Roses of Reality

Prologue

"Hey, Tachi, when you wake up again, you'll remember all the times we shared, right?"

I pulled myself back from him, taking in his dark silhouette contrasting against the rising sun. The slumbering city of Seoul that stretched out below us, began to awaken as color crept back into the world. Matching my gaze to his anguished, crimsons irises clarified the memories of a red-sunset sinking beneath the ocean horizon. Zen's angelically beautiful face, trying so hard to remain the perfect actor, always in command of his emotions, was struggling to retain the famed, ever-captivating smile. I could just barely taste the overwhelming sensation of the Black Angel cigarettes that indefinitely lingered on his breath, as his ever suggestive voice penetrated my heart like an arrow straight from Cupid's quiver. A vocal array that I treasured so much, yet at this moment, it is a cruel fragment that fate was using to taunt me.

Attempting to mimic his imperfect-perfection, I forced my face to constrict into a smile. But for every muscle I demanded to obey, my stomach knotted itself tighter in rebellion. As a warm stream streaks down my cheek, I refuse to dab at the tears. My near-prime body's last boycott at feigning child-like innocence. In all my stint of being considered an adult, this was the true moment in which I wished that I was a child again. A wish I had formerly believed would never be whispered by me. But now, that very idea being screamed in pleas from every atom of my soul.

Because in my eyes, heartbreak had to be easier to forget with a naive heart and mind, right?

But here I stand in a extraneous reality as a young woman, embraced by the arms of the man whom I come to meet, learn about, cry over, defend, be saved by, and fall irresistibly in love with.

I didn't just want eleven days with him, I wanted an eternity.

Even though I tried my best, I couldn't conceal my body's trembling. Stimulated by my shaking, I felt my protector's arms tighten around me, causing my heart to constrict further in both love and agony. I was beginning to believe that I had forgotten how to breathe, or this parting was drowning me in my own pain.

"Z-zen..." My cracking voice like a lake of spineless ice, but the sound was quickly muffled, as my lips were smashed closer to the chest clad in his leather jacket, my nose drinking in his familiar scent as though I were a cocaine addict. I could never understand how a mixture of Kass beer, bitter cigarettes, and the lingering essence of the coconut shampoo we shared.

Zen's indulgent lips grazed my neck, as he burrowed himself deeper into my dirty blonde tresses.

"Tachi," his voice, over-flowing with the rawness of both his affection for me and the pain waned on his velvet voice as it verged upon cracking.

The minuscule pricks of torture had begun to evolve into a throbbing migraine, the agony un-steadying my already feeble knees. As I turned to match Zen's gaze, the world through my eyes had begun blurring, as though I were a camera lens persistently trying to regain focus.

"Zen, I- When I wake up, I'm smiling, because it's another day with you. But-," before I could confess another bittersweet word, Zen's soft lips found mine, silencing my fears in his warmth. 

No words are needed, his lips seemed to tell me without sound. I know.

All too soon he pulled back, tsking at me mischievously with that sly grin of his.

"Tachi, Tachi, Tachi," With each rushed word that tumbled from his lips, the world around me was plummeting into hush, and a foreign static was beginning to rev up within my ear drums, nearly drowning out his words. A deep, silky humming, though it was closed to my ear, echoed from what seemed worlds away from me in a remorseful.

"I want you to know, you have been, and always will be, the only one that I will ever love this way. No matter the time, the world, the reality..."

Peeking through long silver strands of hair, I could see the sun's reach sliding closer and closer to us. We tightened our hold on each other as though it were the end of the world, dreading and cherishing this last moment. I looked up into his eyes just as the sun began to encase us, the tears he had tried to so hard to hold back were streaming down his face. Though the light was nearly blinding, yet, the world around me was becoming engulfed in obscurity, my sense of touch and smell were evaporated and the all the raging sounds fell silent.

A single sound cut through the darkness. A single cry.

"...You'll always be my princess."

And then my screams ripped through the darkness, tears falling into the void as I fell through the fabrics of this perceived reality. 

One sound followed after me though.

The most heart-retching sound I could ever imagine. I prayed to any god listening that I was imaging it.

The sound of a beautiful, broken man crying out my name as he was drowned by his own tears.