He appears again.
The sirens call out my name while his specter enters viewing range. As perfect as he had always been. What would be considered an imperfection for any other being is a trait worth striving for in his case. His face veiled, impossible to conceive. He walks past me as if I don’t exist.
I call out and get nothing in return. My step follows his. It did not take me too long to realize: he is travelling towards Its light.
“The tunnel is closed, you know?” I spoke, a couple of steps away from him. He keeps on walking forward.
Much has changed since the last time we met. He returns without the fear that once made us go our separate ways. A new trait took its place: indifference to everything I could have held against him. Revising all our past experiences does not move him one bit.
And I could not appreciate that less.
I should focus on expanding the garden to suit new visitors instead of chasing the specter. I’d be better off doing anything besides chasing a ghost.
I continue following him.
“We are bilateral in the sense that we chase the same light. There’s your answer. It’s why we found each other in the first place. But It can only hold one of us,” he said, turning around and facing me for the first time ever since we met under the lamp post.
I had no time to respond. He had already disappeared the moment I opened my mouth to speak about the journey. The feelings I once held for him were long gone, surely, but the thought alone of him witnessing Its light bring him back to the beginning was discomforting.
He doesn’t deserve it.
Footsteps appear on a sloped path. No one in sight. His specter hasn’t disappeared, there’s no other way to explain them. Juno is cleaning up the hut, and no new visitors have arrived since her.
Immature as ever. He seriously thought he could fool me by making his specter invisible.
He moved from his hometown to my neighborhood in September of a year I cannot recall, to attend high school, since he couldn't enroll in the same one back home due to his poor grades during primary education. His parents played the largest role in that decision, although it can't be said that he himself didn't also feel drawn by the desire to experience life without an iron fist and constant surveillance hanging over his head. Moving to a new environment presented an opportunity, a chance to build himself independently from the wishes of his guardians during the period when a person develops the most.
Not much time passed before I entered his life. I can't describe our encounter as a meeting, since that word implies mutual interest in establishing a relationship. It was more of an intrusion—forced entry. It didn’t seem that way to me at the time.
There is a specific type of person—I don't know if there is a term for them—for whom the word "no" simply does not exist. When a seemingly "stronger" individual enters their life, it's as if they immediately forget all their own opinions, habits, tastes, and everything else. It appears they transform themselves in an immeasurably short period to better match the views of the person who forcibly entered their lives. Then they forget who they are, granting a great favor to the other person. Characters who allow this simultaneously desire it: nothing satisfies them more than an obedient person, a blank slate, waiting for someone else to tell them what opinions to hold, how to look, and who they can and cannot speak to.
At first, it works. Both sides are on the same wavelength: one commands, the other obeys. Each day, the stronger individual's power grows slightly greater, subtly enough to remain unnoticed until the first conflict arises. Then the “stronger” one becomes intoxicated by power, starting to control even the basic life functions of the weaker: deciding what they will eat, whom they'll speak with, where they'll go, when they'll sleep, and countless other things. The list grows every day.
It always ends the same way: the weaker eventually breaks free from the stronger one, but in several possible ways. The first outcome is that the weaker breaks away—whether through a heated conflict or gradual distancing—and then begins rediscovering themselves. After breaking free, the process takes time, but eventually, the weaker individual strengthens and reaches a point where they can function independently, no longer reminded of what once was.
The second outcome is similar at first: the weaker one also breaks away, but afterward doesn’t understand how to function independently. They find themselves again facing a dilemma: either find a new "stronger" one, but kinder, and gentler than before, yet still authoritative enough to provide meaning. Or he can continue living in fear and memories of the person from whom they broke free.
I haven't spoken with him enough to know how he continued after we parted ways. I don't even know what I wanted from him or why I behaved the way I did. I wish I could say that everything I know amounts to something, but I don't even know what that something is. I can only speculate, never reaching the same conclusion twice. Some days, I conclude that I admired him and wanted to be him. Then another thought arises and cancels that out: maybe I had nothing more than a subconscious desire for control over someone else. I expand on this thought and reach the conclusion that maybe I needed to shape someone else into who I wanted to be but was too weak to become myself. It's always easier to build someone else than oneself.
Then even that thought vanishes, replaced by something entirely different—some absurd conclusion that lingers in my mind for days before I realize that this line of thinking is completely wrong.
I don't even know if what I'm writing is true. Perhaps tomorrow I'll wake up thinking everything is completely different. But that doesn't matter. At least for now.
The sun hitting my face made me realize that, after all, it does matter.
It matters because he is not the first, but rather the second specter. I was the same age as the second specter when the first one forcibly entered my life. I was standing at the edge of the bridge leading from childhood to adulthood, right at the transition between primary and high school. Sixteen, if I'm not mistaken.
The first specter did not forcibly enter my life the way I did with the second. The first simply appeared in a dream, though the day before he was nothing but a casual passerby whom I might have noticed out of the corner of my eye, perhaps greeting him if I was in a good mood. At that moment, I perceived him completely differently.
The dream gave me hope. I woke up with such a strong desire to remain in that dream forever that I couldn't think about anything else—not school, hobbies, or even myself. I could only think about the specter who, by pure chance, appeared in my dream and gave me a taste of something I hadn't previously conceived. I made a big mistake because I only superficially thought about it and started chasing something entirely different.
The first specter, although a completely different person, was actually me—me as I felt and wished to be, but never could. He was the closest thing to my vision of a perfect self in appearance, character, and views. Yet, no matter how hard I tried to approach that perfection, I only drifted further away. I mistakenly understood this desire as needing the other person, rather than needing myself to become that person. Because of this, the first specter left my life forever, and I don't blame him.
I've already spoken enough about the second specter, but he relates closely to the first. My obsession with the first arose because he was closest to my ideal image of myself, while my obsession with the second emerged from him being perfect to mold into the person I wanted to become. In both cases, I drifted so far away that I forgot why I even had contact with either specter.
The first has most likely vanished forever.
The second hides while moving toward the Light, leaving behind footsteps on the sloped trail winding its path between trees and bushes. Following them, I cannot shake the thought that he's choosing the worst possible lines on the trail. He steps over the largest stones and the most slippery roots, thinking I'll either fall or give up when my legs betray me.
Amateur. I taught him this.
“You might as well show yourself now. We're both wasting energy just to end up at the same place,” I speak into the air ahead. No answer.
“We must reconcile. Whatever you think of me, you can't deny how much time and attention I've dedicated to you. If nothing remains—and I believe that's the case—at least have a grain of understanding for everything I've invested,” I again address the void, two steps behind the footsteps fleeing uphill.
And suddenly, the veil falls. Before me appears the specter exactly as I saw him moments ago: worse in every way compared to our first meeting, except that he no longer fears my words. I realize, in a fraction of a second, that my need to shape someone else into my ideal image has vanished. I observe him, thinking: just a person like any other.
What sets him apart from me? From the first specter? From my mother? I look at him as though he isn't there, indifferently.
“How long will you keep dragging me into this conversation? You know I owe you, and that's something I can't repay. Don't rub it in,” he says, looking at me more calmly than ever, though the sentence I used to begin this conversation was always the same one I'd previously used to start fights and guilt trips. I pause for a second to think—something I've never done before.
“It's the only way I can get your attention,” I respond.
“You're no better,” he replies, turning to continue his escape, “I don't even know what I expected.”
“So you did have an expectation in the first place. That's why you came here. I spent three hundred years in the Garden without a single visitor, and suddenly you show up. Doesn't make much sense, does it?”
“Sharp as always. Old habits die hard. Will you always address me with logical statements that only seem correct because you shape them within your own framework of truth?” he responds sharply, already losing the indifference from a moment ago.
“You're searching for something. You care about something, and that something must be with me if you're addressing me this way. I know that tone well,” I said.
“It is waiting for me. The same It that you chased, ending up here. The same It that's identical for both of us: unreachable and unattainable. Yet it still pulls us in and refuses to let go,” he says, pointing towards the source always radiating light and appearing in various places.
Yesterday I saw that source on the other side of the river while sitting in the Garden. I cannot say it didn’t attract me then. An apple falling from a tree is a great event in the Garden, yet alone an ominous light source appearing every so often.
Still, I never gave it much significance. In the Garden, everything is possible: time doesn't exist, three hundred years pass in an infinitely short moment, specters of long-gone people appear, so why shouldn't a bright spot appear in one place today and another tomorrow?
“And what is It, anyway? Just a glimmer of light, like a little star fallen into my Garden. Aside from you, it’s the only thing here that's alive—or half-alive. You're not alive,” I tell him.
“It’s calling me,” he replies, and without giving me a chance to say anything more, disappears along with his footsteps.
I return to the Garden. Sitting by the river, I reflect.