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Till can't sing anymore.
His passion for it went missing with Mizi. He stares at the jolting, thoughtless scrawls tearing through his journal, once filled with music notes and doodles of a smiling face, now mutilated by ink. He stares at the glass of his pod and watches his reflection blink wearily back at him. He stares into flashing cameras and lets the strobing light blind him instead of the drop of his own eyelids, because where there should be comforting darkness, there is a broad-shouldered figure draped in angelic white, then red, then falling away, and then that person has pink hair instead, wide eyes, tired eyes, hands torn up and overflowing with that same blooming red.
Till can't keep his eyes open forever, but their presence does not make him lose sleep. They follow him through the brightest of rooms anyway, the cacophonous parties, the clean laboratories.
It's the fact that only at night, a night like this one, cold and quiet in his blank room, can he think of one person at a time. And sometimes, their names are all that he can say in a day.
Mizi.
Ivan.
He taps out the syllables of their names on the floor beneath his ragged sleeping cot, packaged in pairs. The rhythm of it replaces the monotony of the night.
Till's segyein didn't care to name him properly. Hyuna, his sunbae, had received a thoughtful name, and so had Sua. Till, as it sounds before the translators can warp it into human language, means pet. Not pet-human, just pet. But Mizi made the sound so warm, and when she said his name, it didn't matter who had given him what, who had withheld the privilege of identity. She remade the sound entirely, and while Till never purposely made trouble for her because he hated when she was upset, he would run about her, fooling around and tripping up, just to hear her voice cradle his name with concern.
How would she say his name now? He tries to imagine it, but as the night wears on, his creativity fails him yet again.
He knows how Ivan says his name. Would say.
Till.
Till.
"Till."
He shifts, cracking open his eyes. The sky is cerulean blue, clouds puffing across in perfect plumes.
"Hey, Till."
There's someone calling his name, poking his cheek. He swats at their hand, opening his eyes far too fast and then squeezing them shut against the blaring sunlight.
"You know, it's my birthday today," Ivan wheedles, peering down at him from his crouched position.
Till jolts up, sluggishly wheeling backwards until his back is flush with a tree.
"You don't know your birthday," he says, heart thudding a dull rhythm in his ears. The grass is too green—was it always so?
"Hm, maybe you don't know when my birthday is."
Ivan sighs, sidling up without a care in the world for personal space, now angling his eyes upwards, and when Till looks into them, they swallow him like caverns crumbling, sinkholes eating their way forever down, but then Till blinks, and it's just the Garden, and Ivan being as annoying as ever.
"It's not your birthday."
No one knows Ivan's birthday except for the factory that made him, but—and Till wonders if Ivan remembers this, because he never brings it up, never even slyly alludes to it the way he likes to poke and prod—maybe not even that, because the first time Till saw Ivan, he was the dirtiest, most unkempt human Till had ever seen, bar maybe himself. Either the factory he came from had really poor quality control, or–
"It is," Ivan insists, so sure that Till almost believes him. "And you promised, right?"
He's even closer now, but this too is familiar. Ivan enjoys watching Till draw, and often leans so close to the page that Till has to crane his head to the far side to see his own artwork, which results in some odd angles and misshapen drawings. Knowing how much joy Ivan gets in being a bother, he's sure that he ruins his drawings on purpose.
"Promised what," he scowls, crossing his arms. To most anyone else, this would mean 'go away' or at least 'ten more steps of room between you and me or I'm going to punch you in the face'.
Ivan laughs, and surprisingly, does lean back a little bit.
"You should remember a big promise like that! Someone could take advantage of your forgetfulness, you know…"
"I'm not forgetting anything!"
Till fights the urge to get up and storm away because every time he does, Ivan just chases after him, or worse, lets him run away with no direction. He knows he's not forgetting anything. He's not.
"And if I am, just tell me, and stop acting so weird."
Ivan breaks his gaze away first, which is– not right.
There's a sour taste in the back of his mouth, and his throat crawls with the first signs of overuse or illness, both of which are a pain to deal with. He'd rather it be illness—at least then he could sleep classes away in the infirmary until they kick him out.
"I'm not," Ivan echoes Till's own words, and it should be mocking and condescending and all the petty tricks Ivan pulls, but it's not. His voice has this strange sink to it, a whirling, like there's a newfound puncture at the bottom of the bowl where he pools all his saccharine smiles, bobbing at the placid surface like plucked carmine windflowers, and the sodden petals are now flurrying red and rapid down the drain.
Before Till can protest further, the sly smugness seeps back into Ivan's smirk, and that easy frustration once again smooths over any wrinkles of concern.
"Hurry up, Till. My top-of-class interview with Sua is today, and if I don't get there on time, they'll make her come look for me," he complains.
"And if you really can't remember…" Ivan trails off, lilting his last few words, the first notes of a song Till's heard before.
Suddenly, his face comes way, way too close to Till's, and he instinctively jolts backwards, but has nowhere further to go— the bark of the tree digs into his back, but the pain never arrives.
Ivan's eyes bore into Till's, intense and unblinking, blacker than the night, starred and soaring.
"Then should I remind you?" His breath feathers across Till's cheek, and suddenly, the world becomes sensate—the roughness of the tree bark through his threadbare shirt, the slip of slightly dewy grass beneath his hands, the sudden gravity of Ivan's body above Till's. The warmth of the sun seems like nothing but a passing graze in comparison to the consuming blaze of Ivan's hand curling lightly over his—unbearably gentle, despite the weight Ivan could rest upon it.
His fingers twitch into Ivan's.
Ivan's smile twitches upwards too, but he says nothing else, only continuing to stare unblinkingly into Till. He wants Till to answer.
What happens if Till says no? Will Ivan crawl backward, laughing at his joke? Would he reveal that there was never anything Till had forgotten about, weakly defend himself from the few sure hits Till would strike on him and run away from the rest, then go unbothered to have his idiotic first place, first of the class, first of everything interview?
What happens if Till says yes?
He opens his mouth, ready to emphatically answer no, to roll his eyes and shove Ivan off.
Instead, his hands fly up, fisting into the thick fabric of Ivan's shirt and yanking him down, pulling him off-balance and faltering— good, the smug bastard thinks he has everything figured out, everything in place—and as Ivan falls into him, they twist away from the tree together, rolling heavily and harshly into the grass, dirt mashed into Ivan's sleek hair. His surprised expression sprawls out beautifully under Till, and then Till takes Ivan's lips into his own before they can curl into another stupid smile, before Ivan can run off to an interview with Sua, before everything, before.
It's nothing like the giggling lips pressed to grinning cheeks that they'd grown so fond of chastely pressing on each other in their childhood. It's wet, messy, furious; Till breaks away from Ivan to breathe for less than a second, but Ivan leans up to find him, and then he's lost again in that heat.
And then, somehow, he realizes his hands thread through silky strands of hair, cradling a fragile warmth closer, and they're not laid down beneath the beautiful, fake sky of Anakt Garden. Real heat surrounds them, and Till opens his eyes to the red sky of a dead world.
He shoves Ivan away from him, gasping in air choked with dust and ash, a world that can't be real.
"It's okay, Till," Ivan says, smiling again, his hand wrapped tightly around Till's wrist. He doesn't let go.
"Shut up," Till spits, breaths coming in short, shallow pants, rasping through his throat. It's so sore. Why does his chest burn?
There are words and emotions boiling on his tongue that he never learned how to swallow down, but he doesn't know how to make sense of them to himself, let alone aloud, so all he can do is rock Ivan's head towards him, locking their mouths together once again, closing his eyes so he doesn't have to see a fiery red laughing down at him.
And then–
Then, there's this metallic aftertaste trickling into their senseless tangle, and Till wonders if Ivan's pointed tooth has snagged on the end of his lip again, but then he opens his eyes.
Ivan, buffeted by a stormy night sky. Ivan, trussed up in pure white. Red seeps down the corners of his mouth, smudging away at his lips where Till's had lapped away some of Ivan's blood, not his own.
"It's okay," Ivan repeats. His mouth moves, his blood falls, but his voice stays as steady as it was singing at the beginning of the round, unclogged by the bullet puncturing his chest.
The rain will wash away the blood, but not quick enough. They'll drag Till off the stage, but not before Ivan slumps to the ground, dead.
"Hey." The word rattles senselessly from his mouth, tremoring with terror and rage twined together, inextricable. "You don't get to say things like that."
Unmoving, unblinking, so sure in what he came to this round to do. Till thought he was so sure in himself, and with the perfect idol Ivan made himself to be, he had thought his cockiness wasn't unwarranted.
But despite it all–
Despite the fame and promotions and calm assuredness–
In the end, he went and left Till with the broken pieces.
"Do you hear me??" And once again, he's wrapped his hands around Ivan's collar, dragging him down. Ivan's blood smears onto his knuckles.
"You selfish bastard, you– of all people, you don't get to let yourself die saying worthless things like– like–"
Ivan should've really just crushed Till's windpipe with his fingers the way he crushed alien flowers under his heels, the beautiful camera spies Till wailed over as a kid. 'It's okay', as if he didn't leave Till to be the last of their childhood paradise still in this sick game.
He thought they were friends, even if Ivan delighted in provoking him, even if they left bruises or cuts scattered on the other. In the end, he thought they'd be friends.
"And what's so fucking shallow about your emotions?" His throat is raw, his hands tighten as he shakes Ivan. This time, Ivan doesn't have to thank Till for nothing, thank him with his final breath, thank him for being burdened by Ivan's shallow emotions. "So, are mine? Who let you decide, who let you choose who gets to live and who dies?"
"I hate you, I–"
Ivan, silent this whole time, his blood finally pooling and diluting in rainwater at their feet, starts to grow heavy in Till's hands, and he can't keep both their weight up, and he can't force Ivan's eyes to stay open, no matter if he screams at him until his vocal cords really do saw themselves to shreds.
"You're strong," Ivan says, words finally gurgling around the fluid choking him.
"Cheer up."
Ivan's limp body falls from Till's shaking hands, slumping to the ground beneath him, and when Till reaches out again to grab him, his fingers pass through him like smoke, and as the spotlights shut off in rhythmic, dull thuds, and as he cries Ivan's name, says something even he doesn't understand in the increasingly hazy nothing, unwillingly blinks once–
He sucks in air that smells like nothing, heart hammering wildly against his ribs, begging to be let free and beat uselessly against icy white linoleum floor.
Till tears himself out of the scratchy fabric of his cot, collapsing gracelessly to his already bruised and aching knees. The throes of sleep ebb away as the cold sterility washes over him again, and it infuriates him. How can this room pretend to be clean, pure, perfect, when the makers of these white walls are the reason for all this suffering? For the blood that will never stop lapping at his feet?
It's not right. None of is right, and Till seethes at it, even when there's no segyein in his face to flaunt it, the extravagance and casual cruelty of their forced performances. Till would love singing. He does love singing, always has, and would've sung gladly and freely if it weren't for the collars clamping around his neck and the friends dying around him.
Why does it have to be taught and tainted by alien evil?
Till tastes metal in his mouth again—blood. He must've accidentally bitten his lip sometime throughout the night, reopened the scar.
No, it doesn't have to be. These walls won't be lies closing him in.
He grabs a pen discarded in a random drawer, throws the cap somewhere to the floor, and starts to scratch jagged, messy letters high enough on the wall to fit all he needs to write for his final round, a round he decides he will win.
Blink, gone.