Fate. A predetermined supernatural power. The will of the universe. Fate is order. It writes, and rewrites, gives and takes. It spins vibrant red strings that flow into the world and connect people who are destined to meet, to love, to share a story...
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"Ren," I whisper, and the instant I hear his name on my lips, a thousand newer memories flood into my brain. A thousand different sensations are triggered in my body, and I realise that I haven't thought about him at all today. His gruff voice, his signature scowl, his eyes that change emotions as if they were clothes, his chapped lips, his calloused hands...
He's so familiar to me; everything he makes me feel and remember being things I've felt and remembered over and over. Worrying about Ren has become such a normal part of my day that remembering him now feels...it feels like coming home.
Rubi moves out of the way, and slowly, I walk into the classroom, finding Ren with his head down on his desk by the window. As I inch towards him, I feel a thin swirl of a faraway sadness rise in my stomach. Maybe he's having a bad dream. Ren's presence to me has always felt like that of a distant, flickering bonfire. Raging one second, ebbing the next. Crackling and smoky. Warm.
I'm tired, and I'm not strong enough yet. I know I'm not strong enough yet, and that's the excuse I use when I finally give in to temptation and crouch before him. It's almost completely dark outside and I can't see his face very well, but I'm close enough to hear the breaths he takes, soft and steady.
Lying on the desk beside him is a thin notebook. Ren is worse at taking notes than he is at teaching, and his handwriting, which has no rhyme or rhythm whatsoever, isn't doing him any favours. These notes are useless to me, and I know he probably only made them to look good for my sister. Even so, I feel a pinch in my chest when I picture him hunched over with the book in his hands, eyes furrowed with concentration, hands moving with furious strikes, all while thinking of me.
Warily, I touch the top of his unmoving hand, and a silence washes over me, soothing my nerves. It's the sort of silence that you're left with when you return to your room after a long but good day. The last of the twirling discomfort reflecting Ren's troubles dissolves into nothingness inside me when we come into contact.
As if to say everything is going to be okay now that we're close enough to touch. I lean into the feeling and close my eyes.
Ren groans quietly and starts to shift in his sleep when I slip my fingers around his, and suddenly, I remember the bile in his eyes that had been directed at me the other day when I called his name on the track field. I flinch away, and my hand accidentally rams into the chair leg beside me, sending a metallic ring humming through the room.
Keep your distance, I remind myself as I stand up, trying to even out my breathing. He doesn't like you.
He's awake. For an endless second, I nervously stare down into his eyes, glinting in the darkness. Then, "Where the fuck have you been?"
"I..." I swallow, unable to shake the feeling that I've done something wrong. "Today is my grandmother's death anniversary," I manage. "We rode out to the countryside to pay our respects to her memorial."
