Chapter 105: The Ideal That Had to Touch Dirt
The heat of the Honiara afternoon softened near the white walls of Holy Cross Cathedral. The air here smelled of dry grass, hot stone, and the faint, distant hint of incense from a service long ended. Sunlight poured through the fronds of the tall palms lining the path, painting the ground in shifting, broken gold. It was a place that asked for quiet, for folded hands, for the containment of messy things within beautiful walls.
Freda Sale walked toward the bench where Zoruk waited, her posture straight, her sundress a simple, clean line against the green. She looked, as always, admirable. The kind of person you’d point to as the calm center, the one who held things together. But the polish was thin today. Her calm seemed effortful, a layer of lacquer over wood that had begun to sweat in the humidity.
Zoruk watched her approach, his hands resting loosely on his knees. He didn’t stand. “Thank you for coming, Freda.”
“You’re hard to say no to,” she said, her voice light but with a new, careful edge. She sat on the far end of the stone bench, smoothing her dress. The cathedral’s shadow stretched long and cool beside them. “Is this the last stop on the confession tour?”
“An observation tour,” he corrected gently. “Henry Mani admitted he wants direction, now that he sees the damage his drifting caused. Esther Robert admitted she uses silence as a room to hide in. James Tane admitted he played the villain because it was easier than admitting he wanted to belong. Simon Dau admitted he resents the chaos because his responsibility makes him feel invisible.” He listed them off, his tone neutral, a curator presenting artifacts. “And Iuniana Talo admitted she is terrified of being remembered only as the girl who broke.”
Freda absorbed this, her gaze fixed on a sparrow hopping in the dust. A small muscle tightened in her jaw. “So everyone’s finally being honest.”
“You sound unconvinced.”
“Honesty isn’t goodness,” she said, turning to look at him. Her eyes, usually so serene, held a flicker of something harder. “A person can be honest about being a coward, or a liar, or a resentful… hammer. That doesn’t make them better. It just makes them known.”
“A fair point.” Zoruk leaned back, the dappled light playing across his features. “But knowledge is the first tool. You can’t build with a material whose properties you’ve romanticized.” He paused, letting the cathedral’s quiet settle around them. “Do you still believe goodness can survive when the story becomes ugly?”
The question hung in the warm air. Freda’s fingers twisted once in the fabric of her dress, then stilled. “I want to believe that,” she said, her voice lower. “I have to believe that. Otherwise, what’s the point of any of it? The pain, the work… it has to mean something.”
“Meaning is a powerful analgesic,” Zoruk observed. “It makes pain easier to bear.”
“Is that wrong?” she asked, a defensive note creeping in. “To want suffering to have a shape? A purpose? To not just be… random, ugly noise?”
“Not wrong. Human.” He shifted slightly, facing her more directly. His attention was a physical weight. “After the clip leaked, after Iuniana’s private agony became public spectacle, you worked very hard to give the group a shape, didn’t you? A dignified shape. You polished the story. You soothed the audience. You presented a united, wounded-but-resilient front.”
“I tried to protect us,” Freda said, her chin lifting. “All of us. The gossip was a fire. I was trying to contain it.”
“Were you containing the fire,” he asked, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, “or were you arranging the ashes into a more pleasing pattern?”
She flinched. The graceful composure cracked, just for a second, revealing raw frustration beneath. “What would you have had me do? Scream into the cameras? Fuel the drama? Let us be picked apart as a bunch of hysterical, backstabbing children? We had a chance to show something else. Something stronger.”
“Stronger,” Zoruk repeated, tasting the word. “Or just more beautiful? You needed the group to look meaningful, Freda, because if it looked meaningful, then your own pain within it—your disappointment, your fear, your anger at Henry for his weakness, at James for his performance, at Iuniana for her raw, unmanageable grief—it all became part of a noble narrative. Not just a messy, personal hurt.”
Tears, sudden and hot, sprang to Freda’s eyes. She blinked them back furiously, ashamed of them. “You make it sound like a sin. To want beauty. To want dignity.”
“I am asking where the line is,” he said, relentless in his calm. “Between care for others, and the need to make their suffering… presentable. To make it fit a frame so you can hang it on a wall and call it art, instead of a wound still bleeding on the floor.”
She was silent for a long minute, swallowing against the tightness in her throat. The sparrow flew away. From the street beyond the cathedral grounds, the sound of a bus horn blared, absurdly mundane. “It made it easier to bear,” she finally admitted, the words torn from her. “For me. Seeing it as a chapter in a bigger story, a test of our character… it made the sleepless nights, the sick feeling in my stomach every time I saw a new comment, the look on Iuniana’s face… it made it feel like it was for something. Not just something that was done to us.”
Zoruk nodded slowly. “And that is the sacrifice you are willing to make? To transmute pain into meaning, however prematurely?”
“It’s not a sacrifice. It’s a survival mechanism.”
“Everything we choose to keep ourselves alive is a sacrifice of something else,” he countered. “What would you sacrifice to be chosen, Freda? Truly chosen by Lord Larothus, not just admired from a distance?”
She took a shaky breath, looking up at the cathedral’s spire, a sharp point against the blue sky. “Admiration,” she said, the first answer coming quickly, as if she’d rehearsed it. “The need for public dignity. The… the reflex to make suffering look noble. I would sacrifice the need for the story to be beautiful.”
“Would you,” he pressed, his gaze unwavering, “sacrifice the beautiful version of yourself?”
The question was a needle, slipped between her ribs. She felt it pierce the core of her, the image she had curated not just for the world, but for herself. The admirable Freda. The calm one. The good one. Her breath hitched. “That’s a cruel question.”
“It’s the only question that matters here.” He didn’t relent. “The beautiful version is the one that helped Iuniana by first making sure her breakdown fit a narrative of resilience. It’s the version that comforted James while secretly wishing he’d just stop making things harder. It’s the version that smiled at Henry while judging his emptiness, that listened to Simon’s plans while resenting his bluntness, that respected Esther’s silence while wondering if it was cowardice. That version is very strong, Freda. And it is a fortress that keeps the real war outside.”
A single tear escaped, tracing a clean line through the dust on her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. “Being admirable,” she whispered, “protected me. It protected me from being accused of selfishness. Or fear. Or… failure. If I was the one holding us together, then I couldn’t be the one who fell apart. I couldn’t be the problem.” She closed her eyes. “I wanted to help Iuniana. I did. But you’re right. I also wanted the group to remain something people could still respect. Something I could still respect. Because if we were just… broken pieces, then what was I holding?”
The admission hung in the air, ugly and real and stripped of its beautiful frame.
Zoruk watched her, his expression unreadable. The bioluminescent channels beneath his human disguise did not pulse; he was perfectly, terribly still. “Team South does not need purity,” he said, his voice softening for the first time, though it held no comfort, only a stark clarity. “It needs people who can keep care alive after purity fails. After the story is ugly, and the meaning is not yet clear, and the wound is just a wound, bleeding on the floor. That is the only goodness that matters. The kind that doesn’t require a beautiful version of events to sustain it.”
Freda opened her eyes. They were red-rimmed, but clear. The tear had dried. The idealistic light was still there, but it had changed. It was no longer a spotlight searching for a perfect tableau. It was a smaller, steadier flame, burning in the middle of the acknowledged mess. It no longer floated above the wound. It stood, trembling but determined, inside it.
She looked at Zoruk, really looked at him, seeing not a judge but a mirror that showed terrifying, necessary truths. “What do I do now?” she asked, her voice rough.
“You walk into the committee room tomorrow,” he said, standing up. The afternoon was beginning to wane, the golden light deepening toward amber. “And you decide which version of Freda Sale you bring with you. The one who needs the story to be beautiful, or the one who can tend to the damage while it’s still ugly.”
He left her there on the bench, in the long shadow of the cathedral. She didn’t watch him go. She sat, her hands in her lap, feeling the absence of the polished narrative like a missing limb. The air was still warm, the sparrow did not return, and the silence around her was no longer peaceful, but spacious. A space where something real, untidy, and fiercely caring might finally begin to grow.
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Solomon Islands National Museum, Honiara. June afternoon, after Zoruk’s final reconstruction meeting with Freda Sale.
June afternoon, after Zoruk’s final reconstruction meeting with Freda Sale.
The humidity in the museum courtyard was a thick, visible thing, wavering above the concrete and the giant ceremonial canoe displayed under its open-sided shelter. Muted traffic noise from Mendana Avenue blended with the whir of an outdated air conditioner unit grafted to the museum’s wall. Iuniana Talo was already there, pacing a slow, tight circle near the wooden hull of the canoe, one hand tracing the chaotic weave of a red and black wristband, the other tucked into the ripped knee of her jeans.
She looked like a storm contained in skin—doc martens, a faded band t-shirt, her hair a dark cloud with strands sticking to her neck. Artistic, yes. But also coiled. Zoruk observed her for a moment from the shadowed archway before stepping into the bruised orange light of late afternoon. The rehearsal room where it had happened was just down the corridor, its door now locked with an official seal.
“You picked the scene of the crime,” Iuniana said without looking at him. Her voice was a low thrum of energy. “Very poetic. Or just morbid?”
“It’s a place of weight,” Zoruk replied, moving to lean against a support post. The wood was warm. “Weight matters. You can either be crushed by it, or use it as an anchor.”
She stopped pacing and finally faced him. Her eyes were bright, sharp, already defending against something. She’d applied a smudge of dark liner that had been rubbed at, making her look both fierce and recently unsettled. “Did you bring the others here for weight lessons too? Or am I special?”
“Each location was chosen for resonance. Freda Sale was at the cathedral. She admitted her idealism arrived too late to dress the wound, only to arrange the aftermath.”
Iuniana snorted, a short, brittle sound. “Of course she did. Freda’s good at arranging things. Makes the mess look intentional.” She kicked at a loose pebble. It skittered across the concrete and into the gravel bed surrounding the canoe. “And the others? Let me guess. Henry finally coughed up his ‘whoops, my bad’? Esther… I don’t know, admitted to existing? That’s pretty much her superpower.”
Zoruk watched the pebble’s path. “Henry admitted his guilt. Esther admitted her silence was a room, not a virtue. Simon Dau admitted he resents the chaos because his responsibility makes him feel invisible.” He paused, letting the list settle in the heavy air. “And James Tane admitted that playing the villain protected him from admitting how badly he wanted to belong here.”
A sharp, genuine laugh burst from Iuniana. It echoed under the shelter, too loud. Then it cut off, leaving her expression suddenly bare and quiet. “Wow. Everyone’s just peeling themselves open now, huh? My public meltdown was like… confession fertilizer. Great.” She wrapped her arms around herself, though the heat was stifling. “So what’s my prize for providing the humiliation that made everyone so honest?”
“What do you want it to be?” His question was soft, but it had edges. “Justice? Pity? Control over the story now?”
“I want to stop being the story!” The words snapped out, fierce and immediate. She took a step toward him, her boots scraping on the concrete. “I want to walk into a room and not see people remembering that clip. I want to have a thought that isn’t first filtered through ‘is this gonna be another thing they use?’” Her chest rose and fell quickly. The bioluminescent channels in the ceremonial canoe seemed to pulse in her peripheral vision, a faint, ghostly rhythm.
The silence after her outburst was filled with the distant bleat of a bus horn. Zoruk didn’t fill it. He just waited, his gaze patient and impossible to look away from.
Her shoulders slumped, the fight leaching out into the humid air. She looked down at her wristband, picking at a thread. “I also…” she started, her voice smaller now, almost swallowed by the city’s murmur. “I want them to remember that I was hurt because I mattered. Not because I was weak. There’s a difference. What I was creating in that room… it mattered to me. That’s why it broke me when it got leaked. Not because I’m some fragile little girl who can’t handle the internet.”
“That is a more useful distinction,” Zoruk acknowledged. He shifted his weight, the movement casual, but it brought him a fraction closer into her space. “So what will you sacrifice to be chosen, Iuniana? To move from being the story to telling it?”
She chewed on her lower lip, thinking. Her eyes darted around the courtyard, from the canoe to the sealed door to the archway leading back to the world. “The need to explode,” she said finally, the words measured. “The reflex to make everything I feel louder than the person who caused it. It’s like… throwing a flashbang every time I get hurt. Nobody can see the actual damage afterward. They’re just blind and pissed off.”
“That’s one sacrifice. What else?”
“Maybe… the need for my pain to be the most interesting thing about me.” She said it like she was testing the shape of the idea in her mouth. “It’s so easy to just lean into it. Be the ‘wounded creative.’ Let that be my whole… brand. It’s seductive. People pay attention to a wound.”
Zoruk nodded slowly. “And what about James Tane?”
The blush was instantaneous, a hot wash of color from her throat to her cheeks. She looked away, sharply, as if he’d shone a light on something secret. “What about him? He’s an asshole.”
“He is. He also sees you. Without trying to fix you. That seems to be the unbearable part.”
“He doesn’t see me. He sees… I don’t know, a project. A mirror.” She crossed her arms again, defensively. “He just stands there with that fucking smirk while I’m falling apart, and he doesn’t offer a hand or a hug or any of the normal shit. He just… watches. And he gets it. And that’s worse. Because if he gets it, then it’s real, and I can’t pretend it’s just me being dramatic.”
Her voice had risen, thick with a tangled mess of anger and something else. Zoruk didn’t react to the emotion. He simply absorbed it. “Team South does not need a wound that screams forever,” he stated, his tone clinical, a surgeon outlining a procedure. “It needs someone who can take the raw material of that pain and forge it into creation without burning the whole room down in the process. Explosions are simple. Controlled combustion is an art. It requires patience. It requires trusting that the heat won’t destroy you before you can shape anything.”
Iuniana was quiet for a long time. She walked over to the canoe and laid a palm flat against the weathered wood. It was cool despite the sun. She could almost feel the ghost of the rehearsal room just inside—the smell of sweat and anxiety, the sound of her own voice cracking, the terrifying vulnerability before the leak made it all public property. That girl was still in there, cringing, humiliated.
But someone else was here too, in this courtyard. Someone pissed off. Someone who had watched Freda arrange ashes, Simon resent the chaos, Henry hide, Esther vanish, and James build a villain’s castle just to have a place to stand. Someone who was still here.
She turned back to Zoruk, her chin lifted. The blush was gone, replaced by a steady, dark-eyed certainty. “I want to be chosen,” she said, and each word had weight, an anchor she was forging on the spot. “Not because I was exposed. But because I survived the exposure. And I’m not just sitting in the ruins. I still want to create something from it. Something honest. And yeah, maybe something dangerous. Because anything that matters usually is.”
Zoruk’s lips curved into the faintest hint of a smile. It wasn’t warm. It was the satisfaction of a lock clicking open. “That,” he said, pushing off from the post, “is the useful truth.”
He didn’t say goodbye. He just turned and walked back through the archway, leaving her alone with the giant canoe, the humid afternoon, and the quiet, simmering power of her own decision. She took a deep, shaky breath. The air still felt thick. But it also felt like fuel.