He addressed the small girl in the corner. Physically, she couldn’t have been older than thirteen—at most—but she carried herself in a way that suggested that she was actually much older than she looked.
‘How about you?’ he asked her. ‘What’s a tiny girl like you doing here in Hell?’
She looked at him once. Turned away and gazed out into the distance. Said nothing for a while.
Finally: ‘She told me to leave him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.’ She looked at him again. ‘I couldn’t just leave him.’
‘Who?’ I said, not quite managing to mentally conjure whatever horrific deed she had committed to have landed her here. She just looked too soft to commit heinous crimes, or any sort of crime at all, for that matter.
Yushi Huang took a big stretch as she sat back against her chair and reread her creative writing homework. It wasn't due for another three weeks, but she wanted to get a headstart. Plus, she was kind of in the mood to write anyway. Who knows when she'll get hit by another bout of writing block? And so, deciding to be an unstoppable force out of sheer will, she continues to type intently without really thinking too much about her story's plot.
Sometimes, she once told her roommate, the characters somehow end up writing the story themselves and when they do, they often stray far, far away from what I originally had in mind and they end up surprising me.
She had half-expected her roommate to simply laugh at her silly ideas and dismiss her words, but to her surprise, her roommate was actually genuinely interested in the concept. She even asked Yushi Huang to let her read some examples of such stories.
Yushi Huang's thoughts drifted off to that day again, when they had sat together for hours on the old couch that her parents had insisted that she bring. She remembered the fight she had had with her mother over that old couch—how she had yelled that it was inappropriate to install it in their dorm room without consulting her roommate, and how her mother had yelled back that she specifically asked the school admins to let her daughter have a solo room (the rest of their family simply hung back and let them be; they were already used to it and it was never really serious anyway).
Laughing softly and cringing slightly at the memory, Yushi Huang let her forehead fall with a clunk against her work desk.
Face-planting feels nice, actually, she thinks to herself.
It only feels nice, she realizes, until the crisis storm starts to take over.
Body leaning heavily forward, face flat on her desk, and arms hanging limply towards the floor, she starts to despair over things that had absolutely nothing to do with her homework.
Oh my God, I'm in college. I am so old. I'm actually old? What happens after college? What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go? How do I become an adult? I'm probably going to feel like a child forever. I can't believe I'm going to have to have a job and then pay bills. My God, I can't even do my assignments right. Wh—
"It is gods who make up laws on a whim, desperate to satiate their everlasting hunger for a chance to prove their power."
Yushi Huang instantly reassembles herself into a much more presentable posture at the sound of her roommate's voice reading her homework aloud.
"Do you think it's too cheesy?" Yushi Huang asks her, propping her head up on her hand.
"No! Your writing is always brilliant!" Yushi Huang's roommate, Xuan Ji, enthusiastically responds.
On the day that they met, Yushi Huang decided that she and Xuan Ji were on the polar opposite ends of the same spectrum. She had no idea what the spectrum was, exactly, but there was a spectrum.
While Yushi Huang was generally reserved and expressionless, Xuan Ji was bold and unapologetic.
Their college courses and fashion styles were polar opposites as well: Yushi Huang majored in English Literature with a focus on writing, while Xuan Ji majored in Mass Communication; and Yushi Huang usually opted for soft pastel colors and flowy maxi skirts, while Yushi Huang usually opted for red and black and combat boots.
Xuan Ji collapsed backwards into her bed and let out a deep sigh. Yushi Huang spun her chair around to watch her.
"I thought the party was scheduled to end at 3?" Yushi Huang asked her roommate.
Xuan Ji let out another sigh and said, "No less than five guys asked for my socials today so I had to bail out and announce that I was going home to my girlfriend."
Yushi Huang quirked an eyebrow and smiled a little despite herself.
They weren't actually dating. Xuan Ji had simply grown tired of all the men trying to make a move on her so she randomly pounced on Yushi Huang while she was taking a nap in the school library one day and asked her to become her fake girlfriend.
"Why me?" Yushi Huang had asked.
"Because you seem like someone I could actually have genuine peaceful moments with," Xuan Ji had huffed in response.
"Why not get a fake boyfriend instead?"
"Because men are weird and dumb and stupid. It won't mean anything to them. They'll try to make a move on me anyway to assert dominance against said boyfriend."
True, Yushi Huang silently agreed.
"Alright then."
Xuan Ji suddenly perked up, all traces of men-fatigue instantly gone.
"REALLY?!"
"Really. And I don't have anything better to do with my life anyway. At least this way I'll be able to actually help someone"
The truth was that she agreed because she had been secretly admiring Xuan Ji from afar. At first, she thought that she had simply wanted to be like her—after all, Xuan Ji was always so authentic and dynamic. But when Yushi Huang sat down and thought about it properly, she decided that no, she did not want to become a human embodiment of the Caps Lock. What she really wanted was to be with her; the sun to her moon, the fire to her ice.
Fate can be a bit cruel, teasing me like this, she had thought at that time, but she had never once regretted her decision to agree to Xuan Ji's whims.
Yushi Huang smiled to herself again as she recounted their first day. She didn't realize that she had spun back around to face her desk again and had put her head down on it again. Xuan Ji watched as she peacefully drifted off to sleep. After a short while of admiring her roommate, she got up and placed a blanket over her.
Xuan Ji thought, What a privilege it is to be able to finally live with the person I've long admired from afar.
Yes, it was true that she was tired of getting constantly pestered by guys, and yes, it was also true that she just randomly saw Yushi Huang in the library that day, but she took it as a sign and decided right then and there to create the perfect opportunity for herself.
Unaware that they felt the same way towards one another, both of the girls constantly thought, Maybe one day I'll be able to tell you my true feelings.
Maybe?
Maybe.