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Raja [Rah-JAH]
Meaning: King, Ruler. Hope, the one that Radiates.
He’s hungry.
Or maybe he’s not, maybe he just want to pretend that this emptiness inside of him can be filled with equally empty calories. He can pretend that his hands are shaking from hunger, that his head doesn’t actually feel like it’s too full of thoughts that he doesn’t want to deal with. He knows that it’s just starvation kicking in. That his body has started to break down its own flesh and fat, has started to turn on itself in order to keep him alive. Maybe he can pretend that he’s hungry and not starving for something else.
But he’s always hungry for something more, always hungry for something that is just out of his reach. Sometimes he thinks that he’s too greedy, that he needs to restrict and purge until he’s gotten images of partially blond boys out of his head. He has so much already, but he knows that the cookie on the highest shelf tends to taste the sweetest.
Is it an eating disorder if he’s not eating? Is it an addiction if he’s not indulging?
When Sutan thinks of Raja, he doesn’t think of ‘radiance’ or ‘hope’. He thinks of looking at every single piece of food and considering if it’s worth it, it means looking through closets, being scared that one day his clothes won’t fit. It means always having a freezer full of liquor and an empty fridge.
✖︎
/ Sutan /
Meaning: ???
One night he tries to find out the meaning of his own name without any results. The meaning of Sutan isn’t even worthy of noting down, it’s not important.
He is not important. Not enough.
His skin doesn’t radiate hope, it doesn’t radiate warmth and comfort. He stands in front of an antique mirror in his own apartment and tugs at his skin, tries to figure out if his collarbones always jutted out that way, if hips are meant to look like that.
He stands in a dressing room in the back of a club, and can’t help but to do the same thing. He stands in front of no mirror at all and he is still thinking of bones
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/Karl, Form of Charles [KHARL] /
Meaning: Free Man
Sutan looks at him whenever possible. Karl catches him looking constantly, never questions it but always smiles at him. Sutan figures that he’s probably used to people staring at him, used to having people envying him. He shares his name with Scandinavian kings and there is a version of the name 'Karl’ in every country, translations that makes the name fit on everyone’s tongues. It’s a name whose meaning isn’t blurry, a name with only one meaning.
And Karl is free. Sutan can see it when he’s dressed like Manila, when he’s doing what he loves on stage and performing in front of crowds of people. He can see it when they’re walking home at night, heels in their hands and Karl’s fingers pointing towards the sunrise. He sees it in the way that he talks, in a rapid pace that doesn’t leave room for lies.
It’s hard not to fall in love with him, Sutan thinks, and he wonders how everyone else does it, how their eyes don’t automatically glue themselves onto him when he enters a room. Sutan can’t help but to stare. The way that Karl radiates confidence, how it spreads to everyone in the room like a plague, like an infection – a disease – that Sutan seems to be immune to.
Karl tells him to eat, stares at him until he takes small bites out of the food in front of them. Sutan started to hate tours because of him, hated how he ended up in front of mirrors once they were done. Then he started to hate the times after tours, when Karl would drag him out to coffee, to lunch, to dinner, every single day for weeks. Sutan hated the way he slowly learned how to stop fighting it, how he had started to accepted the offers with way too much ease. He eventually figures that he shouldn’t blame this one on himself.
He never had any demons to conquer, never had any voices that he was supposed to mute out. He had himself, and it scared him more than any saber toothed beast ever could.
✖︎
Ever since he was a child he has been making up stories, has been trying to make sense of his reality by putting it in the perspective of royalties in crinoline skirts, he told them to himself at night when he was still afraid of monsters in the dark. He told them to himself at night when he was scared of the monsters in his head.
Once upon a time there was a King who ruled over a country called Nothing. And even though King had been raised in Nothing their whole life, they couldn’t help but to hate it, couldn’t help but to try and point out the things that needed to be fixed, couldn’t help but to find flaws in everything. King could never be satisfied with Nothing. King rationed their food. Starving citizens were easier to control, and King needed all the control that they could get.
One day A Free Man walked in and fed King’s people with words, broke bread and fed it to them until he turned their fists into fire and watched as they burned the castle down, watched as the King turned into Hope, and how the people of Nothing taught her how to sow and reap like they had done for centuries before King came along to stop it. They taught Hope how to eat, showed her how every single flaw didn’t have to be a weakness, every flaw didn’t have to be fixed.
It’s not a story that’s made to be read for children, it’s not even a story that’s meant to be told. But Sutan still listened to it over and over again at night until he learns it by heart.
Every smile and every touch lingers in Sutan’s mind for days, for weeks and for months. He isn’t sure if it’s him or Raja that envies him, can’t tell if it’s jealousy that he feels when Karl leaves with someone that isn’t him, when someone else gets to see him smile at something as simple as a sun rising.
✖︎
/Sutan/
Meaning: Joy. Art. Positivity and Optimism.
He points at the sunrise and tells him that he is jealous of Sutan’s name. He expects Karl to explain, and once he does, he feels like he should cry. He feels like this is a bigger moment than Karl probably meant it to be. He then swiftly moves on to different topic, drags Sutan into the first place that they can find that serves food at 4AM. He stares as Sutan orders enough food for two people, and as he eats it all on his own.
A Free Man never fixed the people of Nothing. He just gave them fire so that they could fight King on their own. He showed them how to change the country from Nothing and into Art.