Chapter 101
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Sun Fang swallowed his saliva, licking his lips as he contend to salivate. He made grabby motions with his hands as Ivy got closer, leaning forward on his beach chair. As soon as Ivy was in range, he grinned at it and held out his hand. ”Thank you,” he said as the ice cream cone was transferred to him, Ivy settling next to him on the chair.

”It was no problem,” murmured Ivy, looking at him for a moment. Then it looked at the pool, the glittering waters reflecting the sharp sunlight. 

Sun Fang hummed, already munching on his prize.

Ivy’s metallic eyes were distant as it looked at the waters, the mouth pulled thin and sharp. Sun Fang ate his entire cone in minutes, feeling the cold flowing down into his stomach, the taste of blueberry lingering on his tongue. He stuck it out when he was done eating, trying to see if it was blue now—but of course, his tongue wasn’t long enough. Frowning a little at that, he slumped against the chair’s backrest and poked Ivy with his toe.

Ivy’s gaze switched to him. It rose an eyebrow, and Sun Fang only barely managed not to grin at that. ”Is my tongue blue now?” he asked, poking it out and opening his mouth wide.

”No.”

Sun Fang pouted and muttered, ”It would have been cool if it was.” Ivy stared at him for one long, breathtaking moment, than looked away. Back at the waters. Sun Fang’s eyes followed its heavy gaze, and he smirked, sitting up and scooting closer to Ivy. That melancholy feeling in his bones—the heaviness that still sat in his chest—that, he ignored. Instead, he asked, ”Do you miss the ocean that much?”

”Yes,” Ivy responded, honestly. It did him the favor of not pretending to not know what he was talking about. 

Sun Fang hummed in thought, putting his head on Ivy’s shoulder. He felt it tense for one long, drawn-out moment, and then it relaxed into him, the frame suddenly soft and pliant and pleasantly cool against him. He said, ”It won’t be long now, until we’re on Firelight again. Then we can have picnics at the seaside. We could even invite Xingyi to join us.” He paused, then added, ”Would you… like that?”

Ivy’s face turned to him. It stared at him with intense eyes, the ’pupils’ contracting and relaxing again. It finally said, ”Yes. I like Xingyi, I like you, I like the ocean and I like picnics.”

Sun Fang’s lips twitched. He couldn’t resist—he burst out laughing. Throwing his arm around Ivy’s shoulders, he hauled the android close to him and hugged it aggressively. ”You’re the best,” he wheezed out between his cackling, on the edge of climbing Ivy like a tree. Ivy let itself be moved by him, going along with his every motion.

The other people out at the pool this fine day glared at him and his loudness. Sun Fang just stuck his tongue out at the closest one, a petty pleasure filling him when they instantly looked away. He grinned at their back, then stood from his seat, energy filling him to the brim.

He bounced on his feet. He spun around. He tilted his head back and faced the sunlight head-on.

Ivy pulled him back on the chair. ”You don’t have sufficient sunscreen on,” it said. Sun Fang pouted, but allowed himself to be manhandled. 

It was, after all, a beautiful.

Even the sun couldn’t get his mood down—they were, after all, only days from leaving this planet. 

Essentially everything had been packed and shipped off, either to storage or to their new house. Without the boxes, the apartment felt startlingly lonely; a shadowed corner of what once had been and was now no more. It was entirely bare of personal objects, just the furniture left behind to eventually gather dust. 

Going to the pool at their apartment complex had seemed like a good idea, and nothing since arriving had said otherwise. The sun was shining, the water was sparkling, the people were staring at Ivy for having the audacity to actually sit right next to Sun Fang… it was a perfect snapshot image of the past. Even Ivy putting sunscreen on his face, carefully making sure that it covered even the tip of his nose, was familiar.

Sun Fang breathed out. He breathed in the scent of pool-water, of stifled heat, of sunscreen. He closed his eyes as Ivy worked, and relaxed.

Eventually, Ivy deemed Sun Fang ready to emerge from the shadows. Sun Fang let out a heartfelt, ”Thanks,” and stood, stretching arms above his head and yawning as he went. He wandered tot eh pool’s edge, staring down into it for a moment. There were quite a lot of other people in the pool today, children and elderly and so on. Hardly anybody spared him a glance as he turned around, raised an eyebrow at the camera Ivy was holding and finally just shrugged, waving at Ivy and its camera.

Ivy waved back. It held up the camera. And Sun Fang took a great big leap into the pool, water rising high in his wake.

He sank like a stone to the bottom, his whole world abruptly silent and still. Below the water, as he was sinking, sinking, sinking, his eyes peeked open. He saw blue, saw people swimming around him, and saw the fractured sunlight coming from above. He stayed down there until his lungs begin to hurt, the tiny bit of air he’d managed to trap in his chest running out, and was forced to break the surface.

Ivy was standing by the pool’s edge when he opened his eyes, brushing his hair out of his face. ”Hi,” he grinned up at it, Ivy taking several pictures while he rubbed the water out of his eyes.

”Hello,” echoed Ivy, lowering the camera at last. It smiled at him, the eyes gentle. Sun Fang ducked below the waters when the softness became too much, taking shelter from this dangerous Ivy.

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