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Zanka always knew that the world was a place made of scraps, garbage, and everything someone no longer wanted; he just never imagined that his own heart could be found among the wreckage.
Sitting on the cold metallic parapet of the HQ, he watched the courtyard below. The smell of motor oil and cheap cigarette smoke rose up, impregnating the night air — a place where no one could see him, but he could see everyone. And Enjin was there, surrounded by people, his loud laughter echoing off the concrete walls. It was a warm, vibrant sound, the kind that used to be Zanka’s safe harbor. But now that sound felt like a hard blade slowly sawing through his ribs with every vibration of Enjin’s chest.
Enjin was his world. Every scar on Zanka’s body, every combat technique, every shred of confidence he possessed came from that man. And still it hurt like an infected wound: Enjin lived in a reality where Zanka was only a piece, an important person but not part of the main cast — a background character.
Zanka pressed his fingers against the icy metal, feeling the rough texture of rust under his nails, digging gently into the sensitive flesh. He saw the way Enjin leaned in to listen to other people in bars, how his eyes lit up for passions that didn’t include him, for bodies that weren’t his and never would be. The realization was a lead weight that had been pressing on his stomach for a long time: Enjin needed to be happy, and that happiness didn’t have Zanka’s name written anywhere on it.
There was a silent agony in accepting one’s own romantic invisibility. Zanka felt like he was screaming underwater; his lungs burned with unsaid words, but the surface was too far away, suffocating him.
He watched Enjin seek other touches, other conversations, other horizons, and each time a piece of himself died.
He will never love me like that, Zanka thought, and the sentence echoed in his mind with the cold finality of a death sentence. If he already knew it, why wouldn’t the pain stop?
He closed his eyes, inhaling the cold night air. The unbearable anguish reflected once again through his body, a constant pressure on his sternum, as if Lovely Assistaff were trying to manifest from the inside out, tearing his flesh and his entrails. But he would not fight it. If the price to see Enjin’s smile — that smile that lit up the trash of the Surface just like his gray days — was his own annihilation, he would pay it smiling, probably.
Zanka would learn to be the spectator.
He would learn to find a bitter and distorted joy in the reflection of Enjin’s happiness, even if it was directed at others. He would become a master in the art of silent longing, letting Enjin float in his own orbit, free and untouched by the dark obsession that burned beneath the skin of the only person who had ever loved him completely.
After all, for Zanka, loving Enjin had always been a form of religious devotion. And gods do not belong to their devotees; they belong to the world.
Zanka let himself fall backward, feeling the corrugated metal of the roof groan under his weight. The impact sent a dry vibration up his spine, but he didn’t move. He stayed there, arms spread wide, staring into the void above.
The Surface sky was a thick mass of ash and vapor. Clouds drifted in slow, heavy waves, concealing the Sphere he knew floated high above — that perfect, unreachable circle hovering over their misery. Zanka reached his right hand upward, fingers spread, trying to cover his eyes, as if he could block the gods or the people of the suspended city from witnessing his pain. But it was a ridiculous illusion. The Sphere was never in his line of sight, and it was light-years away from his reach — or from anyone who could ever understand him.
Exactly like Enjin.
He closed his eyes again, and a sad, forced smile curved his lips. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he allowed himself the sin of imagining. He let the fantasy bloom like a flower sprouting from garbage, the way he had done so many times before: he pictured the warmth of a large, calloused hand wrapping around his — not for training, not for sparring, but as a promise. A promise to bind their lives together, to belong.
He imagined the cold, solid weight of a ring sliding onto his ring finger. And in his mind the scene was loud and chaotic, just like every time he dared to dream it — the way the HQ always was. He could hear Riyo’s celebratory shouts in the background and Rudo’s grumpy but genuine laugh.
And at the center of it all, Enjin was smiling at him.
Not the proud-leader smile. Not the comrade smile. But the devoted gaze of someone who had finally chosen him above everyone else. His impossible dream.
To be the object of Enjin’s love would feel like finally feeling sunlight on skin after a lifetime spent in shadows.
It would be wonderful. It would be peace. It would be the quiet of being accepted, of those arms holding him as he drifted into sleep, of being the only one to see that smile curve Enjin’s lips when he woke up, of being the sole target of all that love.
And in no reality — never — would it be his.
Zanka drew in a deep breath, the damp air burning his lungs like fire. It was cruel irony. Enjin had taken his first love and his first dream without ever knowing he held them. He had stolen Zanka’s romantic future without ever raising his voice, without ever rejecting him outright. He had done it all in silence, far from sight.
And yet Zanka couldn’t hate him. How do you hate the man who, while taking everything, was also the only one who ever brought color into your life? Enjin was thief and savior, demon and god of his existence; the source of his torment and the only reason he still bothered waking up every morning, breathing air that didn’t belong to him, looking at the same indifferent faces that stirred nothing in him — all for Enjin.
He lowered his hand, letting it fall heavily onto the cold metal. The dream dissolved, leaving behind only the smell of rust and the silent vastness of a sky that would never answer his prayers.
A thick, suffocating feeling pierced his chest. Zanka squeezed his eyes shut so hard that white lights danced behind his eyelids, but he couldn’t erase the truth now carved into his soul beneath that very same sky he tried to hide from.
He had never been on the same page as Enjin.
While Zanka wrote an epic tale of devotion using his own blood, Enjin was simply reading a field report, treating him with the easy camaraderie of someone who didn’t know he was one of the main characters.
He felt like a fraud. A liar who had invented meanings where there was only kindness.
His treacherous mind dragged him back to the past. He remembered one specific afternoon: the setting sun striking Enjin’s face, making those beautiful golden eyes gleam like the sun itself — shining with… something more. Zanka had stored that look away in his memories, convincing himself it was a sign. “He looked at me differently,” he had whispered to himself that night, clinging to the hope like a shipwreck survivor clutching a piece of rotting wood.
But now the wood was breaking. Too rotten from bearing his weight for so long, no longer able to save him.
Guilt burned wildly in his chest, horrible waves of shame burying the dead butterflies inside him. How had he dared project his filthy desires onto Enjin’s goodness? How had he had the audacity to twist a master’s affection into a romantic fantasy? He wanted to believe it hadn’t all been for nothing, that every frantic heartbeat had purpose — but the silence of the rooftop was the only reply he got.
I need to let him go, he thought, and the thought felt like peeling off his own skin, slow and agonizing, like stripping an apple. The rational thought was too painful, too loud, too strong. How do you make it all stop? How do you silence the passionate voice inside his chest that screamed in desperation and terror of being erased, of being torn away from the memories of his impossible love? How do you stop it from drowning out the voice of reason that tried to wrap his wounded body in some vague attempt at maternal comfort to suppress the pain?
It wasn’t only about Enjin; it was about freeing the man he loved from the invisible burden of his feelings. Enjin deserved happiness without the dead weight of Zanka’s obsession dragging at his steps. But what about Zanka?
Zanka… happy?
The word felt like a foreign concept, a language he had never learned to speak and until now refused to admit even existed. How could he be happy without Enjin? Without that all-consuming love that — even as it destroyed him — was the only thing keeping him warm? He rummaged through his oldest memories, trying to recall what breathing felt like before Enjin, and found only a gray blur, trembling and filled with unfamiliar voices.
He couldn’t remember who he was before this painful love became the only tongue he knew how to speak.
He was no one without Enjin. His blond hair meant nothing if it couldn’t be touched by those tattooed hands. His earrings meant nothing if they couldn’t be chosen by his leader. His blue eyes were empty if they weren’t reflecting Enjin’s gold. His Z stood alone without its E. His Assistaff was useless if it couldn’t hang beside Umbreaker — and only the heavens and Zanka knew how violently it thrummed whenever that happened.
So who was Zanka? The question had no answer.
He accepted it, then. On the unfair scale of fate, he would be the counterweight. He would accept the suffering, the emptiness, and the chronic solitude, as long as it guaranteed that Enjin’s smile remained intact and free. He would carry that one-sided love to the grave, like a secret medal of honor and a secret that only he knew.
It was his final act of devotion. In the name of everything Enjin had done for him — for pulling him out of the trash, for giving him a chance and a purpose — Zanka would accept being the only one to bleed. If Enjin’s brightness demanded his darkness, then so be it. He would accept it a thousand times if he could live a thousand lives just to chase the sun in that gaze every single damn time.
He opened his eyes, staring at the heavy clouds one last time. Hope had died, but the deaf loyalty would be eternal — after all, it was the only thing completely under his control.
How could he? The promises of nobility and sacrifice that his mind whispered were made of paper, and the weight of the invisible wreath his head had created was made of lead. It was too real. The imaginary touch of the ring still burned on his finger like a brand, painful and eternal; a constant reminder of a pact that only he had signed.
Zanka brought his hands to his chest, fingers closing tightly over the stiff fabric of the uniform, crumpling it against his skin as if he could rip the anguish out from between his ribs. Tears fell uncontrollably, hot and heavy, tracing salty paths down his face until they disappeared into the collar of his clothes.
The pain wasn’t as strong as his feelings, but God, how it hurt. It was a piercing radiation, a spasm that started at the center of his chest and spread through every nerve ending — more painful than any fracture or cut he had ever suffered in combat. He had accepted being the one who lost, accepted the role of martyr for Enjin’s happiness, but the flesh… the flesh was weak and treacherous.
Could he manage it? Could he look at that man every single day, hear his voice, smell the scent of his cigarette and the sound of his joyful laughter, and pretend he didn’t worship him down to his bones? How could he hide that his own flesh seemed to have Enjin’s name written in every fiber, in every scar? He knew, with terrifying clarity, that if Enjin asked, he would break completely. He would shatter into a thousand pieces of glass just so Enjin could have a brighter path to walk.
It was as if he were coming apart. Each sob that escaped his throat was a piece of his soul detaching and flying away, leaving him emptier yet heavier at the same time. Everything his eyes could see was a wet blur; the world had disappeared, leaving only him and the ghost of a love that would never have a home.
Zanka wanted to accept it. He wanted the maturity to transform that obsession into clean admiration, into pure friendship. He wanted to be able to smile sincerely while watching Enjin happy in another person’s arms, or chasing other dreams that didn’t include him.
But he couldn’t. The cruel truth, whispered by the cold wind of the rooftop, was that his love wasn’t generous; it was hungry, it was absolute and it was devastating. And now he would have to live the rest of his days pretending that the fire in his chest was nothing more than a small ember of loyalty, devouring him from the inside.
Sadness was a weakness Zanka couldn’t afford to have. Not there, in the HQ, surrounded by fighters so talented and powerful that they shouldn’t have to witness his deplorable state. The sob that escaped his throat transformed into a low growl, an animal sound of pure aversion. Slowly, the melancholy on the rooftop evaporated, giving way to a blaze of liquid rage that coursed through his veins.
“Idiot! Pathetic!”, the voice in his mind screamed, each word like a slap across the face, shaking his body and preventing his lungs from seeking air.
Did he even deserve that air?
The guilt still burned like acid in his stomach, painful and destructive, mixed with the avalanche of feelings coursing through his filthy soul. He was the one who had imagined everything. He was the one who had built castles of cards with Enjin’s kindness. He was the dirty one, the obsessive, the creature that crawled in the shadows, projecting impure desires onto the pure and charismatic light that Enjin radiated. Enjin was only goodness; Zanka was the disease trying to infect him.
He stood up, legs trembling, and began his descent from the rooftop. The world seemed to be melting around him, distorted and disgusting. The concrete corridors of the HQ, once familiar, now felt like the walls of an oven, narrowing and suffocating him. The smell of oil and sweat from the other team members he passed without looking was nauseating, but his body couldn’t move any faster. His mind begged him to run and find refuge to disintegrate in silence; he felt his own skin like a hot, sticky shell, a prison of flesh he wanted to tear open. The uniform, symbol of his pride as a Cleaner, seemed made of lead and sandpaper, every movement irritating the already inflamed dermis from emotional fever. He needed to get out of there. He needed silence to hate himself in peace.
He opened the door to his own room with a violent shove while stumbling inside and locked it. The room was small, familiar and too cozy; at that moment it seemed the only safe place in the world. He stopped in the center of the room, his breathing short and noisy, his heart pounding like a war drum against his ribs and the world spinning.
The pain in his chest, that filthy and distorted thing that had accompanied him since the rooftop, was now unbearable. It was a pressure that seemed to be fracturing his bones from the inside out. He needed to relieve it. He needed a focus, a pain he could control.
Without thinking, he brought his hands to his wrists. His short, calloused nails dug into the thin and sensitive skin above the veins. He began to scratch. First with quick, desperate movements, trying to rip away the invisible touch of the ring that his mind still projected between his fingers.
“You are nothing to him,” he thought, and the nails sank deeper.
The physical pain was a momentary balm. The heat of the blood rising to the surface of the skin brought a distorted relief to the cold that froze his soul. He scratched with fury, eyes fixed on the red and raw skin, imagining he was tearing out his own obsession, piece by piece. Purifying himself.
Each scratch was a penance. A punishment for having dared to love the sun while being nothing but a sewer rat. The pain in his chest didn’t disappear, but now it had company — a superficial, tangible burning on his wrists that he could see and touch, something real and justifiable. Zanka stayed there, in the darkness of his room, a powerful fighter reduced to a wounded creature, desperately trying to bleed out the love that Enjin, unknowingly, had planted in his chest. Love really was madness.
The distant sound of the festivities echoed faintly, muffled by the frantic pulsing of blood in Zanka’s ears. How many days had passed?
He snapped out of the trance of memories the exact moment Enjin turned to face him, with that solar brightness in his gaze — the kind of light Zanka had always tried to orbit without getting burned.
There, in the middle of the hall, Zanka felt the crown of thorns he himself had woven from his illusions tighten around his heart. Each heartbeat was a puncture, each breath a tear. But he allowed not a single grimace of pain to escape.
He smiled.
It was a smile Zanka had never given before. From the depths of his shredded soul, he hoped that gesture didn’t transmit the agony that had devoured him over the years. He wanted, just for that second, to convey all the love he had kept buried beneath layers of discipline and silence. It was his last vain attempt to make his feelings be seen — even if only behind a veil of farewell that only he knew existed.
Enjin would never know. He returned the smile, gave Zanka a pat on the shoulder, and went back into the arms of the life he had chosen. The woman who wore the wreath and the ring that belonged to him. He would never know that the warmth in his hand would be the last thing Zanka ever felt. He would never know that he — the man who had brought color to the Surface — would be the cause of what happened two nights after the wedding.
Zanka walked into the darkness of his own room with a terrifying calm. In the infinite silence of the night he saw only the filth on the ceiling and the need to cleanse the world of his own obsession.
As the knot tightened and the air began to fail, there was no regret. He had kept the promise he made years ago, when he realized his love was a stain on Enjin’s purity. He had taken his filthy feelings to the grave, ripping them away from the light so Enjin would never have to bear the weight of being adored by someone so broken. The sun shouldn’t have to take responsibility for killing the stars around it with its heat. Stupid stars that got too close.
When they finally found him, days later — just like in that damned cursed well — all that remained was a withered husk, now swaying gently under the dust of the ceiling. And on his face, frozen by the rigor of death, that sad smile remained — the last gift he gave to the man who, unknowingly, had taken everything from him.
It was all right now. Enjin was clean. Zanka was silent. And the love, at last, had been buried where no one would ever need to touch it.
That crown of thorns and silences that had weighed so heavily and echoed so loudly in his soul — suddenly bloomed. The thorns turned into soft petals and the weight transformed into a divine lightness. He was no longer hanging in the darkness; he was standing, and the ground beneath his feet was no longer the cold concrete of the HQ, but the altar he had always visited in his dreams.
Suddenly, the silence of death was filled with the rhythmic, festive sound of a shower of rice. The white grains fell over him, anointing his head and his shoulders, washing away every trace of the “filth” he had carried until his last breath. In the middle of that white storm, a large, calloused hand sought his — not out of duty, not out of friendship, but with the absolute possession of someone who finally recognizes their other half.
Zanka looked to the side and, for the first time, the shine in Enjin’s eyes was only for him. There were no more blurred brides, no more burden of reality or the barrier of the Surface. There, in the space between the end and the forever, the lie that had killed him became the truth that set him free.
Now everything was real. The touch was warm, the ring was eternal, and the love that had once been his ruin was finally his rest. In the final echo of that rice shower, Zanka could, at last, be happy.