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"i'd never pegged you to be the daydreamer type."
maomao hears that familiar, low-toned timbre of suirei's voice, coming from beind her. she doesn't turn, keeping her eyes on the distant reddish-orange sky ahead. from the corner of her eye, a pair of long legs dressed in ivory trousers made appearance, before they fold and lowers the blue-clad torso. suirei made herself comfortable in maomao's space—which on any other day, the apothecary would chastised anyone who dared invading her space.
not today, though. today, she didn't mind it.
suirei hands her a cup of tea—freshly brewed, maomao assumes—with her left hand. the ceramic shook slightly in her grip, though not as violently. maomao accepts it, deducing that her old man's latest remedy, combined with her supplements had worked in treating suirei's tremors. maomao mutters a small 'thank you', before sipping the tea suirei brought. the tea is mild in fragrance, light tasting, too. it tastes… refined; expensive, dare she say.
"lady ah-duo has been generous with you." maomao stated, almost indifferently. but, judging from the slight roll of suirei's eyes in response, she was satisfied to know suirei had caught the cheeky lilt in her tone earlier.
suirei pulls her right leg up, closer to her torso, and leans her arm on her knee. she holds the tea cup with her thumb and middle finger—not unlike lady ah-duo in laxed settings. "has anyone ever pointed out that you aren't as funny as you think you are?" suirei said, a ghost of a smirk dancing on her lips.
"some with listless humor, yes."
suirei rolls her eyes again, but didn't comment further. she sips her tea, and maomao subconsciously mirrored. the sun is slipping further west, shifting the horizon's palette to a more dramatic purplish—almost plum-like—shade. something, somewhere, deep in maomao's heart, constricts in a way reminiscent of how one wrings out water from a wet cloth. maomao had to remind herself that her heart is an organ that keeps her alive—not a figurative speech used by the illogicals to explain the emotional turmoil caused by unbalanced mental state.
besides, maomao tells herself countless times, it's been seven years since… and couldn't find it in her mind to finish the words she could never speak aloud.
"the sky isn't being kind to us, is she?" suirei quips, as if already been privy to maomao's internal torment.
maomao scoffs, yet doesn't say anything. or rather, she distrusts the stability of her voice at the moment. the damned witch, she cusses, she ought to get the hell out of my brain.
"you're ruminating, did you know that?"
well, someone's chattier than usual. maomao comments to herself, eyeing suirei from the corner of her eye. she clears her throat. "and you've come to that conclusion, how?" hmm, it sounds oddly a lot like deflection, but surely, suirei knows by now conjectures doesn't work against her—not especially if it was presented as observation.
suirei gives her a look.
oh, it's that look. maomao mentally recoils, mirrored by the twitching upward of her cheek. to the untrained eye, suirei might looked like she's pitying maomao—like she's unsure how to handle her without breaking the pieces glued back together.
maomao wished suirei is pitying her right now.
instead, there's that unsettling understanding in suirei's steely blue eyes. like she knows damn well what maomao is feeling; as if they were cut from the same cloth.
oh, who is maomao kidding? of course, they are. they were the only two people on this earth who has been deep in and drinking this poisonous feeling so rotten for seven years. so, of course suirei knows how maomao is feeling like, the same way maomao knows exactly what the baggage is like for suirei.
like they buried alive something, nay, someone who never died. and lived with unclosed grief.
somewhere, in the northern thicket of the rear palace, underneath one of the abandoned peach orchard trees, maomao had erected a humble altar for a girl she and suirei hadn't stopped mourning. a girl that left splotches of plum and amber in maomao's mental canvass—the same girl who'd fallen off a fortress wall with a bullet in her chest and stolen halves of maomao's and suirei's hearts.
like a runaway bride.
like a wound that refuses to heal.
like a phantom that haunts their narratives.
it's maddening, maomao believes. seven years of moving forward past what happened in that goddamned fortress in the shihoku mountains, and yet every year, without fail, her heart breaks all over again. and every year, suirei finds her and brings her a pot of white needle tea—shisui's favourite.
maomao downs the cooled tea in her cup, pouring another serving of the tea. still steaming, she gulped the hot liquid in one go. it burns and swells her throat, though not as severely as sake would. she was about to pour another cup, when suirei yanks the ceramic pot away from her grasp. maomao glares at suirei, and it vexed her that suirei did not care.
"you are not shooting tea, you twit." suirei scolds, like a mother would to her unruly child, perhaps.
maomao bats her hand away. "should've brought sake instead, then."
suirei sighed, but doesn't say anything. just like an older sister would.
it went quiet and still for a few beats, safe for the sound of crisp early winter air. the quietness hurts, because it allowed maomao's mind wandering further down the plum coloured hell.
"she adored you, did you know that?" suirei suddenly said, her voice splitting the deafening silnce between them. maomao doesn't turn to look at suirei, but her head tilted towards her—and that's enough clue for suirei to continue, "lou– no. shisui, i mean. i warned her—multiple times, mind you—that you're sharper than you looked."
"hey."
"but, she never listens. she lets herself free, and showed you who she truly is." suirei sips her tea, a long look in her eyes. maomao mentally noted that this is the first time suirei speaks out her heart freely, in seven years of their usually silent mourning. "in the times where i caught her hanging around you and xiaolan, she was more 'shisui' than she ever was 'loulan'. and while it concerns me that you'll find out the truth, i was happy that she got to be free. even for a hair's breadth moment, you brought her joy."
maomao doesn't know what to say to that, so she stays silent. damn suirei and her equally sharp wit.
and damn shisui too, she supposed, for becoming maomao's unknown achilles' heel.
suirei most likely noted maomao's long stretch of silence, yet she doesn't mention it. at this point, maomao is sure suirei knows the inner workings of her mind by the details. she pours another serving of tea into maomao's cup, and doesn't put the pot away from her reach.
"my sister was born to a tanuki, and raised in a village of foxes. she's rather talented at slithering into someone's heart, and stole half of it for herself." suirei tales cryptically, and maomao is too afraid to guess where she's going with it. "i warned her about it, too. if we were to go through with taking you with us back then, there's no way any of us will stay the same after it was over. perhaps, she already knew it then, and wanted to be selfish for the first and last time."
"i…" maomao choked on her breath, words coagulating in her throat. she was never one to want to willingly pick apart shisui's inner mechanisms, for she was always too scared to unearth what lies underneath. yet, suirei now freely presents to her the chest recovered from an empty tomb. "if she took half of my heart, it's not because she stole it. maybe, i simply gave it away to her, because she needed it more than i do. and, i know you did, too."
suirei hums, not quite in agreement nor dispute. when she finally speaks, her voice was washed in memories of her youth. "when i was nine, and shisui was six, she snuck out to the wells in maidservant's clothes to see me. she gave me treats she had swiped from the kitchen, and asked me a favour in return. she asked if she could call me 'nee-san'." suirei laughs quietly. must've been quite a fond memory, then.
"did you let her?" maomao asks, though she had already known the answer.
"i told her, she can't. her mother wouldn't ever allow it. she said, 'only when it's the two of us', and proceed to call me 'nee-san' or 'rei nee-san' whenever she tags along with servant duties."
maomao quirks an eyebrow. with a jest, she parrots, "'rei nee-san'?" and earned a glare from suirei.
suirei sighed. "from 'suirei'. she said, if i couldn't have the name 'shisui' ever again, then at least she can make me like the new one given to me."
"did you like it? what she calls you?"
"i grew to love it, i suppose." suirei smiles fondly, a rare picture that appears once in every lunar eclipse. for the split second of a moment, maomao could notice the flashing of child-like youth in suirei's otherwise sharp and stoic mask. from the angle she's looking, maomao could almost see ghosts of shisui's smile in suirei's.
maomao oft wonders, how could she have memorise details of a girl she'd only been close to for less than a year, the way she had memorise plant characteristics and properties that goes into her medicines? no matter how many leaps and hoops her mental had gone through to make sense of her heart, the logic of her brain could never conclude with a logical and sound reasoning.
why was it so hard to let her go?
why does it sting whenever she thinks of her?
why is it still so painful to say her name out loud?
"hey." suirei calls, breaking maomao's loud thoughts.
"what?"
suirei doesn't speak her mind right away. which is odd. maomao always thinks of suirei as her mirror; blunt, sharp-witted, and unabashedly forward. this hesitance is uncharacteristic of her, and maomao grew anxious at this. the evident fear in her voice when she finally speaks her only further broke maomao.
"do you remember what shisui's laugh sounds like?"
gods, maomao wished suirei asked her something else. she could answer anything else. ask her what colour are her eyes—and she'd immediately say that they were that of a jar of rare dandelion honey her old man kept in their shack's shelf. if suirei had asked her right now to recount the exact number of her lashes, maomao would've confidently tell her. hell, maomao could tell suirei that she has exactly three hidden moles on the back of her left ear—which were only visible when maomao tucked a strand of plum hair away from her face.
(maomao still remembers when it happened—at the hot spring village's inn. it was the night before she and suirei left to do something.
the night before maomao inevitably uncovered shisui's bloodiest skeleton from her closet.
that night, shisui had asked maomao to help her brush her hair, and when maomao combed her fingers in shisui's locks, she found them. three little dots, hiding behind the shell of shisui's ear. maomao doesn't really read a lot about constellations, but she vaguely remembered ever seeing an illustration of three stars that often appears when the earth faces the heaven at a destined angle.
shisui had laughed when maomao mentioned the beauty mark, saying that she had completely forgotten about it. she had ridiculously suggested that perhaps the three little moles represents phases of her life—like how some insects go through three different life cycles.
in hindsight, maomao thinks, shisui was probably dancing on such a thinly veiled confession. perhaps she thought of loulan as a chrysalis, hoping that shisui would have become the butterfly that eventually fly her to freedom.)
how did it make shisui feel, knowing that some larvae never emerge from its cocoon? that it dies before it could even spread it's wings to the azure sky?
then, maomao found herself mourning all over again for a caterpillar who died in it's own chrysalis. so, she tries to not remember about the three little moles in the back of her ear. or, about the butterfly that never flies to freedom. or, shisui's laugh that night—what probably was the last genuine laugh she had in maomao's presence.
remembering that suirei is still waiting for her answer, maomao pulls herself from her thoughts. she doesn't dare to look at the taller woman—whose eyes are filled with the same fear inside maomao's chest. "i… barely remembered it. i had a memory of it, but, i don't think it'll ever sound right if i replay it in my head. shi–" maomao physically choked on her name, like her name had forbade maomao's mouth from freeing itself in her voice, "she just doesn't sound like how she would've sounded."
suirei digests maomao's answer quietly; like maomao had given her mind a luxurious banquet. after a beat of silence, suirei spoke in a voice of bittersweetness, "i envy that. i'm… i don't remember how shisui's voice sounds like anymore. it's like she had plucked it out of my brain one night, and i woke up not ever remembering how she sounded."
oh, heavens. suirei's confession hurts. it hurts more than when maomao scalded her forearm's skin with an unblanched stinging nettle paste. she feels like she doesn't deserve to remember how her laugh sounds line—not when suirei has been losing the memory of it. maomao isn't one for prayer—the last time she prayed, shisui still died anyway—but, she had prayed that the fates be kinder towards suirei, and lets her have maomao's memory of her voice.
"don't be jealous. i wish i could stop being haunted by her. if i could swap memories of her with anyone, trust that i'd wholeheartedly give it to you." maomao offers, as softly as her voice allowed. which, wasn't much, really. she thinks her words are still unsanded anyway.
suirei smiles, though clouded by a tinge of exhausted sadness. maomao thinks she's accepting her poorly constructed consolation. at least, she hoped suirei is consoled by her, a human brick wall.
the sky had long turned to its deep dark purple, bedazzled by myriads of diamond-like stars. the tea in the pot had ran out, leaving soaked and chilled leaves in it. maomao and suirei doesn't move. matter of fact, suirei looked rather comfortable in her thick blue outer shirt. maomao probably would return to the pavillion when her toes had gone numb.
in this cold, maomao finds it easier to be closer to reprieve of grief. as long as it does not snow—for the last time she was with her, it had been a snowy day, and the snow had greedily swallowed the body of a girl with plum coloured hair and honey eyes. the snow did not leave anything behind for maomao to bury underneath shisui's altar in the northern thicket of the rear palace.
how long should maomao continue this? this neverending grief of someone she couldn't even confirm the death of for seven years. did any medical scholar ever write about this pain? has any philosophers in history ever constructed a poem about the torturous effect of grieving someone whose death was never ratified? was there not ever a spiritualist who absolved the sins inflicted upon oneself haunted by obscurity of death?
they say seven was a number favoured by the gods and celestial bodies. seven tiers of heaven, seven deadly sins, seven holy virtues. and, perhaps for maomao, seven years of never reaching the fifth stage of grief. seven years of living life haunted by shisui in every step she took. in everywhere she had gone to. in solving major mysteries and problems. in the iced milky summer treats, in the locusts and grasshoppers, in the lantern plants, in the purples of plum orchards, in notebooks of hand-drawn insects, in moon moths that still linger at the northern thicket.
without realising, a spot on her skirt turns darker than around it. another spot appears, blending with the first one, and another, and another. then, maomao finally acknowledged the blur of her vision and the growing wetness of her cheeks. tears just doesn't seem to stop, no matter how hard she tries reeling them in. the lump in her throat threatens to burst like a vein clotted by blood.
suirei, as aloof as she can be most times, had scooted closer to maomao's side. she had a hand on the apothecary's quaking shoulder, and surprisingly it helped maomao ground her senses better than balling her fists in. maomao tries to level her breath, conditioning herself to breathe in a rhythm her old man taught her to calm overdriven senses down. her breaths are still shaky, but she isn't heaving anymore.
"bring yourself back, maomao." suirei tells her, addressing her with her name to drive the command past maomao's mental storm to her rationality. the firm presses of suirei's hand on her shoulder syncs to her breathing rhythm, keeping her guided. maomao's breaths returns closer to her stability, and suirei sighs in relief. "tell me her name. say it out loud."
"no."
suirei tsked, though not impatiently. "say her name, maomao. you can't bury her halfway and hoped she would stop haunting you. say it."
maomao glares at suirei. suirei face doesn't flinch from her impassiveness. "suirei, it's pointless."
"convince me by saying her name."
"why is that any of your concern?"
"because i don't want you to pretend she never existed, just because she is a wound that won't close." suirei hissed, a harsh slap to maomao's mind. she then says, a tiny bit softer this time, "i want you to honor her memory, not erase her."
maomao physically recoils, not from disgust, but from the harsh truth suirei shoved down her throat. in xiángqì, this is where suirei had checkmate her, and maomao had no other choice but declare defeat. suirei had cornered her, dissected her brain out to pluck out the rot from it, and showed her directly the problem. she's practically telling maomao that broken bones must go through painful setting to heal correctly, and she's waiting for maomao to set them.
"you're a pain, did you know that?" maomao snarks, though without venom.
"so you've said hundred times before." suirei replies indignantly, though her lips host a faint smirk. "say her name."
"sh– ugh…" maomao clears her throat. "shi... sh..."
"go on."
maomao continues to struggle, her throat closing. she thinks it feels like she's cursed to never be able to say her name ever again, but she knows curses are not real. suirei is right—she had tried so hard to bury her memory, but she could never cover the grave. now, she's has to dig her out with her claws.
"shisssss–! damn it!" maomao growls. she cannot be overwhelmed by her irrational fear, for heaven's sake!
"look past the pain, maomao. find a place where you remembered her in the light."
past the pain. maomao closed her eyes, rewinding her memory further beyond the tragedy at shihoku mountains, the festival of fox masks, the 'kidnapping', the times she had at the rear palace with her and xiaolan, the moon moth hunt. what else is there?
her mind stops at a small memory—the first time shisui ever touched her. in the abandoned orchard at the northern thicket, where she covered her eyes and made her guess who it was with her sing-song voice.
["guess who~?"]
"shisui."
"y-you…" suirei stammers, her eyes wider than ever before in shock and disbelief. "say it again."
"shisui." maomao pushes past the constricted airways of the throat. she tries again, her voice growing louder with each repetition, "shisui, shisui, shisui."
suirei's laughs broke, unfamiliar excitement radiates from her usually composed posture. "you did it. what… what did you remember?"
"a really small moment." maomao smiles, feeling her whole body much lighter than ever. "a very fond one."
"i'm glad." suirei says earnestly, teary eyed and relieved smile.
maomao returned the smile. her chest still hurts, but it doesn't feel as dreadful anymore to think of and say shisui's name. it is, a beautiful name, after all.
on the way back to lady ah-duo's pavillion (maomao's toes had gone numb for a while, and suirei craved the comfort of a hearth), it was quiet. it was always a quiet walk back, the years before, but it used to be filled with distance and mutually shared grief. they also never stayed for too long, always returning immediately once the sun had fully set, and there's some tea remained in the ceramic pot. tonight, however, the quiet was warmer, and the teapot is much lighter.
"hey, nee-san."
"you best keep that between us, or i'll burn your dried herbs."
maomao snickers at the obnoxious eye roll suirei did. she lets a beat of silence pass through them, before she genuinely says, "thank you."
it was curt, and perhaps to anyone else, it was way too broad to address exactly what is maomao thanking suirei for. but, as most things with suirei, maomao is sure that the taller woman knows exactly what that thanks was meant for. suirei lets out a small chuckle, yet another rarity. she doesn't say anything, providing nothing but a simple nod of acknowledgement. maomao thinks it's enough, especially coming from suirei.
a week after visiting lady ah-duo's pavillion, maomao had returned to the rear palace—the northern thicket, to be precise. at a humble stone altar, maomao plants bulbs of snowdrops underneath the frosty soil. by the time spring thawed the snow, the bulbs should begin sprouting the white flowers.
shisui may not leave anything behind for maomao to bury in the humble grave, but it shouldn't mean that she should leave it empty. not when she could instead plant a flower that is very much shisui-like. in spring, maomao should be able to find hope and resilience blooming in this altar.
and for once, after seven years, maomao looked forward to when spring finally melts the snow.