– Memories: Logout [Retracted]

Twelve seconds before the clock ticks 12 midnight, Keen wakes up to the summons of his guilt again.

”Sieg! ” he exclaims, shaking palms against his sweaty face.

The room is dark and filled with the scent of instant noodles and untended plates. To add, Keen reeks of beer and nachos. The dark bags under his eyes also seem to have doubled since he last looked in a mirror.

For the last six months, he cannot doze off without the help of alcohol. Every night, he fights the guilt and responsibility for the disappearance of his younger brother Sieg, eight years old, on a very normal day when they visited the theme park.

It is common for their parents to treat them to something if their freelance work gets paid generously. That time, a fairly big allowance was given to the brothers. ”Loosen up once in a while, ” they said.

On the fateful day, his brother was wearing a red-and-white striped shirt, black shorts, brown sandals, and his favorite white fedora hat. His murmuring pale lips is something Keen has grown accustomed to seeing as his younger brothers sign of excitement. It was unusual though that he brought his reading glasses. For an eight year old, Sieg is a mathematical genius. However, his eyes are a bit less promising, which endowed the young kid a poor eyesight for reading. However, reading glasses made him easily overcome the ordeal.

It was fair day then; the sun was high up and the sky filled with cottony clouds. The wind was a gentle one just enough to make scampering kids deny their perspiration.

Keen, on the contrary, was awfully dressed. He wore black trousers, a body-fit dark blue shirt, and white sneakers. He was surprised that his brother suddenly wanted to go to the theme park instead of a science museum. Maybe he wants a change of pace, he convinced himself. The brothers love each other but never really talked much about their personal intellectual pursuits. Keen has always been creative and Sieg logical, yet both acknowledge the others skills.

Just a few minutes of being in the theme park, Sieg asked for a strawberry ice cream, complaining about the heat he was not used to being exposed to. He sat on a grey bench adjacent the ice cream stall, next to another kid around ten years old who seemed to be having a tantrum, while Keen bought ice cream.

When he looked back at the bench, Sieg was gone. Nowhere near the immediate vicinity. The other kid is there. Sieg is not the type to wander off on his own he told himself while looking around and yelling his brothers name.

”Sieg! Where are you? ” He raised his voice while running to the bench, head-turning quite an audience. A smooth, perfectly disc-shaped black pebble kept a torn piece of paper placed on where Sieg should be sitting. Keen knew those: the pebble Sieg was fond of looking at during his rare free time and a torn page from the stationery he always brought for taking notes on various observations.

A single ambiguous sentence was written in the paper when Keen scanned it.

”Im off to Esprit for a bit, ” it said. Siegs familiar signature was placed after it, as if to add authenticity.

Where are you? Keen asks the nothingness.

His deft hand slams the alarm clock just executing its first ring. I have no time for trivial things he thinks to himself. With a quick jerk, Keen gets off his bed and prepares for his routine every weekend: looking for clues to his younger brothers whereabouts.

For almost six months, Keen has been acting on his own kind of investigation to find the Esprit that Sieg mentioned in his last written message. Knowing his younger brothers complexity, Keen considered the disappearance as some sort of puzzle, but one too bizarre to keep up for such a very long time. Priva