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Chrysanthemums are meant to be laid on graves, decorate the expanses of rundown granite tombstones and provide some comfort for the souls of the departed to run their fingers against, Lee Chan supposes there resides a partial truth within that.
Except now that the pristine petals are scattered under his bare soles and he holds the bouquet of fragrant blossoms in in his clasped hands, the colour of the flower’s dress is blending with the fabric of his robes. And he wonders whether it’s an offence to those who’ve left that he gets to bask in this swelteringly sweet scent before his actual death.
Shuffles his arms slightly so, that the silk of his attire covers the curve of his limbs and stops pooling at his wrists, perhaps the gods will forgive him and the remembered pity him, since eternal sleep is awaiting him anyway. Whispering his name sultrily.
Does it matter if a garden blooms under him or in his palms prior to his burial in earth’s warmth, when alone his presence in the ivory temple signifies the descent of his soul in the underworld? Chan is nothing but a sacrifice to appease the master of the unspoken after all.
It is but an ordinary truth he’s learned to accept since the memory of his mother’s tears first plagued his sleepless nights, somewhere between a twilight that promises comfort and a sunrise that holds nothing but gloom. In a realm that lets him wander and burst at the edges the man can’t thrum his fingers on wet grass long enough before it withers under his touch.
The maids that had woven the jasmines in his hair and lathered his skin with essential oils, had not once looked him in the eyes, not as much as breathed, during the preparing rituals. And he’d wondered whether they had also names and aspirations, if the purpose of their lives ended by the tips of their braided locks or if they had vain reservations about their role in being accomplices of someone’s funeral.
He supposes now that the night breeze raises the hair on his nape and licks away what little nerves he had yet managed to shed away, it is in hindsight slightly unfair both to himself and the temple servants to reminisce about a destiny he’s never allowed himself to mourn about for a second too long.
Lamenting what hasn’t been elicits a dull ache more than what has, and Chan knows not how to justify the meaning of his existence beyond appeasing the harbinger of doom, when the wrinkly priests and feudal lord Choi have thrusted upon his shoulders the stability of their kingdom. Fairly speaking, the man has lived a content life, as much as one person whose sacrifice determines the prosperity of a nation is permitted to say, carelessly running through flowery meadows and indulging in shivering boat rides during summer.
Perhaps one of the smallest pleasures he’s placated this latent sorrow with, has been the forging of human bonds and short-spanned friendships. An elegant wave to the oldest son of the clan’s head, sneaking out to the phoenix lantern festival with the daughters of the temple’s keeper or a brief hug with the foreign servant they’d assigned to protect him since his mother’s death. He regrets not having called him brother.
“My lord, have you ever contemplated about the heavens and their cruelty?” Junhui is brushing through his hair when he asks it, opal comb gleaming in the reflection of the refined copper mirror and humming between breaths a lullaby of his land. Chan nods once, although it’s a lie. Wouldn’t it be unkinder in a way to invent philosophies of fate’s apathy and fall in a pit of desperation than to simply acknowledge the reality of his existence and attempt to feel the taste of plump tangerines?
“I suppose sometimes I allow myself to wonder if my lord’s life would have been changed, were you to have a different lineage.” The older man speaks softly as he opens the carved wooden jewellery box to store the comb away and stares at the younger’s echoed slightly blurred self, when the sounds of night mingle with their breaths.
Chan sighs to himself and wears a refined smile, “Does dreaming not pain more than simply existing?” – The shuffle of sleeping robes being put on, – “It would have been my duty to let our country flourish no matter my blood. The only thing I hope is that the immortal is merciful.”
Neither mention how death is the least of humane deities and they both retire for the night without any other word escaping their lips.
There are twenty-three petals on the flower closest to his cladded chest and he wonders if similarly to everything else he’s wearing, the colour of the inner lining, the silk fabric of his sash, the bareness of his feet and the mark of a silver oleander painted on his forehead, this seemingly trivial number holds meaning. Whether it’s been plucked to represent the years a sacrifice spends on earth before it is tugged away in the same fashion by the divine hands of a figure who’ll never know of naïve vulnerability.
He pries his gaze away from the white petals and lets them wonder lower towards the stem of its sister, foolishly hoping this one won’t have as many blushing curves and reassuring him that perhaps not everything around him has been solely crafted for the purpose of this day, of this moment that never seems to come.
No one actually knows how the god looks like, if he takes on various forms of life or adorns himself with the flesh of mortals to ease his offerings into eternal oblivion, if there are dark scales oozing poison on his body or if he’s moulded out of pure cosmos and needs not breathing to be. Whether he, it, lives in the first place, because could the deity of soul’s demise carry out an action of its counterpart?
The ancient scrolls don’t teach about his appearance or what awaits a sacrifice the moment their duty has been fulfilled, instead it only describes in words and sentences masterfully embellished the proper etiquette to follow in disillusioned manners, not to anger the being and reaffirm the prophecy of the bond.
Chan has always been unsure if he would prefer for death to be something ugly and twisted so that he in his final breaths could allow himself to detest it without repercussions and reprimands, or if he would much rather have it dazzle him and warm his heart so that it feels as if the beauty of his seemingly meaningful life doesn’t only encompass his flesh but his soul.
And he’s begged, oh how he’s kneeled at the altar of ruin for a sign, an omen, or a mantra to live by, but withered prayers cannot chant love and there is nay a thing someone who’s been birthed to end, can do before celestial teeth heave open the layers of his skin.
He doesn’t weep, tears can’t seem to elude orbs not meant to contain them and he smiles to himself at the realization that even during the agonizing expectancy of the god’s arrival, his body seems to not defer from what it’s been compelled to do. Instead, because the sibling of the virgin chrysanthemum does end up being its twin, he burrows his nose inside their petals to fool his mind into registering the scent of blood as that of ornamental blossoms.
Then the air sweltering with the nocturnal breeze stills and in a gleam of moonlight becomes eerily cold, as if streaks of snow were enveloping every breath of his and as he forces his face to look up, petals under his feet whirling about, the sensation disappearing after a lungful as if it never existed in the first place.
Chan wonders whether the immortal had through nature’s jest prophesied the human’s fate, and he grasps the stems of his honorary funerary bouquet a tad tighter as he waits for the god to manifest himself. It’s as if the canvas of the opaque sky has become diluted ink and the stars all twinkle above the temple’s open roof and he can’t get enough of the bright odd scent in the air, of jasmines that shouldn’t be here but are.
And then as monumental as it’d been to discern the sinister coming of ‘death’ in its own sanctuary, the human wonders if this will be all the deity finds him worthy to be subjected to, because it is peculiarly anticlimactic how briefly it all transpires. It’s overwhelming and devastating, as if his bones were being fractured and then all of a sudden, no more.
The universe shifts back into its axis. Conflicting feelings of defeat and grief swirling inside his veins, and he hopes the godly being isn’t too displeased after by the taste of it. So, he closes his eyes and breathes in once slowly, because that is what he’s supposed to do after the heavens’ child has made his presence known to the measly mortal.
Be still and silent, as if he’s never set foot on earth in the first place, as if his greyish and pristine robes were the only proof of his heart having beaten.
“This devoted subject greets the immortal and humbly offers his soul as a token of the promise between earth and heaven.” His voice echoes between the marbles of the pillars and flickers a few of the candelas’ fires near him, as the lights transfigure behind closed eyelids, and he strangely feels himself bemoaning how innocuously he’d spoken the sentence when he’d just granted the deity final permission to be devoured.
Supposedly now is the moment it all ends, when the temple rumbles from the immortal’s might filtering through the air and swallowing down the remnants of his soul before streaming through night and blood and shortly afterwards the temple priests come to fetch his robes. However, because Chan finds it slightly foolish even of himself to have believed in rolls written by those left behind and not gone, something else happens.
And he discovers that at the end of it all, when the illusion of choice has never been a privilege granted to him throughout his lifetime, when he’s been shaped to be offered and tasted, the heavenly presence is at the root of its existence a scale waiting to be tipped.
“Mortal, time has stilled, and the world is deaf. If you choose to escape your fate, you can find refuge in the fields of the north occulted by leaves of willows. There will not be punishment for neither you nor your people. Say the word and I’ll free you. Or hush and be consumed.”
The sounds of the god’s voice is a thunder from the cosmos as if the moon itself were speaking down on him, it envelops his whole being and exposed skin as if the air itself were caressing him, it’s low and deep, pleasant and terrifying in a way that reverberates both inside his ribcage and all around him. As if he were a bud of this mortal realm’s garden being flood by the divine.
A decision. The offering is being offered something. Temptation seems irrelevant and irrational to fall into, even if the immortal were not lying at the moment and he feels his lungs constricting at the same time he inhales the delicate scent of heavenly jasmines more than that of earthly chrysanthemums. Because accepting would not signify anything other than prolonging an existence whose purpose would wilt.
“I only wish for my immortal lord to devour me gently if you must.”
Chan doesn’t open his eyes, and the divine being doesn’t answer his plea, so he waits.
Breathes once.
And waits.
However, nothing comes, and he wonders whether what he’s heard has been the product of a feverish hallucination of his, if he’s convinced himself of this fabled interaction to make sense of the absence of the god he’s lavished with his hushed prayers.
He sighs once and in the quiet moment of human emotion he allows himself, feels the hand of someone settling lightly on the expanse of his cheek, stroking the skin and landing down on the middle of his neck, where his veins cluster and throb. The sensation is both cool and scorching, as if someone were searing blisters onto his flesh and soothing it with rainwater at the same time and although he doesn’t recoil at the deceptive gentleness, he can’t help but flinch his eyes agape.
The first thing Chan notices, is that the immortal is achingly beautiful in a way that lets sorrow and solitude coat his face and reverence simmer in his onyx eyes. He is a man, taller than the human and broader in ways that juxtapose the lines of his own being, garlanded by fabrics of obscurity and silver cuffs and earrings that dangle until they reach his shoulders.
There’s this faint glow at every minimal shift of pupils and muscles, and he wonders whether the divine should be rendered and inhibited this way for humans to gaze and worship, if it is right for such a beautiful creature to obfuscate itself so that the sacrifice has the privilege to look at it.
His dark eyebrows frame his unmoving gaze and a straight nose smoothes the harsh lineaments of his face, as his cheeks sink to the pale pink of his closed mouth. The disguise of flesh that the immortal inhabits, looks soft to the touch and Chan is overcome by the desire to run his fingers along the singular scar stretching from the god’s philtrum to the edge of his bottom lip.
There’s an unperceivable press of a thumb on the area where the divine hand rests and he feels his vision growing dizzy with it, as the god’s scent penetrates his lungs and the whole cosmos rains down upon him. It’s not painful per se, neither unnecessarily lingering and when the foreign skin leaves him, he finds himself both craving and fearing the contact.
“Breath.”
And he sees the man’s head leaning down, hair falling in front of his forehead and he observes the way they seem to move at a time completely dissimilar than the one he lives in, as if they were being lulled by an outer force, and they tickle the outer edge of his chin as the man inhales the scent of the flowers in his hold.
Chan doesn’t move nor, he realizes, has any intention to do so, as he finds himself transfixed by the way the immortal’s eyelashes fan out on his cheeks and the tip of his nose grazes the petals. He seems lonely, as he carefully traces the edges of the chrysanthemums, as if they were whispering something only divine ears can listen to and it strikes the human deeply at his core, how death must be in a perpetual state of grief.
Then it happens in the blink of an eye, much like that unnerving chilliness of his descent, in a motion that has him questioning its actual happening all over again. The immortal of darkness and enchanting jasmine, his skin a reflection of the moon shining somewhere above them, kisses the same spot on his throat he’d just touched moments before.
It burns and itches, spreads throughout his body and reaches his chest, all the way down to his toes, causes heat to arise in parts of his body that have never felt his own and that he’s never allowed himself to touch nor wonder about. He’s parched and quenched all at once and he wants something, anything, except he doesn’t know what.
Chan has never been kissed this way, nor from any other person than his mother for that matter, and he feels a shiver coursing through his spine at the painstakingly soft peck landed on his warm flesh. And observes the way the deity’s shoulder blades mould as he elevates his body back into its erect position, raking his own gaze on every crevice of the human’s body.
He wishes to never pry his gaze away from the shadows of the immortal’s being, to continue feeling this dull sensation of tender ache inside of his heart at the sight of the deity, because it seems as if the mere act of kissing is bringing the other on the edge of desolation and madness.
The mortal opens his mouth to say something, speak his doubts into the night air, perhaps let out a disbelieving sigh or wail out loud and begrudgingly, despite the tears that even at the moment only coat his eyes but not his cheeks, however nothing comes out and his grip on the bouquet falters as he reminds himself to breathe.
“Your duty has been fulfilled mortal.” He stills. A mere unexpected touch on the pulsing centre of his being and the chance to gaze upon a real child of skies and suns, and after this he’s supposed to return to his life? Or has he already perished since the first moments the god has entered the temple, and he’s supposed to take this as a sort of saving grace? Should he bow and follow him to the afterlife, or has he now become his servant for the remainder of the universe’s expanse?
Chan raises his own hand to touch the flesh that’s been so gently defiled and then stops a few fingers shy of it, because is he allowed to sense that which has been infused with the essence of heaven or would that mean a sin boundless enough for the god to devour him as originally intended.
The immortal wordlessly detaches himself from him and picks up the flowers from his hold, careful not to touch him again as if the mortal weren’t still reeling in from the feel of cool lips on his flushed skin. “The price of promise has been upheld. Everyone will remember that a sacrifice has been offered, only not who. You’re free now.”
Chan tilts his head at the words, so freedom is as simple as allowing yourself to be kissed. So why does the immortal look as if the universe itself is dawning upon him, his waterline begging to be plied downwards by his mortal hands, why is he continuing to plaster these offerings of acquiescence in the air, when it’s the human who’s supposed to strip himself naked and tear his chest open?
Then the divinity talks again and this time he sees how the candles around them dim out, “The memory of your existence hasn’t been altered, however know this. If you return to the mortal world your soul will still be tethered to me hence why I fear, every time I take a life beyond its passing your eyes may shed tears.”
There’s the clink of the one longer silver earring, moon pendant twinkling, “The others have recounted in their prayers that it isn’t painful. So be assured.” – There’s almost a melancholic way he extends the solace, as if he were telling that to himself more than the human, - “A snowstorm is upon us, the time to l-”
“Does my immortal lord ache then?” Chan doesn’t mean to say it, he is not really conscious of where it comes from, if he’s thought it the very first moment the god stared back into his eyes or only when the soft mouth caressed his throat slightly uneven from the scar.
And he would have lowered his chin and implored forgiveness for his impertinence in another lifetime, in this one he would only like to uncover the reason of a kiss’ tenderness.
Wonwoo observes the painted silver blossom on the human’s forehead, lets his gaze wonder over the chrysanthemums braided in his dark hair and the curve of his eyelashes, memorizes the pigment of his pupils and the fullness of his mouth.
He’s slightly shorter than the immortal and his white robes are slightly pulled down by the height he’s clasped the chrysanthemum bouquet in, pale skin exposed to the night air and smooth where it creeps up from the silk fabric. Every feature of the sacrifice is delicate and at the same time, manly, in a way that reminds him of the jades of his sword.
This mortal is peculiar, he entices the deity in ways foreign to the span of time that he’s existed through, there’s no hidden meaning to his words and no malice in his bashfulness as if he didn’t expect for the god to heed his request the way it did. Then again, he supposes, none of the sacrifices ever do for that matter.
The few that he’s met, that hadn’t wept from glee at the prospect of living a quiet unassuming life in the north, away from the ones who’d offered them like lambs for slaughter, and instead agreed to completely fulfil their roles as martyrs for the greatness of their country, had always been particularly inventive with their requests. Some begging for the god to strike doom upon an enemy, others pleading for good fortune to shower their families or gazing upon their lovers one last time before being eaten.
He's never blamed them, neither refused their appeals, after all they hadn’t exactly broken the covenant of feast and fast if he thought about it, nor had they actively chosen to be selected as the ones to be devoured by an immortal out of free will, much like him.
They’ve all simply been thrusted in roles unbefitting of their standings.
Wonwoo has often consumed the flesh of the sacrifices, granted they’ve all tasted the same, sorrowful, and he’s learned that in the human world the practice of something called cannibalism exists that consists in eating those of your own kind, leading him to often wonder why some of his worshippers would refer to the ritual as such.
Granted, no one except him, the sacrifices, priests and other deities, are aware of the fact that the de facto execution of the consummation the ignorants imply to be a simple act of ingesting mortal skin, is only limited to the carnal and sensual aspect of it. He’s engaged in manifestations of sexual inhibition, yes, but they’ve never reached the ultimate stage of its course, neither has he ever gone beyond what the humans lost in the moment had instructed him to do.
That’s why it comes as an uncomfortable gust of night breeze, the realization that he quite doesn’t want to explain to the beautiful human what the act of sacrifice consists in, as he slowly raises his face from where he’s burrowed it in the funerary bouquet and hears the quite breaths fanning the crown of his head.
What does devour him gently mean anyway, Wonwoo is quite at a loss over how to appease the mortal without losing himself fully and inhaling his soul, it’s never been this frustrating before to restrain himself from letting the sacrifices’ souls not perish under his touch as they would later recount of their fears and surprise in their prayers when they would go back.
Because they all go back after all. As if the only unexpected alteration to their lives, were the random tears streaming down their cheeks at odd times of the day when the god would be carrying out his duty, as if they hadn’t met him in the first place nor known the taste of his lips.
However, this mortal’s skin tastes of salvation, there’s no one he wished to meet a last time before his supposed death, no one he wanted hardship or pleasure to befall, not even himself as he agreed to be sacrificed gently, kindly, and it becomes increasingly grim for Wonwoo to detach his mouth from the pulse as the flavour of serenity oozes on his tongue.
He realizes this mostly as the man speaks up as he’s about to send him back to his family, wherever they may be, probably in clothes of night and mourning his absence or detached from it all and gulping down wine to celebrate another century of peace as they’ve illuded themselves to.
The mortal’s skin quivers as he gazes back at the deity, “Does my immortal lord ache then?” And Wonwoo stills at that, out of all the things the humans he’s met have enquired about or said to him during the course of his being, he would most likely consider this one the most unsettling.
Death itself doesn’t hurt. It’s more the path that leads to it that can cause pain or harm, either to oneself or the ones near the person, but death, the immortal, does ache every time he is forced to reap a soul. And it is an all-consuming chasm inside his body more than a mere twinge of discomfort.
Hence why it had felt most liberating and gratifying, when the first sacrifice that had agreed to be devoured, he remembers leaving an open-mouthed kiss on her wrist, had been uttering during a temple visit about how the act of crying whenever Wonwoo would revenue, felt more like a tender hug than someone choking her.
However, no one has ever asked him directly whether the act itself hurts, and he finds himself quite bewildered over what he’s supposed to reveal at this point, because contrary to popular belief the gods are quite capable of lying. All of them spin tales of deception, only he remains the singular exception, because death never conceals the truth. It can’t.
Twirling the stem of one of the flowers he’s picked up from the bouquet in his hold and inspects its pristine petals, he deliberately lets the remaining twenty-two fall to the ground and slowly tucks the chosen one behind the mortal’s ear. He finds it suits him in a way, and not at the same time, as if a chrysanthemum weren’t quite the right flower to confine his beauty.
“Tell me mortal, do you think ‘death’ pains now that it has touched you?”
The man hesitates a while before responding, he observes the way his breath has become shallower and his eyes have shifted from staring at the god’s transparent owns, to allowing himself to fully inspect him back, raking the dark irises over Wonwoo’s shoulders and robes before settling on his lips.
A soft breeze of jasmine penetrates his senses and he’s rattled by the feel of it, when has he ever tried to ease the sacrifices with his powers through his representative flowers he wonders, he cannot touch them after all. Everything except chrysanthemums wilts in his hold, even the humans he touches end up withering sooner or later and are forced to bare the curse of his commands through sorrow when they leave him.
“I’ve seen it before, and I’ve heard about it from other mouths. But now that it has become mine, I think death isn’t meant to hurt the one who receives it only the one that gifts it.” – He raises his hand and plucks the flower away from where Wonwoo had left it to rest on the cusp of his ear and plants a peck on its corolla, - “May I be pretend to be the master of my own fate until it kisses me again?”
Gods don’t shiver, they aren’t affected by meteorological phenomena the way humans are and still in that moment he’s sure something akin to a tremble grazes his shoulders as he hears the soft velvety tone in the quiet of the temple. He nods once and puts his hands behind his back to watch what he’ll be doing next, a fluttering expectation flowing inside him as he watches the other breathe.
“Call me Chan.” He says, so Wonwoo complies.
“Hold my cheeks in your hands.” He whispers, so Wonwoo comes closer.
“Tell me your name.” He urges, so Wonwoo utters it slowly.
The human, Chan, is like the one blooming magnolia that he’s so often seen ‘life’ nurture in the garden of reincarnation, Jeonghan always made sure to pour particular care over it because apparently one could never know when it would decide to reach its most delicate stage during the springtime and he observes the light pink flush adorning the man in front of him scatter like starlight.
He strokes his fingers over the expanse of his skin and tenderly traces the shapes of his being until they reach the semi-closed petals of his mouth, and he sighs into the night, a sound that morphs into a faraway thundercloud of wonder.
“Kiss me.” He pleads, so Wonwoo dips his head and captures the lips in a fond act of submission and devotion, because perhaps the true purpose of a sacrifice is to offer to a god whose existence leads to despair not flesh but a vessel for the god's heavenly tears.
And he holds and ravages, consumes every inch of a soul that has for the first time seen him for who he is and not who he represents, someone whose skin tastes of endearment and sunshine, whose pristine robes he would like to sully with roses of blood and promises of eternal sleep.
He kisses and kisses and kisses.
Until he halts and sighs, bare and less like a deity but more like a sinner, as if Chan were the personification of the ruins of this temple, they’ve found themselves in. Because death can’t help but suffer at the hands of care.
"Leave me. I beg of you. Free yourself from this torment." Wonwoo whispers it in strings of molten lullabies and twinkling stars, but how can the voice of a deity whose essence inks the canvas of skies not echo all around him and reverberate against every fragile bone of a human body?
It should come across as pathetic how he'd attempted to hush the desperate tone of his voice as if he could ever be capable to restrict his divine powers enough not to let night become the amphitheatre to his diaphragm and conceal his heavenly status from Chan. Instead, because he sees his reflection in the painting of earthly orbs, the man only smiles at him.
“Then why does it feel so sweet?” – A lungful of jasmine, – “When I die, you won’t mourn for me because I’m a human and you’re a god. I now know it is my fate to fall in death’s arms, because you’re Wonwoo and I’m Chan.”
They stay a while in the still embrace, and when the temple priests come to collect the ceremonial robes from the ground and send out a quiet prayer to the immortal in thankfulness of his mercy, he turns around at the sound of his beloved’s delicate laughter.
The night breeze accompanies them as they wonder around, walking between constellations and waltzing in the gaps of the onyx sky journeying through life and death between the rhythmic cadence of their kisses.