julle

She took her far enough, and Y/n found herself in Osaka, Japan, and instantly brewed hatred for the new place. She missed her father, she missed her burning home because even if they left, Y/n’s world was still on fire. Nowhere was safe, so why take her somewhere foreign? 

The girl balled up her fists, clutching the sweater of her uniform. She brought one fist up and sniffled as she rubbed away the few tears in her eyes.

She didn’t want to go any further. Everything was falling apart, and she was terrified that if she took a step, she would fall and end up under all those ruins, too. Her heart was pounding. The language was foreign (although she knew it), the people were foreign, and the country wasn’t home, nor was the apartment where she stayed with her mother. Y/n’s mother didn’t feel like home anymore.

It was cold. Y/n always found the tips of her fingers tingling from how cold they felt, there was always an ache in her throat, and her body felt sticky from how much it longed for an embrace. No one saw her though, the eight-year-old girl felt even more invincible now, those few people who had seen her were all gone. Her mother wasn’t the same, her father, despite his coldness was still a man whose embrace she longed for, he was and always would be her father. She hated both of them but loved them even more. 

All Y/n could do was find faults in her mother and cling to her absent father because her mother took her away from him. 

Another sniffle followed and the ache in her throat made it hard to hold back. She had always been crying, from her first day at preschool to her first day at elementary school to what would now be her first day at 4th grade. Y/n had always cried whenever she had to be away from her parents. She hated leaving their side, now however, she didn’t see her father and barely experienced her mother’s touch. She had lost her comfort, no matter how much she always wanted to get away from them, she always carved their love and the security of their comfort more. Who would love her if not them?

The little girl was blue, deprived of all the oxygen she needed, she was being starved.

It had been two months, and the second she stopped crying in class they moved the girl up a year. She didn’t want to, but her mother did what she wanted and not what Y/n wanted because if Y/n got what she wanted she would be back home in Seoul with her cold (yet somehow warm) father and a mother who wasn’t cold as ice. 

She felt odd, and she felt how they glanced her way. Y/n longed, but no one seemed to understand that all she wanted and needed was comfort as she was seated at the back of the class. No one seemed to notice the blue hue on her skin, the trembling in her body, or the fear of returning to a home even emptier than it was now, without a father or mother. How did she let them know that she was terrified of staying away from her parents, fearing they would leave her? 

It was her first day with, who used to be her upperclassmen, new classmates and she had been feeling sick the whole day. The girl didn’t dare to move once the teacher left and everyone was getting up to mess around or to eat with friends.

Y/n had no clue how to make friends, approach someone, talk to someone, or simply say that she wanted to be included. She didn’t know how to stop feeling lonely or alone and stop longing as she watched everyone else have what she always had wanted; the other kids make friends, the kids with their parents, the way the girls would get carried by their fathers and hugged by their mothers. Something heavy would always be on her chest when she watched the rest from outside. How did she get in? How did she get loved?

It had been the same at home, but today it gave her an even bigger reason to cry. Both her balled-up fists pressed against her eyes, her jaw clenched to block out the noise as it started to buzz like a static TV in her head instead. Her sniffles were either drowned out or grew louder, but it wasn’t anything she was aware of. 

Y/n was far from aware of the commotion around her, the stares, the mocking, the laughing, the pity, everything but what she needed. Nothing to suffice the yearning within her. 

That was until a paper pressed against her elbow, making her peek out from behind her wet fists. She only looked at the paper, not daring to look up at the person, her breaths shuddered as she read the words ‘Crybaby’, she could only wipe away her tears as she continued to look down, seeing more feet approach her, surrounding her desk. Y/n continued to stare as they took turns writing words on the paper, letting her tears stain her cheeks and drop down to the desk whenever she didn’t wipe them.

‘Mummy’s girl’

‘Baby’

‘Big baby’

‘Pushover’

‘Scaredy-cat’

‘Dummy’

Her shoulders shook, and her whole body did with each hiccup. She was always too scared to do anything to protect herself, to stand up for herself. Y/n would protect anyone. She always stood up for the few friends she had made back home but didn’t know how to protect her heart. Her eyes kept looking at the paper that passed around, watching the multiple times her name was written, but misspelled in Hangul each time. 

It suddenly got silent, the classroom was occupied by the eight-year-old girl’s snivels and whimpers as she kept wiping her eyes with shaky hands. The sleeves of her uniform were soaked, her nose runny, her eyes sore, and her lips trembled as she jutted her lower one. That anxious feeling Y/n had lived with all her life subsided for a second while the murmurs of her classmates barely reached her ears after what was written on the paper.

‘Suki’

Y/n looked up for the first time, sucking in her lower lip to stop the trembling as she bit down on it. Y/n’s dewy eyes which trembled found a pair that were half crescents from the smile, the girl’s face took on colour, getting shades of the sakura season during the early April month of when school would start as she looked back at Y/n. 

“You idiot,” “You’re no fun,” “Who cares about the crybaby?” “Stupid,” they murmured, pushing the girl around who instead of crying the way Y/n would do, laughed. It was odd, Y/n found her odd, watching her smile and scurry away and behind Y/n’s chair after getting hit on the head with the paper as the word she had written made everyone scatter, leaving the two alone. 

She sniffled another time and wiped away her tears, hoping it would be the last time because her eyes were starting to hurt. The material of her uniform was too rough for her soft skin and the tears too salty. 

“I don’t mind you being a crybaby,” her voice was joyous and welcoming. She sounded happy as if she didn’t mind being pushed around, called all those things that always made Y/n tear up, sensitive to any harsh or mocking tone or any negative word. 

Her hand landed on Y/n’s shoulder, squeezing it while walking to her side, bending down to look at the younger girl’s face. She tilted her head, looking up at Y/n who was still staring down, but now at the girl who smiled at her. 

Y/n’s deer-like eyes timidly watched her every movement, observing her as if waiting for her to do something bad when her hand reached into the pocket of her uniform blazer. The girl pulled out her hand and with it a pack of pocky as she stood up straight and put (slammed) them on Y/n’s desk, with the younger’s gaze following her. 

“Suki desu,” she spoke before scurrying away to her spot as the teacher arrived. 

She had been standing in the weather that was turning cold, it was 3:30 am by now and she couldn’t bring herself to sit still in the car. The girl had been jittery and she couldn’t tell if it was from excitement or fear after arriving at the spot that was, she assumed, close to where Kazuha lived. 

She had always feared something, but she couldn’t help but fear that maybe it wouldn’t be the same. What if it would all be different after four years of not seeing each other, of not talking, of terrifying silence that had left the girl’s head in a constant buzzing of doubts? Her hands dug deeper into her pockets, her fingertips tingling from how cold they were, the fear not subsiding. Y/n feared that she would be deprived of it again, that someone she loved would be cold, and that all she could do was yearn for their warmth like she had done all her childhood. What if she wouldn’t be loved again? Could love die?

What was she supposed to do if everything had changed between them after all these years? Would she have to leave just to keep the old image of what their friendship used to be? 

It was scary to think that perhaps she would end up with someone she should leave but never would be able to. She knew that she felt too much for the girl to let go of her if everything was different now if Kazuha was different. Y/n knew she wouldn’t leave her, she would always cling to what she used to know because there was hope for it to come back to normal, however, she couldn’t know if Kazuha would do the same. What if she would leave Y/n at the pit of that ocean to be deprived once again?

She blinked her eyes which were dry from the cold air (creating tears) that blew in her face, staring down at her feet as she leaned against her car, the hoodie didn’t keep her warm, nothing did, but there was a little comfort in it being Minji’s piece. It was also a reminder of her relationship with Minji and how that same fear was constantly following her, how even when she was in her girlfriend's arms, she couldn’t relax but instead fear and dread the moment she would leave wether for a day or permanently. 

Y/n’s fists clenched the material as her head raced, and so did her heart, it made her feel sick, it was overwhelming as she thought about so many things, but had no clue how to sort them out. She had no clue where to even start to fix anything. She was doing her best, she hoped Minji realised that she was, that she was willing to give up everything for her happiness just so Minji wouldn’t leave. All she wanted was to love Minji, to be there for her, and to simply be wanted by her. 

But she had always asked for too much, hadn’t she? The same way she would always be too much and suddenly the world started to crash around her because she was left alone with her thoughts for too long. At some point, Minji wouldn’t need or want her, she’d see her the same way everyone else did, and she’d see her as Kim Y/n. As long as she could see her happy, it was fine. She took a deep breath to stop the melancholy from consuming her, the tears were about to start welling in her eyes– 

“Suki, Suki, Suki~” The said girl’s heart raced, for a second it was because she got scared, the dolphin-like squeals of her name were followed by a body colliding into her with no caution whatsoever. 

There was a pause in Suki’s world that had started to crumble into ruins once again. It stopped, nothing was falling apart for a moment. It wasn’t that it stood still, what paused was everything bad, somehow turning into good as the failed home, those crumbling pieces were starting to get put back together like kintsugi. Something beautiful started to get created, something worth to be alive for. 

Suki had felt anxious most of her life, it stopped back in Osaka, then came back four years ago, but suddenly it disappeared again. She could feel her fingertips as they weren’t tingling or cold. It wasn’t that her other worries disappeared, they simply didn’t have a place in a space so safe and secure with love, with no fears.  

For the first time in a long time, Suki’s heart was beating in a way that reminded her of what love should feel like. It was beating with no traces of anxiety, no traces of fear about what would come next. She was able to relax in someone’s arms, not being scared of the same embrace that was comforting being the one that would squeeze too hard and leave her a mess like all the others did. 

No one had been able to rid her of that sick feeling, that sickness of being Y/n, but suddenly it felt like a bucket of warmth spilled over her cold body, taking her in an embrace that made her eyes sting because it was the warmth of a home she had longed for. The burden of being Y/n, of having to carry that person and her worries were gone and the name Suki hadn’t sounded so good from anyone else’s lips for years. 

Suki felt everything bad crumble around her, those mountains that were there to protect her, to prevent her from taking steps because she was scared of falling under ruins all disappeared as there were no ruins left. She could breathe without her throat hurting, she didn’t feel cold. 

Kazuha’s arms wrapped around her arms in a restrictive hug that instantly made her tear up and feel like a kid again. It felt like she got everything she had longed for back. It felt so overwhelmingly good that she couldn’t breathe and it broke her in a way that brought her relief, knowing that it was okay to cry in these arms, knowing these arms so well, the ones who had held her through the worst parts. She could let go. 

Suki did her best to remove her hands from her pockets and wrap her arms around Zuha’s waist, drowning in the home she had yearned for, the only one who could fulfil all that yearning the little girl in Suki still had. 

She had forgotten that one person could make her feel so many good things at once without needing to make her feel terrible at the same time, or after, someone who didn’t take it all away. She had forgotten completely that it was possible to just feel love, to just feel good, she had forgotten that there was someone who didn’t make her feel sick, someone who she didn’t make feel sick.

She closed her eyes, her face buried in Zuha’s shoulder whose face was pressed against the top of her head. Her hands balled up the material of the taller girl’s shirt as she took a deep breath before realising a long shaky one filled with tears before it cracked and she cried while being held on to, not needing to be the one who did all the holding.

Suki was used to crying, but she wasn’t used to tears of relief, love and happiness, that was all she could feel at the moment when Zuha, who was her home, held her, their bodies pressed close, the closest they had been in years, it made her chest burn in the best way possible. Their staggered breaths and snivels drowned out the busy city, the roaring of engines, the buzzing of the world moving, the wind blowing, and anyone else existing. 

They had been miles apart, oceans away, separated by land, they had been filled with a longing that planted itself and grew a hole in them, but Suki could feel her heart beating in a way that healed that hole as, despite everything, they were in each other’s arms. Somewhere in those voids of lost hope, they managed to hold onto threads of what they used to have which was enough to still believe that nothing could get in the way of finding back home. 

It had been a while since she felt relief after stepping past a door to a supposed home. 

Soon it was followed by a snort and Suki’s cries broke as a tearful giggle escaped her lips, pressing her face into Zuha’s shoulder and sighing. “You’re so stupid for crying, Suki” “I hate you, Zuha,” the older girl pulled back and Suki sniffled as she looked up at Zuha who held onto her shoulders with a smile and tears brimming her eyes. “I don’t mind you crying though,” she mumbled and it prickled in her stomach at those words. 

Suki’s eyes watered more as she looked Zuha in the eye, it spread through her chest like a beautiful garden of flowers at the love she felt, she had always felt the safest looking into those eyes. It painfully grew throughout her body, the thorns gripping her heart, tying themselves around her limbs and constricting her lungs until it all snapped and sprouted gentle petals inside her instead, coming with a relief of being free; it was how Zuha had managed to make her feel.

Free of everything that had been killing her from the inside. 

“Are you wearing a flannel?” Suki questioned, smiling through the overwhelmingly good tears as she tugged onto the flannel Zuha was wearing. The same old smile Suki was so familiar with on her lips, those safe eyes crescent moons. Zuha was still the same girl she met when they were kids and grew up with as she hummed, proudly nodding her head, her dark hair gently moving whenever the wind blew, drying the tears that had fallen. The cold night made the warm moment more memorable. 

“God, you’re such a lesbian,” Zuha’s hands dropped at those words and gripped onto Y/n’s, squeezing them, as if trying to feel if this was real or a daydream. “And you still cosplay a straight girl,” Kazuha laughed while Suki could never bother trying to get rid of her smile as she freed her hand and delivered a jab to the latter's stomach who hugged her once again after. She could feel Zuha relax as she hugged her, heaving a breath that let out all the heavy burdens and fears, everything difficult seemed to leave. 

They didn’t have to say more, they didn’t need any reassurance to know that nothing had changed between them after all these years.

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a/n; idk i felt like this chapter was lowkey mid but also not so yeah.