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Mark lives most of his life moment to moment. His memory is a little blurry, he can’t fully recall the past in one straight line, but he knows who he is and what his world is like. Even with a life that consists of small flashes and vignettes, he feels weird this time. There’s a strange weight to his existence that’s never been there before, and his heart feels a little heavy.
He checks his phone, which is twice as big as he remembers (when did Apple add fonts to lock screens?), and his eyes flick over the date. It’s June, which has already passed, so it’s been a year.
“Oh.” he lets out without meaning to. His voice is a bit shaky, but it’s definitely deeper, which only fuels the thought that it’s been way longer than he first realised. He searches up the date, and the half a second it takes to load feels like an eternity for Mark. 2023. So no, it hasn’t been a year; it’s been two. Exactly two years to the day. Funny.
He doesn’t feel freaked out or scared, just…different? Part of him is sad, he’s missed out on two whole years of his life, two years that he’ll never get back, two years that were lived by someone else, and nothing will ever be the same. Part of him is mad. He doesn’t particularly like Jeno; he’s too angry, sensitive, and anxious. Plus, it feels like Jeno works hard to undo a lot of Mark’s hard, hard work. He makes decision after decision that Mark would never make. And Jeno’s sense of style with his room and clothes is just plain ugly.
But most of all, he just feels indifferent, like his brain can’t possibly give him the energy to think of the implications of two whole years. As soon as he starts to think about it for too long, his thoughts lose steam. What can he do? It’s not his life to live anyways. His only purpose is to help Jeno live; it’s not like he’s a real person or anything. He helplessly watches the date jump from June 3rd to June 27th to June 29th.
He misses his friends, Jeno’s stopped talking to a lot of them, and it’s a horrible feeling to see them hanging out without him. In some ways, it feels like they were never even that close in the first place. None of them actually know that Mark exists.
He shoots Jaemin a text anyways; he misses him a bit. It seems like maybe they got closer in the time Mark’s been gone. At least Jeno can do something right. He tells Jaemin that it’s felt like forever and that they should catch up soon; Jaemin tells him that it really hasn’t been that long. God, that’s so embarrassing. It reminds Mark that, once again, he has no control over his life. He doesn’t feel like talking to anyone anymore. He leaves Jaemin on read. (Mark doesn’t even want to know who Renjun is, why he calls Jeno babe or how far down the list his friend’s DMs are.)
Jeno kept his playlist, which is nice. It’s pinned at the top of his Spotify, and he wonders what Jeno thinks when he sees it. Weirdly, there are songs recently added to it. Was it Jeno? That doesn’t make any sense, though. It doesn’t feel like his own anymore. Not even his playlist has stayed the same. It just worsens the heaviness that he feels. He makes a new playlist and finds that his hands know where to go on the keyboard far better than before. He adds a bunch of his favourite songs and presses play. Frank Ocean helps to stop Mark from overthinking when all he thinks about are the lyrics.
He’s always found comfort in music or anything creative. He’s not necessarily creative like other people, but he loves to think. The world really makes him think. He can find a note to write down, a photo to take or lyrics to make out of anything in front of him. That’s what he’s missed the most; he wishes he had more time to stop and smell the roses.
Time is a hard concept for Mark. Everyone only has so much of it, but Mark has so little that sometimes he feels like he has none at all. Sometimes it feels like nothing he does matters. He’s alive for so little time that any decision he makes has no real impact. He could do anything and it wouldn’t matter long-term. He’s not dumb enough to test that theory, though.
He catches himself in the mirror, and it feels unreal. His mental image of himself has always been different to how Jeno looked, and he’d accepted it, but now Jeno’s physical appearance had completely transformed. He’s muscular, and his face lost all of its baby fat. He’d dyed his black hair blonde too. Jeno looks like a man; he’d be older than Mark now, even though it started the other way around. Their appearances have never been more different. He feels like he doesn’t know who’s standing in the mirror.
(Even though he hates Jeno, part of him mourns the loss of his ability to see Jeno grow up.)
Two years is a long time. You can do a lot in two years. Mark wonders how much of his life has changed, how much of the world has changed. Has Jeno changed? Does he still dance? Did Jeno finally ask out that guy at the coffee shop? Does he still go to school? It all must be so different now. It feels like he’s woken up in an alternate universe, but even that would be better than this. It’s real. There’s no alternate universe, or other world, or a way to return. He will never get time back. The darker parts of his brain tell Mark he can’t live like this. The even darker part of his brain tells him it doesn’t matter because Mark isn’t even real. Tomorrow will come; Jeno won’t know about Mark’s existence, and life will pass without Mark.
The sun is still up and streams through the window, hitting his legs, but he’s too tired to care. He’d rather sleep forever than try to pick up the pieces of what used to be his life. Mark pulls the covers over his head, trying to block out the rest of the world. He closes his eyes and prays that when he wakes up, it’ll be 2021 again.