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It’s painfully similar to every other dream he’s had in the past seven years. Not exactly the same situation, but the exact same feelings and sensations. Sometimes they’re in Anaktr Garden, sitting near the tree where everyone used to spend their free time. Sometimes they’re running together under a meteor shower, hand in hand, Till doesn’t want to let him go. Sometimes they’re singing in the pouring rain, under the gaze of strangers and monsters, Till doesn’t know it, but Ivan is looking at him. And sometimes, when the day has been difficult. When things don’t go according to plan. When he remembers. When he realizes he is starting to forget, Ivan is there, holding him and nuzzling his nose against his cheek, telling him that everything is going to be okay.
He has woken up from another nightmare again, fortunately not about Urak and all the ways he used to mistreat Till for the sake of pure entertainment, nor about a strange melody sung by a soft, feminine and soft voice from his past, the face and identity of the woman still unknown to him. This time it’s about him again. By now, it shouldn’t be surprising that Ivan, bastard that he is, still finds a way to haunt him even after death.
His breathing is ragged and his throat hurts. It tends to happen when he dreams of Ivan, the man he never had the chance, nor the time, to understand. Of the boy who used to steal his stuff only to give it back later, longing for his gaze or even for attention. Of the guy who annoyed him until they graduated and realized things had become serious. Of the same guy who apparently loved him.
At first, the mere concept of being the victim of Ivan’s affection seemed foreign, rare, even impossible. However, when Till looks back at that one time, when he was too lost in his grief over Mizi’s disappearance to notice anything else, everything becomes so clear to him that he starts sinking in a pool of self-hatred and shame for not realizing sooner what had been evident in everyone else’s eyes but his.
He tells himself it’s not his fault. That everything would’ve turned out the same even if he’d known about Ivan’s feelings. He knows he can't be blamed for making Ivan fall so irrevocably and irremediably in love with him. He knows that but it still hurts because he knows it was that same love that made Ivan sacrifice himself to let him live. He curses that same love over and over again until his eyes are red and the morning arrives to greet him with a new day. He curses Ivan for kissing him, for looking at him, for choking him, for loving him. For leaving him. For doing anything remotely related to the feelings he desperately held for him. And he curses himself most of all, for refusing to escape with Ivan that night, back when innocence was enough to keep them safe from death and back when they couldn’t quite grasp what their actions meant for their future.
He wonders if they could’ve escaped safely through the silent night. He wonders if they could’ve stopped Alien Stage before Sua’s death. He wonders if they could’ve lived together the same life Till is living now in the name of both of them.
Because if Ivan were alive, he would’ve enjoyed the parties Dewey and Isaac held in honor of Hyuna and her role in the rebellion. If Ivan were alive, he would’ve smiled warmly at the kids they saved from Anaktr Garden, slums and abusive owners. If Ivan were alive, those same kids would’ve loved him back, smiling back at his unfunny jokes and his unhinged way to express love. If Ivan were alive, they would’ve watched the stars together when the ghosts of the past came haunting their dreams again. If Ivan were alive, he would’ve kissed away his sobs and moans in the darkness of their shared room because they understood that nights felt colder when they were not together. If Ivan were alive, Till would never have let his hand go again.
It’s those kinds of dreams that hurt the most. Because he knows the scenes they show are things that never happened or maybe weren’t even meant to happen. They hurt because they’re full of what-ifs and if onlys , and Till is not sure he’s strong enough to go through that every time his mind decides he hasn’t had enough.
Because when he stops to think, he realizes Ivan is in everything he does, sees or touches. He’s in the red flowers the kids pick when they’re able to play outside without fear because there’s no monster or danger to be afraid of. He’s in their laughter when Kiri says something funny, making Till remember how simple life seemed before they understood what was really going on because they weren’t old enough to process it. He’s in the starless nights, consuming and strange, yet lonely. He’s in the nights full of stars, beautiful and brilliant, yet distant. He’s in the pieces of paper Till has crumpled and thrown away because no amount of pencil strokes and calloused fingers can capture even a fraction of the soul of the man who once had a beating heart. He’s on the ceiling of his room when he falls asleep. He’s on the floor, in a pool of blood, when he wakes up. He’s in the wind and in the water. He’s in the moon and in the sun too. He’s in music, in the sound of drums. He’s in the eyes of a child that fate never intended to create.
The first time Till had laid eyes on her, a rush of emotions surged through him, pulsing through his veins, suffocating him and stealing the air from his lungs. She had inherited his eyes. His loneliness. His lost gaze. His straightforwardness. But she is not him and maybe, Till thinks, that’s for the best.
He isn’t resentful towards the little girl. Instead, a painful, tender protectiveness settles in the surface of his heart and pierces through his chest until he is drowning in his own blood. She’s a product of experimentation and the loveless urge to capitalize on the affection of the humans who had once been forced to participate in a televised competition but she’s also the child of the two people Till had loved the most when they were still by his side.
Her pink hair, soft and smooth, reminds him of the girl who had been his first love. It brings back good memories, but also the fear of not knowing where Mizi ran after the rocket events. It’s been seven years, and he hasn’t given up on finding her, not as a prince looking for his princess but as a friend looking for another. Her black and red eyes, on the other hand, reminded him of the sorrow of a broken melody. Of a damaged crown of flowers. Of the last look of love a man once gave him from his deathbed.
His feelings for Ivan have twisted and morphed, bitter like alcohol, addictive and dangerous. Squeezed, then freed, like a dying heart being played with. Sometimes, they ache and steal his breath. Sometimes, they keep him going, begging him to find peace in the little things he’s still allowed to enjoy while alive. There are times where he wonders what might’ve happened if Ivan had had more time to be more soft, to be more honest, to be more clear and less aggressive.
Even though he was forced to embrace the pain Ivan had gifted him when he left, Till had grown to accept his sacrifice as an act of love too. It’s a debt he knows he’ll never be able to repay and maybe that’s what hurts the most of all, the fact that, at least during this life, he will never be able to see Ivan again.
There are nights when he wants to yell at him. To punch him in the face just to quiet his annoying voice just for then begging him for explanations he already knows by heart. There are other nights, when he doesn’t feel so angry, when he yearns for his soft touch and the way his fingers used to feel on his face. Either way, he knows he will never scream at him again. Never touch him again. Ivan is dead, and so is a part of Till.
When he stares at the empty wall, hoping to find something to distract him from his spiraling thoughts, a soft hum settles in the crook of his shoulder and breathes in the scent of his sweat and tears. A voice he’s starting to forget as the time passes by tells him to breathe slowly because tomorrow is going to be a new day.
When he finally stops crying because he, as a human, has the distressing and cruel ability to remember, the tongue of a ghost licks away the remains of shed tears, and the fingers of an old memory travel through the locks of his hair, assuring him this is just temporary.
When he clings to the mattress in the hope of feeling held by something too, an ancient melody is hummed through the silence of his lonely room as a symbol of pure, devastating devotion.
“I love you.” Ivan says. Or at least, the version of Ivan Till’s mind has conjured that night. Three words Ivan never had the chance or time to say. Three words that were too powerful, yet still not enough to explain the depth of his shallow emotions.
Till hopes that, if there’s some kind of paradise after death, Ivan is waiting for him there, in the afterlife, promising that this time he won’t leave him again because there is no longer any danger. He hopes he’s able to take Ivan’s hand and kiss away his fears because that’s what Ivan deserves: a world where he can be cherished the same way he once cherished others.
Till doesn’t believe in God. He once told Ivan that. However, he hopes that if there’s someone up there listening, they would allow him to live a life in which he’s able to see Ivan again at least one more time.
His voice is shaky and his body trembling, not much different from any other night in which the nightmares become nearly unbearable for him to handle. His mind is loud. Noisy. He feels like he’s about to pass out. Nonetheless, he knows he has to answer. Not because he feels forced. Not out of anger. Not because he feels sad or broken. He has to answer because he never got to answer Ivan back then, when, without using a single word, was able to express one of the purest forms of love.
So, when the ghost of soft, thin, warm lips lingers on the skin of his shoulder, just as he remembers them, Till chokes out the two words he never got to say when Ivan was still alive.
“Me too.”
Because it was reciprocated. Maybe it always had been.
Because it was true, and that’s what hurts the most.
Because that’s love: messy and complicated, but also beautiful and selfless.
“So meet me in your next life, because I know I will love you there as well.”