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After a year of knowing each other they finally talk one-on-one and Tyler Joseph tells her, "People who don't understand just how lucky they are piss me off."
Jenna is almost in love, no joking here—for the first time in years there's a person who is so similar to her in so many aspects, for the first time in years there's a person who doesn't care about her looks and shape, who speaks with her, not with her pretty face.
Tyler kicks the stones down the road and smokes frantically, not that she likes it, but it definitely looks like he needs it right now, so she bites her tongue.
"This winter people came up to me and told me that there was something wrong with me but the only thing that was there was my whole life crumbling down, Jenna, you know? And they kept whining that they're tired of having to finish a twelve-page project for Snow White."
Tyler smokes and his explanation to that is a force of habit, not to the taste but to the smell—the one that has soaked into all of the pillows in his tiny rented flat by the moment alien boy has unexpectedly left its cold emptiness in favour of 'moving on' exactly when literally everything in Tyler's life went downhill. He hasn't told anyone anything for ages, that also happens when the only person you were able to confide in betrays you, accuses of all seven of the deadly sins and leaves you alone in the darkness of your mutual flat in the outskirts.
"I just... I don't know, want to tell them to go fuck themselves, to experience all of the things I went through that month. But I can't, they are complete strangers to me."
Jenna doesn't know a goddamn thing, but there is and always has been this urge to help people deep inside of her guts and Tyler is one of those who she desperately wants to hear out with all their problems. (Maybe even accept?) Three hundred square feet he calls his home is the cleanest and emptiest place on Earth, like a hospital where white walls reverberate the echoing of the footsteps. Tyler cooks her some coffee in a cezve, saying, "Maybe this is all just an elaborate punishment for missing the opportunities all the time. My hubris is the reason. I'm so tired," and Jenna doesn't yet understand but she is trying to.
She doesn't know anything, even the fact that there has already been a person just like her.
After a year of knowing each other, the moment when they run out of all the other topics, Tyler tries to confide in her just because there's no one else left anyway and also because she emits this strange aura of being interested in what he's talking about, and he hasn't felt that for an unbelievably long time. For all this time everything that he had left inside of him was this dark nothingness, the one that fills up basements of the old ramshackle houses, the ones ready to fall apart under the weight of their ceilings. He tells Jenna Black, "I pay out my student loans myself, because my parents 'don't understand' my major."
This is all unsettlingly reminiscent of the whining he hears all the time coming from his classmates. He wants to choke himself to death and pull all of his hair out, the simplest of desires one can have. Jenna is almost in love with him, and it shows in her every gesture, but he is not there yet. In this sterile emptiness of his flat he makes her dirt water in his cezve, and she talks about how this is the first time when she sees a person that is so similar to her in so many random ways: making coffee, et cetera. He still doesn't know if he hates himself for the things that alien boy has taught him.
"And being concerned is optional, but sometimes I just want to punch every single person who says that they are having a hard time living."
Jenna is almost in love, so simple-simple-simple, and she replies with, "That's not you talking."
Tyler looks at her, not even able to blink, because he heard the same thing, word for word, from alien boy several years ago. Jenna Black just stares at him, right into his glassy doll-like eyes and says, "I'm gonna call him Clancy. He just wants to be free from all these stupid obligations."
She smiles at him and drinks her dirt water he made her using alien boy's recipe. She smiles, and there's nothing else left for him to do so he just nods. Now there's Clancy and the name for some reason has a strong scent of calendula. Skeleton man is dead, standing dry next to alien boy like some poppy would.
After a year of knowing each other alien boy finally fades into oblivion, leaving only the dirt water recipe, cigarettes and a mural on a wall of once their bedroom after himself. Jenna Black comes over and helps him out with college projects, makes him dinner and doesn't leave any footprints after her semi-transparent rubber shoes in the hallway. Jenna Black has suppressed and outgrown this crush and the feeling of more-than-friendly excitement a long ago. Jenna Black moves on, just like the Girl whose Dreams Came True, but without the smell of chamomile tea and alien boy's house. Tyler Joseph is in love again. (Or is it Clancy?)
He asks her: "Stay the night?"
She laughs and shakes her head, corrects her hairstyle with the back of her hand.
"That's not you asking."
Smiles and drinks her coffee, leaving Tyler speechless. She doesn't know—and he doesn't remember—that alien boy had this exact effect on him.