Beep~ Beep~ Beep~ Beep~
Resting her head on his chest, Leen directly listened to the source of the sound in the otherwise silent hospital ward. Her face couldn't help but carry some melancholy amidst the sadness it was showing, sadness that blended with the calm she had after decades of seeing what the world had to offer, of navigating the world, and the people.
Her breath was calm, as if in resonance to the barely rising and falling chest below. The smell of the hospital tried, but it failed to overpower the smell she had become used to since a long time, actually, even before she came to recognize it as an inseparable part of her life.
Suddenly, the chest below her stirred, weaker than ever.
*Cough*
She rose up, and as expected, Ryan was awake, tired, but awake.
"Hey…"
That weak voice stirred her old heart, and she smiled:
"Hi…"
Ryan breathed in, then slowly looked around. His eyes were clearer than they had been the last few days. They were even clearer than before he fell into a light coma after sleeping, and got admitted here.
Leen's heart twisted, but she didn't show anything. And though she knew, though she could foresee the inevitable, she asked a question:
"Do you want me to call the kids?"
Maybe it is the inevitable they both knew was a few minutes, a few seconds away, that made her ask something she could guess the answer to, something to keep their whispered conversation alive in the lifeless ward.
Ryan thought for a moment, and shook his head, and exhaled an answer:
"No… Just the two of us…"
Leen couldn't help but freeze, and her features softened as she was reminded of that day fifty years ago.
_ _ _
_ _ _
Fifty years ago, before the civil affairs office.
It was a Saturday, a day joyful for most, if not all, who came to step into those halls with a spring in their steps. That was the case for Leen too, and for her family who had come to witness the turning point of her life. That was the case for her friends, and most importantly, for her best friend.
In a simple but elegant dress, she waited with anticipation, as her heart beat faster with each movement of the needle of her watch, with each step it took closer to the time that would witness her love being cemented.
Every two to three seconds, she couldn't help looking toward the side, toward Ryan, searching his eyes just to seek reassurance in the calm of their lake green color. And each time, he did just that, without fail, reassuring her with his smile that did not hide his joy for her. And that only stoke her eagerness for the coming first step of her wedding more, because after the signing of the papers, there was that true wedding waiting for her.
Feeling giddy, Leen shone, her happiness blinding, only to see Ryan pause from the corner of her eyes. Then he looked down, but not at his phone, but at hers, which she was keeping for him, and which he knew the passcode of since, well, since they became inseparable years ago. That was just how close they had become, with nothing hidden from each other.
Leen smiled, thinking about their friendship, then asked, her tone light with levity, unsuspecting:
"Is there a message for me?"
Ryan nodded, then held the phone toward her. She was lucky to have someone to take the place of the pockets her dress did not have, and the purse she had decided would have been a bother on this day where the focus could not be on anything other than paper to be signed, and the one to sign it with.
She looked at the road, but still no sign of him, so she had the time to distract herself. She took the phone. She unlocked it after a swipe to the side, and opened the message, then the world faded.
Her gaze seemed to zoom, at the same time as it seemed to lose focus, locked onto the picture on display as if it was an anchor, a tether above the abyss, above the gates of hell.
"Leen, are you alright?"
She seemed to hear a voice, but her brain could not process what was being said. It could not even process that something was being said, as if wrapped in a fog, while drowned in thick, viscous liquid.
"Leen?"
The world turned grey, and she stumbled.
"Leen!!!"
Only when he held her did Leen seem to feel reality again. She felt the ground under her feet again, and felt the hand holding her with strength she sorely needed.
Ryan glanced at her pale face, and took the phone from her hand. Even though the timeout period had passed, he swept the screen to the side and unlocked it. The subtle sound of that process sounded like a distant thunderclap, and it shook Leen.
Ryan saw what had broken the happiness Leen had been glowing with, and his hand shook, the one he was holding the phone with, even though the one he was holding Leen with remained as steady as a pillar.
He clenched his teeth, and looked down at the caption below the picture.
"Hehehe… Dax lost the bet! I managed to get him late for his own wedding! I bet Leen never wrung him dry! Hehehehe…"
Ryan's heart hammered away at his ribcage with such anger that he didn't know how to process it, how to vent it. He clenched his fist with the desire to crack the phone and crush it, and he indeed succeeded, in part, and he indeed felt some anger bleed, as he glared at the crack that ran through the middle of the screen, through the chest exposed as the one who had wrung Drax took a selfie with Leen's fiance who still had yet to wake up.
The bright smile that was like a taunt, the comfortable sleeping expression that was like a blade to the heart, and worse of all, the brightening day that was still seeing no fiance arriving, even as the time drew close.
Leen broke down. She crumbled, her shock giving way to numbness. But Ryan couldn't react to her breakdown. He was still struggling with the rage he had yet to finish processing, until he blinked… and the message had been recalled. He blinked again, and confirmed the fact, before others seemed to regain the ability to react too in the group of friends where the message, maybe, should never have appeared.
Shock, concern, feigned concern, pity, veiled indifference. Ryan's arm shook, as his grip tightened until…
*Bang!!*
His action, his rage, the sound, all of that shook the startle crowd. But after he did that, he suddenly left. He hurried away without looking back, leaving behind a crowd whose surprise gave way to bewilderment, and a phone almost broken after hitting the pavement.
Even Leen couldn't help but raise her head. And looking at his back going away, it was like her broken heart being ground to pieces, each step he took without looking back pulling her desire to live out of her body.
Her sight blurred, and she didn't even know why, or how. Only, her brain, her subconscious seemed to finally compute the information she had just seen, and her numbness cracked. Tears came up, like a dam with a fault running through it failed to keep it at bay, before it broke down, and the salty water ran down her face, obscuring the world that seemed to have abandoned her.
Her fiance, right before their marriage, had betrayed her, and apparently without remorse. And her best friend, the one who had always supported her, had always been there, always been a pair with her to smile at the world, who she had never thought would dig a hole in her heart, also abandoned her.
She crumbled as she cried with barely a sound, much to the surprise of the rest. Her despair was so tragic that the sunny day seemed to dim, and it was only then that the others reacted. But who could console her? Who could pick up her heart and patch up the pieces? Who could bring the grey world back to life again?
Leen cried like she never had, like she never thought she would ever, and without the support that left her even more hollow than the betrayal.
She cried, and had she not been too shaken to find a rooftop, she might have jumped to end it all, to stop feeling the pain. Oh, how it hurt it so much! It hurt like a branding iron being twisting in her being, in a deep part she had never known existed.
Suddenly, the crowd around her parted, bringing light that she thought she would never feel again. She was suddenly yanked up from the ground, and confronted with a fierce face she thought she would never see again.
The strong hands holding her shook her, as if to break the emptiness that had invaded her, as if to wake her up from the despair, to pull her up from the abyss, and she heard a roar she would never forget, even as from the corner of her eyes, she caught sight of the documents Ryan did not have in his hand before leaving earlier, documents needed to register a marriage:
"Come! It has always been just the two of us! Don't you dare cry for a piece of trash who doesn't deserve you! Even if the world doesn't want you, I will accompany you for all our life! Let's go! So what if he doesn't value you!?! Come! I will marry you! You came here for that, and you are not leaving with your head down! I will not let you leave here with your head down!"
And with that, he pulled her by the hand to the government building behind them, uncaring of the surprise around, and her numb, tear-stricken face.
Only, her numbness this time was for a different reason. Her numbness was because of something she had dug while her heart had been empty, something she had never expected she had deep inside her heart.
Looking at the back before her, her heart leaped and patched itself up, suddenly finding something to live, finding what to live for.
_ _ _
_ _ _
In the ward, Leen, her hair now gray, only longer and thicker than Ryan's more spare hair, hugged him like that first their friendship had transitioned to become something more, something she only noticed she had always been feeling deep inside while in despair.
If only time had stopped then…
But even with how advanced science had become, death remained undefeated, so there was only one hope to cling onto:
"I will be going first… Let's be friends again… In our next life…"
Her eyes glistening, Leen nodded with a calm smile that mirrored Ryan's small one:
"Yes… in our next life."
With that whisper, Ryan smiled wider, then exhaled for one last time. He stopped breathing, almost eighty years after his first cry, almost fifty years after taking the hand of his best friend and pulling out of despair.
His heart stopped, and he left first, a step before her, to lead the way, just like that time.
Beep~~~~~~
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Alternative Title: Let's be friends again