Marwell had left, but the impact he had on me was profound. I had to make a choice: either I would stay here today and forget these events, or I would go back and face the person I feared most in this life: myself… the child I had to raise.
The necessity of confronting the past that resurfaced years later had occupied me so much that I had forgotten the letters I wrote, striving for the future. I wondered if the letter was still there, if the cheesecake made him happy, or if someone else had received the cheesecake and the letters. When the walls started closing in on me, I realized I needed to step outside again. I stared long and hard at my shoes that carried my body, brimming with all these emotions. What would they say if they were alive? Of course, since my shoes didn't speak, I stopped dramatizing and stepped outside.
As I locked the door and turned toward the stairs, I saw a pair of eyes staring at me from the neighbor's door. After my morning letter-writing ritual, I would always visit my old friend. But today, I found myself in a movie that even he had never seen.
"I waited for you, Ethan, but you didn't come."
I took a deep breath.
"I know, my friend. But…"
"She told me she searched for you a lot."
My gaze, fixed on the ground, instantly locked onto the face of director Norman. I furrowed my brows, trying to understand.
"Did she visit you?"
"She found you because of me."
I paused. As Norman invited me into his home, I felt like a stranger entering a familiar place. Just like how I left hearts that were home to me as a stranger.
I moved to the living room and began to listen to Norman with curiosity.
"About two years ago, I was coming home from the library. I noticed a tall, middle-aged man with a spark of youth in his eyes watching our apartment intently. I went home without paying much attention, but 15-20 minutes later, the same man knocked on my door."
I continued listening with curiosity but also with a fear I couldn't define.
"When I opened the door to Marwell's knock, he handed me a piece of paper with an address written on it. He was a polite and respectable gentleman. I also saw a photo of a child with the paper. When he asked if the address was correct, it felt like I was starting to understand everything."
What I heard didn't mean much to me. I was not concerned about how Marwell found me but why he did.
"Do you remember the accident, Ethan?"
I was shaken. The moments I had feared to remember for years, the ones I made a special effort to forget, had become a guilty conscience, standing before me. Another fear was that this guilt would take human form and be named Marwell.
"A long time ago…"
"For years, I directed films, tried to present different lives to people. I ran around all day, wrote scripts, read books. Sometimes I experienced events myself to write touching, attention-grabbing stories; I had to be sad. But in the end, I realized one thing, Ethan. People don't just regret what they didn't or couldn't do in life. Sometimes, what they did wraps around their neck like a snake."
Norman's accumulated worries were reflected on his face. He was trying to protect me and carefully chose his words. It felt like he was preparing me for some news.
"Isn't it strange, Ethan? Your friend searched for you for years despite you killing his mother…"
The sentence echoed in my brain.
Mother…
My friend's mother…
The accident we were involved in on graduation night…
Cheese-cheesecake…
There were three witnesses to that night, but now even Norman had become a guest to the celebration that ended in blood. I was filled with unknown emotions, and my hands no longer looked as clean to my eyes. Everything was red. Everything was bright red.
"On our graduation night, we had gone out for dinner with our families. It was also Marwell's brother's birthday that day, and being families and children who enjoyed fun, it was a reason to celebrate that night. Marwell's father had made a reservation at a very luxurious restaurant. He was a respected, wealthy businessman."
I was telling someone the events I had accumulated inside me for years, pouring out my heart. But at this point, Norman interrupted me.
"You drank a lot in honor of graduation and convinced your family to stay at Marwell's that night. Spending time with your best friend and feeling close to the girl you loved appealed to you. On the way home, you managed to persuade Marwell's father to drive the car. But on the way, you craved cheesecake, and the journey home started to extend. Marwell's mother told you she wanted to get home early and knew a delicious cheesecake recipe, but you didn't listen and started looking for a bakery. You were very drunk, and because your body wasn't used to it, you felt bad. The car you were driving went off the road and…"
"That cursed night, Marwell's mother paid for my craving for cheesecake with her life."
Norman had summed up the night in a few sentences. Everything had happened in the blink of an eye, and after that night, the families had separated and never visited each other again.
"You know, Ethan, I love you like my own son. I would do anything to protect you."
For him to protect me, there first needed to be a danger threatening me. With his riddle-like talk, Norman was adding new thoughts to the thoughts that had turned into a swamp over the years, perhaps without even realizing it.
"Okay, son, I don't want you to look at me with such cold eyes. Marwell's father was after you to take revenge for that night, and that's why Marwell started looking for you before he did."
With an amusing laugh, I said, "His father is very powerful. Maybe there are armed men at my door right now." Norman maintained his seriousness.
"Ethan, he was looking for you and bequeathed finding you to his son after him."
Had Marwell's father died then? But he was a very powerful man. His name made the ground tremble, and people feared him. Even though a gentle heart beat beneath his tough image, he didn't want to show it outwardly. But the accident that happened that day seemed to have changed us all. One way or another, being guilty of killing a person meant the dictionary definition of a murderer. Ethan, that little boy, I was a murderer. My name, me, Marwell's cars, his father, even the cheesecake recipe had changed. The only thing that hadn't changed for years was the bloody, lively, rainy, deserted taste of the cheesecake.
We were both silent for a while. Norman's words intensified my feeling of fear and began to warn me. Either I would confront Marwell now, or the burden of the years would continue to be my enemy for many more years. The thing to do was simple.
I took an address with Marwell's address written from Norman. The address was far from my childhood, close to that night. Tomorrow, I would find Marwell first thing and settle accounts. Perhaps I should give Marwell the opportunity to extinguish the fire of revenge his father had bequeathed to him. I took a deep breath. After years, the longing was ending. Perhaps with a confrontation, perhaps with death. It was a cursed question, the answer to which only Marwell knew.