Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘although we thought that we dreamed the same dream
that dream has finally become a dream
my heart is torn, please burn it instead
so that pain and regret, none of that would be left’

— outro:tear by BTS

μηδέν — T.E. [“goodbye” my heart, it feels hollow, feels like an illness; even in the slightest breeze,]

Anaxa can't sleep.

-...

Death is the moment in life when one’s functions all cease to exist. When one breathes their last breath, when their heartbeat ceases, and when their brain stops functioning, all body systems are no longer capable of continuing the processes understood as life.

Anaxa had seen it so many times before.

The first ones that went away were his parents.

He had nearly forgotten how it went, considering he was very young back then, his height merely reaching up to his sister’s knees. Yet his brain still retained the memory of that time, when fire alarms rang throughout the entire apartment unit, and the smell of burnt food wafted through the small space where they lived.

Their parents had left a few days ago for an event overseas, their suitcases packed to the brim. They had explained to the siblings that there was an additional one-week vacation clause to the invitation, and they did not want to waste the opportunity. Sadly, they couldn’t get an extra ticket, which meant they couldn’t bring their children with them.

Anaxa would've chirped back then, once a cheerful kid whose smiles brightened the whole house. This time, however, there was none of the sort. The kid ignored the crestfallen looks on his parents’ faces, anger still stirring in his heart due to his parents ‘leaving’.

They had tried to explain the concept well to Anaxa, that this was just another ‘business trip’, and that they would return immediately, but he was convinced of the fact that they would never do so.

A few days later, Anaxa had been playing with his snow globes while watching television. His childhood friend, Phainon, was there with him, keeping him company while his older sister tried her best to cook dinner for two growing boys. Based on the burnt smell that Anaxa could sense from the living room, it’s not going that well.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. The young Anaxa couldn’t help but furrow his eyebrows. He didn’t know who would be knocking on their door at this time of the evening. And as far as he knew, their parents won’t be home yet for the next two days! Still, Anaxa was a curious kid back then, so he stood up, patted his shorts for imaginary dirt, and ran to the door, barefoot.

Diotima could hear her younger brother’s footsteps through the wooden floors. ‘Baby, stay in the living room! I’ll get that!’ She called out, dropping the wooden spoon she was holding on the kitchen counter and walking to the entryway of the house after his brother.

Her orders went unheard as Anaxa impatiently opened the door to two police officers, their faces somber.

It was a blur after that. All Anaxa could remember since then was his sister bursting into uncontrollable sobs, the police from the front door offering condolences as they told the two about ‘an unfortunate accident that happened’... ‘a major incident with the aircraft’... ‘Flight 282 crashed approximately five days ago’... ‘about 100 miles from its destination’... ‘your parents’ bodies are found—’

Unfortunate.

An accident.

His parents’ death was something that wasn’t supposed to happen… and the last thing he had told them was how he hated them for ‘leaving’.

A few years later, he was ten years old, growing up under the care of his older sister, who was merely 15 years older than him. Too young to shoulder the burden of taking care of a toddler, but even when they were faced with the problem of a limited salary and lessened food every day, Diotima still did her best to make sure Anaxa grew up surrounded by love, and Phainon made sure to stay by his side. In a way, Anaxa still had his family with him, even though there had once been four of them, but now there were only two and a friend.

Anaxa grew up to be a bit of a rulebreaker.

He wasn’t too much of a rebellious kid, but he could often see the exhaustion built up in his sister’s body as she received a call from his school for a second time this week, about his younger brother blowing up something in the science lab. Then she’ll look at Anaxa, a tight smile on her face, and it feels like something grips his heart tight as she goes inside her room to scrounge up something to pay for the broken materials.

‘It’s fine, Anaxa,’ his sister had told him, while counting what meager bills she had left from working two odd jobs. ‘Please don’t destroy school property the next time, okay?’

Diotima had been planning to use that money to go to a doctor, as she had been feeling unwell lately, but, of course, of course, she’ll use it on something as stupid as paying for the fee her younger brother had accumulated over the past few days.

Diotima was twenty-five, but she looked like a paper-doll version of herself, her skin stretched too tight over her bones. He had been hearing her crying every night, often affecting his sleep, but he knew he couldn't bother her about it because she hadn’t been sleeping too.

Diotima said she was exhausted, but Anaxa knew that wasn’t right. Tired people slept. His sister never slept. He’d asked her once, curled cautiously by her chair. ‘’Tima, why don’t you just close your eyes?’

Anaxa didn’t want his sister to feel like this. He kept telling himself that it wasn’t his fault, that maybe the staff should’ve locked the materials better, but ultimately, he knew that he wasn’t making their lives any better by acting out and giving his sister much more stress.

In later years, he would find out that what he was feeling was guilt.

The second one who fell asleep was his sister, and Anaxa had never appreciated her when she was still alive.

Perhaps he was the problem, after all.

“Anaxa, wake up! Anaxa, are you okay?” A worried voice called out to him.

Right at that moment, he opened his eyes, only to see his vision riddled with dark spots. There was a large amount of smoke inside the car, the smell of burnt oil hurting his lungs as he tried to inhale. Several coughs rattled through his weak body, with the feeling of something that tastes like iron dripping out of his open mouth.

Trying to guess what had happened felt like swimming through molasses, but Anaxa could feel his memories come back one by one. They were driving back from a party. Phainon.

He was with Phainon.

“Phainon!” Anaxa shouted, his voice rough and hard to hear. He let out another cough, using his hand to wave away the black smoke coming from the crashed car as he searched for his friend inside the car. There was an unpleasant ringing in his ears. “Where are you?”

He wanted to search around more, wondering why he couldn’t locate Phainon, considering he was the driver. Perhaps the crash displaced him? Anaxa could only hope Phainon was safe; otherwise, he didn’t know what he would do.

“Anaxa, are you still inside the car? You need to get out of there!”

That was Phainon’s voice. Relief flooded Anaxa’s veins, leaving him warm and dizzy. He’s okay. He’s out. He’s safe. He tried to move, to push himself towards that voice, towards that outstretched hand. But he couldn’t.

“Phainon?” Anaxa can’t stop the feeling of giddiness bleeding into his words. His friend was safe. He didn’t lose anyone else.

He placed a hand on the car handle and opened it, trying to move to get out. “I’m coming—”

He can’t move.

Why can’t he move?

Without looking down, he tried to figure out what was holding him in place. Anaxa could feel pressure on his thighs, something being cushioned on them, heavy enough that simply removing himself underneath it was impossible; he had to raise it off of him.

“I can’t,” Anaxa mumbled, his own voice thick and strange. “I’m stuck. There’s… something…” With a sigh, he released the car handle and placed his hands on the possible debris, only to feel something wet and sticky stain his fingers.

Blood. It must have been his; he was coughing up blood just a few seconds earlier.

Thump.

Thump.

His heart started to race for some unknown reason.

He looked down, his movements sluggish, to see what was trapping him.

Thump.

Thump.

What Anaxa was about to say dried in his throat. “Phai…?” He rasped, his eye starting to shake in horror.

Phainon’s body was splayed across his lap, looking like a broken doll. His head was twisted at a nauseating angle, chin pressed to his shoulder, so that one lifeless, glassy eye seemed to stare directly up at Anaxa. The other was swollen shut, a mess of purple and blue. A jagged shard of windshield glass, like a cruel, transparent dagger, was buried deep in his temple, and a slow, thick rivulet of dark blood traced a path from the wound, down his cheek, and onto Anaxa’s trousers, staining them with a warmth that felt obscene.

His white shirt was stained and torn open, and the pale skin of his chest and abdomen was a canvas of livid bruises and deep, grotesque lacerations, from which the stark white of a rib bone gleamed in the light.

A sound ripped from his throat, a choked, guttural thing that was half-sob, half-scream.

He couldn’t breathe. The air was thick, syrupy, filling his lungs with a sludge-like substance. His heart feels like it is convulsing, like a frantic bird slamming against the cage of his ribs. The sound of the rain and the ringing in his ears warping into a single, high-pitched whine.

My fault. My fault. My fault.

“It’s not your—”

Anaxa opened his eyes to the familiar white ceiling of the bedroom he had been shutting himself inside for the past few months, tears streaming down his face. His heart is still beating fast inside his chest, which is usual whenever he gets vivid dreams such as this.

He sneaked a glance at the clock on his bedside table. 1:00 am.

“So much for sleep.”

January

“That brings us to the end of today’s midnight program! Thank you for listening today. Be sure to tune in next week for a very special show. Our last track today is ‘The Prayer’ by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli. Remember, trust us… with your music!”

The old radio’s speakers are a bit static-y, but the host’s voice soon transitions to a very beautiful song, its melody filling the nearly empty apartment.

“♪ Need to find a place… guide us with your grace… give us faith so we’ll be safe. ♪”

Anaxa sighed. This midnight program, which he has been listening to on the radio for months now, is the only saving grace for his exhaustion. Ever since that… incident, sleep rarely comes to him, always keeping him awake and unable to close his eyes. It took him a few years to even be able to sleep for a few days in a row. He thought he was improving. He had finally stopped seeing his shadow everywhere he looked, though the heavy feeling in his chest never really left.

Until two years ago, when he came home from what was supposed to be a very productive and enjoyable day, Anaxa allowed himself to take a very long time in taking a bath, something he had deemed as ‘luxury’ before, since being a professor takes too much time off his schedule. Once he was finished, he lay on his bed, closed his eyes…

He found himself still awake the next morning.

It happened again and again, until a few days later, he collapsed in front of his class, fatigue evident in his trembling form. They had called an ambulance for him, out of fear because he never collapses out of nowhere. Anaxa had scoffed when he woke up on a hospital bed, muttering to himself about how useless this is and he only needed ‘a few days of rest and he’ll be alright’.

But he never did get any rest lately, did he?

The first thing the doctor asked when he came inside his room was about his parents. Weird, since Anaxa never really remembered much about his parents. Still, he answered to the best of his ability. He didn’t know the significance of such a line of questioning until the doctor asked about his sister next.

That’s when Anaxa remembered his sister’s restless nights, her gaunt face, the slow pull of something like death in her presence… one that led her to fall asleep at merely twenty-five and never wake up again.

The look of sympathy on the doctor’s face made Anaxa feel sick.

Yet Anaxa never stopped doing what he needed to do. He continued working as a professor at his old university, pushing himself to the bone, knowing that what he received was exactly what he deserved.

He really should’ve slept before he decided to drive Phainon home.

Anaxa closed the book he was pretending to read, then he stood up and did some light stretches, glancing at the digital clock on his bedside table. It read 6:00 in the morning, so it was the right time for him to get ready for his lectures too. He quickly fixed his bed, opened the closet to grab some leftover clothes that he had for another lecture, and turned around to leave.

But as soon as he was about to leave his bedroom, his eyes caught sight of a few copies of a document resting on his printer, with bright and bold letters visible. Anaxa stood in the doorway, biting his lip, contemplating whether to go forward with this big decision, before shaking his head and grabbing a few copies of the paper as well.

It was time, anyway.

“You’re resigning?” The dean’s hands nearly crumpled the papers she was holding. It was a surprise to her and everyone in the room. Though internally, she was glad that Anaxa finally decided to retire.

It’s not that she dislikes the young man. Ever since he became a professor at their university, she had noticed a surge in students attending a greater number of their classes, and the institution’s ratings had risen significantly. It wasn’t something out of nowhere, either, as Anaxa had been an alumnus here, and thus everyone had known that the former top student would also excel in spreading knowledge to everyone else.

Yet, everyone also knew of Anaxa’s nearly self-destructive habits, to the point where she had been giving him more mandatory day-offs, for fear that he would collapse one day. It worked for a short while, but when he was brought to the hospital because he fainted in class 2 years ago, she found out that Anaxa had been making unpaid overtime sessions in return for those day-offs she had been giving him. So she stopped doing that immediately.

She didn’t think this day would come at all. It would be sad to see him go, but it would be better for the young man’s health if he were to resign.

“Yes, Calypso,” Anaxa agreed, though a small smirk was visible on his lips. “‘Happy New Year’, right?”

Calypso did a little victory dance in her head. “Ah, my dear, I would be very sad to see you go, but I hope you will find yourself a new path in life after letting go of this one!” Perhaps there was too much excitement in her words, because the young man in front of her just sighed before shaking his head.

“I would like to have one last request,” he said. He didn’t want to leave his class so suddenly. “Would you be willing to let me have one last day of teaching before I say goodbye?”

Calypso’s smile disappeared from her face. It was a simple request, and many people who had resigned from their posts usually request things like this to bid their last farewells. Yet, why does his sound so permanent? “Sure… is there a problem—”

“There’s nothing, don’t worry, Calypso.” Anaxa looked outside the window of their door, appearing almost solemn as he watched the students walk down the hallway, nostalgia visible in his eyes. “I just want to savor the last moments I have here before I leave.”

A few moments later, Anaxa walked out of the president’s office with his head held high, his magenta eyes roaming around the halls as if trying to record everything to his memory. In his left hand was a cup of coffee, and in his right hand was his schedule for today, with only one class for Chemistry. He had also planned to resign on this very day because out of all the classes that he taught, it was the class with Chemistry that he held dearest to his heart.

Once he reached the classroom, he was greeted with two party poppers exploding in front of him, so he had to take a step back. “What the—”

“HAPPY RETIREMENT, PROFESSOR!”

Whoops and cheers echoed throughout the class. The party poppers’ perpetrator, the twins Stelle and Caelus, are the loudest of the bunch as they picked up some streamers from the ground before showering him with them. Anaxa groaned and rolled his eyes, though inside, he was touched by all the effort this class had made.

At the back of the room was a large banner with lots of decorations (courtesy of March 7th and Hyacinthia). The class also went above and beyond, even leaving a cake on the desk. “Don’t worry, prof! That cake was safe, it was bought by Dan Heng and Sunday!” Stelle assured the man.

Anaxa gently placed his bag on the ground before chuckling as he looked at the obviously extravagant cake, though knowing it was from Sunday, perhaps he should have expected it. “Word travels fast, huh?”

“You really need this retirement, Prof. Anaxa!” Caelus scolded from the back of the class. “Don’t worry about us! We can pass Chemistry this semester thanks to your wonderful teaching!”

Anaxa raised an eyebrow. “Make sure to pass your other subjects too, Caelus.” Fake affronted gasps echoed throughout the room, with some of the students poking fun at the boy for that statement from their professor. “Jokes aside, today will be the last lesson you will have with me, so don’t think I’ll be letting you off the hook without a surprise recitation.”

Immediately, a round of protests and complaints replaced the earlier cheers, which Anaxa drowned out as he took a sip of his coffee, his tense shoulders sagging in relief as the caffeine hit his system.

.

…

..

“Sigh, I knew that rumor about Khaos wasn’t real. I made a wish last week about winning my last game for basketball yesterday but look what happened!

The chalk noises from the board have lessened in volume as Anaxa hears something. He doesn’t tolerate gossip in his class, but something about the topic of their discussion caught his attention.

“Are you an idiot? Have you even opened the door? That was a crucial part of the ritual, you know!”

“Of course, I even listed the instructions so I won’t miss a single step! It says here, ‘knock on the old science lab door three times; say ‘Khaos, what is your dream? My dream was…’ and then say my wish; and lastly, open the door after five seconds have passed to talk to Khaos!’ But he’s not even there.”

“You didn’t see Khaos behind the door? On second thought, maybe it was fine that you didn’t see anything! I’ve heard that people who have successfully wished for something from Khaos will die in a week. That’s what happened to Caenis from the senior class!”

“That bully? Deserves her right! But how did she die?

“Car accident. Khaos probably takes your life as a price afterwards!”

“Hey, you two.” Anaxa’s sharp voice cuts through the chatter between the two students at the back. The two flinched and jumped away from each other, their heads merely a few inches apart. “If you have something interesting to discuss, perhaps you should talk to the whole class about it.”

“S-Sorry, Professor!” One of them squeaked. The other student went back to his studies and pretended that he was not even talking to his seatmate.

Anaxa sighed before continuing to write down chemistry equations on the board. The conversation from earlier receded into the back of his mind, yet it lingered, like every ghost that had ever haunted his life.

“Hey, do you know what’s really interesting in death, Anaxa?”

Anaxa’s eyebrows furrowed at the weird start to a conversation. They had both been in class that day, enduring their teacher’s endless droning on the history of Amphoreus. It was obvious that no one bothered listening to him. Even Anaxa, who tried to do his best to stay attentive, found his eyes straying somewhere else.

He must’ve stared too long at his seatmate, because suddenly, there’s a hand waving in front of his vision. “Hey, ‘Naxa,” Phainon called out to him, purposefully drawing out the last syllable of his name. “Are you listening?”

“What’s with the sudden question?” Anaxa whispered, batting away Phainon’s hands.

Phainon snickered and rested his chin on his hands, his blue eyes never straying away from Anaxa’s direction. “Nothing. I’m just so bored, so I want to talk to you! Anyway,” he lowered his voice as if speaking a very grave secret. “Do you know that people who died never really left the mortal plane if they have regrets?”

His eyes are so pretty…

W-What was I thinking! Anaxa scoffed, breaking eye contact with Phainon, a blush on his cheeks. “Isn’t that a superstition? You must have been reading too many fictional books lately, Phainon. That isn’t good. Why the sudden interest anyway?”

“Nothing…” Phainon spoke, a melodic tone in his voice as he finally went back to giving the professor all his attention. “I’m gonna start doing stuff that I want to do, so I won’t have any regrets. Though if I die soon with no regrets, I’m gonna leave you all alone… so I’ll make sure to have some regrets left!”

Anaxa flinched at the mention of Phainon dying, his brain already thinking of an event when it might happen. Yet, he can’t stop his heart from beating rapidly at his friend’s proclamation. Ugh, this Phainon…!

-..

.

…

“Professor, are you okay? You have been standing in front of the science lab for 15 minutes now.” A worried voice snapped Anaxa out of his daydream. He had been curious about the childish rumor circulating the school for the past month, and all the stories about ghosts and wishes only fueled his desire to find out the truth.

He cleared his throat. “Hyacinthia, what are you still doing here? Shouldn’t you have gone home already?”

“Ah, but professor, I just saw you go here, and I got interested in what agenda you have!” Hyacine responded with a small yet cheeky smile on her face. She moves her gaze from him to the old science lab door right in front of them, a paper taped to the wall with the words ‘OUT OF ORDER’ written on it. “...Aha, that’s too scary… you’re checking out this rumor?”

“Of course, it was in the university’s best interests to nip rumors like this in the bud. Plus, using the death of a student to amplify such rumors leaves a bad taste in my mouth, no matter how much everyone hated said student when she was alive.”

Hyacine hummed. It was silent soon after, with Anaxa not saying anything in case it would keep her there. “Well, don’t let me stop you!” With a skip in her step and a jaunty hum, she walked away from the area, but not before— “When you make a wish, professor… make sure it’s something you won’t regret.”

And in a blink, she was gone.

Anaxa was left to stare at her receding figure, mulling her words over in his head. He stared at his right hand as he did so.

Regrets.

What had Anaxa regretted the most in his life?

He remembered the day before his parents died, when he had managed to say goodbye.

He remembered the night before his sister slipped into eternal slumber, when he had managed to say good night.

He remembered that afternoon before Phainon—

“Phainon, open your eyes, please,” Anaxa choked out, his throat filled with all the pent-up emotions, shed tears clogging his nose. “Phainon, don’t die— Please, I lo—”

Before he could stop himself, Anaxa’s hand already went to the door of the old science lab and knocked three times.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Khaos, what is your dream?” Anaxa still remembers the conversation clearly. Assuming that the boys he overheard earlier hadn’t made a mistake in the instructions, he was sure he was doing everything correctly.

He swallowed before continuing to speak, feeling his throat blocked for some reason. My regrets… “My dream… was to see Phainon again.”

He wanted to tell him that he was sorry. Anaxa was the kind of person whose misfortune pulls people around them to their deaths, after all. His parents, his sister, and Phainon— they all wasted their lives for a person who wouldn't even live up to thirty years.

Deep within his mind, he wondered how things would have changed if he could go back in time and remove the variable that caused all this suffering. Perhaps his parents wouldn't have died in deep sadness, his sister wouldn't have wasted her life away trying to cover up for him, and Phainon wouldn't have been killed for helping Anaxa improve his life.

The silence in the hallway felt suffocating. His hand itched to open the door. He knew there would be nothing inside but empty space and old equipment, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from believing the rumor, if only a little, hoping to catch even a glimpse of that someone.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

His hand reached forward, grasped the rusty doorknob, and slowly pushed the door open—

The first thing that caught his attention was a flowy and tattered black cloak on top of the ghost's shoulders. His outfit purely consisted of dark colors, with a formal looking suit and pants, befitting of a person that lived in the nineteenth century. A decorative chain was attached from one lapel to another.

The second thing he noticed was a familiar shock of white hair. It was the kind of hair that he always wakes up to, back then, soft and fluffy. It made his heart ache with longing and want and the urge to run his fingers through it.

Anaxa's gaze traveled up, up, up…

Then his eyes met the familiar blue ones belonging to the ghost who continued to haunt him in his sleepless nights.

‘i hear the ocean from far away
across the dream, past the woods
i’m going to the place that’s getting clearer’

— euphoria by BTS

ένα — euphoria [it stains my heart and these eyes, full of self-hate, have always seen the end that]

Phainon was far away from home.

--..--

Anaxa was to blame for Phainon’s death.

Yet, as seconds passed by, as his heartbeat slowed down and his vision blurred, he couldn’t find it in himself to be hateful of the cruel fate that Anaxa had imposed on him. He had tried his best. Perhaps Anaxa was correct, what he said a day before, about himself being cursed with misfortune and endless misery.

Phainon vividly saw everything that happened from the moment of his birth, as if it were a movie being played in a loop. His first cry, the lullabies he’d barely remembered, every hand he’d once held, the promises he wouldn't have the chance to fulfill now— “Ah,” he mumbled, the taste of iron filling his mouth as he remembered: his last promise to Anaxa. “I never… managed to give… you…”

Everything was so loud. It felt like all the noise in the world had suddenly decided to attack both of his ears at once. There was a hand in his hair, running their fingers through his wet locks, murmuring reassurances and shouting words outside that he can barely understand. But it was soft, and warm... and it felt like home.

His body screamed with each inch as he moved, his muscles burned, and his bones ached, but still he leaned closer to that soothing touch, drawn forward by a force he couldn’t resist.

The pain clawed through him, sharp enough to pierce the fog clouding his mind, dragging his eyelids open before he even knew they were heavy. And there, in the dim blur of his vision, stood someone he had only ever seen in dreams: someone who felt like a fragment of heaven made real, as if an angel had come down just for him.

Fuck. I’m getting so delirious… Phainon chuckled, which only made the man in front of him panic even more as he pressed deeply onto Phainon’s stomach. “Phainon, stop laughing. This is not the time— when the fuck will the ambulance arrive?!”

“‘Naxa,” Phainon rasped, his shaky hand reaching up to rest on the man’s cheek in front of him. That’s right, this was Anaxa… They were on a car ride back home… Anaxa volunteered to drive. I knew I shouldn’t have agreed… Anaxa had barely been sleeping the past few days. Heh, what bad luck… “I told you… to sleep more… didn’t I?”

Anaxa recoiled, breath hitching as if the words had struck something vital in his chest. His vision burned, blurring despite his frantic attempts to blink it away. “I-I’ll make myself close my eyes if I have to,” he said, voice breaking. “Please, Phainon— don’t go ahead and do it before me. Phai—”

Darkness crept back into the edges of his sight, thick and heavy, his body turning unresponsive beneath it. His fingers refused to move. His legs felt miles away. His eyelids closed shut—

“—don’t you dare die before me, you bastard! Wake up! Help is coming!”

Anaxa’s voice tore through the haze, sharp enough to wrench his eyes open again. Somewhere far off, a thin wail threaded through the air— sirens, distant, getting louder with every breath he struggled to take.

Still, keeping his eyes open felt like fighting the tide.

“I should’ve…” His breath hitched, the words barely making it past his throat. “forced myself to… s-stay awake longer.” A cough wracked through his body, wet and painful, blood dribbling out of his lips. Outside, he could hear footsteps followed by shouts, their sounds overlapping as figures rushed toward them.

“It’s disappointing, ’Naxa…” His vision blurred, Anaxa’s shape smearing at the edges. “I didn’t get to… w-watch you sleep… even once…”

He had wanted, just once, to watch Anaxa sleep without worry, without pain, without the weight of the world pressing down on him. He knew the mental battles Anaxa kept fighting, hiding them from him, and Phainon longed for a time when his friend would find the beauty in life once more.

And now the chance had slipped through his fingers, leaving a hollow ache he couldn’t swallow.

He had never believed this day would truly come. After his untimely death, Phainon found himself returned to the land of the living— as a hollow echo of who he once was. He drifted through the world as a ghost of a person, with regrets clinging to him like weightless chains.

He remembered once entertaining the idea in passing, spoken almost lightly during a class with Anaxa. Back then, it had been nothing more than a thought, a morbid curiosity. He had never imagined it would become his reality, that those idle musings would one day define his existence.

For months, he wandered the empty roads, his presence unnoticed and unacknowledged. The streets stretched endlessly beneath his feet. Whenever he came across a building he recognized, he would slip through its walls without resistance, becoming used to his intangibility. Inside, he lingered in silence, using those moments to acclimate himself to the remnants of a life he once knew. Each place gave him a quiet hope that perhaps one of them would feel right— that it would be enough to give him a reason to stay, or at the very least, a place where he could exist without drifting endlessly.

But it never lasted long. Phainon had thought that he'd be doomed to stay haunting the streets forever, until his feet brought him in front of the metal gates that resonated with his memories, for it was one that he would often see before entering its halls.

“Right, this is where I…” studied, Phainon trailed off because those same gates opened to a man that his heart knew very well, walking over to the nearby bus stop. “Anaxa…?”

It appears as if he has changed how he presents himself. He used to wear a lot of hoodies and always wore makeup back then, and both of those are absent in his current look. Phainon rubbed his eyes and walked closer to Anaxa, who was oblivious to the ghost now standing beside him, observing his every action as he read a book while waiting for a ride.

Upon closer look, Anaxa's hair lost a lot of its former vitality, almost like it belonged to a decomposing corpse rather than a living being. His magenta eyes lost their shine that Phainon used to love, and now that he thought about it, it seems like this book that he was holding was just for show, as his pupils aren’t even moving as they should be.

He was lost in his mind again, and there's no Phainon this time to pull him from its depths.

Then… Anaxa snapped the book shut. The cloudiness in his eyes had receded, and he shoved the book inside his bag just in time as a bus arrived at the stop, its doors opening ready to receive its new passenger. Phainon just watched as the man trudged up to the entrance and disappeared inside the vehicle, and his eyes never strayed away as it zoomed far, far… until he could no longer see its silhouette.

... perhaps I'll just watch over him from here? Phainon casts a glance once more at the metal gates in front of him.

It had been several years since then, and he had chosen this university as his place of ‘haunting’ and never left, purely because he had seen Anaxa apply to work at this same place for his teaching career. It was a win-win situation: he gets to stay in a place he had known the most in his whole life, and he can see Anaxa every day.

It had been such a pain for Phainon to be unable to hug Anaxa as he used to when he was alive. Everyone might not see it, but Phainon was the one who grew up with Anaxa; it was he who knew Anaxa the best. They didn't know that behind the polite smiles that Anaxa likes to give them lies a very exhausted individual who was probably dragging himself through worn routines every day.

So, Phainon watched. Every second of every minute, he had devoted himself to his friend once more after death, given that he literally had nothing better to do.

He had begun using the old science lab as his ‘perch’, practically no one uses it anyway, which means people are less likely to get suspicious over the minuscule changes in the surroundings. Until one day, a golden-haired woman materialized in front of him, her confusion obvious on her face.

Okay, what the heck? Phainon was sure no human had ever developed some kind of ability related to teleportation, so maybe this was merely a staff that came to this lab to clean, and Phainon was just not focusing. Except that this woman is too pretty to be just a janitor, and she was staring AT him…

“Perhaps you could let me in on some of your thoughts, young child?”

Phainon blinked. He looked around him, trying to find a kid that this woman could be speaking to, yet he saw no one. Silence reigned throughout this awkward moment. He pointed to himself. “... You can see me?”

Bemusement showed itself on her face. “Who else would I be talking to?”

Phainon gasped, and in a quick second, he appeared right next to her, his finger hovering near her skin, clearly about to try touching her to see if he would pass through. He waited for her to say her refusal or outright forbid him, but she stayed silent, so Phainon did his thing: he poked her arm.

Her skin yielded to his touch, just like how normal skin would act if touched by a living person. But Phainon was unable to make contact with any human beings, so that means…

Phainon looked at her intently, trying to spot something that appeared non-human. The woman chuckled at his apparent curiosity. “There are merely two kinds of beings that can see us: those who are close to the far shore and those who are within it.” She placed her hand on top of her chest. “You may call me Aglaea.”

“‘Us’? You mean you're…” just like me. Phainon trailed off, not wanting to continue his question, yet both of them knew what he was asking.

Aglaea nodded to his unspoken inquiry, a solemn expression on her face. He looked away, focusing on a sliver of dust atop a chair instead, pretending to find it fascinating. He didn't think that talking about death would be this hard, even past the phase of living himself.

He remembered what she had told him earlier, and Phainon tore his gaze away so he could look straight into her eyes. “What's ‘far shore’?”

“The far shore is where all those who are unable to rest reside,” Aglaea answered. “People who are filled with regrets, people who are still tied to something from the near shore and are unable to move on to the afterlife.” She walked forward and sat down on one of the dusty benches, her otherworldly glow now much more obvious compared to the darkness of the room. “Near shore is where we once lived, what used to be our home.”

Phainon followed suit, sitting down beside her. “Like… where we currently are? This is the ‘near shore’?”

“You are correct. When people approach their death, they draw closer and closer to the line separating the far shore from the near shore. And when they cross it, that’s when they die,” Aglaea explained. “Beings on the far shore are unable to pass on into the afterlife due to their connections to the near shore, either to people or to things where they still place their regrets.”

I know that already, Phainon thought. He touched his own chest, slightly missing the feeling of something beating behind it. He didn't know the specifics of his actual regret, but he was sure it was tied to Anaxa in some way, with how much he had obsessively watched over him right now. Aglaea, however…

“... What was yours?”

A second after he had asked that, Phainon quickly slammed his mouth shut. Aglaea's face darkened for a bit, her lips slowly forming into a scowl at what might be the most insensitive question ever asked of her in her lifetime.

He was on the verge of retracting the statement (perhaps even offering an apology) when the storm in her eyes suddenly faded. In its place bloomed something quieter, heavier: a mixture of sadness and longing that softened her expression without easing the ache behind it. “It was my cat,” she said after a pause. “I… I missed the chance to tell her how much I—” Her voice faltered, the words catching in her throat, and she stopped there, clearly unable to push herself any further.

“Just like me, then.” Phainon was no fool. From the way she spoke, he knew she wasn’t talking about a mere cat, not in the way most people meant it. Whatever truth lay beneath those words was fragile, and he had no desire to tear open old wounds that had barely begun to scar over. Instead, he offered something of his own. “I wanted to… give something to a friend before I died,” he admitted. “I never got the chance.”

Aglaea looked at him then, appreciation flickering across her face for what he had chosen not to say. She turned his words over in silence before asking quietly, “Do you think you’ll ever be able to resolve your regrets?”

“I don’t know. I…” Phainon’s gaze drifted to the closed laboratory door before them. Through its narrow window, he could faintly make out blurred figures of students hurrying past, their movements hurried and alive; it was likely the start of class. The sight felt distant, like watching the world from behind glass. “I don’t think I can. Not yet, at least,” he said at last. “So for now, I’m just watching over him.”

“You know… we’ve been observing you for a long time, Phainon.”

The somber mood that had settled over the room shattered at those words. Phainon turned sharply toward her, the movement so abrupt it might have snapped his neck had he still been alive. The realization struck him a heartbeat later, sending a chill through what remained of him. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

Before Aglaea could answer, a calm and distant voice spoke. Phainon flinched, instinctively searching for the source, his gaze sweeping the room in quick, unsettled movements. Yet there was no one else there. The air felt heavier somehow, as if something unseen had stepped closer.

“All beings from the far shore are bound by regrets that tether them to the near shore,” the unseen presence said. “But there are others, those who carry something more, something that anchors them just as firmly.” The voice paused, deliberate. “The task given to us by the Imperator is to ensure that all beings from the far shore pass safely into the afterlife, their regrets dissolved. Yours, however…” There was a faint hesitation, almost thoughtful. “Yours is very tricky.”

Phainon barely had time to process those words before a figure manifested in front of him, as though stepping out of the air itself. A woman stood there now, her expression gentle yet knowing. Long, wavy red hair framed her kind face, and her presence carried a quiet authority that made his chest tighten. She extended a hand toward him, palm open, as if inviting him in somewhere.

“…Say, Phainon,” she said softly, her voice warm but weighted with purpose. “What do you think about helping other regretful souls like us?”

..

…

-

That was how Phainon became Khaos, a supernatural entity spoken of in whispers, a wish-granter said to answer the deepest desires of those who dared to seek him out.

Before his duties could truly begin, however, he needed something just as important as power: a reputation. With the help of Helektra, a ghost who presided over the broadcasting studio and understood better than anyone how rumors took root, they carefully seeded a story throughout the campus. It spread quickly, carried from hushed conversations to half-serious warnings: that there was a ghost in the old science lab, a being named Khaos who could fulfill any wish made in his presence.

The truth, of course, was far more complicated. Phainon did not grant wishes in the way people imagined. What he actually did was untangle regrets— quietly resolving what the living would otherwise carry with them into death. By easing those burdens before it was too late, he helped thin the ever-growing number of regretful souls that crossed over each day. And there was another reason he accepted the role without protest: it allowed him to remain near Anaxa, to watch over him indefinitely. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad arrangement at all.

As days passed, Phainon observed the consequences of the rumor he had helped create. Students and staff alike began to appear at the old science lab, one by one, attempting the whispered ritual meant to summon Khaos. He watched from his place within the room as they gathered their courage, opened the door, and stepped inside… only to leave moments later in confusion, unable to see him standing right there. And so the legend continued to grow, fed by the lingering belief that perhaps they simply hadn’t done it right.

“Why can’t anyone see me?” Phainon complained, pacing in agitation. “How am I supposed to do my job if they can’t see me at all?” He ranted to Cyrene, a fellow ghost, who could only giggle at the sight of his exaggerated pout.

Cyrene was one of the timebound spirits, which were ghosts tasked with overseeing the flow of time itself and ensuring that no anomalies slipped through its seams. To her, Phainon’s problem was amusing in the way only something new could be. She had long since grown accustomed to the oddities of the afterlife, while he was still grappling with the sheer scale of it.

Phainon hadn’t expected death to be like this. There was so much more structure, so many roles and rules, than he could have ever imagined while he was alive. At times, it felt absurdly similar to the manga he used to skim through in the bookstore.

He let out a tired sigh, leaning back as he waited, silently hoping that the next person to knock on the lab door would finally be able to see him. Beside him, Cyrene’s smile slowly faded, replaced by a faintly melancholic expression. It was one that Phainon, lost in his own worries, failed to notice.

Everything changed the day a student opened the door and saw him.

Phainon had been ecstatic. In hindsight, he knew he’d acted far from professionally (a fact the Imperator would later make very clear), but none of that mattered in the moment. For the first time since taking on the role of Khaos, he had been seen and acknowledged. And in the end, he had succeeded in fulfilling the student’s wish.

When he excitedly relayed the experience to the other ghosts afterward, he noticed Tribios and Aglaea exchange a brief, knowing look. At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it. He had only just begun to grasp the concepts of the ‘far shore’ and the ‘near shore’ when he took on the job; it would take him far too long to realize the truth— that only specific people could ever reach him at all.

He had been smiling when he bid the girl farewell after their deal was complete, watching her leave with lighter steps than when she had arrived. Her wish had been disarmingly simple: she’d only asked for his help in planning her mother’s birthday celebration. She wasn’t a particularly good kid by her own admission, but she wanted to make her mother happy for all the headaches she knew she’d caused her over the years.

“What if we do a collective gift-giving event?” Phainon asked casually, balancing a pencil on the bridge of his nose as if it were the most reasonable idea in the world. Christmas was drawing near, and with finals having drained every ounce of energy from their class, he thought a year-end party might be exactly what everyone needed to let their overworked brains breathe again.

Anaxa made a small noise of curiosity and finally looked up from his notes, one eyebrow lifting. “‘Collective gift-giving event’?” he repeated, setting his pen down. After several hours of their strictly enforced ‘no-phones’ study session, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Phainon had reached the limits of his concentration.

Phainon grinned, delighted to have successfully captured his attention. Sitting up straighter, he let the pencil fall to the floor with a clatter and leaned closer, enthusiasm written all over his face. “I saw it online recently! Everyone buys a gift for everyone, no price restrictions, and there are themes so people don’t overthink it, like ‘something red,’ or ‘something big,’ or stuff like that. Doesn’t it sound fun?” By the time he finished speaking, his face was only centimeters away from Anaxa’s.

“…Idiot.” Anaxa leaned back, as if the other had a disease that he didn't want to catch. “There are around forty-five people in our class,” Anaxa scoffed, flicking Phainon lightly on the nose. “We can’t afford that many gifts.” Ignoring the wounded whine that followed, he turned back to his notes and resumed studying for his rapidly approaching Molecular Biology final exam.

Silence settled over the room. Defeated, Phainon crawled back onto his bed and let out a long, exaggerated sigh. He had been so excited about the idea, too…

Anaxa might have left it there if Phainon had stopped, but the sighs kept coming every few seconds, very drawn-out and theatrical, occasionally punctuated by quiet grumbles and pitiful whines. It was painfully obvious that Phainon was attempting to annoy him into submission. And unfortunately, it was working.

“Ugh, fine!” Anaxa snapped at last, rubbing his temples as the beginnings of a headache took hold. “We’ll go with your suggestion.” Behind him, Phainon’s gloomy expression instantly brightened, as if Christmas had arrived far earlier than scheduled.

For Phainon, it practically had. He’d wanted Anaxa to agree more than he let on, because now his secret plan could proceed uninterrupted: a very special EXTRA gift just for Anaxa. One he definitely wouldn’t be expecting.

It might not be obvious to everyone, who always assumed that the two of them are joined at the hip, never seen without the other. But Phainon knew the truth— Anaxa had always kept him at a distance. The two of them are like magnets with similar polarities: the more Phainon wants to get closer, the farther Anaxa goes.

How was he supposed to help him improve if Anaxa didn't want to lower his guard around him?

As Anaxa returned to his notebook, Phainon discreetly slipped his phone into view and checked the order he’d placed earlier: a DIY snow globe.

Arriving soon.

Perfect. He barely managed to stifle a mischievous giggle right before a pen came flying across the room and struck him squarely on the forehead.

“Get your hands off your phone, Phainon!”

..

.-..

.-..

Phainon had been humming to himself for hours. Just the night before, he had completed a deal with one of the students, and the quiet satisfaction of having helped her still lingered in his chest. To him, it felt like a genuine accomplishment. It meant that he was finally doing what he was meant to do.

He was tired (if ghosts could even get tired) from all the decorations he had helped arrange around her living room while she baked a cake in the kitchen. He could still hear her cheerful voice echoing in his mind. “I’ll be fine now, Mister Khaos! Thanks for all your help. I’ll put your ideas to good use!”

She had even flashed him a thumbs-up and a wide, toothy grin, a far cry from the image she carried at school as a self-proclaimed delinquent with badly bleached hair and a permanent scowl. Seeing that unguarded smile had felt oddly rewarding, as if he’d glimpsed a version of her few others ever did.

Only afterward did Phainon realize she’d been missing frosting for the cake. The thought made him frown faintly. He regretted not pointing it out, but perhaps she had noticed on her own and gone out to buy some? Her mother wouldn’t be home until midnight, after all. There was still time.

A sudden series of knocks at the lab door tore him from his thoughts, drawing a sharp sound of irritation from his throat. Straightening himself, Phainon wrenched the door open and forced a bright, practiced smile onto his face.

“What is it?” he asked through gritted teeth.

Cyrene merely stared at him, her expression unreadable. Without a word, she gestured for him to step beyond his Boundary before drifting away, guiding him toward a nearby room. A group of students had gathered there, huddled tightly in front of a large television mounted against the wall.

Phainon’s irritation ebbed as he followed her gaze. The students were whispering among themselves, their voices hushed but urgent as they watched the news broadcast. What could be so—

“In the XX District, three people were injured, and one was pronounced dead at the scene after a vehicle crashed into the entrance of a convenience store at eleven o’clock last night,” the reporter announced. Her tone betrayed none of her personal thoughts. “Authorities state that the driver was intoxicated following a party and has since been taken into custody for investigation. The injured were rushed to the hospital for treatment, while the deceased was found to have suffered severe head trauma…”

The rest of the report dissolved into noise as the students’ murmurs grew louder. Phainon barely registered them. His eyes were fixed on the screen, unmoving. As the reporter continued listing details, blurred images appeared: emergency lights, shattered glass, a body obscured by pixelation. Yet one detail remained unmistakable.

A crushed frosting container lay on the ground… And the familiar, badly bleached hair, which was now stained with red.

“Wasn’t that—”

“Yeah, that’s the—”

“When people approach their death,” Aglaea’s voice echoed in his memory, “they draw closer and closer to the line separating the far shore from the near shore. And when they cross it, that’s when they die.”

Was this what she had meant?

The student had been able to see him only because she was already close to the far shore.

If she had never seen him—

Phainon clamped a hand over his mouth, his body reacting on instinct as nausea surged through him. But there was nothing to expel. No stomach to empty, because he wasn’t human anymore. He wasn’t alive.

“Don’t destroy yourself over this, Phainon.”

Cyrene’s voice cut cleanly through the chaos in his head. She offered him a gentle, practiced smile. “She didn’t die because she saw you. It was merely… Fate granted her an early death.” Her words were soft, almost tender, yet they carried the unmistakable weight of someone who had witnessed this kind of ending far too many times.

Most of what she said faded into the background, but Phainon still appreciated the intent. At the very least, the girl had gotten what she wanted. She’d been able to throw her mother a birthday party— something she would have deeply regretted missing if she never got the chance.

And then it clicked.

‘Helping other regretful souls.’

I get it now.

Today was meant to be no different from any other for Phainon. The old science lab remained still, dust motes hanging lazily in the air, time flowing as it always did within the confines of his Boundary. And yet, something felt wrong. A faint, persistent unease had settled deep in his gut, an instinct he had learned not to ignore.

Right on cue, the sound came.

A knock echoed against the door of his Boundary, slow and deliberate, reverberating through the empty lab. Phainon straightened, instinctively donning the familiar polite smile he wore for visitors. He had played this role enough times to know how it went.

“Khaos, what is your dream?” comes the question. “My dream… was to see Phainon again.”

The door creaked as it was pushed open inch by inch, its hinges protesting the movement. Sunlight spilled through the widening gap, cutting into the dimness of the lab and scattering long shadows across the floor. For a brief moment, a single silhouette stood framed in the doorway, blocking the light from fully entering.

Phainon’s smile faltered, then it vanished entirely, the moment his mind finally registered who stood before him.

No way.

“Phainon…?” Anaxa’s voice wavered. “You’re… Khaos…?”

From where he stood, Phainon could see it clearly: the way the light in Anaxa’s eyes flickered as his gaze traced over him, as though committing every detail to memory. Bewilderment etched itself into his expression, his hands twitching at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling as if he were fighting the urge to reach out, to prove that this wasn’t some cruel trick of his mind.

No fucking way—

After a moment that felt far too long, Anaxa seemed to come to a decision. He stepped fully into the lab, boots splashing softly through the shallow water that flooded the floor. His arms lifted hesitantly, the instinctive gesture of someone preparing to embrace a friend they thought they had lost, just like in the old days.

“It’s… it’s you—”

“What are you doing here?”

Right now, Phainon couldn’t stop the fear and frustration from bleeding through his composure. Anaxa shouldn’t have been able to see him— not right now. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He had always imagined it happening years later, maybe even decades later, when time had run its proper course. Anaxa was meant to have a long life ahead of him.

“No,” Phainon muttered, the word torn from him before he could think better of it.

He crossed the distance between them in a few hurried steps and seized Anaxa by the shoulders, his grip tight and unthinking. He didn’t notice the way Anaxa flinched at the sudden contact— not at first. All he could feel was the warmth beneath his hands, solid and unmistakably alive. Warmth he should not have been able to touch. The realization shattered something in him, and a few stray tears slipped down his face before he could stop them.

“This— this isn’t how this is supposed to happen,” he said hoarsely, his voice breaking under the weight of it.

For the first time in his life— and in his afterlife— Phainon wished, with everything he had left, that it were someone else standing in front of him. Anyone else. Of all the wishes he had ever answered, his own was the one he could never fulfill.

“You shouldn’t be able to see me this early,” he nearly sobbed, panic and despair boiling over, every emotion he’d buried clawing its way to the surface in this rare, unguarded moment. “This isn’t—”

“Am I going to die?”

Phainon went completely still. The words had been phrased as a question, but both of them knew the truth lodged beneath it. There was no other answer waiting there. And the worst part was that it was Phainon’s fault, because he hadn’t been able to keep his mouth shut.

Silence stretched between them, long and suffocating.

Phainon didn’t dare break it. So Anaxa did.

He stepped farther into the lab, hesitating when he noticed the water pooled across the floor, confusion briefly flickering across his face. Still, he closed the door behind him, the dull sound of it clicking shut echoing through the room. He wandered, scanning the space as if searching for somewhere to sit that wasn’t a dusty bench or a broken chair.

From where Phainon stood, he could see Anaxa bump into scattered debris now and then, movements slightly off, unfocused. It was clear he wasn’t entirely present, his mind lagging somewhere behind the weight of what he’d just learned.

No one would be, after something like that.

Phainon remained rooted to the spot, not trusting himself to move. Any step he took now would only betray the chaos roiling inside him. Instead, he turned his attention to the only window in the lab, watching the world beyond it continue on as if nothing had changed. The warm hues of sunset bled across the glass, orange fading slowly into deeper blues as day surrendered to night. He watched it all in silence, refusing to address the soon-to-be-dead elephant in the room.

Too soon, he thought, and immediately cringed at himself for it.

Years of being dead had warped his sense of distance from things like this. He’d grown accustomed to calling himself ‘not human,’ repeating it until it felt true. Somewhere along the way, he’d begun to detach from the person he used to be; just as Cyrene had, just as all the other ghosts eventually did. And now, standing there while the sun set on a life that wasn’t finished yet, Phainon realized how terrifyingly easy it had been to forget his own humanity.

Phainon remained silent, the weight of everything pressing down on his chest. He didn’t trust himself to speak. But Anaxa, for all his restraint, had never been good at letting questions fester. Curiosity had always been second nature to him, even now.

“So,” he said at last. “Soon.” Anaxa's voice was unnervingly steady, as though the truth he had just uncovered had already settled into place, no longer something new or shocking. “When?”

“I don’t know,” Phainon answered honestly. Death was never precise. It could arrive the very next day, or linger at the edges of someone’s life for months. No one ever knew the exact moment. “The longest someone has lived after seeing us is around a year.”

Anaxa just hummed in response, and just like that, silence reclaimed the space between them. The only sound that broke it was the faint splash of water as Anaxa continued to wade through the flooded lab. Phainon heard him mutter under his breath (complaints about ‘flooded rooms’ and ‘did the pipe explode or something?’), his irritation so genuine and mundane that Phainon couldn’t help the short, surprised snort that escaped him. Anaxa shot him an unimpressed look in response.

“I won’t die just because I made a wish, right?”

“No,” Phainon replied immediately, the word coming out sharper than he intended. “Technically, you haven’t actually made a wish yet. But no, you didn’t cause this. It’s… more of a matter of perceiving us, in a sense.”

If he was being honest with himself, Phainon had expected something different. Panic, anger— anything. Every movie he had ever seen always included at least a moment of disbelief. People broke down, they raged, they refused to accept it… Yet Anaxa showed none of that.

Phainon studied him more closely, squinting slightly as he tried to parse what emotions Anaxa might be hiding beneath that calm exterior. Grief was usually the first thing people felt, but instead of sorrow, all Phainon could sense was exhaustion. A deep, bone-weary tiredness, paired with something even more unsettling: acceptance. The combination made his chest tighten.

What aren't you telling me?

“This situation feels awkward now, then,” Anaxa scoffed. The sudden shift in tone was jarring, a sharp contrast to the heaviness from moments before. Still, Phainon noticed the faint blush creeping across his face, likely born of embarrassment rather than humor. For what? “My wish, it feels useless now.”

Phainon frowned, the expression instinctive. “What about it?” Being dead and separated from Anaxa for so long had dulled his ability to read him. When he was alive, he could tell what Anaxa was thinking with a glance. Now, every word felt like guesswork. He hated not knowing what was going on inside the other’s head.

“I wished to see you again.” Yeah, you did. This time, Phainon felt heat rise to his face at the bluntness of Anaxa’s words. “Now that I know that you and Khaos are the same, it feels inefficient now. I wasted my wish for nothing. I should've gone with wishing for a lot of money.”

Frustration bled out of Anaxa in a quiet sound as he surveyed the room. There was nowhere to sit; every surface was either coated in dust or broken beyond use. The flooded floor ruled out sitting on the ground altogether. With another tired sigh, he gave up on searching and dropped onto one of the benches near Phainon, choosing the least filthy one he could find.

Phainon noticed, almost painfully, how Anaxa left a small gap between them. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. “You can make another wish,” Phainon said softly, nearly under his breath. The words felt heavy, as if something were lodged in his throat, making it harder to speak than it should have been. “Not the money one, please. Be realistic, at least.”

Anaxa snorted. After several long seconds of silence, he exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. It was clear he’d already settled on something. “Okay,” he said simply.

“What do you want?”

Anaxa opened his eyes and met Phainon’s gaze directly, his resolve unmistakable. A rueful smile curved his lips, soft and unguarded. “For as long as I’m alive, or until the end of the year, I want you to accompany me wherever I go, whenever I want.”

‘tell me, if my voice is fake
should i have not thrown myself away?
tell me, if this pain is fake
then what must i do?’

— singularity by BTS

δύο — singularity [these farewells are nothing but lies, like these fleeting moments… could have been avoided; yet]

Back when Anaxa’s parents were still alive, their work often took them out of town for long stretches. During those times, Anaxa and Diotima were left in the careful care of their neighbors: Hieronymus, a retired pilot; his flight attendant–turned–wife, Audata; and their son, Phainon.

At first, Anaxa’s parents were deeply uneasy about leaving their children with others while they were in another town. That anxiety only grew when it came to their son. Although Anaxa never spoke about what happened at school, the scrapes and bruises he came home with were enough to tell them that his presence there was not always welcome.

So when they returned from their first business trip to find Anaxa and Phainon asleep beside one another, surrounded by a sprawl of stuffed toys (likely the aftermath of some forgotten game), they could only smile. Their worries eased, and they quietly closed the bedroom door once more.

Anaxa often referred to Hieronymus and Audata as his ‘second’ parents, a remark that never failed to draw a fond chuckle from the adults at the child’s innocence.

Whenever Anaxa’s parents were away, Hieronymus liked to entertain the children with stories of his so-called ‘adventures’ in the sky. In fact, there was one tale in particular that he loved to tell, again and again.

“Wow, you proposed to Mom in midair?” Phainon’s crystal-blue eyes sparkled as he imagined the scene his father so often described. “That’s so cool!”

“Wasn’t that scary?” Anaxa’s eyes were just as wide, but instead of awe, they held a trace of skepticism. Hieronymus only chuckled at the boy’s earnest question.

He crouched in front of Anaxa and gently poked his forehead. “When it comes to the person I love most, there’s no fear I wouldn’t face, young man. Besides!” He grinned. “I’m a pilot. I couldn’t fly a plane if I were afraid of falling.”

Even after the reassurance, Anaxa still looked unconvinced, his baby teeth showing as he gnawed on his lower lip. The former pilot sighed. Perhaps it was time to try a different approach.

“Come here, let’s practice.”

Hieronymus slipped his hands beneath Anaxa’s arms and lifted him onto the highest shelf in the room. It was a risky thing to do (there was always the chance the child could get hurt), but he made sure the shelf stood lower than his own height.

The shelf wobbled, just slightly. Anaxa clutched at the wood in panic.

“When I count to three, you’ll jump. Okay?”

Anaxa’s eyes began to sting with unshed tears, and Hieronymus immediately softened. “H-Hey, don’t cry. Look, Phainon’s right there. He’ll catch you.”

And Phainon really was the best kid anyone could ask for. From below, he flashed Anaxa a brilliant smile and gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Anaxa sniffled, then squeezed his eyes shut, spreading his arms like a bird taking flight.

“Three…”

This is it…

“Two…”

Don’t be scared, Anaxa. Don’t be scared.

“One!”

Anaxa jumped.

It was meant to be a frightening experience, yet in that moment, there was no fear stirring in him at all. He couldn’t open his eyes, and so the only thing he could perceive was the endless expanse of darkness that lived behind his closed eyelids.

Time seemed to slow, as though it had lost its purpose entirely. He felt weightless, reduced to something small and insignificant, drifting through the air without direction. The wind brushed past him, cool and gentle, curling around his body as if it were trying to soothe him. The sensation settled deep within Anaxa’s soul, somehow oddly comforting.

It lasted only three seconds, yet to the young Anaxa, it felt like it was the longest three seconds of his life.

Just as panic finally clawed its way up his throat and he was about to cry out, arms closed around him. Someone caught him, and the force of it sent them both tumbling to the ground. Voices followed (also known as Hieronymus’s worried questions), but they sounded distant now, muffled, as though they belonged to another world entirely.

When Anaxa finally opened his eyes again, the first thing his mind managed to grasp was how effortlessly happiness suited Phainon. He was right there in front of him, close enough that Anaxa could feel his warmth, giggles spilling freely as a bright grin appeared across his face.

“I caught you!”

February

“... Anaxa?”

The sound of a dog’s whine snapped Anaxa out of his reverie, and instinctively, his face twisted into the perfect image of disgust. It wasn’t that Anaxa had anything against dogs. He didn’t, really… he simply preferred cats over drooly, overly affectionate pets.

“Ew,” Anaxa muttered as he felt something warm and sticky pooling in his hand.

He was holding a Samoyed, its pristine, snow-white fur an unsettling echo of his late friend’s appearance. Just looking at how blissfully happy it was, cradled in his arms, tail wagging with unrestrained enthusiasm— made something twist in his chest. For a fleeting, irrational moment, Anaxa wondered if his friend’s soul had somehow found its way into this mammal, rather than the one standing quietly beside him.

That same friend was visibly affronted by what Anaxa had just done. “Don’t say that to Snowy! What if he understood you and then cried because you called him ‘disgusting’?” Fake tears immediately welled up in Phainon’s eyes, amplifying his already pitiful, almost theatrical expression.

“‘Snowy’? You’ve named him already?” Anaxa muttered, setting the dog back on the counter. Though freed from his grasp, the little creature didn’t budge. It stayed perched there, gazing up at Anaxa with wide, imploring eyes, tongue lolling out as if silently begging him to choose it. A faint wag of its tail punctuated the plea.

That's right. Today, Anaxa wanted to adopt an animal.

One might think it ridiculous, especially for someone like him, whose one foot was practically in the grave. He couldn’t even take care of himself properly, yet the idea of adopting a dog? No way the center would ever approve that.

Well… technically, Anaxa couldn’t adopt one permanently. But he knew the center offered a six-month trial adoption program. All he had to do was sign a few papers, and it would be fine. He could return the Samoyed afterward and leave this world without worrying about who would care for the dog in his absence.

….

A darker thought flickered through him: part of him wished the dog would turn aggressive and maul him. But that would mean another life lost because of him. Most likely, the dog would be euthanized after such a vicious attack, and Anaxa would have to add its name to the growing list of living beings he had caused to die.

A wet muscle traced up his hand, followed by a bark and heavy panting. Anaxa suppressed the instinct to shiver. Was it too late to switch to cats…?

A glance at Phainon beside him made the thought vanish instantly. He had even produced a pair of fake dog ears to wear. If this trend continued, maybe Anaxa should just count Phainon as the ‘dog he’d adopted’ and check this off his bucket list.

“So nice of you to adopt this cute dog, Anaxa,” the clerk droned from behind the counter, chin propped on her hand while the other disappeared into a bag of chips. Her posture did nothing to conceal her boredom with the job. “I thought you liked cats?”

Beside him, the ghost, now making exaggerated faces at the Samoyed, who couldn’t see him, noticed Anaxa’s conversation with the clerk. Confusion spread across Phainon’s face. After all, he hadn’t been told that Anaxa was actually adopting a dog.

He had only been summoned by the former professor after a month of what seemed like Anaxa doing nothing but reading at home (at least, that’s what Phainon assumed). Anaxa’s sudden decision to go to a pet store was probably why he’d forgotten to fill Phainon in on the whole plan.

Anaxa ignored Phainon’s questioning stare and rolled his eyes at his friend’s sarcastic remark. “Calypso, what are you even doing working at this shop? Aren’t you the dean?”

“Because, dear,” Calypso said, plucking a potato chip from the bag and crunching it between her teeth, flicking the remaining crumbs toward Anaxa’s general direction. “My twin, Cerces, told me last night,” she added, air-quoting with exaggerated flair, “that she’s going out on a date with her girlfriend. And guess who’s taking her place? Me! Can you believe her audacity? Last night… of all nights!”

Anaxa cut her off, his brow knitting in irritation. “Then who was in the office today?” Even retired for nearly a month, he still felt tethered to the university that had been his home for so many years.

“Oh! Bartholos,” Calypso replied, her tone casual, almost breezy, as if the person she had just assigned wasn’t the same one infamous for orchestrating outrageously expensive pranks. “Don’t worry, I’m sure nothing too disastrous happened… probably.”

“Are you fucking kidding me—”

Calypso raised a hand, cutting off Anaxa before he could launch into his usual tirade of scoldings. “Anyway,” she said, leaning back with a smirk, “are you here to adopt Snowy or not?”

A few signatures later, after enduring Calypso’s repeated warnings and detailed instructions, Anaxa stepped out of the pet shop, the fluffy Samoyed cradled carefully in his arms. Phainon trailed behind, a pensive expression clouding his face, as if he were weighing some unspoken thought.

Anaxa let out a low scoff, the dog’s name suddenly striking him in full. So his name was ACTUALLY Snowy… Shaking his head, he squinted against the harsh sunlight and fumbled for his phone. Despite the glare, he managed to make out the time: ‘12:07’— before closing it again and tucking it away.

“Let’s walk home, Phainon,” Anaxa called out to the ghost he was certain was following behind him. He felt a small relief that the streets were relatively empty at this hour, which meant there was no one around to see him talking to thin air and assume he’d lost his mind.

Beside him, Phainon mirrored his pace carefully, keeping step with Anaxa, who now moved far slower than he had in years past.

The two continued home in near silence, their footsteps the only sound between them. Though the quiet was comforting, Anaxa couldn’t shake the feeling that Phainon wouldn’t be able to resist breaking it eventually.

“Why did you adopt a dog?”

Anaxa raised an eyebrow at Phainon’s question, pausing mid-step to face him fully. “What’s wrong with adopting a dog?” he asked, a faint smirk tugging at his lips, as if daring Phainon to give the wrong answer.

“N-Nothing!” Phainon stammered, his throat clearing nervously. He quickly averted his gaze, trying to soften the judgment in his expression. It wasn’t that adopting a dog was strange— it was that Anaxa was the one adopting one that felt unusual. “It’s just… You don’t like dogs that much.”

“While I may prefer cats, I am perfectly capable of taking care of a dog as well, thank you,” Anaxa replied with a soft huff. If one looked closely, they might notice a spark in his eyes: a quiet fire ignited by the question, a desire to defend what he believed in. “I’ve always wanted to—”

“adopt a pet, you know?" Phainon said suddenly, his voice breaking the quiet as Anaxa focused on finding the crunchiest leaf to crush underfoot.

“Why a pet? Getting a dog is exhausting,” Anaxa replied, crinkling his nose in mild disgust.

Phainon didn’t answer.

Anaxa frowned at the silence, glancing up to find his best friend staring intently at a couple strolling among the fallen leaves. In the girl’s hand was a leash, connected to the most excitable dog Anaxa had ever seen.

The dog let out a cheerful bark and darted in circles around the couple, prompting soft laughter from both. Anaxa rolled his eyes at the overly sweet display and bent back down to his task. “I don’t understand you. I guess I never really wanted to—”

“… adopt. A pet.” The fire that had blazed in Anaxa’s eyes dimmed quickly to a mere spark. It was hard to defend his decision when he had once been so adamant about not taking on another life to care for. “Besides… he’s only staying with me for six months, so…”

Wow. That’s a terrible way to sell it, me, he thought bitterly.

“Hmm…” Phainon trailed off, searching for the right words, trying not to sound insensitive. After a few tense seconds, he finally spoke, his voice quiet but firm. “Don’t you think it’s a little… reckless to adopt Snowy, knowing you could die at any moment?”

The words hung between them, and Phainon immediately clamped his mouth shut. A heavy silence settled, the emptiness of this quiet corner of the neighborhood amplifying the tension. “That’s not what I—” Phainon began, his voice tight.

“Whatever,” Anaxa cut him off, a furious glint flashing in his eyes. He didn’t even know why Phainon’s words had angered him so much when deep down, he knew they were true. That was the whole reason he’d agreed to only six months in the first place.

Maybe that was exactly why it hurt. Because it was Phainon who said it: it was he who had always looked at Anaxa like he was incapable of doing anything wrong, like all Anaxa ever needed was a little help and gentle understanding. Phainon, who never raised his voice, who never got angry at him. He didn’t even know what it was about Phainon’s words that had set him off. They were tame compared to the scoldings Phainon used to give him back then, so why did they cut so deeply now?

Anaxa didn’t wait for a reply. He surged forward, his pace noticeably faster, brushing past the stunned ghost and leaving him behind without a second glance.

In his arms, Snowy shifted uneasily, scrambling up to perch against Anaxa’s shoulder. The dog let out a soft, distressed whine, craning his head as if searching for someone Anaxa refused to look back at.

Once Anaxa reached his apartment, he fished his keys out of his pocket, swearing under his breath when they slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the ground, victims of his own rough movements. “Fucking piece of…” he muttered, crouching down to retrieve the keyring with more difficulty than he cared to admit.

“Once the symptoms begin to show, Mr. Anaxa, I’m afraid it’s all downhill from there,” the doctor had said. Papers rustled faintly in the background, but Anaxa barely registered the sound, his thoughts drowned out by the sharp ringing in his ears.

Phainon finally caught up just as Anaxa jammed the key into the lock. His hand was already on the knob when Phainon spoke again, shame etched plainly across his face. “Anaxa—”

“Phainon.” Anaxa bit back a frustrated sound and whirled around, cheeks blotched red with rage. Even though anger was his current driving force, he didn't show any of it: the adrenaline that coursed through Anaxa’s body dissipated immediately when he saw Phainon’s crestfallen expression. “It's fine. You don’t need to apologize. Just… go in.”

“█naxa, █r█ we r██l█y █oing t█ fi█h█ o█ █hri██ma█—?!”

Time seemed to slip by unnoticed after that. Anaxa lay curled on his side in his bedroom, staring at nothing in particular. The day had been a whirlwind, leaving him unsure if he even had the strength to move again for the next few hours. He was exhausted.

For most people, exhaustion was a small mercy, for it promised deep, dreamless sleep. For Anaxa, it offered no such relief. Fatigue only ushered in another round of nightmares and thoughts he didn’t have the strength to confront in his current state—

‘Once symptoms start to show.’

This is really going to happen.

The door creaked softly as it opened a fraction. Not wide enough for a person to slip through, but that wouldn’t stop a certain ghost. Phainon stepped inside anyway, moving with deliberate care, as if sound or space still mattered to him, unwilling to disturb Anaxa’s apparently sleeping form.

He sighed and sat down behind Anaxa, the mattress remaining perfectly undisturbed beneath him, untouched by any hint of weight. “I’m glad you’re sleeping right now,” Phainon murmured. There was a cool edge to his voice that betrayed the words, as if he knew Anaxa wasn’t truly asleep at all.

Anaxa stayed silent, not trusting himself to speak.

“It was always hard to make you sleep before, you know?” Phainon continued, quieter now. “It felt like an impossible task.”

Phainon leaned forward, carefully brushing a few loose strands of hair from Anaxa’s face. When his fingers didn’t pass through them, he froze. A faint frown crossed his features, and he quickly pulled back, putting distance between them once more.

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” he said after a pause. “Don’t worry about Snowy. I’ll… help take care of him with you.” Then he let out a soft chuckle, light but tinged with something wistful. “Besides, I’ve always wanted a dog, too.”

I know. That’s why I got him, after all.

But Phainon didn’t need to know that.

Slowly, Phainon rose from the bed and drifted toward the door. As it closed behind him, the room sank back into darkness, his faint ghostly glow trailing after him until it disappeared entirely.

Anaxa didn’t manage to sleep again that day.

March

Anaxa took a deep breath to steel his nerves. He couldn’t believe he was actually going through with this. With a trembling hand, he lifted a small portion of noodles with his chopsticks.

The two of them were seated inside a convenience store, a place where Anaxa could freely buy eight packs of the same brand of noodles without anyone questioning his sanity.

He remembered how excited Phainon had been back then, practically buzzing at the thought of tasting these specific spicy noodles. They were one of those ‘3x’ brands, released only days before Phainon died. It still annoyed Anaxa to no end— how Phainon had pestered him relentlessly to try the challenge together, fully aware that he himself couldn’t handle spicy food in the first place.

“It’s amazing. How is this still in production?” Anaxa had muttered earlier while stacking the noodle packs onto the counter.

Beside him, Phainon had looked like Christmas had come early: his eyes were bright, and his expression was alight with barely contained joy. And yet, beneath it all, there had been something else in his gaze— a quiet, searching look, as though he were trying to piece together exactly what Anaxa had been planning over the past few weeks.

When his parents and sister died, Anaxa had never been given a chance to make it up to them, to do something right after everything had gone wrong. Back then, he had been certain he would simply waste away, rotting inside his apartment, waiting for the end to come. Now that Phainon was here, this was his only chance to let him experience all the things he’d missed, all the small joys he’d wanted but never got to have.

It was the only way Anaxa knew how to atone for killing him that day.

“Well?” Phainon prompted, leaning forward eagerly, gesturing for Anaxa to start eating. He would’ve loved to taste it himself, but being ‘as dead as a doornail’ meant he wouldn’t feel a thing.

“Alright, alright, just calm down,” Anaxa muttered. Before he could second-guess himself, he leaned forward and shoved the noodles into his mouth, refusing to give his doubts even a moment to catch up.

Across from him, Phainon’s expression visibly brightened. Anaxa had actually eaten the noodles. He’d nearly been convinced Anaxa would back out of the challenge, but seeing him push through without letting fear stop him brought a flicker of satisfaction.

“How was it?” Phainon asked eagerly. He rose from his seat and leaned closer, even going so far as to tiptoe to close the distance between them. He wanted to know everything.

Up close, the change was impossible to miss. Anaxa’s face had flushed a vivid red, his cheeks puffed out like a hamster’s from the sheer amount of noodles he’d stuffed into his mouth at once. He swallowed with effort, then reached for a piece of savory chicken on the side and ate that too, as if trying to counteract the heat.

Anaxa suddenly froze.

“That must’ve sucked—” Phainon began his teasing, but his words faltered when he noticed something off, his gaze locking onto a peculiar sight.

Tears streamed down Anaxa’s face, dropping onto the table as he finally swallowed his portion.

Phainon’s grin widened at the sight, clearly entertained by the visible agony on Anaxa’s face. The ‘3x’ spicy level hadn’t been exaggerated, after all. Watching Anaxa’s flustered expressions seemed to delight him, and Anaxa’s chest fluttered unexpectedly at Phainon’s elated laugh as he reached for another serving despite the obvious distress it caused him.

“I’m not giving up this challenge just because I cried, you ass,” Anaxa sniffed, letting some tears run beneath his nose. He had to release his chopsticks for a moment to wipe his face, embarrassed at all the fluids he was releasing at once.

It’s pathetic how good he was at acting these days.

Anaxa choked as another wave of fresh tears spilled from his eyes. “I-It's not spicy at all! I can do another set!” With renewed determination, he reached for the pot of noodles to his left and scooped up another serving, much to the delight of his friend.

Despite his efforts, he couldn’t stop the tears at all. It probably made him look ridiculous, but as long as he could keep up the act and make Phainon happy, that was all that mattered.

Phainon’s brow furrowed, suspicion creeping into his expression. He wanted to know the truth; Anaxa had been acting strangely. “Are the noodles really that spicy?” he asked. Anaxa, unable to speak, merely nodded eagerly, mouth stuffed with the fiery noodles.

They’re probably spicy, Anaxa thought bitterly, clenching his fist in frustration. Phainon didn’t notice; he probably just assumed the tears were a natural reaction to the heat.

But that was far from the truth, because Anaxa had just realized something that made his stomach twist in a different kind of ache: he couldn’t taste anything at all.

.-

…-

.

“Ugh,” Phainon groaned for the umpteenth time. Once again, next to him was Anaxa, who simply ignored his never-ending grumbles, much preferring to scroll on Instagram reels.

Pouting at the lack of attention given, Phainon decided to switch tactics and instead poke at Anaxa's nearest cheek. "Let's go out.” He begged.

“We're already outside,” Anaxa answered without missing a beat, his empty hand gesturing first to themselves and then around their surroundings: a park bench under the afternoon sun.

“No— by let's go ‘outside’, I meant let's go somewhere fun and do something we never experienced before,” Phainon clarified.

Anaxa snorted. “You should've said that in the first place, then.” He chastised him and shook his head in mock ‘disappointment’. “But really, why do you want us to go out somewhere? Have you forgotten that our graduation is in a few weeks, not to mention our final defense—”

Phainon interrupted him. He had known Anaxa for so long that he could tell the difference between a genuine rebuttal and someone merely skirting around the point. “We practically have our defense in the bag; that’s easy. And if you’re worried about ‘not going on a journey before graduation because something might go wrong,’ just trust me! I won’t let anything happen to you.” He punctuated his promise with a playful flying kiss, which Anaxa instinctively dodged.

“Besides, I already made an itinerary, so…” Phainon trailed off, realizing he had run out of words. Time to deploy his secret-yet-not-so-secret weapon: puppy eyes. Usually useless on Anaxa, but this time he wanted his friend to see exactly what he’d be missing if he refused.

Anaxa exhaled sharply and tilted his head back, staring at the sky as if silently pleading for help from gods he didn’t believe in. After a few tense seconds, he finally shut off his phone. “Fine. Give me that damn itinerary.”

Phainon squealed in victory and handed over the piece of paper. Anaxa took it, scanning the first bullet point, and immediately froze, his face contorting into a look somewhere between disbelief and consternation.

That same paper had yellowed with age, edges frayed and marked with a few small tears, yet it still lay intact, tucked safely inside his wallet. On certain days, Anaxa would pull it out and stare at it with quiet longing, finding it far more comforting than the blank ceiling of his bedroom.

Night after night, he grew weary of the same dim lightbulb overhead, wishing he could slip into the temporary escape of sleep that had so often beckoned him.

Today was one of those nights. He lingered on the next item in the itinerary, the previous three already crossed out, and muttered a silent curse at himself for agreeing to this in the past.

Just a few days ago, he had realized that what had once been his strongest skill (memorizing information with ease) was slipping through his fingers, becoming less dependable with each passing day.

It was equally disturbing to figure out for himself how little he cares about losing his life.

April

Breathe. You can do this.

Anaxa closed his eyes and allowed his head to sink into the soft mattress, his hand pressed firmly against his chest.

Everything was supposed to go smoothly. He had summoned Phainon once again, intending to invite him over for a quiet night, like a sleepover. They would play games, belt out karaoke songs, watch movies, and maybe even dance to music in the living room. And like a loyal puppy tailing its owner, Phainon had agreed almost instantly. Yet Anaxa couldn’t miss the flicker of something else in his eyes that set him on guard.

He chose to ignore it, deliberately putting distance between them. After all, everything Anaxa did was meant purely for Phainon’s happiness: for him to experience all the things he had missed.

He repeated the thought like a mantra in his mind, over and over, as if saying it enough could make it true.

But how was he supposed to keep his distance from Phainon like he used to, back when he was alive?

No matter how much Anaxa tried to pretend that Phainon’s death hadn’t changed him, everyone could see how deeply the loss had unbalanced him. There was no longer someone following him, steadying him, as Phainon had always done.

If he had known that Death would claim Phainon anyway (even after Anaxa had gone to such lengths to keep him from getting too close to his heart), perhaps he should have cherished their connection more, lived fully and happily with Phainon while he had the chance.

Now, with Phainon by his side again, even if only for a little while, was it selfish to slowly close the distance and act as though nothing had ever gone wrong?

Just this once.

In a surprising gesture, Phainon suddenly knelt, as if he had stepped out of the pages of a romance novel, his eyes brimming with pure fondness and something neither of them could yet name. He extended his hand toward Anaxa, flickering in the warm glow, as if his very soul were hesitating between two distant shores.

“Will you dance with me?”

Just this once.

Anaxa reached out slowly, almost reverently.

The instant their fingertips met, warmth surged through them like waves spilling over sand. The flickering around Phainon’s hand vanished, as though it had chosen to stay.

For a moment, it felt as if Anaxa were touching Phainon’s heart directly, and he couldn’t tell which of the feelings coursing through his veins were truly his: fear, anger, sorrow, satisfaction, joy— they were all colliding in a dizzying rush. The world seemed to hold its breath, suspended between the soft glow of light and the quiet intensity of their connection.

Maybe…

There was no need for music anymore. For the first time since that day, Anaxa could feel warmth from another’s touch, and Phainon could hold someone in his hand and truly never let go.

Both of them were awkward at this— (“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Phainon apologized, his expression sincere, after accidentally stepping on Anaxa’s bare foot, narrowly avoiding an ‘unintended’ headbutt in the process.) Their movements were clumsy and uncoordinated, and more than once, they didn’t even know what they were doing.

Yet, despite the awkwardness, genuine smiles spread across both their faces. For a fleeting moment, they could focus on the present rather than the uncertainties of the future.

Slowly, the doors Anaxa had so long kept locked around his heart began to open, quietly inviting the sole visitor inside for the very first time.

I could—

-.--

---

..-

“Anaxa!”

FUCK—

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.

In that moment, Anaxa felt as if all he wanted was to sit down and never rise again.

The frail body that Phainon was supporting gave way, collapsing to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been severed. “Shit, what's happening—” he muttered, but he managed to catch Anaxa by the arms just in time, preventing him from crashing completely. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you…” Concern etched itself into his features— he had never expected anything like this to happen.

Anaxa met his gaze, and in that instant, it was as if his mind had drifted back to their university days, when they were nothing more than reckless, hopeful students. Phainon’s expression mirrored the same stubborn determination he always wore back then, the one he put on whenever he acted like he could handle everything, always treating Anaxa like some problem in need of fixing.

Anaxa hated seeing that.

He shoved Phainon's arms away, walls rising around his heart once more. He avoided the hands that reached for him, trying instead to anticipate what symptom might strike next— but all he could think about was the desperate need to breathe.

He gritted his teeth and forced himself upright, ignoring the tightness in his chest and the shallow, ragged breaths that struggled to fill his lungs. His heart pounded like a frantic drum, and it felt so wrong, so alarmingly fragile, like one misstep would send him over the edge, undoing every bite he’d eaten.

“I-I'm going back to my room,” he whispered, hoping Phainon caught it the first time, because he had no intention of saying it twice. “Can you… do me a favor and clean up the mess…?”

Without waiting for a response, Anaxa retreated into the safety of his bedroom. He didn’t make it far before he sank to his knees at the side of the bed, completely drained.

That was how he got into his current situation.

Anaxa fully regretted the decision to rush back to his room, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to be away from the suffocating concern in those eyes and from the way they watched him like he was about to break.

Why can’t I breathe?!

Every attempt to stand only sent his pulse racing faster, each thud loud and unsteady. Somewhere deep down, Anaxa found himself wishing the bed was a solid brick, just so he could slam his head against it and drown out the sensation— anything but this.

Instead of shifting into a more comfortable position, he stayed exactly where he was, frozen, clinging to the hope that it wouldn’t spiral further.

Three long minutes passed with him doing nothing but staring at his feet. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the frantic pounding of his heart eased into a steadier rhythm, and his lungs no longer felt as though they were packed with cement. Anaxa closed his eyes, a shaky breath escaping him in relief.

For a brief moment, he imagined what it might be like to simply fall asleep right then and there. But his illness was relentless: he could keep his eyes shut for hours, yet his mind would never stop racing until it exhausted itself completely.

Fate had always been cruel to him.

But then, something cold brushed against his cheek. Sluggishly, Anaxa opened his eyes to see a glass of water held before him, its surface shimmering under the pale glow of moonlight.

“Thanks,” he croaked, surprised even to himself at how hoarse his voice sounded after only a few minutes of… whatever had just happened.

Phainon watched silently as Anaxa drank greedily, the icy liquid a balm to his parched throat. For a moment, he just stood there, looking a little lost, before realizing that Anaxa was holding the empty glass out to him, silently asking him to take it away.

Phainon returned to the kitchen to set the glass in the sink, and Anaxa seized the moment. He sank back onto his bed and pulled the covers over himself, determined so that when Phainon returned, all he would see was his best friend asleep.

Anaxa had always been a master at avoiding confrontations.

Knowing Phainon, all he would want to do was ask, ‘What made you collapse earlier?’ The truth was, Anaxa didn’t know himself. But he knew that answering would inevitably steer the conversation toward the one topic he desperately tried to avoid: his illness.

He wasn’t ready for Phainon to know— not until the very end, when there would be no more secrets to keep.

The Phainon he knew would see him asleep, sigh quietly, decide to postpone the conversation until tomorrow, and quietly leave the room. And as expected, the door creaked open again. “Are you— oh.”

Phainon could claim he knew Anaxa better than anyone, and in many ways, he wasn’t wrong. But Anaxa could make the same claim in reverse: he knew what made Phainon tick. It was precisely why he could move circles around him, anticipate his hesitations, and steer interactions subtly in his favor.

Yet Anaxa also knew that time had not paused while they were apart. Phainon had grown, matured, changed— and that growth made him less predictable than he had once been. The advantage was no longer absolute.

This is why Anaxa wasn’t fazed at all when he felt a subtle dip in the mattress behind him, as if someone had just taken a seat. Still, he refused to make a move.

Now that he had a moment to think, he realized this was eerily similar to the situation from two months ago, back when he had first adopted Snowy. “I know you’re not asleep,” the voice came from behind him, laced with amusement and a hint of disappointment. “I wasn’t gone long enough for that.”

Anaxa suppressed a wince— or at least he tried.

A hand suddenly appeared in his line of sight, making him flinch, bracing for some unseen threat. But all Phainon did was rest his hand gently on Anaxa’s head, absentmindedly playing with a few strands of loose hair. “I’ve noticed something these past few months,” he murmured. “About the things you always make us do. At first, I thought maybe you’d gone a little crazy… but now…”

What about it? Anaxa asked silently in his mind, knowing full well that Phainon didn’t need one to keep speaking.

“Do you think I wouldn’t notice that all this… has something to do with me?”

If only Anaxa were facing the other way, he would have seen what flickered across Phainon’s face, something he had never encountered before. The years he’d spent being dead seemed to have changed him fundamentally.

“You don’t have to hurt yourself to make me happy. I… forgave you a long time ago.”

Liar.

“So, please…” The hand that had been playing with his hair tightened for just a moment. Anaxa had to fight the urge to wrench it away, but it loosened almost immediately, leaving him frozen. Behind him, Phainon let out a shaky breath and covered his face with his hand, his eyes wide open, terror visible in every line of his expression. “Stop wasting your life.”

Before Anaxa could even respond, Phainon vanished, presumably back to his Boundary, to whatever business consumed him there.

Anaxa didn’t summon him or speak to him for the next two months.

‘the stars are hanging in the sky and we are flying
it’s not a dream at all
don’t be afraid and hold my hand
now we are becoming us
let me love you’

— serendipity by BTS

τρία — serendipity [i always regret making mistakes— everything; but if only someone could turn back time, then my heart—]

June

“A road trip?” Phainon echoed, confusion flickering across his face.

It had been two months since he’d last seen Anaxa. Every attempt to reach him had quietly failed. Phainon had even relied on the bond forged by his wish to trace Anaxa’s presence, but each time he tried to speak through it, he was met with the same response: dismissal, or a curt command to leave him alone.

Phainon wasn’t difficult to deal with; he knew when to stop pushing. Still, the pattern gnawed at him. He’d begun to wonder if Anaxa wanted their deal broken entirely, and the thought weighed heavily on his chest. They had been making real progress back then (especially during the dance). It felt genuine, almost hopeful.

So where, exactly, had everything gone wrong?

He was certain he had said the right thing. Whatever was happening to Anaxa remained a mystery to him, but from where Phainon stood, nearly everything that had unfolded over the past year had only caused Anaxa pain. Why would Anaxa continue hurting himself like this?

Phainon scoffed despite himself. Anaxa never changed at all.

He had just finished visiting Aglaea for their weekly tea (Tribios and Cyrene in attendance as always) when something stirred sharply in his chest. The familiar pull of their bond tightened, unmistakable. Anaxa was summoning him again, and despite Phainon’s mounting irritation, he found himself yielding without hesitation.

He followed the call anyway, like a lovesick fool who should have known better.

In a blink, he found himself in familiar surroundings once more: the nostalgic yet dreary confines of Anaxa’s apartment. He remembered how the walls had once been crowded with photographs of them together. Anaxa had tried to keep it discreet, but Phainon had always known better; beneath the barbed words and practiced indifference, he’d always been a softie.

The smile slipped from Phainon’s face as he took in the room properly. Most of the pictures were gone. The furniture lay shrouded in plastic sheets, and heavy boxes crowded the floor, stacked carelessly as though the place were already halfway abandoned. A sick weight settled in his stomach, panic rising. Why is his apartment so bare?

“Anaxa?” he called. The tremor in his voice betrayed him, fear spilling through despite his efforts to contain it— and for once, Phainon found he didn’t care.

--..--

-..

---

It was just like years ago, when Phainon had been relearning the ropes of his duty after the death of his first client. He’d been a wreck in the aftermath, hollowed out by grief and doubt, barely able to steady himself. If not for Cyrene and the others, he might never have recovered; they had pulled him from that slump piece by piece, gently but firmly guiding him back toward the work he was meant to do.

(“You’re helping them more than anyone,” Tribios had promised, her hands wrapping around his in that familiar, grounding way. “When they die, they don’t have to linger by the near shore anymore. You’re doing a great job.”)

Compared to the others, Phainon was just a little more than a newborn. He lacked any real understanding of the unspoken rules and boundaries (especially when it came to interacting with the living), and that ignorance had cost him more than once.

Because of this, Phainon failed to recognize the gravity of the mistake he’d made. One of his clients (an excessively cautious man, prone to double-checking) had learned of his impending death directly from him. How? The man had wished for Khaos to tell him of his future.

It was a vague request, one that aligned far more closely with Aglaea’s domain than Phainon’s. But he was Khaos— and he fulfilled the wishes placed before him. So he agreed and went straight to Aglaea at the library to seek her guidance.

Slipping through the library doors, Phainon was welcomed by the familiar arrangement of furniture and the comforting, dust-laden scent of old books. Nostalgia tugged a small smile from him. Aside from his own apartment, this was the place Anaxa frequented most. More often than not, Phainon would find him still there deep into the night, seated at one of the desks, buried beneath towering stacks of books as though time itself had forgotten him.

But the common lounge was not his destination. He moved deeper inside, slipping through a perfectly camouflaged, human-sized gap and into the dark space hidden behind the shelves.

It took only a single step for her to realize an intruder had entered her domain. Phainon instinctively retreated half a pace as the space reacted to his presence: liquid gold began to seep through the narrow gaps between the books, dripping onto the floor. Yet the sound it made was nothing like metal meeting stone.

It was closer to the skittering hum of bugs, swarming all around him— probing, testing, searching for signs of hostility or dangerous intent. Their gleaming bodies flooded the hidden chamber with light, the radiance sharp and overwhelming, nearly blinding Phainon where he stood.

“That’s quite enough. You may stand down— I know this… intruder.”

Like a queen bee issuing a decree, Aglaea’s cool, silken voice echoed through the darkness. The swarm stilled at once, then slowly withdrew, melting back into the spaces between the books from which they had emerged. The hidden chamber dimmed again until the wall behind one of the bookcases shifted. The shelves folded away to reveal an ornate door, inlaid with jewels and engravings.

Phainon drew a steadying breath. He couldn’t quite name the reason for his unease, only that this was the first time he would be asking something of Aglaea— she was always so composed.

His hands trembled as he reached for the handle and pushed the door open, stepping into her Boundary.

“So you’ve finally decided to visit me, child,” Aglaea greeted, amusement lacing her voice.

She appeared moments later, descending a graceful flight of stairs. She looked just as she had when Phainon first met her, her dress shimmering like captured light. But now, it seemed to shift and ripple with every movement, as though it were alive and responding to her presence.

It was as though thousands of insects surrounded her, cocooned within them. The image called to mind a butterfly poised on the brink of emergence, waiting to shed its pupa. Before he could linger on the thought, Phainon cleared his throat, silently cursing himself for being in awe of her form far too much.

He had a purpose for entering her Boundary, after all. Aglaea was among the oldest of the ghosts, and in recognition of that, Imperator Cerydra (their leader, and the eldest of them all) had entrusted her with dominion over Fate.

Her Boundary, known as the Archive of Prophecies, was rumored to contain no books at all. Instead, it was said to be woven entirely of threads where each strand held the story of a single life, tracing a person’s fate from birth until death, revealed to anyone who dared to touch.

At the center of the chamber floated a vast golden sphere, glowing softly as it turned in slow, steady rotation— much like the Earth itself. Only upon closer inspection would one realize that it was not solid at all, but formed from countless interwoven threads, each one branching outward and trailing along the floor into the surrounding shelves. This marked the moment of fate's birth.

The threads were gathered into spools, separated and organized by individual lives, lending the library the uncanny resemblance of an enormous tailoring workshop. Each collection rotated gently as well, symbolizing the constant motion of fate as a person moved through their day-to-day existence.

A thread bore only two natural colors: gold, representing the living; and rusted brown, belonging to those who had already passed into their next life. On rare occasions, however, an eerie red thread would appear: a symbol of an omen that a single choice had altered the course of someone’s destiny, bending it sharply away from its intended path.

When Phainon had first seen the bleeding red thread woven into his own spool, he’d wondered what single decision he had made that could have altered the course of his life, and what was supposed to be the original.

The collections on the shelves remained perfectly still. They never disappeared; they simply ceased to move. Even the rusted-brown threads were kept immaculate under Aglaea’s care. When Phainon once asked why she never discarded the strands belonging to the deceased, she had only smiled and said that ‘keeping them close gave one reason to reminisce’.

On that particular day, Phainon had come to her with a request. He needed a spool belonging to his most recent client. The man had wished for a glimpse of his future, and such a thing lay beyond Phainon’s reach alone. Only Aglaea held authority over fate.

When Phainon met her gaze that day, it was clear she meant to refuse. The words hovered on the edge of her lips— then something seemed to click, and she snapped her mouth shut.

Without further protest, Aglaea glided across the chamber, carefully retrieving what Phainon had asked for. When she placed it in his hands, her expression hardened as she issued a single, stern warning: “Never show it to its owner.”

Phainon had taken a glimpse into his client’s future. One vision stood out among the rest: the man would die saving a child from being struck by a truck. It was a noble end, and the knowledge brought Phainon an unexpected sense of relief.

Still, he couldn’t tell his client outright; the future, once spoken, had a way of veering from its intended path. Instead, he chose harmless fragments, details he believed would be enough to satisfy the wish.

But no matter how carefully he followed Aglaea’s warning, human nature proved unforgiving: they were never content with what they were given. And so, one day, Phainon returned to his Boundary… only to find his client already there, clutching his own thread.

Horror was unmistakable in the dark pools of the man’s eyes.

Aglaea’s warning came rushing back to him (about never allowing the owner of a fate to read their own thread), but by then, it was far too late. Phainon could do nothing but stand frozen as the student fled the laboratory in despair, tears streaking down his face, clearly unprepared to confront how close death truly was.

Before Phainon’s eyes, a section of the golden thread bled into a vivid, blinding red. Just as the student had wished, his fate had shifted.

The following day, Phainon didn’t need to look at the thread to know what color it had become. There were only two ways a fate could ever be altered: to delay its end, or to hasten it.

One glance at the rope tied to the ceiling of the laboratory told him which choice had been made.

-.

.----.

-

Over the past few months, Anaxa had instructed him to act a little more human. Whether it was to maintain the illusion that Phainon was still ‘alive,’ or simply the request of a dying man, Phainon had gone along with it without much protest. But this time, he ignored those rules entirely, phasing straight through the walls and silently praying to whoever might be listening that he wasn’t already too late.

When Phainon entered the bedroom, he almost forgot that he was dead. Instinct took over, and he ducked just in time to avoid a projectile flying through the space where his head had been a moment earlier.

He stared at the fallen lotion bottle on the floor, momentarily stunned, before slowly turning around.

Anaxa stood there, looking very irritated.

“Didn’t I tell you to knock before coming in?!” he snapped, his face flushing a deep red as embarrassment overtook him.

Phainon hesitated, trying to process the intensity of the reaction, then it clicked.

Anaxa had just finished taking a shower.

He was not dressed. Water still dripped from his hair and shoulders onto the floor, his towel twisted up to dry his hair instead of being put to any useful purpose. The rest, unfortunately, was left to frantic self-preservation.

Nearly three agonizing minutes passed with neither of them moving an inch.

“W-What are you waiting for?!” Anaxa finally snapped, losing the one-sided staring contest. “Get out!”

Phainon felt heat rush to his face, matching the furious red staining Anaxa’s own. “I-I’ll wait outside!” he blurted, already phasing backward through the wall before Anaxa could decide that a thrown bottle hadn’t been enough punishment.

Despite the mortifying shock of seeing his best friend naked, Phainon couldn’t shake the image of Anaxa’s body from his mind: how painfully thin he was, ribs nearly visible beneath his skin. The sight lingered far longer than it should have.

Back then, Phainon had done everything he could to keep Anaxa from collapsing under his own neglect. He watched over him day and night, making sure he ate, reminding him to rest because Anaxa so often forgot to do either. Sometimes Phainon couldn’t tell whether it was simple carelessness or something far more deliberate. His friends had tried to rein him in, warning him not to hover so much, but Phainon knew they would have understood if they’d seen how relentlessly Anaxa was tearing himself apart.

Now, it felt worse. Anaxa didn’t look ill, but the recklessness of his behavior these past few months had been maddening. He treated his own life with a frightening lack of regard, and every unnecessary risk drove Phainon closer to panic.

He knew he was going to die soon, didn't he? Then why isn't he having a crisis like most dying people do? There's nothing but that quiet, unsettling acceptance, as though he were already preparing to fade away. And the boxes (everything carefully packed, neatly sealed) were arranged as if Anaxa never intended to return here once he left.

Phainon’s thoughts drifted back years ago, to that one client who had stepped off the train of fate long before death was ever meant to reach him. He remembered how those bright eyes had gone hollow in an instant, how desperation had flared just before everything else disappeared.

The air around Phainon frosted as his breath turned unsteady, a terrible conclusion slowly taking shape in his mind.

Surely Anaxa wouldn’t…

A road trip. That was what Anaxa had been planning all along.

To Phainon’s surprise, they discovered that he could anchor himself to one of the seats, enough that the car no longer passed harmlessly through him as they drove. The realization should have been amusing, but his attention had already fixed itself elsewhere.

“You renewed your license?”

Phainon stared at the plastic card in Anaxa’s hand, eyes tracing the familiar blocks of information, lingering far too long on the date stamped near the bottom.

December 25, 2016.

Exactly one year after Phainon had died.

On the very same day.

Neither of them lingered on the date, both clearly dreading the conversation it would invite. Anaxa slipped the card back into his pocket and spoke instead.

“I still prefer taking the bus to work,” he said casually. “But I wanted a way to leave town quickly, if I ever felt like it.”

Phainon hummed in response, and the conversation died there. The silence that followed was thick, most likely due to Phainon’s accidental intrusion earlier.

Anaxa kept his eyes on the road, glancing toward the side mirror now and then. Phainon watched him from the passenger seat, unease coiling tighter with every mile.

He hadn’t liked this distance between them back then, and he hated it just as much now. One way or another, he would make Anaxa tell him everything— even if the methods he chose could be considered ‘too low.’

“Why did you bring all your possessions?” Phainon glanced toward the stack of boxes crammed haphazardly into the backseat. Then he frowned. “Wait— where’s Snowy?” He squinted, scanning the clutter, searching for a flash of white fur amid the sea of brown cardboard.

“He’s staying with Calypso,” Anaxa replied. “Since I’m going on an extended road trip, I figured there was no point keeping him with me.” His tone remained even, but something softer flickered in his eyes: a trace of reluctance, as though the dog had grown on him despite himself. “The six-month contract’s almost over anyway.”

The first question lingered unanswered.

Phainon exhaled quietly. “You still haven’t told me why we’re going on a road trip.”

“I need a change of scenery.”

“By leaving the apartment you’ve lived in for years?” Phainon’s voice rose despite himself, disbelief bleeding through. In his peripheral vision, the scenery blurred, the tight cluster of houses vanishing in an instant, replaced by a seemingly endless stretch of trees as the car sped on.

He didn’t understand Anaxa at all anymore. First came the disregard for his own well-being. Then the erratic behavior over the past few months, moods shifting faster than Phainon could keep up with. And now this(!) selling his apartment, packing up his life, and disappearing on a long road trip without so much as a real explanation.

Anaxa’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, knuckles whitening as he fought to keep himself composed. The motion didn’t go unnoticed. Phainon’s gaze sharpened, his thoughts racing toward conclusions he desperately didn’t want to reach.

“Pull over.”

“What?” Anaxa muttered. “Last time I checked, you didn’t need to pee or anything…”

“Pull. Over.” Phainon repeated, his tone flat and absolute, leaving no room for argument. “You shouldn’t be driving this fast on a road like this.”

Anaxa, stubborn as ever, didn’t slow down. He wasn’t about to stop just because Phainon told him to.

“Phainon, I know how to drive,” he snapped. “Of course I’m supposed to be driving—”

His voice cracked on the last word.

The tremors in Anaxa’s hands had grown unmistakable now, his grip on the steering wheel tightening and loosening in erratic bursts. Sweat slid down his temples despite the cool air, his breathing shallow as he struggled to steady himself and drive, to pretend nothing was wrong.

Instinct took over.

Phainon moved without thinking, placing himself in front of Anaxa just moments before the car veered dangerously off course. In that split second, there was no fear for himself— only a single, burning thought: Anaxa had to survive. He deserved to live, to experience life fully, to love it in ways he had never allowed himself to before. Phainon would be damned before he let something as cruel and senseless as an accident steal that chance from him.

“I thought we had this discussion already,” Phainon hissed, his voice low but edged with fury. “About you forcing yourself to do things you didn't like.” His gaze flicked pointedly to Anaxa’s hands. “You claim to be fine, but your hands are obviously shaking.”

“They’re not,” Anaxa denied weakly, nervousness slipping through the cracks of his composure. “I just haven’t been sleeping lately—”

“Anaxa, let me drive.”

“No, it’s fine. Don’t worry. I can still get us home safely. I just haven’t slept lately.”

The words echoed too clearly, dragging long-buried memories to the surface. The moment of his death surged back in fragments, screeching metal, and the crushing impact that had torn through him like a blade driven straight into his chest—

Phainon’s anger flared, hot and uncontrollable.

“Are you really going to repeat that excuse?!” He snapped, his concern bleeding into outright fury. “I'm speaking out of concern for your safety here, in case you didn't notice!” The words spilled out in relentless waves. “Everything I did for you will be for nothing!”

Anaxa gritted his teeth but said nothing. He must have known that the moment he spoke, the fragile restraint holding the situation together would shatter. Instead, he kept driving along the highway, eyes fixed forward, pointedly ignoring the speed, though Phainon had the distinct sense that Anaxa was painfully aware he was well beyond the speed limit.

His pupils were so dilated that little of his iris remained visible, his gaze trembling with something Phainon barely recognized as fear. Anaxa’s arms were locked in place, rigid and unyielding, his hands clamped around the steering wheel with a force that bordered on desperation.

A sense of dread curled in Phainon’s chest. He glanced at the speedometer, his breath catching as the needle crept into dangerous territory.

“Anaxa,” he said sharply, panic bleeding into his voice, “stop the car. Right now—”

“I can’t.”

Anaxa swallowed hard, his porcelain skin paling by the second. He looked as though he were fighting a battle entirely within himself. His mouth was opening and closing back and forth, the words rising and dying before they could escape. Torn between confessing whatever was wrong and forcing it back down, he froze.

What…?

An ear-splitting blast of sound tore through the air. Phainon’s head snapped up just in time to see a truck barreling straight toward them. At the speed they were going, there was no time for the other vehicle to swerve out of the way.

“P-Phainon—!”

He didn’t hesitate.

With a sharp grunt, Phainon lunged forward, gripping Anaxa’s hands instead of the wheel (he knew he couldn’t touch it directly) and forcing Anaxa's arms to wrench sideways. The car veered just enough to miss the oncoming truck by a breath. A deafening screech filled the air as tires screamed against asphalt, both of them flinching at the sound.

Phainon didn’t stop. He brought his foot down hard on Anaxa’s, slamming the brakes and forcing the car to shudder to a halt along the side of the road.

The abrupt slam of the brakes sent Anaxa lurching forward, inertia dragging his body ahead until the seatbelt snapped him back into place. Sharp pain flared briefly across his muscles. He sucked in uneven breaths as his hands remained locked around the steering wheel, his knuckles slowly turning white. Beside him, Phainon slowly released his grip, leaning back into his seat, expression unreadable.

“What the hell was that?” Phainon snapped, anger rolling off of him in waves. “You almost—”

Anaxa scoffed, his chest still rising and falling hard from the rush of adrenaline. “Relax. I didn't.”

“You never listen to me.”

Anaxa's face twisted with sudden rage. He yanked his hands from the steering wheel as if it had burned him, sweaty palms trembling as he turned on Phainon with full force. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You should be asking yourself that!” Phainon shot back. “Why are you doing this stupid road trip if you can't even keep it together for an hour?! You're just proving me right.”

Anaxa's eyes were bloodshot, their surface shimmering with unshed tears. “... Because I wanted to,” he answered quietly.

“That's not an answer.”

“It's the only one you're getting.”

Phainon laughed. Anaxa had never heard it sound so cruel until now. “You ‘wanted to’?” he said. “So screw the aftermath— that's your whole thing, right? You'd just do whatever you want and let everyone else deal with the fallout.”

“You don't get to say that—” Anaxa started, but he was interrupted when Phainon’s expression darkened, a sharp hiss slipping from his teeth.

“My death was one of your consequences.”

Silence fell abruptly, wrapping the vehicle in a cold, suffocating stillness. The air felt heavy, enough to make breathing feel difficult, yet they both knew there was no taking back what had been said.

“Then why bother with me?” Those words came out icy, each syllable edged with frost.

Phainon frowned. “I'm here because you need me.”

In a burst of rage, Anaxa grabbed the nearest object he could reach (a cup filled with water) and hurled it toward Phainon, uncaring that it would simply pass through his intangible body.

“I don't need your help!” He screamed, the liquid splashing violently against the car door behind Phainon. “You and your savior bullshit… You just like the idea of fixing me! Well, surprise, you bastard, I’m perfectly fine the way I am! Fuck the consequences! Why do you even care?” His voice cracked as the words wouldn't stop pouring out. “You're dead. Why the fuck does it matter to you if I crash?”

Every ugly thought that had festered inside Anaxa finally spilled into the open. Phainon stiffened, his jaw tightening. The restraint that was used to wrap around him snapped into pieces as he uttered: “Then don't drag other people down with you did to me,” he snarled, his gaze burning into Anaxa. “If you wanted to die so badly, why don't you do everyone a favor and suffocate in your sleep?”

All the fight in Anaxa's posture drained at those words, clarity crashing down on him all at once. He could only stare at Phainon, lips trembling. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out— there was nothing he could say. All he felt was the disgust in Phainon's eyes as they lingered on him, his body slowly beginning to turn translucent.

“You were right,” Phainon said after a stretch of silence.

At that moment, Phainon had never looked so different. Back in January, Anaxa had thought about how human he still looked and appeared to be, but now, he couldn't even separate Phainon from the monsters that haunted his dreams at all.

“You only bring misfortune around you.”

He was gone, and just as Anaxa had always known, he was left alone once more— alone with his thoughts that whispered nothing but mockery.

..

..--..

.

It was nearly nighttime when Phainon had reappeared again, an unsettled expression on his face, as if he couldn't decide whether to be angry or sad.

It was a bit shocking to see the vehicle still staying here where they had stopped it hours ago. Anaxa could've left and gone on to his destination, unreachable and undetectable by Phainon (unless he called on him, and after their recent argument, he was sure that was never going to happen). But no, after all the time that passed by, the black car still stayed there at the same place, as if diligently waiting for his return.

Though Phainon couldn't care less about it for now, because he had his own matters to deal with, particularly his— he admitted— strange behavior earlier.

The only thing he had ever wanted was for Anaxa to listen to him, but he had failed to rein in his emotions and said things he never meant to say. And yet, his traitorous mind whispered to him, that ‘it was what he wanted to say the most, freed from the shackles of humanity that he had once been burdened with before’.

Had he really hated Anaxa that much? Phainon didn’t think he would be capable of saying something like that to him. From the very beginning, he always stayed gentle towards the other, and if there were times he became pushy, he knew it was for Anaxa's own good.

An image flashed through his brain— Anaxa dying in his embrace—

Phainon shook his head hard, as if the motion alone could erase the thought at once. His stomach lurched; bile burned at the back of his throat. Even simply imagining it made him feel sick. He would never be able to hate Anaxa or wish for him to die—

… But he had, hadn't he?

Phainon bit down on his lip, unease curling tight in his chest. What's happening to me?

A movement from the car snapped Phainon out of his spiraling thoughts. The car door opened, and Anaxa stepped out, his mint-colored hair tousled and unkempt, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen. He carried nothing with him. He slammed the door shut before breaking into a jog across the highway and disappearing to the other side.

Phainon never had a choice but to follow. He always did.

.

.

..

“I killed you.” These were the first words Anaxa greeted him with as soon as Phainon reached his side. “And because of that, you hate me, right?”

Waves lapped gently at Anaxa's feet as he stared out at the horizon. Before them stretched a sky soaked in deep blues and purples, a small golden mass in the center sinking low, making way for the stars to shine in its place. Wind caressed Anaxa's face, tangling his hair even further, yet it couldn't dry the tears slipping slowly down his cheeks.

It was a moonless night.

Phainon hadn't expected to find a beach here.

He scanned the shoreline, hoping to see any person in the area, anyone— so that if Anaxa ever decided to really try and kill himself here, there would be someone who was able to help him. But there was nothing. Just endless sand and the quiet crash of the waves, telling Phainon that it would only be Anaxa who could save himself… and it was Phainon's role to help him realize it once more.

“Are you trying to hurt someone else?” Phainon asked carefully.

Anaxa shook his head fervently.

Phainon had to be careful with the words that would come out of his mouth. He exhaled and crouched on the sand beside him. He didn't stand up to make it feel like it was too crowded, but he knew he couldn't leave Anaxa by himself either. “So what's the reason,” he asked quietly, “for doing all that stuff?”

Anaxa opened his mouth to answer, but hesitation had stopped him again like before. There were a few seconds that passed with visible struggle on his face, thinking about whether to answer honestly or deflect.

“... I hate dogs, but you love them,” he said at last. “I don't particularly like spicy food, but you had always wanted to try that specific flavor back then… and we both knew I had two left feet compared to you.”

Phainon remained silent; a hidden suspicion within his mind was proven correct.

“You…” Anaxa continued softly. “... you always wanted to go on a road trip too.”

The doubts that were building in Phainon's mind for the past months finally clicked into place. He brushed it off as a coincidence that Anaxa was doing these things, given that there was an interval of weeks in between, but Anaxa's words alone had confirmed that it wasn't random at all.

He had been doing all of it for one simple reason: to give Phainon a taste of the life he never got to live, cut short before it could truly begin.

“Wasn't that too cruel of you?” Phainon said. “Do you think I could enjoy any of this if you put yourself in danger for doing so? The Anaxa I know was much more rational than this.”

With a quiet grunt, he stood up from his crouch and faced him. Anaxa was no longer staring at the horizon from afar; his gaze had drifted back to Phainon instead, his eyes hollow like the seas of the far shore.

Phainon stepped closer. With his cold and dead hands that lacked human warmth, he gently cupped Anaxa's face and wiped away the tears tracing down his cheeks.

He had forgiven Anaxa a long, long time ago. At least, he thought he had.

But he was scared that once he uttered those words to him, it would turn out to mean nothing— merely lies told upon by dead lips to soothe the heart of the living.

“If you really want to repent for killing me that day,” he said with gentle cruelty, “don't waste the life I gave you.”

After all, I sacrificed myself for you, were the words left unsaid.

Phainon hoped it was the right thing to say.

Before him, Anaxa's seemingly dead eyes gained a bit of light, as if a new understanding had come to him. Something new happened after, something that Phainon had never seen these past months.

For the first time, Anaxa let a fragile yet unmistakably real smile appear on his face.

…

.--

.

Despite Phainon’s efforts, Anaxa continued driving the rest of the way. Still, he did begin to listen more, pulling over whenever the tremor in his limbs became noticeable or when exhaustion started to cloud his thoughts.

This was the one thing Phainon still couldn’t understand about him. No matter how often he pressed for answers for why Anaxa had grown so prone to sudden weakness, he brushed the concern aside, blaming it on nothing more than a lack of sleep or lingering fatigue. And so, Phainon kept his watch from a careful distance, in case those excuses ever stopped being enough.

(“... You didn't know what would cause my death?” Anaxa asked, a strange flicker crossing his eyes. From the passenger seat, Phainon only raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

“Well, that's fine. No need to learn about it if I'm going to die in a few months anyway,” Anaxa added lightly. He laughed it off, but Phainon’s brow remained knit in quiet thought.)

“What are you really planning, anyway?” Phainon asked at last. He leaned against the window, head resting in his hand, his bored tone at odds with the sharpness in his gaze.

Anaxa unlocked his phone and pulled up his most recent search before handing it over. Phainon scrolled, then paused when he reached a familiar name— one Anaxa had marked as a favorite: a well-known amusement park.

“Like it or not,” Anaxa said, “I was really planning to complete the rest of your bucket list through this road trip.”

“Bucket list…?”

“The itinerary you made before the graduation,” Anaxa clarified. “Remember how you pestered me to do those things with you? But we never managed to continue because…” He made a vague you-know-why gesture, and Phainon nodded in understanding.

“My death.”

“That.” Anaxa looked close to fainting after saying it, the memory of their argument from hours earlier still hanging between them. Neither of them was eager to prod at a wound that had only just been reopened. “I figured that since most of the things on the list are ‘what Phainon wants to do’, we should do it before I die.”

Phainon sighed and shot Anaxa the most disappointed look he could manage. “Are you going through this again—”

“Let me finish!” Anaxa cut in, raising a finger while his other hand skillfully guided the car through the road. “You don't need to worry about that, because these next two things on the list are things we BOTH want to do at that time, so…”

He trailed off, suddenly noticing where they were. With what little energy he had left, Anaxa turned toward the nearest parking lot, circling past row after row of cars before easing into a space.

Once the engine was off, he took a deep breath and pushed the door open, gesturing for Phainon to follow. Phainon did, his confusion quickly melting into excitement when he took in their surroundings.

Beside him, Anaxa wore a small, content smile. He had missed moments like this… when it was just the two of them, free to have fun without the weight of the future hanging over their heads.

“Let's have fun, Phainon.”

“I regret doing this.”

Anaxa bit his lip as he cautiously peered over the fence. The platform stood nearly two hundred meters above the ground (high enough to rival a skyscraper), and the drop below made his stomach twist. A park staff member tightened the harness around him, double-checking every buckle, while another carefully secured a helmet over his head.

Behind him, Phainon bounced on his heels, barely able to contain himself. His crystal-blue eyes sparkled, living up to the name they bore, and his excitement was almost contagious. Even as a ghost, he could still feel the rush that surged through him during the rides, the thrill as sharp as ever.

Thankfully, they had come on a weekday. The lack of visitors meant empty seats and quiet walkways, enough that Anaxa could leave the space beside him vacant, letting Phainon sit there unseen, without drawing a single curious glance.

For the final part of their trip— a bungee jump— everything was finally set. The sun was beginning to rise, casting warm light across the sky and turning the moment into something almost perfect. The tower stood surrounded by nothing but trees below, giving them an unobstructed view of the horizon stretching endlessly in every direction.

“Are you ready, ‘naxa?” Phainon asked, excitement spilling from every word.

Anaxa shot him a glare, though it faltered when a gust of wind sent his hair whipping into his face. A few strands slipped into his mouth, and he quickly spat them out, his expression twisting with open disgust.

It wasn’t a secret between the two of them how much Anaxa hated falling from high places. He wasn’t afraid of heights (as he’d been perfectly fine during the zipline), but something about falling from that kind of distance always sent his instincts into overdrive.

Maybe it had something to do with his parents, with the way the plane they’d been on had fallen from the sky all those years ago. But that was long in the past, back when he was still a child, so Anaxa brushed the thought aside and blamed it on nerves.

He glanced down at his hands, visibly shaking.

Yeah. Nerves.

Once the staff decided he was ready, they stepped back and gave him the signal that he was clear to jump.

“Have fun, sir!” They called out.

Yet his feet stayed planted firmly on the platform. Anaxa couldn’t find the strength to move forward, let alone jump.

Was it really just nerves, or was it something else entirely?

All at once, his cold, trembling hands were enveloped by a warm one. Anaxa felt someone step close behind him, close enough that their presence was unmistakable. Phainon.

“I think it's time for you to let go of what holds you back, Anaxa.”

Anaxa’s eyes widened as he glanced over his shoulder. Phainon stood there, calm and serene, his face resting lightly against Anaxa’s shoulder. “I don't get—”

“You don't want to fall from this height because whenever you do, you get reminded of your parents’ death,” Phainon said gently, recalling a confession from many years ago; one spilled late at night, drowned in alcohol, when Anaxa had finally let his guard down. “Let go of that sad memory and replace it with this one.”

“But if I did that… then I…” Anaxa trailed off, casting Phainon a meaningful look before turning away.

They both knew that the two of them weren't really talking about his parents' death.

Phainon smiled, soft and reassuring. “I'm sure wherever they are, they have forgiven you a long time ago.”

Have you? Anaxa wanted to ask. But deep down, he already knew the answer.

“Don't worry,” Phainon continued. “I'll be here with you every step of the way, just like you wished for.”

With that, Anaxa turned his gaze back to the slowly rising sun. He drew in a few deep breaths, letting them steady his nerves. All the while, Phainon never let go, clearly intent on jumping with him. The warmth of his presence stirred something familiar in Anaxa’s chest— something that reminded him of a time when they were nothing more than stupid teenagers, thinking only about love and relationships.

Anaxa closed his eyes and leapt from the platform. A scream of pure joy tore from both of them as they plunged downward, dropping meters through open air.

Time seemed to slow, as though it had lost its purpose entirely. He felt weightless, reduced to something small and insignificant, drifting through the air without direction. The wind brushed past him, cool and gentle, curling around his body as if it were trying to soothe him. The sensation settled deep within Anaxa’s soul, somehow oddly comforting.

When Anaxa finally opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was how effortlessly happiness suited Phainon. He was right there in front of him, close enough for Anaxa to feel his warmth, giggles spilling freely as a bright grin spread across his face.

“I caught you!” the younger Phainon had once said.

“I got you,” was all Phainon said now, yet somehow, it was the best thing Anaxa had ever heard.

The second thing Anaxa registered was the sky itself: midnight purples and deep blues slowly giving way to the rising sun, its golden light spilling across the horizon like a sea being parted.

Distantly, Anaxa remembered something Uncle Hieronymus had told him when he was young—

“When it comes to the person I love most, there’s no fear I wouldn’t face.”

Anaxa finally understood what he had felt back then, when Phainon smiled at him in their classroom. He understood it now, that feeling he’d felt when Phainon slipped through his fingers, that tangled ache that tore his heart apart with agony and despair.

It was love.

Somewhere along the way, Anaxa— the one who had once believed he had no one left to love— had come to love the only person who had given his life away for him so completely.

It made the knowledge of his impending death even more painful. Still, Anaxa refused to turn away from it. Even knowing he would soon return to the soil where he belonged, he chose to cherish the life he had left and the time he could still spend with Phainon.

It was the least he could do now.

“Phainon,” Anaxa called out. I hope you hear this.

They fell through the sky in an embrace, surrounded by the colors of sunrise bleeding into the last traces of midnight, a perfect backdrop.

It was now or never.

The air rushed past them as their descent grew faster.

“I love you.”

It was only a whisper, barely carried beyond Anaxa’s lips, yet he caught the slow widening of Phainon’s eyes as the words sank in. Deep down, Anaxa felt a quiet relief— Phainon had heard him.

Did he?

His uncle had been right after all. Declaring your love to the person you cherished most, suspended in midair, was the best feeling in the world.

He gripped Phainon’s hand once more, holding on and savoring its warmth… until his strength suddenly gave out, sensation slipping away all at once. His vision blurred.

He couldn’t stop the wave of disappointment that washed over him.

Ah. So this is what Phainon had—

Darkness crept in from the edges of his sight, and Anaxa knew no more.

.-

.-.

-

“Anaxa…!”

‘it’s so odd, i loved you so much for sure
i adapted myself entirely to you, i wanted to live for you
but as i kept doing so, i became unable to bear the storm inside my heart
i got to fully reveal my true self under the smiling mask’

— epiphany by BTS

τέσσερα — epiphany [my resentment for you needed to be forever gone and drifted away, killed without hesitation;]

Anaxa had only a few months left to live. Phainon knew that.

Still, the weight of it seemed to truly settle only at this moment. His mind kept drifting back to the day before, when Anaxa fell unconscious in midair. The memory lingered, sharp and unsettling: the way the light had slowly drained from his eyes before they fluttered shut. It had been terrifying to witness.

The signs had been there. Phainon knew that too.

Anaxa had been trying to say something at the time, but none of it had registered. Phainon could only focus on the way his skin had grown pale, the faint bluish tint creeping into his lips.

Now, there was nothing for him to do but stand there, staring at his friend’s unconscious form on the hospital bed. The monitor beside him beeped steadily, each sound repetitive and grating, filling the room with a noise that felt far too loud in the silence.

But he could never bring himself to be irritated by it. The sound was the only proof he had left that Anaxa was still alive, still breathing.

He wasn’t the only one in the hospital room. Three nurses stood nearby (two of whom were interns) along with a doctor. All of them were focused on the clipboard clipped to the IV pole, speaking in low voices, as if Anaxa were nothing more than a case laid out for observation.

Phainon’s mouth twisted in frustration as he caught fragments of their conversation: terminal illness, not long left to live.

He hoped they were wrong. Lies, all of it. Anaxa would have agreed with him… he had to. There was no reason for Anaxa to hide something like this from him, no reason to keep his own slow death a secret.

Deep down, he knew Anaxa would. That certainty hurt more than anything else.

Phainon didn’t spare them a glance when they finished their discussion. None of them could see him anyway. To them, Anaxa was just another patient: alone, with no one by his side. The professionals soon filed out of the room, the door shutting with a dull thud as several of the lights were switched off.

The ghost didn’t move from his place. His hand remained tightly clasped around Anaxa’s, as if holding on hard enough might bring the warmth back, might make those eyes open again and find him waiting.

But no matter how much Phainon wished for it, Anaxa remained still. His breathing was uneven and weak, stuttering beneath the steady assistance of the ventilator strapped to his face.

---

-.--

---

“Give me Anaxa’s thread.”

It was the first thing Phainon demanded as he barged into Aglaea’s Boundary. Compared to the care and respect he usually showed other ghosts, Anaxa’s illness had stripped away his carefully maintained composure. He hadn’t bothered to soften his tone, nor did he care how it made him look.

“Khaos,” Aglaea said, her voice echoing through the space. “You took an awfully long time to arrive.” She sounded unsurprised, as if she had been waiting for him all along.

Phainon ignored the faint amusement in her voice. He locked his glare on her as she descended the staircase, gliding across the floor toward him. “Give me Anaxa’s thread,” he repeated, the words edged with a snarl.

Aglaea didn’t voice a complaint, but displeasure crept across her expression. With a slow twist of her finger, a golden thread streaked with red shimmered into existence before Phainon.

Phainon only stared at it, lost in thought. It was true, this was what he had wanted all along, the very reason he had agreed to come here in the first place. Even so, the idea of leaving Anaxa alone unsettled him. What if Anaxa had woken up and he wasn’t there?

What he hadn’t expected was how easily Aglaea handed the thread over. Phainon narrowed his eyes at her, but she paid no attention to his suspicious glare.

He drew in a steady breath and lightly touched the golden strand of the thread—

A sharp gasp tore from his lips as images flooded his mind, his head snapping back under the sudden force. Events rushed through him at a blinding pace, yet he understood them all: the fragments of Anaxa’s past, his present, and the future that awaited him.

Anaxa and Phainon meet as children. Anaxa’s parents are dying. Phainon’s parents are taking in the orphaned kids. Diotima passed away quietly in her sleep. College. The car accident.

Everything was there, just as Phainon remembered it. But confusion quickly set in when the visions stopped.

“What the—” Why did it end in a car accident?

He was supposed to see more. Anaxa was meant to live on, to become a university professor, and then… Why had it ended there?

“In Anaxagoras’s original fate,” Aglaea began, noticing the sudden stillness, “he was meant to die ten years ago, in the car accident on a highway not far from here.”

Original fate…? Phainon’s voice came out sharp as he turned to her. “What are you talking about—”

“I have told you what the red thread signifies, correct?”

Phainon nodded, still struggling to process what she had said moments earlier.

“What the thread had shown you was true,” Aglaea continued. “It was Anaxa who was fated to die in that car accident. But something had changed his fate and prolonged his life even more.”

She gave Phainon a pointed look.

His gaze dropped back to Anaxa’s thread, lying harmlessly in front of him. With a careful touch of the red strand, the vision shifted.

Unlike the earlier memory, where Anaxa had been impaled by a pole, this scene was painfully clear. Phainon was the one who had been stabbed, his body moving on instinct as he shoved Anaxa out of the way.

Wait.

Wait.

“A part of a person's thread turns red once a significant event has changed and affected their whole fate,” Aglaea recited dutifully, her tone practiced, as though she had repeated those words countless times for those who came seeking her. “When you saved his life, Khaos, it ended yours— such is the price of changing someone's destiny.”

“H-How would I even know that?!”

The realization struck hard: he could have lived, could have escaped an early death, if things had gone differently. Fate was cruel in the way it offered hope only after it was already too late. If he hadn’t shoved Anaxa out of the way, if he had hesitated for even a second— would he still be alive now?

The image of Anaxa lying pale and unmoving in a hospital bed flashed through his mind, unbidden. Guilt twisted in his stomach, sharp and immediate, for even daring to entertain the thought.

“However,” Aglaea continued, her voice lowering, “don't think I wouldn't know about what you're planning right now, Khaos.”

Aglaea slowly pivoted her head to look at Phainon, though his attention never wavered from the floating projections before him. File after file unfolded like fragments of a moving picture, scenes stitched together in cold, clinical detail. Then, without warning, the images shifted. The projection settled on Anaxa seated inside a doctor’s office. It was likely the moment he had received the official diagnosis for his condition.

Phainon’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “What are you talking about now?” he snapped, his voice tense. “I'm not planning anything.” It wasn’t entirely the truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either. There was no clear plan forming in his mind, no concrete steps laid out. Still, his thoughts churned relentlessly, calculating, rearranging, searching for every possible way he could help Anaxa with the knowledge he now possessed.

There had to be a way somehow. The idea of Anaxa dying from an illness felt unbearably unfair. Things had been improving ever since that conversation they’d shared. Phainon had seen the change in him, in how Anaxa treated his own life, how he lingered just a little longer instead of brushing everything aside.

If Anaxa’s death had been caused by something preventable, Phainon would never have allowed it. He would have stood between him and any danger without hesitation.

But an illness was different. Against it, Phainon had nothing to fight. It was natural, inevitable in the cruelest sense, and natural deaths could not be avoided without reaching for something unnatural—

Phainon went still, his gaze sliding toward the portrait of Cyrene in his peripheral vision. Time.

“You aren't? What a surprise.” With a flick of her hand, Aglaea dispelled the projection of Anaxa’s thread. “Well, you got what you came here for. Please see yourself out, I need to clean this room—”

“Can I do it again?”

The words cut through the air.

Aglaea stopped mid-step, the motion arrested as if something invisible had seized her in place. Slowly, she turned back to him. “Pardon?” Her eyes widened as though she now realized what, exactly, he had been considering all along.

“I changed Anaxa's fate once, according to you,” Phainon echoed her earlier words. Light from the circular windows cut across him at just the wrong angle, casting harsh shadows over his face. In the distorted glow, he looked unhinged, his eyes fixed and unblinking, his expression stripped of any trace of emotion. “So tell me. Can I do it again?”

Aglaea frowned. She recognized that look all too well: the gaze of someone who could not, would not, let go of the person they loved most. The kind who would stain their hands with the vilest acts if it meant keeping that person within reach. She knew it because she had worn it herself once. It was like staring into a mirror that reflected her own past.

“No,” she said flatly, without hesitation or pity.

She couldn’t allow Phainon to walk the same path she had. Trying to save someone who could not be saved was a cruel illusion, one that led only to endless suffering… for them, and for everyone caught in the aftermath.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Aglaea continued quietly. “I’m afraid—”

A thunderous crash rang out behind her, cutting her off mid-sentence. The insects woven into her dress stirred at once, skittering up her shoulder as they projected the image of her shattered door that was splintered beyond repair. Phainon’s refusal to accept her answer as fact had already taken form.

Aglaea exhaled slowly. There was nothing she could do to stop what had been set in motion.

All she could do now was hope that Phainon would find reason before he descended too far; before he stepped into an abyss from which no one could ever pull him back.

After all, a ghost’s obsession was both their salvation… and their damnation.

---...

..

.--

There was something warm holding his hand.

Anaxa hadn’t expected the afterlife to look like a hospital ceiling. After spending nearly a third of his life staring up at the same white, lifeless tiles, the idea of seeing them again felt less like mercy and more like a cruel joke. If this truly was the afterlife, then perhaps this was his punishment… to be trapped in a hospital room forever, condemned to watch the days blur together beneath fluorescent lights.

“You're awake. It's been three days.”

Am I?

Anaxa blinked, sluggish awareness settling in as he realized he wasn’t alone. With some effort, he turned his head to the side. Phainon was seated beside the bed, his hand still wrapped around Anaxa’s own.

The ghost was smiling.

It was the same familiar expression Phainon always wore, but it stopped short of his eyes. There, something else lingered, something hollow and strained, as if the smile were only a habit he hadn’t yet learned how to let go of.

Anaxa’s gaze roamed over Phainon as if he were committing every detail to memory, before trailing down the length of his arms to where his hands were wrapped around Anaxa’s own, offering comfort in the only way he seemed to know how.

“You didn't tell me you were sick.” Phainon didn’t bother softening the words. There was no point. Time, he realized now, was painfully limited, and he had none to spare on careful phrasing.

“Does it even matter?” Anaxa replied quietly. “I'm going to die either way, you know. We both knew that since the start of the year.”

Phainon fell silent, his gaze dropping to the floor as though the answer had been knocked clean out of him. For a moment, it looked like he didn’t know what to say at all.

Anaxa shook his head. Gently, he slipped his hand free from Phainon’s grasp and lifted it instead, reaching out to pat Phainon’s head in an awkward attempt to comfort him in return.

The ghost pulled away at the last second, a blank, hollow look settling over his face.

Anaxa frowned. “Phainon?”

“The hospital wanted to transfer you to a care facility for the… rest of the life you have left.” Phainon struggled through the sentence, each word seeming to resist him. His gaze flicked to Anaxa’s hand, still suspended in the air, and guilt softened his expression.

“... Sorry,” he added quietly. “I'm going to do something. Don't wait for me.”

He leaned in for a brief, almost desperate hug, then slipped through the window in a rush, as though he couldn’t afford to stay another second.

Anaxa stared at the wall for a long moment before his eyes drifted back to his raised hand. It felt wrong now, strangely empty, without Phainon’s warmth anywhere near it.

July

Phainon rarely answered him anymore.

Anaxa didn’t know where things had gone wrong. Was it because he’d lied about his illness? Now that he finally had the time to think, he couldn’t deny it— hiding the truth had been the worst possible choice. All that remained was to apologize, to make things right, and to spend whatever time he had left with Phainon.

Yet the last time Phainon had visited was a week ago.

Restlessness had begun to creep in, settling beneath Anaxa’s skin.

A sudden jolt ran through him as someone slipped through the door. “Anaxa,” Phainon said, his voice tight.

Anaxa looked up— and froze.

Phainon’s eyes were wide, bloodshot. It was wrong in a way Anaxa couldn’t fully articulate, a detail that shouldn’t have been possible for someone already dead. The sight sent a chill through him.

What had kept him away all this time? And what, exactly, had been demanding so much of him?

“Our agreement is for you to stay by my side whenever I call you, remember that?” Anaxa shot back, the snark barely masking his growing irritation. Phainon’s inability to communicate had always been a sore point. He had a habit of trying to shoulder every burden alone, shutting everyone else out in the process, even when he himself was the one insisting on offering help. “Where have you been?”

The irony of it all only made it worse. Phainon had wanted Anaxa to rely on him, to accept his support… yet now, he wouldn’t even say what was wrong. A hypocrite.

“Here and there,” Phainon replied vaguely, lifting one shoulder in a careless shrug, as if the answer wasn’t worth the time it took to give it. He let out a short whistle, trying to dispel the tension, before a broad grin appeared on his face. “Did you see the cool fountain outside?”

Dodging questions… and now changing the subject? Anaxa sighed quietly. No matter how he pressed, Phainon wasn’t going to open up so easily. Pushing further would only make him retreat.

For now, Anaxa decided he would indulge Phainon’s little act (this pretense that nothing was wrong) and wait for the moment Phainon finally chose to speak on his own.

..

.-..

.-..

Useless.

They were all useless. Everyone around him.

The thought looped endlessly in Phainon’s mind, tightening until it left no room for anything else. Frustration gnawed at him, threatening to spill over into something uglier.

He refused to let himself feel guilty for ignoring Anaxa’s summons. It’s for his own good, he told himself again and again, clinging to the excuse like a lifeline. The next time I see him, I’ll bring good news. I’ll tell him he won’t die from that illness.

That was the only reason Phainon had allowed himself to return to the hospital at all— to remind Anaxa that he still existed and hadn’t vanished for good.

He had considered the cost. If he succeeded, Anaxa wouldn’t be able to see him anymore. That was fine. More than fine. The past few months had been the best part of Phainon’s afterlife, and he was willing to give them up if it meant Anaxa would live. Anaxa would be better off not seeing him again… at least not until decades later.

Yet weeks had passed since Anaxa had been hospitalized.

And despite everything Phainon had done, everything he was still trying to do, there was no progress at all.

Phainon gritted his teeth as he stared at the corkboard dominating the center of his lab. Papers and photographs were pinned to it in chaotic layers, overlapping and crooked. The entire surface was crowded with frantic notes and half-finished calculations, his handwriting so jagged and rushed it bordered on illegible. Several photographs had been slashed through with thick red Xs.

His first plan had been Cyrene.

As the one who ruled over Time, she could simply rewind Anaxa to a point before the illness ever took hold. From there, everything else could be fixed. It had been his most reasonable idea, the one he’d clung to with the most confidence. He had gone to her fully expecting her to agree.

Instead, she had shut him down with a single shake of her head.

‘I can turn back time,’ Cyrene had told him calmly, ‘but I can't stop his disease from progressing. No matter how much we try to alter the events, whether by car accident or by an illness, Anaxagoras was destined to die.’

Phainon stormed back into his lab in a burst of fury, chairs scraping and crashing as he sent them flying to the far end of the room. He didn’t stop moving until he reached the corkboard. With shaking hands, he snatched up a red marker from the floor and dragged it across Cyrene’s photograph, the line thick and ugly with pressure.

It took hours before the anger finally burned itself out. When it did, he stood there unmoving, eyes wide and unblinking, staring at nothing in particular.

There were still a few more plans left.

Cyrene had only been his first choice because hers was the most humane solution he could think of. With her crossed off the board, that option was gone.

That only meant he would have to resort to other measures.

.-..

.

.-

August

“This is an absurd plan, even for you, Khaos,” Tribios shot back, her face flushed as red as her long hair.

They stood within her Boundary, near the observatory. As the ghost who governed Space, Tribios was rarely anchored to one location, shifting her surroundings whenever the mood struck her— but this place was her constant. It was where she worked, where she built and rebuilt her inventions, and where she felt most at ease. Even now, she hadn’t bothered to properly monitor the Space under her control, too absorbed in her latest creation to notice someone slipping through her Gate.

Khaos.

Rumors had already reached her from other ghosts. Khaos had been unstable lately, wandering into Boundary after Boundary, uninvited, each time presenting a different version of the same request. He always claimed he needed their specific abilities to make his plan work. The details changed depending on who he spoke to, but the outcome was always the same.

The plans were ridiculous.

Inhumane.

Tribios had never believed that the gentle ghost Aglaea had once taken in was capable of coming up with ideas like these. Rumors were usually exaggerated, so she hadn’t been particularly worried when she sensed Khaos entering her Boundary that day. Those stories were probably overblown, she’d told herself.

Deep down, though, she knew better. Rumors always carried a trace of truth, no matter how deeply it was buried beneath layers of distortion. And as she looked at him now, she understood that this one hadn’t been a lie after all.

“I need a portion of your Space,” Khaos said.

There was a manic glint in his clear blue eyes. His hands trembled at his sides, as if he were running on nothing but anticipation and fragile hope that was stretched far past its limits.

“For what?” Tribios asked.

Within the Boundaries, time already flowed more slowly than it did on the near shore… but within Tribios’s Space in particular, time didn’t exist at all.

Everything within her Space existed in stagnation. Rain droplets hung suspended in the air, seeds buried in the soil would never sprout, and no one would ever grow old. For Khaos to ask for a portion of it, he must have intended to make use of that very property.

“Anaxa… would need to stay there for the time being.”

The thought seemed to fully form as he spoke, Khaos’s eyes lighting up with sudden clarity.

He took a slow step back, then another, placing distance between himself and Tribios as he began to pace. His muttering grew louder, faster, spilling into frantic rambling. “That's right… This Boundary won't allow time to flow, so Anaxa would be perfect just right here. His illness won't continue progressing, so his fate won't be fulfilled!”

“Khaos, compose yourself. What are you even saying?” Tribios snapped.

Her words might as well have been background noise. Khaos didn’t slow, didn’t look at her. He was caught entirely in his own line of thought as he continued to speak.

“Ah… but he's human right now, would it affect him like it did non-living things…? No, what am I talking about? No one dies in a Boundary! Even if his illness did progress, he would never die! Yes… Yes… this is a perfect solution…”

Tribios had had enough. Khaos’s fixation on that human was beginning to threaten the balance between the near shore and the far shore. She could understand wanting someone to live beyond the date Fate had assigned them, but interfering with a person’s destiny outright caused damage that could never be undone.

She had seen the consequences before. Long ago, between Aglaea and Cifera.

It had never ended well.

And so, for the sixth time that month, Khaos’s request was rejected.

This time, however, Tribios sent an urgent message to the Imperator, marked for immediate attention. When a problem grew too large to ignore, the only solution was to end it before it could take root.

-..

.

…-.

Anaxa grimaced at his reflection in the mirror. His face looked gaunt, his skin pale and drained of color. His lips were dry and cracked, and he didn’t even have the energy to reach for the lip balm sitting within arm’s reach.

He let out another tired sigh.

It had been four weeks since he’d last seen Phainon. He would be lying if he said it didn’t hurt badly. He told himself he didn’t mind if Phainon was too busy to visit during the few months he had left, or even to stop by briefly just to say he was doing alright.

But the silence still stung.

All those times Anaxa had wished for Phainon to disappear from his sight seemed to have finally worked. It was just his luck that it happened now. Karma, after all, had never been kind enough to care about timing or anyone’s feelings.

He had foolishly hoped that today would be different. After all, if Phainon knew everything about him— he had been his self-proclaimed ‘caretaker’ for most of his life, after all— then surely he would remember the significance of today. He had to, right?

Anaxa pulled his phone from his pocket and turned the screen on, intending to check the time. He didn’t even get that far. The lockscreen photo caught his attention first.

It was a picture of the two of them, taken just hours before Christmas and the day before the accident. They were both wearing ugly sweaters, gifts from one of their classmates during the party.

Phainon was the one holding the phone, winking at the camera and flashing a half-heart with his free hand, his arm slung casually over Anaxa’s shoulders. Anaxa, in contrast, looked worn down. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, exhaustion written plainly on his face. And yet, there was still a quiet fondness there as he reluctantly completed Phainon’s heart.

Perched atop Anaxa’s head in the photo was Phainon’s original gift to him: a rubber duck that had been destroyed along with the car the very next day.

Phainon had wanted to give him another present back then. There just hadn’t been time. Anaxa had never even learned what it was supposed to be.

It was the last picture they had ever taken together, and it made his chest ache with all the things that could have been. If they hadn’t crashed, they would have grown up side by side: rented a place of their own, adopted far too many pets, and filled their days with small, stupid joys that would have added up to a life.

The clock ticked on.

When it struck midnight, the date flipped to the twenty-ninth of August. With every minute that followed, Anaxa’s hope that Phainon would appear dwindled until there was barely anything left to hold onto.

Just like all the days before it, it seemed Phainon wouldn’t be visiting today either.

Anaxa had turned twenty-eight alone, just as he had celebrated his birthday for the past ten years.

A sudden itch crawled up his throat, sharp and irritating. His frown deepened as the sensation worsened, and he moved to the fridge, downing a glass of water like a man parched beyond reason. The coolness eased the irritation, leaving him exhausted in its wake. He yawned and headed for the bathroom, ready to wash up and call it a night.

The faucet hissed to life. Cold water pooled in his hands as he splashed his face, again and again, rubbing at his cheeks in a dull attempt to wake himself up. When he finally straightened and looked back at his reflection, he could see water streaming down his skin, clinging to the loose strands of hair framing his face—

Someone was standing behind the bathroom door.

Anaxa spun around. Phainon?

The figure stood just beyond the door, half-swallowed by shadow. He couldn’t see him clearly yet, but Anaxa knew one thing for certain— he hadn’t heard the door open. Which meant there were only two possibilities: someone had climbed in through the window… or they had phased straight through the wall.

Anaxa reached out and shut off the faucet. The rush of water died instantly, leaving the room unnervingly quiet.

“Phainon?” he called, hope slipping into his voice despite himself.

As he took a cautious step closer, the figure came into focus. It was Phainon. He could recognize him anywhere. And yet, something was wrong. Something Anaxa couldn’t quite put into words.

His gaze swept over him, lingering for a moment on the ugly Christmas sweater Phainon was wearing. Anaxa let out a small, disbelieving huff and shook his head, forcing a smirk. “You really took your time visiting me,” he said lightly. “Still an ass, huh?”

Phainon didn’t respond and just kept smiling.

Only then did Anaxa realize the smile hadn’t changed at all, not when he’d spoken, not when he’d stepped closer. It was stretched too wide, fixed in place, never reaching Phainon’s eyes. A chill crept down Anaxa’s spine.

What’s wrong with you?

Anaxa forced a smile of his own, his unease tightening into something heavier. Maybe this was a joke. Maybe Phainon was planning to make it up to him, to compensate for all those missed days, all that silence.

“Phainon?” he tried again.

Instead of answering him, Phainon stepped fully into the bedroom, slipping out of Anaxa’s line of sight. The smile never left his face.

Like a moth drawn to a flame, Anaxa followed.

He opened his mouth, ready to scold Phainon for ignoring him, for refusing to say anything… but then—

At first, everything seemed normal. Then the harsh fluorescent light caught him properly, and the familiar shape began to warp.

Phainon’s skin dulled to a sickly gray. Dark blotches spread across his face, irregular and wet-looking, blooming like rot beneath the surface. They crawled slowly, unmistakably alive in their stillness.

Autolysis. The body begins to break itself down. Carbon dioxide builds up. Acid levels rise. Cell membranes rupture. The body starts to digest itself.

“I’m safe. I’m safe…” Anaxa whispered, the words tumbling out as his heart slammed violently against his ribs. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe it’s just the light. A trick. It has to be.

But his dreams were always the same. Screeching metal, shattered glass, the moment of impact… Never this. Never this.

No. You’re fine. He’s just messing with you. It’s a prank, that’s what he does. He’s laughing at me. He’s always been cruel like that. His thoughts began to spiral, desperate and frantic. He wouldn’t— couldn’t— He wouldn’t do this to me.

The smell hit him next. It was sweet. It was also sickly. It was very much like rotting flesh.

It turned his stomach instantly, bile burning hot at the back of his throat. Anaxa gagged, eyes watering, but he couldn’t look away from the grotesque sight in front of him.

Maybe… maybe if he pretended this was nothing more than a very detailed documentary on decomposition—

“I’m safe, I’m safe…”

If he said it enough times, maybe everything would feel normal again. Maybe his mind would stop turning on itself.

“I’m safe, I’m safe…”

The skin began to slough away.

It peeled off in loose sheets, wet and fragile, exposing blackened muscle beneath. Phainon’s eyes sank deeper into their sockets, the pupils dissolving into cloudy pools of milky white. Something wriggled along the exposed tissue— maggots, fat and pale, threading through what used to be flesh.

What stage was this again?

Active decay. The body shows clear signs of deterioration and putrefaction. Skin discoloration— greenbrownblack. Sloughing. Internal organs are liquefying, fluids pooling inside the body cavities.

“I’m safe… I’m safe… it’ll be fine…” It was just a hallucination. That had to be it.

And then, at last, only bone remained. The skull’s teeth were jagged and yellowed, locked in a silent, broken grin, while the hollow eye sockets still seemed to watch him. Strips of sinew and tatters of skin clung stubbornly to the frame, swaying faintly with movements that should not have existed.

Dry stage. The majority of soft tissues have been removed or fully decomposed. The skeletal remains become increasingly exposed as the remaining connective tissues, ligaments, and cartilage continue to deteriorate.

Dry stage. The -------y of o- ----u-- have been removed or fully decomposed. The -k------ ----i-- become ----------l- exposed as the remaining connective tissues, l----e---, --d cartilage continue to deteriorate. Dry stage. The m------- of soft -----e- have been removed or fully decomposed. The skeletal remains become increasingly exposed as the remaining connective tissues, ligaments, and cartilage continue to deteriorate. drY gt.sae teh mrytOaij of tsfo seUssti ahve eWnbe vdmIeroe ro LuyLf D.eosempcdo het eskatlel saInrme cbEoem sncylnrgaiie sodeexp sa teh rgieianmn oitcnenvce si,stsue elt,nsgiam and reaicgtla iuoennct to tarere.ideto ███ ██████ ███ ████████ ██ ████ ███████ ████ ████ ███████ ██ █████ ███████████ ███ ████████ ███████ ██████ ████████████ ███████ ██ ███ █████████ ██████████ ████████ ██████████ ███ █████████ ████████ ██ ████████████

Phainon was still smiling at him.

Anaxa’s chest constricted painfully, his heart racing so fast that each frantic beat throbbed against his temples, loud enough to drown out his thoughts.

Phainon, where are you?

The thing that was not Phainon slowly lifted a skeletal hand. Despite everything that told him it should have been impossible, Anaxa felt it rest against his cheek, gentle and familiar, a comforting touch that should not have existed at all. There was no flesh, no warmth, nothing real there… So why could he feel it?

At the same moment, something inside Anaxa gave way, snapping as if severed by an unseen force, and a numbing cold spread through him, sinking deep before he could even draw another breath.

A violent heave tore itself from his chest before he could stop it, followed by a rush of hot, acidic fluid that spilled from his mouth and splashed across the floor. He gagged, then retched again, bile burning his throat with a faint, metallic tang of iron. His vision blurred with tears, and he lingered at the edge of his sight all the same, watching him with that same unbearable smile, as though this suffering were meant solely for his amusement.

Anaxa needed to get away from here, needed distance, air, anything that was not this room.

“Help— help!” he cried as he fumbled for the call button and slammed it repeatedly, his hands shaking so badly that he nearly missed it. Within seconds, three nurses hurried into the room, only to stop short as they took in the mess that coated the floor and the state he was in.

For a fleeting, horrifying moment, when Anaxa’s terrified gaze locked onto their faces, the world twisted cruelly. Flesh seemed to peel away in his mind, leaving behind hollowed skulls and impossibly wide smiles that stretched too far, as if their jaws might crack from the strain.

“Get out!” Anaxa screamed, panic ripping through his voice as he shoved a hand into his pocket and hurled his phone at them. He had no idea whether it struck anyone, nor did he care, because all he could think about was making them leave. “Get away from me!”

The phone hit the floor with a sharp crack, its screen spiderwebbing as it skidded across the tiles. One jagged fracture split the lockscreen image cleanly in two, a harsh line dividing Phainon from Anaxa, before the display flickered once and died. That device had been the last thing to hold that picture, and now it was gone, erased beyond recovery.

All Anaxa wanted was escape— away from Phainon, away from the nurses, away from everything that kept clawing at his mind and warping what he saw—

Acting on raw instinct rather than reason, he sprinted toward the single window in the room, forced it open with shaking hands, and jumped.

.

.-.

-.--

“You cannot be serious!”

The outburst rang through the third-floor hallway of the hospital, echoing sharply just outside Anaxa’s room, where three figures stood locked in a volatile standoff.

One of them was short in stature yet carried an authority so oppressive, her presence radiating an unmistakable threat as her sharp eyes dared anyone within reach to challenge her decision.

Just behind her waited another woman, posture composed and disciplined, one hand folded neatly behind her back as she stood in silent, unwavering loyalty, prepared to act the instant she was given an order.

Facing them both was a much larger figure, his sheer size impossible to ignore, the fury he carried for his friend bleeding into the air around him until it felt thick enough to suffocate.

Rage consumed him entirely, seeping into his muscles until his body trembled under the strain, as though the emotion itself were trying to tear him apart from the inside.

“I always think through what I do, and I knew that what happened would be the most effective way to resolve our current problem,” Cerydra replied, her voice low and edged with a hiss as she lifted her staff and aimed its tip toward him in a deliberate, unmistakable gesture of warning. “Allowing the situation to deteriorate to this extent was my responsibility, and we were both aware that we cannot afford to let something like this happen again.”

“What happened between Aglaea and Cifera was different,” the man shot back, his voice raw with restrained violence as he took a step forward. “Cifera was one of us, and both of them understood exactly what dangers they were inviting when they chose to interfere with the balance. This human never had that choice, never even knew that his life was being treated like a piece on a board!”

“Exactly why we cannot let Khaos proceed any further! Imagine another possibility of the Severance happening!” Cerydra shrieked, her voice cracking with urgency as she impulsively fired a beam of light toward the man in front of her. Before it could strike, Helektra deflected it with a swift swing of her sword, the redirected energy chipping a jagged section from the wall behind him.

Cerydra’s eyes gleamed with unhinged intensity as she continued, her madness plain for all to see. “All the lost souls we couldn’t ferry into the afterlife because our connection was severed! I turned a blind eye when Khaos interfered with this human’s Fate, but that was fine; he was merely a mortal back then as well,” she ground out, her voice low and sharp, “but I will not let the disaster from fifty years ago repeat. If this human soul must suffer for what Khaos did ten years ago, then let him die a glorious death!”

He staggered backward, ready to argue on the human’s behalf, but deep down he knew she was right. When faced with the life of a single human against the countless souls at risk, any reasonable being would sacrifice the former for the sake of the many.

Yet hesitation gnawed at him. Was it because Khaos was his friend? Of all the ghosts, none had spent more time with him, none had revealed more of humanity’s fragile beauty through stories, lessons, and laughter.

And the human at the center of it all was Anaxa. From the beginning, everyone had noticed: this human had become Khaos’s obsession, the driving force behind all of his actions. While regret bound Khaos to the near shore, it was the intensity of his feelings for Anaxa that kept him moving, that kept him alive, even now.

If a ghost’s obsession was threatened, or worse, torn away from them, the consequences were never gentle.

“Khaos’s obsession was Anaxa,” the man murmured, his voice rough with unease. “What will we do if he goes past the brink of insanity?”

Cerydra slowly lowered her staff, the tension draining from her stance as she saw the resistance leave him all at once. “Then we will have no choice but to forcefully send him to the far shore. If his obsession and the root of his regret are taken from him at the same time,” she continued evenly, “there will be nothing left to tether him to this side anymore.”

She exhaled, her shoulders sinking as her gaze drifted toward the closed door of Anaxa’s room. For a brief moment, something like guilt softened her expression. “For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, “it pains me to do this as well. But for the sake of balance…”

Her eyes hardened. “They must never see each other again.”

He offered no reply, but his thoughts churned relentlessly. The image of Khaos’s eyes dulling, hollowed out by madness, refused to leave him. That was not a fate he could accept for his friend. He knew he could never oppose Cerydra directly… but resistance did not always need to be loud.

There were other ways to defy her.

September

It had been four weeks, and everything had spiraled far beyond what he had expected. “Phainon! Phainon, open this door, or I’m going to—”

The sudden creak of the lab door swinging open cut him off mid-shout.

Mydeimos recoiled instinctively at the sight.

For a ghost, Phainon had once radiated vitality in every feature. His presence had been brighter even than any human Mydeimos had ever seen, and those crystal blue eyes (so full of life) had gleamed with an almost ironic warmth, given that he was dead.

Now, there was nothing left of that light. Phainon looked hollow, his skin and expression drained of everything that once defined him. Every ounce of life had been leeched away, leaving a shell that resembled the corpses lying in forgotten graves. He had surrendered himself completely to a single purpose, and in doing so, he had willingly given up everything else… including himself.

That was the danger of a ghost’s obsession, how it could consume them entirely, leaving nothing behind.

“Phainon,” Mydeimos said, his voice low, careful, almost like he was addressing a cornered animal. “Let me in.”

He had a plan to pull Phainon back from the edge of the cliff he was teetering on, but none of it would work without Phainon’s help.

---

-.

.

Mydeimos struggled to keep his expression neutral, though the room before him was unlike anything he had expected Phainon’s Boundary to become.

Photos of Anaxa were plastered across the once-bare walls, fragments of broken beakers and shattered test tubes littering the floor. Every piece of furniture had been dismantled and shoved to the edges of the room, leaving an open expanse in the center that felt unnervingly deliberate.

At the far wall, a corkboard dominated the space, covered in a chaotic tangle of photographs, each marked with a red X. Notes in messy, almost illegible handwriting filled every inch of the board. Mydeimos bent closer, trying to decipher them, only to discover that, over and over again, the same word appeared: Anaxa.

The name had begun neatly, carefully, as if Phainon had tried to preserve the image of the human he revered. Over time, however, the writing grew jagged, frantic anger seeping into each stroke until all that remained was the repetition of the name itself, pinned and carved into the corkboard alongside Phainon’s obsessive, idealized vision of Anaxa.

Mydeimos could practically see it— the raw, searing mixture of despair, obsession, and wrath etched into Phainon’s expression as he scrawled the same name over and over.

I couldn't save you. Despair.

I wanted to save you. Obsession.

Why won't you let me save you? Wrath.

His gaze fell on the single photograph on the corkboard that had no markings. The figure was unmistakable: Polyxia, the ghost who wielded dominion over Death. Every other image had been defaced, but hers remained untouched. Why?

“Phainon,” Mydeimos called, his voice strained but firm. “Why is Polyxia the only one left unmarked?”

Phainon stared at one of Anaxa’s pictures pinned to the wall, one bony finger lifting to scratch absently at his scalp. Scritch, scratch, a dry, repetitive sound, like something gnawing away in a hidden corner.

“She’s my last hope,” he murmured. “Death comes for all humans, so she’s what I need to stop to save—”

“Are you planning to eliminate her?” Mydeimos cut in sharply. He refused to let Phainon finish saying Anaxa’s name; even brushing against it in this state would only make him spiral further. “Death can’t be killed, Phainon. Trying to repeat what Aglaea did won’t work.”

Fifty years ago, Aglaea and Cifera had worked together to strip the ghosts of their powers, even managing to unseat Polyxia from her Boundary. They had done it without understanding the consequences that Aglaea could never have foreseen.

And now Cifera is gone.

“I know,” Phainon whispered. His finger slid slowly down Anaxa’s cheek in the photograph, lingering there as if the image were warm, as if it could feel him. “I have a different plan.”

Mydeimos swallowed. “Which is?”

“I changed his fate once by dying in his place,” Phainon said, his voice steadily gaining strength as he leaned further into a plan that sounded like pure, unrestrained insanity. “If it worked once, then I can do it again. If someone else dies instead of him, their Fate can be transferred over, can’t it? It’s simple.”

What…?

Mydeimos didn’t even have time to form a response. In a sudden, jarring movement, Phainon produced a knife from somewhere within his coat, the metal flashing briefly under the cold light before he turned and bolted out of the lab, his movements sharp and purposeful, as if the decision had already been made long ago.

“Phainon!” Mydeimos shouted, sprinting after him. Killing someone… this was what he had settled on? This was his final answer?

He swallowed a curse as he ran. He hadn’t expected Phainon to act this fast, to move with such terrifying certainty. Even as Phainon twisted through corridors and tried to lose him, Mydeimos stayed close, refusing to let him disappear.

He didn’t even know who Phainon intended to kill. It was Sunday; the university should have been empty, devoid of living humans. Unless someone had deliberately come here today, there should have been no one for Phainon to target—

They skidded to a stop in an empty hallway. Phainon stood rigid in the center, the knife clutched so tightly his knuckles whitened, muttering under his breath with a relentless rhythm. If Mydeimos listened closely, he could make out the same word over and over: Anaxa.

“Phainon, stop this madness!” Mydeimos barked, stepping directly into his path. “You know better than I do that Anaxa wouldn’t want anyone dying for his sake—”

A quiet, hesitant voice cut through the chaos. “W-what’s going on?”

Dread surged through Mydeimos as he turned slowly. Not far behind them stood a student, frozen in place, her wide eyes filled with confusion and fear. He knew her. Of course, he did— Polyxia’s obsession, the one Phainon had been circling for so long.

Castorice.

Castorice trembled in place, arms wrapped tightly around the stack of books pressed to her chest. Her wide eyes were clouded with confusion, which quickly curdled into pure fear the instant she noticed the knife in front of her.

Panic clawed at Mydeimos as he tried to make sense of it. How could Castorice see them? Both he and Phainon were ghosts; normally, only those close to the far shore could perceive them. Polyxia had already confirmed the limits of her thread. This didn’t make any sense—

Unless her fate had been altered.

The thought barely solidified when Phainon spun around him, lunging toward Castorice with a manic, unhinged gleam in his eyes. “HKS!” Mydeimos cursed, throwing himself into the path of the attack. The blade sliced cleanly through Mydeimos’s flickering limb.

Behind him, Castorice couldn’t stop herself from screaming at the chaos unfolding before her. “You!” Mydeimos shouted, trying to grab her attention, and when he did, he jerked his head toward the direction of the university gate, muscles straining as he fought to keep Phainon from advancing. “Get out of here!”

Without hesitation, the girl snatched up her fallen books and bolted from the building. Mydeimos could only hope that Polyxia had intervened, shielding her from any danger until her Fate could be restored for the next twenty-four hours.

Phainon’s lips curled into a snarl. With his final plan thwarted, he drew back and swung his free hand at Mydeimos, the punch landing hard against his face. “How could you!” he shrieked, voice shrill and fractured with agony. Exchanging Castorice’s and Anaxa’s fates had been his last hope, and without it…

All the fire left him in an instant. He sagged to the floor, the knife clattering uselessly beside him.

Without it, there was nothing left but grief. Ugly, guttural cries tore from his throat as he pressed his fingers into his face, sobbing and wailing, mourning the time with Anaxa that he could never reclaim.

He had tried everything to save him. Blood, sweat, tears… sacrifices layered upon sacrifices, each one offered without hesitation if it meant Anaxa could live, if it meant he could have a future that stretched beyond hospital ceilings and ticking clocks. Phainon had been willing to give all of himself for that outcome, willingly, eagerly, without regret.

His fingers tangled in his own hair as he paced, nails scraping against his scalp while his thoughts spiraled in frantic, overlapping circles. He needed something else, another answer, another path— there had to be something he hadn’t tried yet.

Then he saw the knife.

A life for a life…

It wouldn't hurt to try, right?

The world seemed to narrow around it. He lunged forward before Mydeimos could stop him, barely registering the shout behind him, and in one swift, practiced motion, he pressed the blade to his own neck, aimed precisely at the carotid artery, and pulled—

Nothing happened.

A strangled sound tore out of his throat. His hand shook as he stared at the unbroken flesh, at the blade that refused to do what it was meant to. “No worries,” he rasped, forcing the words out as panic clawed up his chest. “I can still fix it. I can fix it. I can…”

Someone laughed loudly. It took him a long time to realize that it was him.

The sound that tore out of Phainon was too loud for the empty hallway, echoing off the walls until it curdled into something broken. The laughter cracked halfway through, dissolving into choking, guttural sobs that clawed their way up his throat, raw and animal, nothing resembling the voice he once had.

He couldn’t even kill himself.

The realization crushed down on him all at once. He was already dead. No matter how deeply he pressed the blade, no matter how desperately he dragged it across his own throat, it would never amount to anything. It wouldn’t buy Anaxa another second. It wouldn’t change the outcome waiting for him. His body refused to obey, just as Fate always had.

“I’m sorry.” The word spilled out of him, thin and useless. He had failed, utterly and completely, and there was nothing left to bargain with. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry— forgiveme—”

A slap rang out loud and sharp, cutting cleanly through the noise.

Phainon reeled back, stunned, the imprint of a hand already blooming red across his cheek. The endless loop of apologies shattered, leaving only ragged breaths behind. His unfocused gaze lifted slowly, settling on Mydeimos, who stood there shaking, chest heaving, anger and desperation etched plainly across his face.

“Mydeimos—”

Another slap landed on the same cheek, far harder this time. Phainon stumbled, but Mydeimos didn’t let him fall. With a snarl, he grabbed Phainon by the collar, hoisting him from the ground. “You’re so fucking pathetic, Khaos.”

Perhaps it was because it was Mydeimos speaking, but for the first time since his three months of induced madness, Phainon felt real anger surge through him. “Shut up!” he roared, his voice cracking.

“You’re a hypocrite,” Mydeimos hissed through clenched teeth, eyes burning. “You went above and beyond to call out Anaxa for letting himself waste away, but here you are, doing the same goddamn thing!”

“That’s different,” Phainon croaked, his voice trembling despite the force behind it. “I was trying to save him—”

“Have you ever asked what he wanted?” Mydeimos cut him off, leaning in close so their faces nearly touched. “You didn’t, did you? It’s been your problem from the start. You just decided, all on your own, that Anaxa living longer mattered more than him living the rest of his life—”

“I WAS SUPPOSED TO FIX THIS!” Phainon screamed, swinging a punch at Mydeimos, but his strength betrayed him, leaving the blow weak and half-hearted. “IF ONLY I HAD MORE TIME—”

“You wasted his time,” Mydeimos snapped, voice low but cutting, “obsessing over saving him instead of actually being there.” He released Phainon’s collar, letting the younger ghost crumble to the floor. “When was the last time you visited him?”

Phainon’s lips trembled. When was I…? Last month… No, July? The words barely formed in his mind, shame twisting every thought.

“You don’t get to be the tragic hero here,” Mydeimos hissed, stepping back and glaring down at him. “Your suffering means nothing compared to the time he lost waiting for you.” Without another word, he turned and walked away, leaving Phainon on the floor, eyes fixed on the space he had abandoned. “Three months. Three months since you actually went to see him.”

The worst realization crept in, slow and suffocating.

Even if he had saved him, it would never have been enough. He would have kept searching for ways to trap Anaxa in a gilded cage, shielding him from every pain, every hardship, forcing him to only know the best that life could offer.

He would have called it love, blind to the fact that it was anything but.

He was waiting for me, and I wasn’t there.

Phainon’s eyes snapped open, panic surging as he remembered the countless summons from Anaxa he had ignored, all while chasing a way to save him. He reached out with his senses, only to find emptiness. “What the—”

The bond was gone.

“Mydeimos!” he called, voice cracking. He tried to rise, but his knees buckled, all the weight of his emotions draining him. “What happened? Why can’t I feel Anaxa?”

“Cerydra,” Mydeimos said, voice tight, offering no further explanation.

Phainon ground his teeth, fighting the rising despair, and instead of letting himself crumble, he lowered his head to the floor. “Mydei… bring me to Anaxa. Please.” His voice was fragile, nearly a whisper, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.

He hoped he still had time left.

.

-

---

“Anaxa!” Phainon called out, collapsing to the floor without ceremony. Above him, the portal Mydeimos had created snapped shut in an instant, its purpose fulfilled.

Fine. He didn’t need anyone’s help anymore. Jeez… he had been pathetic lately, hadn’t he?

Shaking his head to clear the dizziness, he forced himself upright. Mydeimos had said he would drop him only in front of Anaxa’s room, no further. That was as far as anyone could go.

Phainon drew in a shaky breath, summoning every ounce of strength he had to see Anaxa again. Weeks of avoidance and selfishness weighed heavily on him. He had ignored summons, brushed past every opportunity, even forgotten his birthday… something he had never done before.

All he could do now was hope that Anaxa would still let him be by his side.

Phainon drew a shuddering breath and pushed the door open… only to find Anaxa standing there, right in the doorway. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and the bandages wrapped around his head made him look even more fragile.

Phainon’s chest tightened. He remembered a similar moment from their first meeting this year. Back then, it had been Anaxa opening the door to find him standing behind it. Back then, Phainon had cried simply because Anaxa could see him, fully aware that that would mean Anaxa was dying.

Now, the roles had shifted, but the emotions were just as raw. Phainon’s tears fell freely because Anaxa was alive… and he could see him still alive.

“Anaxa—” His voice broke, choking on the mixture of relief and lingering fear.

Tears streaked down Anaxa’s face as well, but his were not of relief… rather, they were fear, grief, and confusion.

“Phainon? How… How are you alive?”

What.

‘we walked towards the same place
but this place became our end
although we used to talk about forever
now we break each other without mercy’

— outro:tear by BTS

πέντε — A.R. [because no matter what, no matter what may come, you were my starting point: I need to disappear, no longer remaining bound forevermore, may these ashes of mine desecrate your resting place—]

October

“Hey, Phainon,” Anaxa said, poking his arm insistently in a familiar pattern of two, one, four, six, seven. “You said you had another gift for me, right? Where is it?” His gaze was curious.

Phainon swallowed and pretended not to notice. Instead, he lifted the brush and gently ran it through Anaxa’s hair. It had been months since he’d last trimmed it, long enough that it now brushed past his neck, close to how it had looked back in their university days. The sight made his chest ache.

“What gift?” Phainon asked lightly, feigning ignorance. The lie left a dull, sharp pang behind his ribs.

Anaxa groaned and grabbed the brush from his hand. “You literally said yesterday that you’d give me a different gift. If the Christmas present was really just that rubber ducky, I’m going to kill you.”

You already did. You just don’t remember.

“Right,” Phainon said quietly, giving in far too easily. He didn’t have a choice. Not when Anaxa looked at him with such easy familiarity, with no memory of the crash.

Because how could Anaxa possibly process it now? That the Phainon standing in front of him had been dead for ten years… That the person brushing his hair was a ghost… That his own life was slipping through his fingers, month by month, without him even fully understanding why.

Yet none of it came close to the most devastating thing Phainon had overheard, caught in fragments from hushed conversations between doctors who didn’t know he was there at all.

Anaxa’s terminal illness was made even worse by the head injury from the fall back in August… and it had accelerated everything. The symptoms had worsened faster than expected, creeping into the most fragile part of him— his memories.

The Anaxa standing in front of Phainon now was not the same Anaxa he had spent the last nine months with. That version was likely already gone, eroded piece by piece, without warning. Phainon hadn’t even been there to say goodbye.

All that remained was a thin, fragile hope tied to a wish, and the Anaxa from ten years ago— the one who still believed, without doubt, that they would grow old together.

“You look weird,” Anaxa murmured. He lifted a hand to cover his left eye, blinking, testing his vision as if the world itself might be malfunctioning. Nothing changed. Phainon still stood there the same way, faintly translucent, edges just a little wrong.

“Are you pranking me?” Anaxa asked quietly. “Why are you…”

As Anaxa stepped closer, clearly intent on examining him further, Phainon opened his arms and pulled him into a hug instead, letting out a slow, contented sigh. Anaxa made a startled sound against his shoulder, but Phainon ignored it, holding him just a little tighter.

If only he could stay like this forever.

If only he could pretend that nothing was wrong, that the date was still the twenty-fifth of December 2015, and the future hadn’t fractured yet.

If only.

The world around him went quiet all at once. The soft grumbling Anaxa had been making faded into nothing, replaced by a silence so complete it made Phainon’s skin prickle.

He pulled back abruptly.

Anaxa’s eyes had gone unfocused, hazy, as though he were staring into a place Phainon couldn’t follow, drifting into a dream with no way back.

“Anaxa?” Phainon said, voice tight with rising fear. “Can you hear me?”

Anaxa’s eyes fluttered, struggling as though caught in a relentless current. Behind his eyelids, shapes began to take form. He could hear faint whispers, though no one was near, murmuring in half-formed words.

“Anaxa? Listen to my voice, come on. You can do it…”

A shadow slid across the ceiling above him. When he blinked, it was gone. His body felt unbearably heavy and strangely weightless at the same time, sinking into the mattress while his thoughts drifted sideways, breaking apart into fragments of memories and dreams.

It had been a long time since Anaxa had truly slept, and this was nothing like rest. This was the space between waking and sleep, where his eyes refused to stay open but his mind wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t stay awake, and he couldn’t disappear into dreams either.

“Slowly,” Phainon urged, his voice close, almost desperate. “Listen to me…”

He could hear someone else speaking now, a familiar woman’s voice. The tone tugged at him insistently, though Anaxa couldn’t place where he’d heard it before.

Then, just as abruptly, everything shattered.

He was staring up at his ceiling again. Phainon hovered over him, his face caught between concern and relief, like he’d been holding his breath for far too long. Phainon tried to speak, but before he could manage a word, Anaxa’s voice slipped out first.

“Diotima…?”

It came out rough, scraped raw. Anaxa frowned and cleared his throat, once, then again. “Is that you?”

The ghost didn’t answer right away. His expression was unreadable, fixed in a way that made Anaxa’s chest tighten. When Phainon finally spoke, his voice was quiet and too careful.

“…Your sister’s not here,” he said. “My name is Phainon. Do you remember?”

“Phainon…” For a heartbeat, the name meant nothing. Then recognition struck, sudden and bright, and Anaxa’s eyes widened. “Phainon! H-How are you still—” alive?

It was tiring. It was always like this: a never-ending cycle of destruction and creation. No matter how much Phainon tried to remind him of the time they had spent together, the knowledge slipped away, memories collapsing in Anaxa’s mind like a house of cards.

But that was all right with Phainon. If Anaxa could no longer hold on, then he would. He would gladly bear the weight of remembering for both of them.

---

..-

.-.

“I wonder how everyone’s doing nowadays…” Anaxa murmured, his gaze drifting into space. He sat in a wheelchair as an older nurse guided him through the hospital corridors, the soft hum of the building surrounding them.

He had begged for hours just to be allowed outside to read, insisting that nothing could compare to the feeling of a book in hand while sitting in the garden. In the end, his doctor, mercifully lenient, had given his approval.

But the moment Anaxa tried to take even a single step—

“Oh!”

His knees gave out beneath him, strength vanishing without warning. With his body too weak to catch itself, there was nothing to stop the fall.

“I-I forgot how to walk…”

The nurses nearby rushed to his side at once, lifting him from where he lay sprawled on the floor. In the end, Anaxa had no choice but to accept the wheelchair they offered— no matter how much he despised what it represented, he was now too weak to stand on his own.

Tears of frustration pooled in his eyes, bitter hatred curling in his chest at how pathetic he had become. Before he could spiral any further, he felt a gentle nudge at his side. It was an attempt at comfort, a reminder that he wasn’t alone in the most difficult phase of his life.

Thank you, Phainon…

Anaxa didn’t say it out loud, but he knew Phainon felt it all the same. The ghost’s warm hand slipped into his clenched fist, their fingers threading together.

“It may be a bit cold outside, sir… are you sure you’re up for it?” a nurse asked with concern as she wheeled him toward the gate leading to the gardens.

The hospital where Anaxa stayed had its own garden, nearly as wide as any public park. It was built for the patients’ comfort, though they were rarely allowed outside unless they had explicit permission from their attending doctors.

No one had prepared Anaxa for just how true their warnings were. The moment they passed through the open gates, cold wind rushed forward and struck his face head-on. Anaxa visibly recoiled, his expression twisting in pure discomfort. The sight of it drew an unrestrained laugh from Phainon beside him, who delighted far too much in the look of open detestation on his face.

A few minutes later, the two were left alone near one of the garden benches. One of the garden’s quiet comforts was the lack of tall trees; nothing stood in the way of the open sky. Anaxa tilted his head back freely, eyes wide as he took in the colors above him.

He would never grow tired of this. The soft blues blending into gentle purples stirred something deep in his chest, carrying with them memories of long nights spent staring at the stars with Diotima and their parents.

“When I die, will I see them again?” Anaxa asked, never once looking away from the sky. When he spoke again, his voice wavered. “I miss them. They must be having fun wherever they are now… especially Phainon.”

Phainon’s wistful smile faltered at the sound of his own name.

“Pardon?”

“Oh, right! You don’t know him! Silly me,” Anaxa laughed weakly, emotion spilling over. He wiped at his cheeks with the back of his hand, but the tears showed no sign of stopping.

“Phainon reminds me of you, you see? He always carried everything on his own and never let me share the burden.” Anaxa spoke as the memories came, one after another. “To be fair, I kept him at arm’s length, but he was the only person I could ever be honest with. That’s what hurts the most. He never let me do the same for him.”

Anaxa turned slightly, studying him. “And looking at you, how hard you try to hide what you’re thinking, you act just like him. It’s uncanny, Snowy.”

Did he just call me—

Phainon opened his mouth to correct him, to remind him that ‘Phainon’ was right there beside him. The words reached his tongue… and died there, for reasons he couldn’t name.

“Am I?” Phainon let out a soft chuckle, strained despite his best effort. Even if Anaxa noticed, he didn’t comment on it. “Why did you call me ‘Snowy’?”

Anaxa tilted his head to the side, as if the question itself were strange. He leaned closer to the ghost and, with his right hand, reached up to tug lightly at a strand of Phainon’s hair.

“Your hair is as white as snow…” he murmured. “I don’t really know why, but that name’s been stuck in my head lately. It must be you, right?”

It hurt, being called by a name that wasn’t his, knowing it came from a place where his real one no longer existed. But Phainon didn't want to burst the bubble, seeing how elated Anaxa was while telling stories to his new friend, Snowy.

So… I’ll become ‘Snowy’ and forever stay by your side until you go.

.-.

.

..-

Recently, both he and Anaxa focused on nothing else but each other, choosing to use the remaining time that Anaxa had left to give him good memories (that Phainon hoped would outweigh the bad), but, with the current state of Anaxa's less-than-stellar mind, after years of constant attacks due to sleep deprivation, those memories never had a chance to help Anaxa in any way.

Phainon had tried his best to restrain himself from letting his obsession show, from making Anaxa's life harder than it should be, but there were times when Phainon knew how much easier it could be if he could just—

Perhaps it would have been much better if Anaxa had died from that car accident, after all. It was Phainon's fault that Anaxa was suffering now. Why did he even save him in the first place?

Phainon stood next to the bed, watching over a sleeping Anaxa with a blank stare. With a spare pillow in hand, he inched closer, and closer, and closer—

There's still time, he thought.

He hovered the pillow over the other's face, ready to end his misery right then and there… but a hitch in Anaxa's breathing stopped him from going any further.

It wasn't noticeable, would not even catch anyone's attention if they're not paying a closer look… But Phainon, as someone who was always attuned to everything that Anaxa does, knew that something wasn't right.

That's when he realized his mistake: Anaxa's illness had made it difficult for him to get even a wink of sleep. So Anaxa should have been alert and awake right now, and even on his sick days, he would do anything to defend himself against any attacks made on him.

But Anaxa's not doing anything to stop him. He simply lay there, consciously permitting Phainon to end his life right then and there. He knew neither of them would truly change. No matter how much Phainon tried to soften himself, he would always choose what he believed was right, even if it served his own desires more than anyone else’s.

If this is the choice Phainon made, if he believed this was mercy, then Anaxa would not fight it.

-.

Phainon clenched his teeth. With a sharp motion, he flung the pillow aside and collapsed forward instead, pressing himself against Anaxa’s chest. He buried his face in the crook of Anaxa’s neck, his shoulders tight, his breath uneven.

“Good morning,” was all Anaxa said, and he paid no mind to the feeling of tears on his shoulder.

..

---

-.

“Khaos,” a voice called from the far end of the hallway.

It caught his attention immediately. The figure approached him, each step drawing them further into the sunlight until their features were laid bare.

Phainon’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the staff. There was only one person it could belong to.

“Cerydra,” he said, his voice flat. Anyone who knew him well would have felt the anger beneath it, carefully reined in but very much alive.

Cerydra inclined her head in greeting. “I’m here to give you some advice.”

“I still haven’t forgiven you for breaking the bond between Anaxa and me,” Phainon snapped, abandoning any pretense of civility. He felt a brief, sharp sense of satisfaction when irritation flickered across her face.

“A simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed,” she retorted. “As it is, you weren’t answering any of his calls back then. If his wish was for you to stay by his side whenever he asked… Wasn't what you did a violation of that?

“Oh, Khaos… you broke that bond yourself.” The sneer on her face twisted into a cruel smile. “I merely helped snip the remaining ties.”

Patience had always been Phainon’s strongest trait. It was the only thing stopping him from striking her where she stood. His fist clenched as her grin widened, her satisfaction at ‘winning’ the exchange all too obvious.

“But I’m not here to prove you wrong,” Cerydra continued. She twirled her staff as she stepped closer, closing the distance until only inches separated them. “I’m here to tell you that you have a chance. A chance to settle your regrets and finally pass on.”

Phainon’s anger drained away, replaced by something fragile and dangerous.

“What?” he asked.

“If I recall correctly, your regret centers on a human named Anaxa.” Cerydra cast him a sideways glance, her eyes sharp, inviting him to listen closely. “This is your chance to be freed from the bonds keeping you tethered to the near shore.”

..

That conversation stayed with him, lingering even hours later, when he found himself back at the hospital once more— standing at Anaxa’s bedside, watching him drift in another hypnagogic haze.

It has been happening more often now. His illness was advancing faster than Phainon could keep up with, slipping further out of reach with each passing day.

Time.

It had always been the one thing Phainon never knew how to fight.

“Cerydra told me earlier that I could pass on to the afterlife, too,” Phainon said quietly, beginning a conversation that only one of them could hear. He hoped, foolishly, that his words might reach wherever Anaxa’s mind had wandered… but he knew better.

“But with how you are now… I don’t even know how you could help me. I don’t even know what my regret is.”

It could have been many things.

He wanted Anaxa to love himself. He wanted Anaxa to take care of himself. He wanted Anaxa to choose himself, just once.

Anaxa.

Anaxa.

Anaxa.

A quiet, self-deprecating laugh slipped from Phainon’s lips. On impulse, he reached out and took Anaxa’s hand, placing it in between both of his. He leaned his head against it, reverent in a way that bordered on devotion, like a prayer offered to someone he knew would never answer.

He didn’t need anything else. There was no one he would pray to but the man lying before him.

“Knowing you,” Phainon murmured, “you’d rather die alone so I could pass on peacefully.” His grip tightened slightly. “You’ve always put me before yourself. That’s incredibly selfish.”

He paused. An empty smile tugged at his lips as the edges of his form flickered, thinning into transparency.

“But I’m selfish too,” he continued softly. “We’re alike in that way. And this time, I won’t let myself go before you do. Not again. So…”

He closed his eyes. With something like a prayer burning in his veins, he lifted Anaxa’s hand and pressed a light kiss to it, his thumb brushing over the spot afterward, gentle and deliberate. It was an act of reverence.

Anaxa had never stopped being everything to him.

“Let me witness the end of you.”

-.

“That again?” Phainon asked, watching from the outside of the window of the first floor of his own house.

Anaxa squeaked in surprise and nearly dropped the thing that he was playing with on the floor, if not for his quick thinking. “Hey! Warn a person next time!

“Sorry about that!” Phainon laughed unabashedly before slipping inside through the door. “But this is my house, why would I need to warn you when I go inside?”

Anaxa merely rolled his eyes instead of answering him. A pout appeared on his face, his cheeks puffed in indignation as he returned to playing with the thing he found on top of a shelf.

Curious, Phainon went closer, his small feet making sounds when they hit the floorboards. “You like that snow globe?”

Anaxa blinked, the toy nestled tight in between his still too small hands. “Your dad has a really great collection,” he told Phainon. “I always wanted many, but my sister is working hard right now to take care of both of us…”

“Then I'll make one for you!” Phainon declared, his hands resting on his hips. “I'll make a mint one since it looks like your hair, then a blue one for Mr. Dromas, and then pink, and yellow, and, and, and…”

Anaxa snorted and turned his nose up in the air. “Yellow snow sounds stinky.” He giggled when Phainon made a noise of outrage.

Before he could laugh any further, the other kid tackled him and poked at his ticklish spots as revenge for ‘making fun of his declaration’. Anaxa squealed, but it was filled with childish glee, and soon the living room turned into a playground for the two of them.

-

Those were merely a child's foolish wish, and soon enough, any of these would be forgotten when they grow old. Yet Phainon never expected to find himself fulfilling this one simple wish.

He wanted Anaxa to stop being gloomy. He tried to bring back that smile. If this is the way to do it, then—

That reminds him, he had never managed to give Anaxa his gift back then, hasn't he?

“It's time for me to make you a farewell gift.”

November

“And… there!” A handcrafted mint-and-sky-blue bow was glued to the lid of the sphere jar. Phainon giggled upon seeing it, the mixture of both of their colors making his heart feel alive again.

The last time I tried to give him this, we…

Phainon shook his head from the memories that rose again in his thoughts. This is not the time to think about those things! He had just finished the snow globe he wanted to give Anaxa, after all! This deserved a celebration for him.

He was never even able to give him the original snow globe back before the accident happened, so it would really please Phainon to finally see the reaction he had been wanting to see for years now.

He barely made it a step before a frantic Cyrene rushed toward him, panic etched plainly across her face. “Phainon!”

Said ghost blinked at her call, not really expecting her to come barrelling toward him. “Just in time!” He grinned, about to reach for the gift inside where he kept it. “I just finished the—”

“There is no time!” It was rare for Cyrene to sport such a look on her face; it was always a smile and never anything else. But today, her pretty visage was replaced by someone else, her pink tresses messy and out of place. “Anaxa is dying!”

No… this isn't supposed to happen yet. This was too early.

In his denial, Phainon wasn't able to respond immediately.

“You're joking… right?” Phainon began to tremble, not wanting to accept that the time he had convinced himself that he was ready for— was already here.

When Death comes for a person, they wait for no one.

He thought he still had time.

Without waiting for her answer, Phainon turned and ran. He left the lab in a blur, the snow globe forgotten, the cloak he always wore abandoned where it hung. At that moment, he wasn’t Khaos, the wish-granting ghost.

He was just Phainon.

Tears slipped from his eyes, making numerous mistakes while on the way to the hospital due to his panic. Will he still make it in time? He had to. He promised Anaxa he would stay by his side forever, even though their deal was already void.

He ran, uncaring of the humans scattered around. He simply passed through all of them, his breath jagged and his heart beating in a frantic pace, though it was all make-believe. He didn't need to breathe, and he had no heart anymore.

It's nearing midnight soon.

Fuck this, fuck all of this! Why must you take him from me, you detestable Fate?!

In his rage, Phainon sent a few trash cans flying, striking the nearest obstacles just to give his anger somewhere to go.

“Khaos.” A voice echoed in his head, but he didn’t slow down. He couldn’t afford the distraction.

He scanned his surroundings as he ran, forcing himself to take note of where he was. The street signs told him he still had ten minutes to go before reaching Anaxa. It would have been easier if the bond between them still existed; finding him would have taken no effort at all.

But there was no room for what could have been. All that mattered was what was about to happen.

“Kha— Phainon,” Cerydra tried again, her voice urgent in his mind. For once, the arrogance was gone entirely. “Let others help you.”

As soon as she uttered those words, time slowed.

Cyrene was unable to change what would happen, but she could delay the inevitable as long as she could, until Phainon reached his destination.

Please, just lend me a few more minutes.

Time slowing down wasn't enough. Phainon cursed his own inability to do anything right, but before he could wallow in his own self-blame, a familiar portal formed itself a meter away, decorated with red spikes—

Mydeimos had lent his help as well.

Without hesitation, he jumped inside… and found himself standing before Room 720, a familiar chill settling over him as déjà vu washed through his thoughts.

Please, just this once, I wish to see you go to sleep with a smile.

“Anaxa!” Uncaring for the disturbance it might create, Phainon slammed the door open, his eyes wildly roaming around the room, looking for that one person he solely wanted to see.

A weak voice reached his ears. “Who are you…?”

Phainon swiveled around, and there, he saw Anaxa leaning against the windowsill. His skin was so pale that it highlighted the contrast between it and the dark circles under his eyes.

Even though Anaxa knew that someone else was in the room he was in, he never deigned to look back, staring longingly outside the window, his finger caressing the glass. “Water…” He murmured.

Water? Was Anaxa thirsty? What did he—

A thought entered Phainon's mind. He quickly ran toward the same window to look outside, trying to see if there was any body of water nearby. Just as he had expected, right where Anaxa's finger was pointing was a familiar beach.

Waves lapped gently at Anaxa's feet as he stared out at the horizon. Before them stretched a sky soaked in deep blues and purples, a small golden mass in the center sinking low, making way for the stars to shine in its place. Wind caressed Anaxa's face, tangling his hair even further, yet it couldn't dry the tears slipping slowly down his cheeks.

Without even breaking a sweat, Phainon flung the window open and moved closer, shielding Anaxa from the sudden rush of cold wind.

Anaxa looked at him, and for the first time in what felt like forever, his eyes lit up, knowledge swimming in their depths. “Phainon?”

“Yeah,” Phainon’s voice trembled, his chest fluttering with emotions he couldn’t name. Butterflies swarmed inside him, mixing with relief and something dangerously like hope. He didn’t even know how many times he’d cried today, but now, tears spilled freely again, and this time, they were tears of happiness. “It's me. Do you want to go out?”

A simple nod from Anaxa was all he needed. He won't waste time any longer.

With a grunt, he slipped his arm underneath Anaxa's knees, hoisting him up onto his hold in a bridal carry. Phainon placed one foot on the windowsill and jumped.

“I caught you!” the younger Phainon had once said.

“I got you,” was all Phainon said a few months ago.

“Hold on to me,” Phainon instructed Anaxa, and despite the latter's weakening limbs, his grip on Phainon's arm was tight. “I'll never let go.”

….

.

-.

Phainon never stopped running. As long as he still had time, he would never stop believing that he still had the chance to give Anaxa a proper farewell.

“Are we… there?” Anaxa mumbled, his eyes starting to droop.

Phainon shook him lightly, panic creeping into his voice. “We're almost there! Don't close your eyes yet.”

Wasn't this ironic? He had always scolded him back then for never sleeping and letting himself rest, but now, he was pleading for Anaxa to stay awake for him, to not close his eyes yet.

“I… hear… waves…”

Waves? But we're not at the beach yet! Choosing not to linger on that line of thought, Phainon tried to speed up even more. It only took a few more seconds— the gravel under his feet slowly turned into sand; the buildings around them replaced by the wide expanse of the sky; and then, at last—

Waves went through Phainon's feet as he stared out at the horizon. Before them stretched a sky soaked in deep blues and purples, a small golden mass in the center slowly rising, the stars making way for it to shine in their place. Wind caressed his face, tangling his hair even further, yet it couldn't dry the tears slipping slowly down his cheeks.

He gently placed Anaxa down on the sand near the shore and sat beside him. There was no noise polluting the area— only the sound of waves, the birds migrating from one place to another, and the soothing heartbeat of Anaxa.

Just the two of them at the near shore, both still clinging on to the last thread of their life. Here, there was no Khaos, and the professor— only Phainon and Anaxa, who had foolishly hoped they would stay together in the end.

“I miss my parents.” Anaxa broke the silence.

The familiar cadence of his tone was back, just as it had been a few months ago. Phainon couldn’t stop the smile that crept onto his face. It felt as though Fate itself had answered his one quiet wish: to have a proper farewell with the Anaxa he knew.

“They’re happy to see how far you've reached.”

They would be. Anaxa had grown from a young kid who never had any friends to someone who had been achieving great things, collecting awards here and there. Wherever they are in the afterlife, they are very proud of him.

“... I want to say sorry to my sister.”

Diotima, whom Anaxa took for granted. He was heartbroken after the death of his parents, and it translated into him acting out. He had never known the worth of someone until you lost them forever.

“I'm sure she already knows it.”

If Diotima had the chance to be with Anaxa for a short time, they were sure she would use all of it to scold and chastise Anaxa for all of the things he had done. She would never care about her brother's twisted thinking of ‘atonement’, for she had never blamed her brother in the first place.

To her, Anaxa was the most precious.

“I'm sorry.”

Phainon glanced at the man shivering beside him and cursed himself for forgetting his cloak. There was no time to go back for it now.

He didn’t hesitate. He pulled Anaxa closer, drawing him in until his chin rested over Anaxa’s head, holding him there in a silent attempt to share whatever warmth he could.

A ghost was the worst possible source of heat.

Anaxa didn’t care.

“For what?”

“I killed you.”

“...”

“...”

Even if he didn't know the true future, Phainon would still forgive Anaxa. Allowing himself to stay swallowed in hatred would never bear great fruits— it would only propagate nothing but endless suffering.

Back then, Phainon was scared to admit that he had forgiven Anaxa, fearing that it would simply be nothing but pretenses and lies. Yet, he couldn't stop himself from uttering those same words, because he knew, deep inside, that there was no resentment left in him at all.

“I already forgave you a long time ago.”

Both of them were only humans.

Simple, foolish humans.

.

Anaxa. Age 0. A premature birth.

Anaxa. Age 3. He met Phainon.

Anaxa. Age 4. His parents died.

Anaxa. Age 10. His sister died.

Anaxa. Age 11. He graduated from primary school.

Anaxa. Age 15. He graduated from junior high school.

Anaxa. Age 18. He graduated from a general high school.

Anaxa. Age 22. He graduated from university.

Anaxa. Age 23. He became a professor.

Anaxa. Age 28. He's going to die.

It was a rather pitiful life he had lived. One could almost say it was nothing but a waste, for a great mind such as his to die so early, but Anaxa was glad that even for a small part of his short life, he had done all that he could, so he wouldn't have any regret left tying him to the living world.

Yet, he couldn't help but think of the possibilities, of ‘what ifs’, of what could have happened instead of the events that happened before.

In another life, we could've adopted Snowy together, even though I don't like dogs, he wanted to say. We could learn languages together, eat lots and lots of spicy food, dance with each other…

In another life, I could have explored what it means to love you.

But there was no longer time nor energy to waste on those thoughts. So, Anaxa only had one last thing left, the only thing left that he could do, before his eyes shut completely.

Somewhere along the way, Anaxa— the one who had once believed he had no one left to love— had come to love the only person who had given his life away for him so completely.

“Phainon…”

Let me say it, please.

“I…”

... Love you, was what Anaxa wanted to say, but his body didn't cooperate with him any longer, his voice giving up at the last minute. Only his mouth moved, and Anaxa stupidly hoped Phainon could read lips.

I love you! said the young Anaxa to his parents, who tucked him into the bed at night, but not before leaving him a kiss on his chubby cheeks.

I love you, mumbled the young Anaxa, who was embarrassed at having to say that to his sister, but his traitorous face still warmed up as Diotima laughed and kissed him on his cheek.

I love you, Phainon.

Neither of them ever truly knew how deep their love ran. It might have been something small and harmless, the kind shared between people who passed briefly through each other’s lives.

Or it might have been something vast and ruinous, the kind that binds itself to the soul and refuses to let go.

There was no way to tell. There had never been time to name it, much less understand it.

Maybe it was the kind of love you feel in an instant, or maybe it was the kind that consumes, tangled in obsession, the kind of love that makes people foolish enough to destroy themselves without ever calling it what it is.

Phainon and Anaxa.

Whatever this was between them, it was never meant to exist. And yet, just this once, they allowed themselves to pretend that it had.

The last of Anaxa’s tears slipped free as Phainon pressed a kiss to his forehead. His lips were warm, steady… far gentler than anything Anaxa remembered from the living world.

Phainon was a ghost sustained by regret alone, and still, in that single, fragile touch, he gave Anaxa nothing but love.

“I love you too, Anaxa.”

Phainon watched with a serene smile as Anaxa slowly slipped his eyes shut, the last thing that he saw in this world was the face of the person that he had solely longed for all this time.

“Sweet dreams.”

Death is the moment in life when one’s functions all cease to exist. When one breathes their last breath, when their heartbeat ceases, and when their brain stops functioning, all body systems are no longer capable of continuing the processes understood as life.

On that fateful day, Anaxa was finally able to sleep, comforted and surrounded by the warmth of the sun.

December

“We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas,” Khaos sucked in a breath, in an attempt to pretend that he was lacking air, “and a Happy New Year!”

He cheered, activating the poppers all over the grave. It took him a while to realize that he might be intruding on the other people buried in the cemetery, so he quickly cleaned up after himself with a wince.

“Sorry,” mumbled Khaos, before bringing his attention back to the grave he was standing in front of, a smile on his face.

Here lies Anaxagoras
a loving son, brother, and professor
August 29, 1998 — November 25, 2026

When Khaos had brought Anaxa back to his room, the man in his arms was still breathing. It took three hours before the nurses noticed that there was no stat update on the machines in Anaxa's room, so they went inside and checked his vitals, yet what greeted them threw them in a somber mood.

Hours later, the doctor had announced that Anaxa had gone into a comatose state, which usually occurred in the last stages of his illness.

They hooked him up to an apparatus that kept him breathing, but no one had ever come out alive after this stage had occurred. And so, the doctor made the decision to contact the people that Anaxa knew, for them to bid Anaxa their last goodbyes before they plug the machines off.

Calypso had arrived first, followed soon by the rest of Anaxa’s students, ranging from alumni to those still studying at the university. It was clear that, during his years as a professor, Anaxa had touched far more hearts than he ever let on.

That was only a month ago.

Now, it seemed no one was willing to forget the eccentric professor at all. Even his grave was crowded with trinkets, small offerings left behind by those who remembered him.

There was a picture of Snowy that Calypso brought, something that made her cackle a lot. Lots of flowers from Hyacinthia, one that she proclaimed to be ‘endless summer’ flowers (“it suits Anaxa so well!” she said, but she never spoke about the other bouquet included inside, the forget-me-nots). Castorice shyly placed the first copy of her first book, dedicating it to the professor who had encouraged her to continue with her work. Even a bunch of dromas plushies, courtesy of March, the twins Stelle and Caelus, Dan Heng, and Sunday.

Anaxa was wrong when he said that he only brought misfortune.

Even his presence alone was enough to uplift the lives of all those that he met.

Anaxa was well-loved.

That reminds me… I still have to give him a gift. Khaos chuckled, reaching inside his vest. This gift was long overdue.

To be perfectly honest, he had broken it by accident when he returned to the lab, and never had the energy to make another. But Mydeimos had clearly grown tired of his endless moping, so he dragged the rest of the ghosts along and forced them to help Khaos create one final snow globe.

The result… was chaotic. Golden threads wound around the glass, stars glittered within, and ghostly butterflies drifted lazily inside… Cerydra even added a tiny bishop to stand in as a snowman. Yet despite it all, it warmed Khaos’s heart.

He left the university with a giddy smile, never noticing the quiet, sorrowful looks the others exchanged behind him, as though they were already saying their goodbyes.

(“Farewell, Khaos.”)

“Here's your gift!” Khaos declared, gently placing the snow globe at the center of the pile. “It's not much, to be honest… but—”

Phainon vividly saw everything that happened from the moment of his birth, as if it were a movie being played in a loop. His first cry, the lullabies he’d barely remembered, every hand he’d once held, the promises he wouldn't have the chance to fulfill now— “Ah,” he mumbled, the taste of iron filling his mouth as he remembered: his last promise to Anaxa. “I never… managed to give… you…”

“I promised a long time ago, didn't I? That I'll give you all the snow globes that I can,” Khaos recounted the memories. “I'm glad… that I can finally fulfill this promise.”

This was my only regret.

“Merry Christmas, Anaxa.”

.--

.--

---

“Hey, stupid, wake up!”

Phainon’s eyes suddenly opened at the shout in his ear. He winced and leaned away from the source, rubbing his ringing ear. He glared at the perpetrator, whose pretty face was sporting a shit-eating grin.

“Oww… what the hell, Anaxa?”

“You slept through the whole lesson, dummy,” the young student behind him teased him. “It's time to leave!”

Leave…?

Phainon surveyed the scene, noticing that only the two of them were left in their classroom. The door was left ajar, and outside, they could hear the noises of students chattering with each other, signifying the end of the school session.

What happened earlier? I can't really remember…

“Move faster, slowpoke!” Phainon rolled his eyes as Anaxa ran out of the room. With a heavy sigh, he had no choice but to follow after him.

As soon as they left the room, water pooled around their ankles. The empty classroom faded away as if it had only ever been an illusion, replaced by nothingness. There was no edge to the space, no horizon to mark its end. It stretched endlessly in every direction, colorless and bare.

Each step Phainon took sent gentle ripples across the surface, spreading outward without ever stopping, as though this place existed solely for passing from one state to another. Yet the water was uneven. With every step forward, he sank deeper, the level rising steadily until it reached his waist.

“Why is there water…?”

Phainon grunted in pain, holding his temples. The endless onslaught of memories shut him up, making his head hurt like it had been hit by a bat. Car accident, ghost, shores—

Realization washed over him. This is the far shore…! So then, Anaxa—

“You took a long time, you know,” came the familiar cadence that never left Phainon's mind. “Miss Polyxia kept telling me to go forward already, but I want to wait for you.”

He had never believed this day would truly come. After his untimely death, Phainon found himself returned to the land of the living— as a hollow echo of who he once was. He drifted through the world as a ghost of a person, with regrets clinging to him like weightless chains.

“Was my regret really something as stupid as ‘giving you a snow globe’?” Phainon snarked, forcing irritation into his voice, though the warm tears streaking down his face betrayed him completely.

Anaxa only shrugged in response, a familiar, playful grin tugging at his lips.

God, how badly Phainon had missed that sight.

.-.

“Thank you for your hard work, Phainon,” Anaxa said, smiling as he extended a hand toward him. The light behind him framed his figure just so, almost reverent, almost unreal… like the holy presence Phainon had never stopped believing in, never stopped devoting himself to.

“Anaxa…”

Phainon sobbed, ugly and loud. He had never been a pretty crier, but after all the work he had done ferrying people to the afterlife, after every mistake and misstep along the way, this was the first time someone had ever thanked him.

There were so many things he wanted to say, but his voice didn't want to cooperate, leaving him gaping like a fish.

So instead, Phainon staggered forward, slowly. Not long after, his movements quickened, as though he could no longer endure the torment of existing even a moment more without Anaxa at his side.

When Anaxa caught him after he stumbled, it was like the dam that had been trying to keep most of his tears at bay had lifted.

He knew what people said about devotion taken too far, that obsession could hollow a person out and strip them of reason.

Phainon understood all of it.

And still, he did not stop.

Perhaps it was foolish. But he was already dead, what more could obsession possibly take from him? If anything, it was the only thing that kept his thoughts from scattering into nothingness, the only thing that reminded him he had once lived, once wanted, once loved.

And for Phainon, Anaxa was his ‘home’.

The university was nostalgic, and the other ghosts were fun to be with… but nothing was tying him to it to call it his ‘home’ any longer.

But right now, in front of him— both of them stripped of their titles, back to the Phainon and Anaxa of simpler times—

“Let’s run away together.”

Phainon took Anaxa’s hand. Anaxa squeezed it back. No words of exchange were needed for both of them to convey their thoughts.

Together, they stepped forward, toward the light. The water rose around them, slow and steady, until it covered their chests, their faces… until there was nothing left to see at all.

Finally, Phainon had come back home.

.-..

-..

.-.-.

i will never say goodbye, for my heart is never full without you.

fin.