My head strings sentences, "Chinny. . . It's not what you think," I say.

The sentences don't make any sense, but a lot about this situation does not make sense. Just another chaos of my invention.

"You're dying?" she has never looked this angry, not at me.

"Would you at least, let me explain?" I close my eyes as the words escape.

When I decided not to tell her, I was hoping to save her; she looks like I ruined her.

"Four months? You've been dying for a while! What do you want to explain!" her voice bangs against my head.

It dawns on me, I've known Chinny for more than half a decade, during which she has told me every single thing, including the time she was nearly sexually abused by a primary school teacher, and the time her parents almost separated because her father got another woman pregnant, now, she's realising that I didn't do the same, it's not such a great realisation.

"Chinny," I attempt to reason with her.

She begins clawing at the fascinator that seems tangled in her hair.

I stand up, "Chinny!"

She shoots me a glance I've never seen before, throwing the fascinator at my feet and taking off her shoes. "Don't. ever. talk. to. me. again. " she wipes her eyes and turns around.

"Chinny. Please, wait." I call out desperately.

She doesn't stop or look back.

I follow her. Skipping recklessly with what seems like two steps in the air accompanied by four increasingly out-of-breath pants.

A lot of meters in front of me, her silver dress flays in the low evening breeze. I'm still trying to call out to her in my breathlessness, I know she can hear me.

Why won't she stop and just understand for a bit.

My head tells me to stop running, my lungs are screaming at me to catch my breath, it burns, but not as hot as the liquid pool of regret sipping out of my eyes. I'm drained.

I collapse on my knees, it's not voluntary. I want to run up and grab her, but my body has it's rules, and even if I want to resist, it commands me to obey.

"CHINNY! PLEASE!" I scream out with my last wistful breath, closing my eyes, squeezing as hard as I can against the rotating aurae floating around the darkness from exerting myself too hard.

When I look, she'll be standing, not running anymore, because I can't keep up.

"Why?" she asks. Her voice, almost inaudible in the way it's soaked up her tears.

I open my eyes, slowly, intentionally, taking my time to breathe.

She stopped, a few meters away; away from the breathless heaving mess of tears I have become. At least she's not a mile away, I couldn't move any further if I wanted.

"Chin—"

"YOU'RE DYING! BOMA! DYING! AND YOU TOLD EVERYONE BUT ME! THAT'S NOT WHAT FRIENDS DO! THEY DON'T KEEP SUCH SECRETS!!"

"You're not trying to understand. "

"DO YOU KNOW HOW PAINFUL THIS IS? HOW BAD IT MAKES ME FEEL?" she doesn't turn around. Maybe if she sees me, she won't be so mad—but she doesn't want to see me—to let me trick her into believing that I had a reason for not telling her, when I don't.

"Chinny. . ."

"I wasn't supposed to find out, right?"

She's right and that's not the answer she wants to hear, so I let her resonating voice sift through me, while I come to terms with the gravity of my choices.

"It was supposed to be best for you. " I say.

"That one day I'll wake up and get a call from Mom, or from Ivan, and what Boma? What?"

She pauses for a second to stomp her bare feet into the inter-locked concrete floor like a schizophrenic having a manic episode. Makeup muddled sweat dribbling down her brown neck and onto her cleavage.

"What did you plan? That they'll tell me you slept and didn't wake up, or that you had a fatal crisis? Was that the plan?"

"No. That's not it," I say. That's it but what good will it do to concur with her?

"THEN WHAT?" she sobs some more.

I can't tell if the silence is for letting out steam, or if she actually wants an answer, because she's right, that was exactly my plan, but not in the way she's interpreting it.

"WHAT WERE WE BUILDING ALL THOSE YEARS? TRUST. THAT'S WHAT I BUILT. CAN'T SAY MUCH ABOUT YOU." she says.

I don't know how I manage to grow the strength to cry, but it happens, it keeps happening. I'm wiping volume after volume—leaky eyes don't mend broken trusts, so it means only as much as—I should have told her that her best friend was living on borrowed time. I should have ripped that bandage and things would have been different.

"Tell me, did you feel like you were going to be protecting me by keeping that away?" she asks.

"Yes," I reply at her because SHE JUST WON'T LOOK AT ME.

She finally turns around, but not as much as a glimpse of calm flickers behind her sodding damp eyes.

"Well guess what, I've been with you every single day, and I've lived with that fear, but I've always tried to be here to make you feel okay, to make you less alone."

She palms the tears away like they are irrelevant, an arrant irritation to the anger she's feeling. "All you ever do is you push people away, then claim you're doing it to protect them, meanwhile it's all about yourself. Being selfish. All. Over. Again."

The harsh reality of her words make the tears drizzle more. She's right. I push people away, then I claim I'm protecting them but really I'm protecting myself.

"You're right, Chinny. You are. I should have done better and I didn't, but please, don't go off like this."

"God. I can't even believe you." she shakes her head before skipping away.

I've lost count of how many breaths I've lost or really how many times I've said sorry but I keep saying them anyway; losing more breaths and repeating the cycle.

My fingers find each other, they're freezing. I feel that familiar stream of hydrochloric acid leaking into my back. It bends me to its will so I just sit there, pulling my chest together while my subconscious draws up memories of me promising to tell her everything and keep away nothing. Over and over—you broke the one promise she kept.

Death is nothing short of the chaos my whole life is, I can't die in peace, I can't even choose to want to save the people I love from collapsing in on themselves.

Why is that not my call to make?
At least just this once, why can't I choose how it happens?

My lungs force the first cough out. I block out my mouth with my elbow.

This is supposed to be mom's wedding.
I can't ruin it.
No.
It's not about me.

Another violent cough rattles my ribs, leaving my throat burning just as much as my back. I drag myself up. It's almost impossible not to stumble but I don't stop reminding myself that today is not about me.

The more I remind myself, the more the pain seems to bite at me, extending its grip to my head. I pull my hands away from the fascinator, clutching at my head and asking it to, "just stop!"

If that was how it worked, I wouldn't be here, would I?

The human brain is so good at magnifying memories in the way that it evokes strong emotions. The type that threatens to sweep away the very thought of stability, but, stability is something I've never known so what does this emotion now sweep away? The thought that I was going to be okay, the fake words I whispered to myself?

'Okay' is not a state of being, it is not even a state of optimism, it just doesn't exist, a façade, the type that blindly binds you from realities.

Everything is not going to be okay, nothing will. Mom won't be okay by getting married, Ivan won't be okay by being sweet and kind or rich, Chinny is obviously not okay, and me—how is death okay—the very thing our existence is built for yet, instructed to fight against?

'Okay' is a big fat lie. I've lived that lie for too long and this pain is unforgiving in the way it reminds me.

"STOP!"

I jitter. His hand grabs my back. I don't need to open my eyes to know who it is.

"STOP!" I yell at him. "JUST STOP! THIS IS STUPID!"

He doesn't move his grip. I see his eyes and they're a deep brown—like burnt sugar—with little angry red veins streaking the white corner, doing a great job of telling me how much of a lie I am living—how can he be angry about my dying when he has a great life waiting for him?

"LET ME GO! THIS IS STUPID!"

"WHAT EXACTLY?" his brows furrow so deep, I'm forced to catch my breath.

"THIS—"

"That you keep hurting yourself intentionally? Is that it? Because it is damn. right. stupid."

I struggle out of his hands as if I'm not already all weak and physically drained. He seems well aware of this fact, obviously, in the way he demonstrates his stronghold.

"Don't pep talk me."

"Well you need it. What's with you and pain?" he asks.

I scoff, you have to be kidding me.

"I'M FEELING IT NOW! IT'S ALL I'VE EVER FELT AND NO! YOU WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND. " I struggle a little more. He doesn't budge.

"RIGHT! I WON'T!"

I blink steadily at him. He rolls his eyes like I'm making him do something he swore to never do. "Boma, I can't understand how you understand this pain of yours. Because you invent it so well it seems like you're the only one suffering, the only one who has to live it."

"When was the last time you had to be dying, Ivan, literally?"

"Never," he replies defiantly.

"Then how can you stand there and pretend to understand what I'm going through?"

"I'm not pretending to understand, I can never do that okay, I'm trying to let you live."

"Oh. Oh, the charity case?"

"Would you just shut up?" he wipes my eyes with his sleeve. "Just shut up for once, and allow yourself to live. You deserve it, you deserve to be loved, and cared for, when it's time to go"—his voice thickens like he's telling himself that it's okay; it's not, but I'm too drained to prove that point—"You can't stop the world from missing you. You can't. You can't make your mom not grief, you can't make me want to move on, you can't! So quit trying to rob yourself and the people that only want to love you of the time we should be cherishing"—his eye flickers off the one drop of tear clinging onto his lashes—"You want to know the truth?"

I find myself silent enough to hear how my heart beats angrily against his restraint, again, feeling small and powerless over my own life. He's made it clear that he isn't letting go, so I remain silent.

"The truth is that, you can't stop us from loving you. By us, I'm emphasising me. And that does not matter if you drop dead today, or next year, you can't stop me. You are completely defenseless over how this turns out and I'm not joking. That's enough. "

The stretch of silence becomes too long, my knees begin to buck and as much as I don't want it to, his stronghold becomes a much needed support.

"You've worn yourself out and I won't want your Mom to find you like this, today is not about you. So, you'll follow me to the car. We'll stay there until you feel better. Then, we can move on. But I don't want you to say another word of that bullshit you have stored up in your head."

I can feel my pulse slow down.

"Breathe," he says.

I listen. It's not as deep as my lungs crave but it's deep enough to initiate another deeper breath.

The pain in my head maliciously spreads to my chest.

It's bullshit to allow it to conjure bullshit thoughts in my head, so I ignore it; I ignore everything.

○○○○○
Thank you, this book just recently hit 4k reads and it's because of you, I couldn't thank you better. I wanted to do something special: I thought of giving you guys the opportunity to pick how soon I update the next chapter (drop a comment) aside that, I'm out of ideas so, maybe you could suggest something, or just accept my heartfelt thanks. Till the next update, keep Boma, Chinny and Ivan in your heart and maybe, reflect on lost friendships.
◇Tamunosakiogaree◇