Mahika and Amoli can't stand each other, but that's not the only thing they have in common.
Mahika treats Amoli like she's childish. Amoli thinks Mahika is a stuck-up prude. But Mahika's best friend and Amoli's brother are getting married, so they c...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
˗ˏˋ tiny pleas and lullabies'ˎ˗
➷
Rubbing her index finger on her already reddening eye, Mahika rolls her shoulders for what she believes is the fifteenth time in the past hour. The back of her eyelids as well as the back of her brain, both have started to burn from continuously looking at house interior structures.
The exhaustion from the vacation is finally catching up to her, and the thought that she's going back to college in less than two days makes her stomach fill with dread. Letting loose for a little while has gotten her used to the lifestyle—it's always been something Mahika finds herself in awe of, the way it's so quick to get off track even if you've been living a certain way for years and years.
When she stretches her arms above her head and looks around the mess of her room, her eyes fall on her open but yet to be emptied suitcase, as if mocking her how she's drowning in work after taking it too easy. The fact that she has a choice in the matter just makes the situation more ridiculous, considering her coworkers and her boss had both emphasized that she could take her time with everything.
That's simply not who she is, though. Besides, this is something she oddly finds solace in. Overworking might have started as an escape for her; a coping mechanism, perhaps. But now it's the only way of living that she knows. And old habits die hard, after all.
At least this time, unlike so many other times, she had traded her contact lenses for her glasses hours ago, or she would be miserably trying to find one (or probably both) of her lenses behind her lids because of how much she has been rubbing at her eyes.
Mahika leans back in her seat and cracks her knuckles—a habit that both her mother and her friends have clicked their tongue at her for multiple times—staring at the screen in disdain. And it's as if the universe takes pity on her state for once: unruly hair sitting atop her head in some vague semblance of a bun, eyes ringed red, shoulders slumped, because a familiar ringing, immediately followed by a dark box appears in the middle of her work screen.
Mahika picks up the Skype call even before her brain fully registers the name, a smile that looks like a mixture of relief and longing pulling the corners of her lips further away from each other.
It doesn't stay for very long, though. And the universe was definitely not taking pity on her. If anything, now that her eyes catch sight of the addition to her usual friend circle, her eyes go embarrassingly wide.
Amoli is sitting beside Naina, looking nothing short of a dream with hair that was definitely not this short the last time Mahika saw her. Unlike before, when Amoli was insecure about leaving it open because it was supposedly very hard to tame, now it barely brushes her shoulder.
With a hitch in her breath, Mahika realizes that it makes her cheeks and her dark, wide eyes seem... softer.
