“There are pains that don’t ask to be healed. They ask for someone to blame.” — Seren Amaris, in the margin of a notebook _______________________________________
The funeral was scheduled for a rainless morning.
That bothered Aurel more than it should have.
There was something indecent about that clear sky. Something almost vulgar in the soft light filtering through the church windows, falling across the wooden pews, touching the white flower arrangements, illuminating the closed casket before the altar as if death, too, could be beautified by morning.
He thought it should rain.
Not for poetry. Not for symbolic justice. Simply because the dry, bright, luminous world seemed like an affront. Seren would have hated it. Or maybe not. Maybe she would have said it wasn’t the sky’s fault that people died. Maybe she would have written something about how light also showed up at funerals because it didn’t know how to do anything besides touch everything.
Aurel sat in the first row.
He didn’t know who had put him there. Maybe Ícaro. Maybe his mother. Maybe his own feet had led him to the place everyone expected him to occupy: near the family, near the casket, near the final version of a life that had still had plans two days ago.
The casket was white.
He hated that too.
Not because it was ugly. It was beautiful, in a discreet way, with silver details and flowers covering part of the lid. But Aurel couldn’t stop thinking that Seren was inside it and shouldn’t be inside anything closed. Seren was an open window, books piled up, half-full cups, crossed-out sentences, quick footsteps through the house whenever she had an idea. She was movement. She was a voice. She was hands. She was notebooks.
Putting her inside a box felt like a brutal lie.
Vera Amaris sat on the other side of the central aisle, clutching a crumpled handkerchief in both hands. Seren’s mother seemed to have shrunk since the day before. Her black dress hung from her shoulders like something borrowed by another woman. Tobias sat beside her, too upright, too quiet. His face was hard. His eyes fixed on the altar.
Aurel felt his gaze once.
It wasn’t a direct accusation.
It was worse.
It was pain looking for somewhere to land.
Aurel looked away first.
Elianor held her son’s hand so tightly that her nails nearly marked his skin. Marcel sat to the left, silent, head bowed. Ícaro stayed behind them, as if he didn’t want to intrude on the first row but refused to stay too far away in case Aurel broke again.
The church gradually filled.
People Aurel knew. People he recognized from a distance. People he had never seen before but who cried for Seren as if they, too, had lost something essential. College classmates. Former professors. Readers of a small literary blog where she had published a few pieces without drawing much attention to it. People from the independent press that had accepted one of her stories for an anthology. Neighbors. Her parents’ friends. Cousins. A man from the bakery she frequented, whom Aurel recognized only because Seren called him “the man who wraps bread like he’s packing relics.”
All of them were there for her.
All of them alive.
Aurel thought it was strange how a person could disappear and still leave behind so many witnesses to the fact that she had existed.
The ceremony began with a soft piece of music.
Someone was playing the piano.
Aurel couldn’t identify the melody. Maybe because it didn’t matter. Everything sounded the same inside him, as if pain had its own frequency and muffled the rest of the world.
The priest spoke first.
He said Seren’s name carefully.
Seren Amaris.
Aurel closed his eyes when he heard it.
Her name seemed more real when spoken aloud. And more dead, too.
The priest spoke about life, love, passing, hope. He spoke about human brevity, about God, about the promise of reunion. Aurel listened without hearing. He didn’t feel angry at the man. He knew he was trying to give an acceptable shape to the unacceptable. It was his job. Some people cared for the dead. Others cared for the words the living used so they wouldn’t go insane.
But none of it reached him.
Eternal life, comfort, mystery, purpose.
Aurel didn’t want purpose.
He wanted Seren walking through the church doors late, complaining that funerals were a terrible way to bring loved ones together. He wanted her to make a face at the expensive flowers. He wanted her to whisper some inappropriate comment in his ear and make him laugh at the worst possible moment.
He wanted the casket to be empty.
The first speech came from a college literature professor. A short woman with gray hair twisted into a bun, who walked to the pulpit holding a folded sheet of paper.
“Seren had an insolent relationship with words,” she said, and a weak laugh passed through the crowd. “She used to say a sentence only deserved to exist if it carried some kind of risk.”
Aurel opened his eyes.
The professor took a deep breath.
“She handed me a story during her second semester of college. I returned it with several notes. I told her the text was good, but that the ending seemed cowardly. The next class, she brought me another version. The ending was worse for the characters, better for the story, and absolutely devastating for anyone who read it. When I asked why she had changed it, Seren answered, ‘Because false happy endings are also a form of lying.’”
Aurel felt his throat close.
The professor lowered her eyes to the page.
“She didn’t like beautiful lies. But she loved the beauty that survived the truth. I think that was what made her writing so rare. Seren looked at what hurt and, instead of looking away, asked: what is still here that deserves to be loved?”
Vera began crying harder.
Aurel remained still.
That was Seren.
Not the simplified version people sometimes created after death. Not a sudden saint, cleansed of contradictions. Seren was exactly like that: kind, but not too sweet; sensitive, but incapable of respecting cheap sentimentality; capable of loving deeply and still laughing at her own tragedy before it swallowed her.
Then one of her college friends spoke, Helena, whom Aurel barely knew. She told stories about late nights studying, Seren correcting other people’s writing without being asked, terrible coffee, and one time when she argued with a professor because he said “feminine” writing naturally had more delicacy.
“She raised her hand,” Helena said, crying and laughing at the same time, “and asked if he had ever read a woman who was angry.”
Some people laughed.
Aurel almost laughed too.
Almost.
Ícaro spoke next.
Aurel hadn’t expected it. He watched his friend stand behind him, straighten his black shirt, and walk to the front with the tense expression of someone who would rather face a fire than speak in public at that moment.
Ícaro placed his hands on the pulpit.
He remained silent for several seconds.
“I met Seren because Aurel wouldn’t stop talking about her,” he said. “At first, I thought he was exaggerating. Anyone who knows Aurel knows he talks about photography like he’s explaining a secret of the universe, so I figured he was doing the same thing with some girl he’d met in college.”
A quiet laugh moved through the church.
Aurel looked down.
“But then I met Seren. And I realized that, for the first time in his life, Aurel wasn’t exaggerating.”
Ícaro took a deep breath.
“She had this strange way of making you feel seen and analyzed at the same time. Like, ‘I understand your soul, but I also noticed you’re wearing that jacket to seem less insecure.’ It was irritating. And wonderful.”
The smile slowly faded from his face.
“Seren loved Aurel. Not in that pretty wedding-photo way. She loved him practically. Reminded him to eat. Fought with him when he didn’t sleep enough. Read clients’ messages when he was too busy to breathe. Made him return to the world when he hid behind a camera.”
Aurel clenched his fingers around the pew.
“And Aurel loved Seren in a way that sometimes scared us. Because it seemed like he was afraid the world would take her if he blinked. I used to tell him he needed to relax.”
Ícaro looked at the casket.
His voice broke.
“I wish I’d been right.”
Aurel felt it like a thin blade.
I wish I’d been right.
Ícaro stepped away from the pulpit without properly finishing. A woman at the side offered him a handkerchief. He refused with a gesture and returned to the pew behind Aurel. As he passed him, he placed a quick hand on his friend’s shoulder.
Aurel didn’t move.
Then it was his turn.
The priest said his name.
“Aurel Veyr, Seren’s fiancé, would like to say a few words.”
Would like.
The words seemed to come from another language.
Aurel didn’t want to do anything. Didn’t want to stand. Didn’t want to breathe. Didn’t want to exist in a world where people expected speeches beside caskets. But everyone looked at him with terrible gentleness. As if they knew it was a cruel but necessary obligation.
Elianor squeezed his hand.
“You don’t have to,” she whispered.
But he did.
Not for them.
For Seren.
Aurel stood.
The path to the pulpit was short. Even so, it seemed like an entire street. His footsteps sounded too loud against the floor. When he reached the front, he saw the full church. Sad faces. Red-rimmed eyes. People waiting for him to turn love into understandable sentences.
Seren would have done it better.
Seren always made words obey.
Aurel looked at the casket.
Then at the blank sheet someone had left on the pulpit, as if he might have prepared something.
He hadn’t.
Because preparing would mean accepting.
“Seren…” he began.
His voice came out too low.
Someone in the first row leaned forward to hear.
Aurel cleared his throat.
“Seren used to say I tried to save time with a camera.”
Silence.
He looked at his hands.
“I thought it was beautiful when she said that. I thought it was one of those lines of hers, half poetic, half cruel. She was good at that. Saying things that seemed small and then stayed inside you.”
A tremor passed over his mouth.
“I photographed Seren many times. More than she liked. Much more. She complained, but… she smiled. Sometimes she turned away. Sometimes she flipped off the camera. Sometimes she said I was unbearable. And I kept everything, because…”
His voice failed.
Aurel closed his eyes.
Because I knew.
No. He couldn’t say that. It wasn’t true. He hadn’t known. No one had. But some part of his love had always seemed to sense the loss. As if loving Seren had meant, from the beginning, waging war against her disappearance.
“Because I was afraid I’d forget,” he said.
Vera lowered her face.
“And now I don’t know what to do with all these images. I don’t know how to look at them. I don’t know how not to look. I don’t know how to walk into the apartment and see her coat on the chair, her books on the table, her cup in the sink. I don’t know how to talk about her in the past tense. I don’t know how to put a period where she should still be writing commas.”
Some people cried harder.
Aurel breathed with difficulty.
“I wanted to say something beautiful. Something she deserved. But everything I think of seems too small. So I’ll say the only thing that’s still whole.”
He looked at the casket.
“I love you.”
The words broke at the end.
“I love you, Seren. I love you. I love you.”
There was no speech after that.
Aurel stepped away from the pulpit before his body gave out. Ícaro stood at once and went to him, but Aurel made a slight gesture, asking for space. He returned to the pew and sat without looking at anyone.
The ceremony continued.
He didn’t follow it.
The priest’s voice became noise. The music became noise. The crying became noise. Everything receded except the white casket at the front.
When it was time to take her to the cemetery, Aurel stood with the others.
The procession left the church beneath the clear sky.
Cars followed in a slow line through the city streets. Outside, people crossed sidewalks, went into stores, waited for buses, ate pastries in bakeries. No one knew Seren was passing by for the last time. No one stopped. No one was supposed to stop. Strangers’ lives had no obligation to pay tribute to her death.
Even so, Aurel hated all of them for carrying on.
At the cemetery, the wind was cold despite the sun.
The grave was near an old tree, its roots thick and its shade uneven. Someone said it was a beautiful place. Aurel almost asked what kind of beauty there was in choosing where a person would rot, but he stayed quiet.
The casket was placed on the metal supports.
Vera leaned on Tobias’s arm. He remained steady, but his eyes no longer seemed hard. They seemed empty. As if something inside him had been violently scraped away.
The priest said the final prayer.
Aurel didn’t pray.
Not out of theological rebellion. Not out of conviction. Simply because he didn’t know whom to ask. And if someone was listening, they were already too late.
When they began lowering the casket, Vera let out a sound no human being should ever have to make. Tobias held his wife, but his own face crumbled. Elianor covered her mouth with both hands. Ícaro turned away, trying to hide his tears.
Aurel stood motionless.
The casket descended.
Inch by inch.
The open earth received Seren with obscene patience.
That was when something inside him changed.
It didn’t break. It was already broken.
It changed.
Until then, death had still possessed an unreal quality. Even seeing the body. Even hearing her name during the ceremony. Even speaking beside the casket. Part of Aurel still seemed to be waiting for someone to reveal the cruelty as a deception, dream, delirium, administrative error.
But when the casket disappeared into the hole, when the white vanished below ground level, the world told the truth without a single word:
She isn’t coming up.
She isn’t opening her eyes.
She isn’t coming back.
Aurel felt the pain compact.
Before, it had been a fire, spreading, consuming everything.
Now it became stone.
Small. Dense. Cold.
Rage.
Not explosive. Not yet. It was a silent, almost calm rage, born where hope had just been buried.
After the ceremony, people approached.
Aurel received hugs, hands on his shoulder, repeated phrases.
“I’m so sorry.”
“She was wonderful.”
“If you need anything…”
“I’m praying for you.”
“Be strong.”
Be strong.
Aurel almost laughed in a woman’s face when she said it. Strong for what? To endure what? To keep grocery shopping, paying bills, editing photos of happy couples, smiling on holidays, growing old without her? What a ridiculous name they gave to the obligation not to die alongside someone.
Vera hugged him last.
“She left something for you,” she said, her voice exhausted.
Aurel looked at her.
“What?”
“I don’t know exactly. An envelope. She left it with me a few weeks ago. She said I was supposed to give it to you after the wedding, but…”
Vera couldn’t finish.
Tobias, beside her, took a brown envelope from inside his jacket. It was slightly crumpled, with Aurel’s name written in Seren’s handwriting.
Aurel took the envelope as if it were something alive.
“She didn’t tell me what it was,” Vera continued. “She only said you’d probably cry and pretend you weren’t.”
Aurel almost smiled.
Almost.
“Thank you.”
Tobias watched him.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke. There was too much between them and no safe bridge across it. At last, Seren’s father said:
“She loved you.”
Aurel nodded.
“I know.”
Tobias swallowed hard.
“Then do something with that.”
The sentence struck Aurel strangely.
“What do you mean?”
Vera touched her husband’s arm, perhaps as a warning.
Tobias kept his eyes on Aurel.
“Don’t let what happened to her become just old news.”
“Tobias,” Vera said quietly.
“No.” His voice came out rougher. “My daughter died waiting in a bank line because four bastards decided money was worth more than people. Three are in jail. One is on the street. And soon the excuses will start. Lawyer. Hearing. Rights. Appeal. Maybe one of them will say he was nervous. Maybe another will say he didn’t mean to kill anyone.”
Aurel felt the stone inside his chest grow colder.
Tobias stepped closer.
“I’m not telling you to do something stupid.”
But his eyes said something else.
Or perhaps Aurel wanted them to.
“I’m telling you not to forget.”
Aurel looked at the envelope in his hands.
“I won’t.”
Tobias nodded once. Then he led Vera away.
Ícaro approached soon after.
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Aurel.”
“Nothing.”
His friend looked at the envelope.
“Do you want to open it now?”
Aurel squeezed the paper.
“No.”
“Do you want to go home?”
Home.
The word had lost its meaning.
“Not yet.”
Ícaro hesitated.
“All right. I’ll stay.”
“I want to be alone.”
His friend took a deep breath.
“Again?”
“Please.”
The word, spoken so quietly, broke down Ícaro’s resistance.
“Ten minutes,” he said. “I’ll wait near the car. Ten minutes, Aurel.”
Aurel nodded without promising.
When everyone moved away, he remained before the still-open grave. Cemetery workers waited at a distance, respectful, shovels in hand. That irritated him. Not because it was their fault. It was their job. But death’s practicality seemed endless. There was always someone ready to close, clean, organize, remove chairs, gather flowers, issue documents.
Aurel looked into the bottom of the grave.
He could no longer see the entire casket. Only part of the white lid, almost hidden in shadow.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
His voice came out dry.
“I told you I loved you in the church. Everyone cried. I think that’s what they expected. A beautiful sentence. A farewell. But I wasn’t saying goodbye.”
The wind moved the leaves above him.
“I don’t accept this.”
There was no answer.
Aurel laughed without humor.
“You’d hate this. I know. You’d say accepting isn’t the same as agreeing. That some things have to be accepted because reality doesn’t ask permission. You’d write a better sentence.”
His throat tightened.
“But I’m not you.”
He took the note from his pocket.
I’ll be back before lunch.
He held the paper open over the grave.
“You promised.”
The childish phrase returned, but now it carried rage.
“You promised.”
He folded the note again and put it away.
Then he touched the brown envelope bearing his name.
He didn’t open it.
Not yet.
The sound of shovels began a few minutes later, when Ícaro returned and firmly, gently guided him away before the first soil struck the wood. Even so, Aurel heard it.
Earth over casket.
Dull.
Final.
That night, the apartment filled with people again.
It was a tradition no one questioned: after the burial, some relatives and friends went there, bringing food, coffee, low voices, disposable plates, lost looks. Aurel didn’t know who had authorized it. Maybe Elianor. Maybe Vera. Maybe no one; perhaps grief had its own logistics.
He sat in the living room, away from the food, holding Seren’s envelope in his lap.
People talked around him.
“She loved this place so much.”
“Had you picked a date?”
“Poor thing.”
“Don’t say that around him.”
“Did the police give you any news?”
“Apparently one is still at large.”
“God will see justice done.”
Aurel raised his eyes.
God will see justice done.
A distant aunt of Seren’s had said it, a woman with a round face and a pearl necklace. She was speaking with Vera in the kitchen, holding a cup of coffee.
The sentence hung in the air.
Aurel waited to feel something noble. Some comfort. Some small borrowed faith.
But he felt only contempt.
Justice.
A beautiful word people used when they couldn’t do anything.
God will see justice done.
The police will see justice done.
Time will see justice done.
Aurel looked at his hands.
No one had done justice when Seren fell to the floor of that bank.
No one did justice while she bled.
No one did justice when the man who fired the gun ran away.
Justice always seemed late.
Always polite.
Always full of procedures.
Aurel stood.
Ícaro, across the room, noticed at once.
“Aurel?”
“I’m going to get some air.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
Ícaro was already moving.
“I said I’m coming.”
Aurel didn’t have the strength to argue in front of everyone.
The two of them stepped into the building hallway. The air was stuffy, smelling of cleaning product and old concrete. Aurel took the stairs instead of the elevator. Ícaro followed him in silence.
Outside, the night was cold.
Aurel walked aimlessly to the corner. A streetlamp blinked, a bar was open across the way, cars were parked along the curb, and a dog rummaged through trash near a bin. The nighttime city seemed indecent in its normalcy.
Ícaro stood beside him.
“You heard it, right?” Aurel asked.
“Heard what?”
“‘God will see justice done.’”
Ícaro sighed.
“People say things when they don’t know what to say.”
“Then they should keep quiet.”
“Maybe.”
Aurel looked at the street.
“One got away.”
“I know.”
“He’s somewhere right now. Breathing. Eating. Maybe laughing. Maybe thinking he got away with it.”
“The police will find him.”
Aurel turned to his friend.
“You believe that?”
Ícaro took a second longer than he should have.
“I want to believe it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Aurel…”
“Do you believe it?”
Ícaro rubbed the back of his neck.
“I don’t know.”
His honesty hurt less than any comfort would have.
Aurel nodded slowly.
“Neither do I.”
“That doesn’t mean you can carry this anger alone.”
“Who said I want to carry it alone?”
Ícaro stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
Aurel didn’t answer.
Because he didn’t know yet.
He only knew something inside him was searching for a shape. A direction. A face. A name.
Seren’s death was too large to fit inside chance. He needed to reduce it to someone. To a hand. To a gun. To a man who could be found.
“Aurel,” Ícaro said more quietly. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t start thinking revenge is an answer.”
Aurel let out a short laugh.
“Then what is the answer?”
“I don’t know.”
“No one does.”
“But I know what it isn’t.”
Aurel stepped toward him.
“Do you? Because I think everyone knows a lot when they’re not the person who lost someone.”
Ícaro absorbed the words. His expression closed off, but he didn’t snap back.
“You want to hurt me right now,” he said. “I understand.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No. I don’t. But I’m standing here taking it anyway.”
That took some of the air out of Aurel.
He looked away.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just don’t lose yourself.”
Aurel stared at the blinking streetlamp.
“I’m already lost.”
They stayed there until the cold seeped through their coats.
When they returned to the apartment, most of the people had already left. Vera and Tobias were heading out. Elianor was collecting used cups. Marcel was speaking quietly with one of Seren’s cousins near the door.
Aurel entered without looking at anyone and went straight to the bedroom.
He closed the door.
This time, Ícaro didn’t follow.
The room smelled like her.
Fainter than the day before, or perhaps Aurel was already getting used to her absence, which terrified him. Grief had that cruelty: even the dead’s perfume began to obey time.
He sat on the bed and placed the envelope on his lap.
His name was written in the center.
Aurel.
No last name.
Just him.
He ran his finger over the handwriting.
Then he opened it.
There were two things inside.
A photograph and a letter.
The photo was recent. He and Seren in the park, sitting on the bench they had visited a few days earlier. Aurel didn’t remember seeing the picture taken. She had probably asked someone to take it while he was distracted. In the photo, he was looking at Seren. Seren was looking at the camera, smiling faintly, as if she knew something he didn’t.
Aurel set the photo aside and opened the letter.
Her handwriting filled three pages.
My love,
if you’re reading this after the wedding, it means I managed to carry out my plan to give you this letter without getting embarrassed and pretending it was just a joke. If I’m reading it with you, I’m probably crying and saying there’s dust in my eye. Don’t believe me. I’m dramatic, but I like to maintain a little dignity.
Aurel let out a broken breath.
He kept reading.
I wanted to write vows, but vows seem too small for what I want to say. So I wrote a letter. Maybe because I trust letters more than ceremonies. Ceremonies are beautiful, but letters survive people better.
He stopped.
Letters survive people better.
The accidental cruelty of the sentence struck him so hard that he had to lower the page.
Seren had written it for after the wedding.
Not for after death.
Aurel squeezed his eyes shut, breathed until the nausea receded, and returned to the letter.
Before you, I thought being loved meant being understood without having to explain everything. After you, I discovered that sometimes being loved means being watched with almost irritating attention by a man who thinks every angle of my face deserves historical documentation.
Yes, that’s a criticism. Yes, it’s also a declaration.
You taught me that a moment can have depth. I hope I taught you that not every moment needs to be captured to have value. We’re still negotiating that part.
Aurel ran a hand over his mouth.
I know you’re afraid of losing things. I know you laugh when I say that, but I see it. You keep receipts, notes, blurry photos, old messages, any small trace that proves something happened. Sometimes I want to tell you that life can’t fit into any file. But then I watch you looking at the world and understand: you’re not trying to possess time. You’re asking it to be gentle.
It rarely is.
Aurel’s hands began to tremble.
So I’m going to ask you for something, as your future wife and as the person who will probably keep stealing your side of the bed even after we’re married.
When time isn’t gentle, don’t turn to stone.
Aurel closed his eyes.
Don’t turn to stone.
Too late, Seren.
I love your intensity, but I’m also afraid for it. You feel as if you’re bleeding. You hold on as if you’re burying things. You love as if you’re preparing for war. I don’t want love to turn you into fear. Or a prison. Or guilt.
If I ever forget to say this out loud, I’m leaving it in writing: you don’t have to save everything.
Aurel stopped reading.
The letter trembled between his fingers.
You don’t have to save everything.
He looked at the photo beside him. Seren smiled at the camera, alive, ironic, unaware of her own end.
“But I had to save you,” he whispered.
The letter continued.
You only have to be here. With me. For real. Without a lens between us all the time. Without anticipatory fear. Without trying to turn every second into proof.
I want a life with you, Aurel. Not a collection of evidence that we were happy.
He couldn’t continue for a while.
The sentence opened something inside him that was different from rage. A clean, almost unbearable guilt. Seren had asked for presence. He had given her records. Seren had wanted life. He had offered memory. And now memory was all that remained.
When he could, he read the ending.
I know you’re going to photograph me at the wedding even though I tell you not to overdo it. That’s fine. Take a few pictures. But at some point, put the camera away. Dance with me. Step on my foot if you have to. Laugh. Sweat. Mess up the steps. Be there.
Because, in the end, maybe loving someone means this: accepting that you can’t freeze a person without losing them in another way.
I love you more than I can write without getting cheesy.
And I’m a writer, too.
Seren.
Aurel folded the letter carefully.
Then unfolded it again.
He read the middle sentence one more time.
You don’t have to save everything.
The rage returned, now mixed with something worse.
Defiance.
“Sorry,” he said to the letter. “But you’re wrong.”
He picked up the photograph and pressed it to his chest.
From the living room, he heard low voices. Life continued invading the apartment with cautious footsteps, dishes being gathered, people trying to be useful.
Aurel didn’t want usefulness.
He wanted a name.
He took his phone and searched for news about the robbery.
The first articles repeated the basics.
Bank branch. Avenida Meridiana. Four robbers. Shootout. One fatality. Three arrested. One fugitive.
He opened a report with video.
The story showed exterior footage of the bank, police cars, onlookers, and a section of cell-phone video recorded by someone across the street. Aurel turned up the volume.
The reporter spoke with a grave expression in front of the bank, cordoned off with tape.
“Police have identified the arrested suspects as Dante Corvin, Raul Meska, and Silas Neri. A fourth accomplice, still at large, has been identified as Nilo Sarth, twenty-nine, who was already known for previous robberies…”
Nilo Sarth.
Aurel stopped breathing.
He rewound ten seconds.
Listened again.
Nilo Sarth.
The name entered him like cold metal.
He searched.
Images appeared little by little: an old police-station photo, a thin face, sparse beard, deep-set eyes, a tattoo partially visible on his neck. Aurel stared at the face.
He didn’t yet know whether Nilo Sarth had shot Seren.
He had no proof.
No certainty.
But he had run.
And that was enough for the pain to find a vessel.
Aurel saved the image to his phone.
Then he sat on the bed staring at it, Seren’s letter open beside him.
Nilo Sarth was alive.
Seren was buried.
The world’s mathematics was obscene.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Son?” It was Elianor. “Can I come in?”
Aurel locked his phone and placed the letter on the pillow.
“Yes.”
His mother entered slowly. Her eyes were swollen, her face pale. She carried a cup in her hands.
“I made tea.”
He almost said he didn’t want any, but accepted because refusing seemed to require energy.
Elianor sat beside him.
She saw the letter.
“She wrote?”
Aurel nodded.
“For the wedding.”
His mother closed her eyes.
“My God.”
The two of them sat in silence.
Elianor touched her son’s hair, an old, almost childish gesture. Aurel let her. On any other day, he would have pulled away, made a joke, said he wasn’t a child. At that moment, there was no age limit to pain.
“You need to sleep,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“Trying still helps.”
“It doesn’t help.”
Elianor took a deep breath.
“Your father and I can stay for a few days.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to stay.”
“Mom…”
“I lost Seren too, Aurel. Not the way you did. Not the way her parents did. But I lost her. She was part of our family.”
Aurel looked at the cup.
“I don’t know what I am now.”
Elianor held his hand.
“You’re my son.”
The answer was too simple, but in that moment it nearly broke him.
“And I’m staying here,” she continued. “Even if you don’t talk. Even if you’re angry. Even if you say you don’t need me. I’m staying.”
Aurel closed his eyes.
“I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“Like what?”
“Empty.”
Elianor squeezed his hand.
“Then I’ll stay until you remember there’s still something in there.”
He didn’t answer.
Because he didn’t want to remember.
After she left, Aurel lay down without taking off his clothes. He placed Seren’s letter on his chest and the photograph on the nightstand. He tried to close his eyes. Tried not to see the casket descending. Tried not to hear the earth. Tried not to imagine the bank, the gunshot, her body falling.
He failed at everything.
At three in the morning, he got up.
The apartment was asleep. Ícaro was on the couch. His parents were in the makeshift guest room. Some funeral flowers were scattered around the living room in borrowed vases. The air smelled of cold coffee, an extinguished candle, and exhausted people.
Aurel walked barefoot to the table.
He opened his laptop.
The video folder was where he had left it.
This time, he didn’t open a video of Seren smiling at home.
He didn’t open the park.
He didn’t open the beach.
He didn’t open the cabin.
He opened the report about the robbery.
He watched it once.
Then again.
Then again.
The video was shaky, recorded from across the street by someone hiding behind a car. It showed the bank’s facade, shouting, people running, distant sirens. At one point, a hooded man quickly crossed part of the frame, fleeing along the side of the bank. The image was poor. His face was barely visible.
Aurel paused.
Zoomed in.
Pixels.
Noise.
Shadow.
But on the man’s neck was a dark mark that could have been a tattoo.
Nilo Sarth.
Aurel felt the stone inside his chest pulse.
He didn’t have the video from inside the bank. Not yet. But there were cameras. Security cameras. Cell phones. Traffic. Nearby stores. Fragments. Scraps. The entire world was filmed all the time.
Seren had died in front of lenses.
Aurel still didn’t know what that meant.
But for the first time since her death, his photographer’s eyes had found a task.
He opened a new folder on the computer.
He named it:
BANK - SEREN
Downloaded the report.
Saved Nilo’s image.
Searched maps of Avenida Meridiana.
Bank. Exits. Side streets. Possible cameras. Stores. Traffic lights.
At four in the morning, Ícaro woke and found him at the table, lit only by the laptop screen.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep.
Aurel didn’t look at him.
“Finding out who killed her.”
Ícaro came closer.
He saw the files.
Saw the folder name.
Saw the photo of Nilo Sarth.
“Aurel…”
“He ran out through the side. There’s a camera at the store on the corner. Maybe it caught him. And the traffic light, too. If I can—”
“You’re shaking.”
Aurel looked at his hands.
He was.
He clenched his fingers.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Ícaro touched the laptop lid.
“It matters.”
Aurel caught the screen before he could close it.
The two of them stared at each other.
“Don’t take this away from me,” Aurel said.
His voice was low.
It didn’t sound like a request.
Ícaro grew very quiet.
“This won’t bring her back.”
Aurel held his gaze.
“I know.”
He lied.
Not because he believed revenge would bring Seren back.
But because, in that moment, part of him had already begun searching for something beyond revenge. Something impossible. Something without a name.
Ícaro slowly withdrew his hand.
“You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Aurel looked at the screen.
Nilo Sarth ran frozen in a blur of pixels.
“Then at least it’ll be useful for something.”
Ícaro stayed there for a few more seconds, as if he wanted to say something strong enough to pierce the wall growing around his friend.
He found nothing.
He returned to the couch.
Aurel kept watching.
Rewound the video.
Paused.
Advanced frame by frame.
A man ran out of the bank.
A woman screamed offscreen.
A police car appeared in the background.
The camera shook.
The world, in that small digital window, preserved the day Seren died.
Aurel leaned closer to the screen.
The poor image reflected in his eyes.
For the first time, he wasn’t looking at the past to feel nostalgic.
He was looking to hunt.