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You've forgotten your name.
It's not something that needs a lot of fanfare or explaining — everyone goes through the pain of losing a part of them one day. And every day is a continuation of this loss, from people to things to places, until all the memories are gone in a gust of wind. Until everything goes. Everything goes, bit-by-bit, until nothing remains of anyone.
Still, there are some things you remember, like how to walk. And how to turn your head towards the cloudy sky, how to let go of a bated breath when the first drop of rain hits your face. You remember this as you wander the forest aimlessly, the sky darkening above you, harsh sheets of rain scattering loudly from the heavens.
You won't forget the feeling of cold water hitting your skin — of the way your eyes widened at the sight of gray skies, stretching open your irises and letting them drown in that hazy sight.
And then, when the storm has passed — when your bones ache with the cold, when your clothes are soaked to your skin — a voice interrupts you, soft and whispered like the fleeting wind.
"Who are you?"
Your gaze drifts from the sky to the branch in front of you. Resplendent spicebush flowers, as golden as the sun, bloom in the pale sunlight. A deep brown branch bleeds red, and the splatter of scarlet against ichor-gold petals disturbs you only a little. There's a tugging in your chest, something that both aches and cringes, something that both wonders and abhors. "I don't know," you admit. "I can't even remember my own name."
And the voice of the branch grows louder in volume until you realize there is an arm attached to those flowers — that the growth of spicebush stretches all the way from the stranger's fingertips to his shoulder, overgrown blooms scattered across even his face. What an enchanting shade of gold! It's no wonder that the sky had been so gray before, because all the color in the world exists in his eyes and nowhere else.
As you lose yourself in that moment, this stranger waits very patiently before speaking in lieu of your silence.
"...The sun is gone," he says. "And when it leaves, so too do living things follow its fading light. Beyond the clouds, beyond my reach."
"..."
"And yet, here you are."
"Here I am," you agree softly. You realize that the cold has reached the deepest parts of you now — that your teeth chatter and scrape against each other, your breath coming up short and desperate. But you mustn't let this stranger see you so disparate, so you resolve to remain as calm and practiced as possible.
The effect only lasts for so long. His visible eye is like the sun, and no shadow nor shape can hide your truth from its light. His body stays still and his face unmoving, save for the way his gaze narrows, sunset irises shimmering in thought. You don't dare to break his silence, which is why relief floods you the moment he opens his mouth to keep speaking. (And speaking, like most other acts, seems so sacred to him. That each and every movement he makes must be practiced, that his words must substitute for energy that his body otherwise lacks, that he is like the spicebush that grows around and all over him — he must soak in the sunlight and speak nothing of its warmth, or how it fills his chest like a flame curling up in an empty hollow.)
You say— nothing.
He says— "You're shaking."
"Oh." You stare down at your own palms. Your fingers twitch slightly, as though possessed, as though your hand wishes to reach out and touch something. Anything. "Sorry."
"It was a mere observation, not a cause for me to ascribe blame." He turns slightly, and his manner of dress — his white robes, his gray outer layer, his connecting ribbon at the front of his chest — follows like a ghost behind him, not a single drop of water visible through the layer of blood and petals that envelops him whole. Not even the rain will disturb him. "It's cold still. You can come inside if you want. I won't force you."
You blink slowly. Inhale even slower. Take a moment to wonder how you got to this point in your life (and take an even longer moment to marvel at the object in the stranger's hand — is that a blade, or a branch? or both?). Follow the stranger with your eyes, as he retreats into a building that you hadn't even realized was there to start with. Follow him with your body, too, as you force your legs to step forward. As you will your spirit to move, to remember its place among the infinite stars in the universe. To remember its place as another flower of a different kind, growing and thriving in the sunlight along with him.
He ascends a short flight of wooden stairs, and leaves a sliding door open in his wake.
You follow after him, making sure to remove your shoes upon entry, and waiting for the last of the rain to dry on your lips before daring to step through the threshold properly.
You've forgotten a lot of things, you admit, but politeness is not one of them.
"Are you hurt?"
The stranger — Yi Sang, or so he says his name is — looks at you. "Why do you ask that?"
"Because you're bleeding," is the obvious answer. Because I'm worried, is the true reason within you.
Yi Sang doesn't say anything at first. He merely stares at you, or perhaps through you is more fitting. His golden eye gleams and the other half of his face remains obscured behind overgrown flora. You wonder if he has a second eye, if it had been lost over time, or if nothing lies beneath the petal-surface. It feels like an eternity before he says, "The blood is inconsequential. It is my own way of keeping time. When all is bloodied, only then will I have bloomed in full."
You almost make a sound akin to laughter — that Yi Sang could think that he has yet to bloom in full, that he doesn't consider his current appearance good enough, makes your chest stir with sympathetic warmth. "You're an interesting flower," you say, turning his dreamy way of speaking back towards him, "if you think that you need blood to grow."
The ends of his hands and his branches are stained red, red, red. There is a realization to be had there (what had he done recently to become so soaked in the stuff?), but you ignore it for now. You let the sunlight warm your back, and Yi Sang exhales audibly. "It is not something I can make others understand easily. Yet I carry this futile wish with me, that somehow I could everyone see things the way I do…if only once. For the first time and never again."
Your heart pangs with an unknown feeling. Is it familiarity? Nostalgia? What is it, and why does it ring true with you, you who has forgotten their name, and doesn't desire anything for themself? What does Yi Sang speak about that is so plainly beautiful and wonderful, enough that he wishes for everyone else to experience its full glory for the first time just as he had?
What do those golden eyes see, really?
And would he share those sights with you, a wayward soul, who had been lost in the woods and even further gone beyond that?
You take it all in. Then you say, "Alright. As long as you're not hurt, then it's fine. I'd like to see your vision one day…these 'things' that must seem beautiful in your eyes."
He doesn't smile, but you hear a small breath hinging on the front of his words, the tiniest admission that your simple words have put his heart at ease. "Then I wish for the day that I might show you."
You've forgotten what home looks like.
But in the days since meeting Yi Sang, you're starting to understand a new version of it. Home is the scent of flowers drifting through the day and incense burning at night. Home is the scattered array of fireflies, blinking like stars in the dead of night, beacons in the sea of black-emerald foliage. Home is the sound of indoor slippers scuffling against hardwood floors, hushed voices behind sliding doors and endless corridors. Home is the scratch of pen against paper, fingers reaching out and touching the world — interacting with it.
Home becomes wherever you and Yi Sang are. Over time, you've learned that Yi Sang is not entirely alone in this beautiful place, and sometimes, other people come and go as well. You don't know them all, and you don't always understand what they're talking about, but they seek out Yi Sang as though he is a leader or a mentor of some sort, relaying information that the other absorbs like a plant absorbs water. They hang onto his every word in hopes that they can breathe in some of his fiery air.
You watch from a distance. Yi Sang is bloody, always bloody, but there are times where he is disheveled moreso than usual. Times when his spicebush branches and his petal-covered visage are doused in red, times when you're sure you've heard bone-chilling screams get cut short, and the sound of metallic screeching getting dulled down. You're not sure what this means — what any of it means — but you're scared to ask.
Yi Sang never speaks directly to you about these strange instances in time. He only speaks as softly as he did the first day you met him, staring at you so deeply and reverently that you have to turn away, lest you burn underneath his sun-bright gaze.
Being near him is enough.
But sometimes, you wonder what it means to truly be near him, and that if the dreams he has — if the sights he so wishes to impart onto other people — is too particular, too special, too impossible for anyone else to understand. No matter how much closer you get, he always feels a lifetime away.
What will it take to become inseparable with him?
You wonder if you'll ever find out.
"Stay with me."
"..."
Your name is muttered — it falls as a feather from heavenly lips, so light and ephemeral that a single gust of wind could blow and scatter your memory to the void. Between hesitant lips, your name is said, and it is your name that tethers you to what remains of your sundered attention and broken body. "Stay with me," the voice again says. "Don't go just yet."
"Where would I go?" You slowly start to speak. As your eyes flutter open you swear you can see the sun, burning and bright and eye-straining as always. The heat melts your eyelids — you struggle to keep awake. "I don't have anywhere else in this world to…"
You don't finish that sentence. The words are leaving you like baby birds leave their nest — like winged creatures taking flight, soaring towards the sky and never looking down. There's a swelling in your chest, weighing you down, but light as though every fiber of your being is unravelling. As though the softness of Yi Sang's touch is not in his hands, but in the way your flesh comes undone around him. Bleeding and bruised. "This isn't the sight I wanted for you. If I'd have held you closer, then maybe…"
The memories flash in your mind. Those clad in green and white and black, angry — heartless machines tearing down wood, paper, and human flesh! You remember the glow of metal against the glow of humanity, how hard the blades would try to cut deep, but never reach the inner bone of the body. You remember the spicebush flowers, and how Yi Sang summons them like spirits to his side, how his deft hand moves and crushes steel and flesh alike. You remember him defending you, defending this place called home, defending whoever remained of his secret allies. You remember.
You wouldn't forget the most important part. How absorbed the other had been in combat, how he didn't see that cloaked figure in the shadows, descending upon him like dusk unto dawn. You recall that glimpse of metal in the dark, and how the future laid itself before you. Yi Sang, bloodied. Yi Sang, cut. Yi Sang, dead. And maybe someone like him is stronger than death, and twice as beautiful, but the thought of losing him — losing the sun, losing the flowers, losing the tea, losing the paints, losing the crystal glass that reflects his eyes a thousand times among spiderweb cracks in the shard — horrifies you, and your instincts fight against the horror. You leap into the way of the blade, hands reaching out to grab hold of it, only to miscalculate.
Only for the blade to plunge deeply into you, only for your body to slump against Yi Sang's. Only for your eyes to close shut out of pain and overwhelming despair. Only for you to miss the moment when Yi Sang leaps forward, and the flowers engulf all the enemies, and he sweeps them low to their knees, blood splattering like paint in every direction.
You remember what happened.
You open your eyes again and look up, only to see the crimson-red shape of a palm staining Yi Sang's pale cheek.
Your hand trembling at his jaw. "Oh, Yi Sang…"
"You're leaving." His voice sounds hollow, empty. That not even his melancholy or his wistful spirit follows the words, as though doing so would make them true. "You're leaving me."
"I am." There is no remedy to the dead, after all. There is no repairing a home after leaving it. Your chest stirs with untouched warmth — the flame will remain in you for all eternity. "I'm not a machine. I can't be fixed. So let me apologize…"
"..."
"...For not being able to see your world anymore. If even just a little longer."
"I…"
You hold his face, reinforcing the shape of your bloodied palm against his skin, coldness spiking through and replacing all the human warmth. "Thank you for taking me in. On that day I was lost, but now I can die happy knowing I've been found."
"Your path has crossed with mine, but I led you astray. If I told you everything…if it'd even make a difference…"
You shake your head. You want to say so much more to him, like how much you love him, how much you worry about him, but you don't dare speak. How could you say anything to relieve his heart, when you know you're the reason its beautiful redness will be permanently sundered from hereon out?
You don't say anything. You simply hold onto Yi Sang's face for as long as you can.
And when the last ounce of your original strength leaves you — when your hand slips from his face, when your chest stops moving, and your heart takes its last beat — you hardly notice it.
You've forgotten your name.
When you awake next, part of you expects to see the gates of the afterlife, or the infinite cycle of souls to the next life. When you awake next, you don't expect to see the spicebush flowers, the rice paper screens, or the large black-and-golden fan that would spread like a bird's wings.
You had forgotten your name, so you forget to speak when your vision returns to you, swarming like butterflies to your right eye.
You don't yet realize that your left eye isn't open — that there is no sensation on that side of your face except a permanent dulling, and occasional spikes of pain like branches or thorns.
Golden petals of spicebush flowers drifting in front of you.
You sit up slowly, carefully. There is the visage of a stranger before you — no, actually! He's not strange at all. His dark hair and gleaming eye and blank clothes stand out, but none of it matches the expression on his face, the slight downturn of his lips, the way they part ever-so-slightly, as though breath returns to him at the exact moment that it does to you.
He says your name, and memories flood within the words, like water pushing up against the dam of his mouth. He says your name, and suddenly you feel whole.
You sit up straighter and say, "Yi Sang?"
"...I'm sorry," he mutters. "One's own life can be so fragile, so fleeting. I'd never trust the blood and bones to a human-less machine. So I did what I could."
"..."
"Are you hurt?" He steps a bit closer, voice brimming with emotion despite the calm look on his face. These words are familiar, somehow. You swear you've heard them before — "You're bleeding."
You touch the space where your left eye had once been, only to feel the flesh-like clusters of flower petals, the stubs of wooden branches and the smoothness of flax leaves. You feel red fluids staining the branch, staining your fingers, staining everything like the breath of life fills every creature, like birds shed every wing. You feel everything so much more than you used to — you see the colors like a kaleidoscope reflected in the world, so saturated and beautiful you wonder how you ever missed them before. You remove your hand from your face, and reach out to Yi Sang — bloodstained hands calling out to bloodstained hands.
He intermingles his fingers with yours, and you feel slight tremors in his body, a mixture of fear, regret, excitement, and possibility.
Your bleeding heart open and spread before him. Your cadence finally matching with his.
You understand that he is worried for you — he always had been, in his own way — but now you are confident that this is a much preferred outcome to the other one, so bleed and worry, you will, if it means assuaging his fears.
After all, to bleed does not necessarily mean to hurt.
No, you know the answer, you see his world, and now you can spend more days sharing in it. Holding his hand, standing by his side, and meeting his gaze when no one else would.
To bleed does not mean to hurt—
It means to live.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Every kiss, every prayer, every shared embrace…every moment with Yi Sang seems to emanate this feeling, as colorful and bright as a prism.
As wondrous and plain as a mirror.
You hear these words in him, you feel it through the surface of his skin. As he shudders, as he breathes, as he smiles unseen into you…you feel it. You know it.
And when you reciprocate this emotion — when you kiss his wrist, and move your lips down every surface of his arm and to the rest of his body, when he utters a sigh so sweet you feel as though you've died a second time — you answer him in kind.
I love you too.