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Everything blurs the edges of reality. But your eyes stay sharp, locked onto mine, unblinking—refusing to let me forget you’re gone.
It’s not the regular kind of look you’d give me. Not the teasing Nam-Su (He knows what he’s doing) or the glare he shoots others’ way and forgets to remove. It isn’t like that anymore, something buried deep beneath the substances’ numbing effects, being fractured by the countless deaths and the bloodshed and the greed.
Your jacket weighs heavy around my shoulders, lying on the steel bed frame, plain white slab-mattress that used to be yours. The weight is almost a symptom in and of itself, my arms feeling like metal pipes, my head feeling numb and leaden with something I can’t remember, some pill from inside your locket I didn’t even ask the name of.
Moving doesn’t feel real, that’s why I don’t make an attempt for it.
Neither do you.
The one fixed point in my field of view, everything else swimming like psychedelic patterns or optical illusions. It would usually wash me over with euphoria, one of the only things recently that’s kept me going, kept me sane. Now it only amplifies my emotions, puts a magnifying glass, a filter of vibrancy over everything I’m feeling. I try to push it down. I fail. I clutch your locket.
The one fixed point in my vision. You stand there, the only light in the room seeming to be the giant gold piggy bank hanging from the ceiling, a childish visual, one I usually find some sick humour in. It haloes light around your head, tinging the strands of hair less thick and knotted with saturated violet. You stare with eyes so piercing, so real, so there I almost forget you’re not supposed to be.
Inebriated, muffled in my own ears like I’ve forgotten to pop them on an airplane, I murmur, “I thought you were dead.”
You look at me still, for a moment. Keeping the silence, the peace. Finally, you say, “Nah.” Simple, around my own volume, before you add, “They saved me. You forget? You must be really fucked up if you can’t remember that.”
It doesn’t make any sense. If I’m here, teary eyed, clutching your locket, sitting curled against the wall in self-preservation in this place. If that’s all true then…
Even though it’s ridiculous, a notion so utterly insane and impossible I would’ve expected it to be the story of a lying, desperate child, I find I don’t care. Looking into those dark eyes, glinting in the suggestions of light provided by the piggy bank up above and the blue circle embedded in the ground—It makes me not care.
“Maybe I am,” I say, words slurred. Maybe from the drugs, maybe from relief.
You return my smile, less of the softness mine has (I assume), more of a grin, a smirk. And my brimming tears spill because it’s only been hours since what I thought had happened and I already miss that smile. Mine widens, I choke out a relieved half-laugh-half-sob. Of course you survived. How could I possibly think different?
You almost glide over, the edges of your jacket fuzzy in my vision still hazed with the effects of the pills and tears. You motion for me to make room and I do, budging over as you sit next to me, legs straight out, white shoes identical to mine not stained with nearly as much blood as I thought.
Side-by-side, like so many other times on this same bed, talking, laughing, surrounded and alone. Sitting up disorients me enough that when you’re settled next to me I instantly let my head fall onto your shoulder.
Strands of hair slip out from behind my ears, hanging like spider’s webs in my vision, so close they’re blurry. I think after a while I close my eyes.
It’s a couple precious moments of silence that I relish in. The sound of your breathing, your warmth, the fabric of your jacket rubbing on my cheek. The silent reminders that I was wrong, that you’re still here with me.
My senses are clouded, like sun coming in through windows frosted matte with condensation. I sigh deeply. When I open my eyes again my head is tipped against the wall, though I don’t remember pulling away. However, you still sit there, breathing. You don’t know it but you’re calming my nerves, my irrational pulses of this is a lie, this is all a lie.
Your eyes stay fixed to mine. As soon as I look up they’re locked to me, staring, piercing. They’re sharp and highlighted; the edges of the world still soft and swimming dreamily. Our faces are inches apart, cramped on this single bed made for one. You look just right, face the same shape, that same slit in your eyebrow, the same hair, the same lips. Exact. The back of your neck still has your tattoos, your hands which are crumpled in your lap still possess the same rings and painted fingernails I know. I think, as I often do now, how I might want to kiss you but I curse myself as soon as the idea enters my head.
You begin to talk. We always talk, not going much time without it. Silence isn’t something that comes naturally to you, always jumping in with something to say. There is nothing really significant you’re saying, just sort of words, but it’s not like it matters what you say in this moment. Just hearing your voice low, almost next to my ear, that’s more than enough.
It should feel like hours instead of them blinking by in a second. I want it to feel like hours, I really do. But it’s over as fast as it started, silence enveloping us both at a lack of what to say, a lack of answers. What kind of situation do you call this?
I look to you, Thanos. Thanos who looks so pretty. Thanos who is most definitely, decidedly not dead. I squint, your image tainted with motion blur for the slightest moment. Thanos who looks the same as he did yesterday. Down to the way his hair is tousled and his nail polish is chipped.
“You look bored,” he says suddenly, so close to my side but never daring to close the gap. His expression is one he wears often, one I know well. It’s a smirk.
“I’m not,” I respond slowly, making sure I get the words right. “I promise. I’m never bored with you.”
“Really?” He asks, eyebrows raised.
“Yes. Of course,” I say again, tracing the design of his cross locket with my thumbnail. It’s still clutched tightly in my grip, the chain rattling slightly, attached to my trembling hands.
With my eyes fixed on the cross, the edges of my vision are hazy but clearing. I can’t tell how long it’s been, how long we’ve talked, how long we’ve sat here, how long I’ve been feeling so paranoid. I tell myself it’s just the high fading, my tolerance higher than I would’ve liked in this kind of situation. But at least I’ll see Thanos with a clear mind. That’s what I tell myself anyway.
“ Nice, ” he says in the random English with an air spontaneity I’ve grown used to. “My Nam-Su.” My heart leaps into my throat.
I chance a look in his direction, like any sudden movement would get me shot, sort of like the very first game. Red Light Green Light. When I glance over he’s sitting differently. Cross-legged at my side, further down the bed. Something clicks into place in my brain, something makes me confused. My mind spins, hurls conclusions in opposite, conflicting directions. Immediate, inescapable questions swirl. When did he move like that? Why didn’t I see? And the biggest question, really: How fucked up am I?
And again he opens his mouth. “My Nam-Su,” Thanos repeats. My brow furrows as a sinking feeling rests uneasily in my gut. The world’s edges are sharpening like the teeth on gigantic jaws that are clamping down on my head, acuminate enamel only now entering my field of view, threatening it all if I dare breathe out of line.
“My Nam-Su.” And isn’t it strange how in just three repetitions of something that made my chest flutter now makes me sick; something is wrong with this. A painting, askew, like all of its features are only slightly off. A subject not entirely centred, a cruel, disproportionate lie. But it’s hard to tear my eyes away from those of Thanos, ever harder to suggest to myself that what I suspect is true.
And for once it’s me who breaks the pattern, the routine: “I thought you were dead.”
“Maybe I am,” Thanos replies almost instantly, raising a brow in question before shrugging, like this is just obvious to him. It isn’t fair, how he gets all the answers all the time and leaves me scrambling to catch up. “But does that matter? You’re getting high either way on my pills anyway. What’s the difference, really?” He finishes the sentence in English but the words don’t quite reach me.
I look back to the locket, my hands shaking, breath quickening. I look to him again with bleary eyes, eyes unseeing. I can’t focus on him anymore, it’s too much information to take in. I fiddle with the latch, the hinged top turning over like the lid of a coffin. I pick up every pill inside (maybe eight or nine?), and inspect each one, looking for some kind of sign they would do this to me, signs they would bring him back to me. And nothing. Obviously. Thanos starts laughing at me.
I look back up to the sound and as soon as his face enters my view he stops laughing abruptly without so much as a lingering smile, like somebody had paused a sound effect, like he’d never been laughing at all. He’s staring, straight faced, sitting cross-legged again though this time at the foot of the bed.
Tears well up in my eyes again, the bottom half of my vision distorted with salty water. I can’t tell if I’ve just been left reeling or if I’m afraid. At this, Thanos frowns and his voice softens, automatically, artificial, a tone I’ve never heard him use before, as though he could read my mind and tell me just what I wanted to hear. Like a crude computer generation of a hand despite the people behind the image’s creation never having shown it one.
“Nam-Gyu.”
“No,” I murmur, wrapping my fingers white-knuckled around the locket and almost cradling it to my chest protectively. I keep my eyes locked to his though, darkness glittering, almost like if I look away he’ll disappear. Maybe he will. “No, you can’t say that.”
“Why not?” He asks. Thanos leans forward on the bed on his hands, towering over my legs but not casting a shadow. He stares intensely into my eyes, his edges blurred while the rest of reality stays sharp, on high alert like a vivid dream. It’s paranoia. It’s paranoia. “Don’t you remember? It’s gonna be insulting if you don’t remember.”
“I don’t want to,” I choke out, throat closing. Cowering against the wall like this, it’s like I’m afraid of him. That’s what it would look like if seen from the outside. But it’s not like that. My feet dig into the mattress, pushing back, twisting its angular, clinical edges. My back presses into the wall, unblinking eyes still fixed to him.
He stares back. Still leaning forward, still smirking, still Thanos. Except this time when I look at him his eyes are hollow. I make the deadly mistake of blinking, leaving tears to roll down my cheeks. For only a second my eyes are closed but when they reopen Thanos has changed instantly, like a splice in video footage or a split-second crack in glass.
Blood streams down his neck like a twisted waterfall, still-forming bruises and a raw, inescapable honesty to this sight, a truth I know is real but choose to turn away from. Red stains the neck of his jacket— the jacket around my shoulders—blood spots tickling the 230 printed over the chest. He smells of iron and sweat. He tilts his head innocently at me, innocent enough considering he was the one who instigated the fight in the first place. The fight—oh God. The bathroom and the fight.
“You see now, don’t you?” Thanos asks, leaning closer. His words are accompanied by a chilling bubble of blood at his throat. I press myself further into the wall. I am not afraid of him. Clutching his locket, my head ducks down, cowering in the false safety of my own arms.
I can still hear his voice. It doesn’t necessarily come from in front of me, more-so broadcasted in my head like an amber alert or a fake game’s piracy screen. I’m surrounded, taking verbal hit after hit, it’s inescapable, undeniable, I’m in a crowd where everyone is running. I don’t even realise I’m hyperventilating before I start to hold my breath. I can feel him, his presence looming over my head.
“You’re not dead,” I gasp out in a desperate attempt to stop it all, convince myself this comfortable lie is anything but. “You’re not—you’re not dead.”
And then, clear as day, I hear a voice close to my ear. A whisper of clarity washes over me. His tone isn’t soft like when he’s just woken up, isn’t tough like when he’s yelling at Myung-gi. It’s neutral, passive. The most normal thing he’s ever said, maybe. It’s that sudden, inexplicable clarity that keeps the air trapped in my mouth, like it’s been taped shut with all the air inside, threatening to burst like a balloon and explode me from the inside out. Tears brim in my eyes, my throat tightens. And.
In a whispered, breathy voice, he says: “Yes I am.”
And then my eyes open. And I look around wildly, frenzied and dazed. And I’m completely, utterly alone. Sandwiched between two towers of bed frames, sitting here clutching his locket, blood-soaked jacket around my shoulders. No endless, dreamy haze. No over-saturated, high alert filter. Just normal. This is what normal is now. And I can see the outside, the yawning, open space between X and O. And the newfound loneliness crushes me, not used to silence without him. And I sob; it’s all I can do sitting here, on his bed. Paralysed.
As I openly sob I can hear my broken voice echoing a little, I can feel tired eyes on me, judgemental. Something in my brain insists to me that if he ever saw me like this he wouldn’t be like them. I finally will myself to look up, to the foot of the bed, knowing I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. And I see nothing.
Of course. It’s obvious now, him just being a pill-induced vision. But I need to believe it’s something else. I need to believe his presence, no matter how fake it was—I need to believe that it meant something, that it wasn’t just some cruel joke that God or whoever is playing on me. I can’t go on thinking it all just happened for nothing. I cry harder at that.
It’s a storm, a whirlwind, something unshifting in my brain, the thought that I was right. Never in my life have I been so devastated to be right. His presence still lingers, like smoke in the air, water droplets from nightly rain on the grass. There’s tingling in my fingers and my cheeks. A dull pressure builds behind my temples, spreading to the bridge of my nose. I think back to the night I first saw him at Club Pentagon. He looked lost then, a man who’d tried to cover his cracks and imperfections with shitty spackle and mismatched paint.
I remember seeing him there. A pretty face amongst the other clubbers, somebody who stood out from the crowd, somebody who felt alone. Somebody I could’ve known outside of this nightmare. It makes me resent the blue Velcro patch representing team circle attached to my jacket, attached to his. Something representing a notion that, without the drugs in my system, I would have never agreed to do in the first place; something that represented him, what he wanted. Something I feel the push and pull of, feeling the regret and the shamelessness battle it out in the rain.
I saw his body collapse to the ground. I heard the announcement say in its artificially chipper voice that player 230 was eliminated. And yet I can still feel his presence, or more accurately, the absence of it. I feel the emptiness linger all around next to me, linger like the buzz in my head, like the tears in my eyes.
And I grip the locket, trace the design hastily like a ritual, fiddle with the latch. And I flip open the hinged lid, staring down at my one way tickets. My tickets to seeing him again. I open it with the caution of a man breaking the seal on a curse, knowing it will bind me forever.
Forever claimed by his memory, forever indebted to the dead, to project them amongst the living and pray. And the worst part? I don’t want it to stop.