Chapter Text
Illusions. She feared her life is barely the center of her story. She feared this life is just a figment of her imagination and that it will disappear for being almost too perfect to bear.
Everything seemed unusual to this day. Her mother started catching colds in the summer. Winter spared the month of blooms in sporadic frosty weather. Sometimes a blizzard comes showing in the city to force the citizens inside their homes for a deep slumber in wonderland.
“It’s still snowing…” the mortal looked by the window pane, watching the flakes gracefully dance in the wind with its other cool crystals. She furrowed her brows, exhaling a warm, chilly breath before glancing back at her mother with a frown.
Her mother quietly snored on her rocking chair with an ongoing knitting process on her lap.
The florist looked at the cat on the window sill while tilting her head. The cat did the same then meowed in a questioning tone.
Yuna glanced back at her clothed fingers and decided to pet it with her bare hands.
“I don’t even know who I am. Why am I always chasing my broken past?” Yuna questioned particularly no one but the air.
Seeing how the cat just tilted and looked at her standing posture, she surprisingly received a hum from her feline companion.
“You are a flower trapped inside a human.”
Yuna glanced back at the shadow of the cat with widening eyes. The cat purred after it spoke as it moved along with a silhouette of a man behind its small frame.
“What…”
The cat spoke once again, pointing at her wrist.
“A human with the tears of the Smeraldo is bound to be the other half of the flower of the moon tree.”
Yuna furrowed her brows then gazed down her left wrist. The tattoo carved more onto her skin as it seared painfully on her. Yuna rubbed her eyes and murmured words to herself.
“When you wake up, you’ll receive an invitation. It’ll bring you to a place where you can collect the pieces of your past.”
Yuna blinked. “What do you mean?”
Her feline companion suddenly appeared in his human form with its purple will-o-wisp forming around him. The talking cat had a body of its own and he towered above her petite figure across the counter. The immortal smiled, startling her by surprise.
The lights now shone above his soft purple curls while his blue cat eyes beamed at the female’s bedazzled expression. Just as she glanced down to see his chest, she saw a growing grey color across his heart.
“Once you remember how you were brought to this realm, you have to find me.”
Yoongi scrunched his face in a painful expression and held his chest where the grey color started painfully searing his front. He managed to show a smile at the maiden even in his painful state.
Yuna looked at him confusingly. In a hitch of breath, she watched his eyes gleam at her, making her focus only on his face and voice.
“Find…find you?”
Yoongi seethed painfully, his heart now rapidly abducting his own colors. He held his chest then sighed. “The arboretum. Bring me the basket of tangerines then I’ll… I’ll bring you to Wonderland.” he croaked.
The reigning curse was never expected to move faster than what the guardians intended to imagine. Wonderland will extinct soon if Yuna failed to heal the moon tree.
With a weak snap of his fingers, Yuna found herself by the windowpane in an uncomfortable position. The cat was nowhere to be found and she was snapped back to reality with nothing but overflowing questions about the uncanny dream.
Yuna opened her phone and checked the time and the weather outside. It still snowed in the month of April. Hurriedly, she typed what seemingly made her research in the first place: the arboretum.
There are a couple of arboretums she already visited before. One was the Namsan Botanical garden. The thing is, how can she guarantee the place she’ll visit in the first place? The cat didn’t even tell her the exact garden.
“Ha! I’m definitely going crazy. First, a grim reaper and now a talking cat?”
But her actions contradicted her words. Whatever made her do this was merely because of sympathy. The broken guardian was something painful to watch in her dreams. The way his features pleaded for help convinced her to genuinely lend a hand as well.
“Wonderland…Why would a cat bring me to Wonderland.”