Chapter Text
The wind shifted as he mystically appeared in the middle of the forest at the stroke of midnight. White petals danced around the trails of his footsteps and the creatures bowed down in his sudden presence.
His royal blue tuxedo glistens under the moon as he walks gracefully in the quiet forest. He has big round eyes for such a small face held high by his long neck and he stands tall with his elongated legs paired with broad shoulders. His glossy grey hair is akin to a wolf’s fur and his eyes speak magic in an array of blue and grey shades.
The moon shines on one side of his face as he leans on the trunk of the ancient pine tree. Angels fall envious of his ethereal beauty. Moonchild, they call him.
He comes to visit the same tree every year and closes his eyes for a few minutes. He enters and leaves the forest without a word.
His presence resonates like a warning; there is no denying he is not an ordinary man.
How can he pretend to be ordinary when he never knew how it feels?
For if we watch the birds for a long time, does it mean we can gain wings?
He vanished in an instant, dissolving on thin air like dust, and the entities in the forest started whispering carefully.
‘But I thought his memory was erased?’ The tree asked the wind.
The wind hushed ever so gently, ‘The heart never forgets.’
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Reborn
The wind felt like waves hitting my face and I couldn’t help but grin so wide, it felt like my cheeks could break.
‘This is worth all the scolding when I get home’, I convinced myself when I turned left at the bend of the road without braking and the motorbike tilted to the right, my knees almost touching the ground. I closed my eyes, revved for more power and aimed for the end of the cliff. The adrenaline pumped through my veins like ecstasy, sending me on a crazy rush.
The motorbike leapt from the ground as I jumped unto the cliff, letting go of the grips mid-air. It dissolved to dust in my command. Flying with my arms stretched wide and my back arched ready to dive into the freezing waters of South East England, I looked straight to take a peek at the line where the sky meets the sea - this beautiful illusion where the heavens meet the earth. It sent both resentment and bewilderment to my core, causing a bitter laughter to form under my breath. They never truly touch; it just looks as if they do. We, deities, may be here with humans, but we never really are. Our lives never truly touch; it just looks as if they do.
A split second before I reached the waters, I felt something vibrate from the side of my jeans. My eyes burst wide open in disbelief of my foolishness, causing me to completely lose all sense of graceful diving upon realising it was my phone buzzing. I screamed with eyes wide open, “Fuck!”, but the water hit me midsentence. I could taste the salt in my mouth and my eyes stung like hell. I gathered my senses amidst the salty shock and disappeared in a flash. I vanished from the sea of Eastbourne and into the archaic dining room in the Edenhill lake house, soaking wet with bloodshot eyes while gasping for breath.
The professor was sitting on one of the three chairs placed around the square dining table. One side of the table was against the extensive window that stretches through most of the wall, overlooking the garden filled with a myriad of flowering plants. He had coffee on one hand and his old Nokia phone on the other. Not seeming the slightest shocked at my awkward state, he sipped his coffee and turned his eyes from his phone to the garden beyond the window. Calmly sitting there, calmly sipping coffee, quietly, in deep thought. The ambience of the room was screaming at my ears in high pitch tinnitus.
I broke the silence immediately.
“I- “, but he blocked me before I could devise some lame excuse and I accepted defeat instantly by bowing my head and staring at my drenched red high-cut Converse shoes against the wooden floor, a pool of water forming around my feet.
“You forgot.” His voice was pretentiously calm and soothing. If I didn’t know him enough, I would’ve believed he wasn’t thinking of murdering me with his bare hands right in the middle of the house where he raised me. “Again.”
I jumped to wrap my arms around him in a playful hug and smiled the cutest smile I can muster, trying my hardest to morph my big round eyes to those of cute little puppies. I’ve done too many cunning exploits that I have mastered my way out of them at that point, and what I had in mind was a fool proof escape.
“Professor- Dad?”, I looked up at him to witness him stop his frown from turning into a smile and as usual, fails. “I’m sorry! And I love you!” I finished my sentence almost screaming at his ear as I tightened my arms around him, his chequered blue shirt became soaking wet. He smiled as he shook his head in defeat and I raised my hands up in the air to celebrate my victory, sending saltwater splashing like rainfall across the floor. Our laughter echoed in the small lake house. At the sound of my glee, the flowers in the garden blossomed even more and fresh flowers sprung from the beautiful green stems of my glorious floras. The birds watching from the garden chirped with us in delight of the typical but sentimental scene.
A couple of hours after my near-death experience saved by my undeniable cuteness, I spent the sunny afternoon out in the garden lost in my thoughts. I lay down on the grass with my hands behind my head and my legs stretched out as the aroma of flowers filled up my lungs. The birds flocked together on the branches of trees surrounding me, their chirps a song of admiration. The breeze was a little cold but just perfect to soothe one’s skin under the blazing sun - a rare occurrence in England. In this part of the world, everybody should be ready for rain every day. No matter how sunny the day may start, the weather changes its mind more often than a woman. Although I have not acquired first-hand experience of the said indecisiveness of the opposite sex, I can imagine it’s aggravating.
My thoughts naturally flowed towards the only other person-man-individual-whatever that I have in my life, Professor Kim Namjoon. The professor is not my father, but he is the closest I have to one. He refers to himself as my ‘guardian’ and insists I call him ‘Professor’, just how everybody else does because he teaches theology in the local university. I feel awkward calling him anything but ‘Professor’ anyway, except on moments such as this where I can’t help but recall our uncomfortable memory on Father’s Day three years ago. We have never had a father-son kind of relationship as ours leaned more towards strict professor-crazy student for as long as I can remember, but I had what I assumed was a hilarious idea for that day.
I was on my way home from the music store, not even aware it was Father’s Day, when I caught a glimpse of the ugliest jumper I have ever seen in my life on a store window in town. It mimics the fur of what I supposed was a grizzly bear’s, with the words ‘YOU ARE THE BEaST DAD’. The pun was so bad I shook my head in disbelief, snickering to myself. I took it home as a joke and looked forward to his displeasure but we were both taken aback by his surprising reaction. He stared at the jumper for about ten seconds that I had to make sure he was still breathing.
“Dumb, right?” I asked, laughing hysterically at the sight of the jumper again.
And there he was, frozen staring at my prank, when a tear dropped from his eye.
The professor is an expert in all matters of life; always knowing what to say, when to say it, how to say it and so on. But for a moment there, he looked more human than the always-calculated-deity I have known all my life.
The deities, us, were all once humans. Apart from me, all of them died of natural causes due to old age but they are not reborn in the age of their death. The professor’s body isn’t aged 98. He looks about 40, I think. Deities are reborn at the age of their prime and this differs - they could be reborn in their twenties, thirties, forties, and so on. I guess we reach our prime at different stages in life.
I, on the other hand, am the only deity who keeps growing – physically, that is. I was reborn when I was 7 and continued to grow like a normal kid. No seven-year-old is wise, so another difference I have with the other deities is the apparent lack of wisdom. I am slowly getting there though, I think. Since I’m an isolated case, the professor thinks I’ll stop ageing when I reach my prime. He never fails to mention this concern whenever he tells me off, saying “You clearly have not reached your prime! You need to grow up! Somehow, someday!” He’s worried I won’t ever grow out of my capriciousness. I might end up ageing more than the professor at this rate. There could be a forty-year-old man living in this lake house 30 years from now, telling off an eighty-year-old for being late for brunch.
There are only two criterions used in selecting deities and I am pretty sure I possess neither of these two. The first is wisdom; hence the benchmark of living a long life and dying of old age. The second is what eliminates most candidates- a pure heart.
Deities have witnessed innumerable births and deaths in their longwinded lifetime. Their wisdom is encompassed from their various personal experiences of both failure and success. Moreover, and more importantly, they understand the insignificance of being attached to anything because nothing in this world lasts as long as you wish it would. They understand the concept of withering, dying, fading, and loss.
Some of them have been around for longer than the human mind can imagine, living in one city after another, not returning to the same place for generations to keep their identities concealed. Edenhill is the professor’s favourite, having come back here just 15 years ago after more than a hundred years. I have only met about a dozen deities at this point and I don’t keep track or anything since I don’t keep in touch with them or invite them to birthdays anyway. We keep our relations to the minimum.
‘Attachment’- the forbidden word.
We can make everything we need and want with just a flick of a finger. We can replenish our strength in seconds, never get sick, never get hungry, and never die. We also cannot get drunk. We eat for the sake of tasting pleasurable food but can go on without eating nevertheless. We have everything we need at the tip of our fingertips- except for family, friends, love, and attachment. They poison one’s judgement.
I have never heard the professor complain about this and I have never uttered my curiosity to him or anyone else either. Not that I have anyone else but the professor to share my thoughts with, anyway.
I was home-schooled throughout, growing up with very little human interaction. On weekdays, I was given workbooks to answer and essays to write that the professor checks when he gets home late in the afternoon. On weekends, I played with the birds in the garden and cared for my flowers.
We would go on holidays when the professor gets time off work, but I could sense that he was always cautious about me having a great time as if he was afraid I’d get to love the world too much. From my perspective, it looked like he was pushing and pulling between the roles of human guardian and deity guardian all the time. We have cut our trips short several times for unknown reasons and I used to protest not being able to understand why until I learned to recognise the sadness in his eyes as I grew older - and wiser I think – over time.
He never took pleasure in disciplining my immature emotions and his eyes disclosed the pain he was never able to verbalise. I figured I might as well make his job easier by not asking. Sometimes I wonder if he has grown attached to me. I wonder if he’s committing a great sin by keeping me around. I wonder if one day, he’ll regret letting me into his life.
I was left at the professor’s care when I was six years old. I remember the day like it was yesterday mainly because it was my very first recollection of this life. No matter how hard I try, I cannot scour my brain for any memory that occurred before I showed up at the door of his London flat fifteen years ago. He opened the door, looked around cautiously examining the surroundings, and ushered me into his flat. But I don’t remember how I got there. I vaguely remember a hand pressing the doorbell but I could swear it wasn’t mine.
I came through the door and was greeted by white walls and a steep staircase. The professor closed the door behind me and led our way up the stairs where we were greeted with a cluttered living room. I can barely make my way across without stepping on sheets of paper and opened books. He removed a stack of folders on one of the two settees and patted it, dust exploding into the air. I sat there quietly as he disappeared into another room in the corner. I heard what sounded like pans and pots clanging, followed by the stove flaming on. After a couple of minutes, the small flat was filled with a delightful smell.
‘Taehyung’, he called my name for the first time.
I went towards the room and peeped my head through the door frame. He was standing by the stove with a ladle, scooping Bolognese into two plates. He looked at me and smiled, nodding his head as he hands me a plate. My confused heart was suddenly calm and from then on, I knew I’d be safe under his care.
My thoughts were cut short when I felt the blaze of the sun disappear. I opened my eyes to see thick dark clouds overhead.
‘Typical day’, I moaned as I jumped up to the balls of my feet and shook the dirt off my clothes.