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"Be careful, your hair is gonna get wet!"
A young Mizi laughed as she stood in the stream in the 50th Anakt Garden, giving Sua a bright smile. "Don't worry, I'll make sure it stays dry!" she smiled brightly. Getting ready to grab her target, she cracked her knuckles and rubbed her hands together, her tongue sticking out to the side as she stared at the stream in concentration. Her hands dived into the water and wrapped around a solid metal object, round, and with all the strength she could muster, she yanked it out.
Drops of water flew onto her hair as one of the Garden's robot fish emerged in Mizi's arms. Sua let out a gleeful laugh as she took in the comical image of Mizi, now with slightly wet hair, holding on to a squirming fish that was almost her size. "Yay, you got one! What should we name him?"
"Hmmm," Mizi pondered the question for a moment, knowing that it was a life-changing decision she was making for her new fish friend, and that it had to be done with forethought and elegance. "Bob."
"Bob?"
"Bob."
"I like that!"
With that, Mizi climbed out of the stream, Bob clutched securely in her arms, as she and Sua giggled. Mizi was so happy that she had made Sua happy. Although she had originally arrived at the Anakt Garden with the intention to crush her, she had taken a liking to Sua and she didn't like to see her sad, so she had made it her personal mission to keep Sua happy. (Although she did feel a certain amount of power in the fact that her actions largely dictated the bounds of Sua's happiness, but that wasn't something that Mizi would be unpacking any time soon).
Sua reached up to the top of Mizi's ponytail, sliding her fingers through the loops of the elastic. "I'm gonna take your ponytail out, 'kay?" After receiving a smile from Mizi, Sua gently pulled the elastic out of the former's bright pink hair, carding her fingers through the slightly wet locks. She tucked a few strands behind Mizi's ear and the handle of her glasses, and the two children smiled at each other.
Suddenly, a loud beep emerged from Bob, echoing through that section of the Garden, causing both girls to jump, followed by static which played for a few seconds before the sound cut out completely. Mizi held Bob's face up to her own face, which crumpled in sadness. "Wait, no! BOB!!"
Mizi fell to the ground, crying and clutching Bob in her arms, and Sua, who was caught off-guard by the sudden outburst, shot down to the ground next to Mizi and noticed that Bob's eyes had been replaced by an X in each spot. Sua connected the dots in her head. Mizi continued to cry and Sua rubbed her arm comfortingly.
Although Mizi had not always enjoyed her time underwater with Shine, she had a large appreciation for the sea creatures that didn't try to hurt her. And Bob had never hurt her in the short time that she had known him, at least not intentionally. But his death hurt; it hurt a lot, and in the back of her mind, Mizi vaguely recalled being in this position once before, holding the body of a deceased loved one in her arms and sobbing. She remembered a flash of pink hair, styled similarly to Sua's, and she began to cry harder.
Sua, not knowing that Mizi was remembering another death, looked back up at her with a new urgency in her gaze. "It's okay Mizi, I can revive him!"
Mizi sniffled and looked at Sua with hope gleaming in her teary eyes and handed Bob over to her. Sua gently laid Bob on the ground onto his back and with clasped hands, she pumped his chest. She quickly realised that because he was metal, her idea would not work. "Oh..."
If only such life-saving measures could work every time a loved one dies.
Mizi's breath hitched as the memory of Bob the Robotic Fish faded. Her body shook with sobs as she tried to stay quiet, her heart jolting as she saw the faint flashes of light against the opposite wall, coming from the narrow window above her. After Hyuna had saved her at the end of Round 5 and brought her to where she now was, she had collapsed onto the bed that Hyuna said was for her, curling up around herself and trying not to sob too loudly.
The way Luka had imitated Sua, had mocked her...
It enraged her, but it also caused a deep sadness to settle in her chest like a stone, and Hyuna could see that raw grief and pain on her face. She left Mizi alone in the room to attempt to process everything that had happened. Mizi hadn't changed out of her performance outfit yet, and it felt suffocating on her. It was long and flowy and it reminded her of Shine. That made it feel even worse on her, but she couldn't move. She felt paralysed.
Other than her heaving chest and her shaking body, she was as still as Sua.
Sua...her God, her Universe.
Dead.
Mizi felt dead too. Just like Sua. Like Bob too, she noted with a bitter laugh among her sobs.
Like mom... No, she wouldn't think about that right now. She pushed that catastrophic last thought to the back of her mind where she couldn't reach it again so easily, and found herself back at a still awful train of thought.
Even though she had resolved not to, she had crushed Sua anyway by pretending not to notice that she had been practicing her death every night, by not bringing up what could have been the fate of either one of them until right before Round 1. It had resulted in an argument.
Her last real conversation with the love of her life was an argument.
One that had ended with Sua flashing her a smile that she had known was fake, accompanied by a promise that they would tie the scores together, and deep down, Mizi had known that Sua was lying. But she couldn't admit it to herself and the round had ended with Mizi falling to the ground after Sua, in shock, ears ringing so loudly that she couldn't even hear the cacophony of cheers from the audience.
Before Sua's body had been taken away by the guards, she had lain there, horrifically still, and for a moment, her body had blurred into the image of a different one. Taller, with a similar haircut, but a different hair colour. Pink. Above the ringing, Mizi just barely heard the faint sounds of a sobbing, aching child.
When Mizi had fallen to her knees on that stage, her face had remained painfully blank, just as it now was, as she laid down in the bed, trying so hard not to be heard. She felt completely numb yet overwhelmed by crushing emotions at the same time.
No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't get out of that awful loop of thoughts in her head, telling her that it was all her fault.
That everything she touches dies.
"How cunning you are..."