Hyungwon ONLY; { How many petals can a flower have? }
{ How many petals can a flower have? The answer is infinite. }
{ Alternatively titled a few scattered minutes in Hyungwon’s rather average and boring life. }
1026 HRS
<Mum>: Kyungwon is back from America and Hyewon just won her case in Japan. She’ll be back in Korea in a day or two. <Mum>: When will you come home?
Hyungwon places the phone back on his bedside table and rolls over, flinging his covers over his head. An astrophysicist, a lawyer and… a disappointment. Why would his parents want him back in Gwangju? He sighs into his bedsheets and closes his eyes, drifting back into sleep.
Even if Hyungwon could catch all the dandelions in the world, none of his wishes would ever be granted. It was against the laws of reality.
-
1958 HRS
If his life were a canvas, then Hyungwon’s past was streaks of red and black upon it. All that he is doing now is attempt to cake the canvas in a layer of white paint in the hopes that it will somehow hide the blemishes away, that it will look new, untainted and untarnished again.
“C’mon, just a beer this one time, Hyungwon-ah?”
Hyungwon gives an easy laugh, practised to perfection.
“Sorry,” he says, a slight ruefulness tugging at the corners of his otherwise genuine smile. “I don’t drink.”
His co-workers sigh at this Hyungwon in front of them, but all Hyungwon can see is the fifteen year old one with roses for eyes and a throat full of thorns.
-
0823 HRS
The flowers look pretty wrapped in baby blue and tied off with a creamy pink. Lisianthus, waxflowers, and ranunculus. Hyungwon nods politely along to the florist as she gathers them up.
“For a special someone?” She asks, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear with one hand as she rings up the bouquet with another.
Hyungwon smells the flowers. “Unfortunately not. I wish it were for you though.”
The forty-something year old florist laughs sweetly and Hyungwon can’t help but grin.
(he grins again as his colleague, who is going on maternity leave, gathers him into a hug upon presentation of the flowers.)
-
0046HRS
“You’re rather quiet.”
Hyungwon just continues to scan the crime scene.
“Do you want to call it?”
Hyungwon purses his lips and exhales through his nose. “Our killer is let in through the front door. They must have appeared non-threatening at the time—there’s a used umbrella by the door and a few pairs of slippers that are too big for our victim out— so our victim lets them in. They come into the living room where they get into an argument.” He walks over to the couch that isn’t quite facing the television. “Our victim pushes our killer, hence the couch is disturbed. They retaliate by pushing her back. She falls over the coffee table. Knocks over the flower vase. This is the last straw for our victim and she throws her engagement or wedding ring on the ground. You can see on our victim, the left ring finger has a slight indent.”
As he reasons out the crime scene, he turns a full circle, gesturing from one point of the room to the next before ending up looking out the open window. “Our killer probably jumped. He’ll be too injured to get that far out of the area.”
“A lover’s tiff?” Hyungwon’s partner raises his eyebrows.
“Probably,” Hyungwon answers absentmindedly, his gloved hands already moving towards the table where a scattered trace of white powder could be found.
His partner eyes some wrapping in the bin. “The flowers are fresh though.”
Hyungwon sighs.
“They always are.”
-
1404HRS
Hyungwon sits up on the couch. He runs a hand down his face and exhales shakily. He rubs the sleep from his eyes before just sitting there, still tired. Still so goddamn tired.
The calming scent of potpourri fills him up with dried roses.
-
0523HRS
He couldn’t sleep, but now he’s spiralled into a disaster. Maybe he’ll talk about this, laugh it off amongst his co-workers when they ask why he was falling asleep over his paperwork. I just finished a round of LoL and I looked at the time, he will mine looking at the time in bottom right hand corner, his palm coming up in a ‘what?’ gesture and his eyes will narrow in pretend disbelief. 5:23am, and I just sat there, staring at my screen. You know how it blacks out? Yeah, I could see my reflection and I just sat there going, what the hell am I doing with my life?
“When did you even start gaming?” One of the more curious co-workers will ask, her cheek resting on the back of her knuckles.
And Hyungwon will only tease her back, “When do you think boys start? We’re born gamers.”
And his co-worker will playfully slap Hyungwon’s arm and he will just give her a grin.
But, right now, as he stares at his reflection on the screen, his thoughts are sycamore seeds, spiralling through the haze of his mind until they come to rest on the floor. With due water and sunlight, it will bloom into another sturdy tree, as indestructible as the ones that have already caged his mind.
-
1059 HRS
<Hyungwon>: I don’t know mum. Sorry.
-
1820 HRS
The ladle clatters against the sink as Hyungwon discards it. The kitchen smells of spices and herbs with a hint of sesame oil underneath—it smells just like Hyungwon. It smells like home back in Gwangju, like the packed lunches he always bought to school. It smells of petty arguments with Hyewon and cold shoulders from Kyungwon, of soft lullabies sung by his mother and scraped knees patched by his father.
But it also smells like drunken nights out, like the smoke that curled over his lips, of universal disapproval and unfounded arrogance.
He turns back towards the plates, the food plated nicely in an aesthetic fashion. Leaving his apron by the door, he grabs his camera from the living room to take a photo. He’ll upload it later, but for now, there are four plates worth of food and only one mouth. Suddenly the one bedroom apartment feels much too big and much too unlived in. He slides into the chair. The plates across the table feel too far, like as if he reached over, they would still be a whole ocean away. The little orange flower he had cut from a carrot begins to unfurl on one of the other plates as the toothpick fails to hold the thick petals together.
As he eats, he tries to distract himself with the thought of a shirt he saw in a shopfront the other day. This summer, checkers and vermillion were in for men and floral for women. It seems like it may be a fun summer.
-
1111HRS
He captures the dandelion fluff in between his fingers. The sun makes his skin glow golden and fills him up. Apricity. And just like this, with one hand on his bag strap and the other bringing the white softness towards his lips, he makes a wish upon the seedling of a weed.
-
0101 HRS
“Hey, are you okay?” Hyungwon moves towards the new recruit who was squatting by the sidewalk. He squats down too, but hesitates, not sure if the other would appreciate if Hyungwon put an arm around his shoulders.
“Yeah,” the new recruit manages. “I’ll be fine.”
They sit like that, their car in front of them, the crime scene behind them and yellow tape all around as other officers move to secure the area. It’s not a full moon tonight, but even under the slight sliver of moonlight, Hyungwon eyes a suspicious patch of shadows on the driveway next to them.
“It was just a shock,” the recruit breaks the silence, his voice almost a monotone if it weren’t for the slight wobble at the end.
Hyungwon stretches his legs out in front of him. “First time seeing a dead person in real life?”
“Yeah.”
And Hyungwon curls an arm around the new recruit, because even if the other was dealing quite well without tears or shaking shoulders, sometimes the red blooming on a mutilated chest can be too much. And Hyungwon wants to tell the other that sometimes it doesn’t get better, not until the tenth, the twentieth, or maybe even the fiftieth.
-
-7247 HRS
It feels like the sky is collapsing on him and the only thing keeping him upright is the cold wall on his bare back. His shirt has probably been discarded on the floor somewhere. He gingerly wipes the bitter taste of another man from his lips and pushes off from the wall. Flowers begin to bloom from the concrete, yellow, orange, and blue. He feels warm and fuzzy, like the winter sun gently wrapping him up to chase away the snow. Wherever he steps in search of his shirt, there is a kaleidoscope of colours. An orange tulip will morph into a bluebell and a lilac will melt into a golden chrysanthemum.
He feels good. This feels good.
He thinks maybe it’s time to search out the girl with the studded jacket, ample chest, tight waist and perky butt on the fringes of the audience to seduce to bed, but then remembers one of the sponsors had been eyeing him up. Honestly, he wouldn’t mind. He feels great. Except that his throat burns. No, wait. It’s his neck that feels bruised. He can’t remember what happened, and sometimes that happens, but it’s okay. Because he feels on top of the world and the stars are raining down on him in bright pinpricks of light that burn where they land on his skin. The flowers look even more beautiful bathed in brilliant star light. They glow. Red roses bathed in a purifying fire.
He eventually figures out that the thing he has picked up is his pants. His knees are scraped and the blood are lines of ruby. In the starlight, they glow with a worth that is more than his lifeline. His back is probably also decorated with lines of rubies, sapphires and diamonds. He is studded in worth. When they push against him, when they pull and drag and thrust and wrap their hands around his throat to line them with purple pearls, they draw out that worth in him and decorate him in the easy touch of gems that runs in his veins. He gives a little laugh and continues to skip through the field of ever changing flowers towards the exit.
“I’m not kidding when I said I’ll shoot you cops!”
Bang.
Bang, bang, bang. All the flowers suddenly retreat into the concrete and it stops showering stars. Hyungwon is left in the dark.
Ahead of him, a figure stumbles into his line of vision. Hyungwon quickly tries to catch them, but ends up tripping. The body falls on top of him, knocking his breathing away.
“Contain the damage! Don’t let a single one get away!”
The figure is naked, Hyungwon quickly realises, and the face is recognisable. It’s the male who always orders half g of coke and likes to cut off Hyungwon’s oxygen supply even when Hyungwon repeatedly tells him not to. His eyes are already glassy, like the last of life has fogged them up but his breath is still warm as it fans across Hyungwon’s cheek. Suddenly it feels hot, feels way too hot trapped under the weight of another person. It’s with a sense of urgency that Hyungwon begins to push at the body on top of him. The male above him sucks in a breath and manages to rasp something that sounds suspiciously like ‘you’ before expiring.
Hyungwon freezes.
Then he makes a mad scramble to get out. He’s pushing at the dead body, the fixed glassy eyes stare at Hyungwon accusingly, asking why isn’t Hyungwon dead too. The body is still so hot from life, his hands shove at the naked chest. Except it burns. It’s sticky and it burns, and Hyungwon pulls his hand away, clamping back a yelp. It’s covered in blood. His hands are covered in blood. It’s not rubies anymore, it’s just blood blood blood and more blood.
Somehow Hyungwon manages to flip the dead body over.
The chest is ripped to shreds. Heaped flesh line the bullet hole where the heart should be, and there are shards of bone littered inside with lumps of muscle and blood gushing over everything. A red poppy blooming after death. A waterfall of the most primal red, cascading. A bright red so full of oxygen, so full of life, that it makes Hyungwon sick. The metallic tang of blood is mixed in with the stench of a half digested dinner.
“Round up the last of what we can. Remember your own safety is a priority too!”
Shit. Hyungwon attempts to stand on wobbly legs. He needs to find Gunwoo and Jiyoung and the rest and get them back to Gwangju. He needs to, he has to, he’s got to. But his legs are so weak, and his arms are too, but somehow he does it. Somehow he manages to drag himself into a crawl.
The place is alien to him without the field of flowers and the star shower. He chokes on the air of the underground arena, so full of sweat, blood and gunpowder—so full of death and so full of thorns.
-
∞ HRS
Life courts Death with flowers and gifts and, Hyungwon supposes that each person, each living thing, were a petal in that bouquet. A bouquet sent with all the beautiful love and affection that Life has to surrender.
