The packing was uneventful enough, but the real trouble starts when you’ve hauled everything back to your meagre apartment. One extra ice box for the food that Shine’s mother has shoved at you along with a string of thank-yous for taking in her son for his month-long ‘internship.’ What happens after that, well. That’s for future-you to decide, and now-you to shove promptly out of your mind. Wang Ran demands to be let out as soon as Shine’s mother is out of sight, and so it’s you and him who unpack the suitcase stuffed full of clothes that Shine has chosen to bring to your humble abode.
Wang Ran makes a face. “What is this?” he says, nose scrunching up as he holds out a loose beige turtleneck, the sleeves hanging down.
“A shirt,” you say.
Wang Ran holds it against his body. “I’m not wearing this,” he says.
“Good thing there’s more where it came from,” you say. There’s a growing stack of folded clothes. You drop a pressed pair of slim fit dress pants on top of it.
“Sunshine, do you go anywhere other than class?” Wang Ran asks.
The question is not directed at you, obviously, but you’ve gotten better at deducing that when it’s not so evident. Wang Ran rolls his eyes, makes an unconscious gesture as he and Shine carry on with their conversation.
You keep unpacking.
“We’re going shopping,” Wang Ran declares after a moment.
You roll the now-emptied suitcase into the closet, where your own clothes are admittedly piling up. There’s no room for a cot in your room, but Shine just shrugged and said the couch was fine, thanks. Wang Ran didn’t object.
“Hey,” Wang Ran says, trailing you into the closet, “lao ge, did you hear what I said?”
You look over your shoulder. “I’m not buying you clothes.”
Wang Ran looks deeply offended. “Why not?”
“Because,” you say, shoving the suitcase away with a sigh, “I’m in debt, and you don’t need your own clothes.”
“But,” says Wang Ran.
“Take it up with Shine,” you say.
He pouts, but seems to get the message. You hear him loudly whining ‘Sunshine…’ into the other room as you finish stashing the food into the fridge.
The next day, you come home to shopping bags strewn around everywhere on the ground. You sling your bag down, hover a few out of your way as you wade through the mess, and find Wang Ran trying things on in the closet.
“Where did you get all this?” you ask, with some trepidation.
“Shine took me shopping,” Wang Ran says absentmindedly, as he adjusts the line of the maxi skirt on his hips. He has his hair shoved back again, a metal headband holding most of it back, a sleeveless crop, and is what can only be called preening in the mirror.
“Did you just spend all of Shine’s money?” you ask.
Wang Ran scoffs. “No,” he says. “I spelled the cashier.”
You stare at him for a long while. He stares right back, lips pursed. There’s not even a hint of shame in his blinking eyes, and it’s unclear if he realizes the ramifications of any of what he’s said to you. You think about the paperwork that would await you if someone higher up got a whiff of this case, and a muscle in your cheek jumps. Your jaw aches.
“What’s wrong?” Wang Ran asks, tipping his head to the side. “Does it not look good?”
Well, then. That answers that.
“You look great,” you say, hearing the weariness drip out of your own voice like wringing a particularly gross wet rag.
Wang Ran grins, and turns back to the mirror.
Your next attempt to sleep in on the weekend is interrupted by loud arguing from the living room. You blink blearily, trekking out to find Shine/Wang Ran wearing ripped jeans and a button-down, wrestling with their own hand over the lay of the shirt.
“You picked the pants!” Shine exclaims, hand fisted in the hem. “Let me tuck it in!”
Wang Ran wrenches their arm back. “Absolutely not.”
From afar, it looks like a bad attempt at a miming show. You watch them struggle back and forth for a while, a smile playing around your lips while you wait for the inevitable to happen.
“Ah!” Shine cries, as they nearly fall over and, there it is—a rip pulled right through a panel of the shirt, leaving the bottom hanging.
“You had to know that was going to happen,” you say, leaning over the arm of the couch.
Shine looks stricken. “Can we tuck it now?” he mumbles.
They end up trailing you to the grocery store with the shirt half-tucked, the ripped panel hanging out, and Wang Ran looks pleased enough.
Even more fascinating, apparently, is the concept of a grocery store. He peers at the candy aisle with great attention and tries to stuff some QQ gummies into his pockets, but the jeans are too tight, and you catch him in the act, which brings about a lot more complaining and muttering. In the end, you toss the pack into your cart just to placate him.
“Sunshine says thanks,” Wang Ran says. There’s a glint in his eyes that tells you what he really wants to do is rip into the pack right now, but he’s holding back to remain on good standing.
“You’re just going to let him thank me for you?”
“Yeah.”
Quick as a flash, his arm comes up to flick at his face. “Ow,” Wang Ran hisses, baring his fangs. He swats back at his other hand.
You pat the small of his back absentmindedly. “Settle down, boys. I don’t need any thanks. I just need you to help me take this all back.”
That’s the other benefit of accidentally gaining a lanky boy-shaped sometimes-demon in your household, you suppose. Wang Ran carries all the groceries all the way back home.
Nathaniel finally says something the nth time your phone chimes at lunch and you ignore it. “You’re popular lately,” she drawls, reaching out.
You snatch your phone back. “It’s just spam.”
“You sure about that?”
You quickly flip to your messages, where there is yet another photo of Shine in his wireframes, making a peace sign at you. hope you’re doing well today, jie!
You sigh. Above that is a photo Wang Ran sent of something burning on the stove, a curt sorry~ attached. You can practically see the curl of his mouth. It’s unfortunate how clearly his face has already imprinted itself in your brain.
“It’s my cousin,” you mutter, by way of explanation.
Nathaniel raises her eyebrows. “You don’t have a cousin.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that, since we’ve been spending Mid-Autumn together for years now and you always start talking about your family when you’ve got too far into the rice wine.”
You kick at her under the table. “He’s here from the next city over. Too far to travel, usually, but he’s doing some university internship here.”
“Uh-huh.” Nathaniel looks unconvinced.
“He’s just being annoying lately,” you mutter. “You wanna say hi?” You angle the camera at Nathaniel warningly.
Charmingly, she gives you the finger.
“I’m sending this,” you warn. Snap the photo for good measure. “Is this the impression you want to be giving to a baby? A literal child?”
Nathaniel leans in, peering up at you with a lopsided grin. “Frankly, I’m not even sure if this child exists, so. Fuck that kid.”
You send the photo with a decisive stab at your phone, then jut your chin out at Nathaniel, who promptly bursts into laughter.
Memories spin out like this. Things coming together. Bits and pieces of your life colliding. If you had some perspective, you could see it happen, the coalescing. You’d probably want to cherish it, given another go around.
That night you’re greeted by a fretful Shine, worrying at his lips. “Are you mad?” he asks, with such trepidation that you don’t realize what he’s talking about for a good few minutes.
“What? No. Why would I be mad?”
“Do you want me to text less?” Shine asks.
“Oh,” you say. “Oh. Sorry about that. My friend wanted to know who was sending me all those messages.”
Wang Ran peeks out for a moment, rolling his eyes so aggressively you’re very certain it’s him. “Your friend is an asshole.”
“Yep,” you say, with no small amount of pride.
“I don’t like her.”
“She doesn’t like you.”
Wang Ran narrows his eyes. Then, with a huff, he… dissipates. Shine’s face is relaxed in the aftermath, though he looks faintly exasperated. “Let’s have dinner together!” he says, beaming. “I’ve been wanting to try some cooking, now that I have all this free time. Usually, I help Mom with the orders, when I’m not studying.”
Your eyebrows climb. “You want to have Nathaniel over?”
“I want to thank her,” Shine says, “for coming that first day.”
“We’re gonna have to explain all this then,” you say. “You’re lucky she didn’t see your face, earlier today.”
“That’s okay. I trust her.”
Sometimes, you wonder how it’s possible for a human person to be so open-hearted and then so casual about it. You think you could spend your whole life wondering, and never come to the answer. Shine is wiping up something on the counter, already putting something in the microwave to heat up, and usually when you come home this late from work, you would order something in, or else call it a night and go to bed before you get hungry enough for it to be distracting. Shine is busy himself—he doesn’t cook every day—but these days there’s warm food more often than not, and you’re not quite sure how to conduct yourself in this new reality.
“Okay,” you find yourself saying. “I’ll invite her over then. If that’s what you want.”
“Are you charging?” you ask one day. “I feel like I’m freeloading when you do things like this.”
The table is full for more than two, with heaping plates of dumplings steaming in front of you. Bespoke, even: you mentioned craving shrimp stuffing earlier.
Shine laughs. “I’m literally living in your home, jie.”
“You should charge,” you declare.
“I learned from my mom,” he says. His under-eyes puff out, smile growing smaller and softer. “She used to recruit me to roll out the peels because she was tired of me sitting there reading while she worked.”
“I didn’t know you used to be such an ungrateful son,” you tease.
Maybe that hits a nerve, somehow. Shine laughs, but it sounds forced. He ducks his head, stuffs his mouth full of dumpling, and then fiddles with his chopsticks as he’s chewing. “I used to act out a lot more as a kid,” he finally says. His quiet, hesitant voice seems to belie his words.
“Oh?”
Shine’s face shutters. He eats another dumpling, then makes a face. “It’s a little salty, isn’t it?”
You take another bite, savour the delicate balance of salty pork and the tang of chives, the freshness of the shrimp, and shake your head vigorously. “It’s fine!”
“Hm,” Shine says. “I’ll do it again next week. I think I need to get a different brand of soy sauce. I couldn’t find my usual at the store last week.”
“Do you miss her?” you ask. There’s something about the good food and warmth suffusing the kitchen that makes you bolder and more curious. All the space in your head that’s usually reserved for worrying and stressing about your job focused only on enjoying the simple matter of taste, a hearty meal. And Shine, his sometimes deceptively easy-going manner, the placid smile he wears that doesn’t always reach his eyes.
He blinks.
“I’m not usually this rude,” you promise. “I kind of stole you from your mom for the time being, and I feel responsible for you, that’s all. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay,” Shine says, automatically.
“So, do you?”
“Sometimes,” Shine says. He slumps down in his chair, his chin ducking into the loose neck of his sweater. “Sometimes, I’m kind of glad to be here, though.”
“It’s always nice not to be living with your parents,” you say drily.
“I was a lonely kid,” Shine says. “I worked after hours at the restaurant, and I never had any friends. I used to resent her for that.” The tips of his ears go a little red, and he wrings his hands, knuckles whitening. “I spent a lot of years refusing to be seen with her in public, trashing the food she’d packed for me and just going hungry instead, telling her to drop me off where people couldn’t see, that sort of thing.”
“Kid stuff,” you say.
“No,” Shine says too fast. “Worse than that.”
The anguish on Shine’s face is a familiar one, but you haven’t revisited those feelings in a long time. Still, you think about his mother’s restaurant again, well worn tiles, the dirt, and your face feels hot. “I’m sure your mom understands,” you say, but the words sound false even to your own ears.
Your parents ran a laundromat, not a restaurant, but dirt is dirt. It cakes the same.
“She’s never—she’s never said anything to me about it,” Shine says, and that’s shame that you hear, echoing in his voice. A familiar spell. It takes hold of both of you in that moment, a powerful web of memories and emotions left to rot and congeal over the years. “But I—I hate that I was like that,” Shine continues. “I was stupid. I don’t want to say that’s why I try to help out now if I can, because it’s what I should’ve been doing all along, but. I want to make up, somehow, you know? I go to school to try and do something with myself that can help, and some days I don’t think that’s enough. I miss her, but I don’t miss feeling like it’s not enough every day, you know?”
Carefully, you set your chopsticks down. “At the induction ceremony for my class,” you start, “my parents were the only ones who had no history with magic. No wizards in the family, even though we’ve been practicing folk rituals for centuries before we came to the city. Apparently. Anyway, my parents didn’t know what any of the other adults were talking about—wizard high society nonsense and all that—and I fought with them after. How could you make me look stupid in front of all my classmates and all that. I was nervous about this whole wizard school thing. But they didn’t know that.”
Shine has his eyes squeezed shut. “What happened?”
“I moved out,” you say wryly. “There were other problems, not just that. I got my own place. I go back once every few months. I don’t see them. I don’t know.”
He lets out a small laugh. “Is that supposed to be the good ending?”
You kick him underneath the table, wait until he has his eyes fully open and his attention fully on you again before you snatch another dumpling and plop it whole in your mouth. Shine makes a face as you chew and make enthusiastic noises of appreciation. You swallow, and say mmmm exaggeratedly, until he laughs again, sincerely this time.
“It’s an ending,” you say simply, one side of your mouth hooking up. “We’re working on it. And I don’t know about you, but these taste like the dumplings made by a son who loves his mother very much. Why pay so much attention otherwise?”
Shine swats at you. “Jie,” he says weakly.
“Sorry, being around you kids brings out the advice-sibling in me,” you say.
“Ugh,” Shine says. “You can’t be more than three years older than me.” But he seems, overall, brighter. You finish the rest of the meal in silence, and Shine brightens when he sets down a bowl of the dumpling broth in front of you to finish off. “Wang Ran thinks I should visit,” Shine says.
You nearly spit out your broth. “He said that?”
“Well, he called me an asshole for not wanting to go home this weekend, so yeah.” Shine rubs at his temples. “He basically said that.”
You snort. “Are you going to?”
“He’s going to kill me for telling you this,” Shine says, “but I think he wants to know what she’s like a little more. I don’t think he’s ever had proper parents to compare to.”
“Is that why you wanted to keep him?” you ask.
Shine colours. “Well. He needed help. I wanted to help him.”
“Ah, I see humanitarian Shine has resurfaced,” you say drily.
The blush intensifies. Shine buries his face in his hands and groans. “That’s not completely untrue,” he says.
“Of course it’s not. You’re that kind of annoying person who really does mean it when you say you want to help someone. But.”
“But,” Shine agrees. “I was lonely. It’s not like I had much time for friends in school, either. Wang Ran… he… he was lonely too. I wanted to talk to him more. I want to know him more.”
“Well, then,” you say. “People have done worse for less.”
“We’re going to protect him, right?” Shine asks, biting at his lip.
You reach over and grab his hand. Wonder if Wang Ran is listening now. Wonder if this is the way Shine is, now, always trying to make up for a slip of compassion that stemmed from being a stupid kid who didn’t know any better. Lonely, even now.
You see this? This is alchemy. The confessional of a quiet meal, spun into spellwork.
You give his hand a squeeze. “We’re going to try our best.”
It’s 2 a.m. and dark outside when you hear a loud shout coming from the living room.
You stare blankly into the grey shadows and rapidly go through the stages of grief all at once as you realize that your body is not going to let you go back to sleep with all the ruckus, and you’re going to have to scold your erstwhile demon prince roommate. As if on cue, Wang Ran lets out a truly impressive string of curses, half of which end in unintelligible hissing.
When you step out, his face is illuminated by the light of Shine’s phone. He’s on his back, tongue caught between his teeth, playing some shooting game, by the sound of it.
“Hey,” you say, voice creaky with sleep.
Wang Ran doesn’t look up from his game. “What are you doing here?” he asks.
“I was trying to sleep.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’re you out here, then?”
Honestly, you consider yourself someone with a great deal of patience, no matter how frustrated you may be under the surface. You suck in a loud breath through your teeth, come around to the couch, and hover over Wang Ran’s face.
“Dammit,” he mutters under his breath. “Fuck, shit. No, no, nonono.”
“Wang Ran,” you say.
“Yeah?”
“Can you please shut up?”
Wang Ran’s thumbs seem to skip a beat. They skitter off the phone, and you watch dispassionately as the whole screen goes red and a little death animation plays. “Goddammit!” he shouts, looking down in dismay. “Unfair.”
“I am so tired,” you say. “Please.”
Wang Ran pouts. He tosses the phone into the crevices of the couch somewhere and crosses his arms. “Sleep is stupid.”
“Yeah, well. Unfortunately, human bodies require it.”
The scowl on his face deepens, drags his face into sullenness. The microwave clock is on, illuminating the room enough to see the outlines of him, the deep bags that have scoured their way beneath his eyes. Wang Ran yawns, then startles, eyes going wide. “I’m not tired,” he says, a little too quick.
“Sure,” you say. “Look, I don’t care what you do, so long as you do it a little quieter? Please?”
Wang Ran slides up and cranes his neck up and over the arm of the couch, looking at you upside down. “That game wasn’t very accurate,” he says, heedless of your request.
You press your lips together, determined not to give him the time of day either.
Unfortunately, Wang Ran does not need anything like an indication someone is listening to continue on one of his tirades. “It was about the underworld,” he says, brows furrowing, “that’s what the description said. Collect spirits as a member of the fourth court of Hell, and earn points towards your promotion.” He waves a hand over his face, flipping it back and forth like he’s studying the contours and lines of it—a frequent habit of his, you’ve noticed, when he’s more at a loss. “It was really easy. Well, until you walked in and interrupted me. But you know there were so many people there, and little side quests you could do, and I was halfway to my quota for the week when I died. You know that’s not really how it works, right?”
Here, it seems, Wang Ran has decided he wants you to participate in the conversation. He flips around suddenly, scrambling up on the couch so his face is inches from yours, his pupils swallowed in the dark sepia of his irises. “You do know that, right?”
You fight the urge to turn away. You will not let Wang Ran win this impromptu staring contest. “I didn’t,” you say, hoping to placate him.
Wang Ran deflates. He flops back down on the couch, tossing his hands over his eyes. “Ugh,” he says. “I thought everyone knew that. What’s the point of being a wizard if you don’t even know how Hell works for real?”
“That’s a little out of my jurisdiction,” you say drily.
“Well, then, no wonder you couldn’t do anything,” Wang Ran says.
You feel a headache beginning behind your eyes. “I’m not going to comment on that,” you say.
“Sorry,” Wang Ran actually says. “I just. I don’t like that game very much.”
“Then maybe don’t play it at 2 a.m.?”
Wang Ran’s eyes narrow. This time, he is the one who remains stubbornly quiet.
The electrical hum of the fridge fills up the silence between you two. The wavering light from the microwave is ever-present, a ghostly thing that makes Wang Ran look more stern, ghastly, upset by something you’re not quite sure your sleep-deprived mind can grasp. You suddenly feel like you’re teetering on the edge of something.
Stamping down the frustration still tensing your muscles, you come around to sit next to him on the couch. “Are you adjusting okay?” you ask quietly.
Wang Ran jerks back. “What?”
“It’s been a pretty big life change for you recently,” you say. Stating the obvious. “Sorry I didn’t check in on you earlier, but are you okay?”
Strangely enough, Wang Ran is the one out of the two of them whose every expression you can read like the pattern of a spell on his face. Shine tends towards cheerfulness: a smile can mean anything from genuine contentment to polite deference. With Wang Ran, his borrowed muscles have no filter: every twitch of his mouth is another indication to his mood.
As soon as you ask your question, Wang Ran’s entire face crumples. Maybe it’s the exhaustion. Maybe it’s—all of it. Like you said. His eyes screw shut and his hands fly up to cover them, the fringe he hasn’t pushed back flopping over his fingers as he hunches over himself.
“Hey,” you whisper, “hey, it’s okay.”
Wang Ran is trembling. Tentatively, you smooth a hand over where his shoulder blades are tensed up and tight, and he lets out a shuddering, wet breath, before falling over—straight into your lap.
You are trying very hard not to have a hysterical breakdown yourself. Stroking lightly down Wang Ran’s back and muttering nonsense at him seems to be helping, so you keep doing that. You fully do not intend to ask him to talk about anything when it sounds like he’s still sniffling. You’re not cut out for this. Nathaniel was right: you don’t have cousins—no siblings, either—and all you remember from childhood is the lonely echoing apartment when your parents were out at whichever one of their part-time jobs, nothing but your own company. Where Wang Ran is pressed right to you, you feel hot, a searing line of contact on your lap and the side of your stomach. Every shaky breath that he takes in is a vibration against your own body.
Still, eventually, you get the hang of it.
You inhale deeper and deeper, and astonishingly, Wang Ran follows your pattern. Soon, both your breaths are even, measured. He stills under your hand. You keep patting him, absentminded, until he makes a whining sound in the back of his throat that sounds like he wants to be let up.
“Shhh,” you say. “You should rest.”
Wang Ran squirms. “M’fine,” he says, voice tight.
“Aiyaaah,” you tease lightly, even as you move back so he can sit. “You don’t need to pretend with me.”
Wang Ran runs his hands through his hair hastily. “I—I’m not. I don’t—”
“You wanna talk or let Shine’s body sleep?” you ask.
“I never thought I could be here,” Wang Ran says. He’s not crying any more, but the rims of his eyes are still red, his cheeks puffy. He looks a far cry from the smarmy prince he first presented himself as. In the greenish light, his eyes take on more of a golden shine, pupils shimmering between full and slit, the truth of his nature trying to slip out even now.
“Well,” you say, resting your hand on his back again, “you’re here now, aren’t you? Here to stay.”
He makes another sound, difficult to translate to human understanding. Something between a strangled snarl and a scream, but quieter, smaller. Deep in his throat.
“You are,” you say firmly. As the words slip out of your mouth, low but assured, you realize this is where you have made your choice.
Maybe having Wang Ran in your life isn’t what you anticipated coming into this quarter, but you can’t help but commit to the choice, now that he’s here. Now that he’s here, and he’s hurting, and the long buried part of you that bruises easily at the thought of other people hurting is feeling a bit more full-chested than held back lately. If there’s one thing you can manage to accomplish in this entire sham of an internship, it is making sure that Wang Ran gets to stay.
Wang Ran tips himself over, curls up with his head cradled in your lap, and you ache. Nathaniel’s teasing comes back to you, and you think about the years you would spend in awful, stifling silence whenever your parents tried to put something together for Mid-Autumn, or any other holiday. “Thanks,” he mumbles, barely audible, and your hand fits in easily at the nape of his neck. He sighs, small, when you rub your thumb there, a quick warming spell heating up the pads of your fingers.
“You gonna let me sleep, now?” you ask.
Wang Ran huffs.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” you mumble, but the exhaustion is already getting to you, the sudden warmth of Wang Ran’s weight, your own spell spreading like a balm beneath your skin.
“Mmmmm,” says Wang Ran, shuffling closer.
In the morning, you wake with a crick in your neck and Shine already awake, yawning through the weariness in their body, making eggs. This time, the warmth isn’t physical; you feel it in your core, a sickening, syrupy sweetness that makes you want to curl up and go back to sleep. Damn. What a place to find yourself.
Wang Ran hisses, loud and hacking, when Shine tries to turn on the vacuum cleaner.
“Oh, come on,” Shine says, refusing to let go of the machine while Wang Ran is clearly trying to fling it as far away from them as possible.
Wang Ran jerks their head around in a fierce shake. “What the fuck is that thing?”
“It’s just a vacuum cleaner,” Shine says. He clicks it back on.
Wang Ran clicks it off again with a loud yelp. “No!” he shouts. “Begone, devil!”
“You’re one to talk!” Shine yells back. It would be comical if it didn’t look like every other fight they’ve had and also didn’t make an absolute ruckus with the sudden roar of the vacuum interspersed with Shine’s chastising and Wang Ran’s cries of ‘Demon! Evil!’
As if on cue, the vacuum clicks on.
Off.
On.
Off.
“Guys,” you cut in when it looks like this isn’t getting resolved any time soon. “You can just leave it.”
“But it’s messy,” Shine says nervously, glancing around the room. “Journeyman Feng is coming over in half an hour. What if she’s not comfortable?”
“Trust me,” you say, trying to keep the exasperation mostly out of your voice, “Nathaniel is not going to notice.”
“But—” Shine says.
“Put the vacuum away,” you say wearily. “I think there’s a dustpan in some cupboard somewhere if you really want to sweep up.”
Shine brightens and rolls his sleeves up.
Almost instantly, Wang Ran rolls them back down. “Can’t we take a break?” he whines.
Shine puffs out his cheeks. “You haven’t even done anything. Just relax and I’ll take care of it.”
“But it makes me tired afterwards,” Wang Ran shoots back.
For a moment, Shine doesn’t respond. His mouth hangs open, like he can’t quite believe what he just heard.
“You work too hard,” Wang Ran mutters after a beat.
You can’t tell who is the cause of their cheeks reddening, but it makes for a cute picture nonetheless.
“Both of you can stop,” you say. “I’ll do some sweeping if it’ll make you happy, Shine.”
Shine mumbles something that sounds like ‘sure,’ then wanders away to the couch, losing himself in another conversation with Wang Ran. This is perhaps the strangest part of their co-existence and the thing you had to get used to at first. They sit, lotus-legged, staring up into the ceiling, obviously not seeing it. Their eyes flit back and forth, occasionally flashing a dull gold, pupils constricting too fast to look natural. Whatever conversation they have, you are not privy to this level of intimacy, and you wonder what that must be like. Your whole person cast open for someone else to read, embodiment and thought both shared with another being. Occasionally, their mouth mumbles, low things that gives you enough sense of the conversation for you to know you’re grateful you can’t hear any of it, actually: embarrassing, just say what you mean, but Sunshine, you’re sweet.
True to your own word, you unwedge the short broom from where you last shoved it away literal years ago, and do a little sweep of the kitchen. There’s less dirt than you thought there would be; that is, there is a sizable pile, but it’s not like the tiles are another colour under the grime like you sometimes fear.
A glance at your two houseguests when you finish shows they’re still locked into their spat or discussion or… whatever it is.
You wave a hand in front of their face, receive nothing in response.
“I’m going downstairs, now,” you announce loudly. “Nathaniel should be showing up.” You raise an eyebrow. “I’m taking silence as a yes? Okay.”
With some relief, you slip on a light coat and head downstairs. Nathaniel never texts you before she comes over, which used to annoy you, but it’s been long enough that you can’t say shit about it now. The air is starting to chill, fall snaking its way into the city like a long-awaited bus, carrying with it breeze and somewhat of a reprieve from the fine dust that plagues the sky.
You step out of the building, shoving your hands into your pockets as you expect to settle into a bit of a wait, when you notice—
Well, then.
While you stand there floundering like a badly spelled marionette, Nathaniel Feng bums a cigarette off the grim reaper standing outside your apartment building. Well, then. Fuck!