#50

As if the previous struggle had been a joke, Tennessee instantly overpowered Amber, who was larger in build.

Exhaling rough breaths, Tennessee, his face distorted with a terrifying intensity, pinned the protesting Amber down. After swiftly pulling down Amber’s pants, he directly checked the thing that had caught his fingertips.

“These are self-harm scars.”

“They’re not.”

“They are clearly cut scars.”

“They’re not…”

“Look with your own eyes and tell me! You know it yourself! If this isn’t self-harm, then what is it?!”

“Why do you think I did it?!”

Unable to win, resentment erupted from Amber’s throat.

What burst from his throat was not simple anger and passion. It was the wounds and love-hate that had festered and burst over time.

Finally, he dragged out the anger that had been stained like a blot on his very foundation. Why on earth did you do that? Why did you leave me? Along with handprints stamped in tears.

“You said you wouldn’t abandon me, you said you’d let me know when you left! You acted so superior, so look at what you actually did!”

After reassuring someone with such words.

“Have you even imagined how I felt when you disappeared? I wondered if I should just try dying, if then you’d come find me; I kept telling myself not to have such stupid thoughts, but I still collapsed…”

“I didn’t leave…”

He hadn’t even imagined it. Tennessee let out a long sigh, like a great lament. He knew he had caused a wound, but he hadn’t realized that as a result, something inside Amber had been destroyed—that Amber had come to treat a piece of himself, one he could never find again, as something cheap and disposable.

Among the scars caught beneath his fingertips, there were new wounds where fresh skin had only just begun to sprout. Freshly opened gashes, smelling strongly of blood.

“Did you think it was over? Did you think that because you handed me a piece of candy, I’d just stop crying?”

Amber shoved him away, violently brushing off Tennessee’s hand from his wounds.

“How long are you going to keep seeing me as some fucking dog that just picks up whatever scraps of attention you throw my way?”

“……I didn’t see you that way.”

You always leave me.

Even if he melted under sweet words, he would never step outside the line he had drawn for himself. Not for anyone.

“You lied to me……. Dammit, you gave me false hope. ……Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”

His sharply trembling voice subsided. Amber buried his face in his palms, trying to catch his breath. His lungs, swollen and shaking painfully, tightened and released in a repetitive cycle.

“You are sweet. But I am in so much agony. You make me want to hate you. That’s the hardest part.”

Tears streamed down his chin. Wiping them away roughly, Amber dropped his head.

He was sick and tired of the running.

One day, he would put shackles on those ankles and lock him up. He would cram him into a tiny cage. One day, one day.

“Then why didn’t you look for me? I sent letters! If you were going to live like this, unable to function and self-harming, you should have found me!”

Tennessee pressed him, asking if he hadn’t known where he worked. He had simply sold his house and gone to England; he hadn’t changed his identity or gone into hiding. He could have hidden perfectly if he wanted to, but he hadn’t.

From Tennessee’s perspective, he hadn’t disappeared. He just hadn’t reached out. If Amber had wanted to—if even Elizabeth and David had wanted to—they could have found him and contacted him. That was Tennessee’s excuse. He just hadn’t reached out first; he had been there all along.

But for Amber, it was different.

“Because if I did,”

Why hadn’t he looked for him? Those were horribly cruel words. Why did he think Amber hadn’t done it?

“If we truly said goodbye, how would I possibly live……?”

He had thought about it dozens, hundreds of times. Imagining meeting him. And when they finally faced each other in his mind, without a single exception, the Tennessee in his imagination always said:

‘Goodbye, Amber.’

“Tell me, if I had thrown everything away right then and gone to England to knock on your door……. Would you have let me in?”

“……No. You’re right, I wouldn’t have.”

Amber shook his head, cutting off Tennessee as he tried to continue.

It had been a truly cruel two years. It was a time he never wanted to experience again. Yet, a torture of uncertain hope was better than a definitive farewell.

Amber suppressed all of it rather than dragging it out and laying it bare. Along with the thought that Tennessee would never understand anyway.

“I’ve been having seizures lately. I tried to soothe them, but it didn’t work, and when you lost consciousness, we kissed for the first time.”

He didn’t have the strength to wipe his tears. Letting the tears flow freely down his cheeks, Amber moved his lips with a sneer.

“This was the second time. I’m sorry for not telling you in advance. Even though I knew Tennessee wasn’t in a normal state, I couldn’t refuse…….”

There. Now run away.

He couldn’t tell anymore. Amber ran a hand through his hair with a trembling breath. Then, remembering how he had developed this habit, he gave a bitter smile. He looked at the floor where tears were dripping one by one and wiped his face haphazardly.

“Or, should I be the one to go?”

Tennessee’s gaze was bleak as he looked at Amber standing up. It felt as if the sound of crashing waves could be heard from somewhere.

Tennessee was not one to talk about himself, but in the hospital, he had occasionally shared various stories. From his short stint as a mercenary, to the hardships of hiding for three days to kill a corrupt politician, the snowstorms of Austria, the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco, blood, bullets…… life.

‘Why do you hate morphine so much?’

Sipping coffee instead of smoking, Amber had shrugged his shoulders. But Amber knew that if he just watched without pestering, Tennessee would eventually throw out more stories.

‘I was an addict.’

‘Your mother?’

‘No, me.’

It was a story he was hearing for the first time.

‘That’s where the difference starts for people who come from nowhere, like me. We don’t even really know if drugs are bad.’

When there are addicts commonly around you, your sense of that malice becomes dull.

‘Haven’t you thought that too? The thought that your life is already ruined anyway, so what does it matter.’

Amber smiled bitterly.

Even if one knows the viciousness of drugs, they cannot fully grasp the devastation, the severity, and the implications it will have on their future life.

‘May I ask what kind you were addicted to?’

‘Cocaine.’

‘Tennessee…….’

He didn’t have to ask where he got the money for that; it was obvious. He must have stolen it, or received drugs as payment for doing dirty work. It was common for the marginalized class, those who received not a shred of attention, like Tennessee.

That’s not good, that’s really bad for your body. At Amber’s words, Tennessee had nodded. Spreading his black hair carelessly across the white bedsheets, Tennessee smiled.

‘If I’m not careful, I feel like I’ll go back to it.’

Tennessee’s gaze had drifted toward the dripping coffee.

‘I’m an addict by nature.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘I can’t quit anything completely. I figured it was better to be addicted to nicotine than to do that shit twice.’

Despite that, Tennessee had stayed in the hospital room well without a single cigarette. He didn’t shake, get anxious, or fly into sudden rages. In Amber’s eyes, Tennessee was a prisoner shackled by his own birth. Though one could not say the shackles were placed there by anyone.

“……Those hands, I did that, didn’t I?”

A low question cut through Amber’s reminiscence. Tennessee was pointing to Amber’s both hands.

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“……I didn’t want you, of all people, to get hurt.”

“I know that too.”

Amber’s words snapped out sharply, blocking Tennessee’s slowly opening mouth.

“But you surely know that I’d rather be hurt by your side than be in pain like I was last time. Or is your brain not working that well?”

“……Amber.”

“Shut up.”

The tears that had subsided began to flow again. His chest tightened.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“I just forced a kiss on you.”

Amber thought it was actually the opposite. Tennessee had lost his reason, and at the very least, Amber could have pushed him away. He had simply decided to make a cowardly choice. Once again, he was trapped in the darkness. Amber walked aimlessly toward a faint something.

“You can hit me. You can hurt me.”

22 – Chapter

The pain coming from you must be sweet.

Just as those brief days were.

Inside the stiff, dead interior of the sedan, Tennessee occasionally left the window open, even though he rarely let his voice be heard.

A lush breeze blew in, seeping through every single strand of hair. Tangled with the wind, it felt as if they were falling into the endless wheat fields stretching far into the distance. Between the golden wheat and the blue sky—two contrasting colors—he reached out his hand, crossing through them like a shooting star.

He could clearly see his own humming melody seeping into Tennessee’s ears. He felt that this strange sense of stability, like a waterway, would linger for a long time, perhaps allowing others who tread this path to unfold their own memories.