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They found it once, in a dictionary at the bottom of all the other books they were given. Sealed in clear plastic, so pristine Chaeyeon claimed it could be used as a mirror and laughed at Jiwoo's face of disbelief.
With their hands joined together, fingers so interlocked one could swear they threaded the other to themselves, they opened it page by page. Then a certain word caught Chaeyeon's eyes, shimmering as she glanced up and down from Jiwoo's confused smile and the paper.
Clematis
noun
a climbing plant of the buttercup family which bears white, pink, or purple flowers and feathery seeds. Several kinds are cultivated as ornamental.
Pointing excitedly at the page didn't help Jiwoo much, so Chaeyeon instead shoved the book to her nose with a childish grin.
"Below here!"
Another set of lines, written more so like a report than the dictionary's format, it was easy to tell it was written by their guardians rather than humans. Formulating dot by dot, were numerous facts they must have gathered from history, likely to preserve the past their pets had then.
‘The clematis flowers symbolise the beauty of ingenuity or the trait of artifice.’
Jiwoo narrowed her eyes at her, almost glaring yet they relented at the sight of Chaeyeon's persistent smile.
"Are you calling me a schemer?"
"Huh? No, no, you're just super smart! Ingenuity is like being clever! Inventive, one-of-a-kind, the original! So you're my clematis!"
Jiwoo's stare just grew more confused, as Chaeyeon hung around her neck.
"Your clematis? So now I'm a flower?"
Chaeyeon furiously nodded, finger tracing over the flower diagram drawn into the book.
"Yep, you're as pretty as one, aren't you? And- and, you're witty, smart, you're the only Jiwoo I know!"
"I don't see how it aligns, a flower and a human? Are you just complimenting me?"
"The petals there also look pale! Like a glistening, nearly-gone, fragile pale- like you!"
Jiwoo sank her head down, "Oh, so you're belittling me..."
"Arghh! No!"
The shorter girl clutched her from behind, so close that Jiwoo wheezed out her next breath. Chaeyeon turned her head up, her grin still there as determined as she was.
"I just think you're the most beautiful person I've seen yet! So, I can't compliment you with normal things, so a flower works best! It's like- natural beauty that you have, my Jiwoo!"
Chaeyeon didn't quite remember how Jiwoo's reaction went. She was red for a bit, flushed cheeks probably, she pulled away from her stare and almost looked like she was pouting from embarrassment. Chaeyeon remembered almost falling over, trying to get Jiwoo to look at her again, yet almost out of some kind of deep devotion she never turned for that day.
She could hear her mumble, once they made up with matching flower crowns. Chaeyeon was feeling so warm with her head on Jiwoo's lap as the leaves brushed past them.
"You're too bright to see, pure... I have to keep it... My..."
Chaeyeon never knew what her last word was.
Clematis... Jiwoo was always clever, always knew what people felt, what should be said and shouldn't. She was always a step ahead. There was something deep-rooted in her eyes as if she had stared into the stars and back, into the heart of the occasional night they get when the pixelated 'blue-cloud-sky' was turned off.
Jiwoo held the universe in her eyes, Chaeyeon wanted to be in them forever. In the last bits of her haziness, feeling the faux grass under her feet and the gentle brush of Jiwoo's fingers, cold against warm skin, Chaeyeon cheerily let Jiwoo hold her.
Chaeyeon fell asleep that day knowing that she belonged to Jiwoo. In this little pretty spot of theirs overlooking the whole garden, belonging to one another.
This is happiness.
===============
Chaeyeon was flattening her dress, trying to manage the unruly shape down.
She wasn't a fan of puffy dresses with elaborate lacing and ribbons and everything! It made her look bloated...How did Jiwoo pull it off? She always appeared so delicate, like a porcelain doll among all those fabrics, Chaeyeon smiled at the thought. It does look silly in the end to go so extravagant huh? But it was round one, a performance all of them were preparing for! She giggled at the thought of Jiwoo singing, glamorous under the stage light, she would be an iridescent dream!
She almost dropped the dress in hand upon the sound of slamming behind her.
"Yooyeon?" Chaeyeon coughed into her hand, turning only to tilt her head. Why was she hunched over?
Yooyeon was like... a princess! She always was, with her smooth smile, and now wearing those dark garbs, she was like the night sky against the white walls here. But right now, her fist against the door, she looked as if the dark parts of those dreams, leaving you gasping when you woke up. She and Jiwoo were similar after all.
"Chaeyeon," Yooyeon held her hand back to her chest, as she crept further inside, staring back behind her. As if someone was chasing her.
Chaeyeon frowned.
"Your collar's red, what's wrong-"
"Jiwoo is going to die."
Silence always hung between them in this friendship, which Chaeyeon was happy to fill as Yooyeon always smiled back. Yooyeon was easy to talk to, a good listener, and when she talked, she always had wisdom embedded in each word. She read those thick books after all, every time, even if it made Chaeyeon's head hurt.
A laugh bubbled out, as Chaeyeon shook her head, it thumped along with her heartbeat.
"You're so serious- she's not going to lose, We're going to sing together!"
"She didn't tell you...?"
"I wasn't meant to tell you, but, Jiwoo said we can match our points, that we can see each other again in the next round! That's why it's a duet, you know."
"Are you still-"
"Besides, we'll just end up in the garden again if the points didn't tie! Jiwoo said so. I wouldn't want to to stay back as she goes in the season though, but at least I can watch her sing-"
"We are all going to die." The collected tone Yooyeon wore sliced into her, the red in her eyes narrowed into slits. She was deadly calm. "Jiwoo first if you keep this up."
She felt her fingers grit into the dress in her hands. Her heart kept slamming against her chest, she wanted to grab it out. It twisted and turned that she couldn't utter a word, Yooyeon was... so, so still.
Yooyeon's face pulled into something between a laugh and something else entirely, yet her eyes were shaking too.
"Stop letting her coddle you. She's selfish for that and you're selfish for indulging it."
Then she left, jarring a knife into her throat, as Chaeyeon stood there. White, pale skirt flowing through her hands, just like the outfits she saw Jiwoo presented with. Placid with her master's choice, she whispered into her ear that it will look good regardless.
Jiwoo just wanted her to wear black.
We'll be matching.
Chaeyeon felt as if she woke up, tearing at her hair and screaming silently as Jiwoo did.
A bad night. It must be.
Even if glass shattered upon her feet.
===============
"Chaeyeon..." Jiwoo's eyes were bearing into her, a shimmery violet that usually acted as a balm to her- felt now as if they were carving into her skin.
"Y-you looked good in white so I wanted to match with you!" Chaeyeon tried grinning at her, flourishing the puffy sleeve in a twirl where limb-like ribbons followed. "I didn't think black fitted me that much, even if that's not what you thought."
She watched Jiwoo narrow her eyes, perhaps conflicted, as she achingly nodded.
"You're so beautiful... Like a jellyfish," Jiwoo murmurs, "But, why the change-"
Clutching her hand made Jiwoo jump before she smoothed her fingers between their gloves. She frowns at something in Chaeyeon's eyes, as Chaeyeon brings it up to her cheek.
"We'll live, right? Have a duet, only for us, on stage?" Please, please, please...
Jiwoo's eyes never once flickered, as she so softly smiled and nodded with the littlest tilt of her head.
"Of course."
A thinly, ever-so-sweet, veiled excuse. A promise Jiwoo made not to Chaeyeon, yet on her behalf. The hidden dark pits of Jiwoo's eyes made her swallow something intangible. It was collaring her, leading her down, blinding her into a path she never even fathomed before.
The lights flicker on as the pedestal underneath them rises. Rosy lights fill her vision, seeping into the strands of Jiwoo's hair so that her whole being is lit up. Chaeyeon let go of her, her fist grabbing her chest as if the sight of it bit her.
She was absolutely ghostly, between her fingers she could disappear.
Jiwoo's eyes still hung over her as they turned to their microphones. Her shoes were clicking against the stage, cloth limbs sliding against the ground. Realisation slowly but surely struck her, just as the first octave pitched instinctively from her throat.
===============
Do you believe in God?
Chaeyeon knew about religion, scoured around in the books their masters lent out, yet Yooyeon and Jiwoo were always the ones reading them first.
Jiwoo told her, in a hushed tone against the soft grass, holding her hand in a prayer; that the limits of human power were solved by God's will. There was a desperation in her eyes, a need to devote just as the past humans did as if she couldn't understand why they would long after something that didn't exist.
That the faux flowers bloomed because of God. That the plasticine grass caressing them was due to God. The wires, the tubes, the poking into her flesh, permanently pressing their names into one another, that they will rise up to heaven knowing that her master let her go, promising her eternal song, knowing everything she offered her to on a platter, due to God.
Do aliens have Gods? They held that place in their universe, an alien's belief.
Yet Jiwoo challenged every belief she had, embracing her that she had grinned blindly trailing behind. Chaeyeon thought she could love everyone, but she couldn't have prayed to any of them. She hadn't rested in her lap, not feeling the warmth of her smile, not feeling enlightened by the way her eyes curl at the sight of her- that her cheeks turn as pink as a peach.
The way she mouthed her name, their laughing that chased them down the garden, so precious, it must be divinity.
Oh, my clematis.
She is still heavenly now, her black strands a rich turquoise under the lights that reigned out backwards like the whole universe. Extending out that they are infinity, transformed in their intertwined voices that Chaeyeon hoped could be heard from the ends of the stage and out, out into the world outside theirs they cannot see. Stars blinking from her gaze trailing to the back of her head, to around them, that it became her.
Always be by my side.
It was reflected in Jiwoo's eyes, Chaeyeon was a star residing there. She was immortalised. Forever living and loving, and Jiwoo was hers as much as she was Jiwoo's. Why did Jiwoo try to blind her then, in her kaleidoscopic, everlasting eyes? Why wasn't she trying, digging herself, carving herself, letting Chaeyeon be by her side?
Oh my clematis.
Jiwoo's eyes almost invisibly crease, withering away as if she knew, she knew it. Jiwoo's tongue didn't linger light enough on that note, her breathing weighed too much on the diagram that she missed the perfect pitch. If Chaeyeon didn't know Jiwoo was trying to leave, she would have adored her voice till the end. She ran for her, dropping her microphone entirely, needing to tell her, make her, stay. Stay.
Hope withered in the abyss.
Chaeyeon could have watched her forever. Captured in her voice, gaze, she saw the way Jiwoo's eyes contracted. The luxurious purple she adorned herself within her pupils, widened and almost shook. The anchoring touch of her fingers, forced under Chaeyeon's weight yet she knew Jiwoo was strong. They were pulled into a dance Chaeyeon misstepped in, yet she knew Jiwoo was so smart, she'd always accommodate. They swapped roles when practising the duet after all.
Oh, my clematis.
Then red, blanketing and soaking red, just as the flowers bloomed in the garden, escaped out of her onto the white of their outfits. If this was what spring was like, Chaeyeon was overjoyed to see it and share it with Jiwoo.
Her face was so pale, her eyes like distant specks, her hands digging into her dress. Chaeyeon held her by the waist, curling around her warmth as hers dripped over the stage- making it theirs at that moment.
Please stay by my side.
Chaeyeon couldn't see, the lights overhead dazzling her into perfect- perfectly only framing her under Jiwoo. Her dark strands caged her from seeing the screaming world around them, something wet joining together with the itching pain in her lungs. Someone had screamed, endlessly into an imagined abyss, yet Chaeyeon couldn't help but smile.
Her God.
Her universe.
Jiwoo was hers.
Jiwoo was holding her.
Jiwoo was there, breathing, crying, all in that kind voice of hers.
Her chain to heaven, something all of them fondly remember, was held tight in her hand. In Jiwoo's.
My clematis.