Kris had led her to a room that was all white. There was a vase filled with a kind of flower she had never seen before. There was a bench in front of the long mirror that was hung on the wall.

Most surprisingly of all, there was a bed.

“This will be your room for now. I think it might be better for you to stay away from the others for now,” he said, almost gently. She had never thought Kris could be tender. Then again, she had never thought he could be scared at the sight of his own blood. He seemed melancholy, and his words were quiet.

 “What are these flowers called?” she asked, watching him carefully. She was still wary of him.

  “They’re million star baby’s breath flowers,” he said. He did not smile.

“They’re pretty.” And truly, they were. They reminded her of little dots of snow falling from a faraway place. She touched one, her finger barely ghosting the petal. The flowers disintegrated.

 “Those aren’t real,” Kris said. He sounded angry. “I made them. I gave them a form, not life.”

“Oh.” She was afraid to ask him to make the flowers reappear. The vase looked forlorn, a desolate vessel stripped of its essence. Kris followed her gaze and sighed. With a practiced air, he waved his hand and murmured a few inaudible words. Rapidly, new flowers sprouted out of the vase.

 “Thanks,” she said, embarrassed. She walked over to the vase and held it close to where her heart might have been. Kris ignored her, and sat down on the bench.

 “Sit next to me.” It was a request, and yet it still carried the undertones of a demand. She complied, still holding the vase. It was something precious, because even an imitation of life at its most simplistic, was still beautiful. She didn’t look at Kris, and he made no move to speak. Her eyes wandered, from the white flowers, to the white walls, and finally landed on the mirror.

An empty vase was floating in mid-air above a white bench. The mirror showed nothing of the two people sitting side by side on the white bench.

“What’s wrong?” Kris asked, smirking.

“I can’t see us in the mirror,” she said steadily. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having shocked her.

“That’s because that mirror shows the things that are real. This room is real. I created it with real furniture taken from the human world. The flowers are not real. They don’t show up.” He said this tauntingly, with an edge of bitterness. “We aren’t real. We’re just imitations of something that once existed elsewhere.”

Even if he was right, she did not want to accept it. She set the vase down on the floor. Firmly, she traced her finger over his hand, and felt the warmth of still blood. She pushed him roughly, and felt the hardness of his chest. She pulled at his hair gently, and felt the silkiness of each strand.

“We are real,” she said, and for the first time since entering the room, he directly looked at her.

“Even if we don’t exist to the rest of the world, we are real to each other. And as long as we exist in one world, it doesn’t matter if the other world can’t see us.”