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Sua lives out round 1 like a dream.
Pink lights dance in her vision, blinding her to the perverse faces of the aliens she knows lie beyond the stage. They are not her concern, because for a brief 5 minutes it’s just her and Mizi. It’s a sweet goodbye song, Sua thinks, fitting for the last few minutes of her life.
Her movements are mindless, dance choreographed, smile practiced. She sings her best because Mizi is singing her best, and she doesn’t want to disappoint. The mechanical dings of votes tally behind her, and Sua stares into Mizi’s eyes as the song fades. She does not look back at the voting screen; she knows the answer, has known since the round matchups came out.
A gunshot sounds and she doesn’t stop staring, falling limp like she’s practiced a million times before. Dying should hurt more than this, she thinks, but perhaps the dream-like haze has dulled her senses. She feels blood splatter on her cheeks and she keeps staring. Blood spurts from Mizi’s neck and still Sua stares. So beautiful, Mizi looks like she’s frozen in time. Sua wants to reach out to brush the hair from her face but she can’t move and she can’t stop staring. She feels the aliens pull her off the ground and catches a glimpse of 86-87 in her peripheral vision.
Sua feels like she’s still dreaming, but she doesn’t close her eyes from the growing pool under a tangle of pink hair. It’s a horrible dream dreamt by a meant-to-be corpse.
—
Between bouts of consciousness, Sua thinks she dreams. Or hallucinates. Or it’s wishful thinking. She can’t really tell and she doesn’t really care.
Tall boots and a black dress stained red. She’s so beautiful, oh Mizi…
“What’s the matter, Sua?” she laughs and it brings up blood. “You tried your best to lose, didn't you?”
Mizi cocks her head to meet Sua’s downturned eyes. Her hair drapes over her shoulder and blood trickles like a fountain down her neck.
“Or did you plot against me, hm?” Mizi’s hair flashes pink and then black. “Were you secretly grateful that you won because my poor little Sua is so scared of going pop and dying?”
Hee-ah looks at her with golden eyes in Mizi’s black dress.
“Was Sua hoping and praying to be the favourite all along? So she wouldn’t end up like me?”
Sua doesn’t have an answer for her.
Mother visits Sua at some point. She brings with her white and frills and cold comfort. She speaks without expecting a response, and Sua sits pretty and broken in her pool of lace.
A wedding theme, she says, antennae twitching in delight. Exoskeleton hands comb through Sua’s hair as Mother talks about what kind of outfits she might put her in for Round 5. Sua feels a twinge of nausea under her blankets of numbness. Her mouth stays closed.
Sua’s barely moved from the backroom they’ve left her in. The aliens have stuck tubes in her arms to keep her alive since her hunger strike. On the big screen through her window, they play replays and interviews. Mizi’s head snaps, goes pop, in 20 different perspectives and camera views, yet Sua’s eyes stay wide and locked on. She hopes that if she watches enough times, she’ll never forget the way those gold eyes gleam.
Oh, it’s Till, she sees one day. He’s unkempt and rough around the edges, screaming and crying a mourning song. It’s raw and painful, ugly in its humanity. Sua thinks it’s beautiful in its awfulness.
The aliens disagree, and Till goes pop too. Sua keeps his swan song in her memory, placed carefully between golden glasses and the pink-highlighted lyrics of My Clematis.
—
Ivan comes to see her after his successful round. He’s solemn and his deadened eyes reflect in her own.
“Seems like in the end we’re the same, huh?” he asks, lips pressed together tight.
He wraps his arms around her in a pale imitation of consolation, for both of them. Sua leans into it, anyways, and ignores the shaking in his chest. In return, he doesn’t mention the quiet tears down her cheeks.
There is no confident facade for either of them, no words spoken. There’s no one left to pretend for, to be strong for. There is just emptiness and grief.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, chin resting heavily on Sua’s head, “but I wish she would’ve won. Because maybe, maybe if she lived—” he cuts himself off. “I wish you lost.”
“Me too,” she responds.
By the time the aliens come to take Ivan away, the tears have dried and the shaking has stopped. They don’t owe each other anything, but still Sua speaks.
“Ivan, I look forward to competing against you.”
A blatant challenge to stay alive. He smiles an indiscernible smile.
When Sua starts Round 5, she fears her statement may have been too confident on her side.
Luka’s reputation precedes him—voice of an angel on stage and cutthroat freak in Anakt Garden. She sees both qualities in heaps as he dances around her like a predator. Ruler of my Heart is a pretty song, she thinks, but being back on the stage is dizzying. Luka of course, notices, smug smile on his face as he touches her white veil with his purple fingers.
Sua pushes him aside with her gloved hands.The frilly white dress that Mother insisted on makes it difficult to move around. Luka smiles with his eyes wide, a perfect imitation of Mizi, and Sua can’t help but notice that his irises in certain lighting look almost the right shade of gold.
A do-over, his expression seems to whisper. You have a chance to make things right one more time. It’s gross, and even grosser is how tempting it is. It would be so easy to die, to go quick and pretty, blood soaking her dress like blooming roses. Sua knows how to fall, how to angle herself, but who would she be performing to? That snaps her out of it.
No one ever cared about Mizi like she did. She was the one thing in her life that was truly only her own. Till was too shallow, and Mizi wouldn’t open up to him. Shine will move on, and Ivan has his own cross to bear. Dying would be stifling the only spark of Mizi left, like she never existed at all. What a bleak world that would be, Sua thinks, as she belts out the chorus.
Luka gives her a derisive look, tries the wide smile again, but Sua doesn’t pay any mind. Who is he, thinking he knows so much about Mizi? His imitation is half-baked and insulting to the image of her in her mind. To hell with it. If she loses, the world will keep spinning without her in it, and it could burn for all she cares. Hee-ah, Mizi, I’m coming soon. If she wins, she’ll do it all over again, keeping that sliver of Mizi with her to see it through until the end.
In the end, her best isn’t good enough. She keeps her eyes locked on the screen and sighs in relief when the votes tally in Luka’s favour.
A gunshot fires and—
“Sua, come with me!”
Sua is tugged away and her heart still beats fast. She fails to die for the second time.
Hyuna pulls her away from the wrecked stage in silence, arm slung over shoulder.
“Sua, is there any way to put more weight on your side,” she laughs humourlessly through heaving breaths.
Sua doesn’t respond, but out of courtesy, she picks up her feet a little more so it was less like Hyuna was dragging deadweight.
“Unnie,” she says hesitantly. Hyuna hums.
I kind of wanted to die, she wants to confess. I wanted to lose, I wanted to lose round 1. I shouldn’t be here at all. I’m meant to have pink hair and gold eyes and have a dress not nearly as lacy. And the person you’d be heaving back to your base would be half-dead with grief but would be alive and on fire and not be this disgusting hollow husk that you have to carry with you.
Instead, she says “thank you”.
And they continue their march in silence.
—
When Sua was very very little, she dreamed of a life outside of Anakt. It was nothing like this, alcohol and drugs and hedonism. But one thing is the same: the freedom, the living unabashedly. Sua chokes down her first bottle of vodka so fast she almost dies again, heaving over the shady bar toilet Hyuna takes her to.
“Aah sorry,” Hyuna says, holding up her hair. “I should’ve watched over you.”
Any response Sua could’ve had was cut off by another retch. Vomit splatters back on her face and she doesn’t care. It’s just her and the water in the bowl spinning around and around.
“I’m gonna get you some water, okay?” Hyuna lets her hair fall softly over her shoulders. Internally, Sua thanks her, but is too afraid to speak more.
As her footsteps leave the bathroom and the door shuts behind her, another presence makes herself known.
“Sua, take care of yourself,” Mizi says as she picks up Sua’s hair from her shoulders. In response, Sua spews more bile and alcohol that burns on its way up.
She’s a little younger than the last time they spoke, but old enough to know the lyrics to My Clematis. From the corner of her eye, Sua catches a glimpse of the white Anakt Garden clothes and small feet. Mizi looks like an angel.
“Why are you here?” Sua manages out, still drunk. “You lost, you died, move on and stop bothering me.”
Mizi doesn’t answer and instead keeps carding her fingers through Sua’s hair as tears, snot, and vomit spill into the toilet below.
“I love you,” Sua sobs. “Please don’t leave, I didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” Mizi says, a little sadistically. She tucks a strand of hair behind Sua’s ear, and rests that hand on the warm nape of her neck. Sua shivers as she rubs her thumb into the bone there.
They stay like that and Sua savours every moment, even if she retches every few seconds. Not once does Sua turn around to look at Mizi’s face, but every time she shifts and a sliver of her hands comes into view, Sua laps it up like a starving dog.
Hyuna comes back with water and Mizi fizzles out into nothing. Sua’s left with nothing but hair caked in nast, and the memory of cold hands on her neck.
—
Sua would like to say she’s a good rebellion member. She throws herself into every task she’s given, and spends any downtime in the shooting range or sparring with Hyuna. Despite the members’ countless invites, she never goes drinking with them again.
“You know, Sua,” Isaac says to her when they’re both in the range. “You have the stealth and aim of a sniper.”
Sua aims carefully at the target and holds her breath.
“So why do you always turn down those jobs?”
She fires straight into the dummy’s neck. Its head lops unnaturally to one side.
“I want to look them in the eyes when I shoot them,” she lies.
Isaac shoots at his own dummy as he chews on his next words.
“The rocket,” Isaac says. “I want you to come with us. I don’t know if we’ll even get close to succeeding but with you, it’s the best chance we have.”
There’s no way in hell this is going to work, is unsaid.
Sua doesn’t hesitate.
In a blink of an eye, she finds herself gearing up under a fluorescent FINAL ROUND billboard. Hair tied behind her back and gray hood pulled over, she blends right into the smooth concrete walls around them.
Hyuna leads them, carrying the laptop of months upon months of work. A cry for help, so that others more powerful would somehow reach them.
Luka and Ivan sing it out on stage. Sua can’t tell who’s winning, but she roots for Ivan quietly in her mind. She has enough tact to not ask Hyuna who she hopes will win.
She stares intently at the screen while Hyuna sets up her laptop, but in the corner of her eye, she catches a flash of steel in the stands.
Oh, Sua realizes. That’s the executioner.
Sua’s seen enough clips of Alien Stage to notice where the killing shot comes from. It’s how she knew to practice getting shot in the right jugular and falling left. The shot always comes from the same place in the stands.
Oh, Sua realizes, breath quickening. I can make that shot.
And she starts running.
“Sua!” Hyuna calls after her, but she doesn’t stop sprinting.
The gun that she brought wasn’t fit for sniping, but she’s always had good aim. She prays that it’s good enough.
She kneels down hard on the edge of the stage, closing one eye and squinting for the metal glint she saw shifting under the coloured lights. Her hands will not stop shaking so she leans on the wall and braces herself.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, Blink—BANG
She fires and the recoil sends her back. The audience waits with bated breath to see which one of Ivan or Luka falls. Then it devolves into chaos when neither of them do.
“Move!” she yells despite herself. Her voice cracks with how loud she’s trying to be, after months of barely speaking above a whisper.
Ivan and Luka’s eyes dart to her position backstage, and Ivan yanks Luka with him as he books it towards her. In the background, a rocket fires into space, painting the sky a bright orange, and sending smoke across the stage.
“Sua,” Hyuna says, finally having caught up to her. “Sua what did you…”
She catches sight of Luka whose eyes gleam. He slowly stalks towards her and the other rebellion members look at him warily.
Sua has a sinking feeling of deja vu, like she knows what’s going to happen. As Luka breaks out into a run, she runs with him, and Hyuna’s eyes widen as she spins Luka around just as a rebellion gun fires, but Sua catches it between her ribs instead.
“Hhaaaah,” she tries to scream, but the bullet punctured a lung. She falls hard on the ground and looks at the feet of rebellion members scrambling and Ivan’s white shoes running up to her.
He turns her body upwards to look at him and clumsily strokes her hair as she slowly bleeds out.
“What’s with that martyr complex of yours, Sua?” he says, voice shaky.
She can’t help but think that his expression looks a bit like a child, eyes wide and fang biting his bottom lip hard.
“I didn’t want anyone else to die,” she wheezes out. She’s acutely aware that these might be her last words.
The world subsequently devolves into chaos, and she briefly sees Hyuna punching Luka in the face before her eyes shut.
Before she blacks out, in her mind she sees Mizi again, not one she’s seen before. She’s cut her hair up to her ears, and she wears a rebellion green vest.
“You’re so kind, Sua,” she says wistfully. “That’s where me and you are different.”
“No.” Sua says, grabbing her face. The feel of her skin is so familiar it makes her heart ache, but there are scars she doesn’t recognize, and an unreadable look in her eyes. “You’re kind, too. So kind you’d try to follow my wishes even though you’d suffer.”
Mizi looks sad.
“Wake up, Sua.”
“I want to stay here with you, though.”
Mizi looks at her like it breaks her heart.
“Not yet, okay?”
—
She opens her eyes in a rebel hospital tent bed. Hyuna sits next to her reading a newspaper with a picture of the Alien Stage stadium flaming on the cover. A small rocket leaves it behind in smoke.
“You’re up,” she says coolly.
“Hi, unnie…” she rasps
“How do you feel?”
“Terrible, honestly.”
And it’s true. Whatever painkillers the rebellion scavenged were not nearly enough to mask the pain snaking its way through her chest and head and skin and muscles.
“That’s good. Luka’s and Ivan had pretty bad burns and smoke poisoning, but they’re stable. Same goes for most of the rebellion members.”
Sua’s relieved that they got out alive. She smiles despite herself.
“You really did a number on the aliens, huh? That’s our sniper.”
“Ah, my body moved on its own.”
“Hey Sua, why are you so intent on killing yourself?” Hyuna asks abruptly. “You’re no longer in Alien Stage, you know. Living doesn’t cost anyone else’s life.”
And that’s the thing isn’t it. Sua spent her entire life training to be fodder, the prettiest sacrificial lamb, all in the name of giving her life meaning. It turns out living is so much harder than dying. It hurts all the time. It hurts when she gets shot, when she thinks about Mizi, when she realises that she’s slowly starting to forget her face. On bad days, she feels like she can’t move at all, a doll in a display case who needs Mizi to reach out and touch the glass. Mizi who will never come.
“All this time, you’ve been punishing yourself for winning,” Hyuna continues. “Aren’t you tired?”
And Sua starts bawling.
Tired doesn't begin to cover it. Sobs wrack her entire body as she clings onto a frazzled Hyuna. She hates Mizi for dying first and taking away her purpose, and she hates herself for it. But she loves herself because there’s a part of her that Mizi loved, a part of her that Mizi wanted to live on. Sua’s been telling herself that she doesn’t care if she lives or dies, but every time she dodges a bullet her heart twinges with the knowledge that she has to keep going.
The curse of the one that survives is so rotten in the way that it can never be broken. There will never be a time that Sua can’t stand the sight of red flowers, or look back at every smidge of pink in her peripheral vision. Hee-ah, Mizi, they both left and left her like this.
But Sua is so tired. It feels like she’s forsaking them but she wants to live without hurting so bad, and that means that she can’t keep the memory of red on pink blood splatter replaying in her mind.
“I don’t want to forget them,” she says through hiccups and sniffles.
“Trust me,” Hyuna replies with a sad smile. “You’ll never forget no matter how hard you try.”
Sua thinks she looks tired too. And for the first time since Round 1, she tells herself she wants to live.
—
It doesn’t get better immediately. The rebellion pieces itself together like shattered glass, every member with cut and bloodied hands. Sua works hard—going on missions and playing messenger every day in hopes that she’ll piece herself together along the way, too. What can she say? Working is a habit now, but it’s not the same as before. She takes the sniper jobs and wears heaving bulletproof vests. When it gets cold, she puts on more layers instead of letting her fingers and nose go cold and numb.
The biggest change is that she lets herself breathe without guilt. The rebels try to take up painting and she lets out a snort when they spill it all over themselves. She stops to pick flowers when she sees them on the side of the road. When someone comes back after a long mission, she gives them an awkward hug.
Isaac notices, and he assigns her to an odd mission one day.
“I need you to look for this Alien Stage museum,” he says, voice somber.
Sua braces herself, and looks at the specifications given.
“You can reject it, I’ll assign it to someone else, but…”
“I’ll do it,” she says before she even realises it.
—
She comes back with 5 children and a pocketful of red flowers. She doesn’t play favourites of course, but it’s obvious that the girl with Mizi’s pink hair affects her like no one else.
“You look like a snowflake doll,” she says to Sua one day, Ivan’s red eyes boring into hers. It’s so so wrong and Sua runs away to dry heave in the washroom.
Sua picks her flowers in apology, but the child doesn’t seem to want to talk to her again after that. Sua’s a bit relieved, and then she feels bad about being relieved. In a twisted way, she’s glad that Mizi still has that effect on her. It’s proof that she still cares about her.
—
At night, Sua dreams of a field of endless neon green splotched with red flowers and unnatural trees. Mizi sits all of 12 years old on their favourite hill and her hair is blowing in the wind. There was never wind in the real Anakt garden.
“You’re back, Sua,” she smiles.
Sua swallows down the lump in her throat. “I don’t think I’ll be back again for a while, I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” Mizi blinks her too-wide, too-young eyes at her. “It’ll just be like when you went on your trips home. I can wait. So don’t rush here.”
She pats Sua’s head even though she has to strain her arms comically to reach. Sua blinks hard.
When she opens her eyes again, she’s gone.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” Sua says into the empty air. “But I’m happy I lived.”
The next time she opens her eyes, the sun is shining in her face through the curtains.
It feels nice.