#ex-huma

sirat doesn’t look away, brown eyes staying completely focused on the other. she barely shifts, not even when the words land like stone in water, drowning slowly. hwa-rim’s voice doesn’t shake, but sirat hears what’s beneath it. the kind of grief only women like them carry, passed down like heirlooms no one wanted. the wind presses against her veil but it doesn’t move, silent as sirat stands still as bone. [ she has heard those words before, not from hwa-rim, but from her mother’s hands. in the way they trembled over prayer beads. in the silence after every unanswered plea. they say the gods choose carefully. sirat has never believed that. she thinks the gods choose what hurts best. ]

her thumb brushes the hilt of her blade, worn smooth from years of holding it too tightly. she speaks only once the silence grows thick as blood between them, the divine & the frozen. ❝ — you’re not wrong. ❞ her voice is low, but not gentle : more like something sacred that’s lost its warmth. a fire dying, its last emblem burning away smoke. ❝ you’re just not ready to say it out loud. but i’ve said it. i still wake up saying it. ❞ they both stand between two worlds: one built of ritual and guilt passed from generation to generation, the other of science and glass so fragile the sirat wonders how hwa-rim hasn't cut herself on the shards. neither worlds are kind. neither worlds are clean. neither of them wear bandages. sirat doesn’t reach out, but she steps closer.

‟ @ex-huma, … LEE HWA-RIM   ›   𝗆𝗒𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗅𝗈𝗀𝗂𝗓𝖾𝖽: “        i wouldn't know what to do on a date.        ” / always accepting !

dae looked at her like someone watching the sea make a new shape of itself— gentle, curious, a little reverent. his fingers, long and paint-flecked, drifted idle along the edge of the table they sat at, mapping invisible patterns. the café around them had long since gone quiet, the world outside wet with the sheen of recent rain, lamplight puddling like golden ghosts in the gutter. “        a date,        ” he echoed, the word tasting strange in his mouth— like fruit picked too late in the season, sweet but softened by time. he tilted his head, and a loose strand of ink-dark hair slid down his cheek. there was something almost amused in his voice, though not unkind. “    neither would i.        ” and it was true— because no one taught him how. not after the fall. not after the centuries folded themselves into his bones and he forgot how to walk beside another without leaving ash in their footprints.

“        i think once,        ” he said, voice dropping like dusk, “        someone tried to take me to a market in venice. it was winter. i remember red glass and the smell of burnt sugar. she asked me to hold her hand.        ” a beat. a blink. he exhaled, soft as a prayer. “        i ran.        ” his gaze drifted, slow and faraway, like it did sometimes— toward the places only he could see, or remember. “        dates, i think, are meant to be small things,        ” he murmured. “        shared space. moments folded like origami between two people. a stolen flower. bread torn in half. the ache of wanting to know someone without bruising them in the process.        ” he looked at her again. and this time, there was something quieter in the way he watched her. not pity. not sadness. just— understanding. recognition, like the echo of a voice across water.

‟ @ex-huma, … LEE HWA-RIM   ›   𝗆𝗒𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗅𝗈𝗀𝗂𝗓𝖾𝖽: “        you're going to leave me, aren't you?        ” / always accepting !

the sea had pulled itself quiet. no wind, no gull, no human sound— only the steady hush of the tide breathing in its sleep. around them, the world had dimmed like a stage just before the lights go out, when the last breath hangs in the throat of time, waiting. dae did not answer at first. he stood with his back half-turned, the salt-slick wind brushing against the hem of his coat like a ghost that barely remembered how to be gentle. his hands were deep in his pockets, not out of cold, but to keep from trembling. not from fear — he didn’t think he feared much anymore — but from the unbearable weight of her voice. how it folded, like a petal crumpling inward. you’re going to leave me, aren’t you? the words echoed. not just in his ears, but in the marrow. in the hollow of each rib, where ancient silence had long made a home. dae closed his eyes.

if he answered honestly, the sky might break open. if he lied, she would still know. so instead, he said this— softly, with the care of someone laying down a body that never got to rest: “        i always do.        ” his voice was the sound of something once bright, dimmed now by years and myth and regret. a voice not made for the century it lived in. “        not because i want to,        ” he added, slower now, each word peeled from the bone, “        but because i’m not made to stay.        ” he turned toward her then, barely, just enough to let the light catch the sorrow clinging to his lashes. not quite tears. he didn’t cry much anymore. not really. but there was something in the way his mouth didn’t quite close all the way. something in the way he looked at her like she was a painting he knew he’d ruin if he touched it too long. “      you make me want to stay. that’s the cruelty of it.        ”