The first dawn light has solidified into constant sunlight. Leon is lying on the ground on his back. Friling‘s Heat, Raphael’s Wings, are out as multiple feathers are planted on Leon‘s body. Unlike how they turned into threads with Jarrod‘s severed arm, these feathers are turning into micro-particles, or to a human eye, dust.
JDen, sitting and holding Leon‘s head up so that the blood circulation continues and he does not pass out, asks, “Wait… are those dusts?”
Friling does not open his eyes as his feathers do the work, and serenely replies, “They are what they are needed to be… according to the wounds… they mutate to heal.”
It takes some time, but Friling is more or less able to heal Leon, bringing him back from fatality using his feathers. Leon‘s injuries are more external than internal, so he wakes up in the field and leaves with JDen.
But it isn’t only Jarrod who got hurt by Leon‘s words. Jarrod‘s words—especially the line about the well and the frog—touched Leon too, somewhere deep he could not explain.
That same night, as the full moon is hovering over Titan City, accompanied by millions of stars making the sky look like a Christmas tree but with a color mixture of black, navy blue, and white, Leon is on his penthouse balcony. JDen carries the saline water behind him. Leon stares at the night sky for too long.
JDen finally asks, “Bro, it’s been a long time since you’ve been standing. The doctor told you to lie down. Even if that head family guy healed you, you are not fully ready to be… well, you again.”
Leon asks JDen with his back to him, “Tell me, how much do you know about this world?”
JDen pauses, unable to understand how to answer it, and says, “Bro, you know I have grown up with you. I know it as much as you do!”
Leon finally turns and asks, “So… nothing!”
JDen stares at him for a long time and says, “Why are you asking, bro?”
Leon looks away from JDen, turns his head to look down on the people, and says, “That guy Jarrod told me I know nothing about this world… What did he mean? What does he know that I don’t?”
JDen, thinking Leon might be getting dizzy, literally drags him to the bed and lays him down. He puts the saline water beside his bed and takes his farewell for the night.
As Leon lies on this plush bed staring at the ceiling, the moonlight from the glass doors of the balcony making the room dimly lit, Leon feels restless. Partly because when he moves on the bed to adjust his position he feels a sudden twitch like a killing blow on his body, and partly because his body, his pride, and his whole mindset got shattered in that single brawl.
For a man like Leon, win a fight and you are a god and the whole world has to bow to you, but lose a fight and you are dead.
When Jarrod knocked him out, even if Leon does not fully understand what Jarrod meant when he told him to go out there, given that Jarrod defeated him, Leon feels a debt on his shoulders to acknowledge what was asked of him. Or maybe it is fate guiding him toward his true purpose, and Jarrod was just the catalyst.
So the next dawn, he decides to leave Titan City to see this world that Jarrod spoke of.
Down below his building, he says goodbye to JDen as the sun rises. JDen is basically holding him—he only reaches up to Leon‘s chest—and openly weeping, saying, “Bro, come on, you are not healed yet… and where are you gonna go? What’s gonna happen to the city? What will happen to me? Come on… please don’t leave.”
Leon pats his follower, or maybe even his only friend’s head—though he would never say it loudly that JDen is his friend—saying, “I have to… and who said anything will happen to this city? It has you…” He looks up toward the sun as a bunch of birds fly east and whispers, “…and it has him.”
With that, Leon starts walking toward the East of Titan City!
The focus shifts; it’s yesterday morning again.
The sun is slowly coming out with all its light. The brawl between Jarrod and Leon has just ended, but the moment Jarrod leaves the field, he collapses on the ground face-down.
Friling, after healing Leon, is about to leave when he sees Lesca is missing. He starts searching for her, only to see her at the Exit 1 gate. Jarrod is face-down on the ground, and Lesca is standing over him, her arms crossed over her chest, her leg tapping on the ground.
Friling sprints toward them and asks, “What happened?”
Lesca casually says, “He collapsed!”
Friling, a little irritated, says, “I can see that, but what did you—”
He sees Lesca‘s don’t-care vibe and says, “Never mind.”
He kneels down to turn Jarrod over, checks his pulse, and says, “Well, he is unconscious! It’s a surprise, though, how he did not collapse on the field.”
Lesca, calling their car, says, “Fucking heroes… always need a cool exit.”
Jarrod‘s eyes open to the sound of crunches, which is the primary breaker of his slumber. Then comes the noise of saline and blood drops. He finally opens his eyes and sees the ceiling.
On his right, Lesca is sitting on what looks like a shelf, near the entrance/exit of the chamber, chewing on a bag of chips that she has definitely picked up from the cafeteria. And Friling is beside him on a guest chair, close to his bed, intensely looking at him.
Friling, seeing Jarrod finally open his eyes, smiles a truly radiant smile and says, “Welcome to the world, my friend!”
Jarrod looks to his left. There is a window, and from the looks of it… it’s dusk. The full moon is yet to show all of her radiance, and most of the stars are yet to take their places in the night sky.
He looks back to his right where Friling is sitting and says, “Did I spend the whole day unconscious, or more?”
Before Friling can reply, Lesca quips, saying, “Do you think I would be here if you were here for days?”
Jarrod takes in her quip, smiling and looking up at the ceiling as Friling says, “A little more than 10 hours. Since you did not have any deep injuries, I was useless.”
Jarrod asks, looking at him again, “Is he alright?… Did I? Did I ki—?”
Friling cuts him off, saying, “He is and was fine. And he is probably at his home right now preparing for round two.” Friling chuckles and continues, “Since I did not see him here when I brought you in, it means the healing I did on him was more than enough.”
Jarrod finally sighs, a sigh that looks like he has been holding onto it for a long time.
The luxurious patient chamber falls silent as Friling finally brings up the unsung topic, saying, “So back then… what… why did you—”
Lesca cuts him off, saying, “You snapped during the battle… why? Are you actually a preacher of good in the morning and a killer at night?” she asks with a smirk.
Jarrod stares at the ceiling for a long time and finally reveals the reason for his rage. “My mother raised me… since we didn’t have much gold, we used to live in a—” He hesitates and says, “In an unpleasant neighborhood. People there used to treat us like shit… a single mother raising a child.”
Jarrod pauses, looking out at the night-falling sky, and says, “I wanted to hurt them… bad, for treating me… my mother like that. I mean, what did we do to them, huh?” Jarrod‘s voice raises a little as he looks at Friling, who doesn’t give a noteworthy reaction, so Jarrod turns looking forward. “But I was small and weak. My mother… my sole guardian, despite all the humiliation and harassment, used to smile and be polite with everyone whenever she used to cross paths. She never cared whether they were evil or good.”
He pauses, looking at Friling again, and says, “One day I asked her, ‘Why, Maa?… Why are you so good to them when all they do is hurt us!’ My mother smiled and replied, ‘If you are bad to me, it doesn’t mean I have to be bad to you. If we focus on hurting back those who hurt us, then all that will be left in this world is bad. It is a never-ending cycle. Our Creator, son, sent both good and bad into this world alongside us for a reason. So that we can learn from both good and bad, and grow. And you know,’—Jarrod‘s mother hugged him and said—‘no good deed goes unnoticed. Even if no one is watching, then always remember, at least our Creator is.’“
Jarrod stops with a little struggle, leaning back supported by Friling and the pillows on his back, and continues. “One day, when some men were about to break down our house… some of the neighborhood people came to our aid, saving both me and my mother… the same people my mother was good to. Since then, I choose to do the right thing… the good thing… even if no one else does. Because I know our Creator is watching. And even if the whole world is running the bad cycle, maybe my cycle of doing good… might tip the scale” He hesitates for a moment, then concludes saying “or at least make a difference!”
Again, Jarrod sighs, as he just shared why he lost his composure almost 12 hours ago.
Friling takes all of it in silently and stares at Jarrod‘s face for a long time. He realizes this was hard for him to admit, but he still did it because Jarrod felt safe with him and Lesca, and he respects it immensely. Pushing him for more might be too much for him and break that trusted circle they have cultivated.
Lesca hops off the shelf as her chips bag is finished. Oddly enough, through the narration of his past, she did not make a single sound, yet finished the whole bag. She is about to walk through the door, probably to get more or maybe just to leave, when she stops and says, “If you… stop,”—she says it like the word ‘stop’ is hard for her to spell—”the people who are running the cycle of bad… maybe then there won’t be any need for hope. But only certainty.” And she walks out.
The focus again shifts back to the next morning as Leon is at the Titan City East Side border. The sun is in the sky, birds are starting their day. He stands there, staring back at the city… a place where he has a name, a sense of belonging, and holds immense influence despite the recent loss.
Then he stares at the savanna and the bushes that are on the East side… the Unknown!
What will happen to him, he does not know.
If he needs help, would anyone come to save him? Probably not.
He closes his eyes and takes a step to cross the Titan City boundary, when suddenly—and because his eyes were closed—he brushes against, or to be honest, much to his displeasure, gets pushed back by another guy.
When he feels that push, he opens his eyes and sees a guy maybe a little shorter in terms of rigid feet or meters, but still at his eye level, and more muscular, enters into the city’s boundary. The morning wind making his duster coat flutter crazily. He has his hands in his pockets. He is just walking in from the East Side. This man has that same aloof look on his face, with dead fish eyes —a man who has seen it all, done it all, and decided to be aloof nonetheless, yet his eyes… it’s like they absorb things. A man who does not care about the world, whether it lives or dies.
He brushes past Leon like the protector of Titan City does not exist, or worse he is an ordinary man.
Leon turns and says to him, “Hey, watch it… asshole! I was thinking about something and you broke my focus.”
The guy doesn’t stop as he has walked some steps into the Titan City, by the time Leon has roared.
He doesn’t even turn back, just says with his back toward Leon while walking, “Maybe you should go back to school and learn how to walk on the road… little boy.”
Leon gets instantly furious, and he has every right to be.
First, he was having a moment leaving his home. Second, he is still hurt, so his composure at its most fragile state, even if he won’t admit it, and he just said goodbye to everything he knows. And finally, it was not his fault. This guy appeared from out of nowhere. Up until Leon closed his eyes, he remembers there was no one coming in.
So he is agitated, but he realizes it’s not worth a fight. Fighting an unknown already cost him a loss recently, broke down his world and his body once in 24 hours, and he doesn’t wanna hurt his ego again. Not to mention, truth be told, if a car hit him, he wouldn’t be able to tank the hit—that’s how much weaker he is right now.
So Leon just turns and leaves, gritting his teeth, saying, “One day.”
The guy with the aloof expression suddenly halts, and he is looking at a cafe. There are some people chatting, still some time until peak hours, but the window table is empty.
Taglia walks in, muttering to himself, “I hate being early.”
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