Work Text:
“Hm. I don’t think I’ve told you this one before.”
“Oh?” Sua says, brushing a strand of hair out of Mizi’s face. “I’d like to hear it, then.”
It’s the middle of the day—not really the time for scary stories. The warm sunlight that fills the room, fake and bright, creates entirely the wrong atmosphere. But Mizi, her brain clouded with a fever, can’t really bring herself to care. If Sua wants to hear a ghost story, if that’s what will keep her here in Mizi’s room, then Mizi will tell her a ghost story.
Mizi smiles. They have a bit more time left.
She looks up to see Sua smiling too. Sua really does look like a divine being right now, glowing in the sunlight, a gentle smile on her face.
Mizi wants nothing more right now than to look at that smile forever.
“You need to eat something.” Sua moves, no longer illuminated in the sunlight coming in through the window.
Mizi reaches out, but Sua’s already hopped off of the bed, far away from her on the other side of the room.
Far away. What’s she doing? Is she leaving? Mizi hopes not.
“I was able to get you some lunch earlier,” Sua says. “They were serving soup today. I don’t think it’s gotten cold yet. Here.” She’s back, mercifully, and holding out both a bowl with a spoon in it. “After you eat this, you can tell me the ghost story I haven’t heard yet.”
Soup. It looks like it will taste good.
Mizi knows that. But she isn’t hungry. She hasn’t been hungry at all today, ever since she woke up shivering and with an awful headache.
She wants to be hungry. She wants to accept the soup.
She looks away sadly.
“Please.” The tension in Sua’s voice wakes her up. She looks back at Sua, who’s still holding the bowl of soup.
The expression on her face, that worry, that fear, is…
Well, it’s an expression that Mizi hasn’t ever argued with. She sits up, placing a pillow behind herself, and takes the bowl from Sua’s hands.
Sua looks at her a second longer, than sits back down on the bed.
“Everyone was talking about exams at lunch today. For classes,” Sua says. “Our last exams ever. Apparently someone who was friends with someone who knew a student from the 48th class said the student from the 48th class said the exams are quote unquote terrifying.”
Mizi eats a spoonful of soup, as much as the soup tastes like sludge right now.
She doesn’t want Sua to worry.
Then she laughs. “That sounds like such a fake story,” she says. “They knew someone who knew a student from the 48th class. I wonder if they made up the story themself or if their friend lied about knowing a student from another class.”
“Or maybe the mysterious 48th class graduate does exist, but lied about the exams being scary,” Sua says. “The mystery may never end.”
“Hey, maybe the exams aren’t real!”
“You wish.” Sua chuckles. “Are you eating your soup?”
Mizi nods, eating another spoonful.
“Good.” Sua nods as well, then leans back. “Our last exams ever. Wow. I can’t believe…”
Suddenly, Sua looks down. Curls into herself. Seems to not be reached by the warmth of the sunlight that envelops her. Which makes sense. It’s fake sunlight. It isn’t actually all that warm.
Mizi wishes she could make the sunlight warmer so that it would reach Sua.
“Anyways.” Sua sits back up. “People are saying the exams are just that. Exams. Not tests.”
They both know what Sua means by her emphasis on that last word. They’ve both gone through the sort of horrible experiments that are routine here.
Sua looks weary. Mizi wants to stop being sick right now so that she can be the one taking care of Sua.
Outside, the grass is the same green it always is.
Outside, their classmates are cheerfully talking with each other. Forgetting, for a little while, what their lives are actually like.
How many of them will be dead soon, just like the humans on that screen Mizi watched every day for so long before she came here?
“Looks like you only have a little bit of soup left,” Sua says. “Are you going to finish it?”
Mizi looks down at the soup that remains in the bowl. It’s cold now, and congealed, too. And there’s barely any left. “Probably not,” she says. “Sorry.”
Sua frowns confusedly, then laughs. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I know you’re not going to die from not eating all the soup in the bowl. I think I just freaked out a little earlier, seeing you looking so miserable.” She turns away from Mizi, face a bit red with embarrassment. “You’re not going to die,” she says again, very quietly this time.
Mizi looks at Sua looking out the window. Sua still looks weary—that hasn’t changed in the past few minutes.
An air conditioner kicks on somewhere, a loud whirring noise suddenly filling the silence.
There have been times that Mizi’s hated the monotony of Anakt Garden. How funny. She chose to be here in the first place, and then she found things to hate about here as well. Even now she is annoyed by the sound of the air conditioner.
But soon she won’t be here anymore. Every second, she and Sua are speeding towards the day that they sing together. The day that Sua…
No. Sua won’t die.
But then that would mean Mizi will die, wouldn’t it?
Either of them being dead. That just won’t fully compute in Mizi’s mind. But soon, soon, soon, one of them will be. Graduation is only a month away, and then Round 1 will happen not that long after that.
Mizi doesn’t like the idea of her ashes becoming part of the snow of Anakt Garden. Staying here forever.
Well, maybe they won’t. There’s no way of confirming that that story Sua told her is true.
“Tell me the scary story now,” Sua says suddenly. “The one you made up. That I haven’t heard.”
The light outside the window has changed a bit, become a bit more golden.
Mizi hates being sick. She hates that for at least a few days, a few precious days of this last month that she and Sua have together, she’ll feel nauseous and shivery, and Sua probably won’t even be able to come see her very often because the teachers will be barging in here all the time checking her vitals or whatever, because one of the humans who’s going to compete in Alien Stage soon can’t get sick, because if she’s sick then she can’t sing, can’t make anyone any money.
Of course, though, she can’t even use that loophole. She doesn’t ever stay sick for very long—she’ll be fine once it’s time to perform. All that being sick means for her is that she gets less time to spend with Sua.
But Sua is here right now.
Here.
Alive. Fidgeting and readjusting how she’s sitting on the bed. Looking at Mizi with a worried frown.
“Alright.” Mizi smiles. “You sure? It’s really scary…”
Sua laughs. “I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so…”
This story is a good one. Mizi’s sure of that.
“There’s a creature in the water,” she begins. “One you might never see. One that barely anyone’s ever seen.”
–
There’s a creature in the water. One you might never see. One that barely anyone has seen.
Long ago, it snuck in here, and then the door locked behind it. It’s just like many of the students here at Anakt Garden, in that it would rather be somewhere else if it had the choice. But now it’s stuck here, too, just like us.
It’s far more powerful than any human, though. And even more powerful than that creature with the big teeth that guards this place.
What do I mean by powerful? I—I’m getting to that.
The creature in the water hides during the day, when there are humans running around everywhere, making noise. But once it’s night, once it’s quiet, once we have space to think…
It knows everything about everyone here, I forgot to mention.
It lives in the water, after all. It knows how important all the little water molecules think they are, even as they get swept along by the current.
It knows how all the little blades of grass think they’re so special, even as they get stepped on over and over again.
It knows how the trees think they’ll be here forever, even though one day every one of them will fall to the ground with a loud thud.
It knows what you hope for most. It knows what you don’t want to lose. What you can’t ever lose, or else you will fall apart.
It knows all the lies you tell to yourself.
And so if a human wanders out onto the grass at night, unable to sleep, this creature might kill them in an instant, if it happens to be bored enough to. All it has to do is tell them everything it knows about them, and they’ll fall to the ground, crushed.
–
“Good story?” Mizi asks. “Sua?”
Sua doesn’t respond. She looks disappointed. That’s sad, but…oh well. Mizi tried.
She really wishes Sua had liked the story, though.
She feels sleepy all of a sudden. Like she got something out of her that needed to get out, and it took all her energy with it. “I’m going to take a nap,” she says, flopping back onto her blankets. “You can stay if you want, but you don’t have to.”
“I’ll stay,” Sua says, her voice tense again. “For as long as I can.”
“O—okay.” Mizi doesn’t like that phrasing. Something about it makes her uneasy.
But she’s glad Sua’s going to stay for a while. As Sua places the blankets over her, she smiles, letting herself sink into sleep.