2.1 | renegade effect (on hold until 2024)

05 | orphic

o r p h i c : mysterious and entrancing in which it transcends beyond the ordinary

***

"WELL, SHIT."

Scout Taylors looks over at the next apartment door only to see a tall boy holding a soju bottle the color of emerald. Her fingertips grow warm despite his chilly exterior. "You never told me that we were going to be neighbors."

The early morning is quiet, lingering between humming anticipation and the bleak exhaustion that only comes after the thralls of initial passion and hustle. Stars speckle the sky as if they're transforming into microscopic comets littering the universe, and they sparkle as Scout narrows her gaze. The weather predicted Christmas day to be fifty-two degrees, but she feels shivers race up and down her arms as she catches the immaculate shoelaces, the ironed shirt, the messy hair tucked underneath of a hat. It's all still unsettling—from the butterfly tremors and the thoughts of: I wish I could look at you longer.

(I wish you'd look at me back.)

Scout tilts her head. Nudges her chin forwards to the half-empty bottle of alcohol that clouds from the inside, full of humidity and the aftermaths of contact. "Hey," she starts, trying to keep her tone casual, "are you alright?" Deep inside, the questions spill out of their ceramic jar: why are you drinking, why are you upset, I can feel you hurting and god, it's not fair that you're keeping it all to yourself—

He angles his body so that half of it is positioned to center in her line of vision. Cohen Song looks a bit weary and sad, like a lost soul whose curse is to wander the streets without ever being seen. But Scout sees him. Scout sees the bit of blue glowing from his fingertips all the way to the thin string of pearls draped across his collarbones, filled of opal and sterling platinum lined with white gold.

Cohen nods once: a dismissal. It hurts more than it should. "Fine," he tells her, and she likes the sound of his voice. Likes how it's lower than she expected, full of silk and tea. It's beautiful even now. "I'm fine."

She frowns. "You're drinking."

The stars fade into nothing when they finally make eye contact, confusion swirling in Scout's system as she grapples with emotions that don't particularly belong to her. She spent the entirety of yesterday processing that she has an assassin for a soulmate, that she's being followed and that he's on this twisted mission to keep an eye on her so that she doesn't get shot to smithereens, but Scout still comes up breathless. It's too much. God, everything is just—too much. "Yeah. I am."

Scout blinks, nose wrinkling. "It's, like, seven in the morning. You smell like peach soju. It's, um. It's strong."

His fingers press into the fabric of his thin jacket. Those, too, are beautiful.

"You don't talk much, do you?" The words come out before she can stop it. "I mean, it's not like we've had long conversations before, but I don't know. Just—just figured we'd have more to say."

Talk to me.

Cohen's eyes darken. Scout just feels stuck. "Are you okay?" he breathes softly, and if she weren't straining to hear every syllable that escaped his mouth, Scout wouldn't have been able to decipher his sentence at all. The three words indent themselves inside her wrists like a heavy tattoo. Ink fills her lungs alongside murky water; the abyss nearly swallows her whole.

Scout is not okay. She's a bit scared and exhausted and impatient, a clashing of past and present, dark water slowly sinking in.

She feels as if her entire body's an open wound, and Scout doesn't know how long they can go without nearly freezing again; the bond is still weak, and it flickers faintly along with irritation underneath her skin. The air tastes of metallic secrets, of singed gold. Are you okay, are you okay, are you okay—