Ocean of the Eyes

“You practically glow. What do you think of Lucius? It means light in Latin. I think it would suit you perfectly.”

I jolted awake, my eyes flying open.

“Not this dream again…” I muttered to myself.

It was five in the morning. The floor-to-ceiling window in my bedroom, overlooking the enormous trees outside, was clouded with condensation from the cold. The floor lamp illuminating my room cast a warm, golden glow over everything, yet my hands were trembling, and I felt just as cold inside.

I was staring out into the magnificent silence when the creak of my half-open door drew my attention.

I caught a glimpse of a shadow slowly disappearing.

Rubbing my eyes, I carefully climbed out of bed. Since the house had an automatic heating system, I was wearing nothing but a pair of white linen shorts with blue stripes and an oversized white sweatshirt long enough to cover them.

My steps were heavy and careless as I made my way toward the kitchen. The moment my blurry eyes settled on Ace, my vision seemed to clear.

He was sitting at one end of the enormous white kitchen table, his head buried in his hands. His breathing was heavy, yet strangely quiet. His red hair was scattered around his arms.

After watching him for a while, I silently made my way toward the kitchen sink.

Just behind it was a large glass window overlooking the same wooded landscape as the one in my bedroom. Sometimes, I would spot all kinds of animals out there—deer, squirrels, even crows. I’d tried countless ways to feed them and get close to them.

Then, suddenly, the sun began to rise.

It was such a breathtaking sight that I couldn’t resist watching it.

I quickly poured myself a cup of coffee and stepped onto the veranda through the glass door to the right of the kitchen cabinets.

Settling into the rocking chair outside, I tucked my legs up beneath me. I wrapped both hands around the mug, letting its almost stove-like warmth seep into my fingers.

Meanwhile, little clouds of vapor escaped my mouth into the freezing air, as though my own body were contradicting itself.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the rich aroma rising from my steaming coffee.

These were the moments I lived for.

I wasn’t someone who lived to collect memories.

I lived to experience them.

A sudden rustling sound from somewhere behind the trees in the distance made me flinch. My eyes snapped toward it.

There was a faint, barely distinguishable shadow.

I narrowed my eyes, trying to focus on it.

“Are you alright? Or is there something wrong with your eyes?”

The sudden voice behind me made me jump.

That tired voice, still carrying its familiar softness, could only belong to one person.

“I saw you earlier, but I couldn’t call out to you. I was half asleep,” I answered without turning around.

He lumbered over and lowered himself into the wicker armchair beside me, its seat lined with cushions.

Only then did I notice that his face and clothes were covered in blood.

Even the permanent scar running down the left side of his face, beside his eye, was almost completely obscured by dried blood.

I wasn’t surprised.

It had become something of a habit.

A sight I’d been subjected to for years.

He didn’t take his eyes off mine. As though his condition were of no particular importance, he parted his lips to speak in a low voice, only to swallow his words and remain silent.

“…”

“Aren’t you going to take a shower? You’re covered in blood,” I said, averting my gaze.

He didn’t seem inclined to break eye contact unless I did it first.

Then I immediately glanced back toward the spot where I’d seen the shadow earlier.

It was gone.

I must have been hallucinating.

“Cora,” Ace murmured my name.

There was something almost suggestive in the way he said it, and I had a vague idea of what he wanted.

“You need to shower first,” I told him without meeting his eyes.

For the next few minutes, I watched the trees sway gently in the breeze.

“…”

Eventually, Ace rose from his seat and trudged upstairs to take a shower.

I released a long, deep sigh, finally abandoning the effort of pretending there was nothing strange about the situation.

It felt as though I’d been holding my breath for half an hour.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

Ace was as strange as ever.

Coraline knew there was no point in dwelling on it, yet that voice in the back of her mind always found a way to resurface, disturbing her peace.

She slowly tilted her head from side to side, as though trying to crack her neck, then leaned backward and laced her fingers behind her head.

The sound of Ace’s heavy footsteps descending the stairs reached her ears.

Coraline lifted her head and looked toward the kitchen doorway, where Ace now stood.

He was wearing a pair of extremely loose black linen trousers. His feet and upper body were bare.

Water streamed from his neck-length red hair, dripping from the bangs that fell over his eyes and nose, then down his face and onto his bare chest.

The black serpent tattoo winding from his neck down his right arm seemed like an outrageous insult to the sculpted physique of a Greek statue and the almost unnaturally pale skin it adorned.

His left eye, having suffered trauma in the past, was a much lighter shade of blue than his right.

His past, meanwhile, remained shrouded in mystery.

He looked like two entirely different people.

His hands hung loosely at his sides, like those of a child who didn’t know what to do with himself. He hadn’t even bothered to bring a towel.

Water continued dripping onto the floor as he stood motionless in the doorway, seemingly waiting for Coraline to give him an instruction.

When Coraline noticed him, she stared at the half-naked man standing before her in the freezing cold.

As though trying to suppress her irritation, she raised a hand to her temple and pressed her fingers against it.

Then she gestured toward the chair.

Ace clumsily sat where she’d indicated, without uttering a single word.

His expressionless face seemed incapable of conveying even the slightest emotion.

“You can’t walk around like that. It’s minus five degrees outside. Someone might get frightened if they saw you behaving this way,” Coraline said.

Ace slowly examined Coraline, who was standing before him in her shorts.

“But you’re wearing shorts too…?” he replied.

His comeback was so perfectly timed that Coraline fell silent for a moment.

She had already risen to her feet and headed toward the cupboards behind the veranda seating area, directly opposite the door on the right.

As always, she reached for the first-aid kit.

Then she quickly returned and stood in front of Ace.

Before opening the kit, her delicate fingers gently took hold of his chin.

His pallor was so striking that it almost seemed to announce that the blood had stopped flowing through his veins.

Coraline tilted his face upward to get a better look at him.

Ace’s unwavering eyes suddenly broke contact with hers and dropped toward the floor.

His long, blond eyelashes made it painfully obvious that he wasn’t blinking.

Right.

His natural hair color was blond, too.

Sometimes Coraline forgot that.

Her hand moved almost instinctively, brushing against his face in a gentle caress.

She froze.

Ace caught her hand in his, as though silently telling her to stop.

He remained stubbornly unwilling to meet her gaze.

Coraline abruptly withdrew her hand and took the medication from the first-aid kit.

With movements both gentle and quick, she began cleaning his wounds.

Patiently, she tended to each injury individually, applying dressings and adhesive bandages wherever necessary.

Ace seemed almost entranced.

He remained perfectly still, his gaze fixed on the ground, showing no reaction as he waited for Coraline to finish.

After a while, she closed the first-aid kit and returned it to its place.

Then she hurried inside, retrieved a blanket, and draped it over Ace’s shoulders, letting it fall around his body.

“See you.”

And with that, she went upstairs to her room.

She hadn’t even bothered to exchange a few words with him.

Then again, Ace probably wouldn’t have known what to say either.

She had simply done what she believed needed to be done and walked away.

An inexplicable emptiness continued to occupy her mind, but she stubbornly tried to rid herself of those thoughts and focus on something else.

Sometimes, she felt as though she were on the very verge of losing her mind.

That was why she needed to do reckless things just to remind herself that she wasn’t insane.

That she was only human.

Pain, cold, or adrenaline.

Things like these made her feel human.

Sometimes, she became so detached from reality that she would suddenly find herself staring down at her own hands, struggling to catch her breath.

She didn’t feel present here.

Her body was here, but sometimes her mind tried to convince her otherwise.

Perhaps this was simply what it meant to be human.

She buried her aching head in the firm pillow and squeezed her eyes shut.

And once again, Coraline fell into a deep sleep.