Endy- Reaching for the Missing Moon

by Jiny Lee

I said to Fox, 'What the hell were you thinking? You nearly killed yourself!' She said, 'But I looked pretty damn cool, didn't I?'

  I told her to get some rest and asked Kimmy, 'Is she going to be okay?' Kimmy said she'd be alright.

  I lay on the ground beside her and took a very long sleep.

  I had a dream that day. Diane was standing alone in the distance under the moonlight. I tried to reach her but she kept moving farther and farther away. The distance between Diane and me didn't seem to be closing down. I shouted at her back. Diane! Diane! ... She finally turned around. But her face.. she wasn't Diane. She was the girl in the pocket watch.

  20

  When I woke up the next day, I got up to see Fox. She was still asleep. Kimmy went in and I asked her if she was doing alright. She said she hoped. The good news was that there were doctors among the day walkers and he was on his way.

  I asked her how did it go, the whole revolution thing. She said it was successful. There was a huge uprising in almost every part of the building, simultaneously. The day walkers did an amazing job in taking over the guards. They also helped people with their advanced medical technology. People opened their heart easily to the day walkers especially for the medical help. They were coming up to see Fox, too.

  I looked around the room and notice Alex wasn't on the bed. Kimmy said he had a cast on his broken arm. She quietly told me that he wouldn't be able to use his arm anymore.

  Kimmy told me that Alex might be at the bar, so I went down to the bar and saw Alex and Wonder sitting on the stools. I joined them. I asked them how was everything.

  'We succeeded. We freed all the people on the lower floors. People downstairs are either celebrating or busy sharing supplies together. Jacques went down with Finlin to take all the credits by themselves.' Alex said.

  'Finlin. This guy is really an opportunist. He suddenly turned into a philanthropist or something and gave away everything in his mansion to the people. He also gave away his mansion to the sisters to stay. You're looking for the girl, aren't you?' The sisters are staying at the mansion,' said Wonder.

  'No, she's not there. Hannibal told me. She's on the top floor I guess,' I answered.

  Alex and Wonder offered to have a pint of beer but I refused. I said, 'Maybe I should go out and see what's going on.'

  I went outside. People were all busy settling up the mess. A guy in the hall told me that the cartel was breaking down. People downstairs made a huge riot as soon as they hear Hannibal was dead and probably, there wouldn't be a single living guard downstairs. He said there would be a huge power and Finlin might be the one who'd end up sitting on a throne.

  I saw another man sitting on a bench who didn't seem so happy about what had happened. He said, 'I'm not sure whether it was the right thing. I'm worried I might lose everything I have. Don't judge me wrong. I'm not saying that I was happy with the way the cartel controlled everything. I'm just saying. I mean, what if they say they won't work for me anymore?'

  I didn't like the way he talked but there were some more people thinking that way. Well, there are always people like that. There are always people who are deeply convinced by the belief that some people have to work for them. I said, 'Then you should have to make your own money by your own hand.' He looked at me with a face that he can't believe I said that.

  ...

  I sat on the stairway and waited for Purple to come up. I could hear people singing with joy. Songs of the Chigan Sar and the moon goddess. I never thought the songs could be this joyful and full of life. They weren't songs about sorrow and sadness anymore. They'd become songs to celebrate our regained freedom.

  After a while, I saw Purple coming up the stairs and I stood up to greet him. He was with Jacques and the day walkers. I told them where the bar was. We reached the bar and the doctors went upstairs to see Fox. I sat down on a table with Purple and Jacques. Alex and Wonder joined the table.

  Jacques said it wasn't over yet. He said we had yet to take over all the higher floors. But more than that, he said, 'People are enjoying the freedom at the moment but they'll need to establish a new order or otherwise there would be anarchy and chaos.'

  He said he would make a new set of system with his people. He also mentioned that the new system would be democratic, just, and fare.

  'All the decisions in the building will be made by the counsel whose members are chosen by the people. The leader of the counsel will also be chosen by the people by the democratic elections,' he said.

  I asked him, 'What about the people on the higher floors?'

  Purple answered this time. 'That's one of the most complicated subjects of all at this point. First of all, people are marching upstairs even at this moment. It's a matter of time before we all drive away the guards and the cartel. But after that, there should be a fair redistribution of wealth but we have to allow them to maintain some of it if we're not looking for a total chaos. We have to find a good balance between the two.'

  'Can't we just take everything they had and give it back to the people? The cartel is already on edge of breaking down, and the rich people won't have any choice if we just do as we want,' said Alex.

  Jacques said, 'That's the optimal solution but just as Purple just said, we have to find a good balance. I'm sorry to say this but the people on the lower floors know how to run the factory machine, but they don't know how to run the factory business. Besides, we still have another 100 floors to take. We're only half way there, literally. We have to make those rich people cooperative to us until we reach the top.'

  He was right about that. We still had another 100 floors to take over, and we didn't need the higher-ups to be against us.

  So we made an agreement with the people on the top floors. If they helped us in throwing over the old order and reconstructing the new one, we said we would acknowledge their ownerships of the facilities, if not all, to a reasonable degree. Most of them agreed, and those who didn't want to agree had no other option.

  With their help, we were able to take over the floors one by one without any hardship. The guards lost their will to fight. Most of the guards either ran away or surrendered when they saw the angry people marching with guns in their hands. We promised to spare their lives if they dropped their weapons and surrendered. We confronted a few resistance of the guards on a few floors, but they were no match for the furious majority.

  So we finally reached the 200th floor. The whole floor was empty. The so called royal guards weren't that loyal after all. After we confirmed that there's no remaining guards on the floor, we dismissed everyone and let them go back to their places because we didn't know what the Reaper would do when he heard hundreds of people coming to get him. Only Purple, Jacques, Wonder, and myself remained on the floor to find the Reaper.

  It wasn't difficult to locate where he was on the top floor. Their was only one long hallway crossing the exact middle of the floor with doors on the both sides. And the hallway was leading to an expensive looking door straight ahead.

  We kicked the door open without delay. The reaper was standing in the middle of the room. He was holding a sister in one hand and pointing a gun on her head with his other hand. The sisters were all half naked and so was he. He had a strange looking tattoos all over his naked upper body. Was it a dragon? I don't recall.

  The other sisters were gathering on one corner of the big room. I quickly looked around and tried to find where Diane was.

  She wasn't there. I looked around and around for a couple of times but she wasn't anywhere. I got confused. She had to be in that room! Where could she be? She wasn't in the marching on Chigan Sar, and she was not in the Reaper's place, either. That left me with one single possible conclusion, which I didn't want to accept.

  We were pointing our guns at him. He said, 'Drop all your weapons or I'll fucking blow this girls head off!' Alex said, 'Let the sisters go out first, then we'll drop our weapons.'

  Then he told us to drop our weapons first. Alex slowly dropped his rifle on the floor. Wonde
r, and Purple and Jacques followed. But I didn't. I kept pointing my repeater at his head. I heard Alex talking behind me. He said, 'What are you doing? Put the gun down, Endy!' I didn't listen. I walked one step forward the Reaper.

  'What the fuck are you doing? If you come one step forward, I swear I'll shoot her!' he exclaimed. I walked one more step forward to him. I was somehow convinced that he wouldn't kill the girl. She was a life shield to him. I was sure he wouldn't throw it away that easy.

  I waited, slowly moving forward to him, aiming still at his head. I waited for him to put his gun away from the girl. There would be a moment he put his gun away from the girl's head, and I knew it because I could see from his eyes that he didn't have guts to kill the girl. He won't give up the girl but I was sure that he will try to shoot me if I kept pressuring. I won't miss it. I won't miss the shot. I kept talking to myself to calm myself down.

  One step, and another one step. I got pretty close to the Reaper. He tried to step back but it wasn't easy for him holding a girl as tall as himself in his arm. He almost fell down to his back. I could hear small gasps from behind.

  Wonder tried to stop me. She said, 'What the hell are you doing, Endy. Come back here and put the gun down. Don't provoke him like that.'

  But I didn't listen. I kept walking toward him until that one moment I was waiting for. I was confident about my aim. There was no chance that I'd miss the shot at that distance. He kept trying to threaten me, but I didn't listen to him at all. I didn't make any response to the words he said. Instead, I started counting.

  'One.'

  He said stand back.

  'Two.'

  He swore at me and said he would blow the girl's head off.

  And Three. He finally moved his gun to my direction and I pulled my trigger.

  ...

  That moment, that short moment of one hundredth of a second, time seemed to be extended forever. I felt like I could see the bullet slowly flying out of the muzzle flash. There were two gunfires, but I didn't care about where the bullet he fired went. What I cared was where mine was flying to.

  It went right beside the girl's face and hit exactly in the middle of the Reaper's face. Her ear got ripped a little bit. She got fainted and flopped down to the floor.

  Wonder ran straight to the girl and helped her stand up. Her left ear was half blown away. Purple said, 'That was the most reckless bet I've ever seen in my life.'

  Alex asked me, 'What were you gonna do if he didn't put his gun away from the girl after you counted to three?' I said, 'I don't know, maybe I was gonna count to four, then.'

  ...

  There was a huge party inside the whole building to celebrate the night of our final victory. Everyone, from boys and girls to men and women gathered around the biggest halls and enjoyed the night with plenty of food, drinks and music.

  But I didn't feel like joining them. I walked down the stairs alone like a man who lost everything in his life. I passed by all the people enjoying the party on their floors. I walked and walked down until I reached the staircase where I was with Diane. I felt like seeing the stars and the moon.

  I sat down on the empty staircase alone. The stars were shining the same way it always had been. Sitting there, until I could no longer hear the loud noises of the people rejoicing, I stared at the stars wondering where she had gone.

  21

  It changed a lot ever since. The rich still remained on the higher floors and the poor remained on the lower floors but still, it surely turned for the better compared to when the cartel was controlling everything.

  The temporary counsel, which was established right after we killed the Reaper, promised the fair distribution to the people on the lower floors. Jacques organized this temporary counsel with some of the people who he believed had similar faith. There were 11 of them, including Jacques. He said, the temporary counsel would serve for the general benefit of the people of the building.

  At first, the rich people on the higher floors expressed complaints because their income dropped significantly. When the cartel was in control, they got more than half of the total revenue but now, they only got ten percent out of it. The real workers on the lower floors got seventy something percent out of all the benefits and the remaining ten to twenty percent went to the counsel.

  The counsel used the money for 'the general benefit of the people'. They used the money to build numerous public institutions like emergency services, hospitals, and community service centers which I still don't know the purpose of. It was supposed to do the jobs like keeping records of the residents, taking public census or something like that, but whenever I visited there, maybe once or twice, they always looked busy talking to each other and drinking coffee.

  Most of the people who worked in the community service centers were those who didn't have any special set of skills to find a job somewhere else. As with the rest of the people who worked in other public institutions such as hospitals, they were directly paid by the counsel. I think most of the money the counsel spent in the name of 'the general benefit of the people' went to buying them cups of coffee everyday.

  Well, to be honest, even though I'm being sarcastic about them, I think it was a good decision to invest in those public institutions. Especially, the hospitals saved a tremendous number of people. They contributed a lot to the fair distribution of medicine which had been highly concentrated on the top floors. The day walkers helped a lot with their knowledge about medicine. They built research facilities, laboratories, and medical schools to teach people who wished to learn.

  All those progresses were fast and visible. Everyone in the building could see the building changing in a good direction. People who once doubted at first quickly came to have trust in the way the counsel took care of everything.

  They also made a judicial authorities like police stations on every ten floors. At first, they were cautious about it because of the negative impression people had on the guards. To assure the people, they put a strict criteria on picking the officers at first and later they built a police academy to train the cadets. The cadets were even paid by the counsel so it became a desirable job for the talented young and it surely made a good impression to their parents.

  And finally, the counsel established a religious facility for the sisters. They got rid of all the bad customs the formal cartel had made and literally renovated the religion. The sisters who wanted to go back to their families or back to where they were from were free to do so. Only those who wanted to remain stayed to serve the goddess in the facility.

  Jacques proposed to change the name 'sisters,' too, since he was worried about the connotation of the word. But gladly, people didn't relate the name to anything negative. So we continued using the term 'sisters' to refer to them.

  After the night we killed Hannibal, Finlin let the sister stay in his mansion and he agreed to turn it into a big church named 'Sarny Sum,' which meant 'the church of the moon.' Finlin was given a counsel apartment on the top floor instead.

  He was busy pretty much all the time moving up and down the floors to meet people. Obviously, he was preparing for the election which the temporary counsel planned to have once the system of the building got stabilized. He moved around to meet people, promoted himself and made people remember his name and his face. He even designated himself as the honorary reverend of the Sarny Sum. No one argued with that since he was still the owner of the church estate.

  But I didn't care about any of those things. I just wanted to find Diane. I went out every day and asked everyone I came across if they had seen a girl named Diane. There were some of the sisters who knew of her, but they all said they didn't know where she was. I asked them when was the last time they saw her and they said it was about a year ago.

  As I kept digging in, I felt something was strange. According to the sisters, Diane wasn't the only one who disappeared like that. I carefully asked them if there was a possibility that they were executed. They said, 'No way. The Reaper didn't kill any sisters.
Even if there had been an execution, there's no way that we didn't know.'

  I said, 'Then where did she go? She can't just disappear like that. There's got to something.'

  Then one sister carefully opened her mouth. She said 'I'm not sure if I can say this but uhm... There was a rumor I heard somewhere that there are a secret passage for the sisters somewhere. It's something like a myth among us. It's just a groundless myth I guess. I've never seen someone who said she found anything like a secret passage yet.'

  And I said, 'Isn't that because everyone who found it has already gone through the passage?' She said, 'It makes sense! But where did the passage lead them to?'

  I said, 'That's what I have to figure out from now on. Thank you sisters. I owe you a big time.'

  And I went straight up to the top floor to talk with the counsel. I told them what I heard, the possibility of the existence of a secret passage. They said their was a possibility that this building had some of that unknown passages or hidden spaces. To find out, we had to measure and investigate every floor from the bottom to the top. The counsel wanted to have a blueprint of the building in order for the reconstruction so they decided to form a surveying team. And they let me take charge of the team.

  They gave me the authority to choose the members of the team. I first went to see Alex and Wonder. I talked to Wonder first. She said she'd help me find Diane, but she wasn't sure if Alex would join since Alex was in charge of the police academy. He got a job as a combat trainer. So we headed to the Academy on the 78th floor.

  ...

  When we got there, Alex was in a big studio with mirrors all around the walls with his students. They were cadets training to be officers. He saw us coming in, and gave them a short break.

  I hadn't seen him for quite a while after we got reaper because he moved out from the house and was staying in a quarter near the police academy. I shook hands with him and noticed he had his broken arm replaced with a metal arm like the veteran day walkers. It was a beautiful black arm with delicate chrome finishing, which made a sharp outline. I asked him how he'd been. He said, 'As you see, Endy. I'm a teacher now. They call me master Alex. It's really something.'