You should still be here - 1. Chapter 1

Artem,

I am writing to you because there is no other way left to tell you how badly I miss you. How much I hate it for you to be where you are, how much I hate your memories attached to a place we once called home.

You were not someone who needed to be announced. You stood there with your stupid humor and loud laughs, always making fun of everything so that no one could take you seriously and still you knew more than the rest of us. You didn’t speak about secrets and aches. You waited until something needed a true word.

You were this little annoying stubborn kid hanging at the garden, waiting with your brother till I was home from school, demanding I play football with you. How many times did I tell you I didn’t like football, nor was I your babysitter.

I have to admit, you had a charm of your own, you could break the ice, you could bring hope with your stupid smile, you were motivation in movement, going one step at a time and pulling everyone with you.

Of all the people, I never understood why you looked up to me. I tried to push you away, I tried to get rid f you. I was mean and aggressive to you, but you stayed. You insisted on becoming part of the crew. You wanted to grow up just to be with us. You were just twelve and I told you the gym was not for kids, I told you I didn’t want trouble, you stayed ad you brought the quiet one with you as your backup.

And you were not only loud, annoying, and stubborn but you were good, way better than me. I still remember how you beat me at my own game. I had been working on that problem for days—adjusting grip, changing movements, I even moved some grips to my own benefit, convincing myself I was close when I wasn’t. You stood all the time behind me, talking through half-serious suggestions, most of them useless, some of them deliberately wrong. And one day, you stepped in. Still talking bullshit, still joking about your last fall, and you climbed it. Clean with no pause and no second try. At the top, you didn’t even look surprised. You looked at me like the joke had been obvious the whole time, and I had missed it. That’s when I knew you were not the five year old boy with the ball, you were not the twelve year old boy trying to look older, you were you, ready to explore the world, ready to show what you can and I was no longer your mentor, you had outgrown me.

When you won your first competition, was the first time I really saw you, the boy who wanted to be seen not with his jokes but because he could do it and you made me proud. Then it became your way, one problem after the other, one competition after the other, as if you were waiting for the right time, still you didn’t change one bit, you looked even sad every time as if the winning was a failure, a wedge between you and others. You were still loud. Still making the same bad jokes, still interrupting others in the middle of sentence with statements no one wanted to hear, still turning everything into something lighter than it was, but I could see you as an almost young adult with his worries.

You never told me why you wanted to hang out with me all the time, was I the older brother you didn’t have, or was it just the feeling of being included and seen or was it Daria you had a crush on and I was an excuse. Whatever it was, planned or not, you made my escape possible, you even pushed me towards it. I remember how much I tried not to take you and your brother on our climbing trip in Türkiye, you didn’t even have the money for the flights, and you somehow convinced us to pay for you and your brother so we could look like a family, another bad joke of you insisting on me and Daria being your parents. Was it your way of fixing what you didn’t have or was it your way of telling me what a family was? But that can’t be. I wonder when you saw beyond my excuses, did you overhear a conversation or was I so obviously not straight. I wish I had asked you. But thank you for covering for me, for turning everything into a plausible joke in Turkey, so I didn’t have to make things up. I guess you knew how uncreative I am and how terrible I am at telling lies. You said you felt sick, exaggerated it just enough to be convincing, complained loudly, made it inconvenient for everyone in a way that felt typical for you. Andrey rolled his eyes since he knew you too well. But Daria tried to reorganize things. You kept talking, kept pushing it, until leaving became the easiest solution and I was left alone with the booked rooms and the German gamer.

When I told you about his visit and if you could help me with the planning, you didn’t look at me, you just said you had to go. That was the only moment you were quiet. Later, I understood what you had done. You didn’t create a scene to get attention. You created one to remove yourself from it. So, I could meet him alone on my ground with a chance to show the real me.

Thinking about it, you were always like that, hiding behind the humor, hiding behind excuses, but there were still moments—small, easy to miss—when people wanted to see more, expect more. You looked at them, and for a second, you stopped the humor. No smile. No comment. No performance. Just stillness. As if you had already measured the distance between what people thought you were and what you knew you could do, and decided it didn’t need proving.

When I told you I was going to visit Rick just to see how things are there, you were the only one telling me I was not going to come back, but it didn’t matter as long as you got to be my best man. That was the worst and most honest joke you ever made. You hid something serious inside something no one would take seriously. That was your way of letting go of us.

You were simply extraordinary, you still let people expect you to fall, to try once, laugh it off, and move on. But you never really moved on.

You stayed and let them turn the place to a living hell, let them take what never belonged to them. I wonder if you still made a joke when they were breaking your bones- if you were still smiling, as if it were just another bad joke, when they shot you. When they turned you to a number, a casualty, a victim. And you were not seen as a person anymore. You were just something that was taken, controlled, broken and discarded.

I followed something you told me was right to follow. You made it easier for me to decide, you pushed me to built a life somewhere else, saying I deserved to be happy.

But I could not return what you gave me in any form, not that there was anything I could do to change what happened to you. I know this. And still, it does not let me go.

When I heard the news about Bucha, I could only think of the people I knew, the memories attached to a place I wish had never existed in that way. I prayed for everyone to be safe, to things end. But it was not enough and then I heard your name again after you were already gone.

Artem, I cannot place you anywhere that makes this acceptable. Not in memory, not in meaning. But I will not let you be reduced to what was done to you.

I will speak your name. I will tell who you were. Not to soften this, but to refuse the silence that follows it. Silence turns violence into something permitted. Humans are not numbers. Violence must be stopped—but war is not the way.