˗ˏˋ heartstrings and the words that tug at them 'ˎ˗

➷

Mahika stares at the door quietly for a few seconds, eyes shifting to the wide-eyed girl standing beside it before she closes her own eyes in part-exhaustion and part-frustration, a weak attempt at pushing the rest of her tears away before she opens them and wipes her cheeks.

Their voices hadn't been loud, so Mahika is hoping for the best and ruling out the possibility that someone might have heard them.

"Time to pretend we hate each other," she mutters at Amoli before she makes her way to the door, already clicking the door open to be greeted by Naina's sombre expression before Amoli can open her mouth to say something in reply to Mahika's comment.

Mahika steps back to let Naina in, quietly closing the door behind her.

"Are you two fighting again?" are the first words that leave Naina's mouth, eyebrows drawn together and the corners of her lips turned down. Her eyes are on Mahika, which means she is more disappointed in her out of the two.

So she's the one who replies first. "No, we're not... well, fighting. Not exactly."

Naina crosses her arms across her chest, giving Amoli a look before turning to Mahika again. "Really? Your faces say otherwise."

Mahika can only imagine what her face looks like. She might be good at a lot of things, but keeping her emotions from showing up on her face is not one of them. So with her eyes downcast, she just presses her lower lip between her teeth and says nothing.

"I knew it was a bad idea to let Amoli up here to check up on you," Naina says with a sigh, and her eyebrows come together in an expression of confusion because, Is that what Amoli had told them? That she wanted to check up on me? Then again, Mahika had barely let her speak. So maybe she was there to check up on her. But the realization that Amoli had assumed Mahika would take advantage of her in her drunken state and leave first thing in the morning had sent her over the edge.

"Can we just..." Naina starts with a frustrated breath, dropping her arms to gesture between Mahika and Amoli. "...I don't know. Resolve this thing between you two once and for all? Because what even happened? What exactly is it that you two always end up having an argument about?"

Embarrassed beyond belief and annoyed at herself to no extent, Mahika says, "This one was on me." And she truly believes it was. She could have just let Amoli say whatever she wanted to, and that could have been it. Maybe they would have found something to argue about later, but after what happened between them at Naina's wedding, she truly doubts they'd be getting into petty arguments. "Sorry about that." Her voice gets smaller, and she absolutely refuses to look at Amoli even when she feels her eyes on herself. She raises her face and tries to smile for Naina. "Won't happen again."

Naina looks at her face, her eyes searching Mahika's face. Mahika doesn't know what it is exactly that she's looking for, but she probably doesn't find it because she lets out a defeated sigh. "Are you guys aware that if you actually tried, you could be friends? You two have a lot in common." She throws her hands in the air. "Your stubbornness being one of those many things."

'Friends' is the last thing Mahika wants to be with Amoli. But she keeps that thought to herself, of course. Because that's not her cat to let out of the bag.

When neither of them say anything, Naina puts her hands on her hips like the mom friend that she is. "Can you at least be civil with each other? That's all I ask for. I would prefer it if you could be friends, but I would like it if you at least tried to get along. Is that okay?"

Mahika nods, and she knows she looks like a scolded child.

"I didn't come here to make you feel bad. I know you two don't get along and it was my fault to throw you two in the same space without warning but guys..." she trails off, shaking her head and reaching out to take Mahika's hand in her own. She holds Amoli's with the other before she continues. "This is the last few days I get to spend with the people I love before I leave and we can't meet for God knows how many years to come. So just..." She squeezes their hands, and Mahika looks at her face to find Naina looking directly at her. "Can we all try to have a good time together? Not to mention, it's probably been years since everyone took a proper break."

"Sorry," Amoli mumbles, and immediately gets a light smack on her arm from Naina.

"Stop that." She looks at Mahika. "Both of you. Stop looking so miserable. We're on a vacation."

Her eyes rest on Mahika's face for a while, and she can feel the concern dripping from Naina's gaze all over her skin. She can't bring herself to raise her face, though. And eventually, with a last sigh, Naina says, "Mahi, do you want me to fix you something quick to eat? You missed breakfast."

Mahika shakes her head and tries to give Naina a smile. "I'm really not hungry. I'm just going to take a shower and get some rest."

Naina looks like she wants to say more but holds back, finally letting go of their hands.

"Alright." She looks between them one last time, narrowing her eyes. "I'm going to go now." The 'I swear to God I'll beat you both up if you argue again' goes without saying when she turns around to walk back down the stairs.

When the sound of her feet disappears, Amoli whispers, "Civil." Mahika stares at the side of her face in silence. "We can do civil... right?"

"Yeah," she whispers back, looking away. When she steps away, she feels a tug at her sleeve and stops, breath caught in her throat.

"Mahi?"

She turns around when she notices how quiet Amoli's voice is, her own hand feeling heavy when Amoli lets go of her sleeve and brings her hands together to nervously hold them in front of herself.

"Please don't call me that." It slips past Mahika's mouth for the second time before she can hold herself back or rethink, and with the way Amoli's expression breaks makes her realize she really should have kept those words reserved to her brain.

"I'm sorry."

More at a loss for words than she has ever been, Mahika just nods and waits.

"I just... really want you to know that I-I may have said the wrong things in my state of panic, but —" Amoli raises her face and Mahika is surprised to find tears swimming in her eyes again. "Everything I told you that night was true. Even though I said all of it in a drunken state, I meant every word." She lowers her gaze to the ground again, delicately tucking a lock of stray hair behind her ear.

If the hurt from the texts hadn't settled in back when Mahika had first read them, it certainly does now.

Her chest feels tight and her body seems like it's floating and numbing at the same time, all of the words that she had wanted to say to the girl in front of her dissipating into thin air. Instead, she's left with a hollow feeling in her chest that she hasn't encountered before. It nips at her ribs and leaves it stinging in several spots, so much that she feels it physically.

"I wasn't going to say this before," she continues, voice sounding thick with tears. "I was going to apologize to you about the texts and that was supposed to be it. But I just —"

"You just what?"

Mahika's voice sounds empty to her own ears.

Amoli wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. "I didn't... expect you to feel so strongly about them. And I'm sorry. Because that just makes me so much more insensitive than I had thought. It wasn't... I didn't — I didn't want to hurt you. That wasn't my intention." She looks at Mahika again with those big, dark eyes shining with tears and sincerity. "I'm sorry."

"That doesn't matter." Mahika shakes her head, biting back her own tears. "It doesn't matter how I felt about them. I just want to know why trying to forget everything and pushing me away was your first choice."

Amoli's face crumples and for the first time, Mahika sees the misery that she feels inside her own chest reflect on Amoli's face.

"B-Because I was scared," she says, words barely making sense. "I was afraid that someone would f-find out. I was —" her words blur with her sobs, and she shakes her head and wipes her cheeks again, only for more tears to trail down the corners of her eyes. "No one can know." The words are a mere whisper. A plea. And Mahika feels them tug at her heartstrings.

Because if there is anyone who understands those words better than anyone right now, it's her.

"Especially my parents, they — they can't know, Mahika."

Mahika doesn't miss the way Amoli falters at her name, but right now, she physically cannot stand hearing any versions of her name that sound like endearments out of Amoli's mouth. She can't. So she lets Amoli call her 'Mahika' even though hearing it feels wrong.

Gathering all of the strength she didn't know she had, Mahika finally lets her shoulders sag in defeat and says, "I understand."

It doesn't matter that she wants to ask, "Would you hold my hand in front of the world if I was a boy instead?" And it doesn't matter that she knows this isn't the last time her throat feels tight because of the tears she has been holding back.

What matters is that unless she wakes up inside a different body one day, she can't love who she wants to love without the fear of having every eye around them boring into her skin.

What matters is that no matter how hard it is, she has to swallow all of her feelings back and spend the next week and a half with the only girl who has ever made her heart flutter and pretend like her life is one day going to go back to the way it used to be.

➷

a/n

a bit shorter than usual but we'll hopefully go back to the 2.5k-3k length from the next chapter!

thank you so much for reading <3

working on this story makes me very happy and i really, really hope reading it brings you the same feeling, even if it's just the slightest bit.

have a good day/evening ahead and take care!