Wrapping up the story of meeting the two lovers, I skipped forward several months to when we had gotten close enough to them to barge into their houses with minimal warning.
"Sometimes, after we finished school, Leo and I would drop by their apartment and help Uril paint his trinkets. Aaron didn't buy a concrete stall in Middle Middle Market but instead set up a cart where he sold the carvings for quite a cheap price. And to thank us for helping out with the carvings, he would buy us stuff. And Uril would cook lunch for us."
Relaxing my sholulders, I sighed as the nostalgic memories surfaced in front of my eyes. They were rose-colored, happy memories that bloomed like flowers. Even the slightest touch of those memories would send me back to those times. Times when things were simpler. Where I didn't know about any of this, and everyone was still alive.
But flowers eventually wither, and those rose-tinted memories would deepen in color, turning into the color of blood and rot as the turning point of my entire life approached.
"Compared to Aaron, who was always out, Leo and I were closer to Uril. Not only did we visit them often, but the two of them would sometimes come over and share a family meal with us. They hit it off with my parents incredibly fast—almost instantaneously, actually—to the point that it almost seemed like they had met before. Uril quickly became a pseudo-big brother. And I thought that since we saw them so often, I would know them well enough. But then Aaron was accused of a crime and arrested."
I could never forget the look of heartbreak Uril had the day Aaron was caught.
As usual, the two of us had popped by Uril's apartment after school. Barging in, I swung the door wide open with a smile as I blindly stepped foot into the apartment. However, the moment I opened my eyes, the smile died.
The apartment was dark, the lights off, as Uril laid his weak body on his couch. Gingerly stepping foot into the darkness, I still remember feeling Leo nervously hold onto my shirt as we tiptoed into the apartment.
As I got closer to the sofa, I could finally see the entirety of Uril's body. He was laying there, as unmoving as the dead, as he stared blankly at the wall in front of him. His eyes were red, and dried tear tracks ran down his face and onto the sofa. Noticing our movement, those hollowed eyes shifted to us, and I could feel goosebumps and a wave of dread rise in my body.
Pausing at us for a couple seconds, those dead eyes then shifted back to their original position, staring blankly at the wall, and a fresh new wave of tears welled up within them.
Seeing Uril cry, I felt a tug coming from a corner of my shirt. Glancing at Leo, I could see the naive desire to comfort Uril blare across his eyes. I nodded my head.
Then, with another small tug, Leo brought the two of us right in front of Uril.
As those pair of dead eyes slid towards us, Leo crawled up onto the sofa and near Uril's body. Meeting eye-to-eye with them, his sunny smile no longer on his face, he extended his arms out to Uril and brought the broken man into his small embrace.
Freezing at Leo's action, Uril's eyes seemed to clear up slightly as his arms slowly lifted from his sides and wrapped around Leo.
Nobody said a word or spoke. The tension in the house was too heavy, like a suffocating blanket snuffing out the fire of life that had burned inside this calm and gentle man. After a couple seconds in Leo's embrace, his shoulder's started shaking, and I could see a wet patch start forming on Leo's shirt.
"Aaron..."
With a small sob, Uril's fingers dug into his palms as he leaned on Leo and cried. Leo's body, however, was too small to support a grown man and was tilting backwards as Uril continued to sob. Seeing this, I placed a hand on Uril's shoulders to lessen the weight on Leo, and I ended up being pulled into Uril's embrace as he clung tightly to the two of us. As if, the moment he let go, we would disappear.
The embrace was tight, almost uncomfortable, as his two thin arms wrapped around the both of us, leaving us with no choice but to wait for his tears to stop. Squeezing a hand out from those cage-like arms, I wiped away some of the tears slipping out from the corners of Uril's eyes, and we waited patiently for this moment to pass.
Uril cried for a long time. Although his initial burst of strength and tears died down relatively quickly, water still constantly trickled down his cheek as all the strength flowed out of him. Eventually, his stamina was depleted, and he passed out while holding onto the two of us.
Hearing his breathing even out next to my ear, I slowly and gently moved the slackened arm holding us aside and maneuvered myself out of the tangle of limbs and onto the apartment floor.
Turning to Leo, I gestured for him to stay by Uril's side and hurried back to our apartment. Swinging the door open, I kicked off my shoes and ran to the kitchen, praying that either one of my parents was there.
Entering the kitchen, I let out a huge sigh of relief as I spotted both my mother and father sitting at the dining table. The two of them were hunched over something on the table. As I got closer, I saw that the 'something' was a newspaper.
Glaring at the newspaper, my father frowned as he placed two fingers on his chin, a contemplative expression surfacing on his face. In contrast to that, my mother held up both hands to her mouth, shock, guilt, and fear a chaotic tornado raging on in her eyes as she stared wide-eyed at the newspaper in front of her.
Taking a step forward, my footsteps alerted the two adults to my presence, and both their eyes shot to me. Immediately, my mother cleared her face of all negative emotions and gave me a smile. My father dropped the hand on his chin and similarly hid his real thoughts.
"Welcome back, Dan. Where's Leo?"
As my mother asked me lightly with a half-smile, my father casually pushed the newspaper on the table to the side.
"He's at Uril's house."
They froze. Quickly sharing a glance with each other, the two adults stopped their actions and immediately jumped to their feet. Hurrying forward, my mother kneeled to my height and looked me straight in the eye. Her hands on my shoulders were shaking, but her eyes were firm as they questioned me.
"How was Uril?"
Behind her, my father folded the newspaper on the table and stuffed it somewhere high up.
"...not good."
Shaking my head, the scene of Uril crying his sorrow out until he passed out entered my mind.
"I see."
She pursed her lips, the guilt in her eyes strengthening beyond all the other negative feelings as she tightened her grip on my shoulder. Behind her, my father slowly walked towards us and placed a hand on her shoulder in a comforting manner.
"Let's go."
Standing up, my mother nodded her head with a small movement, and the three of us hurried out of the apartment and into Uril's apartment.
Stepping foot into the dark place once again, Leo and Uril remained exactly where they were when I left them. Cuddling Leo in his arms, Uril's arms circled loosely around Leo's small body as the two lay peacefully on the sofa.
Hearing our footsteps approaching, I saw Leo perk up and turn his head towards us. And when he saw we had returned, he slowly and gently crawled out from within Uril's arms and stuck himself to my side.
"...Uril."
Beside me, I heard my mother's heartbroken whisper as she saw her new friend curling up on the sofa with red and puffy eyes. Taking a shaky breath, she stumbled over to the sofa and loweed herself onto it, looking over the sleeping Uril with clouded eyes.
Reaching out a hand, she gently brushed a lock of hair that was scattered over Uril's face and leaned on the back of the sofa.
It was my first time seeing my mother like this. For the many years I had known her, my mother had always been this gentle ball of sunshine, radiating her light of happiness and optimism in the house as she did all the chores of our family of four with a smile. But now, she wasn't smiling.
The dark apartment was depressing, only being illuminated by the light spilling in from the open door. Since we were standing in the light from the door, our shadows stretched beneath our feet, stopping just shy from the couch. In this poor lighting, my mother's face was shrouded in shadow as she stared intensely at Uril's face. The darkness in the apartment seemed to bleed into her eyes, dying them in their colors.
"Elaine."
Calling out to my father in a calm voice, my father managed to singlehandedly reign in the darkness in my mother's eyes. Being distracted from whatever she was thinking about, my mother creaked her neck over towards us and stared in our direction with an unfocused gaze.
"It's my fault."
Her whisper came floating from the darkness, and her eyes drifted back to Uril.
"Elaine, dear."
My father called out to my mother one more time, putting his foot forward as he closed the distance between them with one huge stride. The shadows seemed to absorb him, wrapping their thick and dense tentacles around him. But from where I was standing, his straight back never bent to them as he reched out a hand to caress my mother's face.
"It's not your fault. It's theirs."
Sweeping a stray lock of her hair behind her ears, his voice echoed in the apartment like a spell as the darkness in my mother's eyes receded and she nodded her head. However, she still looked at Uril even as she withdrew her hand.
"But Aaron..."
"None of you did anything wrong. Don't blame yourself."
Taking another stride forward, my father lovingly supported my mother off the couch and pulled her into his embrace. He lowered his voice to whisper that only the two of them could hear as they hugged in front of Uril. And when they were done talking, my mother nodded her head at him, and the two of them kissed for a second.
Separating from each other, my mother went back to sitting next to Uril on the couch, her back straight as a rod as she peacefully looked at him sleep. In the meantime, my father returned to us and took one of our hands into his.
"Let's return home. Mom will look after Uril. The best thing we can do now is to let them have some peace."
He led us out of the living room, his lips straight, as he pulled us away from the dark apartment without looking back.
"And that day was the first day in which only the three of us had dinner together. Mom didn't return until the middle of the next day. After that, because we were worried about Uril, Leo and I popped by his house every day and stayed with him as much as we could. Leo and Uril were especially close after that day. Although maybe that was why his diagnosis hit Uril extra hard. After Leo...passsed, Uril only managed to hold out for a couple weeks. On the day when Frank was visiting the apartment with his parents, I discovered his door was open. And it was already too late when the two of us found him."
Shaking my head, I pushed back the memories of that familiar body swinging from the cord in the bedroom. In a cruel, cruel twist of fate, that bedroom had almost seen the deaths of two people. Their positions were roughly the same, too.
As I was desperately fighting back the scenes from that day, I felt a warmth on my hand and looked up to see Oliver's worried face in front of me. He didn't say anything; there wasn't any word that would be appropriate in this atmosphere, so he just gripped my hand tightly.
And so the two of us sat there in silence, staring at each other and soaking in each other's warmth as the atmosphere slowly transitioned from it's below-freezing temperature to a more lighthearted one.
Finally, when the tension was mostly gone and our shoulders were slightly relaxed, he gave me an appreciative smile as he looked at me with those eyes the color of melted ice.
"Thank you."
Their silver lining shone under the bright kitchen lights, driving the darkness that had gathered in my heart away and lighting a warm flame in my chest.
"Thank you."