LIGHT UP THE SKY

"The darkest of nights bring the brightest of dawns."

FIN.

Taeyeon is eighteen when her world shifts on its axis, and everything becomes strangely saturated, a sensory overload she's unable to cope with and has to close her eyes at its intensity,

It’s apt, she thinks, because the girl standing in front of her, beaming at her with eyes curved into half-moons, exudes just as much intensity, painfully bright against the shades of grey Taeyeon had long accustomed to seeing.

Soulmate.

The other girl knows it too, and with the way the girl was dressed, adorned in various shades of pink, Taeyeon wonders how her soulmate hadn't been able to see the colours all along.

"Hi, my name's Tiffany Hwang. It's nice to meet you."

American girl?

A hand is offered to her, a gesture of greeting that is foreign to her at the time, indicative of the other girl’s American upbringing, but Taeyeon slips her own into the other girl's nevertheless, and their hands clasp together the way their souls had been destined to, right from the very start.

"Taeyeon. Kim Taeyeon."

“You’re a music major too?”

Taeyeon nods.

In hindsight, the moment feels lacklustre, almost normal, an insignificant meeting between two strangers and she wonders if it had always meant to be this way.

Just an inevitable beginning to another ending.

/

Taeyeon's twenty when Tiffany, her soulmate, dies and she finally understands what it means to lose a part of herself.

Soulmate, the word tastes awfully bitter and painful on her tongue, numbing it with its poisonous meaning and confronting her with it consequences—ones that she had to live with.

She hates it.

Taeyeon almost jumps into and subsequently drowns in the bottomless abyss that has carved its way across her heart; a deep jagged ravine that divides her in half, leaving the person she had once been, along with all her happiness stranded on the other side of its cliffs, detached from her current self.

On most days, she wakes, cries, sleeps, in that order, barely remembering to eat, but never forgetting to visit where Tiffany now lay, beneath layers of soil and sorrow and her name etched impersonally into the cold headstone.

The emptiness, the physical ache in heart from the premature severing of their entwined souls is just another one of the things Taeyeon experiences.

As if the universe wasn’t cruel enough, the colour in Taeyeon’s world is gone.

It had started quietly, barely noticeable through the thick veil of tears that had constantly streamed from her eyes, blurring and clouding her vision. A hue of green here, a shade of blue there, a sliver of red; all slipping away silently, as if her tears were slowly diluting and washing them out.

It's not until the 45th day after the accident (not that she was counting) that she notices the change. The difference is suddenly so blatantly obvious, like a slap to the face, adding insult to injury. Taeyeon spends a good minute, that blinking furiously, rubbing her red-rimmed eyes in a mixture of desperation and denial, but the shades that had disappear never return.

By the 100th day, the rest follow and she can't see them anymore.

She can't see the shade of cherry blossoms in spring, a light pink—the colour that Tiffany loved so much, a fact that Taeyeon had always soulmate for.

She can't see the baby blue hue of the cloudless sky, just like the day when they had their first kiss.

She couldn't even see the offending red colour of life force that had once slowly leaked from her soulmates body, taking Tiffany with it, and robbing Taeyeon of everything she ever knew.

By the 365th day, Taeyeon has resigned herself to seeing the world in dull grey tones again.

Tiffany had been her light, her brightness and it only seemed fitting for everything to be in monochrome now.

Maybe it was better this way.

/

When Taeyeon's twenty-one, she runs out onto a road, out towards oncoming traffic.

She runs in without a second thought and suddenly, Death loses out on a claiming another life—the mark next to Taeyeon’s name is scratched out and a debt is paid.

From that day on, a balance in the universe is shifted slightly, and the difference although subtle, is somehow significant.

Taeyeon's fingers curl loosely around a thin wrist, gently tugging and leading the girl towards a nearby park bench, a stark contrast from the forceful way she had yanked the girl out from out of harm’s way moments ago.

The sky is almost black, it’s a hue Taeyeon’s intimately familiar with now, she could see it in everything (after all, grey was just a step away from black).

Taeyeon's grip loosens, slipping away from the other girl's hands and dropping limply back to her side, devoid of the dogged purposefulness that it had once possessed.

In the instant Taeyeon lets go, panic flashes across the other girl's face and a hand blindly fumbles searching, reaching out and knuckles knock against Taeyeon's forearm roughly, before they are quickly replaced by slender fingers.

It's only then that Taeyeon allows herself to properly look at the girl.

The girl who she had just saved from ending up with the same fate as her soulmate.

Gone, like the colours.

The other girl has wild wavy long hair, pale skin, sharp features and a petite frame, but what Taeyeon notices the most is the pair of unfocused eyes that glance out into the distance, always looking but never seeing.

The moon hangs overhead, a bright source of light that stretches long shadows across an anguished face and Taeyeon stands there wordlessly, taking in the nuanced shades of grey that had somehow become impossibly expressive.

Longing, pain, and grief was best seen in greys it seemed.

The hand clasping Taeyeon’s forearm, trembles. It’s a touch that is barely there, but Taeyeon feels it all the same, as if it was resonating at the same frequency that both their hearts were quivering with.

"Why did you save me?"

It's a simple question.

A flash of images—mostly of Tiffany—still containing hints of colour (or at least what she remembers as colour) flood to the forefront of Taeyeon's mind, flickering the way an image brought up by an old projector machine might; all grainy and hazy.

“How long has it been?” Taeyeon asks, and it would have been rude had it been any other situation, but here they both were.

The two of them with burdens heavier than the just the eternal ache in their hearts.

The girl's body seems to crumple under her question, shoulders deflating and head lowering, turning away from Taeyeon.

Taeyeon wonders if this was what it looked like, what her friends saw when they looked at her and she finds its too raw, too intimate, to be looking from the outside in; like glancing into a mirror.

“I don’t know…I can’t tell—It feels like it’s been an eternity.”

It was rare, but it happened. Taeyeon had heard of cases where soulmates were bonded so tightly that the survivor—the one left behind to suffer—after the traumatic severing of the bond, lost more than just colours. They lost their vision too.

Was it ironic that she met someone who could only see blackness?

“This endless night—I just want it to end.”

There’s a greater implication behind the words and her chest feels hollowed out, emptied of its contents and a corner of the darkest thoughts that had once crossed her mind peeks out.

The other girl had wanted to be out there on the road.

It wasn't accident, not like it had been with her soulmate.

Suddenly, there's a dryness in Taeyeon's throat, mouth and lips that she can't get rid of no matter how much she tries. Taeyeon is caught between feeling horrified, chest clenching painfully, and feeling like she had just stolen something sacred.

“Why did you stop me?”

The girl’s voice splinters.

Taeyeon can't bring herself to answer.

"What's your name?" She asks instead.

A safe option.

"Jessica Jung."

Jessica.

The name tastes too foreign on her tongue and on her lips, reminding her of a memory that was wrapped up with nothing but pain, so Taeyeon doesn’t say it.

“You should stay with me—at least for tonight.”

Jessica let’s herself be guided home.

/

Taeyeon's twenty-one when Jessica first sets foot in her lonely apartment.

Taeyeon doesn't feel as self-conscious as she should.

It didn't matter that her walls were still littered with Tiffany's photos, painful mementos from another lifetime, reminders that she too like her soulmate, had once lived—Jessica couldn't see them anyway. They were like everything else in Jessica’s world, blanketed by darkness and out of reach of her perception.

"We're here. Did you want a glass of water?"

Jessica nods once, standing stiffly in the middle of the room, lost in unfamiliar territory, simultaneously out of place and at home, reflecting the way Taeyeon’s mismatched furniture both clashed and complemented each other.

Taeyeon hesitates to leave the room, wondering if her presence made the situation less confronting, less real for the other girl; the playing out of a dream-like sequence. Taeyeon’s afraid if she leaves, the cogs in Jessica’s mind would start turning, processing the events of the night, leaving Jessica stranded her in unpleasant thoughts—like the ones that Taeyeon often found herself ruminating over in the dark.

(And Jessica didn’t need the cover of night, her darkness was ever present.)

Taeyeon wonders when was the last time she had the desire to give so much consideration to another human being.

(Taeyeon promptly stops when Tiffany's name echoes in her mind.)

She doesn't even know what's she doing or why Jessica's even in her apartment right now, but Taeyeon doesn't let herself think either, determined to finish the strange dream that she’d lead them both into.

Taeyeon crosses the expanse separating them, stopping before Jessica in hesitation, hand hovering just over Jessica’s left shoulder.

She eventually retracts the hand and instead, uses her voice—one that Tiffany had always complimented—soothingly calm and soft in its tone.

“I’m about to head into the kitchen really quickly. You should sit down, it’s more comfortable.”

"Thanks...erm..."

"Taeyeon."

"Thank you Taeyeon."

A ghost of a smile barely flickers across Jessica’s lips, but her eyes remain distant.

/

The blinding headlights, two beams cutting through the darkness of the night.

The screeching of tires, high pitched and urgent.

The smell of scorched rubber.

A scream.

(Wait, was that her own voice?)

And then the silence, the deafening silence.

That was all Tiffany must have known.

Taeyeon breathes heavily, loud exhalations escape into the dark, echoing around her and her hair clings to her forehead, slick with cold sweat. There’s an ache in her chest that lets her know that it was all real. Tiffany was still gone and Taeyeon just lies in the dark accompanied by her thoughts and fears.

All that was left of Tiffany, her soulmate, were Taeyeon’s memories of her.

The couch is hard and her neck aches, but Taeyeon remains unmoving, struck numb by her nightmare and the realisation that it too doubled as her reality.

“Taeyeon…?”

Jessica’s voice floats to her in the darkness, and Taeyeon turns her head, finding the girl in the doorway, palms pressed against the wall and fingers splayed out, steadying herself; an anchor to her unfamiliar surroundings.

“I heard you…” Jessica pauses, “You were screaming in your sleep…I thought…”

Taeyeon doesn’t say anything.

Tiffany’s presences floods back into her mind, raw and overwhelming.

“Sorry for waking you…Try to go back to sleep?”

“It’s okay. I wasn’t sleeping anyway…I-I can’t fall asleep.” Jessica admits, softly, and Taeyeon hears the echo of her demons lingering in her voice.

Maybe it was intimacy that dim night light conferred, mirroring the shroud of darkness that had settled upon their hearts—both half a person, half a soul and lost—that drives Taeyeon to slowly shuffle off the couch and pad over to where Jessica was standing.

“Want to just sit with me then?”

“Okay.”

Her left hand seeks out the crook of Jessica’s left elbow, gentle and instinctive and her right settles on protectively on Jessica’s lower back, leaving them wrapped in a semblance of an embrace and Taeyeon guides the two of them, in the dark, towards the couch.

Jessica ends up sitting on the couch, legs tucked under herself, and Taeyeon settles on the floor, back pressed against its leathery side, just to the left of where Jessica sat.

“I miss her.” Taeyeon confesses, and she wonders why she chose today of all days and Jessica of all people, to begin. To let the words, she’d saved for herself, brushing away concerned faces of her friends when they been willing to listen, tumble out.

“What was the happiest memory you have of her?” Jessica asks, curious, and Taeyeon suddenly understands what they were doing.

It was easier to live in someone else’s happy memories than to drown in your own sorrowful ones.

Taeyeon takes a deep breath, tilting her head back until it half rested on the seat of the couch.

“When I think of the beach, I can’t help but remember her smile, the way she would squeeze her eyes shut and face the sun, beaming back at it just as bright. The wind in her brown hair, the crinkle in her nose… She loved the beach, the openness of it, the deep cerulean of its waters and how it seemed so alive…”

Taeyeon doesn’t stop talking, as memory after memory come tumbling out, and she thinks her words will never do them justice.

Neither of them will remember falling asleep.

Jessica’s still there the next morning.

(Peacefully asleep, looking young and unburdened.)

Taeyeon feels lighter somehow.

/

“Is that her voice?”

Taeyeon continues to stare at the screen that was playing an old video she had recorded.

It’s not the first-time Jessica has found her like this, perched on the couch, laptop open and Tiffany’s voice floating through the apartment, but it is the first time the other girl has said anything.

Some part of her wants to turn away, and feel mortified that she had been caught again, re-watching these remnants of her past, but there’s another part of her, one that still clung tightly to her soulmate, refusing to let her just disappear, that binds her to this routine.

She watches as her younger onscreen self, eyes twinkling with mirth, adjusts the camera, head tilting and leaning onto Tiffany’s shoulder. The younger, happier Taeyeon muffles her amused laughter with a free hand. She cracks an inappropriate joke and Tiffany reprimands her soulmate playfully, tone as rich and as warm as melted honey.

With a pang, Taeyeon finds she can’t remember the colour of the shirt that she wore that day. It's all grey through the screen.

“Yes…It’s Tiffany’s voice.”

Jessica lingers, ears taking in the two distinct voices, both of which now had names attached to them, listening as they rose and fell in tandem. Sometimes they overlapped, sometimes they fell silent, sometimes they pushed back and forth in playful banter.

“You both have beautiful voices.”

Taeyeon swallows thickly at the words. She knew there was no way Jessica could have known, but the two of them had been music majors in college, and more specifically, vocalists.

Taeyeon had given up on singing. It didn’t feel right to do it without Tiffany.