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"Ivan showed me this once," Till says to the stars in his whispery voice. He still can't speak very well, but he always tries to talk to her anyway, even though he's got a notebook to write in.
Mizi remembers what Ivan told her all those years ago: the memory is clean and sharp in her mind, like glass. I'd be lonely out there, Ivan had said. Without him. Without you and Sua ... "I know," she says. "He told me you turned back because you didn't want to leave me and Sua."
"I wanted to," Till whispers. Mizi looks to him. He gazes up at the sky. He turns his face to her. She tilts her head. "I wanted to," Till continues. "For a second. I thought about it." He speaks in short intervals, never speaking words longer than one or two syllables. "But I couldn't do it." He looks away.
"It was nicer there," Mizi says, and finds it to be true. Till scoffs, but doesn't say anything to refute her claim. "It was," Mizi insists. She licks her dry lips. "We were all together, and happy." She looks up at the sky. "We used to sneak out at night, do you remember?"
"Mm," Till says, eyes closed. "We were always scared to get caught."
"Yeah," Mizi murmurs. "You used to sleep on Ivan's arm." Till stays quiet. She puts her head on his shoulder. "And Sua on my chest."
"I rember," Till says, forgetting the mem in the middle. Mizi doesn't point it out. They watch the orange stars hurtle downwards towards the ground, mesmerized. Mizi feels so miniature, like a doll, beneath everything. She imagines how it must have felt for Ivan and Till, reaching for the bright sky, freedom, with their small hands.
"I knew what she was doing," she finds herself admitting into the silence. Her lip trembles. She feels Till shake his head, knows he's already opening his mouth, and pulls away. "I did," she says. "I ... she was—she was wrapping her hands around her neck"—Sua's thin fingers around Mizi's own wrist, then imitating that desperate grip, practicing on her own neck—"pressing into her pulse point, and watching the videos." Studying them, intently, with such focus that she should have known. She should have done more, because—"It was so obvious, Till. I knew what she was doing. I didn't do anything." By the end of her string of words, she is sobbing, bowed over with her head in her own lap. She ditched the wig sometime after ditching Kwon. Her real hair has grown longer, now down to the middle of her back. It curtains her face, hiding it. She's grateful for it.
Till stays silent, holding himself away from her, like he's afraid to touch her. She curls into herself more, grabbing handfuls of hair. "I KNEW WHAT SHE WAS GOING TO DO," she screams through a mouthful of pink hair. She feels rabid, uncontrollable, and thinks: this must have been Till when the segyein locked him up. She spits out the hair and wails out a wordless noise.
Gently, Till unlatches her fingers from her hair and sweeps it over her back. He ties it back with careful hands. Mizi stays bowed over, still sobbing into her own thighs. "Shh," Till says uselessly. "Shh, shh." He rubs her back. Mizi wails again. "Mizi," Till tries. "Mizi, look up, please?"
"She loved me enough to die," Mizi moans.
"I know," Till says. "I know."
She pulls her head out of her lap. "I betrayed her," she says to him, gripping his arms. "I let her die and then I let another woman hold me and kiss me and touch me and—"
"Shh," Till tries, catching his hand in her hair. "Mizi, Mizi—"
"She died for me and I betrayed her," Mizi cries. "I trapped her and killed her and I forgot her, Till, I forgot her—" How could she have forgotten Sua, and her sweet smile, taking Mizi's hands to her mouth, pressing soft kisses to the thin skin on the insides of her wrists? Sua, pulling Mizi into her, holding her safe in her arms; Sua, with her quiet voice that reserved her cutting words for everyone else except for Mizi, who only got Sua kissing her forehead, wrapping Mizi's arms around her, wrapping her own pale hands around her neck to rehearse her final performance—Sua with her graceful mannerisms, the way she danced and sang and moved—she had let someone else take Sua's place?
Till takes her hands in his own. She feels a pressure leave her throat, and realized she had put her own hands around her neck. Her stomach turns. He raises them carefully to his own neck, where the scratches and scars are still raw and unhealed. His whole face seems to blur in Mizi's vision as he places her hands around his throat.
"Don't hurt yourself," he says, pleading. "Please, Mizi." She takes in a deep, gasping breath. And another, and another, until she has to press her hands to her mouth to make the air stay in her lungs. "Mizi, Mizi," Till says, over and over again, until her name loses all meaning. Mizi. Mizi. Mizi. She presses her face into his chest and feels him hesitate a moment before wrapping his own arms around her.
"Shh," Till soothes again, burying his own face in her hair. He shakes in her arms, and Mizi remembers that Ivan had died for Till too. "Shh, shh," he says, and now it seems like he's comforting himself. She pulls away and takes him in: his lean build has grown emaciated in the time he's spent looking for her; his hair is still short, but it's dirty with dust and grime. He looks like he's been weighed down by a thousand tons of steel.
"Mizi?" Till asks, worried. She shakes her head and pulls him into her arms again. He's all she has left.