Coeur never knew what he liked. People asked him what his favorite color was. They asked him if he preferred playing at the park or in his backyard. Coeur was quite indecisive on the matter and as a four-year-old, he spent an inordinate amount of time thinking of answers to these questions. But why did he have to choose? Both the playground and backyard were fun and if any color went missing from the world, Coeur would miss it.
With these indecisive philosophies and relatively quiet nature, Coeur became a passive child compared to his rowdy older brothers. He was the kind that just went along with what others did and liked. As Coeur grew up, however, he found that this lack of personality made him feel hollow. The kids on the playground had their favorite games. Some had insatiable energy and capricious attitudes, while others were tender voiced, and lethargic. Coeur, for the life of him, could not figure out what he was, so he must’ve been missing a part of himself, right?
That’s what Coeur believed the pain was. The muscles between his ribs ached. His teeth were sore. His hearing faded in and out by the time he was ten. Coeur never said a thing about any of it. He believed it was merely a symptom of being empty.
When he graduated into adolescence, Coeur found his peers liked him. Girls called him a pretty boy, and boys respected his size and athleticism. Questions of personality became irrelevant in the face of popularity.
To maintain his image, Coeur took up swimming. Not because he liked it, but because being good at it made him like himself.
His hollowness felt momentarily breached, filled with the pool’s water when he swam. Winning race after race kept the dam full as people clapped.
The dam, he found, leaked rather fast.
When Coeur’s father drove him home from a tournament, saying they’d have no more room for trophies, he clasped Coeur’s shoulder and said he was proud of his son. Coeur found the age-old question sitting at the back of his mind like the hook on a drain.
Why?
Coeur didn’t try very hard at swimming. He was just good at it because he was tall and naturally muscled. He looked at his dad from the passenger seat. Then, he turned back around to face the road, too afraid to ask.
Coeur did find distractions from the hollowness. He found peace in an old record player his mother gave him for his birthday. Not much of a talker, he listened to music all day long because even if he had nothing to say, he always had something to sing. His habit worsened when he got earbuds and a phone. Music became his constant companion.
It was hardly enough, though. One can’t live their entire life lost in diversions. There were only so many songs that sounded out Coeur’s desire to feel complete.
A girl once took it upon herself to kiss him.
Coeur was poor at academics. Numbers were difficult for him to wrap his head around, and words were far worse. A girl in his class offered to help him study. At her house, about twenty minutes in, she pressed her lips to his.
Coeur was startled. He’d never kissed or been kissed, and the concept of kissing had only crossed his mind as something people did because they were in relationships or because they were bored.
Coeur was bored most of his life, but he’d never resorted to anything sexual to cure it. Like everything else, he wasn’t sure if he liked girls or boys or anyone at all, so it was easier to ignore the choices. But it felt good being liked. It filled his hollowness as she got on top of him, and they kissed till their mouths were sore.
“Why are you doing this?” Coeur finally asked.
“Because I like you,” she said, kissing his jaw.
“But–” Coeur pushed her away gently. “Why?”
It took the girl a moment. Her eyes flickered about as if the answer lay somewhere around her bedroom. Then, she did what Coeur feared she would.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “You’re cute, and you’re nice,” she said, smiling, reaching for him again. Coeur held her arms, stopping her midway. He swallowed and asked if they could just go back to studying.
Coeur didn’t go to anyone’s house after that. He soon figured that his quiet friendliness signaled one of two things when he was alone with people. They either took it as an invitation to be physical, or they found it off-putting.
So, Coeur lived his life with a motto of ignorance. People called him aloof, in the clouds, half there, but in reality, Coeur was almost always paying attention. What he was ignoring was entirely his own.
He didn’t have chest pains that sometimes got so bad he felt like he was dying. He wasn’t lonely to the point of crying at night. He didn’t look at his ceiling, listening to his music, wondering if he was just an outline, someone who was secretly made of ceramic without a center. A hollow beast with a bleeding heart.
Then, on a day that heart ached more than most, Coeur met his match in a skinny, short boy with a temper from hell and a face fitting of it.
Coeur sat next to him in literature class, got his books, and in return, Neo helped him answer questions.
Neo was a savant of silence. He did it with substance rather than insecurity.
There was something strange and compelling about him, Coeur thought. He was pretty in a nonconventional sense. He had high cheekbones, messy hair, pale skin, a perched nose, hard eyes, and lips Coeur swore had never smiled a day in their life. He was a cute yet elegant album cover in Coeur’s eyes, but his music was something to get used to.
Neo was mean and impatient. A brisk tempo with harsh orchestra strokes.
“Sorry, I’m stupid,” Coeur would say, messing up on a sentence.
And Neo would say, “Could you not apologize every two seconds? It’s annoying.”
On other occasions:
“Neo, am I doing this right?”
“I already said you’re fine, Coeur. Quit asking, would you?”
Neo had a habit of calling Coeur by his full name. Everyone called him C. Even his teachers. But not Neo. Even when he found himself struggling with pronunciation, he said it in full. And especially when he was being mean.
“Coeur.” He flicked his forehead. “Pay attention.”
“Coeur.” He dropped a paperback on his head. “Don’t fall asleep.”
But like all musical pieces, Neo revealed subtly softer pieces of himself, like strings of a piano’s melody.
“Hey.” He poked Coeur’s finger, the one tracing a line on the book’s page. “Don’t get frustrated. We have time. Just try again.”
Then,
“Coeur, wait.” Neo’d pull him back when they were walking out of class and tuck the tag back into his shirt.
Neo was also funny in a way that he wasn’t trying to be funny: a brass instrument with a quiet, but sudden and sharp entrance.
“In the Picture of Dorian Gray, there’s a character named Lord Henry who says that being in love is the privilege of the boring,” Neo said, while he and Coeur sat in detention for talking too much in class.
Neo read. Coeur watched him read. And occasionally, Neo would say something, and Coeur would smile and listen. “He says that people resort to love because they have nothing better to do.”
Coeur looked over his shoulder at their sleeping teacher, then back at Neo’s pouty face flipping through the novel. He propped his chin on his arms with a crooked smile and asked in return, “What if the greatest adventure of my life is being in love?”
“Then you’re boring.”
Coeur laughed. Neo was the smartest person he’d ever met, yet at once, the worst hint taker in the history of hint taking. Not that that bothered Coeur in the slightest.
For the first time in his life, he knew what he liked. He knew what he wanted. He was aware that he was aloof, up in the clouds, half there, and wholly infatuated by his mean, smart classmate.
Love does not require reason. But Neo gave Coeur the simplest one. He looked into Coeur rather than at him. He sought past the surface, trudging into the deep end of the pool.
So one day in detention, when the teacher had once again fallen asleep–
“Neo,” Coeur whispered. “Why do you like me?”
“I don’t like you. You’re annoying.”
“You tolerate me.”
“Marginally.”
“Why do you tolerate me, then?”
Neo looked up from his book. His gaze didn’t flicker or search. Such a question didn’t have an answer sitting in some corner of the classroom. Instead, it lay in Coeur. In that center he was so sure was missing.
“You’re kind,” Neo said. “Not the normal kindness that people throw around. It’s a real type of kindness, the raw, thoughtful kind that comes from the heart.”
A sudden shyness overtook Neo, pink hues marking his cheeks as he met Coeur’s gaze. “You didn’t grab a book for someone because they asked. You grabbed it because you saw they couldn’t reach.” Neo shrugged then, wiping at his face. “Also, you’re only partially annoying, I guess.”
“What part of me is annoying?” Cœur whispered, smiling like an idiot.
“For one, you’re attractive. It draws too much attention.”
“That’s cute. Did you steal that from Pride and Prejudice?”
“Do the homework, Coeur,” Neo said, standing up and putting his backpack on as the bell rang. “Or I’ll stab you in the eye with my pen.”
“Which eye?”
Neo smiled, a little laugh made of mostly breath escaping his lips.
That was the day Coeur decided he would tell Neo how he felt.
“This is for a girl you like?” Coeur’s mother asked later that night, reading over her son’s shoulder as he wrote a letter, a letter he’d been writing and rewriting for hours in the dim corner of his room.
Coeur shook his head. “It’s for a boy.”
“Oh.”
“But I do like him.”
“Yes, Cherie, I gathered that,” she chuckled, bringing Coeur’s dinner to his room and kissing her son’s cheek. “I look forward to meeting him.”
Coeur finished his letter, not completely satisfied, but then he never would be. There is no perfect way to describe what finding love for the first time in your life feels like, except, maybe, to explain how comfortable you are with them and how passionate you are thinking of them.
Coeur fell asleep, hours later, staring at the ceiling, holding the letter to his chest, restlessly not thinking of loneliness, hollowness, or heart.
He thought of Neo.
But Neo wasn’t in class the next morning. Coeur waited in his seat, peaking at the door with every click of the doorknob, disappointment settling in his stomach when it was someone else.
He’d never asked for Neo’s number or anything because the one time he brought it up it made Neo tense. He said his father was a bit of a helicopter when it came to technology, so he’d rather not hand it out.
So when excruciatingly long days followed and Neo didn’t come into school for a consecutive week, Coeur walked, letter in hand, to his teacher’s desk after the bell rang and class was dismissed.
“Excuse me, sir?” Coeur cleared his throat. “Do you know where Neo’s been?”
“Neo? Oh, he’ll be out for the foreseeable future, I believe,” his teacher said. “Poor lad’s back in the hospital now.”
Coeur took a moment to process the words, thought he’d misheard. Then, if a bit brokenly, he asked, “What?”
His teacher looked up at him through his glasses, curious now. He must’ve noticed Coeur’s distress, the slight tremble in his hand, because he visibly softened, facing his student head-on and removing his lenses.
“I’m sorry, C. I assumed you two were close,” he began. “Neo’s been ill for a few years now. That’s why he’s out of school so often.”
Coeur had always just assumed Neo had prior engagements–a club he didn’t talk about, some sort of excuse to skip class half the week–not… Not something like this.
The teacher sighed. “He had an accident with some boys last week. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. It’s been buzzing all over the school. He was hurt quite badly.”
An accident. With some boys.
Coeur thought back to the morning after detention when he walked into school. He’d just told his coach he was going to quit swimming, to which his coach yelled and flailed his arms. Coeur didn’t remember much else except agreeing to do one last tournament, and then he’d be done.
He remembered walking past Neo in the hall, past teammates who he hadn’t really spoken to outside practices. They practically surrounded him, but Coeur didn’t see it that way at the time.
He saw his old perceivers, the ones who thought him nice, athletic, a good-looking picture to decorate the scene. He saw them gathered around the picture of his happiness, of the person he perhaps didn’t look right with but felt right with.
Coeur had a choice. He could walk into the overtly suspicious scene and grab Neo by the arm. He could tear him away from the danger his classmates posed or even just ask his friends what they were doing. He could’ve done any number of things. But Coeur always had an affinity for ignoring decisions.
“Don’t let it shake you up,” his teacher said, but Coeur was already lost replaying the scene over and over again as if thinking of the past would somehow change it. “Why don’t you go visit him? I’m sure he’d appreciate seeing a friend.”
Coeur nodded and left, the guilt spreading through his body like a virus. It ate at him for the following weeks until the hollowness Neo had filled became a cave with raw, wounded walls.
Coeur cried silently the first night. He felt bad, yes, but more so, he missed Neo. Although that wasn’t entirely correct either.
In French, you do not say you miss someone. You say they are missing from you.
Tu me manques, Coeur said, inside his head, mouthing it, as if Neo could hear.
Every night Coeur wrote Neo letters till he was surrounded by thousands of them. Everynight, Coeur repeated the same line over and over again, Tu me manques tellement que même mon coeur souffre, until little by little, his heart adopted the words as its own.
Waking up in the hospital was a stroke of fate. Coeur was sure of it. His parents were up to their necks in worry not knowing what was wrong with their child.
Coeur didn’t care.
He was mildly aware that his health was in trouble, but his mind was on other things.
Was Neo in the building somewhere? Was he reading and delivering pretentious opinions with wry little insults to other sick children? Was he alright? Had he forgiven him? Coeur struggled with that question the most. He fidgeted on the bed, an anxious dog waiting to be taken off its leash.
When the doctors gave their discourse about Coeur’s disease and how fast and aggressively it had progressed, they gave his heart an expiration date. As if it was a fruit slowly rotting.
A year they said. A year and then Coeur would need another. Even then, he was at risk of a multitude of attacks, infections, and other things Coeur had no interest in knowing about. What he heard was that he’d have to remain in hospital for observation for a while, which made him smile– morbidly from his doctors’ perspectives.
“Can I go now?” he’d ask, over and over.
Eventually, his father told him to just go on and take a walk if his doctors thought it was fine. He roamed with purpose, searching the halls, sneaking into an elevator he had no right to access, and working floor by floor until finally, he collided with a strange, running creature.
“Oh my god!” he yelled. “I’m so sorry!”
The first thing Coeur ever gave me was an apology.
The second was a story to unveil.
He spent the rest of that day in a turmoil of emotions. Neo hadn’t forgiven him. He wouldn’t for some time. But when Coeur was finally able to confront his own ignorance, time and friendship wove his and Neo’s paths back together.
Coeur kept his letters. He kept it in his possession along with his story for an entire year. Because, as it turns out, Neo didn’t need a grand confession. He didn’t need to be swept off his feet or entangled in a forbidden romance.
Tonight, Coeur has all the animation of a corpse. He lays in his bed hooked to an ECMO machine. An eternal pump keeps his blood flowing while he is confined to a bed. His senses are dulled by medicine. He cannot walk or stand or eat, yet he is content.
Neo lies beside him, his head on Coeur’s shoulder. They read books they’ve read before, listening to songs they know by heart. Neo points to certain passages, rousing laughter from them both, humming to the tunes.
When Neo writes, Coeur shuts his eyes, pressing his nose into Neo’s messy hair. He hugs him round the waist. The melodic pen strokes bring him peace.
Their story is almost finished. Given the state of things, Neo reads Coeur the full manuscript in a day. Coeur’s eyes never leave Neo’s face as he does.
“What do you think?” Neo whispers.
“I think the world is going to weep for every word you write.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
“It’s your first review.”
“It’s my only review.”
“You should quote me on the inside of the cover.”
“To my Coeur,” Neo mocks, “For making fun of this manuscript before it was even finished.”
“Perfect.”
“Good. I’m keeping it. You sappy French man.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask, did you secretly learn to speak French for me?”
“No.” Neo frowns. “I secretly learned French so you and your mom couldn’t talk behind my back anymore.”
“My mom likes you more than me,” Coeur laughs.
“Well, I know that now.”
Neo’s head dips, their laughter mixing. Coeur sits up and cups his face so that he can keep looking at it. They touch noses, their chuckles fading.
“Our story’s just begun, Neo,” Coeur whispers.
“Don’t start.”
“It’s just the beginning. It is,” Coeur presses on. “You have so many stories left to read and so many left to tell.”
Coeur slips one of his letters into Neo’s lap, the first one. The one that is too long, ridden with mistakes, and so utterly imperfect that Coeur cannot fathom a truer confession of love. Neo unwraps it with care, smoothing down the paper. He reads it aloud, at times, stopping to gather himself as his jaw aches.
Kindness and Resilience were born in the bodies of two broken boys and all they ever wished for was more time to be together.
They are not a tragedy.
They are a story of love and loss.
When Neo finishes the last sentence, Coeur smiles. Their silhouettes connect in the dark. Coeur caresses Neo’s high cheekbones, his perched nose, and his lips that have smiled for him more times than he can count. He admires his favorite color pooling in Neo’s eyes and he cannot imagine that he would want to be anywhere else.
—
The surgeon described the procedure to Coeur’s parents multiple times. Coeur’s mother is talking to him now as they inject Coeur with sedatives for the operation.
Neo, Hikari, and I aren’t allowed in, so we wait outside. Right now, Coeur’s brothers are each taking turns talking to him. His father holds up his old swimming varsity jacket, talking about something or other as Coeur falls under the medication’s spell.
His mother is the last to see him off before his stretcher is led into the hall. When they tell her it’s time, she struggles to let him go. Coeur is her youngest. Her baby. And she must relinquish him to strangers to have his chest cut open, and his heart replaced.
Once they wheel Coeur into the hall, Neo stands. He approaches the stretcher.
Eric asks the nurse to give them a minute.
“Neo,” Coeur says, a bit too loudly. He smiles deliriously as Neo leans over him, taking his hand.
“Hello, my Coeur,” he whispers. “How are you feeling?”
“So great,” Coeur says. “Drugs are so great.”
“Are they?”
“So great. But don’t try them, they’re bad for you.”
“If you insist.”
Coeur continues smiling, his eyes closing for a few seconds, then opening again, his head lolling to the side, then back.
“You said you’d steal me a heart, you remember that? Was this you? Did you get it for me?” Coeur asks in a whisper, his pupils expanding the longer they remain on Neo.
Neo’s lips thin, his eyes glossing as he remembers the slip of paper. The promise.
For Coeur,
I’ll give you a heart.
That piece of paper is still wedged in the Hit List like a bookmark. Coeur wanted to keep it somewhere they wouldn’t lose it.
“No, I didn’t,” Neo says, dragging his thumb back and forth over Coeur’s knuckles. “But you know you’ve always had mine.”
Coeur cannot sanely take in the words, but he can see the sentiment on Neo’s face. He looks at him as long as he can with a certain kind of joy only simple pleasures arise. Holding his hand. Hearing him. Seeing him. Being with him.
“Neo, Neo, Neo,” Coeur whispers, as if to himself.
“Yes, Coeur.”
“I love your name so much. It’s my favorite name,” Coeur says.
Neo attempts to keep his composure. He swallows hard, his exhales shaky and frail. His palm presses to the center of Coeur’s chest over the gown. The thunder and lightning rumble just beneath.
Neo drags his fingertips over Coeur’s face. He leans down and presses his lips to his. It is slow and gentle. Coeur kisses him back, as much as he can, the two of them parting with flushed smiles.
“You better kiss me like that when I wake up,” Coeur whispers.
Neo laughs a breath, a tear rolling down his cheek.
“I will.”
The nurse gently tells Neo that she needs to take Coeur to the operating room now. Neo nods in agreement, holding Coeur’s hand until he is taken down the hall.
“Neo? Are you coming?” Coeur calls, although the calling fades into babbling whispers. “Neo, Neo, my Neo,”
Hikari holds Neo’s hand. He doesn’t wipe the tear. He lets it hang from his jaw and watches as Coeur disappears into limbo.
I’ve told you before that I am not tied to my body. Similarly, my body is not tied to common perceptions. Normal people aren’t allowed in operating rooms, but you’ve probably gathered by now that I am neither normal nor person.
“Sam.”
“Yes, Coeur,” I say, standing at the head of the operating table. Around me, nurses and techs gather their supplies. Two surgeons get ready to scrub in. One nurse places each tool that shall soon be used to tinker with Coeur’s organs on a tray while the anesthesiologist prepares.
All can see me, I think. They simply do not think my presence is unnatural. They accept it like the sound of a scalpel against a metal tray and the brightness of the surgeon’s light.
“Sam,” Coeur says again, eyes half-lidded, yet on the verge of panic. “You have to take care of him while I’m under, okay?”
I caress his hand, the one that Neo had to let go.
“Okay.”
“You need to make him take his medicine. He–he has–has one round in the evening and two in the mornings. He won’t eat if he’s alone either, alright? Sit and–and eat with him, that way he’ll have a little at least. And–and you have to offer to do something with him otherwise he won’t get out of bed. Take him to the library or the gardens, but–but don’t let him sit too close to the hedge, his skin gets itchy. And he says he hates hugs, but he doesn’t, he needs them. Hug him tonight, alright? Just hold him whenever he’s sad or scared. And–” Coeur stops, breathing in as if he’s trying not to cry.
“Sam, if his dad comes, you have to protect him. I–I know you don’t intervene–I know that’s one of your rules–but you have to keep him safe for me.”
“I will,” I say and Coeur knows I mean it.
“Thank you, Sam.” He smiles and my hand slips from his. “You really are a strange, beautiful thing.”
The anesthesiologist stands over Coeur and places a mask on his nose and mouth. “Countdown for me sweetheart, okay?”
“Will you count with me, Sam?” Coeur breathes.
I nod.
Memories twist into each other, not like film strips, more like a book’s flipping pages melting into one another. That’s all a person is in the end, isn’t it? Bones and blood and beauty spliced to memories.
Four.
Coeur does not think of that as he descends into the depths of an ocean so deep, he cannot see the surface. He does not remember the things he did or didn’t do.
Three.
He remembers Sony cheating at monopoly, Hikari’s jokes and drawings, Eric flicking him, the long drives with his father, the sports games on tv he watched with his brothers, his mother chuckling and bringing him his dinner late at night.
Two.
He does not think of loneliness, hollowness, or heart. He thinks of Neo’s lips and the laughs he breathed against his neck and his cold, yet gentle hands, and his little smiles, and the tear that rolled down his cheek the last time he saw him.
One.
Coeur sinks into the dark.
And his love for Neo sinks with him.
