I became a child no one wanted. Soon enough, I was sent to the orphanage, along with my helpless pigeons, to grow up quietly in the shadows. Memories of my officer father and beautiful mother clung to me, fragile and fading.
Then, one day, I went blind. A sudden case of meningitis took my vision, blurring the world, filling my head with aching darkness. Until I saw nothing at all.
I was terrified, but I never cried. Stubbornly, I kept on living, my pigeons my only company. When night fell, there was nothing left to see, no traces of the world around me. Life was quiet. No one called me "Little Ben" anymore…
Then, I met Hong. It was in that old orphanage, the one built by a French benefactor. She'd already been there a long time, knowing every caregiver, every dusty corner of the place.
She was beautiful. She reminded me of my mother, who had left me behind. I didn't hate her; in fact, I found myself missing the woman who once filled our home with calla lilies.
Hong was gentle, fragile—a trace of sadness always lingering in her eyes. I could only hope that the man who took my mother away could give her the happiness she had been searching for.
The elderly headmistress led me, her rough hands guiding mine, down the long, dim Gothic corridors. This would be my home. I clutched my last remaining pigeon, following her hesitantly, my eyes drawn to the unknown plants that grew wild in the courtyard.
The other children stopped playing to look at me, their faces filled with something between curiosity and hostility.
At the end of the hall, I saw Hong waiting. She sat in the alcove, folding small paper stars in her hands, watching as I drew near. When she smiled, her teeth showed, bright and kind.
The headmistress called my name, "Little Ben." Hong heard and repeated it softly, "Ben," just as my father once had, in some long-lost memory.
Hong came forward, took my hand, and led me past the children's curious eyes. Her expression was calm but gentle. Later, I became the sickly child, eyes closed to a world I would never see again.
She would take me from the dim rooms, leading me outside into the warmth of the sun. She told me stories—of the orphanage, the seasons, and the plants that grew in its garden.
Slowly, I grew to depend on her. Hong was like a plant in the night, steady and quietly strong. Years later, we would leave that orphanage together. Hong became my anchor, and we fell in love. That year, she was sixteen, and I was fourteen.
Life stretched long and slow before us, and the flowers kept blooming.
Later, Lola asked, "Have you been here a long time?"
"Yes," I said. "I've been here for as long as I can remember."
Now that he had eaten, his calm had returned, and he seemed ready to talk. I noticed his injured arm and suggested he take a moment to find some bandages and medicine, to tend to his wound.
The pigeons were still restless, pecking at the floor. Outside, the clouds hung low and heavy with the heat, thick enough to make me thirsty. I heard the bandages tear, the furniture shift heavily, filling the room with a chorus of muted sounds.
"Does it hurt?" I asked, my voice soft, sensing a strange unease.
He didn't answer, as if waiting for me to continue.
"You know, with this heat, I think it's going to rain soon," I murmured.
He stayed silent, perhaps watching my unseeing eyes, or studying the room, which might have seemed overly bright to him.
Not long after, a woman moved in downstairs. Hong told me she was single, or perhaps divorced. She wore an antique jade bracelet on her wrist, a relic from another time. It gave her a faded elegance.
Each day, she stood by her door, watching people come and go. Her face was blank, sometimes casting a mocking look at others' clothes, muttering about the damp and darkness in this old building.
Hong would wash my hair every few days, using a shampoo with a faint fragrance that reminded me of calla lilies. Her fingers moved gently through my hair, lathering it into soft, warm foam, sunlight glinting like rainbows across my closed eyes.
Hong said the woman was pitiful, not especially beautiful, always standing in her doorway, listening to others' conversations about food prices and the day's events, a quiet fear in her eyes. She always stroked her bracelet, as though it held some secret meaning for her. I wondered if it was a dowry, a promise, or something else.
At night, she'd turn her record player up loud, dancing through the night—often a waltz, until everyone grew weary of her.
Hong was right. She was a sad woman, though beyond that, she was simply fragile.
"Who is Sarah? And what happened to your arm?" I sipped my water, finally asking the question that had lingered on my mind.
Lola's face grew dark. Slowly, he began to tell me about her. As he spoke, I felt an urgent need for him to leave.
I couldn't make out Lola's movements, only the quiet sorrow in his voice as he spoke, lost in his story, as if to himself.
"Sarah… she was the deepest love I ever knew. We went to the same school, but we were in different classes. She studied engineering—brilliant, beautiful. I switched to literature, drawn closer to her, yet always separated by the distance of that choice.
They always said I was a moody child. Quiet, reserved. I would sit there, folding paper planes, watching others ride by on bicycles, carefree and reckless, only to tumble and fall, wheels spinning.
Sarah, though, would stand by the window, gazing at the distant forest and sea. And I… I'd be in the courtyard, counting the squares in the ground—one, two, three…
Two people. One looking out from above, another lost below in solitary games. Our youth was like cherry blossoms, vivid but quiet. She loved those red-and-white flowers and once told me, 'Bamboo only blooms in sadness.'
We fell in love, naturally. We wrote long letters, shared simple thoughts. Destiny seemed to chart our paths. She went on to study her beloved engineering and got into a respectable university. I drifted like a stubborn, silent boy, roaming under the sunlight in worn sneakers, holding a paintbrush, finding freedom in fields overgrown with wild grass, letting plants climb the bare hills.
I was a troublemaker. But none of you would know.
Once, I watched a cat fall from a high rooftop and remembered what my grandmother said: Cats have nine lives; they don't die. Then, one day, Sarah left me, just like that cat, falling from a height, beyond my sight forever.
She followed another man, one who didn't smoke, didn't drink, his calm so steady it seemed almost dangerous. I feared that his quiet would take the light from her. Slowly, he became a thorn in my side. The thought of killing him began to grow within me, like a bitter root.
I found a rusty knife buried in a pile of old things. Rain had left blotches, pits of rust, like blood marks dried on flesh. Many times, I held it in my sleeve, watching them pass by, their faces oblivious, as the urge for blood grew within me.
Finally, one day, I broke into their little house.
He was cooking in the kitchen, and Sarah was at the basin, washing fresh vegetables. They looked so happy. In that instant, I knew I'd made a mistake. But it was too late—they had noticed me. Their shouts only made my headache worse, a noise that scraped at my mind.
Even so, I drove the knife into the man with the apron. The rusty blade sank deep into his heart, so deep I never pulled it out. His eyes closed gently, no pain. He looked like a kind man.
Perhaps… I had killed the wrong person.
Sarah fell back, her body sinking to the floor, staring at me with wide, shocked eyes. The whole thing must have seemed like a nightmare to her. She looked at me, dazed, as if she didn't recognize me or understand what had just happened.
An odd relief washed over me. My headache dulled. My throat felt dry, and I thought of the cool water waiting at home. I turned, opening the door. Outside, sunlight poured down, fierce and bright, the air sharp, clean. Clouds filled the sky, as red as cherry blossoms.
Then she picked up a kitchen knife and struck my arm.
The pain was sharp, blood welling up and spilling down. I turned to see her, but she still didn't know who I was.
As if it was all only a terrible, waking dream."
After Lola finished telling me everything, a deep exhaustion settled over me. It was already the second evening. The sun sank lazily into the distant steel forest of the city, swallowed by the remnants of twilight.
Four days had passed. Four days since he stumbled into my home, since he ate, patched his wounds, and began slowly unraveling this tale.
Strangely, in all this time, I hadn't eaten. I hadn't even felt hunger. Water became my only source of strength. And memory—memory that lingered like a shadow, impossible to shake.
Lola kept talking, his words trailing in the air. He spoke of the sunlight after the killing—so blinding he couldn't make out the road, the trees, just as I couldn't see them now.
He kept asking me, almost pleading, "Do you think Sarah will hate me? Will she lose herself because of what I've done?"
He gripped my shoulders, his fingers trembling, his chest rising and falling in broken breaths. His glass slipped from his hand, shattering on the floor, water pooling, shards ringing through the silence.
For a brief moment, I sensed his fear, raw and wild. Just a boy, trembling.
And in that instant, images of my lost love, Hong, and my dead father surfaced—soft memories, ghostly echoes. They had called me "Little Ben," like the gentle chime of broken glass, warm, and fleeting in the silent night.
Hong had promised to return tonight. She'd told me to wait, just as I'd done countless times before. She had always been good to me, gentle, like when we were young, when she would hold my hand, guiding me through dark corridors to toss paper stars into the air.
She'd smile, that tender light in her eyes, and press a kiss to my face, as if filling me with memories of light.
And my mother… she, too, had left, taken away to a distant city, to somewhere my old life could no longer reach her.
Leaving had been her only choice.
She'd pace between rooms, restless, unable to settle, her heart at odds with my father's cheap cigarettes, her nights stolen by sleeplessness. And yet, in the morning, she'd sit, arranging flowers—calla lilies, delicate and pale, the only things she seemed to love.
My father had been like Lola. Impulsive. Driven by sudden instincts.
Only Lola was alive.
My father had died alone, in a small, dim motel, surrounded by the clatter of trains, near the river that had witnessed his youth. His absence stretched on in silence, unnoticed, for a long, long time.
A cold dread filled me, pressing against my chest. I needed to get this blood-stained boy out. Urgently, frantically, I shoved him, whispered, "Run… you have to leave… now."
The woman downstairs had seen him. She'd cast me a strange, chilling smile before vanishing into the shadows. Now, her nightly music, her restless heels were silent.
Perhaps she was gone. Or perhaps she knew, knew he was a killer and was already on her way to the police.
"They'll come for you soon," I told him, my voice hoarse, fading. My legs gave out beneath me, my body sliding to the floor. The darkness thickened around me, cool and dense, seeping through the cracks, wrapping me in its chill.
In the distance, the faint wail of sirens grew, inching closer.
They were coming. The woman had laughed.
"Lola… run." My hands reached for the air, grasping blindly, like a madman grasping at life's last threads.
Lola staggered toward the door, his steps chaotic, slipping. Maybe he'd escape. Or maybe he'd fall to the wild, scattered bullets.
Above, the ceiling light swung, teetering, held only by the loosest of threads. The wind rattled its edges, pushing it to the brink.
I felt something in me crack, and I yelled toward the window, my voice raw, desperate, "Lola, run!"
Then, in one final tremor, the light fell. It crashed against my head, a jolt of pain so sharp it cut through my blindness.
In that instant, I could see again.
I saw the blood—a vibrant, vivid red, blooming in the darkness, and I thought it was beautiful.