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As the weeks passed by, Blain and I were hanging out and having fun, like we always did. Now that he was back, things couldn't get any better... Well, apart from all the shit that was happening around me but... Being with Blain made me forget. I saw Nikki lesser and lesser simply because Blain was a lot more fun to be with... Part of me felt guilty whenever I stayed away from Nikki but on the other hand, I did everything I could... Knowing that I wasn't able to change anything with the way things were going, I'd rather go out with Blain and feel happy than staying home and feel depressed... But just because Blain was back safe and we had a lot of fun together didn't mean he was doing well... Ever since the day he came back, I saw something in his eyes that he tried to hide from everyone else on the outside... I knew what it was, simply because I saw the same thing...

On a Friday evening, I tried to call Blain to see if he wanted to hang out. I called him about five times but each and every time, I heard his voicemail. So I went next door to his house and ringed the doorbell. Several moments later, his sister Esmeralda opened the door... 'Hey, Ceylan, how are you?' 'Hi! I'm doing well, thanks! Is Blain around?' 'No, he went out about two hours ago...' 'Do you know where he went...?' 'No, he didn't say where he was going. I was hoping you would know...' 'I don't, tried to call him several times but he doesn't answer his phone...'

Esmeralda sighed quietly and closed her eyes for a moment... When she opened them again, she placed her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes... 'Ceylan...? I'd like to ask you something...' 'Sure, what is it...?' 'I'm worried about him... He comes home late every time, he seems so distracted and lost... Sometimes he just goes out without telling us where he's going... He pretends that he's alright but I can see that he's not... I know him longer than today and I tried to talk to him but... He just wont say anything... And I understand that he doesn't want to talk about the things that were happening in Sercia but... We're all worried about him... My parents are driving around town to look for him and I stayed home encase he was coming back but...' 'He still might turn up, it's only been two hours...' 'Maybe... But... He was so upset when he left and that's what really got me worried...' 'I see...' 'The two of you have always been very close and... Well... I just wanted to ask you if you could keep an eye on him...' 'Of course...' 'I know he needs time alone but... I-I just want him to be okay...' 'I think I might know where he is... I'm gonna see if he's there...' 'If you do, please, tell him to call us, okay...? Just to let us know he's okay...' 'I will...' 'Alright, thank you so much, Ceylan...' 'No problem... I'll let you know, okay?' 'Thank you...'

Esmeralda had a weak smile on her face and closed the door quietly... Right that very second, I got to my car, buckled up and drove off to the only place he could ever be...

There always was one place where you could find Blain whenever something was bothering him... He used to go there ever since we were little... Whenever he got bullied by Randy back then, he went to that place to be alone, where no one would find him... Most of the time, I accompanied him whenever we got picked on and sometimes, the two of us were crying there... And then we'd hatch a little scheme to get back at Randy just to make us feel better but we knew we would always get beaten up by him and his friends so we never carried out our desire for revenge... Except that one time where I broke Randy's nose but that's a whole different story...

I parked my car on the parking lot around eight o'clock, across the entrance and followed the path I've walked so many times with him... It was a beautiful summer evening and the park wasn't that crowded like it is during the day. It's a fairly big park and looks more like a forest... People come down there just to be together and have a good time... I saw several people having a barbeque and just up ahead was a small group of teens where a boy was playing guitar and others were singing along... By the sound of that, they were a little tipsy but they weren't bothering anyone... They just had a lot of fun, like they should have at their age... Walking along the path, I came across those blossom trees that looked absolutely beautiful in the sun... All those hills covered by fresh, green grass... It had that particular scent... It had been raining earlier that day and all those scents seemed to be so more intense... Every where you walked, you smelled the fresh grass, that particular scent of tree-bark, not to mention all those blossom trees... It's an absolute delight to your senses to walk there after a rain shower... It took a while for me to get there but I once I saw the lake in the distance, I already saw a silhouette sitting on the ground on the other side of the lake... And I just knew it had to be him... The moment I finally got to him, I watched him from a distance and noticed he held two papers and a pen... Every once in a while, he tried to scribble something on that piece of paper but seemed so distracted every time he tried... Every once in a while, he took a puff from his cigarette and stared at the sky... And that's when I slowly approached him... 'I knew I'd find you here...'

Blain turned his head and looked startled at first... But the moment he noticed it was me, he had a weak smile on his face and I smiled right back at him... 'Oh, hey, Ceylan...' 'How are you...?' 'Yeah, yeah... I, uh... I just had to be alone for a while...' 'Can I sit next to you?' '... Sure thing.'

I sat down next to him in the grass and took my flip-flops off... The cool grass tickling underneath my paws felt great... I actually had a smile on my face and closed my eyes the moment I wiggled my toes in the grass... I heard him sigh quietly and when I looked at Blain, I saw he was staring at the sky once more... 'It's been so long since we've been here together, huh?' 'Hehe, yeah...' 'Plotting schemes together to get back at Randy...' 'Except we never carried it out...' 'Correction, you never carried it out. I broke his nose ten years ago.' 'Oh yeah, haha... Yeah, that was awesome...' 'You look tired... Is everything alright?' 'I can't sleep for the last couple of weeks...' 'Anything on your mind that keeps you awake...?' 'No... No, it's just... It's just too quiet for me to fall asleep...'

He looked at his sheet of paper and I noticed it had dried bloodstains on it... I wasn't able to read what it said because of all the smudges and dirt it had on it... He nervously clicked his pen several times and sighed every once in a while... 'What's that your holding...?' 'It's uh... It's a friend's last wish...' 'Is it...?' 'Yeah... Before we got shipped out, he wrote a letter for his parents and asked me if I wanted to give that to them encase anything happened to him... I told him it was bad luck but... Heh... I still promised him...' 'I see...' 'That's my blood on his letter... I've always kept it with me in my vest... And I almost broke my promise by kicking the bucket myself...' 'And yet you're still here carrying out your promise...' 'Yeah... Yeah, I'm still here...'

Blain looked at me and had a weak smile on his face the moment he faced me... But then he quickly averted his eyes and looked to the sky instead... 'I've been trying to copy his letter for weeks now but uhm... I, uh... I-I just don't know if I'll ever be able to face his parents...' 'I'm sure they'll appreciate it...' 'I know, that's what makes it so difficult...' 'Heh...' 'Back at boot-camp, Jason and I became buddies real quick. Always looking after each other whenever shit went down with sergeant Collins ... I can still hear the sarge yelling at us at the obstacle course: "McLaughlin!! Tell Rodriguez to get across that rope before I HANG him with it!!" Hehehe...' 'Sounds like he didn't make things easy for you guys...' 'Yeah... Sergeant Collins was an asshole but no one ever had the balls to tell him that...' 'I can imagine why...' 'Heh... Jason was my best mate...I really miss that shitbag...' 'Your mom told me about it...' 'Told you what?' 'That Jason's mom got a visit...' 'Oh... Yeah... Yeah, you've never met him... You didn't know him so... I'm not gonna bother you with that...' 'True... But you knew and cared for him as a friend... Just as much as I care for you... And all I want is you to be okay...'

He flicked his cigarette away and looked down on his sheets of paper, sighing quietly... The moment he looked at me again, I saw how his eyes started to get red while he had a weak smile on his face... But then he just shook his head and stared ahead... 'Ceylan...?' 'Yes...?' 'Do you remember when you once told me that you feel guilty...? Guilty for being alive...? To have survived the war...?' 'Yes... Yes, I do... And I still feel that way...' 'Heh... It's funny how I still remember nine years later that you said that... Back then, I couldn't understand why you felt so sad about it... In my eyes, you were supposed to be happy to have survived it and to enjoy the things you have here... But right now, when I look back and think about it, I finally understand why you feel that way...' 'Heh... Well, my situation was, uh... Different than yours...' 'True... But in the end, we both experience the same...' 'What makes you feel so guilty...?' 'I, uhm... Heh... I saw how Jason died... He was right next to me...' 'He was...?' 'Yeah... A sniper took him down, right here, between his eyes... He was down before I heard the shot...' 'Can I ask what happened...?'

Needless to say, I can imagine how it must've looked like when someone gets shot in the face... I saw it before during the civil war in Salahadihn... But what I can't imagine is when that person is someone who is very close to you... It does things to you, especially when it's someone you know... From all the things I've seen during the civil war, I sometimes wonder how I still managed to have kept my sanity... And when I was looking at Blain that evening, I could see in his eyes that he was asking himself the same thing... Nevertheless, he started to talk... Very quietly and with a hoarse throat... 'We ran patrol in Marush Al-Juneqan and well... We knew we could expect resistance... We kept our eyes open and the locals were friendly once they saw us... They welcomed us with open arms... Some of the locals told us where they were hidden so we were aware of their presence... They pointed us in the direction of a small village several kilometres up north... So we set out to investigate a possible lead...' 'You knew you could expect to see combat?' 'Yeah... We already made preparations and left for that small village, surrounding it... But there was absolutely no sign of hostilities, found no weapons, whatsoever... Only civilians...' 'Then what...?' 'Just when we informed JTOC that the information we received was bogus, we regrouped and retreated... The moment we set foot outside the village, that's when all hell broke loose... Intel was off and one of the locals tipped the nationalists of our presence...' 'Oh...?' 'Yeah... While we were in that village, they had time to get into position and surround it... So... Once we got out, we were walking right into an ambush...' 'Can I ask what happened...?' 'Jason was next to me and... All of a sudden, I heard a whizz and he collapsed, just like that... I saw him on the ground with a puddle of blood underneath his head and... Chips of bone and pieces of his brain was scattered on the pavement... I saw a lot of fucked up things out there but... Seeing him like that...' 'Heh...' 'I had to leave him there once the fire-fight started... So I took cover in an alley and got separated from the rest... And there was this woman, holding her little kitten close to her chest who ran for her life on the street when the fire-fight started... Until all of a sudden, she fell down... She dropped her kitten on the sidewalk the moment she fell to the ground and I noticed a blood stain on her back that got larger and larger... She saw her kitten on the ground and... crawled over to her and... That's when I saw that her kitten had a hole in it's head... The bullet went straight through her chest... And straight through her little kitten's head...' 'Oh...' 'Heh... I heard the woman cry when she saw her kitten but... It didn't last for very long... She was dying except she didn't realize that... And I just stood there, behind cover while I saw it all happening... Sometimes I think her eyes were focused on me instead, as if she was asking me why I wasn't doing anything to protect them...' 'Heh...' 'And sometimes I wonder why it wasn't me... Why Jason got hit instead...' 'Is that why you feel guilty...?' 'Yeah... Amongst other things... I don't know how I'll ever be able to tell his parents that he was right next to me when he got shot while there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it... I don't know what I should tell them... Jason was talking to me the evening before about how he was gonna play with his girlfriend's titties once he gets home and the next... He just wasn't there anymore...' 'Tell them what he meant to you as a friend...' 'Heh... But... You do know what I mean, right...?' 'Yeah... Yeah, I know what you mean, Blain...' 'You don't know what to tell people but people also don't know what to say to you, simply because they can't relate to the experiences you've been through during the war...' 'Is that the reason why you don't talk to your family about it...? That you don't know what you're supposed to tell them?' 'Yeah...' 'I see...'

Blain grabbed his carton of cigarettes and offered me one but I declined... With shaky hands, he lit up his cigarette and took a puff... Blain exhaled through his nostrils and closed his eyes for a moment... 'It's just so fucked up to know what people are capable of... And to have actually witnessed what they did...' 'I know... I've seen it myself...' 'Like that time we managed to conquer a stronghold... Political prisoners, deserters, POW's, captured members of the resistance... They were all kept there in cages... It reminded me a lot of those World War II concentration camps I saw in the history books back in high school...' 'Heh...' 'Once the stronghold was clear of hostiles, we went inside the main compound... What I saw was, uhm... Heh...' 'What did you see...?' 'People were tortured to death, just to get some information... The bodies were still there for us to see... I found a woman, who was strapped in a chair with razor wire and another dead guy sitting across... Turned out that with each wrong answer he gave, they tightened the razor wire on her body, causing horrific wounds... I think they were members of the resistance, seeing the way they were treated... The guy had bullet wounds in his head and knees...' 'Wow...' 'Another guy got hanged but... He got hanged with a piano string... Normally, you would drop from a certain height and snap your neck or choke to death with a normal rope... But this guy wasn't dropped from a height... They let him down slowly so his weight would tighten the piano snare around his neck... And then his neck would slowly get a severe laceration the more he struggled to the point he almost got decapitated... It's a slow and painful death and not something you'd like to see...' 'Heh...' 'They used it as psychological torture and as examples for the prisoners who got interrogated there... Heh... It worked really well...'

I heard the trembles in his voice whenever he talked to me... Every once in a while, he took a deep breathe and sighed... Every once in a while, he looked at me, having a weak smile on his face with soggy red eyes... I know he tried to hold back all those tears but... I honestly didn't understand why... I can imagine what he was going through... I put my arm around him caressed the back of his head... The way he talked to me sounded as if he could break down in tears any second... 'How'd you do it, Ceylan...?' 'What do you mean, sweetheart...?' 'How'd you managed to live on with the things you've seen...?' 'Heh... I often ask myself the same thing... It's simply the way things are, Blain... Nothing more, nothing less...' 'It's fucked up...' 'Yes, it is... It really is... But you know... When I first got here in Renaria, everything was new... "New parents", "new friends", "new family", like they could ever replace my own... Everyone and everything was new, different cultures, different habits... Settling in was one of the most difficult things I ever had to go through...' 'Yeah...' 'But there was this little boy living next door, who talked to me when others didn't... Asked me to play outside when other kids were too busy to have noticed me... And even though he couldn't always understand what I was saying due to my funny accent and I couldn't always find the right words to express myself, this little boy stayed with me, no matter what happened...' 'Hehe...' 'You and I go way back, Blain... We've known each other for more than thirteen years now... No matter what happened to us, we always stayed together... We always stood up for each other whenever we got bullied, even if that meant that we got beaten up by them... But... That never stopped us to move on, did it...?' 'No...' 'That little boy took my hand ever since I got here and showed me what it's like to be alive... And up to this day, I'm still grateful for that... Because he made me realize that the world doesn't have to be a bad place to live...' 'Heh...' 'That's how I've always managed to... To live with the idea that a friend who stays with you through thick and thin is waiting for you... You've always been there for me, Blain... And I'm here for you now... You don't have to do this alone... But you should hand over that letter when your ready for it... It might not heal your wounds... But at least it'll give you peace, knowing you've fulfilled your promise to him...' 'Thanks...' 'And I promised your sister that I'll look after you...' 'I know...' 'Did you tell your parents that you're here...?' 'No... No, I didn't...' 'They're all worried about you and your parents are already out looking for you...' 'They do...?' 'Of course... They saw how upset you were the moment you left...' 'Was it really that obvious...?' 'Obvious enough for them to notice...' 'Oh...' 'They just want you to be okay...' 'Heh...' 'Here... Your sister is at home, waiting for you to call...'

I took out my phone and handed it over to him... Blain looked at me and smiled and dialled his house number... He told his sister how much he loved her and his parents and he got so emotional, that it was heart-wrenching to hear him speak up his mind... He was sobbing on the phone and to hear all the things he had to tell her... It made me shed a few tears myself... The moment the call got disconnected, he stared at the display of my phone... When he handed it back to me and I saw his eyes, he just seemed so lost... I took my phone back and smiled at him... He sighed quietly once more as the tears were rolling down his cheek... And that's when I put my arms around him and held him close... Blain was crying his eyes out when I did... He placed his arms around me as well and hugged me tight... I told him that it was okay... To let it all go... That there's no need to stay strong and to pretend that it didn't do anything to him... No one ever expected that from him... Especially not me...

I don't know how long we sat there at the park... We were just cuddling each other as it stayed silent between the two of us... Blain and I rarely had moments like these... Moments where we would just sit there together, not saying anything... But sometimes, the silence can be peaceful... I could see in his eyes that he was thinking about so many things... At some point, I stood up and reached out my hand to him... Blain looked at me when I quietly whispered to him that we should go home... He closed his eyes for a moment but then he folded his sheets of paper and hid them in his jacket along with his pen... And so we walked...

Once the two of us got home, I saw how his mother opened the door and the look on her face when Blain stood there... He threw his arms around her shoulders and held her tight... I could hear Blain whispering quietly that he was sorry as his mother caressed the back of his head, whispering that its okay... And I just stood there with my keys in my hand to get inside my house but seeing him together with his mother was just so moving... His mother had red soggy eyes and just before she went back inside, Blain's mother noticed me and had a weak smile on her face while she nodded... And that's when I smiled back at her, giving her a nod as well...

The evening I found him in the park moved me for sure. It was the only time in his life that he ever talked to me about the war... Knowing he saw and did things in Sercia no one is ever supposed to do... Some people say war is a necessary evil in order to bring peace... But what exactly do you think to accomplish by doing the exact same things to the ones who started it all...? It wouldn't make you any better than them, does it...? Maybe I'm just too naïve or maybe it's not that simple how I think it is but... There are no winners when it comes to that... Winston Churchill once said that history is written by the victors... The ones who write history to their advantage are those who killed the rebels, the ones who lost, but were heroes in protecting the rights of the poor and the oppressed... They simply see it the way they see it but not necessarily the way it happened... But I suppose only time will tell what really happened there in Sercia and even then it's quite possible that it's not the true story... I think that no one will ever really know what went down there... And I know Blain needed answers for himself to move on, just as much as I did... But I suppose that's just the way things are... Some answers are meant to kept hidden... The sooner he realized that, the better... He needed distractions from all the things that were on his mind, just as much as I did... So what better way is there to keep each other distracted by being together...?