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She is a perfectionist- that cannot be changed. Everything she does is precise, measured, and expected. To predict every result correctly is a trait she's had since her birth. Everything can be controlled, everything will follow a scientific reason. Everything will match her beginning hypothesis, and she will never have an uncontrollable factor in anything she does.
And she guesses she likes it like that, with every factor in control, everything reachable between the gazes of nous, the other aeons, and the days where she can feel the memories of her childhood slipping away further, further again. Everything that she can feel between the grasps of her slim fingers, everything she can possibly possess.
She will never stop on anything she puts her mind to, even if it means death.
There has never been something she has never been able to keep a single leash on. And she likes to think this as an accomplishment, but it seems he’s taken to challenge her.
-
Ruan Mei has many, many, many unnamable unhealthy traits. He will not bother to count or list them out to her. She won’t listen, or she simply brushes it away. Her astute perfectionism, which leads to her being less than satisfied. It fuels her obsession, if something doesn't meet her expectations. He’s pulled her to feed her, keep her alive, keep that light in her eyes going even if she hates him for it. She can’t see the fruits of her efforts if she dies before finishing.
“Ruan Mei. Eat. You need to sustain yourself.”
He speaks in a firm tone, his hand closely, on her shoulder blades, motioning her to pick up the food and eat. As usual, she doesn't move. Her facial expression barely shows a sign of remorse or will to follow his words. She’s testing him again. She always does, as if she wants him to get so exasperated with her he finally leaves. But he won’t.
She has a sad beauty in moments like this. Her eyelids almost drooping but still wanting to keep herself awake, her eyes glinting and slightly watering from the presence of sharp light. She’s ethereal.
-
And she’s sick. He’s warned her so many times, but she’s never listened. Idiocy, he would say, if she wasn’t the one doing it. Now he finds it endearing, and he can hardly believe himself when he finds her stumbling half asleep in her nightgown in his bedroom. Utterly adorable, loveable.
He fills a teapot with hot water and proceeds to drop a few of her plum blossoms inside. The scent engulfs him, the room, and her. He adds a few vitamins inside, covering the taste with sugar. Her sweet tooth would undoubtedly like that. He covers the teapot with its delicate cover, staring at the intricate designs on the lid. Designs he’s never heard or seen of?
Is this her home?
He observes an array of plum blossoms painted on the rim, with a swallowtail bird in the center of the blooming abyss. She has never let him into her childhood memories, even once. He has no recollection of her telling him a single thing about her childhood.
Maybe she doesn’t remember. He’d believe it if she said she traded them away in her search for knowledge. He’d trade his away, if he could.
He’s had happy memories, he won’t deny that. Him and his sister, his family sitting at their old noble home, somewhere far out in the universe. But his family has never once supported his pursuit of knowledge, and he doubts they’ll be willing to let their disappointing son back into their distinguished noble heritage again.
How is his sister doing? She was nine when he left. He didn’t really know her much, except that she was only his half-sister. A bastard child. She had the same golden eyes and the same shade of lavender hair, and carried human blood in her. Yet his mother despised her.
He always saw her covered in blood, tears dripping down her chin, the maids hovering around her, yet not touching her, in fear the lady of the house would catch them helping her. And she would scream, blood spilling onto the red carpet as he and his mother chatted on the table, discussing his future.
Every drop of blood she spilled was human, even if she wasn’t his full sister.
How many times had he turned her away when she asked to play with him, that stunning glint in her eyes, full of hope, her face still covered in scars because of her birth? How many times had he stared at his own sister, while the life was being beaten out of her?
“You’ll do anything I say, won’t you, Vertias? Go become a duke. Socialise in that elite circle your father introduced you into the previous year. Do something good for your precious mother.”
She wrapped her arms around him, engulfing him in a hug, that was like falling into the chilling abyss.
“You never disappoint me, do you, Vertias, my precious child? ”
He stiffens, his hair standing on ends.
“Yes mother. I will always listen to you.”
“Good boy.”
-
He likes math. He likes the useless, logical calculations that the professors at the laboratory do. He finds them fascinating, following and bending the laws of the world to his bidding. He’s immersed in the very things his parents wish for him not to be.
“Veritas, put that book down. Ran away from the celebrations again, did you?”
His mother stares at him, her gaze directed at him. He looks away. His hands fumble with the pages of the book he’s holding, determined to stand up for his interests his time.
“Mother-mother...I-”
He doesn't finish. She’s going to wrap him in a suffocating hug again, the warmth of his interest dying within her embrace.
“This is for your future. I care about you. I want you to be happy, you know,” She pauses, pulling him in closer to her, her hands caressing his face, his grip on the book dying. “This is all for you, Vertias, so don’t make the wrong decision.”
This isn’t wrong. It’s not. This is what I want to do, right? Right?
The book lands half open on the floor as he soulessly surrenders into his mother’s embrace.
“Good, Vertias. You made the right decision. I’m proud of you. ”
And she feeds him sweet, tantalizing words until he can’t think anymore.
-
“Brother, are you really leaving?”
She stammers, shivering as her unopened wounds are exposed to the winds. He should ignore her. She’ll be the only successor after this, right? She’ll be the heir, her misery ends here.
He’s just given up everything for her, to pursue his interests. He’s just broken off all the family he’s ever known.
“No, brother is just going to a celebration. There’s fireworks, you know.”
His words reignite that hopeful gaze in her eyes.
“Can you bring some back from the party? I’ll be really quiet. We can light them together in the garden when mom and dad are asleep. I’ve never seen them before…”
He lies.
“Yes, I’ll bring back every colour. Red, orange, yellow…it’ll be perfect. I promise.”
He smiles at her, the only grin he thinks he’s ever shown her.
“I’m happy. Thank you, brother.”
She smiles back with the same energy as the shining sun. He tucks her into bed as he whispers one last lie into her ears.
“I’ll be back early, I promise.”
He barely knows her, but she’s his sister.
She wakes up the next day to a bundle of fireworks hidden in the garden and him nowhere to be found.
-
She’s probably around eighteen now. She’s probably having the time of her life socializing. Has she debuted yet?
He hopes she sees the fireworks and enjoys the life he never would’ve.
-
She shifts on his lap and breaks him out of his reverie. He spoon feeds her medicinal herbs, watches as she regains some of her energy to attempt to get out of resting.
“Stay. You’re ill.”
He speaks to her one single command, and she can’t obey it. She disobeys everything he says.
“Vertias, I’m fine.”
She’s clearly not, yet she still wishes to go on and continue her work. He gives up. You would think a genius knew better about their health, but no. If it was really serious, he’d have to chain her to the bed to prevent her from trying to overwork and kill herself.
Though she’d find some sort of beauty in that death, he supposes. She smiles at him again, already heading to the kitchen presumably to eat another unhealthy treat to fuel her worsening diet.
But of course, she kisses him on the cheek before walking away. As punishment or reward, he doesn't know.
-
“Ruan Mei, how was your childhood?”
She looks dumbfounded at his question, as if she’s never heard of it before. She grips her test tubes a bit tighter as she returns his gaze.
“I don’t recall. I traded them at the garden of recollection. I do not remember a single instance from my childhood.”
She’s traded them. A part of her he could have known, gone.
“Do you remember your family? At all?”
She pierces his gaze again. No, she answers.
Her hand is close to shivering now, and her voice is not as stable as before.
It’s quivering on a fine thread, and he can predict it when he sees one of her precious tears fall onto her gloves, staining him slightly with a drip of water.
Her tears are as beautiful as the constellations, transcending the beauty of aeons.
“I had a sister. My parents were there. We didn’t have a good relationship. That’s all.”
Her voice, breathy whispers in his embrace as he hugs her. Warm. And for once, he’s comforting someone, he’s the one to protect someone. And it’s burning hot, it’s scorching when he feels his heartbeat synchronize with hers. She wishes to gain all her memories, while he seeks to lose them.
Does she feel hollow? He drinks all her tears before they reach her chin, her quiet sobs dissolving with the wind as he pampers her until all her tears go away.
-
Her parents prioritized her sister over her. She was overshadowed. She, like him, also had a blowout with her parents before parting ways, the thread connecting them thinning. But unlike him, she’s cut off that thread entirely. She no longer holds any anger, any feeling connected to her past. She had a bad past, so why does she ache for it?
That’s one of the conceivable mysteries about Ruan Mei he’ll never solve, and he hates himself for it.
For a moment, she has the small tiny smile that his sister always had when the beatings stopped. Small, and holding barely a hint of happiness, but it was there. Because she lived. Scarred, broken, bleeding but she lived.
The mirror images clash for a second. And when he holds her hand, he tells her it’s ok, it’s alright, and he’ll always be there. He will always come back.
His sister gives him a sad grin. He grips her hand tighter, allows him to pat his head as he leans down to her height. He tells her he’ll come back, but she knows it’s all lies. She walks away holding the bundle of fireworks under an arm, the only gift he ever gave her. His sister’s ok.
Ruan Mei stops shivering in his arms. They’re ok. They’re both ok. All the sweet words his mother once told him come out, but they’re real. He leans in to press his lips against Ruan Mei’s swollen ones. She presses further, and he surrounds himself in her taste as she grips his hair and laurel crown, caressing every lock. His hands find themself stroking her cheek as they both look at each other, his mind swimming with everything he could give her.
-
At night, her domain sings like fallen stars and undiscovered planets. He’s found a new favourite spot in her ethereal building. At the balcony, the skies are wide and open, and the stars shine bright enough today he can study them without aid. She’s here with him too, her eyes gazing at the sky with mild amusement, despite her tears earlier that same day.
She’s more vulnerable than she lets on. She cries too. She laughs, she smiles. She shows love in ways even if she can’t feel it. She is weighed down by the hollowness of her past. She has destroyed her mind with her own doing. He has too.
She smiles at him, a slightly broken smile but nevertheless the most beautiful to date. She has never failed to disappoint him. They point at the constellations again, and again and again. She’s fond of the opera, and plays, and her sweet nothings make his heart race in a way it’s never done before.
She strokes his chin as she looks into the sky.
“But what are we without scars, if not the skies without stars?”
She whispers in the air, letting her voice flit through.
He smirks.
“Ruan Mei, you are single handedly the most complex person I have ever met.”
She spews poetry in his arms as they fall, fall together. But he wishes to ask her one last question for the night.
“Promise me you’re alright?” His voice resounds, echoing around them.
She looks away.
“The stars look beautiful tonight, don’t you agree?”
She points at them, and he sees the reflections of them in her eyes. But they’re not as beautiful as her.
“You didn’t answer my question, Ruan Mei.”
“I didn’t want to promise you. Aren’t promises the sweetest lies? We all eat lies when our hearts are hungry.” She sighs, blowing a stray lock of hair away from her face. “So don’t promise me, don’t promise me anything.”
But he wants to, he wants to promise her the world, he wants to promise her he’ll be the one to take her hand from now until forever.
“I’ll give you everything, Ruan Mei. It’s a statement.”
“You always find a loophole, don’t you Vertias?”
She sighs, but he hears a hint of amusement and gratitude in that.
-
There’s an event, it seems. He holds the letter in his hand, addressed to both him and Ruan Mei, though sent to her building. It seems Herta has caught on to their relationship. He supposes he’s grateful, but when did she find out? Geniuses really do not mind their own business, it seems.
He’s been fitted into a suit, straightening his tie in front of the expansive mirror in her bedroom.
She emerges from a side room, wearing a white gown with layers of layers of lace. Her signature pearls adorn her neck, and her gloves have been changed to white ones with ribbons hanging off the side. Her usually tied up hair is flowing on her shoulders, loose and free.
She’s breathtaking, as usual.
Her expression is unreadable, but a hint of amusement flickered in her eyes as she meets his gaze.
"Veritas," she says, her voice a neutral tone, "you look very distinguished."
He smirks silently as he speaks back in a teasing tone.
“And you look extremely enchanting today, Ruan Mei. Like a prized specimen.”
Ruan Mei's lips quirk up in a faint smile.
"Like a what?"
"Like a precious being," he finally manages, a hint of a smile playing on his lips.
Her smile widens, a playful glint entering her eyes. She’s full-on teasing him now, fighting him verbally with the things that roll off her tongue.
"Like a precious being? Not exactly the most… poetic comparison, Veritas. I truly expected more from you"
He chuckles.
"Perhaps not. But then again, I'm not here to recite sonnets today, am I?"
She smiles at him, and sits down in front of him. He understands.
“You want me to braid your hair for this? I seriously thought you’d do better, Ruan Mei.”
She grins and swats his hand to start braiding as she contacts Herta about the event.
He gathers her long, silky hair in his hands, his touch careful and deliberate. He threads them carefully, pulling them into each other. It’s a relaxing process, and he strokes her hair as he does so.
"You know," She says softly, breaking the silence, "this is… rather efficient."
His hand hovers over her hair slightly. "Efficient? You mean the… braiding?"
"Yes," she said, tilting her head back slightly. "It's… a focused use of time and resources."
He ties the braid off with a hair tie. Two can play at this game, he supposes.
"There," he announces, a hint of satisfaction in his voice. "A practical solution… for a person like you."
Ruan Mei turns in her chair, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "It's… well-made, Veritas. Thank you."
She reaches up and adjusts the collar of his shirt. Her touch is light, but it sends a jolt through him. She touches his tie, loosening it.
"We should probably get going," she said, her voice betraying a hint of fondness.
“Aren’t you going to tell me something poetic, Ruan Mei? As you asked of me?” He reaches for the fallen lock of hair near her face.
“You’re like a fallen planet, Vertias. I don’t think you understand that. You always say I'm above you because I’m a genius, but aren’t you too? There are many areas of genius, Vertias.”
Oh. That was not what he thought she would say.
“You’ve given up on being a genius already, it seems. Fallen. You’re beautiful, so, so beautiful, Vertias.”
His brain goes blank when she reaches for his lips again. He’s almost certain she’s smudged her lipstick on him, and he imagines what a mess his lips will become. What hers will become.
He pulls away when he’s certain her face is flushed and she’s gasping for air. For a while, they only hear the sound of each other’s breaths.
“I suppose I love you, Ms Ruan Mei.”
She chuckles and he grabs her waist.
“Isn’t it your turn to say something utterly poetic to me, Mr Veritas Ratio?”
She kisses her before whispering.
“If I'm a fallen planet, I hope you were the star I was revolving around.”
She smiles into the kiss, and he thinks he didn’t disappoint.
If he falls, she flies.