Chapter Text
That Saturday had been busy at the shop. Kieu My was more than exhausted and wanted nothing but to go home, take a shower and sneak under her warm sheets. She might even watch Train to Busan again and ask Danny to join. Yes, it was a cheesy zombie movie, but she loved it so much. Watching it with her little brother was always so much fun and Kieu My had already accepted that she had a soft spot for these kinds of movies. She didn’t care that Constantin made fun of her because of it.
‘Kieu My, honey, can you go downstairs and bring some bread from the fridge please? The shelves are almost empty.’
Her father’s soft voice woke her from her dream and she nodded. It would give her a break. It was close to 8 pm and she knew that she only had to push through just a little more. She had studied diligently all week long and she had no homework due. All she would have to do tonight and tomorrow would be to sleep. Zoe could come over and they could hang out too, but Kiey My knew it would probably not happen. Since she had started being friends with the others, it was all her friend could think about. She had almost no time for Kieu My too.
Kieu My climbed the stairs with a frown on her face and aggressively loaded the bread on the shelves. It was only when she saw her expression on the big mirror on the wall that she realized she had let her anger show. She also noticed she looked like a mess. But she would have to ignore that. She breathed in and out and relaxed her face. When she turned to tell her father she had finished with the bread, she was abruptly shoved by someone she had not seen coming.
‘God, I’m sorry!’ The teenager said with a worried expression on his face. ‘ I didn’t see you without my glasses. Here...’
Kieu My took his hand and glared as she was brought back to her feet smoothly. Her father was behind the counter, watching and pleading with his eyes to stay polite. She didn’t know why he always did that. It wasn’t like Kieu My wasn’t polite. She was their daughter, was she not?
‘It’s fine,’ she said awkwardly. She had just spotted someone behind the teenager. A girl Kieu My had seen multiple times at their school. The girl had been looking at Kieu My too, with a curious expression on her brown eyes.
‘Are you sure?’ The teenager said calmly. ‘I’m pretty strong for my age haha.’ Kieu My stared at him. He had kind brown eyes, just like the girl behind him. They must have been siblings.
‘Yes, I’m good,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. Did you need help with anything?’ Kieu My saw her father relax from where she stood and had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes.
‘I don’t! But actually... my sister does. Ehm, Fatou?’
So they were siblings after all. Kieu My couldn’t help but smile to herself. She was pretty good when it came to these things. She would always play this game with Danny when they were in public, where they had to guess who were siblings and who were not. It could get weird because Danny would often guess wrong and say siblings when they were in fact a couple. Kieu My would laugh at him and he would scowl, saying that lots of people searched for a person who looked like them, but what did he know? He was 9 and Kieu My had never once looked at a boy who looked like her that way. This proved him wrong. But it was also true that Kieu My did not look at boys too often…
‘Sorry,’ Kieu My said clumsily when she noticed she had not been listening properly to the girl. ‘Could you repeat?’
Instead of frowning or sighing, the girl laughed softly, her entire face lighting up. Her laughter sounded so sweet and out of place. It was a Saturday night, close to 8 pm in a small shop, and as it was raining outside and Kieu My had just admitted to not paying attention, the only thing the girl did was laugh. It surprised Kieu My.
‘It’s fine…’ Fatou said softly. She had a voice like Kieu My had never heard before, too. ‘I was looking for glue.’
Kieu My made a face. ‘Glue?’
‘I know,’ the girl said with a small voice, the same sweet voice. ‘It’s for our science project. Er… I need glue and paper. Oh! With colours.’
Kieu My knew which project she was speaking of. It was a project they had been assigned to two weeks ago in their science class. They had to present a vertebrate and create small posters with information about their evolution and classification. Kieu My had chosen to make it on birds since she had always liked the idea of flying in the sky, of being able to travel distances and still come back home at the end of the journey. And of course, she loved the idea of spending an entire life watching the stars...
‘Isn’t this project due on Monday?’ Kieu My said without thinking.
‘Is it?’ The brother frowned. ‘Fatou, I thought you said you still had time!’
Fatou frowned and Kieu My smiled to herself again. So she could frown too, and get annoyed at her brother. Even with her sweet voice and her kind eyes, it seemed like every brother could get this sort of reaction out of their sisters. Kieu My herself knew that much.
‘I do have time Ilai…’ Fatou said slowly. ‘Monday is so far away...’
‘It’s in one day!
Fatou smiled innocently. ‘Two if you count today’
‘Do you?’ Ilai crossed his arms. Kieu My thought they all knew the answer to that.
‘I do...I do.’ Fatou bit her lips nervously.
‘Right, that’s why you don’t have any scissors, paper or glue? But I suppose the project is all done on your laptop though?’
Kieu My felt bad for Fatou but she truly couldn’t help the smile on her lips. This scene somehow made her think of Danny and how she would often give him this talk. This had to be something unique to older siblings too.
Before changing her face into the stoic expression she normally wore, Kieu My was noticed. Fatou had looked at Kieu My quickly enough to see one of her secret smiles and Kieu My cursed herself for it. She even felt warmth creep on her neck and hoped it did not show on her cheeks.
‘We-We don’t sell that here,’ she said trying to save face. ‘But... I do have some glue and paper left from my project in my bag? And we have a pair of scissors downstairs too.’
‘Really?’ Fatou said with a brilliant smile, as if Kieu My had offered her the moon.
Kieu My lowered her head awkwardly. This was such an indiscreet proposition. ‘Sorry. I'd like to give something new, but the other shops will close soon. So I thought I would offer this anyway.’
‘It’s really generous of you, thank you.’ Ilai said with a warm smile.
‘Maybe you could go to another shop tomorrow if you need more?’ Kieu My added. ‘Hum, I mean of course you know that already. Sorry...’
Kieu My knew that her face was red at this point because she felt hot all over. It was just embarrassing. Not only did she look like a mess, but she had to sound like this, so unsure, for something so insignificant. Couldn’t she have said no and moved on? Couldn’t she have shut up?
‘This is so nice,’ Fatou smiled. ‘Thank you. It means a lot to me.’
‘Yes,’ Ilai said. ‘Thank you. So now, Fatou, you won’t need to go out tomorrow and can concentrate on this project entirely. You are lucky.’
‘Yeah’ Fatou laughed honestly. ‘Lucky I met you today.’
‘I will… I will go fetch it.’
Kieu My went downstairs quickly, her face still warm and tingling. She fetched the multiple packages of coloured paper, the glue and a pair of scissors. As she came upstairs, Kieu My heard Fatou and her brother talking with her father about the weather. Without thinking about it, Kieu My went downstairs again and grabbed her umbrella. She would share her father’s to their car and to their apartment and Fatou and Ilai could share this one.
‘Okay,’ Kieu My said upstairs, somewhat with a shy pout. ‘I have four packages of paper of different colors. I only needed two for my posters so I think it will be enough. The bottle of glue is three quarters full so I don’t think you will need another one. This is the pair of scissors.’
‘Thank you, really!’ Fatou smiled and took the items, their fingers brushing momentarily. She put them in her bag slowly but didn’t look up once she was done. ‘What about this?’
Kieu My had forgotten. ‘Oh, this is my umbrella. You two can share it since it’s raining so much. I heard you … hum… you said the rain took you by surprise. So I thought...’
Ilai smiled. ‘This is too much! We can buy one!’
‘We sold the last one,’ Kieu My said, even knowing there probably were new ones downstairs in the inventory room. It was a lie, but she really did not mind lending her umbrella to Fatou and her brother. She did not think an act like this needed to be paid with money.
‘That’s really nice of you,’ Ilai said.
‘Thank you. I will give it back to you at school?’ Fatou said unsure.
Kieu My simply smiled. Fatou smiled right back, her entire face following suit. When the two siblings left, Kieu My realized she had not told them her name. Maybe Fatou would have some difficulty finding her? They did not share any classes together, and there were a lot of 12 years olds in their year. Kieu My shook her head. It would be alright, she remembered the other girl’s name. And although Fatou might forget her completely, Kieu My would not. She did not have any friends like her. None who would smile so often and make her smile secretly that many times too. None who would say thank you the way she did, like every act of generosity was big and worth mentioning.
When Kieu My went back behind the counter to sit next to her father, she found him smiling at her with his tender eyes. He did not need to talk for her to know what he was thinking. He put a proud hand on her shoulder and turned on the radio silently. It was embarrassing how much she loved her dad.
*
She could not pinpoint when this routine had first started, all that she knew was that it had become quite natural along the way. First she would wake up in her bright bedroom, tired and disoriented. Having worked at her parent’s small shop the previous day, she would have dreamt of utilities, food and money, her body worned out and longing for more sleep. Slowly, she would sit up on her warm bed and look at her phone, where hundreds of notifications would await her. They were mostly from instagram and snapchat, although she had not really used that application in awhile. Depending on whether she had posted a photo the previous day, and she often did, she would get direct messages from guys she didn't care for and comments from friends she barely knew.
Then she would slowly stand up and look at herself in her big mirror. She would stare at her long black hair, her puffy black eyes, her chapped lips and her disgusting skin. Kieu My in the morning looked nothing like Kieu My in the day. The visceral reaction she felt looking at herself this way always reminded her of why she did what she did, why this routine was so important, why she covered her skin and painted her lips and brushed her hair and chose beautiful clothes everyday. And as much as seeing herself like this pained her, the photos she took and posted online relaxed her. They were a reminder that she could choose to be different and that what stood in front of her did not need to exist, not outside of these four walls anyway.
After a long shower, she would sit in front of her bathroom mirror. From that moment on, she would clean her face with a cleanser, then she would apply a toner and moisturize her skin. For her eyes, she would apply a delicate eye cream, they were sensitive so she would rub it slowly. After the cream came the serum Zoe had given her for her 16th birthday. She would apply it on her face and on her neck. It smelled like rose and like the summer, like a far away beach she’d love to go to one day, but she couldn’t. Not now when she had to help her parents everyday in their small shop. But one day...with Zoe...they would go. Then, she would apply a treatment on her skin for her acne and her pores. Face oil was next. And then sunscreen.
Once this was done, she would start applying the make up: foundation to mask her pale skin, her pores and acne, concealer to cover her dark circles, powder to give life to her stern tired face, bronzer to help give a certain bone structure to that chubby face , blush to make her feel more alive, a little bit of mascara to create an intriguing look for her eyes and finally pink lip gloss. There. She was done.
She would look in the mirror again and breathe out. She was finally herself. The real Kieu My. She would stand up, a smile on her face, ready to choose her outfit and start her day.