#elsoleil

Do you remember living?

Somewhere, within the wasteland he refers to as memoir, he remembers their first spring in Tuscany. A man-made oasis nestled somewhere between the Years of Lead. That spring, he had dragged himself  from border to border only to realize there is no heaven on the other side. That in the end, all men are hopeless, all condemned to the same purgatory. And as all those deemed penurious, he kneels before the nearest cathedral and awaits an early death. He resurrects at dawn, salvation standing  before him in the form of Kaoru, smiling, veiled by the first gleam of tomorrow with a grace  he had not witnessed in decades 

“Welcome home.”  Thus he chooses his own god.

He remembers mass on Sunday mornings, Kaoru’s gospel drowned by children’s hushed laughter as they line up for communion. Before the last amen, they run out of the chapel, their white robes swaying in the wind as they race to resume playtime. Kaoru urges him to follow and for the afternoon he lives a boyhood he never had. By the time they return it is dusk, their cheeks flushed by the sun, their robes dyed of  pastures, their hands clutching onto red poppies as they bid him  farewell. After midnight, Kaoru resembles Moloch. He carves a sanctum out of his ribcage, deludes him to believe home lies somewhere between his talons. “This is home.” Despite the congregation of vultures looming outside their church every Sunday, despite the vermin puncturing his lungs while he hangs from Kaoru´s halo, despite the clamor of eidolons pleading him to beware of the false prophet. Yet he believes. (He feels sick. He feels fucking sick). 

He remembers ´heaven´, how they encapsulated eternity in two springs and three winters. A self fabricated Eden composed by pretenses of tomorrow and upheld by a delusion they called faith. During daylight, they settled in borrowed youth. During the evenings, Kaoru shrouded reality under the night mantle and offered him Arcadia. Do you miss home? “This is my home.” 

He remembers heaven, how God cast him out of it.

Do you remember dying?

In their third winter, Kaoru dragged Cain to Gethsemane. His god now draped atop a chancel as he watches how the vultures  finally descend to peck between his ribs. They had come to take him, to destroy the pseudo-sanctum he had desperately built in the span of two years. And he is crying. Clawing through soil as three men bludgeon him close to death, suffocating in his own blood and bile. Why? And he is eight again, desperately clutching onto his mother´s skirt as a plea for her to not let them take him. He will be quiet. He will be obedient. He will be good just please let him stay. Why? And he is twenty eight, reaching for Kaoru´s robe as they crack his ribs one by one, praying for pity, for salvation, for a miracle. In his last moments of consciousness, Kaoru murmurs his obituary.

“This is the answer you have been looking for.”

Thus oblivion consumed their Eden.

At 10 p.m. he wakes up in a cold sweat, heaving, his palms pressed against his ribs only to find these intact. Three decades after the fall of men, Earth rids him of every yesterday and welcomes him in the form of ‘Jaeyeon’. Twenty four, again, lost in a city he barely recognizes.The slums he grew up in now barren to concrete, morphed into a howling necropolis they may garnish in city lights yet still rots all the same. Outside his window, Seoul weeps in a last farewell to winter. He listens in silence, and prays to somehow halt his existence once more. 

Kaoru had been gone for decades, yet he plagued his thoughts every evening. In dreams, in nightmares. By the end of February, he learns Kaoru´s memoir may have left yet his soul still wanders this Earth. Twenty four, again. Degenerate, again. Even beyond this realm, he scratches at a wound Jaeyeon thought no longer existed. The first time they meet again his hand coils around his throat in horror, swears he sees him flail wildly in a futile attempt to escape (kill him, kill the traitor, kill the false prophet) only to realize he cannot do it. He cannot. 

The following days had been marred by a tense stillness between them and he begins to ponder if Kaoru is but a figment of his own delusions. He may lie to himself every night, yet reality always dawns upon him the next morning. The second time they meet, again, both find themselves hanging from the rooftop to gaze at the precipice, both shrouded by a secular solitude today may never grasp. The winter had withered Kaoru´s garden, poisoned Jaeyeon´s for another decade. From the corner of his eye, he watches him attempt to hide in the corner, bathed in a dim moonlight; he may barely  recognize his skin now flushed by the evening breeze, bruised and bandaged from their earlier encounter. All airs of grandeur he held in the past now nothing but a carcass. For a fleeting moment, guilt pricks at Jaeyeon´s gut only to be buried next to their first spring. Neither move, neither speak. Sometimes, Jaeyeon likes to believe Kaoru remembers him. He likes to believe the pitiful frown on his semblance is his doing, believe vermin gnaw at his conscience as penance, believe the happier days lie somewhere behind his sternum. That he existed.

“Thank you-” Barely audible amidst white noise. “-for not pressing charges.” No response. Cautiously, he steps close enough for his umbrellas´s brim to shield the latter.