UnHonor

Chapter 4

It was truly sweet, like the taste of true life.

With their hands under their chins and their bodies all stretched out on the ground, they were all staring, everything else in their lives forgotten.

Happiness was truly beautiful.

In front of them, on the border that separated heaven and hell, flowed a small stream of the clearest water they had ever seen. Around them, girls in robes of a slightly familiar color were playing. Some had their feet in the water, enjoying the sun that had become kind to them.

Others, with pure and melodic laughter that caressed the boys' hearts and souls, filled their thin hands with water—hands not thin from hunger—and threw it at each other, chasing each other with enthusiasm to win a game that had no losers.

Some of them, in a corner, had spread a cloth that was not dirty at all, not torn at all, and not at all patched or frayed on the intensely green ground, which Elena called grass. They were whispering to each other and laughing softly as they were putting some of those heavenly foods, which Elena once again called fruit, into their colorful, unscarred, and beautiful mouths. They were crushing them with their white teeth, none of which were missing, and enjoying their heavenly nectar.

The happiest of all the inhabitants of Paradise were those holding hands and spinning around in small circles, creating colored streams in their footsteps across the grass. The streams lifted them into the air, allowing them to fly in the fragrant embrace of the sky while their excited screams filled the boys with a very unfamiliar feeling.

"So...so this is happiness..." Barry's intoxicated whisper reached their ears.

"How good..." Chao whispered in response, showing a stupid smile that revealed all his dirty teeth.

"Hmm." Jesse, whose eyes were locked on the fruits most of the time, nodded.

"Oh, when did you lose those teeth, Darius?" Elena, who was lying on her stomach next to them, spoke in an indifferent voice, stealing Darius's big smile from his lips. The question broke the lock of the memory that had been sleeping deep in his heart, and the scenes he had already forgotten showed their faded faces to him.

Darius understood why those girls' robes seemed a little familiar, and this knowledge spread a strong, ominous feeling through his body.

"Hey, look! That pure fellow is not a girl!..." Jesse's faded voice, which seemed to reach Darius' ears from hundreds of meters away, made his body tremble, and this tremor of weakness opened the gates to the flood of locked memories, imprisoning Darius deep within himself.

"No...." Darius's frightened voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well....

---

It was a day like today. Since what had happened to Nathan, Darius no longer knew what day it was, because he no longer looked at the holy picture. The beautiful, evil girl in it brought back bad memories for him.

A day that, unlike always, his father was able to walk without help, and after they had consumed their food rations, he stroked Darius' head and, with slightly shaky steps, followed the path to their room and disappeared into the distance.

Darius, with the extra time he didn't know what to do with, had to wait at least another two or three hours for the others to be free, which is why he started wandering around the mountains of garbage, looking for something they could add to their hideout.

This search continued for a while until Darius was several kilometers away from the factory and heard the sound of happy laughter from a nearby place.

Regardless of the dangers that the owner of the happy laughter might bring to him, he turned his way and approached the place quietly. There, at the farthest point of the garbage mountains, a group of girls whose colorful and clean robes were the logo of an upside-down tree with ten different branches, each of which had a different color, were standing, forming a half-circle with their pure laughter and turning their hellish world into a piece of heaven with their beauty.

Each of the girls, with their bright and shiny skin, their different hair colors, and their red lips that screamed their beautiful faces, imprisoned Darius's soul in their pure existence in a second. With bodies that were not even a bit malnourished, they clapped their hands together and jumped up and down with laughter as if they were cheering someone on.

An endless thirst for their infinite beauty caused his curiosity to overcome him for a moment and turned his eyes toward the center of all those girls' gaze, and...

"Nathan!!" Darius screamed. His body, which still had the effect of the morning meal in it, moved his thin legs with all his might, and while tears quickly escaped from his eyes and flew in the air, he moved himself with all his soul toward his lost friend, who they thought was no longer alive.

Unconcerned with the group of girls who were staring at him in surprise, Darius reached them within seconds. Without needing to push them aside, they opened a path for him, deliberately positioning themselves so he could not see the hostility in their eyes.

Darius, closer than ever to his forever friend, once again rushed toward him with a passion that forced his whole being to scream.

"Nathan! I thought you were dead!" A small laugh escaped Darius, who didn't know how to feel in that situation, but...

Boom!

A fist, the orange halo of which had taken on a more complete but still unknown form, came flying and collided with Darius' jaw, pinning him to the ground in a shower of blood and several teeth that spilled from his mouth.

Lying on the ground, full of pain and confusion, mindless, Darius placed his dirty hand over his mouth and stared at Nathan with boundless surprise.

"Moving Trash! How dare you come near me?" A familiar voice full of hatred reached his bloody ears.

"Who are you? How do you know my name?" The coldness in the voice froze his soul and made his bloody lips tremble.

"Answer me, you insect!" Hatred screamed, and his hand flew toward Darius's collar but stopped close to him.

"Oh, how filthy." He didn't know why or how, but the sound of something breaking filled Darius' bloody ears.

Nathan waved his hands, which were no longer hungry and bony, in the air, and clean gloves appeared in his hands. While his hateful eyes could not be taken off Darius for even a moment, he wore them and once again brought his cold voice to the ears that were becoming less and less efficient.

"I'll say it again, maybe your brain, which is no longer different from the trash you live in, doesn't understand these words. How do you know my name?" Nathan chuckled, and this time, without stopping, he caught Darius's neck in his claws and slowly hovered in the air and flew into the sky, increasing his height above the ground more and more.

"Not talking? Let me see if the height reduces the density of trash in your brain or not?" These disgusting words came out of Nathan's mouth. Very quickly, Nathan's strong, muscular body covered in a white robe and Darius, who had no control over his arms and legs due to his extreme weakness, flew into the sky. Soon, nothing remained of them except two dots in the vast sky.

Nathan shouted. "Tell me, how do you know my name?" When his words were finished, a whisper reached Darius's bloody ears. "Do you think I really forgot you? Do you think their brainwashing will work against my godly brain?" Nathan's whisper ended, but Darius just stared at him.

Nathan really thought that Darius didn't know him well enough to notice his acting; that's why Darius was so affected. He knew what a lie was and what Nathan's true feelings were, and that was painful.

Nathan shouted. "Did you think I was doing you a favor by knowing the name of a future god?" And his whisper echoed in Darius's brain. "What did you really think? Did you think calling my name would change anything? Did you think that seeing me and sticking this dirty body to me would make me be trash like you again?"

Darius felt fear and trepidation as he heard Nathan's words; this Nathan was not someone he knew.

Nathan shouted again. "The only way to be close to God is to be his servant; you don't even deserve the dirt under my feet." His shout was full of venom, but it was his whisper that shook Darius's heart. "Did you think you were the only one who could understand my feelings beyond my words? It's clear from your expression that you think there's something really wrong with me, but let me tell you this. No, even the gods, if they appeared right now, couldn't corrupt my brain. I'm just like them." Nathan's cold eyes turned to the sky. "I am one of them, and no one can hold me captive, not those rats who think I will forget my past through torture and brainwashing, nor you who think the past will make me forget my future."

They were both flying in the sky, the playful winds playing with their hair. Even the invigorating heat of the sun and the good feeling of flying through the clouds could not wash away the darkness of hatred that leaked from Nathan's orange eyes.

"Wh...why?..." The claw that tightened even choked out several words that were forced from Darius's mouth.

This time, there was no need to scream or whisper, because the two of them became one.

"Why? It's very simple. You and all of you mortals are chains full of filth that imprisoned my body and soul in this sick world. I will be a god!" Madness and thirst for power conquered Nathan's face. "In the face of this greatness, these many years of darkness will soon be insignificant! I will become a god! An immortal being who will see the extinction of mortal races, like you humans, and even that will not be the least of what I will see!" His voice was filled with royal coldness. "I will become a god! Hahaha!" The intoxicating laughter from the future shook the sky. "Infinite God! King of the gods! I will see the end of this existence, and with a bored smile I will witness the beginning of the next. I will become infinite. Hahahaha!" Even the sky was serving him, caressing Nathan's face with a gentle breeze.

Amidst the drunken laughter, a faint sound of near-death, amidst the blood flowing from the gaps between the teeth, came out and reached the ears of the future god.

"b... but you'll be all alone..." These words ended the crazy laughter, and Nathan turned his drunken gaze on Darius. For a moment, the same Nathan as always stared into Darius' eyes. The same gaze that seemed to be lovingly cast at a member of his eternal family. The gaze that Darius had seen thousands of times gifted the warmth of love to his broken heart, a warmth that brought Nathan's always stupid smile to his lips.

"Goodbye... my dark past."

The heaviness of the hand that was strangling Darius suddenly disappeared, and helpless and powerless, he fell as the earth seemed to attract him with endless longing, like a lover who had found their love after years. In Nathan's gaze, full of the warmth of love for his loved ones, Darius's body fell restlessly to the ground.

The sky embraced him with restless winds, but it did not slow his fall even a little bit. Instead, after a short moment, it became angry and began to hit Darius' face and body with its angry winds.

Darius, however, was in sorrow. In sorrow for a friend who was no longer there. In mourning for a friend he had lost a long time ago but did not know about it. Full of the shock of betrayal, full of the roar of endless anger, weakness, and devoid of any strength.

(Bad sky. Bad earth. I want to cry. Let me cry... Body, can we cry? I beg you. Please?) The same things were playing in his thoughts, only with different tones. A tone that moved in one direction every moment as his speed increased toward the ground and he lost the warmth of Nathan, the future god, who was still staring at Darius. A tone of thoughts that soon became empty of everything and full of everything.

(Why? Why? Why? Why him? Why me? Why us? Why them? Why? Why pain? Why sadness? Why love? Why friendship? Why flight? Why blow? Why... Why betrayal? Why treason? Why treason? No, I don't want to feel it. No!)

"Noooooooooooooo"

Lifeless of everything, Darius's entire being was filled with the only thing that was free, full of pain.

He screamed in pain. He screamed and rushed toward the embrace that never left him, toward the embrace of death that his stomach screamed at him every day.

"Nooooooooooooo!"

(Cry! Cry!!!!!)

His mouth screamed, but his mind begged, but neither of them received an answer.

His speed grew faster and faster, but his pain-filled gaze found nothing except the blue sky that was still merciless until finally, in the corner of his eye, he saw the tip of a peak and then another peak that was a little distance away. He recognized them; they were the two mountains guarding the holy screen!

(It's enough now....I...I am home.) His eyes closed quietly, and his mouth, which no longer had any life in it, also closed and his face was filled with peace. Enough, that was home. He will not be alone in the home.

(It's okay.)

Under the holy screen, the sick old man once again opened his lifeless eyes and stared. From the sky, a boy made of skin and bones, drenched in blood, was falling straight toward the holy screen, and he just stared, just like before and before that and before the two of them.

The black-haired boy, with increasing speed, changed direction every moment with the movement of the angry winds, until, by good or bad luck, his fall direction was directly in the direction of the holy screen.

He continued to fall like this until he was only a few dozen meters away from the holy screen, which caused the holy screen's defense to activate and quickly suspend the attack on itself in the air! The defense mechanism, realizing that it did not sense the danger of an explosion from the attack, pushed the attack to one side with an invisible, indifferent force.

The attack, the same bony boy, suspended in the air, flowed away at a speed significantly lower than before and became part of one of the two mountains guarding the Holy Screen.

Uninterested, the old man, sick and weak, closed his old eyes and went back to sleep.

In the embrace of the right guardian, a boy with a bloody mouth and ears that were still injured placed his thin hands on a piece of garbage and slowly got up. He looked around in disbelief and examined his body with eyes that were red from the strain.

He survived... still wishing he didn't... His thoughts screamed this in his calm body.

---

With the pain that shook his soul, Darius screamed as loud as he could.

"No! We have to go!!! NOOOOOO!"