The forest air was cool and damp.
Kaien once again alone in the forest. Being alone did not seem so bad to Kaien all this time. But now, after meeting Allen, being alone took every ounce of him and brought a greatest pain in his heart. Like every second, his heart was torn apart.
He went trailing the same path he and Allen took because that was what was left of him and Allen in the forest. Before he realised he was back at the cave where he always concealed himself until he met Allen. He felt the urge to retreat to the cave and stay there until who knew when. But if he stayed in the cave, he might have missed his chance to see and meet Allan again.
He sighed, gazing up at the cave and decided not to go back there. Not anymore. Perhaps, the reason he went there in the first place was not to go back into the cave but to say his goodbye. "Goodbye," whispered Kaien. His voice was toneless.
Kaien turned away and started through the forest again. Ahead of him was the darkness of a thinning forest. He scanned the surrounding forest, trying to figure out which way he should go. The forest looked little different from after Allen just left. He decided he would just wandering aimlessly around the forest. He hoped he would stumble on something that might catch his interest.
He tried to find a place where he could lay down and rest, but in this forest, everywhere looked just the same. It was hard to sleep in a forest that was not...alive. Sometimes Kaien wondered if the forest was always like this before he came or if it turned into lifeless forest after he came. Not like he ever needs or can sleep. He can not sleep nor dream. That was part of his punishment. If he could just close his eyes and mind for a moment and rest, that would be nice enough for him.
He kept on walking until he reached a large oak tree that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to them with his hand. He instantly felt colder and felt as though he had arrived somewhere buried deep beneath the surface of the forest. That familiar cold feeling washed over him again with a wave that was staggering. All his senses and knowledge told him that he was being watched.
“Is that ok?” The voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds was silenced at once.
“Hurm?” responded Kaien. Slowly and lazily, he turned his head to a tree branch that stood a little higher than he could reach.
A black and white owl, a rather rare kind of owl, was sitting on the branch, staring at Kaien with its shining golden eyes. The owls are often seen as a bad omen, a messenger of death. But in Kaien's world and knowledge, the owls were not just messengers of death but psychopomps, the creatures that sent the living world from Kaien's world or to be precise, afterlife.. The owl Kaien was staring at was a Hell's Owl.
Kaien asked the owl who was almost unnoticed because of the darkness of the forest, “What do ya mean?”
The owl flew closer to Kaien. An owl had mysterious intelligence and the one Kaien talked to, could speak very well and intelligibly. “Is that ok to let him go? You have been waiting for him all this time.”

“Hum Hum Hum. . .” laughed Kaien with mouth closed. His laugh was short and humorless. “You know he will die and go to hell if he stays close to me.”
“But he won’t remember you if he stays away from you,” the owl hung his head low. Almost looked like he just looked down at Kaien or was sleeping in his normal way.
“Good!” said Kaien, trying to sound cheerful. “At least he would go back to heaven. To his family. To where he belongs.”
“How about you?” asked the owl. “Don’t you want to go back to hell? To your family? To us?”
It was Kaien turned to hang his head low, staring at the ground, the emptiness. “If I said I don’t, would you stop coming here?”
“I-I…”
Kaien cut the owl’s words before he could finish it. “You should go back now. You would be in trouble if someone found out you were here.” He was trying to smile through tears in his eyes.
The owl nodded as a sign he understood. "Be the kindhearted man you always were," the owl said in an undertone. He turned his back, looking back at Kaien who was still staring at the ground before flipped his wings and flew away. “Goodbye… brother.”
Kaien watched the owl fly into the darkness of the forest. He rested his back and head to the tree and mumbled, “Goodbye.”