Seasons are a part of the cycle of nature. Eternal, ongoing, always unseen. Seasons are sassy, it’s a known fact. Sometimes summers are cold and winters don’t have snow at all. Sometimes they are unpredictable but never like this.

“We have to wake up Spring,” the spirit of winter rasps fussily as soon as she leaves the doorstep behind. Her presence itself is a blinding brightness with her beautiful silver locks, ice blue eyes and pale skin. She’s like white frost flowers on windows, pioneers of the cold season creeping into the hearts of humans. A sight to behold.

Younghyun slowly looks up from his so-called throne that’s just one of the four around the round, gilded table in the meeting room designed for their trimestrial encounters. There are never more than two of them present but they all have a chair assigned just for them, bearing their marks and symbols, made by a tree so uniquely theirs. It’s a reminder that no matter what, the four of them rule together in this area and when one goes down, another one comes up.

Now, the chilly September wind being the messenger, it’s Younghyun’s turn. The smell of sweet rain and pumpkin pies is already in the air, the leaves are losing their green colour and the flowers are leaving their colourful petals on the dead ground. He’s in the prime of his life, stronger than ever just like he’s supposed to be in the beginning of the autumn season that took everybody by storm after the days of summer officially ran out.

“Why? What’s happening?” he asks confused, brows furrowed but can’t help his heart that’s beating furiously of the thought of you. Of better days of spring and flower crowns withering away under your careful gaze and soft smile.

He harshly grabs onto his wooden chair made out of oak tree and overgrown by grape leaves. Normally, he should be discussing important matters with the winter spirit who just woke up and sent Summer into sleep. He should definitely not talk about such blatant nonsense like waking up another season before their time. There’s still three more lunar months until you are supposed to be up and Tingyan knows this very well too. Then what the hell is she talking about?

“Don’t you feel it? The change?” she quirks an eyebrow at him and even though she usually hides her feelings pretty well, Younghyun can tell she’s pissed, probably thinking about how she ended up with such fools around her.

Of course, he feels the change, the weather getting warmer and more chaotic each year, but he has been sensing this for decades now and he got used to the uneasiness.

“But the rules…” he’s mumbling, hanging onto the only thing he believed to be as certain as writings set in stone.

“The rules change, too. Taeyang can’t fall asleep,” the winter spirit explains and a sun-kissed boy with wide smile steps into the meeting room on cue. “Before, when this idiot accidently touched me, icebergs melt. Now? Flowers bloom from ice.”

“Hey, folks, I’m here too and I take full offense for that degrading comment,” Taeyang snickers like he always does with Tingyan.

Winter and summer are total opposites and their spirits’ personalities are quite different too, so maybe that’s why they never really got along. They didn’t even need to due to the fact they only met twice a year. But now that both of them are up and Summer really doesn’t look sleepy at all, it makes Younghyun mull over the odds of impossible in fear. Their job was to keep the balance. Does that mean they failed?

Yet, here he is recklessly hoping that it means that he can see you soon.

“But how is this possible?” he furrows his brows, fingers twitching as he gulps down his nervousness.

“Ask Mother Earth,” the winter spirit shrugs while Taeyang shoots finger guns at him instead of answering the question.

“Come on, Autumn, bring Spring into the party! You have to be the one to wake her up, otherwise it would confuse her a lot and we don’t want any more unnecessary changes or do we?” he raises an eyebrow clearly as a joke. However, Tingyan doesn’t appreciate his funny side and smacks him on the arm that makes him let out a yelp.

Younghyun doesn’t pay attention to their dispute, he’s too immersed in the thought of meeting you so early. Such an unexpected turn of events! He steps towards the direction of your suite almost blindly, pulled by invisible strings and a magnetic power stronger than gravity.

The golden doorknob is cold under his touch and he’s shivering even though he’s not capable of feeling neither warm, nor cold. At least, not in that sense humans feel them; it’s more like an emotion for him, something stirring deep in his heart. His breath hitches as the door opens so easily and the immerse dose of flower scent is already suffocating him. He chokes on his own saliva but it doesn’t break his determination as he marches towards your baldachin bed thoroughly hinted with fresh flower petals. Where in the midst of roses, lilies, jasmines and even more exotic kinds Younghyun doesn’t even recognize, there’s you, the prettiest flower of all.

You are like an angel sleeping in your rosy coloured dress with your long, dark hair sprawled on the white sheets. You have flowers among your locks, like always, and this time they are midnight blue forget-me-nots. Like he could ever forget you! Your heart-shaped face and glossy lips are imprinted in his mind making him crave something he shouldn’t. Because there’s a bridgeless abyss between something you simply won’t have and can’t have. Still, it’s not about owning, about such filial want for physical things but also the longing for a life in which you are with him and not only for one day. But forever.

What can he do though? Autumn and spring is half a year apart, yet you are here, so close, so mesmerizingly beautiful and peaceful while he’s choking on the pollens that are scratching his throat. He absolutely adores this irreplaceable sweetness of yours but the realm of Spring is killing him. He has to act soon or else, his recklessness will be his undoing for being here too long.

He sits down on the edge of your soft bed, the mattress dampening under him as he can’t take his eyes off of you. He’s certain of how he feels, how pathetically autumn is in love with spring, yet he never dares to act on those feelings. Not even when he has seen the same yearning in your eyes because he would hate himself to bring chaos down onto the two of you.

Maybe it’s the change in the air or maybe it’s something completely different but now he feels daring, desperate enough to lean closer until he cannot process anything else but your light breaths on his face and the flutters of your eyelashes. Without further delay, he dives in and presses his lips gently onto your forehead. But as if you burnt him, he pulls back almost immediately, wiping his still tingling mouth with the back of his hands not believing what he just did. Silly, silly deity, has nobody taught you that this mundane thing called love is such a dangerous thing to do?

A heartbeat later, when you blink once, twice and then slowly open your eyes drowsily, he’s there with the softest smile despite being terrified of the possible consequences of his own actions.

“Hey…” he greets you and no matter the centuries that went by, you still get flustered by the way he looks at you so fondly.

“Is it time already?” you ask suddenly wide awake and sitting up in your bed hastily. Did you sleep in? Why did he come into your room when he always waits outside for you?

“Well, about that…” Younghyun gulps and his gaze drops somewhere between your bodies on the flower-made bed. When he looks up, his eyes are autumn days you dreamed about, the warm but windy ones when you wish somebody would hold your hand. But the boy next to you doesn’t do that, no, he rather brushes a stray lock out of your eyes and tucks it behind your ear carefully not to touch your skin. “Everybody is required to be at this year’s autumnal equinox.”

You can only gape at him in awe. This has never happened before.

“What… what does it mean?”

“We are not sure.”

Nobody is. The Seasons’s Council is more crowded this year than ever before and of course, a lot louder too. You stay close to Younghyun as the spirits from all over the globe arrive and start discussing the issue at hand. You don’t understand much of it but you are fascinated by all the new faces you see.

“Is she a rain season? I have never seen one before,” you point at a girl whose hair is like waves and she moves so fluidly as if she was made of slippery water.

“Yeah, she is from the East,” Younghyun nods and introduces you to some other spirits he knows from other areas where only two season spirits exists. You find the monsoon seasons particularly funny so you enjoy yourself despite the seriousness of the situation. Thought, it’s mostly because your beloved autumn spirit is by your side. He’s the calm river in a thundery forest and whenever you feel him getting closer signalled by that dizziness that rushes over you, you are reminded that everything will be okay.

Even if the meeting goes by fruitless and the seasons leave even more fidgety than before, you don’t mind it. Not if it means you can stay and watch autumn unfold in front of your eyes, if you can spend more time with the spirit who stole your heart from bits to bits over the last millennium.

“What happens now?” you speak up when the two of you step out to the balcony of the building. You don’t have to say your fears out loud explicitly for Younghyun to understand what you mean by that: what if you die like humans?

“Now we are here to see every season until we can,” he reassures you with your favourite kind of smile, that genuine one that warms and melts your insides. It takes your breath for a moment and you don’t have any more self-restraint to keep yourself from asking what you’ve wanted to since he woke you up.

“Do you think I can touch you without causing havoc?”

“I- Maybe,” the forever young man blurts out nervous like a teenager in love, clearly taken aback by your direct question but he doesn’t move an inch when you lift your hand to his face.

You hesitate. You’re afraid you will wake up from this dream if you touch him, or you might ruin him just like how spring conquers winter every year. The what ifs horrify you and Younghyun sees your wobbliness in your eyes and shaky fingers. So he gently takes your hand slotting his fingers between yours as he presses your palm flatly on his cheek.

Wow. You let out a relieved sigh.

“You are warm,” you whisper being lost for words. It’s not his ageless face or the touch itself, but the warmth that’s coming from the heart and feels like home.

“You fault,” the spirit of the current season says cheekily and you chuckle in embarrassment. Why is he so cheesy?

“Liar,” you shake your head in disbelief and step back. You need a breather because your lungs are on fire and you’re sure it’s because of the incompatibility between your seasons’ nature. It would be dangerous to prolong the moment more. So you turn towards the jaw-dropping scenery and smile tenderly at no one in particular. “I can’t believe I can see autumn. It’s beautiful.”

Younghyun’s breath hitches as he watches you marvelling at the colours he created and just like an artist presenting his masterpiece, he can’t help but feel proud that you like his work. Oh how he wished so many times you were there to see the beauty of fall.

“I have always known though. I saw it in your eyes,” you keep rambling, confessing in your own innocent way but oh boy, he knows you too well to let it slip through his fingers like that.

“So is it spring I see in your eyes?” he looks straight in your eyes with a look so serious you don’t know what to expect but still, your heart is beating rapidly like the clopping of wild horses on the run.

“I don’t know. What do you see?”

“Something I would be willing to bloom and wither for.”

It’s the softest kiss, a silent I love you and a promise. It takes your breath away and your heart skips a beat as he kisses you shortly. You both know it won’t be easy but you believe it’s worth it, especially because for the first time since forever you are waiting for spring to come with him by your side.

I had to make it happy end, I hope you like it! ♥