Chapter One — Twenty

They stood around me.

Mouths moving. Eyes red.

I couldn't hear a word. Like my brain had quietly decided — enough of that — and switched off the part that makes sense of sound. All I got was the hiss of the oxygen mask and the low hum of machines that had been keeping me company for weeks now.

Just me and the noise inside my own head.

Lys was crying.

Droplets fell on my arm. Small and warm. She was trying not to make a sound while doing it, which somehow made it worse.

Seventeen years old.

I looked at her and thought,  I would've liked to see you grow up a bit more. See what kind of person you'd become. Probably someone terrifying. Probably someone great.

But time had other plans for me.

Terminal cancer.

Funny word. Terminal. Like an airport. Like there's a departure involved.

I suppose there is.

The doctors came in. White coats. Clipboard. One of them spoke to my father in a low voice and I didn't need to hear it. I watched my father's face instead. Watched him nod once, slowly.

That was enough.

Screw cancer.

I'd already made my peace with it. Mostly. You spend enough months in a hospital bed and acceptance stops being a stage of grief and starts just being Tuesday.

It's just —

There were things I wanted to do.

Stupid things. Small things. Things a twenty year old shouldn't have to put on a bucket list because they should've just happened naturally, with time, the way things do.

I wanted to travel. Actually travel, not scroll through photos of places but stand somewhere completely foreign and feel small in a good way.

I wanted to finish a game I'd been playing with my friends before all this started. We never finished it. I don't know if they ever did.

I wanted to mess around with Lys. Steal her snacks. Annoy her about her taste in music. Normal brother stuff.

I wasn't exceptional.

I knew that. I wasn't going to cure anything or build anything or be remembered beyond the people in this room. But I existed. That counted for something. I would've liked to exist a little longer.

Maybe long enough to find a girlfriend.

Internal laugh.

Tragic timing on that one.

I'm not the most dedicated believer. Never was. But lying here with my sister's tears on my arm and my father staring at the floor —

I want.

Not wish. Want.

I want to live the best life a man could have.

I want to feel everything. Every pleasure this world has to offer, the food, the places, the people. All of it. I want to consume it all and still be hungry.

I want a world with less noise. Less stupidity. No artificial intelligence generating everything. No wars fought over nothing. No hatred dressed up as politics.

I want magic.

I want beautiful women.

I want to eat food that ruins me for all other food and sit somewhere impossible and feel completely, outrageously alive.

Another internal laugh.

Listen to me.

I'm about to die and I'm planning a holiday.

My eyelids were getting heavy. Not painful,  just heavy, the way they get at the end of a long day. My consciousness starting to pull back from the edges like water draining.

Lys squeezed my hand.

Both hands around mine. Everything she had. She laid her head on my chest and I felt her shoulders shake once, just once, before she held herself still.

My father hadn't moved from his spot.

My mother's lips were moving. Maybe a prayer. Maybe just my name.

They were all staring at me.

Don't worry.

I felt the last of it going. The room. The hiss of the mask. The grey October light through the window.

I thought, one last time, clearly, like a signature at the bottom of a page —

I'm going to live the life of a king.

The king who seeks all the pleasures of mankind.

Every single one.

The ceiling went white.

Then it went somewhere else entirely.