||Koi No Yokan|| Park Seonghwa

||Chapter 40||

Seeing an empty field at the end of summer could only mean one thing for her.

The days were starting to shorten already, the moon being her only companion on the nights she couldn't sleep. In the mornings, she stayed mostly inside the house: even if she used to spend entire days basking in the sunlight, she found herself feeling a certain sense of comfort in the shadow. Must've been the fact that she spent half of her life in the darkest, most lifeless place on earth.

She noticed the toll it took on her body every day in her appearance whenever she looked at her reflection in the morning, the pale sunlight signaling that it was still early: her sunburnt face, littered with freckles that seemed to repeat in a pattern on her shoulders and forearms, reminded her of her younger self.

"Kore!"

Her mother called from outside, in the gardens: she never used her other name.

She left the rocking chair she had been sitting on and ran outside, finding Demeter busy digging holes to plant new seeds. She didn't need to tell her what to do: her mother just planted them in the ground, then waited for her to bury them beneath the humid soil, humming a tune to a song never written. She did that sometimes, singing while fulfilling her duty as the goddess of spring. Soon, a bush grew from that small cluster of seeds, developing taller and taller until it reached her thigh. Red roses.

"Who are these for?"

Demeter stood next to her, admiring the newly sprouted blossoms.

"Aphrodite asked me to bring some of these to her palace for her morning bath, along with some lavender" she explained. Then, she patted her daughter's shoulder, a non-verbal cue to show that she was satisfied with her work.

Lavender...that was unusual of her.

"Is she stressed, perhaps?"

"Didn't you know? Her son Eros is bringing her to court"

"Cupid?"

She couldn't have been more surprised. She had known Eros ever since he was the most beautiful baby in the whole world, she had seen him grow up throughout many summers and, although they did have their discrepancies, she never imagined him doing something like that.

"Poseidon told me it's because of a human girl...the boy loves her, but she's firmly against it"

"The prophecy..." she murmured to herself, being careful her mother wasn't within earshot.

She remembered it from one of the numerous letters he sent from the palace. She read them all but could never reply; nothing of the living was to cross to the realm of the dead.

"So, I assume you'll have to be present?"

"You know I have to, Kore" her mother replied "Zeus notified the whole council. Everyone will be there tomorrow..."

Including him.

Hades never sent letters; he knew he wasn't allowed to: however, she didn't need to know directly from him when San told her all about him in his letters. It was their little secret, the one thing they kept from him.

"It wouldn't be the first time that gods fall for humans...why is she so against it?"

"I think you know why, dearest"

And then it hit her.

It had been so long...the last time she saw him, he was wandering in the wasteland that was the Underworld, his eyes once ignited by youth and passion now depressingly empty, every memory of his past life washed away by the water of the Lethe River. But she could never lay the blame on the innocent boy Cupid used to be: their selfishness was to blame, their stupid, immature selfishness alone. She had learned to live with her grief: Aphrodite, however, did not.