Elin sat in a chair, lost in thought.
Grenna. The first time he heard that name from Elaine, it was a string of completely unfamiliar syllables. Jorgen claimed Elin had once uttered that name, but even though Elin didn't think Jorgen was lying, it was still hard for him to admit.
Grenna. Since that evening when he first saw Elaine, Elin had been repeating that name in his mind, hoping to find the image it belonged to in his memories. It was like tracing a long-dried riverbed along the damp imprints left in the ground. When he reprimanded Elaine in Dalia's living room, he thought, "This kid's nose looks a bit like mine. So does his mouth. His eyes... well, the eyes of a nine-year-old are too innocent to compare properly. But the blond hair definitely doesn't belong to me. Did the woman in Southshore ten years ago have beautiful blond hair? If she did, it certainly wouldn't have been as lovely as I imagine it..."
There was such a woman. Elin used the sensations he had felt from Elaine to help him piece together fragments of his memory. It was like using a stick to draw various patterns in the wet sand on the beach, much like when he saw Elaine. He used the stick to trace the shape of a woman. She wasn't very tall, and her hair was wrapped in a scarf. Without realizing it, he put a broomstick in her hand – something she often needed for her work. Elin recalled that he was in the habit of taking the broom from her hands and leaning it against the wall before embracing her. Sometimes her hands smelled of dust, and other times they smelled bitter and moist, like a cloth that had been used to clean something. That's why Elin would unconsciously take her wrist and move it away from his face.
He remembered. Grenna. – "Sow"! – No, no. Elin wanted to erase that word from his mind, both in thought and in fact, because when he was twenty-one years old, he had no knowledge of that word. Back then, although his injury no longer hindered his movement, he did everything he could to stay in the hospital. Who didn't like extra leave? But Southshore was, in the end, a poor, dull, and fishy-smelling place. Perhaps this was why Elin read that name on her name tag the first time he saw the temporary worker, looking for an excuse to start a conversation. At that time, he was sitting on a boring hospital bed with the sunlight from the window behind his head, making the back of his neck warm. The patient in the bed next door had been discharged, and Grenna had come to collect the sheets. While she was doing this, she had no idea that Elin was staring at her.
"Hello, I wanted to ask," Elin said.
She turned around and didn't say anything.
"What's wrong with him?" Elin gestured toward the empty bed in the next room. He had known that the neighbor had been discharged; now he just needed an excuse to start a conversation.
"I'm not sure," she said. "The doctor asked me to tidy up this bed."
"I hope he's recovering and going home."
"Maybe," she replied, and then turned to leave.
"Grenna, is that your name?" Elin said. "I saw it on your name tag."
She stopped, looking a bit embarrassed. "Yes, sir."
"The first time I've seen you."
"I'm just a temporary worker, sir."
Elin studied her carefully. She wasn't particularly pretty, but she'd do as a companion during his temporary leave. After all, Elin couldn't drink, or the doctor would find a reason to send him away, claiming that he was already healed. This narrowed his options; he couldn't go to a bar. So, he decided to use his patient uniform as a theme and concocted a poor joke. She laughed, and that was the beginning of it all. Elin's secret to pursuing women was making them laugh sixty percent of the time, acting like a self-assured rascal thirty-five percent of the time, and being the genuine self five percent of the time. This strategy almost never failed, and even if he occasionally encountered setbacks, his ego had a ninety-five percent chance of avoiding a hit.
"Will you come here often from now on?" he said.
"I don't know. I can't enter the ward without the doctor's permission."
"Grenna, do you know how terrible the nurses here are?"
"I'm not sure... I shouldn't say, sir."
"They're awfully rude, as if they're deliberately trying to ruin the patients' mood. Maybe that's the doctor's strategy to keep us from getting better quickly. It's the opposite with you. Talking to you makes me feel much better. Perhaps that's why the doctor doesn't want you in the ward."
"I can't say for sure."
"If I go downstairs for a walk, can I see you? I'm also a stranger here, stuck in the hospital with no visitors; it's not pleasant."
"Maybe," she said, "I have to water the flower beds in the afternoon."
"Alright. The doctor is coming, and I have to pretend to be asleep. See you next time, Grenna."
Elin had never thought that he could recall this incident with such clarity. He began to wonder if some of it was a product of his imagination blending with reality. For instance, he remembered that Grenna had initially been rather shy but relaxed significantly after he revealed himself as an outsider. Maybe she was looking for an outsider, so as not to attract trouble – this was a subjective addition that Elin had made to the atmosphere during their conversation, based on the information Panzi had revealed about Grenna's "identity."
But that didn't matter. Elin scratched his knee. He continued to remember.
What happened next wasn't much different from what he had anticipated, and it wasn't much different from the brief encounters he'd had with women before and after Grenna. It was just one woman, and one mistake. But after he jumped down from the tree branches where he could see Elaine and returned home, Elin couldn't sleep. Grenna. A person who had briefly existed ten years ago. Someone who, at some point, had given birth to a child for him and then died. When he couldn't sleep, he remembered more.
Elin recalled once telling Grenna a joke, and she said, "I think I've heard you say this before. You must have said it. You just changed a few words, right?"
"What?" Elin said. He didn't know how to react because what Grenna said was true. He had a bunch of jokes specifically designed to charm women, and he'd replace key words based on the other person's interests. Of course, he made sure not to say the same lines to the same person. These jokes were like clown masks that he could randomly pull out and wear. But this time, he made a mistake.
"No, I haven't," Elin said.
"When I was a child," Grenna said, "I had a friend. He wanted to become a comedian, so he practiced the same joke every day. You've done that too, right?"
Elin should have said "no" and then staunchly denied it. However, his five percent self emerged at the most inappropriate moment.
"Well," he said, "you've caught me."
"Tell me more about it."
She moved closer to him, and he noticed that her gaze at that moment was earnestly searching for something. It wasn't infatuation, and it wasn't confusion. She was waiting for an answer, one that should honestly convince her.
"I never thought about becoming a comedian," Elin said. "But I did practice telling jokes."
"Why?"
"As a child, on my way home from the village school, I would often encounter groups of local kids. You see, my family owns a large ranch... so I had quite a bit of pocket money."
"Did they give you a hard time?"
"Sort of... anyway, to keep your pocket money safe, the best way was to make friends with these kids. So I thought about how to make them laugh. Then this habit slowly formed."
"And then it slowly turned into a tool for making girls happy?"
"I don't know. Probably. I happened to discover that girls liked it when I told jokes."
Elin had never told anyone this story. He looked at her, feeling an indescribable sense of relief and exhilaration, but at the same time, he was uneasy. He was afraid that he would say more to her. She should have just been a temporary companion during his extended leave – outsiders and temporary workers, a perfect match! There was no reason for either of them to linger, right?
He continued to think. One night, they were lying on the grass outside the hospital. This was something the hospital didn't allow, but they didn't care. He asked, "Why did you come to Southshore?"
It was a question that shouldn't be asked too late. You should ask it either right at the beginning of the acquaintance or never, as it was equivalent to inquiring about the other person's future plans. Elin wouldn't admit to breaking the rules of short-lived romances, but he had naturally asked, without embarrassment or regret. Perhaps it was just an exchange of understanding – Grenna had learned about his secret childhood stories, so he should know more.
She didn't answer for a long time. Elin, ten years later, also took a long time to remember what she had said.
"For some wrong reasons," Grenna said, looking at him. "But I don't care about those reasons anymore."
At that time, Elin knew she was trying to hide something. So what? Maybe he was hiding more himself.
"Can't I know those reasons?"
"No need," she said. "Why don't you tell me about your ranch? What do you do there?"
"I take care of the sheep, milk them, and shear their wool. That's most of what I do, but I hate it, especially milking."
"There must be something you like?"
"There is... sadly, milking is actually a love-hate kind of job for me. Anyway, it's the first step in making cheese, and that's my favorite food."
"Really? I hardly ever see you eat cheese."
"That's because there's no cheese that can compare to the flavor produced by the Tias family. I'm serious. I tried some cheese from Southshore once, what was it called? Fermented with rat urine during the process?"
"You're disgusting."
"But it's not an exaggeration." He took her hand and patted his chest. "I shouldn't be talking about this. It reminds me that I haven't had Tias family cheese in years."
"Since it's a family recipe, you should know how to make it yourself."
"Yeah, I do..." Elin thought for a moment and continued, "I remember the entire process, even though the old man wouldn't let me get involved. I really remember, Grenna."
"Then you can make it for yourself."
"But I hate milking."
"You're really quite foolish. You can buy the ingredients."
"Good idea. Maybe I could open a cheese shop, in a big city, and spread the reputation of Tias cheese."
"Then everyone will know how delicious it is. Its flavor won't just stay in your head."
"Yes. And I can eat it every day. That would be great."
"Would you really do that? I mean, become a cheesemaker?"
"Certainly, I'm not just saying it. I'll be the biggest cheese merchant in Stormwind."
"Tias Cheese Shop?"
"That's right, Tias Cheese Shop."
"Elin," she sat up.
"What?"
"It's too late. I need to go."
Elin couldn't remember what happened next. He just knew that Grenna disappeared the next day. As a temporary worker from out of town, the hospital had no reliable information on her. A week later, Elin left Southshore as well.
He never lied to Grenna about being the "big cheese merchant in Stormwind." Although he had initially been confused because of what Elaine had said about her mother, Elin believed in his memories. He had just shared his dreams with her.
Elin thought, if only 5% of him was his true self when interacting with women, then, with a hundred women, perhaps he could be open with five? But even if he could, he probably wouldn't talk to them about cheese. No one could hear those words from Elin Tias except Grenna. A simple reason, time. He was 21 then, and now he was past the age of saying, "I'm going to be the biggest cheese merchant." Maybe no one could ever replace her. How they initially met didn't matter.
He stood up and moved backward to avoid the fresh blood pooling at his feet, which had flowed from Panzi's slit throat.
All his memories pointed to one thing - he had to kill Panzi. When Grenna told Elaine that "Elin can be a reliable cheese merchant," it was to comfort her daughter and hope that Elin would achieve that dream. Since they would never meet again, what harm was there in such beautiful imaginings? But Panzi was trying to use all this. When Elin first heard Joe say, "I'll leave him to you," he hadn't thought of killing Panzi; he just wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible. He believed Panzi wouldn't dare cause trouble anymore. But as the memories became clearer, it was inevitable. Elin had never been so relieved to have the courage and means to kill someone. Maybe the means were too good, and that's why Panzi didn't seem to suffer much.
Panzi should have suffered. For standing by while the poison killed the frail Grenna, for damaging Elaine's hands, and for trying to extort me through Elaine. They were women I loved, and our daughter. Elin hated himself for realizing this so late.
He left the body in the house and then left. He thought about how to clean up a bedroom at home for Elaine's return.