Chapter 22

Draft

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- [B. "As long as you repent sincerely, God will save your soul."]

"As long as you repent sincerely, God will save your soul." You say hurriedly.

Lemuel looks at you fixedly, and doesn't speak for a long time, an ominous foreboding sends chills down your spine. He doesn't yell at you, he's not giving the same crazy laugh he just did. He's also stopped crying, like all the strength he used to support his response had been drained. He looks at you for a while and says, "What if I don't repent?"

You become silent, at a loss. All the people you've met follow down the steps you gave them. They'll say I repent, whether it's sincere or not, as long as they claim they've repented, you'll be able to forgive me. Shouldn't things have gone this way? Wasn't this the routine? You've never met anyone who dares say "no" to the Lord's grace.

You panic, almost begging Lemuel to nod. There's no need to sincerely repent- such a disrespectful thought crosses your mind- all he has to do is nod vaguely, and once he promises to not make any more mistakes, you'll repent for him, forgive him no matter how deep his past guilt. But you can't vocalise your plea, how could a priest guide others to tell lies? You look at Lemuel pleadingly and he looks back at you. Like he had read your mind, Lemuel twitched the corners of his mouth wearily, it wasn't a smile, it was fleeting.

"I won't repent," He says.

That day ended in a daze, the next morning the post-it notes were blank and Lemuel lies on the couch with his eyes closed. He didn't want to talk to you, I didn't matter whether he was awake or not. You hope he'll be fine after a few days, but you can only hope.

You barely finish the morning's work, no one notices any difference, but you lost a pen cap. You search the church for more than ten minutes, but there's no trace of the pen cap. You have to give up, go to the supermarket, and buy the ingredients you bought that past day- you've seen Lemuel cook, you can at least follow through the movements. The supermarket's cash register is broken, shoppers complain, and you mechanically persuade them to stay calm. The ingredients taken out of the refrigerator forms cold water droplets in your hands, your head is pounding, and your heart is restless.

You finally get home, take out the key and open the door. All defenses are safe, the door is open in front of you, the TV and lights in the living room are turned off, and the quilt on the sofa had been folded. You smell traces of gunpowder and blood. You feel sick.

The hallway is empty, the living room is empty, and the bedroom is empty. You open the bathroom door, the smell of blood rushes to your face, the red color rushes into your vision. So bright and dazzling, you almost think that it's your eyes that are bleeding.

Lemuel is sitting in the bathtub, well dressed in shorts and trousers, a shirt and a coat, a formal outfit for going out. Of course, he can't go out now, because his tail, paws, and half of his head is no longer in place. Lemuel is sitting in the bathtub, the gun is at the bottom of the bathtub, and the blood is splattered on the bathroom wall like a torch frozen in time, already dry. He's very thoughtful, the bathroom is fully tiled and can be easy cleaned.

You charge at him, his hands are as cold as all the other corpse you've met. Suicide by the gun, its been more than three hours after death, probably shortly after you left the house. Your pistol is lying at the bottom of the tub, you haven't proofed it enough, you've stopped guarding against Lemuel and you thought... You get up in a daze, walking into the living room and looking around aimlessly, like there'd be a second Lemuel, undamaged, who would walk out of thin air. There's a notepad on the table, it's different from the ones you get when going out, some words were written on it.

You pick up the notepad, the handwriting on it is the same as the one on the shopping list. There's only one line on it: Don't save me.

You stabilise yourself with the table and sit on the couch, your legs suddenly couldn't support your weight anymore. You turn over the notepad, flipping through each sticky note, page by page, but you couldn't find any other words. This is Lemuel's message to you: "Don't save me".

In fact, even if he wrote "save me," you wouldn't have been able to save him. You've run out of holy relics, even if you hadn't, Lemuel has been dead for too long. You're not a god after all. You're powerless, you're helpless, and this won't change in the face of death. You're no different from the others.

Lemuel is dead.

So there are some things you'll never get to find out.

You won't know his fear of walking on thin ice, you save him with the hands that hurt him, give preferential treatment without giving the reasons. You think you're all right, you think he's alright, you don't realize that your relationship was never and will never be equal. You stand high over him, like a giant, not knowing what the grass under your feet means to him, its a forest of thorns.

You don't know what you mean to him, the priest that's always humble, or maybe people always lack the right understanding when dealing with a loved one. His past world has collapsed entirely, but you're the fulcrum of his new world. You gave him a second life, but the world the half-blood demon Lemuel could live was only as big as your house. You don't know how much courage he had used to catch you the second time.

You don't know what happened to him, you don't know why those people went on a witch-burning spree. What's ordinary scripture to you, is a multitude of tragic wounds to him, those black wounds so deep and narrow he's ashamed to show, wound that you cannot heal.

Oh, in the end, yesterday, Lemuel tried to tell you, he really did.

He really tried his best.

You don't know that he never repented and sought forgiveness from you, because he didn't think he was guilty. He always believed that he was human, that it wasn't his fault he became a demon, that it wasn't a sin to fall in love with someone of the same sex, that it wasn't lavicious to have sex with a lover, and that being fucked didn't mean he was unclean. His sister agreed with him, his friends supported him, but now they're all dead. After that, everyone Lemuel ever met, everyone, denied him.

They called him the devil, they called him a dirty bitch, they say he deserved it. All his struggles were in vain and could be crushed with many punches, guns, and prayers. When you bought him for 177 silver coins, he'd learned to stop saying ridiculous insistences that could lead to ridicule or hurt. He had already believed that no one would treat him like a human being, even if he still felt like a human being. You see him as a fellow, you made him believe that you see him as a man, and when he began trusting you cautiously, you say that homosexuality is an abomination, "Those persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people.'" You say, "If a man has fornication with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed abominations. They shall be put to death, and the sin shall be upon them."

Like a proverb.

When Lemuel spoke, you didn't know that he wasn't asking you, but this unfriendly world and his own destiny. He asked: Was everything that happened to me brought upon myself? Am I not worthy of being born, to love others? Did I deserve it? Is there no one in this world who'll resonate with me, who'll love me, and who'll respect my soul?

As long as you repent sincerely... You say.

"Yes" -He heard.

Why did the camel collapse? The man who placed the last straw on the loaded camel's back wonders, This straw is so light.

You'll never get the chance to understand him, just like he never got to understand you. He doesn't know that your denial isn't out of prejudice and malice, you just have too many things you need to learn. He doesn't know that you loved him the way he wanted- and it's a matter of course, after all, even you know it.

You pick up a cracked vase, you try to mend it, it works to mend itself. Then it slips out of your hands and hits the ground again, shattering, you're unable to pick it up. Lemuel was in the bathroom, his blood like a solidified flame. He didn't plead guilty, he didn't repent, he refused to continue to compromise and would rather choose to burn to the ground in an instant, the embers hadn't been extinguished yet. You feel a piercing pain, but the corners of your eyes are dry, you've never cried for as long as you can remember.

A part of your heart also shattered, as cold as Lemuel's corpse. You realize that maybe you'll never get better.

【Bad ending 4 (燃烧) Combust】

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PastTimer: I want to update this more often since we're approaching pretty far off, still haven't decided yet but I'll let you know when I do