He remembers when he first met her; it was during the winter of Paris. Christmas soon to be here, Snow coated her raspberry wine hair turning it a few shades lighter, puce pink. He found her to be a rare breed she stood in a way that demanded attention but she shied away when eyes were on her.  

There conversations sparked at a vintage café, she’d ordered gingerbread latte, he a mint frappe.

“I’m a June berry” she’d say. His eyebrows quirked the slightest in bewilderment, she noticed his expression, and sighed “A Summer child, I was born in Summer, since you asked me when I was born the other day” His eyes widened, he laughed “ah I see, then I am a June berry too since I was also born in summer as well” their conversations were always peculiar at least that’s how he saw it. It would start of mundane and then get deeper and deeper as time passed. Christmas coming sooner and sooner by each passing day.

He knocks on her Parisian apartment. Its hue, dark blood red, she called it Bulgarian rose (she said she painted it herself although he thought that was highly unlikely, more like impossible. She said she thought it blended well with winter, especially December and all its Christmas colours) When she answered the door, he gasped at her bareness she wore a sapphire kimono gown with printed, de gournay and oriental flowers. A smile graced her china doll lips when she saw it was him. He noticed her smoking a cherry Sobranie cigarette and coughed and spluttered, feeling the smoke suffocate his lungs, when she quickly ushered him in. He bought her a blood orange ice cream. She said she loves ice cream during the winter, he thought that was odd but then everything with her was and is odd. She grabs the ice cream from him, tongue darting out to the outside first. He laughs when she is finished, her lips stained cadmium orange from the ice cream. She doesn’t mind when he tells her why he laughed, she said she adores the colour more than the taste. She grabs his hand then, drags him over to her apartment’s veranda “aren’t you going to be cold?”, he realizes what a silly question that is (her in her dressing gown and him all dressed up in winter coats) because he knows she will be cold, but with her she does as she pleases and doesn’t seem to care when the cold hit’s her bare legs, giving her alabaster skin a slight pink sorbet colour. Stubborn as she is, she stands gazing down at the people but soon gives in to the cold, her teeth beginning to chatter, he laughs even more and she returns it with a glare. He pulls her in then, for a kiss. Her lips are frozen snow cones and the taste of orange is bitter acrimony, from the cherry sobranie. A cat spider blush, crawls all the way up her skin, leaving her shivering but warm from his lips and her arms enclose around his neck. She smiles into the kiss and revels in the feeling he gives her.

He takes her to see 3 ballet productions. The first one being the nutcracker, then swan lake (which is his favourite) and last but not least the red shoes. He is slowly going bankrupt. She loves the twirl and the pirouette (the plum swirl and dew drops of the skirt) the sugarplum fairy does all gracing pastel violet and then fades into a blackberry moch. So much shimmer, stardust, cosmic love and twinkle, his and her heart pitter patter as one.  Swan lake she has never seen before, he is surprised; she is the first one he knows of never to have seen it. She gasps at Swan Lake’s production and the evil gleam of Odile’s eyes as she swipes the prince from Odette and cruelly seduces his heart, hypnotizing him with carmine lure. The last one (being her favourite) “the red shoes” She smiles in contentment. Cinnabar red shrouds the production and cinnabar is her favourite shade of red, so she has told him many times. It’s the colour of Christmas and Christmas is my favourite season she rambles on. He never realized how sadistic the red shoes was until he remembered Karen, the lead being forced to dance forever, until she begged for her feet to be amputated but seeing Jiyeon smile like that, makes him smile.

His friend, Kiseop, turns up at his apartment out of the blue with his girlfriend Seungah and says he has a Christmas party that he would love him to attend too “oh and invite your girlfriend” Jaeseop blushes at that statement, feeling the cotton candy pink sweep over his features.

He knocks on the door and she answers. He gasps at her appearance; she sparkles under the Christmas fairy lights that she has lit, in her apartment. She smiles that smile he loves the most. He swears, he hears sweet rhapsody in blue play in his head (he prefers the title more than the song). She’s dressed in vermillion velvet, lips painted carmine, hair graced in silken peonies. She has lavender grapes on a silver tray; she says it’s for the party.      

He nuzzles his nose, in the crook of her neck. He smells the slight, faint scent of cinnamon spices. She’s drinking passion, plum wine. She watches the plums swirl in the drink and dips in a candy cane with a dark red, candy apple in the other hand. She smiles in contentment. Everything is shaded mandarin red, all glitzy and glamorous, shimmering with jewels of garnets and amethysts.

They leave the party early; Jaeseop says a quick goodbye and thank you to Kiseop. They decide to get lost in the blueberry mist and orange whipped wind of the night. It’s freezing, but they fall in the snow anyway and laugh, maybe there drunk but they don’t care. They make snow angels (the snow turns her dress a softer shade of pink, something like a snow cherry) not caring if they are going to catch a cold or not. He stares deep into her marigold eyes and kisses her. The kiss is deep, deeper than usual, she swears then at that moment she will drift off just as driftwood drifts in the ocean. He tastes the crushed sorbet berries on her lips, winter blackberries. She tastes dark, sultry chocolate and if taste had a colour, for her it would be scarlet red and zaffre blue.

                                                                They both don’t want it to end.