Earlier, Alina listened through a rice‑paper-thin door as Sister Bertha spoke of the Priest’s illness.

The news was brief: treatment hadn’t moved an inch; the Priest lay fragile on the bed, his life ebbing like a dimming ember; in formal terms, he was drawing near to death.

Medicine had no road forward; only tubes, cold as winter vines, kept his body tethered to breath.

So when the Priest closed his eyes, pain rose and faded in her chest like a small wave, and she didn’t sob like the others.

Later, two male doctors lifted the Priest’s body and carried it out like silent ferrymen on a dark river.

By Sacred Cathedral custom, they would lay him in a coffin, then take him back to the Sacred Cathedral.

Their big masks hung like pale moons, and neither spoke a word.

One looked foreign, slight; through the mask, he offered Alina a polite smile, a ripple barely breaking the surface.

You could see it at the corners of his eyes, a crescent of warmth under clouded glass.

Numbness settled first; Alina turned her gaze to the window’s press of black pines, while rehab machines clicked and breathed like distant metronomes.

No doubt, the hospital holds twin melodies, a tide of birth and a tide of fading.

Here, the ill strain toward tomorrow’s dawn, sweating for each new step; under the same roof, we watch Priest John cross from vivid presence to quiet sleep—resting at last in a narrow coffin, like a catfish no one bought, waiting for earth to patter on the lid.

“Everyone’s gone,” the orderly murmured, his voice thin as grass in wind.

Alina rose, mind half-cloud, half-clear, and slid nightstand items into a paper bag: ink-scented fountain pens, a book shedding its leaves, and wrinkled, storm-tossed manuscript pages.

Done sorting, she kept her light gait, then rushed out of the hospital like a bird startled from a branch.

Summer had scoured the sky clean, hurricane-blue with no shred of cloud; the sun burned strange and bright, reminding Alina of the scarlet bodhi fruit Melvina gave her when sorrow came.

That little one reads me too well; one soft glance, and my secrets lie bare like shells revealed by low tide.

Holding that thought, Alina ran toward the nun waiting by the car door, a swallow arrowing home.

“Don’t keep everyone waiting!” the nun scolded. “We have to go back and arrange the Priest’s funeral!”

“You forgot these!”

She dipped her head and peered into Alina’s open bag; a headache bloomed like a struck gong. “Oh, Cheryl! That’s a patient’s stuff!”

“There was nobody there.”

“Priest John’s neighbor bed holds a writer. Those are his. Return them, now!”

Alina ran back inside; when she came out again, the nun and her little flock had flown like sparrows at dusk.

She looked around, adrift; the empty lot was so still she could hear sunlight fall like dust.

“They all left,” said the old man at the lot, his voice creaking like a gate. “They went that way.”

Alina thanked him softly and breathed the scent rising from earth as the white sun baked it, then walked toward the Sacred Cathedral in quiet heat.

The sun’s angle slid over her face, laying a slow gradient of light and shadow like watercolor.

“Everyone went ahead,” she muttered. “They’ll miss the joy of walking rough road, heels tapping sand and stone.”

Even so, a knot of grievance puffed up like a small storm cloud; she planned to gripe to Melvina later—she loved Melvina’s comfort, soft as plush white clouds.

“Oh… Melvina didn’t come here…” Alina realized mid-step. “Did she? No, right? If she did, why would Priest John apologize to me? He’d tell Melvina straight! Ah! I forgot to take her to the secret base!”

Alina burst into speed, a deer shaking heat off its flanks.

The hot air swelled with tiredness, pressing in through every crack; sweat beaded and fell from her forehead like a broken string of pearls.

The wind moved slow and heavy, carrying stone-dust and soil, a mountain smell baked golden.

The rugged path shimmered with warped heat, like hammered sheet iron ready to spark under the next blow.

“Do—Re—Mi—” Alina rasped, testing notes like stepping stones across a creek.

She stopped, heart startled like a bird; the voice in her ear didn’t feel like her own, yet the hills lay empty, and the echo had to be her.

Under such a huge sun, she thought, the shadow dogging her steps wasn’t just a flat sketch; it had flesh, a companion willing to cross mountains and seas.

Thinking that, her stride turned feather-light, each step landing on a bright drumbeat; even seeing Molokov Bay Chapel didn’t chase off the sense that she wasn’t walking alone.

“Don’t grab things again—” the leading nun called, seeing Alina sweat-slick and smiling. “Did you hear me?”

“Loud and clear!”

She meant to say more, but Sister Bertha waved from not far off; words folded shut, and she jogged to the second-floor right room, a sparrow darting to a nun-only council.

Alina didn’t eavesdrop like usual; she knew it would be idle talk. She hurried back to her dorm, pulled a small cake from a drawer, and prepared to celebrate Melvina turning sixteen.

“You mean Cheryl?” a girl’s voice sounded from the dorm bathroom, sharp as a needle. “She’s so dumb! Came back from the hospital and pulled out someone else’s things.”

Another voice mocked, laughter thin as tin. “She was like that as a kid, still like that now. Can you believe she’s eighteen?”

“Don’t get why the Priest adopted her—dumb, trouble-loving, and boyish! Always calling herself the king of the kids—”

“That’s an insult, and she treats it like praise.”

Her pulse cooled like water on stone; Alina pulled a chair over, jammed it against the bathroom handle, and knocked. “Do you know where Melvina is?”

“Ah! Cheryl! When did you get back?”

“Just now.”

“Oh—” relief slipped out like a hiss of steam. “I didn’t see Melvina.”

“Got it. Bye.”

Alina didn’t leave; she listened to the chair rasp the doorframe, a cricket fiddling in twilight.

“What was that?” one voice asked, jittering like sparrow wings.

“Someone jammed the door!” another voice cried. “Hey! Anyone out there?” The shout seeped through the wood and echoed around the quiet room like a thrown stone.

Silence pooled; then a sigh drifted out, thin as smoke. “Looks like no one…”

“Push hard! Three! Two! One!”

Alina gripped the handle and, at the instant they braced, yanked the door wide like a trap sprung.

The pent-up force poured out like floodwater; both women lost balance and crashed to the tile with a startled cry.

“Eat shit!” Alina flicked her wrist; a pillowcase stooped like a hunting falcon and hooded both shocked heads.

Before they could claw free, Alina dragged them back into the bathroom with lightning speed, satisfied, and went on hunting for Melvina like a fox on a trail.