Chapter Text
In the middle of the night, a portal opened on the rooftop of one of Seoul’s buildings. Four people stepped out: three girls and a guy who looked like a rebellious warrior with the soft features of an emo boy. The guy was gripping a device that resembled a remote control covered in a ridiculous number of touch-sensitive buttons. They didn’t look exhausted, but their clothes were simple streetwear, clearly worn out, as if they’d been living as vagrants. And in a way, that’s exactly what they were.
The guy tightened his grip on the remote, scanning their surroundings with a fierce and determined expression. Behind him, a tall brunette spoke up. She adjusted her sunglasses and pouted, eyeing the area suspiciously while taking in the dazzling lights of the megacity sprawled below.
“So where the hell did it drop us this time?”
Till pressed his lips together for a moment, staring at the tiny screen on the device in his hands.
“Year 2147. Seoul, Earth.”
“Oh, we were just here pretty recently,” the pink-haired girl muttered, stepping closer to him and shyly peeking over his shoulder at the panel, then at the city below. She frowned, as if trying to recall something. The short brunette with the distant expression joined her.
“Last time we found Sua here, except the year was different,” the guy said thoughtfully, not lifting his head from the screen and the view below. He didn’t finish the sentence, but everyone already knew what he meant.
This place and this approximate time — maybe here they would find the one he was looking for.
The one all this long and grueling journey had been for.
The three — Till, Mizi, and Hyuna — had once been nothing more than prisoners of the Segeins, participants in a brutal show. A show in which Mizi’s girlfriend had died, and a guy named Ivan had sacrificed himself to save Till — Till, who hadn’t even been Ivan’s friend.
Don’t ask what happened next, what they felt, or what they thought. Obviously, you won’t find anything good there. But the truth is that those very feelings somehow granted them the ability to be here now. Here, and in many other worlds they traveled to.
One day, a being who called himself the Oracle descended into the rebels’ camp (in reality, it was a creature that vaguely resembled a human — clearly a race different from both humans and Segeins — that had crashed near the camp). Hyuna and her people saw this incident as an excellent (and possibly their only) chance to escape the Segeins’ clutches and save humanity, because this being seemed smarter than the Segeins themselves, let alone humans. Mizi, who had read some old literature stored in the camp, called the Oracle a “deus ex machina,” and although Till didn’t fully understand what that meant, he decided the name fit the creature perfectly. Because the Oracle told them that there were many worlds, and many of them were far better than the one they lived in. It seemed the being had taken pity on the humans who served as pets to the Segeins, because it looked at them with sympathy and said that worlds like theirs — full of cruelty and injustice — were actually quite rare. Yes, almost all worlds were cruel and unjust to some degree, but not to this extent. The Oracle said something in their world had gone wrong.
Till, who at the time was still reeling from Ivan’s death, still remembered its words echoing in his head: “This person should not have died. He was supposed to win, the rebels were supposed to save both of you in time, but Ivan sacrificed himself — and made this imperfect world even more imperfect.” Now, according to the Oracle — who looked like a humanoid with grayish-blue skin that sometimes glowed from within, eyes without pupils, and an extra pair of arms — their world had become not just cruel and unjust, but broken.
In the original version of their world, humans were eventually supposed to successfully free themselves from Segein rule, seize a couple of ships, and escape to another galaxy, where they would build their own free human state. They would grow stronger, and then it would simply be inconvenient for the Segeins to try to enslave them again. Only a certain number would have escaped, leaving the majority of the trained pets — who no longer resembled humans but rather humanoids with animal brains — behind on the planet with the Segeins. The rebels would have gotten what they had fought for all those years: freedom.
But somehow, Ivan had ruined everything.
The Oracle said, not looking at anyone, as if staring straight into the future with its glowing eyes, past time and space: like a butterfly flapping its wings in the past and destroying a world, Ivan had somehow broken free of the web of fate — most likely without even realizing it. He had crossed an invisible line and disrupted the course of their history. Because Ivan died, humans would no longer be able to free themselves. Moreover, their world would eventually disappear altogether, collapsing like an old star.
To say everyone was shocked would be an understatement. Hyuna and Till, the two brightest flames of the rebellion, immediately began pressing the Oracle on how to fix the situation. The Oracle stayed silent for a long time, eyes closed, as if it had fallen asleep. But eventually it looked at them and said only one thing: you need to find Ivan. The one who lives in a world that isn’t his own and remembers what happened in this one. The Ivan who will be alive and will remember that he changed the course of fate in his own world — he will know it, even without realizing it, as if sensing it through hazy dreams.
Then the Oracle gave them the device — this slab covered in buttons — which would allow them to travel from world to world until they found the right Ivan. And also — the Oracle said, suddenly looking straight at Mizi, sending a chill down her spine — there you will be able to find your friend as well.
Mizi’s eyes widened in shock and filled with tears. She fell to her knees, tilting her head up in disbelief, as if praying to the being.
“I can really find her? Alive? But that’s… ” She faltered, and her voice faded again. “It won’t be my Sua.”
The Oracle didn’t contradict her. It simply looked at the girl in silence.
“Yes. But somewhere out there is a Sua who has also lost her Mizi. I think it would be nice if two wounded fragments could come together. This won’t cause any changes in time and space.”
Till could only stare at it in surprise, narrowing his eyes with a strange mix of irritation and joy. “So what Ivan did will cause a system failure and the destruction of an entire world, but this — nothing?”
For the first time, the Oracle formed something that could be taken as a smile on its face.
“This person… is special. His sorrow must have been so deep that even the Universe couldn’t withstand it, and he became a black hole of creation.”
Till nearly choked on the air. Something tightened in his chest — a mix of indignation and strange pride.
Ivan, his friend — even if he was an incredibly annoying person who had betrayed Till by forcing a kiss on him on stage — had turned out to be truly special.
But it also meant that his pain had been unbearable even for something like a god. Let alone for a human.
Maybe — Till thought — just maybe… he could forgive that stupid stunt of Ivan’s if he learned that the guy had truly suffered.
Suffered… as it turned out later, not so much because of the Segeins, but because of Till himself. But Till pushed those thoughts away. He wasn’t the type to sit and dwell on his past mistakes — he was the type who went out and fixed them.
And he intended to fix everything — from Ivan’s meaningless and pathetic death to the potential destruction of their universe.
And now — here he was. Together they had already traveled through quite a few worlds. In one of them, Mizi had even managed to find the very Sua the Oracle had prophesied for her. Till had lost count of how many worlds they had visited. Who would have thought there were so many! It was a good thing that one of the bonuses of traveling through time and space was that time barely existed for them. Till had no idea how many weeks, years, or maybe even centuries had passed since they left their home — if it could even be called a home and not a cage…
But they had managed to visit the conditional “past,” “future,” and even “middle time.” They had been to worlds without Segeins — to their surprise, those were the majority. Worlds where humans ruled Earth or even the Galaxy, where humans still ran around the desert in loincloths, or where they flew on gravity boards and conquered other planets just like the Segeins themselves. They had seen medieval wars, famine, and plague. They had seen “modernity” in which they themselves performed on stage, but now as idols worshipped by millions of human fans. They had been to the desert, to Africa, to Korea, to North America, and to Russia at different times. They had spent some time searching among the island natives, even though each of them felt that Ivan definitely couldn’t be there — but they tried and tried anyway.
Hyuna fought for Ivan because the Oracle had made it clear that this person was the key to their salvation. Mizi wanted the same, but the feeling that she had to save her friend still prevailed in her heart. Sua, after joining them, wasn’t interested in saving Ivan or the world she had never seen — the world where Mizi had suffered under Segein rule — but she followed Mizi everywhere and had no intention of backing down. And Till…
Till himself didn’t fully understand what he wanted.
Yes, theoretically, now that they had access to absolutely any world, he could simply pick one and settle down, finally living the peaceful, happy life he deserved. But something inside wouldn’t let him rest.
In none of the worlds they arrived in was there an Ivan. After some time searching, there would always come a moment when everyone intuitively realized that further searching was pointless — just as the Oracle had taught them. Then they would move on to another world, having no idea where it would spit them out next. A few failed attempts would end with them being dropped onto a barren planet in the middle of space where they couldn’t even breathe — and then Till would instantly press the button for the next world, and they would be thrown onward before they had time to suffocate. But apparently the Universe itself was guiding them, because such cases were extremely rare. In almost every world there were people and ways to search for Ivan among millions of strangers. Usually he wasn’t there, as if this person had truly erased himself from the multiverse with his actions, even though Mizi, Till, Sua, and the rest of their acquaintances from Anakt Garden were present in those worlds.
But the worst part of their journey was when they arrived in a new world and actually found Ivan.
It didn’t happen often — only five or six times in all this time. But every. Single. Fucking. Time. They ran into a dead Ivan, not a living one who remembered their names or what had happened in the Garden.
Once he died in Till’s arms. Again.
Till held Ivan’s body pierced with arrows, dressed in the clothing of a medieval Korean warrior. Ivan hadn’t immediately noticed that someone had picked him up from the cold ground — but when he raised his gaze, a horrifying flash of recognition passed through his eyes. Just for a fraction of a second, but Till had thought then that they had found him. Found the very Ivan they had been searching for so desperately — only for him to die in his arms.
He had died in a fucking war that no one had wanted.
No matter how many wars Till had seen during their travels, he could never understand — and never would — why people fought each other. Till was very familiar with hatred so strong it made you want to kill with particular cruelty — but all that hatred had been directed at the Segeins. He would never even think of raising a hand against another human.
But these people…
They killed each other. Tortured and tormented one another. They even invented torture chambers.
The first time he saw all of this, Till had been shaken to his core. And throughout all the time they had been wandering — he didn’t want to think about it — but it seemed something inside him had broken. Something fragile that he hadn’t even noticed before or had considered insignificant.
He felt as if he had lost a piece of his humanity, and now, like a robot running a pre-installed program, he was driven by only one goal — to find Ivan.
A goal bordering on obsession.
Yes, at some point he had become obsessed with the search for Ivan and even rejoiced in it — because it kept at least something human alive inside him.
Till could still dream at night about finding Ivan alive and well and giving him a good… smack. Smacking him for all the suffering and humiliation Till had gone through while searching for him. Although, to be honest, there hadn’t been any real humiliation — but Till was still very, very angry with him and felt he had every right to be resentful.
After all, what kind of idiot accidentally rips the fabric of reality and changes the course of fate?!
How obsessed did this person have to be with his delusional belief in love for Till to nearly bring an entire world to destruction??
Oh, Great Universe. Help them.
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This world was completely ordinary — and all four of them couldn’t help but feel glad about that, because it meant less suffering for them and for Ivan, who might potentially live here. The fact that they had been dropped in Seoul only meant that Ivan was somewhere here — until proven otherwise. Two possibilities: either he was definitely here and they would find him sooner or later, or he wasn’t in this world at all, and they would realize it, as always, after a certain period of searching. Sometimes it felt like the Universe was entertaining itself by deliberately sending them to a world where Ivan had never existed (or had existed once, and his residual presence confused the “higher powers” guiding them). By unspoken agreement, the group had decided to believe that some invisible but benevolent force was secretly leading them — like a game host who sometimes made mistakes and sent them down the wrong path, but who would eventually notice the error and let them know it was time to leave.
Anyway, as already mentioned, the world they had arrived in was ordinary. The technology here wasn’t even as advanced as Segein technology. That meant there was a good chance Ivan could be here, according to what the Oracle had once assured them (or perhaps just let slip — Till couldn’t tell). It had said that Ivan was a damn chosen one, and the Universe — whoever or whatever it was — least of all wanted this guy to suffer, because obviously (here Till had stopped following the alien’s convoluted speech) Ivan had already suffered enough in the world with the Segeins. “Suffered?” Till wanted to snort. “Who suffered more here, huh?”
To each person, their own trials seem far more painful and difficult than anyone else’s. But Till believed he had every right to claim the title of the greatest sufferer among them all. Well — he glanced awkwardly at Mizi — maybe this girl too, who had lost the love of her life, but…
But then he would have to admit that Ivan really was a sufferer, because from childhood he had felt physical pain (oh yes, Till, to his own surprise, remembered the face of the child who had just arrived at Anakt Garden — more like a broken doll, with eyes that held universal suffering hidden behind equally immense exhaustion, as if he had seen it only yesterday) — and when he grew up, it turned out he had suffered from unrequited love? To hell with it, Till still wasn’t ready to think about that. It almost physically nauseated him even to try.
Till had nothing to do with it, okay? It wasn’t his fault that this weird idiot had gotten something into his tiny cute little head.
So Till pulled himself together and felt a fresh wave of determination surge through him. With some sixth sense, he felt that their search would finally end successfully here. At least, it seemed to him that Ivan should be in this world.
They climbed down from the high-rise and began exploring the city. It was the middle of the night, but none of them felt tired, since they had rested and prepared before the latest hyperspace jump. Now that Sua was with them and still not fully used to their schedule, they tried to rest more, though secretly Till wasn’t happy about it. He himself was ready to jump from world to world nonstop, powered by pure willpower — or was it rage? Irritation at their fruitless attempts? Who knew what kind of force it was. He was sure he just wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, because damn it, it was starting to get annoying — how many more worlds would they have to scour, how many centuries would this little stroll across dimensions drag on in the name of saving their own world? And what if they simply didn’t make it in time, even though time flowed differently for them than for everyone else back where they had left the Oracle? While they were rummaging around searching for a single person in the multiverse like a needle in a haystack, their world might be destroyed — and then what?
If that really happened and Till actually thought about his decision — he would probably keep going anyway. After all (the guy clenched his teeth in furious irritation at fate), he had already spent too much time on this search to just give up now.
Simply put, he had to find Ivan. No — he *would* find him. Even if their world was destroyed because of this guy’s absence, and then there would be no point in searching anymore. Even if Hyuna got disappointed and left their little group, and Mizi and Sua — really, it was only a matter of time — realized there was no reason for them to follow Till anymore, found some peaceful, blessed little world, and stayed there together, like a pair of doves finally finding happiness after so many trials. Yes, maybe for them it was already over. Mizi had received what the Oracle had prophesied for her — she had found the Sua who had lost her own Mizi and was practically destined for her. She could move on without burdening herself with the search for Ivan. Who even needed this guy besides Till, as it turned out?! Till himself was shocked. He comforted himself with the thought that he simply wanted to repay a debt — although if someone skilled enough in psychology and human emotions had looked inside his head, they would have found only a smoldering obsession, ready to flare up into a bonfire and then a wildfire. He had been searching for Ivan for so long that the guy had become his fixation. Till could see his face in any random passerby. His heart would jolt every time he spotted someone with the same build and hairstyle. But the eyes — the eyes were always different. He had yet to see any that matched.
And so Till became fired up and started moving more quickly and jerkily than the situation required, so that while descending the fire escape he accidentally snagged and tore the edge of his jacket but didn’t notice. If the girls noticed his nervousness, they didn’t say anything. They simply followed close behind, trying not to fall behind. Till knew Ivan was somewhere here.
And he was right.
It took them exactly one day — twenty-four fucking hours that vanished from memory the moment Mizi let out a surprised cry and pointed toward a corner, stopping in an alley behind one of the restaurants. The moment Till’s eyes caught on the messy black hair and large, frightened eyes as the child suddenly turned toward the sound.
He looked like a little animal. Realizing he had been spotted, he darted between the trash cans as if, by disappearing from the strangers’ sight, they would forget about him and walk on.
But Till was already sprinting in that direction while the girls barely kept up.
His heart stopped, then began pounding dully and rapidly, as if it could barely keep going and was running on its last breath.
It was Ivan. The little alarm bell planted in his brain by some invisible but persistent “Universe” was ringing like church bells — the same ringing Till had heard before finding Ivan on the battlefield in medieval Korea, or when they had found Ivan lying in a coma in an almost-modern world. Ivan, who had been waiting for them unconscious for nearly thirteen years, and the moment they came to save him — in that very fucking second — his heart had slowed and stopped, and the lines on the beeping monitor had flattened into one motionless line right under Till’s gaze.
It was a truly cruel joke by the Universe. Till hated it in that moment. Because Ivan had been in a coma for thirteen years and then died the instant they appeared beside him, as if they — no, as if *Till* — were his personal curse that brought death.
This guy always died because of him, didn’t he? In every fucking universe. No matter how hard Till tried to fix everything and bring him back alive.
But now?
This child among the trash cans.
Staring at them with huge, frightened eyes, hiding something in his cheek. A realization pierced Till when he noticed food scraps in one of the overturned bins — leftovers the restaurant had thrown out because they had expired or didn’t look presentable.
He practically lunged forward with a guttural growl and shoved his fingers into the child’s mouth. The child screamed in terror and struggled, nearly biting off his finger, while Mizi behind him cried out in fright for Till to stop: “You’re scaring him! Till, stop!”
It seemed Mizi herself was on the verge of tears at the sight of the sobbing, terrified little Ivan, covered in dirt and dressed in rags.
And Till…
Well, Till was just angry. Very, very angry.
He wasn’t angry at the child or even at himself — right now he was losing his mind over this stupid joke of Fate or whatever it was called.
In his mind he exploded into the sky. “Didn’t you say you wouldn’t let him suffer anymore, you fucking bitch?!”
“Then why is he like this?”
Why was Ivan — this special, blessed person whose grief had been deep enough to tear the fabric of time and space — now digging through trash cans in this prosperous fucking Seoul, where everyone lived peacefully and happily? Why was *he* the only one suffering here?!
The Universe laughed bitterly in his head — though Till was no longer sure he wasn’t simply going insane.
Yes, that had to be it.
They had no money — Mizi said, and only then did it dawn on Till. All this time they had been lucky — they could go without food and sleep wherever, or a lucky break would always rescue them whenever they desperately needed something. Whether it was a ship to cross to another country — and all four of them would suddenly get a free ride on a cargo barge; or weapons for protection — and they would suddenly find a stash of bayonets and bows wrapped in cloth right in the bushes where fleeing rebels had left them or partisans had hidden them for emergencies.
The same thing happened now — after half an hour of wandering with a wriggling child in tow (they had planned to at least find a shelter for the homeless where they could spend the night), they found a wallet someone had dropped, full of local currency, lying right on the road. There was enough money in it for a couple of months of comfortable living, and Till breathed a sigh of relief, reluctantly taking back his curses at this invisible puppeteer who first threw obstacles at them one after another and then suddenly took care of their well-being.
Although, that was probably how it was supposed to work. Finally the events were unfolding the way Till had hoped from the very beginning: they had found and rescued Ivan. For some reason, he had never imagined they would find Ivan as a child. It made the task of beating him up for what happened in round six of Alien Stage a bit more complicated.
Well, fine. He could wait. Till only hoped their age-freezing effect would continue to work, so that while he remained twenty-two, he could calmly watch Ivan grow up and turn into the same asshole from his memories.
Oh, he knew how to wait. He would wait as long as it took to beat Ivan up.
Now they had money and didn’t have to spend the night with other homeless people in a shelter. Till found the nearest guesthouse where they could wait out the night. Child-Ivan looked heartbreakingly pitiful: he was so tired and scared that he flinched every time someone touched him, but when picked up he would freeze like a frightened rabbit. Realizing he couldn’t handle four adults, he sat motionless in Till’s arms while Mizi tried her hardest to hold back tears of pity and calm the child. Till snorted at her attempts: obviously Ivan didn’t need calming — this was Ivan, even if he was currently a street kid. But something inside Till clenched painfully every time Ivan’s frightened gaze with its trembling black pupils barely brushed over him. His eyes were so dark. The last time Till had seen them like that was when they were children. When Ivan had been that very doll first brought to Anakt Garden. Till rarely — if ever — had thought about the nature of Ivan’s red pupils, his main distinguishing feature besides the prominent fang. Till had noticed those traits. In fact, he wasn’t blind or stupid, even if others thought so. All that time in Anakt Garden he had seen Ivan and considered him a friend, even if they often didn’t get along. Yes, Till had been furiously angry and hated Ivan at first when he realized it was Ivan stealing his pencils. But hey — he always returned them, right? And Till had decided the guy was just weird, a little crazy, but not bad. Till could have taken pity on him and called Ivan his friend — at least he wouldn’t lose anything by it.
Till hadn’t paid attention to how Ivan constantly stared at him, not because he didn’t care or was blind. He had simply decided it was another one of Ivan’s quirks — staring so intently at people he considered friends or felt comfortable spending time with. Everyone had their oddities; Till had realized that fairly early on. Around the same time he noticed how Mizi and Sua behaved with each other. Admittedly, he hadn’t immediately recognized their behavior as love and had simply considered it another strange trait of other people. Other people’s bugs in their heads — that was all.
In the end, he had his own oddities too. If anything, looking back at his past self after all this time, Till could admit he had been a weirdo. Or rather…
He was tormented by a hellish, hellish amount of guilt and shame.
In some book he had read that stupidity was a vice, and in that case Till was a damn sinner, because from the very beginning he hadn’t understood even his own feelings, let alone other people’s — but what was more frightening was that he hadn’t even tried to learn. He had been perfectly fine with it — his own blindness had suited him. He had let Mizi’s radiance burn his retinas, preferring not to notice that Mizi’s heart belonged to someone else, and that his own unrequited love was putting her in an awkward position. Everything had been clear with Mizi and Sua. But what about Till? He could still look for someone who truly noticed and loved him. He knew what pain unrequited love could cause, and he could at least have tried to spare Ivan from that torment. But he had chosen not to look back and not to take on that burden.
Maybe if he hadn’t abandoned Ivan back in the distant past, they wouldn’t have had to scour thousands of dimensions in search of him now. The catastrophe would never have happened.
But the fact was that Till still didn’t give a damn about the catastrophe.
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They rented two rooms — one for the girls and one for Till and Ivan. Ivan didn’t seem thrilled about the prospect of sleeping in the same room as the strange, angry stranger, and Till could almost see that he wanted to cry but held it back — that damn restraint of the eternally perfect Ivan.
Till could only sigh and refuse Mizi’s help. She had been reluctant to leave them until the end and had even offered to help the boy bathe. Only then did Till realize he had never even thought about how to take care of children, and he certainly hadn’t thought about bathing Ivan — the idea had simply never crossed his mind. But now, looking at the dirty little boy in rags, Till felt his heart clench, and at the same time he was overcome by terrible uncertainty. Right. He had no idea how to take care of children, even though he had helped rescue them together with the rebels back in their “home” world. And Ivan, hearing that they wanted to wash him and noticing the intense, unreadable gaze of the “scary silver-haired man,” shrank into himself and tried to run away.
Till sighed wearily and let Mizi do what she thought was necessary.
And he tried not to think about how unpleasant it was to imagine someone else seeing Ivan undressed. Seeing this guy so vulnerable, helpless, and pitiful — and all of it behind the tightly closed bathroom door.
What if Mizi made a mistake and somehow hurt Ivan? And Till wouldn’t even be there to help.
Till rubbed his temples, cursing himself. Since when had he become someone who needed to control everything to feel safe? Since when had he turned into an obsessive dictator? Damn. Mizi definitely knew how to take care of children better than he did. If anything, if it were possible to give Ivan a family, Till wouldn’t mind Mizi becoming his mom.
Well, probably. At least until Ivan grew up — and then the man would take him for himself. Of course, to turn him into a real person and not someone who clung to his mom’s skirt.
Till unconsciously turned these strange thoughts over in his head, though he did everything he could to distract himself: he went downstairs and ordered food for everyone, because obviously Sua and Hyuna were so excited about the idea of a bath that they had run off to shower first, not caring about anything else. “Ha, their own fault,” Till thought, having no idea about his companions’ food preferences and simply ordering what looked appetizing to him.
Then he carried all the food upstairs to his room and noticed that Mizi was almost finished. A couple of minutes while he set the food on the table — and the bathroom door opened, revealing a flushed, clean child-Ivan wrapped in a fluffy towel. His eyes shone softly, and his face looked stunned — as if he hadn’t even known something like a shower existed and that it could feel so good. But Ivan also looked tired and sleepy, relaxed by the hot water, and Mizi helped him reach the bed and collapse onto it.
Till tore his gaze away from watching Ivan — Ivan, who was now safe and under their protection — and went out to call the others for dinner. Soon all five of them were seated around the low table covered with dishes.
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“This isn’t the Ivan, is it?” Sua said suddenly when Mizi returned to the girls’ room. She had just put Ivan to bed, and Till had moved to their temporary nest because they needed to discuss their next plan. The guy looked so gloomy that Mizi felt a wave of sadness, as if she already knew what he was going to say. In fact, it was as if everyone already knew what would happen next.
Till remained sullenly silent, arms crossed over his chest, staring at the floor. His overgrown bangs covered his eyes, but his mood was clear from the thin line of his pressed lips.
“Right.”
Despite the premonition, Mizi still flinched when Till confirmed the shared suspicion.
Even Hyuna, who hadn’t been particularly worried about Ivan or their search from the beginning — she hadn’t felt much pity for the brunette since she didn’t know him — looked downcast. Her heart could still clench with sharp longing when she looked at this unfortunate child forced to live such a miserable existence in this good world full of happy, content people.
So they would have to keep searching. For some reason, out of all of them, Till was the one who had the honor of being the first to know whether they had found the real Ivan or not, or whether he even existed in the world they had arrived in.
“Are we… going to have to leave him?” Mizi asked in a weak voice, making it clear to everyone that she didn’t want to. And Till, even though he looked angry and serious, was thinking the same thing. Mizi might doubt it, but Sua could read him like an open book, just as she had once supposedly read Ivan in the world they were fighting so desperately to save.
“No one is leaving him,” Till said decisively, standing up and, after a pause, beginning to pace the room. “There must be orphanages here. It’s just…”
“How do they treat kids in those places?” Hyuna suddenly snorted. “I’ve seen a lot of them while traveling with you.”
“This world seems good…” Mizi objected weakly.
“It’s normal,” Till muttered through his teeth. In his head he was already running through a plan to find Ivan a proper family, because he himself understood that sending the boy to an orphanage would doom the dear person to a joyless childhood. Again.
The voice of the Universe in his head either let out an unpleasant giggle or a sorrowful sigh — or maybe Till was already losing his mind. He frowned wearily and rubbed his temples. Lately he had been getting the feeling more and more often that the Universe, or God, or whoever it was, was speaking to him directly. Not in words, but at least through reactions like these. Or maybe he was developing bipolar disorder from all the constant worry and late-night pondering. At this rate he would go crazy, especially if they had to wander through fruitless worlds for another couple of decades, if not centuries.
“We’ll find him a family.”
As if on command, the girls turned their heads and looked at Till, who was still paying no attention to anyone. All his thoughts were revolving around the sleeping little Ivan in their room.
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That Deus ex Machina seemed to have kicked into the game at full power the moment Till made the firm decision to find real parents for Ivan no matter what. For some reason, the thought of Ivan surrounded by unfamiliar children and mean caretakers in an orphanage made his heart clench, even though rationally he understood that the boy must have had it much worse on the streets.
The group headed to adoption centers the very next day. There, as expected, they were asked to provide all the documents they didn’t have. But then a kind-faced girl approached them in the waiting room. She looked a little nervous but smiled warmly. Till regarded her with caution, but Mizi responded with a sunny smile. And — miracle of miracles — after just an hour of negotiations and about twenty calls to clearly important numbers, all the documents were prepared and the group was allowed to choose adoptive parents. Till simply stood in the middle of the office with wide eyes staring into nothing, then looked up at the ceiling. It was time to whisper thanks to the heavens.
They would even be allowed to choose the parents themselves? Now that was a miracle. After all, who were they — just passersby who had picked up a child from the street? By law they should have handed him over to the police or at least to these people handling adoptions — and walked off into the sunset with a sense of duty fulfilled. The girl who was consulting them kept glancing at the group with thoughtful, sometimes surprised, sometimes distrustful looks. But the moment her pretty eyebrows began to furrow in a way that made Till worry they were about to be sent away — Fate clearly stepped in, and the consultant would immediately forget her unpleasant thoughts and look almost puzzled, as if trying to remember what she had just been thinking.