The Wish From Heaven | ✓

side stories | edgar

Edgar's Body

As he walks back home, Edgar can't shake away the feeling that people are looking at him.

He keeps his gaze fixed firmly ahead, no matter how much his whole body screamed at him to look down at his feet. I will always walk with my chin high. That's what his mother had taught him.

So he decides to distract himself. He does it by replaying the conversation he and Lexi had in the Literature clubroom after he woke up from sleep.

The two of them were awkward at first, but soon the ice was broken, and they began to talk about all the important things they kept avoiding before. He told her all about his life adventures as an intersex person, which she listened very attentively. Edgar realized that his worst fear didn't come true, that Lexi accepted him wholeheartedly without any question, just like Cedar did.

But that doesn't mean she would also accept him as more than a friend.

The thought makes Edgar let out a sigh. He enters the dirty alley that's been his home for the past seven years. He has gotten used to the rotten smell of poverty by now. On the way, some people wave and smile at him, which he returns as cheerfully as he can.

His mind then drifts to everything Lexi told him. She told him that she lost her older sister in a bus explosion when Lexi was just 11 years old. Her sister was on a trip from her university and the explosion happened the day she came back. It had happened right in front of Lexi's eyes. She was just a few metres away from the periphery of the explosion, and the sudden loud sound is what caused her ears to go partially deaf.

Edgar felt shocked hearing about this. He can't imagine how a scene like that would affect a child.

It was even more heartbreaking when he got to know that Lexi had a big fight with her sister the day before she left for the trip, where Lexi had told her many harsh things. "I didn't know I will never see her again", Lexi told him, and Edgar was more or less at a loss of words. After that, things became sour between her and her parents, for no particular reason.

They talked for a long time after that. The distance between their hearts seems to have reduced from just that hour-long conversation. It was good, but also bad. The closer he gets to her, the harder it will be for him to accept the fact that she doesn't like him in that way anymore.

He sighs and mutters to himself, "Everyone's going through hard lives, huh . . ." Shaking his head, he enters his house.

"Hey dad," Edgar says, walking up to his father. "What're you watching?"

Eugene Conway looks up at his son from the wheelchair. "Ah, Eds. You're home! And look, your grandpa isn't fucking letting me watch Animal Planet. Look at what shit he's watching!"

Edgar looked at the TV, where an old black and white movie, supposedly romance from the way the actor and actress are looking at each other, is playing.

Edward Conway says, "You call this shit? This is beauty! Love is beauty!"

Love is beauty, huh?

Edgar's dad shakes his head and turns back to his son. "So? What happened?"

"What would happen?"