2022-10-23: The volatility of my experience is a testament to why
- Log: The volatility of my experience is a testament to why
- Cast: Leina Ashta, Yuliana Dispersal
- Where: Catalan, Spain
- Date: 2022-10-23
- Summary: Yuliana is back on duty, but is she really back to normal? Leina gets an honest answer to her questions, but Yuliana's threatening nature doesn't match the girl she's speaking to at all.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina had been going stir crazy just sitting around in the Villa all day. Eventually this led her to being asked to be driven into town by one of the staff on a day when Judau and Roux were out. She absolutely hates doing this. She's a person who... doesn't like to ask staff for help if she can help it, and ordinarily she can drive just fine.
Right now there are certain logistics though that make that more difficult. Transferring made her back and pelvis scream in pain - as did twisting or bending, thus she needed someone who could bring the wheelchair out and set it up for her.
Eventually though she thanked them and told them she doesn't need to be picked up until the end of the day. She seemed apologetic for even asking that much.
It's a small town in the Catalan region, a half hour from the Mass Villa. And Leina rolled up to the cafe to grab some coffee to go. To go, because many people know here here and she didn't want to be answering questions about why she's in a wheelchair again... all day long.
To-Go Neo-Latte in hand, she made her way for a small nearby park, and settled in well... nice part about a wheelchair is you didn't need to find a bench. She's picked a spot near the center of town, beneath a tree, so she'd be observed by fewer people. Right now she's wearing a cream colored jumper, a pair of jeans, and some worn sneakers.
At her side between her and the handrail is her purse. While on her lap, she has a book. An actual book in this age where digital is ubiquitous. While it's hard to observe what it is at a glance... it's a book on analyzing Contolism through a more contemporary lens.
Because of course it is. Obviously all Newtypes read this kind of thing. Right?
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana, entirely energised when she returned to Rondo One, had been eager to, quote-unquote, 'fuck Zeon up' while they were in the area. Her lieutenant, Parminder Chaudhri, was luckily able to pull rank on her on account of her having been put on leave, and he made the call to come back to Earth.
Obviously, Medical couldn't save her right canine tooth -- she didn't even bring it back with her. (She got in quite some trouble for leaving a part of herself just lying there in space; she claimed it was lost.) Luckily, Medical have plenty of experience improving the human body, one way or another.
She has, at least, been placed back on duty now her two weeks of exile are up -- though Major Pham was a little sceptical about whether she was able to achieve her counselling remotely, given both of them know talking is only one part of it -- which means she can, once again, claim to be Captain Yuliana Dispersal. And go to all corners of the globe! And make it worse.
(She's just proven she'll do that last one for free even if it's not her job, though.)
Yuliana has a frothy frappe, in her hand, sipping it casually as she strolls through the park. She isn't doing anything wrong right now; whether that's because she's waiting for her timer or because she was just innocently in this part of the world is an open question. Really, she's having quite a normal morning, until...
There's nothing.
Her gaze snaps to the tree, and the girl, reading there. Yuliana smiles, and tosses the remains of her drink to the side; the cup rolls, and stops, against the side of the path. She doesn't bother looking back to it, as she strolls up to Leina, behind the cover of her own greenery.
Hopefully, she won't even realise she's in danger -- until she's plunged into her oblivion.
Yuliana is casual, as she steps up, to lean against that tree, as if she's not in Leina's space. "Leina!" She greets her, with a long, sharp grin -- sharper than normal, given the fang to one side of her mouth. It looks just like the rest of her teeth; it is, distinctly, longer. "What a pleasant surprise!"
She sounds happy to see her, but...
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina's has her face in the book, oblivious to her approach. Then comes the moment of silence.
There's a twitch on her face, as a hand moves up to it, hit by that sensation of vertigo as the entire world moves from a sixteen lane Britannian highway to a balance beam in how narrow its scope feels. The nausea is low key. Unpleasant.
It's like psychic tinnitus in that moment, a ringing in absence.
She then straightens up, dogears and closes her book like nothing is amiss at all, despite how she feels. With a mental command she tries to will the Psycommu wheelchair to advance and turn around. There's a whir of its motors as it tries to obey a mind in disarray. A little forward, then a bit backward. A net zero in actual movement.
Great.
Leina looks at Yuliana out of her periphery. "Yuliana. Already back from your trip to Side 4?" Leina smiles pleasantly even if it looks frayed along the edges, "I can't say I was expecting this."
She beckons to her. "Would you mind terribly standing in front of me? The Doctors say I shouldn't twist or turn too much right now." The book rests on her lap, she hasn't put it away. It's title on the cover is similar to the subject matter. 'A Second Look: Contolism Through a Contemporary Lens.'
A second look at her face as she spies the bruise, and there's a frown, "Were you in a fight...? Or..." Leina isn't going to say it aloud but, the other option in her eyes is that it was a Superior Officer. That much is obvious.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana -- who doesn't know anything about psycommu wheelchairs -- presumes only that Leina is disoriented, and she'll take it. "Quite so!" She agrees, cheerfully, to her first question, and elects not to mention where else she went so easily.
"Of course, of course." She smiles -- sympathetically? -- and steps around Leina's wheelchair, a hand coming to rest on her hip as she stands before her. She's in her usual dark suit, of course, and her scarf today is purple. She does not... appear, to be armed.
"How terrible," she flinches, with that same sympathy, looking over her. "I do hope you recover soon." Or never, and there might be a shade of that shining through, in her arch emphasis.
Or perhaps not. She looks friendly enough.
She waves her other hand -- it draws up close to her face, but there's no bangs for her to brush back, any more, so her fingers fan out with nothing to do. Her face is bruised in just the way one would expect, though it doesn't appear serious. (Medical is really very good, even if it cares little for her comfort.) "Don't worry about that," she assures her, smiling. "Just an honest disagreement between officers."
What type of officer, she doesn't say -- because she hardly wants to reveal Eight's rank.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
It's unusual for Yuliana to just appear in this small a town in Spain. Best case scenario she decided to conduct some more direct business with Sayla. Worst case scenario?
... Well. Leina is at least relieved that she'd acquiesce to standing in front of her.
"Thank you. It was my own fault, unbuckled in a moving vehicle. The driver was having an emergency and my brother was trying to get in to help."
None of that technically a lie either, and she says it without any hesitation. It's well-rehearsed, and she's a good enough actress even if her mind is under... duress at the moment.
There's a pause, and a momentary look of sympathy. "I see." She obviously makes her own assumptions on that, but she decides to move on from the subject. Either Yuliana would get upset about her maligning her bloc or... it'd hit upon other topics that might upset her. And she certainly knows how volatile she can be.
However, despite the risk of upsetting her... there is something she decides to ask. She could continue to play her game, however what she's found is the best results with Yuliana come when one... doesn't.
"Why do you hate us so much?"
It's asked smoothly, flat out, those green eyes upon her. "Why is this all so personal to you?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Oh, don't worry, Yuliana isn't here to kill Leina!
Not today, in any case.
"Tsk," Yuliana clicks her tongue to her teeth, in a too-bad sort of sound, as her head cants to the side. "You must remember your safety equipment, dear. If not, you'll end up with a face like mine!" The scar, presumably, not anything more current.
(The lie sounds plausible enough, to her.)
But her eyes narrow, when Leina asks that question. "Hmm..?" She hums, through her lips, as if confused. "And where did you hear a thing like that..?" She is a paranoid creature by nature; her mind first leaps to Leina speaking to the Ra Mari, rather than her own demonstrations.
Her gaze veils, looking to Leina. The girl Banagher relies on... wants to ask something so...
Finally, a little too neutral, she settles on: "Do you really want to know?"
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"I'll remember that."
Leina says, not bringing up that she too has her scars again. Even the implication that they are similar can anger her, she remembers that.
It's part of why she's asking her question.
"I didn't hear about it from anyone." Leina's eyes don't waver from how she's looking at Yuliana. Despite the vertigo, despite the silence, despite the nausea. The symptoms are certainly not pleasant in the least.
"If you converse with someone long enough, you pick up things. You see a pattern. You hate it when Newtypes compare themselves to you. But to put it more simply, you hate Newtypes."
This might upset Yuliana too, but in the end, it's something a normal person can do isn't it? Pick up things in conversation. Put together pieces of a person like a Jigsaw puzzle.
Yuliana however doesn't deny it in the end, her tone far... far too neutral.
"I do. I've always been sincere in my interest in learning how you see the world."
And then she leaves it at that. With the ball in Yuliana's court.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"How irritating," Yuliana mutters, to herself, her lips falling over her grit teeth when Leina declares that she hates Newtypes. She's entirely correct, of course -- but Yuliana doesn't like the way Leina's put it together.
The smile she stretches over her lips is a hair too sharp to be friendly. "You're right, of course! I simply cannot stand you!" Her tone, too, starts at friendly only to jag up in its tone, a little too tense, a little too enthusiastic. She'd love to lie to Leina's face about this, but leaving aside the fact that the damn girl apparently fancies herself a detective, Yuliana doesn't suspect the Ra Mari will keep that secret of hers for very long.
(Yuliana is someone who lies easily and without remorse, but she does try to avoid stupid lies. Things which are easily disproven only complicate what she's trying to do.)
She closes her eyes, and folds her arms, drawing in a deep breath. "Imagine... you're primed and designed to violate the people around you... prepared physically and mentally to excel. But then, at that pivotal moment, you come to know -- only the empty space where something should be. Nothing, in the spaces around people..."
Her fingers tighten, against her sleeves. Despite her grip, too much slips out, anyway.
"And you realise there's nothing to people. Base facsimiles of what existence should be, pale in comparison to the truth. Vainglory echoes and memories and fakes! Every smile, every tear, hollow and insignificant, bereft of meaning, pantomime of your existence! Beheld without seeing, heard without hearing, UNKNOWN and UNWITNESSED!" Her volume escalates as she draws back the curtain, and finally her eyes jolt open. The hate she stares Leina down with is unveiled. "To know that you alone feel the truth depth and spread of the heart! To stand amongst the theatre and know that you alone are real!"
All a sudden, she lurches forward, to grasp either side of Leina's wheelchair. She stands over her; her threat is overt. "... and reality HURTS! It bores into your skull and TEARS YOU APART! I am ever in motion as the contradiction moves to rip me to shreds! You want to know why it's personal?! It could be nothing BUT!" Her fingers grasp tightly, and all that can be said of her is she doesn't shake Leina, as she screams in her face.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina reacts to the news that Yuliana can't stand her like one might to her saying the Sky is blue. One does not harass Newtypes for fun, seek them out specifically, if one does not hate them.
She doesn't say anything, it's like she's trying to do what Yuliana asks of her.
Imagine
Imagine
Imagine
Imagine
Imagine
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/518567535600336899/997290281470799882/unknown.png
She doesn't need to imagine very hard. It's different, and she understands academically how it's different. They both awakened to a terrible truth - at the moment something manifested within them.
Yuliana's volume escalates, and she puts two hands on Leina's wheelchair, and all but screams into her face... about a reality that causes constant her pain. How much it hurts. This awfulness that she knows, and witnesses.
In this moment Leina doesn't say anything. She merely lifts a hand to one of Yuliana's cheeks. Just the back of her hand, as she puts it against her. A soft, slight touch.
To stand against the theater and know you alone are real.
There's only a distant look in her eyes, as she remembers the void in people's hearts. The utter lack of feeling, of meaning - of how the version of reality she'd been fed was a lie. To know not the truth not in the gaps where there should be people, but to know the truth in the gaps and hollow spaces inside of them.
In the end it's just a soft touch, the girl both there and not. Like she's using Yuliana's cheek to ground herself...
... and maybe to ground her too.
Those green eyes look back into Yuliana's - both here and not as she contemplates the world she lives in - and finds it is not so difficult at all.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhEHhNxkYMo Florence + the Machine - Cassandra
Yuliana looms large over Leina, powerful where she is weakened, angry where she is searching, the implicit made explicit. It would only make sense if she were to cry out -- push her away -- break herself on Yuliana, like waves against the shore.
But Yuliana should know better than most the way waves can break the shore.
The back of Leina's hand brushes her dark cheek, and tears well in that green-eyed monster, summoned as quickly as her rage. (Cyber-Newtypes are so often emotionally labile.) She feels the warmth beneath her skin -- how strange, to feel warmth beneath the skin -- and her breath hitches, over a lump in her throat.
"D..damn you...!"
If her face turns into that warmth -- surely it's just because she was about to shake her head. Because she does, a moment too slowly, and once she starts moving she's able to straighten up and stagger a few steps away. That she relieves the abyssal pressure on Leina, in the process of clearing space for herself, is entirely coincidental.
The emptiness doesn't leave her, though.
Like a lover it is with her, every waking moment, every fitful dream.
She turns away from Leina, but it's not a perfect way to hide the sound of a pill-bottle shaking, the way her hand comes to her mouth, the way her head rocks back and forward again.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
It would make sense wouldn't it? Once upon a time a girl led her away, and she sensed her murderous intent. She picked up a broken oar to defend herself. The other girl picked up a pipe. At the moment...
... she doesn't sense anything. There's no intentionality. There's just a woman in front of her baring her soul about how much reality hurts. How much everything feels fake.
Within those green eyes she sees tears. And she too grounds herself on the warmth in Yuliana's skin.
Her eyes blink, there's just a flutter of her eyes, and her hand is now touching empty space. Nothing but air - as Yuliana staggers away.
In that moment there's a blessed relief from a pressure that is so like but feels so unlike the pressure of Newtypes of such malice that their pressure becomes positively demonic.
Her hand slowly falls back down. And Leina distantly reaches out, and latches onto the presence of the people in her life. Onto Sayla, Judau, Banagher, and Mineva. It takes her some time, concentrating on that which is real.
In a world where the hearts of so many people have been rendered empty by the horrible reality which they live in. Void spaces where feeling once dwelled within them as children, and were carved out over time.
A pill bottle shakes.
Leina looks at her lap, takes a breath. Closes her eyes.
Then looks forward at Yuliana.
"You feel real to me."
Leina notes after a moment... her hand still held up... as if to illustrate what she means.
"I wish I didn't feel fake to you."
And that's all she tells her. It's hard to say how she's feeling right now. As she speaks in a matter of factness about a horrible truth of the world. Whatever the case, she seems to accept that...
... in Yuliana's eyes, she isn't real. This world isn't real. And that she's in pain because of what is truth from her point of view.
"Maybe in a kinder world, I wouldn't."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana, at least, is warm. She is a chthonic thing, born from the earth, tied to its ways and its customs.
She was human, once.
And now she cannot take comfort from those connections, so far away. She is alone, inside herself, and what lies with her is not nearly so human. All she has is physical contact, the psychic torn from her grasping hands. Perhaps that's why... she's crying.
Yuliana returns her pillbottle to her pocket, and buries her face, in a hand. "This world isn't kind," she hisses, through a tight throat. "It's cruel. You people... taunting me..."
... even though she was made this way, she blames Leina. No -- people like Leina.
Her jealousy is an eminently convenient thing.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Yuliana tells her the world isn't kind... and Leina agrees.
"I know."
Her hand finally lowers to her lap...
"This world is hell."
And she does not feel as if she is going to heaven.
"And it will stay that way unless something changes. Despite how impossible that seems."
She does not tell her she will be the one to change it. It feels like arrogance. All she can do is try - because she must. No matter how impossible it seems, she must hold onto hope for a world that doesn't create people like Yuliana, or Elpeo, or Callisto. For a world that takes care of its people.
To accept the state of affairs is to give up, and fall into despair.
Her wheelchair turns fractionally, "I wish my existence wasn't so painful for you."
There's a slow blink of her eyes, "I wish for a lot of things. Maybe one day I won't have to."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"I assure you," Yuliana hisses, turning back to Leina with a glare, and it doesn't sound reassuring, "one day, you won't." Have to wish for anything.
"I... if I were..." She starts, she stops, she draws a breath. Her arms fold across her chest, but it's really just an excuse to hug them against her. "I don't know," half-muttered, gut like a fish to the open air. "I don't know why I --" She stops herself, again, shaking her head sharply.
"... but I'm not the monster you think I am." And it isn't even a lie, because the monster Yuliana is lies beyond all comprehension.
She looks to her elbow, to her fingers, grasping tight. To the engagement band, there, rich gold, diamonds and emerald. "It doesn't matter," she assures herself, with a steadier voice. "I don't need any of you. My dearest is with me. She sees me... she is real, knows reality, makes sense of it... I won't forgive you for dragging my feelings from my throat, when they're for her."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Yuliana bares a naked threat, and Leina knows the position she's in right now in this wheelchair. Even with weapons, the playing ground is not even nearly equal. Responding to that threat with escalation would be unwise, and she knows it.
Her green eyes stare back at her.
Then she looks away. "A monster?" Slowly she lowers her hands in her lap. "That's not what I think."
Leina looks off into the distance, then she says more quietly. "That's not what I think at all."
Part of her can't help but think of Elpeo. One girl raised as a Lady. Another a weapon. All by the same man who decided their destinies. In the end, it was that girl with a pipe at her throat, blaming her as the source of her unhappiness. Rather than the one who is truly responsible.
In the end, she knows this story would not help Yuliana. She would just reject it, state she's not like that.
"I didn't drag anything out of you. I asked. You shared your feelings of your own free will." Leina says to her... before noting, "I wish it didn't hurt you so much."
She understands perhaps, if she rejected her, it would have been easier.
"I'm glad you have someone..."
A pause then...
"... I'm glad."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"'My own free will'... tcha," Yuliana clicks her tongue, frowning off to the side. "You're mocking me again!" She shouldn't be so upset; she shouldn't say this much.
But her theatre is an act, and she is so, so real, beneath the lies she tells them.
"No! My will is --"
She stops herself, again, fingers tightening.
"No. No. No," Yuliana repeats, to herself, once and once again, and who she's speaking to is an open question. "No! You maddening wretch! You... you..!" She closes her eyes, and draws in a jagged breath. Certainly she is driven mad; whether it's Leina's fault is something she'll have to disagree with the world about.
After a moment which stretches just long enough to be painful, she releases it.
"... good," she settles on, voice more even. "Good. You recognise that much. You're right to be happy. Oh," she sighs, looking back to Leina, sidelong, "she's really the most wonderful woman. Perhaps you should meet her... then, you'd understand..."
In the discordant shards of her mind, a plan begins to form, and she grasps tightly to any shred of sense she can muster.
"... have you and your little friend ever been to a Zaftran wedding, I wonder?"
It's so important to bring the bride gifts. There are two brides, this time, but that just speaks to their generosity.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina's eyelids flick towards the ground. "I'm not someone you have to obey." She knows that Yuliana does not have free will to live her life. However, to share her feelings like this? The REA wouldn't condition her to share.
The erratic shifts, Leina can't help but look back at her, as she's called a maddening wretch. She sees how erratic she is. And in several awful ways, she reminds her of someone she used to know.
And still does.
What does it mean that Yuliana considers one other person real?
What does it mean?
How can someone who is cut off from everyone, feel someone?
The disturbing implications of that start to sink into her skin, yet all the same, she wants to know. Because if everything in this world is fake to Yuliana...
... it means there is no chance of helping her.
Still, she hesitates, then, "Once. I was doing charity work after the Devil Gundam."
It hurts to say it, thinking of what Shuuji decided was the true solution to the state of the world.
"A young couple from a small village. They decided that they shouldn't put it off any longer."
Because they decided there might not be a tomorrow.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Tch..." Yuliana grunts, tongue clacking to her teeth again, as Leina spells it out. It's not really her fault -- Yuliana would be angry at any approach Leina took to the subject of the restraints binding her.
She is labile, volatile, every emotion bubbling underneath her skin, a dozen unleashed reactions warring for her heart. Yuliana's self-control -- no, something deeper -- it's been damaged, and rather than repair her emotional regulation, her Republic simply taught her how to lie.
"Devil Gundam... yes. I remember. It was... difficult, to be a melee specialist, in that crisis." Yuliana's words are delicate, but at least they are even, mastering her voice again.
That Yuliana helped fight so many of those battles -- that she helped defend the Earth -- does it square, with the terror she instills? With the pantomime of her existence?
It's logical to her.
"Neither can we hesitate, now we are together. You both should come, I think. You will know, then, why I am unlike you. You..."
Yuliana's fingers tighten; her gut roils. She fights the disgust from her expression, though it grows a shade more drawn. "... may not... have the worst intentions. Fine. Fine," she repeats, as if it will be more convincing the second time. "Let it settle your mind, and trouble me no more when you are sure."
Yuliana troubled her.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
One doesn't need Newtype senses to realize that the people in control of Yuliana is not a subject Yuliana wants to discuss. And why would she? All it does is call attention to the chains, the learned helplessness that everyone learns when your life is not your own.
She learned it too, eventually. She stopped trying to escape.
Leina's eyes seem distant as Yuliana discusses being a melee specialist. And there's a quiet nod, "It was."
Everyone succumbs to the despair of the status quo it feels eventually, and starts taking extreme measures.
"... I know a lot of people who fought at the frontlines of that crisis." She explains.
You both should come, I think.
Leina's green eyes look briefly surprised, then just give her the longest look. Even as she tells her that she will know then why she is unlike her.
Yuliana is still tense, erratic as she tells her she may not have the worst intentions.
"What date have you set? It will depend on if I've healed enough for travel. I don't think Sayla would allow me to go otherwise, but assuming that...?"
It is hedging a bit, she will have to consider this, think it over, talk it over, but if she does go with Banagher...
... well there's no reason why she can't bring more protection with her.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
It's a sensitive subject, but so long as she's the perpetrator, she can't possibly be a victim. In Yuliana's eyes, people are either using others, or being used up. That her power is a fabrication she has been allowed to achieve the aims of her people is...
Her pain over those revelations has already ruined one woman's life. Why stop, there?
If the fate of all test subjects is termination, she'll just keep using everyone around her, until there's no one left to use her up...
"Hmm?" She wonders, under the weight of Leina's gaze. "Not for a month, still. The ritual ceremony will be quite safe, of course. I care very much for tradition, even if mine come from two homelands, so I shall not tolerate perversion of my customs." And all she says is true. The wedding, she would not interrupt for any scheme.
As for what happens afterwards -- well, even if she made a prediction, no one would believe her.
"Or don't!" She sniffs, and it might have been haughty, if she weren't all tear-sodden. "I'll not weep overmuch should a gaggle of Newtypes not wish to bear witness."
Yes; this is more comfortable. She is more comfortable, lying. She was lying all along, wasn't she? Surely she was.
Yuliana knows what's real, and what isn't.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"A month."
With the Growth Accelerators, a month is ample time, she should be back on her feet by then.
"I'll talk it over with all of them. And if my Doctors have cleared me, I'll do my best to be there."
It's a tall ask, and there are a lot of security concerns but...
Yuliana sniffs, and now that she feels... more steady in the state of the world...
Leina's wheelchair moves over to her, as a hand fishes something out of her bag. She hits the edge of her aura, and her control over her wheelchair slips as it halts right at the edge, as Leina holds out to her-
"Here."
It's just a box of tissues.
"Please."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana usually finds it so delightful when her prey volunteer to enter her sphere of influence, and yet she can't muster much joy about Leina urging her wheelchair closer to her.
(By all rights, she should hold all the power here. So why does it feel like --)
She looks to her, sidelong, and her lips fall to a tense frown as she offers out a box of tissues. Her gut roils, again, and she feels anger bubbling up her throat. "Don't you--!" She starts, voice pitching upwards, before the second word reaches her mind, and she swallows down on the rest of the demand.
Her fingers tighten; her eyes blink, tightly. As if it's a favour... no, she can endure it, Yuliana thinks. It's better if she believes.
What a wretched lie!
After that long moment of hesitation, Yuliana reaches out to haphazardly snatch a fistful of tissues from the box -- and stalks away, without another word.
... once she's out of the park, and down the street, she shoves that handful of soft paper in the trash, and pulls a handkerchief from her breast pocket to wipe her face instead.
"Disgusting," she mutters, to herself.
"I'll make you pay."