Work Text:
Art disease is fatal. It's an incurable disease that seems to remind us that there is a price to pay for everything.
There are people who love art, people who have been doing it for years, it becomes their job, their income, they can be very good at it and even be famous, but they will never be geniuses. And, fortunately, not all geniuses have an art disease.
There are people whose talent goes beyond simple human skills and abilities, people who can create real magic with their art. God gifted such people from birth, gave them incredible abilities. But there is a price for everything.
First of all. You can't live without this art. Even if you try to quit, you won't be able to hold out for long, the longer you do art, the more addictive it will become. Until obsession, until madness. Some people started painting or drawing using their own blood and flesh when they were isolated from their artistic tools, others attacked other people, blackmailing them with their lives to get back to it. It is... a voice. It's inside you and you can't ignore it. You want to, but you can't. And you can't quit, because most often art is what keeps you alive.
This is where the second thing comes in. No one lives happily with this horrible disease. Everyone has their own tragic story. Someone has more, someone less, but in the end it still hurts. This is painful, as if hundreds of daggers were stabbing into your heart. That is why many sufferers find peace in the art they love so much, and they get so deeply involved in it that they forget about the real world with its demons.
And the third. The last one. For a long time, the disease had many types and took away something important from every artist, something without which they could not create, or in rare cases, their lives. But people didn't want to just live like that, so they fought the disease, and one of the patients, trying to save his friend, the beautiful Ms. Karina, an incredible artist with the rarest gift of creation, invented a way to cure the disease by experimenting on himself.
He was lucky, his research would later be revealed to the world, and people would massively use the magic stones from the monsters, the charons, to cure their own illnesses.
Unfortunately, Ms. Karina could not be saved. She died of her own gift, an art disease, leaving her husband alone with their daughter. He was alone for the rest of his life, unable to forget his beautiful melancholic beloved. Mrs. Karina is a really strong woman, Ivan admired her, she was able to survive the rejection of her family, survived her own misfortunes, ran away to her fiancé and lived out her happy days there, even reciprocating her husband's feelings in the end.
She really fought for her own life until the end, she didn't want to die.
After all, no one who suffers from the disease of art can be happy until the end.
Since less serious cases became rare, everyone began to believe that the Art Disease was a thing of the past, something from that romantic era of the past centuries when God still had great power over people and religion was the basis of the people's existence.
But no. While people were happy that the disease was gone, God decided to show that he still had power over people. And there were several cases of people with an abnormally strong gift for some kind of art, but these people always died young.
None of them ever made it to their thirties.
Eventually, cases of simple loss of sight or limb became extinct, and a new type of this terrible disease raged among people. Now each patient paid for his own talent with his life, giving it away little by little each time he used his own skills.
The disease has transformed as humanity has changed. There were also a few cases of people acquiring the disease in the middle of their lives, but doctors blamed it on mental and psychological damage to the psyche, fearing reality.
They documented the symptoms that can help identify the disease at an early stage or help the patient live longer by noticing the symptoms later.
All patients with the art disease have eyes that glow when they use their own abilities, each with a different color, previously it was only gold, symbolizing God's will, but now, as belief in God has become a very questionable thing, ordinary non-religious patients' eyes can shine in any color.
But for some reason, red became the most common color.
A cruel joke of God.
No one could explain the impact of religion on the course of the disease; it was just a fact that people had to accept.
Although the only positive thing was probably that people have become more resistant since then. The disease was rarely difficult to treat, mostly only at the end and a few times during life. Although there were cases of more regular attacks.
And still, at the moment, the disease of art has become a rarity, almost a myth of the past. Or not.
Ivan love to sing. He loves to write lyrics, putting all of himself into them, and he loves to sing to his parents. When he was a child, his mom and dad loved Ivan's songs. They often said how talented he was and how he would eventually become a world-famous singer.
This was all before that day. The one day that changed everything for him.
Ivan became suddenly sick in the morning, he was feverish and nauseous, his stomach twisted as if he had been stabbed. His parents heard him vomiting and woke up worried, they quickly called a doctor because they could not understand what was wrong with their boy. Meanwhile, Ivan was getting worse, his eyes blurred, and his body convulsed. Eventually, he lost consciousness.
He regained consciousness only after a while, lying in bed, he saw a strange man talking to his parents about something. The stranger told them something that shocked them, his mother gasped and covered her face to try to hold back her tears, while his father's face expressed anger, denial, and disagreement.
It was then that the doctor noticed that he had woken up and a moment later informed him of the diagnosis.
The art disease. Ivan is a genius singer who literally puts a part of his life into his songs.
An incurable disease from which he will die young. A sentence that hurts everyone, including the victim and his family.
Ivan loves his parents. So much so that he doesn't blame them for the fact that although they initially hoped for a miracle, that it was just a misdiagnosis, or that they could keep him from writing songs, they eventually gave up. They gave up and actually abandoned him.
He heard them talking to each other in the other room while they thought he was asleep. He heard the mother sobbing, saying she didn't want to see her son die slowly and not be able to do anything about it, and the father saying he understood. His parents are not bad people, they just didn't want to suffer, so at first they started to distance themselves from him. No one in the family wanted to hear him sing, and when Ivan had attacks of pain, a hired nurse took care of him. His parents began to talk to him less, he heard their plans to move to a new place and thought it was just a change of environment, so he secretly started packing.
He did not know that they were planning to move without him. So one day, right on his birthday, he woke up, and instead of meeting his family, he found a note on the hallway table with a phone number and instructions to text them if he needed money and to call them only in case of emergency.
There was a card lying next to him, and later he looked at the balance on it and saw that it contained money to live on for a month. There was food in the fridge, but everything that could remind him of his parents had disappeared from the house, and only his belongings and devices remained. That was all. He was all alone.
Completely alone. Because, of course, people who have the art disease cannot be satisfied.
At that moment, he clearly understood these words for the first time. It was more painful than all his previous episodes.
He was crying, calling the number in the note and begging his parents to come back, saying that he would be a good son, and he heard nothing in response. Then they hung up, and he felt as if something inside him had died, something very important.
That's when the voice in his head appeared.
Write a song about them, make them feel the pain of loss like you do, it's not your fault they left you, and they should be regretting it. Cry it out, it will make you feel better.
That's when he wrote his first masterpiece, which he would post online a few years later and it would become popular. People will write in comments and on forums about how they cried to this song because the feeling of abandonment and loneliness took them completely. The pain of loss was felt in everything from the instruments that were selected to the singer's voice. Especially in his voice, the singer, like a charming siren, captivated the audience with his overwhelming despair, a pain that could practically be felt on his skin, so strong was it. Ivan eventually adapted. And he even understood his parents, although the doctor who continued to follow him from time to time said that he shouldn't and it was entirely their choice, obviously wrong, because you can't throw away a child as if it were some kind of discomfort in their lives. But still, Ivan could not bring himself to blame them. Neither could he blame himself, because he had not chosen to be born sick.
And he is openly proud of what he does, he loves to sing, he likes people's attention to the details of the song, the fact that they can feel his deep emotions when they hear him sing. Some people even wrote that his songs helped them cope with difficult periods in their lives, healing their souls and bodies.
So the choice of career after school became obvious. Ivan decided that if he was destined to die young, he would write as many songs as he could by then. For himself. Because that's what he wants to do.
He closed himself off from most people, was distant and mostly emotionless, expressing all his feelings in his songs.
Maybe Ivan pushed them all away because he was afraid that if they found out about his illness, they would leave him like his parents.
But for a long time he didn't like any of the songs he wrote. He felt as if he was stuck in place, lost in the dark and unable to do anything. While his listeners never complained, to his personal ears, his songs had become too repetitive and simple.
He wants his songs to touch and take hold of the soul of everyone who listens to them, not just to cause a slight feeling of sadness or joy or something even simpler.
That was until the day Ivan met someone who pulled him out of the darkness. Someone who could revive the part of him that he thought was long dead. The part that knows how to love.
It was an ordinary day for Ivan until his manager called him and told him that he had been invited to join a music project, a collaboration between some of the most popular artists on social media.
When he agreed, he did not know that he would meet a star there. The brightest of them all.
It is easy to notice Till. Losing him from sight is even harder. The guy is very loud, and he's always arguing with someone. Surprisingly, he is always to the point, gives really good advice and communicates with the film crew as if they were old friends. And it seems that everyone knows Till and wants to talk to him.
And yes, it was a bit annoying, but it was fun. Ivan was going to be an outsider to the drama in front of him and not take part in it. He might even be able to get first-hand information if he uses his friendship with Mizi. She's both an artist and a singer, so there was a time when they even worked together, of course she's not close to him, but for fun he might try to get to know her.
Till's love for Mizi is so obviously sweet and pure that Ivan smiled genuinely when he saw these attempts to keep distance between them. Because Mizi has been officially in a relationship with another singer, Sua, for a long time. Their collaboration will be the first song in the project, and Ivan could only wish them luck.
Well, yes. Ivan was really trying to be just an observer, but somehow it just so happened that the innocent and sociable Mizi pulled him into her circle of friends.
He and Sua got along because they have similar personalities. Hyuna accepted him as her other little brother, which was a very strange feeling. Luka looked at him from under his eyelashes a little bit arrogantly, but they unexpectedly had similar taste in novels, so they became close over one conversation. Ivan became friends with everyone. Except for Till.
They are opposite in personality, in flavor, and even in the genre of music they work in. Ivan also failed to take into consideration the fact that while it was fun to watch Till from afar, he was annoying up close, and so they often argued and almost fought on the set. And the reasons were generally stupid, ridiculous.
Till seemed to be pissed off by everything Ivan did, and as an grown ass adult, he naturally made it worse by messing with him.
But still. It was still fun, and in some of their arguments Ivan couldn't help but laugh, which probably surprised many people, and even himself. He forgot that he even knew how to do it. But Till. Till is a mess of a man, as annoying as he can be, he is never boring.
Thinking about it later, Ivan should have realized that this was not antagonism or hatred, he and Till forgot that there was anyone else besides them in such moments of argument, and he saw that this idiot was also smiling while yelling at him and trying to smash his guitar against Ivan's head!
But probably the biggest discovery for him was one day. They were put to work with each other. The producers said something about how their dynamic would make the project more popular. There was also a promise of a bigger reward. So they had no choice but to grimace and start working.
And Ivan already knew that Till was a professional in his work and that this was not his first project, but the way he was... It was admirable. As soon as he started working, Till seemed to become a completely different person. And he even seemed to care about him.
For a long time they talked about their own performance, their song, what kind of concept it would be, what they would do. They didn't even manage to get to the lyrics in that whole time! The conversation was about music and not only that, and Ivan was surprised to realize that Till is a very educated man, multi-talented, attentive, and risky when it comes to new genres he wants to try. He talked about music with the same passion that Ivan himself felt. As if music was an inseparable, essential part of him.
That was the moment Ivan realized that he was in love. It was when they met eyes, when Till spoke with a sparkle in his eyes about his upcoming single, which would be the second in the project, a single that was full of his unspoken feelings and meanings, which, once understood, give you a completely different listening experience. The moment when someone realized Ivan's obsession with music.
But Ivan has an art disease. Till is not. Till has achieved what he can only do through his own efforts, work and perseverance.
Till challenges God by his very existence. And he is perfect in this.
Probably it was after realizing this feeling, love , that Ivan's art disease began to progress by huge leaps and bounds. As if his obsession, his inner madness, which he tried to suppress, finally found its way into the world through these feelings.
Because Ivan cannot be happy. Of course he had to fall in love with a person who already has his own muse in his heart.
For Ivan, it is not the first time that he has experienced the grief of a broken heart, but it is the first time that he is experiencing it while being with a person who has unknowingly broken it. And it hurts. God, it hurts so much.
Now they are always together, still arguing over trivial things, still talking about music as enthusiastically as if it were their source of life.
What an irony. The fact is that the source of life for others is the worst curse for Ivan, which only slowly destroys him. A curse that he loves.
Perhaps that's why he fell in love with Till.
He is like music, like singing, like art, it inspires, fascinates, makes him follow it like the North Star, it seems as if it leads him towards home, towards happiness, but at the same time ruins him completely.
Deep despair mixed with passionate love, the abyss of grief and shining inspiration, the emptiness of sadness and spiritual healing, these feelings are combined in his soul and as an artist he can feel delight, impatience to put it into song, but as a human being he can only feel the pain in his heart and again and again pursue Till with his eyes as if he were a sunflower reaching for the sun.
Sua's death was painful. For the first time in his life, Ivan felt grief for his friend, his comrade. Only before her death did he learn that she had suffered just like him. They were alike, and because of that, they built a bond that only two cursed people can have.
Sua died having recorded her last masterpiece with Mizi. Listening to My Clematis, Ivan felt that Sua had given her life to this song, given her soul to the God whom she had named her beloved Mizi.
Ivan is used to pain. It had always been with him, mental and physical, the art disease is one of the most painful of all existing diseases. But he felt a different kind of pain after Sua's death, and he felt it even more when he saw Mizi.
She became a shadow of herself. She needed them, and Ivan realized that he would soon hurt her with his own death.
And looking at the quieter Till, he thought that he did not want to die. He knows that Till doesn't love him, that it's just a dream. After all, he wasn't even looking at him anymore.
He should not feel pain for him, not even a little. After his death, Till must go on and continue to shine for others. He can't afford to take a piece of that light for himself, no matter how much he wants to. No matter how selfish he is.
So Ivan began to distance himself from them, trying to find the chains in which he had previously imprisoned his heart and which Till had broken with his bold blows.
The last months he spent only at his home, not answering any calls or messages. He was writing, recording, correcting. He was creating something incredible.
The voice in his head was screaming at him not to do it, whispering to him to hurt Till, to carve a place for himself in his heart with bloody hands. Climbed into his head with his song. With his latest masterpiece.
But Ivan did not listen to him. He wanted it, oh God, he wanted it so badly, so much so that his hands were trembling as he wrote the lyrics to the last song. His Cure.
When he recorded his part, his voice felt right, strong, everything was as it should be. He wrote down the lyrics and created an incredible melody. But it felt incomplete, his last creation had to be perfect.
Ivan felt it. He could feel in his soul what was missing, but he had no right to this part. Because it is not his, because it will not be about him.
Recently, Ivan had kept the door to his house unlocked. This made it easier for deliveries to come in and out, and his manager handled the payments as usual. Thanks to this, he could completely immerse himself in his madness, in the world created by his sick brain.
The disease was taking over his body, he could feel it, he was fighting with his last strength. He could not die while his piece of art was unfinished, no.
He starts singing by himself. That's why he doesn't hear the door open, or the footsteps, or anyone calling out to him.
He turns back to the window and closes his eyes, a sad smile dancing on his lips as he hummed a melody where the words of another person should be. The person whose voice he is now imagining.
Ivan doesn't need to look in the mirror to tell that his eyes are now glowing red, he feels warm blood dripping from his mouth, and in a dance only he knows, he turns around and opens his eyes.
Ivan could not control his own body. No matter how much he denied it, the voice was right, he wanted Till to feel despair and grief for him. He is a terrible person who deep down wanted Till to miss him like Mizi missed Sua. He wanted him to be his, just as Ivan was ready to give all of himself to him.
“Thank you for being a victim of my shallow emotions,” he whispers before kissing Till.
Ivan died in the arms of his beloved one. And for the first time in his life, he was truly happy.
City noise can be annoying, irritating, monotonous and gray. But for Mizi, the noise of the city brings a certain peace, anything is better than silence. Anything that drowns out her thoughts is better.
She is going to meet a friend, and she tried not to think about how they had grown apart recently. And she also tried not to focus on how their group of friends had fallen apart. Trying not to think about how the art disease took away the most precious thing from her, not only her goddess, her meaning of life, but also a dear friend with a beautiful smile of a prince.
But now she's thinking about it again, and she hasn't even noticed that she's already in the coffee shop looking at the menu with a blank stare. She must have scared someone with her behavior, but honestly, she didn't have the strength to do anything about it. She had to save what remained of something in her for Till, who was about to arrive.
Till walks in, and she has always admired his will to live and his determination to achieve what he wants. She feels guilty about getting him involved in that project. Maybe then she wouldn't have seen the sadness in his eyes now.
Till looks like he is getting weaker. He tries not to show it, but she knows he is. Bags under his eyes, a thin face. His fingers are covered with calluses, and it seems he's been playing guitar without a pick lately. Although she is glad to see that light when he looks at her, a piece of that broken world she clings to so strongly.
Although this brightness cannot completely drive the sadness out of his eyes. They are silent, not knowing where to start the conversation. Then Till, obviously a better person than her, asks:
– How have you been doing recently?
From someone else, this question might seem heartless and stupid, as if her appearance should say it all for her, but she knows that from him, this question is not just a formality, but a sincere concern and sympathy. This question expresses both the will to help and the despair of helplessness, because Till cannot even help himself now.
– Everything is getting better. I am slowly trying to move on.
They fell into silence again. And Mizi didn't want to break the peace with her question, as Till seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, and she would probably soon be overwhelmed by her own personal worries. But somehow it was easier with Till around, he was there and she could let herself think about everything she had been avoiding for the past months, she just hoped that Till could do that too. That he knows that she's here, by his side.
Till felt guilty for not listening to his friend's answer. He has not been able to concentrate for some time. He can't do much of anything.
Well, maybe, but only just one thing.
When Ivan kissed him, Till's mind went blank. All thoughts drifted out of it as soon as he heard that calm, deep, full of sadness voice. It touched him by the deepest strings of his soul, and he wanted to sing without even knowing the words. But Ivan's death brought him out of this magical daze and he remembered everything.
How he first worried about Mizi, who lost her lover, how he tried to support her. And how he neglected his closest friend, the friend who seemed to understand him the best. A friend who was always there for him, no matter how annoying he was, and who became his closest person in the world.
And the funny thing is that he was so blinded by grief that he didn't notice how the person who was always there for him disappeared, and it left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.
The feeling of metal on the tongue...
He didn't want to leave Ivan alone, and he felt very guilty about it; he probably feels resentful of him, which he has a full and immediate right to. Or he is suffering from his own pain of loss all alone.
Sua was Mizi's lover, but she was a close friend for both of them.
So that day Till found out Ivan's address. It was strange to arrive and see an ordinary high-rise block of flats, Ivan doesn't seem to care about luxury at all, although with his popularity he can afford better housing.
Although he recalls how they discussed it, Ivan said:
– I don't see the point of a big house. I just need a place to stay, a computer, a notebook, and a pen. This is all for making art. It replaces a large house for me.
It sounded very sad, but Till understood him, he lives in the house only because it's a habit, he doesn't even remember why he keeps doing it. Maybe for his mother, that he barely remembers.
He knocked and got no response, checked the handle and realized that the door was open, he was going to yell at Ivan why his door was open. What if someone robbed him or a crazy stalker broke into the house? Worry overwhelmed the boy again and he called Ivan. He did not answer, which scared Till, so he listened to the sounds and went into the living room.
And then everything was a blur, as if he was under a spell, ancient, unknown, and so fascinatingly melancholy.
Only the taste of blood on his tongue could bring him back to reality. He caught Ivan in shock and called him, over and over again. The man only tried to tell him something with a smile, but his mouth was bleeding, his eyes had red glows that slowly faded until Ivan's beautiful eyes were completely empty.
Then Till broke down and cried. He couldn't lose the person closest to him, the person who had already become a part of him in the short time they had been together. He was such an idiot.
All the feelings that Till had once had came crashing down on him in an agony he had never even known he had before. At first there was only the pain of loss, sharp, burning. It lasted so long that it seemed like it would never end.
But then comes emptiness, hopelessness, despair, love . All this left a deep hole in his soul, inside which Till sat trying not to forget that charming voice, those shining eyes, that happy expression.
In the end, he did what he always did. He went into music. Till composed non-stop as if it was the only thing that kept his body alive, and at the same time, each song seemed to cause him physical pain, but it was still better than emptiness and oblivion.
Finally, he came to Mizi. Till has no words for her, for which he is sorry, but he has to say something to the one who never got them.
– And you, Till, how are you? I heard your latest songs, you seem to be experimenting with different genres.
– I want to try poetry, love songs.
– An unexpected choice.
– Yes, I know.
– For who?
– For one person.
This dialogue was very difficult for both of them, Mizi could feel it, they were both trying to look normal so that the other wouldn't worry, how cute. And how did she deserve such a friend? Mizi expected another long pause, full of unspoken thoughts and regrets. But Till suddenly smiled dreamily and said:
– You know, I hope I'll meet him soon. The person for whom this song is written.
He put his hand in his jeans pocket and pulled out a dark notebook, the cover read Cure, and for some reason Mizi thought the name was familiar, as if she had seen it somewhere, the way it was written reminded her of someone.
Mizi looked up at Till again, who was once again serious and staring at the notebook with determination. She froze when she saw something in Till's eyes, but relaxed, rejecting it as impossible. There were no such cases, she would have heard of it, she just imagined it.
It just seemed to her that Till's eyes glowed red for a second.