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The castle is green. At least, it probably is. Jungwon doesn't know where that thought came from anymore, since he's never seen the outside of this place. He'd woken up in soft white sheets, a swirling emerald ceiling above him, and one sentence in his mind. The castle is green.
He'd sat up and taken in his surroundings, and only once he'd done that had the familiar streams of thought wound their way back in. Why was he here? What was this place?
He'd sat there, waiting for feeling to return to his body, but all that remained was a sort of emptiness. Light, but hollow. Almost like a husk. And then another sentence carved its way into his mind.
Read the scroll.
The scroll was on the table, Jungwon knew. Somehow. It's still on the table. He hasn't touched it since he unrolled it, read the words his mind compelled him to. Two rocks had sat on either side of it. He'd used them to prop it open, though he didn't need to read it a second time. He could recite it in his sleep.
You're dead, was written on its crackly surface. Your rebirth is at your feet. Choose.
It's as inscribed in his mind as the castle is green.
The room is circular, with opulent walls like a palace, neat layers upon layers of metal details varying in viridian hues. A blank brown door on the right, another blank brown door across from the bed, and a floor-to-ceiling window to the ocean making up a section of the wall on the left.
Upon closer inspection, the window isn't just a window with glass, but it's like the ocean just. Stops. Level with the rest of the walls, suspended by something beyond Jungwon's comprehension. It's easier to call it a window.
Through it shines a pretty blue underwater scene, cerulean and coral, sand and sunbeams. The mermaid—merman? merperson?—is pretty, too. His eyes sparkle and his smile promises ease, passion, his hair sticking up in black spikes. When he wants to feel loved, Jungwon sits and gazes into his eyes for a while, until he realizes his hand has come up to touch, and he snaps out of it.
He's woken at night, or what he thinks is night, to see the dark storms and frenzies quickly covered back up by the bright facade too many times to think the ocean would be a joy. He wasn't meant to see that, all those times. Somehow, knowing this doesn't make his decision any easier.
The door directly in front of Jungwon's bed simply opens to white stairs and darkness, winding down, down, down. A man stands before the threshold and tilts his head, silver hair perfectly messy, a gold necklace draped across the base of his throat. His eyes hold a playfulness, a duality.
The smirk that tugs at his lips makes Jungwon think of things he's wanted and never had. But the clangs and hollers and fiery light flaring behind him brew hesitation, hesitation that closes the door and wanders him to envelope himself in bed. There, he lies, until the boredom, the restlessness, and the urge to consider his options again return.
A nightstand had appeared at his bedside, not too long after he'd gone though this routine enough to become familiar with it. All three bottom drawers were empty. The topmost held two photos, and Jungwon should've known the people in them when he saw them.
He still doesn't, really, but he can recall the first one's steadfastness and care, and the way he would fall over giggling and shoving as he was teased. It has to be from when his hair was blond, as there's no way his hair how Jungwon remembers it right before his death was that light, even in the black-and-white picture. Beside him, arms entwined, sits another person Jungwon should've remembered by now. He doesn't even remember this picture.
It's useless to wonder how long it's been, but Jungwon wonders all the same.
He was tall, Jungwon remembers, with a face so him he never thought he'd see anyone else's like it. He was right. He didn't see many more faces before it all ended and now he's trapped with the same six.
Trapped is a strong word. That's what he is, though, isn't it? The ornate walls make his prison, or is it one wall, since it wraps all the way around? Continuous, like this cycle he's trapped in. That word again. Why can't he just choose?
The third and last person he should remember by now smiles, a bit of a nervous, worried, endearing expression, alone in the second picture, squinting in the sun, his dog beside him. This one still has some color, while the first has become completely black-and-white. They fade a little more each day.
The thought that one day he could open the drawer and be faced with two white pieces of nothing fills him with dread, denial. He can't forget another face. Nothing here reflects his own. Someone in these pictures could be him and he wouldn't know. He doesn't know, but he also does know, that none of these people are him. He still clings for the last bit of hope that he'd recognize himself given the opportunity.
There's no real reason he doesn't choose the third door. The man there stands steady in a relentless blizzard, fluffy crystals dusting his eyebrows and eyelashes. The faint smile on his lips makes Jungwon want to see the full thing. He imagines it to be brighter but more bearable than ice reflecting sun. He imagines basking in the beckoning gentleness he exudes, imagines wrapping his arms around his waist, squeezing through his thick coat. And though snow flurries and wind howls behind him, Jungwon knows he'd be warm.
He has no voice here, he's discovered. None of them ever speak, and Jungwon's always left imagining what their voices might be like. He's probably doing it wrong. He hasn't heard a voice since before his death, and even that he hardly remembers. Perhaps this is something he's meant to do in silence. Make his decision in the volume of his own mind.
Some days, he pushes the sheets back so he can sink into the bare mattress and soak in the ceiling's opalescence, yearning to hear more than the bubbling of the ocean he convinces himself is there because otherwise it's disconcertingly silent, and the clanging, the howling. Those two he knows are there for sure.
It's a day like this Jungwon blinks and suddenly he hears. A song floats around the room, acquiescing like bubbles and drifting from surface to surface. He gets up to search, but nowhere in the room has anything changed.
He gives up before the day is over. The song continues, and Jungwon's ears feel raw, like they're being continuously scrubbed and then soothed. How much more can he take?
Several days pass, and the song plays, it plays, it plays. It never stops. It never changes, like the ocean at night did. It never grows louder or softer.
Whatever record player it's coming from, Jungwon still can't find. But he knows it's there. Where else would it be coming from? If he can't know anything for sure about this place, he will force something sure.
Eventually, it begins to feel as if the song has played for as long as he's been here. It begins to feel like forever, no beginning or end.
He can't help wondering again, how long has he been here? How long has it been since that day? He doesn't know. It had felt too precious of a place to disturb by marking the days, gouging the floor with one of the rocks holding the scroll open. Why did it have to feel precious, back then?
This, he also doesn't know. Over time, over the days and nights he feels passing despite never seeing the sun or stars, a resentment has built in him, chafing his mind against this tranquil, beautiful, in-between place. His prison.
He's never been indecisive, that's one thing he remembers, so why is it now that he is? If indecision was the cause of his death, why hasn't he learned and grown and moved on?
Your rebirth is at your feet. Is he going to keep waiting?
How long, the voice on the record sings. The sheets are warm. He waits for the itch to return—the itch to get up, reconsider the decision he can take all the time in existence to make. The cycle has forever to repeat.
But the sheets, the pillows, the mattress are so cozy, so inviting. He'll never have to choose if he never gets up, and just like that, his decision is made.