Days bled into weeks. The village, once a silent tomb, became our refuge. My routine was relentless: gather firewood, hunt what little game I could manage, forage for anything edible, and, most importantly, tend to Elen. His wound, slowly, agonizingly, began to heal under my clumsy care. The golden liquid from the vial, which I later learned was some kind of antiseptic, had worked wonders, but it was my constant cleaning and re-bandaging that truly kept infection at bay. My hands, once soft and useless, were now calloused and stained with sap and dirt.
He was a difficult patient. Stoic, silent, and refusing to admit pain even when his teeth were gritted. But as he slowly regained his strength, the silence between us began to change again. It was no longer just the heavy quiet of survival; it was the quiet of two people sharing a space, a burden.
One evening, as the last embers of our small fire flickered, casting long, dancing shadows on the cottage walls, he finally spoke. His voice was still cool, detached, but there was a new depth to it, a resonance I hadn't heard before.
"Your parents," he said, staring into the dying flames. "Where are they?"
My breath hitched. The question was a punch to the gut, a memory I had buried deep. I hadn't thought about them since I got lost. Since the bullying. Since... everything.
"They're dead," I whispered, the words raw and painful. "Last summer. A... an accident."
He just nodded, a slow, deliberate movement. His eyes remained fixed on the fire, but I felt his gaze, a phantom weight on my face.
"So you're alone then," he stated, not a question, but a grim observation.
I nodded, the word getting stuck in my throat. "In this world," I managed to choke out, the dam finally breaking. The words tumbled out, a torrent of all the pain and frustration I'd held in for months. "I'm alone. I was always alone. Bullied. Called names. Bhosty. Stupid Blast. I just... I just wanted to survive. That's all I ever wanted." Tears welled in my eyes, hot and shameful, but I couldn't stop them. "I just want to survive."
The silence returned, but this time, it was different. It felt… understanding. He still didn't look at me, but I felt it. A connection forged in the shared firelight, in the echoing emptiness of our lives.
Then, he spoke again. His voice was soft now, devoid of its usual sharp edge. "I was an orphan too."
My head snapped up. I stared at him, my tears blurring his face. He was an orphan? This hardened man, this survivor who moved like a shadow?
He finally turned his head, and his eyes met mine. They were deep, older than any eyes I had ever seen, and filled with an ancient, unspoken sorrow.
"My parents," he continued, his voice barely audible above the crackle of the embers, "they were just names in a file. Never knew them. Grew up in... places. Different kinds of places." He paused, a long, drawn-out moment of introspection. "The army was the closest thing to a family I ever had. Until they threw me out." A bitter smile, quick and fleeting, touched his lips. "Guess we're both outcasts, Bhosty."
The nickname, spoken by him, didn't sting. It didn't feel like a taunt. It felt like… a shared secret. A shared understanding. It felt, for the first time, like a name. I didn't say anything, but something inside me softened. We were two broken systems in a world full of errors, and for the first time, I didn't feel so alone.
Three months blurred into one. Three months since the boar, since his injury, since my frantic attempts to save him. Three months since I last thought about Eden Academy. Three months since I last saw a city. My parents were gone, my old life was a distant dream. But here, in this abandoned village in the heart of Budhanilkantha, Bagmati Province, Nepal, with this man—this Elen, the outcast—I was learning to survive. And I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that my path back to school, back to the world, would be through him. Whatever happened to the village, whatever secrets it held, that would be for another day. For now, there was just us.