Black Orchid | BEOMKAI

Prologue

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In today's age, you can buy yourself almost anything. The click of a button and a flash of your credit card is all it takes for that instant rush of gratification. Perpetually trading in your shining, spectacular toys for better ones. Telling yourself that they're enough to fill the hole until the next models are released. And the cycle continues.

But for how long do you water that tree of consumption from the highest branch before you look down and wonder: how green does your grass need to look from the other side of the fence before you're satisfied with it? If a midnight storm of humility tries to sway you, is that golden branch strong enough for you to keep clinging to? Can you still truly flourish at daybreak once the wind settles?

Someone once told me that a flower bud does not bloom orderly in the Spring dawn– it breaks itself open. For destruction and growth have always been lifelong neighbors.

Los Angeles, March 20th 1980

Maya gave a thoughtful gaze to the five fifty-three p.m cotton-candy skies, and she wondered– was God watching? Or was he getting his 'angels' to do his spy work on humanity for him?

No.

To Maya, the heavens were nothing more than an arrangement of clouds, stirring and twisting their peach and purple hues. Divine intervention wasn't something she would wait for. Not when she could take matters into her own hands.

"B squadron in position and ready for detonation, commander. Over."

The scratchy voice through the radio spoke the words Maya had only ever dreamed of hearing. She lowered her gaze from the skies to the Choi Corporation building two hundred yards away.

"On your word, Maya," her second in command said; loyal and patient.

Maya took in that deep breath before the plunge and she could almost taste the desolation searing in the back of her throat; the intake before a dragon's deadly exhale. She unhooked the radio from her belt, held it close to her lips, gave a little smirk, and pressed the push-to-talk button.

"Hit it."

The shockwave rumbled the ground as all fourteen floors of the Choi Corporation building shattered from the basement upward. The wind whipped Maya's obsidian hair out of her eyes and the sky was blotted with steel, glass, concrete, flames and smoke. Glorious.

"Objective complete," her second in command confirmed. "A, B and C squadrons en route to base. Over and out."

Maya should have been running with them, but she instead approached the scene of fiery suffocation. Her knees were shaking, her palms wet but not soaked enough to even remotely dampen the mood. Slithers and chunks of debris fell around her. Some charcoal black, some on fire, some turning to ash the second they graced the grass. She heard the distant fire engine sirens coupled with a voice crying out in the distance. Her eyes widened as she halted. He was here.

"Commander, confirm your position. Over."

She dropped the radio to the grass, ignoring the distressed "Maya! Where are you?!" that came from it. The flames licked at her the closer she got and through the ash and smoke, she saw him– Choi Corporation's CEO.

The man was stumbling, eyes wide and orange from the flames until they fell upon Maya with a gasp. The smirk that spread across Maya's face morphed like the colors of the sunset into a glare. She breathed in the sulphury demolition and her eyes burned harder than the building had to the ground. The wind blew her hair back to expose the black orchid tattoo on her neck.

"How does it feel to lose everything?" she asked the businessman. He shook his black-haired head at her like she was a ghost.

"Y-you did this..?" he gasped. "Lord, heaven help you..."

"Heaven doesn't exist," Maya smiled.

She was tempted to say a few more choice words; a final sprinkling of salt into the wound. Oh, how she had imagined this moment and all she could say. But she had made her point and those sirens were growing louder.

"See you in another life," she whispered and disappeared into the night on sprinting feet.

"Wait!" the CEO called but the now-fugitive was gone from sight. The man fell to his knees, eventually approached by colleagues who rushed to his side, gawking at the remains of their careers.

"What am I going to do?" the man whispered to himself and no one had the answer.

In the distance, the CEO caught sight of a tall silhouette upon a hill. A trenchcoat down to their knees, short wavy hair tousling in the destructive breeze, and two eyes that made him feel like he was seeing stars. In an instant, the figure vanished and the CEO shot glances in every last direction to where they could have gone. But all he heard was the sound of wings on the wind growing ever quieter.