Chapter 35: Chat

The woman looked at him, with complicated look on her eyes as she assessed him much more cleared this time.

Black hair with red eyes, a face that was haggard, tired, and looked like a drunkard. His body was robust but more on the slimmer side while he didn't have clothes on anymore, probably because it burned.

Overall, he looked ugly, messy and dangerous at the same time.

Rueben, who was tired, finally had his energy back when the woman gave him God's Blood to drink. Though he was surprised, he didn't think much and felt that his body needed the blood more than his life.

The woman looked at him, then softly sat beside him as Rueben continued to lie down on the lake.

She then opened her mouth before closing them again as if she was hesitating.

Rueben could snap her neck, and he did.

As the woman was lying stiff on the lake, another one came.

"Wow, you really killed me."

"I didn't think you would still be alive. Though, I have a feeling that you wouldn't die from this much."

Her eyes narrowed, but because of the veil, her face was covered so Rueben didn't see her expression.

The dead woman suddenly sank down into the lake as the woman sat a little farther away from Rueben, who was just lying there, breathing.

Seeing his tired and lifeless eyes, she opened her mouth, "Tell me, Hunter. Why do you want to save my sister, Sara? She does not need your help, nor does she want it."

Rueben turned his head to look at her in the eyes and softly shook his head, "You don't know that."

"Oh I know that." The woman replied back.

"Mother might have gotten us killed hundreds, thousands, millions of times, but those are her efforts to make us strong, to become the better versions of ourselves, she has already accepted everyone except Sara as her official children."

Sara, even when they were trapped together, was childish, kind and most of all, very ruthless when it came to herself.

She was someone who's mind, body and soul was broken. If you wanted something to drink, she would literally offer her own blood for you to drink.

She was a machine, of sorts. That was why the woman felt weirded and even scared of Sara. Yes, she had emotions and such, but the way she treated herself was as if she was programmed to treat herself like that. She has no mercy towards her own body and had sacrificed herself countless times for them even though they all knew that they were going to live again anyway.

She kept doing all these stuff, forsaking her own being as a Human.

Though, what really makes one human? Is it our emotions? Our actions? Reasons?

We never know, yet people had often told others that being Human was just being able to live, to struggle, to have goals and such.

Yet animals have them too, albeit smaller scale than humans. Animals struggle just to live, they have goals but it is impossible for them to achieve.

Does that make animals humans too?

Rueben looked at the woman, who started talking to herself before sitting up. "You are asking questions that feels like you are questioning the line between righteous and evil."

The woman looked at him, "That is an interesting topic to talk about."

His face scrunched and he said, "You do know that I am planning on killing you, right? I won't be able to escape from this place if I don't kill you."

The woman nodded her head, " I know. But have you not already seen what happens if you kill me? I would still come back."

Rueben looked at her, then closed his eyes as he remembered the first time he killed someone, a fellow human being.

"You know, once, I killed someone."

The woman looked at him as she listened.

"She was my childhood friend. The two of us played together since our birth, we celebrated each other's birthdays, made fun of one another, played together… We did all kinds of things that children do. It was unfortunate that the world we are living in is cursed."

"What happened then?" The woman was curious. After all, this guy just suddenly started speaking about his childhood friend.

"She died."

Rueben said, with his lifeless and haggard face, he looked at his palms and pressed them on his face as he let out a long sigh.

"I held her throat on my hand, stabbed her with a fork, repeatedly as I only heard her grunt and scream in pain. Her tears, her face of horror, her eyes filled with anger and betrayal, I could still remember them till this day."

He then reached his hand out of the darkness and looked at it with regret and serene eyes.

"My teacher had told me that she was infected by the disease that turns others into monsters. Her parents had turned into beasts and my teacher found me and saved us, it was two weeks of training under him that he told me that she was infected, that she was going to turn into a beast just like her parents. Of course that terrified me. I was still 8 years old that time."

Remembering the golden locks of her hair, the childish smile that she always had, the optimism and positivity that she always carries, he remembered each and every one of them. It was something that he could never forget.

Rueben saw a little girl smiling at him, waving her hand towards him. Rueben wanted to wave back but all of a sudden, blood started seeping through her clothes, her smile grew twisted, her eyes went to the back of her head as she started screaming, begging him to stop.

He closed his hand and clenched it hard.

"I killed her, fearing that my parents would be put into danger because my teacher had told me that if I don't kill her myself, he would leave us alone." His red eyes started becoming more serene and calm, as if a rock approaching a large storm.

"My old child self, naïve and trusting whatever the adults say, I followed his command. With just a fork on my hand, I attacked her when she was sleeping, I choked her with tears on my eyes, then, I stabbed her with the fork, over and over and over and over again. She screamed, cried for help, begging for me to stop yet I couldn't do much, I continued. As if eternity had passed, only then she stopped screaming and her lifeless corpse laying on the bed with me on top of her."

He sighed, "When I looked at what I've done, I felt guilt, regret, anxiety, so much more complex emotions that I could not understand at such age, I broke down and started crying. Praying to the lord, to forgive me, forgive me for I have sinned. Then morning arrived when I found the dead bodies of my parents lying beside my teacher, who has just finished eating breakfast."

The woman looked at him in silence, she couldn't mouth a word to say. She had a rough childhood, but it was from abuse, sexual immorality and such.

But for Rueben, he lost the people he loves most to the person he trusts most, he killed his one and only person that he vowed to protect in order to protect his parents.

And this all happened at such a young age.

"What did you feel?" She asked.

Rueben looked at her, then just smiled. "Nothing, I felt absolutely nothing."

Rueben then stood up and looked at her, then dashed towards her, grabbing her head and slammed her to the lake with his red eyes glowing. "I felt that nothing matters in this world anymore."