It’s been over a year since that incident.

It makes me sick to think about that choice I made and it

has made me sick.

4th October, 2020. Trafalgar and I had a nice friendship. It was something built out of scratch and it
had worked it’s way up. It was a dirty, dusty and uneven trail to our favourite spot, surrounded by
the oak and pine trees, sitting on the arrowhead-coloured snow, in front of the frozen lake. We’d sit
on the bed of dried and dead leaves and laugh. Laugh our hearts out. It on the 4 th, he whispered, “I
love you. Will you be mine?” Those two sentences; coming from the joker and actor of our class;
made me think that he was joking. And hence, I said, “No.”

He got up and said he had to go home. 2 weeks later, I received a message from a policeman in a
prussian coloured uniform with a sandy-coloured cardboard box. “Good Morning Ma’am,” he said
with taking of his hat and placing it on his chest, “I, regret to inform you, that Trafalgar Law was
founded dead in the frozen lake by the forest. A note in his pocket said, ‘Give the diary to Robin
Nico.’” At that moment, it felt like reality was collapsing into a singularity. The chill of the frozen lake
had reached the nape of my neck. Colour vanished and my heart started beating as fast as the cars in
a Formula One race.

It was the diary that he said he’d give to me when we pass out of high school and go our separate
ways. He wanted to be a surgeon and I wanted to be an archaeologist. The diary had a few torn
pages, but the rest said,

“As I lie on this thick mattress, listening to Experience by Einaudi on repeat, I ponder. I ponder upon
a question. I ponder upon, what is life? Two options, as to the why, when, where, what, which and
how it came to existence.

One is science. That everything happened by chance and chemical reactions.

One is religion. That everything is controlled by an “Almighty” and there is one ruler to command the
cosmos.

My question stands as, “Can it be both?” Or is the answer neither?

My mind, I can’t begin to describe it. The simplest word for it is complex. I am delicate. I may look
tough with a beard, but the ones that know me know that I am not. Within my heart, lies a child. A
sensitive one who does not know how to move on. A sensitive one thinks his existence is worthless,
like his love. A sensitive one who does not know how to stop loving the same person. Rejection has
led me to weaken myself more than I already am. It has also lead me to realise that trust, is much
like death. You can cheat it, betray it, but at the end, you realise it’s was wrong to do that. And death
makes you realise that. I have tried to love again. But then the thought of her comes galloping back
to me. She’s kind. She’s helpful. For me, she’s perfect.
That aside, you know, the thinking voice in the head? It’s on war with my consciousness. Logic and
sanity constantly fight each other. I want to be alone and at the same time I don’t want to be alone.

Sorry.”

Right now, I lie in this bed, trying to fight this brain tumour and I think of him. Only if I had said “Yes”
that summer break, how different would life be.