Gleaming Stones of the Sun

II - BLUE SEEING RED

Chapter Synopsis:

A new student appears in Christine’s class and it comes as a shock.

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August 2017

For seventeen years I’d been alive, never once had I been worried about not meeting my soulmates. I saw my friends meeting theirs, one by one throughout the years, and it was nice, I suppose, since I got to make them my friends, too. So, it was great, as long as they weren’t, you know, my soulmate.

It wasn’t something quite so uncommon to hope for a soulmate nowadays. Blame it to the system, blame it to DNA or genetic mutation, blame it to the global warming, blame it to the stubborn survival instinct of humans, blame it to the instability of magical energy within this world in the past century even—either way, some of us were born with a different streak in our hair. It could be different in color, curly or straight, or even with different texture.

Not everyone was born with this streak. This started to happen, I heard, in year 1990. At first, no one knew what it meant, but later on, they’d find with utter amazement that the streak led the person to their soulmates who, as it turned out, had the opposite streak in their natural hair color, making them a mirroring pair.

People were excited. It was just so romantic, right? Sure. Of course. What about the ones with no streak in their hair? Did that mean they’d have no soulmates? Well, lucky for them, I’d say.

Don’t get me wrong. If they were happy, I’d be completely over the moon for them, I swear. But why did I have a streak at all? I’m an asexual!

I expressed this distress to my best friends once, when we were around fourteen, which earned me a deep scowl from Jenny who didn’t have a streak in her hair and blank look from Liz who had met her soulmate when we were ten.

“Christine,” Jenny started gently, “being an asexual doesn’t mean you cannot have a satisfying romantic or sexual relationship, if you ever want to.”

We were fourteen.

“My streak is light blue,” I told her, as though she couldn’t see it herself every single day. “Glowing. And floating, no matter what I do to it. I don’t want to have a satisfying relationship with whoever has that as their natural hair color.”

“Our Liz here has a shapeshifter for a soulmate and you never listen to her whining about it.”

I looked at Liz who was smiling serenely at me. She was so pure it ached looking at her sometimes. But I said to Jenn, “I’m not saying I don’t believe it exists. I’m saying I don’t want to meet my soulmate. Ever.”

“You’re just too lazy to try,” she added disapprovingly.

I wanted to tell her she was wrong, to stop fitting me into the imaginary boxes, but she really wasn’t. Jenny knew me too well. Some asexuals might be aromantic, but I was a romantic through and through.

Though I couldn’t deny I was perfectly content with my life. I’d spent most of my childhood trying to fix things with my family. I was suffocated by them most of my life, by their high expectations and my inability to satisfy them, until things finally crashed and burned back when I was thirteen and my aunt came into the picture offering me freedom.

Which I took like the gift that it was.

So, I was happy, you know? I got to spend more time with my friends. I got to go out and get home later as long as I informed my aunt beforehand. I could try my best with school and not have panic attacks over B+ the way I used to be. Sure, my parents still checked up on me every a couple of days or so, being the control-freaks that they were, but I felt amazing. I was living the life. Though living the kind of life that I was, I should have known it wouldn’t last.

The world was still hot and humid when the change came around two months before. It was the third week of our senior year. Jenny sat right beside me on the second seat from the front when Mrs. Fontaine, our homeroom teacher came in with a nervous manner, telling us to quiet down and stand up, which baffled me, but we stood anyway.

Then, a boy came into the room.

To say he was a boy was—it just didn’t cut it. He was unearthly beautiful; the sharp high cheekbones making him look aristocratic, the flawless pale skin, pale thin lips, angry violet eyes that seemed to glow brighter in each passing seconds, slender dancer-like build. But it was his hair that caught me.

A bit long, wavy and falling across his forehead, glowing, floating like there was a sudden change of gravity around him, was a shock of light blue hair.

“Christine,” Jenny whispered to me urgently, “his hair is light blue.”

“I know,” I whispered back. “This might come as a surprise but I have functioning eyes.”

Someone at the back groaned and thumped back into his seat. “I thought it was the president or some shit!” Then, following his lead, the other kids started to laugh and sit back down, everyone other than me and Jenny because even though it wasn’t the president, we had seen enough weird things in our current lifetime to know that this person could be someone just as important, if not more.

If the boy was angry before, he was furious now. He gritted his teeth—he was practically snarling. Over what? A bunch of high school kids who didn’t appreciate him? Because we were cocky? We were born cocky! Though the sight was somewhat familiar. He looked as though he’d expected us to kneel before him or something.

I felt myself pale as I realized the possibility. There was only one creature in existence who would throw humans such a contemptuous look. Another creature than my parents, that is.

We weren’t ready when he started blazing lightning across the classroom. Everyone was screaming. Window glasses were breaking. Tables were burning. Lamps were shattering. Shelves were cracking. There was an electricity in the air and sharp wind all over the room, but more than anything else there was this heaviness. Heaviness that came only when there was an enormous amount of condensed magic, one that made it hard to breathe.

Just as fast as it came, the power disappeared. The room felt much lighter and I breathed out the air I’d been holding. This was bad. No, not even bad, this was disastrous.

Jenny gasped then whimpered softly as though she was dying, saying, “The hair behind his head.”

But as soon as I saw it, I felt like dying, too.

The boy’s melodious voice, low and cold, cracked around the room. “You’d better show me a better respect than that, you worthless swain! I’m your god!”

And right there, in the middle of his flowing hair, at the back of his head, was a streak of fire red hair—the natural color of mine underneath this dark brown dye.

Jenny, the ever-present smartass whispered to me urgently, “Your soulmate needs a chill pill.”

And as if it wasn’t bad enough, the boy’s eyes found mine. A flash of white glinted in his violet pair, like he recognized me, even though I wasn’t sure how that was possible since this was the first time I’d seen a wreck that was him. With a voice that was almost a growl, he said in ancient language, “You.”

Why me?

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