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Mizuki is sure she is dying.
What had started in the morning as a faint pressure along her stomach has snowballed terribly into a persistent, sharp ache. Every time she had felt something strange in the past few hours, she played it off, attributed it to whatever she ate that morning. By which she means to say nothing because the dress she's sewing just really couldn't wait the ten minutes it would've taken to make herself eggs or something.
It is now noon. Mizuki is keeled over at her sewing machine. WebMD says she has two hours left to live.
Letting her cheek plop onto the cold, wooden tabletop, she picks up her phone and calls the first person that comes to mind. The dial tone only drones for a couple of seconds before a soft “Hello?” comes through the other line.
“I really think this is it, Ena,” Mizuki whines dramatically, speech slurred. “I think these are my final moments.”
“'Hello to you too, Ena!” her girlfriend mocks. “How is my beautiful princess, darling dearest, love of my life faring at her evil corporate job?’ No? None of that? Whatever happened to courtesy?”
“I was under the impression that this was a strict business-only relationship.”
“Not what you were telling me last night.”
“With the way you boss me around, it might as well be. But—hey! I'm serious this time, Ena, I—”
Another blunt pain rocks her lower half and she can't fight the desperate, breaking squeak that slips out of her throat. She curls even further into herself, sitting up to bring her knees against her chest.
“Mizuki?” Ena calls, light tone dropping into one of worry. “The hell was that?”
“Ow,” she grumbles back weakly.
Clearly, that does something to Ena, who melts at the sound of her distress like candle wax under a burning wick. “Aw, you poor thing. What hurts?”
“Tummy.”
“Did you remember to eat anything today?”
Aw… rats. She hesitates to answer, knowing what reaction will come of it. “No, but—”
“Mizuki.”
“But it's not that, I know it isn't! This is like… like if someone reached inside, grabbed my guts and tried squishing them all into a super tiny ball. It feels like I'm being squeezed so hard I might pop. I've never felt… I don't know what this is.”
The more Mizuki verbalizes the sensation, the more she panics. Her hands comb partway through her hair, then stop to tug at it. Her breathing shallows out, as a tide would before a tsunami.
“Hey,” Ena beckons through the static in Mizuki's phone and in her head, “breathe. You're okay. You'll be okay.”
It's times like these when Mizuki is convinced that her girlfriend must be heaven sent, an angel kneeling kindly to lowly sinners such as herself. Ena talks her through, in equal parts direction and affirmation, until her hands shake a little less and her vision is clear enough to make out the pink heart emojis next to Ena's contact name. It still hurts to do much of anything besides mope, but she's taking what she can get.
“Tell you what,” Ena says softly, “I have to go, but I'm off in… thirty minutes. I'll be there in like forty. Can you make yourself something to eat?”
All Mizuki can articulate is a petulant whimper into the microphone.
“Okay, okay, I'll get you dinner. Go eat an orange or something in the meantime. And for goodness sake, please rest.”
She hums back and lets Ena hang up with a quick “Love you!”
Forty minutes, Mizuki thinks. I can do that.
“I'm home!”
Shutting the door behind her, Ena lets the chilling uncanny of quiet seep. She knew what to expect upon arrival—a pained Mizuki writhing somewhere in their quaint apartment. She just didn't expect that Mizuki to be so silent.
Something in the stillness amplifies those noises which are audacious enough to exist anyway. The thud of her bag hitting the wall as she hangs it on a hook sounds more like a detonating bomb. The rustle of Mizuki's take-out bag against the countertop sounds more akin to the shredding of scrap metal.
For a few agonizingly long minutes, as she scours each room for signs of life, she's scared that something is terribly wrong, that maybe it isn't as simple as aches and pains.
Ena double checks the living room, peering over the top of the couch to find it vacant. The bedroom is empty, but the bed is an unmade mess, blankets practically piled high enough to hit the ceiling fan. She has no luck in their shared office either, though some real frilly project was left half-done under the needle of Mizuki's sewing machine, and her favorite plushie lies abandoned on the designated break couch in the opposite corner.
She's hardly searched every nook and cranny of the place, but there's only so many spots for her to hide.
“Mizuki? Where in the world did you go?”
Not a word is exchanged, but Ena gets an answer, heartbreak and relief felt in a single breath. She hears a delicate, tired sob from the bedroom.
Rushing over and pushing open the creaking door, Ena squints, trying to make out her surroundings. And there, in all her ten-time blanket-wrapped glory, is Mizuki, who sits unmoving even as Ena approaches.
“Hey. Sorry I didn't see you hiding there. Are you doing alright?” Ena asks, rubbing some unidentified mass of sheets that she hopes is actually Mizuki. The blanket trembles under her hand. The pretty pink eyes she longed all day to see were nowhere in sight, replaced by the heavy weight of two eyelids crammed shut.
“Hurts,” Mizuki whispers, voice shaking and strained.
Ena wastes no time scrambling onto the bed and under the covers, where she holds her girlfriend as best as she can while she's curled into a ball. She feels rather than sees the head that pushes itself against her chest, as if to hide from the rest of the world. She feels the small, wet tears staining her shirt as Mizuki cries and cries like something has finally snapped in her.
“My girl is so strong,” Ena says, slowly taking the ribbon out of Mizuki's side ponytail before massaging where it had pulled at her scalp. “Roughing it out all on her own.”
Mizuki groans and Ena feels it ring against her heart. “Missed you a lot.”
“I missed you too, honey. And, hey, I have some good news. I called Mafuyu and she says she's almost certain it's period cramps, which makes sense for how long you've been on HRT.”
Shuffling under the sheets, Mizuki wraps her arms around Ena's neck and presses her cheek into Ena's own. “So ‘m not dying?”
“You're not dying. Just a girl.”
“I'm a girl?”
That gets a laugh out of her. “Yes ma'am. The cutest one there is, in fact.”
And when Mizuki kicks her feet excitedly and giggles, it only really proves her point. She's still shaking but she smiles now. That kind of smile she only gets when she looks in the mirror and sees a lady staring back. Ena would know the difference, and if that fact has anything to do with the copious amount of time she spends staring at her girlfriend, well, whose business is that but her own?
“Now, come on. I got you curry from the place you like.”
Getting Mizuki up and to the kitchen is much less of a nightmare than she expected because as soon as she says that, Mizuki is wobbling to her feet like a newborn deer. She speedwalks to the kitchen (not without stumbling into the doorframe a couple times) and tears into the take-out box with a predatory violence Ena's only ever seen in nature documentaries.
And Ena doesn't speak a word, just grabs some ibuprofen from their medicine cabinet, leaving it on the table with a glass of water.
Unsurprisingly, Mizuki finishes the meal very quickly, making sure to take the medicine after. She complains endlessly when the pills don't immediately kick in, complaints which are only quelled when Ena offers to draw them both a warm bath.
“With bubbles?” Mizuki asks, skeptical.
“So many bubbles,” Ena nods.
This is how Ena finds herself shoulder-deep in steam and foam, her arms around Mizuki, who splish-splashes happily in the stagnant tub water. In front of them floats a solitary rubber duck—pink, of course—barely visible against the consuming white froth. Despite this, Mizuki is entertained, quietly giggling to herself like a kid when she taps it and it “swims” away. It's adorable. Whenever Ena thinks better of squeezing the daylights out of her already hurting lover, she opts to instead kiss at the back of her neck.
“You're too precious,” she says between kisses. “You got a license for that? For being that cute?”
Ena can make out the motion of Mizuki once again kicking her feet against the water, deep enough under to merely cause waves at the surface.
“You can't make me talk,” she says so seriously, but she really can't hide how giddy she is. “I want a lawyer.”
The banter, uncharacteristically, dies off there. Ena just laughs and, beneath the water, she rubs Mizuki's tummy. It's soft.
“Feeling any better?” she asks, right against the shell of Mizuki's ear.
Slowly, Mizuki crawls around until she's facing Ena, where she flops right back into her lap. The rubber duck bobs in time with her movement. She hums affirmatively, a spacey grin on her face.
“Thanks for taking care of me.”
“I'm glad you called.” Ena kisses along her jaw, then her neck, right where she knows is ticklish. “I love spoiling you, even though you're a brat sometimes.”
“H—Hey!” Mizuki squeals through a heavy blush.
“Fine, fine. Even though you're a brat most of the time.”
Mizuki has no chance to retaliate; before she can, Ena bites and Mizuki yelps, hiding her face in Ena's shoulder.
“Not fair,” she whines. “Not fair!”
Luckily for her, Ena relents, chuckling as she trails her fingers along the knobs of Mizuki's spine in an up and down motion. “Whatever you say.”
The steam still rises above their heads as they huddle close. Mizuki looks just about ready to fall asleep right here in the bath. Ena will have to move them both eventually, before the water runs cold. But she'd just like a moment to linger while they're both still warm. Mizuki's smooth skin is like silk against her own. It's gentle, soothing, like a lullaby. Her breaths blow against Ena's shoulder, slow and calm.
Mizuki is her glue as much as she is her total, irreparable undoing, holding her together and laying her bare all at once. It's beautifully horrifying in that way—to see someone so intimately and to be seen just as well in return. And here Mizuki is, naked skin and naked truths cradled and beheld so preciously just between Ena's arms. She's beauty in its rawest form—an authenticity meant only for Ena's viewing.
The bathroom is still. The pink duck sways when the water sloshes against the sides of the tub. Ena keeps rubbing Mizuki's back. They don't move. There's no need to. They simply steep in the water and in each other, ribcages open, beating hearts on their sleeves.