Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Chapter 189 - Death

They had to isolate Evan for quite a long time after that. The boy's family would talk to him from behind a door, and they would take turns so the boy didn't feel too lonely.

Evan cried a lot during that time. He cried because he was alone, because he was sad for his sisters' deaths, but mostly because he didn't want to become like them too. To get infected by the same disease, turn so sick, even his mother wouldn't be able to recognize him. 

Only after three weeks, when they were a hundred percent sure that he was okay, they let him out.

But even after he was confirmed to be safe, he clearly remembered that some servants would look at him with wariness. Even his siblings didn't want to be with him for extended periods.

Not long after, Evan started to have nightmares. 

In those nightmares, he would find himself in a pool of dark water, looking above. Expectantly. Fearfully. His sisters would soon descend from above and gaze at Evan indifferently. Evin would be happy at first, but soon his sisters' faces would turn from indifference to hatred and pain.

Their soft, delicate skins would start forming lesions and pus rapidly. In a matter of seconds, such abrasions would cover their entire skin. Soon they would start popping and leaking fluid, as if his sisters were boiling from inside. Evin's sisters would inflate in ridiculous ways, almost like they were about to explode, but they never did. They would slowly... torturously melt down onto his face.

With the fluids falling on Evin's cheeks, the boy's fear of contracting the disease would flare up. He would imagine himself in a similar state, covered in abrasions. Leaking.

He would madly run away from his sisters, filled with fear and guilt. The fear urged him to faster, but the guilt ate at him from the inside.

But running through an endless pool of muddy water, he would soon find himself under his sister's dripping corpse again. There was no escaping them.

The dripping would follow him until he woke up gasping for air and finding his bed soaked in a cold sweat. Silently, he would sit there, trying to calm himself. Hoping to forget. Even though he himself knew exactly how futile it was.

Soon after he turned 10 he started hallucinating. Just sitting outside in his family's fields, he sometimes heard the water dripping. Trying to ignore it only seemed to worsen his mental state. 

He never learned how to cope with it, since the sounds came so suddenly. During the worst times of the hallucination, he would feel a drop of liquid splash on his head. Panic would seize him immediately. He would fearfully feel his head, afraid to find some kind of viscous liquid leaking to his face.

Due to the nightmares and the sleepless nights they induced, Evan's body grew frailer and frailer. He would get sick more often than other children, and his condition would become worse as well. The boy didn't complain about the sicknesses much, though. His mother had it way worse than him. 

And he knew in his head that his fate was much better than his sisters. At least he was alive. 

Thankfully, the trauma died down by the time Evan reached adulthood. 

After a while, Evan got into a college and soon distanced himself from his family. His fear of dripping liquids became less and less prevalent, and eventually, he started to feel like a normal person again.

He didn't have to fear the nightmares coming, the sleepless nights and the frailty of his body. He could live like others. Befriend others, have fun with them, start loving them.

The girl he met was perfect. The second daughter of an old army lieutenant, well educated and well mannered. Fun to talk with and calming to be around. But most importantly, caring and loving to Evan. 

The young lovers planned to marry soon after dating, but Evan enrolled into the military due to the lieutenant, who found Evan too frail to take care of his daughter. It was a stupid story of Evan trying to prove the man wrong by serving the army. 

He served two years as a border guard, but when he came back after his military duty was over, he found that his lover had found someone else and married already. And it wasn't because the lieutenant forced his daughter into someone's hands. The love between them was true and strong, and Evan could see it clearly. Somehow, he couldn't make himself angry at them. 

That didn't stop Evan from drinking to relieve the pain. He thought his life was over now, that he would fall into depression and kill himself... but reality told him otherwise. It actually didn't take a long time for him to forget about the matter, completely opposite of his expectation. He made a huge fuss of it, drinking and complaining… but after two weeks, he was back at life like nothing ever happened.

Evan wondered if he was just like that. Numb and desensitized. These words didn't sound so bad to Evin. He knew that society frowned upon such emotionless people, but Evan didn't understand why such a view existed among others.

And the three years he lived alone after that cemented the idea in his head. It was fine to be alone and self-sufficient. The freedom felt refreshing as well.

The idea cemented itself in his head when he visited his parents. They constantly nagged him about grandchildren and whatnot, since both his sister and brother already had their own life and children.

His parents' words made him even more stubborn about the prospect of marriage. Being single felt like a blessing to him, without the constant pestering of another on his side. 

Some of his friends joked that he got too hurt by the betrayal of his last fiancée, so now he's acting like a little sissy, but Evan let the jokes slide off without caring.

But after constant repetitions of these incidents, one thought started to appear inside his head more and more often. About how society compares outgoing people to individuals who would rather keep to themselves. How society actively encourages its individuals to chase after relations and love. To create a family. But for the ones who would rather stay alone, society pressures them to follow the rest, just like his family and friends who constantly nagged at him to get married.

With such thoughts, Evan Lorelei decided to write a book.

To sell his idea, he made a study of ancient human behavior and ancient social structures where cooperation was absolutely necessary for survival. Humans could not hunt a lion alone, but if they cooperated, they could use a plethora of methods to slay one. In such a time, ones who wished to stay solitary did not meet a pleasant end most of the time.

He then compared these studies with modern human behavior, stating that there was no need for such tight societal dependency in modern days. One could easily take care of oneself, without the need to depend on others so heavily.

He then wrote that mankind's ancestral dependency on social relationships was a curse that was bound to their blood, and that it was time to ascend these primitive ways, to adventure not the Earth, but to delve deeper inside themselves, to understand oneself best before trying to tackle the world…

The book was a failure, of course. Obviously such radical thoughts were ill-received by most readers. The only silver lining was that people hated it so much, the book sold quite well. 

But the money and the ill fame did not sit well with Evan. His notoriety pushed him more and more into his solitude, leaving him only with his ideas and beliefs to clutch onto. 

Obviously his family and friends offered to help him, but in the eyes of the ostracized loner, it felt like they were taking pity on him.

After this incident, Evan's life became more and more difficult. Without him realizing it, he became unable to trust others properly. Every time someone talked to him, he would suspect their intentions. Even his nightmares started visiting him every so often.

Eventually he started lashing out at his own family and friends, and began to isolate himself completely. He even kicked out the servants from his house, because he suspected them of talking behind his back.

Although he had some trouble at first he got used to living alone. After all, wasn't this what he wanted everyone else to do? 

Drowning himself in his giant collection of books, Evan completely stopped taking proper care of himself, falling into a state of lethargy and filth. With such a way of life that completely disregarded health and hygiene, it wasn't be hard to guess that he would fall sick at some point.

One day, Evan had spent a little too much time in the cold outside and had gotten a fever. The thought to consult a doctor or his family never occurred to Evan. It was only a fever.

He went to the butcher's shop to buy some chicken legs and wings, sweating and lightly panting. The way the butcher looked at the smelly and quite obviously sick customer soured Evan's mood, but he desperately needed the ingredients. He could only curse at the butcher inside his head, while amiably smiling at the man.

After procuring his ingredients, he staggeringly walked home and started preparing the food, all while coughing and cursing. After starting the fire, Evan put all the ingredients in a pot filled with water and sat at the table, his back drenching with cold sweat.

A normal person would worry and panic when their body started showing such symptoms, but Evan's childhood which was riddled with such illnesses. For him, it wasn't such a big deal. A good meal and a solid night of sleep would fix his body by the next morning.

After some time passed, Evan ate his beloved chicken soup and headed towards his bed, removing his clothes as he walked. But while he was taking off his shirt, his foot hit a crooked wooden tile and stumbled onto the floor with a rumbling noise.

Evan tried to get up, but the weakened state of his body did not allow him to move a single inch. Half-naked, with his shirt partially removed, Evan fell into a deadly slumber.

On the cold night in the middle of fall, Evan Lorelei passed out due to hypothermia.

And thus, the author who advocated solitude over socialization died because he refused to ask for the necessary help to cure a fever.