scarlet heart | exo

Transcience

Fingertips brushed against cold glass, and a faint gossamer thickened into a blinding white.

Her eyelids lifted ever so gently. The fog over her eyes lifted, as if someone was shining a bright torchlight through it, or fiddling with her eyes like a camera lens to get the right focus.

Onyx Zhao Xue Feng stood in front of a glass display case, in the exhibition on the Qing Dynasty, in the museum.

I'm back.

She glanced down into the display case. But instead of a bronze mirror carved with peonies and mysterious Chinese characters, the item in the case was a shard of pottery, the only part of a dragon-painted plate that survived the whittles of time.

She glanced around. The museum was just as she remembered leaving it. People milled about the displays, whispering comments on the artefacts to one another as they walked around. If anyone had noticed anything amiss with her, they didn't react to it, too caught up in their own worlds.

She walked through the exhibit breezily. All the artefacts were relics of an era that she had experienced herself; robes she had donned, crockery she had used, accessories she had worn. Although tarnished by the years, they remained as solid and vivid as when they were first made. She urged to reach out and grasp them in her hands like she did before, running her fingers across all its grooves and edges— yet, a sheet of reinforced glass separated her from what was rightfully hers, what she could see but not touch, almost tauntingly.

It pained her.

At the back of her head, she faintly registered footsteps, emerging from the white noise in a steady rhythm. They reminded her of the steps that accompanied her own all those moons ago, parallel on the cobblestone pathways that meandered in the Forbidden City.

Could it be?

The steps came to a decisive stop right behind her, as if waiting for her to reach out, to step onto the bridge and meet in the middle. They were both on the cusp of the bridge's arch, knowing the the other was there, but but yet to take that crucial step toward each other, to see each other over the illusory barrier between them.

She turned around sharply, tongue already forming the words, the name—

It was the museum security guard.

"We're closing soon, Miss. The exit is that way." Wrinkles framed the elderly man's kind smile as he pointed her in the direction of the neon green sign. In his freckled hands he held a magenta sheet of paper, which she recognised as the exhibition pamphlet. He offered it to her, "Here's the exhibition pamphlet, with our opening hours on it. Entry is free, you can come back tomorrow if you'd like."

She took a look at her watch, realising with a start that she had spent more time than she thought in the exhibition. Time moved much faster here in the metropolis, she reminded herself. And there were a lot more explicit structures and rules as to where she could do what, and when.

"Thank you." She took the pamphlet between her fingers, trying not to make the disappointment in her visage too obvious.

The guard left her with a small nod, hunched body ambling as he proceeded to complete his rounds around the rest of the exhibition space. Onyx shuffled slowly to the exit, flipping the pages of the pamphlet absent-mindedly.

Her sneakered feet stopped right before the threshold, between the glass doors which separated the museum from the rest of the world. She realised with a start, that this was, in some small way, a portal between two worlds as well.

She stood in the doorway, examining this city and its stark contrast to the one that she'd just left.

There, it was more quiet.