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Shisui’s flesh is rotting.
Maomao stands over her, a surgical mask covering the bottom half of her face, taking in the sight and stench of the death-not-death she has fallen victim to. It’s still unclear what, exactly, caused this outbreak—if it was a manmade disease or mutated natural illness or something else entirely. Some even claim it is a divine curse placed upon humanity.
Maomao does not believe in any of the fantastical theories, though. She knows what miracles medicine can herald, both good and bad.
She knows what poison looks like.
She crouches across from Shisui, putting them at eye-level, except the place where Shisui’s eyes once were is covered by a bloodied blindfold that does a poor job of hiding the gore beneath. Her body is still, like she isn’t even breathing, like she truly is dead.
Maomao’s father told her she should never, ever, under any circumstance, touch a corpse. Shisui would tell her the same thing, if she could speak, if she were conscious.
But she’s not.
Maomao reaches out a hand.
They meet in high school—Maomao, who wants nothing more than to fly under the radar until she gets her diploma and then go into pharmaceuticals working as her father’s apprentice, and Shisui, who was born into immense wealth and is one of the most popular girls in school. Maomao tries to stay out of her way, in the beginning, but then the two of them are assigned as partners on a class project, and, well…
Maybe Shisui isn’t as bad as Maomao wrote her off to be.
When it’s just the two of them alone, Shisui appears less like a doll molded to fulfill the desires of those around her and more like a real person. She grins and laughs and shows Maomao her sketchbook full of insect drawings. Maomao scrunches her nose up in disgust, and Shisui teases her for being just as obsessed with plants which is equally as weird as fixating on bugs, and Maomao supposes she might have a point there. Just a little.
Shisui continues seeking out Maomao after that, clearly preferring to hang out with her and Xiaolan as opposed to her other friends. She clings to Maomao, and for some reason Maomao can’t explain, she simply lets it happen. She isn’t the sort of person to form connections with others; rarely has she ever cared about anyone apart from herself.
But…
Shisui takes her by the hand and drags her into the woods behind the school so they can search for bugs and plants, and something almost love-like wells up in Maomao’s chest.
Every news headline these days says something along the lines of, ZOMBIE VIRUS OUTBREAK!
Maomao watches the reports from behind the counter of her father’s shop, only half-paying attention as she measures out medicines for their customers. The outbreak has only spread as far as the city limits of Li, right now. They’re going to block off all exits to contain it. It’s likely Maomao will never have to worry about it, although she can’t help but wonder if it’s something she could research a cure for.
The screen changes to show drone footage from the city—the tall skyscrapers with screens plastering advertisements on the sides. One lights up with a recent promo photo of Loulan, all dolled up with her large breasts prominently on display. She smiles and winks at the camera. Her one visible jade eye pierces straight through to Maomao’s soul.
She blindly reaches for the remote and turns the TV off.
The first time Shisui kisses Maomao, there is a dead snake on the ground between them. Its guts stain the pavement, spilled out of the scales ruptured where Maomao pummeled it with a stone because it’s venomous. Because it was after Shisui, or it was after Maomao herself, or maybe she just wanted to kill something with toxins pumping through bloodstream so she could suck them out of the corpse. It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter, because Shisui throws her arms around Maomao and says, Thank you for saving me! and then she breaks the hug to cup Maomao’s cheek with one hand, head tilted, smile warm.
Maomao’s heart stutters in her chest.
Shisui leans in, close, closer, closer—until their breaths mingle and become one, until they’re splitting the same oxygen between them, until there is no more space left at all and Shisui’s lips press against Maomao’s like the sweetest poison she has ever tasted. And suddenly, the snake doesn’t matter at all. Not when the rattling of Maomao’s heart and the heat sweeping through her body are far more pleasurable than whatever side-effects the snake’s toxins may have induced.
Not when she can swallow down Shisui’s venom until her body remembers nothing else.
“It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up,” Shisui says when she breaks the news to Maomao, speaking as if reciting from a script. She smiles in a way that doesn’t meet her eyes. “Surely you understand.”
Of course Maomao understands. Shisui’s parents have used their connections to secure her a record label deal and subsequent career as an idol; they’ve been training her for it since she was a child. It was the fate they wrote out for her, but Maomao had dared to believe things could end differently.
“You don’t have to agree,” she tries, even though she already knows how Shisui will respond.
“I do.”
“You don’t—”
“Maomao,” she interrupts. She reaches out, taking Maomao’s hands in hers, and Maomao’s throat aches with unshed tears. This pain is worse than any disease or sickness she has suffered over the years, worse than the symptoms suffered from any poison she sampled. She has always loved experimenting with self-inflicted pain, but—
This time, she can’t imagine why she did such a thing to herself.
As a rule, Maomao does not care for those around her. So why did she let herself grow attached to Shisui? Why did she fool herself into falling for a girl whose destiny lay so far out of reach?
“I will always think of you fondly,” Shisui promises. She slips out of Maomao’s grasp, hands going for the pin holding her hair in place. She tugs it free, then places the cool metal into Maomao’s palm. The gold cicada on the end is encrusted with glittering jade gems; Maomao’s favorite color, and one she knows Shisui cannot even see. “And here, you can keep this to remember me by!”
She grins, eyes crinkling as they shut. Her lips are painted bold and beautiful by a hand that was not her own. She will make a wonderful idol, but she will never be happy.
“Shisui—”
Shisui places a finger to her lips. She winks. “It’s Loulan now, remember?”
Maomao’s grip tightens around the hair pin. As Shisui turns to leave, Maomao lunges for her, catching her wrist in one hand.
“Don’t,” she pleads, dropping all attempts to appear composed. “Just—just tell them no. I don’t care what your parents have sacrificed to make this happen, because it wasn’t for you; it was for some girl who has never existed. So just…throw it all away and live for yourself! For Shisui!”
For a single moment, something genuine flickers through Shisui’s eyes and Maomao dares to hope.
But then she disentangles herself from Maomao’s grasp, stepping back to put space between them. “I’ve already made up my mind,” she states, cold and formal. “I’m sorry.”
This time, when she turns away, Maomao can only stand frozen in place and watch her go.
The moment it happens, it becomes a national headline—Loulan’s fate, that is.
Bitten by a crazed fan who had been turned. She’d been walking alone at sunset. Her manager claims they’d just gotten into a fight, and he had been desperately searching only to find her a few seconds too late.
Maomao is out of the shop before the report even finishes, having thrown together a bag of only what will be necessary to make the journey. A mask, bottled water, painkillers and a handful of other medicinal ingredients. And a golden cicada hair pin.
“When I die,” Shisui says, “I want my body to be eaten by bugs.”
Maomao wrinkles her nose. “That’s disgusting.”
They’re laying on the floor of Maomao’s room, having already finished their homework and now turning to idle conversation because Shisui doesn’t want to go home and Maomao doesn’t want her to leave. Not that letting your corpse be consumed by insects is Maomao’s preferred small-talk topic, but she’ll put up with it for Shisui. And because that means she’ll get to talk about poisons next.
“Is not!” Shisui argues. “Besides, I’ll be dead, so what does it matter?”
Maomao presses her lips together. She supposes she can’t exactly argue. It’s not as if Shisui is asking her to watch.
“What about you?” Shisui turns over onto her stomach, propping up her chin on her hands so she can look at Maomao. “Are you going to donate your body to science? Or just let it be decomposed by some sort of toxic mushroom?”
She shrugs. “I haven’t really thought about that. I suppose someone else will have to decide.” She pauses. “I’ve thought about how I want to die, though. Which sort of poison I would most prefer to do the deed.”
Shisui giggles. “So morbid!”
Maomao blanches. “And a dead body being devoured by maggots isn’t?!”
“Well, it wouldn’t have to be maggots specifically…”
Maomao huffs out a sigh, but she can’t deny the fondness welling within her chest. She shifts, moving closer to Shisui so she can look up at her. Observe from a new angle. There are new things to learn about Shisui every day, it seems—whenever Maomao thinks she has finally figured her out, a new mystery reveals itself to be unraveled.
She hasn’t yet been able to figure out if what she feels is love or just something close, but she likes spending time with Shisui and she likes it when they kiss—likes her even enough to listen to her ramble about all of the insects that feast on human remains—and she figures that matters more than fickle definitions of what it means to fall in love.
The barriers around the city of Li are designed to keep the infected in, rather than to keep wanderers out. Which makes it much too easy for Maomao to pass into the epicenter of the outbreak zone.
The day Shisui leaves for the city, Maomao shows up outside of her house as the sun rises. Her breath fogs in the cool morning air as she waits beneath Shisui’s window, counting the seconds as they pass until the front door swings open.
And there Shisui stands, already coated in makeup and clad in the finest of robes. Every bit the idol her parents want her to be with none of the true Shisui left visible beneath.
Maomao pulls the pin from her hair—silver, intricately carved, worth more than Maomao herself. A gift, bestowed upon her after she managed to correctly diagnose, treat, and save the newborn daughter of a wealthy politician.
She holds it out to Shisui. “I want you to have this.”
Shisui blinks. “Me?”
Maomao nods. “Take it. As something to remember me by.”
“I will never be able to wear it.”
“That’s okay.”
Shisui stares at her for a moment longer, and then she reaches out. Her fingers brush Maomao’s as she accepts the hair pin, sending sparks shooting through her veins. Her stomach swoops and twists painfully at the contact. She might throw up.
Just throw it all away, she thinks again, but Shisui’s mind was made up long ago.
“Thank you,” Shisui whispers, reverent like a prayer. She tucks the pin into the folds of her robes with a soft smile; an expression that—just for a moment—makes her look like Shisui again, instead of Loulan.
Maomao commits it to memory, letting it sink into her and taint everything she is. She has a funny feeling this is the last time Shisui will ever been seen.
How fortunate Maomao is to be the one to see her death.
(How cruel Loulan is, to sentence both Maomao and Shisui to such fates.)
Shisui’s flesh is rotting.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to state that Loulan’s flesh is rotting, but there is no one here apart from Maomao and the corpse of a girl she might have loved, and when it was only the two of them together, Loulan was always just Shisui. Not that it matters.
Shisui and Loulan are both dead, now.
Kneeling across from her, Maomao lowers her mask. The stench overwhelms her senses—the drying blood, the festering wounds, the rot and decay emanating from a girl once beautiful enough to steal the hearts of an entire nation. It’s a shame, Maomao thinks, that Loulan could never give up her heart in return because Shisui already handed the entire thing to Maomao in the shape of a golden, jeweled, cicada.
And it’s a shame Maomao let Shisui’s ghost beckon her back all because she still held Maomao’s heart in Loulan’s hands.
Shisui’s body twitches, violently, almost as if lurching towards Maomao except she knows better than that. She knows it’s just the infection taking over her brain, no more conscious a movement than the convulsing of a not-yet-dead body overtaken by poison.
She cups what remains of Shisui’s cheek in one hand, tucking her thumb between her half-open lips.
Maomao decided a very long time ago that she wanted to die on her own terms. Not that she was ever actively suicidal, but when her time came, she knew she would like for her own hand to be the one to make the final call. She would ingest such a high dosage of poison that even she would not be able to survive it, and that would be that.
And then she met Shisui.
And she determined that if she was incapable of ending her own life, she would be okay if Shisui were the one to do it for her. If Shisui cradled her head and trickled some highly-toxic liquid down her throat. Perhaps the only better death Maomao could face than one brought on by poison would be suffocating on Shisui herself.
Now, she can have both.
Her thumb catches on Shisui’s lower canine, and she presses down until the skin splits. Blood beads at the puncture point, then drips down into Shisui’s mouth, melding with her own gaping wounds.
Maomao grins.
Maybe this is the real reason she was forbidden from touching corpses—the exhilaration sweeping through her, throwing her into a frenzied, hypermanic, state. An uncontrolled laugh falls from her lips, pitched and gleeful. She found Shisui again, she found Shisui, despite all the odds, despite the promise she made to herself and the ultimate truth that Shisui did not ever want to be found. All it took was the outbreak of a virus that will destroy the world.
All it took was Maomao breaking the gravest rule her father ever set, and now, she and Shisui can be together forever. It was that easy. It was that easy!
She spent so long wishing Loulan would throw everything away in favor of choosing her, but in the end, she was the one who got to make the choice. Throw everything away, poison yourself with the blood of the girl you love, die with her on your tongue.
Maomao leans in, close, closer, closer—until their breaths mingle and become one, until they’re splitting the same oxygen between them, until there is no more space left at all and her lips press against Shisui’s like the sweetest poison she has ever tasted.
As far as Maomao is concerned, it is the perfect happy end.