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Heathcliff turned his hand, observing the thin and twinkling line of red tied to his left pinkie finger. It had been an ever-constant reminder of his beloved back at Wuthering Heights – his heart-wrenching connection to the one thing in this damned City that could bring him joy. The shimmering red thread tied around his finger meant more to Heathcliff than just announcing his universal compatibility with his beloved, but also a push to be better. To prove to everyone that he could be good enough to deserve even a chance at her affection.
Heathcliff followed the lazy curve of the shimmering thread, only visible to himself and his soulmate. He followed the thread across the bus aisle, and to...
“Oi. Hong Lu. Waste your time gawking at someone else,” Heathcliff spit out. He was rewarded with an empty smile and the removal of Hong Lu’s gaze.
It was far from rare to be lacking a red string of fate – more commonly referred to as a fatestring. Everyone was born with a fatestring, but if your other half met their demise, you’d lose your own fatestring. With the City being as grueling as it was, it was no wonder that more than half of City residents were without a fatestring.
However... How does the universe react when someone’s other half is erased from existence entirely? She didn’t die, no, but that was the problem. Heathcliff would’ve preferred her death, causing him to lose his fatestring just as he lost her.
But of course, the world loved to toy with him like a cat to a mouse.
Heathcliff follows the glittering red thread to Hong Lu once again, and finds himself relieved to see Hong Lu is still looking out the window.
It’s some sick joke, really. If she never existed, then his story would be rewritten to have someone else as a soulmate. But that ‘someone else’ wasn’t his soulmate. Because if Hong Lu really was his damned soulmate, they would’ve been connected originally.
Heathcliff wished he could just take a blade and cut the string. At least then, he wouldn’t have to live with this constant torment literally attached to him.
He keeps looking towards Hong Lu, a deep sense of hatred and anger boiling up inside him. Hatred and anger towards what? Hong Lu? The universe? Not her. Never her. He could never hate her – that’s why they were destined to be united.
It had been 2 and a half days since they departed from Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff hadn’t noticed his fatestring had changed course until a few hours after they had left, and it had caused him to be more jumpy and aggravated as usual.
Heathcliff had wondered on several occasions in the past 2 days if Hong Lu had noticed their change of fatestring at all. If he did perceive a change, he didn’t show it – but then, again, he didn’t show a lot of things. Heathcliff would question him about it if looking at Hong Lu didn’t cause Heathcliff’s stomach to nearly bubble over.
The bus was staying in T Corp to recoup and rest from the previous mission and wait for further orders from the company authorities. It was, effectively, a few days of free time.
Heathcliff had to do something. He’d suffocate in this damn bus otherwise. Most of the other sinners had already left to poke around for food spots or other activities. But how could he do something so careless when half of his soul had been torn away from him and thrown further than he could ever reach?
“Heathcliff?” He hears Hong Lu’s voice behind him, and an overwhelming wave of nausea and anger crashes into him once again.
“The hell are you talking to me for?” Heathcliff turns around and snaps, voice so hostile it nearly shocks him. Hong Lu returns his smile that Heathcliff has despised from the very beginning, and his eyes trail absently to the left.
And in that moment, Heathcliff sees her. Her gentle smile and her tendency to look further than the plane of existence Heathcliff was on.
He feels bile rise in his throat.
Hong Lu says something – Heathcliff isn’t sure what, but it’s nothing relevant to him. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was, anyways. “I don’t want to hear anything from your mouth,” Heathcliff growls, barely comprehensible, as he forcibly pushes Hong Lu to the side and makes his way to his room without vomiting on the bus floor.
It was after that incident that he started seeing his beloved in more of Hong Lu’s features and actions.
His reserved nature reminded Heathcliff of his beloved’s increasingly passive nature as she grew older. His smile and eyes held the same patience and faux understanding as hers. The way he leaned against the window while brushing his hair in the morning reminded Heathcliff of early mornings spent watching his beloved in the garden.
He hated every single one connection his mind forced him to make.
It was an insult to her memory. He hated himself more for every time he thought about his beloved. And thus, he worked to rid himself of his self-hatred by passing it to other people.
One person, in particular.
“The way you walk is bloody annoying,” Heathcliff told him in response to the way Hong Lu seemed to effortlessly glide next to every other sinner, “can’t you just walk like anyone else?” Or, during a different encounter when Yi Sang had said something humorous, Heathcliff had angrily told Hong Lu to “quit laughing. The sound of it is gonna cause my ears to fall off.”
If Heathcliff could get Hong Lu to quit mimicking his beloved, he wouldn’t have to deal with this deep disgust with his own mind for thinking of them in the same thought. He wouldn’t have to deal with the feeling of needing to tear out his own heart to stop his madness. He wouldn’t have to feel like he was forcibly trying to fill the hole left by his beloved’s existence with some other person he couldn’t give less of a damn about.
Heathcliff’s cruelty didn’t seem to affect Hong Lu nearly as much as it was affecting himself. While Hong Lu tried to avoid social situations including Heathcliff to be polite, there was nothing Heathcliff could do about the way Hong Lu kept his smile at every insult thrown his way, nor the way his hair seemed to shine in both sunlight and moonlight.
It took Heathcliff an embarrassingly long time to come to terms that the problem resided solely within his own heart, and no amount of violence would allow him any reprieve from the grief and loss he felt from his beloved’s departure.
(Of course, he had known this from the start.)
Heathcliff sat alone on the bus, watching all of the sinners chatter idly with each other. People didn’t typically approach him to talk, and with his increasingly sour mood for the past few weeks, no one had even attempted to speak to him first in the past week.
To put it shortly, he was miserable.
He constantly felt on the edge, thinking about his true beloved and ignoring the insistent shimmer of the fatestring. He felt sick nearly all the time, and hated to hear Hong Lu’s – or anyone’s, at this point – melodic voice sound through the bus. He hated Hong Lu, he hated this bus, he hated the world, and he hated himself. He’s felt miserable since he was born – he’s certain of it now – even through her kind gaze and soft touches.
He couldn’t think of a single instance in his life where he’s been entirely happy.
Even when he played in the woods with his beloved as a child, he had known deep down that not even their shared fatestring could bring them together. They were just too far apart – he was too him, and she was too... her.
It wouldn’t matter how hard he tried. Heathcliff realized he would never feel worthy of being allowed to exist at her side. Fatestring be damned – she would always be too good for him.
Did it really matter, though? If they were connected through the universe’s red thread, perhaps he could have had a chance at something akin to happiness if he had just...
Heathcliff looks up at Hong Lu, who is turned away from him.
...if he had just taken action.
That was the entire moral of his damn story, wasn’t it?
Getting up from his seat feels like breaking through a shell of stone. Hong Lu wasn’t her – that part was obvious in far more ways than one. But maybe, the universe is offering him another olive branch – another chance to crawl out of the pit that was himself and reach happiness.
“Hey. Hong Lu,” Heathcliff says, voice rough but without ill intent. Hong Lu’s conversation stops in its tracks and he turns around with something of a surprised look on his face. Heathcliff suddenly feels very awkward and very watched, but pushes on nonetheless: “Could I borrow you for a sec? I got a question.”
Hong Lu tells his adjacent sinners that he’ll be back soon and makes his way over to where Heathcliff is standing. “Maybe in the Backdoor,” Heathcliff mutters, leading Hong Lu away from the earshot of the other sinners.
Hong Lu looks at him expectantly, waiting for Heathcliff to speak first. He doesn’t want to anger Heathcliff by speaking, Heathcliff quickly realizes, and wishes he could bash his own skull in for being such a moron.
“I was wondering,” Heathcliff starts, taking a pause to avoid stuttering, “if you knew who your soulmate was before we drove over to T Corp.”
“What do you mean?” Hong Lu asks, gently, and his voice brings memories of her again. Heathcliff tries to ignore it. “I mean, I’m asking who your soulmate was. Before T Corp,” Heathcliff says in short segments, wanting to bash his own skull in again once he realizes he’s effectively just said the exact same thing as he did before.
Hong Lu smiles, and he sounds like he doesn’t understand something: “You’re my ‘soulmate’, Heathcliff, even before T Corp. Why would it change?”
Heathcliff clicks his tongue and his foot taps impatiently. “That ain’t possible,” he says, “it must’ve switched after she–”
And then he remembers: His beloved never existed to anyone but him. It didn’t matter who Hong Lu’s soulmate was before or if he even had one – in Hong Lu’s perspective, they had always been connected, because Heathcliff never had anyone else to be connected to.
“Why didn’t– Why didn’t you,” Heathcliff’s voice breaks a bit, unsure of how to navigate a world that’s been rewritten for everyone but him, “Why didn’t you say anything? We’re soulmates, innit? Just going to sit there and stare all day long?”
Hong Lu laughs, and it doesn’t remind Heathcliff of his beloved. It’s darker and far more fake than his usual laugh.
“The hongxian is such a wishful phenomenon, don’t you think?” Hong Lu hums, and Heathcliff understands the word ‘hongxian’ to be an alternate phrase for ‘fatestring’ from a different culture. “My siblings and guardians have never listened to their hongxians – even if it’s what the universe says, it would sometimes hurt to follow such whims, right?”
Of course Heathcliff knows that. Why else would she have ignored their connection in the first place?
Hong Lu continues: “When I talked about my hongxian, my siblings would often tell me that I’d be better off not following it. After all, they made it quite clear that whoever is connected to me must be quite unlucky~”
He finishes off his statement with a sing-song tone that doesn’t fit the conversation at all.
Heathcliff clicks his tongue again, annoyed at the idea. He’s known Hong Lu’s family was cruel for a while, but a cruel upbringing was in line with what the City had to offer. “So what,” he says, after a momentary period of thought, “you’re just going to give up? Won’t even try anything?”
Hong Lu gives him an empty smile again. “I’d like to,” he admits, voice almost sounding a bit vulnerable, “but when I met you for the first time on the bus, I realized my family was right. It’s... not correct. You understand, don’t you?” Another pause. “The way you look at me, it’s...” Hong Lu’s voice trails off a bit, along with his smile, “...like you wish I had never been born.”
His empty smile is quick to return. It pisses Heathcliff off.
“Is this laughing business to you?” Heathcliff growls. “I’m not laughing,” Hong Lu replies, in the same gentle tone he uses for anything else.
Heathcliff takes a breath and recollects himself. Hong Lu is nearly unreadable – but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Heathcliff’s misdirected anger and hatred has cut into Hong Lu’s heart. “I’m willing to try,” Heathcliff finally says, “can’t guarantee nothin’, but I’m willing to give this a proper shot.”
“I’m not,” Hong Lu responds kindly, before giving Heathcliff a polite nod and walking off.
The fuck?
Hong Lu is already back in the main bus area by the time Heathcliff is able to react. He slams open the Backdoor and finds Hong Lu back to cheerfully conversing with the same sinners he was talking to before Heathcliff dragged him away.
What the hell is Heathcliff supposed to do now?
“I wasn’t done talkin’ to you,” Heathcliff growls when he reaches Hong Lu, once again interrupting his conversation. “What more do you have to say?” Hong Lu asks, genuinely, and Heathcliff realizes he doesn’t have anything.
After a short pause, Heathcliff speaks. “Sure, whatever, be an arsehole,” Heathcliff says. He resorts to cruelty and anger, because it’s the only path he has well-tread. “There’s a reason your family said all that shite about you, yeah?” Heathcliff hisses, and regrets his words the instant they leave his mouth.
Hong Lu doesn’t react to Heathcliff’s words at all, outside of issuing a standard apology for angering him. Before Hong Lu can finish, though, Heathcliff is back in his room, the thunder outside his window roaring as loud as ever.
He waits for a knock on his door – some sort of twist where Hong Lu reconsiders his position and decides that Heathcliff is worth at least an hour’s worth of effort. He’s always been a romantic at heart – hoping that the universe would eventually pull him and his beloved together when neither of them made the effort to connect.
The day ends, and no knock arrives to save Heathcliff from his self-made storm.
She would have hated him like this.
...Which is precisely why he’s gotta get off his arse and finally take some proper action, right?
Heathcliff sits up in his bed, turning to his bedside. There’s a small group of flowers of varying types and colors by his bedside in an old marble vase. It’s always been there – ever since he was introduced to his very own Backdoor room. No matter how long Heathcliff spends tearing the petals off, or crushing the marble vase with his bat, the small collection of flowers is always present by his bedside when he opens the door.
He’s grown a small attachment to it, admittedly – what was once an annoyance and a contrast to how he viewed himself now signified a small area where he could feel like he belonged. A small feeling of home that Wuthering Heights could never provide him.
He picks out all the flowers that aren’t purple – purple was for her, and her alone – and throws them together in what appears to be the world’s ugliest bouquet.
No, no, that wouldn’t do – he’s dealing with the one percent here, some crumpled handful of wildflowers wouldn’t work.
A flower crown, then? A forever ago, gentle hands around his had carefully taught him to weave together steams to create a small garland. But Heathcliff bitterly realizes that he’s since lost the knowledge. Just another thing he’s lost, then.
He decides on the vase itself, adorned with what flowers are still together.
The purple flowers stay on his pillow.
With the vase in one hand, Heathcliff crosses the hallway and knocks on Hong Lu’s door louder than he wishes he did. He stands awkwardly outside the door, waiting for it to open. He’s just about to call it a lost cause when he sees the doorknob turn.
“Heathcliff?” Hong Lu asks, and Heathcliff makes a mental note that he should start planning out conversations instead of just following some random instinct.
“Uh,” Heathcliff starts, “this ’s for you,” he finishes, holding out the vase with flowers. He keeps his eyes on Hong Lu’s face, desperate to derive any sort of reaction from his passive expressions.
He looks amused, and his head cocks to the side a half inch. “Ahaha, what is this supposed to be~?” Hong Lu asks in a lighthearted voice. Heathcliff is one impulse away from chucking the vase at Hong Lu’s head as hard as he can throw it until he glances down and sees the vase in question. The flowers have all entirely withered and the vase has lost its intricate designs and pure white color.
Guess that’s what happens when you try to take an object that doesn’t exist outside of its realm.
Reminds Heathcliff about other areas of his life.
“Looked better before,” Heathcliff grumbles, and Hong Lu lets out a light laugh. “So many things in this life are impossibly fleeting,” Hong Lu comments, and Heathcliff can’t help but agree. “Could I come in?” Heathcliff asks awkwardly, motioning towards Hong Lu’s door.
The hand he uses to motion towards Hong Lu’s door is the one that was just holding the vase – the instant it left his mind, it had left his grasp.
Hong Lu’s room is nothing short of eerie – there’s hardly any furniture, the wallpaper is made of a simple white and grey pattern, and there’s at least one painting on each wall that features a seemingly random splatter of dark ink. He notes that Hong Lu’s room door doesn’t have any sort of lock – isn’t that a safety issue?
Heathcliff doesn’t say anything for at least a minute, and Hong Lu sits on the edge of his bed in a pretty and polite manner.
“Why, uh, why not?” Heathcliff nearly stutters out, and finds himself unable to maintain Hong Lu’s unrelenting and passive gaze into his soul. If he allowed Hong Lu to look any deeper into his eyes, what would be found?
“Ah, you’ll have to be more specific, Heathcliff,” Hong Lu says, and the fact that Hong Lu hasn’t been nearly as torn up over their previous encounter as Heathcliff has bothers him. “Y’said you weren’t willing to try and make this whole fatestring thing work,” Heathcliff clarifies, “I’ve been an arse to you since we met, basically, and I know I’m probably an entire kilometer underneath your league, but–”
Heathcliff is interrupted by a laugh – one that almost sounds entirely genuine.
“You have the wrong idea, Heathcliff,” Hong Lu says, and he really does look amused instead of the nauseatingly fake smile he typically has on. “Mmm, I don’t think I’d make a very good lover anyways,” Hong Lu considers further, and the word lover makes Heathcliff flush uncomfortably. What the hell is he even doing here?
He passively realizes the paintings on Hong Lu’s walls are changing shape out of his view every so once in a while. He wonders if it reflects Hong Lu’s inner emotions as the room windows do – both the paintings and Hong Lu’s thoughts seemed completely undecipherable anyways.
When Heathcliff says nothing, Hong Lu continues. “You haven’t been mean to me, Heathcliff, only honest,” he hums, and Heathcliff has never disagreed with a statement more. Hong Lu pauses again, and Heathcliff consciously stays silent to give Hong Lu time to think and speak. When’s the last time anyone has actually given this guy a chance to speak his mind further than a single sentence?
“There’s something wrong with me,” Hong Lu says in a timid voice, and his eyes trail to the left, “maybe I could have tried if I were younger. But now...,” Hong Lu laughs an empty laugh, “what use is there trying in the grand arc of life?”
Heathcliff doesn’t understand Hong Lu’s perspective. But he doesn’t have a burning need to.
“It ain’t right, but for the time being, I don’t mind trying for the both of us,” Heathcliff says, and getting the words out makes his head spin with humiliation. “So, uh,” Heathcliff continues, unsure if he really wants to proceed, “slap me if something’s bad, yeah?”
It’s a horribly awful method of obtaining consent from someone he’s not even sure knows how to consent, but Heathcliff isn’t able to find any other route that doesn’t make him want to tear his skin off.
He gets up from his seat with the intention of kissing Hong Lu. Making his way over to Hong Lu’s seated position on his bed (he’s careful to not touch Hong Lu’s bed for even a second – he wouldn’t be able to handle the feeling), Heathcliff angles Hong Lu’s face upwards a bit awkwardly and leans in with his eyes shut tight. And the second their lips touch...
...Heathcliff feels a sharp pain to his chest and his blood turns as cold as ice.
He physically recoils with a swear, bumping into some piece of furniture he hadn’t seen earlier. It’s wrong – It’s all wrong. He shouldn’t be here, kissing someone so soon after his everything was torn away from him. He could still feel her, as though her icy hands were around his neck, and as though she was cursing him for ever turning towards someone else.
He realizes there are tears leaving his eyes, and the familiar and overwhelming sense of nausea is once again present in his stomach.
“Ahaha, I didn’t know I was that bad,” Hong Lu says, and something in his expression and tone signals that he’s been hurt.
“It’s not that,” he says, trying to regain his composure, “it’s not– you’re not–” He lets out a heavy sigh. “...It’s complicated,” he decides on saying, and is thankful to feel the nausea begin to subside. “Was just too much too soon,” Heathcliff adds after a short period of silence, and Hong Lu smiles.
Hong Lu stands and approaches him. He holds Heathcliff’s face and kisses his cheek in an elegant and practiced manner.
Heathcliff doesn’t hate it.
“I don’t mind waiting, then,” Hong Lu hums. “It’s nice being wanted for nothing more than just me.”
Heathcliff isn’t in any state to even begin trying to decipher Hong Lu’s words. But through his onslaught of emotions, he can hear a genuine gratitude in Hong Lu’s voice.
He isn’t sure how long it’s been since he last made someone pleased.
Unsurprisingly, it’s nearly impossible for Heathcliff to fall asleep that night. His head is racing with thoughts like never before as he lies in his bed for two. What a lousy first kiss that was, Heathcliff thinks, and briefly considers barging back into Hong Lu’s room to execute a better one. The thought alone is enough to make him nauseous though, and he doubts he has the courage.
He glances over to the marble vase by his bedside. The flowers look more lively and full in the vase, and it’s the first change to his room’s furniture he’s ever seen. He picks out a single purple flower and places it across from him on the bed, then redirects his gaze to the ceiling with a deep sigh. He would never be able to forget his beloved (he would never want to), but maybe if he’s careful and takes things slow, he can bring her with him as he finally does something for himself.
And with that, Heathcliff lets out a light breath and falls asleep.