And here comes the second chapter.
The more I write and translate, the more I realise I'm just a weird psychopath who likes to make Cronus suffer.
I love him so much.
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Fourteen past nine.
Nine, one, four. Nine plus five equal fourteen. Everything seems to become fourteen, in the end, when the sunlight enters the room and lightens up a bit the almost empty room. Empty of real memories, of the sound of old vanished laughs. Empty of a scent of humanity, scent of life.
Cronus doesn't really live, without the voice he heard. Coming right from the answering machine, it shot him through the heart without any hesitation. And yet he is still there, sitting on the same old chair, the fourteenth message repeating again and again, like a old song. The metallic voice, altered by the shitty speakers, overcome his brain, his mind.
And his eyes widens, he grits his teeth in order to avoid tears' fall. He hasn't cried for five years, fourteen years. No.
He won't cry.
Kankri...
Kankri, the name of his tragedy. Five acts, five years. Maybe fourteen. He was nineteen, he wasn't yet. February-July. Five months between their two birthdays, actually. It was his tragedy. His way to survive. They were lovers, yes. For a night.
For a life. Fourteen years - still fourteen-. Amazing, almost weird, how this number is important in some lives.
And the message, again and again, the voice never stop talking, to bring back Cronus to Kankri, to remember him all the things he loved, all the things they went through. His annoyed and annoying tone, the words, HIS words. And he imagines, at the end of the line, him.
One ringtone, two. Ten. He hangs up. Call back. Two more ringtone, before he hears the answering machine. His left fingers tugs with the bottom of his red jumper, waiting to leave his message. He imagines his lips almost against the phone, the words, the hesitation, his shattered breath when he hangs up another time.
Cronus knows him by heart.
It always was his mistake.
The moron always on his chair takes from his pocket his cellphone. Slides a finger on the screen, to unlock it. His wallpaper is just some photo taken with his best friend, one rainy day. Nevermind. He quickly taps the five on his keypad, letting his finger on for fourteen seconds.
One ringtone.
Two.
Another one, and then again one.
The last.
"Hello?"
This time when you cannot breathe, when your heart is beating so fast that you think it's gonna break your lungs and chest. This time when somebody answers your call, this voice you've never forgotten. How dumb we can be, when five years pass in denial.
How dumb we are, trying to change a tragedy with some weird jokes.
"Kankri? It's Cronus."
Silence. One of the silence everyone fears, during a phone call. Deep, full of remorses and hate. Full of tears and screams. Full of love?
But this one sounds like a smile. Not from him, obviously, from Kankri. A smile stabbing his heart in fourteen seconds.
"I've figured this out, Cronus. How are you?
— As good as someby who got a call from his ex after fourteen years.
— It's only been five years.
— It's fourteen. What do you want?"
The silence, again. Deeper, this time. Gluing the time and his breath, the all room. Like amber. Gluing time and breath, gluing hope, and closing the lavender eyes of the young man, still on his little metallic sound, at the end of the line, looks for his words. It's not how he is, naturally, he doesn't need to look for words, Cronus remembers and let a tear falls. What has the world done to his little love?
What has the world done to him?
What has love done to them...?
"Knowing how you are, what you're doing. Maybe one day, planning on seeing you again.
— After fourteen years? And the girl you left me for?"
Just a sigh.
"It's stupid, Cronus, if you allow me to use this word. I don't need her approval to talk to you. But I don't want to seem rude and just come to your house, like if nothing happened. But...
— But?"
He hears it. The hesitation in the voice. The almost cracking tone, the tears falling on the red carpet- Kankri loves to blind other people with this color-. He hears it and sighs.
"But...
— I understand. Come here, Kankri. "
If he must be broken, Cronus prefers to be by his ex lover more than any other people. Even if it means seeing him happy and all the things going with it, perfectly fine with his girlfriend.
Even if it means crying in the bathroom when he would be gone.
Forever this time.
And I stay, like an idiot, with the phone against my ear even if he hanged up. And I smile, and I cry. The tears roll down my cheeks, one each second. Just because he still remember me. I am overreacting. Just because there were the words we used to use to see each other. Fourteen seconds before I realize. Turning off my phone. Five minuts and fourteen seconds.
For the first time in, what, two hours? He stands up and walks around his appartment, tries to comb his hair before he left his phone on a table. It's been five years since he had seen him for the last time. Fourteen years he had been waiting to apologize.
Apologize for loving him. Loving him so hard that one night he left him without a note or an adress.
Apologize for being Cronus Ampora.
The young man, leather jacket on his shoulder, quickly goes to buy some cigarettes, chewing-gums and maybe condoms. Out of stock.
"It's Valentine's day!"
He has almost forgotten it.
Fourteen past ten. Here he is.
His own door seems unfamiliar to him, his reflection is the reflection of a stranger. He anxiously plays with his fingers, on the wooden table. Waiting for a call, for a knock on the door.
The second option. And the sound against his heavy door makes him jump. He opens it.
And memories jump right in his face. Right in his heart.
A tear on a frozen cheek, falling to break everything.
In fourteen seconds.