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You'll ache. And you're going to love it. It will crush you. And you're still going to love all of it. Doesn't it sound lovely beyond belief?
Sua inhales a great, big breath of air, hollowing out her cheeks, and presses her lips shut.
She stands in front of a tall pane of glass, separating her from the colorful seahorses that float around in the tank. A field trip is happening. Or, at least, she assumes there is, because many other children her age are wearing bright T-shirts with some form of identification stickers plastered on them.
Sua can safely assume her mother is agitated by the fact purely from the mutterings Sua hears and she wanders just beyond her reach. This is what Sua considers a distraction activity.
Mother and father have something important to do, but there’s a delay, or a hiccup, or some other inconvenience. As a result, they will all be swept up and taken to the nearest place with something shiny or new. A preventative measure against a million ‘why’ questions. Distraction activity.
Today, it resulted in the aquarium. Sua has never been to one, before. It’s loud, though as she understands, this may have more to do with the swaths of children than the aquarium itself. Sua has never been on a field trip. Her parents have different tutors for her, and have their own curriculum, overseen by others. The only suitable option, according to them. She isn’t quite sure of the etiquette.
And, anyway– she’s been holding her breath for a while now, her ears having popped and, momentarily, it pleasantly blocks out the sound.
It isn’t a tremendous effort, but as it goes on, small fuzzy bursts of color spot her vision. She mistakes them for fish, or some other unidentifiable creature, but then they begin to cloud the descriptive signs outside each enclosure, and she’s proven wrong.
A warm finger is then poking at her cheek, and all at once, Sua deflates, air expelled through her mouth, leaving her wobbly on her feet. Her sister is steadying her almost instinctively.
“You’re so silly,”Hia teases. “Are you trying to look like a pufferfish, Sua?”
Sua is not. Sua is trying to stay quiet.
The aquarium is large, and the chatter is constant. Everywhere is draped in blue hues, light streaming through the aquariums, disrupted by all different shapes and manners of sea creatures. They currently are in front of a sign about seahorse, adorned with half-scratched off bubble stickers.
Hia often tells Sua stories. Hia’s favorite story, the one she tells over and over again, is about how Sua has always been cherished. Favored. Perfect. When she was a baby, Hia would illustrate, Sua did not fuss. While her siblings threw tantrums or wailed all throughout the night in their own stages, Sua had been perfectly still.
An occasional stutter in breath, Hia would say, sometimes a few tears, but never loudly.
Seahorses, the sign says, blurring as the seconds pass, have many children. Anywhere from one thousand to two, less than one percent surviving. Primarily, they die from crabs, fish or sting rays. Sometimes, though, they’ll be carried by the current, swept off into unsuitable, harsh currents. They’re too weak to swim against it, and once they’re gone, they die. The few who stay put live.
Sua’s blurry vision is tilted up by Hia’s careful hands. The fuzzy, colorful bits start to fade. Through the glass pane, on the opposite side where more observers are, Sua sees a pink figure with blobs that look like hands pressed to the glass. An odd warm feeling filters through her.
“Stubborn,” Hia says fondly, snapping her out of it, and taps Sua’s nose, just like she would when finishing the story. Favored. Favored, from the very start. You’re so sweet, aren’t you, Sua? “Don’t wander far, mom already has her hands full. If you get lost, she’ll be upset.”
Distantly, Sua can hear her siblings all crowding their mother, can imagine the gaggle of children orbiting her and her long flowing fabrics. She doesn’t see it though, because she is focused on the figure on the other side of the glass.
As her vision clears, she can more clearly see the people on the other side of the exhibit.
Obscured by the water, the figure is jumping up and down, now. She’s tapping at the glass, which Sua is sure you aren’t supposed to do, considering the signs. She sees a frantic motion that seems like waving.
From what Sua can see, the girl has bright eyes. The water and lighting makes them look almost blue, but they’re wide and lively, and focused on her. Pink hair goes down to her middle, messily swaying as she uselessly tugs on an adult's arm, one who doesn’t seem to be listening.
Something in Sua twists and twirls. She barely makes out the faint glow on the other side, the warmth concentrated in her like a tug. Ah, Sua thinks, and reasonably concludes that she is drifting. Being pulled away by the sea. It doesn’t feel harsh. Sua almost wants to try to get closer.
Before she can manage it, Hia is guiding her forward gently, steering her away. Her mother is saying something, something Sua should return a bashful smile to, something quiet but grateful.
Instead, her gaze strays. Even as it does, Sua doesn’t. She never does. This, at least, won’t change, despite the peculiar, overwhelming rush.
She watches, though, stumbles over her feet momentarily, looking back. She leans a little out of Hia’s grasp, craning her head, but can’t force any sound out of her mouth. She thinks the girl might be reaching for her. She thinks the girl's wrist might be faintly glowing just like hers.
The farther away she gets, the more the warmth seeps out of her, fizzling back into dull, safe, normalcy.
Soulmates, according to her parents, aren’t something Sua needs to think about.
As she knows it, it is a relatively simple process. The first words your soulmate will ever speak to you, written across your skin. When you find them, something is supposed to happen. Sua isn’t entirely sure what.
She thinks, according to the books and the songs and the movies, all centered singularly around love and fate, that it must be overwhelming. An onslaught of something, to the point of madness and unpredictability. Something foolish.
Sua’s parents aren’t soulmates, nor have any of her siblings gone on to find theirs. Sua’s parents have a firm belief their reign overrules that of fates. By being their parents, they know what is best for their children. Sua and her siblings' birthright, their duty, is to be wholly and perfectly predictable. Sensible. To not stray.
By this logic, Sua thinks it must certainly be dangerous and ridiculous, whatever happens when you find your soulmate. Sua thinks it must be devastating. Surely, Sua thinks, if it were so strong, she would not have been so easily led away from it if she’d found it. If whatever odd warmth and pull that had happened at the aquarium had been something, surely the world should have split in two, and told her so.
Sua, when she regains her senses, remembers it doesn’t matter.
Sua often thinks that until her parents tell her so, she won’t be meeting anyone at all. She always feels very, very safe.
Boarding school is not a concept anyone in the house seems particularly thrilled about.
It isn’t something that is discussed. Over dinner, her parents make an offhand remark. Tuition, far away, packing. Respectable, something about Sua being the best suited, advancing her studies. Setting her up for a career.
“You’ll do well,” Sua’s mother tells her, brushing some hair out of Sua’s face, lingering to thumb at the skin as if trying to soothe away a taint Sua can’t see. The line between an expectation set or a reassurance blurs.
Sua nods absently, because there isn’t any other true answer, though her mind swims.
There’s more clamoring before Sua can voice any other reply, and her mother doesn’t seem to be waiting for anyone. There’s a brief symphony of her younger sisters asking why they can’t go, either instead of or along with her, before Hia is joining in too.
She raises some questions, only the small handful that are allowed before a dismissal. Concerns. Reminders Sua hasn’t been anywhere else but home, never been in the care of anyone but them or close family friends. Her tone is a careful thing, a strained smile that attempts to not stamp on their mothers clear enthusiasm, but thins at the ends regardless.
“Don’t worry so much,” their mother hums at Hia, and Sua distantly realizes she’s smiling, almost expectant. She turns to Sua, almost cooing, “you’ll make us proud, won’t you, Sua? We’ve raised you well, haven’t we?”
Hia's eye seems to twitch. Sua can feel at least a handful of glares. Well. Sua thinks she smiles, or maybe nods. She doesn’t feel entirely situated in her own body, and the food on the plate sitting in front of her doesn’t taste like much anymore.
Everything continues regardless.
Sua doesn’t look up, eyes trained on her porcelain plate, still delicately holding the utensils in her hands.
She can hear the swarming of chatter. She can feel the looks burning into her skull, trying to catch her eye. Or a few polished ‘congratulations’ with small smiles, performances of gratitude to earn the following acknowledgment from their mother.
Sua selfishly ignores it aside from her meek nod. Her siblings are not clear in their demands or worries, unlike their parents. Sua cannot decipher their upset or their comments, though they all seem to be very certain about knowing her perfectly well. She thinks they’re supposed to, being sisters and all. They all more or less have the same eyes, or smiles, and at the very least, the same dresses. Except that they aren’t the same at all, and that seems to be the very issue. They don’t perform equally, they are not equal.
Sua can’t tell what the right answer is, how she should cure whatever falls over their expression every time attention is lavished upon her. She thinks they’ve settled into an unspoken agreement in interacting, so far, which is practicing each other's courtesy and hospitality lessons on each other.
When her mother looks at her to tell her she’ll be packing soon, Sua smoothes the tablecloth in front of her, and starts itemizing an internal list.
The next day, and the entirety of the few weeks before she leaves, she spends the majority of her time in front of a mirror. Hia spends hours smoothing out her hair, fixing the way the collar of her dress sits on her neck, a thousand small alterations.
After the first few minutes, Sua loses the ability to predict which imperfection Hia will fix next. The only true dependable habit is the gentle hands, the sharper words. Scolding, light reprimands, her voice lilting with a smile. How many times have I told you, silly, she’ll say, pinching her cheek and laughing, or maybe, so messy. It’s a wonder mother thinks you can go off on your own at all.
Sua nods meekly all the same. Murmurs her agreements, her promises to be more diligent, next time. Hia, each time, seems to find this remarkably funny, warmly laughing as she hugs Sua close, looking at them both through the reflective surface. Something in her seems to melt away, and Sua thinks perhaps she's done something right.
Sua has become accustomed to this routine. In many ways, she is reliant on Hia for this, to see the flaws and risks she can’t. It’s been this way since she was little, one constant in a long line of many, everything very nearly the same as before. It’s been a long time since Sua has not had Hia helping her along on where to step, what events to go, what to see in the mirror and how to change it.
Hia may be her most sister-like sister, if Sua had to imagine it.
Today, Hia is different.
It’s a quiet affair. Hia lingers in soothing her hair even when it’s already properly combed through. Whatever lingers on her face isn’t quite a smile, something tighter replacing it. Sua can never tell what exactly it is that Hia is feeling.
Sua doesn’t ask. Sua does not ask much at all. Not much is hers to know.
Sua takes her sister's touches, her warnings and her smiles, for what they are, for all they can change, which isn’t much. Sua has learned that, too. Whatever is left festering beneath it isn’t hers to unearth, isn’t actionable.
“I’m just worried, you know,” Hia says eventually, still smiling. She presses her cheek to the top of Sua’s head, tightens her hold on Sua’s shoulders. “Mother is excited for you, but you’re still small. It’s scary for a sister to think about, the smallest of the family going off on their own, into the unknown. Anything could happen. It’s a lot to contemplate, isn’t it?”
Sua does not have much to contemplate. This, she tells herself, because she has no choice in the matter. The school, her classes, her electives and her room, have all been carefully selected by her parents. Questions about it had been answered by her mothers hand in her hair, messing up Hia’s careful work as she watched from just behind her.
Don’t worry, she’d said to Sua. What she always said to her. She thinks they’re meant to be soothing words, but they’ve always seemed more of an instruction. It’s what their mother had said to Hia last night. Don’t worry, don’t worry.
“I guess so,” Sua murmurs quietly, and tries to keep anything like worry out of it, scraping together her best attempt at a reassuring expression, then corrects to an agreement, "yes."
It only serves to make Hia laugh.
Sua doesn’t worry. A path is laid out in front of her to walk, and she is willingly steered down it, dutifully surrendering the way her limbs might have tensed or moved if they ever learned how. There isn’t much else to it.
I found you.
It’s written right over Sua’s wrist. It is irrelevant, and often covered up by makeup for appearances and meetings for the sake of privacy. A distraction covered up, and especially lost in the whirlwind of chaos that takes place before she leaves.
In one of the few undocumented, unseen acts Sua is allowed, she thinks of it often. Before bed and in the lulls between her parents' grand hosting and attendances. During the many going away parties where she tells people where she’s going, what classes she’ll take, as if she chose it, so they can smile and congratulate her.
She is very clever, they say, following in the footsteps her family would want her to. Duitiful. Sua watches their eyes as they do it, their mouths. Pulled into polite smiles, sometimes glaring at whatever child they have with them, around Sua's age. They often look very blatantly miserable. Or they're not wearing their family colors properly, or they've refused to cover up their soulmate mark, displayed for all to see, as if they're tempting someone to come sweep them away and save them.
Sua, as her cheeks hurt from smiling at them, a stunning image of what they should be, feels a semblance of pity that they've yet to puzzle out how to do this. Or maybe it's something sharper than that. It won't work, she wants to tell them, no hand of fate will ever be as firm as the one on your shoulder. She wants to tell them the small act of resistence is juvenile and irritating.
She doesn't, of course. She smiles. When they speak with her, she offers them encouraging, soothing words. That they'll get it eventually. Something in their face will sour and dull, and she supposes a very clear line is drawn between them, something her mother is pleased with. She'd always had a hard time defining it, but if it brings her mother such joy, she must imagine it's a line between those who can make it and those who can't. She supposes the true question is if that can continue. Her mother spends all her goodwilled faith on her, placing money on a racing horse she's raised and built.
Still, in the quiet after, in the car rides home or in the times when she can finally retreat to her room, sprawled out on her bed, used up and wrung out, she is a hypocrite.
She does not think anything substantial, anything that could be considered too egregious of an offense against the lines she is raised in. It is quite simple.
I found you, she thinks, over and over, imagining what that means. Wondering if she’d drifted, if she’d walked over, if some great, big thing would happen. If the person on the other side of the glass was searching at all, or if fate was truly so simple. If she'd already been found, but missed every other part of it. I found you, I found you, I found you.
Even without her quiet, idiotic revelries, leaving is a drawn out process.
Sua attends countless events that leave her cheeks hurting from smiling by the end. Her parents say she has to network, lectures her on the importance of maintaining their families practice of having friends in high places. She’s expected to do it when she’s at school, too.
After the events, there’s the packing, and the last of her tutoring and lessons, and the remaining registration process.
It drags on long enough that the end and its resulting quiet is almost shocking.
After months of constant performances and chatter and preparation, being dropped off at the airport feels almost serene. It is still a loud place, one Sua does not particularly enjoy, the rush and the clamoring and shouting, it is pleasantly directionless. None of the chaos is aimed at her, no expectation to any of the disarray, like being carried by the oceans’ current, the only requirement being not to drown in it.
Sua finds the quietest corner she can, breathes in and out as slowly, and watches, feeling not quite as heavy as usual.
Still a little jetlagged, Sua isn’t entirely sure where she is.
The campus is huge. She already knew this, her parents had shown her various brochures that featured pictures of it, but she hadn’t exactly imagined herself getting lost.
Well. Lost isn’t the most suitable word.
Sua’s mothers had left her with much fussing, squishing and pinching at her cheeks, lamenting her departure while orchestrating it and filling in the blanks. She’d told Sua to be pleasant, make connections, that sort of thing. Friends in high places, even higher than the isolated circle she’d been taught to interact with. Always more.
So she did. Or, she tried. After about thirty minutes of the introduction committee going on about extracurriculars that hadn’t been selected for her, or classes that weren’t on her structured program, she’d politely pulled one of them to the side to ask to speak to the directors of her own course. They’d smiled at her, and gone off to go find someone.
Sua had tucked her hands together into her lap, sat down, and waited.
It had turned into the expected five, to ten, to fifteen– until it all blurred together, and Sua became increasingly confident her request had been forgotten. Or maybe just ignored.
From there, she was lost. The introduction group was gone, and she’d taken to aimlessly wandering. She’d yet to deem her situation severe enough to justify asking any of the rowdier groups she passed for directions. She imagined it’d turn into a larger disturbance that’d only be longer and louder.
Eventually, she accepted her fate.
Sinking to the grass, she succumbs to the death of her first task. All of her dutiful nodding at her sisters and mothers warnings, even the ones Sua had found repetitive or juvenile, had resulted in a simplistic failure. Don’t wander off, she recalls, with perfectly pitched cooing, feeling a phantom sensation of a tug on her sleeve.
Her eyes sting, and her skin burns from the sun, and as she adjusts, the blades of grass only irritate it into flushing further.
For a little while, she lets herself wallow. She doesn't make a sound, tucked in a quiet, slightly lowered section of the sprawling grass and concrete. She can hear people talking, a faint buzzing sound from a bicycle going too fast down a hill, a broken wheel from someone hauling a suitcase in a constant spin.
The world becomes background noise, muffled, like Sua's underwater, and she's limpon the grass like she's just as weighed down. Months and months of build up to an inevitable, exhausted, anticlimactic fall.
So, when she sees a flash of color above her, she's half expecting that she's lost her mind. Or, perhaps, the pamphlets of the school were as accurate as could be, with all the photos of students with blinding smiles, flying kites or hugging each other, and she's about to be suffocated to death by a stray, descending kite. Perhaps she can blame the burst of warmth in her chest as a willingness to die that she hadn't quite registered up until now.
She sees a blur of pink, first. She barely has time to blink.
"I found you!"
Familiar, bright eyes are staring down at her, a blinding smile, bright pink hair. Sua feels herself warm, serene and divine and horribly damning, and her vision swims, and she feels like she's looking at the girl through glass all over again. Found. Ah.
Hia was right, she thinks. Wholly and utterly doomed.
Mizi, Sua comes to learn her name, guides them back to the main part of campus.
Sua feels a little like she's being blinded, for most of it. From the very first moment, Sua knows Mizi is impossible.
The first few weeks of school are informative.
Sua attends endless orientations, reads countless syllabi, gives her practiced introductions with a polite smile and folded hands. She takes notes, she is dutiful and dedicated and she finds a way to place her family name into every response to each compliment. All of this, she reports back to her parents, to her siblings, though she gets no response from them, recounting each followed step, a repayment she's only just begun to make good on.
Outside of the letters, though, Sua thinks she would structure it all differently.
Within the next few weeks, Sua learns a lot about Mizi.
Firstly, Mizi smiles often. Not always gently or soothingly, though 'sweet' seems to be the word she hears floating around her the most. Sometimes it's teasing, sometimes something of an inside joke, pointing to something with her eyes, indulging with Sua, biting her tongue not to laugh. The kind of sharp humor people around her seem surprised to find, when it slips. Other times it's warm and reassuring, but Sua likes to think the others are for her alone to see. It's startingly and selfishly quick, how fast that thought takes root.
Mizi does not much enjoy classes that run on long, or having to sit still and listen to lectures. Mizi often fidgets in her chair, or nods off, or looks to Sua, and smiles as if she’s done anything more than look back. Mizi isn’t picky, though her snack of choice tends to be something sweet.
She is, of course, Sua’s soulmate. This is the most relevant piece of information she’s gathered, though it seems to be the one that keeps coming back to her, repetitive and out of order.
Sua has a soulmate, whose name is Mizi, who has a pretty smile that is continuously directed towards her. It is all happened, miraculously, beyond any watchful eyes.
In fact, Sua does not mention it once in her letters home. Her parents only ever inquire about grades and, sometimes more broadly, her day, she rationalizes. They’ve never asked if Sua has met anyone to orbit around, to tie herself to and be happily dragged down. They don’t ask about who she’s met at all.
There’s a certain guilty bliss to it, how things can so easily occur to Sua, how she may reflect on situations or even speak them out loud, even if all she can manage is a whisper, only to hear nothing back. In the absence of commands and guidance and a clear path, Sua is stuck at a constant, foreboding empty expanse.
In the stillness, Sua is not meant to go anywhere, or do anything. Things simply happen. As they pass her by, Sua finds she is able to stay wholly still. It is not too different to her typical silence, she supposes. Only now, should she choose to be stagnant, there is no one to beckon her out of it.
Or, well, perhaps Mizi has started to. Though it's less of beckoning and more so tugging. Sua can't find her reason enough to mind.
Sua shouldn't be here.
She's made many allowances and excuses for herself, as it is, indulging in orbiting Mizi, in being consumed and perfectly simple, letting her body fold itself into nothing other than the words on her wrist, the ripples of natural warmth it causes when she's beside Mizi. Her soulmate.
More than she should've, at least. Sua had finally gotten a letter back from Hia, a few days ago. Not very long. Mostly pleasantries, likely ones suggested by their mother, and a pleading for Sua to behave well, to have mercy on her eldest sisters, who've suffered enough both at the hands of Sua's silly incompetence and her absence. Push and pull.
At the end, Hia left a note saying Sua sounded happy. It reads like a well wish, but a part of Sua is still, unfortunately, grounded in the real world, and she knows it for what it is.
Still, she enjoys being in Mizi's room. It's bright and lively, things taken from home rather than just the stale provided atmosphere, colorful and alive. Something about sharing a space feels right.
The visit was supposed to be for studying, though she admittedly knew very little of it would be happening on her end. Mizis 'concentration' of choice for her specificc additional classes is entertainment. Sua had something more aligned with business, curated by her family.
"Don't you want to, even just a little?" Mizi prompts. Sua had made the mistake of indulging her one too many times, a little too weak for all the times Mizi had asked for help with one of her performance projects or trying out a new idea. "You have a pretty voice. You're pretty. People would love you."
Sua glances at Mizi, sitting beside her atop pink sheets, nose scrunching faintly. "I think more goes into it than that."
“You could, though,” Mizi insists.
Sua warms from the inside out, and outwardly presses her lips into a line, brows furrowing. Mizi is all too easily drawn to trying to soothe out the wrinkles, hands lifting upwards to gently brush there, giggling when Sua flusters.
“It’s not the program I’m in,” Sua reminds. She doesn’t lean into the touch, because she knows better. She also knows better than to deny Mizi anything, so she stays completely still.
Mizi smiles, like that means absolutely nothing to her. It probably doesn’t. Her hands are still raised, now hovering above the now rosy apples of Sua’s cheeks. Mizi is always looking at her like something’s funny, like Sua has said something so cute and silly that she’d like to pinch at her cheeks until they flush.
Mizi doesn’t, though. Sua is pretty sure she’d let her. She’s been getting sloppy these days, complacent. It’s just as nasty of a habit as her parents had told her, just as warm and syrupy and hard to not want to drown in.
“You’d be good at it,” Mizi says, instead of something else, perhaps aware, now, that Sua spooks easily. “We would do best together, right? That's what being soulmates means.The professors think so, too.”
Soulmates. Sua likes hearing it. She feels horribly childish.
“None of them said that.”
“I can just tell.” Mizi’s hands do land on her face properly, this time, tilting it up– commanding attention, taking up space, touching and directing, all in a way Sua feels is impossible. As if, compared to Mizi, her hands are tied behind her back. Maybe that’s what’s so nice about it. Knowing there is someone there to reach out, when Sua is planted firmly where she’s been placed.
“Trust me,” she adds, giving Sua a playful wink, like she knows something Sua doesn’t. Sua is convinced that she just might, that maybe Mizi has spun the world from her hands, and only Sua will ever know it's inner workings.
Sua nods, and listens like she always does. Mizi's beaming smile is fufillment enough.
The thing is, Mizi isn't truly the type to let things go.
She is tenacious and fierce in a way people underestimate and water down. Sua is glad to see it for herself in it's suffocating realness. Perhaps too glad, as she also has yet to find a way to discourage it.
It isn't that she doesn't know that some things are a bad idea. Mizi, in general, is an approximation of a bad idea. A walking, talking example of every warning, every condemnation and attempt to ward Sua off of distractions such as soulmates. It's something so innate that it'd feel easy enough to blame for all her troubles, a limp body being carried to shore has no say in the matter. Mizi is vast and impossible as just as great, and Sua merely lets herself be consumed. It's the natural way of things.
Or, at least, it would be. Sua is potentially more akin to someone playing dead. It feels just as inherent.
Regardless, Mizi has many opinions, many feelings. Sua is easily swayed.
She knows her family will freak out if they ever see it. She knows. It isn't very presentable, isn't what's been curated for her, not the carefully chosen classes, or clothes, or which features she's allowed to accentuate or hide. Her mother may cry, or send herself into a frenzy, and her siblings would subsequently suffer the tightening of the reigns, and they'd task Sua with finding a way to placate and please her once more, to atone for her original sin. The likes of which may be existing too loudly, or perhaps going out of the grasp of her mothers palm, favored and safe and quiet.
It's just that, in the innate selfishness of being human, and despite the tutors and classes and etiquette, she is not truly that gracious, or kind, or giving. She, selfishly, would rather stay in Mizis hands instead. Less steady, less careful, just intense enough to shatter or break clean, but the thrill is a delight and the safety lies in that it'll always be Mizi who decides her fate. Or, rather, fate, who has given her over to Mizi, the kindest of keepers.
The point being, Sua has found contentment in a new kind of warmth, and as much as she blames on the heady, dizzy feeling of being out of breath, the exhilaration and rush of adrenaline straight to her head- she's happy, there. Happy to burrow there and live and die.
So, when Mizi comes to her, repeatedly, enthusiastically, insisting Sua should try something for herself, just this once, well. There are other things on her mind, and only so many times she can bear to say no.
Truth be told, she's not quite sure she followed the guideline at all. It's hard to tell if it's for herself, whatever that means. The closest semblance she's gotten lately is whatever blur there is of where Mizi begins and she ends, but Sua does try. It's a struggle, for a while, mostly Mizi prompting her, and Sua hesitating, pausing and waiting for instruction, and floundering when none comes.
It was supposed to be dying her hair, originally. Something temporary, quick. Mizi had fostered a fixation on the two of them becoming something else, something outside of expectation, even if neither of them can truly muster it up. A struggle in the futile, but one together, she reasons. Maybe, one day, they'll even manage it.
Sua lands on something safer, at first. Just one streak of color. Something barely noticable.
And then the haircut. Which, admittedly, came after it was far past ten PM, and the bathroom had started to be filled with hysterical giggles or slurred, whispered secrets to each other.
Mizi cuts it for her. Sua has absolutely no clue what experience she has in this area, and when she tries to ask, Mizi laughs, high and tired and slowly turning to tearful wheezing, and Sua does too. They never get back around to a true answer.
It ends up far shorter than they mean it to. Mizi can't stop running her hands through it in the mirror, twirling it around her fingers, insisting on it being pretty, it suiting her-- through many insistences that Mizi is tired, and can't stop laughing, not that she is laughing at Sua-- and eventually kisses the top of her head, as if to seal the promises. Sua is so out of it she barely processes that it even happens, and when she does, her mind floats off quickly, as Mizi starts running water.
The tub, somewhat predictably, becomes even more of a disaster.
Cold, rushing water hits the back of her head and she lets out a quiet yelp, almost hitting her head on the tub. The angle is less than ideal, incredibly uncomfortable, and she's fairly certain they're doing something wrong.
"Sorry!" Mizi hurries to warm the water.
"Why can't we do this in the sink?" Sua asks, though she thinks she already had earlier.
Mizi frowns. "The video I watched did it in the tub."
Sua wants to ask if this video holds any accountability, but, eventually, the water warms, and both of Mizi's hands slip into her hair, so she settles. Mizi's forgotten gloves, and it'll stain them for however long, though it's just the one streak, but Sua decides to keep her mouth shut, if only for the feeling of her nails dragging down her scalp.
It's nice, like this, Sua thinks, and wonders if this is how it feels to do something for 'herself', like Mizi had said. She wouldn't mind it, even if the adrenaline, the thrill and the terror and the addictiveness, made her sick.
"We're supposed to do it until it runs clear," Mizi tells her. "I think the strands supposed to be by itself, but I'll try to just not get it everywhere."
Going into this without a plan was entirely ridiculous. Uncharacteristic. But it's late, and instead of being alone at night repeating a mantra in her head, or staring at letters from home, she's with Mizi, and they're doing something together, and Sua can't help but be content despite herself.
Mizi's gentle with her. Sometimes, it reminds her of Hia, treating her like glass, but it seems remarkably different, at the same time. None of what could crush her seems quite so scary, anymore. Sua feels almost terrifyingly at peace, being as defenseless as she's always been. Safety feels different, or the lack thereof. Sua wishes for more of it. Mizi makes her forget the reasons why she can't have it in the first place. More of them seem to drift down the drain along with the water.
It's a few minutes of silence, and keeping her eyes open despite the splashing water, that Sua is fairly certain she wants to kiss her. Properly, and not as quiet or offhanded.
Stupid, Sua thinks, and hears it in a handful of different voices, cloying and well intentioned and pitiful.
Sua won't take ownership for much. The majority of the time, she feels like she's hardly responsible for the way her limbs move, as accountable for it as she is for breathing or blinking. But if she had to--
Mizi is her soulmate, isn't she? Not by right of posession, but a sort of belonging. A cushion to a cruel world that fate may have known Sua wouldn't have ever survived alone. To not take it would be to scorn Mizi, wouldn't it? Both of their rights to have each other where they don't have anything else.
She doesn't realize she's holding her breath until the lines of the tiled ceilings blur, and her face doesn't feel warm, and Mizi's face scrunches up at her, confused and amused.
"The water's not hitting you like that," she huffs in a small laugh. "You don't have to hold your breath."
Sua stares. She takes a big breath of air, sits up, uncoordinated and getting water on the floor and her own clothes, and kisses her.
She doesn't do it right, really. Her soulmate is gracious, infinitely kind, and so she gets to try again.
Holidays come soon enough, and they part.
It's its own quiet tragedy, if Sua were to be melodramatic about it, which, going back to the house that seems so much smaller than she remembers it being, in so many ways, she wonders if she has the right to be.
It's awkward, and stiff. Sua is identifiably different, apparently, if the reactions she gets are anything to go by. She doesn't say anything, and it doesn't seem that she has to. She's not quite sure what changed, exactly, and she wonders if Mizi is simply that integral. Something blatant and obvious, just by looking at her.
Sitting at dinner, that night, she informs her family, not unkindly, that she's switching dorms. Taking some new classes. Nothing entirely different, no huge changes, but small things, little ones that don't matter much, that shouldn't, but clearly do. Sua finds, for once, she isn't immune to it, but it feels oddly detatched from her, now. Only visiting. Only visiting.
A part of Sua wonders if this is how her family felt, their smug, overbearing knowledge. The pervading sense of knowing better than her, a secret, an inside joke crafted by the universe that she had not yet understood.
Sua imagines she feels the same, now. Taking in their miserable frowns, their careful restraint, double meanings and strained, saccharine cooing about how quick she's grown up.
I know better, now, Sua thinks, imagining Mizi's bright hair, her unrestrained laugh, her passion and sly looks. She thinks it with the most fierceness she can muster in the small, ever-denied cavity of her heart. There is a euphoria to it, and now she understands. She thinks herself ever so clever, knowing and having something they never will. She smiles too, now, small and satisified, and her cheeks don't hurt because it's honest. I know, I know, I know.