Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 134. Owing Debts
Henrys POV
I would lie if I said seeing her like this wouldn’t hurt me. It was like reopening a festering wound.
"What exactly do you think happened back then? Emilia and the Henrietta—from whom you stole the parents—are not the same person! Nobody led you to the portal; the voice, Emilia, even explicitly told you that you two could never meet! Didn’t she reach out to warn you never to tamper with the ’glue’?"
"NO! Listen to me. After we left the cinema, we watched an action movie; do you remember? We were too little for that, remember? Mum was upset at Dad, and Emilia told me she was waiting in the forest, and I should come to meet her. It was her! She told me! IT’S ALL HER FAULT!"
"That didn’t happen. Kenny saw the scene; you were just a willful child who wanted to meet her friend. I am not blaming you, so why are you blaming others?" I came closer and grabbed her shoulders to force her to look at me.
"Don’t you understand what you have done? Not back then, but what you are doing now—going around and killing people—RIPPING WORLDS APART! What you did is far worse than what you think Emilia has ever done!"
She quieted down a bit, though her tears still fell while she nodded numbly.
"So you won’t believe me. It was her. I know it was her. It’s not my fault. She owes me this. They are my parents. It’s her fault; it’s not my fault." She didn’t look up again, repeating this like a mantra.
For how many years had she repeated that to herself?
She doesn’t even remember what exactly happened back then, having contorted the memory to blame someone else, all the while insisting every counterpart of hers was herself, and she could do what she wanted to them.
As if she was indirectly blaming herself without facing it in the end.
She was lost in a thought construct that didn’t even make sense.
"What about Kenny? I won’t allow you to act against him again; do you understand? You have what you wanted, so just stay still. Can’t you do that?"
She sniffed and wiped her snot away.
"He owes me two hands."
"NOBODY OWES YOU A DAMN THING!" I exploded, feeling suffocated and just wanting to leave this room.
"No, he had used her, though she just wanted his love; she was so in love with him! It’s not fair; she was so in love with him. Why couldn’t he love her back? No, he deserves it!"
Did she think this had happened to her? Was she not only confusing her own past, but also the memories she took in through the death of her counterpart?
"This didn’t happen to you." I took a deep breath to calm down, but it didn’t work.
"You have never been in love with him in the first place!" The words sounded strangely contorted when I spat them out.
She looked at me dazedly, confused, as if she could neither agree nor decline.
"No... no, it wasn’t me. But what he did, he also did to me. It’s his fault; he owes me so much for the pain she had gone through."
"Nobody owes you anything, Henrietta." I repeated and turned away from her, unable to look at her again.
"What his counterpart did has nothing to do with him, just like Emilia’s actions have nothing to do with you, right? It’s your own logic! HE NEVER DID A THING TO YOU!"
"If you need to become stronger to bring us out, you’ll get my blood, got it? Then your hands will work! YOU WON’T TOUCH HIM AGAIN! Just wait a bit, and everything will turn out alright." I hissed, trying to hold it together.
She didn’t answer, and then I remembered Kenny’s words about her ’leash.’
"Don’t you see how devastated our parents are? They are so damn thin that they could break down at any moment; they can’t take the worry about you. Can you behave for their sake?"
"What? Ah, yes." Henrietta snapped her eyes back to me, suddenly seeming more stable again.
"Okay, I won’t attack him." She nodded repeatedly.
"When we leave here, we’ll go home, right? Together with Mum and Dad?" She asked, looking like the child from a long-lost past.
"Yeah. We’ll go home then." I replied emotionlessly, swallowing the bile in my throat.
"Okay, I understand." She nodded at me before again dazedly looking at her hands.
I left the room as if fleeing, finding my parents at the end of the corridor, talking to each other.
"And? How did it go? Did she come to her senses?" My father asked, and I felt so terribly choked up.
"Yeah. She... she is okay now." I turned around and walked to Kenny’s room, hearing my mother calling my name.
"I need... to go." I mumbled, hurrying my steps away from them.
When I burst into Kenny’s room, I found it empty. He was probably still upstairs, speaking with the others, yet not straightaway finding him was so fucking heartbreaking.
My eyes fell on the clothes he had changed out of just a bit ago; it was a pair of jogging pants with a dark shirt that had my dried blood on it. I fell to my knees before the pile and took his shirt, pressing it to my face and taking a deep breath.
Besides the bloody smell, it also had Kenny’s scent.
The same smell I perceived when I broke into his apartment the first time, then when I choked him; in the bathroom of the club, it was mixed with alcohol; at the confrontation in his apartment, it was mixed with raw flesh; in the morgue, the place where I stole him back from death, it was mixed with disinfectant; when I carried him in that strange world, it was mixed with the smell of corpses; when I met him in prison, it was mixed with their soap.
When we finally saw each other again in the forest, and I hugged him, he also smelled so damn much like himself.
Shit, besides calming me and clearing my head, this scent also makes me want to break apart.
I repeatedly inhaled until I felt better, before falling back and leaning against the wall, still having his shirt gripped tightly.
I don’t know how to face my sister or our parents, and I fucking don’t know how to handle this pain that always waits for me at every corner, as if the years I had so actively not felt it had now accumulated to a debt I am too broken to pay.
