FACE THE SHADOW || SVT 14TH MEMBER

𝟬𝟬𝟱

05.

THE TANGIBILITY OF PEOPLE

In which Achlys, for Junhui, would do anything.

────────────────────────

September 6, 2019

SEPTEMBER USUALLY SNEAKS up and all of a sudden it's autumn. August's violent pushes towards growth are orphaned and tucked into corners of sweatshirt pockets to corrode away before the month arrives again, smouldering in the flames of red, orange and yellow leaves. Summer dissolves in your mouth like sweet, sweet merengue and, then, you forget how it tasted like and are left to wait until another year rolls by, unnoticed.

With September left August's challenges and battles.

It hadn't become noticeable yet (August liked to scape without leaving traces, and let September settle sneakily, just to preserve the penury of its challenges a little longer) but Achlys found the first hints of the new month when she found Junhui alone, again sat in the balcony of the dorms.

It was strange to see him there, as if a mirror image of that afternoon, after spending a month acting like strangers in private. In retrospect, Achlys accepted she had acted out of fear and didn't know how to fix the situation anymore— she didn't despise failure (quite in the contrary, she feared it), and couldn't fathom what to do.

With heavy steps — she knew she had taken the wrong decision on August, hurting the person she genuinely cared about, but she tried to console herself, saying that she had protected him from a bigger remorse — she neared the terrace. When she stood in the doorway, aware of Junhui knowing she was there too, she took a second before closing the doors and sitting beside him. The only apparent difference between the first of August and the first of September was that, in Achlys' eyes, Junhui's smile was shallow.

He made a senseless remark on the weather — it's colder — and she searched for words. In its place, she settled for questions. Love hides in them; you cannot ask anything without giving your worry away.

"How was your day?"

I hope it was good.

"Have you eaten?"

I hope for you to stay healthy.

"Do you like this colour?"

I hope to enrobe you in everything that makes you smile.

Junhui's smile fell for a last time before Achlys had the courage to say what she wanted.

"I'm sorry."

Achlys had always had a strange relationship with physical touch. She despised it (it had been what she lacked during her childhood, what she craved from his father and even her loving Meili), and was disgusted at the prospect of knowing that she was desperate to be loved, for her wrists to be held (with care, with care) and her palm to be kissed, and feel the warmth of someone she knows does wants her like she wants them.

She felt like she had wronged herself, breaking her own heart in the process, but had broken Junhui much more.

Still, as she saw him avert his eyes and how his back shook with a movement she didn't want to place, she found herself pulling him into her arms and never letting him go.

Junhui didn't know how to hold on and for how long to a memory, of his younger self, sat haphazardly in his bedroom floor, phone discarded, as he realised he had fallen irrevocably in love; which to decide, the pain of remembering or the pain of letting go? Frustration had been the most prominent feeling that month, not knowing how to do what he wanted to do. Time repeating itself, having both of them sat again in the balcony, made his eyes burn and chest shake.