Immortality

Laughing, smiling, youth is the most beautiful thing. Life is a mentor, a lesson for all individuals. Surround yourself with the people you want to be around with, die a death knowing you’ve lived a full life, even if one is afraid of fading. Believing they’d live, believing they would age alongside their friends and family.

But that wasn’t the case anymore.

63 years have passed.

And they are stuck in time…same face…same body…same age.

All their loved ones are gone and withered.

They moved on…while one was left standing alone.

In the dark, chest heavy, alone.

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Here…I am…

On top of a building roof, the night sky splayed out above my head and before my eyes.

Just leaning against the railing, looking below at the bustling city.

63 years.

I have not aged one bit.

I’ve been alone for years.

No communication, connection, conversations.

All the people I’ve known have been cut off.

They have been consumed by age while I am consumed by grief.

I’ve seen friends pass while I am still standing.

My heart aches, my chest is heavy, my mind is scrambled, my shoulders feel tight.

My body is tense, nauseous.

The amount of emotions has been bottled up for so long.

The walls started to close in and build up.

Demeanor changes, personality changes while the genuine one is buried deep inside.

I’m alone…it is the inevitable state I am in that cannot be helped.

I avoided all my friends, to not watch them grow old and die.

My mind kept flashing back 63 years earlier when I was 17 with the others.

Friends…family…a mentor…

Emotions started to well up in me, swirling, my mind hazy and clouded in despair and pain all over again. I missed everyone, and how I wished to see them.

A voice carried along the wind, ruffling my hair—

a familiar gesture, one they used to do without thinking.

"You’ve changed," it said softly. "Not only are we all buried…but you buried yourself too. If you’re seventeen—why do you feel so old?"

I didn’t reply.

The words struck deeper than I expected, sinking into something I’d kept sealed for decades.

I told myself I was imagining it. I had to be.

But the voice was unmistakable.

A mentor.

I kept my gaze lowered toward the city, lights blurring together.

It had been so long since I’d heard their voice—

So long that I’d nearly forgotten its cadence, the way it always carried concern beneath calm.

Remembering it now tightened my throat.

A lump formed, heavy and unyielding,

And for the first time in years, I wasn’t sure whether the pain came from grief—or from realizing I’d survived long enough to forget.

The wind shifted again, cooler this time, pressing against my skin.

I felt it before I heard them speak.

"I know why you stopped," the voice said gently. "Watching people fade… it breaks something inside you. And no matter how long you live, that pain never dulls."

"I can’t take that pain from you," they continued. "I never could. No mentor ever truly can."

The words settled heavy in the air, pressing against me. My jaw clenched, throat burning, eyes stinging as I forced myself not to look back.

"But pain was never meant to be the end of living,” they said. “It’s proof you cared. Proof you loved deeply enough for it to hurt."

"You will lose people again, over and over. That is inevitable." they said honestly.

Silence stretched between us.

"But so is connection. So is warmth. So is the choice to stay."

The wind brushed my hair once more—just like it used to.

"You don’t honor the dead by freezing yourself beside them," the mentor murmured.

"You honor them by continuing."

My eyes blurred, city lights melting into streaks of gold and white.

I didn’t speak.

I couldn’t.

But something inside me—buried for decades—shifted.

And for the first time in sixty-three years, the pain wasn’t the only thing I could feel.

Then I finally spoke.

"I stopped speaking because nothing ever stayed long enough to hear me…"

My voice faltered. "But it’s been so long since someone asked me how I was that I forgot there was an answer. It’s been so long… so long since I’ve heard you."

The dam broke.

My breath hitched, shoulders shaking as years—decades—of grief tore free.

I let it spill out after holding it in for so long, my chest aching as I realized I couldn’t carry it anymore.

Despite the cold, despite the wind biting at my skin, warmth settled beside me.

A presence pressed gently against my side—steady, familiar—like an embrace meant only to ground me.

As if they were telling me, I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.

And that—

that broke me. And I was so afraid...they would leave again.

...But I knew better...

The warmth lingered only for a moment.

Then it thinned.

The pressure at my side eased, like hands slipping away I hadn’t realized I was holding onto. The air grew colder, sharper. The wind returned, unfiltered and unforgiving.

I inhaled—and nothing answered me.

No presence.

No voice.

No familiar weight beside me.

Just the railing beneath my palms.

Just the city below, humming on without me.

I blinked, breath unsteady, chest aching as if I’d surfaced from a dream too gentle to keep.

I was alone.

I had been the entire time.

The realization settled slowly, cruel in its quiet.

Not a disappearance—because nothing had ever been there to leave.

My mentor was gone.

Not again.

Not now.

They had been gone for decades.

And yet… my chest still burned where the warmth had been.

My eyes still stung.

My heart still ached.

Proof, I realized, that even imagined comfort could hurt this much.

I stayed there a while longer, staring out at the city as the night swallowed the last traces of them—

and wondered if the pain meant I was finally waking up…

or if I’d only learned how to dream again.

The worst part wasn’t waking up.

It was realizing how badly I needed the dream.