a curse is cast upon a child.
a boy who faces death, a boy who has seen what's close to the worst of death's doing. crossing paths, lives are entwined with each other, and perhaps it is the scarlet threads of destiny that eventually pull them closer...
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Moonlight crept in like vines worming their way through the spots that the veil-like curtain did not cover. The curtain was a deep shade of ruby, and felt silky, as soft as the caressing breaths of a newborn infant. He roughly shoved the fabric aside, sitting by the glistening, clear window and directing his glassy stare up at the endless skies and the countless stars that illuminated them.
Putting aside the grudges he held against it, the sky was beautiful. It was a canvas of neat strokes of blue, black and purple, with dabs of wispy clouds scattered across it. Flecks of luminescence were sprinkled across the vast expanse of blank space, and as a centrepiece, the moon hung, confident and proud, on the path that they marked.
Vengeance momentarily clouded his eyes as he gazed up at the moon. As if to taunt him, it twinkled mischievously, letting its light paint a flawless streak of brightness across his face.
And it was right as Seungcheol was about to brush the light off his cheek when a desperate, yet forlorn and hopeless imploration caught his attention.
Save me.
The words, uttered in a murmur that seemed to be streaked with half-dried tears, held no emotion. They were a meaningless plea, clinging to the life it had already been forced to let go of.
☾
Prisoner of the moon, he was a barely lingering soul, tied down and placed behind bars, thrown to the ground of the endless mass of space. He saw nothing, heard nothing, and felt nothing. Emotions had been ripped from his chest, as though he had been skinned alive and been cut open like a FedEx box, contents being lifted one by one from the container. Or was that truly what he felt? Perhaps, and perhaps not. He supposed that anything he felt was a product of the residual connection between his soul and physical body abandoned down on Earth.
All he could do was think. He could not hear his own cries as he spouted the empty, hollow requests that could and would never be answered. The tears that had escaped and begun to roll down his cheeks had been frozen in place, to be stained onto his face for the rest of this eternity.
"Yoon Jeonghan," he whispered to the universe, with the voice he would never again hear himself speak with. Please hear me. Listen to me. Save me.
"Jeonghan."
This too, was a plea.
☾
Seungcheol could have sworn that he'd heard his friend's name echoing from the trail of moonlight. He frowned slightly. It would not have been the first time the moon had taken a living soul captive. The moon would extract the soul from the human's body, imprisoning it, and who knew what it would do with the body. Previous times, the human had simply been discovered and proclaimed dead. While this technically should have been true, it wasn't — not exactly. Soulless did not mean dead. Should a lone, meandering spirit have chanced upon the body and recognised it for what it was, the body could be taken over and possessed, to bend to its new soul's will.
As the moonlight once again fell upon his face, he held it close, whispering,
"I'm here. I'm listening."
"But why?" Seungcheol couldn't help but ask out loud, tone betraying his confusion. The moon... wouldn't do such a thing without an ulterior motive. He understood the galaxies, now. Each and every action it took was well-planned and thought through; when there were risks, they were calculated ones.
A hearty chuckle reverberated from the neighbouring bedroom.
"Still awake, son?"
That was before it hit him.
Of course.
Who had been the moon's greatest enemy for the past seventeen years?
