Fate Carries You Away; Drifting Further and Further

Chapter 5: Like Crossing A Field On A Foggy Morning

Aslan Callenreese

9 Jul. 2018

I saw him, Griffin, in Eiji's eyes.

It started out with my mind fooling me just once, but then it started happening each morning. Sometimes even more often, at random moments, like when he reaches out to me and smiles.

It creeps me out, seeing my dead brother in the person who's taking care of me. Hallucinations cause me to not just see the resemblance, but they literally show me Griffin fading into Eiji.

I don't know why it happens; maybe it's because his smile looks like Griffin's, or because he's so kindhearted that even after I squeezed his arm so hard it had red welts on it afterwards, he still tried to cheer me up each day. But I think it's because he called me Aslan, my real name; only Griffin called me that. And the way he said it, the tone, it just reminded me of Griffin too much.

It happened again this morning, when Eiji was fluffing the pillows that I use when I lay in the windowsill. He glanced in my direction and chuckled, "I don't get how you lay comfortably on these pillows" sounding too much like Griffin, who said something alike that years ago.

It felt like my heart shattered. And I must've lost control of my anger again, because I blacked out completely and when I came to I was on the floor, alone in the room, surrounded by pillows that looked like they were thrown. That was an hour ago, and I have barely moved since then.

I only got up to get the most recent picture I have of Griffin and me, so I can just cry for a moment. And that's exactly what I do; looking at the very picture from when Griffin was still himself and I was still a little chubby with fourteen years old. I lost all that weight, like Griffin lost all his memories.

I remember taking this picture, it was only a couple of days before Griffin's condition got worse.

Three years later he died.

Exactly three months ago, on the ninth of April.

That's why I'm having a harder time today. Everything seems to remind me of Griffin, everything seems to hit me more than it usually would. I guess that's what grief feels like after three months.

"I miss you, Griff," I whisper, looking into his distant eyes. "I wish you were here now."

A tear streams down my face when I remember how he would always be by my side to hold me when I was sad. He wouldn't let me cry like this, not because I'm a boy, but because he couldn't handle seeing me sad; he'd always say it would make him cry too, and he didn't want that.

I dry my tears with the fabric of my t-shirt, smiling weakly at the memories of my brother.

I'm glad I dried them, my tears, because when I look up I'm staring straight into Eiji's eyes. He looks worried, crouched down beside me. His eyebrows are perked up, almost like he's asked something.

"Huh?" I mutter.

"I asked if you're okay," Eiji repeats.

I nod once, but at the same time tears start bubbling up again. I start crying, just like that, without a way to stop the sobs from coming. In between sniffles, I admit I'm not okay.

Eiji slumps down beside me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. He pulls me up against him, like Griffin always would when I was crying and he knew all I needed was a shoulder to cry on.

Eiji does exactly the same, lending me his chest to curl up against while being calmly rubbed with the mouse of his hand. And I do the same as I always used to do, I bury my face in the fabric of his clothes and let it all out; there's no reason to keep it in anyway.

I don't even know for how long we sit there until one of us finally talks.

It's Eiji, carefully asking me if I need something. "A tissue? A cup of water?"

My throat is dry and I'm convinced that a tissue would be nice after nonstop crying for god-knows-how-long, but I shake my head. I don't want Eiji to leave my side, not now.

"Okay," Eiji replies, staying silent for a long time after that, just holding me close.

I sniff once before sitting upright. I look into Eiji's dark brown eyes while mumbling, "It's been three months." I swallow; I don't want to tell him, but he deserves to know why I just cried on his lap for such a long time. "Exactly three months ago, I lost Griffin."

Eiji nods once, before glancing at the picture in my lap. He looks at it for a while before asking, "Is that him, the guy in the brown cardigan?"

I nod, chuckling even though the tears start dripping down my cheeks again. Telling Eiji about how that old, nasty brown cardigan used to be his favorite piece of clothing. "He was only twenty-seven on this picture, but he had the fashion sense of a grandpa, really."

Eiji giggles softly, before asking me what Griffin was like.

"He acted older than his age too," I admit, especially when I was younger I always thought Griffin acted more grown up than most people his age. He was a year younger than I am now when he moved into another house with me and started working fulltime to keep himself and me alive. "He also was very caring and kindhearted, a little like you." A lot, actually. "And he was very brave."

Eiji smiles, but when I tell him that Griffin never seemed scared of something, not even of dying, his expression grows gloomy. He hesitates before asking me, "Are you? Scared of dying, I mean."

"No." I shake my head. "Nobody can escape death, everyone is mortal. I'm just a little higher on some reaper's list, it's my fate, and I've accepted that a long time ago."

"Really?" Eiji gapes at me, just like I said something crazy just now.

I nod. "Really."

Eiji leans with his head onto the side of my mattress, looking up at the ceiling. He takes a moment to think about it, before saying, "I guess you're right, to some extent." He turns to me and smiles kindly, telling me that he thinks that's very brave of me. "I would be terrified."

"Everyone is," I tell him. "but it's not the dying that you're scared of, it's the unknown that's waiting for you." I lean my head onto the mattress as well, and suddenly my face is very close to Eiji's.

I turn to him and whisper the thing Griffin told me when I was just diagnosed and told him that I was scared of dying. "Think about it this way; you're walking out onto the fields on a foggy morning. Even though you sometimes can't even see what's right in front of you, you're probably not scared in the slightest." I pause. "That's the unknown. Whether it's a misty field or death, it can't be that scary."

"Wow," Eiji whispers after being silent for a while. "I never thought about it that way."

I smile weakly. "Well, it's just Griffin's way of making things seem less scary."

"Your brother loved metaphors, didn't he?" Eiji teasingly pokes me in the side. "Are you like that too?"

"No, I'm nothing like that." I chuckle. "But Griffin, well, he was a poet; finding resembles between two things and connecting them through vague sentences seemed to be his way of coping with life."

"So, then what's your way of coping?" Eiji glances at me.

I shrug, because I never thought about coping with anything; some days I find the need to cry, some days I read a book or ten to get my mind off things and other days I just space out for hours. But that's when it hits me, the reason why coping with life has become harder over the past months.

"I coped by talking," I say out loud. "Whenever I felt bad, I went to Griffin."

Ever since he passed away, I've been bottling them up deep inside of me. Up to this moment.

Eiji looks at me, he seems to know what I'm thinking, because right when I need it he tells me this.

"That's a good way of coping." He smiles. "Andif you need to talk, I'll be here for you."