statue garden | psh+khj

this love will keep us

rewrite of the og statue garden, if anyone even remembers that lol 

–•–

The hands of Seonghwa's internal clock stalled the very moment he turned eighteen.

He comes to terms with this sometime in his late forties when he looks down upon his hands, smooth and pristine with silken youth. Bitterly, a voice in the back of his head reminds him that his mother warned him about this.

It was hereditary, this... condition that he has. 

It was passed down onto him by his mother when he was born, lying dormant inside him, and it will haunt him until the day he is allowed to die.

He is unsure of the extremities and limits of his condition – nobody in his family did as the knowledge had been lost over time – but what he knows for certain is that his body is trapped in the state of a young adult, just like his mother told him it would be.

At first, he dismissed his mother's warnings prior to turning eighteen. Instead, he basked in his teenhood and spoiled life as a Lord's son. Now, centuries have passed since his fate was sealed and he was forced to resign to a quiet life inside his childhood home. He wonders if there was any way he could have prevented this – the cold hands of isolation creeping around his neck and pulling his mind further inward until he was trapped inside himself, so much so he cannot discern the difference between entire days passing before his eyes and mere minutes of daydreaming.

And that's another thing Seonghwa has no idea what to think of. Time. 

When Seonghwa was a mere child all of those centuries ago, steadily pushing through the years of early childhood where he was under the guise of living a typical life, he remembered the trivialities of each day as they came. His mind was open, absorbing every detail of anything he could get his prim little hands on, and because of that he was told he could conquer the world if he so desired. He was told he had nothing but time. 

Others, he was told, were limited on time. Their lives were finite hourglasses, his mother said, desperately and fruitlessly fighting against the cruel nature of gravity. All the while, Seonghwa held a pocket watch wound up to count down from an unfathomable eternity, just like her. And as a child, the damnation of eternal life appeared to be a promise he had plenty of time to spend however he liked.

He did not know her words were a warning.

"You will be young for a long time, my shining star, if not forever," she once told him with her hands holding his face and her eyes closed, as they always were. Her voice frequently reminded him of summer peaches and gooey honey, delicate and sweet with ripe youth yet to sour. He always wondered if her eyes were brown and as gentle as her presence. It would suit her over matching the cold gray of his father's eyes.

"Why?"

At the time, she sighed softly and leaned in to press their foreheads together. Her skin was warm against his, and she said, "Because we are special. You and I, we share something very, very special. I have passed this onto you, and I am sorry."

Seonghwa later recalls how she often spoke like her words were a secret designed for only the two of them to hear, and he had always hung onto every last one of them, even if they were hard to believe. The then Seonghwa, only ten years old and on the cusp of beginning to understand the complexities of his condition, wondered about his brother. "What about Gongju?"

His mother was quiet and still for a moment like a perched bird, tensed and ready to take flight. The silence stretched taut like a bowstring as her lips pressed into a thin line before it broke with the soft release of a spring breeze through tall grass. 

"It's only us."

As a child, he never paid any mind to how her voice quivered as it had always had that shaky quality to it, like a bubble about to burst.

As a child, he only revered the fact he was like his mother because he was still young enough to desire to be exactly like who raised him, not yet tainted by the internalizations of trauma and world order.

He did not understand the weight of her words until they shone true like a prophecy the night she finally died.