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Tortoises vs Hares (Remix)
February was nothing short of a sore thumb in terms of weather this year. Incredibly bleak and boring.
On the morrow of a snowstorm, the sky was a pink luster, the belt of Venus. Given the destructive blinding white it left behind, Frederica only felt resentment towards the 5AM watercolour tint stitched into the fabric of the morning clouds.
However, she was able to resume a certain hobby because of the snowstorm.
Behind the apartment complex parking lot, a singular school bus sputtered in its meander on the vacant road, the mass of last night's snow parted onto the sidewalks. Frederica felt like the pin master of the sky for how early she dedicated herself to her renewed hobby, stalking—no, observing Shinei in favour of noticing his strange activities lately. She took it upon herself to uncover why he’d disappear after everyone had fallen asleep and return at first light, as though he hadn’t left.
Except last night, he didn’t return. She had her suspicions, of course. Ones she didn’t want to be true and ones that pertained nebulous allusions to the 14th of this month…
Now, settled comfortably in the borrowed minivan of her so-called father, she had a few hours of its temporary possession before he stirred awake and he, Theresa, or anyone else realized the keys, Frederica, and Kurena were missing from their rightful places.
The engine thrummed beneath her like the busted electric coffee kettle at home and the windshield bloomed patches of defrosted condensation from the blasting heater.
Frederica tested the flint wheel of the Satin Chrome lighter she nabbed from the dashboard. Shinei’s mossy corduroy jacket shifted on her lap as she reached over to ruffle through the glove compartment. Somewhere under the sundry rubbish and empty perfume sample bottles, was the petty paper pusher’s hidden stash of Seven Stars cigarettes, the ones he swore to Theresa he didn’t own.
She gagged. A wad of stale chewing gum jammed itself under her fingernail! Disgusting. She flicked it behind her. How filthy was this car?!
Kurena, sprawled out and drowsy, reserved the entire backseat for herself. “Munchkin,” she mumbled, “I don’t think you should touch anything—Gah!” Kurena flailed then coughed awkwardly when she realized the flying crusted gum was what bounced off her forehead.
Frederica scoffed at the half-baked warning, what worse could she possibly do with a cigarette?
Before she could entertain the thought, frantic knocks rained down the side of the minivan.
Kurena cried out, gripping the headrest with her eyes screwed shut. Frederica didn’t have a moment to gather her bearings before Raiden popped up, attempting to peer through the tinted windows. He knocked a knuckle on the glass.
Frederica snapped the glove compartment closed, one less reason to implicate her, and begrudgingly lowered the glass.
“How may I help you?” Frederica asked, a false cheery smile plastered on her face.
“Holy hell,” Raiden leaned into the car through the frame, behind him revealed an equally false smiling Anju. “God damnit you cost me a bet, who knew—Stop snickering Theo—who knew you had the guts to steal his car.” He sighed, scratching the scar on his cheek. “Playtimes over kiddo, get out.”
Frederica stole another glance behind him. Theo wasn’t there.
“Hello?” Raiden waved a hand in her face. “Did you lose your way? Open the door and out.”
Frederica’s smile twitched. What did he say? Lose her way? How dare he!? She wasn’t some bumbling child, she was a grown and respectable lady. She felt her facial muscles tick again. Counting to three always worked. One…Two—Oh screw him, he was giving her a cheeky smile!
“You imbecile! I’m not a pampered child.” It didn’t help her case that she borrowed the car without permission and likely will deal with a slap on the wrist at home. Frederica calmed herself, her fingers fluttering over her maroon scarf. She needed to lay a plausible defense. Miffed but still sensible, she added. “I have affairs to attend…with er—” she sniffed, her eyes darted far from his knowing gaze. “—with Kurena…”
“Y-yeah!” Kurena tried to salvage Frederica’s poor and vague attempt at an excuse. “We were just cruising around…together in this area. They have, um, a nicer view in this area!” She exclaimed, although she didn’t sound entirely convinced herself.
They all paused in a heavy note of silence. It was the day after a ravaging snowstorm…the view was all but snow and vehicles buried under snow.
Anju sighed. “You two are really a handful,” Raiden moved aside as she drew closer and Frederica cringed away from Anju’s bright, undisturbed pleasantry. It never entailed anything good when her eyes shined with a certain glint.
Frederica faltered, directing her attention to Raiden. “E-excuse you! I’ll have you know that we are perfectly capable of tending to important business–eh?”
Anju reached into the car, and unlocked the car doors.
Kurena yelped. She buzzed with a bundled nervousness since they caught them, but the notch skyrocketed as she flung herself for the backseat doors.
Theo’s face materialized on the window like a 2000s horror film jump-scare. Kurena screamed and clutched at her chest. He slipped into the car, a premeditated motion, and forced her back inside.
“Ah, ah what’s the rush?” Theo simpered.
Kurena moaned in defeat. “Come on…can’t you let this go for once.”
Theo grinned, tugging on the door she tried to flee through. “Child safety locks are pretty handy.” He wrapped his arm around the headrest of Kurena’s seat, trapping her from an escape. “Don’t you think, Anju?”
Anju climbed into the seat beside Kurena and gracefully held her in a headlock. “They certainly are,” she said, her tone serene for the violence she inflicted on Kurena.
Frederica surrendered to their antics long before Kurena’s subduing. She let Raiden pick her up from the driver’s seat and dump her into the passenger side, strapping her in like a limp doll. Frederica had drawn to a sobering conclusion; her persuasion skills weren’t up to par anymore.
In a last ditch effort, Frederica used the last tactic in store on him. “I haven’t eaten—you can’t do this?!” she cried incredulously. She puffed out her lower lip and gave a pity-inducing face. “Our destination was a specific diner and awaiting for the car to heat postponed our return on the road!”
Raiden merely dismissed her and dropped a paperbag on her lap. “Eat up.”
.☃︎ ݁˖
She eventually gave into hunger and curiosity within thirty-minutes of the hijacking operation. The crinkled paperbag carried two cottage cheese flatbread, leftovers from last night repurposed into a sandwich, with smoked chicken breast, sun-dried tomatoes, and chopped watercress. She reluctantly nibbled on it, the extra dollop of sour cream smearing the corner of her mouth.
Raiden thumbed the smear and ruffled her hair. Frederica swatted his hand away and grumbled an averse thank you.
“Um where are you driving us?” Kurena finally asked, maneuvering in Anju’s grip to address the change of scenery.
Raiden gave her a significant look from the rearview mirror. “To an overnight cabin trip.”
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Sun-Eaten Spiral
Shin exhaled and cupped his hands to encapsulate the puff of his breath in the shape of an eight-ball.
February’s snow undid and brought a whole new meaning to winter this year. The hill of the chalet, formerly silhouetted with a coquelicot alpenglow, now aligned with a stagnant blue. The steamed star anise tea from the hotel foyer, offered with a cloying marshmallow fudge (still sticky on his fingers from holding it for Lena), warmed his limbs for their hiked descent to Hesturn.
Hours after their outing for the small town, they were now returning before the ski resort closed for sunset.
Beside him, her argent eyes swirled with passion, her trains of thought swerved and crashed into every topic that came to mind. Lena beamed up at him and paused to catch her breath. The two of them were alone, therefore she spoke to her heart's content and he liked listening to her clear and petal soft voice; a nocturne to an insomniac musician, soothing to his turmoiled mind.
A haze shimmered the curves of her soft figure as she tucked a loose fray of her raindrop colored hair. Maybe it was the blur of his vision creating the haze, but the surreality she embodied, the lucid dream she was, it was a wish he couldn’t grant on the best of days.
She drifted the conversation to chiffon cakes and Annette’s latest attempt at perfecting the recipe. The cold suffused a cerise blush on her cheeks. His gaze dipped lower. It was entrancing, the way her lips moved, the curve of her collarbones—Shin looked away.
“Shin…?”
He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He might confess, or worse, act in the presence of her purity, shamelessly take the wholeness of the only saint in his life.
Lena tilted her head to the side, trying to see beneath the tufts of hair covering his eyes. Her face brightened as an idea visibly dawned on her. She reached for his hand at his side, took her mitten off and intertwined their hands.
Shin froze, his eyes inched wider from the initiation.
“You know,” Lena stepped in closer to him, her breath on his neck, their clasped hands a barrier. “This is the size of a human heart.”
He looked down at her and blinked. It was hard to focus on her words.
Her breath made small cumulus clouds near his beating pulse, where their hands rested. She waited for him to fill the gaps of her thinking and when he didn’t, she fidgeted, patting her recently self-trimmed bangs in habit of self-consciousness.
Lena huffed and traced her thumbs on his knuckles, then brought their hands to her chest. Shin made a move to pull away but she held firm. With a steadfast yet timid expression, she bore her eyes into his. “Yours—your heart—it will always be held here, and mine,” she placed their hands on the left of his sternum and covered it with her other hand. “Mine will always be with you.” Lena promised. “So whatever you're thinking up here or feeling down here can be said to me. You don’t have to hold it in anymore.”
Shin stayed quiet. The hard tension in his shoulders thawed from the warmth of her words. Suddenly, sensitive to the stimulation of her breath on his peeking scar, he realized he wanted to do more than hold her hand, show her the intimate effect of her musings.
But he couldn’t. She was supposed to be pristine and unblemished like the snow. A pure snow angel. Not in the ruins of a war in his heart.
A wilted snowflake pressed and melted on her nose.
Lena released their joined hands, her face flushed a deeper rosy shade. “I-I’m sorry—I wasn’t—That was a bit um,” she stuttered.
Struck out of his daze, he realized he’d left her in a static silence. Shin rubbed his thumb on the hand she held, the phantom warmth of her hand pulsed in his palm despite the cold.
“I didn’t—“ in her blundered retreat, she lost footing. Out of reflex, he caught her.
Almost.
They both tumbled into the snow. An imprint of their bodies crunched into the fresh surface.
Dazed, the remainder of her perfume sillage wafted in his senses. He was too close. Not wanting to fully retract from her, Shin brushed her splayed hair from her face.
She tried to catch his gaze, a gentle look in her silver eyes as she searched his own, expecting.
He cupped her jaw lightly. “Are you okay?” Shin asked, the cold trickling in his lungs.
She nodded, shivering but leaning into his touch despite the dampness of his mittens. “Yes,” Lena whispered. She shifted beneath him, their breaths becoming one. “...Do you feel okay?”
He didn’t know what okay felt like at the moment. He wanted to feel all the versions of ‘okay’ she felt. And if it meant being with her, he would plunge in a heartbeat, whether he could swim or not. No air for the surface.
Slowly, he leaned down and tucked himself in the crook of her neck. A catharsis like paper mint on his tongue followed by the refreshness of cool water. Her dizzy spring flower scent he grew familiar with flooded his mind, numbed away the eating self-loath but mostly, it reminded him that no matter, she was his safety pin.
He melted into her touch, somewhat hovering to avoid pressing his weight on her. His racing heart, the cavity between them.
He expected it to play out as a flustered Lena squeaking: “Shin?!” But instead, she formed a loose grip on his back, tentative with her touch.
Almost hesitant.
Shin pulled away before she could second guess, untangle from him—reject him—and realize she didn’t want to linger for the case that he might taint her. He eased the subconscious frown on his brows, shaking away the parasitic thoughts. Shin allowed himself to hover above her and share his slightly higher temperature. Just for a little while.
Shin cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he fixed her puffer collar and uprighted her faux fur ushanka slighted on her head. Gaze drifting elsewhere, his skin prickled with an acute awareness of her face and their proximity.
A frown deepened a wrinkle on her nose. “What for?” She returned in an equally hushed tone.
“For…” He couldn’t answer. The calmness he often felt, the stillness within his heart wasn’t out of stability; rather it was the dead of a sea, for the slew of emotions he couldn’t handle on his own. There wasn’t enough for him to put into words how grateful he was for her. How she brought the light in his life with just a smile. It hurt how much he…
Shin stood up and pulled her up with him. There was only one way for him to find the answer to his gratitude. An assurance that he could overcome—that for her, with time, he could hope to dampen the self-loath for self-love.
He gave her a silent offer, his arms parted for the space she could slip beneath his chin. A choice of her own. He didn’t think anyone would willingly want to find themselves scarred by his presence.
Lena wasn’t anyone. She folded herself into his embrace, melding without hesitation, her arms sure around his neck and his around her waist.
Shin memorized the curve of her spine. Where his fingers fit on the dent of each bone.
He looked up to see the evening steep into night. The sky's stormy swirls of Jupiter, blue and expansive as the sea. Spilled across were the stars fizzing into existence, akin to the warm fireworks in his chest. To anyone else it might have been a smothering feeling, to be held in this manner, but to Shin, it was an undying blessing he wanted to crystallize into an embosomed memory.
“For everything,” he replied belatedly, his eyes singed with an unfamiliar feel of tears.
“when you’re all alone / i will reach for you / when your feeling low / i will be there too” apocalypse, cas
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Her 143 Serenade
She spooned the cherimoya into her mouth, then ran her tongue over the slick on her lips. Its custard sweet center. A noise of pleasure escaped her, and she closed her eyes to savour it properly.
Lena plucked the seeds, rolling…rolling…rolling them out on the table under her finger.
Amusement flickered in his blood-red eyes. “Are you happy?” His clipped blunt tone, a little softer around the edges. Shin peeled a tangerine, the citrus color tinged on his nails.
The infrared heater glowed. Swelter seeped in their skin, and a latticed shadow of the incandescent lampshade danced on the walls. TP curled on his lap.
She hummed her assent. ‘Exotic and imported,’ he told her, the local fruit market was barren of such. It was luck that he found the fruit for two.
Shin drank from his hot water, her face distorted under the glass.
The rim of the empty-now-coaster ashtray glistened, a sheen of mirror tiles on a disco ball.
Clove and saffron, their stained aromas lingering from dinner. Dusk painted the outside world and their kitchenette window fogged up from the potential clarity to its allure.
All the allure she needed already sat in-between the window and herself.
Shin smiled at her, a tender expression. An expression he reserved for her.
Annette’s chiffon cake cling wrapped on the counter.
A green apple core balanced on the chenille couch. Their gossamer curtains curled on the sill where the potted moonlight caladium perched next to a deck of cards. Lena hiked up her lace fringed slip, scooped the custard fruit’s center, and pressed the spoon on his mouth.
There were some things worth drowning for.