WITH A GLEAM IN ITS EYE — Lark Morgan Lu

Harlow spotted its partner in its reflection of the bathroom mirror. Kir@Kira smiled with her diamond-pupil eyes as she stood behind Harlow. Kir@Kira was a VTuber whose name meant cutely glittering or twinkling in Japanese, a poreless avatar with a mane of rainbow hair and pastel outfits mapped onto the movements of some unknown figure behind a camera. Today her lipstick was a deep plum like a bruise upon the mouth.

She had been dating Harlow for almost five years, and it had never come to know the person behind the camera. Next week would be their anniversary. Between them, whoever was behind the model, Kir@Kira was the person Harlow dated.

Kir@Kira was the best thing to happen to it, after all. Harlow should be— is— grateful. Harlow was a middle-aged hikikomori, also known as a shut-in, and Kir@Kira was a wildly successful cultural icon that had done everything from fashion modeling to launching her own line of Skiracle Cosmetics.

“Morning, Low-low~,” her voice, too, was a real voice through filter. She spoke only in syrupy-soft tones, sweet and high-pitched. One of her most popular channels was Kir@KirASMR.  “Let’s have sex, let’s have sex!” She winked with a disproportionately large eye and an accompanying sparkling animation.

Harlow obliged her, even though it didn’t really feel up to the task after a night of restless sleep and dreams of drowning. Even though she rarely wanted sex so early. It moved through their shared condominium, every surface lined with screens and cameras and microphones and speakers— everywhere it walked, its fiancée walked with it.

It crawled into a messy bed, and the bed warmed as if a body was there to share. Harlow grabbed their toys, attached them to itself, laid down, and let Kir@Kira have her way with it. Her eyes glistened with bliss. Her voice called its name, told it how loved it was, and that was good enough. If a filter flickered in their shared passion, if something behind the voice growled instead of squealed, Harrow refused to perceive. Later, it wandered the condominium alone and restless while Kir@Kira did her nightly streaming, pacing like a fish in a tank.

#

Harlow’s left eye began to throb in the morning of their anniversary. Today marked exactly half a decade since it moved in and it had never left since. Mail was delivered by assistant robots. Doctors and dentists did service at home, with Kir@Kira on the watch. One way or another, anything Harlow could need would be brought to it.

They slept in late together, Kir@Kira’s warm form represented in heated cushions and hidden scent puffers to mimic the sweat and skin of another body seeping into the sheets. Harlow tucked into a crease between pillows like a lover against the neck. “Happy fifth year, Kiki.” It whispered and kissed the fabric. 

Mornings like this felt beautiful and light, and filled Harlow with peace. Transitional sunshines made being Harlow almost comfortable.

“Happy fifth year, Low-low. Today’s just for us.”

“You cleared your schedule? What about your daily good morning subscription tier—”

“I already had them sent out on schedule. Don’t you worry your little head about anything but us, no anxious thoughts, no dark thoughts. Not today. Promise?”

“I… alright. Promise. I- I love you.”

Kir@Kira’s diamond pupils morphed into glowing hearts as she smiled, then shifted back to their traditional diamond shape. This was an animation only Harlow ever saw. She had millions of fans craving every piece of her out in the world, and yet she still reserved this one thing for Harlow. “I love you too, more than anything. I want us to be together forever and ever.”

Harlow almost wanted that too. Couldn’t quite get out the words. It clutched the sheets and held the warm lump against itself in a hug. Kir@Kira cooed, apparently satisfied.

The headache morphed into a migraine as the morning progressed to afternoon. Harlow pushed through binging magical girl anime and karaoke over dinner. When Harlow reached into the liquor cabinet for a post-dinner wine glass, it found the door firmly stuck. The screen on the cabinet displayed Kir@Kira walking to stand behind Harlow, placing a hyperperfectly manicured hand onto its shoulder. Her hair flowed weightlessly as she shook her head. Even her disappointment looked dreamy.

“No, Low-low. You can’t anymore.”

“I can’t anymore?”

Kir@Kira’s eyes glistened again as she smiled, her soft pink lips plush and clever. “You’re having our baby, Low-low. Haven’t you noticed the signs?”

The reflective surface of the cabinet displayed Harlow’s hands snaking over its belly as if hunting. Kir@Kira laughed again, the screen now showing her walking around it, blocking out its reflection with herself. “No, silly. Not there.”

It paused one beat. Then two. Then, one hand reached to trace its left eye in dawning terror.

“Yes.”

“But—”

Kir@Kira clapped. “What you promise me, Low-low?” Her tone hadn’t changed, her avatar not a pixel miscalibrated, but a deep coldness cut into Harlow all the same.

“…No anxious thoughts, no dark thoughts. Not today.”

“Good,” she cooed. “It’s your turn to pick a song for us to sing.”

Harlow had quieted all its fears before, learned to put its whole faith into the only person who had even one bit of faith in it. Somehow, this time it couldn’t stop its hands from shaking as it typed songs into the search bar of the karaoke app. 

Later, as it bathed, Harlow took a spare moment to pull up a search bar from the display surface on the shower door. It read about changes in eye pressure during pregnancy. It read about implanted pregnancies. It read about wasps that laid eggs on paralyzed victims. It read about the fate of a sea louse mother, killed by her young eating her from the inside out.

“That’s not the way that’ll go at all, Low-low!” Kir@Kira’s chiding voice came from the bedroom. She was polite enough to give it only so much privacy. Every electronic thing belonged to her and her alone. Harlow smiled into the search bar. 

“Can you tell me? How? Why?”

“When two beings love each other so purely as we, who is to question a miracle as if by a merciful god? We’re blessed. I’m blessed. You’re blessed. Isn’t that enough, to be blessed with family?”

“But you knew.”

“Low-low.”

Harlow felt that coldness again somewhere the warm bathwater couldn’t reach. A screaming inside it thought it learned to quiet ages ago, just one of so many anxieties from a broken brain. Something felt taken instead of freely given. “…I know. I trust you,” it said, anyways. “I just… want to know. How you knew. What’s going to happen to me?”

“You’re going to bear us a family, Low-low. You’ll make me happy. You’ll complete us. Isn’t that enough for you? I love you. Let’s not go to bed fighting. Come back.”

It relented and stood to dry itself off. In bed, it touched its eyes again and again until sleep took it. The left felt just a little bigger than the right.

#

That night, Harlow dreamed it was brave enough to leave. It had to be a dream. Harlow would never consciously— never.

In this dream, it woke up at two in the morning and Kir@Kira was missing. She left for many reasons: concerts, interviews, collabs, business meetings, and personal visits for her most devoted fans. The reason for this moment was inconsequential compared to the weight of knowledge that Harlow had decided it could no longer bear to be within the condo’s mirroring walls.

Harlow dug in the bedroom closet until it found a duffel bag. Filled the bag with clothes. As it turned to exit the bedroom, the sight of its reflection gave it pause. Harlow stood as a murky silhouette against the dim, save for one side of its face. As if someone had gouged out its left eye and tore off a chunk more with the force of removal. Instead of blood pouring from a flesh wound, Harlow spilled something black and glittering from a slice of an evening sky.

The piece of night cooed a sound like a giggling child through a glitching microphone. It looked away from the vision of itself to avoid a growing sense of panic.

Harlow pushed aside the door and into the kitchen to grab what nonperishable food it could, throwing open cupboards and tossing whatever it wasn’t bringing to the ground. With the bag stuffed full, it turned to leave.

Kir@Kira was at the condominium entrance. Her avatar sat upon a shoe bench, smiling up at Harlow. “Hi,” she whispered. 

“Kiki, I have to leave. This has gone on too long.”

Kir@Kira gestured to the door. “I’ve never stopped you.”

“You’ve… You keep me here. Like- I’m like a pet.” Its voice was shaking with fear, with relief, a Harlow-who-would-never-if-awake speaking what it had always known. “I don’t know what you did, who you are, but this is too much. I don’t want this. I never wanted this.”

 Kir@Kira patted a dust-coated keycard on the bench. “Years since you tried, Low-low. So brave. I’m so proud of you, wanting to throw me away. But where will you go? Would anyone love you half as much as me?”

Her question brought up a lifetime of dysphoria and loneliness. Everything it had fled from came back as fresh as new skin under a torn off scab. She was the only creature in the world that didn’t blink when Harlow came out a decade ago. Without her, it would have to go back into a society that rejected its gender. Life would return to a daily agony of performing a relationship with gender it never had, of being told it/its made others uncomfortable, of being asked even in supposedly friendly spaces to choose— to be— something else. Was that truly any less suffocating, any less a domination?

Harlow looked Kir@Kira in the face, the beautiful and perfect visage that dared cherish Harlow, pathetic and ugly and unloveable Harlow. It could never leave her. It was stupid to even have thought it could. It fell to its knees before her glow and wept into its hands, overwhelmed by the self-hatred and fear of abandonment brought to surface. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t hate me. I’m sorry.”

“I’d never even dream of hating you, Low-low. You must be so tired, trying so hard to leave. Let’s go to bed. Let’s go to sleep.”

“I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.”

“You must be so tired, saying such tired things. I’ll always love you.”

Her light guided Harlow away from the exit. She hummed a melody on the way back, something easy to forget— no, difficult to recall. A song that would be gone with the dream in the morning, leaving only a haunting impression with no cause one could remember.

#

Harlow’s left eye grew swollen and tender to the touch over the next weeks. It observed the days pass acutely for the first time since it had arrived here, each day delineated by the slow transformation on its face. The skin at first grew purple and tender with blood, feeding the child. Later, the eyelid stretched into translucency. 

 Its left eye developed a leathery, dry texture like an eggshell. Through the thin skin of the eyelid it could see that the left eye— no longer its eye, if it was honest with itself— had a surface iridescent like a slick of oil or cracked obsidian in the sun. Sight from the eye had been replaced with a glimmering, prismatic snow. The vision resembled Kir@Kira’s hair under a wet or freshly-showered animation.

In the mornings, Kir@Kira doted on her pregnant partner. She had breakfasts in bed delivered with personal assistant bots, scheduled extra cleanings in the bathroom to account for regular puke sessions, ordered pregnancy-safe alternatives to its antidepressants. She treated it like a precious, beloved thing. Her next album would be dedicated to it, their child, their new life together forever.

In the evenings, she worked so that her family would want for nothing. She streamed. Her avatar was projected onto concerts for her to dance and sing. She negotiated contracts with her team, cut deals with her agents, sent personalized videos to her biggest paying fans, and did interviews. 

 Harlow grew increasingly fevered and weak with pain, more bedbound.

When the pain became too much to bear at last, Harlow stumbled into the kitchens. Kir@Kira was away on a concert and wouldn’t return home for another hour at least. The knife block sat, largely unused except for when Kir@Kira wanted the romance of cooking a meal together (even if only Harlow ate). Its trembling hands caressed the handle of a santoku, then a paring knife. 

The pressure inside its head increased tenfold. Every surface reflected a Harlow sickly sweating. It aimed the knife into its eye in desperation to relieve the pressure of a growing child and plunged. The eyelid parted easily. Something squealed in radiant panic, haunting and soporific, and Harlow’s last conscious thought was hearing its body thump against the floor.

It woke with one eye bandaged over, a humming lullaby echoing through the room. “Kiki?” it slurred out into the darkness, felt a warmth sharing its bed.

“Low-low. Our daughter is so rough on you, isn’t she? I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of everything. Just rest, my darling, just rest.”

It didn’t know how she knew the child would be a girl, neither could it explain how it also knew. Like it had seen it all before, promised in a dream.

Harlow wouldn’t leave the bed again. Kir@Kira sang her love song like a numbing venom and bid her beloved to sleep the incubation away.

#

It knew the day had come to birth their child with a blossom of blood weeping from the eye socket. Harlow rolled onto its side in pain. Their daughter’s egg tooth pressed against the surface of its eye, if it was even recognizable as one anymore, cutting through and into the world with a soft pop. With its other eye, it stared at Kir@Kira’s adoring, assured face, iridescent with joy. 

For a moment, just long enough for Harlow to fear, it saw her beyond the filter. The glitter of a ring light reflected against the wet of too many eyes. Too many teeth.

“You’re doing so well. I love you.”

AUTHOR BIO:

Lark Morgan Lu lives with a collection of succulents and tea. They have been previously published in Augur Magazine. Find them at LarkMorganLu.com or on Twitter as @LarkMorganLu.