it could be better.

2044.
(Present day.)

“…Oh.”

Dr. Sen shifts uncomfortably in her seat, because she hadn’t expected to see a familiar face. From the looks of it, though, she doesn’t know whether it means she should be more tense or relaxed.

“I hadn’t expected to see you again, Liam.”

“Yeah, well. Likewise.”

Brimstone knows that they’re lying to each other to save themselves the despair.

“…All these fake names and shell corporations. Even if I wanted to find you, I wouldn’t know where to look,” he mutters.

Dr. Sen offers him a subtle smile so varnished and fake it glimmers like porcelain. “Yes, of course.”

Brimstone takes no offense to this, because he knows the smile doesn’t conceal much of anything like contempt or bitterness: on the contrary, he knows full well what she’s trying to hide: hurt. He takes a breath through his teeth. He really didn’t want to have to see her again, not just for Sabine’s sake, but—don’t tell Sabine—for Yunhua’s, too.

After all, it can’t be easy for her to be confronted with her ex-brother-in-law like this, because aside from a lot of other things, it’s a painful reminder that Sabine doesn’t want to talk to her directly. And while Liam has Sabine’s back—of course he does—it’s not like he doesn’t get it. Maybe he can even understand how she feels—and how she felt back then—a little.

Yunhua continues with some bravery. “It’s been a while... How are things?”

She’s talking in her stiffer work voice, which she’d shed with Liam after three, four thanksgivings? It’s a shaky façade: Her tells are obvious—at least ever since Sabine had taught him several years ago. The monotone that’s pretty convincing unless you’ve heard her talk comfortably for real, and her using contractions only when she talks about herself.

“I’m fine.” Brimstone dismisses the remark, swiftly but politely. “But I’m here for business.”

Dr. Sen nods. “...Right.”

“So. Your... patents. Radianite capture? Stem cell simulations?”

Yunhua’s eyes flit up in genuine surprise. “Wait, how did you know we were—Not that I’m—but… I am curious... Those should not be documented or filed or anything of the sort yet.”

“Our sources are also... classified, although I can tell you off the record that I myself have no fuckin’ idea where we get our intel from.”

“Ah. And you work for some sort of shadow... organization, is it”

“Something like that.”

“I was wondering what kind of company would want to hold a so-called ‘interview’ with me in a locked room with a one-way mirror. So I see. If you are working with Kingdom, You must realize I’m well aware of my rights.”

Brimstone sighs. “It’s not like you think. Something’s brewing in the winds, Hua, and some people are very interested in getting a group of people together with very specialized talents to stop it.”

Yunhua raises an eyebrow. “So you aren’t interrogating me.”

“They’ve got a lot going on, but I can guarantee that they don’t know that it’s you.” Brimstone reassures. “I had my suspicions, but that’s just me. Your identity hasn’t quite blown over yet, although I can’t tell you how, at this point.”

“And this something... these… people you work for, would need my abilities to stop it?”

“Well, more precisely, they think your tech will help.”

Brimstone can’t quite figure out the way the doctor’s expression seems to sour and harden all at once. Her façade seems to flicker a little bit when she starts to fidget with the hem of her lab coat a little bit.

“Liam... This... ability... It is not one I would employ lightly—it’s not like...” Yunhua takes a breath, and Brimstone can’t tell if what she’s choking back is her own spit or tears or she’s just forgotten to breathe out. “It’s not like I haven’t learned my lesson.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“...”

“I’d just like you to think about it. It’d... help save a lot of lives. And I know we haven’t talked, but I genuinely believe that, and I promise your technology won’t fall into the wrong—”

“I don’t... think you understand. It’s not technology, Liam.”

“...Pardon me?”

“It’s... better if I just show—okay. Here—”

Dr. Sen hikes up the sleeve of her lab coat on her left arm, revealing a rosary of jade beads. She points her open hand at the floor, and the beads plink off her bracelet and splash onto the ground, propagating, and freezing over into a crystalline plaster of mineral.

Oh.

...

Shit.

That’s not technology.

“It’s you.”

She nods, and when she curls her fingers in the crystals seem to retract into the same beads and magnetically attach at her wrist as before.

“The liquid jade is something I can... make with my powers. As for stabilizing radianite particles with it... or the stem cell physiology... Those, I’ve had to... study.”

Oh.

Oh god.

Yunhua sees the look on Brimstone’s face and it scares her a little, so she continues talking without hitching a breath because if even Liam sees her as some kind of monster... No, that couldn’t happen. She won’t let it. She has to prove that at the core, she’s still herself, she’s still human. (Although the morphological definition as it relates to her physiology are of course... academically contentious.)

“It’s not... like I was trying to finish what I couldn’t—and shouldn’t. That’s not why I ended up being able to do this. I promise. It’s just that... my patients...”

“I get it.” Brimstone’s look softens. He sighs. “And… the patents from these shell companies of yours are to hide the fact that this procedure is a radiant ability.“

“Neither the media nor the public would not look kindly upon radiants if they were granted the ability to play god. Neither would your employers, I suspect.”

Brimstone sighs, half in exasperation towards his ex-sister-in-law, half in exasperation over this whole situation. “It’s not like you didn’t try to play god when you were human. Yunhua—”

And there it is. The elephant rears its ugly head.

Yunhua’s shoulders tense up, because the remark clearly hurt more than Brimstone had meant for it to. Both of them, for a minute in awkward silence, stay completely frozen in place, staring at their feet as if the liquid crystal orbs were still frozen over them.

Damn.

Brimstone bites his cheek in displeasure—this complicates things.

“So... we’re not scouting you as a scientist. We wouldn’t be. We’d be... scouting you as a field medic.”

“Field... medic?” the doctor tilts her head in confusion. “What do you mean...”

“You better read this.”

Brimstone jimmies around in his satchel and tosses her a manila folder, stamped with a big red “Classified.” Yunhua fumbles catching it—it’s too big for her hands—but she manages to hold it in a way that the contents don’t spill out.

…

“Oh... wow.” The doctor raises her eyebrows in disbelief. “Not that I understand a lot of the physics, but this is, uh.”

“Terrifying? You bet your ass.”

Sage carefully places the documents back on the table. Then she stares at Brimstone, eyes wide open like a puppy dog that just got kicked in the face by accident.

Brimstone is silent.

Yunhua stares back at the title page of the research paper—Observation of the Everett-Linde Theorem through advanced particle mapping technologies and Einstein-Rosenberg bridge generation.

If she was to understand it correctly, researchers in Santa Clara had managed to map the travel trajectories of particles through wormholes they had been able to recreate in a lab, and found that said particles follow the same trajectory and angle of initial incident as the radianite particles that are generated from radianite decay.

In layman’s terms? Radianite doesn’t at all multiply itself. More of it is being pulled out from somewhere else. Somewhere very, very far away, through punching holes in space-time, through white holes: one-way exits in space-time.
Her eyes then flit down to her hands, terrified of what exactly it was that she’d been touching for all these years of research.

“Oh god…” her voice cracks. Shaking a little bit, she grips her hands at her thigh as if to wipe them off with her pants. “I… what did I do to…”

She swallows.

“So…” She looks back up at Brimstone. “What brings you here…?”

“Good question.” Brimstone tosses several polaroid photos on top of the open folder.

“Because it’s not just radianite coming out of these wormholes.”

He points at the photo in the middle: a nuclear testing site in the middle of the desert, signs of an explosion that’s melted the surrounding sediment into glass, and at the center of it all, a blown-apart flash grenade, and the shaft of an arrow embedded into the shell that appears to be a some kind of antenna with a blinking red light.

“What... is this?”

“War, Yunhua. Why, and for what, that we don’t know quite yet.”

Yunhua... doesn’t, can’t, quite register what Brimstone is saying. She can’t be damned to because the polaroid on the far left is clearly pulled from the security cameras from her own operating table, and the figure in the picture—her hands drenched in a mixture of red blood and black radianite—is her. And laid limp on the operating table was...

“That’s... Oh, no, That’s—”

“The incident,” Brimstone cuts her off, because he really* doesn’t want to talk about the whos or whats of that picture. He pulls the photo to the center, though: “But look… Notice anything unusual to the left there?”

*The sparkling of Yunhua’s dark brown eyes seem to dim into a matte.

Oh.

Oh no.

Yunhua darts to the corner of the room to throw up in a trash can. She wretches and wretches until there’s nothing left. Letting the lid thunk back onto the trash, she groans:

“Bring Sabine in here?”

Her sentence twists into a question by the end but that was clearly more of a demand than a question. Brimstone is a little dumbfounded at the doctor’s sudden burst of urgency: she’s talking in her real voice now, and you can tell she’s fucking serious because her voice dropped several pitches. The atmosphere of the room seems to freeze to a halt, like the strange clarity in the air the hour before the storm.

“Hua—"

“Get her.” Oh, her voice softens up a little bit, because she’s surprised herself at how demanding she’d just sounded. The pressure in room fizzes back out a little. “I’ll go with you. I promise. I... want to help fix it. But... I just... need to talk to her right now. Please.”

“I wish I could, but she’s not here—”

Dr. Sen stares into into her own eyes through the one-way mirror.

Because she knows that Sabine is doing the same.

She has to be.

“Don’t lie to me, Liam.”

She clenches her fists until it hurts. Hurts until she’s damned well ready to bleed.

“Please.”

2036.
(8 years ago. Sabine is a junior biochemical engineer at Kingdom, Yunhua finishes up her last year of med school.)

“Well, I wondered who’d ring the doorbell instead of knocking—it’s nice to see you again, Sabine—and my Yunhua?”

“Sorry… wasn’t aware that I should’ve knocked…” Sabine replies, uncharacteristically sheepish, “And Yunhua had a deadline, she’ll be flying in tomorrow. She insisted I go on ahead.”

Sabine’s fidgeting.

She’s dressed neatly enough, an apron shoddily thrown on over a nice black turtleneck, elegantly tucked into a long skirt with gold designs embedded all over, for Sabine to tell that she’d clearly been expecting her, and by herself. Not that Sabine’s attire was much less conspicuous, a black dress shirt and her best beige corduroy trousers under a plush white cardigan.

Yunhua’s mom raises a knowing eyebrow.

“...And tickets were cheaper on a weekday.”

Professor Ling shoots her a smile, mischievous, but warm. “In, Dr. van den Berg, it’s cold outside. Shoes off, please. There are slippers for the guest in the shoe closet to the right.”

“Er... Socks on or off?”

“Up to you.” she says that like it’s obvious. She reaches up and a finger to tap the fancy hoop earrings—a gift from the professor two Christmases ago, reserved only for special occasions—Sabine is wearing, making them dangle at her ear. “Freshen up first, but I want to see the ring before you fall asleep, eh?”

Sabine’s heart squeezes mid-opening the cabinet.

Ah. Busted.

“Can’t hide anything from you, huh?” Sabine mutters as she reaches down to fold out the guest slippers. “Reminds me of someone I know.”

“You don’t have to be perceptive to notice that you’re shaking,” remarks the professor, amusement flitting across her gentle lips. “You remind me of how baby’s baba was the day before our wedding.”

Sabine gulps. “I see.”

“Relax, sweetheart, You know I like you two together.”

“It’s still a lot to be asking…” murmurs Sabine. “I know how important she is to you. I know Yunhua feels the same about you.”

How is this lady so short yet so intimidating all the same? She really is Yunhua’s mother.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Miss Sabine,” Professor Ling nudges a roomba properly into its charger with her foot as she guides Sabine along the hallway past the living room. “Finally my little sage flower will be out of my hair. What could be better? Just don’t make her hyphenate your names, yours is too long. If anything a white people name will be better for her in academia.”

She scritches her own chin. “But maybe not in hospitals. You know what? You two do what you want.”

“Er…” Sabine doesn’t quite know if this is the professor giving them her blessing. She hasn’t even gotten to sit down yet. Seems like the impatience runs in the family. “Thank you..?”

“You two will be fine.” Professor Ling pulls out a chair at the dining table and sets Sabine down, unclasping some glass tupperware that’s been neatly set aside. “Hua told me you liked eggplant. I got some from the market for you two.”

“Thank you…” Sabine looks at her balled up fists at her knees. Her backache from the flight over still hasn’t subsided, not to mention the long bus ride here from the airport. How’d Yunhua manage to do this every summer break for 7 entire years…? “Thank you, Professor Ling.”

The professor waves it off.

“Thank Yunhua, she’s the one who told me.” She sits down at the other side of the table with her own bowl of rice. She points at Sabine with the tip of her chopsticks. “You two will be great. You’re already made an accomplished researcher of yourself, although if you’d asked me several years ago I would’ve said I doubted your abilities.”

Sabine scoffs a little, transparently in jest. “I’m aware.”

Yunhua’s mother laughs. “Water, and all of it under the bridge, I hope. You know I’m only picky because I care.”

“Of course, Ms. Ling. It’s an honor, really. I would be the same.”

Sabine thinks she’s starting to loosen up a little along with her. Her girlfriend’s mother is as charming as ever.

“And my daughter, too. Months away from being a doctor!” Professor Ling scrunches her nose. “Aiya, that spoiled little rascal, in charge of people’s lives now. Pray for the elderly.”

Sabine smiles. “I’m sure she’ll do great. She’s top of her class. She’s also on track to becoming the first expert in the application of the new energy source in medical technologies.”

Ms. Ling shoots her an amused glance. “And you’re to thank for it. Really, what’s happened to my sloppy little daughter? How come she’s so fixed up now? Last I checked the only thing she was an expert in was being on her idiot phone all day.”

Sabine shrugs. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Not my daughter. She’d have lost her degree without you tutoring her. She tells me you’re still helping her everyday. So humble. If she were without you she would crumble into little specks of dust.”

Sabine laughs. It’s true. “She needs my help less and less everyday, Ms. Ling.”

“Too humble.” The professor sniffs. “You two will go on to do great things, with you balancing out her big head.”

Internally she’s laughing because she knows if Yunhua were here she’d get all flustered, and on any other day she would’ve taken Ms. Ling’s words as an opportunity to be smug.

“I sure hope so. Thank you, Ms. Ling,” she says, the tension all out of her shoulders now.

…

Stars speckle a night painted deep dark blue. Clear skies and a full moon is bright enough to illuminate the whole of Yunhua’s old room in a gentle glow that spills in past the wide-open windows. The room is… unexpectedly tiny and cute, quite unlike the rich, annoying sorority sister vibe she gave off when they first met. If you’d told Sabine back then that the girl’s childhood bedroom looked this tiny, lived-in, and earnestly decorated, she wouldn’t have believed you.

It’s a small attic room with a lower ceiling (Sabine’s head almost scrapes it, almost.) with a small twin-size bed like the ones they shared in the dorms all throughout college. The covers, adorned with a pattern of pastel Sanrio characters, are plush and well-used, tucked neatly into the corners, although Sabine suspects when the girl lived here the bed was never made. There’s a lot of stuffed animals by the pillows.

The walls by her bedside are heavily decorated, and Sabine notices photocards and posters and printed-out decorations of the same kpop idol, mostly, plastered all over one side of the room. She has short, split-dyed hair that falls straight like a curtain, a sharp, serious look on her face. She must’ve been into cool girls since a long time ago. Sabine finds the idea of Yunhua as an embarrassing, gay little fangirl that collects photocards a little silly. The bratty little minx that wormed her way into her heart in college used to be so earnest with her affections… Maybe Sabine wouldn’t have found her so annoying back then if she’d stayed that way.

There’s polaroids stuck in between the cracks, some of her with her mom or dad, most of them of her high school friends… Sabine recognizes some from her stories but she can’t quite put names to the faces. She knows which one Yunhua used to have a crush on, though. Annoying bitch. Sabine sticks her finger at the picture to smush the one face.

Mine now, idiot.

A knock at the door sends Sabine jumping like a cat with its hair on end—caught in the act… She collects her composure as she answers the door.

The two of them sit together on the bed, taking in Yunhua’s years gone by. It’s nice. Ms. Ling’s presence is not at all overbearing. She’s starting to feel the same way with her mother in law that she never thought she could with her own mother… Safe. Safe to be herself, safe to be known. Sabine wonders how things would’ve turned out for her if she’d had a mother like this growing up.

Ms. Ling sticks a toothpick in an apple slice. She’d brought a full tray of them, all cut up with cute bunny ears. For a woman who’s terrible at cooking, she’s pretty damn good with a knife. She waves the apple at the photocards. “Can you believe she was surprised I already knew? Three walls all taped up with boobs pictures of half-naked girls, and she thought herself sneaky.”

Sabine cackles. “Doesn’t surprise me at all, actually. She’s so not self aware.”

“Yet she’s perceptive when it comes to others. Too perceptive.” Sabine catches a glimmer in her eye. “That’s how I know she’s making a good choice.”

Sabine looks on. A breeze rustles the branches of a tree outside. “I sure hope so.”

“My marriage with Huahua’s baba was a lot like the two of yours… Full of dreams that seemed at first so far away, and working together to get there together. I wanted to be an English professor without speaking a lick of it, and Hua’s daddy really wanted a convertible.”

Ms. Ling chuckles. “We worked our asses off to be able to afford tuition and payments on a car. And then we worked our asses off to spoil our little flower. By the time Hua was in high school, the car had all but broken down… The tape player stuck and the same songs playing over and over again, the clutches all stiff, the wheel loose…”

Yunhua’s mother’s eyes sparkle in the moonlight. “And her father, who dreamt of riding it into the sunset, gone.”

Sabine doesn’t know what to say. “…I’m so sorry, Ms. Ling.”

“What I mean to say is that happily ever after is a funny thing, Dr. van den Berg. Sometimes what you have to show for it isn’t the dream you tried to make come true together, but something else entirely.”

“I… think I know what you mean.”

Ms. Ling smiles, looking on at the calendar marked several years ago hanging over Yunhua’s desk. “Baby is baba’s and my happily ever after, Sabine. Happy ever after doesn’t mean that everything is and always will be great. It means that you’ve found something together that will always still mean something even when things go wrong.”

Sabine simply nods.

“…Do you know why she wants to be a doctor, Sabine?”

“It’s her father, right…?” asks Sabine, carefully. “Wanting, if she can, to make sure girls like her don’t grow up having lost their dad.”

A silent understanding, drenched in sweet moonlight, hangs in the air.

“Take care of her, Sabine.” Ms. Ling murmurs, her voice soft for the first time. “She’s a smart little thing, too smart… And she’s strong. Of course I know she’s strong.”

Sabine nods. “The smartest I know.”

“She wants to save lives.” whispers Ms. Ling. “And I know she will. Many lives.”

Ms. Ling stares at her apple. The peel glistens a dim red in the moonlight.

“But when baby becomes a doctor… there will be a time where being smart and strong isn’t going to be enough. And there will be another time after that, and after that. If you can promise that you can be there for her when it happens… and when it happens again, and again…”

She smiles at Sabine, and Sabine swears Yunhua gets her mischievous smile and the sparkles in her eyes from her mother.

“Then there is nothing more I could ask of you.”

The professor throws her toothpick on the tray. She pulls a thick red envelope from under the plate of apple slices.

“Happy new year, Miss Sabine. And don’t think there’s going to be another one for Hua. This is for both the of you. Actually, remind Hua not to expect a birthday gift this year. I’ll be paying enough for your wedding next month.”

“Ah, right..!” Sabine reaches over and rummages through her bag for a red envelope of her own. “Happy new year, Ms. Ling.”

The professor clicks her tongue. “So tricky, my daughter... Bribing me into playing nice with her girlfriend.” She makes a show of not-so-eagerly accepting it, but laughs as she sets the apples at Hua’s old desk and slips past the door. “This better be enough to get me a nice bag. Goodnight, my baby’s groom.”

“Goodnight, Ms. Ling.”

When Sabine puts her mother-in-law’s gift away in her bag, she feels something light and plastic fall from the envelope and clatter against her books.

(later that year.)

“Sab, Sabb…” Yunhua yells out, looking for her wife in a drunken slur. “Sabbbriiiinaa… Sabrinabine….”

“Yes, dear…?”

“Sabine!” Yunhua yells, excitedly, throwing her arms and legs in the air.

Sabine laughs. Normally she would've scrunched her nose at Yunhua saying her name wrong on purpose to get a rise out of her, but she supposes she can make an exception for now. After all, it's her day they're celebrating. Yunhua's just graduated summa cum laude from the most distinguished med school on the face of the planet, with a perfect evaluation on her thesis work with radianite therapy... Hospitals and medical tech firms alike were clamoring to be the first to hire her. If she wants to get shitfaced and call Sabine names, so be it.

Besides, she looks cute being carried in her arms back up to their shared hotel room like this, and in spite of that looking around and calling out for Sabine like she has no idea where she's gone.

"Sab! Sab..." her voice has turned sad now. Her eyes glitter like she's about to cry. "Come back..."

"Right here." mutters Sabine, not quite too sober herself. "Silly. What."

"Oh...!" realizes Yunhua. "You're right here. Boop...!"

Sabine scrunches her face at being booped a little too hard. In the eye. "Ow—"

"Ack!" Yunhua squirms so hard in surprise and Sabine's so in pain that she straight-up ends up dropping her, the doctor falling through her lover's arms and flopping to the ground.

"Haha... Sorry."

"Gentle... If you're gonna boop me, boop me gentle..." squawks Sabine, in pain, "I thought you took the oath today. There you go violating it on day one..."

Yunhua pouts, knees still crumpled on the floor. "There's nothing in the oath about not poking people. It’s part of my job actually. You were listening, weren't you?”

Yunhua grabs onto Sabine's leg and starts fake sobbing in the middle of the hotel hall. “Sabine wasn't paying attention to me when I graduated..."

"So there isn't." Sabine feigns a scoff, dragging her wife towards their room with her leg. "It's still malpractice."

"Is not."

Yunhua quickly gets up, dropping her act, and pats the dust off her clothes. She pats Sabine's head too. Sabine is drunk enough for it to be hard to pretend it doesn't feel nice.

"I love you," whispers Yunhua. "My mouth is drunk but when I say that my heart is as sssober as ever."

"I love you too." responds Sabine, as swiftly as instinct. "Now let's get you to bed, my little smartass."

"Sabine..."

"Yes...?"

As she turns back around to respond, Yunhua locks her arms on Sabine's neck and pulls her into a sloppy kiss. She tastes like honeyed whiskey.

"...I think I want a kid." she says, as they break apart.

…Oh?

"With you. I want a kid. I want a kid with you."

Yunhua boops Sabine again. Gently and on the nose this time. And then she boops her again.

"...Um... like right now you want to do it?” Sabine laughs nervously, grabbing Hua’s finger and gently moving it aside. “…Or you want us to be moms..?"

A sparkle in her lover's eyes. "Mm… both, maybe…? I don't think you can get me pregnant though. But we won't be sure unless you try really...”

Sabine feels a playful curl of fingers dance along the nape of her neck, another hand already slithered under her shirt along the skin of her waist, trimmed fingernails scraped along her abs.

“…Really hard, right...?"

"Yunhua, I..."

Sabine worries. She really does, in spite of her wife continuing to spill warm honey into the base of her stomach. She worries that she won't be all that cut out to be a mother, that maybe Yunhua deserves someone better, someone less broken, someone who knows what it feels like to have a family that's loving, a family that Yunhua deserves. And… if they were to adopt…

Sabine knows better than anyone that something like that’s a huge responsibility, and not one to be taken lightly.

Then she looks into her lover's eyes, waiting, expectantly. The knots in her chest undo themselves whenever she looks into those big, warm pupils, drunk or sober, hurting or anxious. To her surprise the words that slip out from her lips next are honest...

"…Always. For you, whatever you need or want from me, always."

Yunhua grins, tears still glimmering in her eyes. "We can talk more about it when we’re not shitfaced... I know it’s not so simple… I just know if we adopted… I think we could be... I think we would try our hardest ever to give the little thing our everything. You know that. And…"

Her eyes sparkle. “Things have been going so well at work… I’m getting so many offers for residency… There’s no climate crisis anymore, and maybe soon, if I don’t fumble the kinds of research only I can do… so many diseases eradicated. Think of the world we could give our child.”

When Yunhua is happy Sabine thinks her eyes go deeper than the night sky.

"I love you so much." Sabine responds. She leans in to kiss her, but Yunhua pushes her aside with her finger.

“Anyway, now that we’ve gotten that conversation out the way—”

Hua's face turns from a smile into a deadpan as she leaps into Sabine and knocks her to the ground.

“You be a good girl and get me pregnant—” she whispers directly into Sabine’s ear.

Sabine's cheeks heat up in a fiery blush, feeling Yunhua’s warmth beating intensely against her chest. "Hua!” she yells, “what if someone hears us—”

Yunhua giggles. “I’m not the one screaming now, am I?” She starts nipping at her ear regardless, managing to coax out the inadvertent growl of something primal from the pit of Sabine’s stomach.

“Unless you make me…” she whispers.

Ack.

“Not out here, you little freak! Get off me…"

Sabine manages to dislodge Yunhua from nibbling on her ear.

Yunhua pouts, still straddling Sabine. “Fine… You have to carry me there, though, baby. I’m not sure mm… sure my legs work.”

Sabine rolls her eyes. “Liar. Your legs work fine.”

“You got me.” Hua laughs. Then she whispers, her voice low. “But, if we can help it, it won’t need to stay a lie for too long, will it now…?”

Goddammit, this girl…

“…Just get in the room, you little brat.”