Chapter Text
I had already lived through today four times before it arrived.
The first version ended with a failed chemistry quiz.
The second with Blaze getting into another fight because someone looked at him for a second too long.
The third involved me somehow forgetting my homework despite checking my bag six times before sleeping.
The fourth ended uneventfully.
That one was obviously unrealistic.
Sleep had become strange a long time ago. I didn't dream very often anymore. My mind preferred rehearsals. It collected tomorrow like puzzle pieces, trying to assemble every possible version before the real one had the chance to happen.
It never worked.
Morning always invented a fifth.
I stared at the ceiling until the alarm rang, mostly because it felt rude to let it do all the work by itself. The room beside mine clicked open. Footsteps that were heavy enough to belong to exactly one person.
"...Ice."
A pause.
Then louder.
"You're awake, right?"
I didn't answer.
Three.
Two.
One.
The door burst open anyway.
"There you are."
Blaze leaned against the frame with the confidence of someone who had never once doubted his right to exist inside another person's room.
"I knew it."
"You guessed."
"I guessed correctly."
"You've guessed wrong before."
"I don't remember those."
Convenient.
He walked over without waiting for permission, which he had also never remembered to ask for.
His hair looked like he'd lost an argument with gravity.
"You've been awake for ages."
"You've been looking at me for less than ten seconds."
"I have intuition."
"You have eyebags."
"They're fashionable."
"They're alarming."
"They're inherited."
"...That's unfortunately possible."
Blaze grinned. There it was. That warmth. People always described Blaze as energetic. Confident. Hot-headed.
None of those words explained it properly.
He felt...
Bright.
Not because he controlled fire.
Not because he smiled easily.
Not even because rooms somehow became louder whenever he entered them.
He simply...
Glowed.
Not literally.
I'd checked. Several times, actually.
There wasn't light spilling from his skin.
No strange aura.
Nothing supernatural.
If I tried explaining it to anyone else, they'd probably recommend I sleep more. Which was admittedly reasonable advice.
Still...
Blaze glowed.
Always.
Some days brighter.
Some days softer.
But always there.
A warmth that made the world feel slightly less difficult to look at.
Maybe it was just my imagination.
Maybe I'd stared at him for too many years.
Either way...
It was real enough for me.
"You're thinking too loudly."
"I wasn't aware thoughts had volume."
"They do when your face starts looking like homework."
"...That's not a sentence."
"It communicated."
I sighed.
Blaze took that as victory.
Naturally.
Without warning, he threw an arm around my shoulders and leaned almost his full weight onto me.
"Ice."
"What."
"I'm cold."
"You are a fire elemental."
"Exactly."
"You generate your own heat."
"I want yours."
I stared at him.
"...You're unbelievable."
"I've been told I'm inspirational."
"You've been told to move."
"I ignore criticism."
His forehead rested against mine for exactly one second before I sighed again and let cold seep through my arm.
Blaze yelped.
"OI!"
The warmth vanished from his skin almost instantly.
He stumbled backward dramatically, hugging himself.
"Betrayal!"
"You asked."
"I requested gentle cooling."
"You received cooling."
"I've become a snowman."
"You've become tolerable."
He pointed accusingly.
"I'll melt your textbooks."
"You'll fail history."
"I don't even like history."
"I know."
"...That wasn't the threat I thought it was."
I almost smiled. Almost.
Blaze noticed anyway. As he always did.
"There it is."
"What."
"You smiled."
"I breathed differently."
"Same thing."
Before I could deny it, he lunged forward again.
This time I was prepared. The room became briefly ridiculous.
He tried warming me. I tried cooling him. Somewhere in the middle, we both lost balance and nearly dragged each other onto the floor.
"You two are going to destroy the house one day."
Mother's voice floated in from downstairs.
Neither of us answered.
Mostly because Blaze had somehow trapped me in what he insisted was a wrestling move and what any witness would correctly identify as "making life difficult."
"Ice surrenders."
"I don't."
"I accept your surrender anyway."
"You invented it."
"I'm efficient."
Eventually we untangled ourselves. Blaze offered me a hand.
I took it.
Routine.
Like everything else.
We didn't talk much during breakfast. Not because anything was wrong. Silence had simply become another language. Blaze scrolled through his phone while stealing pieces of toast from my plate.
I let him.
Mostly because arguing required energy.
Also because he'd already eaten half of it before asking.
"Want the last piece?"
"No."
"You hesitated."
"I considered lying."
"I respect the honesty."
He pushed it onto my plate anyway.
Then stole half before standing up.
Balance had been restored.
The walk to school was familiar enough that neither of us needed to think about it.
Morning sunlight filtered through rows of roadside trees.
The air still carried the coolness that disappeared far too quickly once classes started.
Blaze stretched dramatically.
"I'm declaring today peaceful."
"That's usually how disasters begin."
"You have no faith."
"I have statistics."
Before Blaze could argue, another voice called from behind us.
"Wait!"
We turned.
Thorn jogged toward us, slightly out of breath. Solar followed several steps behind at exactly the same pace as always.
Thorn smiled sheepishly.
"...Would it be alright if we walked together?"
Blaze answered before anyone else could.
"Sure."
Solar nodded once.
"Good morning."
Blaze grinned.
"Morning, Mr. Class President."
Solar looked mildly offended.
"I have held the position for a few days."
"Power changes people."
"It was administrative."
"You've become the system."
"I organize attendance."
"Exactly."
Thorn covered a laugh with the back of his hand.
Solar looked at him.
"You encouraged this."
"I absolutely did."
For a moment, Blaze laughed. Just enough to wrinkle the corners of his eyes.
And there it was again.
That glow.
Steady.
Warm.
Untouched.
It slipped into everything around him so naturally that I wondered if everyone else had stopped noticing years ago.
Or maybe...
They had never seen it to begin with.
I didn't know when I first started calling it a glow.
I only knew there wasn't another word that fit.
It wasn't happiness.
People could be happy without glowing.
It wasn't confidence.
Blaze glowed even after losing.
Even after getting bruised.
Even after pretending things didn't hurt.
It was simply...
Blaze.
Ahead of us, Thorn stopped beside a flower growing stubbornly through a crack in the pavement.
"Oh."
He crouched immediately.
Blaze laughed.
"Found another one?"
"It survived."
"They usually do."
"Not always."
Thorn brushed a leaf gently between two fingers.
"This one shouldn't be growing here."
Solar stood beside him.
"It isn't efficient."
"It isn't trying to be."
"It would grow better somewhere else."
"It doesn't get to choose somewhere else."
Solar frowned thoughtfully.
"...That's unfortunate."
"It is."
Thorn smiled anyway.
The flower looked healthier in the morning light.
Or maybe...
Thorn did.
I couldn't tell which changed first.
We resumed walking.
Taufan caught up halfway through the next street, somehow already talking despite having only just arrived.
"...I'm telling you, if school starts before sunrise one more time, I'm dropping out and becoming a professional sleeper."
"You'd qualify," Blaze said.
"I know. Natural talent."
Fang walked beside him with the expression of someone who had already accepted this conversation against his will.
Ying appeared not long after, cheerful as ever.
By the time the school gates came into view, our group had somehow doubled without anyone consciously deciding it should.
Everyone settled into conversation naturally.
Blaze argued with Taufan about whether cereal counted as soup.
Solar corrected both of them.
Thorn laughed quietly.
Fang watched.
Ying complained dramatically that nobody appreciated her extremely correct opinion.
I listened.
Because that was what I always did.
Listen.
Observe.
Remember.
The first lesson passed exactly as I imagined three hundred twenty seven times..
Which somehow never made it easier.
Mr. Hariz wrote a question across the whiteboard.
A few students answered confidently.
A few answered incorrectly.
Someone accidentally solved the wrong problem entirely.
The classroom laughed.
He laughed too.
Then everyone moved on.
I watched him for longer than the joke deserved.
How?
How did people do that?
Just...
Continue?
The mistake no longer existed for him.
Mine would've stayed until next Tuesday.
Probably longer.
I answered when called.
Correctly.
Mr. Hariz nodded once before continuing the lesson. The answer disappeared from everyone else's mind almost immediately.
Mine stayed.
Because I wondered if I'd simply been lucky.
Maybe there had been a better explanation.
A cleaner method.
A more efficient solution.
By lunchtime I'd probably solve the same question again in my head just to make sure.
Then again before sleeping.
Then again tomorrow.
Just in case.
"...Ice?" I looked up, Taufan was staring.
"So..."
"...Yes?"
"You've been looking at the same page for like five minutes."
"I was reading."
"You didn't turn the page."
"..."
"..."
"I was reading thoroughly."
He accepted that answer far too easily.
Humans worry me sometimes.
Across the room, Solar erased a tiny mark in his notebook.
Then rewrote the exact same line.
Perfectly aligned.
Again.
Nobody noticed.
I did.
The teacher called on him.
Solar answered before the question finished.
Correct.
Of course.
Then he returned to rewriting a sentence that had never been wrong.
Interesting.
Classes blurred together.
Teachers changed, subjects changed. Students complained with remarkable consistency. The only predictable thing about school was that everyone believed the next lesson would somehow be worse than the last.
During break between periods, I walked past Blaze's classroom.
Not intentionally.
Mostly.
The door stood open, students drifted in and out.
Blaze was laughing about something, probably loudly.
Thorn sat beside him, trying unsuccessfully to hide another smile.
Blaze nudged his shoulder.
Thorn nudged him back.
Childish.
Comfortable.
Easy.
There.
The glow.
Warm as ever.
It settled around Blaze so naturally that I almost relaxed.
Almost.
Then Ms. Farah handed back a worksheet.
Blaze glanced at the mark.
"...Huh."
That was all. No complaint. No celebration.
He folded the paper once and slid it into his file.
The glow didn't disappear.
But...
It dimmed only slightly.
Enough that I stopped walking.
Someone behind me asked me to move, I apologized automatically.
When I looked again, Blaze was already talking to Thorn about something else.
Maybe I'd imagined it.
Probably.
The afternoon classes were always quieter.
Students grew heavier.
The air-conditioning lost another battle against the weather.
Pens slowed.
Conversations shortened.
Even Taufan eventually ran out of words.
Briefly.
Science.
The teacher demonstrated an experiment.
Half the class paid attention.
The other half developed an intense academic interest in the windows.
I copied every note. Checked every measurement. Compared my answers twice. Then once more.
The student beside me scribbled something down in approximately seven seconds before leaning back in his chair.
Done.
Just...
Done.
I watched him. Not because his work interested me. Because he looked finished.
Actually finished.
His shoulders had relaxed. His pencil rested on the table. His mind had apparently accepted that the page no longer required anything from him.
I didn't understand how people reached that point.
The work wasn't the difficult part.
Knowing when to stop was.
By the time the bell rang, I'd already reopened my notebook.
One decimal place bothered me.
Not because it was wrong.
Because I wasn't certain it couldn't be better.
"You're staying?"
Taufan slung his bag over one shoulder.
"For... what?"
"I'm checking something."
"You've checked it four times."
"...Five."
He stared.
"...That wasn't supposed to be the worrying answer."
He left before I could explain. Not that I knew how. The corridors filled with students changing classrooms. Some celebrated finishing quizzes. Some complained about homework. Someone loudly announced they were "absolutely finished" before immediately buying fried chicken.
Remarkable recovery.
Then I saw Blaze again. He was outside his classroom with Thorn, talking. Hands moving, expressions animated, everything looked normal.
Everything should have felt normal.
I waited.
Without meaning to, because the glow should've been there.
He was laughing.
So why—
Nothing.
No warmth.
No brightness.
Just...
Blaze.
The same face.
The same laugh.
The same voice.
But something was missing.
I blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Maybe the sunlight had changed.
Clouds.
Fatigue.
Anything.
Blaze turned slightly.
Thorn said something.
Blaze laughed harder.
Still nothing.
"...Ice?"
I hadn't noticed Solar approaching.
He followed my line of sight toward his brother.
Then back at me.
"What are you looking at?"
"...Nothing."
It wasn't a lie. I wasn't looking at anything. I was looking for something.
Solar tilted his head.
"You've been staring."
"...Have I?"
"For approximately thirty seconds."
"...Sorry."
He accepted the apology with a nod, then walked away toward Thorn.
Naturally.
As if there had never been another option.
We all gathered briefly before heading toward the school gate. Blaze stretched while complaining dramatically about homework. Thorn quietly reminded him he'd already finished most of it.
Solar corrected a date someone remembered incorrectly. Taufan arrived midway through the conversation and somehow changed the topic to whether teachers secretly lived inside the staff room.
Everything sounded ordinary.
Everything looked ordinary.
Except...
Blaze still wasn't glowing.
I wanted to ask.
Not about the glow.
How would I even explain that?
"Excuse me, you've stopped being the imaginary source of warmth I've unconsciously built my understanding of happiness around."
That seemed difficult to phrase casually. Instead I asked,
"...Are you tired?"
Blaze looked at me.
"Bit."
He smiled.
"Nothing serious."
The smile reached his eyes.
It always did.
The glow didn't return.
We walked home together until the crossroads where everyone split toward different neighborhoods.
Blaze waved.
"See you tomorrow."
Everyone answered.
The group scattered.
Life continued.
The world behaved as though nothing had changed.
Maybe nothing had.
Maybe only I had.
Night came quietly.
It usually did.
I lay in bed.
The ceiling hadn't changed since yesterday.
Or last week.
Or last year.
I still counted the tiny crack near the corner.
Twenty-three seconds between passing cars.
Someone's television through the wall.
Water pipes.
Wind.
Tomorrow had already begun rehearsing itself.
"...Ice?" Blaze's voice came softly from the other side of the room.
"...Hm?"
"You asleep?"
"No."
"Me neither."
Silence.
Usually this part comforted me.
Knowing Blaze slept peacefully always made the room feel smaller, the mattress warmer somehow.
Safer.
Tonight there was no steady breathing.
No soft snoring.
Only the occasional rustle of blankets from the bed a few metres away.
I turned my head slightly, moonlight slipped through the curtains. Just enough to outline Blaze's silhouette.
He was staring at the ceiling too.
Neither of us spoke again.
There wasn't anything to say.
I watched the faint outline of my brother in the dark.
Waiting.
For sleep.
For morning.
For the glow to come back.
It didn't.