There was no more snow. When May came, it brought hot days like surprise gifts, but no one wanted them. I recall waking up one morning and feeling like I'd fallen asleep in an oven that turned on overnight.

It was humid. I hated humidity. It was hard to breathe. When was the last time oxygen felt this scarce? Right, that one night in February. I nearly forgot that it happened. However, even if I did, it wouldn't erase the remnants of trauma that had been branded onto my psyche.

The same thing happens to childhood memories; people grow up, but the heart never forgets.

I distinctly remember asking for directions in a shopping mall. The young woman was an excellent guide. I thanked her for helping and began on my way. The words slipped out of her mouth like they've done it routinely, many times over,

"Don't worry, you're safe."

I was not so anxious at the time, and my own safety was of minor concern. But her words taught me something about this complete stranger. On me, she projected an image of the child still within her. What has she been through to feel like safety was so rare, it needed to be promised?

This fear of death. They can only intensify inside my chest. If I didn't pull a drain soon, it would tear me down all at once. I knew this better than anyone, I felt. And yet, when my seams started to lose their threading, I chose to sow them back up. Stitch after stitch, thread after needles, I pierced forward until my hands cramped up. They ached to rest.

I maintained refusal, until I no longer had the choice to. My hands trembled, and I tried to warn my emotions, 'Don't. Levi is here.' They fall anyway, in silent and warm streams that gathered below my chin.

I couldn't figure it out. So when Levi asked what was wrong, I had no excuses. Unable to smooth out the space between my eyebrows, I shook my head at a few different things.

No, stop crying.

I don't know what's wrong.

I wish I could go back in time; maybe forward. It doesn't matter which, as long as it wasn't this current moment.

Levi removed himself from his hammock and came to kneel before me. I wished he'd just ignore me instead. His face was the most serious it had been. His voice was deliberately calm, "Eren, you're not telling me something."

I didn't know what I meant, but I shook my head again. "Let me wake up." The words were too heavy to muster. Like boulders, they plummeted back into me, and my stomach sank for the hundredth time. Levi never got to hear them.

The last person to see me cry was the guy in the mirror. Before that was him as well. Him, every time before that too. Never did I want it to be Levi's turn.

Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Fuck. "Fuck," I managed. My vision clouded over, my eyes drowning in their own waterworks. I was down to four senses. My ears were purposefully sloppy; I couldn't understand a word Levi was saying, if he said anything. Just three senses remained. I heard him offer words of comfort, I swear I did. They just processed as gibberish, as if I forgot the language.

I felt far too small to contain the chaos that was inside me. All I felt was his palm, heavy as gold, steady on my shoulder. I reached out, finally finding his hands in the eye of the hurricane. He was strong, like an anchor. I hands clung to his, waiting for the storm to pass.

Then, in the midst of all of it, his voice pushed to reach me, and I heard from somewhere, "You will be okay."

7 years old. One of my earliest recollections.

I laid awake in between my mother and father who were both asleep. A thought crossed my mind. The idea that there will be a day in which I wake up into this world without them. I weeped, more openly than I do now. I was loud enough to wake up my mom, but not my dad. She took me in her arms and asked, "Eren, what's wrong?"

I cried to her, "I don't want you to die."

She kissed me, held me, and didn't let go until we woke up. "That's way too far in the future, baby. You're too young to worry about this," she whispered to me. I buried my face in her arms and fell asleep wearing that invisible band-aid.

I still wear that band-aid, but even comfort had an expiration date. It no longer eased the anxiety. I was now old enough to worry, and that's what got to me.

Hands. Warm as lightbulbs. They formed a cusp around my face. Levi's hands. I could recognize them from anywhere. I knew how long his fingers were, and exactly where his palm folded inwards as he cupped my cheeks.

I blinked hard to see him clearer. "Eren," he had been saying, I realized. His eyes were patient, foggy with an emotion I still couldn't read yet.

"Sorry," I rushed to say. My hands came up to press my sleeves against the leaks on my face.

I can finally hear him, "Talk to me, please."

There are golden rings in his eyes where the sunlight bounced off. His pupils constricted and dilated, like cameras trying to focus. They raked my expression for answers.

I looked down. "I don't know," was all I could say.

I saw in the way he frowned in my peripheral that it wasn't enough. "What's wrong?" he persisted.

Now, I had to say it. I felt caught red-handed, despite not doing anything wrong. Humiliation burned all over me. I felt weird. I remember one of the first things Levi had ever said to me. "'Weird' is only in your head." He might have been right, but I didn't care. I called myself a pussy in my head and nothing could stop me.

I think hard about my next sentence. Like a magic bridge, I created it as I went. "I'm scared of dying." Short, plain, and simple. If so, how come it took me so long to say?

Levi's eyes widened. No, it wasn't shock. He wasn't scared with me. It was him filling out the rest of the blanks. "I can help," he starts off softly, then his tone firmed with resolution, "I can make you live forever."

Forever?

I suddenly remembered to breathe. Sun rays bounced off of us from between the branches that hung above. They were warm and soft, like an angel's touch.

"How?" my voice came out hoarse.

His hands went to mine. "One day, you're going to sleep and I will not wake you up, ever. You'll live until the end of time here."

I pinched my eyebrows. The plan sounded so ridiculous. But then, I thought about it. He was being completely rational.

Forever, in here. With Levi. Forever with him in here. With no responsibilities, fear, or suffering. Forever with Levi?

He knelt, hair and skin absorbing as much light as possible. His face was clearer than ever. He kept his composure well beside the absence of mine. Sunlight bounced off of his white shirt, illuminating his face from below, and I saw more of him. Not details. I saw implications.

Of what? I didn't know. It didn't matter anyhow, as it was all in my head.

I asked, "Are you sure that's possible?"

"Yes."

He was certain. I was unsure. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to have such things. "This is a world that you're offering me," I said.

He didn't hesitate. "You can have it."

Even though he was a god, it never felt like it. Because he stooped down to someone like me, who deserved basic respect at best. Although I kept reminding myself that it wasn't meant to speak, my heart begged, yes, with its whole being. "I'd like that," it whispered, through me.

His eyes smiled with hope. "Are you alright?"

I smiled back.

It would be any dream I wanted, he said. All he needed was the green light from me. Give me one year, I told him. I will be ready to leave my family behind. As long as I still had the option to come back, I will be okay with dropping everything indefinitely.

"And if you happen to die, you will just wake up," he said as a side comment. I joked about it, but knew not to imagine it too hard or I would spiral.

"What can I possibly die to?" I asked, using my sleeves to rub away the last of my tears.

His eyes flicked down and back up. "Gods can kill you. It's easy."

Involuntarily, my jaw flexed. "You didn't need to add that part."

"I think it's better that you know."

"Yeah?" my gaze wandered, "What are the chances?"

"Close to zero, but absolute zero as long as I'm there." Our eyes met rather dramatically. I wondered if he was as fascinated by my green as I was by his black pearls that could transition into espresso shots. "I'll protect your life as if it were my own, and you know how selfish I get." I thought he was quite generous, but I didn't want to debate it.

He said out of the blue the following night, "Do you want to see my hometown?"

"Your hometown?"

"Yes," he looked somewhere at the sky, "we can leave this realm."

I scrambled to sit up. "You're lying."

"Try me," his whimsical smile. He side-eyed me jokingly. "Fall asleep like a normal man and then come back to me. I don't control the time of day up there."

That was the beginning.