We Won't Give Up On Love [Romance/ Slice-of-Life]

[March 1, 2043]

The last day of February had been relatively warm, but like a swinging pendulum, the weather suddenly chilled as March arrived. It had rained in the morning, and the cold wind coming over the banks of the sea stiffened everything — the grass, the damp earth, and the glistening particles of moisture that clung to both. The sky was an ominous grey, the clouds above threatening to part once more to weep.

Cal and Mel walked side by side, following the coastline as it wended towards the outskirts of the city center, where steel apartment buildings cloaked in neon rose through the wet air, their spires obscured completely by a thin accumulation of mist and cloud. Cal was dressed appropriately for the weather in his dark-blue winter coat and blue scarf, which was wrapped twice around his neck. Mel was dressed in her typical white sundress, as her incorporeal form allowed her protection from uncomfortable temperature or weather conditions, though strangely enough, she appeared to be making an effort to emulate walking beside Cal, instead of hovering by his shoulder as she typically did. The effect was almost precise, though if scrutinized, it would soon become clear that with every few steps, a portion of Mel's bare toes or heel would sink an inch into the wet cobblestone the pair were treading upon.

"You have it, right?" Mel's voice was small and anxious, strained as if she really had been breathing in the chilly air of the afternoon.

"You've asked that like three times now," said Cal, though despite his tone, he withdrew from his coat pocket the yellow-rimmed paper which had been folded three times — showing her. "It's fine. I won't drop it. The hardest part is over now. Now it's my turn to just deliver it."

"The hardest part is not over," said Mel plainly, interlocking her fingers behind her back. "You just have to smile and be polite. I'm the one who needs to watch it all."

He glanced at her. "Sorry. You're right." He pocketed the paper again. "I'll be careful."

"Good. That's good."

There was an awkward silence, only interrupted by the sound of Cal's footsteps. A young couple passed them, a man and woman with brown hair, hand-in-hand. They were smirking about something, as if one of them had just finished telling the other an inside joke only they knew. The woman glanced at Cal briefly as she passed. Cal wondered if she had heard him apparently talking to nobody.

"Are you ready?" he asked, once he was sure the couple was out of earshot.

"You've asked that like three times."

"Okay, but still."

Mel let out a sigh, her blue eyes thoughtful. "Sure. Why not? I mean, as ready as I'll be, I suppose. This is… the last chapter in a way. Closing the book. After this, they won't need to think of me again."

"Don't put it like that," said Cal. "You're giving your brother closure."

"Or maybe I'm just kicking up memories he would prefer to stay forgotten."

Cal bit his lip, slightly. "I've talked with Isaac about you, Mel. It's been over twenty-five years since you died, and he never forgot. And this-" He thrust out the paper again, before immediately putting it back. "This is your response to those feelings."

Mel's eyes shimmered, and she rubbed the corner of her face with an arm. "It's just some words."

"They're not. You worked on writing this single page for how many weeks? And you insisted on doing it yourself, materializing so you could hold the pen yourself, which I know is difficult for you. I would have done it for you if you just wanted to dictate."

Mell shook her head. "It was enough for you to retrieve my old diary from where I hid it on the manor's grounds. Besides, it has to be my handwriting, or it won't seem authentic. The paper might be from my old diary, but Isaac won't believe I wrote it before I died unless it's done in my own hand. The ink is the real problem; it's completely undamaged. Usually, it would be splotchy or have mold after so many years. But hopefully the content will convince my brother this isn't some cruel trick." She paused. "This is a trick, in a way. We're fooling my brother into thinking these are some of my last words before my death, when that's not true. It's screwed up to pretend this is a sincere thing when we both manufactured it artificially."

Cal's answer was short, as if he sensed the germ of truth in that statement. "It can't be helped. You didn't want to tell him you still exist in that house-"

"Absolutely not," came Mel's terse reply. "That would be incredibly unfair to him. A letter beyond the grave is as far as I'm willing to go."

"Well, you didn't want that," finished Cal, rubbing his cold hands together, wishing he had brought some gloves to protect from the sea breeze. He licked his lips and tasted salt. "Therefore, this is the only thing you can do. Besides, it's not a 'trick'. Those words are real. They're your words. Nothing fake about them."

"Yeah," Mel's voice was distracted. The steps of her feet began to fall more deeply into the cobblestone. "Yeah, I suppose."

She glanced at him, suddenly. "You didn't read it, did you? When I gave it to you for safekeeping?"

I haven't read it." Cal said, gently. "You didn't tell me to read it, so I didn't. They're for your brother, not me."

"Mmm," murmured Mel. She began to levitate as she walked, only very slightly, by an inch or two, her dress whipping around her body as if it really were being buffeted by the wind. "Yeah. It's okay if you read it, but thank you for not reading it, I guess."

Her face tensed, and she began running her hand over her arm. She appeared to be in a sort of distress that she couldn't articulate. When she spoke, her words were barely audible over the wind. "Cal… you… you know, don't you? What's in that letter?"

"I didn't read it," Cal said.

His dark eyes were slightly narrowed in concentration. He began to search the ghost's face. He knew Mel well enough by know that there was a second question behind her words, one he had already guessed, but was still patiently waiting for her to speak aloud herself.

"You know about me, right?"

Cal smiled a little despite himself at Mel's clumsy wording. "Yeah. You're Melody Frost. You're boisterous, kind, and frequently uncertain of yourself, even if you have no cause to be. You love horror movies and pretty dresses. You worry about making friends even though everyone in the manor loves you a lot."

Mel shook her head sardonically, though she also had a flicker of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "Here comes the patented 'Pascal Clermont technique', where you speak very plainly and then suddenly switch it up with warm words to butter me up. It won't work this time. I know all your moves by now, mister."

Cal raised his hands with exaggerated gravitas. "Shit, you've seen through my greatest and single technique. Alas, take me away for my crimes of etiquette against my dear tenants."

She laughed. "We would need to hold an entire trial just to get through all your offenses, Cal. All of us girls would get on the stand in turn and berate you for each of our personal slights."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"But seriously, Mel," Cal said, his smile fading. "If you want to ask me something, ask it. I can't do it for you. I won't know what you're trying to say unless you speak it clearly. We've been talking around this for a while."

Mel's expression dropped suddenly. Then she nodded. "No. I mean, yes, you're right."

She took a breath. A second breath, squirming under the anxiety of the words she hadn't yet proclaimed. "Cal… you know that when I was alive… that I didn't look like…" She paused, agonizing. "I wasn't me."

"You weren't you," Cal echoed back. He didn't say the words as a question, but as an acknowledgement, and as a way to prompt her to keep talking.

"Yes," said Mel. She has stopped walking, floating back down so that her feet touched the ground. She was completely pale and hard to see against the whitecaps of the churning sea behind her, though her short dark hair unmistakable created her outline. "I wasn't me, not like this. Not like now, how I am, with all of you. You and all the rest back at the manor."

She gestured at her own body, like she was presenting it to Cal as something independent of herself. "I don't want to be dramatic. It's not like I was unhappy all the time. My life was pretty good, all things considered, and I loved my family — they loved me, too. When I wasn't sick, that is. But there was something underneath, undefinable, wriggling under the skin. It turned everything into an artifice, every action into performance. I felt like I was being horribly dishonest to everyone in my life, even though I couldn't ever recall telling a single lie." Mel blinked, her eyes wide and pulsating with emotion as if animated by electricity. "At first, I just thought I was gay. That would have caused some drama, for sure, in a religious household like ours — hell, my parents didn't even approve of me watching all those horror movies. There would have been quite the hubbub. It was the 2010s, remember? But Isaac was too young to really care about that sort of thing. And Papa would have talked to Mom. He would have convinced her. It would have taken some days, but he would have convinced her. But I wasn't gay. It was a lot simpler and a lot more complicated."

Cal listened to her, his face expressionless in a way that could be construed as dispassionate, but Mel had come to know it just meant he was trying to absorb every word, as an act of veneration in recognition of the effort she was exerting to find the correct words. It gave her the courage to keep speaking.

"Once that thought entered my head, when I was about fifteen, it seemed like the entirety of my body exploded," Mel continued, beginning to walk again, with Cal following slightly behind her. "Every cell blowing apart in a rapture of acid and color. I felt myself dismantling, yet when I looked at my body, it wasn't misshapen at all — it was all in one piece, and that realization somehow only made the sensation of weightlessness and bewilderment intensify. I wanted to erupt into a geyser of light... I wanted to become that strange and impossible thing I felt building inside of me. I wish I had been brave enough when I was alive to come to terms with that."

Mel scratched her scalp thoughtfully. "You see, that's why I make such an elegant and excellent ghost, Cal. I had a trial run. I know what it's like to see and not be seen. To exist and not exist at the same time — it's not contradictory to believe them both simultaneously."

She clenched and unclenched her hands, not looking at Cal. "You're not surprised."

Cal stared at the ground, keeping his voice neutral. "No, not particularly."

"When did you guess?"

Cal shrugged. He glanced over the pale water, watching a ship pass in the distance. "I don't think there was ever a particular moment. Just some details that stood out in my mind that eventually led me to that conclusion. You once mentioned never having worn a dress when you were alive. I thought that was a little strange. Then, when I was speaking with your brother about you, one time in October… it was as if he was tentative to refer to you with any detail, and it came across to me as a very unnatural way to refer to someone. Along with some other things you said, I came across the realization at some point. Not actively, per se, but more like a possibility that rested in the back of my mind."

"I see… So Isaac had already guessed that much... Perhaps I wasn't as subtle as I thought..."

He looked at her directly, and Mel turned her head slightly to meet his gaze. "It's like you're fishing for some specific response," Cal said. "What is it? Do you want me to elaborate?"

"What I told you… it doesn't affect our friendship?"

"No, why would it?"

Mel snorted a second time, though it sounded a little less derisive this time, more nasally, as if she were simultaneously sniffing her nose. "Yeah. You would say something like that. That's a very 'you' response."

"Did you think it would?" Cal's voice sounded a little uneasy for the first time.

"No," Mel replied shortly, pinching the bridge of her nose, her face turned away again towards the water. "I didn't. I knew I had no reason to worry. But for some reason, that didn't make it any less terrifying. I suppose it's the first time I've told another person, using my own words. It's a little surreal. My heart is pounding so hard it feels like it'll burst from my chest and kill me a second time."

She nodded towards Cal's hip. "When that letter is delivered, Isaac will be the second person who knows. Then, I'll have no more regrets."

Here, Mel ceased speaking, apparently having come to a natural stopping point. They had stepped off the riverbank, higher onto the main streets that weaved through tall apartment buildings. The transition allowed Cal to interject with a question that had been on his mind. "So… you never transitioned when you were alive?"

Mel snorted through her nose. "No way. I was too in denial and too sick. I didn't have time for something like that."

"So then…" The unease in Cal's voice grew, clearly unsure how to broach the topic. "How you look now…"

"It's incredible, right?" For the first time since the conversation had started, Mel seemed to be regaining her typical vigor and animation, and she smiled widely. She did a little twirl, showing Cal her dress, though it was the one he has seen her wear every day since they had met. "Look at this sundress, like the kind I always looked at in magazines! I admit, it's sort of a shame to only have one article of clothing, but it's nice it's such a cute one!"

She curtsied in a goofy way, which made Cal smile, then scrunched up her face thoughtfully. "At first, I thought this body and appearance were a sort of ideal, you know? How I wished to look when I was alive, but…" Mel winced. "Let's be honest, I would prefer to be a little more curvaceous and a little less spindly, so it can't be that. Now, I think it's a sort of representation. The shape of my immortal soul. When I lost my body, this is what remained."

Her next question was unexpected. "You don't believe in God, right?"

Cal was taken aback. "N-no. At least not in the way that you mean, I think."

"Mmm," Mel said. "Yeah, none of the other girls at the manor do, either. Aina and Bridget have their own pantheon I think they pray to, back where they're from — but that's different. Well, I was raised Christian, and at church, sometimes I heard about purgatory. That's the place you go to get your soul purified before the angels let you into heaven."

She started counting off on her pale fingers. "I don't think I committed any mortal sins when I was alive, or if I did, I definitely repented them in confession. So that probably means my venial sins are what did me in. My cowardice. My jealousy. My taste in movies, that sort of thing."

There was an ironic quality to Mel's words, like she expected Cal to laugh at them, though there was an expression on her face that seemed to indicate she was expressing something deeply personal that she had thought about for a long time. "Look, I'm not saying I believe in all that stuff, necessarily, though I did pray to God some nights in the hospital, when I knew my time was short. But if you follow that line of thought, this body could also be interpreted as a sort of message from the man upstairs… like a… like a clue. A gesture of encouragement in the right direction. Something like… 'you have everything you need, now work out the rest yourself.' Denying the meaning of this body would be like denying my own salvation. That's what I think. It's a chance for me to put everything right."

She smiled again, and tugged at Cal's sleeve. "What do you think? Pretty good theory, right?"

Cal nodded, but didn't look at her. They had stopped in front of a particular apartment building, and he was checking his phone. "Yeah."

"You don't like it?"

"I like it."

"But you're unsatisfied?"

"No, it's just…" Cal shrugged. "In my opinion, any God worth their salt would send a person like you straight to heaven."

Mel shook her head in amusement, unable to hide the pleasure the words gave her. "You only ever get corny when you're trying to be nice. You should stick to being sensible and sullen."

He raised an eyebrow at her, though he was still distracted by his phone. "You've told me many times I ought to be more optimistic and cheerful. I'm just attempting to take your suggestions into account."

"Yeah, I changed my mind, it's weird. You should go in the other direction. Become a mean bully. Let's see if I'm into that more." Her smile faded a little. "Besides, it's a statement you can only make because of your misunderstanding."

"Which misunderstanding?"

"That everyone you've met in your entire life besides yourself is worthy of being forgiven."

That made Cal freeze, like he had been struck, and he blinked his dark eyes at Mel in astonishment. She took advantage of this to take the phone from his hand, looked at the screen, and then back up at the apartment building. "Yep, this is the address. My brother's on the 60th floor, right? First, we'll need to check in at the front desk. What a hassle. These high-end places always have tight security, though nothing against spirits, hopefully." She sighed, then looked at Cal, and her eyes seemed to soften. "Still, if this is purgatory, it's a far kinder place than I expected."

She punched his shoulder softly. "Come on, let's go. I'm ready."