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Today, the worry is over—she is here—but the lingering effect hasn’t died down. The fear is still here, useless without any backing of logic. I was afraid something might happen to her if I had gotten late tonight. I wasn’t late, so there’s nothing to be afraid of, yet I’m still here. Now I’ve become irrational, thanks to this woman, and I’m not ready to stop here. I think I’ll soon reach the point of being completely illogical and irrational, dumber than Avi and Wen.

“Matleon,” she mutters my name this time without shouting or snapping. I smile; this one reaches not only my eyes but also my heart. Yeah, I’m quite a romantic person after two a.m.

“Yes, Angel,” I mutter back, lovingly. Romance is seeping out of me.

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. I guess it’s more difficult for her to accept my romance than it is for me to express it.

“When did you kill for the first time?” she asks.

“When I was sixteen years old.” It was the man my dad asked me to kill. By then, I was completely trained to kill anyone, with my hands or with a gun. “He was a traitor. My dad was interrogating him. I was with him. It wasn’t my first time seeing a man being tortured. I had been witnessing that since Iwas twelve. But that day, my dad handed me the gun and told me to finish him.”

“And you shot him?”

I hum.

“Did you… did your hands shake?”

I pause for a moment, then hum again. I’ve never talked about this with anyone. Not even with my mom. She wanted to, but I refused.

Silence falls between us.

“Did you have nightmares after that?” she asks, breaking the silence with a whisper.

I hum. “For two weeks.”

“Then?”

“Then I killed another man.”

“And the nightmares stopped?” she asks quietly.

“I made myself understand that taking a life is not a big deal.”

“But that’s not true. Taking a life is a big deal.” Her voice drops even lower. “Did your heart believe that?”

“You can’t kill anyone without killing yourheart, Angel,” I say slowly. “When you see someone in pain, you’re bound to feel it—unless you kill the part of yourself that can feel.” I take a long breath. I don’t like talking about these things.

She goes silent again. I hope she won’t ask more.

But she does.

“What do you feel now when you kill someone?”

“Nothing.”

“When you hurt someone?”

“Nothing.”

“When—”

I stop her. “I don’t feel empathy, sympathy, or anything of that sort for anyone, no matter how badly I hurt them or how miserable their condition is.” My voice hardens. “I stoppedfeeling all thata long time ago.” I sound pissed. And I am. I just hate this kind of conversation.

“Do you not feel empathy for your family as well?” she asks.

I sigh in frustration. “I like seeing my family happy. I don’t like seeing them sad. That’s it. And no more stupid questions, for God’s sake. Why the fuck are you even asking these, and why the bigger fuck am I even answering them?” I mutter the last part to myself.

“Yeah, right. It’s not like your feeling empathy—or not—affects my life. You can leave now. I need sleep, and it would be good if you don’t come into my room without my permission.” Now she’s sounding pissed.