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They had their first kiss inside a cramped photo booth. A dingy room lined with run-down curtains, dusty photo strips littering the floor, small smiles staring up at them, muffled chatter drifting in from the outside… and not a drop of romance in the air.
But their bodies brushed against each other, and magic infused the room; all they could see was each other and all they could feel was each other. His breath came hot against her cheek, his hands carding through her hair as the camera flashed once, twice, and the room filled with the clicks of the shutter. In a violent glow of fireworks, the world exploded with colour.
Something permanently shifted off its axis, a small glitch in the course of history. Faces flushed and ragged breaths and kisses in spate. Rin smelled like amber and tasted like electricity. She deepened the kiss and Nezha lost all sense of his bearings—like a moth to a flame, like a lamb to the slaughter, he pressed against her. And it was their origin of young, foolish love, the first, fierce hum of desire and sweet dates, submission, prayer and half-dreams of eternity together. For Nezha, it was one last, gasping chance to live.
Loving Rin was his redemption.
It came in bursts, like lightning in a bottle. Moments of salvation followed by confusion and plaguing doubts. Passion followed by affection; tenderness followed by sharp, stinging words. Loving Rin was confusing, uncertain and fickle. Was sharp laughter and small addictions and kissing in a glow of amber light. Scribbled confessions pressed into the palm of his hand, her eyes adoring and bright, his boldfaced flattery, a lunch spread underneath crab-apple trees and lush green grass. Equally—the smell of weed in the early morning, wandering home from a night of dancing with silver glitter staining her cheekbones. Watching smoke disappear into the grey skies, furious bite-marks and bullets of rain hammering down as Venka and Kitay trailed behind them.
Young, foolish love. Prancing in the woods, a tinny radio, profligacy and hurtling towards an uncertain future. Equally—battle scars, yearning, wanting, not receiving, unspoken fears, all-consuming hatred. Fighting, tongues lashing and teeth drawing blood. Shrieking at the other until they crumbled—until they were on their knees, crying because they needed some reminder that they still cared. Fighting Rin was an uphill battle, a whirlwind of heat and noise that always ended in a cliché; loving Rin was tiptoeing the line between faithlessness and devotion.
Nobody won. After all, war doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains. And at the end, there were never any winners. Only panting breaths and flushed necks, harrowed eyes searching desperately for a distraction because neither of them could stomach another heartbreak. Sometimes, in the salvation of moonlight, their love felt like the only thing they had left. The only thing they couldn’t ruin—because it was disaster from inception. Like an ouroboros, the cycle went on, eating its own tail… cannibalising from the inside out. That was how Nezha saw it, you either consume, or get consumed. There was no half-assing it. So he chose. So he jumped.
“Do you think we’ll last?” Rin once asked him. Hazy evening, the skies cauterised and a burst of colour spilling out. Grass underneath them, dust particles dancing and a half-empty bottle of Claret clutched in her hand. The smell of peaches and sweat. Nezha’s expression wooden, his eyes sad. He thumbed the patch of skin where Rin had doodled on his arm, smudging in places when he pulled away and engulfed her in a hug. Her small protests and her laughter dissolving inside him like a pill.
“Nothing lasts,” he replied eventually. “Not friendships, not loyalties—”
“But do you think,” she persisted, “we’ll last?”
Silence, stretching between them like a loose wire. Watching as Rin closed her eyes and leaned back into the tall blades of grass, drinking in the sight of her face, her small nose, time-worn lines and her dark tresses all splayed out, her all-black attire. Wanting to say yes, yes, yes—and remembering who they were. The blood that ran thick between them, suspending their fates from birth. A noose. A family. The ancient ghosts of Yin grabbing Nezha with their withered hands as he grappled for severance. In the midst of all that heavy darkness, perhaps Rin was the only thing his father couldn’t touch. Perhaps he loved her too much to care.
“We’ll survive.”
Rin opened her eyes, studying him momentarily, before she leaned in for a kiss that stole the air right out his lungs. He brought his hands to cradle her jaw; there was an overwhelming urge to touch her, hold her hand, rest his head on her shoulder—but she’d already pulled back, watching him with a curious expression.
“You were saying?”
His heart raced. There was something in the sunlight, or maybe it was Rin’s ineffable charm, that made his brain thaw into syrupy matter. But he didn’t mind—not when she was looking at him like that.
“We’ll last.”
Rin stood, watching the dying sun as embers lit up her face. She was the brightest thing in the park by far. “Say that again.”
“We’ll last,” he repeated. “You’ll murder me. You’ll scorch me. You’ll burn me to ashes. But then we’ll be okay, then we’ll last.”
She tilted her head, eyes glinting, and the intensity left him off kilter, like he’d missed the bottom step in a stairwell. “You think we’re playing with fire?”
“I’m not afraid of a little heat,” he lied.
Rin placed her thumb under his chin, and Nezha drew in a breath. “Tell me what you really think.”
There was that look again. Piercing. Shrewd. A kaleidoscope of butterflies broke within him. “I think you’re fucking crazy,” he said, eyes flitting between her own. “I think you’ll kill me. You’ll set me on fire. And I’ll let it happen, because it’s you.”
Nothing was easy between them—theirs was a deeply confusing love story entangled into a past neither of them could erase even if they wanted to. But it had brought them here, to the present, to heated exchanges and a love like narcotics, and from a bruise, a poppy had blossomed. Nezha had been underwater for most of his life, and now he was breaking the surface, drawing breath and feeling the shine of a thousand suns upon him. Rin herself gifted him sunlight. She had crawled down from the stars for him, to offer him a final chance to live. She was his fucking lifeline.
“Good.” She tipped his chin up. “Be my Icarus?”
He grinned. Sunshine on his face. “Gladly.”
