Purple Rain

1

It started somewhere during the early refrains of autumn. When the wind changes its direction and the breeze was so cold, you could feel it seeping into the cracks of your bones and you shiver in your sleep, no matter if you are young or old. These same winds flitted through the dorms that September and Junhoe remember waking up to a darkness that was surreal. He could feel that tickle in the back of his throat, the one which spelled an impending, if temporary, doom for vocalists like him. The one where he could already feel an ache behind the bridge of his nose in promise of colds yet to arrive and overtake his immune system. It made him wish he was back home so his mother would fix him a cup of butterfly pea flower tea. Butterfly pea flower.

Now why was he suddenly thinking of flowers?

He ruminated within the chill of this familiar darkness. He turned to his side, clearing his throat, because it felt as if there was something stuck there. Then it was gone. The cold lingered despite the coverlet and the thick winter blankets his mother had already taken out during her last cleaning visit. He could feel the chill creeping up his toes, slowly engulfing his calves. He got up, discarding the shorts he had on before sleeping just now and rushing through the legs of the track pants he had slung over his chair. In the darkness, he could hear the wheels of his chair turning, as it spun away after his hand had accidentally hit it. Socks. He needed socks. He slid the closet door open, bending over to reach for the thick winter socks under the thermal jackets, unrolling them and quickly crashing back in bed, putting them on before the cold could travel up any farther. Then he was back under the covers again, willing himself to sleep. Unsuccessfully, of course.

In all that time he exerted himself to keep warm, the blockage in his throat had returned, as swift and quietly, as it had gone with the initial clearing of his throat. He cleared it again, harder, for good measure. Maybe he needed a drink. There was a bottle of Cutty Sark, unfinished, on his writing table. At the thought that it might calm his throat a little, he got up again, hands patting the table full of papers, both pristine and crumpled, before fingers gently found the smooth, rectangular glass bottle in the darkness. He uncapped it and chugged it down.

"Krrr." He purred in satisfaction. That should keep him warm. Being at the table reminded him of his attempt at writing early this evening. He had tried to put his current emotions into words, but after almost a notebook filled with unintelligible scribbles, he remained dissatisfied. Not because he was uninspired, but because the subject matter was something a little too close to his heart. He dragged the blankets he had brought along back to bed, after draining the bottle and chucking the empty container back onto the table. He thought about the sordid state of...

His heart.

That he had protected so well all these years. Not that the years were long, no. He had three, almost four, in total. Solid groundwork for achieving his dreams, earning enough for his family so that they do not have to worry about money and just have the necessary comforts for living. Those were also enough years for him to build a garden in his heart; a secret garden. He might have thought it would not flourished. All he wanted was a place to plant just one minutiae seed of love. Then it had bloomed, quite wildly, uncontrollably and now it had overtaken even the walls, which were supposed to have protected it, the stems overflowing with flowers so distinctively vivid in shades of violets and lavender, he was dearly afraid that his heart was now overwhelmed with his love...

For one Kim Jiwon.

Junhoe sighed loudly into the darkness. There were words embedded within his cerebrum; meaningful, filled with magnanimous beauty and profound beyond human understanding. They were also discordant and painful at the same time, because as much as he tried to dislodge them, pen them forcefully onto paper, they remained stubbornly embossed within his id. They refused to budge or leave. He had succumbed to the idea that try as he might, it was not paper they wanted to fall upon, these words. They wanted a release that was stronger, bolder. They desired to be professed via his lips, to flow from his mouth ardently and in front of Jiwon, the one who caused that seedling to grow into a garden. But he was too...

Cowardly.

Afraid. Afraid of many things that had remained as unspoken as his desire to confess to Jiwon. The possibility of ruining all that he had worked for the past four years. The solid groundwork, upturned and shovelled needlessly into turmoil. He only learnt to gaze in secret when he thinks no one is looking, but it only made him want to turn and look even more. He taught himself to be immune to Jiwon's charms and self-assured confidence, not realising that the more he tried, the more willing had he given up governance over his heart until it was no longer his to own. He instructed himself to tame the flowers, which grew wild in his secret garden only to discover that it had taken over the habitat of his desires until there was no space left for anything else but for him to acknowledge that Jiwon was the only one who mattered in his life.

Junhoe sat up suddenly, caught in a fit of coughing and he could feel something unfurl in his throat, blocking his windpipe. He forced out another cough, hand covering his mouth and he could feel something soft actually shooting itself out from between his lips. He was alarmed at first, thinking it was blood but even though it was soft and wet, there was no give when he ran that softness against his palm with his thumb. Junhoe scrambled out of bed, blankets and cold weather forgotten as his other hand scrambled to turn on the lights, eyes alight with panic as his gaze fell on his hand, still clutching that softness between thumb and palm tightly.

A petal.

An indigo blue, almost heart-shaped petal from a butterfly pea flower lay on his palms, slightly damp and flat. It left a blue mark against his palm and Junhoe stared after it in disbelief. He coughed again and a spray of petals came pouring from out of his mouth like a fountain of purple-blue rain, showering the floor in a hail of feathery softness. Junhoe's eyes had widened now in complete and utter horror. A stray petal remained at the edge of his lower lip and he sputtered it out, gazing after it as it listlessly swooped onto the floor to join its comrades to carpet the parquet floors of his room. This cannot be happening, Junhoe thought swallowing the lump in his throat, which was of course, a mistake at this point of time, because it aggravated the itch in his throat and now another flurry of coughs followed by an even thicker cloud of petals began raining into the space between him and the floor. Junhoe decided that he was probably not going to sleep and he sure as hell was going to refrain from coughing.