It felt as if someone had grabbed his heart and was kneading it like dough. The burdens of the world had crashed down on him all at once, aging him not to nineteen but to a hundred and nineteen years. He felt wretched. "How?" he said again without moving his lips. "Please find us!" the whisper begged, as if it were his last chance, his last hope. Tarık sobbed, wondering why he felt this way. His soul was like that of a tormented dead. "Am I dead, maybe?" he thought. No reply came from the shadows; instead, the tap tap of footsteps resumed from right behind him. It stopped; he couldn’t see the feet that had halted, but it felt as if he had known those footsteps, heard that sound for centuries. His soul seemed to ascend to the sky. At last, he had died. "Buğra," he said. Where was he?
As his soul floated upward, his body stood up. Doors, beds, the couch, the kitchen... Everything changed. Time, space... His mind had broken all its bounds. The owner of the footsteps approached his standing body. His body, motionless, accepted its helpless fate. A voice rose from his body. "Please, don’t touch him! I’ll do anything you want." The owner of the feet let out a raspy voice into the darkness. "Do you love him that much?" he asked, and choked on his laughter as if drowning. His trembling body sobbed, "Please, he’s just a child!"
"So you don’t love him, then?"
His body knelt, bowed its head to the ground. The owner of the feet grabbed him by the nape of his neck. His body whispered, "More than my life, more than myself, if you touch him, I am more than your guardian of blood."
He woke up; his body soaked in sweat was curled up at the door. His chest heaved rapidly as if it would break through. He straightened up, leaning his back against the door, pulled his knees to his chest, and wrapped his arms around them. Had it been a dream, or should he call it a nightmare? He wasn’t sure. He felt as if he had died but was also alive at the same time. That man, the owner of the feet, was evil. He would do terrible things if he got inside his body. He enjoyed it, and it was so clear and so vile that his stomach turned. As he left the door and rushed to the bathroom, he emptied whatever was in his stomach, feeling a chill on his back. His eyes met the mirror as he rinsed his mouth. There, right behind him, stood his own body, its neck bent. Blood leaked from its bruised lips, tears streamed down its sunken cheeks, and a purple ring around its right eye showed he had been beaten recently. Choking on the water in his mouth, he heard a voice say, "Brother," as the hand of his body reached for his back. When the hand from the mirror touched his shoulder, he turned around screaming. The darkness turned into a bright white, his chest rose and fell, his breath insufficient. Two shadows in the white extended their hands. "Find us!" they said.