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Rin knows him.
She knows she does. It's a simple fact. The sky is gray, the sun rises from the east, winter comes after fall, the world is cold, her eyes are brown, and Fang Runin knows Yin Nezha.
The thing is, she’s pretty sure she's never seen him her entire life.
This one presence that keeps on bothering Rin.
He’s like an ache that doesn’t wash away; an itch that she can’t ignore. A bright presence in the dull light, the spring of color in the gray air, annoyance and curiosity; the only source of life and sound and simple being .
Something about him bothers her. She finds her gaze lingering on him, and when she forces herself to tear her eyes away, the prickling feeling doesn't cease. He’s like gravity, pulling her, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Rin definitely never saw him before. She assumes she would remember if she did, for he has one of the most striking features she's ever seen. Dark hair, almond shaped eyes. Pale, smooth, porcelain skin. It’s almost annoyingly perfect. Annoyingly… sharp. Strong. Vivid. At least, not cloudy and misty and blurry like everyone else’s. Not a face you would see and forget easily.
So if this is her first encounter, then why does he feel so familiar?
"Hey."
He glances back. Their eyes meet for the first time, and there’s something. Rin couldn't put a name on it, but something. A catch in a breath, saying yes, this is it. She isn’t going crazy. There’s a reason behind the pull.
His long lashes cover his brown eyes and she’s sure it’s the first time she noticed they were brown. But at the same time, she feels like she has always known they were lovely.
"What's your name?"
"Yin Nezha."
"Nezha. Right."
"You're Fang Runin, right?"
"Rin," she corrects automatically. “I go by Rin.”
"Okay. Rin. How can I help you?"
Listen, I know I haven't really met you, but I feel like I know you.
“You can’t. Not yet.”
The interaction was a mistake. She now feels more than a presence. No, it’s a string. Magnetic force. Gravity. Tethered, as though fate.
Rin does not believe in fate.
But she gets flashes of his face in her dreams. She sees a face, lovely as ever, through haze and smoke and cloud, and it disappears before she can freeze it and capture it in her mind.
She wakes up confused, because she’s certain she’d remember if Nezha’s face is as scared as she saw in her dreams.
The tether’s formed, invisible to the eye, souls connected; or maybe it was always there, and she simply wasn’t paying attention before. They’re bonded, whether she likes it or not.
Does she like it, or not?
"I know you,” she says.
He meets her eyes through his lashes. She swears his eyes were brown, but the sky reflects on his pupils, rendering them the briefest blue.
“I know you, too.”
It’s a door, flung open with the magical words and Rin drowns herself in the waves crashing forward. But she’s holding his hand, and she can withstand the current. They both find the city suffocating, so they escape to the roofs where their feet dangle in the air. Dangerous, but both of them know it’s the least dangerous thing they did.
“Did we die?”
“I guess so.”
“What else do you remember?”
Nezha’s brows furrow. “Some faces. Not clear. River. Bodies. Ships. Battle cries.”
Not so different from Rin’s; she has names brushing across her thoughts that melts as soon as she places them on her tongue. Places flashing before her eyes, mountains and cliffs and the sea and a field filled with brightly colored flowers, places that don’t belong in this world, scattering away before she can paint them so he could also see.
“But I remember you.”
Rin remembers Nezha, too. Remembers him in longing. Anguish. Hatred. Love. All spectrum of human emotions that she finds herself dizzy when she pushes her thoughts too long and hard. Perhaps it’s those combinations of emotions that make him sharper than anyone, anything else. He’s imprinted in her mind, even after she closes her eyes and wills him away, like the sun dancing beneath her eyelids in triplets.
Everything about this world, the tall buildings, the low sky, the shadows of people, cars blowing pass, crossroads and street lamps, pale faded sidewalk; cold and unforgiving and shockingly silent.
To her, Nezha’s the only life that shines and screams like one. It’s because she doesn’t belong in this world, and neither does he, and their lives were done and finished and scattered in another lifetime eons ago; yet they also somehow were tethered to find each other in this vast, cold city. They’re odd drops from another painting, brightly colored red and blue escaped from another canvas and dumped into this one; everything else is foreign, and only the other is home.
Home.
The striking feeling she got when she first saw him, it was like going back to a childhood home, or wearing your long forgotten favorite sweater, or a hug from a friend you haven’t been in touch with for over a decade. Familiar, but buried in the past. Strange and new, yet the shape of it all so familiar.
Strange, though. Rin’s sure home’s not supposed to feel scary as well.
"I had a dream."
"So did I."
The more they meet, the more they remember; their memories bleed out onto the pages, faded but permanent. It’s an echo that gets louder, a constant ring in her ears, a sound that she can’t ignore.
Sometimes, she wants to hurt him.
The urge is both strange and familiar; she’s torn in half, and she wants him and hates him. Sometimes, the rage is so unexpected, flaring up in a matter of seconds, it consumes her soul. She’s angry, bitter, and curses the world. She curses him.
But mostly, she’s scared.
They cling to each other.
Metaphorically. Physically. She reaches out, and he’s there. He calls for her, and she runs. The invisible string attached to each other feels stronger by day.
Sometimes, she gets so scared she tries to cut it off. If Nezha felt it, he never says.
They stay together, cling to each other. They share a kiss and let their breaths mix. It simply is the natural course of action. Every point of contact, she feels life and blood and memory bleed out of her. Damn the gray city and unyielding buildings; Rin is certain they can burn the world down together if they want to.
A horrifying feeling of flying and drowning at the same time. Soaring through the skies with wings and fire. Drowning under the waters as suffocation claimed her. Images flashing before she could remember them, yet the feelings lingering behind like smoke after a burned out fire.
They fit together like puzzle pieces, slotting in place. But Rin knows they’re different; they’re different in every possible way that one can imagine, except she cannot remember exactly how and what. They draw each other in like magnets, hunger for what one doesn’t have, and only when they’re together they feel whole.
They’re different, except they’re also the same.
Separation is painful. Their souls latch onto each other, and the tear requires more than a physical pull. It leaves her mind damaged and ruined, but she somehow knows this is not the first time.
It comes with a pain, sharp in her back.
A crash of reality, a break from the unknown suffocating her, but as soon as she gasps her air, she wishes she could take it back. She’d rather not remember; she’d rather stay silent and still and unknown and forgotten in darkness, for the immense hurt is too overwhelming, instantly drowning out her thirst for more.
Betrayal. Such a scathing, scarring, burning, bright word. Mixture of love and hatred and regret and shame. Kaleidoscope of emotions, memories, glaring in the world of gray.
She hates him, hates that hatred is buried beneath all other emotions, and she cries and she cries and she cries. She tears at the invisible tether, thrashing and crying and screaming, and she wants to disappear and fade back into the world of gray. All the while, Nezha keeps saying sorry, though he doesn’t even know why, just that he’s sorry.
She cries and cries and cries till the tears nearly stamp out all her flames and melt her soul into the cold, gray, dull pavement. Nearly. The tether’s still there, and Nezha doesn’t leave.
It takes eons for her to cry away the hurt.
Nezha stays.
Hiding from him is impossible. She can spot him like a beacon through the mist, and she’s sure he can, too. It’s almost unimaginable how they’d managed to miss each other for two decades.
Hiding from him, physically, is impossible. It turns out hiding from him, emotionally, is impossible as well. He knows when her anger ebbs and waves away. Fire can only burn when there’s something to burn, after all. When everything’s consumed and gone, fire follows suit.
In the end, she whispers, “Stay.”
In the end, she doesn’t need to. She knows he will.
She finds herself curled up in Nezha’s arms more often than not. Face buried in the crook of his neck, his arms tight around her body, and she knows she’s giving him comfort as much as he’s giving hers.
When the waves come crashing down, they hold onto each other like a lifeline. Because they are.
It hurts to touch, and she finds herself burning, but it’s better than nothing.
Much better than fading into a dull, gray, cold nothing.
Her fist against his face; the feeling still throbbing on her knuckles. A blade over his chest. Criss-crossed marks on the side of his face. Rain churning down, drowning everything, including herself.
Now, it’s lips brushing against hers, hands on her back. They touch and drown her memories.
When she breaks, she wants to die.
She was wrong; dull, gray life was worth living. Definitely worth more than whatever this hell is.
“I want to stop remembering. I want to forget them all. I wish I never remembered it. It hurts, everything hurts, I wish I never knew, I just want to go back, I want to know nothing—"
She pushes Nezha away, because proximity hurts, because every second of him is a reminder than she doesn’t belong here, and she’s been sent down here as punishment; for the unforgivable crimes she committed, thousands and millions of lives she wiped out off the chessboard, nothing more than ants. She’s never resting in peace, and Fang Runin’s legacy would haunt her forever, just the way she wanted as a sixteen year old.
She pushes Nezha away, but he keeps to his promise.
He stays.
Nezha loved her before. He’s certain of this.
He’s also certain he’s falling in love with her all over again.
When Nezha breaks, he’s silent.
Rin feels it more than she sees it. Everlasting weight sagging down his shoulders. He seems to float off the canvas, drifting away. Away from this world, away from her. Alone.
Rin tightens her grip on the tether and pulls.
When they crash, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Rin mutely takes the weight of the world with him, and stays.
Sometimes, Rin imagines flying away. Leaving this gray world. Leave Nezha. Cut off this weight of consciousness, heavy thoughts pulling her down, past ghosts clinging to her ankles, voices like chains in her arms. With Nezha, she can never escape her past.
So she imagines flying away. It’s all victory, fanfare, unbelievably light and free and careless and wild and exciting for one second.
Then it’s all gone, like fireworks fading and disappearing before they touch the ground.
She hates the boy in front of her. She loves him despite everything.
So she stays.
In the end, they make the most of it. They don’t belong in this world, but neither of them are about to allow it to hinder them. Consciousness stays as long as they stay together, and they don’t melt against the gray walls and floors. They come alive and share a look and even crack a smile and Rin sees colors bursting through. It’s so much more quiet and calm and still than the short life they shared before. Peace is a luxury, and they breathe a breath of it while they can.
In the end, they stay together.