Sunny Flare was used to all the weird things happening around her. After all, the fact that she and her friends had survived high school mostly intact must have been some sort of a miracle. Now she was a perfectly normal student with some successes to her name, with a normal house, a healthy relationship, and only a few unresolved traumas acquired throughout her life.
She opened the door of the apartment she shared with her girlfriend and frowned. It was dark, aside from the faint light coming from the kitchen. It was partially obscured by the shadow of something large moving near the window.
Sunny’s heart froze for a moment. Still wearing the snow-covered boots, she rushed to the kitchen, trying to keep her breath steady.
“Lemon Zest, you stupid goose, what are you doing?” she exclaimed.
Lemon turned towards her. She was standing on a chair, holding a wire. Seeing Sunny Flare, she staggered slightly and grabbed the window handle to avoid falling on the floor. “Hanging Christmas lights, of course. ‘Tis the season, after all.”
“Hanging… Christmas lights. Right.” Sunny Flare furrowed her eyebrows, looking at the empty wine bottle standing on the table. “You were drinking again?”
“Yes,” Lemon replied, grabbing more Christmas lights and hanging them above the window. “You should chill out and grab some liquid festivity too. I’m feeling festive.”
“I don’t.” Sunny muttered, grabbing a bottle and looking at it. Her stomach twisted and turned as the bottle trembled in her hand. “Did you know that today’s the fourth anniversary of when I almost froze to death while drunk?”
“It’s not,” Lemon said. “That was in January.”
“I know, dearie,” Sunny said, clenching the bottle in her fist. “I thought that being appropriately dramatic would speak to your stupid mind for once.”
“I’m not stupid.” Lemon staggered on the chair. “And you could chill out for once. It’s Christmas soon.”
“How can I chill out when you’re trying to get yourself killed in the stupidest way imaginable?” Sunny Flare shrugged. “I mean, I almost did the same thing a few times, but I always knew where the line was.”
“You ended up in rehab,” Lemon said.
Sunny trembled, considering crushing the wine bottle in either her hand or on Lemon’s head. “Yet another reason why you shouldn’t be drinking here. Also, should I remind you what you were doing back then?”
Lemon reached out to hang the Christmas lights on the window, resting one of her feet on the counter while the chair leaned dangerously. Sunny grabbed it, saving Lemon from the fall.
“I was with Sweet Leaf,” Lemon said, hardly noticing Sunny’s efforts. “She was cool.”
“Or with Sour Sweet. Who was less cool.” Sunny rolled her eyes.
Lemon hiccuped. “She knew how to have fun too.”
“She would occasionally use your face as a punching bag, but yes, let’s go with that.” Sunny sighed. “Get down here, you drunken moron.”
Lemon turned towards Sunny, causing the chair to lean dangerously again. “Well, now I remember. I was with Sweet Leaf and then you fucked it all up.”
“For the record, I was in the middle of freezing to death.” Sunny replied. “I didn’t exactly think clearly.”
Lemon staggered on the chair. “You hated Sweet Leaf, didn’t you?”
Sunny Flare frowned. “Would you kindly get down here and stop being stupid? That was four years ago and I was an idiot back then. Unlike you, who’s being an idiot right now.”
“So now I’m an idiot?” Lemon rolled her eyes and connected another chain of Christmas lights to the ones she’d already hanged. “Those don’t work,” she muttered.
“It’s Chinese shit that spent the last year in a cardboard box in our basement,” Sunny said. “I’m surprised any of those still work after that EMP I made for college.”
Lemon looked closer at the wire. “What EMP?”
“The one I eventually sold to the army and this is why we can still afford to live here despite you never paying your half of the rent,” Sunny replied.
“Which army?” Lemon asked.
Sunny shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. They’re not currently committing provable war crimes.”
“I’ll pay you next time I get paid for DJ’ing.” Lemon poked the plastic box with a button controlling the lights’ blinking patterns.
“You're banned from all the clubs here,” Sunny said. “And before you say you're not banned from The People’s Village, I’d like to point out that they never paid you. You should find a regular job if you're not planning to get back to college.”
“I could–”
“I don't want to hear that ridiculous thing about photos of feet either.”
“Okay, fine.” Lemon rolled her eyes and looked at the light controller. “One of those wires must be a bit loose.”
“Leave it,” Sunny said. “I’m the electronics specialist in this–”
Suddenly, several things happened at once. Sunny saw a flash of electricity coming from the damaged wire; it wasn’t very big, but Lemon cursed, dropping the lights and staggering dangerously on the chair. She grabbed the curtains, but all she achieved was pulling them off the window along with the Christmas lights as she fell to the floor with a rather undignified thud.
Sunny didn’t even manage to curse when the lights went out. She frantically looked around, searching for the fusebox, when she heard some commotion on the floor.
“Fuck,” Lemon muttered. “Am I in heaven?”
“What exactly made you think that you would be?” Sunny asked. “Think of the last weekend in The People’s Village. That’d be enough to send us to hell.”
“Okay, you’re here, so I’m not in heaven.” There was more commotion and cursing when Lemon tried to get up. “Maybe we’re in hell?”
“You’re my personal hell,” Sunny whispered, trying to find Lemon in the darkness. “We as well could be. Remember what my grandma said when I introduced you to the family?”
“That your mother is an alcoholic sl–”
“Not that.” Sunny furrowed her eyebrows, almost slipping on something wet.
“Oh… God hates dykes?”
“Exactly,” Sunny muttered. “Especially the ones whose intricate Christmas ornament blows up the fuses in the whole building. Why is the floor so wet?”
“I can’t feel my arm and I feel dizzy,” Lemon muttered.
Sunny lit her wrist devices up – right in time to see Lemon sitting on the floor next to the chair and poking a large cut on her forehead. Sunny lowered the light and saw more blood on the floor, as well as some on her socks.
“Eww…” Lemon winced, looking at the floor. “Is it my brain?”
“You don’t have one, idiot,” Sunny replied, her stomach twisting into a knot as she fought the urge to pass out. “Also, you’re drunk, which fucks up the clotting a bit. Don’t ask me how I know.” She grabbed Lemon. “Get up. We need to go to the doctor.”
Sunny was never a great driver. Sure, she and Lemon owned a car, but she drove it only when Lemon was drunk, which, to be frank, happened with increasing frequency as of late.
Still, powered by adrenaline and whatever feelings she still had for Lemon Zest, she managed to drive across the snowy town and only knock over some trash cans when parking in front of the hospital. She dragged half-asleep Lemon to the reception desk and pointed at her.
“Excuse me,” she said. “My girlfriend was being stupid again.”
The receptionist shot her a look that was in equal parts bored and fascinated, typical of an ER employee right before Christmas. “Sunny Flare. What was it this time?”
“Christmas lights and a chair,” Sunny replied. “And a lot of wine, it seems.”
“I was trying to be festive.” Lemon Zest sobbed. “Sunny doesn’t feel the Christmas spirit at all.”
Sunny rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because I keep trying to stop you from accidentally killing yourself.” She turned to the receptionist. “Can we get her to the X-ray? She broke her arm, I think.”
The receptionist looked at her computer screen. “There’s a few injured drunks in there already, but we’ll see what I can do…”
“Hey, have you seen my new tattoo?” Lemon Zest asked the nurse, rolling up her sleeve and showing a black “レモン 熱意 ” partially masking some old scars. “That’s my name! Sunny says it actually says ‘spring rolls’, but–”
Sunny groaned. “It is actually your name, I was trolling you. Can you shut up for once?” She turned to the nurse. “I’m sorry for her.”
“No problem,” the nurse replied. “She’s not even the worst here.”
Sunny nodded. She had put on earplugs when a few of the drunker patients, in a festive mood, decided to sing some carols, though they couldn’t exactly agree which ones before, but the earplugs couldn’t do much about the way some of them smelled.
Suddenly, Lemon decided to join the choir, which in the meantime settled on the worst rendition of Twelve Days of Christmas Sunny had ever heard. “Fiiiiive Goooold Riiings!” she sang in a raspy voice and rubbed her temples.
“I swear, I’m gonna send you to the ICU…” Sunny muttered.
Lemon stopped singing. “Nah, my head hurts when I sing. Well, it also hurts in general.”
“We’ll have that checked,” the nurse said. “Well, it looks like the X-ray machine is free.” She helped Lemon up. “The girls will take care of you. I need to go… A bad case of acute hyponicotaemia.”
Sunny got up. “Same. Lemon, I’ll be right back. Behave while the doctors look at what’s inside your head.”
“Actually, it’s for the arm. CT is busy right now,” the nurse said.
“Yeah, whatever,” Sunny muttered. She and the nurse walked outside and hid behind the trash cans. The nurse produced a pack of cigarettes from her pocket.
“May I?” Sunny asked. “I actually quit a while ago.”
“Sure,” the nurse replied, offering her the pack. “Bad day?”
“Mhm.” Sunny lit up the cigarette, inhaled the smoke and coughed. “Awful. Back when I smoked, I actually preferred vaping.”
“Now that’s awful.” The nurse exhaled the smoke. “Your girlfriend is quite a handful, eh?”
“I don’t know anymore.” Sunny sighed. “Frankly, I’m done with this all. I sorta want to dump her, but I know how it’ll go.”
“How?” the nurse asked.
“She’ll completely fall off the wagon, that’s how,” Sunny replied. “I know, I used to be sorta similar.” She looked at the cigarette and winced. “I mean, I didn’t quite make her drink and I didn’t personally knock her ex-girlfriend into a coma, but I still feel sorta guilty about that, if you know what I mean.”
The nurse raised her eyebrows. “I feel I’m missing some context.”
“She used to be with our high school friend who beat her, then with a weirdo who got in a car accident and turned into a vegetable, and then with some musician…” Sunny rolled her eyes. “She preferred dudes after all or something. Lemon didn’t take any of this well and I felt somewhat responsible for some of these things, so, uhh…”
“You felt responsible for her?” the nurse asked.
Sunny shuddered, tears flowing down her cheeks. “I’m pretty bad at this. My most serious relationship before that was with a guy who rarely, if ever, left his room.”
“What happened to him?”
Sunny shrugged. “I don’t know, he went offline one day and never came back.”
“Yeah, he obviously didn’t have a bright future ahead.” The nurse chuckled. “Anyway, I guess you’re not a bad person. You–”
“Oh, spare me this bullshit.” Sunny rolled her eyes. “I’m just tired of it all. I want to go away, but I’m afraid of what will happen to Lemon.” She shuddered. “And why does it have to be in winter? I hate the cold. All my problems started in winter.”
“You two met in winter?”
Sunny dropped the butt of her cigarette on the ground. “Nah, I didn’t– I mean, I once got a second chance. But I don’t feel that I’m doing well with it.”
“I think you do,” the nurse replied. “I think they should be done with the X-ray. Are you going to check on your girlfriend?”
“In a minute,” Sunny said, wiping the tears off her face. “I’m a hot mess right now, I need to make myself look presentable.”
“Okay, but don’t take too long,” the nurse said. “She’s waiting for you.”
Sunny nodded and watched the nurse go away. She coughed again; the cigarette left a bitter aftertaste in her throat and she was slowly realising that she hadn’t eaten since lunch. She looked at the brightly-lit windows of the hospital and thought briefly about following the nurse and going back to Lemon.
Then, almost like a machine, she turned back and walked away, disappearing in the dark, snowy alley.
Cold wind started to blow, pouring fresh snow on her footsteps.
