by Elizabeth Lo
I need you to choose, the voice echoes. That world. Or… my world.
“Where… are you?” I call back, ignoring the stares of my parents.
The voice says something, but it seems to blur in my mind.
I’m starting to get a headache.
There’s a block in my mind still. Almost like one from a spell.
Although it’s like grasping at straws, the snap helped clear it. I can remember bits and pieces of that other world. I can remember detail after detail, from it, slowly but surely. Nothing specific, just moments.
The snap has unblocked my memories. I can remember.
The large, majestic pink nuagepanthère. Talks in the woods with someone… significant. Talks in a stairwell with a strange couple. Cold, mirror-like eyes of a white-haired queen.
Remember that I was going to go into this room and leave as soon as possible.
Yes… I have a responsibility in that world. This world needs just to be temporary.
But…
I take another bite of pancake. Sweet and soft… I drink a glass of orange juice, relishing the crisp tartness of it.
I breathe in the smell of the morning, listen to the hustle and bustle as Mother stands up and puts her dishes away while Father sighs at the news in the paper and puts it down to drink some coffee I can smell from across the table.
I feel the weight of the world that only moments ago suffocated me suspended above my head by the magic of Fantastique’s Stone. Who knew the test to get it would be so pleasant. So sweet…
“You know, Midnight,” Mother says, washing her hands in the sink. “I bought those chalks you asked me to buy. As usual…” She grins at me. “The wall’s yours.”
“Really?” I say, putting my fork down. “Then, is it okay if I start drawing right now?”
“Sure.”
Perfect timing.
Leaving the dining table, I dash outside to the side of the house already covered in a good layer of chalk dust.
A new wooden case of chalks awaits me.
Smiling to myself, I pick up a light pink stick for sketching on the white walls of our house.
Hmm… what should I draw? I rushed out here without thinking…
Ah, I know.
Soon, the sound of chalk against the stone surface is all I can hear. The skritch skritch skritch of every line…
Line after line, I dissect my complicated thoughts onto the side of my house just like old times.
Image after image, the framework for a mural is laid out before me. Me in my bedroom filled with books, a queen strangled in a world that won’t listen to her, and an officer in a room of dead bodies. There’s the red-haired girl and the boy with Neptune’s silver hair laughing in front of the mansion and the old magician with the Arimean boy holding a giant pink kitten.
I put down the pink, sighing, and looking at the sketch. I find the first color, and I lift it to the surface, applying the first base colors.
“Was that your dream?” a voice behind me asks. Black—or Neptune, as I should call him.
“Hmm… yeah.”
“It looks like it was a colorful dream,” he says.
“Yeah… it was…”
“It also looks sad. Everyone here is… sad.”
My hand stops in the middle of filling in the pink fur of Sucre.
“Maybe it was that, too,” I say softly, my hand dropping.
“You’re debating going back to it, aren’t you?” he says. “Going back to a world like that where… you look so lonely.”
I follow his gaze to the picture of me.
“And she looks so angry… and he looks scary. Why would you want to go back to a place like that?”
“Why…?”
That’s right. Why? That’s what I’m searching for. The why that I keep missing. In everything.
“You should be glad this world is different. Free from suffering.”
“Free from suffering…” I echo.
“Yeah. You look a little stressed. Why not come back inside…” The rest of his words fade out in my ears.
Why…
Oh… maybe that’s why I want to go back.
Maybe because it’s my responsibility to. Maybe because I have to go back and receive my punishment and save everyone.
Maybe… But… that doesn’t seem quite right.
I catch sight of the smiling chalk Artemis above me.
You’re indecisive.
Yeah… that’s right, Artemis. I really am.
What do I want? Which do I want?
And most importantly, why?
The world back there was so colorful. With the darks and the lights altogether in one. Just like this mural.
Think back on it, Mid… Was it all unfortunate? Was it all a tragedy?
I remember Black once told me about differentiating between the wood and mountain. How up close, you could look at every leaf on every tree for ages. But if you back away and look at it from afar, you’ll see that it was really a large beautiful mountain. He explained that you have to find a balance between looking at the woods and the mountain as a whole.
And I can look back now and say with the utmost certainty that I didn’t make a very beautiful mountain in my life. But that’s not to say there are not beautiful trees mixed somewhere on there.
Even if it’s… kind of small sounding… is it a crime to want to live here, even if me living means pushing the other world into darkness? Even existing just for the fun of it sounds delightful now. No “purpose” to abide by. No more unwanted responsibilities handed to me by other people.
But here, there is no mountain. And here, I most certainly won’t make amends for the time I’ve lost. I won’t there either, seeing how my end is just waiting for me, waiting outside of this faux world in the Stone…
If I had to choose… If I really had to make a choice between living here and finishing what I left off there… If this is all I can do in my limited power… Then the answer is already there. This is my power of choice. As small as it is, this is in my control.
And maybe I didn’t do everything I could, but I can do what I can… right?
Truly, though… I want to redo my story. This picture of me sitting in my room alone. I wish I could have drawn it doing something else—sketching, perhaps, instead of wishing for death. Lafayette in his sea of bodies and Glorieux in her silent rage; I wish I could have drawn the two of them smiling.
Smiles. That’s right. That’s what I want. True smiles that lift their eyes and warm their faces.
I sigh and put down the pastel pink.
Sometimes, you should enjoy the illusion.
But eventually, that illusion will end.
“I guess it’s time I found a way to leave this place,” I say, standing up. “I might have overstayed my welcome.”
I turn around to come face to face with my faux family.
“I guess this is goodbye—”
A hand wrenches my wrist in a deadly grip. Then another. And another.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mother demands. “You’re not planning on leaving us, are you?”
“Midnight. What are you trying to do?” Father looks livid.
“Let… Let go of me.” I yank my arms against their grip. At first, they stay firm, unrelenting. A spike of fear shoots through me. “Let go!” I yell. One more jerk of my arm and they let go… and disappear.
Like wisps, it’s as if they turn into black smoke and dissipate into the air.
I feel my heart clench at the sight.
“Mid.” Neptune’s grip was the tightest on my arm; he’s still holding on. When I look at him, his eyes turn dark cherry again, and a tar-like black seems to leak into his pale hair. I’m not looking at Neptune, the brother I never knew, but instead, Black, the brother that I loved. Except this Black isn’t smiling anymore. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
I’m ready to say something in return, but when I look at him, my throat catches.
“Are you going to push me away again? Are you going to block me out just like you did before?”
“No… No, Black, I… I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry,” I say.
The sunlight outside disappears around us as if it was never there in the first place. All that’s left is me, face to face with Black once more.
“I thought… I thought I worked hard… I thought if I worked hard enough we could all be happy… I smiled just so you could smile too!”
I inhale so sharply, it feels like I almost choke.
“I’m sorry,” I sputter. “I wish I could have… could have done something more to save you.”
His heartless, cold stare only makes more words tumble out of my mouth.
“I-I’m… sorry… But can you let me go?”
“If you’re so sorry, then don’t leave me. Stay here. And everything can return to how it used to be.”
“But…”
“Stay here. Make me smile again. We can create our own world here—a world that won’t hurt us anymore. Don’t go back to that other world.”
“I-I can’t, Black. If you’re really Black, you would let me go.”
“No. Stay here,” he insists. “Why go back to that world? All it ever did was wrong you. Use you. Turn you into a scapegoat. You drew it yourself! You can be happy here. You can just stay here in this world forever. This is the world where everyone can smile.”
“They’re waiting for me… On the other side.”
“What about me?” he whispers. “Are you just going to forget about me? Choose those hypocrites over me?”
“Black…” My fist clenches at my side. “You… You would’ve wanted me to choose the most logical choice, right?”
“Logical?” his eyes narrow. “You think this is logical? I wouldn’t have wanted you to waste your life. I wouldn’t have wanted you to die for the very people who hurt you!”
“But…” I look away from his eyes. I can’t look anymore. “Not everyone… hated me. There were some good people… And even in the people who hurt me… they weren’t completely evil, either.”
“Mid… ever the naïve Mid. You think too highly of the world.”
“I-I’m… really… really… sorry,” I whisper. Is that all I can say?
“You think breaking that curse will give you worth,” he says coldly. “But how can a worthless thing like one of us become worth something? You learned this—it’s basic math. Zero times anything is still zero.”
I seem to have forgotten how to breathe for a moment there. I have to bite my lip to keep me from saying anything irrational.
“How are you even here?” I ask.
“How? When I died, I wandered the skies until I found my way here.”
No, that’s not right. Didn’t I curse Lafayette with Black’s soul?
“Are you even the real Black?” Despite how calm I sound, my hands have gone completely cold and tremble a little. They shake so much I feel like my entire body is shivering.
“I can prove it to you,” he says confidently.
“No,” comes a voice. “I can prove it to you.” The voice echoes along the walls of my head. It sounds like it’s coming from the right of me—as if someone really is standing there, yet there’s no one there.
“Lafayette?” I recognize the voice, though only slightly due to the distortion.
A figure appears in the darkness in front of me, his back to me. Lafayette, yes, but there’s something different about him.
“Get away from her, you lying bastard.”
“How did you get in here?” Black asks calmly.
Lafayette smirks at him. “Magic.” He continues to stride over. “Or I guess, anti-magic.”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Black says.
“Mid,” Lafayette says, ignoring Black. “Stop listening to him. It’s the Stone testing you. That right there is just the Stone in disguise as your brother.”
“Then how do I know you’re not fake? Or just another illusion?”
Lafayette sighs and, in one swift motion, grabs the fake Black’s face. A burst of shadows explodes from his hand.
A rabid scream comes out of Black’s mouth—so loud my head buzzes. His arms flail around in struggle, clawing at Lafayette’s arm.
“Lafayette, stop!” I yell. “What are you—”
“Getting rid of this piece of shit.” It’s only now I realize that Lafayette’s eyes are alight with a cutthroat, immovable gaze.
Black’s body bucks in pain.
Then the fake Black disappears, too. First, his head starts to blacken and morph into nothing but a blob darker than a raven’s feather, and then the rest of his body follows, warping and distorting into an unrecognizable shape. With one last scream, the shape fully explodes and, in one black wisp of smoke, he returns to nothingness.
He’s gone. Again.
Tears spring to my eyes. I can’t breathe evenly; I can only sharply inhale and shakily exhale.
“What… did you…” My knees fall. Strangely, the floor of this black nothingness feels like polished stone.
Lafayette looks at me, his eyes already apologizing. He kneels in front of me so our eyes can meet.
“Mid,” he says softly. “You knew he wasn’t real.”
I did. I did. But I wanted to keep talking to him. Seeing him again… made me want to let out the apologies that were buried within me for so long.
“What he said was true.”
“No, it—”
My hands are shaking so much.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… That’s all I ever say. Why isn’t there anything else? I can only keep apologizing and apologizing… It’s frustrating.
Lafayette gently grabs my hands and pulls them away from my face.
And then… to my shock, he wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his chest.
I can hear his heart next to my ear. It thumps slowly, like an unchanging beat sounding through the chaos.
“Would you like a second shot in life?” he asks quietly.
“Is this a dream?” I hiccup.
He chuckles. “That’s not an answer.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I want it with every fiber of my being.”
His hold on me seems to loosen.
“I thought so,” he murmurs.
I’m still sniffling and hiccupping, but the tears have stopped.
“Can… I talk to my brother then? My real brother.”
He nods slightly.
“Of course.”
Sitting up, he leans his head back, eyes closed.
When he moves his head back, he opens his eyes, breathing in deeply.
His eyes are slightly unfocused, seeming to struggle focusing on my face.
“Mid,” he says, this time, a softer ring to his voice. Warmth—something I didn’t know Lafayette’s voice was capable of producing. “I can’t stay here for long.”
“Black,” I breathe, looking at Lafayette a little closer.
It’s only now that he’s here that I forget everything I wanted to say to him. But I guess I should start with…
“I’m sorry,” first and foremost. Again.
A faint, sad smile comes to his face as he looks at me.
“Why?” He reaches out and cups my face with his hand. “Shouldn’t it be me who’s sorry? I left you, didn’t I? I left you when you needed me the most.”
“That… that wasn’t your fault… I wish I could have told you that while you were alive. I wish… I wish I could’ve saved you…” I’m doing it again. Wishing.
But I’ve already made my decision.
Black shakes his head.
“No, Midnight,” he says. “Don’t blame yourself. You chose our world, didn’t you? Our imperfect… faulted world. That, in itself, is amazing. Considering… everything.”
“It… didn’t have as much to do with the world
as it had to do with me…” I mutter.
No. I shouldn’t spend my last moments with my brother muttering to myself.
“A lot of this was my fault,” I blurt out. “I didn’t… I could only think of myself. I let Artemis tag along. I couldn’t control my emotions. And I couldn’t help you when you needed it the most. ”
He shakes his head.
“No. It’s not your fault. You can’t take the blame for everything.” He pats my head gently. “As for me… I got angry. What I wanted to protect the most was destroyed in a single day. I thought I could get some answers from that magician… and so I left you. And this whole time, waiting in this person’s body… I could only think that I should’ve returned your smiles properly before I died. So here I am, to return your smile that I had so unfairly taken from you. Smile, Midnight… For your…” His voice wavers. “For your pitiful brother who will never be able to see it again.”
His eyes meet mine. A sweet smile is on Lafayette’s face… and it seems to fit him perfectly. That alone could make me smile. And just hearing my brother again makes my smile wider.
“There you go,” he murmurs.
“Can you tell me truthfully, Black,” I say after sniffling some more. “Were you ever… happy when you smiled at me? Or were you just smiling just because I wanted you to?”
Black chuckles, releasing his hand.
“Of course I was, silly. Our times together in our little town were the happiest days of my life.”
There’s something about that statement that’s strangely calming.
I’m glad… I, at least, made one person happy.
At least that one small thing had some sort of effect, right?
Now that I think about it… What impact? What purpose was Glorieux talking about?
My life would have meaning by undoing this curse.
But… what meaning? Maybe to others who are cursed, I would have a great impact. But what about myself?
Is it selfish to want something for myself?
Nevertheless, it’s too late now. There’s nothing left that I can do.
Seeing Black and Lafayette like this reminds me all-too-sharply of what I’ve put on myself. A responsibility I never asked for yet so innocently accepted.
“Is it delusional to wish for a second chance I’ll never have?” I whisper.
Black says nothing, just looks at me now with a blank stare.
