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“Don’t,” Hyuna hisses at her.
She’s hunched over the monitor. One hand is pressed against her midsection tightly, the other grabbing Mizi’s wrists with just as much strength.
Both of their emergency medical supplies are already used up. Hyuna had insisted that there was still time before they really needed to be concerned and that a gunshot wound wasn’t enough to completely throw their plans away, so Mizi had decided to follow her lead.
“Don’t you fucking dare go after him, too,” Hyuna says. “We saved this one because you begged me. We’re not going further than this. We don’t have time to go further than this. This one barely has ten minutes.”
Mizi glances at the reason they don’t have their medical supplies anymore. Ivan’s skin is pale, blood covering his chin and most of his left side. Mizi hadn’t seen the round, but she’d seen Ivan’s body lying there from the security camera monitors, and after a grief-stricken moment that she had lost someone else, she had seen his chest move.
That had been enough to hope.
In the hustle of the aliens clearing the stage and setting it up for Round 7, taking Till and Luka— Mizi bites back a flinch— backstage to prep their hair and makeup, it had been easier than she had expected to get to Ivan’s body before it was transported to wherever they took the losers once their round was over.
She had thanked any and every god she had ever heard of when he was still taking slow breaths when she had got there. Dying, but not dead just yet. Mizi doesn’t know if she’d have been able to survive this long with the same injuries.
The screen in front of her now is Till. She hadn’t been able to get to him when she and Hyuna went to get Ivan. She hasn’t seen him in so long. He looks exhausted. His hair is longer than it used to be and she would recognize the haunted look on his face anywhere.
“I’m sorry,” she tells Hyuna, wrenching her hand away from hers, and runs.
-
For a second, Mizi thinks she’s not going to make it. Till is walking towards her too slowly, and she’s too still trying to fight her way through the aliens. She can’t tell when the song is going to end, and she can’t tell whether Till or Luka are in the lead.
There’s no time.
She ducks underneath the arm of one of the aliens, making it to the edge of the stage just as Till reaches the edge, and—
She grabs his hand, and yanks down as hard as she can.
-
Hyuna barely manages to finish breaking into the computer when Dewey and Isaac show up, apparently at Hyuna’s request. “I wasn’t going to be able to pick him up,” she says, nodding her head at Ivan. She groans as she stands. The blood of her wound has long past the point of coating her hand. It coats nearly her entire arm, now. “And clearly, haa, neither of you were going to be able to,” she says, gesturing between Mizi and Till. “We’re retreating. The rest of the plan is fucked at this point.”
Till’s face had gone white at the sight of Ivan’s body. Mizi clutches his hand tighter. “Not yet,” she tells him. Her chest is aching. “We need to go.”
The rest of their escape is lost to adrenaline.
-
If she has to rank it by injuries:
First off, herself. She’s fine. There are some scrapes on her hands and arms, and her hair curls at her ears now, but she’s the healthiest of them all. She doesn’t know yet if she has the capacity to be grateful for it.
Till’s next. He has old bruises, permanent injuries where bones had healed incorrectly, and a scar on his midriff from an injury even Till doesn’t remember anymore. The worst of his bruises is around his neck. It’s bright red, the early stages of something that happened recently. Mizi had seen her first live footage of the stage when Round 6 was already over. She doesn’t know what happened during it. “Till, what...”
Till just shakes his head, and doesn’t explain further.
Third: Hyuna gets lucky. Like she had said, it isn’t a fatal stab wound. “The blood loss is the more pressing concern,” the medic says. “But the bullet missed anything vital and passed straight through. She’ll just need to be on bed rest now that we’ve finished operating.”
Some light scarring, and it would be as though nothing had happened to her at all.
It’s a different story for Ivan. Even with their on-the-ground treatment, Ivan had lost so much blood. The bullets were still lodged in him, and one had ended up scarily close to his left lung. Had they been any later in bringing Ivan in, it would have been too late. But—
“He’ll be fine,” Mizi tells Till, sitting next to him on one of the medical wing’s bedside chairs. Ivan is still in the operating room, but the medic had told her they’d bring him out soon.
Till closes his eyes, and he lets out a shaky breath. “Fuck,” he says. His entire face scrunches up. “Fuck. I don’t even— I don’t know what to think.”
Mizi reaches over and grabs his hand again. Till’s hand spasms for a moment when she holds it in hers before he tentatively holds it back. Leftover nerves, she thinks. “Till. We can, we can be happy, you know. He’ll live.”
“Happy,” Till repeats. Like he doesn’t know what the word means.
“Yes,” Mizi insists. “I know it doesn’t,” she swallows, throat feeling thick all of a sudden, “I know it doesn’t feel like it just yet. And so much has happened that maybe you’re feeling confused or stressed or overwhelmed. But it’ll be okay. Right?”
“Right,” Till says, sounding just as lost.
-
Hyuna isn’t talking to her. She’s furious.
Mizi can’t blame her.
There was more to the plan than getting the contents of their computer. More parts to it that Hyuna had to give up so that they could save two people who were never meant to be a part of it.
Mizi almost wants to tell her: You didn’t have to listen to me.
But that’s not fair, either. Hyuna had told her not to, and Mizi nearly exposed them twice to save two different people in two different moments, all while the aliens and security were actively looking for the intruders. All of them could have just as likely been caught and if not killed on sight, taken prisoner again, shackled up and paraded around in some twisted bonus competition.
It didn’t happen, though. They all escaped, wounds notwithstanding.
Mizi is alive. Till is alive. And Ivan will be. It makes her want to cry with relief. Her chest feels so, so full.
Not completely, though. Never completely.
Because the only person she didn’t manage to save—
She doesn’t let the thought finish.
Mizi should have expected where this line of thinking would lead her. It was like she had told Till: Too much had happened in too short a time period. She hadn’t seen Till or Ivan in weeks. She hasn’t seen Sua since—
Mizi should have expected it. Her mood sinks so rapidly it leaves her lightheaded. She should have expected it.
For the hurt to come back, like it had never left at all.
-
Till is still in the same seat when Mizi gets there the next morning, asleep with his head faceplanted on the cot in front of him. He’s in new clothes now, at least, a plain pair of sweats and a t-shirt. Ivan is there now, too, out of surgery, an oxygen mask over his mouth and a mess of tubes and needles connected all over his body. His face still looks pale, and his brows are furrowed like he’s pained even in his sleep.
“We had to force him to change.”
Mizi jumps. Isaac stands behind her, chewing on an unlit cigarette. “The only thing we had in his size was one of Sara’s pajamas. He said he didn’t care, so.”
That’s not a surprise, really. Till has at least a head on Mizi in height, but most of the other men at their base are substantially taller and bulkier than he is.
“I don’t think he even knows we gave him an actual cot to sleep in.”
“I’m sure he does,” Mizi says.
“Hm,” Isaac says around the cigarette. “He hasn’t gotten underfoot at least, so the medics are letting him stick around. Or they feel bad for him. Can’t figure out which one.”
Till barely twitches, even though Mizi and Isaac aren’t lowering their voice to accommodate him. She suspects that even if they had woken him up, all of his attention would still just be on Ivan. She can understand, to a degree. All of them had been so close, as children, and even now she considers Till and Ivan to be the closest friends she’s ever had. But she’s always known that Till and Ivan had a special dynamic she wasn’t privy to.
In another life, had it been Sua in the cot, and Mizi who had just been saved, she thinks she may have acted in the same way. There would have been nothing that could take her attention away.
In another life, if maybe luck of the draw meant that it was Till and Ivan that had competed first, maybe then Sua—
But that wouldn’t have worked. She knows that wouldn’t have worked.
She had told Till that they were allowed to be happy, but the wave of self-loathing that hits her suddenly nauseates her. Happy. When she doesn’t even know where they took Sua’s body.
That’s when the thought hits her: Sua should be here instead.
She freezes. What?
Stop it, she tells herself. Stop it, stop it, stop it.
How could she think that?
What was wrong with her?
She doesn’t want to compare them. If Sua was here, that means Ivan wouldn’t have been. She loves Ivan. The thought of losing him, so shortly after, after losing Sua, makes her chest pound, rapid and uncomfortable. Stop thinking, she tells herself.
But the instruction doesn’t land as well as she hopes. It’s like the thought brands itself into her brain, and the more she thinks about how much she shouldn’t be thinking about it, the more it latches on.
“Must really love him.”
Mizi startles. “What?”
Isaac jerks his chin towards Till. “Him. Those chairs fuck up your back hard. They make your ass numb, too. I don’t think I could sit on one for as long as he has.”
Mizi nods slowly. She bites the inside of her cheek.
“Woah. You look pale,” Isaac says. He raises an eyebrow. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Fine,” Mizi says. Gasps out. “I need to go.”
-
This isn’t the first time she’s had thoughts like this. It’s been like this more often than not ever since she’s escaped. Since before then, if she’s being honest. Since after her round with Sua happened in the first place. It’s just that. It’s easier to not feel sick with herself when the thoughts are directed at a person she doesn’t know, like one of the other rebels she barely recognized walking the halls. But this time, it’s towards Ivan. Towards Till.
She thinks of Ivan again. Mouth slack and eyes closed. His chest rising and falling, as weak as it is.
If Ivan has the chance to survive it, why didn’t Sua? Even if this is all it ends up being, just a few more paltry breaths on a cot before dying for real, why couldn’t it have been her?
Fuck.
She doesn’t know when she became this kind of person. She wasn’t unaware of death before all this. Of what would happen to the loser on stage. Of course she wasn’t. But it had always been a faraway thing for her. Something that happened to other people.
She was excited to be on stage. In the days leading up to it, she had daydreamed about it constantly. The day everyone would be able to see just what she and Sua are to each other. Were to each other. Sua must have been more realistic than she was, but she never corrected Mizi whenever Mizi would share her fantasies. It makes Mizi wonder, sometimes, but there’s no one to ask about it now.
Death was supposed to stay far, far away from them. From Sua.
Though, Mizi supposes all this is just her own stupidity talking.
-
Mizi struggles to sleep, most nights.
Unless missions or training exhausts her to the point of collapse, thoughts of Sua tend to keep her awake. She had thought, after rescuing Ivan and Till, she might be able to catch a break.
But clearly not. It’s been two weeks since their mission, and she hasn’t slept through the night once.
Her eyes ache from how hard she’s rubbed at them. What happened to running out of tears? Wasn’t that supposed to happen eventually? She wipes at her nose. It’s so stuffy that she’s been stuck breathing with her mouth for the last thirty minutes.
She curses under her breath. Clearly, even lying in bed is a lost cause. She drags herself up, feeling the soreness all over her body. She knows she’s been pushing herself too hard. Hyuna tends to call her out on it, but considering Hyuna’s silent treatment, Mizi isn’t surprised that that’s stopped, too.
In their base, the showers and bathrooms are located in a different hall than the sleeping chambers. Mizi is used to the layout of their base now, after so much time. She can get there even without having to turn any of the lights on. Her footsteps echo as she walks. It must be late enough that even the people who preferred to stay up late had already gone to bed.
Hence, why she nearly screams when she runs into someone just as she turns the corner.
“Oh my— Till?” She clears as much of the congestion out of her throat as she can. It’s too dark for her to really make out Till’s features other than a general silhouette and the shine of his eyes. It’s a blessing in disguise. It means that he won’t be able to see how puffy and red her eyes must be.
“Mizi,” Till says. His voice exudes the same kind of tiredness Mizi feels. He makes a motion, like he’s going to put a hand on her shoulder, but then he stops. “Are you. Are you crying?”
Mizi wipes her face. “No, no. Just a little under the weather.”
“Is that why you’re up?”
Mizi tries to smile, but remembers it will be futile in the dark, and lets her expression drop. No need to fake it. “I had some work to do,” she lies. “I was just going to freshen up a bit before going to bed.”
“Oh.”
Come on, Till, Mizi thinks. At least try to keep the conversation going. “And you?” Mizi tries. She’s not up for conversation either, but it’s too awkward to let it fall apart like this.
“I was with Ivan,” Till says.
It’s not a surprising answer in the least. She’s barely seen him these past weeks. From the comments floating around their base, he’s even started to help the medics beyond sitting at Ivan’s bedside. It endears Mizi, a little.
All his help has had low rates of success, though, if the one story about Till accidentally dropping two IV bags and causing them to burst open is accurate.
“Are you headed back there?”
She vaguely sees Till’s head move in a nodding motion.
“How is he?” She asks.
“Same as always,” Till responds. Then, surprisingly, he continues, “They say he’ll wake up soon. It was, uh, hard to tell for a little while, apparently, because of the— because of everything. And then he got a fever yesterday, which could set everything back, but uh. I think they decided that he has a better chance of waking up than not, which. Yeah.” Till clears his throat.
Mizi doesn’t know that she’s ever seen Till ramble before. He used to be much quieter around her, she thinks. Avoidant, maybe, is the better word. She’s never really known what he’s thinking.
“He’ll be okay,” Till says, not quite firm or confident.
If she had been in Till’s shoes, she thinks again. If the person on that cot was Sua, and it was Mizi saying, She’ll be okay.
“It’s Ivan,” Mizi says. She hopes the next sentence comes out as honest. “Of course he’ll be okay.”
Mizi wants him to be okay. She does.
“Did you watch our round?” Till asks suddenly.
The question is out-of-place for the conversation they’re having, and the atmosphere they’ve created in this dark hallway with no one else around. But maybe, that’s precisely why Till’s asking now. Nothing feels real this late at night. If Mizi was any more sleep deprived, she’d think that this conversation was all happening in her head.
“I didn’t,” Mizi says.
She thinks some of the others had, based on the loaded looks they send Till whenever he comes to ask where they keep their towels so he can wipe the moisture off of Ivan’s forehead, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. At first, it was because she didn’t want to watch one of her friends die. Then, even though a small part of her had been curious when she had learned of their point disparity (A nineteen-point difference? They’re both skilled in singing. Shouldn’t their scores have been closer? Ivan was a media darling, wasn’t he? How did he lose by such a wide margin?), a larger part of her didn’t want to watch it when she already knew the outcome.
Ivan had lost, and through some luck of the universe, survived still. Till had won.
She continues, “Why do you ask?”
Till is silent for a long moment. His shoulders sag lightly. Relief or disappointment, Mizi can’t tell.
“No reason,” he says. “Sorry. I should get back to, uh. Yeah. I’ll let you go freshen up,” he says, and then walks ten steps back towards where the medical wing is. Then, he circles back, says “Goodnight”, and leaves again.
Mizi stares at the empty spot he leaves behind. Then, she continues on her way to the bathrooms.
-
She forgets, sometimes, that she’s not the only one with a past that haunts her.
Before all this, when Mizi was still the newest recruit, she and Hyuna had gotten drunk together. An introductory meeting sort of thing. Mizi had quickly realized that despite her smiles and laughs and easygoing demeanor, Hyuna was just as tight-lipped as the rest of them when it came to her past.
Even with the bar deserted as they drank, Hyuna had never mentioned a single name, even when Mizi had outright asked for them. The only tidbit she had gotten was a comment, slightly slurred: “There’s things I would have done differently, if I had known. If I could go back.”
Mizi doesn’t remember how she had responded. If she did at all.
Thinking about it now, she thinks that she doesn’t know if she would want to change anything at all. If she could go back and do things differently, what if she did it wrong? If she did something new and it changed her life with Sua, would she be able to risk it?
She doesn’t know.
She does know, though, she knows that even if something did change, she wouldn’t have given Sua up for anything.
The night had ended with the two of them grasping each other, with Mizi half-dragging Hyuna to bed. Hyuna, more asleep than not by that point, had pressed a loud kiss to Mizi’s lips, laughing afterwards. “Night,” she had said, and Mizi barely managed to say it back.
The next day, Hyuna doesn’t mention her comment or the kiss, and Mizi lets it go.
-
In the end, Mizi thinks that she just wants someone to relate to her. No one is here because they didn’t lose anyone, Mizi knows, but it’s different. As far as she knows, before Till and Ivan’s arrival, she had been the only rebel in Hyuna’s crew that had ever actually competed in Alien Stage. Who else could relate to what that was like, to have the person you’re competing against killed in front of everyone?
Till could have, had things turned out any different. Till still could, if Ivan doesn’t make it.
-
Like the universe can hear her, Ivan wakes up exactly one week later.
-
Though, maybe waking up is too strong of a descriptor.
Truthfully, Mizi had been avoiding visiting Ivan altogether, too anxious she’d have another thought about him dying and jinx the whole thing. Till’s there when she goes again, just past the one-month mark of their botched mission. The world’s most stiff caretaker, she thinks, half-amused when she walks in and sees him trying to massage Ivan’s leg muscles. Massage. It more so that he’s just periodically squeezing the same spot on Ivan’s thigh over and over again. Ivan would get a kick out of this if he was awake.
Till startles when he notices her, snapping his hands back onto his lap. His cheeks redden. “Mizi. I was, um. The nurses told me to,” he explains slowly.
She nods. “Right.”
Mizi feels hollow, looking at him. Till hasn’t lost any more weight in the last few weeks, but it doesn’t look like he’s gained any, either. The bags under his eyes are deep. He’s in a different set of clothes, this time around. It’s nearly all-white, similar to what they used to wear in Anakt. She wonders whose it is this time, or if he chose this outfit himself.
Till stares at her like he doesn’t know what to say.
What is there to say? Mizi probably looks just as awful. Just as she’s about to ask after him, if he likes the base or what his favorite meal is in the mess hall or some other inane question, Ivan’s fingers twitch, making a soft, barely audible noise against the blanket draped over him. Mizi whips her head to look at Till. He stares back. The both of them look at Ivan.
Slowly, painfully so, Ivan’s facial muscles start to move. His eyebrows furrow, just barely, and his eyes crack open.
Mizi yells for one of the medics, just as Ivan makes eye contact with her, then Till, and passes out again.
She collapses back into her chair, exhaling shakily. Next to her, Till is doing the same, his eyes clenched shut.
She tears up in relief. It’s a good sign to be crying now, she thinks. It’s proof that she’s a person underneath everything else. She still has it in her to be relieved that her friend will live.
-
Mizi stares at herself in the mirror.
She doesn’t know what time it is now, only that it’s late. She doesn’t run into Till this time at least. She barely even remembers walking here. Her hair is limp and lifeless where it falls in front of her eyes. Her bags are as dark as Till’s. The length of her hair has slowly started to grow back, curling against her ear now rather than sit above it. It’s. Similar to the length that Sua’s had been. Just a little. It doesn’t suit Mizi nearly as well.
Would Sua even recognize her like this?
She jerks, the thought hitting her like a gunshot. Suddenly, she’s wide awake.
Would Sua recognize her like this?
What about Mizi is even the same since Sua had seen her last?
She buries her head in her hand and tugs on her hair until the urge to scream finally lessens.
-
Ivan’s progress is slow, but undeniably there.
Till’s massages aside, Ivan’s lost some muscle mass from the bedrest. There’s a rotation of medications he has to take to avoid infections.
Seeing him awake is something to get used to.
Mizi wants to rage at him for not being Sua. She also wants to fall into his chest and sob until she physically can’t anymore.
Instead, she holds his hands and says, “Ivan. It’s good to see you.” Her eyes are wet, despite her best efforts.
Ivan smiles. “Mizi. Long time no see.”
“Your jokes have awful timing,” she says.
“You recognized it as a joke, though. Speaking of jokes, have you seen Till?”
Mizi blinks. “He’s not with you?”
Ivan looks surprised. “Should he be?”
“I just thought,” Mizi says, trailing off. “He was with you this whole time.”
Ivan tilts his head. “I haven’t seen him around. Should I go look for him?”
“He hides, sometimes,” Mizi says, and then nearly slaps her own forehead. Did she forget who she was speaking to?
“I can find him,” Ivan says. Knowingly.
“Yeah,” Mizi says. “Probably.”
-
Hyuna’s on her laptop when Mizi walks into her office.
“I wish I was more sorry,” Mizi says.
Hyuna raises an eyebrow, not bothering to look up. “Two months, and that’s the best you could come up with?”
Mizi bites her lip. She had thought about it, the million different configurations of things she could have said, how she could have shown Hyuna that despite the setback she caused, that Ivan and Till could still be useful. But she knows Hyuna a little better than that by now. More than usefulness and pragmatics, Hyuna prefers honesty over all else. “It’s the truth,” Mizi says.
Hyuna sighs, closing her laptop.
“Come here,” Hyuna says, patting the seat next to her. “Sit with me.”
Mizi does. “I am sorry I ruined our plans,” she says. “But.”
“I get it,” Hyuna says. “As much as I wish I didn’t. I’m happy your friends are alive, Mizi.”
Mizi nods. She doesn’t know what to say next. Luckily, Hyuna takes care of that for her.
“How are they? I’ll have to introduce myself to them later. I heard Ivan woke up.”
“He did. They’re fine.” If quietly avoiding each other could be described as such.
“No other health problems I need to worry about?”
“Not that I know of,” Mizi says.
“And you? Anything I need to worry about?”
“Not that I know of,” Mizi repeats.
Hyuna raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”
“What?”
A hand pinches Mizi’s cheeks. “You look stressed.”
Mizi bites her lip.
Hyuna huffs. “That bad?”
“It’s just. Been a lot,” Mizi says, eventually.
“Want to talk about it?”
“With you?”
Hyuna waves a hand. “I don’t know. With anyone. It’s good to talk about stuff like that. Makes you feel better.”
“Maybe,” Mizi says. She doesn’t know if she can, really, but she can understand the merits of it. She used to tell Sua near-everything. “Do you? Talk about stuff?”
Hyuna smiles wryly. “This isn’t about me.”
“I guess not,” Mizi says, but a part of her is amused, too. Hyuna has a tendency to bring that out, she supposes. “But it could be. You know. If you want to talk about it.”
Hyuna laughs, and kisses her. Mizi makes a sound against her mouth, but before she can react, Hyuna’s already leaning back.
Mizi blinks. Her second kiss. Both times with Hyuna. At a loss of anything else to say, she asks, “Is this you accepting my apology?”
Hyuna laughs again. “Half-right. I’m still mad at you.”
“Then—”
“Don’t think about it too much,” Hyuna says, grinning. “I wanted to do that, so I did. That’s all there is to it. If you hated it, just tell me.”
“I.” Mizi thinks about it for a moment. “I didn’t hate it.”
“Good,” Hyuna says.
-
There are still missions in between everything. Smaller-scale for now. They’re trying to lay low for a while. The Alien Stage producers are in an uproar to hunt down the rebels for ruining not one, but two rounds, and preventing the finale from taking place altogether. Hyuna’s original plan was apparently contingent on breaking into the venue while the rounds were taking place, when most eyes would be on the stage. Mizi had ruined it, but hopefully not for forever.
So. Small-scale missions it is. No less risk involved, though.
One mission rewards her with a new scar down her side.
Hyuna says it makes her look rugged.
Till flushes when she comes back to the base with half of her shirt missing.
Till isn’t allowed on missions yet. His mental state too finicky to be trusted when Ivan’s barely out of his deathbed.
“Maybe not the best wording,” Hyuna amends after she says it. “But the point still stands.”
Till seems to understand the point, anyways, because he doesn’t bother asking about it. Instead, he seems to find his place in the medical wings. Apparently, spending the better part of a month there has endeared him to the medics. He’s now sent on small errands for them whenever they catch him in the halls. It’s become common to see Till running around with bandages in hand.
Still steering clear of Ivan though, it seems.
-
For nearly an entire month, Mizi feels like she’s on the verge of something peaceful.
-
“Look at you,” Ivan says to her at one point. “You’re all different now.”
“Am I?”
The corner of Ivan’s mouth rises. Not exactly a smile. “You have a different expression now than you used to.”
Mizi feels off-kilter, a bit. “Good or bad different?”
“Neither different,” Ivan says. Then, “I heard you went out yesterday.”
Mizi did. “You can go out with us, too. When you’re ready.”
“Maybe,” Ivan says, in that tone that makes it sound like he’s humoring her.
Mizi tries to imagine it. Ivan running around with bombs and a gun and completing stealth missions with the rest of them. It’s not too hard, but the image doesn’t sit right with her. She can’t imagine Ivan being like that at all. Then again, months ago, she wouldn’t have been able to imagine herself in the same situation, either.
Mizi asks him, “Did you watch Till’s round? The one after yours?”
Ivan’s not-smile drops. “I did.”
“What did you think?” Mizi barely knows what to think about it herself. She doesn’t have the context for it, only knows that Till had been acting the way she had, when she was up against Luka. From that one round alone, she had understood the kind of competitor Luka was. She had seen Sua while she sang.
Till, instead, had probably seen—
“I think,” Ivan says. “That Till wasn’t focused enough.”
Mizi blinks. That... wasn’t what she had thought she would hear. Ivan doesn’t sound unkind as he says it. Like it’s a neutral observation. She understands now, a bit more now than she ever did in Anakt Garden, that there are parts of Ivan that she’s never really understood. She hadn’t given it much thought before, her time and thoughts much more likely to be filled with Sua, but she wonders if this was closer to the Ivan that Till had grown up with.
Mizi had always seen Ivan as a cut above most other people she knew. Clean-pressed clothes, camera-ready smile, kind and charismatic. They never needed to be actively doing something with each other to have fun. Sometimes it was nice to even just sit in silence. Mizi used to take naps on him when there was nothing better to do. He was comfortable, and it was easier, sometimes, to talk to him about things that she couldn’t talk to Sua about.
Maybe that’s what possesses her to ask:
“Do you think I deserved to win?”
Ivan raises an eyebrow.
“With Sua,” Mizi clarifies. It feels embarrassing to ask. Like she’s revealing too much. She never used to feel this conscious of herself before. “When we sang. Do you... do you think I should have won that round? It, it was so close. It could have gone either way, don’t you think?”
She doesn’t know what answer she wants to hear. Would it make her feel better or worse, to hear Ivan say no? Then again, she’s not sure she wants to hear him say yes, either.
Ivan’s eyes flash with something unreadable. “I think you’re wrong.”
Mizi pulls at a frayed thread on the edge of her sleeve. “About?”
“I don’t think it could have gone any other way,” he says.
“That’s,” Mizi starts. A copout, is what she wants to say. But she can accept it. It’s probably the best answer she’s going to get. Not a yes, and not a no. “Okay.”
There’s a beat of silence before she adds, “What about you? You and Till.” The round she’s still yet to watch. “Do you think Till deserved the win?”
“Yes,” Ivan says. Easier, this time.
“And,” Mizi says, “If Till had been... more focused? Against Luka? Who should have won then?”
Ivan smiles.
-
Ironically, it’s that conversation more than anything that makes her want to watch it. Round 6.
The video she clicks on has wracked an astronomical amount of views compared to clips of Alien Stage performances she’s seen in the past. She wouldn’t be surprised to see her round with Luka’s having a similar view count.
In the video, Till steps onto the stage in all-black. He looks pale. Ivan’s nowhere in sight.
Mizi frowns when the songs start. Till didn’t usually opt for slower songs like this. Was it Ivan’s preference? A compromise?
A nineteen-point score difference, Mizi thinks. For a style of song that played to Ivan’s strengths.
She realizes why, once the video reaches its end.
They hadn’t even finished the song.
What had Isaac said about Till, back then? Must really love him.
The comment spins in her head as she loops the video again. She can’t tell what either of them had been thinking. Why Till had stopped singing, and why Ivan had... done that. At the same time, it strangely makes sense. Of course this would happen to them.
It... makes her wonder, though.
Bad idea, she thinks, as soon as she goes to type in the search bar. She sees the alarms blaring in her head. Bad idea bad idea bad idea.
She finds a clip of My Clematis.
The camera switches between close shots of the two of them individually, and a wider shot of the both of them on stage together. They had sung most of it facing each other. It’s been so long since Mizi had heard her voice. Even through a recording, it makes Mizi’s breath catch in her throat. She manages to stop the video just in time, just before the scores get finalized on the board above their heads. Sua’s expression is partially obscured to the camera from this angle.
Mizi remembers it still, the smile Sua had given her. She had been breathing heavily, exhilarated from singing. The lights overhead had been hot enough to leave them both sweating.
Mizi stares at the screen.
Final conclusion: She shouldn’t have watched this. The wound of Sua isn’t as fresh as it was months ago, but it’s not painless either. Not even close.
-
Mizi lurches upwards in her bed. There’s a pressure in her chest keeping her from breathing. She chokes on her gasps, and feels the hot trail of tears down her cheeks.
In the back of her head, she’s laughing at herself. The grief had lessened in intensity for a little while, there. That’s on her for letting her guard down.
The rest of her head is filled with Sua, until all she can think is: I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.
-
She runs into Till in the hallway the next morning, sketching flowers on the back of an old report as he sits on the floor. Mizi almost turns back around, eyes heavy and sore from the night previous. It’s beyond obvious she spent the whole night crying hysterically into her pillow. But the thought of being alone in her room is infinitely worse, and she actually wants to talk to Till, so she drags herself into the room and tries to look at least semi-normal.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
Quietly, Mizi assesses him. His hair is tied back today, rather than sitting loosely against his shoulders. His bangs aren’t quite long enough to do the same, so a few strands fall over his eyes. He hasn’t bothered to put his piercings in today, either.
He looks up after finishing another petal. Whether he sees her still-red eyes and puffy face and decides not to comment, or he’s oblivious to it, Mizi doesn’t know, but she’s grateful for the lack of one. He’s probably no stranger to nights like that, anyway. “Hey.”
“Hi, Till.” Her voice comes out even at least. After a beat, she clears her throat. “I finally watched it. Your round.”
Mizi watches Till’s whole body lock up. Till drops his gaze back down to the paper. “What did you think?” He asks finally.
Mizi says, “He kissed you.”
“Yeah.” Till’s ears pinken, flush spreading down to his cheeks and neck.
“I didn’t think you guys did that.”
Till makes a face. “He wanted to try it once, a long time ago.”
“Did you?” Mizi asks. Mizi hadn’t. Not until Hyuna. Sua never offered, and Mizi was too shy to ask.
“No,” Till says. Like it’s an unconscious movement, his free hand comes to rub the side of his neck, right over where his name is. Ivan’s hands didn’t look gentle. The redness on his neck Mizi had noticed on the day of their escape makes sense now.
“You didn’t stop him from choking you,” Mizi says.
“...Are you asking me why?”
“No,” she says. “Unless you want to tell me. Is that why you’re avoiding him?”
“It’s that obvious?”
Mizi hums. “That you’re avoiding him? A little.” More than a little. She doesn’t think Till knows the meaning of subtlety, sometimes.
Till twirls the pencil in his hand. “To you? Or everyone?”
Mizi shrugs. “To Ivan, at least. I don’t know that anyone else would care enough to notice.”
“Right.” Till glances up at her again before shaking his head. “I don’t know. I... I still haven’t decided what to do about it. Any of it,” Till confesses quietly. This moment feels important, Mizi thinks. She had started this conversation to help. To get Till to open up. And now he is, before Mizi had even done anything. And Mizi doesn’t know what to do.
“Till, I.” I don’t know how to help you, she thinks. What is she supposed to say? She doesn’t know why Ivan did what he did. If he wanted Till to win, there were other ways of throwing the round, weren’t there? What was the plan if Till hadn’t stopped singing? Why did Till stop singing?
It’s not what happened with her and Sua. The both of them sang, and one of them won. There was no sacrifice with them.
The thought makes her pause.
There was no sacrifice with them. Mizi would have known if there was. Sua had done nothing but sing. The two of them, all they had done was sing.
(Do you think I deserved to win?
I don’t think it could have turned out any other way.)
No.
No, no, no, no.
Mizi would have known if Sua was planning something like that.
Mizi would have caught onto it. She would have stopped it, if there was a sacrifice involved. Sua didn’t throw their round. She couldn’t have. They sang to the end. Their line distribution was fair. Wasn’t it? The scores were close. Sua couldn’t have predicted what happened.
Ivan’s voice telling her I don’t think it could have turned out any other way rings in her head again and again and—
She exhales.
“What do you think I should do?” Till asks, and then immediately winces. “Sorry. I just. I know you might not have the answer. Sorry. I don’t know why I asked.”
Mizi swallows. “It’s fine,” she manages. “Have you talked to Ivan properly, since he woke up?”
Till shrugs. “Kind of. I don’t know. We haven’t, really. Talked. But we never did that before, either.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know,” Till repeats. “He’s just. He’s just so fucking. Ugh.”
Mizi cracks a smile before she realizes what she’s doing. “He is so fucking ugh, isn’t he.”
Till stares at her. “Since when did you curse?”
Mizi’s turn to shrug. “Since I decided I could. You should talk to him.”
“I don't want to talk about it with him. I don’t want to know what he has to say about it.”
Mizi stares down at the table. What she would give to talk to Sua one more time. “Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand him.”
“I don’t know,” Mizi says. “I think you understand him more than you think.”
“Like you understood Sua?”
Past tense. From someone else’s mouth, from someone else that knew her. It’s like a bullet wound, hot and sharp and overwhelming. But then, the feeling passes, and Mizi can breathe again.
“Maybe,” Mizi says. “If that’s how you want it to be. That’s why you were taking care of him while he was healing, right?”
Till’s face grows redder. “That. That’s.”
“There were people that were watching him,” Mizi continues. “Medics. But you were there, anyway.”
“...I was confused. I thought. I thought he couldn’t die while I was still feeling. Confused. I thought I wanted answers.”
“Well. He’s alive,” Mizi says. “So you may as well get them.”
-
It’s no one’s fault, at the end of the day. No one’s but the aliens that had done this to them. A bitter truth and a realization in the same breath.
It’s not the rebels’ fault that Sua didn’t get saved. Mizi barely knows why Hyuna had rescued her. They wouldn’t have bothered if she hadn’t decided to use her fists on Luka back then. On some days, she’s thankful about it. This chance to live.
(On the practical end of things, she had learned later that snatching her away had bought the rebels some time to carry out their plan. No one had found out that she had gone missing until it was too late to catch up with her. They bought themselves nearly a month of time to finetune their plan.
And after they had made their final escape, Luka had been crowned the winner of the season by default.)
It’s not Ivan or Till’s fault. What could they have done? They were stuck in the same hell she was.
The most bitter truth of them all: There was nothing she could have done, either. It’s not her fault, either.
-
Hyuna asks Mizi out to drinks at the bar again.
Mizi doesn’t remember how exactly the conversation turns to Sua, only that it does at some point, somewhere between three and four drinks in.
Hyuna chugs nearly half of her fifth bottle in one go. “I saw her promotional poster once. She was pretty.”
“Yeah,” Mizi mumbles. As though pretty could ever be enough to capture it.
Hyuna continues, “I kind of knew, all things considered, but I guess I didn’t really understand. But you guys,” she makes a circling gesture, “All of you guys were actually pretty close, weren’t you?”
Mizi doesn’t really know how Hyuna still sounds so coherent. “All of us?”
“Till and Ivan. And you.”
“And Sua.”
“Sure,” Hyuna concedes.
Mizi’s next swallow of alcohol burns down her throat. “I think I’m different now. Than before. When Sua was here.”
“You think so?”
Mizi nods. “I feel different.”
Hyuna hums. “Is that a bad thing?”
Mizi exhales. Maybe she’s too drunk for this conversation. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to change. I think I changed too much.”
Sua will forever be immortalized as the person she was on that stage. In less than a year, Mizi’s become a completely different person.
“I think we all change,” Hyuna says.
“Very insightful,” Mizi says, and Hyuna shoves her.
“I’m being serious,” Hyuna says. She clears his throat. “For what it’s worth, you haven’t changed all that much to me.”
Mizi huffs.
“Seriously. You’re still the same person that beat Luka’s lights out. You think you’re the only one who’s ever wanted to do that?”
At that, Mizi barks out a laugh. There’s something else in Hyuna’s words, another revelation of something that she’d usually keep under tight wraps in any other situation. Mizi nearly doesn’t pick up on it. But this isn’t the time to uncover any of that. “Probably not.”
“Damn right.”
Mizi takes another swig of her drink. She’ll regret this tomorrow, maybe, but for tonight, it’s fine.
For tonight, at least, a small piece of her soul feels held together.
-
It takes weeks before Mizi sees anything even come out of her talk with Till. It’s almost like they’ve turned into a stranger, adult version of who they used to be in Anakt Garden. They sit with each other in the cafeteria now, Till making sure Ivan’s plate carries as much food as they can get away with—Which isn’t much, because Till isn’t a good bargainer and even worse at acting cute in front of the cooks.
And now:
Mizi almost walks in on them. She can’t hear them from where they are in one of the common rooms, but the two of them are clearly in the middle of a conversation. They sit on either end of the couch, Till faced straight ahead, and Ivan faced towards Till.
Ivan’s gaze is intense, but he doesn’t look unhappy. Till’s face is pink.
Ivan reaches over and tugs on Till’s bangs. Till immediately slaps the hand away and glares at him.
The both of them stare at each other, without saying anything.
It makes Mizi want to laugh, but she doesn’t dare. Neither of them had noticed her yet.
Sua always had a pinched face wherever Till was involved that Mizi never understood, and she tended to treat Ivan more like a stubborn pest than the friend he was. But, maybe she would have been happy to see this.
Or maybe, Sua would have been happy to know that Till and Ivan becoming close again because it would have meant that they would leave her alone.
Mizi, at the very least, is happy for them. Just a little bit. Happy enough that they’ve figured it out. What it is, she isn’t quite sure, but she’s not about to interrupt them to find out.
She’ll just have to ask them later.