#pheni

So, Phen isn’t much in the picture recently though will be a bit, but! She’s the daughter of the Prime’s personal tailor, an ambitious young seamstress who bascially runs the boutique for the avarage people, while her mother focuses on the clan stuff. At least that’s what parents think, but Pheni did catch Kil’s attention and ended up entangled in the emotional turmoil that is him, lol.

Their relationship is passionate, which is a nice base since they met, but Pheni is a relationship and family person at heart. She’s not opposed of not labeling anything until they’re sure or seem like they can work together well, but they’re in each others life for a considerable amount of time now. She loves Kil’s passion for everything, his good spirit and doer attitude. She admires him for being able to learn seemingly anything with ease and gain exceptional proficency. But her feelings and patience are tested time after time when the rest of Kil shows too: when his avoidant nature comes out as problems arise between them and he bolts, or when she brings up to settle finally, or talk through what they are, and what future they want and he just seems incapable of committing. He’s miserable in that state, she can see it, but that’s only an excuse for so long.

The sun’s first peach-coloured kiss tried to wake the drowsy city, attempting to pour life into Kil’s fingers that gripped the stirring wheel. He kept rubbing at the soft scar on his brow, elbow sitting stiffly on the window frame. The touch conjured a memory in his mind; of a warm yellow summer with reckless plans and a passion oh so sweet on the tongue. The summer when he first met Pheni. 

Kil brought his fingers to his lips, pushing them deep into the tender skin. 

“Will he be there?” he rasped, voice strained like the very first words uttered into the world. It wasn’t from a lump, or a bouquet of welled-up tears — no, it wasn’t the freshly cut wound inside. All that, he buried in the graveyard in his heart, far down so nothing would be able to dig it up. No, it wasn’t — couldn’t be from that. It was the strain of lack of use, rather. The consequence of not saying a word long enough to forget your vocal cord’s existence. 

Pheni gently turned her head to him, adjusting her purse in her lap. 

“No, he’s on an ambassador duty outside the country.” She quieted, keeping her eyes on Kil’s profile. He didn’t turn to her. “I told him not to come.” 

A bittersweet half-smile tugged his lips upward, while he turned to the next street. The sun was rising, yet his skin remained cold under the warming breeze that sneaked inside the automobile. 

“I wouldn’t do anything to him.” 

The lie scorched his throat like the strongest mejo. He was plagued by the nauseating rage inside his gut that urged him to do unspeakable things to him. His mind was full of possibilities. He would have done everything to him — and yet. Kil rubbed at his brow to the point of irritation on his skin. He thought and desired all that, but both knew he wouldn’t have lifted a finger should the opportunity arise. Despite the circumstances, respect wasn’t one that Kil would have scattered away. Not even in times like this. 

Pheni averted her gaze, looking at the brightening road ahead. “I don’t fear for him,” she said, and Kil closed his eyes for a single second. They were close as always, the proximity nothing but painstakingly familiar in the automobile. Now, however, there were no more interlocking fingers, nor palms on her tights just to feel her presence. He used to feel if he didn’t touch her; if he didn’t make sure she was real and there, she would fly far away. They used to have an air around them when they were on the road, a silent bubble only they could fill in with unspoken words. 

A bubble that did not disappear, but morphed into a container of everything Kil wanted to shove at, tear at, drench in gasoline and set alight. The lingering implication of Pheni’s sentence made his knuckles whiten over the steering wheel. 

He kept his mouth tightly shut. The boutique Pheni owned crawled into his periphery as they passed it. The soft colours, the smell of fresh flowers and perfume, the shuffling of fabric used to make the place lively, a lovely invitation through the big windows. The once vibrant letters echoed faintly on the ageing wood above, the memory of a time that left nothing behind except the dark windows and a silent shell. 

Kil rolled back his shoulder under the wordless accusations that he couldn’t truly keep inside. He ached to look at her, to find that his sight tricked him and the woman who sat beside him was still that warm fire that charmed him, the blazing ambition that fed both of their growth, the bright love that pushed him in the dirt, defeated. He ached to look at her, to see all that, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He knew if he did, all he would see was a woman whose fire shied away from him, leaving him cold and alone. Whose face was imprinted in his mind, and now pleaded to be forgotten, worn by a stranger. Whose…

Kil’s lips burned under his fingers’s pressure on them. His own words rang in his ears, the frail, hoarse voice still foreign in his throat. 

“You knew,” he croaked to Pheni, clutching at her dress as his head sank into her lap. “You knew what it meant to be with me.”

“I know. I thought… I hoped I knew.” 

She kept her palm on his head but did not run her fingers through his hair anymore. There was no consolation, or soothing — there was only the ashes of their life together blown free in the wind. Kil clutched at her dress harder, his soft trembling shaking his fingers around the fabric. He knew he couldn’t keep her there if she wished to leave. If she wished to live a life without the confines of his clan. He promised he wouldn’t. 

Yet, there he was, bruising his knees on the hardwood, weeping. “Please.” 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and a crack like a splitting eggshell rippled through those two words. 

Kil parked on the deserted sidewalk that led to the airport. He swallowed back all his words, all his thoughts. He still didn’t look at Pheni, letting his head lower under the weight of their memories. He should have listened to Fang; she warned him since he was a boy: “No one should be brought into this kinda life from outside, but if they are, you can’t expect them to stick around. Be prepared to let them go, and hope they’ll let you down gently.” 

The sun was almost fully in its place, bringing its golden shine that still couldn’t mould what was broken. Kil kept his breathing even but did not look up. He closed his eyes for a moment, then stepped out of the automobile, legs stiff and heavy. Dragging his feet onward, he packed out of the back, gently placing the luggage down. Pheni’s lovely legs walked into his sight, as he put down the last of her things. Her steps never gave sound, sparing Kil from memorising the sound of her leaving. 

He buried his itching hands in his pocket, turning towards the airport. There were a million words on his tongue, a hundred pleas clawing at his throat, but he didn’t say any of it. He simply swallowed. “Do you need help to bring them in?” 

“I’ll manage, thank you.” He could hear her small smile in her tone, a warm little curve he didn’t want to see. “I’m going, then.” 

Kil did not nod, nor look. He lowered his head, breathing. His limbs tensed as if he was falling, too fast and too slow at the same time. There was no saying how to do this right. And so he didn’t. 

Pheni stepped closer softly, a tender touch finding Kil’s face. He leaned into it, not having in him to pull away. Her skin hurt over his for the first time, but he didn’t mind — he didn’t care. She gently leaned into his view, the sight of her all too familiar face cracking his chest open. The eyes that would love like none stared at him with the same sorrow he couldn’t scrape out of his bones for a while now. She smiled that small smile, and leaned onto his lip for one last time. It was a peck at the very edge of them, but he leaned into that too. Like a lick of fresh air to the drowning, Kil absorbed the touch of her gentle lips, debating if he should forget or treasure it forever. His hands fell out of his pocket, and he reached for her waist, then stopped at once. Limp, he kept his arms beside his torso, fingers curling into his palm. 

Carefully, Pheni pulled away eventually. She looked at him as a mirror, all and everything written on her face at last. And she said what he didn’t have the strength to.