Chapter Text
“Till,” he hears from above him, looking up from where he’s sifting through his old drawings. There’s smudged charcoal on his hands from where he would thumb his newer sketches of a certain pink-haired girl, though he hadn’t the chance to draw anything else, what with his pencil being… lost.
Right.
Lost, is what he thinks again when he looks up to see Ivan. The shorter boy is smiling giddily at him with his hands behind his back. He’s practically bouncing in place. Till already knows what’s about to transpire, as has happened, not even including this interaction, a total of 3 times in the past week. His annoyance has already melted to exasperation at this point, watching as the other boy's snaggletooth stabs into his lower lip with how wide he's smiling.
“I found your pencil,” the black-haired boy says, swiftly holding out both of his hands with said pencil resting in the crevices of his palms.
…And so begins the typical song and dance that comes with Ivan “finding” one of his missing items. The first time it happened, he was so relieved. He hadn’t many possessions to himself, so he wouldn’t think himself careless enough to lose anything. He had sworn to himself that he’d always remember where he had last put his things. He hadn’t misplaced anything for a while then.
Then it happened a second time. When it was returned to him, he was confused, sure he had left it by his bedside, but he was relieved nonetheless. Ivan was eyeing his reaction, and so he would smile and thank him as always. They spent a good amount of time near each other, so he supposed it would make sense that Ivan sometimes happened upon his things before he did.
The third. Fourth. Eventually, he could only turn to anger. Was he just messing with him again? He’d gotten into many fights with the other boy, and as clearly amusing his reactions seemed to be to the other, Ivan would still follow him around without picking any fights, so he’d thought there wasn't any sense of true animosity between them.
But with each time, he began to notice that there was no usual teasing smirk or second agenda. The other boy would just wait for his smile and thank you, and he’d be seemingly satisfied with it. Maybe he’s just bored, or he’s just borrowing his pencil for something. Maybe he’s practicing drawing as well? He could just ask him if he could borrow it — it’s not like Till would say no.
“Thank you,” Till says carefully, watching as Ivan smiles wider, snaggletooth poking out of his mouth. It’s actually rather cute, he’s come to find the shorter boy, when he’s not insulting him or pulling on his hair. It’ll happen again, he knows, as Ivan settles down next to him with a quiet Oomph , peering over his shoulder as he sketches. He’s not going to question him or make a spectacle out of this, he thinks, since Ivan always returns his pencil sharpened to perfection just as he settles down against the same tree to draw.
“Her nose looks off,” Ivan breaks the silence to point at his mistake. Till bristles, shoving him away to no avail, as Ivan just crowds into his personal space again anyways. Leave it to Ivan to ruin a good thing.
-
“Let me see,” Ivan says impatiently, making grabby hands at Till as he passes over his papers. Till clicks his tongue when they’re yanked right out of his hands. He couldn’t wait another second?
He’s stuck to composing songs for a while now — ever since he’d lost the recorder that Mizi had kindly gifted to him. It was his most prized possession, and he’d been using it to write a song, For her, he thinks, before he squashes down such thoughts with a painful pang of guilt in his chest. How could he write anything at all for her, all the while knowing he’d so easily lost something she’d given to him.
He eyes Ivan for a moment as he scans the words on the page. He’d denied him multiple times out of pure embarrassment, before simply acquiescing to the boy’s demands. No point in prolonging the inevitable. Someone like Ivan, one of the 2 highly gifted children in the Garden, would always get what he wants, regardless of what it is.
And what “it” is currently is an embarrassingly heartfelt confession to a certain girl on paper. Ivan’s not above teasing him about it, though he definitely wasn’t the first to do so. He copies what the other kids playfully tease him for and increases it tenfold.
He’d entertained the thought of Ivan having taken it, but that was immediately dashed with how quickly Ivan would return his stolen items to him. If he talked about wanting to go draw, Ivan would’ve magically found his pencil, saying Here you go, Till , ready to eye his drawings for as long as Till wanted to spend under that same tree.
So now he has to live with the thought of having misplaced something so dear to him, he thinks dejectedly, as Ivan silently sits next to him, surely cooking up another witty insult that’ll have them yelling and grappling at each other until they’re forced apart and reprimanded (well, Till will be, that is). Their teachers would take one look at them and think No, Ivan would never do something like this, and immediately send Till off to solitary confinement.
Well. Till is always the one throwing the first punch. But it’s not like he just attacks for no reason – Ivan’s the one always goading him into it!
“Ah, this is pretty pathetic,” is what shocks him out of his thoughts. He immediately bristles in response. Does this guy have no tact?!
“Then don’t read it if you aren’t gonna like what you see!” he snatches the papers back out of Ivan’s hands, who keeps his hands hovered in the same place while he turns to look at him.
“I didn’t say that I don’t like what I see,” Ivan says, confused. “I just said that it’s pathetic?”
Being friends with this guy is really hard sometimes, Till thinks to himself. He looks at him with such an innocently confused face while casually saying the cruelest things… It’s always so frustrating — he’s like a little kid and a taunting bully wrapped into one, with strikingly handsome features and big ol’ eyes to boot.
In a fit of self-consciousness, he wonders if Ivan even considers them friends. He called him a friendless loser before, yet continued to follow him around day after day, asking him questions and constantly giving him whiplash with his brutal honesty.
…But. It’s not like someone like Ivan needs to even try to make friends. He’s good looking, he does everything right and gets good grades and he has some of the best vocals and composition the Garden’s ever seen —
Till put his heart and soul into these lyrics, and all the other boy has to say is that he’s pathetic .
“Ow!” Ivan yelps quietly when Till smacks him on his forehead, eyes welling up with tears, papers flying about in a frenzy as he rubs his eyes raw with his charcoal stained sleeve, escaping down the hill, leaving Ivan sprawled on his back, wondering what it was that he said.
-
It hurts, is all he can think as he attempts to wriggle his fingers in the upper body cast they’ve put him in. The mechanical whirring of the mechanical parts holding his neck in place is getting to him, his arms and legs cramping from where he’s unable to move them.
It’s dark, is his next thought, saliva pooling in his mouth, but his throat is so sore from screaming that it’s hard to swallow. His eyes are numb, and each slow blink is more painful than before.
The longer he stays unmoving, forcibly dormant thanks to his restraints, the more helpless he feels.
Help me , he wants to say. Someone . Anyone .
He’s never needed anyone. He’s always fought and grappled with those damn aliens on his own, with all the other Anakt kids looking on in fear. He doesn’t regret it either. They’d never make a docile pet out of him, regardless of what they’d do to him.
But he’d never thought they’d make him into a test subject. He could handle being beaten and bruised to hell and back, but violating needles pierced into the flesh of his arms and his legs and his eyes —!
His eyes burn. He doesn’t know what they’ve injected into him, but it spreads, his nose running in rivets and the piercing pain giving him the worst headache he’s ever had in his life. He wants to bash his head open just to stop it.
The pain travels down his neck, and he groans in discomfort. He breathes deeply, chest moving with the effort of it, before exhaling. It doesn’t help. He feels like he might suffocate, all alone in this damp room with the only sounds around being the whirring and beeping of the machines and his effortful last breaths. His eyes hurt, but he searches for something to look at anyways, to calm himself down.
But he can’t find anything. It’s so dark .
And as if answering his prayers, the door in front of him creaks open, light flooding the cramped room and shining right into his eyes.
Apparently very light sensitive now, he scrunches his eyes closed, head bursting in pain once again. His eyes flicker for a second before he tenses up in fear.
“Till?” A familiar voice sounds, and his entire body relaxes so suddenly that he’d have fallen over to the ground were his restraints not holding him in place.
Slowly opening his eyes, he withstands the pain to look up at his savior.
“ Ivan ,” he murmurs, and he’d hit himself over the head over the desperation in his voice if he wasn’t so relieved.
The shorter boy is looking down at him, a rare shocked expression painting his features as he lets go of the door handles.
He’s not sure what to say now. Momentarily, he feels more relaxed just being in someone else’s presence.
Ivan’s staring at him. He feels like he might get made fun of as he had been before.
Ivan’s looking up at him with a deceptively kind smile.
“You think they’ll ever let you take your necklace off if you keep rebelling like that?”
What a jerk…! His expression never matches what he says!
Instead, Ivan reaches out to him. He flinches and closes his eyes instinctively, and Ivan pauses, before gently putting both of his hands on the side of his collar.
Till parts his lips in amazement and looks up to watch Ivan’s expression as he feels the collar slide off his neck. Since when did Ivan learn how to do that?
Ivan doesn’t say anything as he undoes the rest of Till’s restraints, and Till doesn’t know what to say, either. When he unwraps his upper body cast, Till tries to wriggle out of it as well, making quick work of it as Ivan casts it to the side.
He clenches and unclenches his fingers, cramped from the time (hours? days?) he’d spent in the cast. Ivan is still oddly silent, just staring at him with a contemplative look in his eyes.
Ivan stands up and reaches his hand out to him.
Unthinkingly, Till holds it, feeling Ivan’s cold hand clasp around his warm one, and he pulls him up, Till’s legs shaking from the effort of it.
He stamps his feet on the ground a few times, still holding onto Ivan’s hand, head still numb and ears ringing the second he gets up.
Ivan says nothing, even when he stretches his arms out and moves Ivan’s in the process of it. When he looks back at him, Ivan grips his hand a bit tighter.
“Thank you,” Till murmurs, gripping Ivan’s hand back.
Instead of answering, Ivan leads them out by the hand. The entire facility is dark, Till realizes, bare feet making contact with the cool tiles of the floor. Ivan’s pace quickens, and Till huffs with the effort of keeping up with him.
…But instead of turning to the rooms of the Garden, he moves further away, continuing on straight. Where is he going…?
Till decides not to ask questions. It’s not like Ivan would get himself in trouble, after all. They’d probably believe any excuse he cooked up.
He looks down to where his hand is pressed against Ivan’s. He looks up to the back of Ivan’s head. He’s moving with a fervor, not speaking or looking back once. He wants to ask where exactly they’re heading to, but for some reason, he wants to see where Ivan could be taking them to in such a hurry at this time of day.
When they begin to slow, likely reaching whatever destination Ivan has in mind, Till freezes, looking up at the guard alien who is…
…Asleep?
Till blinks twice, to make sure he isn’t dreaming. Is this guy seriously just sleeping on the job? What an idiot.
He almost wants to kick it, to see if it’d fall over from the pressure of it. Maybe it’d fall over and crack its head open.
Well. That’d only alert more of those things to them, and he’d only just escaped…
Ivan pulls him along, and Till, shocked, almost yells at him to ask what he thinks he’s doing.
But he’s being pulled out of the garden, into the tunnel of darkness that leads to the open, and he bites his lip to silence himself in fear.
His hand sweats, and he thinks it’s gross, but he holds onto Ivan’s hand tighter, crowding himself a bit closer to the smaller boy.
Ivan squeezes back.
Suddenly, light erupts in his vision, and he blinks, adjusting to it, before looking up at the sky.
It’s beautiful .
He’d never seen anything like this before.
The sky in the garden, as he’d read in the Anakt garden’s storybooks, was just a dome that projected an image of what Earth’s blue skies used to look like.
It only made sense. The garden was a cheap attempt at an imitation of a world long lost to the humans, of endless blue skies and plentiful green grass. The mechanical animals in the water were the dead give-away to the fakeness of the Garden. Even though he’d never known anything else, he could tell.
But this sky was real . It was a beautifully disastrous mix of black and red and gold, shooting stars falling gracefully in the sky, bright gold burning, illuminating the gradient of black and red. He wondered if they kept running long enough, if they’d be out of sight.
His pace quickens, as does Ivan’s. The tiny pebbles stab into the soft thin skin of his soles, but he doesn’t care. He can feel the tiny pinpricks of his blood smearing on the rocky ground, but he barely notices it. His eyes burn, but only because he refuses to blink. Even his head doesn’t hurt anymore. His hand must be so sweaty and slippery, but Ivan doesn’t let go. The heat of their palms pressed together grounds him. He doesn’t feel or hear anything else.
Ivan turns back to look at him, a beautiful, genuine smile adorning his face. He feels a burst of affection at the sight. He’d saved him.
He saved him.
Ivan turns to look forward, worries all lost to the wind. He can hear him laughing. Giggles burst in his chest, full bodied laughs that make it hard to breathe, and he’s smiling the widest he ever has. His cheeks hurt.
In a rush of adrenaline, Till repeats it one more time.
He saved him.
His grip falters. Ivan still holds on tight.
Why did he save him?
Someone much kinder, someone much more deserving of freedom was laying sound asleep back in the garden. Someone who everyone loved, who never had an unkind word to say, who never caused any trouble.
Wouldn’t someone like that deserve to leave? He looks back up to the sky. Tears prick at his eyes at the brightness of the comets. Deserve to see such sights?
It’s not fair, he thinks. It’s really not. Did he deserve to be free, all while Mizi was left to uncertain doom?
Suddenly, his hand slips out of Ivan's, who hasn’t noticed quite yet. He struggles to meet his gaze, left hand gripped onto his other arm, nails digging so hard into the soft material of his uniform he almost feels himself drawing blood.
He needs to say something. Ivan deserves that, at least.
He doesn’t know how to put it into words. His chest, which had just felt so full, feels incredibly hollow, his throat clogged with the guilt of what he knows he’s throwing away.
“I can’t,” is all he says, quiet under the roar of a thousand shooting stars, and before Ivan can turn around and force Till to see the look on his face, he turns tail and runs back in the direction they came from, and all the pain he’d ignored came back at once, his head bursting, screaming at him, the rocks painfully digging into his feet making him wince with every step. The wounds near his mouth and eyes aren’t fresh, but they might as well be, stinging from the tears that run down his face.
It doesn’t stop hurting when he gets back.
-
Graduation messages, he thinks, tapping the butt of his pencil against his lower lip. He’s a lot older now, and yet. He isn’t quite sure what to say to most of the other kids — they’d seemed to enjoy his music, though they were clearly a bit put-off, if only initially, by the intensity of it.
A bit self-conscious, he holds the paper-book of Mizi’s friend, Sua, with the intent of writing a graduation message for her — but he isn’t quite sure what to say.
She’s always been attached to Mizi’s hip (he is notably not jealous about this fact), for almost every interaction he’s ever had with the pink-haired girl. She almost seemed like an entirely different person around her — she’d smile and laugh and react easily in Mizi’s presence, though in the rare moments that he’d find her without the other girl, she’d always adorned a rather… Bored?… Look on her face.
But her mere presence would make Mizi light up, pretty face flushed and smile as wide as it could get. He’s thankful for that, though it’s not like he can write as much, seeing as they’re much closer than he could ever hope to be to his crush.
On top of it all, he feels rather discouraged by the huge paragraph Mizi’s filled her friend’s page with, sketches and squiggles near filling up the whole thing, love clearly poured into every stroke of her pencil. It… takes up over half of the entire page. She was surely the first one to get her hands on Sua’s booklet. Of course, no one expects him to do the same for Sua, but repeatedly reading the pink-haired girl’s message doesn’t bode well for his overthinking mind. Not that he was tracing and committing the girl’s handwriting to memory, mind you. Nor was he trying to replicate the cute little jellyfish doodles she’d adorned the corners of her message with.
Instead, he peers over at the other soon to be graduate-Anakt garden kids, one writing in his graduation book while another peers over his shoulder. He’s instantly hit with a wave of self consciousness when they giggle while hunching over and scribbling into it.
“Hey Till, wanna take a look at your page?” the girl, Eri, peering over the boy’s shoulder waves over to him. Ah, he recognizes that expression, he thinks, a teasing smile he’s seen on a certain someone’s face so often it’s practically burned into his memory. “And tell Yeong to share while you’re at it. He’s practically hoarding it!”
Feeling rather uneasy, he says, “Sure,” while making his way over to them. He could ask them about what to write in Sua’s book while he’s at it.
Instead, he finds messy scrawls of hearts around a messy (and in his opinion, rather poorly-made) sketch of a long haired girl with big round glasses. Instantly, he shrieks and yanks on his booklet, being met with shrill shrieks of joy and laughter, fighting desperately with Yeong for his own booklet. Eri has her hands clasped together with a dreamy look in her eyes, and Mikhael has the back of his right hand pressed against his forehead in a swoon, using only his non-dominant hand to pull at the edge of the book.
“Don’t pull so hard Till, you’ll rip it!” Eri yelps when the paper begins to make a ripping sound, and Yeong raises his eyebrows before letting go suddenly, releasing all the momentum onto poor Till, who tumbles onto the floor unceremoniously with a girlishly high-pitched shriek.
Sua’s booklet falls to the ground alongside him, and the pair have the decency to look guilty about that, at least. He leans over to pick up Sua’s book, before brushing himself off and leaping back up with a quickness, face flushed and pristine white clothes dirtied.
“I think a lot of people have written in yours already,” Eri hums, pointing at the books in his hands with one hand on her hip.
He hums in response, angrily scribbling over their drawings. He hopes it’s not too visible now.
“Yes, except for a certain someone,” Yeong hints, grinning at him toothily. He’s instantly reminded of Ivan, whose book he hadn’t quite mustered up the courage to ask after.
“I haven’t written a message in Ivan’s yet,” he says outloud, Sua’s booklet forgotten. The pair raise their eyebrows at him in unison, clearly perplexed. Is that not who they were talking about? They look at each other and then back at him, before Eri says,
“Ah, makes sense. It’s probably being passed around as we speak. I don’t think I’ve seen it in his hands all day.”
“No doubt receiving confessions in there,” Yeong chimes in wistfully. He looks at Eri pointedly, but she either doesn’t notice or has just decided to ignore him.
“I think Mizi had it last,” Eri faux-whispers to him cheekily, pointing in the direction of the pink-haired girl.
“Thanks,” Till gives them a genuine smile, before waving them away, flipping through his own booklet, searching for inspiration to write in Sua’s whilst walking in the direction Eri had pointed him in.
His eyes search for Eri and Yeong’s first, wondering what they could’ve written that was so darn funny.
I finally get to tell you this since we’re graduating, and in the obnoxiously largest possible letters he’s sure the other boy could’ve possibly mustered without being a complete jerk with the page space, but you were so freaking loud when you practiced!
He flushes to the tips of his ears. He hadn’t realized.
You come off a little cold, but you’re actually pretty adorable , and he could practically hear Eri’s voice in that one. He brings the book closer to his face to cover his growing blush.
The more he reads, the more demotivated he gets. Everyone’s messages, regardless of how embarrassing they are (and how most are poking fun at him), whether they knew him that well or not, are clearly personalized. Is he only overthinking such a thing just because of how close she is to Mizi? Would they read his message together?
“Ah, Till!”
His eyes snap up suddenly, mouth parted in surprise at the odd arrangement of people he finds in front of him.
Mizi is waving eagerly to him, and on her right and left respectively are Sua and… Ivan?
Sua doesn’t seem to be too happy with Ivan there, but she waves at him as he approaches, offering him a small, polite smile. Sua’s never had a bad thing to say to him, though they’ve barely interacted in the years they’ve grown up alongside each other.
“Hi,” he mutters, mustering up a smile back at Sua and Mizi. Ivan is smiling, as usual. Instead of his teasing smile, he has on what Till internally calls the Perfect-boy smile, where his lips are only slightly upturned and his eyes are near-closed. It’s at times like these that Till wishes he could know what that guy was thinking, sometimes.
Mizi’s sweetly genuine smile quickly eases the tension. “Ah, you got your booklet back! I thought Yeong would’ve had it on him forever,” she claps, before reaching out. He places it on her hands immediately, unthinkingly, and he can hear someone huff out laugh. It better not be who he thinks it is.
“Aah, I really wanna be able to write in everyone's today! We’re all graduating, and I’m scared we won’t be able to see each other as often…” Mizi continues, eyeing the messages he does have on there. If it were anyone else, he’d be running off to the edge of the garden while hugging his booklet tightly to his chest. “We all seem to be all over the place, all because some kids want to be the first to write in others’…”
Both Ivan and Sua give her a look, the latter’s more fond, fully aware of her hypocrisy. They don’t say anything, though. In a rare act of understanding between the two, they just look at each other exasperatedly. He understands them. Mizi’s just too cute to correct!
“Ah, there it is,” Sua interrupts, smiling at Till. He suddenly remembers that he had forgotten to write anything in hers, and she seems to be able to tell immediately from his expression. “If you’d like more time with it…?”
“Oh, sorry,” he flusters, grabbing for his pencil and using the palm of his left hand to rest the booklet on.
Quietly mortified, he writes a rushed, Thank you for everything, take care — Till, and hands it to her. The action felt incredibly half-hearted, and he deeply regrets not just writing something down on the way over, but Sua nods kindly to him anyway, before taking it into her hands.
“Oh Till, you haven’t gotten to Ivan and I’s papers yet, right?” Mizi asks him, and without missing a beat, hands hers out to him, eyes wide and glittery. He can feel the flush crawling up his hands as he takes it from her. He really hopes she doesn’t notice.
“Ivan, you have yours on you, right?”, she turns to the -damningly- tall haired boy, and he hands it to her to give to him, and Till feels a spark of irritation at the action. Since when did Ivan need someone to act as a proxy between them? He’d never felt bothered to initiate every interaction with Till, so why now?
He squashes down his annoyance to turn his attention to Mizi, smiling shakily at the unfairly cute girl who was shoving the black-haired boy’s booklet towards him, near-bouncing in place from excitement.
“Well, we’re off to write in yours, Till!” she exclaims, linking her arms with both Sua and Ivan. Sua looks torn between being happy and annoyed at this fact. Ivan’s still smiling neutrally. “No peeking! Don’t be scared to write a lot in ours! We’ll be waiting!” She tries to wave, but her arms looped with her friends’ make it difficult to do so. Sua notices as much and waves for her in her place.
Feeling a bit lost and very left out, he waves back, before staring down at the two pages in both of his hands.
He has so much he wants to say to Mizi, and no practice paper to do it on. What if he messes up, and ruins Mizi’s paper? She’s obviously excited at the prospect of getting goodbye messages from all of her peers. He needs to write something meaningful, long-lasting… Something that won’t make her ashamed to display his message alongside all of her other friends’. Something that makes sure she remembers him.
He can’t falter in the face of something like this! He’ll pour his heart into the message!
He can only hope she doesn’t just skim her eyes over it and move on.
With a renewed sense of determination, he sits in a criss-cross manner on the ground, whipping his pencil out and spreading Mizi’s page on the grass. He places Ivan’s to the right of hers for later.
Ah, right. He needs to write in Ivan’s page as well. His eyes flicker between the two, vigor slowly dissipating.
Unconsciously, he finds his eyes drifting over to Ivan’s.
What… Should he write to Ivan?
Ever since the day they’d tried to run away together, it felt like something in the air had changed. Yet simultaneously, it was like it had never happened. They didn’t talk about it. He was so sure Ivan would detest him. He’d thrown away one of their only shots at escaping the hellhole that’d await them — Ivan would surely turn his back on him, ridicule him to the other kids, possibly even to their teachers, and single him out more than he’d already been before.
But. The very next morning they had come back, Ivan had treated him as he always did.
He still poked fun at him, hung around him, and talked with him as they always did. Now that he’s thinking about it… was it only Till that had begun to act more withdrawn…?
…But, well, of course Till acted differently! It’s only natural! Ivan’s the weird one here!
He rests his palm on his chin, elbow digging uncomfortably into the meat of his thigh. He exhales loudly, tapping his pencil against his lower lip.
…Why did Ivan come back?
He’d just been under the impression that Ivan didn’t think he could do it on his own. He’d been so wide eyed and impressionable when they were younger… He wouldn't know the meaning of the simplest things, and when someone would say something he didn’t understand, he’d look to Till immediately to explain it to him. It was actually pretty cute. Concerning though, the longer he thought about it. Annoying, too, when it’d just end up getting thrown back in his face.
But they were older then. Neither of them knew much about the outer world, but if it were for freedom, why didn’t he go?
He’d… definitely feel a bit lonely without Ivan around, that’s for sure, but he couldn’t be so selfish as to ask him to stay for him. It wouldn’t be fair. As infuriating as he is, Ivan was still someone he cared about, even if he wouldn’t admit as much to the other boy’s face. He deserved to be free, too.
So why?
…He feels like he’s just running in circles trying to understand someone else’s reasoning. A suspiciously Ivan-sounding voice in his head snarks out a Don’t hurt your head too much, thinking without a brain .
He loudly slaps his hands on his cheeks, eliciting a surprised squeak nearby from a girl and her friend writing in each other's pages. They fall into hushed whispers as he turns his attention back to Mizi’s page.
He doesn’t regret his decision to come back. Someone as pure and kind as Mizi shouldn’t have to suffer while someone like Till gets to escape and be free. Even if he’s just watching from the sidelines for now, he wants to know firsthand that she’s okay. That her smile never gets wiped off her face. That her kindness isn’t dulled by the cruelty of the world they live in. That… even if she gets knocked down time and time again, she’d get back up. He’d be there for her if she ever needed him, after all!
He begins to write. He crosses out a few words, too many for comfort, painfully noticeable as well, but he doesn’t let it get to him too much.
HI!
He crosses that out immediately. He sounds way too excited.
HI! Hi Mizi! You’re super good at singing!
Okay, looking good.
If angels existed… I think they’d be just like you.
He writes over it so hard he’s scared he might rip a hole into it. Who says something like that? Even if it’s true! Heat crawls up his neck. Even his knuckles are so flushed that his hands are shaking. Especially if it’s true!
He thinks again to the song he wrote for her that he’d steadily been editing and improving upon over the years. He’s almost completely polished the lyrics by now, so…
So… I wrote you a song…
Ahh, no, he crosses that out, too. Who does he think he is? What, he tells her that he wrote a song, and then what? Write the lyrics in there? Should he throw in the notes too while he’s at it?!
Well… she could come to him about it… but what if she’s not interested? He could also just tell her about it, but that’d be too presumptuous too…! Not to mention embarrassing!
He pulls on his own hair in a fit of rage. Since when was this so hard?!
He’s so glad Ivan isn’t here to see this. He’d have even more creative comments on how sad of a sight he is.
Though at the same time, he wishes he were here. He might drive himself stir-crazy as he is alone.
…But if he were here, he’d want to see what Till was writing on his page. That’s a definite no. He’s gotten used to Ivan making fun of his crush on Mizi, but he’d die if he were to see…
Eh? If he were to see what, though…? Wouldn’t he just be looking over his shoulder while he’s writing, as he’s always done?
What exactly is he making a fuss out of again…?
No, he’s getting off track! He needs to thank Mizi for all she’s done for him.
Thanks again for the recorder you gave me when we were little…
He really means that, too. Even if he lost it.
It’s my one and only treasure.
Yeah, no. When he reads it again, he begins to understand what Ivan meant when he called him pathetic. Even if he means it wholeheartedly, how does that look to her, that his most prized possession is something he lost? Oh, I love it, it’s very dear to my heart. Oh, where is it? No idea, I lost it a few months into having it!
Can you believe we’re graduating from Anakt Garden already? I feel kinda sad.
And he really, really does. It really felt like time flew by. He never really had the chance to properly get to know Mizi… Each time he felt like he’d worked up the nerve, her smile would deal intense damage to him, and she’d be gone by the time he’d recovered!
We could’ve gotten real close but I guess there wasn’t enough time for me…
He ponders the sentence for a bit before crossing over it. It’s not a particularly scandalous sentiment, and it is their goodbye messages, after all… But he feels awkward nonetheless. He really is a coward.
Moving away to stare at it, he decides to finish it off with a Hope you take care . It’s definitely not his best work, but there’s something else in the corner of his eye that’s been nagging him (quite literally, with a voice accompanying it), that’s telling him to write something.
Sliding Ivan’s page in front of him, he gets the sinking feeling that this might be harder for him than writing for Mizi.
After the disastrous message and multiple crossed out phrases he’d given to her, he resolves himself to not make such mistakes again. Moreso because he’d never hear the end of it from Ivan.
But. Will he ever even hear from Ivan again after this?
Well. Surely, he would? Ivan didn’t just hang out with him for lack of better options, did he? Or was it really just to make fun of him?
Scratch that — would he even properly encompass all he wants to say to him? Would he even be able to put it into words?
Will the teachers look at this, too? What if he alludes to it and they know ? They’ve always watched him so closely, punishing him as they see fit. They’ll easily beat him black and blue if need be. Even if it was years ago, they’d be punished for it. Severely.
But could he stand in front of Ivan and speak of it to his face? Would he acknowledge it, or would he ignore him and move on? God forbid, would he laugh at him? If Till couldn’t win in any fights against him back then when Ivan was just a wee thing (he holds their years where they had a whopping few inches of a height difference in his favor dear to his heart), he surely couldn’t now. Not that it’d stop him from brawling with him anyways, if he dared to mock him at such a time…
At the mere thought of it, that guy’s smiling face pops up in his head. He’s probably making that stupid face while writing on his paper as well… Wait, what if he writes something stupid in front of Mizi?!
He’s seriously at a loss for what to say. He doesn’t want to write something so formal, there wasn’t a moment in their relationship where they said a single polite word to each other, as are all the other messages from the other kids on Ivan’s page so far… Uwaah, there’s even a confession in there…!
I actually had a crush on you but never got to talk to you ever. Take care. Bye. — Sein
Wow, the girl who wrote that sure didn’t hold back. If only he had the courage to write like that in Mizi’s…
Speaking of Mizi, his eyes drift over to her message. It’s pretty long, and has what he now recognizes as her trademark jellyfish doodles. He wonders if he’ll get one of his own, too.
Hi, Ivan! It’s Mizi! You’re handsome like a prince, Unfortunately true, you sing like a rock star, AND you’re smart too… How are you perfect?! He’d disagree with that last part.
And even Sua’s perfect too… I’m just surrounded by a bunch of perfect people, huh?!
She’s drawn jellyfish-Ivan, too. His lips quirk up at the inclusion of his snaggletooth. He’d never thought Ivan would be easy to draw, what with how classically handsome he is, but he’s amused to say he’s been proven wrong.
Feeling oddly motivated, he brings his pencil to the page. He should tease Ivan, give him a taste of his own medicine. But what exactly can he even tease him about? He seems to excel in everything… Even if he faltered in any one area, he’d still be doing miles better than Till.
Oh, right!
He almost feels guilty writing such a thing, especially with how long he’s kept his awareness of it secret, but he also can’t help a giddy smile from making its way onto his face. Fair’s fair, after all. He can’t be mad at something he used to do as a child, after all.
It was you who stole my pencil back then, isn’t that right?
He snickers to himself, pressing the body of his pencil against his closed lips. He almost wishes he could see his reaction to this when he gives it to him, but if he opens it up in front of Mizi, it would only prompt her to open hers, and, well…
Ah, whatever! He’ll give it to them right as times up, so he’ll just ask Ivan what he thinks later!
They’re being called now, he realizes, the bell echoing throughout the Garden. He gets up, stacks Mizi’s page on top of Ivan’s before tucking it against his side safely, smiling wide. He breaks into a brisk jog, completely unaware that he’s already late. He’s only thinking of how fun it’d be to give Ivan a taste of his own medicine.
-
“So, what did you think?” Till speed walks to catch up to Ivan, looking up at the other boy. Damn his growth spurt.
“About?” Ivan asks, slowing down a bit to accommodate Till’s (barely!) shorter legs. He’s read his booklet already, hasn’t he…? What else could he be talking about?
“My message?” Till prompts, confused.
Ivan stills. Till stops walking as well. What’s with that reaction…?
“It was fine,” he says, with an unreadable expression on his face.
It was fine, Till repeats to himself.
What does that even mean? ‘Fine?’ It was just fine?
Ivan has an extremely good poker face. He’s just never seen it be directed at him before. It was a point of pride, he supposed, that someone like Ivan could drop his good boy facade in front of Till. He’d actually been shocked when he saw how sweet Ivan could be with others. A lot of other kids found him intimidating because of how ideal he seemed to them, but Till never really thought about it like that until they were older. With Till, he had no need for pleasantries. He’d made sure as much from the very first moment they’d interacted, grappling and scraping at each other angrily.
He’d never wanted to see Ivan again after that — what kind of guy just crushes pretty red flowers like that! It was like he knew Till liked them, so he’d done so just to see what he’d do!
But to his complete surprise, Ivan instead began to gravitate more towards Till. At first, their interactions would center around the flowers. He seemed to realize the extent of how annoyed Till would get if he walked all over them, so he did so. Well, until he moved on to walking all over Till, instead.
Point being, even after Ivan began to grow up a bit more, being pointedly prim, polite and respectful to everyone, he’d always been the same with Till!
But when Till teases Ivan instead, he suddenly wants to act like this? Doesn’t like when the tables are turned on him, huh?
“Oh well if it’s fine, then.” Till sniffs hotly, feeling dangerously close to crying. He takes one last look at Ivan’s unfairly perplexed expression before turning tail and booking it back to his room. Where does he get off, acting like he doesn’t know what he’s doing!
He spends the rest of his night under his covers, rereading Ivan’s message, neatly and compactly written to him:
When we were young, we were both ignorant and often bickering. But come to think of it now that we’re older, I feel that maybe we could have been friends.
There’s more, but Till’s fixated on the same sentence.
I feel that maybe we could have been friends.
Maybe we could have been friends.
So he really never did consider them friends? Was he just a tool to pass the time? Whenever Ivan had nothing better to do?
Well of course, he thinks cruelly. Who better to go to than his number 1 favorite source of entertainment?
But if that was the case, then why? Why did he bother? Why did he try saving him?
He slams the paper into the inside of his bedside drawer, slamming it shut. He resolves not to think about it anymore. If his lack of sleep shows on his face, he’ll get punished again.
And there won’t be anyone there to save him now.