Work Text:
It’s so easy to fall into her presence. Something in her smile, about her laugh, makes Esfen forget why she’s here. She swears, every time she realizes who her target is, that this time will be different; that she won’t lose herself in that wretchedly beautiful existence.
Sitting in a karaoke booth with two other nobodies, her eyes locked on Lin as the girl sings her heart out, she thinks about tearing her traitorous brain from her skull as she realizes she’s failed again.
The song ends. She watches mutely as one of the other girls stands, calling excitedly to Lin. The microphone switches hands, and before she realizes, the source of her suffering is right beside her, smile brighter than the sun, and Esfen is a deer in headlights, stunned into silence by the incessant flow of words directed at her.
“Essy, Essy, I can’t believe I hit that high note!! I’ve sung that song so many times and I always sound like such a dying crane during the bridge, but I got it this time!!” She beams, bouncing in her seat with excitement. “How did it sound?!”
Esfen shifts her gaze to Lin’s sparkling earrings, focussing intently on the shape of the ravens and the glint in their gemstone eye, far enough away from Lin’s eyes to break free of the trap, but not so far that she’d be called out on her action.
“Sounded great,” she murmurs. “Wouldn’t go as far to say you were like a dying bird last time, but your voice was more stable this time.”
Truthfully, she hadn’t been paying attention to her voice either of the times, but the answer seemed to satisfy the girl, her eyes crinkling into crescents as she grabbed the tablet from the table, shoving it towards Esfen.
“Okay, your turn to choose something!! After Eila, we don’t have anything queued, so it’s perfect for you to jump in!!”
There’s a half-hearted attempt at protest from Esfen, lightly pushing at the tablet and muttering an unintelligible excuse, but she ends up with it in her lap moments later. Lin peeks over her shoulder, shouting encouragement at the current singer, and resting her chin on Esfen, and it feels as if someone’s picked up a warmed pot from the stove and poured the contents directly where Lin is touching her. She lets out a sharp exhale through her nose, fighting the instinct to flee, and scrolls rapidly through the song list, clicking the first one she recognizes. Oblivious to her struggle, Lin looks down at the tablet again and makes an approving sound before taking the tablet back, and seeing that gentle smile on her face as she adds the song to the queue almost makes the part of her telling her to run away quieten.
Esfen avoids any contact between her eyes and any part of Lin until the song is finished and the girl that had been singing is holding the microphone in front of Esfen’s face. She says thanks as she takes it, adjusting her skirt as she stands.
As luck would have it (luck had never been on her side), the song she’d hastily chosen was a depressing love song. Unrequited, useless love, she thinks bitterly. As the title screen fades to black, illuminated by the colourful lights in the reflection on the television screen, some ugly thing in her chest heaves when she sees Lin whispering something to the other girls. It’s only a moment before Lin’s looking back at Esfen, meeting her eyes in the screen and giving a little wave of encouragement, but in Esfen’s mind, it’s far too much time spend without the girl’s eyes on her. Regardless of the fact that Esfen can’t keep her own eyes on Lin for more than a few seconds without feeling physically overwhelmed, the tiny, traitorous part of her wants. Wants Lin just to look at her, to think of her, to love her.
But that’s nothing but a delusion she uses to keep herself sane.
Esfen looks away from the reflection of her desire and focuses on the song.
There are exactly eight streaks of pink in Lin’s hair. There are exactly eight verses in the song she’d sung for her four months ago. Esfen counts each streak of vibrant colour over and over, neatly arranging the hair, as she sings the song to the girl lying down with her head in her lap. She sings as a goodbye, pulling the sword out from the girl’s chest, and sheathing it back into her belt.