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“I can’t even remember my mom’s voice anymore. Some kinda son I am to forget something like that, huh?” Mizuki laughs pitifully. “I’m a real piece of shit.”
Suddenly, the windy balcony they’re standing on is quiet, like time froze in a bubble around them.
Why am I showing weakness?
“Oh, Mizuki…” Genuine concern washes over Wuyang’s face and Mizuki hates it. Not the fact that Wuyang is worried, but the fact that he cares about him at all.
He shouldn’t.
Wuyang puts a reassuring hand on Mizuki’s shoulder. Mizuki wants so badly to push him away, but the touch is comforting, a reminder that he has corporeal form and isn’t just a ghost drifting through life.
“Y’know, if my parents weren’t calling me and Anran every other night, I’d probably forget their voices too.” Wuyang chuckles softly, shaking his head. “Jeez, they can be pretty annoying. Sometimes I wish I could just tell them to leave a voicemail or something, but then they’d call a million more times, and…”
Mizuki doesn’t respond. He stops looking at the ocean, gaze flicking back to Wuyang.
“Oh, uh…” Wuyang stammers a bit, wondering if he said the wrong thing. Mizuki’s silvery eyes are so piercing they’re boring holes into his soul. “Well, she passed away when you were a kid, right?”
Wuyang’s hand slips down a little further and starts tracing soothing circles on Mizuki’s back. It’s embarrassing how much it grounds him.
“Yeah,” Mizuki croaks. “She did.”
He’d only mentioned his mother’s death in passing. To think that Wuyang cares so much that he would remember such a brief aside.
“So… it’s been a long time since you’ve talked to her. I don’t think you’re a bad person for forgetting her voice.” Wuyang stares up at him with the warmest brown eyes. Strands of soft black hair frame his handsome face in a terribly charming way. Mizuki can barely stand it. “It just makes you human.”
Human.
Mizuki doesn’t deserve to be called that. Not when the shadow of his curse is eternally looming over him and threatening to take the lives of everyone he dares to care about. Not when his entire life is built on a precarious web of lies that’s liable to snap the second he takes a single misstep. Not when he can barely find the strength to look Wuyang in the eyes, because if he gets attached to him at all, it's just setting both of them up for a life full of painful realizations and unfulfilled promises.
Wuyang just keeps talking. God, he’s always talking. He never stops talking, and yet Mizuki still can't get enough.
“Mizuki, why do you say these things about yourself?”
Mizuki doesn’t know how to reply. “Because they’re true,” he finally spits out. “I’m a rotten guy. Right down to the core.”
Wuyang winces and Mizuki can already feel something inside of him crumbling away. “Stop saying that stuff. You’re not.”
I am. If only you knew.
Even without a response from Mizuki, Wuyang continues the conversation. Mizuki wants to wish that he’d shut up for once. But he doesn’t actually want that. In fact, he’d like to keep listening to the pleasant cadence of Wuyang’s voice forever.
“At least, I don’t think so.”
Please don’t do this to me.
The final death blow is delivered with a smile that could disarm even the foulest dregs of society.
“I think you’re a good person, Mizuki. I mean it.”
No. No, no, no.
Waves crash against the jagged rocks below them.
Through some cruel sleight of hand, Mizuki has managed to fool Wuyang with his flimsy facade. There’s an inescapable chasm of dissonance between his true self and who Wuyang believes he is. He's a wretched monster for deceiving him.
Mizuki. A good person. Words that shouldn’t ever be in the same sentence.
I should be dead.
But maybe, just for now, they can keep playing pretend. Maybe Mizuki can keep deluding himself that his life isn’t irrevocably fucked up. One day, he can have some semblance of a normal life, one where he doesn’t have to lie or hurt others or rationalize his very existence. Maybe it'd even be one that Wuyang could be a part of.
Mizuki wants to say so much to Wuyang. He wants to tell him that everything he says means so much more than he’ll ever know. That he occupies an uncomfortable amount of space in his mind. That he'd do anything to make him happy.
But Mizuki’s a coward. That’s the plain truth.
His mouth’s dry and chapped, and the salty air is only making it worse. Meanwhile, Wuyang’s lips look soft, rightly hydrated. Of course they are. They always are. Mizuki would love to kiss him and taste whatever flavor of lip balm he uses.
Selfish. Not like he'd ever deserve something so nice.
“Thanks.” That’s all he can say.
Pathetic. Like he always has been. Like he always will be.