Chapter Text
Judy was curled up in the chair in her studio.
Knees drawn to her chest, her whole body folded inward—like a fetus still inside the womb. The lights were all off. Only the screen was on. Cold white light bled from the edges of the monitor, casting a solitary island across the wooden floor. She sat at the center of that island, arms wrapped around her knees, motionless.
On the screen was Valerie's profile.
She'd taken it in secret one dusk. The resolution wasn't high, the edges slightly blurred—like memory itself fading. Valerie was leaning against the corridor of the lab, wearing a white coat, a cup of coffee in her hand. The setting sun poured in from behind her, gilding her entire silhouette.
Judy stared at the stray strand of hair behind Valerie's ear. Stared for a long time.
Then she closed her eyes.
She could draw Valerie's face with her eyes shut. From forehead to jaw, from the bridge of her nose to the curve of her ear—every line was etched into her fingertips. Not memorized with her eyes, but with her skin, her bones, the spaces between every heartbeat.
She remembered the scar on Valerie's chin from a fall at ten years old. Remembered the strange, sharp scent that clung to her the day she came home from the hospital after presenting at fifteen. Remembered the burn scar on her arm from the time she'd shielded Judy from a knocked-over kettle at twelve.
Like crushed juniper berries, mixed with the bite of ice. Gin. That was the scent of an Alpha's pheromones.
And her own—hyacinth. A flower that bloomed in early spring. Cloyingly sweet, but with sorrow at its root.
The family doctor handed her the test results and pushed up his glasses. "Your pheromone sensitivity is three times the normal level, Miss Álvarez. This means you'll require stricter suppressant management. Especially—avoid contact with high-compatibility Alpha pheromones, and any form of stimuli."
Judy only nodded. Her fingers gripped the edge of the report, her nail pressing a shallow groove into the paper.
She didn't ask: *What if that Alpha is Valerie?*
She didn't dare.
Because this was her secret. A secret hidden deep in her bones, circulating through her bloodstream with every pulse.
They were sisters. Biological sisters.
Valerie was two years older. No—strictly speaking, one year and eleven months. Judy used to fuss over that one-month gap when she was little, always standing on her tiptoes and shouting at her big sister, "I'll catch up to you soon!" And every time, Valerie would grin and ruffle her hair. "Alright. When you catch me, I'll let you have the last strawberry cake."
They used to be inseparable.
Truly inseparable. From the moment they opened their eyes in the morning to the moment they drifted off at night. Squeezed together on the kitchen stools, sneaking bites of their mother's burnt toast. Flung their schoolbags into the hallway and raced upstairs. Curled up on the same bed watching horror movies.
Valerie was afraid of ghosts. Every time a scary part came on, she'd dive under the covers—even though she was the older one. And every time, Judy would puff out her little chest. "Don't be scared. I'll protect you."
Back then, she thought they would never be apart. She thought life would stretch out like a straight railway track, the two of them sitting side by side, watching the scenery slide backward one carriage at a time, all the way to the end of the world.
Until presentation.
The autumn Valerie turned fifteen, she presented as an Alpha.
It happened fast. A chemistry lab session—the ventilation duct had malfunctioned, and the whole class was exposed to high concentrations of chemical reagent vapors. The other students only felt slightly dizzy. Valerie was the only one who collapsed.
By the time Judy and their mother got to the hospital, Valerie was sitting up in bed. An IV needle in the back of her hand, tear tracks still on her face. She looked up at them, her eyes lost and afraid. Judy had never seen that look in Valerie's eyes before.
"Mom." Her voice was hoarse. "Did I… did I hurt anyone?"
Their mother shook her head and crossed the room to hold her.
Judy didn't understand it then. Why presentation had to be like this. This wasn't what the textbooks said.
But a year later, she understood.
She presented.
It was the middle of the night. Without any warning. Her whole body burned. She rolled off the bed and knocked over the water glass on her nightstand. The shattering glass woke Valerie in the next room.
She burst in—then froze at the door.
The scent of hyacinth. So thick it was as if the entire spring had been crammed into that ten-square-meter room.
Valerie's face went terrifyingly pale in the moonlight. "Judy. Stay where you are. I'm getting Mom and Dad!"
That was the first time an invisible wall rose between them. Only an outline back then. But it was already there.
After that, they could still see each other. But they could never touch again.
"The Álvarez miracle." Their mother would later say to relatives, smiling. "An Alpha and an Omega. The odds are probably lower than getting hit by a meteor!"
The living room would fill with laughter. Judy would sit on the corner of the sofa, head down, scrolling through her phone. Valerie would stand by the balcony, her back turned to everyone.
What probability didn't tell them was this: the odds of getting struck by a meteor are about one in seven hundred thousand.
And biological sisters presenting as different dynamics, who also happen to be each other's fated pair—
"Statistically close to zero, probably." Judy had secretly looked through the literature. In the ABO genetics database, there had been only three documented cases in the last fifty years. Every single one had ended badly. One party forcibly isolated, incarcerated for life in a containment facility. Or the two eloping, only to both commit suicide under social pressure and psychological collapse.
No happy endings. Not one.
Yet it happened anyway.
As if God's hand had slipped while casting the dice, flinging two stars never meant to meet into the same orbit.
Judy opened her eyes.
The holographic clock beside her read 5:47 AM. The numbers floated in the dark, glowing a faint blue. In two hours, Valerie would be back from her night shift at the downtown lab.
Judy could picture it—so clearly it was as if it had already happened a thousand times.
She pressed her hand over the gland at the nape of her neck. The edges of her suppressant patch had already curled. The skin underneath was alarmingly hot. Pheromones churned beneath it—like trapped tides, pounding against the seawall again and again, finding no way out.
*Your pheromone sensitivity is three times the normal level.*
She knew.
Especially to Valerie.
---
Valerie Álvarez shut down the last spectrometer in the lab.
The moment the screen went dark, she caught her own reflection in the black glass. Faint bluish shadows under her eyes. She'd been working for thirty-six hours straight. To be precise, she'd deliberately kept herself working for thirty-six hours straight.
"Still not heading out?" Carlos swung his bag over his shoulder as he passed, patting her on the arm. "Night shift bonus isn't gonna buy your life back."
"Leaving now." She forced a smile.
The sound of her colleague's footsteps faded into the hallway before she slowly got to her feet. Stepping out of the building, the pre-dawn wind hit her face like thin blades.
She fished a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, shook one out, lit it.
The burning tip flared and dimmed in the dark.
Her gaze followed the smoke upward, drifting all the way to the few stars barely visible through the city's light pollution. She thought of when they were kids. Summer, probably—she was twelve, Judy ten. They'd stolen the picnic blanket their mother kept in the storage room and spread it across the backyard lawn. Cicadas roared overhead, and the air smelled like grass after rain.
Judy pointed at the brightest star in the sky. "That one's yours. The one next to it is mine. We're right beside each other!"
Valerie laughed. "Stars are millions of light-years apart, dummy."
"I don't care." Judy was stubborn. "On my map, they're right next to each other."
But in this vast cosmos, was there really a star that belonged to her?
Maybe there was. Maybe there wasn't. Who could know.
She couldn't hold onto that star. Just like she couldn't hold onto the summers before she turned fifteen. Couldn't hold onto the girl who used to follow her everywhere. Couldn't hold onto the last second before presentation—their last embrace unshadowed, untouched.
They were separated by an entire galaxy. By this line that could never be crossed. A line carved into their genes, carved into social norms, carved into the split second her heart stopped every time she caught the scent of hyacinth.
She exhaled the last drag of smoke and crushed the butt under her shoe.
Dawn was breaking. The eastern sky was turning fish-belly white, then orange, then gold. Like someone layering paint onto a canvas, stroke by stroke.
That person was still waiting for her to come home.
Valerie tossed the cigarette butt into the trash. It made a soft *thunk* against the metal interior. She turned and headed toward the apartment.
The streets were still quiet. Cleaning robots crept along the sidewalks, emitting a low hum. An early bus drove past her, its headlights slicing through the slowly brightening mist.
She reached the apartment building and looked up.
The window on the far left of the seventh floor—the light was still on.
That was the studio Judy had cleared out for herself.
Valerie stood downstairs for a long time. Long enough for the streetlamp to click off. Then she drew a deep breath, pushed open the glass door, and stepped into the elevator.
The weightlessness of the elevator rising—it felt exactly like the moment of presentation at fifteen.
The sense of the whole world tilting. And her hands grasping at nothing at all.