Sadly, their efforts never amounted to anything, and all the treatments were for naught. He had to endure some of the most excruciating pain that a normal person couldn’t even imagine. It was so bad that it would’ve brought down some of the strongest men in the world.
He still didn’t know the reason he put up with it. If he had to think of one, it would’ve been because he still had hope. Hope that he could get better, but the real reason was because of his parents. He would’ve given up a long time ago if it wasn’t for them.
It probably would have been better for him if he did.
His only respite from everything he had to go through was reading. Ellington was able to escape his reality while doing so, traveling to all types of different worlds just by opening a book. It was the only highlight of his life.
His parents tried to encourage him to read educational things with the mindset of ‘you will get better one day, you will need to know this stuff.’ At first, he listened, studying things they wanted him to like business, communication, art, etc.
However, after a while, he just put his study material to the side and focused on things he liked. Which were basically manga, and webnovels, but as he told his parents, they had some teaching moments in them. Not a lot, but still.
Ellington always thought that his parents would have been more upset that he gave up studying if it wasn’t for his figure skating obsession. Besides reading, his other joy was learning everything about the sport. His parents even got him a 3-D figure skating modeller.
He would use it all the time to choreograph skating routines, all the while imagining what would it be like if he could perform them one day. What kept him from the unbearable longing about something he couldn’t do was coincidentally a webnovel.
He found it one day while browsing for a new novel to read. After browsing through a bunch of novels, he saw an ad for it at the bottom of the website. It caught his attention straight away.
It was a novel called ‘Ice Heart’ it was still being written but after reading the summary plus seeing it had over a hundred chapters, he decided to give it a shot, because this was his first reading a novel about ice skating a boy love novel at that.
He fell in love with the story after the first chapter. It was about a world just like his own, but the one key difference was that the world in the novel celebrated artistry more than anything else.
Sports such as basketball, football, soccer, etc. were nonexistent there. The dominant sports in that world were ice skating, gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and so on. And ice skating was the most watched sport out of all of them.
The main character was Liam, a boy living in 3045 who loved historical figure skating. Figure skating in his time had become flashy, relying on the number of jumps and revolutions in the spins instead of anything else. Liam loathed that the performance and the artistry that had once been the staple of figure skating were gone.
Liam knew that even though being an ice skater was his dream, it wouldn’t be possible for him to do it professionally because they would force him to fit into a mold. After thinking long and hard, he decided to do it as a hobby, taping himself doing historical routines.
He gained quite a following and was invited to ice skate at an event. However, before he could, he died and was sent to the past, where artistry was still at the forefront. Liam saw this as his chance to follow his dream of becoming an advocate of the art of figure skating.
However, he gained a lot of rivals, all of who wanted to stand in his way. Especially his nemesis Baptiste Giabiconi and his henchmen. Luckily, with the help of his boyfriend, Liam was able to destroy all obstacles in his way.
Ellington was basically living for the story. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow that’s when the final chapter would be published. Liam and Baptiste would have one last confrontation, and he would see how it played out. He was looking forward to it.
The only thing he disliked about the book was that a cannon fodder had the same name as him. If the author had to give a character his name, it should have been a villain. That way, he would at least last until the end of the book and not just three chapters.
~*~
As Ellington lay in his hospital bed thinking about the story, a sudden wave of overwhelming pain came over him. It was nothing new. Gritting his teeth, he tried to ride it out, but this time was different.
Suddenly, it was as though he couldn’t breathe. His vision started to fade and a loud ringing in his ears. He knew this was it. He was going to die.
He didn’t notice as a couple of doctors burst into his room, nor when they tried to stabilize him. All he could focus on was the pain and the darkness that was creeping over him.
It was weird. People say that a person’s life passes through their eyes before they die, but that didn’t happen to him. It was probably because he spent most of his life in a hospital. What did pass through his mind were his parent’s faces.
He wondered how they were doing, and if they knew he was dying. He felt so strange that he would pass away while his parents were still alive, but at least he would see them again one day.
He wanted to tell them everything, how much he loved them, and thank them for everything. But in the end, he wouldn’t be able to. However, before the regret could form in his mind, everything stopped.
Literally.
His pain, the people in his room, everything. It was as though time had frozen. And then, slowly but surely, the darkness began to recede, and the pain started to fade.
It seems I’m just in time.
