason would just be the act"
"You start to philosophize again"
Salim smiles
"No, no, no, that's just it"
"You don't end your sentences there!"
" Sure i did! These are my thoughts that I do not finish. Tell me instead…"
Ruhi is done, she comes over and kisses him
"Don't ask me what I'm going to do, I don't want anything more than what's being done there"
"It is necessary that…"
"Would you let me go if I decided to leave?"
They look at each other. Salim mine suddenly tight. Ruhi walks over and holds his hand
"Don't agree to act like I should have a normal life, I told you before, I'm special, I can afford it."
She shakes his hands and when she understands that he has understood, she lets go and heads for the stairs, cheerfully adding "plus I'm much smarter than the average person, I'll be able to succeed in everything I do."
Salim smiles again and when she's gone, he swallows a wedge of orange, whispering to himself "You're right, but intelligence by his definition is far from the most useful weapon there- outside" his eyes are stern: those of resurfacing memories.
*
Ruhi comes out of the shower and finds Lisa lying on her bed. She is still wearing her school clothes and has her backpack hastily thrown on the floor. Her arms are wide open, as if she were crucified. Her slovenly look looks good on her face in a lovely marriage with her "white" charm she calls it. Ruhi thinks she has the beauty of the flame of authority. Ruhi smiles, she looks at her and uses Reina's memories in her own way to form her own appreciation.
She realizes that both: Reina and Ruhi have fallen in love with Lisa. She remembers that at the beginning when still confused for her new arrival in this true world, driving her intermediate body of palpable senses, when she feared her own existence, fearing this world, these people whatever acknowledging a strong respect for them, she found herself fearing Lisa above all. Not that Lisa suspected the trick, but that she was clairvoyant, and was a strong character from which came a humanity, a focus of sweets emotions that sounded at this moment for her to call her forced to fit in. Rubbing shoulders with Lisa, this sweetness, is accepted to succumb to the goods of this world and appropriate them but by what right?
But the more time passes, the more the body and its senses demand their instincts. She understood not to appreciate Lisa, but something more obvious is that Reina's message came back to her: "what is, is. She reminded herself that she was and that was enough. So she allowed herself to approach Lisa and discovered the charming flavors.
Since then, it is more obvious to her her stay with them.
She looks at Lisa again before going to change.
Is posed in front of her a photo of the girls on the evening of the birthday.
Ruhi came to find it there, and when she was rearranging the room, she took out all of Reina's stuff except this picture, she doesn't know why. Every time she looks at this photo she tries to find what can inspire her so that she doesn't want to take it off but nothing comes to her. But she knows it speaks to her.
She no longer thinks about it and goes back to changing and it knocks on her door. It's Frida
"Are you okay, is it me?"
"Yes, I'll be down in a minute"
" OK. Have you seen Lisa?"
" She fell asleep "
" It's not true ? She sighs "I told her to come and call you"
"Mission failed"
"That girl… well I'm down."
" OK. "
Ruhi is particularly smiling, happy with an idyllic situation that comes with a bizarre idea: she finds it very strange to say to herself "I feel like home" for a muzhara, it's new! But no matter, the days are happy.
*
The night is far too cold that evening in his shelter; he freezes silently, he only has his clothes and his patience to keep him warm. The plastic bag is placed behind him, he is lying on his side, his head resting on his arm. His face says he's still thinking, who knows what.
The fact that Ruhi puts a blanket next to him with other plastic bags does not bother him, he pretends that it is nothing. Ruhi sits cross-legged on the ground near the entrance to the shelter. She rubs her hands to warm them and steams out of her mouth.
"Niamey is getting colder and colder, they say, I never really knew, never really knew" she does it again. "How do you survive this for weeks?"
His silence does not decide to break but Ruhi is there with her own intentions, she is particularly happy, something makes her very happy.
" Oh yes !" She barely enters the shelter, she takes a small box from which she takes out a small gas stove, another from which she takes out a kettle which she fills with water.
The young man hears the gas stove turn on, the water fill the kettle and then the latter whistles. Then the smell of hot chocolate takes hold of his nostrils. Despite himself, he is filled with nostalgia.
Ruhi puts the cup down next to him before going back to where it was.
She smells the cup which intoxicates her with its perfume which she inhales after which she takes a sip, she feels good, and also feels nostalgic; she takes a second sip.
How beautiful she is, Ruhi.
She smiles at the stars that inspire her.
"Do you know the tale of the water child?"
The young man does not answer her.
Once upon a time, in a forgotten era, there was a boy born to a weaver and a shoemaker father, who knew from his fathers and mothers only enjoyment, love, and tenderness. He was an intelligent, affectionate child, loving his fathers and mothers, but above all eminently curious; whatever he didn't understand, he asked his parents until neither of them could answer him any more, so he began to imagine his answers on his own. They were far from any society so it was not possible to enroll him in a school. He was taught all the same about writing and reading. What he did was to write down in a language that he created, to write down each of his knowledge. When he came of age, his own knowledge was such that he could have written an encyclopedia. But now he could go to town, he said goodbye to his parents and went in search of knowledge. He didn't want to come back until many years later. He then only found, on his return, the bones of his parents devoured by the wolves. In front of this scene, he had the immense revelation: he remembered that when he left, his parents were old, very old. Without him, who could take care of them, protect them? He had returned home to tell his parents that his trip had only served to make him understand that his objective was not knowledge but his quest; what he liked was to look for it with them, what he had always kept was this nostalgia. But he could not understand it soon enough, so taken with regret, he drowned with his tablets in the river making his knowledge disappear with him.
"But the first question" says Ruhi "is that if the story is true, how do we know it if not by having learned it, and the stories are learned in the mouths and in the writings. So, have we read it or heard it, what do you think?"
She has a distant gaze, the silence persists, nothing is heard until he comes out with his cup which he hands to Ruhi. She looks at him.
"Add more," he finally said.
Both are seated, cups in hand. He takes a sip.
"You just made this story up"
" Yes "
He too has a distant gaze, but he has never been so calm, serene… he finally seems to be able to calm down, to fear nothing.
"I am not like this child; I am no one and neither looking for anything"
"You don't have to tell me"
"I'm not saying be" he takes another sip before now mimicking harshness, he immerses himself in the beginning of everything.