Lydie Heung

The rest of lunch wasn't eventful.

Miteki Bless and Miteki Amafuu sat in silence for the rest of the call.

The breezing air conditioner and the wind of spring eavesdropping on their silent conversation.

After lunch ended, Bless collided with the student council.

She didn't greet them the way she usually did.

Muraoka Rii was taken aback. She was the first to notice Bless' puffiness and redlined eyes.

She hid Bless with her body, a little too late. Uyehara Eme had noticed the eyes too, and faltered.

She wanted to uncharacteristically initiate a hug but Muraoka Rii blocked her path.

"Did you eat?"

Muraoka Rii attempted small talk, scheming to stay behind while the group went ahead.

Ketsukira stuck her tongue out, thinking Muraoka was trying to hide the jacket on Miteki's body. "Blehhh!"

The busy hallways emptied out. Intersecting in the hollow, Muraoka Rii put her hand on Bless' cheek.

"Don't touch me." Bless wouldn't put up with her measly attempts at comfort.

Poor and degraded in quality.

"Then give me my collection back."

"What?"

"The jacket."

"What jacket?"

Audacious! Rii scoffed. "The one on you!"

"On. Me. Me…?"

Bless padded her shoulder. Turns out, there really was a jacket draped over her.

"I didn't expect a thank you, but obliviousness? That's insulting."

"I was busy crying." Bless didn't lie. "I'm sorry. Thank you."

Rii must've draped it over her while she was sleeping in class. She was blind to her surroundings from her awakening, till now. She could barely feel her body. It was like a drifting cloud, moving with the integrals of the day, disappearing as one focused on the ground.

The jacket was from a Lydie Heung concert. Bless wasn't into idols, let alone music. She knew this because her mother would watch the concert every week. She was attached to it, oddly. It irked Miteki Bless in the beginning at first. Her mother wasn't the type to fangirl over idols, she was worried a great shift in her mother's wellbeing was going to enact itself. Thankfully, her mother got healthier! How amazing was that?

Being uninterested in music, Miteki Bless would have to be in a specific mood to listen to the music played in the concert's footage. She refused to listen to anything that wasn't that concert's footage. The live cover, the unprocessed vocals, the choppy instruments, the first voice crack ever recorded in Lydie Heung's career. She loved it.

"You're forgiven only when you teach me how to make coffee jelly."

Bless had zero protests. According to the tasks given to her, making coffee jelly was on the to-do list. Sitting back, relaxing and being talkative didn't seem like a bad deal at all.

"Sounds good."

Miteki Bless left Muraoka Rii standing alone in the hallway.

"She really didn't want to talk, haha."

Mirroring lunch time, most of culinary class was uneventful.

Miteki Bless and Muraoka Rii paired up.

Miteki's puffy eyes had deflated and her scleras were proactively whiter than earlier.

She looked like the truest version of Miteki Bless. The rude, spastic, emotionless Miteki Bless.

Muraoka Rii became keenly aware of the shiver running through her spine while Miteki Bless looked at her. She couldn't control the smile ripening through her face.

"Why are you staring at me that way?"

"I'm excited to make coffee jelly. Why can't I stare at you 'that way'?"

"It's confusing. I'm standing here and doing nothing. Wouldn't you be confused if you were smiled at for doing nothing?"

Rii leaned against her, acting as though they were old friends. "That already happens to me. I've risen above confusion, listen to me, child, as this wise old man has experienced the tribulations of this hellish world… hohoho…"

Miteki Bless: ? This person is not O.K.

"… I don't know why I didn't think of that. That must be stressful."

"Not really, I'm okay with it. Actually…" Muraoka Rii held Miteki Bless' hand. "It just means you're cute. Nothing more, nothing less. When you're cute, you can sit there and look pretty. You can grit your teeth and achieve success through bleeding. It doesn't matter to them, they see the cuteness first."

"That seems like a miserable predicament."

"I don't think so."

She swayed their hands back and forth, losing sight of their objective.

They strolled in circles around the kitchen.

Passing by rows of flour, burnt cookies, melted butter, cooking platters and aprons. The aprons were doodled with springy pig tails and the large, pink noses of cows.

"Don't you hate it? The barrier between you and your connection to everyone else?"

"Mite-chan, I don't want to be seen."

Bless matches Rii's energy.

At the end of Rii's sways, Bless sways forward.

Rii sways backwards. Bless sways forwards.

For a while, this rythm is a lullaby that lulls them.

"Lydie Heung." Miteki Bless says.

"Hm?" Muraoka Rii replies.

"Which name do you like the most?"

The spotlight is on Miteki Bless' lips. Opening. Round. Plump. Pink. Glossy.

"Muraoka Rii."

"Lydie Heung."

The rythm of their swaying slows down until Muroaka Rii forgets to walk and stops the sway. "My real name, of course."

She swallowed.

"I'm starting to understand it."

The swaying rewinds, spinning like a music box, handle—handle—handle, crank—crank—crank.

"That would scare me, Mite-chan. Don't say that."

"I really want to say it."

"Then say it."

The end of Muraoka Rii's sway.

The start of Miteki Bless' sway.

"Which one is it? To say or not to say it?"

"It's scarier for you to not say it."

The fear of the unknown.

Knowing the fear would neutralize it.

"In your mundane life, you use an aggrandized name to disconnect. And when you're on stage, you want your true self to shine because you're confident that no one would be able to touch you."

"I don't like the way you worded that."

Muraoka Rii didn't want to connect with people in her everyday life. Instead, she wanted to connect with them on stage. An elevated platform where the ordinary people and ordinary life couldn't fathom touching her. Where she was incapable of bending down and connecting flesh to flesh with the ordinary, regardless of how low the platform was and how high the ordinary person was.

Muraoka Rii could easily be appointed for a butterfly.

In her cocoon she is bland and unmoving, in her metamorphosis she has vibrant wings and her flapping causes storms; she wants to be invisible when she's visible, visible when she's invisible.

"Correct me if I'm wrong." Bless could just as easily be prescribed with the same medicine.

She wanted to be wrong to know more.

She wanted to be right to know more.

"You aren't wrong. Are you happy, hearing that?"

"Very."

"…" Muraoka Rii unclasped their hands. "Do you ever smile?"

"I smile everyday."

"Hah! That's a good lie. As good as the lie you pulled off in forensics. Mind explaining that to me?"

Recently buried negative emotions rose to the surface like the destroyed planks of rafts. Miteki Bless told them, "Fine. You are part of me." They sunk back, disinterested in someone who didn't want to "fix" them.

"It's not as complex as you think. I swapped your cards."

"Okay, that's not all. Here's where you start a long monologue, laughing villaneously at my foolishness, detailing your plan step by step, going over everything I missed."

Bless thought for a few instances. "Is it villaineous for me to say only if you hold my hand again?"

"No… Unexpected." Muraoka Rii blushed. "You're full of surprises."

"Afterall, I crave physical contact. Naturally."

"… Noble." Muraoka Rii complied with the request.

She did more than was asked. She clasped both of Miteki Bless' hands, rubbing her thumbs on the back of them.

"I really don't want to talk about what happened in class. I'm going to keep it short. I distracted you, took your card, replaced it with Wada Sui and relaxed for the rest of the class. Until I was collectively… laughed at."

"How'd you know I'd be the lead detractor before the game started?"

"I didn't. It was a risk."

"Had it not been me?"

"The plan was to join every side… I planted traces of myself that would limit defuncts and the lead detractor. I was grounding myself and setting up boundaries where my logic couldn't escape… I was planning on operating solely on instinct and impulse."

"You're so impressive."

They slowly spun in place, a merry-go-round, their feet inside the ride, fueling the ride.

Miteki Bless was dizzy. "You know I am."

"Thank you for today, Miteki Bless." She let go and hugged her.

Miteki Bless didn't want to ruin the hug by asking, "Are you doing this as Muraoka Riii?"

Muraoka Rii read her mind.

"I'm doing this as Lydie Heung. You were a wonderful experience."

Bless couldn't reply to this right now.

Lydie Heung was being vulnerable. She felt that the sole appropriate thing to do in this situation was not to speak, but to absorb Lydie Heung's vulnerability.

"You don't have to do the things on that paper. I was joking with you, I promise."

"… You won, I won't break the deal with you, inside the clubroom. I won't commit suicide."

Miteki kept silent.

"Guilt is sheltering in my heart, knowing I caused you pain. Everything that happened today—I'll clarify it. I can't take the burden off your shoulder, I just… I support you."

Bless staying silent was clearly doing something. The less she replied, the more urgent Lydie's words became. Miteki Bless felt as though her nostrils, eyes, ears and mouth weren't the only holes on her body. She was a word-absorbing sponge.

"… Mite-chan, can you show something on your face?" Lydie's vulnerability was making her insecure and worn down pretty easily.

As if she was being acupunctured to a sleep.

Bless smiled. Was that enough?

"… Mite-chan, you can't even do that for me?"

Bless stopped absorbing. The desire to defend herself stronger. "What do you mean? I'm smiling. I'm smiling right now."

"You are not. There is nothing on your face."

"…? You say… I am always like this?"

Lydie Heung nodded.

"I don't get it. Why do I feel like I'm smiling if I'm not actually smiling?"

"I don't know the answer to that. Sorry." Lydie Heung crossed her arms and showed her side to Bless.

"But you see me everyday! I don't like this joke, yanno? Everyone… Everyone deciding whether I'm emotional or not."

"Mite-chan."

Lydie Heung gripped her shoulders. "Listen, explain to me how your face feels to you right now."

If she expected, it feels empty, she'd be wrong.

"I'm…" Miteki Bless blinked. It was stupid she even had to do this. "I'm frowning."

"You're not."

The class had been forgotten. Lydie Heung dragged Miteki Bless out into the hall, shoving her into the closest bathroom.

A one-person staff bathroom. The standing space was cramped and stuffy, sweaty and sour.

Their elbows pressed against each other.

In the mirror, looking at their identical, yet alternate selves, Lydie Heung has creased eyebrows and a worried expression, while Miteki's supposedly frowning face was an emotionless glacier.

Miteki Bless wasn't a foreigner to this resting face of hers. She'd see it at home before talking to herself in the mirrors every morning. She'd see it every time she used the bathroom at schools. In the shower, when fog condensed the windows. At her mom's job, in the rare times she could visit.

"You don't even smile, do you?" Against her wishes, that smile had been hovering behind her her entire life. She remembered being focused on that question for a small period in her life, it was a grunge focus that circled her mind before becoming saws that degraded her wellbeing.

"Mama, am I emotionless?"

How could Miteki Amafuu say yes to her child? Yes, to her child crying in her arms, eyes crinkled and cheeks smudged and round? Yes, to her child whose vision was blurry, with drooping lips and a wrinkled up nose? Yes, to her child whose face would distort every time she opened her mouth to wail, her baby teeth and their gaps exposed?

"You have the cutest teeth I know, dear. I know this, because of the many smiles you've given me."

Somehow, Miteki's eyes became more downcast than the frost in the mirror. A gloomy passage sliding over her face.

"That doesn't make sense."

"Mite—"

"That doesn't make sense!"

"Calm, calm!" Lydie Heung placed a palm below her neck, right above her chest. Her arm encircled Bless, rubbing in overlapping square motions.

Square motions turned to diamond motions. "You weren't aware of this?"

"No… I'm always so embarrassed around you."

Lydie understood the implications of that. Someone emotionless, without thoughts that could be jotted down on their face had nothing to be ashamed about. Let alone, feel little. Except, if they went around, not knowing they weren't expressing what was in their heart… the difference in inner composure would be drastically different.

"I like to show my emotions. This doesn't make sense to me."

"Has…" Lydie Heung's hesitating breath occasionally pricked at Miteki Bless' skin.

Her shoulder was being used as a station for Lydie's chin.

"Has anyone ever seen you emotional?"

"Mama—Mother has seen me. I've seen me."

Lydie was happy Miteki Bless couldn't see her face, happy for this weird, displaced embrace. She had always wanted to hug Miteki the way Uyehara Eme did. And more.

Miteki Bless, she wanted to be good friends with her.

Lydie Heung's face was red and ablaze. Miteki's stutter was misleading, she'd heard herself be called "mama," for a moment there. She almost combusted.

"… Maybe you're not as comfortable as you think?"

Miteki Bless not replying to her, made Lydie eager to prove her point. She was hungry in explanations, wanting to get everything she could possibly help Miteki with right.

"It's like when adults switch personalities around their coworkers. They might be more crude with their friends or family, and in the next second, suddenly impassive and upright with coworkers."

"I believe… it's called code-switching. Could you be unaware that you're code-switching?"

Miteki Bless laughed, self-pitifully.

She slumped, her chin landing on Lydie's shoulder.

The mirror showed the image of the two girls reflecting each other.

Awkward arms encircling their bodies, glued stomachs, chins to shoulders, heaving and cramped breathing loudly in their ears, because their breaths had no other places to go.

Lydie Heung didn't hear Miteki Bless' self-pitiful laugh.

What's wrong? The imagined conversation that would create. Nothing, I'm only asking what can't go wrong with me.

Bless didn't want to stay here, slumped on the floor in the arms of someone who had her tormented so much within one day. Lydie Heung's presence was comforting, disgustingly so.

Currently, that didn't seem like the right thing to get intoxicated to.

As she got up, Lydie panicked and reflexively grasped for her. She grasped for air at first, then, wrapped her arms around her neck without instantly realizing.

"Bless."

Miteki Bless wasn't the most emotionally intelligent, and academically emotional intelligence couldn't be defined definitively, so it was never a flaw of hers that she gave the light of day. But she knew, this girl clinging to her had been the most vulnerable she'd ever been inside the school. It wasn't difficult to understand, a girl who spoke openly about suicide around people she considered herself disconnected from was a cry for help.

"There, here, there. I'm not going anywhere."

"But you got up." Lydie Heung was letting her words flow freely. She didn't carefully curate them, the way she classically did. The way that was classic of Muroaka Rii—spelt a Muraoka Rii.

"Class is ending soon. I haven't shown you how to make coffee jelly."

"No!" The bathroom was only so little. Her voice made Miteki's head ache.

Lydie Heung's face reddened at her accidental outburst. "Who cares about that anymore? You've done enough today. It's enough for you to survive… Because of you, I'll be okay."

It was hard to say Miteki didn't find the wording weird. She couldn't find fault with it, in the end. "Lydie-chan. I insist, I do."

"… Hehe, I can imagine what you'll say to me if I say no."

"What would I say?"

This was good development—Lydie had let go of her at last.

Lydie Heung did vocal trills before lowering her voice. "Prrrr—!"

"Lydie-chan," She emphasized her name, like it was sacred. "You know how stubborn I could be. Give up. Let me win this conversation. I keep my word."

"… It feels wrong to agree, it feels wrong to agree."

"Hah! That just means you agree!"

"Hehe…"

Lydie Heung suddenly gasped. It startled Miteki Bless who didn't show it on her face.

"You laughed!"

"I did?"

"You laughed! Isn't that crazy? I made you laugh, Bless-chan!"

Miteki Bless smiled as best as she could. "In the future, maybe you could teach me acting skills. I'll be able to show emotion in public, for you."

Lydie Heung became serious all of a sudden. "I can't do that."

Huh?

"Hey, why not? Aren't we friends?"

"It's too dangerous."

"You..."

Belatedly, Miteki Bless understood she was being messed with.

"Yup, can't let a Miteki Bless that can act run around freely… If I do teach you, it's on one condition…"

"Anything."

Lydie Heung's eyes became catty, her lips cheshire and grinning.

"You let me capture you." She said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You can try."

"I'm sure!"

The sum of this day was a total of: what was happening?

The day did not take care of itself.

There is a saying that goes around, Only you can understand yourself.

The day not being able to understand itself, as a leader, leads others into their deaths.

And because it doesn't understand itself, it doesn't know that it is the cause for their deaths.

In that manner, it doesn't recognize when it leads others to life.

Miteki Bless and Lydie Heung strolled by, passing door after door, smelling the leftovers of the sunlight lasering through the windows.

"I'm going to teach you, even if you plug your ears with cotton."

"Then, I'll pluck my ears out!"

"You have eyes!"

"I'll gouge them out!"

Miteki Bless pulled on her ears, "If I pluck them out first, I can speak the recipe into them first!"

Like the sea in seashells. "What'll you do then?"

"I relinquish, my liege. Haha!"

In the middle of the kitchen, where all eyes can focus on, Lydie Heung, the idol of today's generation, jokingly kneeled down for Miteki Bless, her junior.

Lydie Heung contentedly looked up at Miteki, a girl who was the same height as her in all instances like standing up, sleeping and sitting.

"This isn't enough to atone for what I made you do today. Say, if I saved your life today… Do you think it would be worth the tears you wasted?"

"Yes." Miteki Bless helped her up, not fully acknowledging the sentences spoken before the question.

Tears were proof she was her mother's child.

"Lydie-chan, why do you want to die?"

"That's not an easy question."

Miteki Bless searched for a box. "Gelatin… I don't expect you to answer it. If you can't. If you don't want to."

Lydie Heung answered by plucking a small, white ball out of Miteki Bless' hair. Toilet paper… Had her hair come into contact with toilet paper inside that cramped room?

It was actually from the earmuffs.

Student council president can't distinguish fluff from toilet paper.

Miteki Bless sent her a side-glance.

"Your hair is pretty."

"Thank you. That makes me feel warm."

"That's why you'd better off be dead."

Miteki's smile dropped.

Lydie Heung's voice had changed.

She was mocking someone.

Her lips shivered as she dramatically lifted her hand, tensing it in a claw.

"Have you ever asked someone, "Why are you doing this to me? It hurts." Only to be met with, 'that's why you should just die.'"

"Mite-chan, one minute people tell you you're pretty. The next, they tell you all the pain you feel is okay. Because, you're pretty."

"And then, because you're a contemptible, wretched creature who feels pain… you deserve to die."