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The one downside to having thick curtains was that Mei constantly lost track of time. Her digital clock was a wasted investment, since most of the time there’d be something thrown over the a.m./p.m. swatch. Her phone wasn’t any better.
Did her brain really expect to keep watch of how close it was getting to 4:00 a.m. when she had memes to save and high scores to beat?
But these things were nothing compared to whenever she got Red Son to come over. As cheesy as it sounded, Mei truly lost track of time whenever she had a moment alone to spend with her boyfriend. It was in the same vein as hanging out with MK, except they didn’t kiss or cuddle. (Romantically, at least. They weren’t afraid to kiss the homie goodnight.)
Plus, Mei and MK never stayed at the same place for too long, always letting their one-track minds jump on the next thing moving.
Mei never knew she could feel content just sitting under the sun in her family’s celestial jade garden, holding hands with Red Son as the two sat by the koi fish pond. They had long since gone inside to cool off, occasionally returning to a window together to peek out at the rosy horizon or take advantage of the empty home to stroll along the many long hallways.
Currently they were in Mei’s room, resting without a care in the world.
“You thinking of staying the night?” Mei quietly asked, combing out the loose and lazy braid she’d done to her boyfriend’s hair.
“Would your parents approve?”
“Eh, what they don’t know won’t send you down a flight of stairs.”
“That isn’t how the… Never mind.” Red Son gently shrugged the hands off his head and stretched the kink out his back. “If I could stay overnight, I would. But I’ve my own curfew and parents to keep in mind.”
“Can’t you just say you’re having a sleepover with your super awesome and incredibly beautiful girlfriend?”
“If they so much as hear the words ‘sleep’ and ‘girlfriend’ in the same sentence, I might as well disown myself.”
Mei smirked and leaned forward on her palm. “Saving yourself for marriage?”
Red Son pushed her away by the forehead. “Something like that.”
“Hate to break it to you, but I know all your secrets. And once I find enough songs for our playlist”—Mei tapped her phone, her eyes twinkling with mischief—“oh, it’s on like Donkey Kong!”
Red Son looked from the dragon phone case, to the cheeky grin on his girlfriend’s face, and over to the walls as if the posters could help him.
“I don’t even know who that is,” he deadpanned. “And a playlist for what?”
Mei crooned and squished the bull’s cheeks. “You sweet little bean.” She planted a sloppy kiss on his lips and rolled off her bed, going from cheerful to mildly annoyed when her foot slid across something hard. “Wish you’d stop leaving your stuff lying around. I could’ve broken my neck.”
“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black,” Red Son muttered, roaming an eye around the many books, clothes, and electronics scattered around the carpet.
Mei mimicked him under her breath with little heat and sat herself on the floor, pushing aside the small satchel he had brought over. She was familiar with it by now. Every once in a while, she’d see Red Son pulling out tiny notepads or his phone from it, jotting down reminders or sketching engine designs inspired by her own motorcycle repairs.
Mei’s foot had apparently slid across one of these books; a big, sleek hardback journal, and the cover instantly caught her eye by how pretty it looked. It was midnight-black with a slight gradient of silver and teal on the spine, and the eight phases of the moon were pasted large in the center, their names swirling in tight calligraphy.
Mei had never pegged Red Son as an astronomy lover, but that was one of many things she loved about him—he was an unsolved mystery waiting to be fully uncovered. Curious, she opened to a random page and smiled, recognizing his refined handwriting and his favorite words or phrases used here and there.
“Ooh, a poet,” she muttered to herself.
The words on paper were anything but poetic. In bright red ink and swooping, cursive letters, it was very clear that Red Son’s words were angry. Not in the cartoonishly upset way his temper would flare, or even the rare times where he would genuinely get frustrated.
No, these words sounded hurt. Hateful, even.
There were paragraphs listing what he had “unforgivingly and shamefully” done wrong, and they seemed like such simple mistakes that made Mei’s heart ache. Scalding insults were thrown around, criticizing his parents’ ways of going about things and the way they spoke to him, only to immediately be backtracked with uncertainty and self-blame. Certain words were underlined or scratched out, but Mei could still see them—words like “useless,” “foolish,” “monster,” “unnecessary.”
And Mei didn’t know if the faint sketches of different motors or parts for cars meant something, but the way they were scribbled in the margins and the way they were hovering outside of such upsetting words…
The journal was abruptly snatched out of her hands. Mei almost didn’t want to turn around, her fingers and neck burning from being caught, but she eventually did. Red Son reached for his satchel next, shoving the journal deep into the leather and bunching his hair up.
“I should get going,” he said, so quietly and plainly that Mei was guessing he was doing that on purpose to level his anger. She didn’t blame him.
“I’m sorry,” she said on instinct, wincing at how quiet her voice sounded. “I didn’t know that was, like, a private diary or something. I thought it was one of your machine books.”
“Well, don’t assume a thing about anyone’s belongings. And give me back my hair tie.”
Mei huffed out a tired little laugh. “It’s on your wrist.”
Red Son scoffed and began giving himself a fishtail braid, fidgeting with the ends of his hair. Mei could smell the faint scents of smoke rubbing off his shaky fingers, and she hated to think her partner was shaking from the anger she had inadvertently caused.
“Really, I’m sorry,” she insisted. She placed a hand over his knuckles and bit her lip at the sharp heat radiating from them. “Here, let me help?”
Red Son snapped the hair tie out of his hair and turned his body toward the door, arms and legs crossed like a pouty kid. Mei awkwardly got off the floor to search for her brush and extra rubber bands on her vanity dresser, occasionally stealing looks in the mirror. Red Son hadn’t moved from his spot.
“Sometimes I, um…” Mei felt her chest shake in emotion. She could never leave well enough alone, could she? “I used to doodle in my free time whenever I dog sat, ’cause you can never stay mad around puppies. And drawing helped my anxiety.”
Mei collected a few odds and ends, quickly fitting herself behind Red Son and carefully parting the red locks. She hadn’t realized she was biting her lip until her incisors bruised a particular spot.
“These walls are thick enough where I can make some mean jams”—Mei nodded to her electric keyboard in the corner and then to her guitar, but she doubted Red Son was paying attention—“but either my parents block out my ‘rebellious noise,’ or they’re never around to hear it. You know how it is.”
“A hobby is a hobby,” Red Son muttered.
Mei nodded and kept her focus on the tiny waterfall braids, then soon heard herself saying, “I could let you hear one of my songs, if you want.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Mei did want that, and yet as she passed Red Son her headphones and found the file she had created in a short couple of weeks, she still felt like she was pressuring him. It was so weird to think she had different wheels to spin whenever it came to how she shared her issues and how she perceived others’.
It was so comforting and less intimidating to attach a joking tone on heavy-hitting topics, and at the same time, it was so cathartic and nice to spill her guts to her two closest friends about the kind of thoughts that kept her up at night.
“That’s how I felt one night,” Mei softly explained once the song ended. “MK recommended this one song by this Filipino-American chic he listens to. She’s pretty good. It’s called Vampire, and just… The way she sings and the vibe of the song got to me. I had to write something like it, so…”
Mei weakly gestured to her laptop and started picking at the loose threads of her sweatpants.
“I guess I’m trying to say that, um…that I get the whole writing stuff about yourself thing. I’ve done it, and at some points I started to believe everything that my parents said was wrong about me. The way I talk too loud, or when I can’t sit still, or how I find the smallest things funny.”
Mei shrugged, then felt her eyes widen in surprise when she felt Red Son gently grab her hands. He still wasn’t looking at her, his eyes instead staring at her knees, but the tightness in his shoulders seemed to relax a bit.
“You wanna talk about it?” Mei murmured.
Red Son shook his head.
“You need a hug?”
Red Son said nothing, but his thumb hesitantly traced along Mei’s knuckles. They had come up with so many inside codes and silent exchanges in their long time dating, and Mei knew what his pride wouldn’t have him say:
Please keep talking.
Mei cleared a spot on her bed and held Red Son close. She ran her fingers through his hair, placing a soft kiss on his temple every other minute or rubbing along his arm.
“I didn’t see a lot in your book, and I’m not going to make you say anything you’re not comfortable with. I just want you to know that I get it, I really do.”
“It’s not important,” Red Son finally spoke, his voice muffled by how his face smooshed into Mei’s chest. “It was a lapse of character and it won’t happen again.”
Mei had a nauseatingly sinking feeling that those may have been the exact words Red Son could’ve said to his parents. Or maybe they just sounded like something he’d readily say in order to avoid that scathing disappointment. She hoped his parents hadn’t found his journal, and she wasn’t about to ask if they did.
“How did it make you feel after you wrote that stuff?” Mei asked instead.
Red Son glared at the patterns on her sweater. “I shouldn’t have been writing anything in the first place. I was in the wrong. Not my mother, not my father. Do you understand how mortifying that is to say such…such treacherous words about them?”
He pushed himself up, running a palm through his hair that was steadily beginning to crackle and flame up.
“No, I don’t think you do understand. I’ve been on this mortal realm for over a millennia, far longer than you, and the Noodle Boy, and your whole little posse. You don’t know what this says about me or my family’s legacy. I shouldn’t be wallowing in self-pity like a measly child!”
Mei placed a hand on his knee, and Red Son gave a literal knee-jerk reaction and turned his head away.
“I wish you hadn’t been snooping,” he muttered. “It was pathetic enough for me to take a pen and write that hash. And now you’re gawking at it and trying to justify my actions?”
Mei opened her mouth to say something, but figured it’d be better to let that infamous temper sizzle out on its own. It surprised her when all Red Son did was squeeze his eyes shut and allow his hair to fire up for maybe ten minutes.
“You’re right. I don’t understand,” Mei admitted quietly. She sat behind Red Son and slowly wrapped her arms around his waist. “I don’t understand your parents in the same way I don’t understand mine. And, at the same time, I really don’t understand your parents.”
Red Son scoffed. “Wonderful response, Dragon Girl.”
“But I do understand how it feels like you’re not enough. Like, you’re not doing the best you can, or you’re constantly told you have to do better. And that’s just a load of bull. No pun intended,” Mei giggled at her boyfriend’s raised eyebrow.
“When you’ve been the only heir for centuries and raised on nothing but your family’s accomplishments, you can’t help but want to be up to par with them,” Red son said. “But…”
Mei nodded and kissed the base of Red Son’s ear. He didn’t need to finish. Heck, he didn’t even need to begin.
“Red Son,” Mei began, resting her cheek in the crook of his neck, “would it help to say that you never have to be better than you already are around me? Because you’re already perfect, and really babe, you always have been since the day we met.”
Red Son snorted. “The day we met, I was trying to kill your best friend.”
“Yeah! And you were trying to do it perfectly, baby girl!”
Red Son said nothing after that, but a ghost of a smile was threatening to haunt his mouth as Mei peppered his cheek with kisses. The only real noise that followed was the soft rustle of blankets whenever Mei would move, or her soft occasional humming as she rocked them side to side. Slowly, Red Son turned his head and gazed down at her, eyes shining with something Mei couldn’t name.
“I appreciate that, Mei,” he said quietly, then leaned further down to kiss her forehead. “I mean that.”
Mei smiled and connected their lips for a proper kiss. “Good. I’ll be sure to tell you that every day.”
“Hm, would you really?”
“I can do better than that.” Mei made a smooth transition from holding Red Son from behind to straddling him on the sheets. “I can tell and show you how perfect you are.”
“Wait a minute, I…” Red Son’s eyes flitted over to the door, which was cracked open a bit, and felt his face redden as a deep kiss pressed to the column of his throat. “Wha–! Hey! Knock it off. What if we get caught?”
Mei smirked. “Caught? My parents aren’t home. Now then”—She slid her palm under the bull’s tank top and winked when she felt him shudder—“how about we get a head start on our playlist and see what works best?”