The charging breeze had never thrilled him so. And the girl riding behind him on the motorbike had never been so close. Still he was glad he had an excuse for being flush-red all over when that 'friend' of a Badou would see him and drop some sarcastic remark. Then Haine would surely drop a whole load of raining bullets on his red head.

Nill, the half-angel, half-demon (another word for 'woman' in his language) was keeping an uneasy, yet welcomed silence. Of course, she had no way of speaking. All her organs, including her tongue were superficial, though intact. She even had a few more in surplus – the shiny angelic wings, which no overcoat could cover up.

Haine, on the other hand, had no problems with or qualms about his appearance – the somehow simultaneously watery and steely crimson eyes. Plus the whitened spiky hair. Badou joked about his hair and suggested that Haine was secretly watching some old show called ''Bleach'' when he wasn't killing people. No, not people, dogs. Wild, stray dogs howling in the dark. If you don't know how to howl, you end up being balmed… if they ever care to find your corpse.

But Nill couldn't (and most likely wouldn't) howl when frustrated, scream when terrified, roar when infuriated, murmur when enamoured, speak when lonesome. She was a deserted blond mermaid ashore, on the concrete seas of blood and streams of gunpowder.

But she was a stray, too. A loner. An orphan. A monster.

'Though she could never beat me in that last respect', Haine reassured himself. As if guns could vanquish his fear of women. Maybe it had to do with that one, long ago in the laboratory. But she was more like a wolf, a voracious carnivore, which fed on their fear, their insecurity, their loneliness.

'Hey', he whispered to Nill, to the engine or to the wind, but his sigh-like word drifted away into the nothingness of the pale city view.

Silence still. A still silence.

My throbbing heart. Is it immortal, too?

Is my head the only mortal and vulnerable part of me? Is it because of my mind? Is it really there? Is it what keeps me alive or what drives me insane?

'La', a husky, but gentle voice came out of the abyss around him.

Did the city answer my stray call at last?

'La, lo-', it came out again.

The chasm is singing, it's opening its mouth to swallow my immortal self. To trap me forever and never in… myself again.

'Love', the voice sang and mumbled at the same time. It came from behind.

Everything bad comes from behind. That's why my guns are always on my back—

'Love', Nill was beaming. Singing.

'You—'

'Love i-s f-for-g', she tried her best to continue, forcing her weak voice cords.

'Love is forgotten?', Haine wasn't very adept at remembering sappy songs. He usually snapped at them.

'Love is forgiven', Nill chanted exultantly, without stammering.

Haine dind't know this song.

Nill was singing.

She had tried to speak so many times and nothing but croaked, distorted sounds bulged out. Nothing.

Her voice stumbled when it was walking, but flowed aggressively and graciously when asked to dance.

He asked her to dance with him. In this warming breeze that gave off the scent of a disappearing city. That gave off a disappearing secret.