His pale hand that looks like it’s dyed in red moonlight softly brushes against her arm. Those featherlike mannerisms fluster her, his thick voice melts dazzlingly in her ear. Baby, look at me. Wisps of patchouli and sickly sweet vanilla fill the rain soaked night. The blemishes she leaves on him mirrors lipstick on marble. Passion builds and burns inside of her in indigo tinted flames. I can’t remember anything before you. His leaving footsteps dissipate in dwindling smoke. Her porcelain fingers grasp cold black sheets. Come back! Don’t leave me, please, come back—

“Unnie, wake up!” Winter’s consecutive pillow attacks jolts Karina out of her sleep, causing the frazzled 20-year-old to harshly catch her breath before directing an irritated glare to her unimpressed sister. “Your alarm has been going off all morning, are you gonna skip classes again!?”

Karina heavily exhales, ruffling her disheveled ebony locks. “Okay, I got it. Quit it already.”

“By the way, something came for you this morning,” Winter winks obnoxiously, “Maybe it might motivate your lazy to go outside.”

Karina arches a questioning brow before drowsily mumbling curses beneath her breath. “You better not be joking, I’m not in the mood for your childish antics, Winter.”

“I’m so serious! I think it’s from you-know-who,” Winter laughingly taunts as she follows her grumpy sister into the corridor. The latter is about to bitterly retort when she catches glance of a gold accented black Venus et Fleur box filled with blushing red roses on the kitchen table.

“Isn’t it crazy?” A smirk uncurls on Winter’s pink lips, she carelessly plucks a rose much to Karina’s dismay. “Supposedly, these flowers last all year long. They might even last longer than your relationship, unnie.”

“Shut your mouth,” Karina pinpoints her in simmering annoyance. Her onyx irises flicker back to the flower arrangement. Other than intimacy, opulence was Jeno’s love language. These roses represents his adoration for her, she prays it does, hopes that the gorgeous ways he mends her fragmented heart back together isn’t all for nothing. She lovingly caresses a rose as if it were his skin she was soothing. He always folded under her scorpio sting, it was like an inferno to him and it left him crumbling to charcoal. She shivers at the picture of his shadowy face in her mind. All of her scenarios and decisions tied up in the silk of his omnipresent yearning.

She misses him, misses him silhouetted in starlight, misses his lips biting her lips, misses the skipped heartbeats his tantalizing seduction causes on her, misses his black tattered ballet shoes and peony bruises that makes him blissfully sigh when she kisses him there. She misses his femme fatale, kittenish gestures and withdrawn broodiness, the Calvin Klein waistband that hangs low on his alabaster hips, traces of glitter from her makeup that settles in his sheets. How he goes from a feral black jaguar prowling through campus to a docile sweetheart for her in private, bubble baths and Moët and explicit melancholy. Documenting their own cinematic movie for the moon and stars to witness, sharing secrets too scandalous for mornings, bodies entangling to become one. Whole. Jeno.

She can’t exist without him.

An iridescent spotlight showers Jeno as he leaps across the grand stage. With each graceful jump he ascends and descends like white cherry blossoms, his svelte movements recite poetry in the air and it seems as if the musical notes of the piano encourage his elegant crimes. The watching audience fuels him on, their breathless gasps from his fluid pirouettes spikes pheromones in his bloodstream. Of course, they have no choice but to be captivated by him, for his glimmering ethereality and renaissance-like flair that’s like no other. His slender limbs crafted of satin and sharp muscles sculpted from diamonds, his blood and tears, what would they know about the strenuous regimen he puts his disciplined body through? He’s the personification of vintage perfume bottles, gold powdered angel wings, twinkling Eiffel lights, romanticized philosophies, pearls, and the sugary gleam of eternal snow. Divine. Even if his body cries out and breaks down in unbearable pain, he doesn’t mind it at all. Spent and love-drunk, he gazes upon them with pupils wide blown in lust and metallic lightning. He arouses in the thrown bouquets and shrill applause, the piercing eyes, the violent rush coexisting prettily in his system with heady sedation. Crimson watercolors flush his cheekbones as he takes one last bow before slipping offstage where his peers greet him with explosive cheers.

“Daebak, you were practically ten feet in the air!” Jaemin exclaims in awe.

“Yah, that’s impossible,” Doyoung scoffs before patting Jeno on the shoulder, “Good job, you’re improving more than even the seniors. They’re probably pissing themselves about how great you are.”

Jeno’s previous high dies down to a puerile modesty. “Don’t say that, hyung. I still have a long way to go.”

The elder disapprovingly frowns at him. “Being a perfectionist is only gonna tear you up in end, Jeno. Remember to take it easy, okay? Don’t go to the practice room but go straight home. You still have upcoming recitals and competitions, what good is it to overexert your body now?”

Jeno winces, but nods obediently as Doyoung pats his shoulder again for good measure. He craves nicotine, something to substitute his vanishing adrenaline and pacify his nerves. And he does exactly that as he changes into his sweats and swiftly excuses himself for a cigarette break behind the auditorium building. At the first exhale of translucent grey, the lightheaded buzz purifies his pent up dissatisfaction. Resentment swirls in his chest, followed by guilt, turmoil, then crushing defeat. He feels his phone vibrate in his pocket, solemnly, he slides it out and taps the screen to life to reveal a blue text bubble.

wendy 💗: hey babe you were fantastic out there! 

wendy 💗: where are you i got your favorite flowers 💐

A fond smile plays on his lips.

“Jeno.”

His thumb pauses over the keyboard. His head lifts up for his whole world to disintegrate in slow motion.

“Karina.”

She fills the gap between them in two strides, her hand already reaching for his black cigarette.

“Why do you look like you seen a ghost?” She smirks coyly. “Did you really think I would miss your performance?”

“Did you like it?” He worries his bottom lip between pearly whites, shy and hopeful.

She boringly scans him up and down. “I liked your dancing. . . Can’t say the same about you.”

Humming low, he pockets his phone and pushes off the brick wall. He takes in her incandescent appearance, momentarily pausing at the charming beauty mark on her chin. She slowly inhales, the cigarette’s end crackles and golden sparks fly. She’s so hot, so y, an aphrodisiac that sets his gasoline heart ablaze. Hopes the pretty rage radiating off her shoulders burns him alive in sweet, sweet fire. “Why can’t you just say I did well?”

“Cause you’re just fishing for compliments,” Silver tendrils chase her harsh words.

“Didn’t you miss me?” His pleading expression contrasts the cruel amusement crinkling in her snowflake pupils. “I missed you like crazy.”

An evaluating, wolfish smile decorates her face. “Is that why you sent those roses?”

“Red roses are your flowers,” He points out, flushing the shade of a bruised peach.

She scoffs around her cigarette. “And isn’t it ironic — how black roses are yours.”

“. . . I would touch you but I don’t have your permission.”

Karina withholds a sarcastic laugh, opting to coolly blow fragrant smoke in his gorgeous face instead. “Oh, really?” She drops the black cigarette and grounds it with her heel. Jeno observes as she presses closer, barely tracing the iron curves of his angular  jaw all the way down to his throat with her cold fingertips. “Then how come I can touch you anytime I want?”

His coal eyes smolder. “Because I’m yours.”

(First you made my heart beat.)

“Liar,” She hisses, scorned glare forming.

“And you’re mine.”

(Then you beat my heart.)

“Stop lying to me!” She weakly fists the front of his sweater, on the verge of cerulean tears.

 His veiny hands come up to cup the sides of her face. “You can’t stay mad at me forever — you just can’t. How are you able to go a day without talking to me? It’s so hard for me, I need you.” She tinges scarlet beneath his overwhelming intensity. Her eyelashes flutter shut as she involuntarily rocks her body into his, releasing mutual groans and mixed sighs. He steals a kiss, his way into and there’s way too much tongue for it to be sweet but it’s him, and she loves everything he gives her. Submission. He kisses greedily, like he’s taking back the lost time she stole from them being together. All she can do is hold onto him tightly and melt in the remaining sweetness of the chocolatey cigarette he had.

“You’re such a good girl,” He lays open mouthed kisses on her jaw, neck, collarbones. Karina whimpers his name like a hymn, every kiss ignites a wild fire trail of starry dizziness across her skin and she relishes in it shamelessly. The heat of his body feels like paradise, her head lolls back for him to tattoo her neck in lilacs.

“I love you,” She’s lost in gratifying ecstasy, a lush oasis, wet and tropical obsession. “I’ll always love you.” A crazy desire that erodes like bugs eating fruit from the inside. It’s a lie, but she’s caught it in, it’s such a sweet lie. And it’s all hers.