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afterhourswjay · 4 days

Text

plum blossom soliloquy.

summary: ruan mei is the one person in the universe who can touch you.

notes: 3.6k words, author's notes, themes of codependency/worship, made-up science, loosely inspired by cardia from code realize

Ruan Mei collects pieces of you everyday.

With insulated gloves pulled up to her elbows and safety goggles perched on her nose, she extracts samples of your blood, strands of your hair, and biometric readings from her scanner. This is your daily ritual, and Ruan Mei’s visits mark the beginning of your day. She never fails to come in like clockwork, more consistent than the sun itself.

You don’t ask what she does with the samples; her explanations never make much sense, and your education is woefully limited. But Ruan Mei always hums as she works, delicate strands of music like peach blossoms waving in a spring breeze, and you can never take your eyes off of her as she carefully clips strands of your hair, head bent over in concentration. Close enough that you can smell the plum pastries still clinging to her, warm and sugary and fragrant. She must have had some for breakfast.

“How are your findings?” you ask.

“The high toxicity level of your body remains stable,” she murmurs. “And yet, you still don’t feel any discomfort?”

When she says this, Ruan Mei looks at you with calculations and dreams swirling in her eyes like a galaxy. You flush at her evaluating gaze, as if she can stare past your skin into the hollows of your soul, everything stripped bare in front of her.

“No, not at all,” you say softly. “I feel normal.”

“You’re a marvelous specimen,” Ruan Mei responds.

You bite back a smile at her words, pressing your teeth down on your bottom lip. There’s a miniature sun in your chest, burning and bright, at her praise.

“Will I see you at the same time tomorrow?” you ask her.

Ruan Mei stands, briskly arranging all her samples. “Yes, of course. Your meals will be delivered as per the usual time.”

“Ruan Mei,” you say quickly, “May I make a request?” It’s audacious of you to ask. You’ve never voiced your thoughts to her before. You don’t dare to disturb her, and try to stay out of her way as much as you can. What is so different about today? Nothing, nothing at all, but the sight of her back to you makes you feel lonely. So, you offer your words to her like a worshiper to a god, hopeful for any acknowledgement.

She frowns thoughtfully at you. “Yes?”

“May we have today’s meal together?”

“Together? I fail to see the point of such an endeavor,” she says. “We run on different schedules.”

“I’m sorry if it’s presumptuous,” you murmur. You should have known better than to bother her. “You can forget it if it’s too much.”

Ruan Mei tilts her head at you, squinting as if you’re some particularly strange calculation. Your skin tingles under her gaze, and you fight to keep your own eyes locked on hers.

“I suppose I can,” she says at last, “if that’s what you wish.”

“Thank you,” you say.

She nods, once, before exiting out of the lab. You let out an exhale, before hugging yourself at the unexpected clemency she has granted you.

The two of you do not talk much outside of the scheduled appointments in which she, like clockwork, shows up at eight in the mornings per standard time to collect samples of your body. Though she has given you free reign of her lab, outside of a few forbidden zones in which she conducts delicate research, you mainly squirrel yourself away in the little room she’s provided for you. It’s comforting to burrow in your corner of her lab; the idea of disturbing her experiments with your carelessness worries you endlessly. You’re not used to having space to wander, either, and keeping your world small and limited is easier for you.

Some might call her cruel, but that’s only because they do not understand the nature of her work, so grand and all-consuming that you’re honored to have a role to play in it at all. You would gladly offer up every last piece of yourself if only to feel Ruan Mei’s touch once. After all, what other use would a body like yours have? Your body, which is toxic to the touch. Prolonged exposure to your skin is lethal. Flowers wilt. Birds choke up. Everything beautiful dies when it comes into contact with you.

But Ruan Mei, as lovely as a plum blossom, is the only beautiful thing who hasn’t.

—

Your story before Ruan Mei was painfully dull. There was nothing to say about that time, which was filled only with a monotony of endlessly repeating days, of set meals and lessons and an empty manor, with its carefully preserved artifacts.

You didn’t remember your parents. Perhaps you had killed them, or they had abandoned you. Maybe you didn’t have any parents at all, and had simply sprung into existence by an aeon’s will. You had never learned the truth about your heritage, no matter who you asked. Not that there was anyone to ask. In your frozen wasteland of a home, you had grown up with only a few android servants for companions, who oversaw your education and general health. Outside of that, you were alone. You could only learn about the world through the books you read.

“What’s this?” you pointed a finger at a picture of a tree, pink flowers blooming voraciously across its every limb. You must have been seven or eight, and had never seen anything so colorful before.

“That is a plum blossom tree,” your android teacher said, its motors whirring. “It is a tree that can be found across the Xianzhou Luofu, and is a popular subject of art. It blooms during the spring, and the fruit has a variety of uses in cooking and medicine.”

“Plum blossoms…” You trace the brushstrokes of the petals with your fingers, as if you could feel the soft silk if you just tried hard enough. You knew what trees were, but you had never seen one in person. Nothing green could survive in the icy landscapes of your particular planet. “Do you think I’ll be able to see it one day?”

“Negative. It is too dangerous for you to venture away from your home. It is possible your body could contaminate the tree and sicken it, as well.”

“Oh.”

It was just the way things were. You were dangerous. You could not leave. You would most likely stay in your isolated mansion, surrounded by drifts of snow and ice, until you died.

There were no visitors. All you understood about the world came from the books the androids offered you. There was no advanced technology in your household, as if someone had forbidden all your contact with the outside world. The most you were allowed was a scratchy record-player, out of which poured music you had no context for.

That was your life. At least it was until Ruan Mei arrived.

Ruan Mei had not bothered to knock on your door. Instead, she had picked the lock and strode in as if the mansion belonged to her, even as the androids fruitlessly tried to get her to leave. She brought in swirls of snow, trekking ice across the floor, sending your servants into a panic. She was calm, even as they pushed her with their mechanical arms.

The commotion and the noise had driven you out of your room, where you hovered on the second floor, watching this strange woman. Slowly, you crept closer, down the stairs, to the first floor, to the source of the disruption of your average life.

When Ruan Mei saw you, she strode towards you. Entranced, all you could do was watch her. This was the first human you had encountered in your entire life. Was she a dream? Or a ghost? It wasn’t until she was close enough to raise a gloved hand to brush against your cheek that you flinched back, skittering from her touch.

Still, enough of the glove brushed against the edge of your cheek so that the silk sizzled and blackened against your corrosive skin, revealing her pale fingers.

“Curious,” she said, flicking the glove aside. “It seems the rumors weren’t wrong. You are a strange specimen.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” you rasped, still edging backwards. “You shouldn’t touch me. You could get hurt. It’s— it’s dangerous.”

She tilted her head. “I’m a scientist. It’s part of the nature of the profession to do dangerous things.”

What a strange woman. Were all humans like her? You couldn’t tell, but there was a strange shine in her eyes, an endless hunger when she stared at you. It made something in you catch alight, sending trails of fire through your veins.

She was the most beautiful woman in the galaxy, who disrupted everything you thought you knew and understood. Where had she come from? From your dreams of companionship, like a fairy tale sprung to life? Or from the fervent wishes of your heart, answered at last by a star or an aeon?

“Who… who are you?” you finally brought yourself to ask. You couldn’t look away.

“You can call me Ruan Mei,” she said calmly. She extended her ungloved hand to you, palm up, fingers spread. Pale skin, traced through with blue rivers of veins and valleys of creases. Nothing like the smooth, unblemished synthetic hands which nurtured you for years. “And I am going to take you out of here.”

It was dangerous. You were trapped here for a reason. You couldn’t leave. If there was one thing you had been taught, it was that it was your duty to stay in your manor.

But she was so beautiful. Even if you didn’t take her hand and tried to chase her away, she had stolen something from you that you could never get back.

There was only one choice for you now.

—

You learned more about Ruan Mei’s mission in her aircraft, where you were bundled up in a blanket you brought from home so you wouldn’t burn through the seats. You didn’t bring much with you, outside of a few objects that she wanted to examine.

Ruan Mei wanted to understand life. No, she wanted to create a perfect lifeform. It was her self-imposed mission, and when she had heard rumors of you from a colleague, she had immediately flown to your glacial planet to find you.

“A human who is not a human is the closest thing to an aeon,” she explained calmly.

The idea that someone like you could even be close to divine felt wrong, but the way Ruan Mei said it made you wonder if it could be true.

You learned more about her in the following months. She was diligent and articulate. She loved desserts, and enjoyed embroidery. She was a member of the Genius Society, and took tea every morning before she began work.

From the meetings you overheard her conduct, her coworkers called her cold, and disinterested. But they couldn’t have been more wrong. She was the one who had found a way for you to live in her home without melting everything you touched.

Ruan Mei hypothesized that the entire manor you had once lived in had somehow been treated so you could touch things without your poisonous skin corroding it. The fact you didn’t melt your own body was proof there could be a way to counteract your own poison, and that she could find a way to prevent you from doing the same to the things around you. It took her only a few days to collect samples of your blood and to use the blanket you brought back from the manor to create a solution she used to treat the entire area in which the two of you lived. Now, you could touch things with your bare hands without fear.

“It’s for the sake of my research. I can’t do work if you melt every beaker I try to use to collect samples,” she said, but you were grateful regardless.

You had never been useful before. It wasn’t a possibility you were aware was possible.

“So you’re the lab rat she’s dragged in,” one of her colleagues had told you dismissively. Dr. Ratio, that was his name, perhaps. He had visited to share lab results with Ruan Mei, and you had run into him by accident, jumping a mile in the air at the sight of the stranger.

You had burned with emotion then, and it was only now, after replaying that scene in your head again and again, that you could finally come up with the proper words to refute him.

“So what if I am? She needs me.”

Using you? Even if that was true, what did it matter? Love, affection, care… Those sorts of emotions were quick to fade and notoriously unreliable. You wouldn’t be able to trust them. But her experiments on you, each and every day? Those were real. Those were proof that you were important to her, more important than anyone else could ever be.

Your body’s condition was finally good for something. It had brought Ruan Mei to you.

—

The appointed time of dinner draws closer, and you still haven’t figured out how to prepare for her arrival.

What should you wear? No, should you tidy up the area? There were automated bots who cleaned each room and made the meals, as Ruan Mei found such things a bother to tend to when she was busy. Ah, maybe you should have asked if it was okay to make something for her, perhaps a cake that she liked– not that you could cook. You couldn’t serve her terrible food. And it wouldn’t nearly be enough to repay her for everything she’s done for you.

A soft, elegant knock echoes against your door. The time has passed faster than you expected. You leap up, heart pounding, as Ruan Mei steps into your room, a bot trailing behind her, carrying a tray.

“Hello,” she says. “I’ve brought you your meal.”

You pull out a chair for her, and she slips into it with a word. Her every moment is precise, elegant, with no wasted movement. Every minute of her day must be carefully planned and executed. She could have a mathematical equation for the entire universe, hidden in the palm of her hand.

The bot lumbers over to your side and sets a stainless steel plate down in front of you. To your surprise, it’s not the usual mush, packed with, as Ruan Mei says, enough nutrients to keep you healthy, even if not the most favorable meal. Instead, it is a real dish: fragrant stir-fried vegetables and braised meat, steamed fish and two bowls of rice, set with a pair of chopsticks perched across each bowl. It’s food from Xiangzhou Luofu.

“Well?” Ruan Mei says, already plucking a piece of fish into her bowl. “Eat.”

Emotions choke your throat as you tentatively reach for the chopsticks, and poke at some of the vegetables. The poison in your body makes it hard to taste the food before it dissolves in your mouth, but to your surprise, you can taste every ounce of flavor in these vegetables, succulent and lightly-seasoned.

It’s delicious. Ruan Mei must have done something to your meal; had she poison-proofed it somehow? But for what end? So you could enjoy the meal? But why? It seems the sort of sentimental behavior she doesn’t tolerate.

There’s nothing but the clinking of chopsticks against porcelain plates as the two of you eat. You’ve never been with her for such an extended period of time. What can you talk about? Her papers for the Genius Society? No, you wouldn’t understand a word of it. You could mention the books you’ve read lately, but you don’t know if she would care about romance novels.

“How is your research progressing?” you ask timidly. That’s a safe subject, at least.

“It’s progressing smoothly with your assistance,” she says. She flicks a glance at you, scrutinizing. “How are your accommodations?”

“Perfect! The pillows are soft, and the temperature is always mild, so I never felt too hot or cold. And you’ve given me plenty of books, so I never feel bored,” you say. “Thank you, Ruan Mei.”

“It’s only natural,” she says. “A lack of stimulation might lead to a degradation in your condition. I’m only trying to keep your environment stable for my own research.”

“That’s extremely thoughtful of you.”

“So that’s how you see it,” she murmurs. You sneak a peek at her, but she’s focused on eating. Better not to comment, then. Maybe that’s a sentiment you aren’t supposed to respond to.

Silence falls again. The rice is dwindling, and only sauce is left on the plates. What can you do to make her stay? To engage her interest? This is a rare opportunity, one that might not come about again.

Sometimes, you think about faking illness, if only to keep her by your side for longer. Any change in your condition would concern her. But most likely, she would just send in a medical bot to check on you, and your ruse would be easily discovered. A childish ploy for attention would never work on someone as intelligent as her.

She’s standing now, neatly folding her chopsticks over her plate. Why did she accept your invitation, again? Maybe that’s not for you to question. You’re fine with your relationship. You’re fine, so you shouldn’t get too greedy, and to want more than you are allowed.

“Ruan Mei,” you say again.

“Yes?”

“Am I helpful to you?” you ask plaintively.

She doesn’t answer right away. Ruan Mei looks at you, really looks at you, her gaze luminous and all encompassing, like a lighthouse in a storm. Her gaze flays you open, excavating every last inch of you for her appraisal. Without her attention, you would revert back to who you were before, a lost person trapped in a glacial manor, all alone.

She walks over to where you still stay sitting. She reaches out one gloved hand and places it alongside the length of your cheek. There’s an emotion struggling to break out through the calm waters of her eyes. You can see it, floating right beneath, under her tranquil exterior.

You can’t breathe. You wait for the sizzle of acid, of melting flesh. You wait for her to recoil. You wait for the words you’ve always heard, the knowledge you’ve always known: your body is a curse. It’s dangerous. You aren’t meant for human connection, much less someone else’s touch.

But none of that happens. Ruan Mei’s touch is gentle, ghosting against your skin. You can almost feel her warmth through her glove, and can almost imagine how soft her hand must be, how lovely it would be for her to touch you, to really touch you.

You still remember the sight of her hand, the first time you met her. Flesh and bone and blood and nerves, all the delicate components that come together in a miraculous fusion of life.

“You are helpful,” she says curtly, pulling away. “I need you.”

“Okay,” you say smiling. “I’m glad.”

Raw, naked need. It’s more reliable than Ruan Mei saying she likes you, or cares about you. Need is hard and visceral, like plum seeds packed in fertile ground.

The bot clears away the food, and your table is as clean as if you’ve never had a meal there in your life. You sit in your chair with your hands folded in your lap like a doll.

Ruan Mei is by the door when she pauses. “By the way. I have something for you. It followed me home, and since I have no need for it, I believe you may find better purpose out of it than I could.” As she speaks, a strange, furry creature darts between her ankles and into your room, a flash of gray fur and wide eyes.

It’s only when it comes to a stop that you see it’s some sort of… cat? A cat that looks like a cake, with its tail curled close to its body as it looks up at you, its head peeking out of its cake-like body.

Wide-eyed. Scared. Needing.

You hug your arms around yourself. “What if I–”

“It can survive your touch,” she interrupts. “I made sure of that.”

“Ruan Mei,” you say breathlessly, holding out your arms. You say her name like you would say the name of a god. The creature scampers into your hold, but she’s stepped out, and the door is sliding closed, and still you add, “thank you.”

There’s no response. You hold the creature to your chest, and it is so, so warm. It’s alive and trembling and soft. This is the touch of another living being. This is what being alive means: to feel the touch of others. To hold them. To know you are real.

“What’s your name?” you coo, stroking the creature’s fur. It feels like velvet.

“Don’t have one,” it replies. You almost drop it; you haven’t expected it to actually reply. But Ruan Mei is a genius; of course her experiment has some measure of intelligence.

“I’ll give you a name,” you say. “What about Plum?”

“Plum? It sounds nice,” the creature says, nuzzling into your grasp, finally relaxing in your grip.

“It’s because…” You remember that book about plum trees you read as a child. You remember the smell of Ruan Mei’s favorite plum cakes, clinging to her skin. You remember Ruan Mei, pulling you out of your dull existence. “It’s because plum blossoms are the most beautiful flowers in the universe.”

You hug Plum closer to you. Whether Ruan Mei is an angel who saves you, or a devil who pulls you into hell, or a cruel god who will destroy you, it doesn’t make any difference. As long as she is the one reaching out her hand to you, you will take it, no matter where she leads you.

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