Once In A Blue Moon

16 Treasure

It's not time that passes, it's you, it's I.

— Rutger Kopland

☾

Aurang.

Her voice is the only echo in his head, bouncing back from every surface in his skull to his ears. It causes him raw pain in the heart and keeps him restless-- it keeps reminding him of her. Their evening together. Their every moment together. They become like ghosts in his mind, never leaving. And he has denied her something that she eventually will find out. It will bring her suffering. Her suffering will ache him too. What if she doesn't forgive him?

He absentmindedly pets his cat lying in his lap as he stare at Zimal and Larmina from the porch of his house, sitting in the lawn and busy doing something he cannot make out. Hurairah sits beside him, his son lying sleeping in his arms, being put on babysitting duty by his wife. He munches on a chocolate as he calls him.

"Mikael?"

"Yeah?"

"When are you gonna tell her then?"

"I don't know."

"Well, that sounds bad."

Mikael glances at him. "It's not easy."

"When did it become so complicated?"

"It has been since the beginning, and you know it."

Hurairah lean towards him, apprehensive, waving the chocolate bar in his face. "Are you blaming me for it?"

Mikael sighs and shakes his head, turning towards him. "Why don't you just tell me who did you make a promise to in my name?"

"I don't understand." Hurairah knits his brows in annoyance. "What is Banafsha's problem? If you hadn't married her, she would've ended up with someone like the rest of them, and she knows it."

"You're changing the topic," Mikael catches onto his trick but doesn't push it. "Apparently, she still doesn't know Aurang," he reminds him. "She knows me, and I'm not her husband for her. She thinks Aurang could be the same as them. So from her point of view, her worry is justifiable."

"She's just quick to judge, brother," Hurairah argues. "Only if she had been decent with you on your nikah night, met you, talked to you, wouldn't she have known? It's her own fault. She should be grateful she didn't end up with some rich, zeroed-character fellow from the list of useless men whose proposals her parents were considering for her before you came in the picture."

The way Hurairah is talking about Banafsha irritates his tolerance. Despite everything, she's still his wife and he cannot bear anyone raising fingers at her. Mikael bites his tongue.

"What is done is done." Hurairah reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. "I'm sorry, you certainly deserved better than her. If Mina gets to know Banafsha, she might divorce me for setting you up with her." He chuckles lightly. "But she's lucky to have you."

"I never said I'm unhappy in this relationship," Mikael clarifies.

"You don't have to. Knowing you, I know you never will-- you're unlike them. But Banafsha is one of them; she has the same blood in her veins. Honestly, I don't know how Zoraiz has turned out to be different. I just thought if he could be a good man, maybe his sister would be different too. Only if I had known..."

Qutub stretches on his lap and Mikael ruffles the cat's fur, feeling discomforted at Hurairah's constant criticism. "She's not like them," he defends her. "She's actually quite different. And besides, I thought you and Mughis were friends. You don't have to be a hypocrite and go behind their backs speaking poorly."