“Uh-ah.”
“No, they’re not. They are not in pursuit of anything. They are just a bunch of self-centered scumbags enjoying freedom. Ask them to risk their lives to save a man they don’t know, and you’ll see how selfish and contemptible they are,” I said, as we turned left at the corner of the street and saw two police officers patrolling down the street toward us.
After inhaling an uneasy deep breath that was conducive to composing myself when I set eyes on the fierce-looking duo – I had for a second mistaken them as the two officers who killed the headband man and quailed.
“Heads down, avoid eye contact, keep moving,” Kriss whispered cautiously, not too loud, not too weak, just enough for all of us to hear.
Her words didn’t help, nor the inhalation. I was scared to death and was quaking in my shoes. For each step taken, I had my toes curled a little bit more according to how much fear had risen within me. With my focus fixed on the cheap stone paved street, I just kept on walking, not too fast, not too slow, just like the locals. I didn’t even have the courage to look behind to check if we were safe. I just kept on walking and walking until I felt like I had reached the end of the horizon.
And as I finally came to a standstill and looked back, I was elated to realize all five of them were quietly tagging along close behind me like nothing special had just happened on this quiet street, which seemed to be off the beaten track.
“What?” Kriss said, arms akimbo, as she was about to collide with me. “Do you even know where House Heaven is?”
“Nope,” I said. “Maybe it’s better for you to lead the way.”
“Agree,” she said, and I sidestepped and made an after-you gesture in an exaggerating joking pose.
Thus we carried on trudging up along the steep street, which was much narrower compared to the boulevard, just a bit wider than that mucky muddy alley, in the same way we did on the boulevard with street lamps on the edge of the street.
“Where is that House something?”
“We are very close. We’ll be there in around five minutes.”
“Is that a secret base or some sort of a hideout? I mean, the name is cool. House Heaven.”
“It’s our prison,” she said with a hostile tone that had implicitly forbidden me from talking to her any more, or maybe it was me who didn’t want to talk to her any more, I can’t recall.
But at that time, when she said ‘it’s our prison’, I immediately thought she meant it’s where they would usually hide for a long time when the police was engaging in a hot pursuit after them and she called it a prison due to the long span of time they had to spend in there. However my assumption turned out to be wrong, not completely wrong, they did hide in there when they needed to, but the main reason for her to think of it as a prison wasn’t what I thought back then. And it wasn’t until yesterday – after I have discovered how to help her gain control of her emotions and at a point we started to talk about this prison thing – that it dawned on me that the main reason was because of my father, who spent the last minute of his life lying peacefully on a sofa inside and warbled this after a prolonged sigh ‘why am I in a prison that looks like heaven?’.
Of course, she wasn’t there when he said that, so she seemed unsure of how he managed to get there after he had phoned home, but she was certain that Kaylen’s father and her father, to whom she had alluded in our conversation, were with him the night he passed.
Anyway, the rest of the uneventful journey to the ‘prison’ was completed in dead silence. The house was a two-story, stone-built, obsolete cottage that stood out from the modern skyscrapers surrounding it, and it stood out for a good reason. It looked like the roof was about to cave in at any moment and was so out of shape that I had no clue how it managed to remain in midair; the physics-defying look of it was just as extraordinary as The Leaning Tower of Pisa, which had already been heaved down by gravity two years ago, though the wreckage of it was well-reserved in a museum named after it.
“This is the House Heaven!?” I mumbled.
It was quite different from what an average man would typically expect to see for a building called House Heaven.
“This is it,” Kriss said as if she was saying ‘are you not satisfied?’, striding toward a steel door.
I followed close behind her. “Are you sure it is safe to go inside?”
“That’s what you are about to find out.”
I couldn’t see her face from behind, yet I was certain she was smirking when she spoke. And as she turned the doorknob and opened the door, producing a gliding flute-like sound, a big fat rat quickly slithered past my left ankle and disappeared into the street.
“What was that!?” I piped.
She then looked at me madly, “Don’t make a fuss about it. It’s just a rat,” rolled her eyes and stomped into the house.
Why was she mad? I didn’t know. But it was clear that the two of us didn’t get along very well and I guessed she and me could never be friend, though this inference has been proved dead wrong when I decided to propose to her last week. And she said yes happily with three consecutive quiet but quick nods. Yes, I have to admit that I didn’t know her very well when I proposed to her – we weren’t even a couple at that time – and that birthday celebration I had with her was the first time we two had a heart-to-heart talk, but that’s already enough for both of us to fall in love with each other. There was no rose in my hand when I knelt down to ask the question. But there was that cumbersome-looking photo pendant that was seemingly identical to the one I had once seen in Kaylen’s car in my hand – this is what I have chosen for my Gift – and this is something I will explain later.
So, without protest, I went in after her, and she flipped open a light switch in an unlady-like manner after passing through a ten-feet long, straight hallway into a moderately furnished living room, which seemed fit to be put into any houses, and it was one that no one would like or dislike particularly. The bright light exuding from an unappreciated lamp seemingly whitened the yellowish wallpapers when she flipped the switch, and the feeling of warmth imparted by it made me feel like it was home. It’s the reason why it was called House Heaven, I guessed.
“Guys, it’s six o’clock now. We will set off at half past seven, so get some rest now while you still can. I promise you this will be a long, long night,” she said while I was exploring the place with my eyes, stretching my head up and down until the dangerously almost caved-in part of the roof, which appeared to be more flimsy observing from inside, right above my head heightened my awareness.
By merely judging from the degree of deformation it manifested, I believed I was ostensibly capable of punching through it with just one single mighty blow with my fist, but I guessed I would better keep it that way, for this could be one of the next most remarkable world heritages, perhaps The Falling Roof of Heaven.
Then when she finished and hurried away, “What’s the plan for tonight? How are we getting out of this country?” I asked, my voice kept bouncing back from the walls around, so I told myself to lower down my voice, peering at her, who was then tiptoeing up a spiral staircase twirling around like a tornado situated on the left corner of the house to the upper floors with a lightness that dumbfounded me.
And just right before she disappeared into the upper floors, “Why don’t you get some rest first? I will let you know about everything when we are in the park,” she said, not even throwing me a look, not even a flippant remark.
I can feel the resolution in her voice, and I reckoned either she was so running out of patience with me – the reason why she was so capricious had puzzled me since the first time she cried and the way she treated me made me feel like she held a grudge against me but I just couldn’t think of what was that made her so frustrated with me – that she had to hide upstairs, or she was up to something she tended not to confide in me. That said, I couldn’t care less about what she was up to as long as they were really able to smuggle me out of the country, and that’s all I was really concerned with.