the other girl
They make the promise when it's raining outside. The rain is not loud or theatrical enough to warrant any scrutiny; it's a lethargic sort of downpour that hardly encourages deep thought or conversation. That's all she can really say about it, other than it happens to be wet.
They make the promise because there's nothing better to do. Well, he wants to read a book, but that's hardly any fun, she reasons. So she says let's get married and he says what, no, get off me, six-year-olds don't get married, are you insane?
She's not really the sort of girl who is denied what she wants. She's figured out, through a mixture of careful observation and systematic deductions but mostly through whining, that she will get her way in the end. She works on him for a bit; she keeps herself permanently attached to his arm. He tries, a bit half-heartedly, to shake her off, but she clings like a dying man to a rock. The only thing is that dying men don't wear perpetual pouts on their faces that make them look like forlorn puppies.
He capitulates, as they all do eventually. Fine, whatever he snaps. But not right now, okay? He pines, most desperately, for spontaneous self-combustion, particularly when she throws her arms around his shoulders in unrestrained jubilance. She has an air about her that can only be described as gleefully insane.
I love, love, love you! she says. With the power of ten thousand burning suns!
He can only imagine the heatstroke.
.
The problem she finds with him is (well, she shouldn't really be thinking this since she's kind of in love with everything about him) is that he's not very affectionate. There's no two ways around it.
See, the thing is with him is that he's got approximately three expressions. One of them is a hostile scowl – she's seen it so often it's ceased to be intimidating to her. His second favourite expression is simply a neutral one, although still a bit antagonistic and even patronising, she supposes. Then there is that bored, somewhat irritated look he gets, and that's the expression he only seems to have around her. He does smile, but that's only when he wins at something.
He does like her, though. She is sure enough of that. She knows because he's a blunt sort of person and he will always say whenever he is displeased with something. He often looks at her and says things like your hair looks bad today and you're being annoying, stop it but never once has he said I don't like you or I don't want to be near you. In other words, he's never trying to be mean, he just kind of is anyway, but she's always appreciated that about him.
He's also strong and handsome (as far as six-year-olds go). Well, actually, not really, she doesn't really know where she's going with this train of thought. But he's always had her back, and that's just how it's meant to be. They do a lot of things together, and if she ever trips and falls, then he's always the one who catches her. It's as simple as that.
Occasionally on those rainy days, they do play games together. After they make the promise, he takes out some video game and she plays along with him. But while she's good at sports and academics, she's never been good at video games.
She dies on level one and he snickers, and she huffs, and he just snickers some more. Then they glance at each other, and suddenly, she's laughing too, hard enough that the sides of her stomach feel like bursting.
Together, she thinks, we make a good team.
.
The conditions of their promise are as follows: marry me unless you find someone you like better. She only decides to add that second part because he says but what if I find someone I like better?
Well, marry her, then!
Hn.
But if you don't like her, you have to marry me, okay? Me! Pinky promise!
They say I do while their pinkies are wrapped around each other. And all the time, she is a ball of euphoria and fervent energy, and she is also strangely, passionately jealous. She is jealous of this girl that neither he nor she has yet met. One day this person will come.
Somehow, she knows about this, but she doesn't quite know how, and the thought is gone soon enough anyway.
.
She sees him the next day and she's very happy about this opportunity, even though it's as frequent for her as a meal is. She tells him excitedly about a joke she read in a book and is delighted when she evokes an amused response from him. Then her parents call her to go out somewhere and she leaves with them, a smile on her lips and her heart soaring.
And the day after that, she decides she wants to go see the newest movie. So she approaches him and says movie and he says what? To which she replies come, and he grumbles and says okay.
She wears her best dress to the movies, even though he never makes a comment about how she looks. Everything is fine until afterwards, when it begins to rain. Then she is a nothing but a cold, shivering figure wrapped in fine, silky nothingness and what is worse, he chooses this moment to remark on her dress.
It's so thin! You're an idiot for wearing that in this weather.
Sh-shut up! She scrunches her eyelids shut. I'm cold!
She hears a slight rustling of movement where he is. Then she feels something warm fall on her and at first, she is too stunned to do anything about it. It is his jacket.
I wish you would take care of yourself is all that he says.
But why? is what she wants to ask. It feels so warm, she thinks.
.
It continues like that until the day she, too, is unsatisfied.
She's not quite sure how it came to be, just that it is and that it's really starting to bug her. Maybe she's older and wiser now. Maybe she's just being ungrateful. What she is beginning to realise is that the way he is fond of her is not quite the same as the way she is fond of him and despite her best efforts, she is probably not in his thoughts nearly as often as he is in hers.
For instance, as long as she doesn't make a mess of herself, he is relatively unconcerned whenever she is in the proximity of another male. And yet she feels as if her heart is bleeding from the inside every time he is with another girl. The discrepancy is starting to worry her.
She just wants his affection, she thinks. She wants him to pat her on the head or maybe give her a hug and say you're such a sweet and wonderful girl. Because when it comes down to it, she really is sweet. She has never failed to tell him what his good qualities are or to be there for him. It's not a lot to ask for him to say something nice in return, and yet he never does manage it. Instead, he's just there; and his presence in itself is like a protective blanket.
.
It is suffocating.
The exact adjective never once comes to mind. She can only perceive twinges of disappointment when she is with him, and to her chagrin, this feeling only escalates. She only acknowledges its existence when, for a reason that she never quite figures out, it becomes too much to handle. Their interaction, after all, is as amicable as it has always been.
But she is heavy and subdued one day, and he doesn't ask what's wrong with her. He reads a book quietly on his own and she regards him leeringly. There is stifling silence in the room between them; at least, that is what she feels. She cannot read his mind.
Look at me she says suddenly.
So he does. What am I meant to look for?
She asks am I pretty?
What are you asking that so suddenly?
Am I?
I guess so. I haven't thought about it.
She stares glumly down at her knees.
You're acting weird today he says, closing the book. Then he promptly leaves the room.
She is still staring intently at her knees. She can feel something welling up inside of her, and if she makes a movement, the feeling will dissipate. Actually, she is controlled by this feeling. It is because of the feeling that she cannot move. All she can do is sit still and perceive it growing and knotting inside of her.
At length, he returns by her side. She hears his voice here, drink, you'll feel better and it sounds distant like muffled static on a radio.
This is when she ceases to think. She hears her hand connect with his cheek and thinks nothing of it. The glass slips from his fingers and falls on the carpet, spilling water. She sits back down.
What'd you do that for? And although he is shocked, he is hardening even as the surprise washes over him. He takes a step back.
You never appreciate me she says and she can hear herself stumbling and choking over her words. She is leaking frustrated tears from the corners of her eyes.
I don't get what's gotten into you he answers. And, wordlessly, he begins to clean up the mess the upset glass of water has made.
She kicks him while he's on the ground.
.
Naturally, she's horrified later. What did I just do what did I just do – is what she thinks and her thoughts run in a repetitive, frantic cycle defined solely by panicked emotions. She has never thought she is even capable of wanting to hurt him, but she is and the thought pulsates like an ugly, open flesh wound.
It quickly gives way to despair: she cannot help but think their relationship has abruptly and prematurely come to its climax. It is the breaking point: if what they have does not meld into something new, then every given interaction after that will seem a hollow, beating farce in comparison. And it is entirely her fault.
And –
He forgives her.
She apologises profusely and all he does is put his hand on her downcast head. It's okay he says gruffly. She was just being a brat, he thinks. It's not anything world-shaking.
And she knows, because once she did ask him if she could ever do something to make him hate her.
He said no, there isn't. He means everything he says.
It's the outcome she half-expected, and somehow, it breaks her heart.
.
And then one day, unexpectedly, he falls in love.
It shouldn't really be that much of a surprise – not at this stage – but it is. It most horribly is. He asks to see her and she can just see, oh so clearly, what it is. He is holding fast to that condition of his promise.
It is an anticlimax in a way, because when she sees his face, it is as if everything simply ebbs out of her. Not even jealousy remains. The absence of whatever hot and passionate emotions she should feel is what makes her knees turn to jelly beneath her. She cannot look him in the eye.
Is this, she thinks, the end of them? Of their peaceful, airy nothings?
And to this day, she is still shocked, in a way – shocked, because what she finds herself mourning over is how she never appreciated him. It was never the other way around.
.
He is exactly the same as always and never the same again. He does not simply throw her aside because he is in love now. But as for their lazy Sunday afternoons, the ones they spent basking in the simplicity of their laughter and futile promises – they have come to an end.
He is himself now. He is still gruff yet kind, only the kindness has opened up more inside of him. It is like the way she has always seen him has been tilted on a forty-five degree angle. Her view of him pans out, and now that he's known love, he's himself but in a different way now. It's the him he could have always been.
So the he and she, their dynamic duo, the thing that has always made them them and the thing that has always made her want to grin and pinch his cheeks – is gone. But the thing is this – they both remember it so well it's just another extension of them.
She finds this out when he comes back to her and she points at that park they've always played at as children. Don't you remember? she asks and he says yeah. A smile forms at his lips and she feels it tug and play pleasantly upon her heartstrings.
She grins then, throws her hands up in the air, then nudges him on the shoulder and calls out it.
.
One day, she wakes up and she's not jealous of the other girl anymore. In the strange, peculiar way the world works out, she realises that her feelings had never really been worthy of jealousy from the beginning.
She loves him, and he loves her, but it is not love. She really does love love love him and she will love love love him to the very end but it's not – never will be – love.
She thinks it's the most beautiful thing she's ever known.
And one day she tells him so, just how unconditionally she loves him. He says are you sure about that? Didn't you hit me as a kid?
She pouts at that.
You're a walking contradiction he says, shaking his head. And then she says will you hold my hand?
He looks at her, not startled, but something close to it. At first he does not know how she means it, and then he realises that he does. It's the way he's always felt about her but was unable to express.
Have it your way he says, because he can do it now.
His hands close around hers, and she feels the warmth of his hand against the smoothness of her own skin. It is like a protective layer. She realises it's that kind of warmth that will stay forever, because he will protect her and that's just how it's always been.
He doesn't marry her or tell her that he thinks that she is pretty. He doesn't have to. He doesn't need to, not with her. And this is something they both know and can feel, through their simple, unassuming touch: Some promises are made to be kept. Others are simply made to be remembered.
fin
Author's note: Dedicated to The Jabberer. You are the Meiling to my Syaoran. You make me remember all my half-remembered dreams from long ago. Thank you for always being there for me.