iii.
THE SISTERS
October 2023—the present. How could people be forced to contend with such consuming emotions—all impassioned, almost inhumane—that cause something in them to twist: their words misconstruing, their faces derforming, and eventually, their souls unmaking slowly but surely straight to utter namelessness and nullity that cannot help but pull back and damage the victim, all because of just purely fictional things and beings? What power is it that the mind possesses whenever it feeds and spits out every kind of lore—people, thoughts, experiences, motives, taste, appetite, hate, adoration—that instead of beholding these, the mind couldn't help but project their semblances: a trap, which would soon drive anyone (or everyone, possibly) to an uncomfortable episode. Regression. Relapse. All those serious things nobody has ever been ready enough, not open enough to talk about. Then, there is devastation to it, from the origins of these emotions. People: consume or be consumed. It is them and the things they do that lead to eventual death.
But it would look and sound unfairly easy if the mind didn't do what it does. If death had eyes it would be like their mother's. But living that way, carrying around the 'if' everywhere, the older sister's had always known of death as being the second to something more vile which she couldn't put her finger to. All that wanting to name death for so long that she had forgotten what their mother had sounded—but she had watched her back as it turned without the face ever looking back, which had cut the might of both her eyes and mind to remember what the woman had looked like. She had believed that the woman's presence wasn't of this world but of somewhere else more rightful, more macabre. There was nothing in the older sister's world that could convince her that the woman was less than fiction. If time could hear everything it would tell everyone everything, it would give a sign, it would give anything, but so far it has been quiet. A bit odd, because the paradox of fiction is never quiet.
Which is fair. Because the older sister didn't have to know the woman had gone there—a fictional place—or maybe she had truly gone home, which is nowhere near them. The older sister has learned so much from herself; she had thought that death is something final, but it was wrong; it was the quiet.
"Sir, have you ever wondered what worms think of us?" A kid aged between six or eight asks, looking down on the nineteen-year-old Yūn Mago now on the knees, treating the wound on the boy's right knee.
Leaves were falling, dried and green, as the wind made sounds and the sunlight was blocked by a mass of gray cloud, casting a shadow on half of the playground. With earphones in her ears all afternoon, Yūn sat on one of the benches, a notepad and pen in her hands, killing the whiles trying to think of something to write. Her sight on the trees; they all looked imperfect and old, having stood strong, having danced, and she'd known, those 'trees are probably the ribs of someone's childhood'. She'd looked at the playground, its sand, and she'd thought it must've been someone's psyche crushed into smithereens—the sand had belonged only on the playground to exist as salvation. They were still. The page was white, still blank, she had been there for a while. Someone's waiting for her back home, probably. She was about to leave when she saw one of the kids stumble and fell on the sand over a lump of rock. Was he okay? The boy only sobbed, nearly cried, but didn't. And then she's been asked by all sorts of strange questions by the kid before her.
"No. It never crossed my mind." was her reply to the kid. "And I'm not a sir."
"Not a sir? But you look like a boy, Sir."
Only a muscle twitched in Yūn's jaw, getting amused.
"But what if the planets were really just the siblings of Jesus and all of them became like that, or like, got trapped inside 'cause they were bad? Or did bad things? Like smoking and drinking?"
"I. . . " Yūn stops for a second. What if? Then laughs. "I'm not too sure, kid. Could be. But nope," she says as she continues treating the wound, now putting alcohol.
"Ah!" the kid hisses. "But you sound like a boy, Sir, like a beast,"
She laughs, briefly looking up at the kid.
"A beast, huh,"
"Yeah. Do you know Raizo? From Ninja Assassin? He's so cool. He killed the bad guys in the dark—didn't even see him going here, then here, you know?" the boy goes on, with his aggressive hand movements, the sand from his hands almost blinding Yūn. She shrugs, but that was one of her favorite movies. "No? But you kinda sound like him, but a girl."
"You could handle gore scenes, kid?"
"Gore scenes?"
"Bloody scenes, brutal scenes,"
"Psh! I can watch those. They're not real, anyways. Dad told me they used jelly blood for it and it's edible." the kid says, proudly.
"You must be stronger than me, then." she says.
A while after.
"Is it done, Sir?"
"Done. Be careful now. Wash it, even if it stings. Unless you want a beast smell your blood and eat—"
"No! Beasts are monsters and monsters aren't real!" the kid exclaims, quickly striding off.
Yūn laughs, getting up. Raking her hair, she waves goodbye to the boy.
"Thank you for treating Sergeant Luke, Sir!" the boy yells affirmative, saluting.
Yūn playfully salutes back.
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Home. 4:05 PM. She sees her nine-year-old little sister, Suna; her head crushed two of the crayons on the mini study desk back in her apartment, slightly drooling over the colouring pages. The locks in every unit are all finicky and secure, and the girl says she's a strong independent lady (Yūn smiles at the thought) even though she would see blueberry jam smeared on her little lips and cheeks every now and then—she was out, earlier, to get a new blueberry jar, and maybe spare a hang of life—but she realized then that she didn't really need to go outdoors to scavenge some revelations, nor have moments of rude awakening from noticing the little things. Because now, she carries her, she watches her, and she loves her. A multitude of people she's yet to become, of things yet to adore.
It was more than twenty days ago when little Su had first spent the night with her, eyeing at her big sister's place and her "bizarre" things: her big "odd" mug and why she had only one: "So none for me? None for Su?" (that mug costed her a limb—it was a handmade ceramic, and she was never broke for anything handmade—and Yūn wasn't even using it; she told the girl it was too good to sip from it), her "injured" books she had bought from $1 books sale (old books needed new owners, she told her, and books have feelings, too, from which she had received a slanted reaction from the girl), the papers on the desk with her "crooked" handwriting and why there were many scribbles and red marks on it—got asked if she were really an adult because the nine-year-old wrote better and "bigger" than her, given that little Su came home, as if from pride rather than school, with a mark of star on her hand. Her sister explained she was writing a literary criticism about movies, and some letters and poems and more of such but she was proud of her for getting a big star, and told the girl it's just like that most of the time and it wasn't because she made haste)—all for which she didn't mind getting, well, interrogated, from the least obvious, serious questions to the most absurd ones, as long as it kept the girl amused, as long as it kept her curious, as long as they were together. To add more layers on it, she had told random, weird, existential facts about little things while making pancakes to cheer the girl up because of a little graze; she had overly scratched her little knees.
"You know, you were born without kneecaps. You were a baby, Su. Don't scratch it too much because it's just going to be itchier. Tap it lightly, tap it, tap it, then–"
"Like slapping it?"
"Almost, but gentle."
The girl did as she said.
"Now, what?"
"It's kinda gone," she continues smacking on it.
"Woah, I don't feel the itch at all, Yū, magic!"
She lifts her from the cold floor, putting her in the room—they share the room, and she is glad that they do, because MLP and Studio Ghibli plushies filled its corners, and little Su verily adored the big Totoro and the big Pinkie Pie which Yūn got for her as a welcome gift, hugging it every night hoping it could talk, because big Yūn overheard her solemnly saying, "Know what, talk to me and I won't even tell my friends about it. Just a word, no one will know—promise. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye." while sticking out a pinky promise.
Little Su comes there at her place only during the weekends since she lives with their grandmother, Isla, in the North, and Yūn's also the one who brings her back home. It was about any time then that the girl would grow up, as she shall, and Yūn did not want to be too busy to the point that she'd miss so much about all of it.
She took off her leather jacket and hung it on the rack, planning on tidying the area. The smell of blueberries fills the place from a jar left open on the marble island, along with pencils and drawings and a sharpener. Maybe her little sister, she thought, was a strong independent lady after all, when she sees the mini chair close to the bar stool, all in the likeness of a staircase. After fifteen minutes of dejunking, Yūn lays on the couch and opens her phone, sees bars of notifications from DnD, one of it was an email from IELTS. She still needed to pass those tests—and she did, even after, for a very long time, she has stopped speaking her mother tongue out loud and that meant her communicating mostly in English, not that she had a choice after their last stepfather whom died of cardiac arrest. They have another stepfather, the one who came before the previous one, whom either made visits with a bundle of Hungry Jacks and pineapple drinks for her and her little sister every six (or nine, maximum) months or sent monthly allowance without seeing them, and would tell them, her, specifically, that she has been a great big sister to the little Su, for a young age; and their mother is just not around for long years, and all of the wonder and spirits of inquiry with relevance to her had just stopped days before she turned as a woke sixteen-year-old, and, who could have known? It felt ever sweeter—so any schools can allow her to study, and she had already picked a college fifty-eight minutes away from the suburbs of Silverwater.
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