Nothing Lasts Forever (Phan)

Chapter 11

Phil POV

After a little while Mum left, and I continued finding out just what was going on in the world revolving #comehomehowell. It seems like a lot of businesses had realized the potential for a profit in our drama and gotten themselves involved. I was overwhelmed. Whether people were doing it from the good of their hearts or doing it because they got something out of it, they were helping. 

Around three in the afternoon I put down my devices and decided to make a video. Instead of setting up in my bedroom I remained in the living room, which was odd for me. 

"Hey guys. So there's over eight million of you now? What? And mine and Dan's story is on TV and there is just so much going on." I pause, trying to order my thoughts. "Why don't I start from this morning when I woke up? That seems like a good idea. Right so this morning, I woke up, checked my phone, and saw Dan had uploaded last night after I went to sleep. So I watched the video." My heart aches as I think about the video. "Dan, you replied to my last video, so I hope you watch this video as well. Because I have to tell you something. I love you. I have since we met. I didn't tell you because I didn't want to scare you away. I had barely known you, but already you meant so much to me. And I do want you to come home. Please, I'm never going to be able to come to terms with my Dad's death if I'm to busy crying over you. This morning when I saw your video, I freaked out. I started screaming and crying and ended up basically passing out in a ball on the floor. Mum found me at one in the afternoon. I cried some more. Then I spent two hours trying to catch up with everything that happened overnight. So much happened. And I have to thank you guys, because there is no way I would've been able to pull myself together enough to organize everything you did in a matter of hours. Though I have to say I'm not sure why you're fundraising. I'm not sure money has to do with it other than hiring a million private investigators. But I'm sure with we hire enough, one of them will find Dan, and they have my permission to kidnap him if that's what it takes to get him home. So thank you guys. And thank you to all the other youtubers that made videos asking Dan to come home. Though, Tyler, I wouldn't go as far as to call him every bad name under the sun and curse his cow." I smile sadly at the camera. "Thank you all guys, it means a lot to me. And Dan, come home."

I spend the rest of the day editing and uploading the video, replying to tweets and comments, talking to private investigators who wanted to look at Dan's room for clues or whatever they did. I went downstairs and had dinner with Mum, then went back upstairs and sat refreshing Dan's channel, hoping for a video. When it got to around two am I gave up and went to bed, hoping Dan would be there when I woke up.

He wasn't. But I didn't lose faith. I made myself eat three good meals at appropriate times. Spent a couple of hours looking through photo albums with Mum, we cried and laughed as she told me stories of her and Dad before I was born. At four in the afternoon I made another video. It wasn't much, me thanking everyone again, telling people about the amount of private investigators that kept showing up. After a lonely dinner, I sat refreshing Dan's channel again. At eleven I stopped, sighing, and went to bed.

He wasn't back the next day either. I felt slightly deflated as I had talked to well over thirty private investigators, and none had found anything. I repeated the same routine as yesterday, though my video was slightly less excited, and more looking at the ground. I only cried twice, the first time I made the mistake of going into Dan's room, the second I felt like making a gaming video to do something, but the moment I sat at the computer, all I could look at was the Sims 4 game case.

The next day Dan still hadn't made any form of contact with anyone, not even by making a video. There was no activity on Twitter, Tumblr, anything. He had disappeared. My video was little more than me saying that Dan still wasn't home, but I appreciated the effort. I only made it to give me something to do. After that I didn't feel like talking to anyone, so I didn't go and see Mum, instead I just cleaned every inch of the apartment, like organised cupboards would make Dan come home. At around nine pm I decided just to go to bed.

And when I woke up the next day, I went on repeat.

And the next day.

And the next.