The Final Dawn - A Proper Goodbye

by IlnaHers

Summary:

'I can't do this.'

'But I have to.'

Khun prepares to face the world.

 

"“Everyone,” he called out, in a calm voice that carried all the way to the opposite wall. “Could I have your attention for a minute?”

All the bodies stopped moving, turning toward him, a dozen gazes snapping to his, surprised, intrigued, waiting. Khun felt the nerves create a tightness in his throat, but he swallowed around it. His palms were moist, curled into fists, but he forced his articulations to relax, forced his hands to go lax.

Once he knew he had all the attention on him, he sat down. He lowered himself in front of the tea table, slowly, until he was kneeling on the carpet. A silent invitation for them to gather in the living room, on the other side of the table. He looked front, at the rest of his friends, grave, and spoke solemnly.

“I…”

He pressed his lips together, pushing through the mess of his emotions to continue.

“There is something that I need to tell you.”"

 

Or: Should the Hypotheticals become the Inevitable. What if Khun spoke to his team instead of keeping it in.

Notes:

Yes I haven't been working on my other fics. This big baby is the reason.
The strength I needed to finish this. This is officially my longest one shot ever.

Go enjoy and cry.

I can’t do this.

 

Khun sat on his bed in the quiet of the morning. He ran the brush, machinally, through the strands of his long silver-blue hair. His eyes were lost in the background. The window showed bleak darkness outside. The darkest hour, before the sun rose. Dawn would soon come.

 

I can’t do this.

 

He used to keep his hair short, because it would bother him during battle otherwise. Short but styled nonetheless, with taste. He hadn’t noticed he’d been neglecting it until four months ago, when he had looked into the mirror one morning and realized how it had grown past his shoulders and down his spine. He had taken a strand of it between his fingers, observing the results of the distress that had caused him to neglect himself so badly. He had understood then, why everyone would throw worried glances at him from time to time. That, and the bags under his eyes probably hadn’t helped.

 

He had decided not to cut them then.

 

It wasn’t like he would return to the battlefield again.

 

Still. He had trimmed it, and had tried to adopt a more healthy sleep schedule, once more. Reestablished a routine where he ate with his friends, worked around his friends, bickered with his friends. They stopped looking worried. He stopped looking like he was at death’s door.

 

Looking was the key word.

 

I can’t do this.

 

Now his hair reached the middle of his back, and he took care of it every morning. Just like he took care of it now, motions that soothed him, that kept him calm. In a way, their growth was the manifestation of all the distance he had gone through to come to this point. All the stages of premature grief, processing it, accepting it.

 

Nearly a year had passed, since he had first realized.

 

He had denied it, pushed it back. But there came a time when he could do nothing but acknowledge it. Obsessed with finding a solution for days, weeks, months, he’d then fallen into anger. He had been furious, at himself, at the world. And then, desperate. Hopeless. He hadn’t known what to do. He had found himself in a distress so profound that he had forgotten to look at those he cared for, those he wanted to live for.

 

In the end, he chose to accept it. If only because they did not need to see him like that.

 

They deserved better than the mess he had been, four months ago.

 

They deserved better than the mess that was threatening to come back and devour him whole right now.

 

I can’t do this.

 

But he had to do this. The time had come and he had to do this.

 

He had debated with himself for months now. Should he speak to them? Should he deal with him? There had been nearly no solution to be found, and he didn’t want to see them when he broke the news. When he told them the truth. He didn’t want to see the disbelief, the horror, the sadness…

 

The betrayal.

 

Not on their faces, not because of him. Not on his.  

 

For a long, long time, he had wanted to be selfish.

 

But he knew better than to be selfish. 

 

Even now, as all the words he could think about were these.

 

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

 

You have to.

 

No.

 

I can’t do this to them.

 

Khun Aguero Agnis was a coward, he thought to himself. A coward who was afraid of love, and afraid of his friends.

 

It was pathetic.

 

He continued to comb through his hair even though he didn’t feel any resistance anymore. No more knots, no mess, nothing but smooth, silky pale strands of silver and blue. But he still went through the motions.

 

He remembered the way his sister would let him comb her hair when they were both younger. Both too young to understand what was at stake yet. When they hadn’t learnt all that had been waiting to be learnt, yet. Now it was his own. Still, it reminded him of how strong she had been, how comforting she had felt, how he still looked at her back as she fought even when they were forced apart by the way of life that was the Khun family’s. 

 

It also reminded him of how she died, like a coward who couldn’t face the world. The thought always came unbidden, yet it always made him self-conscious. He too, had trouble facing the world. Always had had. He too, for a time these past few months, had wanted never to face the world again. At least he wouldn’t be letting them down to their faces then.

 

He was a coward, just like his sister, just like his mother. Maybe he was the worst of them three.

 

Kiseia had been the only one who wasn’t a coward. She was brave, and blunt, and impulsive in a way Khun didn’t know how to be. He’d envied it, once. Pitied it, the rest of the time. But in the end, she was the one who survived. That had to mean something.

 

Maybe it was just the way Agnis raised them. Or it was in their genes. Don’t trust anyone, survive, lie and hide away.

 

And then he’d gone and made the world ashamed anyway. More than once.

 

But there was one person… a few people he couldn’t shy away from. People he couldn’t hide from, had no right to shy away from. His team, who deserved the truth. His team deserved to be faced.

 

Khun had debated, week after week, night after night, all these months, all the past year. Had questioned himself endlessly years before, wondering should such a situation arise, what choice he would make. Months spent paralysed by fear and helplessness, refusal to face them head-on, morning after morning after morning fighting with himself, finding the courage to speak up.

 

He didn’t know if he had found that courage. But whether or not he had the courage to make this one last confrontation, his team deserved to know from him.

 

His family deserved a proper explanation.

Slowly, morning arose.

There was noise outside his room. The house was animated. Bustling with little activities. A few muffled yells here and there. The sun peaked from the horizon, illuminating through the glass of his bedroom window. Khun’s catlike eyes didn’t blink, too lost in thought to fully register the sunray gently reaching him. He could hear them, one after another, waking up from their slumber, going about their day as usual. Life had come again to the quiet house.

 

Dawn had come.

 

Khun did not want to step out of the darkness. He did not want to step into the light. Not for this. Dawn for him wasn’t a time of hope.

 

Dawn was the hour of meditation. Or preparation, as warriors made the last of their spirits before leaving for the battlefield. And this?

 

This would be Khun’s last battle.

 

His eyes, saturated blue, slit pupils, calm, rose to meet with the gentle ray of warm light. He looked away quickly, after just one more look at the distant shinsu sun. He then rose to his feet, a hand slowly coming down to smoothen his sleeve, then hem of his white ironed dress shirt. He looked as prim as usual, he knew. And the apprehension didn’t show. Not yet.

 

He was, as one could possibly be, ready.

 

He faced the door. He breathed, slowly. And then, he opened it, and faced the world.

Bam was cooking breakfast in the kitchen.

 

“Khun!” the man exclaimed happily. “Did you sleep well?”

 

Khun smiled softly at him, despite the turmoil in his veins.

 

“Yes,” he replied quietly, “I did.”

Rak was right next to Bam.

 

“Oi, Blue Turtle, you’re late today!”

 

“Don’t be too hard on him, Rak!” Bam chastised him with a smile. “It’s a perfectly reasonable hour to wake up, especially for Khun! He’s not even the last one up, Lauroe notwithstanding.”

In the living room, Hwa Ryun was drinking tea.

 

She glanced toward Khun, and he nodded, before looking somewhere else.

In front of her was Anaak.

 

Ran was with her. They were playing cards, and Anaak was winning.

 

“See?” she taunted. “You’re weak as fuck.”

 

“Cards don’t count!” he retorted with irritation, before muttering. “This is such a bother…”

 

Without even looking, he greeted Khun distractedly.

 

“Yo, A.A..”

 

He hummed.

 

“Hi, Ran.”

 

“Hey, stay focused! If you lose just because you weren’t looking, I’ll kill you.”

 

“I’d like to see you try. And I was looking! You’re the one who would get distracted so easily, not me.”

 

“What did you say?”

Shibisu was watching television. He spared one hand wave toward Khun before commenting.

 

“It’s funny how they still put you on the screen for commercial breaks when they know you’re a criminal.”

 

The person he was talking to punched the top of his head, and he yelped.

Endorsi pouted in annoyance.

 

“Say that again, old man!” she hissed, “they do it because I’m beautiful!”

 

“Alright, alright! Don’t get mad!”

 

Khun didn’t intervene, instead moving to look through the window.

Dan was outside, in the garden. They found a house with a garden this time, and Novick had been strangely pleased with the fact when they reunited.

 

“How am I supposed to use this?” Dan murmured to the axe in his hands, Khun reading his lips to hear what he was saying through the glass.

Novick was teaching him how to cut wood.

 

“It’s not that difficult. No, not like that, your shoulders aren’t properly aligned… Look how it’s done.”

 

Novick easily cut through one piece of wood. Dan sweatdropped.

 

“Aren’t you a kid from the families? Or a reject? I’m sure even Khun doesn’t know how to cut wood, why do you know?”

 

“It builds strength. Believe me, you sorely need it.”

 

A heavy, defeated sigh.

Lauroe was sleeping on the carpet.

 

“Breakfast is ready- WAH! Lauroe?”

 

“Sleeping Turtle! I almost crushed you!”

 

The man didn’t even stir under his blanket.

It felt warm. Everyone was contentedly buzzing around. In a chaos that resembled peace and simply screamed ‘us’.

 

Khun wanted to bask in the noise. To join in, or ignore them like he used to do sometimes. To go prepare his coffee and sit at the dinner table, grumpily avoiding Isu’s morning hug.

 

Khun ached. 

 

He hated to be the one to break the peace. He felt his resolve faltering.

 

Hwa Ryun’s gaze crossed his. And he knew he couldn’t fall now.

 

They deserved a proper…

 

He didn’t let his resolve break. He watched them, taking a seat in an armchair in the living room, observing their content family, that would remain family no matter where they found each other in. A train, an apartment, a jail, a floor test, a house with a garden.

 

He sat, quietly, and soaked in the people he called his.

 

For one last time, before it was taken away from him. One last time, before he destroyed it with his own two hands.

 

When Hatz made his way down the stairs, Khun knew his time was up.

 

He waited only five minutes more before he stood up and made his way to the tea table, and then he turned to face the rest of the household.

 

“Everyone,” he called out, in a calm voice that carried all the way to the opposite wall. “Could I have your attention for a minute?”

 

All the bodies stopped moving, turning toward him, a dozen gazes snapping to his, surprised, intrigued, waiting. Khun felt the nerves create a tightness in his throat, but he swallowed around it. His palms were moist, curled into fists, but he forced his articulations to relax, forced his hands to go lax. 

 

Once he knew he had all the attention on him, he sat down. He lowered himself in front of the tea table, slowly, until he was kneeling on the carpet. A silent invitation for them to gather in the living room, on the other side of the table. He looked front, at the rest of his friends, grave, and spoke solemnly.

 

“I…”

 

He pressed his lips together, pushing through the mess of his emotions to continue.

 

“There is something that I need to tell you.”

For a few moments, there was only silence.

 

Slowly, all his dear friends that he had never once truly acknowledged as such started to move, filling the couch in front of him and sitting down on the floor on the other side of Khun, who watched them. Only a few murmurs broke the quiet, along with the fumble of their movements as they shuffled so that everyone could be seated in the living room.

 

Hwa Ryun stood from her seat, pressing his shoulder in quiet companionship before she left the house, giving them some privacy.

 

Khun faced them. Despite his incredible urge to look down and stare at his knees, he kept his head up high and stared at them.

 

Khun had been the leader of all the teams that were composed with the people in front of him. Each of these regulars, he had once led, even if maybe not at the same time. These were people who, despite their different personalities and personal grudges or differences of opinions, looked up to him, and whom in turn, he looked up to. He owed these people much more than he could ever vocalize.

 

He didn’t want to let them down. But the truth was also something he owed them, after so long spent lying to them as their leader for the sake of winning and keeping them alive.

 

This lie wasn’t necessary, no matter how much he yearned to speak it instead of the harsh truth. But if he lied this time, it would truly be a betrayal.

 

Bam and Rak.

 

Shibisu, Hatz, Anaak, Lauroe and Endorsi.

 

Novick, Ran, Dan, even Xia Xia and Beta, even though the both of them weren’t there today.

 

And Hwa Ryun…

 

Well. Hwa Ryun already knew. It was probably her that had made sure Beta, Xia Xia, Vespa and the others weren’t there for this. In that sense, he was grateful to her.

 

Now. This was the time of truth.

 

And he found that his voice was gone.

 

He pressed his lips together. The words bound to his chest, stealing his precious air. He struggled to open his mouth, to speak. His throat was dry.

 

The words wouldn’t come.

 

“Khun?”

 

His name, spoken with caring concern, made him raise his head to meet Bam's golden eyes. He didn’t remember when he had stared down, unable to bear the strain.

 

If he could, he would laugh. He must have made for a pathetic sight, opening and closing his mouth, no sound coming out. Like a fish, or an idiot.

 

It wasn’t like him, he thought. He wondered why none of them had quipped at him yet. Maybe they could tell that this was no laughing matter.

 

They were waiting, patiently. Mostly. He could see some of them shifting in place, frowns adorned the features of others. Rak looked one minute away from bolting up and hitting him on the head for making him wait uselessly.

 

They were all waiting for him. Not knowing the weight of the words he was about to speak, curious and only slightly worried, perhaps a little bit ill at ease. Clueless and unaware.

 

For all they knew, their strategist was about to bestow an important piece of knowledge upon them that would have them preparing for an attack, ready to move, or simply informing them of the Tower’s current movements, which would matter to them and especially to Bam.

 

They didn’t know that he would be addressing them not as a Lightbearer, but as Khun Aguero Agnis. Their friend.

 

Maybe that was why the words were so difficult to speak. It wasn’t professional. In fact, it was so deeply personal Khun had not yet whispered anything of it, even though it would impact all of their lives so badly.

 

Maybe that was where he should start.

 

He breathed in, deep and slow, gathering all his courage once more.

 

This time, it stuck long enough. Khun swept the small crowd with his eyes, taking in each of them, and then, he closed his eyes. Just one more moment. 

 

They were blue steel, when he opened them again. 

 

Thus he spoke his first announcement.

 

“I'm sorry,” were the first words that came out.

 

Surprised blinks answered him, and he set his jaw, prepared to continue.

 

“I… will not be able to accompany you any further.”

 

The words settled over the room like a death sentence. Heavy and tense. Khun did not look away, even as incomprehension appeared in the eyes of his friends, blank faces as they processed the information.

 

Shibisu was the first to look up to Khun again, confusion and fear written over his features. He seemed too afraid to speak a word. To ask. Khun held his searching gaze. He held on even as whatever was in his eyes only seemed to scare the scout more.

 

“Khun… What do you mean by that?”

 

Endorsi looked pale next to him.

 

“You,” she murmured, “you’re not saying…”

 

He nodded shallowly.

 

“I,” he spoke low and slow through the tightness in his throat, “Khun Aguero Agnis, officially resign from my position as a lightbearer… and as a regular.”

 

He scanned their faces, their reactions to his supposedly ridiculous declaration.

 

First came disbelief.

 

He saw Anaak open her mouth in a smile to laugh, and then stop herself at the last second when she saw the look on his face. Novick was looking right back at him, trying to assess the truth for himself. Dan was staring too, as though he wanted to say something. He seemed confused.

 

Shibisu was pale, and tight-lipsed. Rak had stopped fidgeting, looking like he couldn’t even compute the words. Lauroe was the only one who seemed to be taking the news like a smart adult- too smart, already suspicious. Khun could see the awareness in his eyes after they truly opened.

 

It was Endrossi who laughed, in the end.

 

“You, you’re saying you’re not going to climb the Tower anymore?” her tone was a bit unstable, “I don’t believe you,” she snarled.

 

Bam was blank-faced.

 

Khun didn’t answer. Instead, his hands primly put on his lap, he hunched over. He lowered himself until his eyes were staring down at the edge of the tea table, until he could see the ends of his own hair hanging before him, until he could hear the gasps of his friend, horrified and taken aback by this gesture that Khun Aguero Agnis had never offered to anyone in his whole life.

 

He bowed.

 

“Thank you for everything,” he murmured, his voice stable despite everything. “And, I’m truly sorry.”

 

This time, he didn’t rise.

 

He had used up all his courage. Maybe he could stop there, maybe this was enough. He simply couldn’t face them anymore. So he kept his head down. Waiting for the inevitable fall-out.

 

He listened to the heavy, unbroken silence he had left in his wake.

 

Something hit his head. Something hard and small. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t dare look up. The projectile fell in front of him instead, right in his line of sight. A stone. It was a bit blue, in the middle, under the granite. It almost made Khun smile fondly. Still, he didn’t rise to meet the angry red eyes of the one who produced it.

 

He had expected the disappointment. The betrayal. He had expected the dead silence. In any other circumstances, he would have been ready to take it all in directly, instead of bowing down like the coward he truly was. But he found himself wanting to apologize once more, to bow even lower, because he had nothing else to give for his own failure.

 

He couldn’t face Rak, he couldn’t face Bam.

 

I’m sorry I’m breaking my promise.

 

“Blue Turtle!”

 

He couldn’t look at him, look at them. He simply pressed his lips tighter, otherwise unmoving.

 

By now, they had all understood that he was dead serious.

 

The disbelief must have turned into denial. And then… Khun couldn’t bear to see it morph into anger. He didn’t want to see rage on their faces. Hot fury, the manifestation of how much he was hurting them. He didn’t want to see it on Endorsi.

 

“No,” a voice wasn’t nearly as stable as earlier, and she still sounded like she was laughing; a crazed, disbelieving, hurtful laugh. “No, you can’t do that. You think you- that you can just up and, and give up? Who are you and what the hell did you do with Khun?!”

 

He closed his eyes, in resignation. The Khun you know has always been a coward, he thought bitterly. This is only me owning up to it at last.

 

He didn’t want to see it on Hatz.

 

The end of a blade nestled again the tender skin of his neck, threatening. Its owner was right at the other end of it, gritting his teeth and frowning, Khun could guess from his growling tone.

 

“She’s right, Earrings. What do you think you are doing? I’ll kill you myself.”

 

For a single moment, Khun wished he would. If only so Khun would be spared this excruciating moment, so he wouldn’t raise his head ever again, facing the ground forever instead. But he knew better.

 

He didn’t want to see it on Bam.

 

“Khun…?”

 

The broken name, coming from that person, tore through his heart, and Khun had to bit his tongue not to look up to see those warm golden eyes.

 

Because they were most probably broken, uncomprehending, sad, horrified. Because looking at Bam now would break Khun. Khun wouldn’t be able to hold the tears back if he stared back.

 

He didn’t want to see it on any of them. And certainly didn’t want to see it most especially on…

 

A laugh, short and barbed.

 

This time, Khun had to stop himself from flinching.

 

A snicker. Then another. Full blown laugher, crazed, cruel, sharp as a razor. And then it stopped, replaced by a biting tone.

 

“You can’t be serious right now.”

 

It was Ran.

 

“Stop messing with me, A.A.. You think you have the right to give up after everything that happened? You… You have no right!”

 

Shuffling sounds.

 

“Ran…”

 

“Let go of me, Novick. He has no right! ”

 

Ran is standing. Furious.

 

He deserved to be furious, Khun thought. All of them did.

 

“You're abandoning us,” Ran accused, and the words fit right into Khun’s heart next to his own self-blame. “You're abandoning us,” ‘me’, “and for what?!”

 

“Ran, calm-”

 

“Let me hear it!” One step closer. “You decide you can just stop like nothing happened, after all this time, all these efforts? Hah! Is this a joke to you? Are we a joke to you, A.A.? Look at me.”

 

Khun's fists were clenched on his lap. Trembling with the strength he put into it.

 

“Look at me” Ran demanded, shouting out, and Khun could do nothing but obey.

 

Mindful of the sword digging into the soft flesh of his throat, he straightened slowly, his eyes set on the floor. He could see Ran’s feet anchored on the ground now. Could see his fists clenched as bad as his own, trembling, with the veins popping out.

 

He raised his eyes, reluctantly. He was met with ashen faces. Anger and confrontation, and shell-shock.

 

He raised his head to meet Ran’s gaze. Thundering and blue and about to explode. His younger brother.

 

I'm sorry, Ran.

 

Ran let out, his voice breaking on that single words as he repressed the tears.

 

“ Why? ”

 

Why.

 

Why, huh.

 

Eyes looked at him, several pairs, just waiting for that one answer.

 

The one answer that he couldn’t give. He didn’t have the strength to. He didn’t have the courage.

 

He had already disappointed them enough, he thought resignatedly. Must he really destroy everything now?

 

To destroy… 

 

“Boss.”

 

Khun turned to Novick, who was staring at him with strangely sad eyes. Well, they were friends. Was it really strange?

 

“I want to know as well.”

 

Dan raised his hand, gravely serious.

 

“Me too, if you don’t mind. Sorry A.A., but there's no way that you would do that without a good explanation. I want to hear it.”

 

Anaak nodded along.

 

“You're too much of a sore loser to stop now. There must be a reason.”

 

Khun pressed his lips together, avoiding their too frank gazes. But then Shibisu also spoke.

 

“Besides,” and Khun met his eyes reluctantly, but too caring to ignore it. “I know you, Khun. You would never have told us anything if you weren’t prepared to give us the truth,” his eyes were warm and welcoming, despite the concern shining in them. “Otherwise, you would have just left in the middle of the night like before.”

 

Yeah. Khun would have done that. He felt his lips curl up slightly, and his eyes fill with mist.

 

“You deserved better than that,” he admitted quietly.

 

“Damn right we do!”

 

Khun had to shut his eyes as another stone made its way to his skull, courtesy of Rak.

 

“Blue Turtle was being shifty again!” the stupid Gator cried out triumphantly. “I knew all along that this was just Blue Turtle hiding the truth again! You better spit it out! Or I'll disown you!”

 

Khun felt a chuckle bubble into his throat. He ended up choking on it.

 

It seemed like he had had no choice from the beginning.

 

Well, he did think he owed them the truth. He did resolve to reveal it today.

 

He had still been hoping that this moment wouldn’t come.

 

He took another look at them. Endorsi and Hatz still hadn’t spoken, but they were actively glaring at him. Hatz's sword had retreated back to his side.

 

The swordsman’s eyes narrowed.

 

“Don’t think you can get out of this.”

 

“I'm not thinking that,” Khun answered truthfully. “But I'll ask just in case. We could just separate nicely without all of this. Knowing why… it might just be worse on all of you. All of us. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

 

Endorsi glared harder.

 

“Honestly, she said,” I don’t care about your reason, Khun. If you're serious, then you already know that this shit? It’s one of the worst things you could do to us- to your team. And to Bam. But I'll hear it. And if it’s not to my standards, I will tear through it and chain you to the house so you can’t escape, got that?”

 

As blunt as ever.

 

Alright, so maybe Khun wouldn’t change her for anything. She too, had been hurt by his impromptu leaving years ago. It was his own fault they all were so cautious and wary now.

 

He'd formed them well.

 

The thought came unbidden, and he had to internally shake it away. The irony of it stung too much, but also the truth behind the thought made him all the more nostalgic.

 

Ah. He didn’t want to leave these people.

 

Lauroe just stared at him, with a contemplative gaze.

 

“Go ahead,” he said. “I think I have an inkling either way.”

 

Right. Even if he slept all the time, Lauroe was amongst the most perceptive of the whole group. Khun shouldn’t have expected anything less from him.

 

“Khun.”

 

A hand clasped into his, entwining their fingers tightly. Khun shut his eyes painfully at the thought of facing that person, the contact of that warm hand burning his skin with love and kindness.

 

“Please Khun.”

 

He forced himself to turn and open his eyes, to meet wet, molten gold ones, completely focused on him.

 

The sheer amount of worry in those eyes.

 

The awful hope .

 

Khun couldn’t bear to look at it.

 

He didn’t want to see it break, he didn’t want to be the one to destroy it.

 

Don’t make me kill it, Bam.

 

But he couldn’t look away.

 

“Tell me, Khun,” Bam looked at him with those eyes, and Khun could do nothing as he felt his own burn. “Please tell us the truth.”

 

Bam could see it, the pain on his features because his own twisted in shared suffering.

 

“Please,” he pleaded, and Khun felt his heart clench. “Tell us. I'm sure we can find a solution. Maybe there's something we can do,” Bam tried to smile encouragingly. “Together. Please. Let us help.”

 

Khun choked at the words.

 

Let us help.

 

Bam was staring still, searching his eyes. He could not possibly ignore the wet sheen lighting up his irises with emotion. He could not possibly ignore how Khun was positively breaking inside. He had to see it.

 

He felt bare under that earnest gaze.

 

He could never say no to Bam, his companion, his closest friend.

 

But how am I supposed to tell you this?

 

His free hand came up to cover his eyes, and breathed out, long and controlled.

 

Just one last bout of courage.

 

To be honest, just one last time.

 

‘Let us help.’

 

Oh, Bam.

 

You are still… so naive.

 

The thought made him smile, and chuckle wetly before he had to press his lips thin, to stop himself from letting the tears out.

 

I can’t do this, the thought came, again, as it did before.

 

But I have to.

 

“Alright,” he whispered.

 

“Khun?”

 

Oh, the hope in that one name. Khun shut his eyes tight and let his fingers graze over his eyelids, wiping and willing the tears away, blinking them at bay. He removed his palm and looked at his friends again, determined to finish this.

 

“I'll tell you.”

 

The way almost all of them perked up to attention almost made him smile bitterly.

 

They didn’t imagine. They all looked so focused. Suspicious, still angry, hopeful, waiting. Few were ridden with the petrifying terror that Khun himself felt creeping up his spine.

 

He crossed Shibisu's gaze. Shibisu who still looked scared. Khun met the silent question of his fellow leader, one of his oldest friends and of those who understood him the best, even better than Bam did, with a solemn look of his own. He casted an apologetic glance onto Ran and Novick, who watched with respective desperation and apprehension.

 

The countdown had finally reached zero. And the time was, truly, up.

 

Once again, Khun faced them, his oldest friends, the people he had aimed to guide to the top of the Tower. The people he cared for, and who cared for him.

 

He spoke again, and this time, there was finality in his tone.

 

“I won’t be resuming the climb with you. My journey ends on this floor… for a simple reason.”

 

He breathed in, and raised his head high.

 

Time to face the world. Time to face the truth.

 

“The truth is that, I have been ill. For a few years now.”

 

It was a quiet reveal. Just a few words. Words that he had been unable to pronounce for months on end. Now cold and methodical, they were torn out neatly out of Khun’s throat, aligned together almost impersonally. 

 

Maybe that was why, for a few seconds, they didn’t seem to register in anyone’s mind.

 

Khun understood, better than anyone. Never in the past had he thought to associate his own name with ‘illness’. Never did he think he would eventually fall to sequels or lasting injuries or, worse, body self-sabotaging.

 

But in the end, it was what this was about.

 

“Khun. Khun, can you hear me?”

 

Khun opened his eyes, wearily. His sight was completely blurry. Cold mist came out from his lips as he exhaled.

 

It was so cold.

 

“Khun,” was that Hwa Ryun? “You’re burning up.”

 

He thought he could feel a hand on his forehead. One moment it felt glacial, and the next he jerked away from it as it burned against his skin. He caught a whimper in his throat, and his eyes looked feverishly for the red in front of him.

 

“Khun,” she called again, and Khun thought he could hear a single note of urgency in her voice. “Regulate your temperature.”

 

Huh?

 

Oh. Right.

 

That was something Khun should know how to do. He had been doing it for years, more or less successful. He focused inward, and attempted to stabilize his body temperature. From icy to bubbling hot, from hot to cool… finding a middle ground. Somewhere safe. Not too much.

 

The shinsu recoiled and suddenly fought against his control, boiling under the surface until it blew up inside of him. At least, that was how Khun felt as he was projected out of his meditation, taken by a sudden coughing fit that bloodied his sheets.

 

He gasped as he caught his breath. His insides hurt. He blinked a few times, eyes frantically looking for Hwa Ryun. She was looking at him with grave features.

 

“Your shinsu is rebelling against you,” she murmured, as though she was having an instant of revelation. “Or, not quite. It feels more like…”

 

“Fighting,” Khun offered, breathless, feeling nauseous. “For control.”

 

She glanced at him inquisitively.

 

“Over you?” she inquired, dubious, and it took great pains for Khun to shake his head into the pillow.

 

“Internal conflict,” he rectified with a croak.

 

There was a look of realization over her blurry features as he relayed his sensations.

 

“The ice and the fire,” she surmised.

 

He nodded weakly. He could hear his own pants like he was underwater, drowning. And maybe he was. Perhaps there was holy water in his lungs, stealing his oxygen in the form of greedy fire.

 

Maybe it was trying to take control, actually. But that wasn’t what was hurting him. It was the battle for dominance, the disturbance of the elements in his system. His whole organism had become a battlefield, slowly turning into a wasteland as it burned hot and cold, turning into a ruin.

 

“It’s killing you,” she whispered.

 

He swallowed, asphyxiated.

 

“It’s killing me,” he confirmed in the same tone.

 

Too afraid to speak any higher. Because surely that couldn’t be true.

 

But it was.

 

His own vital energy was becoming tumultuous, attacking him unintentionally with how unregulated it had become. He could feel the outside shinsu pressure oppressing him in his weakness.

 

His organs were failing.

 

Quite ironic, how a fight for survival was what would kill him. Slowly, from the inside.

 

How unamusing.

 

“I'll find a solution,” Hwa Ryun promised. “There are still paths.”

 

But those paths had been cut off in the course of a month. It was war after all, and war didn’t leave many choices for those involved.

 

Hwa Ryun had come back, grim looking, and she'd observed him slowly draining his own strengths.

 

“Khun,” she said one day. “You'll only shorten what is left of your time if you continue to push yourself like that.”

 

“I won’t die! I'll find a way. I'll stay until I can keep my promise.”

 

“...You know that is mere wishful thinking.”

 

Truth. In fact, Khun wouldn’t last to the end of the year.

 

Especially not like that.

 

And then one day, Khun had caught a glance of himself in the mirror, and he had realized just how ragged he had run himself. He had taken note of how all his friends were looking at him like they were waiting for something to snap, taken note of how neglected he seemed and how much that impression lowered the spirits of his teammates. He had noticed how much he was hurting them just by denying the truth and hurting himself.

 

Then, he had accepted the inevitable. And he had made the most of the time he had left.

 

Hwa Ryun once came to him at night, with only a few words.

 

“You should tell them, soon,” she said. “Before it’s too late.”

 

Back then, he had been afraid. He had carefully hidden it, just like how he had hidden the chaotic flow of shinsu mounting within him until he was struggling to breathe, and stay afloat.

 

“I still have time,” he had replied then.

 

He kept entertaining the idea of hiding it forever, leaving, separating himself from his loved ones. He thought it would be easier.

 

That might be true.

 

Running away would definitely have been easier than this. But Khun had decided to face them, and to face the truth that he had difficulty admitting even to himself. Because finally, his time had come.

 

The end was close. And all Khun needed were ten minutes of courage.

 

Because they deserved a proper goodbye.

 

“My condition has turned critical in the last ten months,” he informed them with the sterility of a doctor explaining a diagnosis, because it was easier this way, and he had never known how to express his true feelings. “And my body has become too weak to handle the living conditions past this Floor. Which is why my climb must stop here.”

 

The breath he let out after this was silent, but shaky.

 

And it was like a brand new realization even for himself.

 

Oh. This is where I stop.

 

This is the end of me.

 

He didn’t let his eyes water again.

 

They were all looking at him now. With eyes wide and ashen skin. It was as though they were only now realizing the reality of the situation. It had dawned on them.

 

This wasn’t simply Khun Aguero Agnis being his usual prickly, schemeful, secretive and difficult self. It was so much more simple than this, in fact. This wasn’t about overcomplicated courses of actions than none of them could see through. This was plain and obvious, laid bare for all to see.

 

Even Hatz seemed speechless, his lips hanging open as he stared at Khun like he was only just understanding who he was talking to, what was being spoken.

 

Who he was about to lose.

 

Because Khun wouldn’t joke about that. He wouldn’t lie about that.

 

Shibisu was the first to find his words again.

 

“Critical… how?”

 

“Terminal.” Curt and merciful.

 

Khun watched as Shibisu's features decomposed, his expression falling to grim understanding and devastation.

 

Ran stood frozen, and even Novick looked horrified.

 

Endorsi stared into the void, her hostility gone as she took in the catastrophe that was really this conversation. Her face was so blank, anyone could tell that her emotions must have been thundering inside. She swallowed.

 

“Then you're dying,” she blurted out, almost like a question.

 

A hopeless plea for Khun to answer in the negative, because surely this wasn’t what it meant.

 

Khun flinched, for the first time since the beginning of this dreadful morning.

 

And he wasn’t the only one. Bam shell-shocked in front of him, frozen and deathly pale, also jolted at the vocalization of what would surely happen to his closest friend.

 

Khun hadn’t wanted to hear it either. But in the end, it was the cold, simple truth. Heavy waves of resignation flowed through him. His shoulders unwound in one, exhausted movement, and his eyes dulled.

 

Because it was just that. The truth.

 

“Yes,” he said. “I'm dying.”

 

I'm dying.

 

A breath hitched. Ran was frozen in place, staring with wide eyes full of excruciating denial, filled with horror on features that didn’t know anything but to be blank. His arms were shaking.

 

There was a metallic sound, as Hatz's weapon fell onto the floor. 

 

Endorsi, next to him, gritted her teeth helplessly. She curled in on herself, hiding from sight.

 

“You're not joking,” Anaak breathlessly spoke with a revelation. “You're not joking.”

 

But Rak was still blinking at him, also gone quiet. His lack of understanding was obvious, but when he queried, his voice was small, low and hopeful.

 

“But you'll come back?”

 

Khun bit his lips to repress the sudden sob that almost bubbled out of him.

 

“You'll come back, right? You always come back.”

 

It was almost innocent, in wording and tone. Rak suddenly seemed like a young child.

 

It only made it feel more real to Khun. Because he had to answer that. He had to explain to his oldest companion that no, Khun wouldn’t come back, that what used to heal him and everyone else was now killing him, that he wouldn’t be able to survive this.

 

He wouldn’t survive, not even if the Yeon flame was removed from his organism. It had already caused too much damage.

 

And almost all of them knew that. They could read it on his expression.

 

Lauroe chose that moment to rise with a sigh.

 

“Khun,” he called him, and Khun raised his head to meet his eyes, green and serious and focused, yet not hopeful like Rak's.

 

Not angry like Ran had been, not devastated like Shibisu. A bit like Khun, like Hwa Ryun. A hint of resignation, because he probably already knew what he’d find when he asked.

 

“Mind if I take a look?”

 

Khun shook his head. Lauroe stepped front and side-stepped the tea table, putting one knee down to meet Khun at eye level. Wordlessly, Khun raised his hand for him to examine. Lauroe took the time to fold back the white cuffed sleeve before bringing his fingers to Khun's pulsing vein.

 

He closed his eyes as he felt for Khun's shinsu, as the rest of them waited in the heavy silence.

 

“It’s true,” he eventually concluded, his words echoing flatly in the atmosphere of lead. “Your metabolism is heavily disturbed by the irregular flow of your shinsu. The shinsu itself is attempting to self destroy, which is damaging your canals. Even if the Yeon Flame is removed, its power has already rooted itself deep into the properties of your shinsu, a bit like a virus… and it has already disrupted your natural flows too much for its effects to be reversed now. Your ice shinsu would still identify part of itself as an intruder in your bloodstream. I advise not attempting to remove the flame, or you might die faster through self destruction.” He paused. “Not that it would change much,” he ended up adding grimly after a second of thought. “You'd have to see an actual doctor for the details, but I reckon you won’t survive another full week.”

 

So that’s it. I'm going to die in the matter of seven days.

 

And that was the best scenario.

 

Khun was glad for the length of his bangs as he hung his head low, hiding behind the pale strands as he, too, processed the news.

 

He had known the end was near. But hearing it enunciated so clearly made it more difficult to swallow.

 

Lauroe patted his shoulder awkwardly.

 

“Since your internal shinsu pressure is a mess approximately three year long in coming, the ambient pressure is also messing with your organism. But the damage is minor at this stage. You'd die instantly if you climbed just one more Floor, but you're relatively safe here. At least until you die. If you're lucky, you'll be asleep when it happens.”

 

“ No. ”

 

Ran, Ran, his dear younger brother that he never called his, took one vacillating step toward Khun. Then, another. Faltering, but still subdued, like Ran was. Perhaps a bit too subdued. Ran stopped once he stood above Khun, his eyes trembling as they mind-numbingly focused on the elder.

 

“You…” he breathed out. “You’re not kidding. You’re really leaving.”

 

He looked and sounded like he couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He kept his tone low, as though if he were to speak any louder, the words would become true.

 

“You can’t go,” he ordered in a murmur, even though it wasn’t so much an order as a… “You promised. A.A..”

 

He was almost inaudible, no emotion to be perceived on him. He really was the embodiment of a Khun. Ran fell to his knees, reaching for Khun’s clothes, pulling on them as though it would make Khun answer his questions, as though it would stop him from disappearing.

 

“Just like that…”

 

He gritted his teeth, his fists curling against the fabric of Khun’s white dress shirt. Repressing what they had always been told to eradicate within themselves, until he couldn’t anymore.

 

Ran let out a long, tortured howl.

 

Khun clutched him right back, pushing the head of the boy against his chest. He didn’t know what else to do.

 

“I'm here,” Khun whispered, his hand grazing at the short, soft blue hair tickling his neck, because that was all he could do. “I’m here,” he repeated, ceaselessly, shutting his eyes tightly to stop the burn behind his eyelids.

 

But not for long. And the words constricted in his throat until he could not speak them any more. He resolutely closed his lips to prevent any other kind of pathetic sound to escape.

 

This was somehow more difficult than he ever thought it would be. For them, and for himself.

 

He hadn’t thought he would ever get to see Ran like this, breaking down in his embrace. Heck, he had never thought either of them would find themselves vulnerable enough to be in each other’s embrace.

 

Life had an odd way of fucking them over, huh.

 

Lauroe looked down at him in quiet companionship.

 

“Now that I think about it, your hair’s so long now,” it must be the first time he was awake enough to bother commenting on it. “You're half unrecognizable. You look softer… it suits you more, I think.”

 

He stood up, taking his hands away. He added then, pensively.

 

“It looks like you've already been grieving for a while. I'm sorry for your loss, Khun.”

 

Khun hummed.

 

“And I’m sorry for your loss,” he answered dutifully.

 

Because he might be a failure, but he was not unaware now, of how much these people cared for him in their own unique ways.

 

Khun had been grieving. Finally, after all these years of existence, it was his own death that had pushed him to allow himself to grieve. To mourn his mother, who had never seemed to love him for himself, his family who was as cold as the worst blizzard, his fallen friends from Sweet and Sour, Maria, who he had never seen again.

 

His own sister, who looked so much like him, especially now that he had grown his hair more. Their faces looked nearly identical, if only for the way their locks would frame their features. It had been an experience of its own to look in the mirror and see his sister’s face, staring back rather contentedly at him. Cathartic. Therapeutic. Would you be happy like I am today, if you had been able to leave this cursed life the way I did instead of taking that short-cut? Who knew.

 

And he was grieving himself, of course.

 

It was a strange concept, but he had accepted it.

 

He didn’t want to die. He had wanted to stay with them, just a bit longer. And then, just a little bit longer. Without him realizing it, he had gotten attached to his own existence in a world full of affections, a world of his own making. And now he would have to leave it, even though building his own rightful life in this place, among these people, had been the hardest work he had had to go through in all his decades of life.

 

“Don’t leave me…”

 

Khun pressed Ran tighter to his body, quivering with silent emotions. I don’t want to leave either.

 

“Khun!”

 

He turned. To the origin of the voice, stricken with horror and panic, with urgency and devastation. The one voice who had always seemed too warm for his icy skin.

 

Two hands latched onto his. Two strong hands, covering his small frail hand, rendered weak throughout the time he had lost running himself to the ground in search of a solution. Caressing it but keeping it in his grip, firmly, desperately, and so, so kindly. Like a precious treasure that that person couldn’t bear to separate from.

 

“Don’t go!” Bam was crying. “Don’t go where I can’t follow! Please! Please Khun! Let’s search again? Hwa Ryun! Maybe Hwa Ryun will see something, she'll have a solution! This can’t be the end. Khun! Khun!”

 

His own name reiterated again and again like the sound of a prayer, in the mouth of the people he loved the most. Bam, sobbing in despair, cradling Khun's head to his forehead as though it was the most precious thing he had ever held. The man in front of him finally realizing that there was nothing to do to help. No way to reverse fate. No matter how far they looked, how hard they tried, they would be left with nothing to show for their efforts.

 

Khun had watched, just moments earlier, as Bam's expression had morphed from encouragement and hope to confusion, then a blank slate. It had then slowly been colored with disbelief and denial, quickly followed by helplessness.

 

Their eyes had met, Bam had begged with the light in his eyes, one last attempt to rewrite reality.

 

But now that the truth was out, Khun had had no strength left to lie. He had watched as his friend, his best friend, his closest partner had let himself fall into desperation and despair.

 

A mind numbing sorrow. The tears had fallen quietly from his eyes, frozen. The golden hues had turned into abyssal darkness of heart-wrenching pain.

 

Khun had been able to tell that Bam had stopped listening to anything they said, the moment Khun had said those words.

 

“Yes. I'm dying.”

 

“There must be something we can do! Khun! Say something! Anything, Khun! Khun! No!” the last word was sobbed so grievously Khun almost couldn’t make out the sound of it.

 

This was what Khun had attempted to avoid at all cost. The pain, the horrible despondency that threatened to destroy everything they had built together.

 

“...just like that?” he heard somewhere, sounding like Dan’s toneless voice.

 

A roar of pure excruciating pain poured out of the figure of Rak.

 

There was movement. Then, Khun could feel the gigantic form of a decompressed creature draping itself over him and his brother. The grip tight, the embrace bone-crushing. As though those scaly arms could protect him from the fate that was awaiting him. Rak must already know. Otherwise, his roars of crushing pain would not sound so much like the sorrowful wails of a grieving beast.

 

The room was in chaos.

 

“I'll absorb it! I'll absorb everything that hurts you! I won’t let anyone touch you again! Just stay by my side!”

 

“Bam…”

 

“No! No! I'll give the Tower more and more and more, but it can’t have you! It’s not allowed to have you! No! ”

 

 Bam, …stop…

 

“It doesn’t matter if I have to stop climbing the Tower, it doesn’t matter if I have to work with Jahad, or FUG, or Wolhaiksong, or if I have to climb down this damned Tower! As long as you stay by my side, nothing else matters, please I'll do anything!”

 

It’s no use…

 

“ I can’t do it without you! ”

 

The first teardrop fell silently, mixing and quickly drying in Bam’s lucious brown hair. Followed by many others, rolling down Khun's cheeks without a sound.

 

He hadn’t even realized he had started crying.

 

Ah, he thought tiredly. Here he went, failing that one task. But then again, it probably didn’t matter whether he let the tears flow or stopped them, now.

 

He looked up to see Shibisu, standing behind Bam. Shibisu's eyes were hollow, showing the cracks, the broken heart behind it. He didn’t make a sound either, but he too was crying quietly.

 

“Why.”

 

He raised his head, blue eyes meeting soft brown.

 

“Why didn’t you say anything until now.”

 

Khun stared at him, and he remembered. All the sleepless nights spent looking for a solution, attempting to prove that he wasn’t condemned to death. That he could be saved. Then all these months sitting awake, contemplating how stupid he had been, how everything would have been easier if only he had been able to understand, if he had known how to communicate properly.

 

All that time lying awake, tortured by all the possibilities and the terror that ate at him when he thought of admitting the truth to his teammates, his family, and facing them. Facing his failure.

 

He smiled in the midst of his tears. Because this too, this last admittance, he owed it to them.

 

Because, he mouthed, unable to speak anymore, I am a coward.

 

He had always been.

 

Khun Aguero Agnis was a creature filled with fear.

 

Shibisu's face crumpled, contorted painfully, bursting into even more tears, silent as a gasp, that could not have hurt more if it had been a stab in the back.

 

For them or for him, Khun couldn’t tell anymore.

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

Hatz had pressed a palm on Endorsi's shoulder as she contorted upon herself, in a silent scream. The grip must be bruising, with how clenched and shaking his fingers, his whole figure was.

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

Novick had his head in his hands. He looked more exhausted than Khun had ever seen him be.

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

Anaak’s teeth were gritted hard, but she couldn’t hold back the fountain of tears that was drowning her, a roar threatening to tear out of her throat. Dan let her hide her face in his clothes, even though he still seemed shell-shocked himself.

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

Ran whimpered against him, Bam's cries far from fading yet, and Rak wailed like a drowning one, except maybe Khun was the one drowning. Shibisu had sat, cross-legged, in front of them, but his eyes gazed at nothing, directed at the ground. They were empty. Hollowed out.

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

(Somewhere in the middle of everything, Khun thought he could hear someone respond, all too gently.)

 

(“It’s not your fault.”)

 

(“None of this is your fault, Khun.”

 

“...It’s not your fault.)

 

Khun had no idea how much time had passed. At some point, everything faded away, leaving only dust, ruin, and quiet.

 

He caressed Ran’s hair as the boy rested on his lap, completely exhausted and not used to such strong emotions. Khun wanted to apologize to him for the trouble, but he would rather not wake him up for now.

 

He could see Hwa Ryun by the door. Discreet, but there, she had come back. They exchanged one glance, heavy and sad.

 

Rak was still behind him, his presence a reassuring warmth despite everything. And, by his side, with his head on Khun's shoulder, was Bam.

 

His golden eyes were tired and dulled. His hand still entwined with Khun. His breathing was soft and regular. His silence and touch were still imprinted with a deep mark of grief and hopelessness.

 

He murmured.

 

“A week?”

 

It was but the whisper of a thin, broken voice. But somehow, it carried, echoed throughout the room.

 

No one could have missed it.

 

There was a moment of shared quiet again, of sadness and breath-holding. Then, Khun let his own head gently fall on top of Bam's. His answer echoed back, just as soft.

 

“A week.”

 

Bam closed his eyes resolutely, painstakingly.

 

“I see.”

 

He pressed their intertwined fingers tighter, for just a moment.

 

Khun pressed back.

 

Hwa Ryun turned and left.

 

Khun closed his eyes, but didn’t dare sleep.

 

***

 

Somehow, the next few days they spent together appeared as the longest in Khun’s existence.

 

Yet at the same time, they felt so short.

 

Starting from that disastrous conversation in the living room, Khun had never spent even one second on his own. He was always accompanied, wherever he went - except absolute necessity. Even when it came to sleeping, Rak and Bam had sneaked their way inside his room without a word.

 

Khun wasn’t complaining. Although it did make him feel guilty for worrying them so much and having become a burden to them for the short time he had left, he didn’t regret his decision to tell them. He dared not imagine how much more grief his sudden… disappearance would have created. He didn’t want them to feel guilt for not having noticed his predicament until it was too late.

 

That was how his team was. Especially Bam. Bam would have let the self-blame eat him alive, especially because Khun acknowledged how close their friendship made them after all these years. Shibisu would also have withered, and Ran would have closed himself off.

 

Truth was, Ran would have closed himself off either way, certainly. But he probably had pushed himself to get over his first reaction, because he didn’t have time for that. Khun wouldn’t be there anymore by the time he was ready to say goodbye.

“A.A..”

 

Khun looked up from Shibisu's lighthouse, its owner just one foot away.

 

“What is it, Ran?”

 

The youngest Khun son stared fixedly at Khun, firmly but impassively.

 

“Teach me chess,” he demanded.

 

Khun blinked, dismissing the lighthouse back to Shibisu.

 

“That’s peculiar. Are you sure?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But when we were young, you used to say you didn’t see the use in sitting and ordering pieces around when you could just do the j-”

 

“Just teach me,” Ran brushed him off irritatedly.

 

Khun searched his eyes with curiosity, but then he smiled fondly.

 

“Sure.”

 

His half-brother, who had never been interested in strategy during his whole life, took the initiative and asked Khun to teach him a game Khun liked. Ran wasn’t very at ease, often fumbling in his attempts, and the folds on his forehead showed how much of a bother he thought this was as he failed to grasp the material, his features often disgruntled.

 

Despite Ran's obvious struggles, he stayed, and kept himself involved in the games they played. If anything, he was more annoyed because he was trying to understand rather than being uninterested. Khun appreciated the gesture. They spent hours just sitting in front of the board, game after game, as Khun bestowed his knowledge upon the younger.

 

They may have never needed nor felt the desire to bond like this in the past, but Khun couldn’t help but feel a noticeable amount of warmth as he spent time with his brother that he had never called as such, in slow moments. Chess was, after all, a game that permitted the players to pick at each other’s brains, and understand the other better.

 

He wondered if Ran felt closer to him when they sat together like this. Khun would certainly never get enough of that feeling.

Shibisu was the opposite. The scout left a trail of urgency in his wake wherever he went. And Khun could understand that sentiment.

 

Before separating from their original team for the first time, Khun had taken the time to teach Shibisu how to navigate a lighthouse. Shibisu was someone easily overlooked, but Khun had realized rather early on how strong the man was. He was rather emotional, of course, but he didn’t let his sensibility intervene during tests. That was something Khun had been able to appreciate, as a person who had needed to suppress all his feelings to become functionable as a child. Khun would almost say he admired Shibisu for this. It was something Khun had never been taught how to do.

 

But as it happened, that admiration would be reciprocated. Shibisu also held Khun in high esteem and cared for him greatly. For five to six years, they had been separated, and Shibisu had led his boat so successfully it was obvious he didn’t need any help, yet still Shibisu kept that stupid idea that Khun was his mentor and his better, and that all this would be impossible without Khun.

 

Khun had knowledge, connections, experience, and a quick-silver mind that had admittedly saved them all more times than could be counted. He was someone who was always around, or a pocket call around, and his sheer presence seemed to be comforting and reassuring to Shibisu… and perhaps not only him. His approval seemed to mean a lot to the other. Despite Khun’s original ambitions and reluctance to form friendships, Khun was also the one person who had guided their team at the very beginning, teaching them how to plan and operate the climb of the Tower in a way that would permit them not to abandon anyone. No one left behind.

 

In the end, it had been Shibisu who kept the ship afloat, but somehow the man still considered Khun as he did all these years ago.

 

They had already experienced a completely severing separation in the past, with the Hell Train and then for two whole years of being comatose, and back then it was Shibisu who had welcomed Khun back into the world of the living. Shibisu had never abandoned him or given up on him, and in the time he didn’t have Khun to look up to, he had grown into an admirable leader all on his own, one that Khun would never admit he was proud of.

 

But still. Today, Shibisu didn’t seem like he could bear the thought of Khun and his guidance disappearing forever, to survive only in his memories. More than that, he seemed intent to absorb as much as possible, and accumulate as much knowledge and memories as he could, just so he would not miss Khun in the future. An impossible task. But Khun could understand the urge to have a memento, something to remember someone by… even if it was only in the form of endless conversations and strategy teachings, or learning more about Khun’s craft. Shibisu asked Khun for as much guidance as possible, and Khun didn’t know if it was for the sake of old times, thinking ahead to a future without Khun… or simply to be able to keep a piece of Khun with him after his death.

 

“You’ve become a master yourself, now, Isu,” Khun told him one time, looking into his eyes to let him know just how much Khun was proud of him, even though he would never vocalize it.

 

Shibisu looked right back at him with eyes all too somber and shining with emotions.

 

“But you’ll always be better than me,” he replied with an air of finality.

 

Khun shook his head, exasperated. Shibisu kept going, lost in memories.

 

“You know… When Bam and the other met back with us after the Hell Train debacle and I saw you then… I felt helpless. I thought I wouldn’t know what to do if you never woke up. And then, there was Ha Jinsung who was captured, and Bam was desperate to free him and save him from potential demise.”

 

Khun tilted his head, patiently, not certain where this was going.

 

“Back then, Bam’s every action was so… urgent, I guess,” Shibisu shrugged. “I thought about his situation, about him wanting to save his master so badly and thought about what it meant to have a more experienced figure in our life ready to take us under their wing, for however short a time. I thought that, inevitably, all birds must leave the nest of their parents one day. But we always do all we can to push that moment back as far as possible.”

 

Oh.

 

“Looking back, I think that what Bam felt at the time… must have been pretty similar to my own feelings at the time. I didn’t want to lose you, I did all that I could to save you, with the conviction that I would save you because I simply couldn’t imagine a world without you in it.”

 

He turned back to look at Khun, only to see the blue-eyed man staring back at him deeply, far too understanding for what this was about.

 

“But you both ended up growing because of this experience,” Khun said, seriously, before he scoffed derisively. “Anyways, I’m neither your parent nor your teacher.”

 

Shibisu shook his head fondly.

 

“No, you’re not. You’re my friend,” the smirk faded from Khun’s lips. “You’re a friend that I value dearly, for all that you have given me until now, and for your reassuring presence by my side. My friend that I never ceased to learn from. You’re the friend who showed me the ropes of being a leader and who never stopped supporting me, despite our differences of opinion in the years. Most importantly, you’re a friend that I never want to forget.”

 

He looked down, swallowing heavily, and an apprehensive silence fell upon them. A sad kind of silence.

 

“Khun, I…” his shoulders fell. “I don’t think I’m ready to see you go.”

 

Khun let his head fall back against the cushion of the armchair, he looked at the ceiling. Wearily.

 

“I’m not ready to say goodbye yet.”

 

“...Yeah. I think I’m not ready, either,” Khun told him in confidence.

 

Shibisu pressed his entwined hands together on his knees. He lowered his head down to lay his forehead against it, his eyes closed shut and his features painfully drawn.

 

“I don’t think I will ever be ready.”

 

Khun stared up, numb.

 

“Me neither.”

Even Lauroe spent more time with Khun. It was a bit strange. They had been in the same team for some time, but Lauroe had seldom been awake during such calm times. They’d never interacted too much. Still, they’d been teammates that cared, ever so slightly about each other.

 

“It’s going to be weird without you.”

 

Khun smirked.

 

“Don’t worry, you won’t even notice it.”

 

“I wish. Don’t jinx me, please.”

There were Novick and Dan, too. It was nice, just talking with them. They had a closer bond to him than with anyone else in this house except Ran. Sometimes Ran was with them, sometimes not, but Khun found himself liking the time they spent together, with their own set of humor and inside jokes that none of the others would understand.

 

With them, they all tried, and as a result there was nothing to cry about.

 

“What’s that?” Dan asked when Khun threw a list at him and Novick, caught by the latter.

 

“A hit list.”

 

“A hit list?”

 

“Yeah,” Khun confirmed with a grin. “Of all the people who pissed me off in the past. Ranked by killing priority. The reasons are annexed next to the names and current locations.”

 

“That’s… I don’t know if that’s impressive or just fucking creepy.”

 

Khun’s grin widened.

 

“Do it for me? Please?”

 

Dan took one look at his very nice expression and shivered, focusing on the details of the list.

 

“Let me see… Hyubaric Joeh… stole ten points in the seventh Floor’s test game by cheating. Khun whatshisname… gave Ran a fool mood for five months. Michael for killing Gyetang I understand but… Hyeunang Inoe? For flipping you off?”

 

“Damn,” Novick whistled. “You know how to hold a grudge. Here, Yu Hansung… kidnapped Bam, is an absolute menace to society. Why is he so low on your priority ranking?”

 

“Well, Evankhell would kill me right back if I tried, so…”

 

Dan sighed.

 

“You’re crazy.”

 

Novick chuckled.

 

“Interesting… I’ll do it.”

 

“What? Novick, no!” Dan paled significantly at the thought, and Khun burst out in laughter.

 

Yeah. He’d liked this team.

Hatz… didn’t come to see him until two days had passed.

 

It was night time, and nigh everyone had gone to sleep. Yet Khun sat, in the living room. Busy copying all his lighthouses’ worth or data to Shibisu's, organizing it like one would put their affairs in order before letting go. 

 

Hatz came to find him then.

 

He was quiet as a mouse. Khun only recognized his presence as he walked toward him, in his back, coming to a stand still a couple of feet away.

 

Khun ceased typing.

 

“Swordsman,” he acknowledged..

 

For a moment there was only silence.. The pendulum clock ticked away the seconds. Khun waited a moment.

 

“You should go to sleep,” he advised. “It’s late.”

 

Hatz didn’t answer. A constant, rapid metallic noise made itself known. Khun looked over his shoulder, and noticed that Hatz’s grip on his sword was so tight it was shaking.

 

Ah…

 

Khun turned back and laid down against the cushions. He let out a long, deep, silent sigh. He stared down at his translucent keyboard.

 

Eventually, Hatz spoke, like a blow too long repressed.

 

“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

 

Khun saw no point in lying. Not anymore.

 

“Because,” he replied truthfully. “I'm a coward.”

 

“...That’s it?”

 

Yes. That was it. Just that.

 

Khun had spent his whole life afraid, in reality.

 

He could very well ask the swordsman to be grateful for the fact that Khun did end up telling his team the truth before he passed. But the only point would be to hurt him.

 

Khun had had enough of hurting his friends.

 

Hatz clenched his jaw. Khun could almost hear his teeth gritting.

 

What he did hear were the strained breathes in the quiet of the night.

 

“I hate you.”

 

Khun didn’t flinch. Didn’t let his fingers twitch at the words they had practiced yelling at each other, again and again, yet that had never felt so raw as in this one moment. He allowed his eyelids to drop slightly, the only sign that the words did reach him.

 

“I see.”

 

There was movement behind him. Hatz crouched to the ground, as though it would help him contain the mess of feelings that screamed to get out. As if it would stop the tears from bursting out.

 

“You’re the worst,” his voice sounded, low, broken, breathless, as he clutched his sword against him.

 

Khun wished he could just smile it off as always.

 

“Is that so.”

 

“I hate you.”

 

“Mh.”

 

They stayed like this. The clock ticked away. The time kept running out. Second after second. Reminding them why they both found themselves together in this place, with no word but the soundless burden of their own, complicated bond, which they’d never wanted to create in the first place.

 

One they had never regretted, either. But there was no time left for it now.

 

“I hate you.”

 

Khun found nothing to say to that.

Endorsi was different, in that regard.

 

She still resented him, Khun could tell. After all, what kind of asshole would only warn their friends of their death a week before the event of it? Why not before? Why be so cruel?

 

In Khun's opinion, it was rather merciful. If Khun had been left with a year or even six months to deal with the death of one of his friends in the near future, like Shibisu's or Bam, or even Rak's… he would have torn himself apart looking for a solution. He'd have gone into denial, refused it with passion, destroying himself hoping for a miracle, because there must be one, right? Deluding himself.

 

Huh. That wasn’t quite so different from what Khun had done once he'd learned of his death to come.

 

Once, in a pause between two sessions of intense bickering, Endorsi had looked away from him, impassively, and said:

 

“I get you, you know.”

 

Khun looked at her, wary.

 

Khun and Endorsi had been raised similarly, in conditions that paralleled each other. In the end, both of them had only been a means to an end in their childhood, until they took life for themselves. They knew, more than anyone, how the Tower worked, how it all worked, what their places in this was. They had no choice but to know. Out of everyone else in the house, they had the most similar mindsets.

 

And they both cared, more than they could ever admit.

 

How would Endorsi have reacted to the news of her own death, he wondered.

 

Nevertheless, he was too scared of the depth her answer could have if he asked her what she meant by that. So, Khun said nothing. Eventually, Endorsi continued.

 

“Actually, it’s pretty out of character for you to even have told us about this. You've made progress, I think. Or maybe… No, nothing.”

 

She smiled, appraising him from where she had her chin resting on her palm.

 

“It doesn’t suit you. Your hair, I mean. I’ve half the mind to say it makes you look neglected- hey! Don’t glare at me like that!” she chuckled. “But you do look retired, like this.”

 

She stood up, and clasped a hand on his shoulder.

 

“I don’t blame you. You did the best you could.”

 

Khun pressed his lips together, unwilling to say anything to this.

 

Then, unexpectedly, as Khun was about to retort against her strange wording, she embraced him.

 

He remained frozen at her unfamiliar touch. Let her lower her body onto his, let her squeeze his shoulders in empathy and friendship.

 

She approached her lips from his ear in the same movement.

 

“You did good,” and it almost sounded like a reassurance, gentle and far too understanding, too raw, “I promise I'll take care of the rest for you.”

 

I'll do it for you.

 

Let me finish what you started.

 

She left him there, calling for her niece. Khun found himself sitting at the dinner table, her words echoing in his mind.

 

(Truth was, this was the best goodbye gift she could have ever given him. He wasn't certain whether he wanted to feel comforted, or regretful at all the missed futures he couldn’t create himself. )

 

With an overwhelming urge to cry. He blinked away the burn.

Khun liked Anaak well enough.

 

She was a child that had grown too fast- even though she most probably was older than him by a large margin, just like Endorsi. Those kinds of things didn’t really matter in the Tower.

 

Khun respected her as a fellow teammate, even though they had started off as opponents. He looked fondly upon her and Ran's rivalry. They both felt so young to him. But he didn’t feel the need to protect them from the world. Quite the contrary in fact.

 

Khun would never admit it, but he might actually get softer when children were involved. Really, that was a secret. No one was allowed to find out.

 

And, maybe Anaak wasn’t a child anymore, even though her emotional growth made him think of one…

 

Watching her relationship with Endorsi often made his heart go a tad warmer against his will.

 

But Anaak and he never really had a close relationship so to speak.

 

Which was why he was surprised when the girl approached him and Bam one day, with that strange constipated look on her face.

 

“Chicken pie,” she muttered.

 

He blinked.

 

“What?”

 

“My mother's recipe. Help me make it.”

 

Oh. That was…

 

“Why us?”

 

“Don’t question it! And I'm only asking you two because Bam knows his way around the kitchen!”

 

Endorsi had eventually joined in, because when did she ever miss an occasion to bond with her niece.

 

Khun…

 

His heart clenched with the sheer number of times this team had reminded how much they were his and how much he was theirs, throughout the week.

 

His chest felt so warm it burned.

 

He loved them so much.

And then, there was Rak.

 

And then there was Bam.

 

**

 

Bam was always there.

Following Khun's admittance at the beginning of the end, Bam had refused to be separated from Khun for even one moment.

 

Rak was mostly the same, he found. That evening, both of them had exchanged one glance, and they had gone to pick their things in their respective rooms.

 

Khun seemed surprised when they entered his room with their own mattresses and deposited them on the ground. He had remained unmoving sitting on his bed and he had watched them, not even trying to stop them. Rak had then come closer and gestured for him to move. Khun had stared, and stared, and for an instant Bam had thought he was going to refuse, to throw them out of his room and close himself off.

 

Instead, Khun had obediently moved from the bed, letting Rak pick the mattress up and dropping it in between his and Bam's.

 

He grunted in satisfaction.

 

“Oi! Come over here, Blue Turtle! Don’t make me drag you to bed! Sleep is important for prey!”

 

Even dying ones.

 

Bam couldn’t shake the thought out of his head. Not when Khun made his way to the middle of the makeshift bed without a sound. Not when he inserted himself under the blanket or when Rak popped up next to him before going to sleep. Not even when Bam did the same, getting in the bed and sneaking his arms around Khun, feeling the temperature of his skin and the pulse in his veins.

 

Khun was dying. And apparently, there was nothing Bam could do to help.

 

He wasn’t deluding himself. If there had existed a solution, any solution- Khun would have found it, would have tapped into his reserves of hope and desperation and continued to search until he'd found it.

 

If there had existed an alternative, Khun would never have told them in the first place. They wouldn’t even know there had been a crisis to solve, a death nearly-avoided.

 

Khun never did give them false hope.

 

It didn’t stop Bam from hoping, nonetheless.

 

Because he couldn’t imagine a world without Khun.

 

To think that, just a few hours ago, the thought of Khun simply retiring had felt so terrifying that it was unacceptable.

 

Bam… did not care if Khun was stuck on this floor forever, or if he went back down to someplace he wanted to live in forever, leaving them to climb alone. Because Bam would have come back to see him every month, every week if he could. Bam would have climbed the Tower faster than anyone else, he would have fought whoever anybody wanted him to fight, and then, once everything was done, he would have come back to Khun, with the rest of his friends, and then they'd all be retired

 

Bam wished it could have stayed that simple.

 

“Teach me chess.”

 

Maybe Bam had distanced himself too much from Khun in the past few years without realizing it. Suddenly he felt like everyone was soliciting Khun for one reason or another.

 

It felt strange, to see so many people seek Khun's company. He often forgot just how strong the bonds between these people were, despite appearances. How much time they had had to flourish while he wasn’t there, while he wasn't paying attention.

 

Bam had hardly ever talked much with Lauroe or Anaak since the Floor of Tests. He didn’t talk to Hatz so often either. It was even without mentioning Khun's old team, with Novick, Dan and his half-brother, Ran.

 

It felt so novel to him, all these friends gathering around Khun and actually talking to him, doing things with him. In a way, it felt like seeing all of them in a different light.

 

It also felt like seeing Khun in a different light. With each new person.

 

Bam hadn’t realized, just how close they were to one another, just how much they actually knew each other underneath the bickering, the fighting, the climbing and the damned war. He hadn’t realized how far away he himself had gone from these people that he found himself not knowing them all that well, not understanding all their nuances. But Khun did.

 

While Bam wasn’t looking, all these people, these outcasts of the social world that would never do well nor want to integrate social life as the Tower knew it, they had created a small Society for themselves. Including Khun.

 

Even Shibisu felt different from what Bam had always known him as.

 

It all felt so new and novel, so different to him. And yet, next to him, Khun always welcomed them like old friends. With melancholy and nostalgia. With puzzle pieces easily slotting into place.

 

And Bam felt a pang of hurt as he took the measure of how much he had missed, of Khun, of all of them.

 

He should’ve paid more attention sooner. How ridiculous it was that he was discovering all this, this literal family right here in front of him, this warm and cosy place they'd built for themselves, only when it was about to go crumbling down? Finding out an entire world that he hadn’t quite been privy to, just behind him, mere days before his best friend left them all forever.

 

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so heart wrenching. If it didn’t all too much feel like the end of a tragedy play.

 

Never once was Khun left alone. And Bam, just by always being by his side, suddenly found himself learning more about all his friends than he had in ages.

 

“Why are they here again?” Ran complained in a grumble as he bishop went down. “Can’t you go away?”

 

Bam smiled placatingly at him.

 

Ran had never really liked him, now that he thought about it.

 

“Go, Blue Turtle! Destroy the Little Lightning Turtle’s mini turtle army! Hunt them all!”

 

Admittedly, Rak's cheers were unnecessarily loud and irritating. Bam could understand that Ran would want them gone.

 

Khun had a small smile, almost a smirk, as he defended his queen.

 

“Just ignore him,” he advised his brother. “He'll have enough soon.”

 

“Hey!” Rak yelped. “I'm your leader, show me more respect!”

 

Ran kept quiet for a while. Bam didn’t really know much about chess, but it felt like he wasn’t just preparing his next move.

 

Honestly, since the beginning of this arrangement began, it never really felt like Ran's usual silences. It was something more… hesitating. Tentative.

 

Whatever it was, it seemed Khun understood it. With a seemingly impassive patience that Bam didn’t remember seeing before, he waited for Ran, at every turn. And when Ran happened to glance back up at him, he stared right back. Sometimes, it felt like something Bam shouldn’t be able to see.

 

Maybe that was just their way of communicating. Khun had once said, the children of Khun didn’t like to show weakness. Maybe that was their own way of side-stepping that post-traumatic constraint. It was a wordless conversation no one else could listen in to.

 

Sometimes, Bam watched, and the chessboard felt like a bridge. Ran made a move, made a step forth, and Khun gently replied, crossing the distance.

 

Maybe Bam would have liked Khun to teach him how to play chess, one day.

 

‘One day’.

 

“Ah ah ah! The stupid Little Turtle lost again!”

 

“Will you shut the fuck up-”

 

Bam watched in silence, always close to his friend, and dreamed of that one day that would never come to pass.

 

“I'm dying.”

 

The memories of that unforgettable moment flashed through his mind, and he bit his lips until they bled.

 

There was no escaping the finality of it. But if there had been more time…

 

…if only there had been more time.

 

Bam would have destroyed the Tower to keep all of this. Two years without Khun, drowning in uncertainty, had been more than enough for Bam to decide that he would do his utmost never to experience a world without Khun again.

 

Not again.

 

He had wondered if it could have changed anything, knowing it would happen before Khun fell and froze himself into a coma. He knew, he hadn’t been the only one to think, would it have hurt less if I had done all I could to save him?

 

Turned out, helplessness was just as excruciating. And the terror of the certainty of a future empty of warm smiles and kind calculating cobalt eyes, was even more unbearable than the old uncertainty from back then.

 

Bam found that Shibisu thought the same.

 

On that note, he had never truly considered the bond between Khun and Shibisu in the past.

 

He had heard, after the Workshop battle, Shibisu being heavily scolded by their teammates for not having told any of them about Khun's plan, but it hadn’t quite registered back then that it meant Khun had trusted Shibisu enough to confide in him. But those seven days became an opportunity for Bam to grasp at the relationship the two had developed in the gap of his absence.

 

Before, Bam had always thought of that gap as an obstacle between the person his friends valued, Bam, and the person he had become, Viole. When he thought about those seven years, he thought of the obstacles and difficulties he had faced, how much he had changed, and how much he had wished to reunite with his friends. Back then, he had consciously avoided thinking about how his friends had lived through it. And then he had had the opportunity to see them all again, Khun and Endorsi and Shibisu and everyone, and his thoughts were akin to this:

 

Oh. They hadn’t changed at all.

 

What a relief.

 

It had been such a familiar sight. Khun and Rak, Endorsi speaking confidently and a bit strangely to him, Shibisu's team as chaotic as ever despite the new additions.

 

The years, day after day, that those people he cared for must have lived through, it was a vague sort of blur in his mind. They were sad, they moved on, they separated, they climbed up. That sort of thing. But seeing how Shibisu and Khun's relationship had evolved so far from his eyes, he felt fascinated.

 

Fascinated by the strange trust between them, like junior and senior, like older and younger, like student and teacher, like fellow leaders and like colleagues. Fascinated, but also envious, and uncomprehending.

 

Because Bam had never had something so nuanced with them. He had also been blind to it, and now he had trouble connecting the threads that had led to this result which he couldn’t understand.

 

He felt guilty too, because it was his own fault he hadn’t been able to see it earlier. His own fault for dragging his best friend on this lonely journey and even making him take a stand against his dear friends, all for Bam.

 

He remembered when they had gotten out of the Hell Train. Shibisu's expression of horror and fear, of profound unease.

 

Back then, Bam had had trouble identifying that expression. Instead, he had thought it was a normal reaction for the sake of a friend.

 

A ‘friend.’

 

The more Bam thought about it, the more that word felt plain and inadequate, too general. Too meaningless. Unable to properly encompass the subtlety of the bonds that had been intricately woven together.

 

Shibisu and Khun were not just ‘friends’. Bam realized, now.

 

“You've become a master yourself.”

 

“But you'll always be better than me.”

 

The solemnity of that gaze and those words as Shibisu stared at Khun fixedly, Bam thought he might be able to understand it now. Understand Shibisu a bit better for it. Understand Khun just a bit better by learning of that which he and Shibisu had forged throughout the years and despite the distance, all that they had done for each other, to support each other, in a period of suffering Bam hadn’t been there to see.

 

“I thought that, inevitably, all birds must leave the nest of their parents one day. But we always do all we can to push that moment back as far as possible.”

 

Bam hitched, hidden behind the wall, a plate full of cups of tea clenched between his fingers.

 

Khun had been his first nest in the Tower. Time and time again, he thought he might fall down, or that the nest would be destroyed. Each time, Bam had come back, more determined to never let go.

 

“Looking back, I think that what Bam felt at the time… must have been pretty similar to my own feelings at the time.”

 

I don’t want to lose you.

 

I'll save you.

 

I know I will.

 

I can’t imagine a world with you gone.

 

Bam felt himself shake.

 

For Bam, Ha Jinsung had been the man to teach him how to live in this accursed world, this dreadful Tower, with his head high. The one who'd taught him how it felt like to make someone proud, who gave him all the keys to succeed, yet never truly stopped hovering just behind, where Bam could reach him any time, and ask for help again.

 

He might have been Viole at the time, but his master had been the only person in that place to put his trust in Bam. Who had looked at Bam, and not just the slayer candidate, had looked at all his flaws and all his weaknesses, and thought, ‘you can do it.’

 

‘I know you can do it. Trust me. Trust me like I believe in you.”

 

For Shibisu, that person had been Khun.

 

“You’re a friend that I value dearly, for all that you have given me until now, and for your reassuring presence by my side. My friend that I never ceased to learn from. You’re the friend who showed me the ropes of being a leader and who never stopped supporting me, despite our differences of opinion in the years. Most importantly, you’re a friend that I never want to forget.”

 

And yet, why did it feel like their feelings, although so different, rejoined back together into the same sentiment anyway?

 

Don’t go yet.

 

“I’m not ready to say goodbye yet.”

 

His heart broke when Khun answered.

 

“I don’t think I'm ready either.”

 

Bam wasn’t supposed to have heard that, he wasn’t supposed to have heard any of it.

 

“I don’t think I will ever be ready,” Shibisu confessed, and Bam felt his eyes water.

 

Because wasn't that how they all felt.

 

He waited a good five minutes after that to enter the room. He thought Khun must have known anyway.

 

Sometimes, it felt like Khun knew everything. Of course, that wasn’t even remotely true, but Bam couldn’t help thinking it sometimes. It was as though Khun only ever needed one glance to read Bam's most inner feelings, anyone's inner feelings really. But no one understood Khun entirely. It was sad, not just sad but painful, because it wasn’t for lack of trying.

 

Bam thought about it when he heard the bouts of laughter coming from the living room as he prepared today’s dinner. It sounded so easy for them. For Khun's old team, to reach him and make him happy just like that.

 

But Bam understood that they were different. Bam knew that the first time they'd all met together, Khun had ordered this team never to get attached. They were all experienced then, had all lost something important, and knew not to expect not to lose anything else, even each other. They knew how to pretend everything was alright, and that even if it wasn’t, it wasn’t their role to be sad. They didn’t need to be sad.

 

Those were people who could joke around about death, people just like Khun, and Bam thought, that might be what Khun needed.

 

It was painful to listen to. But Bam couldn’t find the strength to go too far away. He simply couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop absorbing as much as he could from Khun Aguero Agnis.

 

So, soon enough, the dinner in the oven, he came back, closer to Khun, because he couldn’t bear the distance.

 

“Michael for killing Gyetang I understand but… Hyeunang Inoe? For flipping you off?”

 

He heard more as he came closer, he chuckled nervously at the killing Hansung part.

 

He tilted his head as he sat down with them.

 

“Who were you talking about?”

 

Khun smiled in greeting. Novick grunted.

 

“I don’t really know that Inoe guy, you wanna know about Michael?”

 

Dan grimaced when Bam nodded.

 

“That asshole…”

 

“What? What did he do?”

 

Dan glanced at Khun inquisitively, and Khun only shrugged.

 

“A lot of things, actually,” Novick ended up offering. “The major part being that he was a FUG guy who spied on our team for years. And then he killed two members of our team.”

 

“One,” Khun raised a finger proudly. “I lived, bitch.”

 

Bam blinked slowly, already disliking that person.

 

“To be fair, Michael’s not strong enough to kill me,” Khun added, “he just sicked a high ranker on me. Coward couldn’t face me properly. I’ll get revenge.”

 

“ I’ll get revenge,” Novick corrected, and Khun smiled at him somewhere between playfulness and gratitude.

 

This is what Bam had been talking about. This… ease, to speak their mind about the whole catastrophe waiting to strike like it was as easy as a laugh. All three of them. He had to hide a wince, flattened his lips to keep a straight expression.

 

“Then I’ll get revenge by proxy,” Khun claimed. “Anyways, the point was that Michael poisoned a member of our team. Name’s Gyetang, a very cute and kind birdman. Not just nice, but competent, otherwise I wouldn’t have chosen him in my team. In contrast, Michael was a sick bastard with ideas a bit too dark for my taste. But he was a deal package with the actual team member I recruited, so it’s not like I could kick him out. Just because he was rather good at his craft… You’re much better than him, Bam.”

 

Not that Bam didn’t like the compliment, he beamed in thanks, but he felt like Khun was going on a tangent.

 

“Khun?”

 

“A.A., back on topic.”

 

“Ah, right,” Khun blinked, as if in a daze, and Bam only had time to furrow his brow in concern before Khun resumed. “So he killed Gyetang, and he was proud of it. And then he tried to kill me. Failed. I promised I’d laugh in his face if I saw him again, but he probably knows I survived anyway. This is a team matter, we’ll have his head before all our members die.”

 

Dan nodded.

 

“That’s a promise. Ah, but I’m not doing the killing if I can help it. But I’ll be damned if I don’t participate in the torture, there has to be torture! You should have seen him… I’m not sure if he was thirsting over the boss or viciously jealous, he really had an ambiguous character… Ran never did talk to him, if I remember well.”

 

Wait, their boss?

 

Their boss was Khun, right?

 

“He did what? ”

 

Khun ignored him, laughing aloud as he raised a hand in the air.

 

“Hail to not being sequestered in a dark cave somewhere by a lustful madman!”

 

Everyone else railed their hands in a mock cheer as well, following their ‘A.A.’’s lead.

 

“Hail!”

 

Bam was going to kill this Michael. But before that, he could very well appreciate the content of the cheer. He sighed.

 

“Hail.”

 

He watched them jest for another minute or so before looking down.

 

“Khun?”

 

“Mh?”

 

“What’s that on your lap?”

 

Khun rolled his eyes. He pulled at the blanket on his lap to reveal Rak’s… head. Rak’s head. He was dead? Rak was dead! Phew, no, his body was actually nuzzled up to Khun’s on the armchair, Bam didn’t know how he didn’t clock it before. Rak was sleeping. And borrowing Khun’s lap, apparently. It tore a chuckle out of Bam.

 

“If you can get this scaly thing to wake up and get off me, I’ll be immensely grateful,” Khun told him while shaking his head exaggeratedly. “It’s highly uncomfortable. And he runs too warm.”

 

Bam laughed.

 

“I’ll do what I can.”

 

It was the second day. They all had dinner, and a lot of things happened. Khun was never alone, and Bam was grateful for that. He ended up falling asleep next to Khun on the couch as he waited for his best friend to finish his work so that they could finally go to bed. Rak had gone hunting. Bam imagined that Rak had needed to unwind in some way, and didn’t mention it, even though it was dark outside, and Bam had no idea what he could possibly be hunting right now. No matter, because Bam trusted Rak to take care of himself. And Rak trusted Bam to take care of Khun.

 

Bam opened his eyes blearily to see Khun looking defeated, in the dimly-lit living room. He looked more tired now, Bam realized.

 

“Did something happen?” he murmured in worry.

 

Khun smiled down at him. It was a sad smile, Bam didn’t like it. He wanted to erase it. Bam wanted to erase the last few days… the last few years, even. Anything that would make Khun happy and content forever. However, that wasn’t possible. So all he had left to do was listen to Khun, because he couldn’t even help him now.

 

“Hatz came by,” Khun answered the inquiry in much the same tone, as though afraid to disturb the night.

 

“Oh.”

 

Hatz had refused to show his face in two days, Bam remembered. He straightened.

 

“What happened?”

 

Khun looked even sadder now. Still with that smile on his face.

 

Bam had always wanted Khun to smile more. But not like that. Never like that.

 

Why did Khun have to smile like that?

 

“Do you resent me?” Khun asked calmly, looking up to the ceiling.

 

“What?”

 

A pause.

 

“For having hidden the truth for so long. Do you resent me?” Khun repeated himself.

 

Bam said nothing.

 

He thought about it. Of course, Bam wished he had known earlier. He wished that he could have been told early enough to be able to do something about it. Now all was left to do was wait for death in limbo. Of course Bam was resentful of that. But did he resent Khun himself?

 

Did he?

 

Khun spoke again, solemn, in the quiet of the evening.

 

“Back when I faked my death, around the time of the Workshop Battle, I stopped for a couple of seconds as we arrived. I asked myself: what are they thinking? What did they feel when they learned of my death? And then I told myself it was a stupid question, because they must have been delighted to be rid of me.”

 

Bam couldn’t help it. He shook his head frantically.

 

“That’s not true!” he exclaimed, but Khun shushed him with a smile.

 

“I know,” Khun conceded. “I’ve known for a while now. But if I had learned I was going to die, back then… I would never have told anyone anything. I didn’t think it mattered. At most, I would have briefed my team. They were the only ones I know that wouldn’t have freaked out… or faked concern of some kind. That’s what I thought back then. But things changed since then. I’m not the same person I was then. I have all of you, and you all have me. It’s not just me dying; it’s you losing me.”

 

“Khun…”

 

Bam wanted to comfort him, but he didn’t know what to say. He had no idea what to do.

 

He didn’t know how Khun did it. All this time, claiming he wasn’t good at comforting others, and yet effortlessly raising Bam’s spirit with an embrace and a few words, just a smile sometimes, or a pat on the shoulder. Bam didn’t know. Bam couldn’t do it.

 

Another thing that only Khun could do, and that he would be taking with him when he left.

 

“I never wanted to become these people’s teammate, or their ‘friend’. And some of them never wanted to become mine either. But what happened happened, and we all realized… there’s no going back. There’s no cutting the bonds now, there’s no option to simply forget it all like it didn’t exist, because now, now we’re friends, now we care, and that’s something we can never reverse. Just like you once cared for Rachel. There will forever be a part of you that wants her alive at least, no matter how small.”

 

Khun glanced at him at this part, casting a reassuring smile in his direction, before it turned contemplative again, his eyes lost in memories, looking down at his lap. At his hands, twisted in one another.

 

“I think Hatz resents me,” he admitted quietly.

 

Bam’s first instinct was to deny. They were friends, weren’t they? Surely Hatz wouldn’t.

 

But he had come to learn over the course of the last couple of days. Nothing was actually as easy as friends and foes. It was, all, so much more complicated. Bam still had trouble imagining.

 

He couldn’t pretend to know what Khun’s and Hatz’s bond was made of.

 

“He resents me for having become someone he cared about. I think he’s long hated me for it, you know. I wormed my way into his heart, he wormed his way into mine. And we always tried to ignore it, the fact that it was unintentional, and carried it with pride like all the rest. But that resentment… I don’t think it ever really left. Because he and I… we knew we’d get hurt. Because hurting people is so much easier when they love you. And we can’t get along on the best of days… It was obvious that one day, one or the other would end up jaded. And I think… we always knew it would be him.”

 

Bam listened quietly, and he tried to imagine what that kind of friendship must have felt like. How it would form. He remembered the very beginning, the snipes they threw at one another, the heavy bickering, the scowls on their faces. The reluctant acceptance. Back then, Bam had thought it was just another way to be friends. Back then, Bam… he hadn’t been long enough in the Tower to know.

 

“But we are teammates. And this is how we work,” there was steel in Khun’s gaze, his voice firm, because that was something he could never budge on… something, Bam found, that very few people could budge on, in this Tower.

 

That Teammate was a word that had more value than Friend. It was so much more. Meant so much more. And it would always be something precious.

 

“Hatz hates me,” Khun said, “and I always knew that. Because that’s how he loves me. That’s how we love each other.”

 

“Is that what he told you?” Bam found himself asking with a small voice. “That he hates you?”

 

Khun nodded, that awful smile making an appearance again.

 

Hatz hated Khun, because he loved him.

 

“I’m the one making him suffer after all. I could have told everyone everything so much earlier, you know. It wouldn’t have changed anything. But I could have. Do you know why I didn’t?”

 

Bam shook his head.

 

“Because I was afraid,” Khun said, and it shook Bam to the core. “Because I wanted to watch you until the end. I wanted to be there, Bam. With all of you. I was so desperate for it. Do you remember, four months ago?”

 

Bam did. He invoked the memories in his mind, taking in how Khun had let his perfect hair curl at the end, and wave, and push past the line of his shoulders. How he had looked like he never slept, like he was haunted. Haggard, eyes dulled, movements sharp and frantic whatever it was that he was doing. Never really present. Always seeming one step away from the abyss. Bam had worried that he wouldn’t be able to catch him. He had watched him, given him space. Nothing had changed.

 

Until one day, and Khun was suddenly back to normal, smirking, scoffind and boasting as usual. As prim and proper as the first day they met.

 

Bam had never thought that this was what it had been about.

 

“I do,” he answered softly. “You were… tired.”

 

Khun laughed.

 

“Your assessment is so nice,” he commented, before correcting: “I was a mess. Back then, I had no intention of admitting my own demise, not even to myself. I told you… I was desperate. And even afterwards, I never thought I would tell you all the truth. I guess… Hatz resents me for being selfish like that. So much time lost, because of the fear of one person.”

 

He lowered his head, and Bam couldn’t tell his expression anymore.

 

“All because I was a coward. Of course he couldn’t accept it.”

 

Bam wished there was something he could say to comfort Khun. To fix his and Hatz’s  companionship. to fix everything.

 

Then, Khun added.

 

“But as I said, he and I, we’re teammates. We got to accept it. So in the end, he accepted it. That was what it was. Even if it hurts. That’s all we can do.”

 

He scoffed painfully.

 

“It’s not like there’s much time left to be stubborn, anyway. He may never forgive me, but that’s okay. What’s important is that we accepted it.”

 

Bam hummed. He didn’t trust himself to speak. His voice would break. He would break. And then, Khun might break too.

 

That was what it was about. All of this. There was no time to be sad, no time to refuse, to deny. They needed to accept it, fast. All of them. Or else, they would regret those last few days all their life.

 

It was the opportunity Khun had given them, at last, after all.

 

So, Bam didn’t comment. Instead, he whispered, a timid question he wasn’t sure would be answered.

 

“Why did you tell us, in the end?

 

Why did you change your mind? What persuaded you?

 

Khun paused, immobile for so long that Bam thought he might have fallen asleep. But then, slowly, Khun straightened, and he looked back at him with eyes too raw, too honest. And too calm, as well.

 

“Because,” he said, “it wouldn’t have been right.”

 

‘It’s not just me dying. It’s you losing me.’

 

That same night, after Rak had come back and all three of them had gone to bed, Bam woke up again with a start. These words echoed in his mind, again and again even as he laid eyes on what had woken him up.

 

Khun, panting, feverish. His fingers clenched, icy-cold. Coughing blood on his pillow.

 

‘It’s you losing me.’

 

They were losing Khun. He was slipping through their fingers. And if Khun had told them nothing, then Bam wouldn’t even be sitting here, looking at him as he struggled against his pain.

 

Bam would know nothing of it. He wouldn’t be there to watch Khun slip away.

 

All he would have known was that, one morning, he would have woken up, and Khun would have been dead. And Bam wouldn’t have known why.

 

“Khun!” he shook the shoulders of his best friend, his best friend who was fighting a losing battle. “Khun, please! What’s wrong!”

 

Khun remained unconscious. Struggling in his sleep, but not waking up. Bam exchanged a glance with Rak. In Rak’s red eyes, there was fear like Bam had never seen before, and helplessness, that which a hunter could never feel. A terror that mirrored Bam’s.

 

“Don’t wake him up,” a familiar voice sounded, at the entrance of the room.

 

It was Hwa Ryun.

 

She looked sober, almost austere.

 

“What…”

 

“It’s better if he’s not awake to feel it,” she only said, taking a few steps closer.

 

Bam glanced down at Khun’s figure again. He was sweating heavily, as though he was hot, but when Bam wiped his brow, it was deathly cold. He didn’t understand how it was even possible. Unrest was written on his strained features, his lips open as he gasped again and again. He turned warm then cold, under Bam’s touch, and then warm again. He coughed, and there was a splatter. He heaved, his chest sounding wet.

 

“How can we help him?” he heard himself beg.

 

But Hwa Ryun shook his head.

 

“There’s nothing to do. His shinsu is unregulated, it’s even causing his metabolism to malfunction. His organs are failing.”

 

“What is that supposed to mean, Turtle!” Rak exclaimed with anger, but also anxiety, and Bam could see the tears of helplessness stuck in his eyes.

 

“It means we wait. If we’re lucky… then he’ll still be alive in the morning.”

 

Bam’s breath got caught in his throat.

 

If they’re lucky.

 

Hwa Ryun knelt.

 

“Change the laundry before he wakes up,” she told them.

 

She dragged the blanket back on top of Khun, and then stood up and left. Bam could hear the message in her instruction.

 

Change the sheets. Make sure everything is pristine. Like nothing happened.

 

Because it was the only way they could all continue to act normally afterwards.

 

Bam found himself staying awake for the rest of the night, watching over his friend, even as Rak wrapped his arms around him and cried, sharing his warmth.

 

Morning came. Khun lived.

 

Bam and Rak said nothing.

 

One thing came upon another, and soon enough Shibisu was suggesting a truth or dare with alcohol. Rak and Khun were given fruit juice because ‘who the fuck knows what alcohol could do to either of them.’

 

Khun raised his glass as if in a cheer.

 

“Like I’d drink alcohol anyways,” he answered Shibisu’s declaration.

 

“I don’t get why I have to drink childish juice!” Rak bellowed. “I'm a prey! Not a baby Turtle!”

 

“Here, here, it’s fine, let’s be baby Turtles together,” Khun snickered.

 

“You! I'll make you choke on banana juice.”

 

“No thanks.”

 

It started tamely enough, with Khun sipping from his glass from time to time because, well, it wasn’t like he was going to get drunk now. For once, Rak played the game neatly, only drinking when he refused a bet. Which he never did. It frustrated the Wraithraiser to no end as much as it made him proud.

 

“Hatz!”

 

“Dare.”

 

“I dare you to hug Khun!”

 

Hatz finished his cup.

 

“I feel so wounded right now.”

 

“Shut it, Earrings, and drink your apple juice.”

 

“Funny how you seem to think that’s an insult.”

 

“Novick!”

 

“Truth.”

 

“Tell us the truth, have you ever had a crush on Khun?”

 

Novick looked like he'd swallowed a lemon.

 

“Let’s not talk about that…”

 

“The truth! The truth!”

 

“The truth!”

 

“Just drink, Novick, they won’t believe you if you say no.”

 

“Little Blue Turtle.”

 

“Dare.”

 

Rak pointed toward Ran triumphantly.

 

“I dare you to win against Blue Turtle at mini-turtles board game!”

 

“I'm so going to kill you right now-”

 

“He means chess right?”

 

“Yeah, he means chess.”

 

“Fight me yourself, coward!”

 

“Who you calling a coward! You're the coward Turtle!”

 

“Hum, won’t someone stop them?”

 

Eventually, Dan and Novick decided to retreat, if only just to calm Ran down. Bam thought he heard they were going to unwind with some basketball.

 

“So who against who?”

 

“Me against you two.”

 

“Win for me too, Ran,” and their fists had met lazily before the trio had left.

 

After that, Shibisu changed the rules.

 

“Let’s do a Never have I ever! Floor of Tests special edition!”

 

Bam beamed at that.

 

“That sounds fun!”

 

Shibisu grinned, obviously proud of his idea.

 

Anaak started.

 

“Never have I ever paid for someone else's meal.”

 

“You!”

 

Needless to say, most of them ended up drinking.

 

“Khun, you're just drinking or you're drinking ?”

 

“Ah, Khun bought me a meal once.”

 

“Lucky you, I wish my mother had been that nice- argh!”

 

“Call me a mother again and it won’t be your leg that suffers.”

 

“Alright,” Endorsi smirked. “My turn. Mh… Never have I ever… tried to take a hit for someone else.”

 

Bam grunted, then took a sip. Hatz took one sip, then seemed to mull it over. He took another sip.

 

“Oh?”

 

“The first time was the Crown Game, right? So it counts if you deflected the hit instead?”

 

“When was the second time? I wanna know now!”

 

Khun and Hatz very carefully did not look at one another.

 

“Never have I ever… tried on new clothes.”

 

Bam and Shibisu drank, as well as Endorsi.

 

“Shibisu, what.”

 

“Just because they all look similar to you doesn’t mean I don’t change it up once in a while!”

 

“Oh my god you fashion disaster…”

 

Shibisu hmphed.

 

“Well, if that’s how it is…” he glared at Anaak for her comment. “Never have I ever sabotaged my own team!”

 

Anaak growled in her cup.

 

“Nah, that’s oddly specific.”

 

“Wait, Endorsi's drinking, too. Oh, right, the Hide and Seek game!”

 

“This is not funny.”

 

“What. Khun? ”

 

Bam whipped his head toward Khun, who stilled, caught in the middle of taking a sip, red-handed.

 

“Were you hoping to be discreet?”

 

“Khun my love! Don’t think you can hide behind your hair like Jue Viole Grace just because it’s long now!”

 

“Again, that is not funny.”

 

“No, but I want to know. What is this about?”

 

Rak grunted.

 

“Does the door test count?”

 

Khun then proceeded to take another sip.

 

“Well, that answers it.”

 

“Ah!”

 

Anaak rose to her bare feet with one leap, pointing an accusing finger down at Khun.

 

“You! You sabotaged the Hide and Seek game!”

 

There was a moment of silence as they all blinked twice, remembering that particular event. Then, Shibisu started shouting in disbelief and victimized bullshit, as Khun then called it. Hatz facepalmed, and Rak laughed at the top of his lungs. Khun, Lauroe and Endorsi exchanged a glance.

 

“Wait! I thought it was Endorsi who did it! You mean it was all Khun's plan!?”

 

“Hey!” the princess protested. “I was the one who came up with how to trick Quant! Not him!”

 

“Anyway, Lauroe, drink too!” Khun ordered. “I don’t want to get grilled alone.”

 

“Ugh, what a pain…”

 

Amidst the chaos, Bam looked at Khun and smiled warmly. Another thing he would never have noticed if it hadn’t been pointed out to him. 

 

Khun was the reason he had passed that test. It made him all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.

 

He tried not to feel sad, that Khun would never bestow any of these invisible gifts upon him again.

 

He wanted to find them all, one by one, uncover them like a secret and keep them close forever.

 

“You did that for me?” he murmured, and Khun smiled at him.

 

“I'd do anything to be by your side, Bam.”

 

Half an hour later, Novick entered again.

 

“I don’t wanna interrupt you, but we have guests.”

 

To their collective surprise, Sweet and Sour had managed to catch up to them.

 

Soon enough, the game had to stop, so that all the newcomers could be accommodated and properly welcomed. After the first round of greetings, Bam decided to stay close to Khun, who had taken his usual seat on the couch, Rak also unwilling to separate.

 

It was almost amusing, how Rak seemed to have transformed into some sort of custom plushie these days, clutching at Khun and sleeping on him shamelessly all the time like a cat.

 

Sometimes, Bam wondered what it would be like to be that small again, if Khun's embrace would feel as comforting as it did back then, when they happened to share a bed. Khun had always detested skin contact, but he had reached out more easily to Rak and Bam, even back on the floor of tests. It made Bam feel nostalgic to think about.

 

“‘Ole.”

 

He raised his head to look at Wangnan, who nodded at him with an austere look.

 

Wangnan’s features were uncharacteristically serious as he stared down at them, his fists clenched by his sides. Bam watched him turn toward Khun, watched as his features closed even more.

 

He looked and Khun then, who stared up with no trace of a smile on his lips, prepared. Suddenly, Bam knows what this was about.

 

“Khun.”

 

Khun nodded sharply.

 

“They told you.”

 

They had.

 

They - maybe Shibisu, or Novick - might have thought it would be easier to tell Sweet and Sour the truth without the audience. That it would be easier on them, and on Khun.

 

“Did they only tell you?” Khun asked, closing his book on his lap.

 

Wangnan nodded, looking down.

 

“For now.”

 

Wangnan had done a great job remaining composed, but Bam had known him for a long time. He could read between the lines.

 

He could perfectly picture the way Wangnan must have been smiling one moment, and then Shibisu would have motioned him closer to talk about something important, and Wangnan, probably clueless like the rest of them had been, had followed. They might have spoken together about their teams for a moment, and then Shibisu would have warned him, in a whisper, and Bam thought he could imagine the way Wangnan’s face must have fallen, his eyes widened, first in alarm then in disbelief. And then…

 

Because Bam knew, even for people who had spent less time with Khun, people for whom Khun wasn’t a sheer lighthouse in the dark. All these people had one day or another always had to listen to Khun. Khun was part of the Novick team, he was part of the Shibisu team, and the Tower be damned if Wangnan didn’t consider Khun a part of Sweet and Sour as well.

 

He wondered how Ehwa would react. It would be their third loss.

 

Of course, the number never made it any easier to swallow.

 

Wangnan’s gaze focused on something else.

 

“Your hair…” he murmured, as though he was looking at a complicated puzzle. “You’re unrecognizable.”

 

Khun raised an eyebrow.

 

“That can’t be right. I’ve been told I’m the same asshole as always.”

 

“Yeah… But still. It’s disturbing. You… actually look the part.”

 

Of the dying man.

 

Bam felt his blood go cold in his veins, before he forced it warm again. Khun still seemed to catch his moment of pallor, because a warm hand soon grasped his own. Bam took a moment to look at Khun, as well.

 

Of course, Khun was beautiful. Any existing human being would be able to tell, short or long haired. But he understood the others’ point. The pale strands of hair framed Khun’s sharp features, sometimes even covering them. It softened his rough edges, seemed to smoothen his clear-cut personality and barriers. It was terrifying how a few more inches of length could change a face while leaving it exactly the same as before. But truth, there it was, in the shadow of his lengthened bangs. Khun seemed more tired. A bit less strong, with the gator on his lap, a book in his hands, his eyes opened wide but gone was the will in them, gone was the readiness to fight anything that came at him. They were always calm. The knowledge never left them, but that knowing, all knowing determination that would never leave, in those eyes framed by locks of various lengths as opposed to the past where everything was so well defined.

 

It blurred the edges, between the wisdom of the seer-like strategist and the resignation of the dying ruler.

 

Wangnan laughed, bitterly.

 

“I’m sorry. I just… I can’t believe it. You’re Khun. That guy… I find it too hard to think you could be dead tomorrow. That’s just unrealistic.”

 

It felt unreal.

 

“Does it hurt?” Khun asked, and it sounded cruel.

 

“It fucking does, asshole. I look at you and I feel like… you were just in front of us the other day, promising you’d take us up to the Workshop to get ‘Ole back, all confident and inaccessible. You asked me to trust you like you ever trusted me and… and then you pointed a gun at me.”

 

This had the merit of making Khun crack a smile. But he said nothing. As though he knew that Wangnan was getting somewhere.

 

“And now… Now you’re pointing another gun at me. That’s what it feels like. You never do pull your punches.”

 

“I don’t,” Khun quietly agreed. “Do you feel like I’ve let you down?”

 

This time, Wangnan didn’t answer. His eyes roamed over Khun’s face like it held all the answers to his questions, and then he gritted his teeth.

 

“Why do you have to die?”

 

And, Bam choked. He choked like this wasn’t all that had been going on in circles in his stupid mind for three days now.

 

It seemed like a gate burst.

 

“You’re just sitting there like everything’s alright! You’re just going to… to leave us all alone?!”

 

“You won’t be alone.”

 

Wangnan ignored him.

 

“You look like- You! You look like you’re… you’re not even trying to pretend!” Wangnan gestured wildly to Khun’s figure, like it meant something. “You’re just going to give up? Just like that!”

 

Khun flinched ever so slightly at the last few words. Bam could feel it through their linked fingers.

 

Enough was enough.

 

“Wangnan!” he warned, severely.

 

It echoed in the room.

 

No one else turned. They were carefully enthralled in their own conversations. So much that it was unnatural.

 

Bam was grateful for their tact nonetheless. But despite the noise all around, a small, contained silence rang around the three of them.

 

“Of course the Blue Turtle doesn’t want to die.”

 

Bam and Wangnan jolted.

 

Khun didn’t even react.

 

Rak’s red eyes were open.

 

“The Blue Turtle is a stupid Turtle. He doesn’t want to be left behind, so he always tries to run ahead because he thinks he has to catch up. The Blue Turtle is always risking his life so he doesn’t get forgotten or useless, even though he’s already useless. But the Blue Turtle would rather live and be left behind, than die while the Black Turtle and the others still need him.”

 

Wangnan’s breath hitches.

 

Bam thought he too had stopped breathing. He felt suffocated.

 

Khun didn’t move an inch.

 

“Blue Turtle doesn’t want to die,” Rak repeated, and he clutched Khun tighter around the waist. “So stop hurting the Blue Turtle already. For once, he doesn’t deserve it.”

 

Khun wanted to live. Bam remembered Khun telling him that. He wanted to be with him, to accompany them to the end, wanted to be able to say ‘it’s over’ with the rest of them. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to let them down.

 

“It’s not just me dying. It’s you losing me.”

 

But, somewhere in there, in a place of restraints and excruciating helplessness, it was also Khun watching them lose him.

 

In a way, Khun was all alone. All alone in the void, watching them cry and suffer, while he could do nothing. Powerless and hurting, as the other hit against the transparent walls, underwater as they failed to reach him, and as, one by one, they all had to give up. Abandon him, because there was nothing they could do. He had to watch them give up on him, and then, he had to watch them suffer.

 

And he suffered in turn.

 

It was no surprise that Rak had been the first able to hear past Khun’s silence.

 

‘He doesn’t deserve it.’

 

Rak… always knew Khun best.

 

Bam squeezed his hand.

 

“It’s not Khun’s fault,” he murmured.

 

It was Wangnan’s turn to watch them. Bam couldn’t look up. Couldn’t decipher the painful silence, as he rubbed circles in Khun’s skin automatically, feeling the warmth underneath, even though sometimes it dipped to cold, cold ice. Felt the life underneath the skin.

 

“You’re right,” Wangnan let out. “It’s not Khun’s fault. You probably did all you could, Khun. I’m sorry, for venting on you. You look defeated enough as is.”

 

Khun shook his head, not raising it.

 

“It’s fine.”

 

Pain was obvious on Wangnan’s features.

 

“It’s not,” Wangnan whispered. “You know, Khun. I don’t want to lose anyone anymore.”

 

There he was. The Wangnan that Bam knew. The Wangnan that had first enthralled Bam in. The one who lost Nya Nia. Who lost his past teammates, and never wanted to lose any teammate again.

 

But then, they’d lost Arkraptor and Prince.

 

And now they were losing Khun.

 

Wangnan took a deep breath.

 

“We’re going to find somewhere to stay for a while, after tonight,” he declared. “If there’s anything…”

 

Such an euphemism.

 

“...then call us.”

 

They all understood. Wangnan made to turn around, but Khun’s voice, still deep and low and everything that made everything Khun except for the weakness of it, reeled him back.

 

“You have to tell them soon.”

 

Wangnan stopped in his tracks. Silent, saved for one labored breath in. Khun was looking at him, with eyes calm but all too seeing, too sharp and too knowing.

 

Understanding.

 

“Don’t repeat past mistakes.”

 

Wangnan’s fingers twitched. He nodded sharply.

 

“Yeah. You’re right. …Goodbye.”

 

Khun nodded, slowly.

 

“Yes. Goodbye.”

 

It was probably the best.

 

For everyone.

 

The night of the third day, Bam said to Khun, under the covers.

 

“I wish you never had the Yeon flame.”

 

Rak was sleeping, snoring next to them. Khun looked at him as he did these days, too knowing, too open and yet so difficult to decipher.

 

“I hate it.”

 

Khun stared at him sadly.

 

“It’s the reason I’m alive.”

 

“It’s the reason why you’re dying now.”

 

The word felt like ash in Bam’s mouth. He wished he could swallow it right back after having pronounced it.

 

Khun’s eyes shone in the dark, with bright light that told Bam he was about to cry. But then he smiled, that terrible smile, and huffed fondly.

 

“Then, that just means,” he said, reaching out to caress Bam’s cheek, sweeping off a stray tear that had rolled off from his eyelashes, “that I always was on borrowed time, either way.”

 

Bam choked on his tears.

 

“Then,” he spoke impulsively, sobbing, “I wish you never followed me on the Hidden Floor.”

 

Khun’s smile turned even softer. Fond wrinkles appeared around his eyes, and he stared at Bam with  so much love that Bam almost could not bear it.

 

“That would have been impossible,” he said.

 

“But why? ” Bam found himself begging .

 

Khun, oh so gently, brought their foreheads together.

 

“Haven’t I told you already?” he whispered to Bam in confidence.

 

Suddenly, he didn’t look so sad anymore. There was too much love in his eyes, shining through the grief.

 

“ I would do anything, to stay by your side. ”

 

That night, Bam cried himself to sleep, lulled by Khun’s soft hums and the burning warmth of his pale hand against his cheek.

 

The fourth day, Khun asked him a question.

 

“Do I really look that bad?”

 

Bam turned to face him, frowning.

 

“What are you talking about, Khun? You’re as pretty as usual.”

 

Khun smiled.

 

“Thanks, but that’s not what I was asking.”

 

“Huh? Then what?”

 

Khun took a strand of his hair in between his fingers, immediately letting it slip away from his grasp.

 

“My hair. Does it really make me look… defeated?”

 

Oh.

 

Bam remembered looking at Khun, and seeing that. Not quite defeat, but…

 

“You look a bit tired,” he offered.

 

Khun seemed contemplative for a moment.

 

“Maybe I should cut them,” he mused, and Bam perked up.

 

“Why?” Bam asked. “Do you want to?”

 

Khun shook his head slightly.

 

“No? Not really. It’s a reminder, after all.”

 

Bam blinked. Huh. A reminder?

 

Bam dared not ask. But it didn’t really matter. Khun seemed in a strange mood, he opened up all on his own, without really elaborating.

 

“I just don’t want people to keep a negative image of me, you know?”

 

Bam narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. He waited for Khun to order his thoughts. Khun almost didn’t seem to remember Bam was with him at the moment, so engrossed in his own memories.

 

“I think… I wanted to show her that even an Agnis can be content without winning,” he murmured to himself. “But if… if I looked like she did before she died, then I’d…”

 

The words faded before he could finish the thought aloud, and it took Bam a few seconds to realize what he was speaking of.

 

Kiseia? Maria? No, neither, he thought, his eyes widening. It was his…

 

It was the first time Bam had heard Khun willingly talk about his sister. A sister whom Bam knew Khun regretted, despite everything. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have this expression on his face right now.

 

‘I don’t want people to remember me like I remember her. I don’t want to look like I want to die.’

 

‘I want to leave something good behind.’

 

Khun was grieving too, after all. And, when he reminisced about his sister, his deeply buried insecurities resurfaced. So much so that even Bam, who knew next to nothing about Khun’s past, could see them, perceive them just under the surface of Khun’s silence.

 

He took a strand of Khun’s hair in his hand, surprising Khun out of his trance.

 

“You look different,” Bam admitted with as warm a smile as he could muster. “It’s not making you look sad,” he reassured. “Just older.”

 

Just a bit more experienced. That was what it looked like. The rest…

 

“The rest, it’s what they see on you. What they want it to mean, or what they fear it means. At least, that’s what I think.”

 

Khun stared at him, taken aback. It was rare to catch him off-guard. It made him remember the day Khun had embraced him all of a sudden, seeing past the enthusiasm he had mustered to cradle his tender heart between his hands. Bam had been stunned silly that day.

 

He wondered. If Khun would let him… just once more…

 

Bam retreated.

 

“What’s important is what you want it to mean. Don’t worry Khun,” he said, looking right into cobalt blue eyes. “I can see the life in you. And, no matter what, know that I’ll remember you, and I’ll remember you happy by my side.”

 

I’ll always remember you, he wanted to say, but he feared he would burst into tears if he did.

 

He held Khun’s blue, outstanded gaze. He held it until Khun hid behind his hands, his ears red in embarrassment.

 

“What are you saying, Bam!” he whined, and Bam chuckled.

 

“Ahah! Sorry.”

 

“You’re not.”

 

“Yeah, I’m not.”

 

And for a while, nothing happened again. It was Rak staying with Khun, Bam always hovering over Khun’s shoulder, and people coming in and out, dragging Khun here and there, playing chess or reviewing files, Khun working on organizing his lighthouses, sending messages to people he had favors to collect on, and then it was Hatz coming back alongside Shibisu like nothing happened two days ago, because that was just how they all coped, how they could be alright just a few more days before the end. It was Anaak creeping around, and Endorsi bickering thrice as much with Khun as she ever did. Bam thought that might be their way of bonding.

 

“I get you, you know.”

 

Bam paused in his movements in the kitchen. He turned, looking toward the dinner table, just behind the counter, two feet away next to the opposite wall. Khun sat at the head of the table, while Endorsi was seated in the middle, her back facing Bam and her elbows on the table. She had been the one to speak, in between two light hearted arguments.

 

Khun looked at her impassively. Bam wished he could tell what Khun was feeling.

 

“Actually, it’s pretty out of character for you to even have told us about this. You've made progress, I think. Or maybe… No, nothing.”

 

Oh, she was talking about that.

 

Bam wondered what she had been about to theorize. Was it that Khun might have always been like this, actually? Or that it wasn’t really progress at all?

 

Or maybe, it didn’t really mean anything.

 

Bam thought about it. Would Khun have told them he was dying if something like this had happened on the Floor of Tests? He might have. He would have cared far less for their emotional states back then, even though he had already cared for them despite what he liked to pretend. Or would he have not told them, because he didn’t think they would care enough? Or that they would, so he wouldn’t tell them?

 

Yes, maybe she was right and it didn’t really matter. Only Khun would know anyway.

 

‘It wouldn’t have been right.’

 

Bam pressed his lips together in an attempt to repress whatever emotion he felt bubbling up in his throat.

 

Khun had always thought about his friends first, no matter what he said.

 

Endorsi resumed. She too, had something to say about Khun’s hair. She seemed to think like him- it made him look just a bit older. A bit more experienced.

 

A bit more knowing because of it.

 

“It doesn’t suit you. Your hair, I mean. I’ve half the mind to say it makes you look neglected- hey! Don’t glare at me like that!” she chuckled. “But you do look retired, like this.”

 

Sure enough, Khun was glaring lightly. but it let off surely enough a few seconds later. It looked a bit curious instead, and Bam watched half in wariness and half with that same curiosity as Endorsi stood up, walking toward Khun with the intention to walk past him. He stopped what he was doing again when he saw her put her hand on Khun’s shoulder.

 

“I don’t blame you,” she said, and it sounded like she was comforting him… understanding him in a way Bam was fully unable to. “You did the best you could.”

 

She sounded like… somewhere, far away from the  kitchen or the dinner table, Khun and Endorsi were in the same place, standing eye to eye, observing the same sight. Like she would have taken the same decisions if it had been her instead.

 

Like she was telling him, ‘it’s okay. You can rest now.’

 

Maybe something like, ‘Rest assured. I won’t let it go to waste.’

 

‘I’ll take it from here.’

 

She hunched over Khun, in something that resembled an embrace, and Bam felt his heart clench. He felt his heart yearn. Yearn for the chance to make Khun so open, for Khun to accept his own embrace, to comfort him like that too.

 

He observed as she whispered words into his ear. And then she left.

 

“Anaak! Anaak, I know you’re stirring trouble, come down here!”

 

Bam looked at Khun, and saw how raw his features were. How he looked into nothing, his eyes shining with unshed tears. As though someone had really said to him that it was alright to let it out, that it was going to be okay.

 

Maybe, Bam thought as he abandoned his work, coming closer his broken down best friend, he’d been told that his efforts had finally been acknowledged. That all he had worked for all his life, none of it would be in vain.

 

Maybe, he thought as he took his shoulders in his hands and stared into his eyes, waiting for the tears to fall and for the faraway look to fade, he had finally been told those few words.

 

“You did good.”

 

“Khun. Khun,” he coaxed gently. “Please. Talk to me?”

 

And Khun? Khun stared at him, unseeing, and then his features contorted slightly, as if it would stop the overwhelming weight of his emotions to come and swallow him whole.

 

He breathed out, like a gasp, like a word. Like the weight of the world had finally dropped from his shoulders.

 

Bam stayed immobile. He let Khun gently, carefully put his forehead against the fabric of Bam’s shirt, against his shoulder. He let Khun hide there, just that one point of contact, the air between them feeling like a barrier that Bam could never cross, like he would never be able to share that burden with Khun, and Khun would leave and Bam would never have been able to understand, to finally understand. But he let him hide. He wondered if that feeling of wetness was his imagination or if it was real. But he kept quiet. He remained unmoving. He let Khun hide and grieve, and let it out, because Khun deserved it.

 

If that was the only thing Bam could do, then it was okay. Bam would be content with it.

 

Anything to keep Khun close. To let him know he was loved. Anything to care for him, in any way Khun would let him.

 

He let him.

 

He hoped Khun could hear it. The desperation of his feelings. The sound of his cries. He hoped Khun would feel it.

 

‘Rest easy,’ Khun had been told, ‘We have you now.’

 

I have you, Khun.

 

“Chicken Pie.”

 

Bam tilted his head toward the newcomer. Anaak looked a bit nervous. Embarrassed, he would say, even. Khun asked, confused.

 

“What?”

 

She glared weakly.

 

“My mother’s recipe. Help me make it.”

 

Bam glanced at Khun surreptitiously. Khun liked children. Bam knew it. He had a weakness for them. He would know because Bam had been one of those children. And one couldn’t say Khun wasn’t rather nice to Ran. Bam waited to see how Khun would respond.

 

“Why us?”

 

A non-answer. How classic.

 

“Don’t question it!” Anaak retorted, clearly embarrassed. “And I'm only asking you two because Bam knows his way around the kitchen!”

 

The truth was, she would probably have less trouble remembering Khun this way. Floundering in the kitchen, probably with his eyebrows furrowed in perplexity, in this domestic setting where they could try however long they wanted to cook, and joke together and being together with an excuse.

 

It was how Anaak remembered family best, after all. Bam had learned.

 

But Bam said nothing. He let her keep her excuses. He stood up, following her for a few moments before he turned. Khun hadn’t risen yet. He extended a hand.

 

“Aren’t you coming?”

 

Khun looked up at him, with an unreadable gaze. For a moment, Bam wondered what he was seeing. Then, Khun outstretched his own hand with a small smile.

 

“Sure.”

 

Bam helped him up. And off they all went, to the kitchen.

 

Soon enough, Endorsi joined them. She had a shit-eating grin as she teased her niece. Soon enough, it went into bickering. Still, it was bickering while trying to find their way around the kitchen. It was very experimental, there was no written recipe to follow. Endorsi sometimes yelled at Anaak playfully because damn, Anaak was too young to remember the details clearly back then.

 

“Give me a minute, okay?”

 

“We already got the chicken out and pieced! Don’t let it wait too long outside!”

 

“I said give me a minute! It couldn’t have been so difficult. I know it.”

 

“Khun, what are you cutting?”

 

“Hum? The carrots and the squash.”

 

“Uh… That’s not how you’ll want to cut them.”

 

“Why? It works all the time.”

 

“Yes, but not for a pie! Trust me Khun, you do not want to find slices of vegetable or anything in a pie. Here, I’ll show you.”

 

Novick poked his nose into it at some point, but left them to it eventually. The results were certainly not perfect when the pie ended up on the dinner table at midday, but it was more than enough.

 

“Anaak? You alright?”

 

“Shut up! ‘M not crying!”

 

Bam smiled, and found Khun matching his expression, watching fondly upon their group. As though he could tell this moment would turn into a very warm memory. 

 

Bam found that he didn’t want it to end.

 

This moment. This week.

 

Bam could do a great many things, he found. But, unfortunately, stopping time was not one of them.

 

It was bound to end, and turn into memories afterward.

“Say, what did Hwa Ryun want to talk about yesterday night?”

 

“Ah…”

 

Khun let his glass down. This evening was very animated. They stared at everyone having fun or screaming at each other, whichever, as they thought.

 

Khun hummed.

 

“I’m sure she’ll tell you if it turned out to be noteworthy,” he only said.

 

“I see.”

 

Bam’s eyebrows were furrowed, possibly trying to come up with something Hwa Ryun could say to Khun that wouldn’t yet be deemed important enough to talk about with Bam himself, or the others. He shrugged.

 

“Ah. Sorry, I leave you here for a second. I think I forgot something in the room.”

 

“It’s okay,” Khun smiled playfully. “I have Rak to protect me from any and all bodily harm.”

 

“The great Rak is a hunter, not a shield!”

 

They chuckled, before Khun turned to Bam again.

 

“It’s Shibisu’s old wine bottle, right? He said he wanted to bring it, but he forgot.”

 

“Oh, that too. But I was thinking about Ran’s spear. Anaak stole it a couple dozens of minutes ago, I’d rather he had it back before he realizes and causes a scene.”

 

“A bloody scene,” Khun elaborated, following Bam’s reasoning. “Our savior.”

 

Bam nodded.

 

“I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”

 

“Mh. Come back quick. Who knows what these idiots can do with one responsible man missing.”

 

Bam chuckled and left for the bedroom. Khun turned back to what was quickly becoming a mess in front of him. All around him really.

 

It felt somewhat… appeasing. To be in the middle of his friends, in the dimly lit house. If he tried, he could tell who was saying what, who was talking about what with whom. Rak shouted excitedly at him, and Khun nodded patiently, content to stay here and sipping his non-alcoholic drink.

 

He really liked this. This place, these people. In a way, it was his world that was reunited in the room, or staying a few streets away, just a pocket call away. He didn’t need anything else but this familiar chaos.

 

He found himself basking in it, like a cat to the sun. He felt so warm and happy, with his team right there next to him, all around him.

 

He wished this moment could last forever, he thought on a whim, absentmindedly. Distracted.

 

It felt so warm. Khun felt his eyes closing with sleep.

 

The world had gotten a bit blurry. It was so very warm.

 

There was someone calling out for him. Rak, he thought, with his strong voice, very close, sounding far away. And Shibisu, he thought. They sounded urgent. Calling his name.

 

His friends.

 

Khun closed his eyes, the world undecipherable anymore, as he slipped away into the warmth.

 

I love you all.

It was night, the evening of the fifth day, and Bam had gone to retrieve Ran’s spear hidden under the actual bed in Khun’s room. That night, he also went by Shibisu’s room to pick up that one bottle the man kept singing on and on about and yearning for, but Anaak was dozing off on his lap and he hadn’t dared move. Bam smiled, as he had retrieved all that he needed, and he made his way back to the living room.

 

“I’m back,” he called, but stopped in his tracks, pausing for only a moment.

 

Bam came back to the living room after a short while to a chaos of a different kind, a bit more quiet and tense, only to find Khun laid down in Shibisu’s arms, not waking up.

 

There was the sound of a glass bottle breaking into pieces on the tiles, and a scream that might have been Bam’s.

 

“ Khun! ”

 

The night of the fifth day, Khun collapsed.

When Khun awoke once more, he wasn’t coherent.

 

“Khun!”

 

“Finally awake?”

 

“Blue Turtle!”

 

Bam could make out the nerves in Endorsi's call. He could hear the obvious relief in Rak's voice. Could hear the desperation in his own voice.

 

He was hunched over Khun, ready to push him back down if he tried to straighten up.

 

“I…” Khun's voice was hoarse, roughened by the fever and the bloody coughing fits which had agitated him throughout the night. “...who…”

 

His eyes were dazed and veiled. The sight of him, searching for a familiar anchor in the midst of his fever, broke Bam's heart.

 

“It’s us, Khun!” he tried again. “It's Bam and Rak! Endorsi's here too. You've been unconscious for fourteen hours. How are you feeling?”

 

Khun's lips, already open from the strain of his breathing, seemed to form the form of Bam's name, voicelessly. He looked confused, vulnerable.

 

He was in no condition to tell them anything.

 

“It’s okay, Khun,” Bam’s voice broke as he spoke a meaningless reassurance. “I'm sorry. I'm sure you're tired. You… you probably want to rest again. It’s alright. Take all the time you need.”

 

Khun seemed to lean against the palm Bam brought to his cheek. Appeased by the warmth, or the comfort it brought him. Bam didn’t know. His eyes closed. Bam couldn’t pretend the vision of it didn’t send goosebumps up his spine.

 

He wanted to shake Khun out of his daze, out of his sleep, tell him not to close his eyes, not to leave. But what was he to do?

 

He heard a wet gasp behind him. Turning slightly, he saw Endorsi, a hand to her mouth, her eyes strained shut as she cut herself before the sound could entirely form.

 

“I can’t do this,” she said, opening her eyes to stare at Khun's figure. “I can’t watch him like that,” she added, more firmly, swallowing back her weakness before she stood and left the room.

 

Bam thought he could understand her. To those who only ever witnessed Khun alive and aware, directing the flow of battles and cursing at others with no shame, always leading them forward in his own way, the sight of him struggling for the last breaths of his life was too shaking.

 

Because Khun wasn’t supposed to look like that. So vulnerable, so lost. It felt too disrespectful.

 

Even watching his coma through an ice coffin hadn’t seemed so excruciating.

 

This was really the end.

 

Rak and Bam stayed. Always. Soon enough, they were joined by Shibisu. The others had been taking turns, helping them take care of Khun one after another.

 

“How is he?”

 

“He woke up for a minute. He didn’t seem to recognize us.”

 

Shibisu nodded, his worried frown not alleviating.

 

“It must have been the fever. Or whatever is happening inside his body right now.”

 

Shibisu sighed heavily, brushing off Khun's bangs from his eyes.

 

“I thought we might have a bit more time.”

 

Bam flinched.

 

“But now, all that’s left to do is pray.”

 

Bam examined Khun's features again. Him, and his sheets covered in blood spatters. His pants, weak at best. His skin tone, turning either flushed red or icy white. The strain in his eyelids, bracing himself for the pain.

 

Bam had no more choice but to face the facts.

 

Khun might not wake up anymore.

 

“He will wake,” a newcomer interrupted his thoughts.

 

All three of them turned to discover the familiar figure of Hwa Ryun waiting by the door. What was unfamiliar about her appearance was how tousled she looked. A subtle breath escaped her, as though she had been running, even though she showed no sign of fatigue except for her slightly drawn features.

 

“Red Guide Turtle!” Rak exclaimed. “What are you doing here!”

 

Bam wanted to ask her the same. But first and foremost, he had to focus on what she had said.

 

“He will?” he asked her, hopeful.

 

She nodded, ignoring Rak’s inquiry. She looked upon the subdued figure of Khun, something briefly reflecting in her eye.

 

“I have seen it,” she declared calmly. “Khun is a fighter. There is no future in which he does not wake up at least one last time.”

 

It was as though a cold bucket of water was dropped over Bam’s body.

 

Of course he knew this was the end. He knew very well. But…

 

Just one more time…

 

“I,” Hwa Ryun spoke once more over his thoughts, walking inside the room as she did, “have found something of importance,” she revealed, vague as always.

 

Bam frowned, busying himself with changing the wet cloth on Khun’s forehead.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“What does it have to do with Khun?” Shibisu questioned warily.

 

Hwa Ryun stared at Bam until he looked back at her, right into his golden eyes, with conviction. More sober conviction than anyone had felt in the course of six days.

 

“There remains one way to save Khun.”

 

Bam’s mind drew to a blank. The cloth fell to the ground.

 

Her words echoed in his head, and for a single moment he couldn’t make sense of them. One way… to save…

 

His eyes widened.

 

“ What? ”

 

She looked at him, as impassive as ever, as he scrambled to his feet, Shibisu frantically doing the same next to him. Rak also hadn’t lost a second.

 

“What do you mean there's a way to save Khun?”

 

“What is it?!”

 

“Why didn’t you tell us!”

 

Rak's exclamation made sense, Hwa Ryun should have told them their options before. What if Khun had died before they could try anything?

 

Hwa Ryun raised a placating hand.

 

“Because I only just found it,” she answered, and they quieted down, giving her space to elaborate. “I kept an eye on the paths just in case after Khun and I gave up the search. I never expected for it to actually give conclusive results. I wasn’t sure, so I only spoke of it with Khun two days ago.”

 

“Two days ago,” Bam murmured, blinking to clear his thoughts.

 

“Say, what did Hwa Ryun want to talk about yesterday night?”

 

Yes, he remembered.

 

“Ah…”

 

Khun hummed.

 

“I’m sure she’ll tell you if it turned out to be noteworthy.”

 

“Yes,” Hwa Ryun confirmed. “I brought to his attention an anomaly I found in my vision of the paths. Some sort of duplicate, that I found after a more focused inspection contained very minute differences, minuscule yet unexplainable. Unfortunately, as these paths are closely related to you,” she added, still looking at Bam, “there was little else I could perceive. But it was a chance.”

 

Bam shook his head.

 

“Khun refused to tell me about it,” he murmured. “He said it wasn’t worthy of attention.”

 

“Of course,” Hwa Ryun replied without missing a beat. “It was just a theory after all, one that could very well have turned out to be unrelated to our efforts.

 

“But it wasn’t,” Bam almost spat.

 

Yet, at the same time, hope blossomed in his chest. A desperate, last resort hope that would not bear to be broken and crushed again.

 

“It wasn’t.”

 

Bam was going to save Khun, no matter the price.

 

But if Hwa Ryun had indeed found a solution, why did she still look so sober and, dared he say, sad?

 

“Please,” Shibisu spoke from behind Bam. “Tell us.”

 

She closed her eye, her arms crossed against her chest.

 

“It’s something only my god can do,” she revealed, and then added, bleakly. “But I must warn you.”

 

Her eye turned sharp. Bam swallowed nervously, but standing strong. Nothing could dissuade him from helping Khun.

 

He didn't think he could live the rest of his life without Khun by his side.

 

“Even if you take that path, nigh nothing will change,” she bestowed her knowledge upon him, like an ominous oracle. “Khun Aguero Agnis will still have died to the eyes of the entire Tower, you shall climb the Tower without him for he will be as good as dead. And it is most probable that no one will ever be able to interact with him again.”

 

Bam heard Shibisu hold his breath behind him. As for Rak, he was suspiciously silent. But Bam could see him shake in repressed emotion in his peripheral vision. He didn’t look away from the guide.

 

“But he will live,” Bam asserted again, seeking confirmation.

 

“He might be unhappy,” Hwa Ryun told him. “Keep in mind that this is no miraculous solution. At any rate, there are a couple of changes that are of value to us.”

 

She raised one finger.

 

“One. We might not be able to communicate with him anymore, but he will keep his consciousness. His wish to see the end with the rest of you would be granted, if anything. Two,” she raised another finger, “except for his intellectual contribution, all the assets he carries will remain available to you, my god. May it be the ice shinsu, or the healing flame.”

 

Bam didn’t understand. How could such a thing be possible? And most importantly, what about Khun's body? A ‘consciousness’ could not survive without a body.

 

Shibisu narrowed his eyes.

 

“That’s your true objective, isn’t it,” he accused. “You just want to salvage Khun's use for your cause. How are we supposed to trust you with his life?”

 

She turned away from them.

 

“Think about it another way. How would Khun feel if he couldn’t be of any use to you even in death?”

 

Shibisu’s features contorted, as though he had eaten something really sour. Another sign of his struggles were the tight fists at his side, the skin turning white with how strongly he pressed his nails in his palms.

 

It felt wrong, saying it like this. Of course, Khun would rather his loss didn’t handicap his teammates too much, but it felt wrong to say such a thing.

 

But in the end, no one denied it. Shibisu didn’t admit it aloud, but his gritted teeth and his silence were already too much of an agreement.

 

Not only that, but Rak’s own struggle for an answer told Bam enough.

 

Did Khun really…

 

Hwa Ryun scoffed.

 

“As I thought. As for what I want in all of this…” she looked off in Khun’s direction, her red eye veiling over for a moment, something indecipherable passing through before it disappeared, leaving Bam off-put. “Well. I guess you wouldn’t believe me anyway. But you would be surprised.”

 

She didn’t elaborate any more than this.

 

It was fine. Bam had enough of all of this.

 

“Just tell me, Hwa Ryun,” he nearly begged her for the answer. “Tell me how to save Khun.”

 

Bam watched as she only gave herself one moment of apprehension, of near hesitation, closed her eyes and breathing in ever so subtly, before she turned toward him again, grimly.

 

“To save Khun Aguero Agnis, you must kill him.”

 

There was silence.

 

Cold, dead silence. Frozen human figures in a cold cold room, and words ringing soundlessly, weighing heavily in the air, like a condemnation. 

 

Like some kind of laughable, final judgement.

 

You must kill him.

 

“No.”

 

What was Hwa Ryun talking about?

 

Some kind of… glorified euthanasia? Was that what it was?

 

“You're not serious,” Shibisu accused, like a statement, but she was.

 

Bam could see it in her eyes. The somber resolution.

 

He couldn’t speak. His voice had left him.

 

He refused.

 

He could never kill Khun.

 

“It is as I said,” she went on, sweeping her gaze over them. “Salvation can only come to him once he leaves this World.”

 

“That makes no sense! I won’t let you kill the Blue Turtle!”

 

Rak had put himself in between Hwa Ryun and the vulnerable body of Khun, decompressed in all his great splendor, Mad Shocker at the ready in between his claws.

 

“No one can have him,” the sounds came out as a growl, a rumble that echoed in the chest. “He is my prey. ”

 

Hwa Ryun stared up at him, unafraid. Her eye narrowed.

 

“Would you rather he dies slowly and painfully in the course of the next few hours?”

 

Rak stilled.

 

Bam flinched, jolting from the ground.

 

“He will lose his life in the next twenty four hours no matter what we do,” Hwa Ryun insisted. “Will you at least hear what I suggest?”

 

But she wanted him to kill Khun.

 

She wanted Khun to die.

 

She said…

 

Shibisu gasped quietly.

 

“It’s impossible for Khun not to die if he is killed,” he asserted the obvious, like that fact was somehow questioned now.

 

But maybe it was.

 

“Are you saying,” Bam was afraid to even speak out the hope, “that Khun might not die if I kill him?”

 

He was incredulous.

 

“That’s impossible, ” Shibisu repeated, stressing the importance of his words.

 

He was incredulous as well. There was no way something like this would work. Even the Yeon flame could only bring Khun back from the brink of death. Only Arlene had managed such a fact- and whether or not she had brought back the original soul of her infant was still up for debate.

 

Hwa Ryun hummed noncommitally.

 

“If Khun wishes to live on, he must die in the eyes of the Tower,” she reiterated, formulated in such a way that Bam might begin to grasp at the hidden meaning between the lines. “He must exit the immediate world of the Tower… if only to enter another.”

 

Bam frowned.

 

“You're not speaking of reincarnation, right?”

 

She shook her head.

 

“No. There must still be a soul, as well as an envelope to contain the flame and perhaps even the ice. The processus is risky and might not work… but the decision is yours. Should you accept the risk, then you might be able to bring Khun inside your inner world and keep him alive there.”

 

Finally, the fog cleared, and Bam's eyes widened.

 

“You want me to devour him,” he realized with clarity.

 

She nodded, passing by Rak to kneel by Khun's side.

 

“Perhaps a better way to express it is, Khun needs to cease existing in reality. Just like the Black March and the Leviathan.”

 

Khun wouldn’t exist anymore, Bam understood. He wouldn’t exist anywhere but inside Bam. For anyone else, he would be as good as dead.

 

A thousand questions arose.

 

“Can Bam even devour a human being?” Shibisu protested, disbelieving, as Rak processed the whole explanation. “And what guarantee do we have that Khun doesn’t just disappear in the process?”

 

“There's no guarantee,” Hwa Ryun told him. “But my god has proven himself able to absorb both a soul and its container. Whether he manages to preserve its unity or automatically dissolve it into power, only he will know. Only he can try.”

 

The weight of Khun's life would rest on Bam's shoulders. It would rest on his ability to understand himself and not dissolve Khun into a mass of ice and fire shinsu.

 

Hwa Ryun met his terrified eyes.

 

“If you can manage it,” she said, “you will have absorbed Khun’s soul, without cutting the Yeon flame off of him. In that way, the destruction of his corporeal body would not matter anymore, as your inner world would act like a seal. And should you succeed… maybe one day you might be able to talk to him again.”

 

She murmured the last part, like a secret hope.

 

But all of it relied too heavily on suppositions.

 

“How would I even devour Khun?” he found himself asking, hearing Shibisu's protests as he did.

 

“I told you, my god. You need to kill him. Seal him in your blood. Whether or not he will wake up again afterwards is a gamble you must be ready to take.”

 

A gamble.

 

All of it was only a gamble.

 

And if it did work… could Bam really condemn Khun to the life of a prisoner? Could Bam take Khun's free will from him, his power and his agency, all so he could have him close again?

 

Would Khun still be ‘living’, if Bam absorbed him?

 

Would Khun be able to talk to him, with his deep soft voice, pronounce his name as he always did, would Bam ever be able to feel his gentle caress again?

 

Was he brave enough to cut Khun off his teammates, his world?

 

Would Khun even exist ?

 

What if Bam couldn’t do it? What if everything went wrong?

 

What if-

 

“Bam…?”

 

He gasped wetly, his head whipping in that direction.

 

“Khun!”

 

He precipitated into kneeling next to his best friend. Hovering nearly close enough to touch. Khun was awake.

 

“You're-”

 

“Blue Turtle! You’re finally awake for real!”

 

“How are you feeling! Can you talk?”

 

Khun sat up, with Bam's help even though he disapproved. The lightbearer glanced around him, his eyes landing on Hwa Ryun also sitting by his side.

 

“Hwa Ryun,” he acknowledged.

 

Bam thought he saw a small smile on the Red Witch's lips, and that her eyes might be warm.

 

“Khun,” she greeted back.

 

Guide and strategist. Two sides of the same coin.

 

Begrudging respect that had turned into hard-earned trust and faith.

 

Of course Hwa Ryun wanted Khun to live.

 

Khun only needed a few seconds to scan the situation.

 

“So you found it,” he said, his voice tired, his features apprehensive.

 

She nodded.

 

“In the path that I told you about. There is a weak chance of reaching it, and you might never be with them again,” she warned, almost cryptically if not for the fact Khun could read everything left unsaid on her expression, all that she didn't need to say, all the warnings she knew he would understand. “You might still die,” she said.

 

“But you think it’s worth a shot,” he divined, and she nodded.

 

“Bam needs to devour you.”

 

Bam observed his features. He observed with the utmost attention, as Khun narrowed his eyes, processing the information, then blinked slowly, his lips pressing against each other, then relaxing, his shoulders unwinding. He sighed softly.

 

Focus. Realization. Struggle. Acceptance.

 

Or was it resignation? Defeat?

 

Bam wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

 

“Khun?” he pressed, nervously. “Khun please, say something.”

 

Strangely, it reminded him of six days ago. When he uttered that very same plea, in the hope that they could solve everything, together.

 

Khun stared back at him from where he had lowered his head, his eyes so terribly sad and unsure. He tore them away, seemingly before Bam could extort an answer out of him. Or a cry. Who would know.

 

“If this works, will Bam be able to use the healing flame and my ice? Is that what you’re saying?”

 

Bam choked on his feelings.

 

Khun, no!

 

“Why is this what you’re asking!” Shibisu shouted.

 

Hwa Ryun nodded.

 

“If the procedure is well executed,” she reminded. “Even if it’s not perfect. The most effective manner to achieve the objective would be to use a sealing circle, but… that resource is unavailable to us. I should be able to prepare something similar, for your unity to remain intact through the absorption. What will it be, Khun?”

 

For a moment, Khun said nothing.

 

When Bam tried to think of it from Khun’s perspective, it made horrible sense. Khun was doomed to die either way, all his assets to be lost with him. With this, he would not only die but his soul would dissolve - and wasn’t that even worse? Bam couldn’t imagine a world where Khun’s soul would not even subsist in the Tower’s shinsu.

 

But from Khun’s point of view, he would disappear either way. He wouldn’t be there to give Bam his kindness and support, Bam wouldn’t be able to feel his warmth ever again, and Khun wouldn’t be able to live through the end of this story, wouldn’t be able to help as ‘Khun’ anymore. Hwa Ryun was suggesting that Khun leave something behind. May it be his ice or his flame, it would be something Bam would inherit from Khun, a way for Khun to remain present all along even after death. A way for Khun to continue to save Bam, again and again- even though Bam had never been able to save Khun in return.

 

What could Khun want more?

 

But Bam wouldn’t accept it.

 

“Khun,” Hwa Ryun spoke again, almost urgently, “your body and your soul are unstable due to your inner dysregulation. If you die in that state-”

 

“Hwa Ryun, I know.”

 

Khun took a deep breath.

 

“In my state,” he whispered like each word cost him to pronounce, “even without this, my best option was always a mercy kill.”

 

Bam thought he misheard.

 

A mercy kill.

 

“...What…?” he croaked out, but Khun wasn’t looking at him.

 

Khun was avoiding his gaze.

 

His eyes were set, though, with that familiar iron will that Bam knew him for.

 

“But I told you before, Hwa Ryun,” he went on, “I don’t want a mercy kill.”

 

His hands clutched at the sheets, curling into fists. He coughed violently, and Bam’s hackles arose, alarmed.

 

“Khun!”

 

Khun raised a hand to stop him, and without thinking, Bam did.

 

“I don’t trust anyone but my team to do it, and I would never ask any of them to do that for me,” he spat out, bringing his palm up to cough into, his gaze a determined glare.

 

“But I’m not suggesting a mercy kill. All I’m saying is, if you don’t want to take the risk, then you should let your teammates know their options. If you’re killed prematurely, your instability will not be the eradication of you.”

 

“And then Bam could devour my soul. But then the Yeon flame will die without a host, and I’m not willing to let Bam be it,” Khun argued viciously.

 

The Yeon flame had been what had kickstarted Khun’s illness. It was the beginning of all this mess. The reason why Khun was dying in the first place. If it had never existed then… then Khun would still be in an ice coffin, never to wake again, Bam reminded himself.

 

“Khun. Can you trust me when I say that I do have a solution for this?”

 

Khun pressed his lips together again, struggling with his answer. There was a breath-holding silence in the room, no one daring to speak.

 

Finally…

 

“For your plan to work, they will still need to kill me,” he protested quietly.

 

Hwa Ryun nodded.

 

She had nothing to add to that because, well.

 

It was true. And the realization made Bam spiral all over again.

 

Khun’s soul would potentially be destroyed if they let Khun die from his illness. As a result of his body being destroyed. Khun would die an excruciating death, and then he might still be in pain after death. And to avoid that… they would have to kill him.

 

Bam would have to kill him.

 

“Can’t the Black Turtle devour the Blue Turtle alive?” came Rak’s inquiry.

 

Hwa Ryun shook her head.

 

“Not without a sealing circle. And we don’t have that.”

 

No one said anything. All lost in the impossibility of the situation. Then, Khun raised his head, and finally looked at Bam again.

 

“Bam… the decision is in your hands.”

 

Bam came short of breath.

 

“What?”

 

Khun reached out for him, as though he wished to comfort him. But he fell a few inches short, removing himself as he continued to speak, all his composure regained.

 

“I will die either way,” he said. “You’re the ones who need to live with it afterwards. If you choose to go through with it, then… I’ll accept your decision. It is also your right to refuse.”

 

For once, Rak was silent.

 

Shibisu looked between the two of them with a broken expression.

 

And Bam? Bam didn’t think he could bear any more of this.

 

I can’t do this.

 

“Is something wrong?”

 

Ran was at the entrance, poking his head in. When he noticed Khun was awake, he seemed to repress a smile.

 

“A.A., you’re alright.”

 

Khun smiled back, weakly.

 

“As alright as can be,” he replied.

 

Ran nodded, obviously relieved, before he turned to the rest of them.

 

“So? Did something happen? You all look…”

 

Like they’d seen a ghost, perhaps?

 

It wasn’t even funny.

 

Hwa Ryun stood up.

 

“At any rate,” she said, “you all have until dawn to make your decision. I’ll brief Khun on the procedure while you take your time.”

 

So they had all night.

 

Khun waved minutely at them when they were made to exit the room, another supportive gesture that Bam didn’t know how to give back. Khun was the one dying, so how come Bam was the one being supported.

 

“We should talk to it with everyone,” Shibisu advised grimly.

 

Both Rak and Bam had nothing to say to that.

 

“What?” Ran frowned. “What is it? What are you hiding?”

 

Soon enough, everyone had been gathered in the living room once again. The scene was far too reminiscent of what happened at the beginning of those seven days, and Bam couldn’t help but loathe the parallel. 

 

“So?” Dan queried nervously, “Is… Is A.A. …”

 

Bam shook his head.

 

“Not yet. Hwa Ryun said we have until morning,” he informed them.

 

“That’s…”

 

Really soon.

 

The knowledge weighed on all of them like lead.

 

One could hear every heavy, careful breath breaching the silence. Time ticked away, rhythmed by the sound of the pendulum clock. Like grains slipping down an hourglass.

 

Novick leaned back against the couch’s backrest with a sigh.

 

“So there really is nothing we can do, huh.”

 

No one wanted to talk. Not Shibisu, not Rak. Not Bam.

 

But he had to.

 

“Actually…”

 

In a single instant, every single pair of eyes zeroed in on him. All the people reunited in the room focused intently on his next words, and Bam felt them catch in his throat, creating a knot that wouldn’t let him speak.

 

But he forced through.

 

“Actually,” he repeated, “Hwa Ryun said she found a way.”

 

And then, under the careful eyes of about a dozen people who were all attached to Khun one way or another, Bam had to explain everything. From Khun’s unstable condition to the possibility of absorbing his soul and his shinsu as one in his own, Bam told them everything. He told them of their hopes, of the risks. The immense risks.

 

And of course, the fact that none of them would ever see him again.

 

Was it worth it?

 

“Khun told me to choose,” he concluded, “and that he would agree with whatever choice I would end up making. I…”

 

He bit his lips. Then, quietly, breathlessly, he confessed:

 

“I don’t know what to do.”

 

For a few minutes, there was nothing but the sound of the clock.

 

Not a whisper, not a sigh. Only loud silence, and loud thoughts.

 

Bam wondered, his head bowed down to face the carpet, if this was what Khun had felt, when he had called them to gather around him that morning, when he had apologized so genuinely and told them the truth.

 

He wondered if Khun, like he did right now, had felt so awful that he couldn’t bear meeting any of their gazes.

 

If he thought, over and over, on his words before saying them, realizing how horrible they sounded, and that there was absolutely no way to lessen the blow.

 

Bam was telling them he could kill Khun. That he might. And that he might do it in a way that wouldn’t even leave a body to bury.

 

Lauroe sighed deeply.

 

“Figured,” was all he said, before closing his eyes in what seemed to be acceptance.

 

Bam remembered. It had been Lauroe who had spoken these words to Khun.

 

“If you’re lucky, you’ll be asleep when it happens.”

 

“You knew?”

 

Lauroe stood, stretching slightly as he did.

 

“Yeah… I mean, I don’t have the details. But when your own vital energy starts acting destructively, it’s bound to affect both the body and the soul. After all, personal shinsu is just a mix of genetics and soul attributes. It’s like boiling water in a closed recipient.”

 

If it didn’t open, then it was bound to explode.

 

Bam flinched at the mental image.

 

“I don’t care whatever you decide,” Lauroe threw from behind his shoulder as he walked away, and Bam didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “I’m going to go say goodbye.”

 

He left without looking back again. No one stopped him.

 

Eventually, Ran crossed his arms behind his head.

 

“I say you give it a shot.”

 

Bam whipped back toward him.

 

“What?!”

 

“Ran,” Novick called rather softly, “you don’t need to…”

 

“I mean it,” Ran cut in, seemingly uninterested. “The worst that can happen is, you dissolve his soul, right? But you said it’s mostly going to be damaged anyway. I know A.A. would want you to have it, if anything.”

 

“Ran…” it was Shibisu, this time, sounding far too pitiful. “Are you sure?”

 

Ran avoided their gazes. It was probably a giveaway of his feelings, but Bam found that he could only guess at it, unable to read the tells.

 

“Of course I am. I’m not like A.A.. I don’t care if you feel the guilt of killing him for the rest of your life or something. I just think that, after all these years, A.A. deserves to be happy. If he can’t have that, then you should at least grant his last wish, shouldn’t you?”

 

Ran’s cold gaze pierced through Bam, as though he could see all the feelings Bam had tried to hide.

 

A.A. would want you to have it.

 

He didn’t like thinking about the fact Khun would die for him without a hesitation. That Khun would let him take any and everything from him just to be of help to Bam. He hated the thought that Khun’s happiness depended on Bam’s.

 

But Ran was not the first person to tell him this sort of thing today.

 

Maybe… maybe Bam should not disregard it. Even though Khun had never told Bam clearly.

 

He should listen to Khun’s wish.

 

Ran was the next one to speak his mind.

 

“If there’s even one minuscule chance that the Blue Turtle can come back one day, even if it’s just as one of Black Turtle’s powers… then I want to take it.”

 

Bam turned to Khun’s and his oldest companion. Rak, who had always cared for them, who had followed them wherever they went and who had always, always been there for both of them. Who looked at him with eyes too bright and too desperate, because he didn’t want Khun to die. He didn’t want his Khun to disappear forever.

 

Rak looked at him, and Bam saw his own feelings reflected in his eyes.

 

Anaak protested.

 

“That’s stupid,” she hissed, but Bam could hear how her voice almost broke. “You heard him. We’ll never see him away either way. What’s the difference!”

 

Rak held his ground.

 

“It’s the Black Turtle. He can do it. And the Blue Turtle is the Blue Turtle. He’ll find something. I know he will. He won’t let himself die in his shell all alone.”

 

“Don’t you think that’s too much?” Endorsi gritted her teeth. “You want to lock Khun up? Seriously? Didn’t you see how miserable he was after his coma? That’s just plain cruel.” She turned back toward Bam, decided. “I agree that a mercy kill would be for the best. I’ll do it for you if you can’t,” she offered, more gently. “But you can’t lock him in a cell and force him to sleep time away for the rest of eternity. That’s not who Khun is,” she stressed.

 

Bam let himself think about it.

 

About Khun, who grinned at him proudly, extending a hand toward him. A Khun who ran by his side, almost ahead as he guided him through his first test. A Khun who stayed by his side, but who was never immobile, always moving, free. Left for a year, back the next, moving away before Bam could reach him, then ready to hold him just a few days later. A mind that moved so fast, sometimes with fearsome plans and terrific schemes, other times with deep-running insecurities that were an inherent part of Khun. A past, a present, and a future. Always moving, transforming, becoming someone between the lines of their story.

 

Then he remembered, Khun stuck in ice, perfectly unmoving, like a statue. Not quite dead, not quite alive. Stuck in between, part of neither world.

 

What had it felt like? Had it been dark? Could Khun think? Could he feel?

 

Bam imagined a world in which Khun’s ice was his, but Khun himself was gone. He couldn’t control the shiver.

 

“I… agree.”

 

It was Hatz.

 

“Khun… he wouldn’t want that. I know him enough. He would rather die than to stay in limbo forever. It’s not even about the guilt he’d feel if he regained consciousness. Khun… he wouldn’t want to be anything else but himself.”

 

It was about the lack of everything that made Khun who he is. Everything that made Khun, Khun.  

 

There was an unmistakable strain in Hatz’ voice, on his face, as he spoke again.

 

“ Of course I want Khun to live. But can you even call that living? ”

 

Hatz's eyes, as he raised them to meet Bam’s, were full of terror.

 

More than Bam had ever seen Hatz display.

 

“He and I, we’re teammates. And that’s how it works.” That was what Khun had said, four days ago. Hatz was someone who was all too aware of who Khun was as a person. He was someone who had formed a bond with the man despite it. Because of it. There was a true, begrudging respect between them because they were both far too aware of the other. Of each other’s traits, that they hated so much, and yet that they acknowledged as the best of them. What made them worth respect, and love.

 

In a way, Hatz knew more of Khun than Bam could ever imagine, despite the form that their friendship took. Or, perhaps, because of it.

 

“Khun fought during all his childhood to become a person, and not just a tool. He fought all his life to finally live, to find himself. You can’t take that away from him.”

 

For Hatz himself to beg this way, then…

 

He’s probably r-

 

“I…”

 

Shibisu’s voice echoed over Bam’s thoughts, effectively shutting them down for a few seconds longer. The man was hunched on himself, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands down, fingers intertwined. Clenched. Mulling over his words.

 

“I don’t think I can bear it, you know?” he started. “Not knowing.” He breathed in, deeply.

 

Everyone was listening.

 

“The day Khun told us the truth, about his death, I… I think it might have been the worst day of my life. But it felt right. That he told us the truth, instead of holding back, disappearing. We might’ve never known. I know that I would have spent the whole rest of my life looking for him, searching every corner of the Tower to find an answer, and I would never found it. I would never have known whether he was still alive somewhere, or if he had died all alone in some obscure street where no one would remember him. I think it would have been way worse. I’m grateful, to Khun, for speaking up, despite how difficult it must have been for him.”

 

He closed his eyes.

 

“Because I think I couldn’t bear it. No knowing whether or not he survived. Ignorance would be torture. At least with knowledge comes closure. I don’t want to question myself all my life because we tried something and didn’t know what happened to Khun, all just for what looks like FUG’s interest in making their savior as strong as possible. I don’t want that.”

 

There was not a sound as they all listened, attentively, to what they all felt intimately in their own being.

 

They might never know the truth.

 

“But…” Shibisu shook now, all his features contorted to hold back the emotion. “But I want Khun to live .”

 

He wasn’t meeting any of their gazes. He spoke like he was about to cry. He was probably trying not to cry. But he spoke his most innermost desire.

 

And Bam found his own tears rising behind his eyes.

 

“I want Khun to live, and to actually retire. I want Bam to tell us about how much Khun is bitching about retirement. I want to know he’s there, just a barrier away, scolding the hell out of us for whatever reckless endeavor we were up to then. It doesn’t matter if I can never hear or see him again, if I can never surprise him with a hug when he gets out of his bedroom. I don’t care if we can never talk and bicker again like we used to do. I want Khun to stay. With us. I want Khun here.”

 

He let out a sob.

 

“I want it so bad! ”

 

And suddenly, all their feelings resonated.

 

Whatever they thought was right, whichever side they were arguing from, they all found, all of them, that…

 

They all wanted it, so, so, so bad.

 

“I don’t care if he only wakes up in one hundred years. Two hundreds, no, I don’t care if it takes a fucking millenia! I want to trust that Khun can come back, that he will! I want to trust in Bam! I don’t want Khun to leave! ”

 

It was like a dam broke.

 

The tears couldn’t stop.

 

And it wasn’t just Shibisu, or Bam. It was all of them. Every single one of them. Empathizing, strongly enough for their breaths to catch, for the throat to form knots, for the chest to become tight. Because they all felt that way.

 

They all wanted Khun to stay. They all.

 

“Don’t you think I don’t want that too, you stupid old man!” Endorsi screamed, standing on her feet, her voice coming out ragged and high with emotions Bam had hardly ever heard on her. “I just… I…!”

 

“It’s not that simple,” Hatz whispered, clutching the hilt of his sword for dear life. “It’s not that easy.”

 

Dan at last opened his mouth.

 

“All of us, we've been thinking hard about what A.A. would want, like it’s our job to figure it out. But this is about what we want,” he told them, looking so much older than he was, and so, so tired. “Is it so bad to say that I want A.A. to live, even if just in such a small way? In the last week, A.A. has done his best to show us how happy and content he feels when he is with us. Everyone has to have seen that. Isn’t it only normal to want to give some of it back, in our own way? I say we try.”

 

Novick, next to him, had eyes dulled with memories and heavy with sadness. He nodded.

 

“Yeah. Let’s try. A.A. deserves rest, but he doesn’t deserve death.”

 

He tried to jest, then.

 

“He already has a few decades of sleep to catch up upon. Might as well let him have them, right?”

 

Ran gritted his teeth. He dragged himself away.

 

“I'm going to see A.A.,” he said, leaving them there to figure it out, as though he couldn’t stop himself anymore.

 

And Bam wanted nothing more than to join him. Feel Khun's hand in his, know that he was still alive, still smiling, smirking and insulting his teammates as usual, that Khun was just at arm reach, welcoming and warm, and sometimes a bit cool too.

 

“Anaak, Hatz. Please…”

 

Anaak shook her head, but tears were rolling down her cheeks without her consent.

 

“He's a rightful asshole,” she let out, brokenly, “but he shouldn’t have to die like this. It’s wrong. ”

 

“But he’ll be happier like this. He might live. We all want to believe in this. Even Endorsi.”

 

Endorsi wasn’t saying anything. She had bit her lips, and her eyes were strained shut.

 

Bam thought she might be weeping as well.

 

Hatz clenched his jaw, breathing through with difficulty. He looked pained when he opened his eyes again, the sheen in them a witness of his suffering as he turned toward Anaak. He pressed a hand on her shoulder.

 

“Whatever the form,” he promised, his words and his voice both rough in a way Bam had trouble describing, “he'll always be here. I- you know he wouldn’t allow anything less.”

 

“But…!”

 

She didn’t want to, but she was sobbing.

 

It was hard. Accepting.

 

“Whatever the form,” Hatz insisted.

 

He looked close to tears as well. The grief was written in his whole body, from the silent and still proud way he carried himself to the strength in his fingers and the glint in his dark eyes.

 

Anaak truly burst into tears, hiding herself behind her arms as she let out a heart wrenching wail.

 

“Alright, yeah,” Endorsi breathed out wetly, almost with spite. “You win. I don’t want that bastard to die. If there's even one way to save him…”

 

Shibisu smiled at her, through the curtain of his tears. He stood up then, placing a warm hand on her shoulder as she was left hunched over, head bowed.

 

They were all exhausted.

 

“Yeah.”

 

He turned toward Bam.

 

“I'm sorry, Bam,” he spoke, with a wet chuckle. “We're giving you all the work again. I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”

 

Bam nodded, throat too tight to talk.

 

“I know it’s unfair, but…” Shibisu paused, seeming to hesitate.

 

When he looked back, it was with conviction and determination.

 

“Please. Save Khun for us.”

 

Even if a mercy kill is all you manage to do. Even if you might kill his very soul in the process.

 

Please, try.

 

Please. Save our friend.

 

Bam wasn’t sure he could do it.

 

“I will,” he whispered all the same.

 

Shibisu nodded with a smile. Only then did he turn away from the broken down chaos they had left in the room.

 

“I'll call Wangnan.”

 

He spoke one last time, letting the others hear him as his voice, even ragged and broken, carried all the way through.

 

“We have the whole night. So use it well. Go say goodbye.”

 

No one showed that they had heard him. But Bam knew, they all had.

 

And they would all listen.

 

“Black Turtle.”

 

Bam turned to face Rak.

 

“Let’s go see the Blue Turtle,” the Wraithraiser said, expressing both their feelings in one sentence of askance.

 

All of them just wanted Khun to stay.

 

Bam smiled down at Rqk, but shook his head.

 

“Not yet. The others… they deserve some privacy.”

 

In the end, Rak was only able to hold out a few hours before both of them made their way to Khun's room once more.

 

All their teammates had gone by, from Novick to Hatz, including Wangnan, Ehwa and Miseng. They had a couple of hours left before dawn. Each of them had taken the time to make conversation, to laugh around and to cry.

 

Bam and Rak arrived to such a scene. Hatz, their proud and noble companion, always arguing with Khun for the sake of it, now holding Khun close to himself in a dignified fraternal embrace. Murmuring a few words to the other that made Khun look close to tears, and hum.

 

“Mh… Farewell.”

 

Oh.

 

Bam looked away. Just long enough for Hatz to separate from Khun and stand back up, passing by Bam on his way out.

 

“Give him the best you have, Bam,” was what the swordsman told him quietly before leaving, closing the door behind him.

 

‘Give it your all,’ Bam heard, ‘and do all you can to save him. Or I might not forgive you.’

 

The worst was, Bam still didn’t know if he could do it.

 

“Ah,” he turned back to see Khun smile at him. “Bam. And Gator. Is it time already?”

 

Bam walked closer, Rak running ahead to claim his spot next to the lightbearer.

 

“Not yet,” he told his best friend. “We still have some time.”

 

“I see,” Khun straightened and smoothed the corner of his blankets, inviting Bam to come sit with them with a motion. “Then, let’s talk, for some time.”

 

Bam let his eyes roam over Khun’s figure. He hadn’t actively registered it before, but Khun was thinner than during the time they were actively involved in a war. In hindsight, the energy of his body would have been dedicated to the internal war of his energies, eating him up slowly. Bam didn’t know how he didn’t realize before that something wasn’t right.

 

He reminded himself of nearly a year ago.

 

A year ago, when Khun had started to isolate himself more often, away from the rest of his team. When Bam only saw a wisp of Khun when they worked together on the battlefield. When Khun got irritated more easily, more quickly. When his movements had gotten sharp, urgent, desperate, when Khun’s room had turned messy unlike anything Khun had ever maintained in his life. When Khun progressively lost weight, and when he would only give Bam a few words in passing. When Khun began to avoid his gaze all the time, as though staring at Bam was too painful for him to endure.

 

Bam had watched, in concern, as Khun had slowly started forgetting to trim his hair, as heavy bags had settled under his eyes, and as his skin had turned a sick grey. He had watched from afar as Khun slipped away from them, his eyes often wide and haunted. He had been so worried. Khun actually looked as though he was dying, back then. Like he was losing it.

 

And then, one morning, Khun had come out of his room and greeted Bam with a warm smile, one that Bam hadn’t witnessed in months, and his skin tone had turned healthier, the bags under his eyes slightly alleviated. His hair washed and trimmed and pulled into a ponytail. His clothes no longer rumpled and old, now looking fresh with immaculate white and black, correctly ironed. Khun, for all intent and purpose, had come back, all prim and proper and composed, his eyes deep and warm, his features no longer drawn and haunted.

 

Bam had been so happy that he had not questioned the sickness from before, or the quick transition. It had felt as though Khun had just come back to life.

 

“I just realized it was something there was no point worrying about,” was all Khun had told him, merrily, when Bam had questioned him, dropping the topic afterwards.

 

He had been too relieved to have Khun back, alive and well. But Khun had been dying. He didn’t look ill, or injured, or depressed, but he was dying. He had never put that weight back on, thinking about it. But Khun had gone back to being brilliant, in control, and positive, and that had blinded Bam. No one would have known back then, just looking at him, that he had had a death sentence sprung upon him.

 

No one could tell now, looking at him, that he was only half a night away from passing.

 

I don’t know if I can do this.

 

But for now, they still had some time. So, for the sake of those last few hours, for the sake of having his friend happy and content just a little bit longer by his side, Bam swallowed back his apprehension, and came to sit close, in front of Khun, cross-legged.

 

He wouldn’t let these last moments go to waste.

 

And they talked. All night.

 

They talked about anything and everything. It had always been easy between the three of them. Doing whatever they wanted, or rather imagining it. Bickering, joking around, reminiscing. Just being themselves.

 

“I don’t like this floor! It doesn’t sell bananas!”

 

“You don’t like anything that doesn’t give you bananas, you Gator…”

 

“But I see your point,” Bam mused. “It’s hard to be creative when they don’t sell fruits and vegetables. We have to bring them in from other floors or get into our personal reserves…”

 

“Hey! They do! In cans…”

 

“You would know, Blue Turtle.”

 

“You! What are you insinuating, I know how to cook! I know how to make food!”

 

Usually at that point, Bam would chuckle and promise Khun to show him how to cook and not just make food. But he didn’t. He laughed. And they all stirred away from the topic.

 

“You still straighten them even though they're longer now?”

 

“Sometimes. But most of the time I don’t really need it… only when they're being unruly.”

 

“It’s just fur anyway. Blue fur.”

 

Khun’s lips quirked up.

 

“The Khun family,” he said, “a history of blue cats.”

 

“So you do identify as a cat.”

 

A chuckle.

 

“Not really. I don’t think I'd be a cat- did they ever teach you about all the existing species out there in FUG?”

 

“Uh, no?”

 

“What? That’s so stupid! That genrral culture, even the Great Rak knows that!”

 

“It’s okay, I'll tell you all about it now.

 

And Bam soaked it all in. Soaked in Khun's knowledge, Khun's voice, patient, warm, sometimes laughing, sometimes mildly annoyed, a bit higher, often deep and slow. He basked in their conversations, the easy peace that only the three of them could create.

 

They were a family.

 

Bam wondered what they would have looked like, a hundred years from now, had things gone differently. He couldn’t imagine anything different from this.

 

I can’t do this.

 

It was the same.

 

The same as decades ago, when Bam had met for the first time Khun Aguero Agnis. A boy that shone blue in a bright place filled with golden fields. His antics, from kind to playful, from playful to demonically bad, but always mindful of Bam. And always in the same dynamics with Rak. Even though Bam thought it had gotten better with time. They never really scowled anymore, when they bickered like that.

 

He remembered sometimes how Rak would jump onto Khun despite Khun’s frantic protests to get off of him, ending up in play fight that was a bit rough, a few cries and their fair share of laughter. Bam always ended up laughing. Khun too, if he managed to get rid of his parasite. Or Rak, when he managed to sit triumphantly on top of Khun.

 

Now Rak still clung to Khun, but Khun only pressed him closer into his side.

 

I can’t do this.

 

The same bright boy.

 

With a smile and a smirk, a duality that brightened everything around him with sharp sparks or gentle light. With patient words that had opened Bam to the world of the Tower, guiding him into his life.

 

Now, leaving him, waving goodbye.

 

I can’t.

 

And they talked, just like they did back then. They never stopped. They had known each other all their lives, and they could never stop.

 

How nice would it be to stay in this room forever, just the three of them.

 

Khun smiled, warm but sad. Sad but warm.

 

“I really loved it all, you know? Despite the constant chaos. It was our chaos.”

 

Bam nodded.

 

“And all the moments in between, too,” he added softly.

 

Khun's turn of the lips sharpened slightly, amused.

 

“Like right now, you mean?”

 

“...yeah. Like now.”

 

Now.

 

Almost dawn.

 

They eventually fell silent. All too aware of the time fading away between their fingers, amidst the eternity of the night.

 

Rak was the one who moved first.

 

He hit Khun's arm lightly.

 

Khun blinked. Massaging the bruise to come, perplexed.  Rak hid his face in Khun’s neck, holding his arms out and drawing Khun’s head down in a sort of embrace that felt far too fragile.

 

“Your leader hates waiting,” Rak said in the quiet of the room. “Don’t make me wait too long, Blue Turtle. Don’t hide in your shell forever. Or I'll hunt you, for real.”

 

There was a weakness in Rak's strong voice. Something strained and sincere, and reaching out. Vulnerable.

 

A desperate attempt at communicating, perhaps like they had never done before.

 

Khun's features fell, thinking over the words. But then, they contorted into fondness. He held Rak back.

 

“Sure,” he murmured gently, so gently, so unlike Khun except it wasn’t. “I'll see you soon.”

 

They stayed like this for a few moments. Until Rak shook himself off with a suspiciously wet huff.

 

“You better!”

 

They all shared glances, far too tacit and meaningful. Then, without wasting a second, Rak left. He only stopped at the door, shortly. He turned, back toward Khun, to the person he would surely never meet again in his life.

 

And Khun, Khun waved back at him, with a reassuring smile he had never addressed to Rak, and almost inaudibly…

 

“I'll be back.”

 

Like a promise.

 

Like a goodbye.

 

A proper one, despite everything.

 

‘I'm leaving.’

 

Rak didn’t hold back the tears. They came silently. He nodded.

 

‘See you later.’

 

It meant so much more.

 

And after that…

 

After that, they were alone.

 

Jue Viole Grace and Khun Aguero Agnis.

 

Khun and Bam.

 

It began with them. It would end with them, too.

 

I can't…

 

“It’s soon,” Khun noted, his smile dulled. “What did you decide? Bam.”

 

Soon. Too soon.

 

Bam wasn’t ready.

 

“I… I want-” but Bam cut himself, stuttering. “I… I don’t- But you'll…”

 

“It’s okay,” Khun tempered, seeing Bam so helpless. “We still have a few dozens of minutes, I think. Take your time-”

 

“But I want to save you!” Bam shook his head, interrupting Khun. “I want to!”

 

I just don’t think I can do it.

 

There was a short contemplative silence as Khun gazed upon Bam, whose head was lowered and facing the floor.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

And Bam nodded.

 

Because of that, he was certain.

 

A fond huff.

 

“Alright, then.”

 

Bam felt a change in the surrounding shinsu. He raised his eyes only to see Khun, eyes closed, with a hand pressed to his chest. When he opened them again, a couple of seconds later, he explained serenely.

 

“The Yeon flame is sealed in my ice now,” he said. “This way, even if it is absorbed in you alongside me, it will remain linked to me through the seal, and my shinsu signature. As discussed with Hwa Ryun beforehand. As for how you will absorb me… ”

 

Right. Bam was going to have to kill Khun.

 

But then Khun shook his head.

 

“Don’t worry about it, Bam,” he reassured his friend. “I’ll do it myself.”

 

Bam frowned. Khun will…

 

He abruptly whipped his head up, alarmed.

 

“You’ll kill yourself?” he prompted in disbelief and panic.

 

“Not quite,” Khun chuckled. “I told you not to worry…”

 

But Bam simply couldn’t stop worrying. His best friend was dying , for the Tower’s sake. His companion of forever, who had taken his hand at the very start of their adventures, who had guided him and lit his path wherever he walked, who had always waited for him, and chased after him, and climbed with him.

 

Bam didn’t know how to live without Khun anymore, not in this Tower.

 

Truthfully, he had never known how.

 

“Then you won’t die?” he dared breathe, but Khun’s face fell slightly, chasing away the hope.

 

“Of course I will,” he murmured. “I will die… but before that, I will seal myself in ice. We’ll let it happen, alright? And then, you will be able to place this sealed being inside you. Before my trapped soul can escape.”

 

Oh.

 

Bam clenched his fists, his nails digging into the callused skin of his palms.

 

He remembered the vision of Khun, sealed away by his own power, frozen in time, floating in a box of blue. A coffin, as they had called it. That artifact had been the only reason Khun had lived so long, trapped within ice.

 

This time, Khun would die. Once he sealed himself, his consciousness would fade, and his own ice set free would only kill faster, without the counterbalancing of the Yeon flame. And then Bam was going to absorb Khun. Like he absorbed the Leviathan. Like he did the Black March.

 

He…

 

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I…

 

“Bam.”

 

Bam hadn’t realized he had closed his eyes. He opened them and met Khun’s, a concerned glint in them. But most importantly, Khun held something in his hand, extended toward Bam, and his features were prompting. It was… ah.

 

“Brush my hair for me?”

 

He was holding a brush. Toward Bam. And asking Bam to brush his casually long hair.

 

Stunned silent, Bam took the brush wordlessly, understanding the level of intimity Khun was allowing between them right now. Slowly, he stood up, walking around Khun and settling on his knees in the lightbearer’s back.

 

Almost reverently, he took a few strands of the silvery-blue hair in his fingers, reveling in their texture. It had been such a long time since he had brushed hair that was so long. Since he first cut his own, he thought. It used to be a relaxing movement.

 

When was the last time Khun had allowed Bam to take care of him?

 

Now that he thought about it, it probably had… never happened before. He carefully set to work, working the brush through the knots as gently as he could. He found that they weren’t as messy as he thought they would be, after such a long time lying sick on a makeshift bed. It was really smooth, silky and well taken care of. And Khun trusted him with it.

 

It felt nice.

 

Khun sighed, in front of him. It was quiet. It allowed Bam to focus on his actions, on the presence of the person in front of him. It was the first time he ever got to care for this person in this way, and it would also be the last. He soaked in every touch, every movement. He could never get enough.

 

Thinking about it, Khun had been the one to teach him how to use a brush. He even brushed Bam’s short curly hair for him that first time. It had been such a strange experience, but Khun had been so soft and gentle. It showed in the way Khun would touch Bam, how much he cared about him.

 

Bam hoped Khun could feel how much Bam valued him, from the way combed through the blue hair. It felt precious, this moment.

 

It was.

 

“You know, Bam,” Khun said eventually, softly, not to break the quiet. “It used to scare me. The thought that one day, you would grow too strong for us to keep climbing by your side.”

 

Bam hadn’t known.

 

He hummed.

 

He yearned to know more. Learn more. He yearned to understand Khun now, even though he probably had never really understood him in the past.

 

“But at the same time I thought… you might be better off without me.”

 

Bam paused, feeling his body tense up with the need to counter it immediately. Bam would always need Khun. But he stopped himself. Pursued the mindful motions.

 

“That too, used to scare me. But… I’ve learned with time.” A chuckle. “Admittedly with Rak, too.”

 

Bam cracked a smile at that. But it came down soon enough.

 

“I never knew,” he whispered, before he finally admitted, “there are so many things that I never knew about you.”

 

“Don’t feel guilty, Bam. I hid them from you. I told you before but… I really am a coward. I remember…”

 

Khun breathed softly, and Bam instinctively slowed his movements, hearing a grain of happiness that hadn’t been there before.

 

“I remember when you were just a child.”

 

Oh.

 

“The first time we met.”

 

Oh.

 

Immediately, Bam was once again brought back to that long gone time. The bright blue of the high ceiling, the ‘sky’, and the golden hue of high fields of golden grass. The way the sunlight shone and reflected over Khun’s hair, and even the blue bandanna that hung braided in his hair back then. Khun had been someone so novel, and who had looked at him with such catlike curiosity.

 

It had been the beginning, for Bam. Of everything.

 

The more Bam thought about it, the more he realized how closely linked together the beginning of his life and the beginning of his very first friendship had been in his mind, all along. Maybe that was why losing Khun felt like losing such an important part of himself.

 

Like losing his beginning.

 

But the more Khun spoke, the more the scenery changed, minutely, in his mind’s eye.

 

“You were so nervous back then! You were smaller than me, too. Wary of everything, skittish… but never for long. All it took was a few words, and then you let your guard down around me… I had never seen that before. Someone like you. And I found many beings that resembled you since then, but no one quite like you. I felt… intrigued. I couldn’t understand. You were a puzzle, in a way. And the mystery ended up pulling me in.”

 

Bam could hear the smile in Khun’s voice.

 

“And then I told you my name. And you didn’t react! You just gave me yours back and took my hand, so trusting… It was the first time.”

 

The more Khun spoke and unfolded his narrative, the more Bam realized that for Khun too, it had been the beginning.

 

“You’d never met someone who saw you for who you were?” he tentatively said.

 

“...Yes. I was always a Khun to everyone else. Even to the rest of the Tower climbers. And you were the one who changed the way they looked at me, too, ever so slightly. You were… the first bridge between me and the world. It all felt so novel then.”

 

Bam nodded.

 

“It did.”

 

“Of course, Rak and Shibisu and all the others were awful people. I still don’t know how I put up with them.”

 

Bam let himself laugh.

 

“But you love them.”

 

A short silence.

 

Then…

 

“Don’t let them hear that, will you?”

 

Bam blinked, slowly.

 

“Don’t they all know, anyway?”

 

Khun hummed, hanging his head a bit more backward.

 

“Sure. They probably do. It’s not like I need to tell them. But…”

 

There was another sigh. A long one.

 

And again, it felt like so much more. Like a reminder.

 

A quiet admittance. A regret.

 

“I wasn’t able to tell them when I was alive,” Khun spoke, so quietly Bam almost didn’t hear it. “It’d be such a shame… if they had to hear it from someone else.”

 

Thick silence. Bam didn’t reply. In the end, Khun straightened and concluded, with a thin but final voice.

 

“If that’s how they have to hear it, then I’d rather they don’t hear it at all.”

 

Those three words. I love you.

 

Always tacitly understood.

 

Yet never to be spoken aloud.

 

(A tragedy in its own right. A regret never to be undone.)

 

Neither spoke, and Bam found himself spiraling again. The soft warmth his closest friend exuded, turning slowly to a cooler degree. Bam’s movements continued, ceaselessly, slow and almost mindless.

 

I can’t do this.

 

The sky wasn’t as dark anymore. Time was running out.

 

I can’t do this.

 

Khun was never going to be able to say, ‘I love you’, to the people he loved. The last gesture he had been capable of giving was to Bam, the opportunity to finally take care of him. Of valuing him.

 

The very last.

 

I have to do it.

 

The very first rays of sunlight passed through the window. Dawn gently caressed Khun’s features and hair. Lighting up Bam’s hair and vision.

 

The gentle warmth of dawn, upon them.

 

It was time.

 

But I can’t.

 

Bam felt his forehead collide with Khun’s back. He felt the tears wet the fabric of Khun’s shirt before he knew they were falling.

 

Big, continuous, neverending. Bam cried, and he could not stop.

 

“ I can’t do this. ”

 

He let out a sob, and it felt loud and ugly, in the quiet. All his repressed emotions bubbling up to the surface and refusing to be dominated.

 

“I can’t do it, Khun! Please! I can’t! I can’t!... ”

 

And he begged. He begged so pitifully, for the life of his oldest friend. for the one who was always by his side. For the one who was leaving now, who was leaving them, leaving him, and who would never come back. He begged until his voice was but a broken trail, until his own bangs fell in front of his eyes, wet and messy, until Khun’s dress shirt was crumpled and creased, almost unsalvageable.

 

He broke down and down, and begged and cried.

 

“Khun… no… Please, I can’t… I can’t…”

 

And he did so until Khun turned, seeming so peaceful. But then Bam had to raise his face, a hand guiding his cheek for him to look at the other, and he saw Khun’s features lit up by the weak sun rays of dawn.

 

How glassy his blue eyes looked.

 

“Here you are.”

 

So fond and loving.

 

Bam looked at Khun, who seemed to smile despite the fact his eyes must have been burning right this moment. Khun faced Bam and smiled at him, with no resentment, no anger and no grief.

 

“You can,” he said. “You know, about a week ago now, at the brink of dawn, I stood in this same room, with that same brush in my hands, and I told myself the exact same words.”

 

A second hand appeared to cradle his face.

 

“I thought I was letting you down.”

 

Bam shook his head, messily, the tears overflowing and yet he forced himself to focus on that image, that blurry image, his best friend, Khun.

 

“You aren’t,” he croaked out. “You aren’t, Khun, you could never.”

 

“That’s right, Bam. Look at me.”

 

And Bam did. He looked, and looked, and looked like a starved man. Through the tears and the blur, through the grief and the hopelessness, he looked at Khun, taking in all the warmth and love left unspoken in those kind blue eyes, even though Khun’s skin against his face turned cooler and cooler. Colder.

 

Khun pressed their foreheads together.

 

“You’re not killing me,” he whispered. “You are saving me. Saving my soul. You are giving me another chance to remain by your side for the rest of your life. I will forever be with you, all of you, even if my soul does end up dissolving into power for you to inherit.”

 

Bam choked on his sobs, yet he felt warm inside, and Khun embraced him, his arms sneaking around Bam’s back. He buried his head in Bam’s shoulder, and Bam did the same. He embraced Khun back. He kept him tugged close, clutched at him and held on to him for dear life.

 

After all this time.

 

Bam held Khun in his arms. Unwilling to ever let go.

 

And he let himself go.

 

“Khun!” he cried, breathlessly.

 

“Bam,” Khun’s deep, low voice answered, in a breath, soothing. “I will always be with you.”

 

“Mh…”

 

“Always.”

 

Bam held onto him tighter.

 

“Besides… we promised Rak. Didn’t we?”

 

“Yeah,” Bam breathed. “We did.”

 

“Yes.”

 

And, once more, Khun, slowly, weakly, his skin icy to the touch, rose. Just enough to look at him, and for the strands of his hair to fall over and around Bam’s face. Leaving them alone, in the smallest world, their precious world. Just the two of them.

 

“I, Khun Aguero Agnis, promise. I will do everything I can, so that one day… I can be with you again.”

 

A very small blade of ice formed into Khun’s hand. Gently, he pierced Bam’s skin with it. Just above his heart.

 

“So, do not fear.

 

Take me in.”

Bam could not even feel the pain.

 

“Is this… really alright? Khun.”

 

And Khun. Khun looked at him. With eyes warm and loving, sad but hoping, and with tears rolling down his face. It didn’t make him any less radiant.

 

“I told you, Bam.”

 

The last words were only for Bam alone, for him to hear and no one else, as Khun slowly fell down on him again, and Bam pressed him closer, in grief and desperation.

 

“ I’ll do anything, to stay by your side.”

 

Bam cried as he devoured Khun. A soft, long breath leaving the body of his only lightbearer, at last. He felt Khun dissolve, under his fingers, in myriads of light particles that were absorbed into his void. But he saw none of it. His eyes were closed. He might be wailing.

 

He only clung tighter to the fading figure in his embrace.

 

‘I never regretted knowing you,’ he thought he could hear, echoing in his mind.

 

And, despite everything, despite the hurt and the grief. Despite the sheer weight of the crushing pain that Bam felt as he collapsed on himself, unwilling to let go even though there was nothing to hold anymore… Bam could not help but answer back, with all his being.

 

Me too.

 

I never regretted you, Khun Aguero Agnis.

I will never regret you.

Bam had no idea just how much time had passed when he finally left the bereft room. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he felt more tired than he had ever been.

 

He felt almost hollow.

 

A crowd met him. Expectant eyes, hopeful, desperate, hopeless, grieving.

 

They all looked up at him. Waiting.

 

Waiting.

 

“Bam?”

 

“Please. Tell us.”

 

And Bam paused, searching within himself.

 

Almost hollow. Uncertain

 

“I… I think…”

 

On the dawn of the seventh day, Khun had left this world behind.

---

Two hundred years later.

 

Bam stood, alone, on top of a cliff.

 

It felt like one could see everything, from here.

 

The world of humans, of beasts, and of gods. Everything, without distinction.

 

He had grown. His hair, too. His power as well.

 

He looked very different. And yet, there was something about him.

 

Something, like a spark. A past never forgotten.

 

A past he had never let go on. A present, so to say.

 

The man, who was in the end, not a god, raised his head suddenly, as if listening to something.

 

A smile spread on his lips.

 

“You’re awake,” were his words, warm like a welcome.

 

For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind, the peace of nature, and the faint bustle of human activity down below.

 

“It’s alright. I’ll tell you everything you missed,” Bam said again, seemingly speaking to no one at all.

 

Then, a laugh.

 

“You’re right. He must be waiting for us now.”

 

…

 

“Mh. Let’s go back now.”

 

To them.

Let’s go home.

Notes:

...
Yes the beginning and the end are made to match.

Alternative story, if I wrote crack:

Bam: Why are you retiring!!! QoQ

Khun: *breathes in deeply...*

Khun: I'm pregnant.

 

Ugh I'm dead. I'll ramble on it later.
I'm so glad I finished this! This was an obsession until it was done! Like right this moment. No editing. No way. No more time waste. Story, you're a waste.

Unfortunately the next obsession has already made an appearance.
ToG as Liyue? Khun as both Xiao and GuiZhong, everyone? No? Just me? Whelp.

Anyways see you soon. And comment. This bitch was not born to be un-cried over.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 6 of I can and WILL torture Khun Aguero Agnis to death- (Affectionate)