Chapter Text
"I'm sorry, Isha is who again?"
The room was stacked high with boxes. Mel had noted that at some point, whoever had been labelling the boxes had given up, and had instead started doodling random things on them instead. A technicolour haze stared at her from every angle. She had the odd feeling that this flat would look more cluttered once everything was out of the box. The sofa was littered with bags, leaving Mel nowhere to sit, despite how exhausted she was from carrying luggage up three flights of stairs. Her gym membership would not be getting much use this week.
A blue-haired frenzy whipped around the kitchen counter, clutching something tight in her hands. Mel winced, watching with wide eyes as Jinx managed to avoid standing on anything, no matter how small, or tripping. Some people thrived in chaos, and she seemed to be one.
"Careful!" Ekko dumped the final cardboard box on the wooden floor, a gentle smile on his face. He leaned over the back of the sofa, angling himself so that Mel would see him despite the carnage. "She's an egg. We were paired to look after her in school, and Jinx got so attached that she kept the egg."
Mel turned towards Jinx who now stood by her side, hopping from one foot to the other. Her hands unfurled to reveal an egg, well-preserved, with a cartoonish face painted on it and a little felt hat with googly eyes stuck on. Looking after an egg wasn't something Mel thought anyone had ever taken that seriously, but clearly Jinx did. People like this, who clung to childish antics and refused to age past eleven, tended to irk Mel. Alas, there was something she found oddly endearing about Jinx, not despite the childishness, but because of it. Energetic and yappy, but still polite. "And who gets custody of the egg- Isha?"
"We swap each weekend." Jinx nodded, holding the Isha egg close to her chest. Blue eyes peered up at Mel through thick lashes, a small smile on her face. Thankful Mel called the egg by its name, and didn’t just refer to it as an egg. "One day, I'll let you hold her. Not today, though. You gotta be careful with her - she's still got her soft spot." She winked, and Mel nodded wistfully in response.
Ekko walked around the couch, before slumping his arm over his girlfriend’s shoulders. "But now we don't have to alternate between weekends, because we finally live together." There was no irritation in his voice at the previous arrangement – it didn’t seem that Ekko was upset whatsoever that his girlfriend had a strange attachment to an egg that they’d been tasked to look after one week in secondary school.
"'Course we do, I have her in my room one week, she's in yours the next."
"Uh, how about we keep her in the living room where we can both see her at all times." He reached out and took Isha, holding the egg with just as much attentiveness as Jinx. "It's gonna be winter soon and the heating in this flat is dog-shit... I think Isha's gonna need a jacket."
Blue lips parted, and Jinx raised her hand, playfully wiggling her finger in his face, before stealing Isha back. "You're so right!”
Mel chuckled. "Well, it looks like you guys are all moved in now. Did Vi say we were meeting tonight for dinner? Are we going out somewhere?" She hoped they were. Vi had some last-minute society stuff to sort out, so she couldn't help the Little Couple move in. She felt terrible about it and tried everything she could to get out of it, but nothing was more vicious than a university society. Once they had their claws in you, there was no escape. Mel volunteered herself instead. She'd had a few brief conversations with Vi's little sister, and had never met Ekko before, but they all lived in the same building, so no harm done.
"We were thinking pizza. Somewhere cheap. As our thank you for helping us move in... our thank you to you at least, the rest of 'em are just freeloaders." Ekko dug his hands into the pockets of his dungarees, which were littered with different embroidered patterns. "Sorry it's nothing fancy; we saved enough money for the flat, but we didn't think any further than that."
"There's an arcade right by the pizza place, though!" Jinx grinned. "You any good at arcade games, Goldie?"
Seems they were on nickname basis already. Mel was pleasantly surprised. "Oh, I'll beat your ass at Dance Dance Revolution."
"Wanna bet?"
"What money are you betting, Jinx?" Ekko grabbed one of her shoulders and gave her a playful shake. "We don't have any. Unless you're selling an organ."
Mel left having given the happy couple her flat number - she was two floors up and had to make the journey up there by foot because the elevator was broken and had been ever since she'd moved in for her second year of university. That was three years ago. She was a PHD Law student now, starting her second year. It made her feel especially old helping first year students move in, because it felt like her first year had been a matter of days ago. Starting a degree that she had no interest in, only to now be extending her studies as much as she could to avoid picking up the career path her mother had planned out for her. To avoid her mother altogether.
The door into her flat was jammed again, and it took four shoulder shoves this time to get it open, ruining her white jumper with dust. She locked it behind her and threw her key into the bowl that Caitlyn had made for them on a pottery date she went on with Vi. A lot of the things in the flat belonged to either Caitlyn or Vi. For the most part, Mel kept her things in her bedroom but wasn’t against sharing her collection of books. The day she had managed to build the bookshelf by herself one Saturday night with nothing, but a glass of champagne and a dream was the happiest day of her life. The following morning when, hungover, Mel discovered that her bookshelf had not made it to see the sunrise, was the saddest day of her life. With the help of Cait’s girlfriend, who didn’t live with them but hung around so much she had started giving them extra money for the internet bill, they eventually managed to fix the shelves, and she’d filled them with her expansive book collection.
Those two would most likely be hanging out again tonight, after dinner. Not that she minded, she was happy for them. But there was a stark difference between friends that had partners and friends that didn’t. Selfishly, Mel felt, she wanted friends that had more time for her. Everyone around her was in a relationship. It used to make her feel like she was lagging. Made her question herself – was she the problem? Was she un-loveable? Maybe she wasn’t pretty enough? Not smart enough? Not enough? That was the kind of thinking that would keep her up at night in second year, after the breakup she went through with her ex-girlfriend. It wasn’t a rough breakup by any means but losing her ‘other half’ meant facing the fact that there was no ‘other half’ to herself. It was just her in this world, and anyone else she met had to go through that same realisation before they could ever truly understand what it meant to love.
Ignoring the phone that she had left face-down on her bed, Mel moved into her bathroom. Her skin felt clammy. Makeup felt as though it had seeped into her pores and done irreparable damage to her skin barrier. The weather was traitorous, and she had worn a jumper on a bizarrely sunny day in the beginning of September to help people move in, and she very quickly felt the consequences of that decision. Helping people move was difficult with no elevator. Helping engineers move in, at that. Most of their stuff was random – in her opinion – crap that they had insisted on keeping with them. Abandoned projects, failed plans, probably a few more eggs. And a comically large salt lamp.
“What did you pack in here, Jinx? Rocks?” Mel had asked as a joke. She’d carried the box upstairs and was sweating. The flap of the box had opened, and when Mel had glanced down, she noticed a huge salt lamp sitting alone inside of it. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me!”
They were characters, though, Mel thought. Especially Vi’s sister. She tried not to think about that word too much, as she reached for her makeup remover and cotton pads. ‘Sister’. Exactly what she was but also wasn’t. Schrodinger’s sister. Does a person stop being a sibling once they lose their only sibling? Or is there a point of no return that you reach? So long after their death, do you stop being a ‘Sister’? As though the membership has expired. Or was it when you could no longer remember which eye had a small freckle in it, and what their voice sounded like?
Cold water ran through her fingers. Best to wash her hands before she started washing her face. She let it run until her fingers felt numb, and the gold painted on her hands had dripped down the plughole. An expert at this now, Mel knew how to remove her makeup without staining their porcelain sink. Caitlyn’s girlfriend, however, was still learning that trick. She poured the remover onto the pad and wiped it across her skin. Stood on her tiptoes to see into the mirror that hung above their sink, Mel watched as the gold wiped away to reveal the white patches of skin she covered up. At the beginning of her third year, she realised she had vitiligo. Rarer for someone her age, but not impossible.
This process was relaxing to her. Painting was a much-neglected hobby of hers, and unlike painting, anytime she did her makeup, the paint could be removed. Wiped away as though it had never been there to begin with. Whenever she did her makeup, or her skincare, she became her own canvas. If she were to ever pick a paintbrush back up again, Mel knew she would be able to paint her own portrait from memory after all this time alone with just herself. Looking into her own hazel doe-eyes. Her father used to say that she and her brother, Kino, looked alike. No matter how hard she searched her face now, she could see no trace of him, bar the dark circles left in the wake of his death.
Two cotton pads, and a third one just in case, later, and Mel had wiped the gold away. She washed her face with her luxury brand face wash – the most expensive thing Mel would allow herself now that she lived on her own money, and not her mothers’ – and stripped down. With any luck, the stain on her jumper would come off with a good scrub. If not, Vi was handy at upcycling. Maybe she could take a look at it.
This bathroom had been a nightmare to sort out when they had first moved in. Mel knew she couldn’t call her mother for help, and even if she could, she refused to. Thankfully, Caitlyn’s mother was aghast at the idea of her daughter moving into a dinghy, shared flat, and would have sold her husband for extra cash if it meant renovating her daughter’s new home. Still not perfect by any means, and the hot water still struggled to work, but a cold shower was supposedly good now and then. Mel was sure she had read that in an article somewhere. Or was it that hot showers were best…? Whatever was best right now was whatever got her cleaned up before they went out for pizza tonight.
In her bedroom, her silenced phone rang for a minute, before a notification was left behind the veil of Do Not Disturb for the nineteenth missed call from Ambessa.