your loss, not mine | Sooshu

I can't stop my mind from haunting me.

Shuhua

19 September 2016

It wasn't like her to just leave. It wasn't like her to just give up. It wasn't like her to just walk away. She didn't have anywhere to go. Which is what she tells herself to explain why she's here, trying to find happiness at the bottom of a shot glass. The loud music blares out around her, but all she can hear is the stinging remark Soojin said to her. "I'd rather forget we existed."

The lights blind her, but all she can see are the ways she could never be enough. The alcohol burns her throat, but all she can taste is the heartbreak she caused.

And maybe she's a little bit drunk. Maybe there's a tiny part of her that's still trying to get over her last shot of whiskey. And maybe she's starting to get a little queasy – alcohol is drowning her in the pit of her stomach, an ocean tide trying to get to shore. Before she knows it, she begins to swallow down the lump rising in her throat, threatening to get out. She places a hand over her stomach, closes her eyes for a moment. And lets the silence sink in her bones.

She can't remember the last time she felt so alone.

"Does my eye deceive me, or is this Yeh Shuhua we have here?" a voice breaks her out of her pity party. She knows that deep voice anywhere, a scowl forces its way to her face. "Oh, Shuhua! It is you!"

"Leave me alone, Yuqi." An arm is thrown haphazardly across her shoulder. "I don't have time for you."

"You never do." Yuqi takes a shot of whatever Shuhua was drinking, cringing as it went down her throat like liquid fire. "This drink is shit."

"Thanks, I never offered it to you. Now leave me alone."

"Is that how you'd treat an old friend?" Yuqi just laughs at Shuhua, not offended in the slightest "Never thought Soojin would rub off on you like that."

Shuhua flinches noticeably at the sound of Soojin's name. The name leaves a sour taste in her mouth, almost like gunpowder. Bitter, metallic, and destructive. Shuhua pours herself another shot, and downs it in a frenzy. Desperate to clean her palate from all traces of—

"Huh," Yuqi scratches her head, a look of confusion and concern painting her features at Shuhua's action "Do you, uh, want any help?"

"No," Shuhua gasps, sputtering as the burn of her throat spreads to her chest. "I don't want any help. I just want to be alone."

"Well, do you need any help?"

Shuhua laughs, a short and pained laughing that comes from her ribs rather than her lungs. When was the last time somebody asked her if she needed help? When was the last time someone saw her ask for it? When was—

"Yah! Shuhua."

"No." Shuhua says firmly, staring into Yuqi's eye. She sees an emptiness in there that she feels. She sees the same girl she knew back in middle school. "Well, actually..."

27 September 2016

They're both in the living room, Yuqi just mindlessly scrolling on her phone and herself just staring blankly at the wall, fingers mindlessly tapping a tune that she could only hear.

(She flinches when she realizes what tune it is and stops.)

"So why aren't you two talking anymore?" Yuqi asks, looking up from her phone. "You've been ignoring her phone calls."

She could say it's a long story. She could say they had a fight. She could tell her everything. Make her hate her like she does (because, really, she does. Forgetting is hard when she remembers everything, back to the first word she said to her, when they were still strangers. When it didn't hurt when they didn't talk to each other).