So kind, right? Yet it leaves him absolutely no option to retreat
The rope wasn’t “taken out.”
It was simply there all at once. As if a cut had been made in the image, and one extra length of something had appeared.
The space was empty. The ceiling couldn’t be seen; all that was known was that there was an “above” overhead. Everything was grey-white, one unbroken expanse. Even the shadows looked bleached.
Gilga stood beneath it, the line of his shoulders taut, his hands empty.
He knew what he was waiting for, but part of his mind had gone dead, like the power had been cut.
Across from him, the thin shadow kept standing there.
Light lay over Nodt’s face like a sheet.
He raised his eyes; his gaze crashed straight into Gilga’s single eye, pressed some hidden button, and he tossed out, cleanly
“You want to die, right?”
No preamble. No Are you okay?
Gilga gave the smallest lift of his chin, as if trying to shove something back down.
His tone was light, like flicking ash off a cigarette—yet his Adam’s apple bobbed, giving him away.But his throat moved once, and gave him away.
“Then, is there a specific way you'd prefer?”
Gilga lifted a hand as if to draw a circle, then only waved it off.
“That kind of thing doesn’t matter."
The words left his mouth, and half a beat later, his mind lagged behind. Then it caught on something. He added:
“As long as I can be remembered. Just don’t die like a wimp.”
There was a trace in the air of something almost like laughter.
Nodt hummed, as if noting down an experimental condition.
“Then hanging it is. It’s the most convenient ”
As soon as he finished speaking, a length of rope was in his hand.
It was impossible to tell whether he had pulled it from behind his back or straight out of the air.
It dangled between them. The lines of its fibers were so clear they almost hurt to look at.
His expression didn’t change, but his eye visibly stalled for a moment.
Nodt held the rope out to him, as casually as if offering a pen.
“Can you reach up there?”
Gilga stared at it; no sound came from his throat.
Fuck looped three times in his head, but he said nothing.
Nodt didn’t rush him either, only pushed the rope a little closer toward him.
His voice was low as always, faint and even.
“You can tie it yourself, right?"
Gilga’s fingers twitched. Still, he reached out.
He took the rope, not gripping it particularly hard. The roughness in his palm scraped all the way up to his knuckles.
The hazy patch of “above” overhead seemed to draw closer all at once.
He tilted his head back, shoulder blades folding behind him, and slowly reached up.
The movement was slow. Not hesitation — his brain had simply gone blank for the moment, leaving his body to follow instructions.
His arm stretched to its limit, and the rope was just barely long enough.
Nodt watched from below, his gaze never shifting by so much as an inch.
"But it's a bit tricky..." he said flatly, "...with your height..."
He sounded as if he were complaining about a long stick that wouldn’t fit into a drawer.
The rope looped over some nonexistent structure like a beam or hook.
The image was deliberately unclear, as if wiped through with fog.
Only the imagined pressure of the fibers against skin remained.
“…If your feet can still touch the ground—”
Before he finished, Gilga had already tied the knot.
It was muscle memory, barely involving his head.
One loop, one turn, pull tight. His hands moved faster than thought.
By the time he realised it, the noose was already hanging there in silence, brushing his throat.
He looked down at Nodt, who lowered half-lidded eyes and met him again.
"Well, it's not hard to fix," he said, with no comfort or tease—just solving a physics problem.
Only then did Gilga realize he had been leaning backward the whole time, as if something behind him were waiting for him to press against it.
Nodt lifted both hands. His wrists were thin, his movements slow.
“I’ll hold you up,” he said. “Now bend your legs.”
In that instant, the muscles in Gilga’s face seemed to forget how to move. It wasn’t fear. The image was simply too vivid:
Him dropping forward, the rope snapping up, a pair of hands and arms supporting him from behind —
like holding a child, or holding a broken object, lest it smash the floor.
His expression cracked. One corner of his mouth twitched, then froze before it could finish.
Nodt saw it and didn’t expose him.
He only stepped closer, stood behind him, and threaded both arms up under his armpits.
The embrace was tight, but not warm at all.
Like cooling metal, just firm enough.
He rested his chin behind Gilda’s torso, eyes curving into a smile.
“I’ll keep holding you until your wish comes true,”
he said, his voice so low it seemed pressed into the skin. “Don’t worry.”
When he smiled, there was no white in his eyes.
Only glittering black, as if night itself had been packed into his sockets.
It wasn’t a wicked smile, nor an amused one.
— However far you want to go, I’ll stand with you that far.
The noose lay cold against the front of his throat.
The arms around his back tightened.
Gilga suddenly couldn’t tell which he feared more—the noose above, or the person behind.
The loop hadn’t even tightened, and his throat was already constricting.
In those dangerous, laughing black eyes Gilga saw a flick of gentleness—not a hallucination, but real:
If you really wanted this, I would help you.
And for one instant, that kind of assisted death felt scarier than being left alone.
Nodt stepped forward: slow, steady.
His shoes clicked twice at each step on some unknown surface—not wood, not tile, more like water pooled in a ruined floor, split open and closing again.
Water echoed deep inside the dark.
He stopped before Gilga, not too near, not too far.
His hand rose—not toward the throat but lower—
around from the side, wrist brushing the waistband, fastening beneath the hips.
A lifting hold, not an embrace.
Gilga’s throat slid; he swallowed and it snagged.
The loop still dangled, patient as anything.
Nodt looked up at him, eyes still that glittering black, a smile line with no humor.
A pre-op checklist: “For everyone, for the world—leave anything behind?”
Gilga’s tongue scraped his palate—no taste.
He had prepared plenty—curses, sneers, contempt—
but when the time came, every word lodged behind his teeth, mouth full of sand.
Only a vague click escaped: “…Tch.”
His chin lifted; a tiny smile played.
Almost as if helping him.
Eyes looked upward—classic kami-sho angle—like peering from a well bottom, like staring from behind the executioner’s shoulder at the crowd.
“Want me to say them for you?”
He added, lazily teasing,
“Aren’t you best at that sort of story—life gone to shit yet still pushing on?”
Gilga’s Adam’s apple jerked.
The rope’s shadow lay across his collarbone.
Nodt’s hand under his crotch tightened, testing weight.
Nodt’s eyes curved; his speed slowed.
“ ‘Thanks for watching my train wreck this long.’ ?”
“Or— ‘Don’t think you’ll be safe just because I’m dead.’ ?”
Both sounded exactly like lines he would use—too exactly.
Gilga gave a single, low laugh—a scoff with no breath.
His voice rasped. “Make it up however you like.”
Nodt nodded, like a doctor receiving a signed consent.
“Good,” he murmured. “Then I’ll tell it the way I heard it.”
He didn’t ask what he’d heard, or whether it might be wrong.
The arms at Gilga’s back hoisted, lifting him slightly; his heels loosened from the floor, weight tipping.
The loop inched toward his throat; the air thinned.
In that brief weightless gap Gilga realized—
what scared him more than being strangled was that someone might arrange every detail and voice his last words better than he could himself.
That perfect representation felt tighter than the rope.
The frame hiccupped like a jammed film reel; next moment everything fell—
He jolted awake on the bed, fists locked in the sheet, throat aching, chest swollen, ears full of his erratic heart.
No rope, no shadow—only gray city light and distant cars.
But “Then I’ll tell it the way I heard it.” still hung behind his ears like an untied knot.
He vaguely knew this was no longer assistance but coercion.
Yet what leverage did Nodt have?
He could have slugged that steady smile off his face, split those black eyes, smashed that gentle don’t worry.
He could have walked, slammed the door, smoked—filed the dream under another crap flick.
And no one could blame him.
He knew all that, yet the rope was knotted—by his own hands.
In that moment he realized he’d trapped himself in the room.
Wanting to die had been his line.
Any way works had been his, too.
As long as someone remembers me—also trash from his mouth.
Nodt merely followed the script, no ad-libs.
If anyone owned the scene, it was him—yet he felt no agency at all.
When death was that close, he discovered he hadn’t finished the sentence “I’m ready.”
His chest hurt like it had been roped; breathing hard, he understood:
what terrified him wasn’t death, but that someone might help him die exactly like himself.
Another splice, the picture cut.
He snapped awake, breath clawing out.
He’d been frightened not by the noose, but by that over-gentle black gaze.
“I’ll keep holding you till your wish comes true.”
—half blessing, half verdict.
Air flooded in, burning his throat. No marks on his neck.
Room dark, city glow fuzzing the window.
The balcony was empty; glass slid shut, reflecting his own wide eyes.
He sat, knuckles clenched at nothing as if the rope still lay there.
A beat later his brain dropped a clear line:
“I’ll keep holding you till your wish comes true.”
Definitely not something the real Nodt would say—too cooperative, too aligned with death.
He blinked hard, pushed the smile away; chest still heaved, but he kept silent.
The room carried only his breathing.
He realized sharply: the Nodt in the dream was his own assembly—someone who’d knot the rope and wrap up the story.
His hand reached down, still fooled by the sense of being held. He felt a crumpled shirt crushed beneath him—the lump that had pressed his dream.
Gilga cursed, yanked it aside and sat up.
Throat raw, heart still snared in the loop.
He looked at the window, then the other half of the bed—
For a beat he was stunned: the first thing he searched for was the man who had just tried to hang him—in the dream.
The other side was neat, blanket folded.
He swallowed the weirdness, flung off the covers, and stepped down.
Moonlight tiled the floor; every barefoot step still felt off the ground.
A glow glimmered on the balcony: a cigarette ember.
He pushed the door; it was only ajar.
Night air slid in, smoke and damp.
Outside, Nodt leaned on the rail, hair hanging. He turned a little to identify him.
Gilga stood in the doorway, feet prickling. The void from the dream clung to his bones.
He rasped, “Why aren’t you asleep?”—voice shaky at the edges.
Nodt scanned him—sweat, a faint red band on his neck, chest heaving.
He didn’t ask had a nightmare?; he just took one last drag and exhaled smoke.
Gilga felt his damp vest cling. He stepped out, the tiles cold underfoot, and asked for the cigarette.
Their fingers brushed; the ember was dying. Nodt withdrew it.
“This one’s finished,” he pinched it out. “Another?”
Nodt fetched the pack, lit one for Gilga, his lighter flaring—catching the bloodshot in Gilga’s eyes.
Too close; the glow hung between them like a tiny chandelier—turned, it could illuminate a rope.
Gilga’s throat clicked; he sucked smoke, coughed.
Nodt’s gaze dropped to the faint red mark.
“Pillow,” he lied, too fast.
Nodt hummed, didn’t probe.
They smoked side by side; shirts fluttered on a line, cool cloth brushing calves.
After a while Gilga’s breath slowed.
“You called out,” Nodt said.
“Couldn’t tell—just saw your mouth wide.”
He said it like reporting a trivial result.
Gilga’s ash fell. “Why didn’t you smack me awake?”
“No need. You’d wake yourself.”
A dry laugh: “…Trust me, huh.”
“Trust your body,” Nodt said. “If you truly didn’t want to wake, you wouldn’t have been gasping.”
The words dropped; the night felt heavy.
Gilga could only mutter, “…Fuck.”
Nodt offered no smile, no reply, just moved the ashtray nearer.
“Go sleep some more,” he reminded, everyday gentle. “Early start tomorrow.”
Gilga searched those black eyes—no hint of I know your dream. Only his own reflection wavered.
He stubbed his cigarette. “After you’re done.”
Nodt lit another, kept it, slow but not teasing out time.
When he finished, dawn had only begun to pale the sky’s edge.
Back in the room Gilga lay down facing away, hand dangling in the middle.
Something brushed his fingers—maybe accidental.
He twitched them toward the touch, asking no more.
The balcony door shut softly; darkness folded back.
Smoke, sweat, cool air filled the blankets; the rope was gone, but the memory of being held lingered at the root of his spine.
Strangely, when he reached out he found a spill of hair—
Nodt slept quietly, back to him, hair like poured ink. It wasn’t space meant for him, yet his fingers burrowed in.
He twisted a few strands, dry and fine, looped again.
How come I still look for him—the bastard who hung me in a dream?
He pinched the hair once more, pressing it under his knuckles as if to prove:
what now lay against him wasn’t rope, but a living person.
