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White is for loyalty.
Only the moon remembers who they are. The sky does not know anymore, who they have become; just that the stars have made her laugh, and the veil of night has given him freedom. There are urban legends down Greek countrysides—white roses blooming in the middle of winter, warriors meeting kinder ends on cracked soil—but even those are fading with every passing of the seasons.
Nobody bothers to ask the moon where they’ve gone, but it talks to the wind sometimes, because the wind whispers to the ones that know how to listen.
It carries their promises, vows whispered as they laid against each other by the roots of their pomegranate tree. The King and Queen of the Underworld, resigned. Not even gods can escape fate.
“Where will we go?” she’d asked, hand in his, hair a transparent sheen around her waist. She was met with silence. The queen had known. “Will you find me, then?”
“Yes,” came the reply. “I will be by your side again, for there are some things even the Fates cannot touch.”
The wind whispers their last words in the height of storms, creeping in through the cracks of anything it can find.
and when the world is no more?
how will we see each other?
all things must end.
i will have loved you enough by then.
Pink is for kindness.
Sai finds a fallen warrior under a tree, blood blooming from a broken arrow tip stuck to her armor. The herbs she’d been sent to trade have been replaced by gold. Her hair hangs loose by her shoulders, tussled by the evening winds. Her hands itch to help, for her father has made her live by the pure services of the heart—but they can’t seem to move.
The warrior is no doubt dangerous. And unknown. Kindness would not be to her own benefit. There are no rewards when it comes to people left-for-dead.
Her legs are far less prone to hesitance.
Skin as white as now, lips as pale as the moon. The infection will kill her by the morrow. The coldness of the steppes will kill her even faster.
“She’s like you,” she says now, in their tent. Her father’s eyes shine with worry, foot tapping against wood. The warrior is coating their floors red. She knows he’s healed worse wounds than this. She would do it herself, but she is clumsy. Weak. “Or was. She has little time, and no markings from any other tribe. Please.”
“We do not owe her anything,” her father scoffs. “She has nothing to trade. We will be leaving in two moons. I cannot afford another mouth to feed.”
“She will not make you feed her,” she pleads. “She will go her way once she is healed.”
“Why bring her back at all?”
She does not answer. She stays by her side—the warrior’s name is Inka, and she does not leave. She finds a place beside her, laughing and fighting and talking through the tough grounds and the cold mountains. Inka teaches her how to pull up strength when there is none, and the daughter teaches her hands the gentleness she has never known.
They have always been complementary; death and chaos, winter and spring. The bards sing about love around a tribal fire; they cling to each other. Her father goes to trade on the main routes for three nights; they learn of the places they’ve hidden from everyone else.
Why bring her back? The daughter has never stopped thinking of it; the one second that felt like a tugging in her soul, back to that night. All she knows is that she’s found her. All she knows is the promise in her bones.
will you find me?
The moon knows that it will happen again.
Green is for hope.
Miko looks for her behind the bookstores. Ashi is a dancer, feet connected to the earth, limbs light and nimble as she follows the beat of instruments. Her smile is as bright as the flowers around her neck, and her dark skin glows with the sun.
In the moonlight, she becomes even more beautiful.
“Found you,” she says, arms from the back circling his sides. “Hello.”
Miko is a scribe, hands spotted with black ink at any time of day. Ashi says Miko is her rest: her reprieve from the pressure of her beauty. Miko says Ashi is his sun behind the clouds: that glowing too brightly would blind him anyway, and that he loves how she is when she has no one but herself to impress.
“Is everything alright?” he asks, because he senses the tremor in her hands and the tremble in her voice.
“My Miko,” Ashi says, resting her chin on his shoulder. Her hair smells like a spring garden; like the flower section of their floating markets. “I am sorry.”
Miko’s breath halts in his lungs. Maybe his luck has ran out. Maybe he was never meant to teach her to read and write, never meant to tell her all the stories he knew behind the bookstore ‘til sunrise.
“My mother does not approve of you,” she whispers. Somehow, this is worse. There is no room for argument. Her family is all she’s ever had, and Miko would never make her choose. He loves her too much. “We will leave by the next harvest.”
The moon watches him give Ashi his ring. An emerald sits in the middle of bands of gold—the most expensive thing the scribe has ever possessed.
“Remember me then,” he says, an unspeakable weight inside him, they were like this once, happy but ripped apart, but those are times only the moon has witnessed; “it was my father’s.”
“I will.”
The ring ends up in the bottom of the river, blood washed away by the water. The bandits had finally caught up to her family. The dancer thinks of her scribe in her final moments; as long as he is safe. The cold ground greets her like an old friend. Like an old lover.
The moon is used to sacrifices.
Red is for passion.
Love. It was what they had, till the very end.
A samurai is strong. A samurai is impenetrable. Both of them were fearless. The first time their blades sing together, their souls sing with them.
Kenshi meets Kuro in the battlefield, clashing, life and death, before they see the insignias stamped on their armor. They find each other in the middle of chaos, peace in the height of war.
Kuro says Kenshi feels like the moon.
“You take bright things,” Kuro says, looking up at a star-strewn sky, “and carry them everywhere you go.”
His sister’s charm on his sword hilt jingles in the wind. His mother’s woven blanket is soft in Kuro’s calloused hands.
He doesn’t say it; the scholars would laugh and Kenshi even louder: but he feels a calling in his soul. Something that feels like it’s been searching for centuries, and something in the hand between his that feels like a promise finally fulfilled.
The moon laughs, high above them, though not for ridicule. It laughs in millennia, in sadness. This is the last it will see of the terrible king and queen of the Underworld; far from their homeland, though distance never much mattered to them. It was all above anyway.
Their souls have spread so thin: it was no matter that they were gods, leaving and loving with every iteration, traveling north and west and south, mountains and hills and clouds, places they always wanted to go if they would have been born as anything else—
Kenshi was always a romantic, even in secret. He laughs at Kuro’s scowls and makes him smile when he finds no other thing to smile about.
“Come on, Kuro,” Kenshi always said, “I might die if you don’t smile!”
Kuro loved to watch the sky. Even after the wars, even when they were old and gray, Kenshi would always ask their son to come visit, and drag his sister along if samurai duties did not keep her busy, and Kuro would always greet them with his head tilted up to the stars.
He would make special mochi on nights the moon was full, and he would always, always, ask Kenshi to watch the first snow with him. He loved taking his husband—they were only partners, but they married in secret—out to the bakeries in town, hands barely touching, Kenshi’s loud laughter tinkling across the streets.
Best of friends, they were called, soulmates.
Kenshi is Kuro’s silent happiness; and long after he dies, Kenshi had always been about keeping everything quiet.
In the end, Kuro meets Kenshi in the moonlight, and they walk down the path of cherry blossoms together. The moon watches them, and they stare back at him.
Thank you, they say, the final voices of royalty, for watching over us.
Black is for death.
“Or at least,” Kyungsoo says, rose stem between his teeth, “that’s what it traditionally means.”
“Some people just don’t care for tradition anymore,” Chanyeol sighs, dramatic, head resting on a sweater paw. Kyungsoo uses the opportunity to steal a glance—Chanyeol’s hair is ruffled by the soft winds of his tiny electric fan; gray hoodie settling nicely over his frame.
His boyfriend leans back, stretching, draping his body over the back of the chair. He’s feline: basking in the glow of the full moon seeping through the floor-to-ceiling windows, small cheshire smile curling with contentment.
Kyungsoo has long given himself up whenever Chanyeol chooses to be beautiful—roses and peonies and baby’s breath blooming in a riot over his heart. The flower shop is silent. It’s only the both of them, and even if they’ve been together for over a year now, Chanyeol always seems to strike at him the way he did when he first walked in through Junmyeon’s rose-tinted doors.
“What’re you thinking about, mochi?” Chanyeol says, opening one eye, expression smug at having caught Kyungsoo looking. “Do I look like an angel?”
“A cat,” Kyungsoo replies. “The annoying ones that fight on rooftops in the middle of the night and beg you for scraps.”
Chanyeol chuckles, hearty and unrestrained, leaving his spot to sit on his ankles in front of Kyungsoo. He runs a finger along his jaw. His lips are pulled up on one side, and Kyungsoo knows he couldn’t look away even if he tried.
“If you’re going to call me a stray,” Chanyeol teases, “at least take me home.”
“Whenever I do that, home always seems to be real messy right after,” Kyungsoo says, raising an eyebrow.
“Only the bed,” Chanyeol winks, leaning forward, placing a kiss on Kyungsoo’s lips. “Cats are very good companions, you know.”
His face is only a few inches from his, and Kyungsoo pulls him in, smiling against his teeth. Silent happiness clings to the fingers holding his coat, familiarity shining through the way Chanyeol cups his neck.
Kyungsoo knows that beauty is how you arrange it.
Some people loved thorns for their sharpness, red splattering onto flower petals, flowing down fingers. He knows there is beauty in pain; in things that should not be. But he likes to think that some people are born for each other. Complementary. He knows that there are those meant to be side-by-side, there is beauty in completeness, gentle hands roving across stems and the soft scent of flowers mingling with ink colors.
It’s moments like this: belonging flashing through his veins, a split-second of feeling as if they’d gone through so much, they were old souls, they could have been something else, once upon a time, they were gods, spirits racing aside so many others, he knows that smile, knows those hands—searching, searching, searching—it would be a shame to let go—
Marry me.
It’s only when surprise flits through Chanyeol’s eyes that Kyungsoo realizes he’s said it out loud.
“What did you say?” Chanyeol whispers, voice dangerously soft. “Soo—Kyungsoo, what did you say?”
“I—“ Kyungsoo sees a light in his boyfriend’s eyes that he’s never seen before. There’s no going back. “I want to marry you. I—obviously not right now—“
“—right, of course—“
“—but I—I want to—stop making that face, it’s not a big deal—“
“Not a big deal?”
“No!” Kyungsoo backtracks, “I—yes, I love you, but I’ve been thinking about it, no pressure, that’s all, it’s not—it’s just for me, Yeol.”
“You’re serious?” Chanyeol asks, eyes wide and shining. Shining. “Kyungsoo, I swear—“
“It was when we were watching that Marvel movie,” Kyungsoo assures him.
He focuses on the bouquet in front of him, flowers waiting for the final layout. There is only one single black rose needed to complete it. He fiddles with the stems, rearranges the hydrangeas.
“And you were just going off about how cool Black Panther was, and what sort of ink they must’ve used for his tattoos. I didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about. But all I could think was how I wanted to listen to you as long as possible, like that, and it just stuck. I could wake up to you, I realized, and I could go home to you, and I could see you with a ring that matched mine—“
Chanyeol cuts him off with a kiss, fierce and hurried, and it takes all of Kyungsoo’s strength to stop them from toppling over the buckets of water stationed across his workspace. Chanyeol settles into his lap, lips soft against his, arms caging Kyungsoo into his chest.
“You’re so—“ Chanyeol breathes in between kisses, “—unreal—”
Kyungsoo will never admit it, but Chanyeol makes him feel like he’s found his person. He walked in one day, white shirt and blue jeans, looking for all the world a lost kid trying to ask how much a bundle of pure baby’s breath flowers would cost, and became a constant presence in his life since: offering tattoo recommendations, sharing bus routes, asking him on sunset dates—what kind of person would Kyungsoo be, to not want to be with him forever?
“I just really love you,” Kyungsoo smiles when they finally pull apart, and then he spends the next fifteen minutes calming down a teary Chanyeol that’s too overwhelmed with recent events, shoulders rising in time with his small hiccups.
“How are you pretty even when you cry,” Kyungsoo coos, and it launches his tattoo-artist boyfriend—the one everyone is intimidated by, the one their friends go to for scary things—into full-on sobbing.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because of you!”
“Me? All I did was call you pretty!”
“I was barely holding after that proposal, you’re so irresponsible, you know how I am when you get soft and vulnerable—“
“How is that my fault?”
“Just shut up and hold me—”
“I’m doing that already!”
The moon looks on, their bickering travelling through the moonlight.
Humans were capable of so much, and are limited to so little. It sees what the florist cannot, the moment he felt the rush of belonging through his veins; he was right, but he would never know the depths of the truth he’d glimpsed—something so old and warm, barely existing, living in so many others.
Ghosts flutter in between the spaces. The taller one—there was spring in his heart, of course he would follow the one that tended to the flowers, gentle and kind, quick to anger, slow to act—holds the smaller one’s hands: death incarnate, silent and fierce, steadfast in everything he did. They watch Chanyeol promise Kyungsoo so many things, and They watch them tangle their arms together as they cross the street, steps light and expectant as they climb up to their shared apartment.
The one promise that connects all of them: a promise completed.
I will be by your side.
They will find each other, again and again and again.