“… to its strategic interests and chose to go to war. After negotiations broke down in 1904, the Japanese Navy opened hostilities by attacking the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur in a surprise attack. Russia suffered…”
Her eyes were out the window but her attention was on the lone voice that rose above the din of the classroom. It was all dates, facts, politics he was going on about. There was no color to his words, but the information alone was pulling her to sepia-stained memories. Back in a time where her existence was the bane to many, the nights were long and the winters even longer. She often relied on the generosity of others to get by, or else was put on the street by nationalists who slandered her ‘Oriental eyes’ and silent tongue. The snow was almost unbearable for her wheels to churn through, she recalled, and her hands were barely kept warm by the amber glow cast from a well-lit window.
Everyone stood, the same voice that lectured earlier now announced their dismissal, and fourty minutes was over in the span of a single daydream. Charlotte moved beyond the doors, the entry way, and the main gate of her high school. Enough was enough, for today. She couldn’t find the strength put up with another lesson, although there was no running from the snowstorm of thoughts that blanketed her mind.
He was a thunderous man, the vessel her Prince had taken residence in, who had never been happy to have her near. His attention came in strings of violent curses and racist remarks. But, at least it was him barking them in her direction; at least he was physically able to. That’s how she convinced herself to stay in that iced-over Hell he called a country– to make sure he stayed a viscous nationalist drinking in a pub rather than a nationalist soldier walking to an early grave. It was in the alleyway of that very bar that he threw something other than words. The force of his hand striking her cheek had her toppling into mud and garbage, only the resounding slap and his heavy breathing cut through the cold air. She, as always, remained hauntingly silent in the face of fury.
The unfortunate girl found herself lost. Well, lost among the crowds of Seoul, somewhere between her school and her apartment. People often looked like fish in numbers; trapped in some current only they were aware of. She didn’t mind stopping amongst them just to observe their monochrome ocean, although it came with a few gentle nudges to those that could not cut away from her fast enough. Charlotte even grazed shoulder-to-hand with a passerby or two. Her gaze fell down to the white paint crosswalk, wishing it was Russian snow and that she could be saved once more by the man with a hearth heart and jeweled eyes.
He had come from the shadows, perhaps, placing himself between a fallen soul and it’s beastly soulmate. He was polite enough in speech, but his tone had fallen dangerously low to match the expression she never witnessed. It must have been a fearsome one, though, because they were quickly left to themselves. Thirty or more years without a friend, and her first had been kind enough to take her home in his arms. She warmed herself by his fireplace and forgot the cold had ever existed beyond the window panes. There was just something in his gentle smile that could melt decades-worth of ice from her pearlescent heart.
Her eyes lifted to scan her surroundings once more but it was the same– many people, empty gazes. Her fingers thumbed the wheels, about ready to move along elsewhere, when the familiar aura of topaz caught her by the throat. She had been thinking of it all day, all week, a few decades even, but never expected to run across him again. She fought the sudden crowd of oncomers with a feeling of excitement strong enough to take the air from her lungs. He was there, somewhere, looming above the faceless and just out of reach. Couldn’t he hear her call? Her silent pleading for a miracle?
Fate had, apparently, because the traffic light changed signals and a delivery boy sped through the intersection haphazardly enough to cut an opening through the current. She took her chance and followed blindly through until her fingers had latched onto the white cuff of a men’s shirt. He smelled like kindling and blood, but his back was still faced away from her in a way that plunged a dagger of doubt into the back of her mind. After all these years, maybe she was wrong. Maybe he wasn't who she sought. Maybe he wasn’t her savior, her guardian, her friend. Maybe he wasn’t her
Izák.
