Work Text:
Inside you lies a nesting doll, layers of skin nestled under layers of skin, each a new face and body, unfamiliar yet wholly you.
The outer layer sits tight on you like a mask. It’s barely a nuisance and rarely loosens but it’s carefully curated by you. It’s decorated, bare and exposed to an audience. It serves as armour, guarding secrets held within, and saves your heart from breaking.
The first time Gyuvin’s first skin cracks is when she realises her boyfriend is boring. It’s become complacent. She hasn’t felt the heated rush or excitement of coming home in months. She still smiles and picks up his calls, but beneath the practiced persona, something soft begins to harden, something hard begins to ache. She longs for something new.
It starts subtly— she lingers a little too long on strangers’ faces, searches for features the complete opposite of his. Bigger eyes, taller nose bridge, thicker lips. She longs to hold the delicate skin of someone genuine, and as beautiful as her.
At the thought, a bullet of guilt pierces its way into her chest. She thinks of her boyfriend at home, how plain she feels with him. How satiated. It’s safer this way, she thinks. Easier.
The second layer inside her begins to tremble.
It wants to break free. She craves the feeling of her hands brushing through longer hair, stroking softer jawlines, holding rosier cheeks. Her wants clash with her needs, unmet hunger throttling humming bones. The second skin speaks in pulses— impulses twitching behind her ribs, a whisper in her throat, a low ache in her spine.
What scares Gyuvin the most isn't who she is or how she’s changing, but that others might see it too. That all she knows will shatter if the truth slips out.
She giggles shallowly when her boyfriend asks about her, smiles with all her teeth when he brushes her hair behind her ear like they’re the same again, and keeps her gaze firmly fixed on the path she’s walked before, hoping the pining will pass as if it’s only lust. Or at least, it will stay hidden in the shadows where no one else can find it.
One night, in the mirror, she looks for herself and finds someone else staring back— sharper eyes, restless and determined. A version of herself that doesn’t want to wait for a man anymore.
Gyuvin’s second shell breaks when that version of herself leads her to a small gallery tucked between a laundromat and an old peking duck restaurant, windows foggy from the creeping winters and its lights dim. She goes in without thinking. It's quieter inside than it is outside, the only sounds coming from light breathing and the silent clunk of frames being put up.
Gyuvin sees her first. Not a painting, but a girl. She’s leaning on a chair, blonde hair up in a loose bun, hanging from her ear a dangling cross. Something about her is magnetic. She’s not performative or practiced. Gyuvin can’t look away from her. The girl turns, sensing her gaze, and their eyes meet. When she steps off the stool, Gyuvin finds out she’s almost as tall as she is.
"First time here?" the girl asks, voice low, amused. Her smile is small, but it still meets her eyes.
Gyuvin nods.
"It’s different. I haven’t been anywhere like this before," she replies, and means it.
"Mm. No one really comes here unless for directions. What’s your name?" the girl tilts her head.
Gyuvin laughs, and for the first time in a while, it’s not rehearsed.
"Gyuvin. Yours?" she replies.
“Ricky.”
At that, something in her cracks a little more, but this time, it doesn’t cut flesh. It feels like shedding an unknown façade, and waking up again.
“What brings you here?”
Gyuvin falters. She opens her mouth, closes it again. She allows the memory of her reflection to flit past. This version of her in the mirror, remembers nothing.
“I’m not sure,” she says finally, her voice cracking. “I think I needed to go somewhere new.”
And wasn’t that the truth? Her voice is quieter now, from fear and the gentle pressing of honesty. “Maybe I was hoping I would meet someone.”
There’s a pause. It doesn’t feel awkward, just still, like the wind holding its breath. There’s a moment. Gyuvin feels the underlying guilt of her other self throbbing, but in the stillness of the gallery, Ricky feels like fate.
What can she say next? That she’s been settling in safety for so long, she forgot how it felt to ache for a love that sets every part of her on fire? That she’s been content with nothing for so long, she doesn’t feel like she deserves full devotion?
She needs to sort out her boyfriend before everything. She thinks it won’t go well, maybe. She thinks of the safe haven shattered by her own rashness, of the words colliding like speeding cars on an empty highway. Maybe she’ll take a while to heal and Ricky won’t wait for her.
The time will pass anyway.
Even at their first meeting, Ricky makes her want to unveil her heart. She wants to peel herself inward, one layer at a time, hoping to find a version untouched, a self she hasn't reached. In Ricky, she finds both pain and beauty, a tapestry woven from her deepest desires and the reality of who she is.
She’s proof that Gyuvin’s heart has opened up.
She imagines Ricky holding her like a promise, calloused fingertips from years of handling paintbrushes, meeting the graceful line of her collarbone, trailing down to lay harsh against gentle curves. She wonders how long it will last before it shatters. After all, she’s still learning how to adjust to the gentleness of no longer pretending.
Someday, she thinks, her lips will bear the kiss of tinted lips. Still, while time unfolds, all that matters and remains is the shell of who she is, a simple nesting doll.