10. The Pain of Epiphany
Part Two: Sumire
The Education of Sumire Min is a previously unpublished novel by S. Jae-Jones. Chapters will be emailed every Friday at 5PM EST. If you do not wish to receive the next chapter, but want to remain subscribed for other updates, you may unsubscribe from the book here.
A day late and a buck short, 친구들, sorry about that! Anyway, starting this week, chapters will go behind a paywall, but because of that, feel free to ask or comment on anything you see or read here.
The insidious thing about falling in love, Sumire thought, was that by the time she realised she was in love with young Mr Pryce, it was too late. Too late to prevent it; too late to fix it. It happened in such tiny, minuscule, unimportant instances that they slipped entirely by her notice: the moment when jokes became unsaid, when glances became entire conversations, when Mr Pryce became Corliss. But the most perilous thing about being in love was the reluctance to cease being in love; her treacherous heart clung to every last shred of emotion that his face, the very memory of his face, could conjure. How strange that a heart so full of feelings could feel so light; how terrifying that even best kind of happiness could cause the worst sort of pain.
It was the pang of epiphany, the double-sided agony of discovering the source of her joy and wanting to bury it at once. With knowledge came the fall from grace, or so the Giraffes had taught her, and she could never again return to the pure, sweet, innocent bliss of ignorance. The moment she discovered her happiness was the moment it was ruined, twisting the delight in her heart into painful longing. It hurt, and she did not want it to hurt, but cherished the ache all the same.
Mrs Morita was right after all; Sumire was a romantic. But where she and other romantics diverged was that she answered to a much higher power than love, than God, than faith. She answered to no one but herself. To the unnameable desire within that drove her to an unknowable destiny, discarding paltry dreams scattered along her path. She would later betray Corliss for that greater power, with full knowledge that she was cutting her heart out of her chest with her own hands. She hoped it would hurt less if she were aware of the pain.
She was wrong.
It would only hurt so much more.