Levi stepped forward, his hand clutching the doorknob to Dane’s room. He shook all over, feeling the bile rising in his throat. The tears rose in his eyes, the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. He swallowed hard as he felt his airway shrink to the size of a pinhole. Covering his mouth with one hand, he resisted the urge to scream as he twisted the knob for the first time in a long time. He bit his lip as he felt himself opening the door, the tears bubbling in his eyes as his vision blurred and he shuddered with the sobs, too broken to even cry. His breaths caught in his throat. He just shook and gasped, forcing breaths down his throat but not breathing. He forced himself to look inside, smelling the air but it didn’t even smell like Dane anymore. He couldn’t even remember what Dane smelled like anymore. Everything Dane was like was slipping from his memory. He couldn’t even remember how he felt like when they laid next to each other. It had been five years and he couldn’t even remember Dane as he really was, just the distorted image in his memory reminded him, along with all the people who told him “Dane would want you to get over him” or “Dane wouldn’t want you to be sad” because truly, everyone had a distorted image of a person, seeing them how they wanted to, and not how they actually were.

He gazed with watchful eyes as his vision blurred and he stared around. He looked at Dane’s bed, his bedspread perfectly laid across, unlike Dane ever would’ve left it. He lay on the sheets, trying to catch Dane’s scent, but it had faded from the sheets and the memory. All that was left in the room was their camera. He hadn’t filmed for five years now. Blowing the dust off, he pulled off the lens, starting it up as he pulled the letter he’d written out of his pocket, the paper wrinkled from folding and unfolding about a million times already. He pressed the on button, staring into the little red light for a few seconds. The words formed in his head as they fizzled on his tongue. He finally retraced his steps, the words laced on his tongue.

“Hello Internet,” he swallowed hard as he felt his eyes and nose burn. Wiping at them, he started again, “It’s been awhile. I probably won’t be able to get halfway through this video without crying, but I guess I’ll try.”

He stared blankly as he pawed at his piece of paper.

“January 10th, 2020.” Levi felt his mouth form the words but a scream burning in his throat, “Dear Dane,” he began to read.

“I may not understand why you did it now, or probably ever. You had fooled everyone, Dane. Your family, your friends, even me. I know I shouldn’t say this but I really thought that you were fine and happy, the sun that shined brightly on my dim, pale figure as the moon. Truly, I didn’t know you then and I probably never will.

"Do you believe in heaven, Dane? Is there really a heaven with bright, endless days and sad fortunes forbidden? Do you really play the strings of a harp and gain wings to fly and land on fluffy clouds? The whole thing seems a bit farfetched to me, especially since everyone tells me that you’re up there as an angel watching over me when it feels like a cold, hard emptiness that every just shrugs over as an angel gained in heaven. When you die, do you just disappear? Just cease to exist as your subconscious melts away from you when you fade?

"They also say you died in an instant with the rope curled around your neck. But what the hell is an instant even? A few minutes, a minute, thirty seconds, ten seconds, one second? What the hell is an instant to a dying person? Does it feel like forever? What about the pain, Dane? The agonizing pain as the connections to your very organs struggling to keep you alive died off one by one. What the hell is an instant anyways, Dane? What the hell was an instant to you?

"I’ve just been so tired lately. I've been so tired of being alone and scared of being able to go back on to my regular accounts or our YouTube channels. I spend hours awake at night just trying to remember the way you smelled when you would up next to me on the couch when we watched a movie or how you even sounded like when you talked. It seems like everything just fades away so damn fast I can't reach out to grasp it. I don't think there's a heaven, and I don't think you're watching me but I'll say this for everyone else.

"It was after you left when it truly hit me that I would never be able to tell you certain things again. After I found you in your room, the rope around your neck as your head drooped on your shoulders, that chair lying on the floor, the sinking to my knees, puking everywhere and passing out on the floor, unable to speak, cry or move when I realized that we would never get to go back to Japan or anywhere. Days later when I woke again, lying on the floor of the hall, a massive headache raging as I remembered I'd drank the entire liquor cabinet just to try to forget you, hoping I'd end up dead, when I had to cut the noose around your neck and hold your lifeless body in my arms, the films over your bright blue eyes and some kind of words formed on your lips. You were so cold and stiff and I had to place you on your bed as I ran to the bathroom and vomited up bile because I had nothing else left in my stomach to throw up.

“The worst part was when I came back and just lie there on your side, lifeless and I watched from the door, hoping you’d start yawning and stretching and stare back at me with those brilliant blue eyes of yours, a smile creasing across your face. Then you’d walk over to me and ask why I up and we’d walk into the kitchen and you’d eat all my cereal and I would laugh. I thought I’d seen you take a breath and I rushed over and placed my fingers against your neck but it was so cold and stiff and your eyes just stared at me half open and your mouth still open like you were going to say something. I just lay next to you, unable to cry, unable to speak, wishing you would come home to me.

“I know it’s so selfish, Dane. I know it’s so selfish to want you back and have you with me, to stay with me. It’s so selfish to think that way. It’s like when I think of you it’s always about how much I miss you. I know it’s not your fault, or mine, or anyone’s. We just weren’t equipped to deal with the hand we got. I’m sorry for all of the nights I spend on the roof of our apartment building screaming until I lost my voice on how it was your fault when I truly knew it wasn’t anyone’s.

“Everyone keeps telling me that you wouldn’t want me to act this way, Dane. They keep telling me that you wouldn’t want me to do this or that, and they twist you against me when they don’t understand. When someone dies, everyone just keeps this distorted image of the person in their head as who you were. Even I have this image of you. I see you as this amazing person that was always happy about life and never had a reason to sad but the truth is that I didn’t even know you and I still regret it every day.

“Everyone keeps telling me to just let go of you, to get over you, but the truth is, I can’t. There are just so many loose ends never to be tied. Letting go of you means forgetting you and I can’t let go of the way you used to be. Everyone who let go of you forgets who you really were and even me, not letting go, holding on, I still forget how you used to laugh, how your lips curled into a smile, everything.

“I know I shouldn’t say this, Dane, but I am in love with you. I loved you then and I love you still. I could never tell you, the words always fizzling on my tongue as I tried to form them. I couldn’t even say it at your funeral, Dane. I couldn’t tell you that I loved you until a year later at a support group my mum forced me to go to so that I could let go of you. Everyone stared at me as I mumbled the words, and no stared at me, just kept talking about their loved ones who had died as if they were watching over them in heaven. They didn’t understand how much I’d loved you and how I was unable to say it.

“Most days I don’t even get out of bed, Dane. I just lie there, wondering if you ever felt the same way about me. I know it’s so selfish and I hate it but I can’t help it. I’m a selfish person. The worst part about being in love with you is that I never got to kiss you or even tell you that I loved you. Remember that time when we were sitting on the couch and I was curled up next to you and I just started crying and you asked me what was wrong and I wouldn’t answer? Well, it was because I thought that in that moment I would never love you as much as I did then and that you would never feel the same way about me.

“It’s the little things that hurt me the most sometimes, much more than the big things, like going to Japan. I’ll never be able to sit on a beach with you and watch the waves come in and wash at our feet as I curl up next to your side and watch the stars. It’s hard to go to Tesco now, even. I walk inside and grab that cart and suddenly I remember pushing you along in the car, running down the cereal aisle as you grabbed cereal off the shelves and the clerks started chasing after us because we were causing such a racket. I walk down the aisles sometimes and just break down crying as people surround me, asking if I’m okay as I use the hood to cover my face.

“I’m falling into such a dazed delirium now, Dane. I’m just so damn tired of everything and I’m not going to let go of you. I can’t and I won’t. A lot of people would write that they’ll see the other in heaven, but I know that we just make up heaven because humans truly can’t imagine death. Some emotions are just too deep to be felt by humans, I guess. I know that I’m just dragging on this note because I refuse to give you up and all the memories of you are coming back to me but only the good ones, Dane. I guess that’s just another aspect of my distorted image of you, Dane. I guess I’ve fallen in love with your distorted image. Everyone says I have to just keep living, but the truth is that I stopped living the moment you stepped on that chair, tied the necklace of rope around your neck, and stepped off the chair. I stopped living the moment you took your last wispy breath and started just surviving.

“I’m not a genius, but I do know this- I will never let go of you, no matter what they say to me, and no matter how many people tell me that you wouldn’t like something I’ve done. I know I probably will never see you again, and that as you have faded out of existence, I will too. I’d like to thank you for everything, even if you won’t ever see this video, and I probably won’t ever see you again but I’d like to believe it over truly being gone.

“As for you, internet,” Levi paused, staring straight into the camera lens as he looked up from his piece of paper.

“Goodbye, Internet.

This is the most fun I’ve ever had.”