Chapter Text
The fluorescent lights were too bright. The usual chaos of the ER blurred around Aiah as she stormed in, the world around her narrowing to just one question.
“Where is she? Where’s Mikha?”
Maloi stood from the nurse’s station, palms raised.
“Aiah, calm down, okay?”
“Where’s Mikha?!”
Maloi sighed, her voice soft. “She’s in Bed Six.”
Bed Six.
Of course it was Bed Six.
Aiah didn’t waste a second. She stormed down the hallway, pulled the curtain aside like it owed her answers.
And there was Mikha.
Lying down, eyes to the ceiling, looking more peaceful than she had any right to be.
“Mikha Lim,” Aiah barked, her voice cracking. Mikha jolted up, startled. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Mikha said, sheepish. “My chest just hurts.”
Aiah took her wrist gently, feeling for her pulse. “What else hurts?”
“I don’t know.” Mikha looked at her like the answer was somewhere in the air between them. “It just feels… heavy.”
“What’s heavy?”
And then Mikha reached into the pocket of her jacket.
Pulled out a ring.
“This.”
Aiah froze. The beeping monitors, the faint crying from Bed 4, the clatter of a dropped syringe tray—all of it disappeared.
“My chest hurts,” Mikha said again, “because I’ve been trying so hard to hide this from you.”
“Are you serious?” Aiah whispered.
Mikha nodded. Her voice trembled, but her eyes were clear. “Aiah, I know everything started out weird and awful. And I never thought I’d get another chance with you again. But here we are. Somehow. You and me.”
“I love you. I love your little quirks. Your sarcasm. Your refusal to let me win at my own games. You’re my favorite person ever. And there’s no one I’d rather handle weird and awful things with. So—”
“Oh—right.” She slid off the hospital bed and knelt on the cold ER floor.
She looked up.
“So… will you marry me?”
Aiah blinked. Heart still racing from the panic that brought her in. She was supposed to be angry. Or at least composed.
But instead, tears welled in her eyes and she let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh.
“Of course, you’d propose in a hospital.”
“It’s where I met you,” Mikha grinned, still on her knees.
Aiah dropped to the floor with her. “You’re so stupid.”
“But you love me, right?”
Aiah kissed her.
Soft. Certain.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do. And yes, I’ll marry you.”
The curtain split open again.
And there was Sophia—smug, radiant, arms crossed like she just won a bet.
“Told you this was a good idea,” she said, eyes glinting with satisfaction.
Behind her, Maloi peeked in, shrieking—but quietly, because this was still a hospital and decorum mattered. At least a little.
“I wanna scream,” Maloi whispered, hopping on the balls of her feet, “can we go to dinner now?”
“Dinner?” Aiah asked, still half-sobbing, half-laughing as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Yes. There’s dinner.” Maloi nodded, like it had been obvious all along. “We planned the whole thing. I even made a goddamn reservation.”
They all started walking out. Aiah and Mikha hand in hand. Sophia and Maloi trailing behind them.
Sophia shook her head, chuckling to herself. “This is still a little weird.”
Maloi turned to her, lips curling into a grin. “Why? Oh—right.”
And then they both burst into quiet, breathless laughter.
Weird, yes. But maybe weird was exactly what they all needed to finally begin again.
—
Dinner was perfect.
Julia and Marian were already seated when they arrived—Marian in a crisp linen blouse, Julia with a new haircut that Aiah hadn’t commented on yet. Mikha’s mother came in late, arm-in-arm with her boyfriend of the month, a man with far too much cologne and a suspiciously white smile.
Maloi and Colet sat at the far end of the table, arguing about who should stop ordering wine but continuing to order anyway.
Sophia sat beside her girlfriend, who had an infectious laugh and an eye-roll Sophia seemed to adore. They giggled through toasts, clinked glasses too often, whispered things behind napkins like teenagers playing house.
Mikha and Aiah?
They watched quietly. In awe. Because this—this loud, mismatched, ever-evolving table of people—they had somehow all chosen each other.
This was family. This was home.
They held hands under the table. Not dramatically. Not possessively. Just... grounded.
Even while Mikha turned to listen to her mother’s story about getting into a minor scooter accident while chasing a man who owed her money, her fingers didn’t let go of Aiah’s.
Even while Aiah leaned forward, pretending not to care but clearly invested in the mystery man Marian had introduced to Julia, her hand never stopped squeezing Mikha’s.
They kept holding hands.
—
The night also carried old wounds, half-healed and healing, with laughter layered over memories too painful to name. The mess had happened. The betrayals, the aching silences, the wreckage they crawled through just to feel whole again—they didn’t vanish, but they were softer now.
They were stitched into the room, into the way Sophia filled Aiah’s glass without being asked, the way Marian laughed too loud and no one flinched, the way Aiah rested her head on Mikha’s shoulder mid-story and no one looked away.
They had survived it all—not just the breakups, not just the shame—but the guilt, the grief, and the unbearable knowing that they hurt the people they loved most.
Here they were. Together.
Choosing joy again.
Choosing softness.
Choosing to stay.
Aiah looked up just as Sophia glanced her way from across the table. And in that blink of a second, the whole night shrank to just the two of them. Not Mikha’s hand in hers. Not Marian’s easy laughter. Not Maloi and Colet clinking their fifth glass of wine.
Just them—Aiah and Sophia, staring at each other like they were remembering everything at once. The nights they didn’t speak. The times they pretended not to be sisters. The ugly honesty of it all. The rivalry no one asked for, the love neither of them knew how to give without burning. And yet… there they were. Still standing. Still showing up.
Sophia didn’t smile. She didn’t need to. She just lifted her glass slightly, not a toast, but a quiet nod. A truce. A vow. That somehow, after everything, they made it out the other side. Aiah exhaled. Gave the smallest, tired laugh. Tilted her head in return.
That was their language—a little dry, a little unsentimental, almost comically restrained. But it was love. Not the loud, pretty kind. The brutal, undeniable kind. The kind that stays even when you can’t say the words.
Because in a room full of new beginnings, old mistakes, and half-redeemed futures—
no one can love you like a sister.
No one can cut you as deep.
And no one, no one, will ever know you like she does.