Work Text:
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They said the hibiscus represented self-destruction.
Maybe that was why it bloomed here.
Its petals were the color of bright red, it trembled in the wind, yet it did not fall.
Yoo Joonghyuk stared at it from where he stood by a broken window, the horizon was painted with a golden sky.
The flower shouldn’t have been able to grow here, not in a ruined world, not in soil that had long forgotten warmth.
And yet, there it was.
“Why do you keep on living in such a world.” he murmured.
Behind him, footsteps approached
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” Kim Dokja replied, his tone soft with amusement. “If something can bloom here, it means it hasn’t given up yet.”
Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t turn. “You’re comparing yourself to a flower again.”
“I’m comparing you to one,” Dokja said. “The hibiscus doesn’t die easily. Even after it withers, it returns. Again and again. It still blooms no matter what right?”
Yoo Joonghyuk wanted to look away, but the flower held him captive.
“Eternity,” he repeated quietly. “You talk about it as if it’s something beautiful.”
Dokja stepped closer, his reflection flickering in the cracked glass. “It can be,” he said. “If you choose who to share it with.”
Yoo Joonghyuk reached out, his hand hovering just above the flower.
“I don’t believe in eternity.” He said.
Kim Dokja smiled.
“That’s fine,” he whispered. “You don’t have to. I’ll believe for the both of us.”
And when Yoo Joonghyuk finally looked up, the dawn was full of hibiscus blooms, each one burning quietly, like all the lives they had lost, and all the ones they would keep finding again.
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