The white noise from the old Walkman enveloped them both; like a blanket of new snow, it draped itself over them, shutting out all the curious looks.
And the world under the blanket was - surprisingly, wonderfully - absolutely, quiet.

That was how she saw the storyteller for the last time - in an absolutely silent world, in a staircase. He'd hit his target.
When she fell into darkness, she knew that she would never see him again.
She'd love him to the very end.

The place in her, though, where her tears should have come from, was rough and dry. No, she didn't find any tears in herself to cry for the storyteller.
The storyteller didn't exist anymore.

And the snow that fell onto the roof in winter... it fell softly... softly... and it covered the house, the armchair, the books, the children's voices. It covered Anna and Abel, covered their parallel world, and everything was finally, very, very quiet.

I can’t be forgiven so I am not asking you for forgiveness. We lost each other, and we will never find each other again.

Possibly, she thought, the pool of answers was limited. There are fewer answers in the world than questions, and if you ask me now why that is so, I must tell you that there is no answer to that question.