Page 13 of Encounter

It couldn’t have been gone. I couldn’t let it go.

Chast’s loud, prolonged sigh pierced the awkward silence that followed. “Jesus, fine! Why the hell not? But it won’t be there. Trust me—as long as the bag itself woulda made someoneanyamount of money, it was taken, good neighborhood or not,” he said with a bitter grimace, waving his hand.

“Th-thanks,” I whispered, lowering my head once again to stare at my shoes even though a smile appeared on my lips.

At first, I was excited. Even if the possibility of getting my record back was slim—Chast made that clear enough—I was still hopeful. I wanted to be. Hopeful that perhaps the universe would decide to give me this one thing after what I had to go through.

But once we arrived, the pressure inside my chest kept mounting. Chast stopped the car at the end of the street—the handbrake crunched and clicked as he put it up, and all I could do was stare ahead. My body confirmed with trembles and sharp cramps that it was the road.

This is where they got me. Here, somewhere.

With the sky turning dark, everything around me became hostile again. Even though I sat in the car, safe, I couldn’t move.

“Hey.” When Chast grabbed my shoulder I jerked away, hitting the car door with my back. I widened my eyes at him and released a shaky breath. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea.” As he frowned, his lips disappeared somewhere into that thick beard.

Before I could worry about making him angry, his gaze softened again.

“Goddammit, let me— What kind of a bag was it? What the fuck am I lookin’ for? I’ll go and have a quick look. I’m not promising anythin’,” he added sharply.

Taken back, I wanted to reject him. I wanted to open the door and go look for it myself but... my legs wouldn’t move. My lips quivered and my heart pounded in my ears, making it impossible to even concentrate on my thoughts properly.

When I turned to Chast again, after being consumed by the inner turmoil for what felt like hours, I expected him to be close to losing his patience. Instead, his brown eyes hovered there, watching me only with the intention of getting an answer.

“It’s a...umm,” trying to clear my throat and fight off the pressure, I rolled my shoulders back and tilted my head as I spoke. “It’s a black, leather messenger bag. The brand has a cursive L on the logo.”

“Copy that.”

Slamming the car door, he didn’t even give me a chance to say thank you. And once again, instead of being glad, guilt weighed on my conscience instead. Guilt for being a burden; guilt for losing Zola’s gift in the first place. There was nothing I could’ve done to prevent it, but that didn’t ease the heavy sensation in my chest.

I watched Chast in the distance, barely visible at the end of the street. He walked around, crossed the road, and then went between the houses into the little alleyways, searching them.

As he was coming back, empty handed, he lit up a cigarette.

“Sorry, kid,” he said as soon as he sat back in his seat and slid the window further down to let the smoke out.

With a faint smile, I nodded. “Th-That’s fine. Thanks for checking, anyway. I appreciate it.” There was nothing he or I could do.

It’s lost, forever.

“Is some bag reallythatimportant?” Chast asked, making it clear how unreasonable he found it to worry about it. Or maybe he somehow sensed it was something more as I looked away, trying to hold back tears. He was a killer, a soldier—surely, it made him much better at reading people than I was. “I just walked around like an idiot lookin’ for your man-purse. You could at least—”

“A gift,” I said, still unable to meet his gaze. “It was— In my bag, there was a gift. It’s... irreplaceable.”Don’t get emotional about it.Don’t.The memory of the record in my hands was already fading. I didn’t even get to open the plastic and take it out, smelling the old scent of paper and vinyl. I didn’t get to put it on and listen.

Puffing out smoke in a way that made it sound like a scoff, Chast’s lips twisted into a dissatisfied smirk. “Whatever it was, it was only a thing,” he said plainly. “You’ve come out of it all with your life intact, so whatever it was, forget it.”

I tried to hold in a bitter chuckle clawing its way out of my throat. Of course that was how he saw it. All stoic and strong...

The LP might have been just a round disc with some tunes on it, embezzled with faded ink by the hand of a long dead, forgotten pianist but… It was so much more than that to me. More than the man next to me could ever understand, and I wouldn’t get past it in seconds.

The silence started to drag on, clearly spoiling the mood, so Chast fully turned to me and drew his brows together when I looked up. “Shit, was it reallythatimportant? Your ol’ man didn’t say anything about retrieving any valuables as part of the job.” He pursed his lips as if he really tried to understand why I was so distraught.

Why would he care?

“It was a vinyl record,” I finally answered.

“Huh...” His cocked brow egged me on.

“Lucia Huang. She... She was a really talented pianist. It was signed, and she was— Well, doesn’t matter now, I guess. Like you said.”

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