Chapter 90: Jiyo Kael And Benjamin Gustilo

(Somewhere in Shanghai, China)

Jiyo Kael took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then slowly let it out again. He could still feel the adrenaline pumping through his body, even as the tension slowly began to ease. The moment when he would have calmed down, his breathing would flow evenly again and his mind would be able to process the events of the past day, that was the moment he feared the most. He knew the feeling too well. Had it too many times already.

As soon as tiredness set in and his body began to cry out for relaxation, all the hard-pressed feelings that he hadn't been able or didn't want to take the time for in the whirlpool of events would surface again. The images then inexorably caught up with him with a power that made him a defenseless victim of his imagination.

People he had lost, people who had died through his fault, people he had killed himself, they all looked at him, could never be chased away, gradually turning him into an unfeeling monster, the longer it went he could bear to live with them.

That was when he first collapsed after his first deployment to an enemy zone, unable to bear the pain for months. He was back on duty working automatically, hadn't realized how hard his insides had become until he felt it couldn't go any further. And then it was the drugs that helped him keep going, especially after the agonizing time at the front.

He closed his eyes and tried to delay the inevitable for a moment. Familiar faces flashed before him, accusatory eyes, but there were so much more buried in his soul, things he had forbidden himself to remember for fear of succumbing to guilt and shame again. It had worked, his self-control was the bulwark behind which the nightmares lay, nightmares he had hoped to be rid of one day. There had been this Benjamin Gustilo - he had served and loved him too, desperately, but he disappeared. He also had to take the blame for me because of the Billionaire Marco Fernando Senior released and it was obvious that he was far from coming to terms with it. Too much had happened too quickly!

The death of so many people, the danger, the relief of not having remarried at all, and military service. And then withdrawal, work, and enough problems that had to be solved anew every day and, if he could prevent it, left no time for the past. Whatever the reason, he had closed, had accepted what and how he was and tried to move forward, and had been at peace with himself.

But now everything was different, the nightmares came back. And he wasn't used to this yet. He wanted peace and remoteness.

Filled with pain, Jiyo Kael opened his eyes again. It couldn't last much longer, the looks, the screams, they grew stronger and louder, they suppressed what little he still perceived of reality in his exhausted state.

It was hot the sun was blazing down from the sky and seemed to be drying out the desert even more. His tongue felt dry, like sandpaper, but he resisted the urge to drink. He knew this would it no better. In the shimmering heat ahead, he could vaguely see the outline of the tiny, almost unfamiliar place that would become his first target, his first goal in a new life. A dry cough shook him and he stood for a moment.

Only a few hours ago he had felt free, it had seemed to him as if a heavy burden had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders, the unbearable burden of his life. He was running away from Benjamin Gustilo. He hadn't wanted it anymore, more than once he had tried to escape, but this time it was different.

Jiyo Kael was dead, as others perceived to be true; his friends, his family, his colleagues.

Jiyo Kael was dead, and as much as it pained him to leave behind the people he cared about, who had shaped his life, the sense of total freedom had been overwhelming. No thought of the future, no plan, nothing more, it no longer existed and would never exist again!

The sunrise with its bright, auspicious colors had seemed to him like twilight of the gods and the blood rushing through his veins, his heart still pounding in his chest, had driven him forward towards a new destiny.

But this intoxication was gone quickly, he should cover known, he could run away from everything, just not from his own demons. They always followed him everywhere, no matter how sure he was that he had eluded them.

And then they caught up with him. His past gripped him and he felt that he was losing the strength to defend himself any longer. When he reached the first houses, he had no choice but to look for a room somewhere, lock the door behind him and let the nightmares come. At some point these too would be over, and perhaps he would then have another chance to lock them up deep in his soul, so deep that he could even forget them from time to time. Days passed and he was still stuck in the unknown place. Not that anything was stopping him from moving on. He just couldn't muster the energy to do it.

He was alone, there was literally no one to care about a stranger who decided to crawl under here. The few residents of the town had enough concerns of their own to care for someone who, as he had made clear up front, was just passing through. Apart from him, no one lived in this house, the landlord showed up irregularly but very suddenly, so that Jiyo Kael felt reminded to be on the lookout.

Sometimes it occurred to him that maybe no one wanted to talk to him because he wasn't the first to have the idea of ​​hiding in this remote corner of the world. Why should he be the first, and why shouldn't people have sought refuge here that, like him, carried a past of violence and death with them?

It was just one of his nightmares and by no means one of the worst, showing him images of him being discovered and taken away. Whether it was from his own government, police, army, or any of the other groups he hated, it made no difference to him. He knew they were all doing what they believed in and he was the last to blame them.

Still, staying here was stupid, stupid, and dangerous. Not just for him, as a runaway, but for the people who helped save his life. He owed it to them to find a better place, a place farther away from anything that had meant anything to him before. Though he kept reminding himself how unlikely anyone was looking for him, the familiar feeling of constant menace lingered.

And yet he couldn't leave. He had paid for the room in advance, knowing he would never stay in it for more than two days at most. These had passed faster than he realized. His tiredness, the dreams that plagued him even when he was awake, the self-distilled beverage that his landlord kept offering him and which he gratefully accepted in the hope of being freed from his thoughts - if only for a short time - all that, coupled with the desperate effort of not wanting to remember, it barely allowed him to leave the room he had originally planned to stay in for only a few hours.

Perhaps it was the struggle against the memories that seemed to be present in this room at all times, and that he was still struggling to let go; this fight that sapped his will to go forward.

Freedom also meant solitude for him, and in that solitude, his demons grew stronger by the hour. He heard the car stop a little way off, low voices murmuring until the gusty wind scattered the sounds and carried them on.

A reflex made him stand up in one quick, fluid motion and peer through a gap in the curtain. Two men, dressed in suits inappropriately for the temperatures, got out of the car and turned to Jiyo's landlord, who was already waiting for them. Jiyo Kael didn't need to see more.

Years of practice in quick, well-considered action made it work automatically. His tiredness disappeared into a place inside him that he could lock down if he had to.

He quickly gathered his few belongings, removed obvious traces of his stay, and placed the gun in his belt before exiting the room that had not given him enough rest, left, and set out on the path he had already set out on the first day of his stay.

After climbing through the narrow skylight and landing with a bound on the dusty floor of the backyard, he ran, taking advantage of every cover, to the barn next door, where he knew a truck was located.

He hid a wad of cash on a broken shelf and got into the car, which he had broken into and short-circuited in a split second. Slowly and patiently he backed out of the barn towards the road, careful not to draw unnecessary attention.

Only a few hundred meters away from the small cluster of shabby houses in the middle of nowhere did Jiyo Kael dare to step on the gas. The engine roared and the truck shot across the bumpy road, giving him a moment of relief.

Water drifted calmly and steadily against the shore in a steady, never-changing rhythm. The sound of the waves was calming, peaceful, and almost hypnotic. Jiyo Kael couldn't take his eyes off the horizon, trying to see the line that separated the sea from the sky. It was impossible; everything was a blur in the distance in hazy blue-grey shimmering tones.

Jiyo Kael let the fine sand trickle through his fingers. He had lost track of time. How many weeks has he been in this remote part of the world now? He had stopped counting the days. What purpose should that have? They passed one by one, monotonous and lonely, lonelier than he had ever been in his whole life of hectic, tense, and painful.

XXX