If I Feel I Want To Die

Chapter 21

Dan had been driving around looking for Ayan for a while now. It felt like hours, but the actual search time was probably closer to only 45 minutes. When he left the studio, it was still bright daylight. But now, the daylight has since faded into the soft pinks and oranges of a sunset at dusk. As time went on, Dan became more and more worried.

Taking off directly from the studio had been reckless. Somehow, he’d tricked himself into believing that the search would be easy. After all, during his police days, he’s often searched for lost dogs and cats and even children. They always turned up in the end. Why would Ayan be any different?

However, Dan forgot that with those previous searches, he had never gone in completely blind. When looking for pets, he always had an owner there to tell him about the animal’s habits and favorite hiding places. When he was looking for a child, Dan usually had both the parents give testimony about the behavior of their child. On top of that, in the most serious cases, he usually has his entire search-and-rescue team, complete with a canine force to track the scent. As a result, as a cop, he was never truly alone. But this time, he was. It was only him, a 34-year-old guy searching blindly for the figure of a young man he just barely knew, Ayan, a person he’d met less than five times.

As the evening sunset gave way to the blue-haze of twilight, Dan knew he was running out of time.

There was part of him that wanted to turn around, drive back to the studio, and fell into bed. After all, he was scheduled for a long shift at the construction site tomorrow. He had really ought to be resting rather than straining his eyes by squinting into the darkening evening haze for a man who probably didn’t even want to be found. But no matter how tempted Dan was to turn back and give up looking for Ayan, there were two things which held him back:

One, he had a sense of responsibility: He and Yok had brought Ayan into their home, but their careless words had clumsily isolated and emotionally injured the man they were trying to invite into their home and hearts. Ayan wasn’t just a typical man too: He was a sensitive guy with a history of mental illness and suicide ideation. If Dan left Ayan on his own after experiencing what might have been a heartbreaking and devastating conversation, how were Dan’s actions toward Ayan any different than neglect of a vulnerable person? Therefore, at the moment, driving around at night looking for Ayan was the only decent thing to do.

Two, Dan promised Sunflower he would give Ayan the drawing as soon as Dan found him. So, if he dared to return back to the studio without any news of Ayan, Yok would be furious. More accurately, Sunflower would sulk endlessly and perhaps even start crying again. Whatever the case, the childlike man’s disappointment would be heavy, and he wouldn’t be able to hide or likely even try to hide how much he hated Dan— his cowardly, deceptive boyfriend—for letting him down again.

Shit. It had only been a handful of months since what had become one of the all-time worst moments of Dan’s entire life. Before becoming a cop, Dan’s life was truly an unremarkable one. He’d never known how much devastation his actions could cause until the day he made a snap decision and was forced to look upon the cold corpse of an unarmed man. This man, a criminal associated with drug trafficking had lost his life so easily because of a damn simple misunderstanding. This choice Dan took seconds had subsequently haunted him and his art for years.

In that damned moment, he’d taken the life of not only a desperate criminal, but also someone’s husband and someone’s father, Sean’s father. The minute the man fell and breathed his last, Dan had felt the weight of innocent blood on his hands, and he’d been thrown deep into a whirlwind of feelings and thoughts akin to hell: endless grief, fierce self-hatred, persistent frustration, heavy apathy, and cold, dark fear. Hell! If it wasn’t for Yok, Dan might have continued to wander blind and soul-dead in that hell until he died. Yok was not only his lover, but also his fucking savior.