| Fan Fiction |
by heartsong
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After I’d told my mum in a quiet, calm voice that I wouldn’t send Chun home, she’d left me alone in my room. Not moments later, Chun had knocked my door and asked to be let in.
I did so. He pulled me into a tight embrace and thanked me over and over again for letting him meet Ariel. I wanted to cry. I could feel the tears growing in the well beneath my eyes, but I refused to give in to the action I knew would make me lose control. Instead I stiffly disengaged him from myself and took a step back, asking him to leave in the calmest voice I could muster.
I don’t think he noticed if anything was wrong.
I shut my door behind him and sank, disheartened, onto the carpet. I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t even have the energy to cry anymore. He was officially dating my sister; he’d told me so just moments ago. Initially I thought my heart couldn’t be in any worse state. But I was wrong.
Hebe’d just texted; reminding me of our Prom Night – which was in a few days’ time. The good thing was: I’d be free to go wherever I pleased, anywhere, away from here. Hebe promised to come along no matter where I went. The bad thing was: I’d have to tell him, and then he’d ask me why. I knew he would, but I didn’t know what to tell him.
It was dark, really dark out. Mum had decided not to install any lights on the coast and I heard the car’s engine as it pulled out of our driveway – this was how I knew Dad had agreed to send them both back to Chun’s house.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.
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As I sat myself in the back of the car, holding the hands of the one I loved, I felt what one could truly call bliss. There was, honestly, no better sensation than the one I was having now. I would tell her jokes and she would giggle before the punch lines even came, her laughter washing in soothing waves over my love-fuddled brain. Her skin felt like silk every time I brushed my fingers over her cheeks or held her hands.
Her touch was fire on my skin, yet ice against my hands. I held her close to me as her Father looked into the rearview mirror and chuckled.
I couldn’t find a word, or a phrase to describe how my heart fluttered against my rib cage every time she spoke a word. I couldn’t tell why, either. I couldn’t find a sentence that truly described what I was feeling at this very moment. The closest phrase to it would be “head over heels”, but even that was not accurate enough for me.
“Chun,” she called softly, “Chun?”
I turned to her and let her words, her voice wash over my in dappled shades of gold. This was my angel.
That night I slept better than any other night I had had ever since I moved into the dormitory.
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Chun and I took the same course in our University. We sat side by side at our desks in Art, studying about Picasso and what-not’s.
Before long I was dozing off to sleep. I usually never dozed off in Art class, because Chun and I usually spent time making fun of the old artists. We’d talk about how Van Gogh chopped off his own right ear; and stuff like that.
I’d stopped talking to him recently, after all he could talk about in class was Ariel, Ariel, and Ariel.
I’d simply smiled and looked away. From my vantage point I could see her name all over in his notebook for art class. Beside that I saw an entire page filled with sketchy outlines. I realised, my heart dropping from my chest, that it was Ariel.
My eye-lids were drooping shut, and I could feel the warm, cozy haze of comfort and sleep wept tears over my already unraveled brain.
Our professor’s voice swept over me in droning waves, like flies, and I lazily lifted a hand to sweep the imaginary flies away. Chun caught my hand and lowered it, coming closer to whisper in my ear. I do not know what it was, but I know I heard my sister’s name. I scrunched my face, too tired to bother with a façade, and turned my face away from him.
I felt my heart start to beat frantically in my chest, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I lifted my head slightly so that my nose wasn’t buried in the crook of my elbow; so that I could take in fresh, cold air. Head. My head hurt; my heart hurt.
Vaguely, I heard someone call to me from a distance. Then I heard Chun’s strong, steady voice reply the person who’d asked how I was.
He lifted me in his arms and strode out of the lecture hall, which was steadily becoming too cold for me to handle.
I shivered slightly and snuggled closer to the warm chest enclosed in a layer of fabric. I pressed my parted lips to the cloth as though, if I drank in his scent; if I swallowed it whole, I might be able to own him again.
-
I woke up in a soft bed with the quilts over me, a familiar scent hanging over me and wrapping me in a cocoon, a haze.
I forced my way out of it, a butterfly stretching its wings in the dark; learning to find its own strength.
It was dark already, and I wasn’t home. What had happened?
Someone beside me stirred, and then I turned to see his face staring into mine.
“Ella, are you alright?”
I nodded, unable to speak – partly because of the thickness in my throat, partly because I did not know; did not want to know what to say.
There was nothing left to say - what could you possibly say, when someone broke your heart in such a horrible manner?
When he did not even know that he had?
What could you say to someone who had pushed a dagger in without knowing it, someone who was holding the handle and twisting the blade; carving a void large enough so that you could no longer feel anything but the emptiness, like a black hole, in your chest?
I had no idea what I would say to him after all this went through. Goodbye? I love you? Fuck you, maybe?
He pulled me to me, wrapping his arms around my shaking frame. I had had no idea how secure I would feel with him before this – this was what my sister had. This was what I had longed for the, the very first time I realised I loved him. This was my dream long before, long before Ariel had adopted it and taken it away, made her dream come true.
I sank back into the haze as the cocoon closed back over me, my wings not dry, my strength not fully acquired.
I would be a crippled butterfly, because I did not succeed to find my way out of my cocoon by myself.
More daring than I had ever been in my life, fuelled by the outrage I felt on realizing that the dream of having him – which was rightfully mine – had been stolen from me – I kissed him.
I pressed my lips to his and squeezed my eyes shut until I felt him give, just a little – until I felt his lips pulse, once, on mine.
It was not romantic, it was not pleasant, and it definitely was far from refined – but this, in all honesty, was how I felt.
Then, before his lips could move back against mine – before we both lost control, before I would get hurt more, I pulled away, crying, and apologized.
He shook his head and gently guided me to the door.
He sent me home.
We never said another word to each other – I didn’t let him.
The moment I reached, I locked the door, like always.
That was before Ariel had come banging on the door.
She demanded to know what happened, and why we were both back so late. She took the liberty to tell me that they were going steady and that I should not even try to make any advances on, as she so palpably put it, her boyfriend. I had no energy left to protest, everything was just so
Overwhelming.
I told her, in a quiet, exhausted voice, that I’d simply developed a fever and the Chun had sent me to the sick bay, where’d I slept a full three hours before I finally awoke. And then Chun had sent me home.
I had neglected to tell her that it wasn’t the sick bay I woke up in, but his dorm. I’d neglected to tell her about how he had kissed me, how his lips undulated under mine for that single hearbeat; about how, when I woke up, his arms were around me, a protective bind to ensure that I did not run off the face of the Earth.
She didn’t believe a single word I’d said, and I couldn’t be bothered to explain.
It was the first quarrel we’d had in a few years.
-
The trigger did not come until Chun came upstairs half an hour after Ariel went. I was shocked stiff at the things he asked; amusement and anger lurking in my mind at the statements he made; the lack of trust in me he had, even after three years of being best friends.
“What did you tell Ariel? You told her about that kiss, didn’t you? Why did you? How Could you?!”
I shook my head in all helplessness, feeling very much like a girl whose father was giving her a shelling for being bad in school.
He went on and on until I finally broke down, screaming back at him in all my honesty.
And vaguely, I remember asking him something about who he would pick if he had to choose between my sister and I.
He told me he’d choose Ariel over anyone else. I wept and asked him what three years of being friends meant to him, and he didn’t have an answer.
I screamed the famous derogatory word that started with F at him, and slammed the door in his face before my parents could come a-calling.
Inside, I wept.
What would one do to a forgotten star?
I remembered distantly that I’d read somewhere before – stars were smaller forms of planets that had burned out thousands of years ago, but we could only see their light now because we were so far away from them.
In the same distant state of mind, I wondered if I would be one of those stars – burning myself out trying to make Chun notice me. I wondered if – like them, he would notice me only after I was long gone, after I had become but a memory – if my love would take that long to reach his hardened heart.
What did I mean to him, now?
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Thanks for everything, you lovely people!(: