Lessons on Raising a Partner

Chapter 133: Dean: Hell is next to heaven.

“Wait till I come back.”

“Okay! I will wait for you to come back! “

Wait till I come back...

Wait for me...

Wait...

Dean didn’t know how many years he had waited. All he knew was that every day, every hour, even every second without Abel made him want to die at once.

In silence, quiet, sunrise, every moment of his life, he was thinking of Abel; bright roses, sunset dusk, full moon night, every scene in the world, he could relate to Abel’s memories, want to share them with him.

The sea I have seen was something you haven’t seen, the sunset I have seen was something you haven’t seen, the songs I have heard, everyone I see, every blink, has your shadow, even every wheeze and breathing pause.

You are so important to me. How did I survive without you?

Dean did not know how to stop a person’s missing, how to end the endless pain. Sometimes he wondered whether there was such a saying in his previous life. Was it because he had done so much wrong in the last life that he lived so painfully in this life, remembering a person with every breath and heartbeat, and living painfully in the world without him?

“Don’t you sleep? You’ve been sitting here for three days and nights.” Palatine sat down beside Dean and sighed.

“Has it been three days?” Dean uttered this sentence in a trance, without saying a word for three days. His voice was unusually hoarse. “When I was here with Abel, I always felt less pain. Look, teacher, he was still warm.”

Dean touched the white candle beside him and burned his hand in the blazing flame. He could not feel it. Palatine opened his eyes and clapped his arm, “Hey, your hands are burning!”

Grabbing Dean’s arm, Palatine gave him a cure and cured his scald, but Dean did not respond at all, as if the hand he had just burned was not his.

“You...” Palatine did not know how to say that he was okay. What happened between his two students made the two who were good half dead. One of them was even as good as dead.

On that day, Dean rushed to the church with Abel, knelt on the ground and asked Palatine to save him. Palatine watched his students’ bodies covered with mud, not to mention the red and white things between his legs, and was almost speechless.

“I... I can’t save him...” Palatine looked down and clenched his fists.

“Impossible! Teacher, you must have away, right? He’s still so young... He hasn’t had time to see the outside world yet...” Dean grabbed Palatine’s robe and left blood on his snow-white sacrificial clothes, burning his last hope in his eyes.

Palatine’s throat slid a little, but he could only watch Dean’s eyes die out: “I read your memory, Abel killed that guy... His soul is stained with blood, I can’t do anything...”

Dean sat on the ground, and in the chaos, only one of the mobs died.

When Abel saw that he was overwhelmed, he broke away from the others, jumped over and bit the man directly through his throat, then tightly defended him, blocked everyone’s punches and kicks, and did not let go until he died. Dean was actually buried alive – the mob thought they were both dead, but in fact, only one of them died, and Dean’s blood woke up Nightmare.

“I helped him light the soul candle, as long as the flame does not extinguish, it proves that his soul still exists, maybe when you talk to him, he can feel it.” Palatine turned Abel’s body into a candle and placed it next to Dean.

“Those people... Damn it. On what basis... For what? Why!!!!” Dean rushed out of the church with tears in his eyes, and Palatine chased him out, only to see him sitting on the back of Nightmare and leaving.

“Dean!” Palatine shouted a few times but did not see Dean coming back. He could only go back to the church and put the candle on the candlestick, watching it glow warmly. A long-time later, Palatine left the candlestick and sat down on the bench to pray.

The next morning, Palatine opened the church door, opened his eyes and stepped back several steps before he stood — Dean stood in front of the candlestick, caressing the candle representing Abel’s soul with his clean right hand.

There were many white candles on the candleholder, but Dean recognized Abel’s at a glance. He was wearing a black windbreaker with a pool of red blood underneath him. When Palatine looked carefully, the windbreaker was supposed to be grey, but it was dyed black by blood. Nightmare stood by the door, and bloodstains spread from the entrance to the candlestick.

Dean turned his head when he heard the noise, and his eyes turned dark and grey, like the eternal grey and low sky in the Grey City, but he had a sick smile on his face: “Teacher, will I be able to be with Abel?”

He raised his left hand and loosened what he held in it – a pile of flesh and blood that could not be seen in shape.

“Dean...” Palatine shouted Dean’s name in dismay.

Dean slowly approached Palatine with a strong smell of blood and flesh. He stood beside Palatine and whispered, “Teacher, the Bible says that pure and kind people will eventually reach heaven, and those with sins and blood on their hands will go to hell.”

“Abel and I are out of heaven, so I’ll go to hell with him...”

With that, Dean and Nightmare left the church together.

After that, Dean played with materials and equipment in the laboratory to prepare for the overthrow of the imperial evolution of human rule. This was made him inhumane, and he often returned to the Church of Erenie, stunned by the soul candle that Palatin lit for Abel.

Palatine thought Dean was mad.

He tormented himself unscrupulously with nightmares as if the pain of it could alleviate the despair in his heart. But that kind of despair can’t be erased. Dean’s hope has long been dead.

He could only be more painful and desperate day by day. Those emotions were like a bottomless pit, tearing away every inch of his mind and consciousness, making him so painful that even his soul was crying and howling.

Dean and Nightmare watched a sunrise and sunset before going to Titus.

“This is the most beautiful and quiet place I have ever seen.” Dean grabbed a dog’s tail grass, shook it in his hand, looked at the sun that was about to sink into the horizon on the half-star, and said to Nightmare, “Abel and I said that when he died, he wanted to be buried with me on a peaceful planet. I think it’s not quiet here.”

“When I die, I want to bury you on the most beautiful planet. There are not too many people on the planet. It’s better to have only a few people. There’s also a happy couple. Haha! It feels like we’re still living. Would it be difficult for me to hope for that?”

“No, I promise you I’ll find you a planet like that.”

“Oh, why did you look for it? I must have died after you. You are a pure human being. How can you live longer than me? But even if you’re old, I still love you only. When you die, I’ll sell us at the Flower Street Star House and talk about buying a ticket to take you to the most beautiful planet...”

Nightmare listened silently to Dean talking about his Abel’s past, trying to learn him to pull a dog’s tail grass, but his fingers were too big to pinch at all.

Dean sneered and shoved him with a handful of dog tails. “You’re a primitive mechanical fighter. I heard Oliver set your emotions like human beings. Would you suffer? Would you be afraid?”

“No.” The voice of Nightmare was firm. “Because we are soldiers, we don’t need these emotions.”

“Then you must have regrets.” Dean stood up and opened his arms to the sunset. “Without pain, you don’t really feel alive.”

“Purple Fatty hurts.” Nightmare suddenly opens.

“Purple Fatty?”

“Oh, it’s Pier, a little fat man. He can not only cry but also feel pain. He has a complete emotional system.”

“Why?” Dean was interested.

“Because he’s a kid, you know, a kid always has some privileges.”

Dean looked at the sunset and laughed: “Child, if I could be a child again, I hope I didn’t meet Palatine when I was a child, and I didn’t have to live so well. When I was a child, I had eaten all the bitterness I deserved, so that when I met Abel when I grew up, I would only be happy...”

Nightmare was silent and did not know how to answer. He was the original machine armored soldier with the least words.

Dean patted his Nightmare’s arm: “Old man, go, let’s work together again, and then you wish me happiness!”

Maybe it will soon be with Abel. Dean was in a good mood today. Nightmare looked into his grey eyes, silent for a few seconds then wished him and Abel happiness solemnly.

“Thank you, we will be happy.”

After the end of the Star Wars, Nightmare, with the ashes of Dean and Abel intertwined, laid a grave for them on the companion star and Pier looked at him. “Shall I ask my darling to get you an emotional system and make you cry?”

Nightmare turned to leave, “I don’t want pain, I have enough happy mood.”

“You haven’t cried! Where do you know the feeling of crying?!” Pier behind him shouted discontentedly.

Cry? He saw Dean cry on the first day they met and on the last day of Dean’s life when Abel left him, and they met again.

He looked as if he was suffering, let alone having experienced it himself once. He didn’t want to cry.

Nightmare had taken all the property Dean left him to buy wake-up stones, enough for him to guard the grave for more than 100,000 years, or even longer, and he intended to continue to earn money, continue to buy wake-up stones, and then continue to stay on the beautiful planet.

Because I want to be your most reliable guardian forever, my master.