"Yeah."

"But when you and Zach were little Alexei was a young adult."

"Yeah."

"So why did you say that you've known each other since you were all little? Wasn't Alexei already a young adult when you met?"

"I mean, Alexei and I were babies when we met, but we met Zach when we were kids."

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"Are you just messing with me?"

"No, why would I do that?"

"Because you're a goofball."

"...admittedly, but I'm not messing with him right now."

Shrug.

"But what you're saying makes absolutely no sense whatsoever."

"It made sense to me."

"I didn't fucking—"

Stop. Breathe. Recenter.

...Eric pats his arm gently. "You seem to be having kind of a rough time. Have you eaten? Are you stressed out about college? Can I help?"

"Yes I'm fucking stressed out but it's not about fucking college it's about the fact that the Grim fucking Reaper is your grandfather and also your brother-in-law and peoples' life expectancy is eighteen weeks and no one around me is a goddamn person who can follow simple fucking arguments about why none of this makes any fucking sense and now I have to rely on other people to figure out how to not die because I don't want to fucking die and I especially don't want to depend on some random dude's goodwill to become a ghost instead of being fucking sliced in half by a huge magic scythe—"

"A friend of his died this week," Tae-hwan says to Eric in an undertone.

"Oh... I'm sorry, that really sucks."

"—sorry, I need some air," or he's going to punch the living daylights out of a guy who has been nothing but nice to him just because he is absolutely fucking insane.

"There's a bench in the shade over there if you need some time," Eric says, gesturing out at the garden.

"Yeah. Thanks."

Out he goes! To the bench in the shade! So that he can be alone and try to make sense of anything!

It's really pretty out there.

Yeah. That's nice.