Mob Character Z

2.24 The Mob Character Is A False Magician

However, Laurem did not give up.

As summer approached, schools across the land granted their students a reprieve, allowing them to return home for a well-deserved break. Many pupils took advantage of this opportunity to embark on adventures to exotic places, jet-setting overseas to visit far-flung relatives or seeking summer jobs to earn a bit of pocket money. Others, however, opted to remain on campus, enrolling in summer classes to complete credits or delve into advanced subjects.

For Laurem, who had no family or home to return to, this break served a different purpose entirely: to search for that elusive person who had captured his heart.

He would return to the town, asking anyone he remembered seeing before, but despite his best efforts, Laurem could not seem to locate any information about that stranger. No one in the town seemed to recall ever seeing him, which came as no surprise, given that the stranger was not a native of the area. It has been a few years too, and some traces would have been erased through the weather,

Still, there should be some information left.

How could someone be gone like that?

He tried to describe the features of that person. With only the vaguest of memories to guide him, Laurem struggled to recall any defining features that could make the search much easier. All he could conjure up were the stranger's most redeeming qualities, such as their striking eyes - a description that hardly did justice to the person's unique and captivating gaze.

Yet, every time, he will receive the shaking heads of the people while saying that they did not know any person with that kind of feature. Many times, and many more, Laurem had long grown to the numb feeling of receiving the same response all the time.

Why...

Why does it seem like this person did not exist at all?

For such a person—nobody remembered the person who has six small siblings following his footsteps, the person who would always run strange errands on the street, the person whose eyes would shimmer even on the darkest of nights—the person who should be very recognizable to everyone.

A person that should be remembered.

If not from Laurem recovering his memories, does it mean that nobody will realize the existence of that person? Will nobody realize that he is gone?

Laurem suddenly felt cold.

He had already prepared himself for the possible outcome, in the case the person he sought had already passed away. He knew he would feel a sense of loss, for meeting one's soulmate is a rare gift from fate, and losing them also means losing oneself. Still, perhaps this reunion, even in death, could offer a salve for the deep ache of his longing - the only way to quell the incessant yearning that consumed his every thought.

To find closure, even in death.

Fate is a fickle factor in this world, with its fragile strands interweaving together all the destinies of all those who dwell on it. The final release of death can occasionally turn out to be the nicer outcome, since it puts an end to the struggles and suffering of this earthly life.

Laurem would succumb to it if not for his sense of survival.

Yet for him, the notion of merely stopping to feel seemed unacceptable given the lingering "what-ifs" and the alluring prospect of a possible survival. He craved closure, he craved resolution, and he was willing to explore the far reaches of existence itself to find it.

But it will be different if that person did not exist in the first place.

What if he is just a figure he imagined?