none but the lonely heart

chapter three

It's another morning to pass in calmness for Queensland Symphony Orchestra second violinist Eddy Chen: like every day before and every day to come, Death-Cast doesn't call him simply because he isn't dying today.

He's one of the luckier ones: people who don't wake up to the Allegro from Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11 blaring out of their phones, people who are lucky enough to have decades longer to live without being chosen as Death's next target—lucky people who get to live their lives in ease when tomorrow is certain.

He's unlucky sometimes, maybe. When your life doesn't quite orbit any definite motif besides survive, when your life doesn't have an outlined sense of direction and you're hanging by just the wayward compass lodged in your mind—maybe that is, in fact, a sort of death. Eddy isn't one to know, really.

When he's clicking and scrolling through the Last Friend app late into the night, wondering what it'd be like for someone to know they've completely run out of tomorrows, the moment comes that swings his heart and mind off-course and changes everything: he finds a profile he knows all too well and the pit of his stomach falls.

The unsettling blend of amazement and fear would've hit Eddy less if it had occurred to him before, why the conductor of the Queensland Symphony had sent out that email earlier in the evening, postponing the orchestra's upcoming concerts and marking the concertmaster's spot as empty. He could have had an answer, when the other string players talked about that regretfully, our upcoming concert programs will have to be postponed until further notice email.

He reaches out with a sorry you'll be lost, and with a string of messages back and forth, they connect—and it turns out the concertmaster of the QSO, bright and charismatic and exceptional on the violin as he is, really did get the call from Death-Cast.

In a spur-of-the-moment decision, Eddy offers to be Brett Yang's Last Friend and stay glued to his hip on his End Day, to get to know him outside their shared orchestral careers, to let him live every last tomorrow on his last day—even if it means he'll have to watch him die in the end.

It'll be worth the day we spend together, he tells himself countless times as he drives to his house, as little flecks of a warm childhood memory, mere minutes long and lost to all the years that came after, come to mind. It'll be worth living every last tomorrow with him.

"I'm outside," Eddy says into his phone, parking his car in the driveway and stepping out, slinging his violin case over his shoulder.

"Alright." Brett's voice comes tinny from the phone speaker. "I'll be there in a second."

Eddy hangs up, looking over to Brett's house just as the door swings ajar. A man with dark hair and glasses steps out, zipping up his jacket and slinging his violin case onto his back before walking over to where he stands.

"Hey."

"Hey."

It's different from their greetings in orchestra rehearsals, brief nods to eachother as one or the other walks in during tuning—here in front of Brett's house at four in the morning, they stand awkwardly, both waiting for the other to say something, anything.

Eddy wants to say something, anything, but he can't bring himself to open his mouth and form coherent words, to ask the question that's been etched all over his heart since day one: do you remember that afternoon all those years ago? He stays silent, and in this moment, he hates himself for it.

There's some things Eddy never stops to truly notice—but from where he stands this close, he can see the unique fleck against the white of Brett's left eye, the way the early morning breeze dances gently in his hair. It fills him with some feeling that makes his heart feel light, something he can't quite put his finger on; a feeling he carelessly wards off.