The Time It Takes To Fall

The Word Called Lonely

USA, 2019 A.D.

The rain fell in a soft drizzle— that kind that felt like the gentle spray of a thumb over a hose pipe. It was that lovely, refreshing sensation rather than the dump of an angry sky. It was the sort of rain that was supposed to make one feel better.

Despite the lovely rain, Kai felt terrible. The past forty-eight hours of his life had been a rollercoaster, starting with a rapid rise of hope and declining faster than one could let out a scream. He'd thought that his life had finally found its purpose— that he had at long last succeeded in his four hundred year-long quest. But of course his assumptions had been premature; Cinder had discovered his lying by omission and then proceeded to accuse him of a murder he had not committed.

And to make everything oh-so much worse, Kai had finally connected the dots to Selene's consistency in dying or discovering that he was something other just as he felt he had succeeded. He'd argued violently with the Blue Koi— master of death and the reason he was where he was now— and somehow felt bad about it. Of course, she had been his oldest friend throughout his many years of searching and finding and losing the girl he loved, but she was also the reason he kept on failing.

There had been times when Kai had grown suspicious of his friend, especially with the death of Selene's ninth reincarnation, but never could he have imagined this. He thought that she cared for him— that she wanted him to succeed. After all her years of advice to him and comfort upon Selene's many deaths, he'd believed her to be his ally.

But as it turned out, Kai had no allies. He was a man alone in the world, on a constant quest that always ended in failure. It was like playing one of those blasted arcade games: sometimes he neared the final level, but somehow he always ended up losing, no matter how much practice he had. He could not complete the final level— he could not defeat the final boss.

A car pulled into the parking lot of the park that Kai was at. It was not the same park that he had been with Cinder just two nights before when they had kissed for the first time in this life. It was a park meant for the young, as it had a swing set and a few rusted slides.

Kai watched as a figure walked toward him— she was tall and completely... blue. From her bright azure hair to her navy dress, she was varying shades of the color. Kai had seen much of the color throughout his life but never another person wear the color so boldly as the Blue Koi.

She advanced through the rain, her face completely devoid of all emotion. Upon reaching Kai, who was seated at a picnic table, she stared at him for a moment with only her eyes conveying any sense of emotion. The only problem was that Kai could not tell what the emotion was.

It had taken less convincing than Kai thought it would to get Iko to meet with him. One would think that finding a girl with only a first name as a guide would be difficult, but after four centuries of doing just that, Kai was a pro. It had taken him less than fifteen minutes to track down Iko. Convincing her to meet him had taken even less time— almost as if she had been expecting Kai to reach out. Their text conversation had been abrupt and to the point; their meeting followed only an hour later.

And now they were together— two people whose only connection to one another was Cinder Linh. It was a strange thing to know another person well through association without ever having met them before. Kai knew loads of random facts about Iko, from her favorite color— uh, blue— to the fact that she was terrified of fire. He knew her, and she was sure she knew him, but they did not know one another.

"Hello, Iko," Kai said, clearing his throat as he said the words. "Thank you for agreeing to meet me upon this day." He almost added "despite you believing me to be a murderer" but thought better of it.