Chapter Text
Ka Zuigetsu’s life had always been curated for him. He was enrolled in the right schools. He wore the right suits. He knew the right words spoken at the right dinners with the right kind of people. He moved through his teen years like a pearl placed in a velvet box: polished, admired, handled with care but never truly allowed to get dirty.
He loathed it.
Because he was from an influential family, he grew up being paraded at social events. The media gave him the nickname Jinshi due to his beautiful appearance and it stuck because even his real name felt like a mouthful.
Soon, no one called him Zuigetsu.
It was only natural that the first time he saw her, he was both horrified and fascinated. She was elbow-deep in a jar of some foul liquid behind the counter of the cramped lab. Her hair was messy, tied back in what could hardly be called a ponytail.
Jinshi had lingered in the doorway longer than he should have.
“Do you need something?” She finally asked, not looking away from her work.
He dazedly walked in, ignoring the suspicious way her gaze swept over his neatly pressed shirt and expensive watch. She sighed in annoyance and put down one of the apparatus to look at him. Her eyes were unimpressed and it sent an inexplicable shiver down his back. No one had ever looked at him in disgust right in his face.
He smirked and introduced himself as Jinshi.
From then on, he kept coming back.
He learned her name was Maomao. When he didn’t find her in the university, she’d be working part-time at the pharmacy a few blocks away.
Sometimes he went under the excuse of needing herbal remedies for headaches or whatever vague ailment he could invent on the spot. She always had the solution to any problem.
She never treated him like anyone special. She didn’t fawn over his looks, didn’t trip over herself when he smiled, didn’t hesitate to cuss him out when he was in the way of her and her shelves.
He found himself addicted to those visits. He found himself finishing procrastinating his homework to get to her earlier and stay with her longer.
One rainy evening, Jinshi ducked into the pharmacy to find her crouched on the floor, reorganizing boxes. Water dripped from his umbrella, soaking the mat by the door.
“You’ll ruin the wood.” She said, already sounding irritated.
“You’re welcome for the free cleaning service.” Jinshi replied smoothly, shaking his umbrella a little more deliberately.
Maomao shot him a glare sharp enough to cut glass. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, Jinshi laughed a real laugh.
They built a rhythm.
Maomao brewed questionable concoctions. Jinshi teased her about being a witch. She rolled her eyes, muttered something about “pampered men with too much free time” and yet never told him to stop coming.
There were nights when she let him stay late, when the shutters were half-drawn and only the clubs were still alive. He’d watch her grind herbs with patient movements, her fingers stained green or brown from powders.
“You work too much.” Jinshi told her once, yawning.
“You talk too much.” She shot back.
Later that night, long after he left, Maomao found herself frowning at her notes, her pen stuck mid-sentence. That Jinshi was a nuisance. He was frivolous. He didn’t belong in her world. Why was he bothering her thoughts?
One humid summer afternoon, Maomao closed the pharmacy early to restock supplies. She balanced bags of pills against her hip while trudging back from the wholesaler.
“Need help?”
She groaned. “Don’t you have a yacht to lounge on or something?”
Instead of answering, Jinshi plucked the heaviest bag from her arms. He carried it effortlessly, his sleeves rolled up, revealing toned forearms that made more than one passerby turn their heads.
“Why are you even here?” She muttered.
“Because I wanted to see you.” He said it lightly, with a smile.
Later, he helped her arrange jars on the highest shelf. When he leaned close, she smelled his cologne. It was expensive but not overwhelming.
Over the next few weeks, that scent was almost always by her side. Jinshi brought coffee sometimes. Maomao pretended not to like the iced lattes but always drank them down. He asked questions he didn’t need the answers to about plants, chemical reactions, why some stuff smelled like rot but cured fevers. She explained in clipped, precise terms as if daring him to get bored.
He never did.
Instead, he listened. Really listened and it unsettled her almost as much as his ridiculous compliments.
“Do you ever… want something else?” he asked suddenly one time.
Maomao paused, tying a packet with twine. “Something else?”
“Yeah. Different life. Different place. Something away from all this.” He gestured vaguely, though his gaze was steady.
She frowned. “Wanting doesn’t mean much. Life is what it is.”
He studied her from the stubborn crease of her brows to the sharp focus in her eyes. No, she wasn’t like him at all. She fought for her place. It made her all the more attractive to him.
The first time she called him by his real name, he almost didn’t hear it.
“Zuigetsu.”
His head snapped toward her. She said it casually like she hadn’t just tugged open a door he usually kept bolted.
“…What did you say?”
Maomao straightened, dusting her hands on her jeans. “Ka Zuigetsu. Don’t look so shocked. Your face is all over the internet. Took me five seconds to figure it out.”
He blinked, caught between irritation and amusement.
After that, she started using it at random. Sometimes when she wanted to annoy him. Sometimes when she wanted his full attention.
“Zuigetsu, hand me that vial.”
“Zuigetsu, move, you’re in the way.”
“Zuigetsu, stop looking at me like that.”
He hated it. He loved it.
“Everyone calls me Jinshi.” He told her one night as they locked up. He’d gotten the same part-time job: however he fit that into his schedule, he wouldn’t tell.
“Ka Zuigetsu. Jinshi. Does it matter? All I know is you’re the nuisance appearing in my favorite places every other night.”
Leave it to her to make him feel more like a person than he had in years.
Jinshi noticed the little things more: how she brushed her bangs out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, how her laugh was rare -sometimes creepy- but genuine when she let it slip, how she always double checked every label twice.
The night of the blackout changed things. The city’s grid went down unexpectedly, and the lab was plunged into darkness. Outside, few car horns blared and the faint glow of emergency lights flickered on.
Maomao swore softly, rummaging for a flashlight. At one point, she accidentally bumped into Jinshi and felt something she convinced herself was nothing more than a frog. “Ow. Can you move your hand?” She almost tripped again with how quickly she backed away.
Now standing uselessly by the counter, he chuckled. “You know, I think this is the first time I’ve witnessed you rattled.”
“Shut up and hold this.” She snapped, shoving the flashlight into his hands once she found it. Their fingers brushed, sparking something for him.
She lit a candle across the room, away from all the experiments soon after. Its golden glow threw shadows across the room. For once, the place felt less like a workplace.
Jinshi leaned against the counter, watching her work in the halo of light. How beautiful she became when she wasn’t deeply concentrated in perfecting a mix. “You look different.”
Maomao snorted but she realized she was grateful for his presence right now. The darkness would have been unbearable without him.
Oh no. This isn’t good.
The next few days, Jinshi noticed something different. She didn’t push him away but she stopped calling him Zuigetsu either. She stuck with Jinshi. It was like she retreated behind her own kind of distance and it unsettled him more than her insults ever had.
After two nights of that cold politeness, he cornered her outside the pharmacy.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Maomao slipped the keys into her pocket, refusing to look at him. “No.”
“You’re lying.” He frowned. “You always tell me when I’m being annoying. Why not now?”
Her shoulders stiffened. That silence stretched, filled with the muffled bass of a jazzclub down the street. For once, Jinshi didn’t try to fill it with charm or laughter. He just waited.
“Jinshi is for them,” he murmured. “Zuigetsu is for you. Only you.”
The tension broke when a group of drunken students stumbled past, shouting and laughing at one another. Maomao stepped back, putting space between them, her arms crossing defensively.
“Maomao..” He came so close to her he knew he was being so obvious then. Either she realized too or she was still trying to be oblivious to the way he looked at her. He leaned down. Not a full kiss, not yet. His face was just close enough that she could smell his cologne again. Their faces were inches apart. Her breath hitched and his eyes searched hers, dark with intent.
“Tell me to stop.” He whispered.
She just stared at him.
He was afraid she’d push him away at the last second. But when she didn’t, when she leaned just slightly closer, Jinshi deepened the kiss, one hand cupping her cheek, the other steadying her against the table
She tasted faintly of jasmine tea. For a dizzy second, he was the one struggling to keep up. She knew exactly what she was doing and it left him reeling. Her lips were softer than he’d imagined, her tongue brushing his in a way that sent heat straight to his chest. Her hands hovered near his chest like she couldn’t decide whether to push him away or yank him closer.
When they finally pulled apart, Jinshi stood between her knees with their foreheads resting together.
“This is a mistake.” She said, breathless but still stern.
For him, for once, he felt like himself. He felt messy and imperfect but very much alive. If it was a mistake, then it was the first one Ka Zuigetsu ever wanted to make twice.