heartstop.
@paxromi summer evening on a hilltopÂ
there was a time when yuro would have pulled his still beating heart from his chest if romi had so much as suggested it. though diminutive and slight, slender, delicate, ethereal, there was a sense of steel to her. an incredible strength of spirit and heart. and perhaps unsurprisingly, giving and giving of himself had made him a fool, pathetic, a weakling with nothing left to offer. so was it such a surprise that in the end it had all crumbled and fallen apart?Â
objectively, romi is the most beautiful woman in the town. this is yuro’s truest belief. that by the grace of her beauty she had avoided the fullest stigmatization her family’s crimes might have visited on her. he would have spirited her away from all of that if he could have done so. he would have taken her to the hotel and given her rooms and showed her to tend the gardens he loved so dearly.Â
he would have done anything for her. but romi, a girl like that, she can and will do all things for herself, by herself, with a quiet strength that doesn’t think to ask a stupid boy with whispers in his ears for that help. in the end he’d been obsessed, overbearing, pathetic. he knows it. he knows that’s why she slowly faded out on him, like a ghost, like the fog disappearing as the sunlight hits.Â
but he still chases after her, still stumbles her way. his only chance with her had been because they were, both of them, such outcasts. isolated by the nature of the town and the cruel judgments of it’s people.so when he finds her on the hillside he crosses the ridge to get to her, settles down beside her on the plush, dry grass. “the monsoons are late this year,” he tells her, as if he’s just noticed, hesitating as he takes a glance to the side, gaze flickering over the shining ivory between her fingers. “what’s that?” he questions, but as soon as he has done so he’s gently taking it from her grip. his thumb smooths across the dome, smooth and white. “a bird skull?” he notes, quizzically, glancing over at her. “it must have been out here all summer, to be this clean.” he hands it back to her carefully, lest he crumble the brittle material. “going to make a necklace?” he half-jokes, brow lifting upwards, as if perhaps to smooth over the fact that they were once something they now are not.Â
