Darkness and silence fell over them, the suddenness of it like crashing into a brick wall. They were back in Lee’s room, sitting across from each other, panting for breath.
Lee wanted to scream.
Just when he felt he was getting closer to an answer, more questions appeared. He was no closer to finding his mother, to helping his father, to knowing the truth.
He turned from Sen, looking away so she couldn’t see the rage in his expression, so she wouldn’t be afraid. Surely she could smell death and murder on him.
“We can try again in the morning,” Sen said quietly, as if she feared his response. “I need to sleep, or I can’t train tomorrow and my father will be angry.”
Lee nodded stiffly. “Okay,” he said, though the words felt brittle.
Sen rose to her feet, her hand on the doorframe. “I hope you can find her again, as you’ve found me,” she said quietly.
Lee looked over his shoulder.
“I hope that she’s like me—still living in some time before she knew pain,” Sen continued. “I hope that all you have to do is find the right door and you can meet her again in a different time.”
Her words wiped away all of Lee’s thoughts. He could only stare at Sen, where she stood in the doorway between their two lives, the moonlight bright against one side of her face.
They were perhaps the kindest words anyone had ever said to him, because unlike so many well-wishes, they weren’t hollow. Lee had found Sen, after all, and the world was full of so many doors he hadn’t yet opened. A strange warmth bloomed somewhere deep inside his chest, the antithesis to the pain he’d felt moments ago, like his body was thawing out in the sunlight.
When it seemed that Lee wouldn’t reply, Sen turned to leave. All at once, Lee saw his mother in the doorway of the hotel porch, the door through which she had passed but never returned. The thought of Sen never returning was unbearable.
In the end, Lee couldn’t remember if what happened next was true, or just another dream that bled into reality. He would never ask Sen the truth.
“You can stay,” he said.
Sen turned, her eyes wide. “What?”
“You said that when you’re in this world, death seems like it’s only a bad dream,” Lee said. “So why don’t you stay here and return in the morning?”
“I never said that,” Sen said, frowning.
Hadn’t she? Lee swore he’d heard it when they held hands and crossed the beach. Or maybe he hadn’t exactly heard it, but felt it, the words from her heart as true as the words from her lips.
“But it’s true, isn’t it?” he said. “You can stay, if you want.”
Lee didn’t understand why he offered this. It wouldn’t help him find his mother. Sen would not have asked it of him, or expected it. But he had imagined the sound of the closet door closing, the light going dark behind it. One day, the door would shut and it would never open again. And something about that felt worse than the open door, than the mouth of darkness. Lee had trouble contemplating that people sometimes stopped existing. Sen was a whole universe, and universes didn’t simply go dark.
“Where would I sleep?” she asked quietly.
“Here,” Lee said, pulling back his sheets. It was a large futon, big enough for them both. “I’ll sleep on top, and you sleep underneath, so we won’t touch.”
Lee could see many thoughts blazing past Sen’s eyes in that moment. Her gaze flickered between him and the bed, her fingers worrying the handle of her sword. After a moment, she nodded and closed the closet door.
She set her sword on the ground beside the futon, toed off her sandals, and slid beneath his covers. Lee needed to shower, to get rid of his bloody clothes, but something compelled him to stay there beside Sen, cold on top of the covers, and feign sleep until her breathing evened out.
When he thought Sen was asleep from the slowness of her breathing, he looked to her and found himself staring into her bright black eyes. He opened his mouth as if to apologize, but no words would come because he didn’t want to lie to her.
She pulled one arm out from beneath the blankets, set it carefully on top of Lee’s clothed chest, the layer of fabric between them a buffer against the darkness but thin enough that she could feel his heartbeat. Lee hadn’t realized how loud and fast it was without the sedatives. Like he was always balancing on the knife’s edge of fear, waiting for the fall. But at Sen’s touch, hefelt it slowing, the edges of her face blurring into soft shadows. He didn’t want to sleep, because in his dreams he was alone.
But people like Lee Turner were meant to be alone, and when sleep pulled him under, he dreamed of an ocean of darkness. When he woke, Sen was gone, like she’d never been there at all.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sen
Sen woke to the sound of a sword cutting through the air.
