Chapter 220: Enough

By the time Adrian reached Lena’s apartment, the smell of something burning had already reached the hallway.

He stopped outside the door.

There was a brief silence from inside.

Then Noah shouted, "It’s supposed to look like that!"

"It is black," Lena replied.

"Some foods are black."

"Name one."

"Charcoal."

"That’s not food."

"It can be."

Adrian closed his eyes.

He had faced beings that existed before existence itself. He had answered questions that could have dismantled the foundations of reality. He had once stood before an entity that wanted to decide whether anyone deserved to exist.

And now he was afraid to enter an apartment.

He knocked.

The door opened almost immediately.

Noah stood there wearing an apron, holding a wooden spoon in one hand and looking like a man who had just lost a war against an enemy he had underestimated.

"You’re late."

"I was invited to dinner, not summoned to an execution."

"Good. Then you can eat this."

Noah held out the spoon.

Adrian looked at the dark substance clinging to it.

"What is it?"

"Potatoes."

"Were they potatoes before or after the fire?"

Noah stared at him.

Behind him, Lena leaned against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed.

"Don’t encourage him," she said.

"I haven’t encouraged anyone in years."

"That’s not true," Noah said. "You encouraged me to cook."

"I said you should learn."

"Same thing."

"It really isn’t."

Noah returned to the kitchen, muttering something about ungrateful family members.

Adrian took off his shoes and followed him.

The apartment was warm. A small lamp illuminated the living room, and the window was open just enough to let in the sounds of traffic from the street below. There were books stacked beside the sofa, a blanket folded over its arm, and a small wooden toy resting on the shelf.

Lena’s son’s toy.

Adrian had repaired it with him several days earlier.

One of the wheels still sat slightly crooked.

He smiled when he saw it.

"You’re looking at that thing again," Lena said.

"Just checking whether it survived."

"It did."

"Better than the potatoes, apparently."

From the kitchen came an offended noise.

Dinner was, against all reasonable expectations, edible.

The potatoes were abandoned in favor of rice and a simple vegetable curry Lena had prepared before Noah decided he wanted to demonstrate his culinary abilities. They ate around the small dining table, arguing about trivial things.

Noah complained about the price of groceries.

Lena complained about Noah complaining about groceries.

Adrian listened.

He had become strangely fond of these conversations.

Nobody was trying to explain the purpose of existence. Nobody was asking him to decide the future of a world. Nobody was waiting for him to provide an answer that would settle every argument.

They were just people.

People who got hungry, became irritated, spent too much money, and occasionally burned perfectly innocent potatoes.

It was wonderful.

Halfway through dinner, Noah put down his fork.

"I have a question."

Lena immediately looked suspicious.

"Why?"

"Because I have a question."

"That has never stopped you from asking a terrible one before."

Noah ignored her.

"Adrian, do you think people should always tell the truth?"

Adrian blinked.

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On the truth."

Noah frowned. "That doesn’t answer anything."

"It answers the question I was asked."

Lena hid a smile behind her glass.

Noah leaned forward.

"Suppose your friend does something wrong. You know about it, but telling someone would ruin his life. Do you tell them?"

Adrian studied him.

"Is this hypothetical?"

"Yes."

"Then why do you look like you’re about to throw up?"

"I’m concentrating."

"You’re a terrible liar."

Noah sat back.

Lena set down her glass.

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

"Noah."

He sighed.

"There was an argument at work."

Adrian waited.

"One of my coworkers made a mistake with an order. It wasn’t a small one. A customer lost money, and the company might have to compensate them. My coworker asked me not to report it because he’d probably lose his job."

"Did he cause the mistake deliberately?"

"No. He was careless."

"Has he admitted it?"

"To me."

"And what does your company expect you to do?"

"Report mistakes like that."

Lena folded her arms.

"So you’re asking whether you should lie to protect him."

"I’m asking whether I should ruin his life over one mistake."

Adrian looked at Noah for a moment.

Then he asked, "What happens if you don’t report it?"

Noah hesitated.

"The customer might never get their money back."

"And if you do?"

"My coworker could lose his job."

"Could?"

"He probably will."

Adrian nodded slowly.

"Then you have two people who might be hurt by your decision. One is the person who lost money. The other is your coworker."

"I know."

"Do you?"

Noah’s expression hardened.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you’re talking about this as if the only consequence of telling the truth is what happens to your coworker."

Noah looked away.

Adrian continued carefully.

"You don’t want him to lose his job. That’s understandable. But the customer didn’t agree to pay for his mistake. They didn’t choose to become part of this situation."

"So I should report him?"

"I didn’t say that."

"Then what are you saying?"

"Find out whether there’s a way to correct the mistake without hiding it."

Noah stared at him.

Adrian shrugged.

"Maybe there isn’t. Maybe your coworker will have to face consequences. But you don’t have to pretend that those consequences are the only possible outcome before you’ve even tried."

Lena nodded.

"And your coworker should be the one helping to fix it. Not asking you to carry the whole problem for him."

Noah became quiet.

For a few seconds, Adrian thought the conversation was over.

Then Noah asked, "What if he hates me afterward?"

There it was.

Not the customer. Not the money. Not even the job.

The thing Noah had actually been afraid of.

Adrian knew that fear.

He had seen it in people who surrendered their choices to keep their families happy, in people who stayed where they were miserable because leaving would disappoint someone, and in people who called their silence kindness because they were afraid of being disliked.

"You can’t control that," Adrian said.

Noah grimaced.

"I hate that answer."

"I know."

"Can you give me a better one?"

"No."

Lena laughed.

Noah pointed his spoon at both of them.

"You’re enjoying this."

"A little," Lena admitted.

He shook his head and returned to his food.

The conversation moved on, but Adrian noticed that Noah barely touched his dinner after that.

Later, while Lena washed the dishes, Adrian found him standing by the window.

The city stretched beyond the glass, full of illuminated windows and people moving through streets. Somewhere, someone was probably having an argument about something that seemed small to everyone except the people involved.

Noah rested his hands on the windowsill.

"I don’t want to become someone who hurts people," he said.

Adrian stood beside him.

"Neither do I."

"But you have."

"Yes."

Noah turned toward him.

"How do you live with that?"

Adrian considered giving him a comforting answer.

He decided against it.

"Some days, I don’t know."

Noah looked disappointed.

Adrian continued.

"I used to think that if I understood enough, I could avoid making the wrong choice. If I knew every possibility, every consequence, every way something could go wrong, I could choose the one path that wouldn’t hurt anyone."

"Could you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because knowing what might happen doesn’t mean knowing what something means to the people who have to live through it."

He thought of Cael, who had seen countless futures and become exhausted by them. Of Michael, who had asked Adrian to save a world instead of saving him. Of Mara, who had convinced herself that she knew what her brother needed.

"Sometimes you can make the most reasonable decision available and still hurt someone," Adrian said. "Sometimes you can make a terrible decision and learn from it. You don’t always get to know which one you’re making until afterward."

"That sounds awful."

"It can be."

"Then how do you decide?"

Adrian looked through the window.

"You listen. You ask questions. You try to understand what you’re not seeing. And when you finally have to choose, you take responsibility for what follows."

"And if you regret it?"

"You live with the regret."

Noah was silent.

Adrian gave him a small smile.

"That doesn’t mean you have to enjoy it."

"Good. Because I wasn’t planning to."

They stood together for a while.

Then Noah asked, "Did you ever wish you hadn’t existed?"

The question came so quietly that Adrian almost missed it.

He turned.

Noah wasn’t looking at him anymore.

For a moment, the apartment seemed to grow very still.

Adrian remembered the question that had preceded his own existence.

Who wants to exist?

He remembered answering.

I do.

He remembered the worlds that had formed around that answer, the people who had suffered, the people who had loved, and the lives that had continued without asking him for permission.

For a long time, he had believed that wanting to exist meant accepting responsibility for everything that came after.

He knew better now.

But knowing better didn’t make the question easy.

"Yes," Adrian said.

Noah looked at him.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"More times than I can count."

"Why?"

"Because I was afraid of what my existence meant. Because people got hurt. Because I couldn’t save everyone. Because sometimes I thought the world would be better if I had never made certain choices."

He paused.

"And because I thought that if I disappeared, I could finally stop being responsible for them."

Noah listened without interrupting.

"Did you ever think about actually leaving?"

Adrian nodded.

"I did."

"What stopped you?"

Adrian glanced toward the kitchen, where Lena was humming to herself while drying a plate.

Then he looked at the wooden toy on the shelf.

"My life."

Noah frowned.

"That’s vague."

"It is."

"You’re terrible at explaining important things."

"I’ve been told."

Adrian leaned against the windowsill.

"I kept thinking about the things I would miss. Conversations that hadn’t happened yet. Arguments that hadn’t started. People I hadn’t met. Even the stupid things."

He smiled faintly.

"Burnt potatoes, for example."

Noah groaned.

"You’re never going to let that go, are you?"

"Probably not."

For a moment, Noah laughed.

Then he became serious again.

"I don’t know why I asked that."

"That’s fine."

"I wasn’t thinking about—"

"You don’t have to explain it."

Noah’s shoulders relaxed slightly.

Adrian didn’t ask him to promise anything. He didn’t demand an explanation or insist that he understood what Noah was feeling.

He simply stayed beside him.

After a while, Noah spoke again.

"I think I’ll report the mistake tomorrow. But I’ll talk to my coworker first and see if we can fix it."

"That sounds reasonable."

"And if he hates me?"

"You’ll survive."

Noah gave him a flat look.

"Your advice is terrible."

"Yet somehow, you’re following it."

"Unfortunately."

Lena appeared in the doorway, holding a dish towel.

"Are you two having a serious conversation?"

"No," Noah said immediately.

"He’s teaching me how to ruin my friendships."

"Adrian’s specialty," Lena replied.

Adrian placed a hand over his chest.

"I leave this family for one afternoon, and this is how I’m treated."

"You were gone for three hours," Lena said.

"Three difficult hours."

She shook her head, smiling.

"Come on. I made tea."

They returned to the table.

Noah began talking about his coworker again, this time discussing possible ways to correct the mistake. Lena suggested calling the customer directly. Adrian suggested making sure the company knew what had happened rather than trying to solve everything privately.

They disagreed about the details.

Nobody declared a final answer.

Eventually, Noah decided he would speak to his coworker in the morning and take the problem from there. ℯ

It wasn’t a perfect solution.

It was simply the next thing he could do.

And for once, Adrian didn’t feel the need to improve it.

Much later, after Noah had gone home and Lena had fallen asleep on the sofa with a book resting against her chest, Adrian stepped onto the balcony.

The city was quiet.

Not silent. Never silent.

A car passed below. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked. Someone was laughing on the street, and a window across the road closed with a dull thud.

Ordinary sounds.

He had once believed that ordinary life was what remained after the important things were finished.

Now he wondered whether he had misunderstood the order entirely.

Perhaps the important things had always been happening here.

In conversations that went nowhere. In decisions made without certainty. In the small moments when someone chose to stay, or leave, or tell the truth despite being afraid of what it might cost.

He looked up at the night sky.

There were no extra moons.

No enormous eyes.

No strange messages written across the stars.

Just darkness, distant lights, and a few clouds drifting past.

Adrian smiled.

"Good," he murmured.

Behind him, Lena stirred.

"Who are you talking to?"

He turned.

"No one."

She opened one eye.

"That’s suspicious."

"I’m appreciating the weather."

"At midnight?"

"It’s a very good weather."

She looked at him for a moment, then held out her hand.

"Come inside, idiot."

Adrian took it.

And went home.

For the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel as though he was leaving something unfinished behind him.

Tomorrow would bring more choices. More mistakes. More things he couldn’t predict or prevent.

He would deal with them when they came.

For tonight, there was tea on the table, a book waiting to be finished, and someone holding his hand.

That was enough.

It had always been enough.

He was only beginning to understand why.