Underneath the ground was a black hole.

If you fell into that black hole, you would fall forever, in complete blackness.

You wouldn't be able to see, to hear, to feel, to smell, to taste.

You would just fall, forever, in that complete blackness, with your thoughts as only company.

The ground swallowed me whole.

I was in a void, a void of nothing. I wasn't sure if I existed. I didn't eat or drink. I lost the concept of those two actions. At work I just sat down, staring at the nothing that was this world as I now saw it. I was on sick leave but I never remembered, so I showed up every day anyway. I was hospitalised due to dehydration after I had collapsed at work. It didn't matter, honestly.

I was in my hospital bed with a cannula in my arm when I saw a silhouette with a long ponytail enter, holding a kidney dish with suture materials.

My eyes shot up.

"That will need stitches", the silhouette said with a melodic voice.

"Izuna..." I reached my hand out to grab him.

He smiled and laughed.

"Toby..."

And just as I was about to grab him, the illusion dispersed and disappeared.

And I was alone once more.

I stood with the pathologist in a room next to the farewell room, who had performed the autopsy on Izuna's body.

"The right side of his body was completely crushed. Most of his vital organs were fine and there weren't any major blood loss, which is why we could take most of his organs for donation except his right cornea, but his right and only kidney didn't make it. He had laid there for quite some time before he was found, without kidney function. The blood test results showed he highly likely died of hyperkalemia, causing his heart to stop. He was basically poisoned to death by the ion imbalance in his body caused by loss of kidney function."

I swallowed, processing this.

"Tell me truthfully", I said, voice void of emotions, arms crossed over my black turtleneck, knowing that his answer would become the background for the rest of my life. "Would he have survived if he had two kidneys?"

The pathologist looked at me carefully.

"And none of that 'You may never know'-bullshit", I warned. "I'm a doctor, too. I can see through it."

The pathologist sighed and crossed his arms. "Yes. Yes, the boy would have survived."

I let that sink in. The irony of it didn't go past me. If I hadn't been such a fool that night.

If I hadn't caused myself to lose so much blood so my kidneys wouldn't fail so I wouldn't have needed a transplant so Izuna wouldn't have needed to become a donor...

My soul broke into a thousand pieces.

"That will need stitches."

His warm smile.

"IZUNA!!"

When someone had been in an accident that heavily altered their appearance, the last farewell was made so that the family and loved ones did not need to see the destroyed parts.

For example, if someone had died by suicide by jumping from a height, they wouldn't show the piece of meat that the body turned into, but perhaps just a hand.

Which was why Izuna's entire right side was covered up.

I stood alone in the farewell room, looking at my lover, my life, my world, my light, but all light had left him. I didn't believe in the afterlife, and even if I did, that belief would have died now because Izuna wasn't there.

He just wasn't. There.

From some angles, he looked like Izuna. From other angles, I didn't recognise him at all. The side of his face that was visible was full of blue bruises. His skin was waxy and had a yellow-ish tinge to it. His eyes were closed. He had a pair of silky, silver trousers on, but his chest was bare. Someone had cleaned off the makeup he'd worn that day and removed his nipple piercing. On his left hand, his glittering engagement ring was still visible. It caught the morbid light of the room and reflected it beautifully, just like I'd hoped it would with sunlight.

That ring had never seen sunlight, and never would.

I went to him and took his hand. It was stiff from rigor mortis, and icy cold, but it was still his hand, his nails painted black, the shapes of his fingers still so familiar underneath my own.

There were sutures on his abdomen from where the autopsy had taken place, sutures that would never become scars since Izuna was dead, and his skin had stopped healing.

I took my other hand and stroke his beautiful, shiny hair that had been freed from his hairband.

I stayed like that, holding his hand in one of mine, stroking his hair with my other, looking at his peaceful, resting face. I wanted to think it looked like he was sleeping, that it looked like he would wake up any time now, pleading me for breakfast in bed as he did each Sunday, me pretending I didn't want to get up just to hear him beg, then gladly going up, asking him from the kitchen if he wanted maple syrup or strawberry jam on his pancakes (he always chose jam but I still always asked, for over two years), bringing them with me to him in bed, sitting down and watching him devour them as I sipped my coffee and stole the occasional bite by kissing him when he had his mouth full.

But Izuna didn't look like he was sleeping.

Izuna looked like he was dead.

Izuna looked like he was dead and was never, ever going to wake up.

This is it, I thought. This is it. It ends here.

My entire body started shaking. I felt my face crumple up as the tears welled up in my eyes. One teardrop landed on Izuna's cheek, then another. In the end, my knees buckled, and I leaned my head on the edge of his bed and wept, each and every one of our plans and dreams for the future escaping me in every teardrop.

One by one.

And one by one.