already flying through the free fall
Saeyoung X Eunji (CMC) featuring Zen X Lea (CMC)
red universe | Saeyoung’s route: 5th day
If she climbs up on the windowsill and tilts her head back just enough, she can see the sunset from here.
Eunji has been watching sunsets for ages. The house where she grew up had a big oak tree in the front yard, and from the top of it she could see an endless expanse of sky. She wasn’t supposed to climb it, but she did anyway—scurried outside when no one was paying attention and climbed all the way up, careful to tuck whichever (hated) dress she was wearing around her legs so it wouldn’t rip.
She never loved to have her feet on the ground. From the air, she could see neat little lines of pretty rooftops, which covered homes, which covered families. She could see the skyscrapers she loved in the distance—just a short train ride away (but to a little girl, that’s an eternity). When the sun started to set, she’d pretend she was painting the sky all the colors of the rainbow; she’d watch the pinks and purples as they sank below the horizon and imagine she belonged among them.
She’d grip the branches with her knees and lift both hands to the sky and feel like she was touching heaven.
When she was a teenager, she’d climb to the roof of her apartment building, kick off her shoes, tie back her hair, and watch the setting sun amidst broken bottles and painted-over wires and the other trash that covers the roofs of buildings in the city. She wasn’t allowed up here either—never allowed anywhere—but when it had been two days (or even three) since she’d seen her mother, she’d start to feel small. Standing close to the sunset, she was strong, and the sorbet-colored sky sung her name.
She’d imagine herself as a cloud, or a gust of wind—going, going, gone.
It was impossible to get to the roof of the building where she lived with Kate. It was a three-story brownstone, and from their apartment on the second floor Eunji couldn’t see the sunset at all.
During those years, she’d sometimes run out in the middle of cooking dinner, bare-armed in the winter, laughing as she sprinted down the city streets. It was always loud here, and she shimmied her hips to the music blaring from speakers perched precariously on the uneven sidewalk and smiled when she saw the river sparkling in the distance.
She never minded the roaring sound of the highway or the dirty, fishy smell of city water. Over the Hudson, the sky would be red. She’d hug herself tight and imagine falling into it.
Back then, she’d run home, shivering and silly—and nothing felt quite right, but she was always on the verge of leaving. Now, she’s not supposed to go anywhere at all.
It’s familiar, this feeling: she hears sit still and smile echoing in the empty air whenever one of these strangers (friends?) reminds her she’s safest if she stays put. She’s spent her whole life living in other people’s boxes, she thinks—even when she was sure she was free.
Now she’s alone, and this sterile apartment feels more like a hospital than a home, and she realizes she’s never been any good at choosing.
Eunji dims the lights and twists her body till she can make out the horizon beyond the buildings that loom all around, shielding her from most of the sun. She lays her cheek on the window and feels grateful for the shock of cold glass against her skin.
There are streaks of red and gold in the cloudy sky and she wishes she were anywhere but here.
If she thinks too hard about the situation she’s found herself in, she’s afraid she’ll fall apart. There is nothing ordinary about the organization she’s involuntary ended up joining—nothing logical about the party she’s supposed to be planning. If the strangeness of the weeks since she left home (came home) hadn’t made everything a blur of uncertainty, she would have left already.
She should have left already.
She’s not ready to admit to herself why she’s still here.
It’s unfair, she thinks, that he has almost certainly seen every picture of her that anyone’s ever put on the internet and she’s only looked at what he’s allowed her to see. She hates that she’s saved his stupid profile pictures to her stupid phone and zoomed in, trying to gauge the secrets behind his smile by staring too hard at blurry pixels on a tiny screen.
The sky reminds her of his eyes.
Eunji doesn’t trust the person that sent her here. She doesn’t trust anyone who’s assured her that she’s safe. She doesn’t trust herself.
She’s nothing if not bold.
Still staring at the sky—darker now, stars peeking out behind purple clouds—she calls him. It is already becoming habit, her finger hovering over the spot on her screen where his contact lives before the app is even open. She wonders if he ever watches the sunset. She wonders whether he was thinking about her, too.
The phone rings once and then connects. There’s a pause.
“Thanks for calling Seven Zero Seven, genius astronaut, friend of cats. Nobody’s home right now. Leave a message with the color of your underwear and I’ll call you back.”
She giggles. There’s definitely something wrong with him.
“I already know what your voicemail sounds like, silly,” she says. “My underwear’s got pictures of cars on it.”
He chokes. She’s won this round.
“Is—does it—really?”
“You wanna see?” She grins and brushes her hair back off her face, feeling proud of herself.
“God,” he mumbles. “Yes. No! No! Forget I said that. I didn’t say that. Who am I? Who are you?”
Eunji tucks her legs up to her chest so her whole body fits on the windowsill. Of course her underwear doesn’t have pictures of cars on it. Who owns something like that?
“I’m Eunji,” she says. “Nice to meet you.”
He sighs heavily. He sounds weary, or maybe just overstimulated. She wonders how his breath would feel on her neck.
“Why, uh.” God, she loves that she can leave him breathless. She loves that nobody else can hear how his voice sounds when he talks to her. She loves that his laugh is sweet like the color of sunset. “Why did you call?”
She has no idea why she called. She pictures him checking the cameras, wondering if she’ll come out into the hall so he can see her.
“Tell me something about myself, Seven Zero Seven.”
He laughs: high-pitched, nervous. “What?”
“You know everything about me,” she says. “Tell me something I might have forgotten.”
He giggles and she hears him shifting in his chair, like he’s focusing himself. When he speaks again, he sounds serious.
“When you were seven years old,” he says, “you fell out of a tree. You didn’t break any bones, but your parents took you to the hospital anyway.”
Eunji sits up straight.
Of all the things, he thinks of this just as she’s sitting and watching the sunset. She wonders if he can see inside her mind: the things that delight her; the things that frighten her.
She remembers falling. It wasn’t getting hurt that scared her then, but the repercussions of getting caught breaking a rule. She has a feeling he understands about that kind of fear.
“How’d you know that?” she asks. She was sure he’d seen pictures—her addresses—her schools. She didn’t expect him to have already stored details about her childhood in his beautiful, mysterious mind.
He makes a funny sound, like he’s not sure what to say. “Hospital records,” he mutters. “Uh, sorry.”
All her life, Eunji has withheld information from the people she meets, feeling safest if she’s got secrets. She hardly ever spoke to Kate about the years before they met, because it felt good to know that some things belonged only to her.
But: “I don’t mind that you know,” she tells Seven. As she says it, she finds that it’s true.
He giggles weakly.
“What am I gonna do?” he whispers. “You can’t say things like that to me.”
“Why?” She unfolds herself from the windowsill. It’s fully nighttime now.
“Have you ever jumped out of a plane?”
Eunji raises her eyebrows. She’s fast, but he’s faster.
“No,” she says. “Have you?”
“Of course.” There’s a glimmer of confidence in his voice now, and it makes her stomach drop. “Feels like the universe is expanding inside your chest. That’s, uh—it’s how it feels when I—”
“When you what, babe?”
He makes a spluttering sound in response to the term of endearment and she tosses herself onto the bed.
“Whenever I think about you.”
Now she’s the one who’s breathless.
It wasn’t so long ago that she was in love. She remembers being held too close, too tight: the suffocating warmth of someone needing you. She’s used to hiding from people who are kind to her, but right now she feels different.
She finds she doesn’t want to disappear.
“I—” she starts—but there is a commotion in the background, and she gets the sense that he is being scolded.
“Never mind!” he chirps. “I have to go! It’s—ahh!”
There’s a scuffling, and Seven is gone.
Eunji dangles her bare feet off the edge of the bed, head spinning. She wants to run to him.
She sends a text instead.
Hey, she writes. I have to ask you something.
She’s sure that Lea is working—but in this strange new version of reality, there is no one else she trusts.
She’s not sure there ever has been.
Lea often works late, and Eunji doesn’t expect a response right away—but one comes in a matter of seconds.
Hi! she types back. What is it?
Eunji has a million questions, and she isn’t sure there’s a good way to ask any of them.
Does he act like this a lot? she writes, which isn’t a great representation of her scattered mind, but it’s something. She doesn’t have to say who she means.
Lea is typing—then she isn’t—then she is again.
This is Zen, the message says. Eunji laughs, because texting with them is like talking to a very beautiful two-headed creature: she never knows which one she’s going to get. Seven’s a weird guy, Zen writes. But he’s gotten weirder.
Eunji smiles. She tries to picture Seven speaking to someone else the way he’s been talking to her, and her heart aches.
It hasn’t even been a week, and she’s already hoping that she’s special.
Sorry, the next message says. It’s Lea again.
Eunji nibbles her bottom lip and waits for an answer. What, exactly, does she want to hear?
He’s never been in love, Lea writes. If that’s what you want to know.
Eunji lets her phone fall from her hand, immediately disappearing into the unmade bed. She can hear the rattling of her own heartbeat.
Lea answered the question she wasn’t sure how to ask—allayed some of the shadows surrounding all this brightness. She should have known her new friend would already understand.
She tangles herself in the blankets, staring at the ceiling. For her whole life, she’s been gazing at the sky and wishing she could dissolve in it—she’s built a whole career out of her furious desire to transcend gravity.
And Seven says thinking of her is like falling through space, and she sees his eyes in the color of sunset.
She sits up and looks out the window. The sky is inky black, and usually she’s scared of the dark.
Tonight, all she sees is stars.
Banner by the mysterious hacker’s future girlfriend, @luxielle ❤️
