"Well!" Grandpa lets out a huff. "I've told you quite a lot about myself now, haven't I? So why don't you share a little about yourself too?"

"My- myself?"

He nods. "You don't have to go too deep into it, just scratch the surface if you may, dear. I have lived 71 years, so I find myself qualified to be of help."

I realize this is why he took some time to tell me about himself, so that I feel comfortable to do the same and feel like we're even.  I wonder how it would be if I do tell him a little about my current problem. Will he be able to give me some insight into why I'm struggling with the apology? Last time I shared my problems with anyone but July, it was with Edgar, who unexpectedly turned out to be of a great help. However right now, July is sitting right here, and he is the one my biggest problem is about, so I'm not sure how to.

Just as I am about to refuse, July stands up from beside me. Then he walks out of the room, probably sensing that I can't say it in front of him. That must mean he wants me to take the help that has been offered. I suppose I do need to talk to an adult about this. I'm 17 years old; I can't be a know-it-all who can easily solve every problem by depending on solely himself.

"Okay," I say, and begin to arrange the thoughts in my head.

"Take your time," he says, "the others won't be waking up anytime soon."

I nod. Clearing my throat, I begin, "There is . . . someone I hurt a lot with my words, out of . . . out of my own selfish desire to protect myself. But-" I clear my throat again as a lump begins to form there. "But, I can't seem to apologise no matter how many chances he gives me. I- I don't know why, because it's never too hard for me to apologise when I know it's my fault. But this time-" I press the side of my index finger against my lips, afraid a sob will escape anytime. The sight of my lap becomes blurry before I know it. "I don't know. I can't figure it out. And it's someone I- someone I . . . I deeply lo-"

I start to restlessly tap my foot on the ground. I don't think I can say any more than this. If I do, I might really crumble apart.

"Hmm." From my peripheral vision, I see grandpa take off his glasses. After a short silence, he says, "From what I can tell, you are a very honest kid, Cedar. And that honesty doesn't allow you to utter an apology that is incomplete. Am I right?"

I vigorously nod. "Yes. Yes you're right." My heart begins to pound. He understands, he really does. "But I don't know . . . I don't know why it feels incomplete. And while I still try to figure it out, it's getting more and more late, grandpa."

He nods. "My dear, do you know? The curse of honesty is that you can't take shelter under lies. But when you do, the shelter of protection soon becomes a prison of guilt."

"A prison?" I repeat. Somehow, that word is terrifying.

"Mhm. And the only way to come out of that prison is to go back to square 1." He smiles, like someone who has managed to read everything between the lines.

Then he tells me what, perhaps, a part of me already knew but stubbornly refused to carry out.

"So be honest to yourself, Cedar, and correct the lies."

-----------------------

"Why were you crying back there?" I ask July after closing the room's door behind me.

He looks up from the sketchbook. His expression is unreadable. "What's wrong in crying?"

"There's nothing wrong but-"

"But it bothers you? I can't do anything about that, Cedar. It's not my job to always please you with my words and actions."

I frown. "July? What are you saying?" He turns back to his sketchbook, and somehow that makes my chest tighten up. "I never said it bothers me. I'm just asking if there's something bothering you."

He takes a moment to reply, during which he makes himself comfortable sitting in front of the window. I remain standing a few steps away from the bed. Finally, he says, "I can cry whenever I want. I don't see why I need your permission for that."

My frown deepens further. "What the . . . why are you talking like this? I don't get it. You're making weird meanings out of what I'm saying."

"Or maybe I'm just saying the actual meanings out loud. Who knows?"

I lose my words at that. July's tone is soft and calm, but it doesn't hold the gentleness it usually does. It doesn't hold coldness, mockery or anger either. I don't know what it holds at all, because I've never heard him talk like this before.

Restlessness grips my body. With a great urgency, I ask, "July, I'm . . ."

"I forgive you, Cedar."

He says it in a voice so soft that I want to collapse then and there. I feel my eyes widening up, shocked at what I'm hearing. He forgives me? But I haven't even apologised yet. A lump rises in my throat. Maybe he overheard my conversation with grandpa.

"I'm not mad at you." He looks at me with a steady gaze, a gaze that says nothing but everything at the same time. "I have no reason to be mad at you. I think I'm more mad at myself. About many things. Most of which you can't do anything about."

I swallow and scratch the body of my index finger with my thumbnail. He did not just say he forgives me without giving me a chance to apologise. That is too cruel. No matter what he says, he is mad, and it's my first time seeing him genuinely so. It's worse than yesterday. Maybe because he was tired, he didn't show the whole picture.

The I forgive you, Cedar keeps resonating within the walls of my mind, driving me to devastation. I never imagined he would be like this. I never imagined this is what things will get down to. I wanted to come back to the room and mull over what grandpa told me, figure it out, and finally apologize. But nothing ever goes according to my plans.

I decide it's best to just end the topic. It's going nowhere, and in all honesty, I'm scared. So I walk over to the corner of the bed, where my clothes are lying around in a disheveled manner. I begin to fold them as I ask, "What were you doing when I was asleep?"

He arcs his neck backwards and looks out the window. "I drew, walked around the house, got familiar with the people. Drew some more, then took a walk outside in the forest. After grandpa woke up, I decided to accompany him. Time passed by."

"Weren't you lonely?"

The question makes his head sharply turn to me, and I immediately start regretting it. I think I just said something I wasn't supposed to.

He gives me a small smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "Why, you think I can't spend a few hours without you all by myself? You think I'll start trembling like a little child out of loneliness just because my only companion Cedar is not around?"

Even as all these mocking words spill out of his mouth, his voice holds a stable calmness. It's terrifying. This is somehow worse than my mom screaming at me about how I'm not working hard enough.

My clenched heart paces up. Swallowing, I say, "That's not what I meant."

"Cedar, I have spent my whole life alone. That's 19 years, in case you forgot. Just because I had company for the past 25 days, doesn't mean I will suddenly forget the normalcy of being alone."

"I- I know but-"

"Let me make this clear to you." He puts one of his legs over the other, hands joined together on his lap. "You are fully aware of my feelings for you. Just because you don't feel the same, does not make me the inferior one in our relationship. Just because I lived months under the name of someone else, doesn't mean my self-esteem has dropped to the ground. I still have a bit of pride left. I still deserve some respect. Don't think you can do whatever you want with me, going as far as to dictate how I should be feeling, just because I'm weak for you. Don't assume that I'm excessively depended on you just because I've never had someone else to depend on my whole life. I'm not that weak."

I listen to him speak with my jaw half-open. My shirt falls from my hand while I try to process his words. "What?" I blurt out. "July, what in the world are you . . . inferior? Weak? Why would you be inferior to me? When did I ever-? I don't get it, you're totally twisting my words! I never said you were inferioir to me, nor did I ever say you're excessively depended on me . . ."

"No, but you're treating me like that."

"No I'm not." But my words come out uncertain. Somewhere inside, I get the feeling that I have unknowingly done something even worse than pushing him away. It's true, I do always assume he's lonely whenever I'm not around, when it's something he's totally used to. I did say some extremely disgusting things to him back at the cliff, going so far as to call him a worm, just because he came too close to me. Oh my God. Maybe I do see him as some delicate shard of glass that might easily break into pieces, when he, by himself, is a brick wall.

I might have really disrespected him with my words and actions.

I still find myself shaking my head. "You're getting it all wrong, July. You're getting it all wrong."

"Then make it right, Cedar."

Once again, his voice is so soft that I want to start sobbing right now. But I know the softness here is just a facade, because he knows I can't handle high tone of voice. In this case, I wish he used exactly that.

"Make it right. If there is anyone who is willing to let you talk, it's me. So tell me. Fix this."

He stays silent, giving me the time I need. But my head blanks out like a white paper, and I find myself unable to form any coherent words, or any words strong enough to fix this. I can't. I can't fix this.

"But you can't, can you?" he asks. "How can you make it right when you're wronging yourself?"

I bite my lips, and my hands ball into fists. "You said you're not mad at me."

He smiles again. "Do I sound mad right now, Cedar?"

He doesn't. He sounds worse than mad. His cold anger is making the temperature of the room drop by several degrees, crushing my heart on the way. "But you're getting it all wrong," I repeat with more urgency. "I'm just worried about you, July. Because I care about you. I don't care about many people in this world, but I genuinely care about you, July. You know I do."

"I know. But me knowing it does little to change anything."

We stare at each other in silence. At one point, I see his neutral expression falter ever so slightly, face contracting just a little for a moment before turning back to normal. He averts his gaze right after. I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff again, just a step away from crumbling apart into tiny specks of dust. I can't do this anymore. I just can't. I'm so tired. My legs are starting to hurt, so I sit down on the edge of the bed, my back towards him. I put my elbows on my thighs, join my palms together, and rest my forehead on them.

I take a few deep breaths. Exhaustion clings to my limbs like stubborn parasites. Closing my eyes, I tell him, "Just give me some time, okay? Let me sort myself out. Please. Let me come to a conclusion with myself. And once I do, I want to have a proper conversation with you. A proper, genuine, and calm one. Then we can decide where things will head. So just give me some time. Okay, July?"

I wait for his reply, but none comes. Disheartened, I turn my head backwards, to find his gaze fixed on the other side of the room. I know he's looking at the wallclock over the mirror.

"Time." He says it in a tone that expresses a hatred so strong that it's truly exhausting. "How I wish that word didn't exist."

----------------------

I stay in bed for the rest of the day.

With no energy to physically move, I expend my emotional energy by threading one debate after the other within my mind. I put all my contradictory thoughts together in a room and make them argue with each other in the hopes of coming to a final conclusion. I analyse each thought and what they stem from, and try to discard the ones that are unnecessary. However, the more I eliminate old thoughts, the more new thoughts are born, creating more jumbles, more confusions, more circles.

At some point, my head suddenly becomes empty like a blank slate. Every emotion I've been feeling uptill now vanishes into thin air. What follows afterwards is a sense of pure numbness.

I realize I have expended both of my physical and emotional energy. Without either, I lay on the bed like a dead person with a beating heart.

I think I need to cry. Maybe crying would help. But for some reason, I can't. All I can do is bury my face under the thin blanket and stare into the little darkness it provides. My eyes are aching and heavy, but every time I close them, unwanted images float in front of the lids. Driving those images away takes too much energy, which I don't have. So all I can do is keep my eyes opened and wonder whether I'm alive.

Aunt Sayra once called me for breakfast. After I refused, no one disturbed me again. I have a feeling all of them are aware of my not-so-good condition, so they are leaving me alone. That's for the best. Otherwise who knows, maybe I would have said ugly things to them as well. I'm the most ungrateful piece of shit in this world, after all.

July has been sitting right beside me the whole time, in complete silence. He only told me to eat something once, but after my lack of response, he didn't ask further. But he did go and bring me a thin blanket from the cupboard, because he knows I feel uncomfortable without one. Then he closed the window and draped over the curtains as the sunlight got too strong. He only left a little gap so that the room doesn't become fully dark. He also went and increased the speed of the ceiling fan after I started sweating a little.

Though I hurt him so much, he still keeps doing everything for me.

As my back is faced towards him, I don't know if he is drawing or just sitting there doing nothing. Probably the latter. He has a lot of things on his mind too. After all, I destroyed him. And while doing that, I destroyed myself as well. I deserve everything that I'm going through, perhaps even worse.

So I stay in my empty thoughts for God knows how long. The sound of the ticking clock reaches my ears from time to time, reminding me of the seconds I'm uselessly wasting. Everytime I have to block my ears and turn a blind eye to the passage of time. July is right. I wish the word "time" never existed.

At some point of the blankness, I hear a knock on the door.

I hate this. There's no way I can get up right now. There's no way I can walk over to that door. It's impossible. That's when I see July get off the bed. I frown. What is he going to do? It's not like he can open the door. But I only see him opening the lock as silently as possible, then walk back to the bed. I realize why he did that.

Clearing my throat, I call, "Please come in."

Out of the push of manners, I manage to find the little energy required to sit up just as the door opens, revealing Uncle Ray. He has a pile of clothes on his arms.

He stares at me for a few seconds, evidently a little surprised. I wonder how I look right now.

"Can I help you with something, Uncle Ray?" I ask, in spite of being aware of my lack of ability to do that.

He snaps back to his senses. "'Ey, Cedar! Naye, not at all. I only came here to give ya these clothes of mine. These are old, old ones, from before I gained all this . . . ya know!" He slaps his big belly and laughs. I smile a little. "I think these'll fit ya quite well, yeah?"

"Thank you so much, Uncle Ray. Please keep them here." I gesture towards the corner of the bed, where my other clothes are lying, properly folded.

He does. Then he puts his hands on his waist and looks around the room. With a nod, he says, "Feels a bit empty, doesn't it? It was my oldest Flora's room. Princess took almost everything all the way to the darned city. Want me to put some decors here and there? Bring more life, yeah?"

"It's okay. My room back home is a lot like this too. So I'm fine with it."

"Okay." He nods and crosses his arms over his chest. He awkwardly hovers around.

"Is there something you want to tell me, uncle Ray?" I ask. A part of me wishes he would leave, and another part hates me for wishing so. I'm tired of all these contradictions.

"Ah, yes. Umm . . ."

---------------

"You're not coming?" I ask while unbuttoning my shirt. It got soaked with sweat while I was under the blanket.

He glances up at me from his sketchbook. He isn't really sketching anything particular as far as I see. He is just doing a bunch of random shading here and there on the page, seemingly to make himself look busy. He turns back to the page as he replies, "You go. I'm feeling tired."

I hold back the urge to sigh. Uncle Ray proposed for me to accompany him to his beehives and help him collect the honey today. He said that I can join him if I want to learn new, interesting things I won't learn from school. I have no energy to learn things right now, but I couldn't refuse him because I'm imposing in his house and the least I can do to repay the favor is help him out in his work. I was still having a hard time deciding because of my tiredness, and that's when July urged me to go with Uncle Ray and catch some fresh air.

"Come with me, July," I softly say, hoping he can hear the request in my voice. I'm only asking twice because he needs the fresh air as much as I do.

He glances at me again, studying me. He puts the sketchbook aside, and for a moment, hope blooms within me. But he only says, "Put on your shirt," before proceeding to lie down, his back facing me.

This time, I do let out a sigh. Throwing the indigo-coloured shirt aside, I put on a cream coloured one. While I'm buttoning it up, I see him curl up further on the bed and wrapping his arms around himself. I notice his pants pull up slightly, revealing about an inch-long cut right above his left ankle. I never noticed that before.

"Then I'm . . . " I wanted to say, Then I'm leaving. I'll be back soon. But I fear that it will again sound like I want to assure him about not feeling lonely. After all, he's not like me. He's not gonna have any problem staying for a few hours all by himself. In the end, I only say, "Then I'm leaving."

I wait for a mild response. When none comes, I disappointedly head towards the door. Just as I am about to open it, he says, "Be careful out there."

I turn around. From the back, he looks small, vulnerable, though he is holding on much better than I am.

I nod, though I know he can't see it.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

31.05.2021

Hello everyone :)

Hope you liked this chapter. Does July's behavior seem understandable to you, or does it feel like he is overreacting? Let me know your thoughts. It's obvious that there is a misunderstanding going on here, but sometimes, misunderstandings are important too.

One another note, thank you to all those who responded with positive messages to my announcement. It's only after I started getting the replies did I realize how it sounded like I was fishing for compliments and seeking internet validation, two things I would usually never do in my right mind because of my self-esteem. But then again, I haven't been in my right mind at all the past few days. So I hope you'll understand.

Thank you so much for reading, and for supporting me. Some of you can't even imagine just how much your kind words mean to me. Continue to be kind like this to everyone in your life. Take care of yourselves and those around you. See you next update :)

— love, Poma