Salvific â
Minhee/Hanyoung
He left her in misery. Masquerading sadness with happiness wasnât a challenge, it was finding a demon that would distract such sadness from the soles of her feet or finding a monster to cause chaos with. Whenever he left, he caused the demons to spread their wings and destroy hardware, causing required programs to become obsolete. She played fortune teller, asking tea leaves at the bottom of her mug when her oracle would be in her grasps, though she didnât have the abilities that Hanyoung had. But without him, the air wasnât meant to breathe, only trace gases and argon filled her lungs, lungs that were only meant to inhale the Hanyoungâs sweet scent and air, recycling words and phrases so that sheâd never forget (if that was even possible) his melodies and harmonies, his touch or how he told others of their fortunes.Â
Staring at the ground, her orbs stared at the man who looked exhausted and opaque, very eccentric to her dark eyes, ghosts were to be translucent and beautiful, pass through walls and doors, but he was in physical form on the ground, her chest exhaling and inhaling. Without words, her hands found themselves playing with his fingers as she placed the papers of graphite to the side, her fingers ran through his dark hair, it needed to be washed. What demons had created it so that he would not be clean? Her imagination wondered where he had disappeared off to and when he recovered his physical body. Though Minhee knew it was temporary, every little bit of this body was temporary. Silently, she dragged the man across the floors as though he was a doll of some sort, still silently worrying that sheâd harm his body in some sort or if sheâd have to catch his soul once she pressed her fingers onto his shirt or if heâd turn into dust if sheâd pour water onto his body that needed to be cleansed and transparent once more. Humming, Minhee pulled off his shirt, making him lean against the bathtub, he was to be her doll for a moment, sheâd change and dress him so it was suitable for the traditional humans. Her lips pressed against his forehead, a sign of deep affection. She still didnât understand what kissing one meant, but she knew Hanyoungâs lips tasted like stardust and he was the sweetest ambrosia that she could ever taste. But humans believed that the lips were the passage to underlying emotions and a sensual pleasure that Minhee couldnât understand or feel the need to understand.Â
"You disappeared," Minhee stated as her fingers scrubbed the filth out of him, any secular dirt that he put himself in and she paused a little as shampoo made bubbles on his head, making her giggle at the magical attributes of shampoo and bubbles could be made out of soap. "But youâre here now," she finished as she washed the remainder of the filth from his upper half of his body. "Why did you leave?" she asked curiously, as she sat across from him, her eyes staring into his. She desired answers from this immortal being, where he drank wine or if he danced with other ghouls, met princes from other kingdoms, oh she desired everything from the wanderer of worlds.
Minhee was salvation, a raison d'etre, completion, and the feminine soul that taught him how to clutch glass without shattering the amorphous spiral. He was without tenacious resistance, a rag doll in her arms subsequent to the touch that articulated their souls, for he could sense her aura, the bridges and ridges. He could perceive how fauns would elevate their injured, mangled necks in the presence of her faith and clemency, how it radiated, filled his lungs with oxygen until the soot was evicted in feeble, quiver distorted coughs. It could only be her to extract the splinters of keen crystalline from his arteries, the ornaments and urns perishing and piercing him when Circeâs umbrage seized him, when he would mummer fools and abuse his body to acknowledge life and living. He was a famished nomad, skeletal and withering with a body ornamented in blemishes of purple, green and yellow, the circular bruises flourishing beyond one hundred, and his eyes were cast downward, not a drop of discomfiture from Minhee repairing him, confiscating his shirt, his pupils dismal and itinerant between reality and oblivion reveries.
She had kissed him and had yet to be poisoned by his arsenic skin and ran her fingers through methanol inundated hair, however she did not wash the sins of a blasphemer from him with blessed hydrogen cyanide. Hanyoung, a recidivist to exhaustion, allowed the edge of the bathtub to press into his ribs, the incapacitated blood cells, one arm pendulous over the opposite hemisphere, the other deadweight, his physical form practically a marionette when his eyes were equivalent to the weight of cinderblocks. He did not display signs of life, did not seek out the rings of her irises, until she spoke, giggled innocence and crooned of sorrow, and what reply he gave her was a quote, declaimed with his vocal cords an antique music box, rusted and temporarily forgotten. âAnd I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.â
Hanyoungâs hand ascended, brushed damp, sanitary clusters of hair away from his eyes, sanctioning himself unobstructed sight to see, lean closer to her, only ceasing movement to spare her of his cruelty. âI had to travel, become a tourist in impersonal cities, many of which we had visited before during years of dragonâs breath and wormwood. The world, it exhausts me, the sound of industrialization and microwaves of hostility and fruitless, painful endeavors â I pity humanity, accursed humanity â and I too drank from the futile oasis. I couldnât find my blood, and if they slip, if they dieâŠIt hurts. Existing hurtsâŠHow will I be forgiven?â He elucidates, condensing and reciting his story, his voice becoming sorter, strained with fissures until he whispers, glancing towards the ground, the tiles of white, the bubbles of soap assembled in junctions. âI apologize, sincerely, and I will absorb your suffering. Let it become part of me.â His muttering is sleep talking during narcotherapy, the blackness blinding him repetitively, and it remained when he leaned forward, rested his head against Minheeâs shoulder, speaking, pressing friable words into the hollow bones of collar. âForgive me.â