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Lucon Al Banas was someone who was an outcast, in all ways there could possibly be. Socially, mentally, physically. Discarded trash that so happened to look human. Subhuman, that was him, a ‘someone’ that was much more used to being treated like a ‘something’. Maybe it was just a knowledge innate in his mind that he was not normal. After all, he thought different, acted different, therefore he was different. Different from human. And yet there was a man, a single man who made the subhuman Lucon a ‘real’ human.
Hersel. To him the name Hersel was the name of an architect. The architect of Lucon Al Banas. The one who had breathed life into the shell that was Lucon Al Banas, the one who made him, taught him.
Slow, deep, yet laboured breaths escaped his mouth as he leaned against the window sill. His heart carried a pain. A pain that felt painfully numb.
His heart was leaking blood like a tap, and yet at the sight of that man with his dazzling golden hair and his sapphire eyes, it had felt as though the hole in his heart had filled, that the blood flowing out of it had reversed back into the weakly beating organ. Maybe it was his body forcing him to stay with this man for any bit longer.
But he wondered, for a split second, if it were a hallucination born of his blood loss. If the man walking towards him really was Hersel Ben Tenest. If the man that he so longed to see had indeed appeared in front of him.
That the cruel architect of the human Lucon had returned. Willingly to his side. The side that he thought he'd never come to the moment he had seen Hersel's eyes harden with resolve at his declaration to oppose him.
Lucon Al Banas felt strangely warm. Which may be the blood. But-
“Ha…”
A quiet, light sigh exited the mouth of his architect.
Yet that light sigh felt unimaginably heavy to Lucon. His hand twitched lightly at his sides. Every step, every breath, every sound that Hersel made felt like something precious he had to hear.
“That outfit seems familiar.”
Lucon could feel his lips twitch in a sort of happiness before he clamped down on it.
“That’s probably because I chose a design similar to what you used to wear often.”
His mouth opened as if it were on autopilot.
“And Hersel, your attire is quite different from usual.”
His heart ached slightly. But he had gotten it stabbed…
It was pathetic. Him. It looked as if their very clothing dictated the divide between them. That the gulf that once had a bridge to cross had lost it in a murky abyss.
The copycat, the Lucon Al Banas adorning clothing just like Hersel would have worn and one in which the hated son would have never had.
And Hersel Ben Tenest, wearing such simple clothes that it was the slightest bit reminiscent of the clothes Lucon had received.
It was terribly ironic.
The fact their roles had somehow changed in some way. Hersel had not become such a pitiful thing like Lucon nor had Lucon become such a great being like Hersel. So to call it a reversal of roles would be wrong.
And really. Lucon wants to be the dog of Hersel Ben Tenest.
But surely Hersel would be here to kill him. And yet his eyes lacks a resolve or intent to do so.
“Do you resent me?”
He asks instead.
Resent you?
It's funny. Or maybe it's not. He can't really tell.
But even so, a small chuckle escaped his mouth.
“According to Felia, yes.”
“Is that what you think too?”
Is it? Maybe. Probably, maybe that period of time Hersel never contacted him and he was left alone in that house. Back to being Lucon that was a bit better than a pebble on the side of a road. Because, unlike a rock, he could do things you wanted him to. Always sporadic fits of hate born of the anxiousness of abandonment. As Felia described it at least. But to him it felt like multiple blades stabbing into his heart. A sort of stimulation he found himself hating, which was a first in itself.
“Hmm…”
“By the way, isn’t the human rights abuse here in the academy severe?”
Lucon blinked.
Could he change the subject anymore obviously? The only way to be more blatant than he already was, would be just declaring ‘I'm going to change the subject!’
But Hersel kept talking, and Lucon kept replying in sentences, hums, chuckles.
It almost felt as if he wasn't leaning against a windowsill ready to die with a hole in his heart, shoulder and other various lacerations due to his act of terrorism upon the school assisted by an evil ghost doppelganger of an mage locked in a basement, but talking to a friend on a sofa.
But despite the atmosphere feeling like he wasn't about to drop dead any second, it didn't change the fact he was going to drop dead any second.
He could feel his body draining of blood, and could see it, he could feel his breath becoming harsher, his face becoming whiter.
“…Hersel.” he said.
“What?”
“I think I should return now. I’m fine.”
A strange emotion grabbed hold of his heart.
Hersel looked straight at him. Like he could read his every emotion. A part of him wanted to ask if Hersel could name whatever feeling suffocated his heart so much. His face was telling him if he really was ok.
Lucon saved that face, that very expression in his mind. The face that lucon had never seen before.
“If anyone saw this scene, you’d be the one in trouble.” he whispered, the strength in his voice collapsing.
Oh. Felia.
“Come to think of it, Felia told me to give you that if you came.” He forced strength into his limp arm and pointed to a statue.
Hersel moved over to the statue and Lucon moved to look out the window. The sight of perfectly white snow blanketing towering mountains, shimmering like diamonds reflecting a startling purity.
“Unfortunately, the snowy mountain has yet to be colored with greenery.”
He spoke.
“Right? If the snowy mountains turn green…”
He smiled at Lucon with an awkward smile completely unlike the Hersel Ben Tenest he used to know, he too saved this expression to his mind.
“I always hoped we could see it together.”