#imagine a double sided keychain... gulp...

Kwall Dragon Chibis! It was challenging but fun to draw the ectoplasm texture :3

Copyright ©️ soupydumplingss

AN: Here it is, the prologue of a PROJECTED 10 chapters. Might be more might be less! Sorry this took so long! this has not been Beta'd, sorry for any mistakes! Please enjoy, anon! And yes, i stay consistent with a chosen last name for Oliver, haha."Concrete Trees" -Prologue"Mama. Mama, I said I’m fine.”I spin in my rolling chair idly as the cellular takes up the broad of my hand. I catch the foggy, almost mundane grey light outside of my apartment window one, two, three times before I come to a sudden halt with the skid of a sock, and I stand up dizzily. “I miss you to, Mama. But it’s only been a few days, you must at least try to last the semester. Just this one, okay?” She mumbles.I bounce on my toes over the boxes that scatter my floor. Porcelain keepsakes pile in one with paper wrapped securely around them while in the other clothes seem to reach the ceiling. The ultimate privilege to nabbing my own apartment in New York as a student was the ability to make my own messes. I’m an adult, I told mama, she has nothing to worry about in terms of keeping the place neat and tidy, and while I’m sure I will, some of the things she doesn’t know won’t kill her.“I’ll be home for Hanukkah, I’m sure I’m not the only one here who’s far from home in a place like this. Maybe you should get together with a mom from Germany who sent her son away to New York, too.” I giggle as I rip my phone from my ear abruptly to keep from her cries from hitting me to loudly. “I’m just joking. This was 100% my choice and you know that. We’ve been through this hundreds of times. Everything will be alright, I’ll find another 22 year old who’s too far from home somewhere around here. Maybe they’ll be from Italy.”I pad over to my large window that poses as a portal to what seems like an alternate reality, one with cars in every free centimeter of the hot pavement and people of every race and religion wandering the street aimlessly. If i looked a little too far to my right, I’d be peering straight into someone else's apartment, which doesn’t sit in my stomach well, so I opt to keep my right curtain closed, both for my privacy and the mystery person both feet from me yet, in the grand scheme of things, so far away. I’ve never been so far in the air in my life, minus that dreadful plane ride, if you can even call it that. It’s a huge death tube, I think, but the others around me treated it as if it was normal. The conversation lasts for what seems like hours. Some “highlights” being my grocery list, how much money I’llnspend on tourism in the next year, all those fun things. But at least by the time our talk has ended, my apartment is less of an apartment and moreso a home. The ambiance is red and orange to match the lamp in the corner, there’s a little couch and TV set by a rug all my own, and shelves upon shelves of books I couldn’t emotionally bare to leave in Italy stand at the walls, along with pictures of my family at every corner.“Oliver went to Columbia,” my mama says, finally. Lastly.I swallow. I know Oliver went to Columbia. I pretend I haven’t thought about that so many times it’s burnt a hole through my skull.“Yeah, I know. Last time I spoke to him he said he said he, uh,” I pull on my shirt collar.“Went to work at another school. In another state. Illinois, I think.”“When was the last time you spoke to Oliver, Elio?” I feel the heaviness of the curious pity within her voice like one feels lead pass through their bloodstream. Unfavorable… in the least. “I’m going out, mama. I need to eat in the next week, I should get started on those groceries.”The pause, that evidently only lasts a moment, drags on until she finally responds.“I love you, Elio. Stay safe.”“Always, mama. I love you too.”After deciding it was to humid to shove a jacket over my shoulders and trudging outside in just a black shirt and jeans, I ask myself as I sit on a damp park bench with paper grocery bags sat politely next to me, if I am forcing myself to think about Oliver rather than if it is worth it to think about him. The past was the past when I was in Italy and the past remains the same in Manhattan, but I feel his energy in everything that moves; I feel something coercing me into the thought of him. Life here is chaotic and beautiful. I learned that from Oliver, and because at 17 his worlds mended to me as words do at that age, he lives in the bleeding red light fractured through the water on my eyelashes. He lifts the cruelty from honks and yells of frustrated and busy people. I’m unsure if it’s comforting or not.I decide that due to the increasing rain (and my sheer stupidity in not correlating humidity with storms) that it’s time to aquate myself with the New York subway system, as reluctant as I am. Hands full and swerving around people left and right, I realize how crowded and cluttered it is, but it’s also so exciting to see such a staple in culture unlike mine. Oliver must have rode these everyday before he received a car. I’m riding a mile or two in his shoes.I wait for the subway, now. I shuffle my ticket between my fingers, pressed to the wall furthest from the track ledge. I had taken one glimpse of that sickening fall and had eagerly conjoined myself the furthest thing from it, as if nowhere was far enough to keep myself from falling in.There's a boy a foot away from me, but he stands in front of the ledge. No fear consumes him as it does to me. His leg jitters in a pair of huge sneakers and off white jeans (maybe coveralls?), shrouded in a soft flannel and a green bookbag covered in mini pins and keychains, one that looks like a row of hanging dice on rainbow beads that spell “Percy.” One says Columbia on it- in fact, multiple do. A returning student.How much older is he than me? From behind he looks no different than me; curly brown hair but cut short, a little taller but just as thin. His head swivels left and right eagerly, as if the Eastbound train will emerge from the Eastern terminal. He’s not afraid of the ledge because, like a seasoned New Yorker, the ledge has gotten to know him.I find it peculiar that I think so hard about strangers, but sometimes you can tell so little about a person by how they look and you’re forced to sit and wonder. I knew all about Oliver and even yet, I still sit and wonder so strongly about him.Where was this boy from? Was he American? European? Or maybe Canadian? I’d never met a Canadian, but I hear the land is a conglomerate of Ireland's fields and New York’s buildings. Some canadians speak a french many would say is “botched” though I’ve never really heard it, and some of the more interesting ones speak english like I’ve never heard before. It’d be cool to meet a Canadian.When the train pulls up, the station comes alive again as people scramble to catch a seat and they squeeze through the doors. He’s the first one in, but I let the mass push through; I don’t mind standing. I hobble through to one of the only handles left, near the back of the subway car. To my disdain there is a couple here displaying affection I wouldn’t call publically appropriate, and an older man already passed out asleep. If i stretch on my tip-toes, I can hear a saxophone playing on the other side of the train but only barely see the player. However, my eye catches the boy again. I notice now how freckles fleck the entire surface area of his face and glasses frame his cheeks. He plays a gameboy with concentration I’ve only seen in my father, which is a feat. At the first stop, that concentration fades, and he notices my staring. Instead of being weirded out (as, admittedly, I would be) he hesitantly motions for me to sit in the spot next to him now unoccupied. I accept, placing my bags on my lap and crossing my legs, making a point not to stare at him more than I already have. But curiosity gets the best of me. “You… you go to Columbia?”He looks at me, almost surprised that I had actually opened my mouth.“Yeah… why?”“I’m a first year.”“A freshman?”I scratch the back of my neck. “Yeah, that.” He boots his Gameboy up again. “I’m assuming you aren’t American. You look like a deer caught in headlights.” He’s extremely casual for someone I wouldn’t have met had I not stared at him so indecently. “Italian. But my father is American. I’ve never been here though, so, yeah… Italian.” “What brings you to Columbia then? No good Italian schools? What’s your major?”I didn’t know what to expect when I sat next to this boy, but I can’t say I’m surprised. “Double major in Anthropology and Philosophy, and a minor in Music.” He still doesn’t raise his head from his game. “That’s a real boatload. I’m just doing Integrated Technologies and a minor in education.”“Education? You want to be a professor? My father is a professor, he did the same things I’m doing actually.”“I’d love to be a highschool teacher.”I visibly gulp at the sound of that. I can’t imagine having to stay any longer than I did in a school full of sweaty teenagers. Hell, I was one once, I don’t think I’d want to go back.“Oh, uh,” he interjects.“I actually know what professor you’re likely to have if you’re completing an anthropology major.”“Hm?”“Yeah, he’s quite strict in how things are taught according to my buddies, but it’s the sign of a good teacher. He loves when people interact with him in class; he hates a boring class. He won’t have it. But don’t goof off…I don’t know much- anything, about you, so I don’t know how you’ll fare with that. I wouldn’t be quiet if you were in his class but don’t be slack.”He sounds like an okay guy. I’ll be with people like me, it seems. “What’s his name?”“Professor Bishop. You’ll know him when you see him. Tall, blonde, and stubbly. Younger than most of the professors. You’ll know him when you see him.” My face goes Appalachians snow white and a stack of apples are moments away from hitting the subway floor. “What’s his first name?”“Uh, I’m not sure. Ollie? Owen? Oliver- Yeah, that’s it. Oliver… You okay dude?”