Part 1
**1**
The room is enclosed in darkness. The grey curtains that cover the doors leading to the balcony flutter and dance to the rhythm of the wind. It is the only sound heard, the only glimpse of light escaping into the room. She lays restlessly in her bed, too many thoughts haunting her mind. She finally settles on laying on her back, her eyes tracing over the flowery patterns laced onto the ceiling wall.
And from her balcony that she knows a little too well, where her greetings and goodbyes of those souls she helped usually take place, a small glow of blue shines brightly against her curtains. It begins to grow in an instance until the whole room has exploded in light. That is all it takes for her to sit up straight, pull the covers off herself and walk towards the balcony.
She yanks the curtains open, pulls the doors, and sees him standing there against the railing, tilting his head up to the sky.
His aura is almost as bright as the stars, and it envelops his figure. The familiarity of his presence over the last few months has allowed her eyes to adjust enough that she no longer feels the urge to cover them when looking at him. His brown hair is airy and flows to a wind that is no longer there. He smiles at her, a usual sight from Antonio. But this time it is more hopeful and warm. It is not carrying the weight of his usual emptiness and longing. This is a shift she has seen too often. For him, tonight means the world. For her, it will be the crumbling of hers.
“It is time.” His velvet voice splits, creating an echo, and the air around them suddenly thins.
Her stomach drops at his words, but she conceals it well. She stands beside him.“I knew you could do it. I knew you could move on.”
She tries to place her palm on top of his, but her face falls when the blue shadow of his hand vanishes like smoke. Once she lets go, it comes together again.
It is happening. He is finally fading away, although he was never completely visible when she first met him originally. No matter how many times she has done this in the past, she has never learnt from it. It is only as they begin to leave that she realises her mistakes.
How can she keep on allowing herself to forget, even if it is just a moment, that he is only just a shadow, a floating spirit she is only tasked to help move on into the afterlife. He was never supposed to be her friend or someone she cares about, but she cannot help but fall into mourning at the idea of him being completely gone.
As Antonio looks down at her hand, his face softens.
“I would not have been able to do this without you,” he says gratefully, his eyes shimmering just like the rest of him.
“Do you think,” she pauses purposely, making sure he looks at her so she can make a memory of this moment, “that once you move on to the afterlife, you will still remember me?”
That question was hidden behind a door, but the realisation that she will not have the chance to ask again makes her release it.
“After everything, I cannot imagine not being able to,” he replies. “I do not know what happens after this, but I know that deep down I will know that I only got here because of you.”
A faint smile appears on her lips as those words temporarily settle the storm brewing inside of her. Likewise, she knows she will never forget him. How could she? Every single lost soul that she has helped has been engraved into her like a scar. However, the only difference is that it never fades or heals. It remains as an internal pain that reopens at every goodbye and she wonders whether healing is only an illusion, a myth, a dream that she will never experience.
“But what if there is nothing. What if, after this, you stop living completely. There is only a void where you cease to exist?”
Your memory of me ceases to exist, her voice rings in her head. And how fair would that be? She has to live with the memories, but he could disappear without it, forgetting all that they have been through together, while she is cursed to remember another person that she has loved and lost. She wonders why she is the only one that carries the scars.
“We will never truly know. But that is life, my dear,” he reassures her with his soft voice, a voice that used to glide over her wounds like jelly. “Some things are meant to be a mystery.”
But this time, his words are not enough of an answer for her. She craves more. This is a mystery she cannot live without knowing. There is no doubt that she wants Antonio to move on- she did not tear his universe apart and rebuild it just for him to be stranded on Earth as a floating spirit for all eternity.
But the cost of his peace is the cost of her time and sanity. She does not know if she has any more left to spare.
Her throat begins to feel tight as she stares and mesmerises his face for what could be the last time. She imagines the angles and curves of his features fading away into the air like smoke being vented from a fire. She imagines how it would play out in front of her, just as the previous dozen times she has witnessed it. She knows that when this happens, she will be compelled again to rethink whether their time together meant anything, or if he was even there to begin with.
Therefore, within the deepest corners of her, areas that she is too afraid to admit, she would rather have Antonio trapped here than live without him. She cannot help but feel selfish.
A sudden white light emerges from Antonio’s heart, drawing her eyes down to that area and they widen. She returns her glance to him, almost frantically, begging with her eyes for him to stay for a moment longer.
“Antonio-”
“It is now time.”
As he looks up at the sky, his expression relaxes. His only focus is the newfound lightness in his chest, and he is oblivious to how much she is hurting because, for the first time, he is finally free, and that should be all that matters. She feels hopeless, but she swallows her words and puts on a small smile.
However, the clear pain in her heart is still very noticeable, as even without seeing her tears build up, the sudden dullness cascading through her affects more than just her eyes. She is suddenly consumed and concealed under a cloud, the shine of hers gone as if it was never there.
His body excels a fog of blue that shimmers and leaks into the air, and as predicted, his features fade within it until all that is left in a small glowing orb floating where his heart would be. And as that orb of blue, homeliness and kindness, the embodiment of Antonio, finally shoots up into the midst of the night sky, the tears begin to fall.
The world around her collapses into darkness as Antonio takes all the colour with him. Her knees buckle and she hugs them to her chest, sobs escaping her mouth.
How is it possible for her to grieve a man that was already dead when she first met him?
