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I’m alright if you’re alright, I’m okay if you’re okay
It’s this state in this state I’m living in.
It's just a little bit, It’s just a bit and maybe
This December, I’ll remember
Want you to see it when I do
God knows I do
-This December, Ricky Montgomery
The logical side pressed the crumpled newspaper against the bottom half of his face; the countless creases that had been made and were currently being made from the firm, fervent grasp his hands had on them will forever hold proof of the terrifyingly fast pace his heart was beating at, and no, it wasn’t because of how fast he was dashing towards his room.
Logan’s room was the last one down the hall, and he slammed it shut once he entered, quickly sprawling the treasured present on the table and pulling out a pen and a notepad. He took deep breaths, despite his bursting excitement. In order for him to be able to solve this puzzle efficiently, he had to be calm and focused, two things he usually perfected at being until a couple minutes ago, when the greatest realisation ever dawned on him, opening his eyes to the infinite number of paths of possibilities and impossibilities and how it was up to him to discover that one true designated path.
Contrary to what Virgil had said, Logan didn’t need luck. Luck was an unpredictable chance, something that couldn’t be entirely controlled. That was why Logan especially loved puzzles like these. The puzzle maker didn’t complete his puzzle because of luck; it was because he knew every piece served a purpose to tell a complete story, and damn was he going to control these pieces again so that story could be retold if that was the last thing he did.
Like the saying goes, it’s about the journey, not the destination.
He scanned through the first page, noting down the letters that had been circled in bright red ink.
“E…U…L…”
After a couple more findings, he looked down at the letters he had scribbled and found that they had spelled out: EULERS IDENTITY.
Euler’s identity was a famous mathematical equation that showed how the constants π,i, and e were related. Now, how was it related to this puzzle? That was the question.
As he continued flipping through the newspaper, however, his eyebrows soon furrowed once he realised that there weren’t any other letters left to be discovered, just colourless text blocks after blocks.
Logan remembered that Virgil said that the first puzzle would eventually lead to a second and what Logan hoped to be more, but as much as he appreciated the footprint Leonhard Euler’s work left in the mathematical world, how was this formula supposed to move him forward?
It was much too early to be stumped, so reluctantly, Logan opened the door with a creek and made his way to the kitchen for a cup of tea that should help clear his mind and help him think about the next logical step.
Upon entering the kitchen, Logan was greeted with a vinous, sweet smell in the air as Patton pulled a golden-crusted pie out fresh from the oven.
"Oh! Hey Logan!” Patton grinned, carefully placing the pie on top of the rack. “Are you enjoying Virgil’s present?”
“Of course he is; he literally bumped into me while running towards his room because his mind was too busy thinking about him to notice. Nearly spilled wine all over my new sweater you know."
Another voice appeared, and Logan turned to see Janus leaning against the doorway, sipping, or rather, downing, the red wine from the bottle with an unimpressed expression directed at him.
“Oh Janus, can you blame him? Virgil seemed to have put in a lot of effort towards his gift, and honestly, I think towards Christmas this year in general. I mean, he even offered to help bake this pie! Black current is definitely an interesting choice, but hey, you can’t knock it until you try it, am I right?”
Logan watched as Patton cut a slice of pie, the rich, dark purple filling oozing out from the cut and coating the knife along with the area of pie crust around it.
Wait.
Did Janus say 'him' ?
Logan turned around, but alas, the slimy snake was no longer there.
He had probably just misheard him.
“Have you found any clues yet?”
Logan sighed. “Well yes, but I’m not too sure how a mathematical formula that links pi with other constants together is supposed to help me. I’m sure it’s there for a reason; I just got to think deeper.”
Patton laughed, grabbing a plate off the stack of others. "Well, I’m not too much of a math guy myself, but I do know a thing or two about pie.”
“Patton that’s not what I meant, I-"
The bubbly fellow eagerly shoved the plate of pie towards his face with a wide grin, and Logan sighed in defeat.
“I know you’re technically allowed to let the pie cool down after taking it out, but shhhhh, no one has to know.” He whispered the last part.
Logan didn’t feel like eating the pie, not until he deserved it, and he knew he would only deserve it once he had solved his puzzle.
However, looking at his friend’s puppy dog eyed expression, he only managed to sigh a bigger sigh of defeat.
“Thank you…very much, Patton.”
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“Wait a minute."
Logan’s body moved closer towards the newspaper that he had spread out and had been studying. He had been so busy merely looking at what has and hasn’t been circled amongst the monotone chunks of text that he didn’t realise that none of it makes sense.
Sentences that were supposed to have continued on the next page were suddenly cut off and replaced by parts of other stories. Usually the page numbers would have given them away, but the pages were removed and inserted from other newspapers of the same page number.
“Smart move…”
An exhilarating spark of adrenaline set off in him.
To be honest, if anyone were to give Logan a puzzle to solve, he would hope that person was Virgil.
No offence to the others, but Logan wholeheartedly believed that Patton’s would be too easy, Roman would’ve gotten carried away by his creative endeavours and the entire puzzle would just be an open book fairytale, Remus’s would involve too much grotesque bodily fluids, and Janus while a close contender, would purposely set dead end clues for the fun of it. It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Virgil’s would be just right in every aspect (he would know, he often reflected on their debates fondly).
Now, the only question was: why those pages?
Logan took another small bite of the black currant pie. Usually the apple pies that Patton makes during Christmas were a bit too sweet for his liking, but this new recipe coated the insides of his mouth with just the right amount of sweetness. The natural slight tartness and earthy tones of black currant, along with the savoury butter crust, made each bite just more and more addictive.
However, if there was one thing Logan prided himself on over the others, it was that he had just slightly more self-control (if you don’t count that Crofters advertisement), and so with much self-discipline, he set the half-eaten pie aside on his bedside table and carried on studying the newspaper.
Shortly after, he quickly realised that it wasn’t the text he should be concerned over, but rather the images themselves. Logan wasn’t an avid newspaper reader, but he knew each one should definitely have more images and advertisements.
The first page had an image of a prototype of some new glasses; a couple pages after that, there was an image of an elderly woman wearing hearing aids; then there were two advertisements, one for a luxury brand of hand lotion and another for allergy medication; and the last page had a new Italian restaurant that had just opened.
Glasses, hearing aids, hand lotion, allergy medication, and a restaurant.
What did these five things have in common?
Logan wrote them down and contemplated, repeating these few words over and over until they no longer felt real.
The clock above his study table continued ticking, and the cogs in his brain were turning. In reality, he was merely staring down at a piece of yellow notepad with nonsensical words, but in his mind, he was surrounded by these images, connecting red strings and cutting them, connecting, cutting, connecting, cutting, until he was left with just the right length of string to connect all five of them.
His eyes widened. Could it be such an elementary concept that tied these images together?
Glasses allowed you to see.
Hearing aids were obviously for hearing.
Hand lotion makes your hands feel smoother to the touch.
Allergies so your nose won’t be blocked.
A new restaurant means new flavours for your taste buds to explore.
The five senses.
Unlike the mathematical formula, the five senses had been something Logan had utilised before for the other sides, specifically Virgil, with the 54321 grounding technique that was commonly used for dealing with anxiety or panic attacks, so the person feels more secured, calm, and hence aware of the reality of the present.
There were some exaggerated things that Virgil had said when Logan asked him the questions during another re-watch of the Frozen movie with the others approximately four years and a month ago. However, amongst those things, there were exactly five responses, which Logan noted down.
He saw the blinds.
He felt the wall behind him.
He could hear the fan whirring above him.
He could smell deodorant.
He tasted the sour aftertaste of reheated Thai noodle leftovers.
Now he wasn’t too sure about the last two items on the list, but the last time Logan checked, the common living area still had the blinds, walls, and a fan above it all.
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Making his way towards the common living area, Logan couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. He remembered Patton saying how Virgil had put so much effort into this secret santa gift; however, the moment he received this unassuming newspaper, that was all his brain could comprehend—that all he got from him was an unassuming newspaper.
At first he was confused, but then there was a strong pang of disappointment from his heart against his ribcage, which ran through the rest of his body. He wasn’t sure why exactly. Of course, it had immediately further strengthened a certain insecurity of his, that gift being just a slap to the face (not to be confused with the bitch slap Roman gave to Janus), with the fact that perhaps nobody cared enough to listen to him about what he liked or cared enough to listen at all.
If the gift was from Remus or Janus, he honestly wouldn’t have expected much and would have been indifferent to it. Roman had gifted him a 400 page self insert Sherlock fanfiction a couple Christmases ago, so he immediately would have known there was more to it because, for Roman, the only direction he could go is up. As for Patton, honestly, Logan would just be more surprised that the guy had even touched a newspaper.
However, when Virgil did...
While another part of his brain asked, “How was I supposed to know?" all Logan could think about afterwards was what Virgil said when he came to realise the greater meaning of his gift.
What do you take me for?
One of the first lessons Logan had ever taught Virgil was how you shouldn’t jump to conclusions because all it does is worsen any negative thoughts.
But that was what he did, wasn’t it?
He quickly assumed that Virgil wouldn’t care about him enough to give him a decent gift, which only worsened his negative thinking at that moment.
Sure, jumping to conclusions was just a flaw of human nature, but somewhere along the lines of the hurt panging painfully within him and all the time they had spent together, there was something else.
Why was Logan specifically upset with Virgil?
Or, the more important question to be answered is:
What kind of person exactly did Logan view Virgil as?
He found himself at a standstill, both in his mind and with his body.
He shook his head. Whatever it was, he had to continue, and whatever it was at the end of the journey, at the end of the day, he hoped that he could share with Virgil.
“Do you think it’s too boring? Should we try something new?”
The blinds were closed, and the fan was whirring above them. Against the wall was a couch where Roman was laying while scrolling through a food delivery app, muttering out different Thai food options because that was what they usually come to an agreement for every Christmas. Next to him was Remus, sitting on the coffee table nonchalantly eating deodorant, and Logan looked at the current event in front of him like the sky was blue and the sun was yellow.
Something told him to try looking under the couch, so Logan followed his instinct because he had read just about enough Sherlock to know what to do.
“Oh hey LoLo watcha doing?” Remus grinned, revealing pieces of deodorant that were stuck to his teeth.
“The puzzle.” Logan said, kneeling down in front of the couch and bending the top half of his body down to see if there was anything.
“Ooh! Nice view!”
Ignoring Remus’s comment, he continued looking, but of course he couldn’t see anything; having left his phone in his room, he couldn’t use its flashlight option. Roman was already busy on his, and Logan would rather spend a day with a flat earther than ever touch Remus’s phone.
Well, Sherlock had to get his hands dirty every now and then.
“Hey Logan, does coconut curry sound good? And then maybe fried rice and sticky mango pudding for dessert?”
"Well, I’m fine with that, but maybe we could do one less serving of curry and replace it with khai jiao…” Logan had stretched out his right arm and was feeling around the mass of dust particles for anything that could be under the couch. Why was this so tiring? "'Cause I know Virgil doesn’t do well with spicy food. Well, all of us don’t necessarily have the highest spice tolerance, but not him, especially...aHA!”
Logan pulled out an orange coloured gift card, his ecstatic expression turning into yet another confused one.
“Didn’t I give this to him during the secret santa from five years ago?” Logan thought aloud.
He remembered a particularly boring afternoon and seeing Virgil lying on the couch without his headphones. A detail so peculiar to Logan that he asked Virgil what was wrong. The latter narrowed his gaze at Logan but rolled his eyes and explained that the $20 limit from the gift card for audiobooks that he had gifted him had been reached and that he didn’t feel like listening to music, so the only option left was to stare blankly at the wall and let the existential dread swallow him whole.
Logan then remembered offering Virgil his account that they could share. Despite being a self proclaimed bibliophile (or "Oh! So a bookworm then!” as Patton would say), he very seldom utilised audiobooks, having much preferred letting his inner voice be the narrator. He mainly signed up and had been paying the $3.20 monthly in case of any road trips they would be on, although a better part of him would logically state the obvious question: When was the last time they had stepped out of the house? But hey, it was better to be safe than sorry, and now in this case, it seemed that a new opportunity had arisen.
After some back and forth, Logan assured Virgil that he didn’t mind letting him share his account, and he didn’t mind paying the full cost because he preferred making reading more accessible to others.
Now as Logan held up the used gift card, he noted that despite how dusty the bottom of the couch was, only the bottom side that had touched the ground was thinly coated with some dust while the top remained spotless, meaning it had been deliberately put there recently.
Which also meant that Virgil still kept the gift card despite it being monetarily worthless and already having unlimited free access to audiobooks.
“A used gift card? That’s pretty lame dude.” Remus groaned.
“No, it's a clue.” Logan stood up, gift card in hand, and started making his way out of the common area, his mind now racing about the new routes this journey had opened for him.
Roman, who had just finished paying for their food delivery, turned to Logan with a smirk.
“Hey is that smile for the clue or for him?”
Smile?
No, more importantly, again, 'him' ?
“What do you mean?” Logan asked, and although this time the culprit(s) didn’t disappear on him, their sudden silent treatment certainly felt like they did.
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He opened up his phone to the audiobook app and found a couple books from their shared library that were pretty much just Virgil’s.
Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, An Interview with the Vampire, and other gothic literature books and random autobiographies from famous rock musicians were listed. He wasn’t sure where to start until he continued exploring the app and found that under the ‘Your Favourites’ section there was only one book listed.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie.
While it was Logan’s favourite book, he didn’t remember downloading the audio version of it, being already content with his own physical copy, and it being the only book under this section meant that it had to be a clue for him.
At least, that was what he initially thought, until a mere three seconds later, when he discovered the date this book had been downloaded.
Now with this app, it was possible to transfer books downloaded from other accounts into another, and the date of download under this book was Christmas of 2017. The same day Logan had given the gift card, before they shared accounts, and much before this puzzle.
While Logan could indulge in whatever fantastical theories he had briefly thought of, he knew that the most logical reason was that crime and mystery were already sort of Virgil’s forte, given the dark, eerie atmosphere of it all.
(And maybe, just maybe, he was somewhat influenced by Logan’s love for that book.)
Whatever it may be, Logan decided to re-read the book once more, this time with the audiobook in the background. There was only one slight issue: his earbuds were broken.
As he tried looking around his room for any extra earbuds lying around, a knock came from the door, and Logan opened it, only to find no one there aside from a small brown box and a steaming mug of hot chocolate on top of it.
Closing the door with his foot, Logan carefully placed the dark blue mug on top of his bedside table next to the pie which was obviously from Patton, and found inside the box a small note on top of some tissue wrapping that stated “Good Luck, Mr. Detective,” scribbled in messy handwriting.
“And I wonder who this could be from." Logan amused himself.
He placed the note aside and removed the purple wrapping tissue until it was revealed that a pair of headphones belonging to said mystery deliverer was underneath it.
Speaking of headphones, here's another quick, funny-not-so-funny little story:
A while back, when Virgil first got these headphones, the large black and purple headphones would be on him approximately 94% of the time; 60% of them were for their designated purpose, and the remaining 34% were for decorating his neck. Logan would every now and then remind Virgil to take a break from wearing them so he could stop complaining about how sore his neck feels, but the latter would resist insisting that he just needed to get used to the weight of them or how he should mind his business because he didn’t ask. This little back and forth continued, with Logan hoping that one day he would finally stop hearing Virgil’s complaining. And it did, but not without leaving an awkward tension in the air. Virgil’s retorts and insults tended to be very straightforward, like ‘no one asked’, ‘shut up’, and ‘Go dig yourself a six foot deep hole and stay there’. However, there were also times where they were creative, something Roman knew especially; having his fondness for creativity used against him particularly grinded his gears and hence pleased Virgil, and that was what Logan thought so too until one day he heard, “If you wanted to see my neck, you could’ve just said so.” Obviously he heard the sarcasm dripping from the sentence, and it was just Virgil being just a bit stubborn as always, but something about that bold accusation with its ever so slight innuendo made Logan nearly choke on his tea as if he had suddenly been caught off guard like a deer in headlights, and this absurd, unknown truth about him had just been discovered. Virgil must have realised what he said, because from then on his neck pains had magically disappeared overnight.
Now Logan held the exact pair as if it were some delicate treasure. Was Virgil really about to lend him something that had basically been moulded to become a piece of his body?
He connected the wire to the end of his phone and found himself a comfortable position on his bed before placing the headphones over his ears, ignoring the particular warmth that ran through him because that wouldn’t make sense; the headphones were only covering his ears (Wow what an astute observation!).
This was the one of the few times he had ever listened to an audiobook; the first few times he found the narration to be rather dull. As much as he loved listening to long lectures, that wasn’t typically the mood he was going for when indulging himself in fiction. However, this time, while the narrator had such a calm, soothing tone, they knew exactly when to pick up the pace and emphasise key dialogue and points. Not to mention the melodic background music that would play a bit before each chapter to really help to set the tone.
While this was his twenty third re-read of the book, it was the first time Logan had experienced it in such an enthralling way. As he continued listening, letting his eyes follow along to the soothing words, somewhere along the black lines of text and rich melodic tones, he felt his eyes grow heavier and heavier, and...
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When Logan woke up, he found himself staring up in a room barely illuminated by the blue hues of light illuminated by the lamp on his desk. The headphones were still snug against his ears as he peered through his awkwardly shifted glasses at the time stated on his phone.
11:52 p.m.
He flopped back down to a lying position on his bed and thought about how even if there was a clue within this audiobook, he had slept through it, how his accidental nap had thrown him off his whole schedule, and how he felt nowhere closer to finishing this puzzle, with each new clue giving him a sense of direction of where to go but not an answer. Why the mathematical formula? Why a used gift card? Why that one novel Logan loved in particular? Why his headphones?
Unlike “there's no rhyme or reason for what I do, I just do” Remus, this was Virgil.
There had to be something more to them.
What kind of person exactly did Logan view Virgil as?
While he mulled over the puzzle pieces over and over again, a part of him also felt rather refreshed from the nap he had taken. It had been a while since he was able to doze off at a time that wasn’t 11:00 p.m. sharp, and while the time he woke up certainly was unconventional, the benefits of the nap did not wear off.
Logan pulled the headphones down to his neck. It's a rather strange feeling to have something that belonged to someone else now in your possession, and you weren’t sure whether you should give it back or if you even could give it back when such a treasured item was given to you for you to use and permanently leave your imprints all over, and you can’t return it without it still lingering.
Turning on his bedside lamp, he found the book left open in a tent shape next to him, and when he reached for it, he found he had dozed off towards the end of chapter 7.
“It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.”
And the page after that,
“Everything is simple, if you arrange the facts methodically.”
These were the two quotes he had highlighted in the book a while back when he first got his hands on it, seeing them as how he navigated his own life.
He set the book aside and reached for the mug of now lukewarm hot chocolate. Taking a sip, he quickly grimaced, not because of the temperature; being made by Patton, it was impossible for the fact that it was lukewarm to ruin the comforting experience. However, because it was made by Patton, it was always just too sweet for his liking, even after he opted out of the whipped cream and marshmallows.
In hopes of trying to balance out the sweetness of the hot chocolate, Logan reached for his plate of half-eaten pie.
He knew he told himself he wouldn’t finish it until he had managed to solve the puzzle, especially now, feeling so close yet so far away from finding that last puzzle piece that will make this entire journey make sense. Logan started off this puzzle determined to gain control over every piece, but now he just found himself trapped in this endless hypothetical maze, blindly following any sort of clue for the exit but never finding it; not dead ends, but more empty passages that would lead to more long empty passages.
Moreover, he wanted to finish off the pie with the taste of satisfaction and victory, not sinfully selfish bites of dejection and confoundment, which, oh…
That was exactly what he was doing right now.
Perhaps he had overestimated his ability to exercise self control.
“Everything is simple, if you arrange the facts methodically.”
The insides of his mouth were coated with the sticky goodness of black currant as he continued devouring every last crumb of pie until there was nothing left but a small illustration of a raven in the middle of the plate with a slight smudge of black currant on it.
Logan inspected the small animal; he’d seen it before. These fancy plates, with their gold coloured rim and whimsical yet simplistic designs, were only reserved for special occasions, like Christmas, or when Remus finally started closing the bathroom toilet. Patton was absolutely delighted when he first got them, saying that he bought these plates from a vintage store heavily marked down from their original price. (Don’t worry, Logan insisted they tested them to make sure they didn’t contain any lead or, worse, uranium, despite the protests from Remus saying that they would help build the immune system.).
With that in mind, Logan flipped the plates, and sure enough, the half-ripped pink price tag still remained. The text was a bit hard to read, but Logan was sure the tag described the plates as being from 1825.
“It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.”
A plate with a raven illustrated.
A plate from 1845.
Logan contemplated, trying to draw any sort of connection between the two details.
“Surely Patton had no hand in this scheme because it’s highly unlikely Virgil would trust any third party to help him... but Virgil…” He wondered aloud, remembering what Patton had enthusiastically told him.
“Virgil seemed to have put in a lot of effort towards his gift, and honestly, I think towards Christmas this year in general. I mean, he even offered to help bake this pie!”
The pie was the second puzzle!
If Virgil was already helping out in the kitchen, what’s to say he didn’t have a hand in making sure the plates were stacked in a way to ensure that Patton would serve him the pie on that specific plate?
That question led Logan down another train of questions, the main one being: How predictable was Logan to Virgil?
Logan prided himself on being the most observant amongst the six of them, and he still did. Being very observant and examining others and their actions and behaviours was what he did best to ensure something that could be considered stability and peace, but that was with others. Has he been aware of his own being, his own actions, and his own behaviours? Now that was another question entirely.
The thought of someone knowing him just as well as he knew others caused his breath to hitch. It had already happened earlier when Logan discovered what Virgil’s gift truly was, but at that time it was about his own interests being acknowledged—an aspect of him being validated and celebrated.
This time, the message that the puzzle was trying to convey from the maker to the solver was entirely about him as a person.
And that idea made his heart hurt in the best way possible.
He got up from his bed, making his way to his bookshelf to find what he hoped to be the final piece of the puzzle.
The Raven, a poem by Edgar Allen Poe that was published in 1845.
Like the rest of the clues, Logan wasn’t sure where it was supposed to lead him, but that was what made it frustratingly exciting.
He heard the low chatter of the TV from the living area and made it out to be A Nightmare Before Christmas. He opened his door to see the darkness of the hallway greeting him back as everyone else but he was probably huddled up together with their Thai food for their annual Christmas movie marathon.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
Logan peered down at his watch, the corner of his lips quirking up when he realised where this was going.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
“Purple curtains…” Logan thought. The only room here with purple curtains was Virgil’s.
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door
He hesitantly walked to the door of the latter’s room which was obviously closed.
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door
Logan knocked on the door, although he was already quite sure Virgil wasn’t in his room. Even if the poem’s unintended instructions implied that he should enter, Logan wasn’t sure if he should. He re-read the poem, trying to find another meaning within the lines, but couldn’t think of anything else.
He didn’t care about the treasure at the end of the rainbow, not when he was about to potentially invade the privacy of someone he cared a lot for. Virgil had a big rule about people going into his room without his permission (even during the ungodly 7a.m. vacuuming Patton does every Sunday morning where he barges into everyone’s room, Virgil’s door was the only one he knocks on before entering). He reached his arm up to scratch his neck, only to touch the soft ear cushions and remember the headphones that were still around his neck.
“It really was such an open act of trust”, Logan thought. If Virgil trusted him enough with his only pair of headphones, which he had on him for years, would he also trust him enough to go into his room, a place that held every aspect of his own life, alone?
Logan looked around; no one seemed to be there to stop him. Even with that, even if Virgil had apparently given him permission, he still felt weirdly guilty about stepping into his room unattended. However, it probably also wasn’t easy for Virgil to give him that permission. If Logan were to not go inside, would Virgil mistake it for Logan believing that he was still too fragile simply because he didn’t want to hurt him?
What kind of person exactly did Logan view Virgil as?
Slowly, he turned the doorknob with a terrible creaking sound.
here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there and nothing more
Logan found the light switch and flicked it on, illuminating the room in a soft violet glow. Posters from various bands were haphazardly pasted on the walls, clothes spilled out from the closet onto the chair beside it, half of a thick Halloween-themed blanket was on the ground while the other half laid on a messily made bed that was pressed against dark purple ringed curtains drawn shut. The shelves, as he walked past, were filled with various knickknacks, journals, and such (Logan found Mr. Fuzzy sitting on the bottom shelf, clearly distanced from the rest of the trinkets).
Once he reached the purple coloured curtains, being wary of touching Virgil’s stuff, he merely took a glance around the area for anything out of the ordinary that could be related to the puzzle in hand.
Before he could kick himself for barging into someone else's room for no reason and probably hate himself for the rest of his life as he lived with the guilt, he looked down and found something poking below from the curtains with the tiniest glimmer of light peeking through, and cautiously bent down to move the curtains away to reveal the item.
Between the wall and the curtains was an old iPod from 2003, with stickers covering its black exterior, and by some miracle, or a lot of unnecessary electrical work—Logan suddenly remembered how a couple weeks ago, Virgil came to him asking about some instructions on how to fix a hypothetical unnamed electronic device—was somehow still working, seeing the small screen dully illuminating pixelated lists of songs. Upon further inspection, his eyes widened when he found that at the end of a list of My Chemical Romance songs, was a peculiar audio file that had already been highlighted and titled with his own name.
Carefully, he left the poetry book on the bed, and picked up the audio device and found the headphone jack at the bottom, seeing no other option than to plug it in with the headphones he has on right now.
*̣̥☆·͙̥‧❄•̥̩̥͙‧·‧̩̥‧̩̥·‧•̥̩̥͙‧·‧̩̥˟͙☃˟͙‧̩̥·‧•̥̩̥͙‧·‧̩̥•̥̩̥͙‧·‧̩̥❄‧·͙̥̣☆*̣̥
There were a couple seconds of silence, followed by an awkward cough that was undeniably Virgil’s.
“Richard Feynman, a physicist and Nobel Prize winner, regarded Euler’s identity as ‘the most remarkable formula in mathematics’...and so it was known as the world’s most beautiful equation…”
Logan noted the voice’s shaky breath towards the end and the long pause. He turned around, deciding that he should probably listen to the rest of this elsewhere, and started making his way towards the doorway.
“Like you.”
For the first time, his precise footsteps and upright posture faltered as he struggled to regain balance from the sudden skip in beat his heart made.
“Fucking hell…Sorry, that was really cheesy. I’m uh- reading off a script right now, and you think this would make things a lot easier, but it’s not because now I’m just cringing at what I wrote. NOT that I don’t mean it; I mean I, uh, really think you are…You are, um…”
If the universe thought Logan didn’t hear it the first time, they definitely made him hear it again the second.
“Anyway, if you’re hearing this, congrats you made it to the end of the puzzle. If you were expecting a lot more, I don’t know uh pizazz, at the end of it, sorry, you just get this really shitty audio of me talking. I hope you had fun, because I definitely had a lot of fun planning this whole thing out. To be honest, I really had no idea what I was doing in the beginning because, ya know, obviously it’s my first time doing all this.”
His hand felt numb when it made contact with the doorknob as he closed the door behind him.
“I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done to help everyone. I don’t know why I’m making you do all this work for you to hear me express my gratitude, or, I guess technically, this isn’t work for you, but even so, this is a pretty lame reward after all that effort. I hope you at least liked the pie I helped make. I managed to convince Patton to put less sugar in it, and I bet he probably added more sugar to the hot chocolate to compensate huh. I also hoped you liked the audiobook version of that book; it was uh, actually the first book I downloaded. To be honest, I never really read much crime and mystery, mainly because those stories always felt too real...But I have heard you talk about it for years and thought that there must be something to it…Now it’s usually my go-to audiobook when I have trouble falling asleep. So thank you so much for that recommendation…I um…”
Logan’s heart was doing a multitude of things at once, beating loudly in the background against Virgil’s soft tone, which he presumed to be a product of recording this late at night. There were so many things being said that, for once, he couldn’t find a way to write them all down in some sort of bullet journal to organise them all.
He carefully made his way down the dark hallway to the living area (thankfully the fuzzy socks Patton knitted for all of them last Christmas made this a whole lot easier), and felt the hot rushes of blood around his face at the thought of that momentarily fantastical theory being true. Although that was what he wanted: for others to pick up the same interests as he did. Like when Roman told him he had to read a couple Sherlock stories for inspiration for that self insert fanfiction he wrote for him. He had experienced this before, so why should this time feel different?
There was another long pause. Between the soft friction of his socks against the floors, his heartbeat, and the static, the silence was the loudest.
“No… This isn’t what I wanted to say…”
Logan heard the rustling of paper, followed by a couple muttered curses.
“Fuck it. I’m gonna speak from the heart or whatever fucking bullshit advice Roman usually gives."
He then heard the sound of what must have been Virgil tearing his script apart, followed by an obvious frustrated groan and another round of silence.
“You know, this entire puzzle was basically just a ploy to get you to enjoy yourself, like with the pie, audiobook, and that nap you’d probably have afterwards. I don’t know why I went down this route; well fuck actually, I do. It’s because it’s so frustrating to see you make sure that I'm okay especially, and how I wasn’t able to do the same for you. And it’s so stupid because I have no right to feel this frustrated; if anyone has any right to be frustrated, it’s you for having to put up with all of this. I know we all say Patton is the one who makes sure everyone is alright, but you’re the one who helped me cope with my own anxiety and existential crisis with logic or whatever and make all of it sound so simple. I’m so sorry if I ever made you upset and not feel heard, especially when all you’re trying to do is help me. I guess sometimes I get too far ahead of myself and don’t know when to stop.”
And so the story of it all was beginning to unravel.
Logan turned the corner to the living area, but his shadow ahead stopped dead in its tracks.
“You know why I really chose Euler’s identity?”
His hand gripped the iPod ever so slightly tighter.
"Sure, it’s known as the world’s most beautiful equation, and I mean, sometimes I wish you were as stupidly vain as Roman and carry a mirror with you at all times so you could see just how bright your eyes shine whenever you ramble on about a certain topic or whatever, because for fuck sake, I need someone else to carry the burden of seeing how adorable you are whenever you do that...But also, like you, it manages to take these complex constants and units and whatever and make it into one simple equation. You are able to make everything so much easier to understand, and I honestly think that’s your greatest gift, which was why making this puzzle was so hard in the first place because I didn’t know how to compete with that.”
His heart was running miles and miles, and Logan didn’t think he was able to stop it. He wondered how Virgil must have looked and when he was trying to record this. Was his hair in a frazzled mess? Were his eyebags ten times darker because he had spent the whole night trying to perfect this recording? Was he tearing the pieces of paper again and again while speaking until it looked like winter came early in his room?
When Logan turned the corner, his gaze softened.
The soft glow from the TV cast onto the faces of the sleeping figures sprawled across the living room.
Roman, Janus, and Patton were laid against each other on the couch, while Remus laid on top of it. Meanwhile, seated on the floor was the person currently speaking to him. He had a throw blanket wrapped around him, and his comforting silence momentarily distracting him from the words fumbling through the headphones.
“I-look, you're a smart guy. I'm sure you can figure out what I’m trying to imply here, not just with this audio but with this entire puzzle. You don’t need me to say it aloud, right?...Again, I hope you had fun with this puzzle, and, uh, hope you didn’t find this too weird. If you did, then I don’t know, blame Roman or something."
The audio had stopped there, and all that was left playing was the musical number happening on the TV and the louder rapid beating of his own heart, like it was trying to escape the confines of his ribcage.
Carefully, Logan disconnected the iPod from the headphones and placed the small device on the coffee table next to the scattered dishes of mostly eaten Thai food, before he gently moved away the excess blanket hugging Virgil so he could share the warmth with him.
Once again, he pulled the headphones down to his neck.
The opposite of that lingering question in his head had already seemed to be answered, so there was only one obvious question left.
What kind of person exactly did Logan view Virgil as?
While his mind sometimes has trouble understanding his heart and the erratic, unpredictable way it behaves, at the end of the day, Logan still wanted to share it with Virgil, just as he did so with his own.