Walking down a small pathway made of stone - old and ragged, as such pathways sometimes were, Luhan was careful not to step on stray flowers which had overgrown from the grassy field all around him and who stood proudly, defying all newcomers bravely.

 

The stray flower was white and soft, nothing like the sole flower he was clutching tightly. No, it wasn’t soft and forgettable, ordinary and beautiful because of its modesty. This flower was something entirely else - it was unique and strong and easily recognized among thousands of other flower species inside of a giant garden.

 

The pathway led to the top of a small hill, a lonely tree standing there as an outpost to all the lost souls like his own. The tree’s branches swayed slightly, creating a stage play of light, the gold and blue alternating with a little bit of white among all the green.

 

The summer would be over soon, Luhan knew. It was just one of these days when it seemed as if it wasn’t the end of September, but the beginning of June instead. The nature would not be lulled into a gentle sleep soon, in which it would remain until spring came, waking it up.

 

The flowers would not close their petals and retreat into the ground. The leaves would not flush in an irreversible process that would carry them away from the tree’s branches, out into the unknown and towards a silent place…

 

A place that would remain unchanged, only the blanket of snow hiding it from the world for a little while. Hiding it from anyone who might remember, who might want to…

 

Luhan did not know anything about this place. Yet he was here, and he felt familiar with everything - as if the flocks of birds making mysterious patterns in the sky and moving towards a brighter tomorrow were followed by his eyes as they came back half a year ago.

 

Came back from where? The south? And came back to which place? Home?

 

Luhan reached the tree and leaned his back on the tree’s trunk, careful not to harm the old friend in any way. It wasn’t too hot - instead, the day felt just right like only a few did when it was summer.

 

Only a few did during all other seasons, too.

 

Luhan glanced at the flower in his hands, so out-of-place in this oasis of peace and warmth.

 

But it was not.

 

Luhan had seen it for the first time on the cover of a book - or at least, what he’d thought was a book - that someone had forgotten and left behind on a train ride.

 

He could’ve left it on the table. He could’ve run after the stranger, but he did not remember who it was. He was a child, eager to get home after having spent some time with his distant relatives, and he did not want to get lost before getting there.

 

So as the train’s wheels turned and the iron horse brought him closer to home, he opened the book and began reading it. He was a small boy, but he’d always liked reading books, so this would be just another conquest for him.

 

Luhan took the book out of his pocket as he sank to the ground, his back still anchored by the tree’s trunk. Its jacket was old and nearly torn at places from having been read so much.

 

He opened it for God knew what time since that day on the train. Yet the feeling he’d had when he’d started reading it for the first time persisted - it was excitement combined with fear, uncertainty and just enough belief that the writer was not a liar making up things that were not true.

 

He was quite different than that boy, and he knew the book’s contents by heart, but beginning to read it again still left him feeling as if this time, its contents would not be the same and the end would change.

 

He took a deep breath, clutching the book tightly in his hands, the flower perfectly fitting in next to the violet jacket with the image of the same flower on it.

 

He’d picked it up on purpose - it could’ve been pink, red, white… But for some reason, he chose violet. Because it was the color the book’s writer had chosen, because it was the color he thought she liked.

 

She…

 

Much the same like the first time, Luhan traced his fingers on the handwritten letters in the book. It was not a book, but a diary, yet Luhan still refused to call it that. Because maybe, just maybe, the writer was not the girl whose story she’d told. Maybe that girl didn’t exist at all. Though he hoped she did, with his whole heart.

 

Luhan sighed, reading what was written on the first page. Why was he still doing this to himself, even after all these years? Why couldn’t he let go of all of this?

 

It was just a child’s dream, everything. A play of words, a talented hand, a big coincidence. Why Luhan still didn’t believe in it, he did not know.

 

I am writing these words even as the tears roll down my cheeks, the page read. Because though you’d said you would return again, a part of me knows you will not.

 

And seeing you for the last time like this, without being able even to say a proper goodbye, hurts so much.

 

But perhaps that is how everything is supposed to be - it is not fair for some to get everything they want and for others to have nothing. And life is not unfair.

 

The words resonated deep within Luhan’s soul, though they should’ve lost meaning through time. Though he’d read them so many times that they blended in with his very soul and turned into one of his basic beliefs.

 

It wouldn’t rain today. Yet he could see the scene in his mind nevertheless, the woman being hit into the head while she was washing laundry on the riverside. Though he could imagine her fear while she was being thrown into the river, because she knew she would die.

 

But she didn’t. Instead, she was saved by a pair of strong arms, though they were as young as her own - merely sixteen at the time. Instead, the duo rushed away on his horse, and though they were being chased, they would not be caught. He reassured her over and over again, and she believed him.

 

Neither of them knew that the time they would have together would be short. Neither of them knew that, every time they went into the field of violet flowers and chased each other until sunset, it could be the last time.

 

A month. A month of protection from harm, of laughter and sweet bliss they’d thought would last forever. It was the beginning of August when they’d first met. When he’d saved her from the people wanting to prevent her from helping make the world a better place.

 

At the end of August, she was alone among the flowers again.

 

Luhan had read the first chapter so many times that some of the pages were torn out of the book, glued back later just to start falling out after some time again. The story progressed without difficulties, and the prince-rescuing-the-lady concept was so interesting to him that he’d thought of himself as a knight who’d arrive just in time to save such people from harm.

 

He did not understand the explanations of falling in love at the time. Nor until much, much later, when he turned sixteen himself and started wishing he had someone to fall in love with, too.

 

The second time he arrived, it was the beginning of August again. He was just a coincidental savior again, in time to kill the snake that was about to bite her while she was resting in the field of violet flowers.

 

She remembered him perfectly well. She knew every line on his face, the unique color of his eyes, the beauty of his smile. She was still mourning the loss of him, not understanding why he’d disappeared so suddenly but trying to justify him even though he’d probably just gotten bored of her.

 

But he knew nothing about her. To him, she was just a stranger he’d never met before.

 

She fell in love with him again at the age of seventeen, and this time they spent a month looking at the night sky while he told her the names of countless galaxies and their stories.

 

She tried to memorize them all and failed, but she would never forget one he’d told her the first time he’d kissed her in their second encounter. In his second life, as she liked to say.

 

The sky was not always so full of stars, he had said to me, the words Luhan knew by heart read. A long, long time ago, it used to be empty and void of light.

 

A beautiful woman, much like you, did not like darkness. She wished the world was full of light, during the night just like during the day.

 

She was so sad and lonely that tears began streaming down her face.

 

Luhan took a deep breath, wanting to close the book and throw it away. Why was it making him feel like this? Why couldn’t he get used to it, even after all these years?

 

Do you see all of the asters in this field? The boy said to her, staring into her eyes right before kissing her underneath the stars.

 

They are the tears of the woman who did not want to live in a dark world. Just like you, though the darkness you are fighting is inside of people’s hearts, and it is hard to light them up.

 

Even with the sincerity of love.

 

At the end of August, he disappeared again.

 

The asters remained. She wondered if more would grow if she cried on the field, or if it would make no difference.

 

Some people were lucky enough to find their soulmate once. Luhan wasn’t such a person - at seventeen, he was the laughing stock of the school, his head always buried underneath a million books about astronomy. And flowers. Violet asters in particular.

 

Luhan stood up, wanting to get out from the safety of the tree’s branches and out into the sun. He was feeling cold and empty, and he did not want for the flower in his hands to feel that emptiness.

 

He looked around himself: the whole world was a sea of grass and flowers, the field going as far as his eyes could reach and even further away.

 

It was a field like any other.

 

Yet his feet had taken him here today, while October was steadily approaching and the summer would be just a distant memory until the next time it settled on this Earth, blessing it with its warmth and sending it into a happy dream so much unlike the one created by winter.

 

Memory… Next time…

 

At the age of eighteen, she met the person she considered her soulmate again.

 

Again, she'd been supposed to die. She’d hurried one of the children away and into the woods, and she hoped the child would manage to get away, but she didn’t think for a second that she might, too.

 

Luhan looked at the sky - its color was like no other, a beautiful shade of blue that brought calmness to everything in the world.

 

It was the last color the woman thought she would see before she died - now finally, with no stranger there to save her.

 

But he proved her wrong again, throwing some kind of food at the mad dog who was going to shred her to pieces for sure. The dog fell asleep, and he smiled.

 

He did not know who she was.

 

She pretended it was likewise.

 

And he fell in love with her again, just like she did with him. They ate apples that were not yet ripe together and laughed deep into the night, the sound echoing through the endless fields, becoming one with the sounds of the cricketers who were the only residents of the grass that were not asleep.

 

When the cricketers fell silent, she remained alone with the asters and the stars. But the memory of him remained.

 

Even though we had to do everything all over again every year, I wouldn’t have changed it for anything.

 

Because even though he changed through the years, just like I did, we always found ourselves falling in love with each other, again and again and again.

 

If that doesn’t mean we are destined for each other, then what does?

 

Even though the pathway ended at the top of the hill, Luhan’s feet were steady as they started carrying him through the grass. He had no idea where he was going. He had no idea how he would come back when the tree got too far from sight.

 

The grass was so tall he could barely move through it. It was golden, unsycthed by man and left to create a barrier between the cruel world of reality and the world of hopes and dreams.

 

Much like it had for the woman from the book, who’d run through the wall of gold and violet, sobbing because he did not come to save her when she was nineteen.

 

No, not her - the child she’d attempted to save, the child whose only sin was not being as intelligent as other children. Though it was as capable of loving as others, though it was as capable of feeling surprise and happiness and sadness and fear…

 

The 19-year-old her told the 19-year-old him how they’d met four years earlier, and then after a year, and then again. She’d fell in love with him three times. He’d saved her three times.

 

The fourth time did not happen, though. Instead, she’d spent that August alone, desperate and with her heart broken.

 

I should’ve known that he wouldn’t believe me, the words looked at Luhan from the old, worn-out pages of the book.

 

Who would? Half of the time, I questioned myself and thought I was crazy.

 

But it was him. And though this time he did not fall in love with me, I still loved him.

 

For Luhan, the age of nineteen was full of new things. It was the time when he first fell in love himself, with a girl he met at the university, who’d loved the same things he did and who didn’t pressure him into talking when he felt like going out into the nature to stare at the stars for a long time.

 

It did not last, though, and he was left with his obsession with stars and the aster on the book’s cover. And with the contents of the book, whose meaning he could still hardly comprehend. It would never be like reading it for the first time, though, he knew.

 

At twenty, her smile was honest but underneath it lay a sadness of the past year. Of having to get through it without the warmth of his eyes to follow her. Of wondering whether they would ever meet again, or if his withdrawal now would carry him to some other places and stop whatever miracle it was that led him to her from ever happening again.

 

But when she tripped and almost fell from a cliff, the hand that caught her own and brought her up was warm and sincere, and so was the boy who’d run away from her a year ago, calling her a madwoman and throwing away the aster she’d put in his hair while he wasn’t watching.

 

At twenty, there were the most asters in the field. She did not quite believe in the story of the woman’s tears, but the asters seemed like a visible expression of the past year’s sadness.

 

That August, he'd said he wanted to climb onto a tree to see how far the asters stretched, because it was an extraordinary scenery, after all.

 

The moonlight shone on the violet field, giving it an unearthly glow.

 

I can see them reflected in your eyes, he had said to me before he kissed me for the first time.

 

In his fifth life.

 

How long would this last? How many more times would I get to see him, love him and then grieve for him for an entire year?

 

How many more times would I wait until the end of August, preparing the words I would say for our final goodbye, the words I would never voice?

 

The grass suddenly became a sea of violet instead of the gold he was trying to get through frantically, speeding towards a destination he knew nothing about.

 

Luhan was surrounded by flowers identical to the one he was holding in his hand - powerful and unique and mysterious and patient, patient above everything as it waited for next August, when it'd be able to love and be happy again.

 

At the age of twenty-one, he did not come.

 

Or rather, it was her who did not get to see the asters bloom. Who did not get to see the night sky as it overflowed with stars, ensuring that the world was never enveloped in darkness again.

 

My heart is waiting for next August… Though I don’t think it will hold on and leave me in life, I will be there when he comes.

 

He will not know me.

 

He will not remember me.

 

He will not get to fall in love with me again.

 

But I will remember. I will remind him of all the love we’d shared so that he may come back into his world safely. So that he may love again, even if he will forget about it.

 

He will find me among the aster flowers. He will find my reflection in them, and though he will not know it, his heart will.

 

Luhan could not take much more - no, he couldn’t take a single word because he was overflowing, not able to breathe while he ran through the sea of asters, the sea of tears of some unknown woman who didn’t like the dark.

 

Who’d spent her life trying to protect the underdeveloped children. Who’d lived in a world where they were savagely murdered.

 

Who’d been wounded while trying to save another one of them.

 

Who wasn’t even real and who was making tears start streaming down his face as the grass and asters mixed once again and he suddenly found himself outside of the tall vegetation and in a place where the grass was cut and there was nothing but violet.

 

No, not him… You.

 

You will not remember, Luhan. And it’s okay, my love.

 

I’ll remember for both of us.

 

Luhan made a painful noise, the book falling out of his hands as he fell to his knees.

 

In front of him was a tombstone.

 

He remembered the last words in the book as if he’d written them himself. The little boy in the train thought it was such a strange coincidence that the main character in the book had the same name as him.

 

But coincidences didn’t exist.

 

He did not know what her face looked like. She did not describe whether her eyes were the color of nuts or jades, whether her hair was a fire shining in the sun or the echo of the darkness on the whitest snow.

 

He imagined her to be a small girl with curls the color of the palest wheat swaying in the autumn wind, ripe and unscythed. He imagined her eyes to be the reflection of the sky on the warmest summer day, and her smile to be the brightness of the stars shining during the night.

 

The tombstone was empty, as if those who’d buried her did not want for anyone to know what a bright person she was.

 

But the asters were all around her, the asters would always remain there, searching for the person who’d cried after being hurt by the constant disappearances of the man she’d loved.

 

“How must it have felt…” he said through a constricted throat, the tears not ceasing. “To fall in love, just to lose me afterwards, and then have to do it all over again.”

 

Don’t worry about me, Luhan. I hope that where I’m going, there won’t be darkness.

 

“I wish I remembered,” he whispered, the aster he’d brought to the field finding its way out of his hand and where it belonged, next to the woman who’d kept him inside of her eyes, knowing him better than he’d ever know himself.

 

And he’d never get to know her.

 

No…

 

He’d listen to the wind and hear her laughter in it. He’d smell the asters and feel the scent of her hair. He’d look at the sky and see her reflection. He’d touch the golden grass and know the feel of her curls against her fingers.

 

He would remember, too. His mind would not, but his heart would know.

 

And that would be enough.

 

I hope you find peace, my dear Luhan.

 

I have, every time I looked at you.

 

“I have, too,” he whispered as he closed his eyes, the tears falling to the ground. “Ever since you left this book for me that day on the train.”

 

As the train rolled away through the August day and the boy read the book with the aster as its cover for the first time, the tears on the ground in front of the tombstone turned into violet flowers, intertwining for the first and the last time.

 

I know the field of asters doesn’t stretch on forever, he said to me underneath the moonlight.

 

But I wish they did. The whole world would be filled with light, a light so bright that no one could ever forget it.

 

You didn’t, Luhan.

 

Thank you…

 

For remembering me.