“I can’t believe that this day has finally come!”

Nana keeps talking to me in a whispery daze. She doesn’t seem to really realize that I’m not really Forrest. In fact, she doesn’t even seem to realize that I have refrained myself from talking for the last thirty minutes.

“You look so beautiful in that bridal robe, Forrest! Oh… oh!” she beams. “Really fit to be the bride of a god, indeed!”

The way she says it… it’s as if her whole eighty-seven years has been leading up to this moment. It’s enough to propel me into a never-ending maze of guilt.

Aw, shit.

This makes me feel as if I have taken this lifelong dream from her. Unfortunately, the most I can do is nod my head, because if I really tell her what’s going on, I’m quite afraid that she will drop dead out of shock. Literally.

“I really can’t believe that I managed to live until this moment. I have been holding on for this day!” The amount of teeth missing from her mouth makes me feel a strange mixture of pity and fondness.

There are actual tears welling up in her eyes. I cringe, mentally slapping myself for doing this to her. Nana has done so much for me, and I repaid her by stealing her actual reason to live.

Nana looks at me, her old, paper-thin skin all stretched out when she manages a toothless smile. Nana has always managed to look so strong, and she hasn’t really been sick all of her life. But in this moment, I actually can see the age on her face. Before, I had never really considered it. I had always thought that Nana would stay with me forever. The concept of her actually leaving me had never really hit home.

But right now, Nana’s smiling at me and touching my face with her papery hand, and I feel my heart soften. This moment—me in a bridal robe, wearing a wig, Nana in an odd-looking robe, all ready to burst into tears—is absolutely ridiculous. I might never be able to tell anyone (not even Forrest because I’m already feeling so resentful towards her) about this night without stopping midway and changing the subject. It’s way too surreal.

But as surrealistic as this is, and as much as I want to rip the wig off and set it to fire, I’m determined to get through it. Tomorrow I’m going to let Nana put as much maple syrup on her pancakes as she wants, no matter how disgusting it looks or the effect it has on her body.

“Let’s start now, Forrest, okay?”

I nod, and then I let her guide me to her room. Now, I’ve been living with Nana since I was a kid, but I’ve never been really familiar with her room. She’s always the one who comes to my room, to invade my space.

Or maybe, it’s just because of me. Because I always think that old people don’t need attention.

Nana’s room is dark and filled with a lot of ancient scrolls. The papers are all yellowing and a lot of them are not in good condition. The scrolls have chipped edges here and there, and I can see that one of the scrolls got torn in the middle of the text. Not that I’ll ever get interested in reading those wall of text; I can barely get through my history textbook.

And that’s when I see him.

The person Nana’s been obsessed with. The god that was supposed to marry my sister, but now is waiting to marry me.

Khaol, the God of Pain.

The picture of him has already faded and the natural grunge that occurs on scrolls has blurred his face a little bit. But I can’t deny that there’s a certain quality that makes his face… mesmerizing. The painting of him on the scroll shows him in the middle of a fight, so his mouth is slightly parted and half of his hair is draped all over his face. If he had lived in the modern day, a guy with his facial features would have had modeling agencies lining up to sign him.

One more thing that I notice, though, despite the zealous glint in his incredibly light blue eyes, is his palpable suffering. Despite his dark, long hair, and despite his superhero jaw, Khaol the God of Pain looks like he’s tormented. Not in pain. No. Just tormented. As if the life has been sucked out of his soul. As if he’s just a man living past his expiration date involuntarily.

“He’s one good-looking fella, isn’t he?” Nana suddenly says. She traces her finger over the painting, her eyes glassy, and suddenly adopts this far-away look. “I had a really hard time finding this particular painting. This was done centuries ago, before Khaol was even called Khaol. When he was just the Betrayed General.”

So, even before all that shit happened to him, Khaol already possessed acute Resting Tortured Face syndrome.

Before I can stop myself, I scoff. If even half of Nana’s stories were true, if Khaol existed before my time, I wonder how has his life turned so sour that even his handsome face can’t hide his suffering. But I erase the thoughts out of my head, because tonight is about Nana.

I look at my grandmother. I take in her wrinkled skin and her toothless smile. I memorize the way her eyes crinkle when she’s happy and how her every move contains a bit of a tremble because of her advanced age. She moves as if she doesn’t belong here, and with her stories about the gods of old-times, I think she really was born into the wrong era.

She takes my hand, and upon touching me, the tremble on her fingers slowly halts. She closes her eyes then, and all of a sudden, I can feel the window burst open. The wind smashes against mine and Nana’s body, but before I can close the window, Nana applies more pressure to my hand.

Not now. I can feel the words she’s not saying. Stay, River.

I open my eyes in shock.

I gape at Nana. She’s still looking at me, even though she’s making an expression I’ve never seen before. Her eyebrows are pulled together in concentration and she grinds her teeth as if she’s focusing on something. Her mouth keeps moving as she mouths wordlessly, and I am pretty sure she’s stopped blinking.

She’s doing the ritual that she’s been dreaming of doing for her whole life. But I can tell that she’s not confused. My Nana may be old, but she is not foolish.

She knows it is me.

I don’t know at which point she realizes that I really am not my sister. But Nana keeps going. And as her mouth’s movement crescendoes to a faster tempo, the wind starts to become stronger. I have to close my eyes, because everything becomes a little too unbearable. A little too magical. It feels as if what Nana has been drilling into me is not mere stories.

“Na… na…” I whisper.

Nana looks me in the eyes, and there, I can see the gaze of a woman who has dedicated eighty-seven years to this moment. Nana smiles at me, and I can’t tell if the smile is sinister or brimming with kindness. When she speaks, though, I can feel years worth of affection in her voice:

“River.”