Chapter 155 – A Story

Cassius slowly began his story.

He spoke about how Noah found himself inside that dreadful place, and how he came to meet Katherine who took him under her wing.

He spoke about how their relationship grew into something close, with Katherine protecting him in a way that said more about her own wound than anything she could have expressed directly.

There, Cassius was stopped abruptly by Katherine, who asked a question that had been burning inside her since the beginning.

"How?" She asked, looking deeply at Cassius. "How did her brother die?"

There was something beneath the question that went beyond simple curiosity. It was as though Katherine — Cassius noticed, watching her trembling pupils — was searching for a connection to the Katherine of Earth. A shared thread that would prove to her she was not the only one dragging this particular kind of pain through her life.

The strange thing was that she knew, rationally, that many people had endured the same. She was not singular in her suffering. And yet the absence of a real example standing in front of her had made her feel as though she were the only one cursed this way.

That was unbearable.

So at her question, Cassius answered gently. Not with a lie this time.

He would never lie about the life of Katherine.

"I did not particularly want to go into that part of it, you know." He said.

"Why? Is it painful?"

"More than you can imagine."

"More than my pain?"

"I would not dare to belittle your pain by comparing it." Cassius said. "But I will give you the chance to decide for yourself. Though, does it actually matter which pain is greater?"

"It does to me."

He smiled wryly. "Alright, Katherine...oh, actually, is it alright if I call you by your name? You look old enough to be my mother."

He asked with an awkward smile. He was not particularly formal by nature, but certain things still embarrassed him.

The question visibly caught Katherine off guard. She went still, as though briefly transfixed, then came back to herself and answered, her tone still edged with grief, yet carrying a thin thread of sorrowful amusement beneath it.

"Call me Katherine." She said. "It does not matter to me."

’What does matter to you anymore, Katherine?’ He wanted to ask, but shook his head instead and continued.

"I told you that Katherine lost her brother." He began, earning a subtle nod from her. "But I did not say how he died, because I myself did not wish to revisit it. But I will tell you now. Simply."

He held her gaze, then let his voice descend slowly.

"He killed himself."

"...what?" Katherine exclaimed, her eyes widening slightly.

"Aye." He nodded, his expression hollow. "Her little brother took his own life."

"But why?"

"Because he did not believe himself loved enough to allow himself to keep living." Cassius answered, drawing back the painful memory of the day Katherine had told him about her brother. "Think of a world similar to ours but different in certain ways. There, as here, children attend schools. They meet people their own age, build friendships and grow together. Now tell me, Katherine, what happens to a child who does not fit in?"

"...he probably has no friends."

"If that were the extent of it," Cassius replied, shaking his head slowly, "the situation would have been better. But it was not only that he had no friends, he was also bullied for being different. Different in the sense that he did not enjoy what most of them did. And do you know what a group despises most?"

He did not wait for an answer this time.

"Difference. And irregularity. Something that disrupts what they are as a whole. To them, that difference was like a poison that needed to be removed."

"Because they were afraid of being infected by it." Katherine concluded, her old experience speaking for her. "Afraid that their harmony, however fragile and illusory, would be destroyed by that one divergent thing."

"Aye." Cassius nodded with a sigh. "And so it happened. They would strike him whenever they felt like it. They would take his belongings and act as though they owned them. They would push him into a locker and leave him locked inside...sometimes for minutes, sometimes for an hour. Alone in that darkness, suffocating as though buried alive."

Katherine shivered.

The more Cassius spoke, the stranger the sensation growing inside her became. She was no longer simply Katherine who had lost her son...she was becoming the Katherine who had lost her brother, learning all of this for the first time.

The pain of truth was its own particular kind of bitter.

Cassius continued.

"And while all of this was happening at school, the boy began to change at home. He was afraid, or perhaps ashamed, to open himself to his family. No one could tell what truly drove his silence. But the bullying was plain in how he changed."

He looked upward briefly.

"The boy who used to smile and joke with his older sister was gone. The boy who spoke to his parents with warmth and respect had disappeared. In his place was someone eerily quiet, who spent his days inside his room playing games with his so-called friends. His family was worried, of course, but you cannot force someone who refuses to speak to speak. And they could not possibly know he was being bullied if he never told them."

"...what happened next? Did he simply take his life after that?"

"He did take his life. But the way it happened is what shaped who Katherine would become."

"How?"

"An argument broke out between Katherine and her brother." Cassius’s voice tightened, as though the words had to be forced through. "A completely mundane one. Katherine accidentally spilled a cup of juice on him. He was already wound tight from everything happening at school, so the courage he could not find in front of his bullies, he unleashed on his sister. He shouted at her. Shoved her. Very nearly raised his hand against her."

"...no!!" Katherine cried, tears spilling down her face. She could not have explained why, only that a profound, overwhelming sadness had come over her like a wave threatening to drag her under.

She wanted Cassius to stop. The pain was becoming too great.

But she could not ask him to. She needed to know. She needed the ending, even knowing it would hurt her.

"You can already guess what followed." Cassius resumed, watching her cry and smiling, not because it pleased him, but because his own eyes were stinging, and he had always been afraid of being irrational for crying over this story again.

"Her father stepped in and struck the boy for daring to raise his hand against a woman, and against his own sister at that. Katherine was shaken by her brother’s outburst, and her shock quickly turned into deep anger. And so — you can imagine — she decided to shut him out, to ignore him."

Cassius paused, drew a slow breath, and continued.

"Then came the day." He said. "Their parents had gone out for business, leaving the siblings alone in the house. Katherine was still giving him the silent treatment. She left him in his room and settled in front of her own show without apparent concern. That was when something strange happened."

"Something strange?"

"Her brother sent her a message. He asked her to come to his room." Cassius said. "Katherine refused, of course, telling him that he was the one who should come to her, since she was the older sibling and he was in the wrong."

"...what did he say back?"

"He did not say anything."

Katherine’s eyes went wide. And Cassius nodded, confirming everything she was thinking.

"That was the first and last time her brother reached out for help. When it was time for dinner and she called his phone to tell him to come out, there was no answer. She went to his door, knocked...still nothing. The door was locked. After several minutes without a response, her worry overcame her anger and she broke the door open."

He smiled then — wide, exaggerated, and deeply pained.

"Her brother was sprawled on the floor, dead, his eyes white yet still carrying the last traces of agony. His left wrist opened at the vein by a knife. Beside him was a letter. In it, he had written everything he had endured at school...and then one final sentence. The sentence that broke Katherine’s mind."

Cassius quoted it quietly.

"’Maybe if you had come... I would still be here.’"

Katherine’s face was entirely covered in tears and grief by then. Even Cassius felt his chest hollowing out again.

"W-What became of her?"

"She left school. She became addicted to substances. She found companions in dark places and did things that were not kind to look at...all to fill the void. All to escape the regret. But regret, as it turns out, is immortal. It never left her. It drove her to violence, to theft, to ruin. She became known in the underworld, and in a shorter time, she built her own organisation...colder and more ruthless than most. Then, as if finally understanding that nothing she did would change anything, Katherine began trying to make peace with her past through an Apothecary she visited in secret. But her present and her future were already broken."

Cassius leaned forward slightly, closing some of the distance between them.

"That was when she met the young, sharp-edged boy I mentioned at the beginning. And instantly — seeing a boy the same age her brother had been when he died — something inside her awoke. She poured everything she had wished to give her brother into that young man. It was not rational. But grief and the ways people cope with it have never needed to be rational. They only need to work. And it worked for her. So well that she began to grow happier. So well that she began to smile more and kill less. So well that her future, sometimes, no longer felt so heavy and dark and endless. She found salvation in a young boy and treated him as such. As an angel. As if the boy were somehow the living form of her brother’s forgiveness sent to save what remained of her."

He paused briefly.

"And the boy did save her." Cassius said, smiling. "As though that was what the world had been waiting for, she died not long after. Painfully...but inside, I believe, peacefully. And so the story ends."

"Ends?"

"Do you know why I chose to tell you this?"

"I don’t."

"Neither do I, honestly." Cassius chuckled quietly. "I hoped I would understand by the time I reached the end, but I still do not. However, there may be a thread of similarity between how your son died and how her brother died. Her brother was simply unlucky to be placed among people who lacked basic emotional intelligence and care. And he could not trust himself — or his family — enough to ask for help. So he chose silence until the very end, when he tried once, and gave up."

"Your son, Katherine, listen carefully now, because this is the answer you came for." He said, and she straightened entirely. "Your son was killed simply because he was unlucky. Unlucky enough to be close to Anesthesia Amaris. Nothing else. Nothing more."

"They... they did not intend to kill him?"

"They only wished to wound Anesthesia."

"But why kill my son for it?"

"Because Anesthesia is not easy to touch without bearing severe consequences. I cannot say the same for your son, forgive me. So he was killed, killed because he stood near someone whose Fate was far too powerful for his modest destiny to bear beside it."

Visibly, Cassius watched Katherine begin to collapse inward, folding upon herself as though she were unravelling.

She was dying, he noticed. Dying of grief.

The realisation that her son had been killed for nothing more than being close to a girl he loved was filling her with a devastation that had no floor.

So Cassius reached out and took her hands in his own, making the older woman look at him with hollow, listless eyes.

"Don’t tell me you are giving up." He said.

"I want to die." Katherine whispered. "I should have known... I should have known it was unwise for him to be near Anesthesia. I should have known, as his mother, that nothing good would come of it. Last Born, I knew, even then, that she would never love my son. It was simply impossible, given who she is. But I did nothing. I did nothing because I was afraid of hurting him. And now he is dead."

"That is not your fault." Cassius said. "You don’t have—!"

"I want it to be." Katherine cut in, smiling sadly. "I want to carry this guilt. I want to feel this pain so deeply that letting go of my life becomes easier. I want to die, Last Born."

"Did you learn nothing from the story I just told you?" He pressed, making her pause. "Katherine lost her brother and still found a way to make peace with that pain. She learned to love again despite the regret and guilt inside her. Are you truly unable to do the same?"

"I... I..."

"Do you think your son would find peace seeing you in this state? He would not, I would wager everything on it. And besides, if you die, who will remember him?"

"Huh?" Katherine let out involuntarily.

"You are the primary keeper of his memories, Katherine." Cassius said softly. "If you die, your son disappears from this world with no one left to carry him. However much the Jurish family loved him, he was a bastard by birth. And bastards are not entered into the family records. You know that, don’t you?"

"...I do."

"Then only you can ensure his death was not meaningless. That his life — however short and however unjustly it ended — still carries some weight in this world. And only you, who knew him better than anyone, can do that. So tell me, will you allow yourself to die?"

Cassius was aware of what he was doing and why. He was keeping this mother alive because he would feel wretched if she did not survive this. So in a sense, he needed her to live...not purely for her sake, but for the quiet of his own conscience.

And yet, despite the uncomfortable hypocrisy of that, his compassion for Katherine was equally genuine. He did want to help her.

Those two things sat side by side in his chest, cold and uncomfortable, and he wished very much for the conversation to reach its end.

"But how do I live?" Katherine asked. "How do I live when I no longer have a purpose? No longer have a reason for anything? Is it not simply better to die?"

"Just as Katherine found a way to live, first through sheer will, and later through someone who reminded her of her brother and whom she chose to love in her brother’s place." Cassius said. "You can do the same. You can love again, Katherine. You only need to try."

"Love again?" She said, then looked at him with sudden intensity. "A son? Having a son again? My son?"

Her voice had taken on a strange, rising excitement.

"Can I have a son again?" She began to cry, as though this possibility had simply never occurred to her before. And now that it had...

’Yes, yes, yes! I can. I can have a son again. Who said I could not? No one. No one said it. So I can. I will take better care of him this time. I will protect him. Yes, like Katherine’s boy, he will be my salvation. He will bring me joy. He will save me. Yes. He will.’

But then the question arrived like cold water.

’Who? Who would be her son?’

"Are you alright, Katherine?" Cassius’s voice reached her, his expression puzzled as he watched her face shift between restlessness and something that looked almost like excitement. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

His voice pulled her back to the present. She lifted her head and looked at Cassius with his red eyes quietly worried.

’...worried...for me?’ She thought, her heart beating louder. ’Only my son would worry for me. Only my son. Then why...’

"...why are you calling me Katherine?" She asked, her tears falling faster as she moved — quickly, like a blur — until her face was an inch from his.

He yelped in surprise, his heart lurching, and tried to pull back.

But Katherine held him with both arms. And only then did Cassius realise how strong she was.

"What are you doing?" He asked, genuinely confused.

"Why did you call me Katherine?"

"Because you told me to call you that!"

"Don’t call me Katherine." She said, with a gentleness that should not have been possible in someone so broken, looking at him the way a gravely ill patient looks at the only cure that has ever been promised to them. "Don’t call me Katherine. Don’t call me Katherine."

"Then what should I call you?"

"Mother." She said immediately, smiling so wide her entire face seemed to split open with it. "Call me Mother."

Cassius’s mind went completely blank.

’...what?’

—End of Chapter 155—