Song: Honestly just listen to anything cuz vibes be consistently changing this chapter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"There is no must to the life of a mortal, except death."
- Madeline Miller (Circe)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I woke up to the smell of lavender in a fresh breeze. When I managed to open my eyes, I was in a place that any Christian might mistake as heaven itself. Amongst the pile of white, fluffy pillows and marble walls, she laying peacefully.
Her white hair was draped across her face, and her eyeliner was smudged at the corners of her eyes, but she was still beautiful, a glowing force of power and grace anyone with a brain would kill to posses. I even had to stop my hand from reaching out to remove the hair from her view.
It's not that kind of relationship, may I remind myself.
Sat up at the edge of the bed, with a cold chill hitting my bare back from the open window, I tried to be as quiet as possible. I felt a hand grab my wrist, and I turned to see that Hoshi was up, face still down on the pillow, but a look of determination in her green eyes.
Her sheer will power was something else. Hoshi clumsily grabbed her phone, unlocked it, clicked something, then gave it to me. Her head went back into the pillow once more without a word, and I was staring at her phone app keyboard. I smiled, because we only met last night, and here she is, handing me her unlocked phone while she crashes.
Adding my number felt like an obligation that I was more than willing to take. I put it in, made my contact name "Doll", as she referred to me last night, and quickly took a selfie with her sleeping face in the background for my contact photo. That is when I left.
It's not like this relationship will go anywhere.
~~~
My relationship with Hoshi Takami didn't go just anywhere. It went to the fucking stars, never turning back.
Ever since that day I did the walk of shame back to the frat house, everything changed.
Hoshi would invite me to every on-campus event that she was apart of, and I would attended without a second thought. Every event ended the same; drinks, more drinks and back to her dorm- more like her room because that shit was huge. There was something dawning in the way Hoshi smiled at me, the way she spoke was enchanting, the way she touched me, as if I was the only man in the world, which is what I had felt like.
Those late nights became later the more I got to know the story behind her cover. Hoshi was like me in a lot of ways, from start to finish, it made me feel seen, though I never knew I needed the attention.
It was now June, our first summer break together. Hoshi and I had planned a spontaneous trip to Greece, because why not? We were sitting outside, the night breeze pushing the soft waves onto the shoreline, then chilling the skin of she who was in my arms, a glowing goddess underneath the moonlight. I stroked her snowing hair as she told me her story, a story of a life that sounds like a poem of death; a tragedy. She explained how her parents split when she was 4, because of the fact that her mother was a junkie. Hoshi and her brother, Keigo, then went to their father. Their father then died of cancer when she was 8. They went to an orphanage that was really abusive, so instead of her brother going to college, like he had planned, Keigo got a job at 18, then adopted Hoshi by 19.
Hoshi, like me, was raised by an older sibling. God, she is my soul mate. And I have no doubt that we were once lovers in another universe, and we may just meet in the next.
