Act V - Revelation (Part 2)

"Happy birthday, Albert!" Eugénie and I chimed in unison.

Albert leaned forward, simultaneously blowing out the fifteen candles on his cake with a large breath of air. It was a sponge cake, one of those intricately-decorated ones with a combination of both chocolate and vanilla icing. Other than that, Albert hadn't insisted on anything in particular for his birthday celebration. He didn't even want gifts.

"You don't need to get me anything this year," he'd told us the week before, when Eugénie had casually asked him if there was something he wanted. "I'm fine with just being able to be with you guys."

Of course, that was when Eugénie had tried to convince him that we needed to do something special, at the very least. When we couldn't come up with any good ideas – partly because Albert was unquestionably adamant in refusing any type of present – she'd suggested that we spend a few days together at her summer villa.

In the end, a grumbling, unwilling Albert had been dragged along with us for the trip. His resistance soon disappeared when we'd got to the beach on the first afternoon of our stay, however.

Stop it with the act, Albert. I plucked off one of the candles and stuck the icing-coated side in my mouth. It tasted rich of buttery sugar.

I smiled, watching as Albert and Eugénie fought over the knife to cut the cake. He tried too hard to be altruistic sometimes. Being honest about wanting something doesn't make you selfish.

The three of us were at the local café, seated at an outdoor table, immersed in the city skylights. The bustling urban commotion cast colorful, dancing lights upon us.

Idle chatter and the amiable background music had been drowned out by Albert and Eugénie's continuous bickering. We'd just recently finished our dinner and now we were… well, making quite a scene.

"Albert, you'll mess it up! You're too clumsy." Eugénie protested, tugging at the serving knife in his hands. "Just let me cut it."

"What?" Albert was annoyed, but clearly not taking her comments seriously. He yanked the utensil out of her grasp. "I'm not going to mess it up!"

"Hey, you guys," – I lifted a hand to get their attention – "Just keep it down a little, will you?"

The two of them swerved around to glare at me instantly, sending off unappreciative vibes. No use, huh? I shouldn't have expected them to comply. I drew back hesitantly, raising my eyebrows. "Okay, sorry… go on then."

Putting my indifferent invitation to good use, they continued to argue, pulling the knife from one side of the table to the other. At first, it was sort of amusing to watch, but now it was just getting tiresome. I leaned my forehead down on the table to drown out the noise, defeated.

"You're going to cut it all wrong!" Eugénie cried, making an attempt to snatch the knife from Albert's firm grip. "Come on, just give it to me."

"Why would I cut it wrong?" he retorted. "And what makes you think you'll be able to do it better? Have you ever cut a cake before?"

"Of course I have, you idiot!" Eugénie yelled back, frowning. "Why do you have to be so stubborn all the time?"

This was getting pointless. It had to come to an end somewhere. Decidedly pushing myself up, I slammed my hands onto the table. "Stop it already!"

"Can't you see you're just embarrassing yourselves?" They said nothing, frozen in the aftershock of my serious disposition. I turned to take a step towards Albert.

"If you two can't decide, I'll cut –"

My leg collided against the edge of the table, tipping it momentarily and sending the cake spiraling off balance. On its raised glass stand, it wobbled, spun erratically across the table before falling with a sudden splat.

Right on top of Albert.

During the confusion, he'd somehow tumbled to the ground, the cake along with him. Eugénie was standing above him, suspended in motion. I had my arm in the air, my mouth gaping in wordless murmurs. The entire café – save for the jovial background music, which seemed almost ironic now – was silent.

Albert stared down at his new dress shirt with wide eyes. He'd bought it just a few days before, and now it was caked in – no pun intended – chunks of his birthday dessert and multi-colored icing.

"Well… there goes fifty euros." Albert looked up at us, an amused smile on his face. Then, using the serving knife that was still in his hand, he scooped up a lump of the crumbling confectionary. "Want a piece, Eugénie?"

Maybe it was Eugénie who started it first then. Maybe it was me. Then again, it could have just as likely been Albert. It was a nervous giggle, soon followed by a full-out laugh-fest. Whoever it was, within minutes, we were clutching at our sides from running out of air.

Well, except for Albert, of course. He couldn't clutch at his sides unless he wanted to squish what remained of the cake in his hands.

A couple minutes later, we were sprawled out on the ground next to Albert, eating the crumpled cake off of his shirt as if it was a plate. Sure, people gave us odd looks, but who cared? We couldn't let the cake go to waste.

When only crumbs and smears of icing remained, Albert got up, brushing himself off. He smiled as he looked down at his ruined shirt with a hint of remorse, but didn't seem that upset. He turned to Eugénie and me, placing the serving knife on the table.

"I'm going to get cleaned up now, okay?" he told us. "It won't take too long."

I took a seat at the table. "Go ahead. We'll wait for you here."

As Albert left for the restroom, Eugénie sat down next to me. She let out a content sigh. "That was actually pretty fun," she laughed. "It was the first time I've ever eaten off a shirt."

"Yeah." I let out a tired yawn. We'd done a lot that day. "But if I hadn't accidentally knocked the cake over, you two would probably still be fighting."

"Nah," Eugénie replied. "He would have given in eventually." Then, looking towards the glimmering lights of the city, she added: "But he's always so stubborn."

"Well, you'll have to get used to it," I chuckled. I knew I had, a long time ago. "He's the stubborn guy you'll have to marry."

Eugénie immediately turned away as her cheeks became pink. "O-Of course," she replied. "I'm just annoyed by him sometimes."

But her wistful eyes seemed to express otherwise.

"You know Eugénie, speaking of marriages…" I absent-mindedly played with a napkin in my fingers.

"Yeah?" She turned back to me.

"Albert asked me a weird question today." My voice was casual, but a little diffident. I wasn't even sure why I was going to tell her this.

"Oh," Eugénie's eyes lit up. "So what did he say?"

"He asked me… if I loved Valentine."

"That's not really a weird question," Eugénie replied reasonably. "You two are engaged."

"I know," I hastily responded, shoving the napkin aside. It was beginning to become distracting. "But he just asked it so suddenly."

"I see. So what did you tell him?"

"I told him that I like her as a friend." Unlike my ashamed temperament, Eugénie seemed the least bit affected.

"Hmm," she said.

"What? 'Hmm?'" I was confused. "You don't think it's weird that I don't love my fiancée?"

Eugénie laughed warmly. "Franz, why would you think that's weird?"

I said nothing.

"It's normal," she assured me. "Not loving your fiancée isn't a big deal."

"How can you say that so casually?" I raised an eyebrow skeptically. "I'm going to have to marry this person, and I can't think of her as anything more than a friend!"

"Because, Franz…" She let out a sigh, seeming impatient with how dense I could be. "She's your arranged fiancée. It's not as if you asked her to marry you."

Well, she does have a point.

"So not having feelings for her… that's not surprising, to be honest. It's as natural as… say…" She tilted her head on an angle and squinted a bit, searching for the right analogy. "Oh, I know."

"It's as natural as loving someone who isn't your fiancée."

I paused, her words echoing on the surface of my mind.

Ah, that's right.

I could only stare as Eugénie smiled kindly at my blank expression, unaware of the thoughts that were swimming around in my head. It was as if she had turned on a switch in my mind somewhere.

Why didn't I realize this before?

A hand clasped on my shoulder, causing me to nearly jump out of my seat. "Hey, what are you guys talking about?"

I looked up to see Albert, his sopping wet shirt with smudges of icing still stuck to it. It looked like he couldn't clean it up properly.

"Were you talking about me?" he guessed slyly, a teasing smirk on his face.

I laughed, but Eugénie only blushed. "Don't think so highly of yourself, Albert." I told him. "You're not that interesting."

"Hey!" I couldn't help but smile in response to his displeased frown.

"So…" I pushed myself away from our table, standing up. "Let's go home now, shall we?"

I found myself having rather unwanted difficulties later that night.

It's not like I particularly brought it upon myself, even though I'd been the one to knock the cake over. If I had known it would be distracting me so much now, I would have just let them argue for as long as they pleased. It would have been irritating to put up with at the time, but that would've been a much more preferable alternative than this.

After roaming around the city to observe the nightlife for a while, the three of us had arrived back at Eugénie's villa shortly after ten. Exhausted in a rather satisfying way, we'd dragged ourselves up the stairs to our rooms, laughing and fooling around in our fatigued daze. Eugénie had casually bid us our goodnight's and told us that she'd left some fresh towels in the bathroom in case we needed them the next morning.

So, nothing seemed out of the ordinary really.

But Albert, almost half-asleep from our tiring excursion, still insisted on getting out the stains left by the icing. That, I normally wouldn't mind – except Albert, for some strange reason, had to undertake the cleaning process of his shirt without actually having it on.

"Aw, it won't come off," Albert scrubbed harder on the crumpled fabric spread out on his bed with a damp facecloth. "The color's seeped into it already."

"Don't do that over there," I retorted unsupportively, pulling the comforter off of my bed. "You'll stain the mattress. Go do that on the table or something."

I was doing something – anything to make sure I that my eyes didn't have to meet Albert's bare chest in the process. After all, what was I supposed to do if he realized I was staring at him?

"Geez Franz," Albert griped at my suggestion, though he complied nonetheless. Setting down his shirt on the table, he rubbed vigorously against the stains. "Ugh, this isn't working. Does Eugénie have some type of bleach around here we could use?"

But I wasn't listening.

My mind was elsewhere, trying to determine the lingering questions that plagued my thoughts. When we'd been younger, seeing Albert without his shirt on hadn't really bothered me before. I mean, we were kids then, so it wasn't a big deal, right?

Now, I felt different. In a mortifyingly heated sort of way.

Great. And it was all because of what had happened this morning. Because of the situation that had reawakened itself in my mind, I couldn't look at him with such careless ease now.

How could I? How could I even try to, when I had this panging in my chest that was urging me to hold him, touch him, feel his warmth in my arms, to look into his clear blue eyes and…

"Hey, Franz," Albert was calling from across the room. "Did you hear me?"

I shut my eyes, letting my head droop. How could I be thinking of such embarrassing things?

I had been keeping myself preoccupied with needlessly straightening up the beds, but Albert hadn't noticed how seemingly pointless my actions were. Not too far away, he was still hunched over the table, attentively wiping at the stains.

"Uh, no…" Realizing what I'd just said, I took my words back immediately. "I mean no, I don't think she has any bleach."

Albert let out a resolute sigh. "I guess there's no helping it then. I'll just put this in the sink and let it soak in water overnight."

As he turned away from the table and began to head towards the bathroom, wet shirt in hand, I decided that there was something I needed to do about it. I pulled one of my own shirts out of my suitcase, throwing it at my friend.

"At least put on a shirt, Albert."

He stared me blankly, but soon replied. "Thanks."

"Oh, and turn off the light when you leave, will you?" I asked as I sat down on the side of the mattress, yawning. "I'm going to go to sleep now."

"Yeah. I'll be back in a few minutes." He walked over to the door, pushing it open before turning back to meet my eyes. He stood there for a moment, just looking at me. "Franz…"

"What?" I looked up at him in mid-yawn. His hand was resting on the polished doorknob, the door still ajar. There was a strange air of serenity that surrounded him as he gazed into my eyes.

Albert smiled slightly. "Today was fun, wasn't it?"

When I found myself unexpectedly at a loss for words, I could only agree.

"Yeah. It was."

The light flicked off silently, soon followed by the gentle closing of the door behind him.

I flopped down onto my bed, pushing the hair out of my face with back of my palm. It was comfortably cool in there due to the occasional breeze that flowed its way through the open balcony window.

I had settled my head in an untouched pillow, listening to the faint sounds of the whispering tides. Waves crashed, waves pulled away, returning to the vast ocean to meet the shore once again. I basked in its calming resonance. It was a continuous, soothing cycle.

I turned to the sky then. Staring up at the stars, I saw Albert's quiet, pensive expression from that humid summer night two years ago.

No… I think that's love.

Moonlight illuminated my eyes: everything seemed so blue. I had finally realized what I'd been ignoring for so long.

This whole time, I've just been afraid.

It's cold here.

When I try to lift my hands, bring them before me to grope at the darkness, my fingers close around vacant space. My eyes are of no use in such an unfathomable place. The air that surrounds me is thin and stagnant, painfully empty.

I am alone, trapped in a cage of steel.

Something is coming forward, approaching me. My breath is becoming ragged, heavy and uncontrolled. I can feel a choking strain tearing within my chest as I struggle to gasp for air. My eyes sting of nonexistent tears.

The aftermath of a duel is but an endless abyss.

Demise is swallowing me now, omnipotent and unheeding, in the manifestation of a throbbing, aching pain. It's spilling out of me: endless pools of crimson tears, draining me of my willpower. Somewhere within my thoughts, I've known that this would be inevitable.

Then, why is it?

I'm numb with exhaustion, slowly drifting away. It's like watching falling snowflakes float down to land on my eyelids, offering to ease me into a deep, unchanging sleep. And I'm accepting it.

Why am I not anxious? Why don't I feel fear; why don't I try to escape?

As if in response, my body slowly begins to tingle. My fingers twitch. I realize it then: there are arms around me, breathing life into my being, enveloping me in affection. Two clear azure eyes hold me in their gaze, calling for me.

Ah, that's why.

I don't need anything more. As dawning light cradles me gently, I see those eyes once more. And I'm glad… I'm thankful of my decision. In those arms, I have no regrets. I smile.

It's warm here.

I woke up in a cold sweat.

My hands were trembling and I was sweating profusely. My bed felt uncomfortably damp in perspiration. As I pushed myself up off the mattress in apprehension, it took me a couple seconds to recognize where I was. I was panting, blinking to clear my head.

When was the last time I'd had a nightmare like this?

As my eyes got adjusted to the dim atmosphere of the room, they wandered to register the long shadows that were spread across the carpet by the moonlight. I shivered, clutching my blanket in clenched fists. I couldn't even remember what I had been dreaming about, and yet I felt so uneasy.

Something came over me then, drowning me in simultaneous waves of fear. I sat crouched on my bed, shaking in a confused panic. I had never felt so unbearably helpless before. It was hard to breathe.

"Franz?" a voice asked quietly. From the bed beside me came a ruffling of sheets. When I didn't reply, he called again. "Franz… are you okay?"

"I… I think I had a bad dream," my words warbled between my choking breaths. I couldn't bring myself out of the sea of emotions that had swallowed me.

"Franz…" Albert pushed away his blanket, slowly getting off his bed. His figure was outlined in the faint moonlight.

"I'm fine," I told him, but my inexplicable quivering was beyond my control. I turned away as he neared me. I didn't want him to see me in such a vulnerable state. Wasn't I supposed to protect him? "Don't worry about it, just go back to sleep."

But Albert didn't listen. He went over to sit by my side, his eyes concerned. "Hey," he said.

I turned to look up at my best friend. He possessed an expression I'd never seen before. It was a kind, worried smile, his gaze sympathetic in an implicit way.

My wavering eyes locked onto his. He lifted his hands, and in a fluid, continuous motion, he wrapped them around me, tenderly bringing my head against his shoulder. "It's okay."

I brought my own arms to surround him, my breathing beginning to calm as I relaxed in his warmth.

Albert surveyed me with nostalgic eyes, watching as I exhaled evenly. He let out a quiet laugh. "Remember when you used to hold me like this when we were younger?"

I held him a little tighter. "Yeah."

"It always made me feel better."

I lifted my head to meet his eyes. Albert didn't do anything, he didn't even blink – he only stared at me with silent appreciation. His azure eyes shone softly, shimmering slightly in the moonlight.

Albert, I used to think that I was doing the right thing.

"Are you all right now?" he asked gently.

I would always look after you; protect you when you were in danger.

"Albert…" I sat upright, causing his hands to slide to the bed. He said nothing. Carefully, I lifted a hand to stroke his face, holding his gaze up to mine. "Just… stay here for a while."

I thought I was being strong.

It wasn't anything like what had happened that morning – unexpected, nervous and hesitant. What happened then felt so natural. I slowly pulled him closer to me, breathing in his familiar scent as he grew nearer.

When in reality, this whole time…

Our lips met gently with such a delicate patience that caused my heart to ache. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, delving deeper into my embrace. Long-suppressed desires flowed out of me as I caressed the taste of his kiss. I held his body against my own, cherishing the warmth of his mouth against mine.

I've just been running away.

That day at my father's funeral, when I had started to run, to escape from my guilt, I had never stopped. I had resolved I couldn't be selfish and rely on others anymore: I would have to make them rely on me. By protecting Albert, by holding him close to me when he was afraid, I thought he needed me. I thought that it would make him need me.

When this whole time… it had been the other way around.

When I realized that he may not always be with me, I didn't know what to do. It hurt to see him with others. And because it hurt, I didn't want to have those feelings about him. In the end, I couldn't help it. It was Albert after all, my best friend. I couldn't change how I felt: and so I continued to run.

I hadn't changed that much. In truth, I was the one afraid: afraid of not being able to protect others, afraid of admitting my feelings to myself, afraid of losing him, afraid of getting hurt… but most of all, I was afraid of being able to love honestly.

Because love, just like hate, is a hurtful, troublesome thing at times.

But now… now, I won't run anymore.

Illuminated in the waning light of the stars, I stroked Albert's hair as he lay on the pillow we shared, snuggled up against my neck. He breathed so peacefully when he was asleep. Smiling at his serene expression, I placed my arms around him, cradling his warmth. Just being able to be with him like this… it was more than enough.

I had made a decision. I wasn't going to be afraid anymore.

I would face and endure whatever hardships happened to come my way. I would protect you with everything within my power; defend your innocent smile that I admire. I'd make sure you wouldn't do anything foolish or impulsive that would cause you pain in the future. It didn't matter how hurt I would become in the process, because I'd care about you more so than I'd care about myself. And if, perhaps, the time comes… I would give up my life for you.

Because Albert, you said it yourself, didn't you?

That's what love is.