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Jisung's biggest fear was dying.
He was sure of it. There were no spiders, no heights, that made the world spin around him, that blurred his vision and gave him chills the way thinking about the end of his life did.
He knew it, because every time Felix told him:
"I'm going to love you in this life and our next life and the next…"
and all he could see was darkness at the end of the first, all he could answer was:
"When I'm with you I'm not afraid. Just because it's going to be the two of us. We are both going to the same place. Forever."
And they spent their days like that. Jisung wanting to do it all before it was all over, Felix adoring his man slowly every second they spent together. They had a lifetime to enjoy.
The news started spreading slowly. The changes weren't quick. Most people didn't notice.
But newspapers and radio stations and tv programs reported more and more cases as isolated, before they realised it all came from the same place. People whose flights kept getting cancelled, to their relief; men and women who stated with huge grins that they could not see spiders or beetles or insects in general; mothers who miraculously survived terminal illnesses.
Over a year had gone by when they announced that everyone's greatest fears had disappeared. Not really disappeared, they just wouldn't ever happen.
Not all changes were obvious; some people found it immediately, some spent years not knowing. But slowly and steadily the world adapted. There were ruthless drivers who never crashed, and horror movies that always crashed when someone who feared its contents sat down. People who never found themselves alone, who never had to be in small rooms, who were stubbornly remembered by everyone they met. Pets that lived for longer they should, roller coasters that rode on despite being broken beyond repair.
For Jisung and Felix, life stayed the same. They lived with the same joy and peace as before. There were no changes that alerted either of them…
…at first. Many years had passed since the first cases, when something became suspicious to them. Looking at their own old pictures, they noticed that Jisung hadn't changed a bit in the last five years, although his different hair colours and styles hid his stillness. They chose to think nothing of it.
Some years later, with Felix's first grey hairs and wrinkles, and Jisung's ever porcelain skin, they blamed it on genetics. None of them said what they were really thinking. Maybe it would come true if they did.
There came a time when it was obvious, so obvious that there was no point in saying it out loud. When Felix was in his forties while Jisung sat still in his mid-twenties. When time made Felix's joints weak and Jisung kept dancing in his youth.
They found comfort in the fact that there were other couples like them, where one feared death and the other something else. They weren't the only ones mistaken for father and son.
And they didn't care about their differences. They may not physically grow at the same pace, but they kept learning, and living, together. They were the same age, after all.
They learned to take care of each other. Jisung started walking slower, to match Felix's steps. He waited patiently when the other started taking more time to respond. Jisung arrived home to a warm dinner when Felix couldn't work anymore. They created new routines as time passed.
But at one point, the thing they feared was unavoidably approaching. Jisung wondered if either of them had feared it enough to keep it from happening. He surely feared it then.
But it was too late and death was unstoppable, and Felix took his last breath holding his immortal lover's hand. Jisung thought about how young people never truly fear the worst.
The next few years were lonely. Lonelier than Jisung could have ever imagined. He, who had woken up to the man he loved for most of his life, was now reaching for an empty space every morning. He prepared his own breakfast and his own dinner. He was walking slowly for no one, when he could be walking fast.
And life outside of his house made no sense. The world had nothing to offer, nothing that could replace what he had lost. So, for many years, he stayed inside.
But the silence of his room was maddening, and the stillness of the house and his body was depressing. He had to move on. He had all of eternity in front of his eyes.
He slowly left his house. Firstly, he made conversation with shopkeepers whenever he got groceries. Then he invited his youngest friends left over. Lastly, he decided to get a job. He chose a fast food place near the centre. Soon enough he realised the place was close to some universities, too.
His new job filled him with new life. Young people were wonderful companions, most of them thought he was their age. He sometimes didn't bother correcting them. They usually understood.
There was one university student, though, who didn't need explaining. He seemed to read Jisung right through from the first moment they had met. Who treated Jisung like an equal, who insisted he enrolled in university again. Who stayed until they closed the place, who could talk with Jisung about anything. Who had a familiar glint in his eyes and an unforgettable smile.
Jisung didn't want to believe it was him, but one night, walking together back to the kid's place, he heard him say that he was sure they had met in another life, then he laughed because, how silly, this was Jisung's one and only life. How lucky he was, he said, having plenty of time to learn, to travel, to meet people, to love. You can have it all in a lifetime.
Jisung told him to love a lot, and he would never truly die. He didn't mention his own immortal love, who he thought was the student's past life.
Jisung was hesitant to take the kid in at first. Being a young immortal, he was just slightly older than the oldest mortal. But he offered his house for him to stay, under the excuse of it being closer to his university.
He treated him like a son; he advised him, guided him, told him stories about his own youth. For some time, there was nothing between them but a brotherly affection.
But with the passing of time, things changed like they always do. The boy graduated, got a serious job, became wise like a grown up. And Jisung realised he couldn't keep playing as an older person, because the other just didn't allow him. He let himself be advised, guided, taken around the world. His companion wanted him to experience as many things as he could. And he wanted to experience it all with him.
And so they grew, and learnt together. Their relationship was complicated to name, but it was theirs and who cared, truly.
And history repeated itself, in Jisung's so-called second life. His partner got wrinkles and grey hairs, walked slower and slower, stopped dancing tirelessly and spent more time under the covers. And until his last moment he promised he had had the best life he could have wished for, and kept the glint in his eyes. He held tight to Jisung's hand. And told him to find him again in his next life.
Jisung did exactly that. He spent some years in loneliness, twenty, to be exact. He kept reading and working, all with a new heavy heart, and, of course he wondered if finding him again was worth the pain of losing a new lover. And he concluded that yes, it was worth it. He felt born again every time.
So, as soon as twenty years had passed, he took off in the search of Felix's new life. He took one plane and another, he walked around and met many people, always looking for that familiar glint in some eyes.
This time he found it seven years later in an English tourist in Italy, where he had been working as a waiter for some months. The next time, it was an Indian engineer, his neighbour at a hotel. The other, a Peruvian tour guide showing him Incan ruins.
Always waiting twenty years in between, always having to suffer an unimaginable loss. That part never got easier.
And he got to see the world change, and it was beautiful, because every time there was something new and exciting to experience.
Sometimes, it wouldn't take him long to find it, like the 22 year old Nigerian shopkeeper, and sometimes, it took him painfully long, like the time he only found him at 77. Sometimes, even, it was too early, like the 12 year old that came to him asking for money.
Sometimes, it wasn't obvious. Sometimes, it was like love at first sight. Sometimes, it was hard to really get close; sometimes, it came naturally to them. Sometimes, they met for the first time more than once. Sometimes, life was hard on them. Sometimes, times were difficult. Sometimes death came when they least expected it.
There were times when Jisung got to see him age, there were others where he had to rush him to a hospital. There were some where he couldn’t say goodbye.
But Jisung found him every time, no matter if he had to travel around the world and back, or if he had to break the law, or if he had to walk straight into war territory. He did it every time. And every time he loved him with his timeless body and soul.
He loved him when he was imprisoned for protesting for civil rights. He loved him when he was rich and had no worries. He loved him when he had cancer, and when he lived to be 102. He loved him and he wondered how a soul could carry all that kindness for so long, how that sweet smile could have existed for all those centuries.
Until there came a time, one special time when they had met when Felix was in his early twenties, when Felix had blond hair with black roots and freckles all over his face, that Jisung got his first grey hairs, even before Felix did. When he looked back on old pictures and they both had changed. When they started using canes at the same time, and they got wrinkled and old together.
And they both got to hold each other's hands until the end, and they both could swear that their love was endless.
And Jisung remembered what he had asked Felix, in his first life, when he was on his deathbed.
"Honey, what was your biggest fear?"
"I'm not sure," he had answered, "I guess that you would ever stop loving me as much."