baby i
creunxce.
youth seemed like a lifetime ago. eunice might be young, but her bones are heavy. (no, her bones are broken, shattered, bruised, regrown and battered. her skull littered with hairline fractures, her ribs etched in words that burned through skin. if she died today and they cracked her open, they would see a skeleton aged, bones brittle from wear (uncaring) and skull firm (stubborn). if she died and they cracked her open, they would see the aftermath of living life wild; life spent running from demons.)
by twenty one, the bones of a woman her age bears a significance weight on her heart, threatens to collapse in on the organ if she ceases to run for even a flicker of a second. if she allowed silence (fate, mother’s venom tongue, heartache worth of a lifetime) to catch up. if she stills. smells the roses. relishes in the ache.
no, there will be none of that.
instead, she busies herself. breaks her bones (after the first and second and third time, it’s not so hard to) and bleeds from the mouth. keep busy. keep moving. somehow, twenty-one bones, it is the only way of living she’s known.
but broken bones are not her folly. her heart is her folly. how it yearns. how it aches. how it hungers. how she so willingly gives into it.
she would not be here again otherwise.
no errand in mind. nothing but an aching heart that leads her here, pained for an aliment (a gap) she knows none of.
pointless. mindless. thoughtless. stupid. she is still young. this is still what being youth is about.
but had it not been for that, she would not have found him. a tuft of bright locks in an alley of grim and grime—eunice herself is clad in dark tones, to better fit in—true youth, right down to his eyes. clear. bright. lost. ripe for the picking.
say she belonged here, say this was her place to stay. then would he not be her prey?
“you couldn’t look any more out of place, you realize.” but she wasn’t. of course. eunice eom is all things good and brave. it says so in the gryffindor user manual. so she fixes a reassuring enough smile, curious eyes looking him over (catching sight of the hogwarts crest, just barely hidden).
“what are you doing here?”
and as he wanders, the predictable rhythm of his footsteps bouncing off the walls of the alley, creating a continual hollowing echo, he begins to think perhaps this was not the best of ideas. yes, he knows what he’s getting himself into. yes, his intentions are pure. yes, he’ll be careful.
yes, yes, yes.
yet, the shadows lurking within the window displays of the franchises he passes tell him otherwise; send a chill down his spine and tell him no.
no, this isn’t where he belongs.
belonging, a term very much foreign to someone of his nature. the boy with hair too bright and eyes too curious for his family’s liking. he does not belong to them. not to the dark lineage of which he had the misfortune of being born to. the boy with a puzzle for a mind and a riddle for a heart appeals, also, not to his peers. he does not belong to them either, not when all they think and know is the boy in blue and bronze who wanders the halls aimlessly, head full of strange things.
he does not belong to any of them. leo hwang, simply, does not belong.
but for the past eighteen years, he has never once let that bother him. in fact, he prefers it this way. prefers the confines of his mind and exploring it until it is all he knows. so familiar, it becomes, that he even can see it within the darkness of his closed eyes. he can trace it with his fingertips. he can draw with his breath. here, leo finds is where he does belong.
yet, he is here, trespassing into territories not of his own. although he knows this well, he had hoped that it wouldn’t be as obvious to the naked eye. and so when he hears and sees her, all leo can manage is a very intelligent, very coherent:
“huh?”
truth be told, leo may be many things. today, however, he is not without reason. and so a christmas gift ( though not just for anyone, for none other than his father. ) is enough to bring him to a place he otherwise would very much like to avoid.
there’s no need to lie. especially not to her: a living, breathing whirlwind of familiarity and novelty all at once.
so he doesn't. after all, leo hwang is just as expected—always of well intent.
instead, he smiles. “oh, just shopping.”
