Chapter Text
Beyond the golden gates, there led a mystical tower that contained copious amounts of luscious green trees. Red and white rose bushes blooming in grace with birds tweeting and chirping in a sing song way. To those who visited, it may have been seen as a sanctuary or even Heaven in their eyes. To the one who lives in this tower, it was nothing but a prison. One full of clocks and scars.
We, human beings, have hearts that go lubb and dubb. The citizens of this world had clocks in its place. No one had a heart in this world – with clocks as their hearts, it was only a matter of time until it ticked away like a time bomb. The moment it stopped ticking, it meant the moment you would stop living.
In this tower, there was a young man who was always on the hunt – looking for clocks all over the world. It was something he tinkered with as he was always playing around with time. He was known as the Timekeeper; a controller of time. The creator of life in a way.
There were those who called him a life saviour. Mending and fixing a broken clock meant creating a new life and new person. There were those who thought otherwise. In this world of Wonderland, there are many faceless citizens. Right at birth, they were deemed unimportant. However, he mainly fixed the clocks of broken faceless cards. They saw him as cruel as why should they be brought into a world where they were seen as neutral beings. They had no goals and no motivation to keep their lives going. It was too painful to let them live.
The Timekeeper lived a lonely and solitude life. On the rare occasion, you would see him with someone. However, It was usually chronometers, chromospheres, pendulums, tuning forks and oscillators that kept him company. This man would keep trying to fix as many clocks as he could – his goal: to heal the world of devastation. He kept to himself though. Did he truly befriend these faceless citizens? Has he ever tried? What made this world devastating? Why was life so cruel?
Many times, he brought life back and it tore himself from the inside to the out. He held on a face with grim but he was truly happy at one point. Love can come in many forms – it never had to be relationships with lovers or partners. They can come from friendship, affection for those who come and other forms of desire. There are times he questions if he is allowed to have love in his life – what is truly stopping him from allowing himself? He had been wounded deep inside. If you were to ask him, he would say “I may have won that battle but I have lost that war.”
He hopes that the love of his life doesn’t see him as someone scary but one who is worth befriending, one who is worth fighting for and one who will love him with all his flaws. If love was not meant for him, he knows that the ticking of his own clock would have paused years ago. Yet it is still running and ticking by the second.
The Timekeeper can be friendly when he wants to. He enjoys his teatime affairs in a unique matter – Hibiscus rose scones with a side of Coca Cola. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare would always invite him and many others to their tea parties. It was always an extravagant time and yet, at the same time it was not. The Queen of Hearts had despised the Mad Hatter’s singing capabilities. Thereby, he was sentenced to death for murdering time – forever stuck at 6:00pm. The time for tea parties forever running.
From time to time, the Knave of Hearts will stop by the clock tower to give the Timekeeper trinkets and clocks that he has found on his own journey. It has been many years of visitations. One could even call them best friends from this fact alone. What goes inside the clock tower is only for the two of them to know.
Do you know Alice? She was once a visitor to this world and she held the rarest item of all. A heart – one that beat with the sounds of lubb and dubb. Envy was a fickle thing amongst the citizens. However, Alice had everyone warming up to her with friendship and curiosity. She may have been an absent-minded female who truly only wanted to go home to her family. Her adventures consisted of hanging out with the Wonderland citizens. To her, the faceless citizens were not faceless at all. They may have looked similar but there was always something notable about every single one. From the mole on one’s left arm to the scar on the back of another’s thigh. Each citizen was unique. The Timekeeper even allowed her to stay in his home and helped her out on her quest.
He was different for a bit – a more solemn face could be seen compared to his usual grimace. He was able to find joy in small things – the setting skies that were painted with red, orange and pink strips, roses blooming from bud to full bushels, the rain that pitter pattered that helped bring the flowers to full fruition. Her quest for home came to an end and Alice’s time was short lived. When she left the world, a part of him left as well.
Even with limitations, one could see he was a diligent man working towards a goal of friendship and love. He will forever be fixing clocks till the end of the ticking of his own. He was known as Lee Jihoon.
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