Dancing in the stars

Those rules

— I'm hanging up on you, Demir.

Demir laughed a little when he heard Nil's voice on the other end of the phone. A strange sensation came over him, it was like going back to the years at boarding school when he and the other boys ran away from the inspector to participate in regional parties in the small neighboring town.

At that time, the adrenaline of the illegal trip mixed with the fear of being caught made his heart race, that was when Demir felt alive. In these little moments of adventure he was a teenager like any other, who was ready and feared punishment. He was not the boy who was abandoned by his mother, much less the boy whose father found it too difficult to keep around. He was just Demir, the mind behind all the youngers escape plans from that school.

Of course, the current version of him was not very proud of that part. Being considered the head of the gang had never been Demir's intention, but for good and bad the title ended up with him. He still remembered when, together with the other kids, he was caught jumping over the wall back to boarding school, the director had decided to punish them by keeping them all in school during the holiday.

Little did he know that it didn't matter to Demir.

His life was that school. He had nowhere to go. The few times he left was because his friends took pity on him and invited him to spend the holidays at home. It was on one of those occasions that Demir met Alessa, the Italian cousin of one of his friends.

The beautiful girl with long reddish hair won the heart of the young Demir Erendil. He could spend the rest of his life just admiring her and he would be happy. Or at least that was what his 12-year-old version thought.

After Alessa there were other girls, Demir was far from being a monk. Until he met Eylül.

Demir didn't exactly remember when and how they crossed paths, but he knew why she had attracted his attention. Eylül was like him, lonely, minimalist, direct and even a bit of a workaholic. The two listened to the same songs, appreciated the same artists, admired the same cultures and still worked in the same industry. The matter between them would never end, they would always understand each other. Maybe that's why he asked her to marry him. Both would be able to go through any challenge that life imposed on them, unlike his parents.

Although Demir denied it, he had vivid memories of the time when his parents were still together. They were so different from each other, but they seemed to make that marriage work. A kid mistake. A child's mind is not able to see things clearly, so it has a hard time accepting when reality is placed before him. Demir's parents would never be happy because while his father was completely focused on work, his mother played the piano upstairs.

That would never happen to him and Eylül. The two would always walk the same path and if one fell the other would be right next to support. Too bad it had happened only in his mind.

When the words written in Eylül's elegant handwriting reached Demir's eyes, he pretended they weren't real. Likewise, when they hit his mind, he treated it like a nightmare. But the moment they reached his heart, he was unable to bear the weight they carried.

It was two years, the worst two years of Demir's life. He did not recognize himself during that period and saw everything around him collapse without having the strength to stop it. It was as if the most important piece of it had been pulled out, again.

As much as he refused to admit it, Demir knew that the reason he had collapsed had little to do with the sudden end of the engagement. If Eylül had told him that she no longer wanted to marry he would suffer, but he would not plunge into the abyss of self-destruction. But she didn't say. She preferred to leave him in the dark with beautiful words of little meaning in the same way as her parents had done.