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Vivi thought that she’d want to date someone warm.
If she was always freezing, it made sense. She’d told Haseul about her theory, and she’d gone off about thermodynamic equilibrium, sources, and faucets. But no matter what nonsense her friend was talking about, Vivi felt that she got the general gist of things.
Cold + hot = perfect temperature for both.
Yes.
Vivi was very smart.
...theoretically.
Until she met Choi Yerim, the girl captivating enough to steal her thoughts and her breath away. Choi Yerim, who, coincidentally, had hands just as cold as Vivi’s.
(Not that she minded.)
((Vivi can always buy a pair of gloves.))
She thinks both of them are meant to stay inside, huddled under a minimum of six layers of blankets, watching shows about a polar bear who’s too cold, just like them. The perfect date is a night in, away from the wind and evening chill, drinking something foamy and verging on being too sweet.
Of course, Yerim takes it upon herself to disagree.
Yerim’s ideal date is out. And not out at a party, either. Vivi can deal with the sweaty crowds and criminally cheap alcohol if there’s tolerable music and none of the windows are open. She can tag along to the respectable number of parties Yerim goes to, even if they’re not her favourite.
But no.
Yerim likes going outside outside.
At night .
She likes leaving the house when there’s no sunny spots for either of them to situate themselves into, because there’s no sun . Her girlfriend loves any sort of evening walk, staying up to see the stars. She visits parks when the only thing illuminating the ghostly silhouette of tree branches is the dim light of the moon, and the beam of the iron lamp posts overhead. She plans any number of midnight trysts -- “they’re fun, I swear” -- to go gallivanting off into the night.
Vivi, as whipped as she is, relents. Yerim doesn’t even need to wheedle her into it anymore, start pleading half an hour in advance so they’ll go where she wants to go. Sometimes, all the warning Vivi gets is her being shaken awake She braces herself, sliding on a knit sweater and three hoodies, huddling herself close to Yerim.
Because, well, here’s the catch: Yerim’s hands are cold, but she’s not.
She says it’s because of her circulation, but she still produces body heat unlike some individuals; she swears Vivi is a cold blooded reptile.
(Vivi’s worse off. At least reptiles get to stay in their nice, sheltered enclosures instead facing off with the wind at two in the morning.)
((Like she was doing, yet again.))
“Yerim,” she puffed out, pulling her hands deeper into her sleeves. “Yes, the ocean’s pretty. But it’s fucking a.m., and it’s cold .”
Yerim’s so busy taking pictures of the moonlight on the water that she doesn’t even notice how Vivi politely limited herself to only one expletive. The younger girl’s bouncing absolutely everywhere, darting close enough for the tide to brush against her shoes, and then back towards the cliff that looks over the beach. She ignores Vivi’s complaining, instead throwing up a handful of sand and catching the shot as the little grains blur and focus alternately.
Vivi sighs, wondering if it’s colder by the water or by the cliff. Realistically, she knows that the cliff blocks most of the wind and the water makes things more humid, but none of that science matters because neither can compete with the warmth of her apartment.
It really is beautiful, she muses. Her eyes catch a glimpse of something shiny in the sand, and she bends down to pick it up. When she brushes the sand and salt crystals away from it, she realizes it’s a smooth pebble. No, not exactly.
Sea glass.
It’s dark, but from the light of her phone and the moon, Vivi can make out that it’s a pale pink. Soft, translucent. The leftover dust and residue from the sand are swept away, leaving a clearer surface.
She can remember distantly, back when she was a child in Hong Kong, visits to a beach with her younger sister. She’d gone through a phase back then, collecting sea glass. She’d helped her sister, telling her stories while she glowed with the pleasure of having her big sister pay attention to her.
“Yerim,” she calls. “Look.”
And this must be a death wish, because of course Yerim will want to find close to every single piece on this beach. They won’t be coming back until an hour, two hours later, with Vivi freezing in real time.
(But she still can’t stop herself.)
“I found sea glass,” she holds it up for her girlfriend to see. “Want to hear the story?”
“Story?” Yerim, intrigued, always eager to listen.
“Sea glass,” Vivi started, turning over the fragment in her fingers. “Has lots of legends behind it. People say all kinds of things, all over the world. But when I told the story to my sister, it started with a dragon.”
Yerim nods, so serious in the night. “He was purple, right?”
This startles a laugh out of Vivi, the kind she thought she’d stop having after the first few months of dating.
(That clearly wasn’t the case.)
((And Yerim’s right; the dragon is purple.))
“Purple? Why?”
“Because underneath the water, red dragons turn purple.”
Extraordinary.
“Mhm,” Vivi agrees. “Exactly. And he kept a hoard of all of his things, you know, because hoarding is good-”
“To a certain extent,” Yerim interrupts. “You haven’t used a single one of the stickers you keep buying.”
Vivi waves her hand dismissively. “They’re too cute, I’d feel bad,” she justifies. “But the point is, he had a massive bunch of all of the things he owned, in his little underwater cave. And he lived like that, very happily, doing his own dragon things until one day he went above ground to learn how to breathe fire.”
“He’d learned about it from a friend, you see. It seemed to him that learning how to breathe warmth and light and sausage barbecue enablers was good. So he went away, but he couldn’t take any of his things with him.”
“Did they get stolen?” Yerim asks, sighing at the thought of another typical fairytale.
“Of course not,” Vivi answers. “He’s a very practical dragon; he locked his house when he left, keeping all of his treasures safe.”
“Many years later, when he learns how to breathe fire he comes back to his house. Everything’s dusty, and he needs a glass of orange juice and a vacuum, but he likes being back home.”
“So he learned how to breathe fire,” Yerim concludes. “What happens next?”
“He wanted to see what would happen if he tried to breathe fire underwater. Part of his training was knowing how to put out fires, not just light them. But what if he were to do both at the same time? So he tried; he puffed his cheeks and blew fire.”
“But he was underwater.”
“He was,” she concedes. “So instead of the fiery flames he understood, there came a blast of bubbles, frenzied in the magic of blue heat. They shot towards his wall, where his mirror was hung up -- dragons need to fix their appearances too -- and smashed against it.”
“Did the mirror break?” Yerim takes the glass from her hand, peering at it closer.
“It did. And all the little shards were picked up by that magic, which was still going strong. They hurried out of the house, and when the magic wore off, all these little pieces of mirror were floating around in the waves. They were sharp, and jagged.”
“This isn’t,” she traces a finger over the smooth, domed edge.
“Because the waves seized hold of it as soon as the bubbles stopped. They twirled the glass around, pushing it in the water, smoothing it out with relentless pushes in an endless dance.”
“When it’s done, the glass gets sent onto all the beaches of the world, tumbled and twirled until only this beautiful soft glow is presented. A gift from the sea dragon who wanted to learn how to breathe fire.”
It’s silent.
Maybe they’re both too old to still talk about things like this. But Vivi doesn’t mind, because she can remember the hushed whispers of delight as her sister urged her to tell her more and more, even if she knew this story better than any other in the world.
“Why is it different colours?”
Vivi starts, and then nearly laughs again. She should’ve known Yerim would have a question.
“Because those are the stories of the world,” she continues, making a new chapter of her story on the spot. “Every time the mirrors met something new, it was reflected into them so it became a part of who they were.”
Yerim nods, satisfied, and then settles into Vivi’s arms, still looking through the sea glass.
“Do you want,” she begins carefully, “to look for more?”
Vivi blows out a breath, but the edges of her lips curl upwards, pushed by the wings of fondness and love.
“Only if we spend a minimum of two hours recovering.”
Yerim laughs, freely, brightly, and soars away to go find a mirror shard of her own.
After they amass a sizeable pile, after they sort through them with care, after brushing away sand from pant legs, after Vivi’s cold hands grabs Yerim’s even colder hand…
They go back to their apartment, where Vivi can be undeniably warm.
She loves it.
(Especially because it was so cold outside.)
((But more because she’s with Yerim.))
It’s a few days before Yerim even mentions their night beach visit.
They’re cleaning the apartment, the mandatory once a week cleaning both of them had (grudgingly) agreed to when they moved in together. It was better to clean once a week then stay buried in junk for months on end.
She stumbles across Yerim carefully storing sea glass in one of her drawers, inside a wooden box that used to hold a fancy cosmetic set.
She holds up each piece to her eye before she nestles it into the velvet lining of the box.
“Why do you keep looking through it?” Vivi asks, turning off the vacuum so they can talk.
“Because,” Yerim says simply. “Maybe it’s see glass too.”
“Sea glass? It is sea glass.” Vivi responds.
“Nono,” Yerim corrects hurriedly. “See-glass, s-e-e. Like looking, that see.”
“See glass,” Vivi muses. “What does that mean?”
“Because mirrors help you see,” Yerim ruminates. “And I know that it’s a story, and how sea glass is really made, but I think it’s that nice that see glass could have held onto that part of being a mirror to help us see too.”
Once again, she marvels at the girl in front of her.
“I love the way you see the world,” Vivi murmurs, kneeling down beside Yerim. “What does it help you see?”
“Who knows? Maybe the future, maybe the past. Maybe it just makes the present clearer.” Yerim flashes a smile, verging on a smirk. “Or maybe, it helps you see a baby pink dragon who hoards perfume samples and likes to learn new things.”
“They could show you all of the things they see. They could just define what you’ve seen. But I think it’s worth looking at, don’t you?”
If she were to look at the yellow-green sea glass she grabs next, she thinks that it’d show her the future. And through it’s transparent glow, Yerim’s face is framed by the see glass’ edges.
Children are little demons, Vivi thinks decidedly.
But she’s been dragged to the library, which runs weekly child programs for storytime and colouring and whatnot. Parents stand at the walls of the room, looking all kinds of weary, supervising as said crotch goblins run around the booked room.
Yerim loves it here.
Vivi only comes along because… well, first, she’s been forced to. Seeing Yerim have fun and play with the children makes it nearly worth it.
Nearly.
At least the library has heating, she ruminates. Vivi usually just finds a book, sometimes in Korean, sometimes in Chinese. She reads, glancing up to see the joy on her girlfriend’s face every now and then.
But not today.
Today, Yerim decides she needs a bathroom break. She decides that Vivi will take over playmate duty.
Vivi is
terrified
mildly annoyed.
She doesn’t know how to deal with these things. She might break them. Or make one of them cry or something like that. As long as they’re alive, she should be fine.
Right?
She has no idea what to do.
They stand there awkwardly, the children sizing her up. Maybe they’re going to start screaming, she doesn’t know. She’s a foreign species in their natural habitat.
“Do you want to… hear a story?”
Good job.
You did a thing.
They probably don’t want to hear a story, these children. But Vivi ignores them, half thanking her impulsive brain for coming up with something to amuse them until Yerim returns.
Until she realizes she doesn’t know any stories.
She could just settle for a children’s book, or some fairytale, but Vivi has it in her head that she’s got to do something special. Yerim’s entrusting her with these worms, and she’s obviously the best at childcare.
“What story are you going to tell us?”
This can’t be a coincidence.
The girl who asks looks like the perfect blend between Yerim and her sister. She has the same long, dark hair, but also the big eyes of her girlfriend. Her chin’s a sharp, pointed peak and her nose is long.
Yerim.
Her little sister.
The sea glass story.
(She’s a genius.)
“I’m going to tell you about a dragon,” Vivi begins.
And so it starts, the recount of everything the purple dragon under the sea does.
When Yerim gets back -- a whole five minutes later -- the children are all clamoring around Vivi, wanting to hear more.
The story ends, and so does their allotted time. They walk out of the library, into the winter air.
“You’re pretty good with them,” Yerim comments lightly.
“Never again,” Vivi shoots back.
“I don’t know,” Yerim says teasingly. “Don’t you want children when we get married?”
“No,” Vivi says without hesitation. “Never.”
(But she does want to get married.)
((Just like she wants to go home.))
((( ...It’s too cold out here.)))