Solo For Two

“Quite literally, look where it’s plausible.”

Julian’s pronunciation was sloppy from the alcohol, but his gaze felt piercing, even somewhat reproachful towards Karel.

“I’m telling you to drop the fantasy.”

Karel responded to Julian’s words in a low voice.

“…If you have something to say, say it straight.”

“I… damn it, I thought from the beginning… you know, that he’d be in a place like that. Haven’t you seen it on your way here? There’s a fairly big members-only club near Garnier. It’s well-decorated but… it’s where you can buy prostitutes.”

“……”

“If it disgusts you, there’s no need to go there. There are plenty of guys lurking in the alleys who would kneel down for just half the money you spend on errand boys. Even with just a penny, they’ll scour the backstreets like scavengers to find Sasha for you. Oh, did you know? Twenty years ago, a man who used to be a prima donna at the opera house performed in that underground club. As his value declined, he ended up there.”

Karel’s eyes became dangerously sharp. Julian suddenly regained his composure and stammered.

“Uh… um… what I meant was… not to degrade Sasha, you know? If you really want to, if you want to meet him again somehow, it means you should look in places you haven’t looked before… you know?”

Sensing Karel’s uneasy mood, Julian hastily left the room. Karel rolled the whiskey in his hand before swallowing it all at once. Having downed several drinks in a row, Karel left the room in a tipsy state.

And for the first time, he faced the true face of the filthy and vulgar city.

Right behind the glamorous streets of the upper class was a place that fulfilled their base desires at a bargain.

Karel had always considered himself a bottom-tier person. Just someone from the lower class who could barely afford an education thanks to the Ludwig family. But how naive his own thoughts were. Karel realized that day. True bottom-tier life was right there.

There was no need to even go to the exclusive club as Julian had said. There were plenty of people selling their bodies at a bargain to satisfy the conquest desires of poor men who couldn’t afford the membership fees of upscale clubs.

Young men rushing towards Karel, and older men… Some men who quickly realized that Karel wasn’t looking for a woman, flashed seductive smiles and approached him.

!

Whenever that happened, Karel felt like he was being punched in the heart. It was the image of Sasha, lying next to him on the second night, with his gown off and his bare back exposed, that overlapped in his mind.

Now, Karel wandered the back alleys of Paris every night. As the maze-like narrow alleys became more familiar, his eyes gradually became accustomed, allowing him to venture further and further inward. And the further he went, the more dangerous the scenery became, to the point where he wanted to avert his gaze immediately. Men exposing their buttocks on the street and offering themselves from behind, women selling their bodies with all their might by the side of the road, and children who, despite demanding money, received blows until they were near death.

Most of the people begging from Karel, dressed in shabby clothes, couldn’t speak French. Karel thought of Sasha. What could a foreigner, who could barely speak, do with nothing but his own body…

“That might be right.” A few days later, Karel held Julian’s hand. Julian looked at Karel with wide eyes, his expression asking, ‘What’s the matter?’ It was right after Karel returned from his late-night outing.

“I saw a man today. When I saw his back, I really thought he was Sasha. The height, the build… even the slightly long hair was the same. I caught him, but he was a drug addict. He seemed to have been addicted for a long time. His nose was worn out, constantly sniffing, and his nails and teeth were not in good shape… He must have been decent-looking originally.”

“Hmm… that’s tough.” Not knowing what Karel wanted to say, Julian kept quiet.

Karel took off his coat and slumped onto the sofa. Seeing Karel, who usually didn’t look so relaxed, Julian sensed something.

“Karel, did you buy a man?”

“He looked too much like him.”

“Ah, damn. It’s hard to see a brother’s downfall right in front of your eyes.” Suddenly feeling the urge for a drink, Julian got up from his seat and looked for the alcohol.

“My heart ached… so I emptied all the cash I had. He grabbed the money and burst into tears right there. Seems like he was starving. Then he ran straight to the bakery.”

Karel’s eyes showed a hint of self-reproach. But Julian found something slightly different within them. Karel’s dark pupils, satisfied just by embracing a man resembling Sasha, and that momentary glimpse of an ominous aspect, made Julian’s heart suddenly fill with a foreboding feeling.

For about a month now, Karel had been behaving strangely. Brothers who scorned the act of buying people easily succumb to desire like this. Karel felt unfamiliar.

Was I completely wrong about Karel? From childhood to now, his true nature might not have been fully revealed. I even suspected a few times before. Karel’s humility is more like the consideration bestowed by the strong.

Julian said, concealing his troubled heart, “Well, let’s admit this now. You just want to sleep with that man.”

“……”

“The reason you traveled 2,000 kilometers from St. Petersburg to Paris is because of that, right? I’m not criticizing you. If anything, I think it’s fortunate. Falling in love at first sight with a man who you don’t even know where he came from? It’s better than such unrealistic stories, wanting to sleep, that is. That’s my perspective.”

“I’m not sure either.”

“I’d rather hope it’s the latter. Then roughly… after rolling around a few times with someone who resembles him, you’ll get better. No, you’ll feel like a beggar. Empty, like nothing at all. And then you’ll break free from the fantasy, won’t you?”

Karel also knew it was time to stop. In his mind, he even thought Julian was right.

Julian had even hired a private detective a week ago since Karel had no progress in finding Sasha. At this point, it was fair to say Julian had done all he could out of consideration. Karel knew Julian also wanted to go across the Mediterranean to southern Africa or cross the Gobi Desert to visit China.

Karel originally liked to make quick and rational judgments. He didn’t like gambling on slim possibilities.

He had already behaved recklessly enough.

So maybe it was time to really stop being foolish now, Karel thought.

“Julian.”

“Why?”

“Where should we go next?”

Karel said, still leaning back on the sofa and looking at the ceiling.

“Let’s go south now. I’m tired of winter.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious. Day after tomorrow… no, let’s leave tomorrow.”

“What? Well, that’s fine by me… Uh… can we wait for three days, or at least two more?”

“Okay, then two days.”

“Two days… without any regrets?”

Karel chuckled at Julian’s words.

…I never liked gambling in the first place. I don’t cling to things without possibilities. I’ve decided to stop doing foolish things after just two days.

Karel sighed heavily and closed his eyes. Sasha’s face looked mature.

***

The last night in Paris.

Karel was already drunk from the alcohol he had been drinking at the pub since early evening. He didn’t plan to get drunk, he just wanted to drink. Trying to get his unresponsive body up, Karel almost collapsed, but he was held up by someone’s arms and staggered out of the pub.

The smell of opium, cheap distilled spirits, and the stench covering the alleyways…

The blurry scene in front of his hazy eyes was the back alley he used to frequent every day. Karel realized that he was still being held onto by someone while aimlessly trying to go further in.

“You’ve been coming here for a week, haven’t you? Is there someone looking for you?”

“…Did you… spike my drink?”

“I wouldn’t do that… It just makes it a bit stronger.”

“Trash.”

No wonder I got drunk so quickly. Karel glared at the man with disdain. The man smiled as if the glare meant nothing.

Karel still tried to shake off the man clinging to him. But strangely, he ended up expecting the man’s presence, even though he was repulsed. The man, who struggled to support himself against Karel’s staggering, continued to babble incessantly.

“You seem familiar for some reason. Have we met somewhere before?”

Seeing through the obvious ploy, Karel chuckled inwardly. He waited for the moment to lose consciousness and run away with all his possessions. But you chose the wrong target. Karel leaned against the wall and took a deep breath.

Originally, Karel’s sturdy physique didn’t take well to alcohol, let alone drugs or anesthesia. If he just regulated his breathing and took a little rest, he’d probably be fine.

“Sir?”

The man’s face pressed into Karel’s field of vision.

Karel opened his eyes narrowly. In his wavering sight, he saw the face of a man.

“…Sasha?”

The man had black hair, and his irises, with slightly tanned milky skin, were a murky shade of blue. Karel struggled to remember that Sasha’s eyes were a bright amber color, even in his foggy mind.

But now, he couldn’t be sure if his memories were accurate. He didn’t know if he was overlaying fantasies onto his memories, turning the ordinary face of a young man into the angelic face of Sasha.

“…You have black hair.”

“It’s a deep brown. It’s dark here, so it looks like that.”

“Is that so.”

The man was smiling humbly, but to the intoxicated Karel, his shy smile somehow overlapped with Sasha’s. Without realizing it, Karel affectionately brushed the man’s hair behind his ear.

“Do you like my hair?”

“I don’t know.”

In a brief moment, Karel remembered that Sasha was a foreigner, and they couldn’t understand each other’s words. This man wasn’t Sasha. But rationality quickly faded like a dream.

Karel embraced the man. Suddenly supporting Karel’s heavy body, the man staggered. Karel rested his head on the man’s slender shoulders. He could feel someone else’s body heat. Closing his eyes, it felt as though he had embraced Sasha, whom he had never embraced before. Karel burst into laughter mixed with self-pity, feeling pathetic and foolish.

He thought that perhaps he had been mistaken in thinking he was chasing Sasha all along, and that in reality, he was not facing the goddess of destiny. The cruel goddess might be laying traps along Karel’s path, watching with amusement as he falls into them one by one.

Meeting Sasha by chance, unexpectedly rediscovering his traces in this city, and even reaching this point… Karel was undoubtedly the clown caught in the goddess’s prank.

True love wouldn’t be like this. It couldn’t be true love to waste time being infatuated with a face, even if it was Sasha’s. They hadn’t exchanged a single word.

Karel… Still, he thought they had shared emotions, even if it was his own rationalization. Perhaps this was just carnal desire.

Karel grabbed the man’s chin with his hand and traced his lips with his thumb. The man made a sound of distress. In that moment, the man in front of him, however cruel, was more welcome than the elusive Sasha.

When Karel came to his senses again, he found himself entering a narrow room. His consciousness flickered. He didn’t know if the drugs were just meant to make him lose consciousness. His body felt hot, and his breathing quickened.

Even in those brief moments, Karel couldn’t resist pushing the man’s shoulders down repeatedly,

trying to make him lie down. “Just a moment, let’s go to the room,” the man insisted. When Karel realized he was pushing the man towards the door rather than the wall, he promptly pushed him into the room.

At that moment, another presence was felt inside the room. As the man slipped out of his embrace and stood upright in frustration, he harshly addressed someone.

“Can’t you wake up? You should be working at night, you bastard! Come out! Stop disturbing others’ business.”

The man pulled something resembling a person out of the bed and mercilessly kicked it. The man curled up reflexively with a “thud” sound as he was hit squarely in the chest. Then the man started kicking the person’s neck and head with his foot.

It was a brutal beating, even for an unfamiliar stranger. Karel realized this was not about treatment but simply violence aimed at complete destruction. He also wondered how accustomed they were to such violence.

“Get out now!”

When the man, struggling to stand up from crouching on the floor, tried to flee, leaving bloodied streaks on the floor from his face and nose, Karel restrained him from continuing the beating, supporting the bleeding man.

“Are you okay…?”

In the darkness, the blood-soaked man raised his head. His frightened brown eyes, meeting Karel’s gaze, shook slightly as they exchanged glances.

Karel felt a surge of elation throughout his body. The goddess of fate was on his side.

“Sasha!”

For a moment, Karel embraced Sasha tightly. He heard the man who had brought him here shouting something from behind, but he paid no attention, pushing him out of the door and locking it. Karel staggered back around.

And then he slowly surveyed the scene in the room. It was to confirm whether what he faced was another hallucination.

The cramped and filthy room, the man standing under the flickering light, the chased-away man banging on the door from behind… It was no beautiful place for a reunion; it was brutally realistic. Yet Karel found the sensation strangely comforting. At least it wasn’t a delusion, that much was certain.

Sasha looked at Karel with dismay, covering his bleeding face with his hand. Karel awkwardly tried to wipe away the blood on his pitiful face with his palm, realizing soon that it would only dirty Sasha’s face more.

The blood wouldn’t stop easily. Beneath the dried blood on his white cheek, his skin was already turning red with bruises. Instead of wiping away the blood, Karel tenderly held Sasha’s cheeks in his hands and gazed deeply into his face.

He feared he had mistaken fantasy for reality in his memories, envisioning an angelic face. But how foolish that thought was.

The man before him was indeed an angel.

“Do you remember me?”

“…”

After a moment, Sasha lowered his head. Knowing he wouldn’t understand his question, and that a response was meaningless, Karel felt crestfallen.

“Sasha?”

At Karel’s words, Sasha’s eyes fluttered open again.

After a moment, he spoke again.

“[Sedrin, Alexander Sedrin.]”

Though the pronunciation was exotic, the name was unmistakable. Karel smiled as he caressed Sasha’s face.

“I know. So that’s your name. I’m Karel. Karel Clements.”

“Karel.”

“Yeah. How much I’ve searched for you.”

Saying so, Karel embraced Sasha deeply once again.

“In case we never meet again… How much…”

The man in his arms was even more emaciated by now. Feeling a pang of sorrow, Karel let out a deep sigh. With the deep breath, drowsiness washed over him. Karel lost consciousness along with that sigh.

***

Upon waking from his slumber, Karel immediately sensed the movement of a small creature scurrying across the ceiling.

“A mouse.”

As he squinted his eyes, he also noticed a cockroach crawling beneath the light. Karel buried his head in the pillow to avoid looking there, but couldn’t stand the smell of the musty blanket and sat up. Instantly, a terrible headache struck.

As he retraced the cause of his severe hangover, Karel thought it fortunate that he had passed out unconscious last night. He would never have stayed in a place like this sober.

Descending from the hard wooden bed, Karel discovered someone crouched by the bedside, dozing off. In an instant, memories of the previous night came flooding back.

“Sasha?”

At Karel’s voice, the man who had been sitting there shoulder-slumped slowly raised his head. The blackened face, covered in dried blood, confirmed it was indeed Sasha. Hastily, Karel helped him up.

“Why are you sitting here… You weren’t doing this all night, were you?”

Sasha attempted to reply, but instead, he choked on a cough. The deep coughing from his lungs hinted at his physical condition. Pneumonia was a possibility. Anxious, Karel wrapped a dirty blanket around Sasha and embraced his shoulders.

“Let’s get out of here for now. You might get worse lung problems in a place like this…”

Seeing Sasha struggling to rise, Karel, who had been suspicious of his discomfort, soon remembered what had happened to him at the hands of the man who had chased him away last night. Suppressing his rising anger, Karel supported Sasha for now.

Meeting that man again, Karel had wanted to give him a beating just as Sasha had received, but on second thought, he was the one who had led them to Sasha, so he should be thankful instead. Karel sighed ironically.

It took Sasha quite a while to stand up on his own. His legs, stiffened from squatting all night, felt numb. As Karel led him out the door, Sasha hesitated momentarily, as if unwilling to leave. Though his strength was feeble, he was clearly resisting going outside.

“Why?”

Karel’s question was immediately answered as someone outside began banging on the door recklessly. Hearing the coarse, husky voice mixed with curses, Karel frowned. It was the man from last night.

From what he could gather from the man’s ranting, it seemed he thought Sasha had stolen his customer.

“You shameless punk, stealing someone else’s customer?”

Karel looked down at Sasha, who still had fearful eyes.

It was hard to tell what he wanted, but it was clear he didn’t want to get hit.

“Come with me. I’ll make sure they won’t touch you.”

Karel said words Sasha probably couldn’t understand, embracing him affectionately with his supporting arm. Fortunately, Sasha remained still until Karel opened the door. The man causing a commotion outside was momentarily taken aback by the sudden opening of the door, then, true to form, he reached out aggressively toward Sasha’s hair.

Karel pushed the man’s arm away. Then, facing the belligerent man, he pulled out some bills and handed them over.

“Take this, so we can leave quietly… Please.”

Taking more money than he had received for the scuffle last night, the man rolled his eyes and casually pocketed the money. Just as Karel was about to walk away, the man’s voice stopped him.

“Wait a minute. Where are you going?”

Karel stopped and turned around as the man pried.

“Why are you taking him with you?”

“Is there a problem?”

“Hmph… If you do business here, you have to give half of the rent to the landlord. There are some who do underground business during the day, but if they get caught pocketing all the bribes…”

“Would this shut you up? Is this enough?”

Karel pulled out another crisp banknote. As he counted the money one by one, the man’s eyes widened considerably. Taking the money Karel handed him, the man hurriedly shouted towards Karel as he turned to leave.

“Hey, aren’t you two thinking too much alike? I’m confident I’ll finish you off.”

Karel didn’t respond to the man’s words and calmly turned away. Throughout the conversation with the man, Sasha was trembling. It seemed he was afraid Karel might leave him behind.

Karel quietly bit his lip.

Taking Sasha away like this would ensure they never set foot in this alley again. From now on, the stories of the landlord and the man were their own, and there would be no connection to Sasha afterward…

But the man’s words were unsettling. A reasonable suspicion crossed Karel’s mind that Sasha might have sold himself to strangers. Suppressing his anger with nowhere to go, Karel instead strengthened his grip on Sasha’s clinging arm.

Before stepping out the door, Karel remembered he had promised to leave for Paris with Julian today.

“I need to reserve one more seat on the train.”

Julian’s reaction, Sasha’s condition, convincing Julian to accompany them on the rest of the journey with Sasha, returning home with Sasha after the trip, living with him… and the future after that.

Countless thoughts cluttered Karel’s mind. The headache interfered with his rationality. Instead of coming to conclusions about things yet to happen, Karel held Sasha dearly in his arms.

As they stepped out the door, the midday sun poured down on them.

For a moment, Karel forgot about the hangover and the headache and simply felt grateful to be free from wandering through foul-smelling alleys filled with despair, and to have Sasha in his arms.

Before stepping onto the main road, Karel took off his own colorful coat and draped it over Sasha. Then, he stopped an expensive carriage adorned with pennants. Even though he covered Sasha’s dirty clothes with the coat, the coachman seemed hesitant to pick up the disheveled guest, casting disapproving glances at Sasha several times.

As the coachman hesitated instead of departing, Karel glared at him silently until he finally coughed and said,

“Where shall I take you?”

“To the Hotel Baudon.”

Sasha, who had been bowing his head under the coachman’s gaze, lifted his head upon hearing Karel’s voice.