“Then you’ll have to take mine first,” he said. “Because I am the chimera now. I am the lion who guards. The goat who climbs. The serpent who remembers.”
“Then the chimera is dead,” I said.
— End —
“She was already gone,” he said. “But her heart still beat in my chest. I carried it for three years. It spoke to me at night. It said: Give me somewhere to rest. ”
A question.
“You came back to kill it,” he said. “That’s why you’re here. You think the chimera’s heart is a relic. A weapon. A cure for something.”
I sat on the stone until dawn. When the sun touched the koi pond, the water was clear. I saw fish. I saw pebbles. I saw my own reflection, older than I remembered, with something missing from my chest. The Chimera-s Heart -Final- -Sirotatedou-
“So you gave it your heart?”
Not a heart.