40 19.2: My World (2/2)

”Your letter will be perfect for him,” he says and I blink up at him.

”You said it'll anger him-”

”It will,” Tobias smiles. ”It'll also ground him, and that's how we measure how 'perfect' your letter is,” he tells me. ”Him accepting your death, moving on, should be the 'perfect' you're wishing your bother. It is the kind of perfect I would've wished myself if I was alive and trying to deal with Tom's death.” He looks down. ”Your note is some form of goodbye. It'll give him solace in a way or another-” he tells me and I look at him with wide eyes. ”I told you,” he says. ”It's subjective.”

But maybe in the complicated process of living, I've given out my love to so many but myself. And I owe myself an apology as much as I owe you.

Jacob gets to his feet, holding the paper in one hand and wiping his face off tears with the other. He faces the sea's magnanimity and doubles over, letting out a suppressed groan.

”Oh boy, he is angry,” Tobias says beside me and I sigh. ”I like how you reasoned your suicide by self-hate when you don't really hate yourself.”

”I might've hated myself at some point.”

”We all do sometimes,” Tobias speaks through Benji's fur. ”You killed yourself because you thought people hated you-”

I hold my hands in front of me and shrug slightly. ”It's complicated. I can't pinpoint a reason,” I say. ”But I believe I could've loved myself to more confidence. I should've been more confident of my presence and purpose regardless of what people thought. I should've loved myself enough and been so confident that I'd flip anyone trespassing their limits off. I shouldn't have been easy on them. I should've been confident enough to rage and call the rain on them,” I click my tongue. ”Maybe I did kill myself because of self-hate after all.”

I look at Tobias and he has his brows lift in amuse. ”Our will to live only comes in our death,” he says.

”I think we now just understand what it meant to live,” I tell him. ”It is what it is,” I repeat what he's once said before and he smiles, dropping an arm around me.

”No, not really,” he says and I look at him, offended.

”You said that-” I suddenly feel embarrassed again.

”Yeah-no, I know. Many people say that but context is important. You can't be the reason behind the being of something and just blaming it on an 'it',” he argues almost too seriously. ”I'm not the reason behind my brother's anguished cries,” he points at a worked-up Jacob. ”I am the reason behind my brother's death. But that's- that's different-”

I blink at him in surprise at his humour attempt. I smile. ”Okay. Whatever.”

”I would say, Rose is who she is,” he tells me. ”Because, like, everything you're going through is because of you, not 'it'.”

I shake my head with an incredulous smile. ”You're an idiot.”

”Why are you talking to me? Shouldn't you be watching your dear brother giving away his final goodbyes, huh? Who's being an idiot now?” Tobias jokes around and I shake my head again, my eyes lingering over his wide, almost-real smile, before sighing softly.

I watch my brother stand in the weak, dying sunlight, folding my letter in half, only for a strong gust of wind to come and tug the letter free from his hands.

I gasp a little as Jacob's stands too shocked to properly respond to what has just happened. When he realizes that he's going to lose my note, he starts chasing it along the shore, barefoot, but to his great misery and my sorry expectations, the paper returns to the sea, where it belongs.

Jacob doesn't stop whatsoever and wades his way through the water to reach for my paper. He finds it and he holds it, only to cry for its lost contents. Without being close enough to him, I can tell that the seawater erased all I've written, leaving behind an ink-smudged, drenched paper.

And it makes perfect sense. All that the sea has taken away is all that shouldn't have existed anyway. My dead, rotten breaths and words. It's only fair.

Or my brother is just clumsy and let the paper slip. I'll go with the former.

Meanwhile, Tobias stands, making no remarks as he watches my brother wade his way back to the shore, wet up to his waist, loosely holding the paper with slumped shoulders.

”Welp, that was illegal anyway,” is what he ends up saying. ”Too good to be true.”

I nod, a little part of me not that surprised anyway. ”Yes, but he got the message anyway.”

”Won't be able to show it to the world though,” is what Tobias says. ”No-one would believe it.”

”I don't care about the world,” I say. ”He's my world.”

Tobias smiles at me like he's proud. ”That's the whole moral, isn't it? To finally know your world. The world you should've lived for.”

I nod slowly, sadly. In fact, I'm too sad to even find words that sad. I don't think someone has been as sad as I am to create a word that expressive. Because this kind of sadness is reserved for the dead and damned.

Maybe, I think, I should work on my own dictionary. Like how Tobias came up with 'cycles', 'Darkoom' and 'dimensions'. Words only we would understand their hidden meaning. Because words aren't defined by their letters, but by the meaning they carry. Context.

”What should've been your world?” I ask Tobias.

Tobias smiles half-heartedly. ”I don't know,” he says. ”My parents? Rita? All of them?”

I look away and back at Jacob who's dragging himself to Mom's car that he's parked nearby on the sand. When he gets to it, he fishes for the keys in his pockets before looking at the plum sky (the sun has disappeared a little while ago) and letting go of the empty paper to the wind.

He then lights a cigarette and draws in a few breaths, watching the wind pick up and swirl the paper away with it. He then gets into the car and starts the engine.

And know by heart, Jack, that I'll be watching you and loving you dearly even in my death.