( 𝐟𝐢𝐠 𝐢. ) — white lily,

(She never texted Ino back. She didn't even try. She did not want him to watch the three dots appear, disappear, appear, and disappear for good. She had a hunch this is how that would go.)

"Um."

Stella grimaces, confronted with her own conflicting realities. She wants to say Blackwell's is like a family, of course, which is important in its own way, but the Romanos are a family, by blood, which is an endlessly significant thing (as Ranta knows better than he knows anything else).

Instead, she turns her head, partially concealing the aggravated slant of her mouth.

It's normal, she would insist, for some family members to live separately from other family members. She cannot fathom that Ranta's entire bloodline and those who married into it live on the same property. That is one extreme.

The other extreme, or some approximation of the other extreme, is this: an aunt who lives on a farm upstate, where she raised her children—your cousins, whom you've only met a handful of times; an uncle who was murdered right before you were born, which nobody wants to tell you, so they haven't; another aunt who lives in the city but you aren't sure which part since you've never visited (although she lets you follow one of her Instagram accounts, so long as you follow from a finsta, which is a word she taught you); and Burns Harris, whoever that is, who disappeared right when your uncle was murdered, which, again, you have been spared from knowing.

Moreover, Stella has never been invited to visit her half-brother's family in Mexico City with him, though she's grateful, so beyond grateful, to God and to everyone else, to see her father's extended and sometimes distant relations in Florence because it reminds her that she is less alone.

She often feels alone.

She has no idea what it is like to live on a sprawling estate in the mountains where everybody has the same goals and agrees how things should be done—where everything belongs to them collectively.

Your mother too?

Stella's head snaps back up. She stares at Ranta—who has only been staring at her, who very well may not have blinked this entire time, though Stella won't think too critically on that.

"My mom doesn't really have a family."

What?!

"I mean!"

She leans in to convey how urgently she must backtrack that statement—not only because it is a lie, but because it implies something she cannot allow Ranta to believe. Unfortunately, this jerky movement means her knee jostles his knee, again. She cannot notice.

to spare them both some indignity—indecency?—he shifts his knee a little to the left.

my mom doesn’t really have a family doesn’t resonate with him as much as it should, or at least not in the way that it should, in the way that stella means, or the way that it really is. more than any language barrier, it gets lost along the paradigm of their very, very different lived experiences.

what he assumes stella means is that her mother is a bad wife, which is something that ranta understands due to the other extreme that he was raised in. bad wives aren’t really part of the family, but they’re tolerated because they bear children who are. like stella! and like ranta, whose own mother had been bad because she’d died giving birth to one such good child, and whose step-mother must have been bad since she’d disappeared one day.

maybe he should warn stella: keep an eye on your mother, or she’ll wander into a forest full of bears and never come back. as the story goes.

whether he believes that isn’t relevant.

ranta nods self-evidently, sagely. ' and she will be there tonight. with your brother and your father. ' once more he neglects to mention everyone here, who are—at best—guests of varying degrees of honour. for now. until whatever arrangements are being made are made.

despite all this talk of half-dead mothers, he smiles more genuinely than he has tofore. ' i’m happy i’ll meet them. it’s kind of mister romano to have us. he’s a good man. ' other than running the exploitative circus of mutant-abasement, which ranta is currently not thinking about because he really can’t stop fantasising about dinner.

It doesn't taint his adoration of her that there is, presently, nowhere else for her to go but by his side. Even if they walked in opposite directions until their legs gave out, they would return to one another as if they'd never tried to leave. They haven't tried that; they do not want to. Tengen's bland, uninspiring habitat does not allow any necessities to be desired, once you know how to communicate with the space. And even if they could leave or separate, two more things prevent it: their duty to this mission and their increasing fascination with one another.

Yuki's hand is warm. He wants to hold it. Instead, he knows he needs to pull himself more together.

Not only for Yuki, or himself, but for—

<<Yuji wouldn't want to see me like this. He shouldn't see me like this. If he were here, he would want to race from one end of Tengen's sanctuary to the other, like a game we could have played when we were growing up together. Even though he's young, he has the right perspective. He's very optimistic. Like you are, too.>>

He turns his head towards her, which has the effect of leaning his cheek against her palm. Still warm.

she pulls her legs up and under her, angling her body toward choso. his cheek presses against her palm; his words press against her chest by way of her heart. surely he can’t be a curse, even just half—or else curses aren’t what she has always thought them to be. ( she won’t linger on this for now. although she’s started doing a lot of that lately: lingering, considering, re-considering. god knows she has the time for it; god knows choso gives her much to consider ). some things she’s already come to know and understand.

for instance: to be mentioned in the same sentence as his brother is the highest honour that choso can bestow on a person.

her smile broadens, dimpling her cheeks. pride looks good on her.

' if i'm like yuji and yuji's like me, ' she runs her thumb over the slope of his cheek, which is warm because his tears are warm. so much for those tissues. ' then he wouldn't mind seeing you like this. even here. '

yuki leans in, puts her other hand on his other cheek, pigeons his face between her palms. she’s so close; she can feel his breath on her mouth.

' do you want to race? ' her eyes are very, very bright. ' i may only be a humble beauty, but i’m fast. '

she beams at him with the full force of the cosmos. ' we could train. get ready for when yuji gets back. '

She doesn't know why she assumed Ranta's father was here. Maybe she believes this is the sort of situation everyone else gets in, but they could only ever be in it because of their father. Also, she wasn't paying close attention during the initial polite introductions, as she decided none of this would apply to her or affect her life very much. She feels a little rude now, as those were not Ranta's parents, but has not changed her mind about how much this impacts her.

Stella nods so that she can convey being an active listener. She does not know what word to fill in for Ranta, of course, which means that she looks apologetic, too. For awhile—until she's smiling, pink in the face all over again.

Ranta's sweet. She does not need to ask him if he is asking her on a date because he is too harmless for this to be the case, and his suggestion (because we will go sometime followed by if you want could only be a mere suggestion) is so casual.

Then: until you come to Tokyo. Stella wants to ask why he thinks she's coming to Tokyo, but she can't interrupt him. He clarifies. She smiles, satisfied with her assumption that he misspoke. These things must happen when you are balancing two languages, she thinks.

"I've never been! I've been to Europe a lot. Italy—for my dad's family. It's pretty. Really pretty. But! My—" Thinking about Ino makes her genuinely sick to her stomach. Deciding whether to call him her friend or something else (boyfriend is untrue; classmate is devastating) could ruin the rest of the evening.

Anyway, her Ino has family in Japan, and she has wondered if she could visit them with him.

he smiles too, because he's pleased with said apology—taken by the contrite flush of her cheeks and the way they turn as pink when she’s happy as they do when she’s dismayed. stella, he thinks, must be very pretty in winter, when things die and the mourning period begins.

her hesitance, of course, doesn’t reach him. there was nothing to infer, no conclusion to draw. he couldn’t know about ino (who had texted stella earlier to ask how her day went. party hat emoji). nor does it occur to him that she could possibly have a boy-friend-classmate, since—if she did—she wouldn’t have touched his knee, and she especially wouldn’t have called him by his name. now then,

it’s settled: she’ll visit him in tokyo, where the winters are long and cold and arduous. he doesn’t gloat about this accomplishment and how he’s been more productive in several minutes than the others have been in over an hour, since it isn’t his accomplishment at all. it belongs to the clan.

also, something’s troubling him. ' your dad’s family … your real family? ' ranta cocks his head.

he doesn’t understand the concept of a father’s side of the family, as all families belong to the fathers at their forefront. it doesn’t need to be said. so he interprets what stella has shared as: i’ve been to europe a lot—for my family.

' they live in italy, ' on the soft contours of his expression, his consternation looks like guileless curiosity, ' and not with you? '

if this is true, then it’s really no wonder that she’s deluded herself into finding a home here! the flaps of a circus tent are so much like the skirts of a sister, grandma, or

Her eyebrows wrinkle inward when he stumbles over nothing but himself, but the expression does not last.

She nods, understanding and knowing. It is very sweet. His ambivalence leaves much to be desired, but Stella's felt that way all night.

"Oh!"

He didn't like it. He was being courteous. He was trying it because she asked him to. It's always good to do what you're told—to speak when you're spoken to. Things like this. She still feels badly, but she laughs a stilted laugh and does not think too hard about how he has said please to her at least three times in the last one hundred and seventy seconds.

"People really like tiramisu. It's—sweet." Obviously. She cringes, grimaces. "It's coffee cake, but not coffee cake—there's layers. It's good. I like panna cotta, too," she tells Ranta, who, again, did not ask.

She likes that Ranta speaks plainly and optimistically. He seems, now, to eagerly accept that a family meal is in their future, because the Romanos are a family, and Blackwell's is part of that family. He didn't explicitly say any of this, but it's easy to convince herself of.

He can sit where he would like. He can do anything he would like, really. But she should tell him:

"You don't need to call me Miss Romano." People often do call her this. It always makes her uncomfortable. Ranta in particular has this effect—he can't be much older than her. "Um—I'm Stella. Just Stella. You're—Ranta." She hesitated, sure, but ultimately pronounces his name correctly. Rahn-tah.

"Our parents are doing—work stuff? I guess?" She doesn't know. Does he know? Is she allowed to ask?

despite that, she manages to pronounce his name properly. he smiles encouragingly. good! yes. very good. although she probably shouldn't call him ranta. undressing someone’s name is much the same as undressing their body: indecent. nor is it her place to give him an identity. he is first and foremost zen’in. everything else about him, such as his name, is secondary.

' cousins, ' he corrects gently, firmly, between small mouthfuls of cotton candy. ' your father is meeting with my cousins. ' they wouldn’t wish for him to overstate his place, or for stella to think more highly of him than he is. which he respects since their wishes are his wishes too.

about the work stuff he says nothing, even though he knows. especially because he does.

just-stella crosses her legs; just-ranta stretches his out, thinks better of it, brings them back and sits just-normal. for a minute, they just-hang-out. he finishes the cotton candy and laments silently over how sticky his palm feels.

then: ' i like taiyaki, ' this is a profoundly childish thing to share, and so he says it to the ground rather than to stella. ' it's a small cake. fish-shaped. and the filling is ... ' he has no idea what the word for anko, red bean paste, is. he shrugs cryptically, if not apologetically.

' they sell it here, at tea shops. we will go sometime, if you want. ' he has a way of issuing innocuous commands, of making demands under the illusion of free choice. we will do this—if you want. but of course only the first bit really matters. the subordinate clause is just that: subordinate. like he assumes stella to be.

"You weren't rude!" The cycle threatens to solidify itself. Stella, by some grace of her God or something even more compelling, manages to overcome it by smiling—genuinely.

Now they're both holding the cotton candy. The tube supporting the cotton candy is made of paper—paper only slightly more durable than what you or I might put into a printer. It does not crumple beneath the pressure of Stella's frantic hold because she does not do things, ever, in a manner that would cause such injury or threaten the integrity of anything, anyone.

Stella's hand is very warm. Or maybe that's his. What's most likely is that it is both of their hands—sweaty, too feverish to be truly clammy.

"You don't have to pay," she says, and when she says it, she's giggling girlishly; she's briefly, loftily amused by Ranta's complete and utter lack of awareness of how things go.

Stella is under the impression that neither she nor Ranta truly know what his family at large and her father currently discuss in the privacy of Daniel's office, but in this moment, Ranta seems even more delusional and optimistic than she is. Among other blind spots he possesses, he must not know he won't be able to pay for anything; Daniel has already taken care of it. He will provide what must be provided for anyone who needs it.

Ranta looks like he is on stimulants. Stella looks so kind that it tires her.

To accept the cotton candy offering, she decides to let go of the tube, since Ranta's still holding it above her lap. She takes the piece from his hands and eats it from her own fingers. The sugar melts against her tongue quickly. She smiles, close-mouthed. Finally:

"Veal is, um," This isn't the sort of thing you discuss so frankly—not in public, not with people you barely know. This is because most things, when you think about them, are better off unsaid. "It's like beef. Like steak?" She doesn't know how to make that more relatable or applicable to his experiences. What she does know is that her explaining that veal can only ever be a cow killed when it was still a calf, when it was still young, won't happen willingly. "You can eat veal piccata?" It comes out like a question. She already knows what she said doesn't make sense.

"Try it!"

She nudges his knee with her knee, then regrets it. Her palm is still warm from her own nervous blood flow, and his palm is still wrapped around the cotton candy tube. She can't move away. It's not his fault she can't—all the same, she's stuck.

while she talks about meat, he stares at her mouth and wonders if she has herbivore teeth: straight, blunt, lacking canines. he fights the urge to push back her lip and count them, to coax open her jaw and run his thumb along their edges to see if they can cut him—or else if they will. he wants to see if they are naturally dull or if someone had filed them down; if this is what she is really and truly like or if she is playing a part.

you could tell such things if you had an experienced hand, or if you yourself had grown up with herbivore teeth. once. before they'd been filed—not down but into points.

stella's grip goes lax around the cone, but he's distracted. he barely notices that he's now doing the holding, up and in place. when she nudges his knee, he almost drops it on the ground—pulls away from her—fumbles forward—catches the cotton part of the candy in his palm.

because profanity is bad for digestion and they have a dinner ahead of them, he doesn't swear. because he's practical, he tears off a piece and eats it.

' very sweet. ' he says neutrally, making a face. he keeps eating it though, bit by bit, since at this stage he kind of has to—having had touched it. he shifts back to the way they were, close but not touching.

' we'll share veal later. peek-kah-tah. my family and your father, ' he does not call what she has a family, ' all of us. ' this idea seems to delight him. ' and then desert. maybe something else—ah, not this, please. ' he laughs as politely as he speaks: ha ha.

sure, he had wounded her earlier. he regrets that. he knows that it was wrong. but understand: he'd only done that so he could single the wound out later, put his mouth on it, make it better again with promises of dinner and family and togetherness.

this was because he preferred sad women, delicate and breakable, women who'd been messed up and were in desperate need of consoling. he liked to comfort them, reassure them, apologize to them. make them happier, if only for a moment. and himself too, of course. that was the payoff: a grateful woman would go the extra mile. a grateful woman would smile and laugh and tell you you weren't rude even when you were. she would bump your knee. she would offer you cotton candy—and eat it, too, if you asked nicely.

—none of that was to inflict pain.

So, politely: What the fuck is Ranta Zen'in's fucking issue right now?

"Yes, I—"

Ranta's disposition and posture are briefly so reminiscent of Daniel's (at times when he has endeavored to show her right from wrong because she was too confused and naive to figure it out herself) that Stella can't finish her sentence. She's better suited to cutting herself off.

"I'm just—maybe—"

Maybe what? Stella blanches as it occurs to her what must have happened here: it was rude of her to speak so severely when Ranta merely wanted to know more about how the performers at Blackwell's live, how Stella lives, because he lives across the ocean and eats different types of food and does not relate to his family as wholly, as intuitively, as Stella relates to hers.

"This," The cotton candy once more must be jostled, "Is something you eat when you go to—I don't know. When you come here, or a carnival, or a festival, or something like that? It's sweet. Did you try it? It's really sweet, and—"

Surely he knows you can't eat dessert whenever you want. He's an adult. He must know that.

"—you should try it. It's good." An offering.

"And maybe later, after the show, my dad will cook something for you guys. Something we like to eat." We as in herself, Spirit, and occasionally Vincent. She does not know what Rhett and his friends and coworkers eat when they're exhausted to the bone and haven't been able to make it to the grocery store. That version of reality does not occur to her. Her stomach does sink, however, as Ranta's interrogation has an effect that surely was unintentional: Stella must accept that the performers at Blackwell's are not her family. Her family is the three people who sit in stilted silence while their forks clatter against expensive bowls and everything around them grows colder, colder, colder.

When Daniel cooks for the performers, which he has done, in his life, Stella can't figure out how to make that sort of communal meal align with the dinners she's eaten since she has memories of them.

but then there’s the knife's edge, and with the knife’s edge comes the fear: has he gone too far? and if he has, what comes next?

STELLA HADN’T MEANT TO HURT HIM, BUT HE HAD HURT STELLA—which is of course what he’d wanted to do. only that now that he's done it, he regrets it. and not only that: he promptly convinces himself that he hadn't meant to do it at all, that it isn’t like him—he wouldn’t do that!—and all of this is a horrible misunderstanding.

the strangeness of his expression turns to dismay. he has the decency to look horrified, if not about his own actions then about stella’s, and the way that her stammering makes him feel. shh, he wants to say. it’s okay. i’m not mad. trust me, i’m not mad. i’m not mad and so you can trust me. it’s okay! it’s—

the cotton candy bobs between them. to reward stella her penance, he tears off a piece with one hand, holds the cone steady with the other. now they're both holding it, which is strange and unbecoming. and also her hand feels very warm. or maybe that’s his.

' i apologize. i was rude. we will have dinner together, all together, and i will pay, and you can eat veal. ' he still hasn’t let go of her; he still doesn’t eat the tuft of cotton candy. his eyes have turned to rabbit’s eyes, dark and imploring, darting across her face in search of anything that he might interpret as forgiveness. but forgiveness for what, exactly? he can’t place it now. and shouldn’t he be the one doing the forgiving?

two flightless birds sit on a wire. they seek absolution from each other rather than from the sky.

' i don't ... i don't know what that ' veal ' is. will you explain it to me, please? ' something in the way he says this, so lame and wanting, makes him sound his age.

' and will you have some of this too, please? ' he offers her the piece of cotton candy.

As it did not occur to Stella earlier that Ranta's unprompted, gratuitous compliment could have been directed towards anyone but her, she now assumes, and therefore knows confidently, that Ranta agrees to sit for her benefit more than his own. He didn't need to say if you want for her to draw this conclusion.

"Thank you," she says, too-quick and too-gracious since she didn't thank him quickly enough for his compliment. His chivalry, now, must be acknowledged appropriately.

Stella sits. As soon as she does, she regrets ever having suggested this—even though it prevents her from conjuring up facts about Blackwell's half-rooted in reality or compelling Ranta to see this place as more glamorous than it truly is.

He couldn't possibly hate it here, but he certainly doesn't look impressed. She's glad he asks a question because she'll have less to come up with on her own. She's not glad for what the question is, so she doesn't answer for awhile—long enough for Ranta to finish asking if Stella would want this life.

"Of course they like it here. They love it here. It's—it's really nice, it's a great place, and they're—we're like a family."

(I like this cage, and I like my spot here in it. Even sitting on your cardigan waiting to watch my father's employees dazzle audiences with their powers so they can pay their bills, I am so extremely grateful.)

"Eating—this every day?" She shakes the cotton candy. It shifts, dandelion-like, though slightly more stubbornly enduring.

ranta says nothing for some time—not to restrain himself but rather to demonstrate what restraint looks like to someone who seems to lack it.

around them, hawkers hawk; music drifts through rippling tent flaps; circus-goers amble through the dust in their unreasonable shoes.

' and what do people eat, miss romano? ' when he finally speaks, he keeps his voice kindly but remote: a cross between a pedagogue, soothsayer, and benevolent patriarch. that should be the tone for conversations like this, where he doesn't want to directly acknowledge his disappointment with her. only imply it. which he does by keeping his eyes lowered, his expression pensive.

' you're family, right? you must know. ' having shed the cardigan, he has no sleeves to pick at and settles, instead, on clasping his hands together. ' you spend dinner with them, yes? because you're family? '

it's important to him that she knows that this—this ragtag abomination of the weak and the exploited, who must surely be victims of exploitation because they are weak, and not due to some delusion of love and loyalty that keeps them together, keeps them happy, keeps them placid—isn't family. and that if it is, she isn't part of it. she can't be. because this isn't family. this is not a family. this is not what it means to be a family.

which is also to say: because the hei share their meals, and the kukuru can name his favourite meat, and the zen'ins allow him to sit at their table, he knows that they—unlike stella and her circus—are.

but she sounded so familiar just now, didn't she? he's heard it said. he's said it himself. he's thinking it now, as he does any time he thinks of home: of course i like it here. i love it here. it's nice. this is a great place, and we are family.

' so ... ' ranta turns to look at her, ' what do they eat? ' he is speaking so, so gently now, and his eyes are very, very wide.

' what do you eat? ' and why isn't it the same thing?

Stella cannot remember whether or not her mother was with them. She can't articulate why, but she suspects Spirit is not fond of Blackwell's.

To Stella, the tents and performers still possess shiny, new charm due to how irregularly she engages with them. Well—she sees Lorenza all the time. She loves Lorenza. But she loves Lorenza at Sweetgreen or anywhere else they galavant on the Lower East Side—not where Lorenza works.

Stella tries to take pride in everything she shows Ranta. This is difficult, as she realized ten minutes after being entrusted with his experience here how little she knows about Blackwell's operations. She'd seemingly been sent away to give mild-mannered, unassuming Ranta a tour, one that reinforces how amazing this place is. Perhaps she'd been meant to relay interesting, quirky trivia or an intimate behind-the-scenes look.

There's a bathroom in that building over there, but you might have to use the porta potties. I'm sorry. / My best friend performs a lot. Not today. She's really good. She's so nice, and she's hilarious. You would think she was so funny. (Why would Ranta possibly think that?) / Rhett's—that's Voltage, I don't know if you know that—well—he's still the closing act sometimes. I won't ruin the surprise. I wonder if he'll do it tonight even though he's with ourrrr—

—and so on, entailing other such babble. Ultimately, she'd prefer not to say anything at all because she's so painfully aware that none of this has been worth saying, not even by virtue of Stella Romano intermittently deciding to voice some nonsense thoughts into existence.

She'd been quiet for awhile. Their surroundings are far from silent otherwise, but she's walking closely to ensure Ranta stays close by. His insistence upon walking behind her has been unnerving to say the least, but it wouldn't be polite to interrogate him about this. (They're both minding their manners exceptionally well—but what else would ever occur to them, given where they came from?)

All of this means that she hears Ranta well. She's immediately pink—though confused as to why the back of her head inspired such praise. She wonders if this is just how he talks—nearly drawing the correct assumption that he is a young man who deals in absolutes—but instead focuses on figuring out what she possibly could have done.

Her stomach sinks. It wasn't on purpose. She doesn't want Ranta to think she is beautiful or awe-inspiring or good at all. She wants him to see her for what she is without somehow subconsciously engaging with her abilities and compelling him to see the most beautiful thing he ever has.

She's not that. She doesn't want that, for either of them.

Stella takes the cotton candy. She blushes as she stares at it, eyebrows furrowed. She can't look at Ranta for a few seconds too long, but when she does, her expression is clear.

she also stutters a lot, or else interjects her own thoughts with other, less relevant thoughts, like she can't decide between which one is important enough to say—if any of them even are. which ranta is starting to doubt. sometimes, as now, he has to frown at her to try and parse her meaning.

sit down? dirty ... footwear?

he sticks out his leg and considers his shoe. then he looks at stella and considers her shoes, too: sensible but not dirty. just like his!

' sure. ' he doesn't say if you want, because then it'll sound like he's doing this for her. due to how red her face is, he decides that this isn't something she can handle right now.

the circus isn't wanting for seats, but of course most of them are arranged around the ring. instead of entering this seventh layer of hell earlier than strictly necessary, he settles on a pair of hay bales that someone had dragged in front of a gold- and mahogany-striped tent. he shirks off his cardigan and lays it on one; waits patiently for stella to take her place; and then sits down on the other.

' —do you think they like it here? ' such an irrelevant question, and one he regrets immediately after asking. ranta makes a point of not philosophizing about anyone he considers less fortunate than him. his sisters, mostly. and sitting ducks. hypotheticals were easier to stomach. sure, they could be dangerous (the inflammatory what-ifs of a better life). but they were more-or-less safe when applied to strangers, whose lives simply did not apply to him at all.

like stella's, for example.

a stalk of straw digs uncomfortably into his thigh. he shifts to avoid it and, when that doesn't work, resigns himself to endurance.

' sorry, i mean—do you think you would like it here? ah, working. and eating this every day. ' does he really think they eat cotton candy every day? ' would you do it? ' if everything were different and nothing were as it is? he stares at his open palms.

WHEN CHOSO CRIES, HE DOES NOT THINK ABOUT FEELING SHAME OR MAKING HIMSELF STOP. He does not get angry; he does not berate himself.

However, when his happens, as it often does, he has always been alone. Now, although the amount of time he's been spending with Yuki has been ultimately—pleasant? (Pleasant would be insufficient, but overwhelmed with despair as he currently is, he cannot think of anything more accurate or outright flattering.) — he does not always know how to incorporate her into his emotional displays.

She is patient. Accepting. Enduring. These are things he can admire about her from a distance or up close, like they presently are.

These are also things that are so beautiful that they worsen his sobbing.

<<Joy?>>

What does joy have to do with what he's feeling right now?

All the same, he knows the answer instantly. He steadies his breathing before he says it. When he looks at her, he can barely see her—not as well as he would like to.

what he needs is a three-ply tissue.

she presses one into his palm. despite the tremors she can see and feel passing through him, he remains cool to the touch. she suspects that this is because choso’s blood flows to his heart and pools in his chest. hemorrhages, sometimes, in the form of tears and sobs. and so there’s none left over for his pale skin or often-rigid limbs.

' mm. ' fondness melts into something soft down her throat. she smiles a smile of her own, slight and rounded, because smiles are contagious—and when choso talks about yuji, he does it in a way that fills the room. there’s no choice but to enter the memory with him, experience that single joy firsthand.

sick of his own face, sick of his skin, he crawls out of himself. an independent original character, by lea.