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You will remember this scene for the rest of your short life.
The little café beside the park has large front-facing windows and you curl up in one of the elaborately-embroidered seats. The rain is still sluicing down your hair, trickling down your eyelashes and the sharp curve of your jaw. You had stood out in the rain waiting for Ging long past the time when you were meant to meet. Why did you wait outside in the rain? Even then you had known that he wouldn’t arrive on time, if at all.
Your heart hammers, the prickly electricity of fear racing in your blood. The familiar ritual calms you. A cup of hot water in porcelain, burning on the rough palms of your hands when you cup it. Add a little bag of peppermint tea leaves and use a spoon to mix them together, watch the water turn from clarity to darkness. The air is diluted with the smell of mint. You breathe in, tasting on your tongue mint and fresh rainwater and that ever-permanent coffee.
Outside, the heavens open up for sunlight. The rain is still pelting down, mixing the dirt into mud.
The doorbell jangles when Ging slams open the door, cursing lowly to himself at the rain. He slumps down into the comfy seat opposite yours, unwinding his soaked scarves, treading mud on the carpet. “Give me a desert,” he scowls, “Give me undying thirst but fuck this, I don’t ever want to see water coming from the sky ever again.”
“You would die within five days, Ging.”
He shakes his head. He is strange with his skin laid bare, dark hair plastered down against his throat. Ging needs a haircut. He says, confident, “No, I wouldn’t. There’s a way around that. Nothing is impossible.”
When he says that, you believe him.
So you say nothing while Ging stands up and goes to the counter to order himself black coffee.
You are still waiting for the part where he opens his mouth and cruelty flows forth. You are still waiting for him to shame you, to make you feel worthless, to make you know that simply by existing you are still taking up too much space in the world. This is easier when it’s Pariston, because he is always cruel and he always loves you.
Ging slumps down back into the seat, resting his muddy boots on the edge of the coffee table. He’s chosen coffee in a takeaway cup and has already managed to spill a little over his fingers. But he lets the hot drips of water trickle down his wrist, without even flinching, and your eyes follow them.
He isn’t looking at you as he starts. “Once there was a king with four children, all talented and promising and they all wanted to go out and see the world. But because their dad was a king, they had to stay in the castle and attending boring parties and learn how to rule.”
This is how it goes: he picked you up and told you stories about the world and he’s telling you them even now, because when it comes to you Ging can never say the truth outright. You don’t know why he’s so hesitant to break your heart. You are holding your breath, lungs filled with seawater.
You are holding your breath and waiting for the hit to strike. You won’t flinch. You’re ready.
“Everyone in the castle loved them, except for one person. A serving girl who worked all day, her fingers scraped raw and bleeding, and no one ever thanked her for her service at all. One day the princes and princesses were playing outside in the sun, and can you guess what the serving girl did?”
Your eyes are lingering on his unshaven stubble. “No.”
“She went up to them and said hi and played nice, said she had a gift to give them. Something that the princes and princesses wanted more than anything else in the world.”
You’ve loved people who have hated you and you’ve loved people who haven’t cared about you at all. Perhaps you are still unused to basic kindness, perhaps you are still holding on the hope that someone somewhere is going to love you back.
Ging keeps you waiting. He doesn’t love you and he doesn’t hate you. You will have to settle for never quite knowing if it’s apathy or a mixture. There will never be a definitive answer from him, one way or the other. Can you settle for that? Is Ging enough for you? Maybe that is the first time you have ever asked such a question.
“What was it? Freedom, of course! So the serving girl turned the princes and princesses into swans. The catch? They would have to fly around every single lake and river and stream for nine hundred years and never leave the water.”
What is enough for you? The sunset, the sea, the animals of this world. Hot bread eaten with your fingers.
Here is the catch, what you didn’t expect. He picked you up and told you stories and never listened to the stories you told him in return. He never listened to what you were trying to tell him all along and you will never know now if it was deliberate and he knew all along how much you loved him, or if he was just too caught up in himself.
When he told you stories and showed you miracles and made you anew, you took these wins for yourself. You found something more than him, something stronger, even if he just happened to be by your side when it happened. You have belief in a better future. Is it strong enough to keep you alive on your own, this rock of your conviction?
“The king and the castle were heartbroken and so they put the serving girl to death. But nothing stopped the freedom of the swans and they would never come back home.”
Maybe some part of this fear is the thought that if you left, everything Ging had brought would disappear too. Nen. Being a Hunter. Your little group of friends, of people who like you. Your belief. Ging made your life so much better and yet so much worse. Can you do it alone, without him? Or, even if you never saw him again, would the echoes still be there, whispering in your mind?
Is it possible to know how hard the landing will hit before you have jumped into mid-air?
“And for nine hundred years they wandered and sang and flew.”
And maybe you are never going to have an answer about why he did what he did to you, because he doesn’t know either. Because there isn’t an answer for the things that we do to each other. You could spend the rest of your life tormenting yourself with the questions, or you can make up your own answers to the end of this story, make peace and move on.
“Well, what’s the ending? After nine hundred years, did the swans turn back into children, or did they crumble into ancient dust? I don’t know. You decide what you want the ending to be.”
For some reason, you always assume that you will always be there to chase after Ging. He won’t ever be chasing after you and neither of you will ever change. If he calls, you’ll answer, right? But even when you need him the most, you won’t call again. He doesn’t have a right to updates on your life, to know that you’re doing fine without him.
You are tired of these circles, of being showered with attention and abandoned for months on end, rinse and repeat.
Maybe your life will be wonderful and maybe you will fall in love with someone who tells you they love you every single day. Maybe you’ll never think about him again. Maybe you take a shovel and you bury your ghosts in the backyard. Maybe the future can be better than this. Maybe you deserve better than this. Maybe you will kill your old self and be reborn as someone stronger.
“What do you think?” Ging drains the dregs of his coffee, throat thrown back as he swallows.
You twist your long hair around your fingers, because you’re only allowed to speak when Ging asks you to. “I think that if they were happy flying around the lakes with each other, then the ending doesn’t matter at all.”
Ging hums, considering. “I haven’t heard any versions of that story that says how the swans felt. I don’t think the serving girl intended for them to be happy.”
You nod and that’s when you know that when the two of you walk out of this coffee shop, you will never see each other again.
You aren’t the princess and Ging isn’t a hero. You can save yourself.