Work Text:
Till had something he had never told anyone ever before.
Call it an ability if you want, or a curse, or a blessing, anything. But to Till, it was an inconvenience that can never be solved no matter how he does it. It had always been like this.
Because he can see people .
The difference between normal people and the people was that no one else can see them but him . His earliest memories were that from a young age when one day, he met a large person back in ANAKT Garden. He could hear the person talk but he couldn’t make out the person ’s face very much. The person ’s face had a black void replaced on it and the person ’s voice was distorted, like an audio being played with thousands of voices mixed in it— it was impossible to tell which one is the person 's voice.
The person liked to watch Till draw for the first few months, and Till let the person watch him. After those months, the person asked Till to draw them. Till had tried his best, matching the description being told to him step by step, erasing and redrawing parts where the person thought were inaccurate. Soon, the drawing had the face of a man who Till thought could only be described as beautiful.
“Is this your face?” he asked back then, while the person ’s face was slowly appearing on where the black void previously took place.
The person nodded, smiling with his fully formed face at him and spoke with perfect clarity. “Till, listen to me. Do not tell anyone of your sight,” he had said. “Do not mention it or bring it up. Remember, I am the only person you saw in your entire life, ignore everyone else or you might get killed too.”
He remembered the shiver he had back then too.
The face of the man on paper was quickly ripped and buried underground.
He never saw that particular person ever again.
Ever since then, he has seen various different people. Some who looked to be around his age, some just a bit older, never once was there a person who looked to be alien. They were all humans. (Humans once. They are not humans anymore.)
Till connected the dots. He could see dead people.
And ever since that discovery, he’s kept his mouth shut about this ever since.
No one knew; not Ivan, not Sua, not even Mizi knew about this.
When he and Ivan were close to escaping, there was a sudden increase of people in the middle of the field. And he knew there was something there that killed them because no one is dead without a reason.
So in the reason of not wanting to leave Mizi alone, Till ran back, knowing that Ivan will follow.
(The people were yelling, about how they want the aliens dead, how they hate the aliens so much, how they killed them . There was too much information in the yells.)
And ever since the first round ended, he can see Sua with her void face following Mizi everywhere, speaking in her distorted voice that she acquired after her death. She spoke about how much she missed her and how much she loved her. (Till knew that loving Mizi was never a choice for him anyways. The people told him so.)
In the place of Sua, Till began hanging around Mizi. He began telling her everything Sua told her, even if he tried his best to keep it vague and unsuspecting.
Till drew Sua’s face that night. Sua returned to Mizi's side with a sad smile and a soft voice.
Then, after the second round, the boy who he didn’t know started to follow him. Till never said anything and just kept his mouth shut, continuing with his life as the boy– person followed him around.
( "I know you can see me," the person had said in the distorted voice he knew all too well. "I know you can hear me. I saw you helping Sua. Help me, please." )
As the years passed, Till's room had been filled to the brim with paper filled with drawings of the people and many music sheets. There was no space for toys or story books when all he sees are the people .
Some of the people are not so nice either, scaring him once he was about to fall asleep. That's why he doesn't sleep a lot, because the people won't let him.
The distorted voice of the people and their infinite void faces had been a sight Till was used to. Passing by the fields, he would see more than one people on the field, looking at something that's not there, and Till doesn't care about them.
Then, the fifth round started. In the end, Luka won and Mizi lost, but Till doesn't know where Mizi is, because he knows that Mizi isn't dead. Why would she be if she isn't a person yet?
(He doesn't say that there was a child behind Luka, their face masked with the void and standing there with their head facing Luka.)
The sixth round came. Ivan was there. It wasn't anything spectacular at first, Till faking heartbreak in order to protect his secret and keeping the illusion of him believing that Mizi is dead.
But Till didn't expect Ivan to kiss him. The people probably noticed how Ivan looked at Till but Till himself never noticed. Ivan kept his hands around Till's neck, squeezing tight enough to make the illusion that he's choking Ivan but loose enough for him to breathe through.
Then Ivan was shot. Once. Twice. Three times.
Ivan fell.
Till stared at Ivan's dead body, knowing that Ivan will follow behind him.
Huh.
A tear.
He never expected to cry.
He never had to for the past 20 years of his life.
He knows Ivan is behind him, so why is he crying now?
He sniffles.
Till let the rain wash away the tears and came closer to Ivan's corpse.
"I hope you noticed me now, Till," Ivan's distorted voice came, closer than he thought Ivan would be. And with an inaudible whisper, Till responded with “of course I noticed you.” before leaving the stage, leaving behind Ivan’s corpse while Ivan follows him.
For the following month, Ivan followed him anywhere, making a one-sided small talk with Till at every waking minute. Sometimes he swears that he sees Sua following him and talking with Ivan, sometimes speaking of how idiotic he was and chattering about some random things. Till doesn’t pay much attention, because there was a sudden increase in people inside the facility.
He saw a long-haired woman standing by a hallway looking around as if searching for something. The clothing she was wearing was completely foreign to him but he, as protocol, kept looking away.
“Till, I love you,” Ivan said for the nth time this day, but Till never gets tired of it because one day Ivan will move on and he’ll leave him forever. He doesn’t want that.
He hums a tune instead, trying to compose a song for the final round against Luka. He knows what Luka is capable of, and he knows that Luka doesn’t have shit against him, but he does have shit against Luka instead.
The people talk a lot about their past memories, and while passing by Luka, he heard a lot from the person that was following Luka. The person said a lot, talking about how Luka will pay for what he did and, in graphic detail, explained how he would do it. “The same way you did to me,” he said.
(That night, Till wonders how Luka killed the person without feeling any sort of guilt or remorse. He fell asleep to Ivan’s lullaby that night.)
“Eat something, Till,” Ivan said, and he did. He chewed on the rice that he was given and kept sketching. It was a miracle that he’s still alive at this point. His eye bags were deep and his consciousness was hanging by the thread. But that’s okay, he can always sleep.
Finally, he finished drawing Ivan’s face from memory. He went into his room and pasted it on the wall like all the other faces that he drew, and slowly, Till turned around to face Ivan, staring as the drawn face slowly morphed into view.
“Do you see me, Till?”
“...”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I love you, Till.”
“... I love you too.”