As the Crows Fall | ONC 2020 Grand Winner

xiii | Follow the Crows

| | |

The warehouse is abandoned.

Empty tables litter the landscape, the concrete walls wiped clean. Stubs of chalk lie at wayward positions throughout the room, vines and woods reclaiming the warehouse once more. Its yawning mouth is much too similar to a cave Ruwei once knew so well before.

Ruwei kneels before the warehouse, the cotton of her long navy blue sweater flowing with her motion, soft wind tangling her hair. She touches the dirt at her feet. It's dry dirt. Loose dirt. Everything about this place has been excavated from the inside out, thrown up, blown out, shaken so violently that nothing is left behind.

The dirt is unperturbed and free. It's as if no footsteps have trampled it, as though no wheelchair rolled over it, much like no one has ever been here before. This is not a place abandoned. It is a place that was empty to begin with.

There is a note on the table at the center of the room. She walks carefully to the table and takes it between trembling fingers, reading it by the dying light of dusk.

'Killing me won't bring her back, but perhaps, I am the last piece of your puzzle. Is this one you want to complete?'

Ruwei lowers the note and stares out the high bay doors, looking out over the city.

Ruyue stands at her shoulder. This is what you want, isn't it?

Ruwei swallows against the tears that threaten.

No, Ruwei wants to tell her. No, I simply want you back.

She looks down and crumples the note in her hand. She lets it drop on the floor as she walks to the edge of the warehouse.

What now?

She hasn't caught Mu'en, not yet, but she knows there's a part of him that wants to be caught. He wants to be taken and tortured and destroyed for all he's done, through his men even if not directly, and the knowledge that the guilt will eat him alive is almost enough to sustain Ruwei for now.

She drops into a crouch at the lip of the platform in front of the warehouse, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth as a sob rises unbidden at the back of her throat.

What now? What now, after all you've done?

She kneels there, swallowing back tears, quietly watching the empty city as the sun falls in the sky. Ruyue sits beside her. She says nothing because she has nothing to say.

Slowly, Ruwei reaches into her pocket and pulls out the list of names she's carried for years. She runs a finger down the list. She's gotten a number of them, but not all. Not even close. But these names hardly matter anymore.

She glances about and freezes. A crow stands on the warehouse edge a few paces away.

Ruwei blinks.

It tilts its head.

Ruwei looks around, gaze sweeping the empty landscape, but this crow is the only one. It flies to her, landing on her knee, and she realizes that it is holding something of a wretched shade of pink in its foot. She tugs the thing free only to find that it is a Daisy Duck lighter.

She clenches it tightly as she glances about, slow paranoia creeping up her spine.

But she is alone. There is no one else here.

Just a single crow, a lighter, two folded pieces of paper and the ghost of a dead girl. Ruwei breathes a sigh of relief and pretends she doesn't wish that there was someone else here. Anyone. A sibling. A friend. An enemy.

But there is only the ghost of her sister.

Ruyue watches Ruwei with reproachful eyes.

Stop protecting me, her ghost seems to tell her. Bie baohu wo. I don't need protecting anymore.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" she whispers.

Ruyue tilts her head at the crow. It hops back to Ruwei, pushing the crumpled notes back into her hand. One list. One letter.

After a moment, Ruwei sparks the lighter and burns a paper. The list of dead names crumbles to ash about her feet.

She reads the note left by her enemy one last time, and she realizes that they aren't so different after all.

The broken, lost pieces of him have deformed into something wretched, something awful, something that somehow fits in the spaces of the pieces she lost. His lover, his loss, his pain, his burden.

His broken pieces fit perfectly where hers used to be.

And hers.

Her broken pieces. They'd grown and moulded while they were apart from her and now they fit in the spaces left by his.

It is not something whole or beautiful or good.

It is simply a reason why.

Because at the end of it all, behind all the hatred and anger and grief, they are naught but two sides of the same coin, counting fate like they do stars in the sky, hoping for a better day, a happier life, a brighter world in the shadows they call home.

Home has no place in their hearts anymore, because for people like them, home is not a where or a who.

It is a why.

It is a reason to wake up in the morning and chase the things that have stolen all they ever loved and it is pretending that once they attain it, everything will be alright again.

It can't.

It won't.

But they can pretend.

Ruwei watches the crows as she gets to her feet, revenge like a dark stain at the back of her mind, bitter or sweet, however she likes it, and hunts for the man whose lover she killed. The crows litter the warehouse now, and they take to the sky as she folds the note and tucks it in her pocket.

The sun dips to kiss the horizon.

She smiles and follows the crows.

| | | 完 | fin | | |

bie baohu wo (別保護我) - don't protect me